Ner­is­sa Gold­en

The mar­ket­place is crowd­ed. Whether you are a teacher look­ing for work, a con­sul­tant seek­ing your next project or a singer wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered. You must be able to stand out in the crowd if you are to suc­ceed at busi­ness.

While many be­lieve that if they do more they can get more, do­ing more of too many dif­fer­ent things won't make you unique, rather it will make you like every­one else. Here are five ways to set your­self apart in the mar­ket­place.

1.Be au­then­tic. I tell my chil­dren you can on­ly fake some­thing for so long. Even­tu­al­ly, the re­al you will show up and it may be at the most in­op­por­tune time. Be your­self al­ways. Peo­ple con­nect and want to do busi­ness with those who are gen­uine and it is eas­i­est to ac­com­plish this when you are not strug­gling to main­tain ap­pear­ances and be some­thing you are not. If you recog­nise that there are ar­eas of your per­son­al­i­ty or habits that you have which are not con­ducive to grow­ing your busi­ness then get help. Be­ing au­then­tic is not an ex­cuse to be rude or brash. We can all grow to be­come more of who we would like to be to at­tract the suc­cess we want.

2.Team up. My dad al­ways says no man is an is­land. Stop be­liev­ing that you must ac­com­plish things on your own. In a crowd­ed space, com­bin­ing re­sources can en­able you and a busi­ness as­so­ciate to get more done and in­crease your vis­i­bil­i­ty. You may not need to work with a com­peti­tor but find a prod­uct or ser­vice which com­pli­ments and of­fers more val­ue for cus­tomers. Con­sid­er that you are an event plan­ner need­ing more clients and know of a cater­er need­ing more events to work at. Cre­at­ing a sig­na­ture event which com­bines both of your abil­i­ties will bring work that you would not be avail­able with­out team­ing up. We are stronger to­geth­er.

3.Re­brand your im­age. How long has it been since your web­site, busi­ness cards, busi­ness signs got a makeover? Take a look at the vi­su­al el­e­ments of your busi­ness and give them a fresh coat of paint, so to speak. Con­sid­er whether your web­site is user-friend­ly and easy to nav­i­gate. Do you have a call to ac­tion vis­i­ble above the fold? Does your lo­go tru­ly re­flect what you do and who you want to at­tract? Make the in­vest­ment to hire a qual­i­fied de­sign­er who can pro­duce a top qual­i­ty lo­go which will fit with the im­age you want to present. Up­date the signs at your busi­ness so they have your email and web ad­dress and al­so use the same lo­go as on your web­site and oth­er mar­ket­ing ma­te­r­i­al. Change up your dis­play win­dows of­ten to keep it fresh.

4.Po­si­tion your­self. If you are try­ing to get more work as a speak­er or con­sul­tant don't try to speak or con­sult on too wide a plat­form. Your past work ex­pe­ri­ence could be the foun­da­tion for your speak­ing ca­reer. Say you were a high-lev­el civ­il ser­vant in the health care min­istry, con­sid­er us­ing health care im­prove­ment as the seg­ment to build your con­sult­ing busi­ness around. Write ar­ti­cles of­fer­ing ways in which health care ser­vices across the re­gion can be im­proved. Re­search how var­i­ous is­lands are man­ag­ing a par­tic­u­lar health is­sue and gain­ing re­sults and share this with your au­di­ence. Look at glob­al trends and bring them in­to a Caribbean con­text for your au­di­ence. Po­si­tion­ing your­self as an ex­pert in the health care field will be more ef­fec­tive than try­ing to speak for ex­am­ple on im­prov­ing gov­ern­ment ser­vices in gen­er­al. This will help you to fo­cus and help peo­ple who need some­one with your skill set to find you. Most im­por­tant­ly it will en­able you to charge top dol­lar as you will have less com­pe­ti­tion in a tar­get­ed are­na.

5.Show up con­sis­tent­ly. As en­tre­pre­neurs we usu­al­ly have 10 dif­fer­ent ideas which we think are vi­able and that we want to do but that is not fea­si­ble or ad­vis­able to mul­ti task in that way. Fo­cus on the ven­ture that is earn­ing you a liv­ing and con­tin­ue to de­liv­er on this. If you are build­ing a brand and de­liv­er­ing a ser­vice then do it all the way. When mar­ket­ing your ven­ture don't con­sid­er one or three-month cam­paigns as the so­lu­tion. Bud­get and plan for month­ly cam­paigns to keep you con­stant­ly be­fore the faces of your cus­tomers. This will mean find­ing af­ford­able ways to ad­ver­tise but it will serve your busi­ness bet­ter in the long run. So­cial me­dia is an ex­cel­lent method of do­ing this as well as sub­scrip­tion-based email newslet­ters.

In or­der to suc­ceed, you must make the de­ci­sion to stand out and be cen­ter stage in your busi­ness. His­to­ry will re­mem­ber the bold ones and your busi­ness will be bet­ter for it.

Ner­is­saGold­en is an award-win­ning Me­dia Strate­gist, Busi­ness Coach and au­thor who helps her clients ac­cel­er­ate their busi­ness growth by lever­ag­ing high im­pact com­mu­ni­ca­tions so­lu­tions and in­come gen­er­at­ing strate­gies. Get tips on start­ing and grow­ing a busi­ness atwww.tru­ly­caribbean.ne­tor on Twit­ter @tru­ly­gold­en.