Suffering from Tunnel Vision Marketing?

If you work in a trade, chances are better than not, one of your parents worked in that trade, and maybe their parents too.It means you’re good at what you do, since you’ve been doing it since before you were born.

So naturally there is no room for improvement.

But there is.

The benefit of working in a trade is that you know your business inside out. No one can care for a lawn, manufacture widgets, build engines or de-clog a pipe better than you can. But when it comes to marketing your service or product, your excellence in lawn care, manufacturing, engineering or plumbing won’t help you. This is what is known as tunnel vision marketing.

Too often businesses will rely on the quality of their service or product to garner new leads and deals, rather than exploring white-collar marketing techniques. This also extends to in-house administration. For example, the country’s best plumbers are using software designed specifically for the trade/industry, and when they bought that software, it was the best that money could buy. But while not a lot has changed in the plumbing industry in 30 years, other industries have taken administration and reporting software to new heights. That same plumber can buy newer software, but it will only bring them to the edge of their industry. Isn’t it time trades overtook the edge?

A trade or business suffering from tunnel vision, having only ever worked in that trade, and possibly for one company, cannot comprehend the thousands of options that exist outside their workplace to help improve efficiencies on everything from reporting to dispatching. Why would a company have all their technicians report in person, daily, for their routes when those routes can be dispatched directly to them? Why would a pest-control company pay a technician to take down details of a visit manually and then pay a data entry person to input it, when the details could be electronically captured and automatically inputted? Why would a company track time and attendance using colour coded spreadsheet instead of software that can help them do it in a fraction of the time? It seems obvious but tunnel vision will easily cripple the leanest of trades.

Sadly, few know where to turn. Most small businesses will see an ad agency or an in house marketing team as a non-option, and they’re right. The agency model does not support the SMBs with a 100K marketing budget. But there are options out there and we’ve seen it work time and time again. If you’re ready to leave the tunnel and see the big picture we want to hear about it.