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.
Five Quick Solutions to the “I Don’t Know How” Problem in Marketing
One of the most persistent barriers to the success of self-employed professionals at marketing themselves is the “I don’t know how” problem. Here’s how it often goes.
An expert or a colleague advises you to take some specific marketing action: “Collect all your leads in a contact management system” or “Write a white paper” or “Ask your website visitors to subscribe to your mailing list” or “Develop some referral partners.” You evaluate that idea, and decide it’s a good one. “Great,” you say, “that’s just what I’ll do.”
Need More Referrals? Partner Up!
Have you ever considered that prospective clients who are referred to you are much more likely to hire you than those who come to you in any other way? The endorsement of a referral carries so much weight that referred prospects ask fewer questions about your qualifications, are less likely to shop for the lowest price, and typically make their buying decisions much more quickly. In fact, they are often pre-sold when they contact you.
With the value of referred prospects being so high, it makes sense for generating more referrals to be an essential component of your marketing. But many professionals limit their ability to gain referrals by concentrating all their efforts on current and past clients.
Before You Market, Stop and Think
One of my coaching clients recently asked my opinion about whether she should try out a new marketing approach. She’s a psychotherapist who has always gotten clients primarily by referral. She had been contacted by a couple of people who were trying to sell her on using social media to increase her therapy practice. Instead of advising her about this, I asked her some questions (see below).
Thirty minutes later, she was shaking her head, wondering why she ever thought that a social media campaign was a good idea for her type of business and personal situation. Before she talked to me, she had been ready to pay a hefty sum for a training program and invest a considerable amount of time to dive into a whole new way to market her business. But my questions made her stop and think.
Eight Reasons Why Your Blog Isn’t Bringing You Clients
A common complaint I hear from the self-employed professionals I work with is that they’ve tried blogging as a marketing approach, but it hasn’t paid off. No one is reading their blog, they tell me. Or they’ve got some readership, but their readers never seem to become paying clients. Is it time to give up blogging, they ask? Maybe they should focus on social media instead.
Yikes! Don’t make that choice. Social media marketing doesn’t work without good, original content to share.
Yes, Writing Blog Posts and Articles CAN Bring You Clients
“I’d like to attract clients by writing articles or a blog, but I’m not sure what to write about.”
“I tried blogging for a while, but it didn’t bring me any business.”
“When I write, people seem to like it, but I have only a handful of readers.”
These are some of the comments I hear from self-employed professionals who think that writing about their area of expertise might be a path to attracting clients… but feel like they don’t have a map. I understand their frustration. It’s easy to make crucial mistakes when using writing as a marketing strategy. But you CAN do this successfully. Here are six guidelines to make writing pay off.
Four Powerful Ways to Keep Your Marketing on Track
When was the last time you put the amount of effort into marketing that you intended? For most self-employed professionals, getting marketing tasks accomplished is an ongoing challenge. You don’t have a boss looking over your shoulder ordering you to make those follow-up calls or write those blog posts. It’s easy to get distracted by client emergencies, family responsibilities, and technology issues. Then another week goes by without enough — or any — attention on marketing.
You may have put a considerable amount of energy into figuring out how to market your business, and coming up with smart plans for what you’ll do. But if you fall short on execution, even the best plan won’t help you get clients.
Here are four approaches to making sure the marketing activities you’ve chosen for yourself actually get done.
Let’s Put an End to Silver Bullet Marketing
I have a dream for us self-employed professionals. I picture us all making simple marketing and sales plans, working our plans consistently, and as a result, landing all the clients we need. But in order for my dream to come true, we’re going to have to stop letting ourselves be pulled off track by the tempting lure of silver bullet solutions.
The lure of the silver bullet
Maybe you know the ones I mean. There’s always some flavor-of-the-month approach to sales and marketing that you’re hearing about.
Marketing as a Game
What if marketing was a game? Something you can play at, play with. A game without winners or losers, just different outcomes.
Would that make marketing feel easier? More fun?
I see many business owners treat marketing as something serious, saying things to themselves such as, “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do it,” “It must be done correctly, or it won’t work,” “I’ll look foolish if I make a mistake, and I’d hate to have it look like I don’t know what I’m doing — it’ll be embarrassing in front of my peers and my clients.” The idea of doing marketing the correct way can be a hurdle that feels hard to overcome.
Emerging from Your Pandemic Cocoon: For You, for Your Business
For well over a year, we self-employed professionals have largely been wrapped in a home-based cocoon. Yes, many of us have continued to serve clients, sometimes even in person. But we’ve also spent a whole lot of time on Zoom. An entire category of business marketing has been absent…
