Small business owners who thirst for attention sometimes make difficult decisions when it comes to advertising and marketing their brand. We can agree that many small businesses offer unique products and services, but probably don’t know the best way to market them. I want to introduce the concept to be disruptive in a healthy way and not be annoying.
Today’s most admired products and services are ones that are disruptive. What does that mean? Because of their product or service, they effectively caused a splash-and-ripple effect on their industry by producing something unique. Apple has produced (at least) two solid examples of disruptive technologies that have changed our lives and their industry.
- iPod – Revolutionized how record companies monetize their talent from CDs to $.99 songs and changed the way people manage their music on the go.
- iTunes (Store) – Radically changed the accessibility of the long-tail of applications and content to consumers. So much so, they established their own rankings of interesting applications and many people refer to that as a reliable source to make purchases.
I wrote this post because I see many small businesses fail at making their offer unique and disruptive in the marketplace. In turn, they become annoying, duplicative in nature. More concrete examples of “annoying” would include ripping off a competitor and calling it an innovation, leading in with price instead of value and focusing on the bottom line or otherwise stale items that lack passion into them.
How Business Can be Disruptive in Three Steps
From my own perspective here are the three parts necessary to turn ripples into waves on your industry:
- Change the rules in favor of consumers – A product or service must change the rules of engagement for consumers. It doesn’t necessarily mean going to a freemium model, it just means giving the control to consumers in how they interact and engage with a product or service.
- Solve a problem for the industry – Ask anyone what problems a certain industry has and they will list off a lot of great feedback. In the case of Apple, they solved a problem of monetizing music that would be normally lost to piracy and converting that into an asset for record companies. If you solve a problem found in the industry, you’ll win the hearts of consumers and the minds of peers.
- Execute (even if imperfect) – Many entrepreneurs get their feet stuck in the quicksand of flawed execution of their plans. Execution is the only way ideas will grow and succeed. This would underscore the concept of Fail Fast, Fail Cheap before you become mired into the mess of an imperfect business plan. You will find imperfections in your execution; you can quickly adapt and change. (Apple reacted well when Universal Records threatened to pull out of their digital music relationship.)
I find that our company, Infusionsoft, does a great job on all three points to be disruptive, while respecting the needs of consumers and the capitalizing on the needs of the industry. The results prove it, we’ve grown at a strong rate supporting over 15,000 small business users and we’re not done yet. The next steps we have in front of us are often the most difficult. For instance, as we make enhancements and new features of service, we must execute judiciously to honor the needs and expectations of loyal customers. We’ll try not to be annoying, but if we are, you’re quick to let us know with plenty of channels for feedback.
Can we work on causing healthy disruption in our industries together? What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
[Photo by sudheer on Flickr]
