This past weekend, I was having dinner with a friend. In our area, he is affectionately known as “Mattress Mike”. And guess what he sells? We were celebrating the fact that he recently opened up a 4,000 square foot showroom in our area. And he had invited me and couple others to celebrate the occasion with him.
Last year, his mattress business pulled in 4 million dollars. This was despite NOT having a showroom. And the majority of his sales come from being online. This is despite the fact that he doesn’t have a website presence either.
So how’d he do it?
This is going to be perhaps the most boring explanation but it illustrates a simple fact about marketing. It doesn’t have to be complex. You don’t have to be everywhere at once. You just need to be in places where your audience is. In some cases, you don’t need a website. You certainly may or may not “need” a twitter account (Mike doesn’t use any social medium platforms to sell things).
Mike started selling his mattresses using Craigslist. At first, it was hard because he didn’t know how to strategize the platform. But over time, he built a business. He learned what the best times to post ads were. He learned how to post multiple ads without getting flagged. He learned what ads worked best. And slowly, over time, he built a business with it.
Now he uses other ad mediums, but Craigslist accounts for 80% of his sales.
This approach works because you aren’t diluting your resources by trying to spread them out too thin. Everything you add to your marketing comes with a cost in resources. By sticking with one strategy that is super simple, you are able to focus all your marketing resources into it.
image attribution- http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgarcrook/5135587568/
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Twitter: universetoday
says:
You see this online, with some people being super successful with SEO, while others are popular on Facebook. It’s not the platform, it’s the focus. I’ve been really successful with Google+ because I’ve put a tremendous amount of energy into it, figuring out how it all works, and providing value to the network.
Great insight!
Fraser Cain recently posted..Galactic Gong – Milky Way Struck and Still Ringing After 100 Million Years
Fraser,
You know, every person that I have had the pleasure of talking to in regards to building a business have that one thing in common. They choose a traffic medium platform, learn what works within that platform and then really work it.
Most people tend to dabble and move on. And I am beginning to believe that, if there was a secret, this would be it.