7 habits of highly successful business owners
Chris Dale • September 24, 2020
Few things are more important to a business than its ability to market its products and services effectively. If you want to grow your business and increase your profitability, you might be wondering what steps you need to take to reach your goal.
Over time, MarketingHQ has worked with many owners of small, medium and large businesses. These business owners are successful. With our help, their businesses are thriving. And they share similar habits when it comes to marketing their businesses. Want to know what they are? Here’s a summary of the seven key habits of business owners that we’ve observed.
Habit 1: They understand the importance of good branding
At MarketingHQ, a brand is defined as ‘the consumer’s gut feeling about a product, service or organisation’. Successful business owners understand the importance in investing in branding that connects with their customer, positions them against their competition and stands out from the crowd.
A well-designed and consistently used brand also builds trust and helps associate your business with a solution, action or even a specific word. Google is a great example of this. Their brand is associated with the online searching. Now, instead of consumers saying that they need to ‘search online’ for something, they say to ‘Google it’. This is the power of good branding.
Habit 2: They have marketing systems and processes in place
Marketing is most effective when it’s part of running a business, not just something your business does when things get a bit quiet. Smart business owners know that consistent, systematic marketing drives new and repeat business. They are consistent with their implementation and methodical in their approach as they know that this is the way to ensure marketing works for them.
Habit 3: They know when to hire experts
Good business owners are not afraid to admit they cannot do everything on their own. If you try to do everything in your business, you’ll waste a lot of time and energy. Instead, focus on getting good at one or two vital skills and outsource marketing to trusted experts.
Those who hire experts to help run their businesses are often surprised at the amount of time they save. Doing so will also enable you to maintain your perspective so that you can view your business as a whole without getting too caught up in individual tasks.
Habit 4: They understand their customers
All truly successful businesses have one thing in common: they understand their customers on a deep level. If you want to get the best possible marketing results, then you need to understand what your customers need, want and desire. This will allow you to tailor your marketing in a way that gets their attention and compels them to buy your product or service.
You can achieve this via marketing research, by observation or just by talking to customers. If you can understand your customers and their motivations to buy, your marketing will be much more effective.
Habit 5: They know their customers' pain points
In addition to understanding their customers, successful business owners also understand the pain points that trigger the need for their product or service. This pain point is the first step in the customer’s decision-making process and should be the focus of your marketing messages. When you know what bothers your customers and causes them stress, you can show them how your product or service eases their pain and why they should spend money to fix it.
Habit 6: They’ve got a marketing plan
There’s a saying in business, ‘What gets written, gets done’. In our experience, successful business owners have a marketing plan. That’s why the first step of any engagement with MarketingHQ involves the creation of a marketing plan. The plan should identify your ideal customer and their pain points, specify marketing objectives and provide the structure for how your business is going to systematically market your product and services to that customer.
A good marketing plan is also a fluid document: it gets updated continually, not written once and then ignored for 6 to 12 months. In our experience, marketing plans often change as markets change with new competition, products, services and technological advances that sometimes change how customers access a product or service. You need to be flexible, and so should your marketing plan.
Habit 7: They measure all marketing activities
The importance of measurement in marketing is twofold. Firstly, any investment in marketing should be evaluated to determine if it connects with the customer and increases revenue. It should be measured against the lifetime value of a customer (that’s in your marketing plan) to determine if the investment in that activity has delivered a return on investment.
The second reason for measurement is to know if a marketing activity is not worth continuing. We’ve had many conversations with business owners who’ve invested in activities for over 12 months but cannot tell us if it was worthwhile or not. Some activities might seem like a good idea at the time and make sense. But for some reason, they just didn’t work. The last thing you want to do is continue investing in an activity that isn’t creating new or repeat business. If you are going to fail, fail quickly, re-evaluate and move on.
At MarketingHQ, we’ve helped hundreds of business owners change the way they use marketing to drive new and repeat business. For most businesses, it’s about providing the marketing expertise they need to establish a marketing plan, get their strategy right and ensure it’s implemented effectively. If you’d like to know more about our services, contact us today.Always wondered what happens on the other side of your campaign. Well, now you’re going to find out.
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Author: Chris Dale
Chris Dale is the lead Fractional CMO and Managing Director of MarketingHQ. He is a Certified Practising Marketer with over 25 years marketing experience.
