Don’t Be a Small Business Lemming
There are many small business people who are involved in online marketing. Of all the huge range of things a small business could be involved in online marketing would have to be one of the hardest and it is becoming harder and harder all the time.
The amount of competition that people who market online is just one of the factors involved here. There are many others and most of them are almost beyond the control of the small business online marketer.
So it’s no surprise that, when one well-known person in this part of the small business world becomes excited about a product and writes about in genuinely glowing terms, that a lot people will rush to jump on the bandwagon without taking time to read the fine print.
Of course, the fine print is more than just the fine print on the contract. The fine print also includes things like how the product will fit with what the small business is already doing and whether or not the new product is well established or still in beta mode.
Ultimately, if the product doesn’t work for you then if someone needs to be blamed for that failure the blame should start with you and not with the person who suggested the product in the first place.
Toni and I have been watching as a very genuine and responsible online marketer has been trashed by people who blindly rushed in to take advantage of something that was working for him.
Nobody forced them to follow his lead, no one held a gun to their head and made them take on the product he found that worked for him. Instead, they rushed in without understanding the fine print and some of them have not made the money that the expected to.
Instead of blaming themselves they’ve blamed him for the inability to make the product work for them. Right now they are making life hard for him but in a few days it will have all blown over as they rush off to follow some other great idea that probably won’t work for them either.
If you want to seriously make your small business work then don’t be a lemming - don’t rush from one good idea to the next till you are worn out. Take the time to read the fine print and see how the product will fit with your business and only then should you take some tentative steps to see if it will work for you.
If it doesn’t work and you are committed to the product them improvise adapt and over come instead of standing around crying and blaming someone else.
