Like all good habits, consistent marketing activity can be difficult to keep doing regularly, especially when things start to get tough.
Then that little voice in the back of your head keeps giving you good reasons to put it off to another day. And then another day. And then another.
The range of different excuses is vast, but they all lead to the same end result – an empty sales pipeline for your business, and no income for you.
How many of these sound familiar?
- There’s a recession on. Nobody’s buying anything
- I’m too busy with work at the moment. I’ll look at marketing when it’s quieter
- My prospects don’t want what I have right now
- My prospects seem perfectly happy with the competition
- My prospects won’t have the budget at this time of year
- My prospects are very busy now, and I don’t want to interrupt them
- My prospects are perfectly happy to live with the problem for the moment
- I tried (emailing, networking, blogging) once before 5 years ago and it didn’t work
- My prospects don’t read their email
- My prospects never answer the phone (or listen to their voicemail)
- My prospects don’t open the post
- My prospects never read the paper
- My prospects never surf the web looking for suppliers
- I don’t see my competition marketing much at the moment, so it probably won’t work for me
- I see my competition marketing all the time, so it probably won’t work for me
- I’ve managed to grow my business so far without much marketing. Things should just carry on as normal, right?
- Things have changed since last time I ran that successful campaign. It won’t work this time
- Nothing has changed since last time I ran that unsuccessful campaign. It won’t work this time
- My prospects will be more interested if I leave it until next week/month/year
- Why bother? I just know they’ll say “no” right away
- My website isn’t finished yet
- I don’t have any brochures yet
- I don’t have a business card yet
- I can’t think of a really compelling message
- I’m still waiting for the results from that ad campaign I did last quarter
- I’m still waiting for the web developer / graphic designer / copywriter to get back to me
- I still haven’t followed up with the leads from last time
- I’m good at what I do – I really shouldn’t have to market myself
- When people need what I have, they’ll find me
- Having a tidy desk is more important to me right now
I’ve been guilty of most of them at one time or another. And I’ve found there’s only one sure-fire cure.
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When I ask business owners to describe their website to me, they often talk about the home page first. From speaking to web designers, they tend to find the same thing. Their clients worry an awful lot about how their home page looks, what features to include and where it should link to, often to the detriment of the rest of the site.
I suppose the reason for this is that people think of their site in terms of being like a physical shop. Shops need to have a great store front to attract customers inside. So it follows that you should take the same approach with your site, right?
Right – except that with your website, your store front is probably not your home page. It probably won’t be the first thing your visitors see. Many of your visitors may never see it at all. So if you’re spending most of your time looking at it, and thinking about how to improve it, you could be missing out on a lot of potential enquiries.
So which page should be your all-important ’store front’?
It depends. Visitors should be coming to your site from lots of different sources, and which page they see first, along with what it should contain, varies.
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Over a quiet mug of coffee, see if you can answer the key question at the end of each section.
No. 1 Positioning
What are you selling? Who are you selling it to? More importantly why do they buy it from YOU? Can you describe this in clear and simple terms in such a way that it is obvious to your prospects?
If you can’t do this, either verbally or in written form, you’re facing an uphill struggle promoting your offering to a target audience. What is your Unique Selling Point? What is your Elevator pitch? Check out your competition, and see what they are saying about themselves. Does what you say really sound that different? I know from when I worked in the IT sector, almost ALL of our competitors’ marketing messages were exactly the same, just with slightly different colour schemes on their brochures. Why should prospects come to you for help rather than your competition?
Q. What do you do? (without mentioning service, reliability, quality or price)
No. 2 Packaging
Ok, so you’ve sorted out your USP or Key Marketing Message. You may even have a good grasp what what the problems, worries and frustrations of your clients are, and how to match these to your solutions. But how do you package this? How are you packaging your solutions to communicate the value that you offer, in a way that gives prospects confidence that you can solve their problems? How do you package yourself, your identity and your message?
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Imagine setting out on a long mountain trek, with no guide, no map, and no clue if you have the right equipment. That’s how I used to approach marketing when I started in business. I didn’t have a mentor, and I didn’t know where to look for ‘experience’. So I read as many books as I could, took a guess, and got going.
Unsurprisingly, I made a lot of mistakes, had a lot of failures, and learned a lot of lessons. Here are the 10 that would have saved me the most trouble, if I’d know then:
- Your time is at least as valuable as your money. When I started out, I attended every networking event, trade show, supplier get together and whatever else I could think of. After all, it’s networking, and it’s free, right? I shudder to think how much that cost me in lost time when I could have been doing far more productive things (or having fun).
- “Now and nearly right” beats “next month and perfect” every time. In the early days, misplaced perfectionism delayed my brochures, websites and telemarketing campaigns because “they weren’t quite right yet”, costing me tens of thousands in lost sales. Most of the time your idea of perfect won’t work anyway. You won’t know until you test. Nowadays my rule is: launch quickly, improve continuously.
- People don’t buy features and benefits. They buy pain relievers to get them through the day. I took a long time to really understand what this meant, but nearly every purchase has an element of pain-avoidance to it. You just need to dig a little deeper to find out why your customers really buy from you. (see point 7.)
- Lead generation: Little and often works. To be successful, lead generation has to be a habit, not something done in panic bursts 5 times a year when you realise that your sales pipeline is empty.
- People need proof that you are good as your claim. They need to see how other people like them have benefited from working with you. That’s where testimonials come in. I used to feel awkward asking for them. I’m not now.
- Happy customers want to help your business grow. Make sure you go out of your way to make them happy, then ask them for referrals! As with testimonials, I spent a long time being shy about asking for these too, but I’ve grown out of it.
- If you want people to buy from you, you’d better be able to say why your business is different. Without mentioning quality, reliability, service or price. If you’re not sure what I mean, type “computer support services” into Google. Can you tell the top 5 companies apart?
- You can try all the tactics you want, but without an effective strategy to back them up, you’re doomed to hit and miss results. You need a plan which allows you to continuously measure and improve everything you do.
- Don’t rely on just one form of marketing. Have a plan which involves several channels, measure what works, and cross-fertilize. I used to try some cold calling, then some email, then some networking. The results were lumpy to say the least.
- If you’re not truly passionate about what you do, stop right now. As a business grows, it’s easy to get distracted by things that seem appealing, often for financial reasons. If you don’t stick to what you really get excited about, the world isn’t getting the best of you, and it shows.
What are your most valuable lessons so far?
