The balancing act between tactical approaches to marketing for short-term profits, versus the more strategic approaches that bring in longer term profits and credibility.
One of the main flaws in the stock market lies in the fact that companies are evaluated on a very, very short-term basis. In that case, quarterly. If a company misses a target for one quarter, the stock typically drops instantly.
They are forced to think in terms of a 3-4 month window of opportunity.
Fortunately, for you as a small business owner, you don’t have stockholders and investors breathing down your neck to hit specific revenue goals or watch your shares plummet.
For a company to survive and grow for years, you must begin to think strategically. This creates long-term branding and success because you tend to focus on things that add more value to your customers lives.
To be more clear, let me give you an example.
Let’s say it’s December 5th and you’re “just” shy of hitting your yearly goal. You want to hit that goal no matter what, so you decide to hold a 50% off promotion for the Christmas season.
The promotion allows you to hit your goal. You’re happy, your employees are happy and your customers are especially happy. They just paid 50% less for your product/service!
But in that happiness lies a major problem.
If you do this too often, your customers become accustomed to your discounting. You lose your credibility and positioning power in the marketplace. They will literally stop buying until you run another promotion.
Let’s juxtapose that with a more long-term, strategic thought process.
Instead of discounting, you RAISE your prices. In order to make sure your conversions don’t plummet, you add more value by including a few extra bonuses and hire a better copywriter to make the sales copy sell better.
No, you probably won’t hit your income target for THAT year, but you’ll set yourself up for much higher income, long-term.
1) Better Positioning – Every person should want to be perceived as the #1 leading expert within their industry. And what do all experts have? Products and services that are priced higher than other people in the marketplace.
2) Higher Perceived Value – The more you pay for something, the more you value it. People who pay $1k for a junk car will have no problem running it through a giant mud pile, over a curb or in a blizzard. Do you think someone would do that with a brand new Ferrari? With higher prices comes higher respect and appreciation for what they paid for.
3) Higher Quality Buyers – As you probably know, I own dozens of different businesses. Some of them are lower priced products…. some very high (relative to the marketplace, since each market is different). One trend I’ve noticed is that the higher priced I am in the marketplace, the higher caliber of buyers I attract. This means more opportunity for coaching and higher end products/services, less complainers, and less refunds.
Increasing prices (for a strategic reason) is just a single example of tactical versus strategic thinking. It is an important one because it’s one of the fastest ways to increase your net profits… if you do it right by adding more value in order to increase your prices.
With that said, I understand that sometimes you need to resort to tactical, short-term thinking simply so you can pay the bills for that month.
However, do not fall into that trap. Do what you must to survive, but always keep “strategy” clearly focused in the back of your mind. This is what I teach my students and I’ve seen literally hundreds of people exponentially multiply their businesses once they began thinking strategically instead of tactically.
It’s also something I’ve been teaching at my C7 Business Model events. If you’ve been following my own progress over the past few years, you’ll see just how strategic I am in everything I do.
If you would like to get a glimpse inside my mind and learn how to be more strategic in your business to increase both short and long-term profits, I invite you to come to one of our C7 Business Model events.
You can go here to see where we’re headed next.