Written By Loren Woirhaye, December 23rd, 2009
Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes
Coming as I do from a background as a small business owner who manufactured and marketed a tangible custom-made product, I know a thing or two about the way consumers perceive products as commodities: to be bought primarily on lowest-price criteria. I ran a small cabinet-making business in Los Angeles; small meaning basically me, and Los Angeles meaning I was competing against craftsmen from Mexico who usually marketed on the seductive premise of “real cheap price”.
Cabinets are basically just boxes and you can get them at Big Box stores or have them custom-made in L.A. by the Mexican guys pretty cheap. The challenge of doing the business as a job (as in I personally did much of the labor) was that to most customers the end-product was basically the same – a box with a door on it.
The post author, Loren Woirhaye writes sales copy and creates marketing systems for business clients who want to slash customer acquisition costs and position their businesses For 20%-30% sales growth in the next 12-18 months. He writes regularly about marketing and life at his Entrepreneur Blog.
Written By Loren Woirhaye, December 22nd, 2009
Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes
Your ego’s job is self-preservation and advancing your personal dominance over your environment. In the old days when the law of the land was based on physical domination of others and competition for scarce resources, perhaps letting the ego run the show was a good path to becoming a successful warlord or local king.
Times have changed. These days the path to success in business falls along the lines of getting people to voluntarily agree to buy stuff from you. Largely gone are the days when you could have a local market cornered.
Today’s consumers have a mind-spazzing array of shopping options – through the internet, catalogs, and local retail. Unless you have some sort of true exclusivity (such as a groundbreaking patent) you are competing for customers in your marketplace. In order for those customers to prefer to buy from you, they need to see demonstrable evidence that you offer superior service, lower prices, more convenience, or exclusivity of product your competitors do not offer.
The post author, Loren Woirhaye writes sales copy and creates marketing systems for business clients who want to slash customer acquisition costs and position their businesses 
