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Get Clients NOW!
by C.J. Hayden
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Marketing Along the Path of Least Resistance
Do you find marketing to be a constant struggle? It doesn't have to be
that way. The most successful marketers make it look easy because they have
found a way to market themselves that is effortless. Perhaps you have tried
to copy what those successful people were doing, and it didn't work for you.
Here's why.
Marketing is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. You have to find your own
unique path, the one that works best for you and your business. To make marketing
easy, that path needs to be the one where you will encounter the least resistance
-- both from the marketplace and from inside yourself.
Here are six steps to put you on the road to effortless marketing:
- Be willing to let go of struggle. You may believe you want marketing
to be easier, but stop and think for a moment. Is there some part of you
that is attached to making things difficult? Is there a secret payoff you
get from trying so hard? Whenever you find yourself struggling about marketing,
pause and ask yourself, "How could this be easy?"
- Market to the people you like, and who like you. A colleague
once told me I would never earn a living marketing my services to solo entrepreneurs.
"You have to focus on getting corporate clients," she said. "Then you can
afford to work with entrepreneurs once in a while."
Thank goodness I didn't listen to her. Maybe that was the formula that worked
for HER business, but it's not where my heart was. One of the reasons I
became self-employed was to spend more time working in non-corporate environments.
If I had followed her advice, I would have failed miserably.
- Start with the people who are ready for your message. Yes, there
is an entire population out there who would hire you if only you could make
them understand what it is you offer and how you can help them. You can
make educating those people part of your long-term mission. But in the meantime,
you need to make the car payment.
Seek out the customers who are most likely to already understand the value
of what you do. If you are a reflexologist, you need to be speaking at the
Whole Life Expo instead of at the Chamber of Commerce. If you offer a workshop
on corporate ethics, network with members of Businesses for Social Responsibility
instead of the Millionaires Circle.
- Choose marketing strategies that match who you are. I'll be the
first to admit that I'm a mediocre cold caller. It just doesn't fit my personal
style. So I focus on the strategies that are natural to me -- speaking,
writing, and networking to build referrals. I've consistently maintained
a full practice that way for over ten years now.
One of my clients is also a business coach who targets solo entrepreneurs.
Her business is identical to mine, but her personality is completely different.
She loves to cold call, and has been able to fill her practice that way.
Speaking and networking don't come naturally to her at all. It's a good
thing she didn't try to copy me.
- Find people who can pay what you need to charge. If you persist
in marketing to people who can't pay your fee, you will encounter not just
resistance, but a brick wall. Don't give up because it seems that no one
in the population you want to serve has any money. You have to look for
the intersection between your chosen market and people who have enough resources
to hire you.
Colleagues have told me that people suffering from life-threatening illnesses,
or recovering from substance abuse, can't or won't pay for professional
coaching. But I have had several people in these situations as full-fee
clients. The intersection is that they were also entrepreneurs. People say
you can't make money working with teens, but I have had many clients who
do -- as life coaches, private tutors, psychologists, and professional speakers.
The intersection they found was teens with well-to-do parents, or schools
with funds obtained from grants and corporate sponsors.
- Pay attention to how people respond to hearing about your business,
whether or not you are marketing to them. A client of mine used to be
a computer skills trainer. When she talked about her work, people nodded
politely. But what she really wanted to do was teach public speaking. When
she began to talk about that idea, her listeners got excited.
The difference wasn't in the content of her message -- public speaking can
be just as dry a topic as computer software. It was her own enthusiasm for
the work that attracted such a positive response. If you really want your
marketing to be effortless, you need to be in a business that excites YOU.
Five Ways to Keep Your Marketing Up When You Feel Down
Even the best marketing doesn't always pay off quickly. In the lag time
between when you launch a marketing campaign for your business and when you
start to see results from it, it's easy to become discouraged. Especially
when you work mostly solo, it can be a difficult task to keep yourself motivated
about marketing when there isn't an immediate payoff.
