Marketing savvy

Hard work is no longer enough. It took me a while to learn this lesson. I was born into a sawmill family in the mountains of western North Carolina and northeast Georgia where you would be unloading logging trucks at sunrise and shoveling sawdust at dark. I was in high school before I realized not everyone worked 14-hour days.

My dad was convinced that our hard work would always pay off. He was wrong. While we depended on the textile buyers and brokers who bought our dogwood logs for shuttles to handle the marketing…our market disappeared. And so did our sawmill.

How about you? Who are you depending on to drive your marketing efforts? There are two very wrong answers. The first wrong answer, “I take care of that when I get all the other work done”…or “My wife handles that along with payroll and the bookkeeping.” Today it takes a tech-savvy, customer-focused effort to grow your business.

And here is the great news – the internet has made it possible for even the smallest nursery to have a laser-focused reach in a broad market. But you have to do three things. First, look for a firm that specializes in helping a family nursery business with a limited budget reach the widest possible buyers – wholesale or retail.

When deciding on who to partner with ask yourself these questions, “Do they know who my customers are? Can they articulate my competitive advantage? Are they able to differentiate me from every other grower in this crowded space?”

Second, invest the time to help them understand whom the economic buyers are that make the decision to write you a check, and also the consumers that are downstream if you are solely a wholesaler. Make certain this firm gives you a clear plan of reaching your niche with the strongest message that drives an immediate buying decision (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, email, Google Hangout, direct mail, networking, etc.).

Third, enter into a contract with your marketing partner that is based on measurable results: number of inquiries, number of orders, volume of sales, etc. Together decide on who will produce the daily dashboard of results and plan to talk about that at least every two weeks over the course of your agreement.

No partnership will be perfect. But if you don’t communicate often and realign what is being done, you will probably miss the target. Make sure you are using a firm, large or small, that will invest the time with you to ensure a successful campaign.

You can’t do everything, no matter how hard you work. You know how to plant it, protect it, nurture it, harvest it and get it to market. Don’t punt the marketing effort like my father did; rather, partner with someone who is looking for a long-term relationship based on results.

There is no magic bullet that will mystically grow your business. I have invested the last three decades sitting across the table from business owners who are trying to succeed. They all were willing to work hard. But the lasting success came to those who worked hard at what they were good at and then found a partner in those places where they weren’t the expert.

No one could grade a load of lumber like my dad. He constantly told my brothers and me that we had to do our very best everyday…and he was right. But sometimes that means knowing what you are never going to be the best at doing and finding a partner who is.

Barry Banther is a best-selling author and founder of The Family Business Advantage, an online tool for families who want to work together in business and live together in harmony. Visit www.barrybanther.com and see a video that goes deeper into this topic.