So You Want to Be Famous. How About Slightly Famous? Will that do?

Steven Van Yoder's "Get Slightly Famous" Business Strategies

by Steve Kayser, Cincom

For those of you that know me for the irregular column I write titled this will be a totally different type of article. I'm bowing to political pressure.

That's right. I had a complaint.

Actually, two of them.

One of them berated, lambasted and vilified me for cruelty to animals. The individual was horrified that I would use "Shoot the Donkey" as such a hideous metaphor.

I was crushed.

I tried to explain that "Shoot the Donkey" refers to a classic scene in the movie "Patton" where the Third Army is in a life or death race to rescue a trapped American unit. They get held up on a bridge by a cart-pulling donkey that has stopped, and refuses to budge, totally blocking the bridge. An MP struggles with the donkey and the owner, trying to get them out of the way.

General George Patton roars up, whips out his ivory handled pistol, shoots the donkey and immediately has it hurled off the bridge, removing the obstacle.

That classic scene not only revealed Patton's character in a cinematic way, but it also embodied the great leadership principles of decisive action and removing all obstacles to fulfill one's mission.

Winners, leaders, and innovators know how, why, when, and where to "Shoot the Donkey."

But ... my message failed to mollify, or even remotely pacify the complainant. I tried heroically. I cried out, "But it's a cartoon donkey!"

No matter.

No matter.

To her I was a brutal, cruel beast. A Neanderthal. She actually called me that. (I didn't mind that too much ... Neanderthals are kinda neat, cuddly, cute, smelly, and extinct.) I would be totally famous if I was one ... Steve, the kilt-wearing, mechanical bull-riding Neanderthal.

Definite niche there. Unique.

Maybe even a movie deal ... "The Last of the Neanderthals." I wonder if Daniel Day Lewis could play me?

The "Shoot the Donkey" articles, so far, have received close to 50,000 reads. Two complaints. Two complaints.

But, I am a sensitive person. Sensitive to complaints.

When the complainant continued to rail on me, she also intimated that I had a sophomoric, frat-boy sense of humor with the intellectual depth of a parking-lot puddle and was very likely, in her estimate, unable to put two deep thoughts together at one time.

I collapsed under the brutal tirade of criticism. It's obvious; I had really offended her.

I melted. Melted like an M&M on a black leather camel seat in the Sahara Desert. I felt like I had just gotten

I didn't tell her the other complainant recommended that shooting bovines instead (the complainant was from Mad Cow, England ... go figure) would elevate the quality of the story and my writing.

Somehow ... "Shoot the Bovine" just didn't have the same zing.

So ... I decided, I would try (JUST ONCE) to swear off the "Shoot the Donkey" metaphor in an attempt to convince this complainant that

Now ... on to the real story.

Oh, wait a minute.

I do want to shamelessly promote the next article coming out soon titled, "Getting in Touch With Your Inner Donkey," techniques, strategies and tactics to prevent useless moaning, groaning, whining, complaining and idiotic worrying about cartoon metaphors.

Slightly Famous.

Hmm … doesn't sound particularly sexy. Doesn't rock my boat. Although I am slightly famous as the only kilt-wearing, mechanical bull rider training for the 2050 Olympics to be held in Cincinnati, Ohio.

But what if slightly famous was better than famous?

There you go again Steve. That sounds less than intellectual (insert the word "stupid" for "intellectual" if you so desire) doesn't it?

How about better in the sense that customers would come to you, without expensive advertising and marketing outlays? Seek you out.

That's more intriguing.

The mission of Cincom's Expert Access is to provide objective, business-critical strategies, innovations and actionable ideas to our 14,000 subscribers and customers worldwide.

So we're going to help you become famous. Slightly.

Become a Celebrity in Your Field. Attract More Business With Less Effort.

The newest participating expert resource for Cincom's Expert Access, and the author of Get Slightly Famous, Steven Van Yoder, will lay out for us in a concise, easy-to-understand manner, why becoming slightly famous can be a very effective marketing and business strategy in today's tough economic climate.

But first … an introduction. Steven Van Yoder is a very interesting fellow.

He lives his book.

He talks the talk.

He walks the walk. Literally.

How?

