Why You Need Clients and What to Do About It
We need to talk about your business. Not to be too crass, yet part of the formula for a successful business looks like this: Clients = Money
You need clients because you need money, because you want freedom to do things for yourself and others, both personally and professionally, which means you need to do something about that. About the getting of clients. That thing that’s easy to say, that you’re “supposed” to do, yet is easy to ignore. But. Something. Is. Always. (Seemingly) More. Urgent.
Marketing or Selling: Which Is More Important?
A question I often get from clients and students goes something like this: “I’ve been collecting marketing ideas… and I have a drawer full! I also have a stack of promising leads I’ve accumulated. And I know it’s important to stay visible, so I keep marketing, but then I just end up with more names in the stack. How do I prioritize all this?”
If you’ve ever wondered something similar, you may have lost sight of a very important truth — the way to win the business game is not to collect the most leads; it’s to make the most sales.
Is Your Marketing Approach Incomplete?
Trying to implement a marketing approach that has critical elements missing is like trying to make a pie without the ingredients to form the crust. Or in some cases, without an oven to bake it in!
There are four essential elements every successful marketing approach must have:
- Strategy – What are you trying to do, and why?
- Tactic(s) – How will you do it?
- Tool(s) – What will you need to do it well?
- Medium or Venue – Where will you do it?
If any one of these ingredients is missing, your approach will be less effective than it could be, and in many cases, will fail completely. Here are four examples to show you where an incomplete marketing plan can go wrong.
The One Can’t Fail, Surefire Marketing Strategy
What’s your one surefire, can’t fail marketing strategy? What did someone tell you is the one thing that always works? When you think of what these strategies might be, I’m guessing things come to mind such as attending networking events or publishing articles, and these certainly can be effective marketing strategies.
If you look at the broader picture of marketing, you can see it with a unique perspective. A perspective that produces consistently great results no matter what marketing strategy you choose. A real-life, win that you can count on no matter what. Curious what it is?
Come in from the Cold: Warm Up Your Marketing
Do you feel uncomfortable trying to market your business to strangers? Most of us do. Making cold calls, knocking on doors, or attending networking mixers where you don’t know a soul can be challenging or even painful. Happily, cold approaches like these are not all there is to marketing. In fact, you may never need to use them at all.
Perhaps you already know this, and have been marketing your business in other ways. For example, launching a website, exhibiting at trade shows, running pay-per-click ads, distributing flyers, sending emails and letters to people who don’t know you, or posting promos on social media. But all of those approaches are “cold” as well, and many of them can be expensive.
Whenever you are trying to start a marketing conversation with a stranger — with no introduction, referral, or shared connection to help you — it’s a cold approach, whether you make it on the phone, in a room, by mail, or online. And cold approaches, across the board, are less effective than warm ones.
Five Reasons (Almost) Every Self-Employed Professional Should Have a Blog
When self-employed professionals come to me with questions about how to attract their ideal clients, one of the first places I look is whether they have a blog. In my experience, most self-employed professionals have the potential to be excellent bloggers, even when they haven’t written anything longer than an email since leaving college.
Authoring a blog can solve several of the stickiest marketing problems for professionals. Here are five reasons that blogging is one of the marketing methods I recommend most often to my clients and students:
Is It Time to Reset Your Marketing Plan?
Is your marketing plan producing the results you need? When was the last time you evaluated your plan to see if it is leading you toward success? Are you even using a marketing plan at all? Here are four questions to help you determine whether it’s time to reset your plan.
1. Are you getting in touch every month with at least three times as many new clients as you need? Not every prospective client will say yes. You need to have a marketing pipeline filled with prospects, contacts, leads, and referrals that you can draw from.
Three Ways to Make Marketing Easier on Yourself
Maybe this sounds familiar: you’re staring at your marketing to-do list, fully aware of how important it is to get things planned and executed, and yet getting started feels hard.
Want to Create a Product, Program or Membership? Here’s Where to Start
I can’t count the number of self-employed professionals recently who have told me they are working on a program, product, or membership service to package their talents in a more tangible way. Professionals as diverse as life coaches, magicians, management consultants, and travel consultants are all seeking new avenues to bring in revenue during our current twin challenges of pandemic and recession.
Should You Be Marketing at Any Cost?
“Will this marketing approach be worth my while?” It’s a question self-employed professionals often ask. But there’s a related question that, unfortunately, they ask much less often: “How much will it cost compared to what it brings in?” Surprisingly few professionals know the answer to this crucial question, and many admit it had simply never occurred to them.
Every marketing approach has a set of costs attached. Social media ads, pay-per-click campaigns, and trade show exhibits come with a price tag in dollars. Networking mixers, business lunches, and posting/interacting on social media take up your time, and may also incur expenses.
