It has long been thought that the way to go about marketing your business is on your own.  That a competitor should never be mentioned to a potential customer for fear that they will become a customer of your competitor rather than you.  Each business being like an island on which no other businesses exist.

Obviously, marketing this way works or it wouldn’t be done.  The effort and the expense is all yours and the results are all yours, good or bad.  As we all know, advertising is very expensive and having a campaign that doesn’t produce good results is extremely expensive.

For the sake of argument, lets say your business is on a block that has 10 stores on it.  These businesses could be all antique shops or restaurants or whatever.  Some would believe that one or two of these shops going out of business is a good thing for the businesses that remain.  That the customers that would have went to the one or two that went out of business would then become customers of the remaining businesses.  I, on the other hand, would have to argue against that.  In my opinion, if one or two businesses on the block are closed, not only do their customers  go elsewhere but so do others.  The perception of the block with closed businesses is that of a declining area, one in which people are less likely to spend their time and money.

Now, let’s think in terms of that same block being a community.  The 10 businesses working together for the betterment of all the businesses, of the community.  Those 10 businesses are now sharing the expense and  effort of marketing and advertising.  Now advertising becomes much more affordable and with 10 people working together, bouncing ideas off of each other, also becomes more creative.  The best part is that once customers begin to feel the synergy on the block, they will come to trust and be extremely loyal to the community.  This then changes the perception of the area and attracts more customers to your community.

What are your thoughts on this?  Do you agree or disagree with my line of thinking?  Share your comments below.  Let’s get a conversation going.

Photo credit:  Edgar Barany

Syn-er-gy – The combined effort being greater than the parts.  The working together of two or more people, organizations, or things, especially when the result is greater than the sum of their individual effects or capabilities. A mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct business participants or elements (as resources or efforts).

Let’s look at this in terms of social media for minute.  Stores start a social media campaign to better communicate with their customers.  They let their customers know that they are on Twitter or Facebook or wherever.  Their customers choose to follow because they want to know what’s going on with your business.  That’s all good but, the only people that follow you are those that know about you and choose to follow you.  What about reaching potential customers?  What do you do to reach people that have never been to your store and maybe don’t even know of your existence?

This is where synergy comes in.  Let’s say your shop is in a plaza where there are several shops.  They could all be clothing stores or they could all be different kinds of shops – it doesn’t really matter.  Each of the shops individually attract 200-300 followers on social media.  If the group of shops combined their efforts and created a platform to reach out to all of their individual customers, think about the number of people each shop could then be reaching.  For example, let’s say there are 10 shops in the plaza.  Each shop has 200-300 followers.  Combining that group of shops would yield a following of 2,000 to 3,000 people.  That’s a huge difference.

Let’s look at one more thing.  By definition, synergy is the combined effort being greater than the parts, especially when the result is greater than the sum of the individual effects or capabilities.  This would lead you to believe that the following of the group then could be more than 2,000 to 3,000 people.  Is that possible?

Absolutely.  You’ve heard the old saying that two heads are better than one, right?  Well, it’s true.  By getting those 10 shop owners together and brain-storming, bouncing different ideas off of each other, the end result has the potential to be amazing.

We’ll talk more about this in posts going forward but I’d like you to really think about the possibilities of synergy in your community.  Let us know what you think?  We’d love to talk about it.

Photo credit:  kln2119