Small Business Marketing Tall Tale 3 You’ve Got to Get Your Name Out There
Small Business Marketing Tall Tale #3: You’ve Got to Get Your Name Out There
Author: Jimmy Vee
Tall Tale Three “Get Your Name out There”
Get your name out there. Plaster it everywhere. Slap it on the side of a bus. Paint it on a park bench. Print some matchbook covers. Cover your car in it. Shout it from the highest mountain top. Do what ever you have to, but get it out in front of as many people as possible.
WRONG’WRONG’WRONG’WRONG’WRONG!
Market yourself this way and you’ll be spending countless hours on your efforts. You’ll be wasting precious time and energy on avenues that never bear fruit and will be speaking to people who aren’t listening and probably even annoying the crap out of them.
Ultimately, you will burn yourself out in an exhaustive effort that yields absolutely zero.
Yep, I said it’Zero, Zip, Nada, Nothing. If you are one of the many who buys into this ‘get your name out there’ philosophy, you are most likely already sitting on a curb somewhere huffing and puffing with exhaustion.
You are feeling like a candle burning wicks on both ends and just want to throw in the towel on this marketing stuff. But you can’t. It’s your business’ livelihood at stake. What other option do you have?
An Excuse for Marketing that Doesn’t Work
“Get your name out there” is an old fable made up by marketing hacks who needed an excuse for advertising that doesn’t work.
You’ve probably heard, or even said yourself, when someone asked:
“How did that ad work?”
“Well, it was OK. We got a few calls. Most importantly, though, we got our name out there.”
Right. Got your name out there to whom? What does that mean anyway? You paid for an ad or for a bus stop bench (god forbid) and you got no calls.
If you get any solace by believing you got some mysterious value out of that, you’re kidding yourself.
Why not just spray paint your name on the sidewalk? It would probably work better and get more attention.
The Poor Get Poorer
Unfortunately marketing junk like this usually afflicts the people who can most scarcely afford it. Small businesses who don’t think they can afford help with their marketing or think all they can afford is the most basic “get your name out there” techniques are the usual victims.
The worst part is some businesses bet their existence on this myth. They’re
