The Most Important Job of a Small Business Owner

Running a Pest Control Business? Read This Post

Qspray.com just had its best year ever – by a lot. We were up almost 40% in 2017. Thank you to our clients and friends for supporting us.

I thought I would take a different approach for my first post of the New Year. Rather than complaining about careless technicians destroying beautiful equipment, I would write about something more fun.

The most important job.

The most important job of a small business owner is to be a marketer of his/her company’s goods and services. This is a huge mindset change, but it is the thing that had helped Qspray.com grow so much over the past couple of years.

I used to think that if we built great power spray rigs, provided the best selection of equipment, stocked all the parts our customers needed to stay operating and productive, that would be enough to run a pest control business while ensuring growth and success.

I was wrong.

It doesn’t matter if you do a great job if no one knows about it. The world is filled with great products that failed and marginal products that were huge successes.

Here are examples that underscore some pretty important small business marketing advice:

McDonalds doesn’t make the best hamburger, but they sure sell a lot of them.

Betamax was better technology than VHS but VHS won and Betamax lost.

Tivo had great technology. We even use their name as a verb, but I bet the DVR you have at home is NOT a Tivo.

It is critical that we as small business owners stop thinking of ourselves as doers and start thinking about ourselves as marketers. This can be a tough pill to swallow for some, but swallow we must.

Here are some other marketing truths that I have stumbled upon:

Figure out what all your competitors are doing and DO SOMETHING ELSE Good marketing does not have to cost a lot of money You are not your customer. Make sure your marketing is appropriate to your customer. What you think or like does not matter.

You are not communicating with your customer enough. As my good friend Mick Jagger says, “too much is never enough”. Again, you are not your customer.

Whether you’re running a pest control business or a completely unrelated company, do not rely on 1 marketing technique. Do a lot of different things.

If you are not pissing some people off, you are not trying hard enough. I spend a lot of time writing a newsletter that I think will have value for our clients and prospects, yet someone always seems to take offense at the smallest thing. I have to shrug it off.

Use creative, guerrilla marketing techniques for creative, low-cost, but impactful results. I love marketing and plan to share a bunch more ideas on this topic. I will be happy to send you FREE, the 101 Guerrilla Marketing Weapons checklist. I have used many of the techniques on this list for great results.

Just put in your name and email and I will email you the checklist at no charge. I think it is interesting. I will periodically send you marketing tips & info periodically that I hope you will find valuable.

If you’re running a pest control business and would like to give some valuable input, please email me with any comments or suggestions.

Thanks. Andrew Greess, President - Qspray.com