Currently Steven is in Bali, Indonesia sharing his book, message, knowledge and hope. Steven is establishing a global network of marketing experts who volunteer their knowledge and resources to teach entrepreneurship and small business marketing skills to emerging entrepreneurs in the developing world. The project is powered by the support of marketing guru Jay Conrad Levinson; the National Federation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE); Indian-based I Create, Inc. (in partnership with NFTE); the Center for International Trade Development and legendary catalog entrepreneur Lillian Vernon, among others.

Before getting started I had one question I needed to ask Steve, mainly because Expert Access has a global readership. So, Steve …

Are Getting Slightly Famous strategies applicable outside the U.S.?

Van Yoder: When I wrote Get Slightly Famous, I was determined to create a marketing guide that addressed today's tough new business climate. I wanted to deliver action-oriented advice, not theory, which any small business owner could use to make a real difference in his or her business and life. I believe that if the marketing advice I espouse is applicable to small business owners in the U.S., Europe and the other parts of the developed world, it should be equally applicable to those in the developing world.

Now … Let's Become Slightly Famous!

By Steven Van Yoder

Some Business Owners Seem Able to Attract Clients and Customers by Magic

Their marketing seems effortless. They may not have made a cold call in years, they may not spend a dime on advertising, yet somehow they're regularly featured in newspapers and magazines, and get invited to speak at conferences. Everyone knows their name, and they get all the business they can handle. It's almost as though they were famous.

In fact, they are, but not in the way movie stars and top athletes are famous. They're just slightly famous.  Just famous enough to make their names come to mind when people are looking for a particular product or service, and let them reap the benefits. They not only get more business, but the right kind of business and they don't have to work so hard to get it.

The Slightly Famous You

In a crowded marketplace, where your potential clients and customers have lots of choices, you can stand out by being just slightly famous. This is the exact opposite of mass marketing. It's not about being all things to all people, but being a mini-celebrity to the right people. It's about targeting your market and developing a reputation as a great resource trustworthy, knowledgeable and close at hand. Your goal is to become the lord of a small, profitable domain of your choosing. Within that domain, you will attract more customers and clients, including those you want most.

Naturally, such results require thoughtful and consistent efforts. These efforts will take many different forms, but underlying and guiding them are just six basic principles:

Working on these principles is your recipe for getting out of the anonymity trap, creating a slightly famous you, and building a successful business. In the pages that follow, we'll look more closely at what these principles call for in the way of action on your part.

Targeting the Best Prospects

Market research is like sticking your toe into a lake before jumping in. If you know who you want to reach and what their needs are, you avoid wasting time and money in poorly conceived marketing programs. You can alter your product or services to fit the needs of your target market, and you can craft a message that reflects your business and your customer. Moreover, market research needn't involve expensive consultants, surveys or focus groups. It can be as simple as asking your best customers the right questions.

For example, Larry Klein discovered his target market from the inside. A successful financial advisor, he retired from his primary job and became a marketing guru to other financial professionals. He knew they needed several kinds of marketing help, but as he talked to them and worked with them, he discovered that what they wanted most were ways to reach seniors.

Klein explains, "I'm not 60. So, you don't have to be a member of your ideal marketplace. But if you talk to enough people in that market group, you're going to get it. You have to be awake and aware and be listening for what it is."

"All the information you need to target and succeed in an ideal marketplace is out there waiting to be found," says Klein." You can take the guesswork out of building a business."

Having talked to enough seniors to understand their needs, Klein refined a series of methods for approaching them with investment opportunities. Now he offers seminars and writes articles about these strategies, and offers himself as a consultant to his former colleagues. You and I may not have heard of him, but within his targeted sector of the financial planning community, Klein is slightly famous.

Developing a Unique Market Niche

Large companies aspire to total market domination. Small businesses with a "slightly famous" strategy flourish by establishing themselves within a carefully selected segment of a market; they target a market niche that they can realistically hope to dominate.

Market niches can be defined by region, by special customer needs, or by demographics, such as a particular ethnic or age group; sometimes a market niche can be generated just by a product that's a variation on an established one. (Interestingly, the word niche, which comes from the French language, means "nest." As a small business you want to build your nest somewhere away from the hawks of big business.)

