| |
| |
|
KwikMarketing.com - Marketing Information |
|
|
|
Like Brushing Your Teeth
What do the following things have in common: brushing your teeth, regular exercise, eating a balanced diet, paying your bills on time, cleaning your gutters, spending quality time with your spouse and kids?? They're all forms of regular "self-care" that, if you neglect them for a period of time or take the wrong approach, there will be costly negative consequences. The same goes for marketing. Do any of these symptoms sound familiar? ? Your phone does not ring regularly with new prospects. ? You don't regularly hear, "Hey, I've heard of your company!" ? Your sales pipeline is dry, so you go to some networking events, get some leads, then stop. ? People don't respond quickly to meet or talk with you after an initial introduction through networking. ? The leads you do get trickle in slowly. ? You spend a lot of time looking for opportunities, but aren't getting the results you want. ? You can't safely project your firm's income for the next 6 to 12 months. ? You're finding it hard to attract and retain top talent, even in a recently tough economy. ? Relationships with clients tend to be short and one-off projects (i.e., no repeat business). ? You rely heavily on one or two income streams (i.e., consulting or coaching). ? Most of your eggs are in one basket (i.e., one or two major clients), and if they went away, you'd be in trouble. ? You're too busy to look for more clients. If any of these symptoms ring true for you, one of two things is probably happening. Either you're not marketing on a consistent enough basis to generate reliable results. Or you're not using the right approach to get the kind of results you want. Or both! Consistency is Key The American Dental Association recommends brushing your teeth at least twice a day. The USDA's food pyramid maps out a balanced approach to eating. Your mortgage company or landlord stay happy when you pay them monthly on time. Experts urge us to clean our gutters twice a year. You get the idea? Do we really follow all of these guidelines to the letter? Probably not. But within reason, people who consistently follow healthy habits over time, get better results, live "younger" longer, and incur less cost (financial, physical, emotional) than those who do not. This is definitely the case with marketing for professional services. You simply cannot dabble in lousy messaging, offer an unwanted service, do occasional networking, or disappear from your target audience's radar, only to reappear when you need more work. Benign neglect and sporadic attention will get you predictable results. Here's why: clients come to you in a very vulnerable position?they need something from you that they can't do for themselves or don't have the expertise to solve on their own. So they need to trust that 1) you won't lead them astray, wasting their time/money; and 2) you have their best interests in mind. How can they begin to trust you, then, if you disappear from sight, inconsistently communicate with them, or say things that they can't understand or relate to? Taking a proactive, consistent "preventative maintenance" approach to marketing is the key to building trust in the marketplace. Here's how to make marketing a healthy habit: STEP 1: Offer what the market wants. Sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how often I see firms selling what their clients "really need, they just don't know it yet." Or, "this is such a worthy cause (new approach, cutting edge strategy, etc.), I just know it's needed." Unless you have the PR and marketing budget to fund a major, long-term educational campaign, you can't afford to take this approach. STEP 2: Say the right things to the right audience, at the right time, in the right way. What you say (messaging) is more important, and harder, than spreading the word. The biggest waste of time and money is to spin your wheels promoting your services when you're saying the wrong things. STEP 3: Do some form of marketing every week, if not every day. Even if you're swimming in more work than you can handle now, you can't afford to stop promoting your services. Ever. Pick a "theme" for the week and just do it: prepare a talk, draft an article, network, write your monthly keep-in-touch e-newsletter, ask for testimonials, add case studies to your website, send items of interest to clients and contacts, write thank you notes, do a postcard mailer about your next talk, call an old client, write and send out a press release, provide great client service, develop a valuable freebie to give away, and so on. Successfully marketing professional services is about establishing and sustaining trust through a consistent approach to meaningful visibility with your target audience. Ignore this advice, and in short order you'll suffer the equivalent of cavities, leaky gutters, bad credit, and an expanding waistline?and end up paying the expense of emergency surgery, instead of the smaller investment of taking a preventative approach. (c) 2004 TurningPointe Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved.
