Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
What Small Business Needs to Know About Marketing with Prosper Taruvinga and Cathy Smith
Show Notes
Prosper Taruvinga is the founder of Livelong Digital. Born in a small town in Zimbabwe, Africa, Prosper didn’t have a lot of money or ambition to become a successful businessman – but his life changed when a bright-eyed Australian teacher came to work at his school.A few years later, he jumped on a plane to Melbourne with nothing but the clothes on his back and high hopes for the future.
Nowadays, established service-based businesses hire him to help them Generate 100s of qualified, high-ticket leads like clockwork, so you never have to rely on cold calling or emailing just to beg clients to hire you. Their approach is simple, yet effective. They focus on building trust and credibility with your potential clients, so they are more likely to become paying clients.
Cathy Smith is the owner of CATCO Enterprises for over 20+ years now. As a granddaughter of an artist; design has been her whole life. CATCO Enterprises creates attraction and competitive benefit for businesses through holistic marketing. Comprehensive strategies that build relationships, honesty, integrity, and trust producing a positive marketing RIO.
The Digital Marketing Journey
Cathy started marketing thinking it is an easier route and would be better to have time with her baby. So 22 years ago, she started a digital marketing agency before digital marketing. So back then it was just a marketing agency. So they did Yellow Pages ads and fliers and newspaper ads and the traditional marketing. And then as time went on, it evolved. She became a digital marketing specialist.
So, what inspired Cathy to focus on helping small businesses with their marketing efforts considering she’s coming from corporate? Cathy was involved in a corporate that worked in small businesses working as a printing sales rep. She went around and helped people with their printing. And back in the day, printing was quite different to what it is now. So it was quite complicated, very expensive. So, she got to go into a lot of small businesses.
So it just seemed like a natural progression that when she started her business, she would help small businesses and it started because one person wanted help with their printing.
Why Is Marketing Strategy Not Working For You?
Why do many business owners actually struggle with maybe ineffective marketing strategies that are there? There’s a few different reasons. Some of them, they unfortunately get bad advice, so they go and see somebody who’s only interested in putting money in their own pockets and not in the pockets of their clients. If we all can make the pie bigger, we’re all going to prosper as opposed to trying to grab hold of one little pot and not give it to anybody.
The other thing is they spread themselves too thin. They want to do everything for everybody and unfortunately that doesn’t work. And the third thing is they get really excited. They start doing something and then suddenly it’s no longer a shiny object. Something else has come along. So, they grab it that. So, they’re not consistent and they don’t follow through.
Identifying Your Ideal Customers Through Marketing
There are a couple of different ways. One is to think about your best customer. So, if you’re already having got a business, you’ve already got customers, then who is your best customer? Who is the customer that always pays on time is easy to deal with? Appreciates what you do, take some advice. If you’re in the advice type game, think about that person and how can you amplify that person if you’re only just starting out and you don’t have customers already, then think about what the customer might like to be.
So if you’re following your own journey, it could be you. Five years ago, what would you have wanted five years ago that the you of today can help out with? And tasking you absolutely spot-on on that, especially when somebody looks at what they’re going through right now. Usually nine times out of ten, somebody else is going through that.
Common Mistakes That Small Business Owner Do
One mistake it to be everything to everybody. Remember the Facebook analogy? If you think about Facebook, Facebook started in one university on one campus. Once they got that sorted out, they went to a second campus. When they got that sorted out, then they went to other universities and then world domination. So if you can tailor your marketing and your business to one type of person with one service, get that sorted and then offer other things. If you’re trying to offer ten things, you’re probably going to do a not so good job, a little bit badly on two or three, maybe one stands out, and it makes it much more difficult for a customer to go, Oh, you’re the blue widget person.
So when you’re looking at these people that have a huge range of products, they normally didn’t start that way unless you were actually selling products, so you might be selling something of a low value, then you might need to have a few. But even with that, think about what complements it.
So if you’re a café, for instance, and you’re selling coffee, do you put biscuits with that? Do you give a gluten free option? Do you then give a different dietary option? Do you bring in tea? What is it that you can bring all around that same thing? Don’t be selling coffee and then think, right, I’m going to be doing smoothies all in one go. If there’s only one person, they wait until you’ve got that coffee sorted and then you can expand your range.
