Businesses Die in Obscurity. Do All You Can to Gain Attention. If you want to succeed and grow your business, your sales revenue and your brand, you must build awareness.
By Grant Cardone Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Entrepreneurs must know that businesses fail because they don't get attention. If you want to succeed and grow your business, your sales revenue and your brand, you must get attention.
What do I mean by attention? I am talking about generating enough awareness that you and your company own the market. Obscurity kills businesses. There are plenty of solid ideas and great products out there. Most don't know how to get attention and so they disappear. There are also some weaker products and services being sold. When you look closely, those people, products and services are committed to getting attention. Money follows attention.
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To be successful in creating attention you need to be able to answer these two questions:
1. How far will you go to get attention?
2. How frequent will you be in your attempts?
Over the last five years, I have worked hard to get the right kind of attention. I have used radio, TV, advertising and social media. I've posted over 1,000 videos on YouTube and written thousands of blogs, strategies and posts on other social mediums. I also recently launched Whatever It Takes Network, a digital platform with video programming intended to help people with their businesses and life. It takes work and the willingness to try new things, learn what works and what doesn't, make improvements and move forward.
I have found that "creativity follows commitment" so make sure you commit first, then worry about content. To me, quantity is more important than quality in the beginning because you aren't going to figure out the quality without the quantity. The quality will not matter if you don't push content frequently enough to get results.
If you're out there all the time, you're going to get more and more eyes. When you have something to offer, offer it. Repeat it over and over.
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In every communication, my goal is to create an effect with the recipient of that message. It is very important to vary the content and be informative, but most importantly, I must entertain. Think about what catches your eye. What makes you read or watch one thing over another? Communicate to others with that in mind. What will make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to you?
Understand that your customer is oblivious to you and overwhelmed with content. To cut through the clutter you must entertain. My friend, Gary Vaynerchuk, says in his book, Jab Jab Jab Right Hook, "if you are going to interrupt people's entertainment, you better be entertaining."
You must get sold and have total belief in your business. Think of it as your ethical duty to tell as many people as possible about what you do so you can help them.
Most entrepreneurs struggle with getting attention because they are afraid of how they may be perceived by others. The marketplace doesn't reward those who play it safe and coast under the radar.
Get attention for who you are, what you know and what your business has to offer. Someone who isn't afraid to get attention will push past you and leave you in the dust. Get known, your business' survival depends on it.
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