Notes

6 Steps To Get Slightly Famous
A few years ago, Bruce Smith experienced a slowdown in his Salt Lake City-based travel agency. Airlines had eliminated his sales commissions. The recession and recent terrorist attacks also took a toll. And because the travel industry was ultra-competitive, he knew he had to find ways to distinguish his company from thousands of other travel agencies.

Then, he previously a fortunate accident. His wife asked him where they might celebrate their first wedding anniversary. When he gave her a blank look, she set about planning a trip-but wouldn't tell him what she was planning. Because he enjoyed the mystery before the trip, and the hints his wife gave him, he repackaged his travel service as The Veiled Voyage, selling 'destination unknown' vacations to couples and others.

Smith's clever branding strategy was a hit. It not merely helped him create a unique and memorable brand, but also made him 'slightly' famous.

Now, the majority of Smith's business comes through referrals from happy clients who eagerly tell their friends about The Veiled Voyage. He's regularly featured in newspapers, magazines and radio programs and was even invited to speak at a national travel conference. Moreover, he's been able to extend his brand with a significant grocery store chain by way of a lucrative co-branding relationship which has further expanded his company.

The 'Slightly' Famous You

Some companies attract clients and customers like magic. They don't cold call or depend on advertising. Yet they're regularly featured in newspapers and magazines and obtain invited to speak at conferences. Everyone knows their name, plus they get all the business they are able to handle.

It's almost as though they were famous.

In fact, they are, but not in the manner movie stars and athletes are famous--they're just slightly famous. Just famous enough to create their names one thinks of when people are trying to find a particular product or service. They have more business - not merely more, but the right type of business - and they need not work so hard to get it.

Desire to join them and revel in this ideal state of affairs, where customers arrived at you? You can, but it may require a new way of thinking and a new online marketing strategy. Although their efforts take different forms, underlying them all are six basics.

1. Targeting the best prospects

Slightly famous entrepreneurs focus their marketing to target the best prospects.

Alex Fisenko is well known in the world of coffee as 'the Dean of Beans.' The 60-something coffee expert started his first espresso shop in the 1960s. Since then, he's focused his energies and today sells his expertise on launching an effective coffee business to aspiring entrepreneurs. Alex conducts restaurant seminars and sells a training course called 'Espresso Business Success.'

His Internet site, http://www.espressobusiness.com, generates thousands a month in products sales and consulting engagements in america, Thailand, South Korea, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, and Barbados. 'By targeting the very best prospects, I now earn more income through book sales and consultations than when I ran coffee shops,' says Fisenko.

2. Creating a unique market niche

Small businesses with a 'slightly famous' strategy establish themselves inside a carefully selected market niche 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 back. Though it could sound as if his audience would be too small to generate significant sales, he knew his market and where to find them. Best of all, he has the marketplace all to himself!

Rather than make an effort to fight for attention in general bookstores, 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.

3. Positioning your business as the best solution

Positioning is about identifying a key attribute of one's company not offered by competitors which is clearly valuable to your marketplace.

When Harry Shepherd started his bookkeeping service a couple of years ago, he realized he was in competition with a large number of other bookkeepers selling basically the same thing. To stick 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 are hard to get new clients. Word spread fast among accountants as they referred him to their clients. He even trained other bookkeepers to utilize accounting software.

4. Maintaining your visibility

When was the final time your name appeared in print? Yesterday? Last week? Per month ago? Because you remember doesn't mean a possible client will. To become 'slightly' famous, you must have your message out there, or even continuously, then often enough to keep your name alive in customers' minds.

When Bart Baggett decided to make handwriting analysis his career, he embraced the media, and studied newspapers, magazines, and radio and television programs to determine what forms of guests were popular, and then looked for methods to tie his professional abilities to specific media. His strategy paid.

At the height of the O.J. Simpson trial, he sent out a news release about Simpson's handwriting that led to several timely media interviews. He later appeared on Court TV to go over Timothy McVey's handwriting, and was recommended by the director of this program to CNN. A feature in Biography Magazine led to stories in the London Times, the Dallas Morning News, and others.

5. Enhancing your credibility

The surest solution to earn credibility is by establishing yourself as a 'recognized' expert with intimate knowledge of your clients, customers and industry. Experts out-position their competitors because they are recognized as knowing a lot more than their competitors.

Fred Tibbitts, Jr. founded Fred Tibbitts & Associates to help food and beverage companies reach global markets. He strategically cultivated a reputation in his industry as a well-connected and knowledgeable global beverage-marketing expert who's fluent in all the details of his business.

Tibbitts monitors global beverage trends on a daily basis while staying in connection with account managers at hotels and restaurants. He hosts a series of special events, 'Fred Tibbitts Spring & Autumn Dinners with Special Friends,' in key markets, including Hong Kong, Singapore, and New York. Tibbitts also contributes a column to Hospitality International Magazine and numerous industry publications.

6. Establishing your brand and reputation

Slightly famous entrepreneurs use their smallness and specialty in ways that corporate giants can't touch. They make certain their brands strike an emotional chord by bringing their business 'soul' to the forefront of these marketing.

When you meet Dave Hirschkop at a trade show, don't be prepared to shake his hand. That's because he'll be wearing a straitjacket while standing before a simulated insane asylum to promote his popular line of 'Insanity' hot sauces.

Dave established his brand by making the hottest sauce possible. Instead of sensual pleasure, he promised pain, even danger. Now, Dave's Gourmet, Inc. steps to the front of the crowded hot sauce category because he embraced a humorous branding strategy that resulted in fiercely loyal customers and great media exposure.

When check here introduced his Insanity Sauce at the National Fiery Foods Show in New Mexico, he made attendees sign a release form before tasting from the bottle that came in a coffin-like box wrapped with yellow police tape. His best, if unintended, publicity coup happened whenever a show promoter had a minor respiratory problem after tasting his sauce, and banned him from the show.

To take pleasure from 'slightly' famous status, you don't have to be insane. But, you need to cultivate a brandname identity that will end up being the guiding star of one's entire business. It will ensure that all of your marketing efforts pull in exactly the same direction. You'll waste less time, make fewer marketing mistakes, and stick out within an increasing cluttered world.

Steven Van Yoder is writer of Get Slightly FamousT: Turn into a Celebrity in Your Field and Attract More Business with Less Effort. Visit http://www.getslightlyfamous.com to read the book and learn about 'slightly' famous teleclasses, workshops, and marketing materials to greatly help smaller businesses and solo professionals attract more business.
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