Do you have any marketing plans for 2010 yet? I read this great article today and thought I'd pass it along to my visitors!
Building Marketing Mansions
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One month left in 2009. Do you have a plan?
Do you know what marketing activities will generate your income
for next year? Would you make a bet that next year will be better
than last year? What's your actual plan to make it better?
It took me a very long time to actually get the concept of
planning my marketing. I'd pretty much go one month at a time,
hoping my efforts led somewhere.
Yes, I planned some strategies, activities and projects.
And then I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I
depended more on hope and the willingness to work hard. I
figured if I did a certain number of speaking engagements or
teleclasses and sent out my eZine every week, I'd be OK.
I finally realized that even this was not enough.
Now I do marketing like I'd build a house.
I'd make a plan for the house to be a certain way; I'd buy the
necessary materials; I'd create a timeline for each step to be done
in a certain order; I'd contract the workers and build the house.
Does your marketing look like that? If so, great! But I'll bet it
looks more like this:
You think about the house and talk about it, but never write down
a plan. You don't get around to ordering the materials. Timeline,
what timeline? Workers, surely you jest! And you'd only fit in the
actual building if you had some spare time.
Yeah, it's really that bad!
Look, it's up to you, but maybe you'll actually create a plan that's
designed to bring in new business predictably next year.
What if you had a plan that not only brought in more clients, but
highly committed, higher paying clients whom you didn't have to
beg to work with you?
Here's what I recommend you do:
1. Decide on exactly what kind of clients you want next year. Why
settle for the level of clients you've been getting? Might as well
aim for the ideal clients as you tend to get what you intend.
2. Determine the services or programs you want to offer to these
clients. Don't just think about it. Write it down in great detail and
make it real. It's not a plan unless it's on paper.
3. Now do a write-up about that service or program and put it
prominently on your web site. Not a paragraph or two, but a
detailed description of what your clients will get and how your
services are structured. Yes, several pages!
4. Add a response form at the bottom of the page which
prospects fill out. Ask questions that will let you know if the
person responding is a qualified prospect or not.
5. Next design several marketing activities designed to drive
people to that page. Anything and everything can work here. You
need to experiment and test.
6. Use everything from email to social media, speaking
engagements to networking. Don't try to sell but to inform and to
build trust and credibility. Get enough qualified people to that
page and some will respond.
7. For everyone who responds, offer some kind of complimentary
"strategy session" designed to get to know these prospects'
situation, as well as understand their goals and challenges.
8. Then present the benefits and advantages of your service or
program (as you did on your web page). Be concise, and
demonstrate how what you offer will meet their needs and
provide the value they're looking for.
9. Ask them to work with you if you know you can help them
accomplish their goals. Don't be wishy-washy about it. Show the
confidence you have in yourself and your services.
Follow this plan and you'll attract more clients.
This is a pretty simple plan; it's not highly sophisticated or
complicated. But it works. And as you get results, you can then
work to fine-tune and refine it to sell more complex and more
expensive services.
Article by Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. Please visit
Robert's web site at www.actionplan.com for additional
marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional
service businesses.
LInks to other sites you may find helpful for this topic
Welcome to Google Places for Business
Top 7 Tricks to Rank in Google Places | Search Engine Journal
How to Get Your Website High on Google Places | MasterGoogle.com