Real-World Success Story - Mari Gottdiener Finds a Market She Didn't Know Was There

Sometimes people find themselves thriving in a niche without planning it. Such was the case with Mari Gottdiener, who refocused her credit and consumer advocacy business from general consumers to the narrowly defined market of professional mortgage brokers.

Mari specializes in getting credit bureaus to address and correct credit-report errors. After struggling to find clients throughout the general population, she discovered that mortgage brokers were ready-made prospects. They had an ongoing need for her services on behalf of their loan applicants. She began networking with brokers at trade association meetings, and gave presentations at several mortgage offices.

"My decision to focus on the mortgage broker sector transformed my business," says Gottdiener." The more I focused on being the person who fixes credit problems for mortgage brokers, the easier it became to define what I could do for them. Now, my name gets passed around, and I've developed a special reputation within that market that makes getting business easier than ever."

Mari's niche fame really became apparent when the California Association of Mortgage Brokers invited her to talk about credit issues at their luncheon. Since then, she's spoken to broker groups regularly, and has reached out to similar associations in other states.

"Word-of-mouth referrals built my reputation at a local level," she says." Now I'm expanding to reach a national audience of mortgage brokers by writing articles in national mortgage broker trade publications and even doing online seminars."

Positioning Your Business As the Best Solution

In a crowded marketplace, it may not be enough just to carve out a niche. You've narrowed your focus, but you still have competitors. This is the time to distinguish yourself as the pre-eminent source of solutions by refining your expertise and conveying it to your target audience. You need to know more about something, or be better at something, than anyone else, and you have to let people know.

When you can honestly convey such a message, potential customers and clients see you as the obvious answer to their problems and challenges, and the logical choice when they're looking for a supplier.

Real-World Success Story - Fred Phillips Finds His Special Niche

Fred Phillips, a restaurant-industry veteran, landed his first job at a hamburger franchise when he was in his teens. Now, 20 years later, he is president of RestQuip, a supplier of environment-friendly restaurant equipment.

Rather than blend into the woodwork of look-alike restaurant supply houses, Phillips focused on helping restaurants reduce waste. Drawing on his knowledge of industry issues, Phillips observed what he foresaw would be a major industry problem: "a tenfold decrease in the amount of landfill space available for dumping refuse."

Within this situation he saw the business opportunity. "As a greater emphasis was placed on waste reduction by government agencies, my clientele needed options to deal with this potentially costly problem."

RestQuip developed a number of programs that addressed these issues, and at the same time, made sure that their environmental products and services got plenty of attention in the trade press. They have consistently stayed abreast of environmental issues and solutions, and take advantage of this knowledge to market themselves as the experts within their industry.

Maintaining Your Visibility

When was the last time your name appeared in print? Yesterday? Last week? A month ago? Even if you remember, that doesn't mean a potential customer will.

One key to succeeding in the marketplace is to have your message out there, if not continuously, then often enough to keep your name alive in customers' minds. This is the meaning of visibility, and if you're not visible to your potential clients, you cease to exist. If you haven't done any marketing in months, you'll miss getting clients because they forget about you, and instead call your competitor, whose name was in this morning's paper.

Visibility is a cornerstone of every slightly famous business strategy, and it begins by placing your core marketing message in front of as many of your target customers as possible, as often as possible.

Enhancing Your Credibility

Visibility, of course, is only a means. To produce results, visibility must be combined with credibility. This means that you need to embrace visibility strategies that display your distinction, competence, expertise, authority, and leadership and this is where the slightly famous strategies in this book go beyond marketing strategies that rely on advertising.

"Exposure plus 95 cents might buy you a decent cup of coffee," says networking expert Bob Burg." The key is to position yourself in your market as the expert, the resource, the only person your prospect would ever even think of doing business with, or referring to others."

The surest way to make a credible name for yourself is by becoming a "recognized" expert. Who counts as an expert? Experts include authors, speakers, consultants, business owners, managers and professionals. If you have in-depth knowledge about a specific subject and that subject can be your business you qualify, too. The test is how much you know, and if you know a lot about something, you can leverage that knowledge into a halo of authority.

As an authority, you can write articles for trade and special-interest publications (if you're too busy to write, or uncertain of your writing skills, it's easy to find help - use the Web or the Yellow Pages to look for "Editing and Writing Services"). You can give talks. And you can become a news resource, providing quotes to the media on issues relating to your industry.

