Business Opportunities Weblog

February 3, 2010 by Dane Carlson | 0 Comments

photo credit: themacinator

The following is a guest post by Aditya Mahesh.

I think one problem area that a lot of small business owners run into is that they try to do a little bit of everything and in turn end up doing nothing exceptionally well. They have a general lack of focus and thus don’t stand out. The logic behind the decision is obvious enough: in order to capture the whole market and increase the pool of potential customers, entrepreneurs want to create versions of their product that cater to as many people as possible. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs don’t have the resources to do this from the get go and instead end up creating a series of inferior products which stay on the shelves.

I ran into a similar problem when I ran a public relations firm. I tried to offer as many services as I could, from press release writing to social media marketing to SEO and beyond. The problem was I didn’t have the resources to run such widespread marketing campaigns for my clients and found myself under performing and losing customers.

I then adopted a different approach. I specialized solely in press release writing and distribution, the area where I had the most experience and prior success. An amazing thing happened. While the number of clients I had decreased, overall sales increased. This is because I was able to ensure I did a thorough job for each client and one-time customers suddenly began purchasing my services time and time again and recommending me to their associates. This served to not only increase sales while reducing the time/money I had to invest into marketing, but also help me build my brand in the niche as an expert for press release distribution.

After I allowed my business to grow, I was able to use some of the funds I had earned and reinvest them into the business; hiring employees and expanding the range of the services I offered. This time, the combined reputation I had built in the marketplace and additional resources I had been able to acquire allowed me to better handle and excel at various kinds of projects.

The moral of the story is to not be too caught up in trying to do everything for everyone and instead focus on becoming an expert in one specific area. Once you build a brand name in that area and grow your business, you can think of expansion.

Aditya Mahesh is the founder of AMBeat.com, one of the web’s most popular entrepreneurship blogs.

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Tags: Execution