Are the results you’re getting from your marketing not what you hoped for? Perhaps there is something else you should be doing. I don’t mean something more. You are probably working hard at marketing already. I’m suggesting something else.
It’s been my experience that many independent professionals just don’t market the way they should. Here are the five most common reasons, and how you can overcome them:
1. Missing information.
There’s a lot of misleading information out there about marketing.
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.
Effective marketing of your business requires commitment. No matter what marketing approach you choose, you must be consistent and persistent with it, if you want to see results. You’ve probably heard that advice. But this sort of commitment doesn’t always happen in practice.
Do any of these phrases sound like something you may have said about marketing at some point?
“I tried that a couple of times, but I didn’t see results right away, so I stopped.”
“I was using X to market my business, but then a friend suggested Y, so I started doing that instead.”
“I don’t know if this is the best way to market myself, so I don’t want to risk doing it.”
There you sit: you know you need to do something to get the word out about your business and get the clients flowing in, yet you’re not in the mood. In fact, you’re mostly never in the mood to do marketing. The problem is, no marketing = no clients = no money = no impact with the work you’re here to bring to the world, which is a sad state to be in.
“Even if you don’t feel like sitting down to write or working on that big proposal, or whatever it is, just show up anyhow and the rest will follow.”
– Ayana Mathis
Getting in the mood to market is a mind shift, one you can bring on yourself. Consider these tactics when you’re just not feelin’ it:
For the past twenty-plus years, I’ve been asking self-employed professionals to tell me the most effective ways they know to get clients. No matter where and when I ask this question, their answers are always the same: “networking,” “referrals,” “word of mouth.” These are the right answers. The professionals I ask know this to be true.
But then I ask a follow-up question: “What are you doing right now to market yourself?” And what I hear back is surprising, given the answers to my first question. More than half the people I ask tell me their primary focus is on something other than those answers. They’ll tell me they are building a new website, or mailing out postcards, or running pay-per-click ads, or cold calling strangers, or launching a Facebook page, or exhibiting at an expo, or posting promos on Twitter.
As a self-employed professional, the last thing you want is for clients to perceive you as a commodity. Commodities are products or services that are considered to be basically the same no matter who provides them. When your target audience thinks of you as just another financial planner, graphic designer, life coach, personal trainer, or psychotherapist, you must work far too hard simply to get them to remember you until they need you.
Here are five ways you can position the solution that you offer as distinctive enough to attract and hold your prospective clients’ attention, AND convince them that your solution is the one they need.
As a self-employed professional, the view that prospective clients hold of you is crucial. What you want is for clients to see you as an expert. How clients perceive your level of expertise will influence not only whether or not they hire you, but also how much they’re willing to pay, how easy it is for you to close the sale, and whether clients award you big projects or small ones.
It may feel like you, the person to be hired, don’t have much power over clients’ perceptions. You may believe that clients will make their own decisions about how — or whether — to work with you, regardless of what you do. But that’s not true. There is much you can do to influence how potential clients view you before you ever have your first conversation with them. Here are seven ways you can influence clients to perceive you as an expert.
“Marketing is hard.” That’s what we independent professionals tell each other, anyway. At meetings, workshops, and online, wherever entrepreneurs gather, the difficulty of getting clients is a frequent topic.
There’s certainly some truth to this statement. Marketing your services can be one of the most challenging elements of being in business for yourself. But does marketing have to be as hard as we seem to think it is? Maybe not.
In fact, I’ve noticed that professionals often make marketing much harder than it needs to be. Here are six ways that entrepreneurs frequently turn marketing into much more of a struggle than necessary.
Are your marketing activities in need of a boost? Motivation? Inspiration? Consider adopting a muse.
A muse is a person or being that serves as a source of inspiration. To adopt a muse means to intentionally choose a model individual to inspire your work. Following a chosen muse can guide you as a self-employed professional to sort out what you need to do in order to market yourself successfully.
Here are five Marketing Muses you might consider adopting. Each one embodies a different set of abilities and personal qualities which you might be able to relate to, or to emulate.
