Continued Developments for Small Business Growth at Kurb

Need Marketing and Branding support that’s affordable from Matt at Kurb in Grey Lynn?

web development + online marketing // cd dvd duplication / design + posters

Email kurbpromo@gmail.com // 027 684 8250

I think the main thing I need to do is basically zero in on that new market I want to target.

And we’re always thinking of what we have in hand that can give us the advantage, that can give us the leverage into a new market.

I know I can build retail in my garage and I can leverage our location as close to the city and a reasonably affluent area where certain supplies may not be easily accessible to local retailers and business people.

I know I can keep pushing the deeper and underlining principles of my business. That is, that there are cheap and affordable ways of promoting yourself or your business or your content and we offer that with posters, cd and dvd duplication as well as online promotion and marketing. By wrapping that into one promotional service which is really a comprehensive branding service for artists, individuals and small organisations.

It’s important that I offer the packages because too much of what I can do is too low value to maintain increasing turnover, I don’t have time to discuss a project that only amounts to a $200 website, we need to get them onto a marketing package that is worth at least $1000 because then we’re not messing around.

The thing clients may or may not appreciate the trouble I’m actually saving them by covering development of their whole online presence if they need it.

But that comes with building up my brand and my team so I can confidently charge that kind of money for the ideas I’m bringing forward. The problem is, without the brand and the team then it’s kind of hard to articulate a strong message about what it is I do.

Just saying oh we can do your website and your blog and your social media and your google and can we have $1000? Doesn’t sound convincing. I need to communicate that vision of branding. Practical branding, so it’s almost something I have to build towards.

I can’t reach my market properly, my branding net has holes in it, so I can’t catch fish. I can’t be the all powerful marketing man right now, but I’m not prepared to get bogged down in graphic design and blog promotion etc. which is making somewhat regret going down the bath of bloggerpromotion – but I think it’s good I actually have these shells of businesses just waiting to be filled in with activity.

Only web design is getting valuable enough and that’s totally too competitive.

So I need to think laterally. Go vertical. Move slowly out from music into other niches, while slowly building the brand up, targeting preferably more lucrative and under exposed markets.

But there’s still the question of the garage. I’d rather be converging than diverging to be honest, but perhaps the garage represents a safer bet by moving into retail than staking a bet on building my brand in order to increase the value of the work I’m doing.

So rather than promoting a product or service it will be about building the brand of kurb and my personal brand, identifying valuable markets outside of music I can reach in the meantime, and developing a retail brand while I deliberate on what exactly I can sell out of there, or how I can leverage the space behind what I’m already doing.

Maybe that’s where I need to see the space solely for customer service and functionality as a commercial space, but if I can also leverage it in a way that would bring value to my key clients that would be great.

That’s where the idea I was onto in the last post comes through. Firstly it is a centre for my current established operations, then it becomes a service centre not only for outsourced products such as T-shirts , stickers, printing etc. but for outsourced services such as graphic design, web design, blog services and content services, and lastly . . . it is also an outlet where the exact same promo products can be retailed.

This would not be done by taking a commission that would be too inefficient. We would literally divide up the floorspace and rent it out, or better yet, include instore presentation as part of our promotion.