Congratulations, you’re a business owner! You know your craft and are filling your days doing what you love, giving value to your customers, and putting well-earned cash in the bank as a result. Everything is as it should be.
Except.
There’s a voice you keep hearing that says something like:
You aren’t nuts & boltsy enough, how can you be successful in business? You can’t even understand a profit and loss statement – how do you expect to make it?
*sigh*
If you’ve read my book Get Clients Now!, you’ve seen my personal definition of marketing: telling people what you do, over and over. The book also spills the beans about the secret to successful marketing: choosing a set of simple, effective things to do, and doing them consistently. Following these two pieces of advice will make your marketing both simpler and easier. You design a marketing plan, refine it, and then repeat it. Voila – clients! But there’s a problem.
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.
You need a marketing plan to get clients. That’s the first thing to know. A professional who tells you that he or she has gotten plenty of clients without ever having a plan is either: a) working way too hard, b) not telling you the truth about how many clients they have, c) working a plan that they’ve never written down, or d) one of those rare, incredibly charismatic individuals who seem to draw an audience as soon as they enter a room.
I find that most of the time, successful professionals who claim to not have a plan fall into the “c” category. They are working from a plan in their head. If you can do that, more power to you. Most people — myself included — need to write a plan down in order to keep it straight.
Isn’t that what every self-employed professional is really looking for — that one magic formula that will take the effort out of marketing and bring you all the clients you need, forever?
Searching for this marketing silver bullet, they read articles and books, take seminars and home-study courses, and hire consultants and coaches. And in the process they learn about many, many so-called marketing secrets.
These “secrets” to marketing consist of supposedly surefire approaches like search engine optimization for your website, social media marketing, joining a leads group, sending postcards, and running pay-per-click ads. There are of course many more, and each of them is being touted by someone as the ultimate solution for marketing your business.
As my spouse Dave and I were sitting one morning at our respective computers, I wondered aloud what topic to choose for my monthly newsletter. Dave, staring at his own screen, complained, “Who has time to work and still keep up with Facebook? Hey, why don’t you write about that?” Now since Dave isn’t even working at this time of year, if he feels overwhelmed by the endless stream of social media posts to read and make, what’s it like for the rest of us?
For the average independent professional who is trying to serve existing clients, run a business, and market for new clients in multiple ways, social media can be only one small piece of the picture. Yet it seems that to use social media well, it can potentially consume an endless amount of time.
Here are five ideas to consider about where social media marketing may fit — or not — into your already busy life.
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.
Does it seem like you can never find the time to market for more clients? It’s hard to find open hours in the middle of a busy week. But not every marketing task requires big chunks of time. Here are ten productive things you can do to get more clients when you have just ten minutes.
1. Place a call. Which of your past clients have been totally happy with your work over the past couple of years? Think of one you haven’t been in touch with recently. Call to see how he or she is doing. When your fans are reminded of your good work, new projects and referrals often ensue.
2. Send an email. Who has referred you the best client over the last year? Send an email to express your continuing thanks. Showing your appreciation to referral sources frequently results in more referrals.
Do you consistently follow up with prospective clients? If you don’t, you may be wasting the effort you made to get those prospects into your marketing pipeline in the first place.
Too many self-employed professionals limit their view of follow-up to calling a prospect on the phone or sending them an email, asking if they are ready to buy, sign up, or get started. But effective follow-up entails much more than that. And, it can be much easier on your psyche than those challenging calls and emails.
When you think of follow-up as nothing more than making those scary contacts asking for business, you may find yourself avoiding them, delaying them, or always finding “better” things to do.
