Sun Tzu said: “One whose upper and lower ranks are of the same desires will be victorious.”
I’m going to stretch on this one a bit. I’ll replace “upper” with “inner” and “lower” with “outer.” Small businesses don’t have huge organizational hierarchies, so the metaphor doesn’t translate directly, but there is a strong parallel if you look at it a bit differently.
Your “inner” ranks, the way I’m defining it here, consist of the people who have strong a vested personal self-interest in the success of your business. That would be you, the business owner, of course – as well as your business partners and any investors you might have. I’ll also include high-end clientele who invest heavily in your services and could not easily switch to someone else. Your “outer” ranks consist of the people who are slightly affected by your success or failure, but who don’t really have much skin in the game. Employees and contractors who work for you would fall into this category, as well as most customers, referral partners and other business owners in your community.
Armies throughout have risen and fallen because of loyalty – or lack thereof.
How does this apply to internet marketing? Like any other kind of marketing, you’re more likely to be successful if you focus your efforts on creating as many strategic allies as possible. An example of how this applies in the online world is link-building. Ordinary marketers will attempt to boost their search engine rankings by posting large numbers of comments on blog posts. Link spam is not going to win you any allies. It will more likely annoy other web site owners. On the other hand, if you start following a few other web sites consistently and adding value to the conversation, you’ll build a positive relationship with the owners of those sites. Better yet, if you start linking to their blogs from your blog when it’s relevant to do so, you’ll help bring some good traffic to their sites.
This is just one example of how you can build loyalty over time by consistently looking to give value first. If you look for other opportunities to do this as often as possible, you’ll start to build relationships in your home town and other cities as well. You never know where this might lead.
This ties into what we’re going to talk about next week – building a competitive advantage by preparing yourself to seize opportunities where your competitor is unprepared.
Tags: marketing
