One of my favorite quotes is supposedly
from Andrew Carnegie. He said “put all
of your eggs in one basket and then watch
the basket.”
Too many people give out the advice that
you have “too many eggs in one basket,”
meaning that you need to diversify your
business in order to protect yourself
from a disaster.
Hogwash I say!
What’s good for Andrew is good enough for
the rest of us…
I think that it’s important to have multiple
streams of income and multiple streams of
customers, but if you water down your
business and pull it in too many directions,
you won’t stand for anything in your
customer’s eyes.
Let’s say you are an expert on ice cream.
You have the best ice cream shop in town and
some crazy friend of yours says that you need
to diversify.
You open up an oil change shop down the
street and then an on-line poker site a few
months later.
Now, where you were once known as the ice
cream kind, people will have no idea what
you are famous for.
Just look at all of the huge, international
brands that have watered down their original
message with over-diversification.
Clorox has about 100 products with their
name on it, where it used to ONLY mean the
best bleach.
The same holds true for Nestle, all of the
major car companies, and about 1,000 other
brands that you can quickly find on the shelf.
What was once an icon name for a single business
or product has been watered down into a
little something for everyone, which becomes
memorable to no one.
When you are building your business, make
sure that you stick to your original core.
Of course you need to grow and expand, that’s
the name of the game, but make sure that you
still stand for the reason that people came
to you in the first place.
Stay as the best ice cream shop in town and
expand on that idea.
Multiple streams of income is a whole another
story. This is where you need to focus all
of your secret powers of business.
If you are on-line, go off. If you are off-line
go on. There are customers in both places
that do not know about you, just waiting
for you to sell them stuff.
One of the best ways to expand your customer
base is the FREE way, and that’s with tons
of search engine traffic.
People rarely use the phone book any more and
if you want to hit a real pile of gold, then
you need to get your site at the top of the
search engines.
If you want to know more about how to get
there, check out my search engin optimization
report at: http://www.ranking-higher-seo.com
Have a fun and cash-filled weekend.
Until Monday,
Joshua Black
*******************************************
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{ 2 comments }
I think you’re right. Although there’s some brands (such as Virgin) which have managed to be famous for more than one thing. Music and Airlines, plus a 100 other things too!
Matt,
Yes, although Virgin does have a ton of successful things under its brand name, the brand does not stand for anything in particular… What is a Virgin product? I don’t know.
When your focusing on your small business branding, develop a seperate brand for each product, so that it can stand for something on it’s own.
-Josh
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