Marketing as an entrepreneur

Being an entrepreneur you have to know a lot of different things about business. There is marketing and publicity and bookkeeping and budgeting and… For instance I have a friend you is a public speaker and he told me recently he came back from a gig and the paycheck bounced which put his bank account into a tailspin. I asked him what happened to all his money. “You make more in one speech than many people make all month.” He said, “Well there’s my manager and hotels and airfare and all of that stuff.” When you are an entrepreneur you have to be able to manage your money. You have to be able to put some away for a rainy day. You never know when there may be a dry spell.

You also have to know about marketing. Next to actually knowing and being good at your job, marketing might be the most important part of your job as an entrepreneur. You have to know how to market yourself and help the people find you so they can connect with you to give you business. Last night we went to the M Casino and Resort for a little gaming, a nice dinner and a comedy show. Some of the comedians were really good and some of them not so good. The really good ones their names I couldn’t tell you because they did not make it easy for me to remember their names. At every comedy show the Master of Ceremonies introduces the comedian and at that point I really don’t care what their name is. Because if they are not funny I’m not going to want to remember their name anyway so when they come out at the very beginning tell me the name it just goes in one ear out the other. All I want at this point is just for them to be funny. At the end when they are funny and I want to know their name so I can look them up or follow them on Twitter and Facebook and tell my friends about them, they always are in such a big hurry to get off the stage. All I hear is,”Yeah that’s my time. My name is bubble bobble bobble blah.” At this point they should be telling us what their Twitter name is and what their Facebook handle is. They should be telling us these things so we can look them up and get on their mailing list and come see the show next time they’re in town.

I’m not a professional comedian but I do go to comedy clubs, in fact I was at two this past weekend alone and I see all these guys on stage and I’m thinking how difficult would it be to be properly marketing yourself. If there was a monitor on the side of the stage have them put a picture of your Twitter name up there or wear a T-shirt with your Twitter account or at the very end of your set pull out a camera and take a picture of the crowd and tell them you will post it on your Twitter account and remind people to go see it. The point is get people to know who you are. Your job as a comedian is to get people into the club. Once the people are in the club they will buy drinks at super inflated prices. That makes money for the club. If you are funny people will want to see you again. Maybe they will bring some of their friends who will buy more pricey drinks which will make the club more happy and they will hire you again. If I do not know who you are I probably will not come back to see you specifically. You have failed at marketing yourself and your lack of work will prove it. No one gets an HBO special if no one knows who you are. You have to be on top of your marketing unless you’re goal is to be the Unknown Comic and even then everybody knew who he was.

Bottom line, if you are good at your job but not at marketing yourself, the amount of work you get is going to suffer. Nobody wants to pull a ‘Richard Sherman‘.

To learn more about marketing as an entreprenuer buy and read The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users by Guy Kawasaki today!