Issue link: https://nbm.uberflip.com/i/1451379
B U S I N E S S S T R A T E G I E S S T I T C H S O L U T I O N S | J E N N I F E R C O X 8 8 G R A P H I C S P R O A U G U S T 2 0 2 2 G R A P H I C S - P R O. C O M H ow to find customers (aka marketing) is the second most discussed subject we cover with NNEP members and apparel decoration business owners daily. Many embroi- derers and apparel decorators are not sure where or how to find customers. Many new business owners guess about what kinds of marketing will work for them, or even worse, do no marketing at all, yet they hope for the best that their business will take off. Today I will cover ways to market your busi- ness that 1) you can do; 2) you can afford; and 3) that work! YOU'RE AN ENTREPRENEUR My goal today is to help you make the mental shift, if necessary, from thinking of yourself as an embroiderer or apparel decorator to thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur, a business owner. is is important because our industry is populated by three kinds of people: producers, sellers, and entrepreneurs. And the entrepreneurs are the ones that are profitable. I want you to be in the third group! And getting into that last group, the entrepreneurs, is totally within your abilities and your control. • Do you want a business that makes no income? • Do you want a business that makes a little bit of income? • Do you want a business that replaces an existing income? • Do you want a business that makes a lot of income? How much is a lot? $25,000? $100,000? A million? What is your "big sexy number?" Write this number down somewhere where you will see it every single day. "I want my business to bring in $______!" As it has often been said, when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. at is especially true for independent business own- ers. We get so busy doing the "work" filling orders that we overlook the importance of building a solid foundation for our business. Today, we are going to think about exactly that – the foundation upon which we are building our dream businesses. We need to set aside time to work on our busi- nesses, not just in them. LOOK AT THE BIG PICTURE Without a plan, a big picture view of our company, it is really challenging to achieve that objective! I have learned, after helping literally thousands of business owners, that suc- cess is possible when you step back, fly high and look at your business from an angle and from a higher elevation. To see the terrain of your business and where you want to go, you need to view it from 40,000 feet and see what is going on within your company, your market, and within this indus- try. en you need to take what you see and build that into a marketing plan that will take you where you want to go. is plan becomes your roadmap. Without a map, how do you know where you are going? More importantly, how do you know when and if you get there? I'm going to give you marketing strategies that you can begin using immediately. ey are not expensive. ey are not tricky. ey are not easy either. Doing any of these strat- egies will require that you think and then you must act, you need to actually do something to benefit from them. It all starts with marketing because marketing is the first step that leads to sales. Marketing produces contacts. Contacts become prospects and finally, prospects become customers. MARKETING EXPLAINED I am giving you some homework – yep, assignments to help you define where you want to go and then how to get there. I bet that you've heard some of the ideas that I'm going to share before. But what you may not know is that only 25% of independent business owners actually do intentional mar- keting. e ones that do the work succeed! Because you are here, reading this magazine, taking the time to learn how to grow your business, you have already dramatically increased your chances of realizing your dream business. Marketing is one of those "fuzzy" words – even for me, and I have training and years of experience in it. What does it actually mean? Marketing is the action or business of pro- moting and selling products or services. How to bring your marketing plan to life – that is where things get interesting. ink about your marketing objectives as real conversations that have a life cycle of their own. Once you know the flow of these conversations, and what to do at each stage of the conversation, you will move forward. As apparel decorators and embroiderers, we are doing so much more than providing products with logos and designs on them. • You're a key part of your customer's marketing team • You're part of their branding • You're a problem solver and solution provider • You help them build community • You help them create unity 5 WAYS TO FIND NEW CUSTOMERS THINK LIKE AN ENTREPRENEUR