WS Chronicle

As a business growth strategist, Antonio McCoy has made a tremendous impact with business owners and entrepreneurs he has worked with over the years. Shining the light on ways to market one’s business is one of his specialties.

McCoy recently spoke with The Chronicle and gave an overview of his career in marketing. He touched on how he has grown personally and professionally, but wanted to go a little more in depth as to how he assists business owners in marketing themselves and their products. “If it helps Black business owners, then I’m good with it,” he said about doing a second interview.

McCoy sat down with The Chronicle once again to break down how he helps business owners. He says he wants to pass along as much knowledge as possible to business owners in need of help with marketing. Here is part one of that interview with Mr. McCoy.

Question: When a business owner/entrepreneur comes to you and needs help with marketing, what is the first thing you do with them?

Answer: So, essentially what we do is determine what problem they solve with their offering; what’s the solution. Then we determine, based on the problem that their prospective customer is having, what’s the conversation that they are having in their head.  

The next step is to take away the risk, because every company out here that does what you do, or I do, claims to do the same thing, so basically we have to lower the risk to say ‘If I don’t do it, you don’t pay for the call.’ So now I lose nothing and take no risk by using your business. Just to kind of put it in perspective, your marketing should do the heavy lifting in helping your prospective customer make a decision. Your marketing should help your prospective client make a decision as to whether or not you are or not the obvious choice. Most small business owners’ marketing doesn’t do that.

Question: Is it easier to work with a new entrepreneur just getting started or an established company that has been failing?

Answer: If the company has been failing, we have to get into the financials to find out what’s going on financially to dub them – quote, unquote – ‘failing.’  With either situation, one is no different than the other. One is just in a different place in regards to their stage of business growth. A startup is just now starting out, so they have not made any mistakes; they are not sure who their target market is. They haven’t gotten feedback from their customers in regards to how they perceive them in the market and until they know that, the start-up business is operating on marketing based on who they want to be.

The one thing about marketing that business owners have to understand is that they have to listen to their customers and create products and services based on their customers changing needs and market to that. An existing business would know that as they probably have a database. That’s the difference between the two. One distinguishable difference with a business that’s already in business and perhaps failing is that when they go through their database, they have to look at what percentage of their database is inactive. And if they have clients that are no longer doing business with them, then the business owner has to ascertain whether or not this customer is not doing business with us because of something we did or if their needs changed. If it’s something we did, then in our marketing we have to share with those customers what we did to correct the problem.

Question: How do you find the target market for a startup business?

Answer: Any business, regardless of where they’re at in their stage of business growth, has an acquisition cost to get a new customer. Typically, a lot of startup businesses don’t have a lot of capital, so we need to keep our acquisition cost as low as possible. One way to establish who our target market may be, based on who we think they are, is to create a strategic alliance or a joint venture.  

In other words, for my executive coaching, for example, I have to determine as a coach who is already doing business with my ideal customer. So, for executive coaching, I am trying to connect with anyone who is a new or existing manager, from the CEO all the way down to the entry level manager. When you are a startup or even if you have been in business for some time, the cheapest way to acquire a client is to align yourself with someone who is already doing business with your ideal client.  

You have to know the lifetime value of your customer and what that means. You need to know how long an average customer does business with you and then you need to look at the transaction size. For me, usually a client stays with me for about a year to three years. In that time they may spend anywhere from $6,000 to $50,000 with me over the course of three years. That lets me know how much I can spend to acquire a customer. If they spend $6,000 with me in six months or a year, then I know I can spend $1,000 to get that customer because I am still $5,000 to the good. Most small business owners don’t think of marketing that way.

Question: Do you see a lot of small businesses only using social media or word of mouth to advertise?

Answer: So, it isn’t just social media, although people think social media is the silver bullet now. They not only do it with social media, they do it with a Facebook ad, they do it with radio, they do it with TV if they can afford it. So yes to answer your question. There is nothing wrong with marketing that way when you don’t have a database. Word of mouth is good if you have the cash flow to wait on it, because word of mouth takes time. Most small business owners I know don’t have that type of cash flow, so you need to be dynamic as it relates to a referral strategy or word of mouth when you are working with one of your customers. That’s why it’s so important that your database is your most valuable asset. Your database is your most valuable asset, even more valuable than any real estate, or any equipment you own, because your database will be where you go to, to create cash flow.

In other words, if you have something to sell, you’re supposed to go back to your database, not throw something up on Facebook or radio. New businesses should do that, because they don’t have a database, they should do that to build a database.

Question: How do you continue to assist your clients after they have been with you for six months to a year?

Answer: If it’s someone that has been with me for six months, then they have a database or some resemblance of one. Well, guess what? You have clients and your competition is marketing to those clients. Once you have a client, you have to put some type of client relations in place to keep those clients, because that’s what’s going to sustain your business. So now you may have to hire some folks, so I help with that. Now you have to become a better leader and I help with that as well.  

The more money you make, the more complex your business becomes. If you have five clients, that’s great, you have five clients, but now you have five clients that your competition markets to and you have to continue marketing to those clients to make them understand you’re the obvious choice, even though they are receiving marketing messages from businesses who do what you do. As you grow and reach different stages of business growth, different things are required to operate at that level. I walk with them and provide them guidance in how to do that.

To contact McCoy for more information about his services, please visit www.growstartup.com or text him at 336-575-9920.