Make Your Marketing Rock

How are you doing with your marketing? Great? Not so well?

Here are a few questions designed to see if you’re on the right track with your current strategy:

IS IT TIGHTLY FOCUSED ON APPEALING TO THE PEOPLE IN YOUR TARGET MARKET … YOUR IDEAL CLIENTS … THE ONES YOU SPECIALIZE IN HELPING? OR ARE YOU JUST BROADCASTING AN UNSPECIFIC MESSAGE TO THE WORLD AT LARGE, BECAUSE YOU’RE AFRAID OF LIMITING YOURSELF?

If you’re using a “sprinkler instead of a fire-hose” and not focusing on a specific niche, you’re violating the prime directive shouted from the rooftops by almost every marketing consultant out there, including us. You have to concentrate on one particular, well-defined segment of the market, because the sprinkler approach, where you try to be everything to everybody, just doesn’t work! People want to do business with experts … specialists.

And yet, the generalist approach is what most businesses default to. Maybe that’s why we see so many businesses fail in the first couple of years. Just providing a good service isn’t enough to guarantee success.

You have to be able to get a sufficient number of clients in the door before you run out of working capital … and too many folks just aren’t doing it.

IS YOUR MESSAGE RESONATING WITH YOUR IDEAL CLIENTS? IS IT CREATING A SPARK IN THEM, MAKING THEM THINK YOU COULD BE THE ANSWER TO THEIR PROBLEM OR NEED … AND ACTUALLY ATTRACTING THEM TO YOU?

If not, you have a major-league problem. As marketing consultants, it pains us to see good people with a great service … but poorly crafted messages … not succeeding as they should. And, we see it all the time. The prospective client has to “hear themselves” in your message. They have to feel as if you’re talking directly to them.

IS YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY ALIGNED WITH YOUR PERSONALITY AND THE SERVICE YOU PROVIDE OR ARE YOU FORCING YOURSELF TO DO THINGS YOU REALLY DISLIKE … OR EVEN HATE … DOING?

Trying to jam a square peg into a round hole doesn’t work any better in marketing than it does anywhere else in life. As your marketing consultants, we help you design a market strategy that fits who you are, one that has you doing things you actually like doing and are comfortable doing … and will actually get out into the world and do.

IS WHAT YOU’RE DOING EFFICIENT AND COST EFFECTIVE?

It’s soooooo easy to throw money at your marketing and get almost nothing for it. And without a well-thought-out plan, that’s very likely to happen. As marketing consultants, our mission is to make sure you aren’t wasting your marketing dollars.

The fact is, the very best marketing strategies for professional service providers are basically free or will cost you very little.

ARE YOU RELYING ON SOCIAL MEDIA AS YOUR PRIMARY MARKETING TOOL?

How’s that working for you? We see people spending their marketing time sitting behind a computer screen posting tweets and blogs, thinking that’s going to somehow magically produce a steady stream of clients lining up at their door. It won’t. Social media is fine as a supplemental strategy, but used as a primary marketing strategy, it almost never works.

How do we know? Because we see people pursuing it … with high expectations … and they consistently fail, because they aren’t making a connection that’s strong enough … personal enough.

And let’s face it. Very few people actually enjoy marketing via social media or are skilled at all the in’s and out’s of it. It can be a quagmire with so much to learn, technology changing every day, and you’re barely able to keep up! It’s frustrating.

If you want to attract more clients and generate more income, it takes something more than blogging and posting. It takes a more personal connection. And that comes from getting out the door and actually interacting with … communicating with … people face to face.

What? You don’t have to become a social media marketing guru to have a successful business? No … no you don’t. What a relief!

Here’s the bottom line: If you’re getting great results, that’s terrific. You don’t need a marketing consultant.

But if you want to see better results to marketing than what you’re getting now, you have to take a different approach … a better approach.

We can help.

 

“Denise is the real deal! After hearing her speak, I knew immediately she was someone I wanted to work with.

Denise was vital in helping me figure out my target market and create my elevator speech. She listened patiently and got me to come up with the feelings I was trying to express. Then, she crafted the words that allowed me to convey what was important to me.

I love her honest, natural approach, and I’m more confident in being my real self from following her lead.”

Ellen Schweitzer

LIFE & DIVORCE COACH, NEW YORK, NY