The Tribune

By D’Arcy Rahming

Friday for most people signifies the end of the week, the beginning of the weekend and, most importantly, payday. It is a day of relief that you have made it through the work week, and you can now pursue your other interests or just plain relax. However, for most business owners, Friday is a day of hand-wringing anxiety as they struggle to meet payroll and other bills. Too many Bahamian businesses are surviving day to day.

One of the casualties of this week-to-week survival drill is the cutting or elimination of the marketing budget. One of the reasons I can write on the marketing revolution is because I, too, am a small business owner. So my articles are not theoretical. I, too, experience the frustrations and challenges, along with the joys and rewards, of ownership and trying to market a service to persons and add value to their lives.

The idea of waiting for the economy to turn around has led to the closure of many businesses that once operated successfully. We have to all ask ourselves the question: “Am I doing the exact same thing I was doing during this last business cycle, but expecting a different result?” The old cliche is that this is the definition of insanity. One of the positive ways you can excel is not to follow the pack. When everyone else is cutting their budget, maybe it is time you refocus yours.

A good first step in order to find out what is working and what is not implies that you must know where your customers are coming from. For example, one business discovered after a survey that despite their marketing efforts on Facebook, all of their business was coming from the local area. In this case it makes sense to focus on more community-based local programmes, maybe partnering with other vendors in the area to bring attention to their service.

While Facebook marketing works for my kickboxing and Judo school, I am also aware that in many ways I am advertising for every martial arts school in the country. The public can often not tell the difference between myself, an international author and seminar presenter with multiple black belts and more than 30 years experience, and some joker who bought his black belt over the Internet and won some tournament in Miami. The practice is to then place some pictures with six-foot tall trophies in the newspaper, claiming to be the best in the world.

So it is up to businesses such as my own, which have become commodities, to distinguish themselves from rivals. This can be done on several levels, but in keeping in context with this article, it is very important that I continue to market the uniqueness of what I have to offer. Because when things get tight, one of the first things that goes is the marketing budget, which means that the public will not see your true value.

• NB: D’Arcy Rahming holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. A lecturer at the College of the Bahamas, Mr Rahming has clients in general insurance, the retail, health and medical fields, sports federations and financial services. He is also treasurer of the Bahamas Olympic Committee. To receive his marketing newsletter FREE go to http://darcyrahming.com.