By Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing
For quite a long time I've been focusing on the interior aspects of marketing your services, from making a contribution to marketing mindset to "big mind marketing."
As important as these topics are, with this issue of More Clients, I'm returning to the "Basic Machinery of Marketing."
Like any machine, marketing has many moving parts. And if you want to attract clients consistently, you need to understand how those parts work and interconnect.
Every Marketing Machine has three main parts:
1. Marketing Message
2. Marketing Strategies
3. Selling Process
Marketing Message
If a business was a person, this would be your name, your personality, your body type, your thoughts and feelings, in short this would be who you are.
Your Marketing Message includes the kind of clients you work with, the issues those clients deal with, and the solutions you offer to them.
In addition, this would include all your verbal and written marketing communications that conveyed all of the above. The job of these communications is to say, in essence, "This is my business, this is who I work with and how I help."
In order to attract clients, your Marketing Message needs to be crystal clear, cut through the noise and offer clear advantages and benefits of working with you.
So your Marketing Message is not a trivial thing.
It's the very heart and soul of your marketing. Think of it this way: If you don't know what your business is all about and are unable to express your message clearly, do you think your prospects will ever understand what you can do for them?
Marketing Strategies
Without Marketing Strategies, your business just sits there, hoping someone notices. Even if you have a great Marketing Message, you won't get much attention because you aren't putting this message out into the marketplace.
Most Independent Professionals use tactics more than strategies. That is, they do marketing activities in a haphazard, random way. A little networking here, a little social media there. This rarely gets the results you wish for.
If you want consistent results, your Marketing Strategies need to be designed and implemented as step-by-step action plans. The purpose of these plans is to systematically build relationships with prospective clients until they feel comfortable exploring working with you.
Marketing Strategies don't convert people into clients, they build a foundation of knowing, liking and trusting. And then you can move to the final stage of marketing, the Selling Process.
Selling Process
When a prospect is ready to explore working with you, the Selling Process starts. Essentially this is a conversation to see if the needs of the prospect match your abilities to fulfill those needs.
Selling isn't about manipulation, persuasion and closing. It's more about discovering if you can work together successfully or not. This is particularly true of professional services where selling is a process of discovery and building agreement.
About three quarters of the Selling Process is asking questions and learning about the prospect's situation, goals, and challenges. The other quarter is explaining how your services work and how you can help the client.
What most Independent Professionals miss in the Selling Process is the process part. There are many parts to this process, and if you want to succeed at it, you need to master each of these parts.
What's missing in your marketing?
These days, many Independent Professionals tend to worry about the pieces of the puzzle (twitter, blogs, ezine, teleclasses, etc) while missing the big picture of marketing success.
Do you need to work on your Marketing Message, your Marketing Strategies, your Selling Process or all three?
In the coming weeks I'll explore these three parts in more depth.
The More Clients Bottom Line: Nothing is more important to attracting clients to your business than understanding and implementing "basic marketing machinery." And the more you work on its three main parts, the easier marketing will become for you.
What part of your marketing machine needs tuning up? Please share on the More Clients Blog. Just click on the Comments link below.
Marketing processes require a pre plan approach to step by step methods , it focuses making a goal , stretegy to achieve that goal and how to implement it to bring best effecient results .
Posted by: jeff paul forum | October 07, 2009 at 08:31 PM
I would like to invite you if u have any videos of your equipment to contact me and post free to my Machines Video blog
http://machinesvideo.blogspot.com
thanks!
Posted by: yane | October 05, 2009 at 06:55 AM
Great info! Got my mind thinking! I am looking forward to the next few weeks. Thank you!
Posted by: Suzette Armijo | September 15, 2009 at 07:55 AM