Marketing Your Four Corners Business [Hint: Start With Your Story]

Making your business stand out in the sea of other businesses is a challenging task especially if you’re a small business owner.  Consumers are bombarded with countless advertising messages, a 24-hour news cycle and the ubiquitous cat videos. 

There’s no magic pill that will revolutionize your marketing overnight, however, here are a couple of valuable suggestions to get your marketing jump-started and create a foundation for the rest of your advertising strategy.

Tell Your Story

Marketing in its essence is just that, telling your story.   Do you have a story to tell?   Sure you do!  What is your reason for being in business? Why do you do what you do?  How did your journey to start, buy, or invent your business come about? Consumers love the idea that they are doing business with a real person, who has a real passion for what they are doing.  Your story gives credibility to the effort, the products and the services that you’re offering.  It provides an emotional connection between you as the business and your customers.  That story will make doing business feel less transactional and more personal and more connected.

Finding What Makes Your Business Unique

Now that you have your story, what’s next? Part of telling your story is identifying what makes your business unique.  That should come out in your story of course, but it’s also how your business is unique in the context of the customer.  This is how you identify and create your Unique Selling Proposition (USP).  This is the intersection of your story, the customer and the competition. What are you doing that your customers want, that you do especially well that your competition can’t or won’t replicate?

Give some serious thought as to what you offer as you develop your USP. It may be the speed in which you provide a service.  Maybe it’s a unique product that no one else can replicate.  It may be a unique geographic location.  Think of the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.  Yes, there are other train rides you can take but there are no other train rides that famously take you along the raging Animas river and through breathtaking scenery right into the heart of the San Juan Mountains into Silverton.  That’s truly unique.

Keep in mind as you capture your unique selling proposition that it appeals to your customer or potential customers.  Don’t get focused on how it’s unique to you but rather to your customers.  Once you have identified your unique selling proposition it then becomes the essence of your marketing message.    

Share Your Story

Now that you have a story and a unique selling proposition, it’s time to tell that story in your marketing efforts.  Share it on your website, print it in your brochures and handouts, tell in it your radio ads, post it in your store or office with clever signage or table tents.  If your customers connect to the story or philosophy behind why you do what you do, it will be much easier to share with your customers why they should buy your specific products or services.

The story is what makes your business your own.  Your story is a good one, otherwise you wouldn’t have raised your business off the ground and made it this far.  When you tell it, make sure you’re authentic, honest and personal.  The beauty of your story is that it’s exactly that, yours and no other business can sell that!