Should You Be Marketing at Any Cost?

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.

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Advertising Doesn’t Equal Marketing

Advertising Doesn’t Equal Marketing

I asked a new client recently what he had been doing to market his professional services. “Everything,” he said. “I’ve been running pay-per-click ads online, I hired someone to write a sales letter and mailed it to a list of local companies, I have a banner ad in my professional association’s directory, I’ve even been posting flyers around town… and I still have almost no business.”

“Ah hah,” I replied, “I think we’ve uncovered your problem. You actually haven’t been marketing your business. What you have been doing is advertising.”

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Increasing Your Signal to Noise Ratio in Marketing

Increasing Your Signal to Noise Ratio in Marketing

You can learn a lot about marketing by listening to broadcast radio or streaming audio. You can learn even more by noticing when you’re not listening. A clear signal and music or talk you like to hear will keep you tuned in to a particular station or channel. But too much static, a connection that keeps dropping, too many ads, or programming not to your taste will overwhelm the signal, and all you’ll hear is noise. That’s when you’ll tune out. Which is pretty much the same way that our prospective clients react to our marketing messages.

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In Marketing, an Action Step Is Worth a Thousand Words

In Marketing, an Action Step Is Worth a Thousand Words

We self-employed professionals spend a great deal of our marketing effort on searching for the right words. We read books, take classes, and hire consultants to help us write copy for our marketing materials. Composing web pages, writing sales emails, and drafting ad copy consumes hours or days of precious marketing time.

It appears, though, that many professionals have mistaken all this wordsmithing for productive action.

Don’t get me wrong; the words you use to market yourself are important and deserve your attention. But crafting the message, and effectively delivering the message, are not at all the same thing.

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Let’s Put an End to Silver Bullet Marketing

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.

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Do Promotional Events Have a Place in Your Marketing Mix?

Do Promotional Events Have a Place in Your Marketing Mix?

Are you considering adding promotional events to your marketing mix? Remember that promotional events are one of six overall marketing strategies (more on that below), and can be a great way to garner visibility and gather leads to fill your marketing pipeline.

If you’re not sure what promotional events are, here are some examples:

  • Exhibiting at a trade show
  • Holding a free demonstration
  • Hosting your own webinar or workshop
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Why You Need to Include Outreach Strategies in Your Marketing Mix

Why You Need to Include Outreach Strategies in Your Marketing Mix

I’m a big fan of using attraction strategies to fill your marketing pipeline as a self-employed professional. Attraction-based tactics like blogging or publishing articles, posting on social media, and generating media publicity can all be effective ways to bring prospective clients into your sphere. Under the right circumstances, promotional events and advertising can work also.

And… attraction strategies alone are rarely enough to build a thriving business.

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Why You Shouldn’t Do What the Gurus Do

Why You Shouldn’t Do What the Gurus Do

It’s only natural to emulate successful people. You’d like to copy their success, so it seems it would make sense to copy their approach to sales and marketing. But modeling your marketing after the gurus in your field may not get you where they are.

Simply put, the present situation of these highly successful people may be entirely different from your own. Gurus typically have plenty of money to spend, staff to help, a large in-house mailing list, many followers on social media, widespread name recognition, a suite of products and services to offer, and many years of completed work to draw from. If you don’t have all this in your business, trying to copy their marketing and sales approach may be a recipe for failure rather than success.

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Are You Marketing More or Less Than You Think?

Are You Marketing More or Less Than You Think?

Unless you’re literally hiding under a rock, if you’re in business and have any clients at all, you’re doing something that qualifies as marketing. People tend to fall into two camps: those who are doing more marketing than they realize, and those who are doing less than they think.

Which camp do you fall into?

As an aside, for our purposes we’re defining marketing as getting the word out about your business, it’s services and benefits, to potential customers so that you can have a sales conversation with them and hopefully close the sale. Marketing creates opportunities to have sales conversations.

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