Marketing Authenticity Is Important
Authenticity is everything. You can’t be who you’re not. Remember the quote by Marie Forleo that says that why try to be somebody else? Because they’re already taken badly set. But you get the ID, you can only be you if you’re trying to be somebody else. You’ve got to have a very, very good memory because you’ve got to remember how you showed up and who you showed up to.
If you’re just being you and true to you, some people are going to love it. Some people are not going to like it. And that’s equally as good because that way you are going to actually repel those people because they’re not your people. So, it’s no point spending all this time and energy trying to be somebody and attract people that don’t want you because that’s how you go bust very quickly.
Everybody else is taken. You know, there’s only one Cathy Smith out there.
Surround Yourself with the Right People
It is essential that you surround yourself with the right people because we can’t possibly know everything ourselves. So listening to podcasts, like Small Business Talk just about to hit 200 episodes by the time this one is out, is a great help.
We can’t know everything about everything. So hearing different people’s opinions on it, hearing how they’ve made things worth hearing, how it didn’t work, you might hear that they did a podcast and you’re going like,” Oh, that’s not for me”. Or they might be a YouTuber and you go, “That’s not for me either”. Well, that’s fantastic because you know, not to put your energy there.
So you might be into blogging. You might be somebody who likes to write, you might want to do short content. All of those things that gives you an idea on where you are good with so listening to other people saying what they are, what they do, mixing and matching up flavoring to taste is how you become a much better person. But remember, don’t try to get everything from everybody as we’ve been talking about. Just pick one or two, see how you go. Sometimes new people come into your sphere, but don’t try to learn something from absolutely everybody or you’ll just be overwhelmed.
Marketing Tips for Marketing Coaches
Tip 1. Get in front of the people.
The first thing they need to do is actually get in front of people so people get bogged down in, I’ve got to have another certification, I’ve got to get a new tool, I’ve got to learn that tool. Everything has to be perfect. And the problem there, is that you never actually get in front of real people. If you don’t get in front of real people, you can’t use your coaching ability. You can’t take it, you can’t change it, and you’ll never know whether you’re actually going to be a really good coach or not. Having said that, one of the tools that really helps and it was made here in Western Australia is Canva, Canva.com.
It started in Perth University. So there’s a free version of that and there’s also a paid version, but that’s a really great way to get really high quality social media. It’s also a very big rabbit hole and you can get stuck in it for a lot of time. So please be careful on sitting on Canva all day.
Tip 2. Be Consistent
Every day does not mean you’re a business person, but that is a fantastic tool because you can do fliers, you can do social media, you can do all sorts of different types of artwork that you can use then to put it out there, not a tool per say, but something that really works well for all small businesses is consistency.
Pick one area that you’re going to market. So it might be Facebook. It could be Instagram, you might not be doing online at all. But whatever your core thing is, make sure that you’re consistent and you’re doing it regularly
The Marketing Roadmap
Well, Canva once again, like Facebook didn’t come out of the box and didn’t suddenly emerge and be the success it is today. It took a lot of years. It took some investment and it took some real grit to make that the worldwide name that we’ve got now. So sometimes you need to actually put those steps in, the hard work and persevere. So, if you’ve got a really good idea that’s not quite working, then maybe you’re almost at the top of the hill, maybe you just haven’t quite got there yet. So sometimes it’s a case of not giving up because you can almost see the view.
Yes, the coaches marketing right roadmap can benefit coaches in their marketing journey. It’s a ten week course and we teach coaches how to market their businesses because it seems that a lot of coaches learn the art of coaching, they learn how to coach, but then they just put out into the real world and got, okay, how do you get clients? And that’s where they struggle. So, we’re teaching people how to use their passion of coaching and create a thriving business. You can check out Cathy’s Coaching Marketing Roadmap here.
Links
What Small Business Needs to Know About Marketing with Prosper Taruvinga and Cathy Smith
If you’re a small business owner looking to maximize your marketing efforts, be sure to connect with Cathy and explore the services that she offers at CATCO Enterprises. And remember, your business Success is within reach. And when you have the right marketing strategies in place, you can create a business that’s profitable and enjoyable.
Listen to the full episode of Small Business Talk episode 208.
You can also find the video versions of the Small Business Talk Episodes on YouTube.
