I had an interesting experience yesterday in my workspace (yes, I was working on a Saturday). There were a few of us entrepreneurs in there and as I was getting ready to leave one of them stopped me and asked my opinion on marketing and advertising. While it's a subject I love, I was a little caught off guard because her business model and mine are completely different - as are our industries - so I'm not terribly well-versed in what would work for her specifically. Instead I gave some broad suggestions such as going after PR by sending local publications press releases from time to time with a "hook" or something that would make them interested in mentioning you as well as looking into any blogs that may write about your area to traditonal and e-advertising. While we were talking a third entrepreneur joined our conversation and started asking my opinion about what she should do for her business.
Which made me wonder, when did I become the expert? Or, perhaps more importantly, when did I start being viewed in my workspace as someone who knows anything about what they're talking about? I have yet to break even and my marketing and advertising costs are astronomically high in relation to my actual revenue. Part of that is due to the fact that I don't play in a limited local market but am trying to get the word out throughout North America (thank you Canada for being one of my biggest buyers!). So I certainly don't see myself as an expert. I was very frank about the fact that I wasn't yet making money from the business and gave them an idea of what just my tradeshow costs for 2009 were looking like to give them an idea of my spend. Regardless, they seemed to value my opinion. All of which I found interesting because for whatever reason I've somehow become labeled as an expert - or at least as close of one as we've got in our workspace.
In other news - I'm still convinced that 30-50% of my current small retailers are going to fail in the next year given the economy. I just get the sense that many of them are too underfunded and many of them started their businesses because "they love to shop" not because they came in with any real business experience. Now I may be proven wrong at the end of the day but in the meantime I'm spending a lot of time thinking other distribution avenues. The problem I'm faced with is how a different distribution model may affect my brand - and brand is KING and paramount to success in my mind. So do I think about creating a subbrand? I'm just not sure yet.
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