The 1 Belief - To Understand Marketing For Small Business

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Want to hear a clear and simple truth? If you're a business owner, you don't need to be an expert at SEO, digital advertisement, graphic design, or copywriting.

The truth is for you to understand and implement a marketing campaign, you only need one thing for your business—a powerful idea.

This article will help you look at marketing from the big picture, not the basics, but what really moves the needle towards sales and conversions with your audience. Once you grasp that concept to its roots, everything that comes after can be delegated or prioritized depending on your needs.

And based on our experience and conversations with hundreds of entrepreneurs, I can confidently tell you that what matters most about a marketing campaign is not the tactics but the ideas that drive them from behind. Let's start off by exploring this concept further.

What is a powerful idea?

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You see, there are millions of businesses around the world. Most of them are alike. For their audience, it's a matter of competition and commodities. That's why we, as marketers and owners, need something that you can't justify by facts alone -we need an idea.


This idea will encompass what our business represents. It will present our audience with something they've never seen before and grant them the opportunity to participate in it. The idea is the compass for all of our future marketing efforts, and it will guide them and bring them back to the right track if they ever astray.


So how do we create such a powerful, big idea for our business? Well, we can start off by crossing off three bullet points of our checklist:


a) The idea has to seem like a new opportunity, in some way or another.

Think about the weight loss market, for example. If someone told you that by eating healthier, low-carb, low-fat food, you'll lose weight in a matter of weeks — I can imagine you brushing that off as old and outdated news. There's nothing unique about it.

You've heard it before. Instead, what if the new opportunity sounded like “by eating protein-packed cakes four times a day, you could build muscle and reduce fat at the same time”. Now that sounds weird, new, but also plausible.


One last example before moving on. The new opportunity we present in MicroMentor is “individualized online mentorship for small business owners,, entirely for free.” Now, that's hard to come by. You probably didn't even know that existed. Remember, this is not your product, but instead what your product would give your audience access to. That's why it works.

b) But, the idea also has to be connected to a desire on the market.

The Wolf of Wallstreet movie famously ended with a simple challenge to an audience of wanna-be salesmen — “Sell me this pen.” Ask yourself, how would you sell that pen? Or anything for that matter. What Jordan Belfort wanted to drive across in that instance is the importance of finding a desire on the market. Whoever wants to write will probably need a pen to do so.


This concept, although shallow on the outside, is as multifaceted as you can imagine. Preferably, the idea has to be directed to a market that has bought similar products to yours, is frequent buyers, and has the necessary means to pay. Niching down on your audience has excellent benefits, including higher conversions and the effectiveness of your powerful idea.


The desire is what your potential audience wants to achieve by using your product. Is it writing? Losing weight? Growing a small business? Only you can answer that question, but it needs to be clearly stated on your powerful idea.

c) Lastly, let's talk about the new mechanism or your product.

New can mean many things, but it's simple at its core. As author Seth Godin constantly preaches, there's nothing original in this world. It all has all been built on what came before. Is a soda brand entering the market considered “new” because it uses purely natural ingredients? To many people, it would.

But it is only an iteration, and that's what we have to understand. Our product doesn't need to be groundbreaking technically speaking, but we have to present it that way for our audience. Make them listen to why is this “new mechanism” of doing things is better, something they've never seen before, a new tool. And only then, you'll have their attention.


While the new opportunity reveals WHAT is unique about your solution, the new mechanism reveals HOW it works. It's the vehicle that delivers the new opportunity. It's the secret sauce that explains why your solution works.

And now that you understand what a powerful idea is, it's time to put it all together into what we call THE ONE BELIEF

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When most people advertise, they don't have a mission. Your mission is to make the audience believe in the One Belief, simple as that.

After all, how are you supposed to create advertisement that converts if you don't know the ultimate goal of every piece of communication? How are you supposed to succeed if you don't see what you're trying to accomplish?

With the One Belief, you will know what your mission is. It's your North Star, guiding you to a high-converting piece of advertisement. It goes like this: "This new opportunity is the key to their desire, and it's only attainable through my new mechanism."

Let's wrap up with a couple of examples of the one Belief into action.

  • The one belief for Subway: Eating healthy fast food (new opportunity) is the key to losing weight (desire), and it's attainable only through a diet based on Subway sandwiches (new mechanism).

  • The one belief for MicroMentor: Online personalized mentorship (new opportunity) is the key to growing your business (desire), and it's only attainable through MicroMentor's free platform that allows you to connect with mentors worldwide (new mechanism).

See how simple is that? The one belief will guide every piece of communications you launch into the market. Whether it's yourself or somebody else, it will be the north star making sure there's alignment in your marketing.


Well, there you have it folks. I suggest you get started writing down your one belief today. Think about every part, and ask yourself if they are as unique as possible to make them stand out from your competitors. If you need any help, the MicroMentor platform is there to connect you with a marketing mentor who can give you a hand entirely for free.

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