6 Steps To Get "Slightly" Famous
1. Targeting the best prospects
Slightly famous entrepreneurs focus their marketing to target the best prospects.
Alex Fisenko is known in the world of coffee as "the Dean of Beans." Opening his first expresso shop in the 60's, Alex has moved to focusing his energies and now sells his expertise on launching a successful coffee business to aspiring entrepreneurs. Alex conducts coffee shop seminars and sells a training course called "Espresso Business Success."
His Web site, www.espressobusiness.com, generates thousands of dollars a month in products sales and consulting engagements in five countries. "By targeting the best prospects, I now make more money through book sales and consultations than when I ran coffee shops," says Fisenko.
2. Developing a unique market niche
Small businesses with a "slightly famous" strategy establish themselves within a carefully selected market niche that they can realistically hope to dominate.
Dan Poynter, for example, is a successful self-publisher who started writing books about parachuting and hang-gliding over thirty years ago. Though it might sound as if his audience would be too small to generate significant sales, he knew his market and where to find them.
He sold books to skydiving clubs, parachute dealers, and the U.S. Parachute Association. He developed a reputation in skydiving circles, and has enjoyed steady sales of his books for more than three decades. Best of all, he has the market all to himself.
3. Positioning your business as the best solution
Positioning is about identifying a key attribute of your company not offered by competitors and that is clearly valuable to your target market.
When Harry Shepherd started his bookkeeping service years ago, he realized that he was in competition with other bookkeepers selling essentially the same thing. To stand out, he mastered a popular accounting program and marketed himself as a "QuickBooks Software Training Consultant."
Shepherd went from blending into a sea of look-alike competitors to occupying a compelling market position. He charged higher fees, and he did not have to work as hard to get new clients. Word spread fast among accountants as they referred him to their clients. He even trained other bookkeepers to use accounting software.