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Nine Advance Networking Skills for Seasoned Networkers A seasoned networker knows the real meaning of networking -- being organized, efficient, effective, and, of course, work the event to its fullest. Attending networking groups after so many years can tire and drain anyone's excitement. Learn How to Market Your eBusiness in Real Time: Dissect, Study, Emulate Everything you will ever need to know about internet marketing is plainly available to you everywhere you go on the internet. All you need to do is dissect, study, and emulate these methods and you invariably will become just as successful as the people who created them. Tradeshow Booth Cures - Living Color Feng Shui is the Ancient Chinese practice of configuring home or work environments to promote health, happiness, and prosperity. By utilizing elements such as light and color, Feng Shui Masters used their skill to promote the flow of "chi", or vital energy , to protect and enhance the prosperity of the Imperial Dynasties. How Would You Handle This? We have been talking about choosing groups to participate in that meet your needs and goals as a business professional. Once the decision is made on which groups to belong to, then a certain level of participation is required in order to achieve the individual goals set by the business professional. First Steps to Developing a Marketing Plan Direct Mail . . Why Referral Business Is So Valuable With so much money invested on innefective advertising, it's time to look at some good old fashioned ways of generating new business. One tried and tested way is by referral. When You Need More Than Magic To Keep Your Marketing Going It is easy to focus on what remains outstanding and not seewhat you have accomplished or how you have grown over thepast year.� Even marketing experts have difficulty nailingdown time to market. Lessons From a Six Year Old My 6 year old daughter Emily knows exactly what she wants to be when she grows up. Two weeks ago she knew that she wanted to be a teacher. Principles of Marketing 101 Marketing results should be measured in only one way - increased sales. Marketing should not be considered an art form. Develop Your Curiosity And Increase Profits If anyone was to ask me what my greatest strength was I'd say curiosity. The reason I would say that is because curious people learn a lot. Business Promotional Items - How to Stimulate Word of Mouth Advertising If the promotional items you give out end up in the attic or shoved in the back of a desk drawer, they are probably not doing what they are supposed to be doing. However, if items you passed out to clients and customers are being seen again and again, chances are, word-of-mouth advertising is stimulating your business. Youre Halfway There!...Or Not Part 1 The year is almost over and the last half of this year will fly by just as fast as the first half. Are you on target for meeting your business goals for this year?If you answered yes, congratulations! Keep reading for ideas that will help you stay on track. Your Marketing - From The Couch To The Cash Register When you put time or money into any marketing plan, your only objective is to MAKE A SALE. Are you sure your marketing is going to get your customer from their couch to your cash register?When somebody hears your message or sees your logo from some medium you have created, what does the path from that first 'touch' to your cash register look like?We call this path the yellow brick road. Plant a Seed and Watch Your Business Grow Do you have all the business you could possibly want or need? If you're like me, you're still growing your business. Marketing is an ongoing item on my agenda, and I'm always looking for new ways to market my services. How to Profit from Your Expertise (Part 1 of 2) Are you looking for a natural way to market your professional services? What if you could exponentially multiply the number of motivated, pre-qualified prospects you reach in a fraction of the time that networking and referrals require?Now what if you could be the person in a crowed room with whom everyone wants to talk about your services? And no, they don't want to sell you something?they want to buy what you've got.Too good to be true? Not if you know how to leverage the knowledge you get paid for every day as a professional service provider. Target Your Share of the 50-Plus Market It's quite apparent that Americans are living longer--- and as people age, they request and require many more products and services than ever before. Now, as aging Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) are coming of age, the fifty-plus population is over 77 million people and growing enormously all the time. Walking Talking Advertisements So you've made a sale. Great!Now what? You're not just going to sell your new customer a product and let them walk away, are you?Not when you're marketing on tight budget! You now have to use the customer in front of you to build your business, and you do that with a successful referral program. Tipical Mistakes in Marketing To prevent the risks of a promotion campaign for our products or services, I'm talking about email campaigns, it is recommended to study some of the most common mistakes that can be made in this situation:1. The desire of immediate successLaunching a promotion campaign through email can be compared the situation in which we want to reach the top of a hill with our car, starting from the base. Postcard Direct Mail Marketing: 15 Ways To Grab Attention If you use direct mail postcards to generate leads or sell a product or service, you need to create postcards that grab your prospect's attention. The place to do that is Side A, the side that doesn't have the stamp and address on it. Marketing as a Spiritual Practice II: Unearthing Your Potential Marketing as we know it is over. Done.
|
| home | site map |
| © KwikMarketing.com 2007 |