Theresa Iglesias-Solomon started Niños, a Spanish/English bilingual catalog business, out of her home in Michigan several years ago. Realizing that her focus on the Hispanic market made her newsworthy to business writers pursuing stories on niche markets, she regularly notified reporters and editors about new ethnic products and buying trends.

Over time she built a reputation as an expert on the Hispanic market, and this has led to frequent media mentions, including some in The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, USA Today and Catalog Age.

In addition to making the news, you can augment your marketing and your business by creating information product booklets, e-books, classes, and audiocassettes around your area of expertise. These will cement your place as the leader in your market niche.

A business coach herself, C.J. Hayden markets to other professional business coaches, marketing consultants and sales trainers. While her book, Get Clients Now!, helped to establish her credibility in this field, Hayden took the concept one step further. After writing her book, she trademarked the name and developed the "Get Clients Now! Licensee Kit," which includes a 60-page facilitator's guide, audiovisual aids and tools for marketing the program to students. The result has been a profitable package that helps others reproduce her program.

Hayden has sold more than 200 licenses internationally, and the program has helped her land book deals in the U.S. and China, and publicity in several national magazines. This is a perfect example of visibility and credibility building on each other.

Establishing Your Brand and Reputation

Nothing overcomes consumer skepticism more effectively than a good report from someone who's dealt with you before. When people get a recommendation about you from a friend, they approach you with positive expectations. In essence, they have an insurance policy that reduces the risk of doing business with you. If, on top of hearing about you from someone they know, they also see your name in print, the effect grows synergistically. Marketing guru Marcia Yudkin expresses these ideas in an algebraic formula:

Visibility + Credibility + Word-of-Mouth = REPUTATION.

None of this is possible, of course, if you don't provide customer satisfaction. There are a number of good books on the subject of customer service, and you should take their advice seriously. Without visibility, you can provide excellent services and still find yourself without enough business. But if you pursue visibility and credible marketing strategies and provide an outstanding product or service, word-of-mouth will take on a life of its own. And although you can't personally be present at every moment your prospects are about to buy, your reputation will function as a surrogate salesperson within your prospect's mind.

Roseann Sullivan, a corporate trainer and owner of San Francisco-based Sullivan Communications, has an excellent local reputation as a public-speaking coach. Nevertheless, she credits the articles she has written with providing the lion's share of new clients.

"I've landed work from clients who hear about me through my published articles," says Sullivan, whose work has been featured in numerous professional journals and business publications, including Apartment Owners News, Southwest Airline's Spirit, and The Business Journal. "And I get calls from prospects who had already heard about me, but were then 'nudged' to call and hire me after reading one of my articles."

Big corporations spend millions to promote a brand identity because it pays. The best-known brands spread with the speed of spicy gossip, jumping from prospect to prospect, community to community. While you're probably not in a position to spend your way to success as they do, there are economical ways you can make your business an attractive, distinguished and distinguishable microbrand that represents your values and expertise.

Your brand will integrate all your marketing around a core idea and vision. It will actually make knowing what to do to successfully market yourself easier. Because you have a unique identity, you will have less to fear from competitors, thereby opening the door for mutually beneficial partnerships with other businesses.

The Sonoma County Woodworkers Association (SCWA) emerged when a handful of independent furniture retailers in Northern California banded together to survive the recession of the early 1990s through cross-promotion and buying strength. Together, the group bought advertising at local radio stations and newspapers, and developed combined events where customers were eligible to win prizes. They even printed a joint brochure that included a map to their locations, along with a headline that read, "People You Can Trust." Because each retailer had a distinctive identity, they were able to work together to survive rough times.

Your slightly famous brand identity will become the guiding star of your entire business. It will ensure that all your marketing efforts pull in the same direction. You'll waste less time, and make fewer marketing mistakes, because you have a long-term strategy of investing in your slightly famous reputation.

About Steven Van Yoder

Steven Van Yoder is a seasoned journalist, published in over 200 publications including The Washington Post, Financial Executive, Home Office Computing, Costco Connection, Industry Week, INC, Business 2.0, The Wall Street Journal, CFO, Brand Marketing and dozens of trade, business and consumer publications.

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