Once your marketing does begin to work, you may still encounter times when
it's hard to keep it going. You may become overloaded with client work and
feel like there's not enough time to market. Sometimes you may feel blue and
begin to wonder if any of your efforts are worthwhile. Or it may just be that
marketing isn't your favorite thing to do. When you are full of energy and
enthusiasm you can get it done, but when your spirits are low, it all seems
too hard.
Here are five ways to give your marketing a lift when you are feeling down.
- Make your to-do list shorter. When faced with an impossible task,
most of us feel discouraged. But when we believe we can accomplish what is
in front of us, we are often more likely to get going on it.
If you feel overwhelmed by everything you SHOULD do about marketing, tear
up your to-do list. Then start a new list, and put just three items on it.
When you complete one of the three, cross it out and celebrate, then add
a new item. You'll feel much less stressed and more productive when you're
faced with a less daunting agenda. You'll probably get more done by planning
to do less.
- Calendar your marketing time. When you're feeling discouraged
or resistant about marketing, it's easy for the time to slip away while you
work on other things. This is also true when paying clients are keeping you
busy. You know you need to keep marketing to avoid a famine when the current
feast of work is over, but it's just not happening.
Make an appointment with yourself for a specific block of time to work on
marketing, and treat it as seriously as if it were a client meeting. Set
an alarm if you need a reminder. If you find that you are still pulled to
other tasks during your marketing time, change the location where you do
your work. Move to another room in your home, to a conference room in your
office building, to a nearby park, or to a café. A new setting can remove
distractions and sharpen your focus.
- Spend just five minutes. If your current mindset is that marketing
is hard or distasteful, you may find that getting started on marketing tasks
is the most difficult part. Commit to spending just five minutes on marketing,
and see what happens. You may discover that once you get going, you won't
want to stop.
If you do stall out again after five minutes, don't despair. Take a break
or work on something else for a while. Then try another five minutes later
on. The following day, see if you can work up to ten minutes at a time, then
fifteen minutes, and so on. Just as if this were a new exercise program,
you may need to start out with brief periods of effort and increase them
gradually as you build your strength.
- Connect with a fan. Sometimes the best place to look for motivation
is outside yourself. Who are the people in your life that you would consider
your champions? Make contact with someone you can count on to be positive
about your abilities. This could be a friend, family member, colleague, or
coach. Ask your champion to remind you of other times when you have overcome
obstacles and accomplished goals, so you can get back in touch with what
you are capable of.
If no live champions are at hand, spend some time reading your fan mail.
Track down any letters or testimonials you have collected from clients you
have helped in the past. Reviewing their acknowledgments will make you feel
better about yourself and inspire you to do more great work in the future.
When you're inspired by the value you bring your clients, you'll feel more
enthusiastic about getting new clients to work with.
- Revisit your purpose. In the press of multiple tasks and deadlines,
it's easy to lose track of why you are doing all this anyway. Spend some
time reconnecting with why you went into business in the first place. Who
were the people you wanted to help? What personal goals were you trying to
achieve? What was your vision of a successful business?
Holding a clear mental picture of your intended destination can keep you
on the path to get there during challenging times. Every time you have to
place a sales call, write a marketing letter, or take on a difficult promotional
task, visualize the positive results these tasks will help you achieve. Keeping
your goals in mind when you tackle tough jobs helps you constantly remember
the reasons you're willing to work so hard.
In an ideal world, of course, we would get all our marketing tasks accomplished
with ease and confidence within the time we have available. But since that's
not the world most of us live in, consider that doing ANYTHING about marketing
is better than doing nothing. In the long run, you'll want to have a comprehensive
marketing plan with an appropriate amount of time and effort dedicated to
it. But when you get stuck, what you need most is just to get going again.
So the next time you feel overwhelmed, resistant, or discouraged about marketing,
try one of these quick fixes to jump start your marketing engine. The simple
act of getting things rolling will make you start to feel more positive again
about your marketing, your business, and yourself.
C. J. Hayden is the author of Get Clients NOW! Thousands of business
owners and salespeople have used her simple sales and marketing system to
double or triple their income. Get a free copy of "Five Secrets to Finding
All the Clients You'll Ever Need" at http://www.getclientsnow.com
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