“Marketing is hard.” That’s what we independent professionals tell each other, anyway. At meetings, workshops, and online, wherever entrepreneurs gather, the difficulty of getting clients is a frequent topic.

There’s certainly some truth to this statement. Marketing your services can be one of the most challenging elements of being in business for yourself. But does marketing have to be as hard as we seem to think it is? Maybe not.

In fact, I’ve noticed that professionals often make marketing much harder than it needs to be. Here are six ways that entrepreneurs frequently turn marketing into much more of a struggle than necessary.

1. Refuse to choose a target market.

If you don’t limit your marketing to a specific category of likely clients, the alternative is marketing to anyone and everyone. That makes everything about marketing harder. You have to network more often, in more places, with more people, to run across enough prospects who might hire you. Building referral relationships is rarely possible, as you can neither identify who might be most likely to refer you a client, nor describe to them who they should refer.

Without a defined target market, you can’t even talk about your business effectively, because there’s no way to get specific about the benefits and results you produce. Whether you market yourself online, in person, by mail, or on the phone, trying to reach an undefined audience with a generic marketing message will wear you out before it produces results.

2. Spend time on your approach without tailoring your message.

I’m often asked to supply a universally effective cold calling script or sales letter, as if it were possible to craft such an item without explicit details about what is being sold, to whom, and for what purpose. No matter what marketing approach you choose, it’s not going to work without a message that’s tailored to your business and your audience.

But I see countless professionals fall into the trap of thinking marketing success is all about the technique — social media, let’s say, or public speaking, or pay-per-click ads, or a leads group — while giving little thought to what they wish to communicate with these approaches.

3. Do what’s easiest instead of what works best.

Most professionals already know what works best to market their services. When I ask them, they answer with “networking,” “word of mouth,” “referrals,” and other strategies involving direct contact or personal connections. But when I ask those same professionals where they are spending the majority of their networking time, many of them sheepishly admit they are avoiding these strategies and instead sending out email, running ads, or trying to attract web traffic.

It may seem easier and less confronting to sit at the keyboard, buy an ad, or hire website help than to spend time connecting with people personally. But is it really “easy” to put money and effort into the least effective ways to market yourself, instead of doing what you already know works better?

4. Change marketing approaches every week.

Successful marketing is an ongoing process, not a collection of unrelated events. Whether you are blogging, networking in your community, writing a newsletter, or building referral relationships, persistence and consistency pay off while one-time or occasional attempts fall flat. Letting go of a marketing tactic after a handful of tries, only to pursue a different approach, is a guaranteed recipe for struggle and failure.

5. Avoid follow-up.

Similarly, any marketing strategy requires follow-up to produce results. Exhibiting at a trade show will do nothing for you unless you follow up with the people who stopped by. Public speaking won’t produce results until you follow up with those who attended. Attending networking events won’t bring you clients unless you follow up with the people you meet.

Yes, follow-up can seem difficult or confronting, but consider the alternative. Expending all that effort on exhibiting or speaking or networking without landing any business because you neglected to follow up — now that’s hard.

6. Continue to search for hidden marketing secrets instead of doing what’s in front of you.

One of the hardest ways to go about marketing is spinning your wheels in analysis paralysis, second-guessing, or perfectionism. “Should I do this? Maybe I should do that. Perhaps something else might work better. I wonder what else I could do? Maybe I need more information. I’m not sure I’m ready.” You can wear yourself out this way just thinking about marketing, without taking a single step.

Make it easy on yourself instead. Choose a few simple, effective things to do about marketing, using the suggestions above as a guide. Then get going. And keep going. You’ll find that marketing won’t seem so hard once it really starts to work.

It often seems that it’s the destiny of the independent professional to exist in a constant state of feast or famine. Either you are working day and night to keep up with client demands, or you’re wondering how much is left in your savings account and whether the phone will ever ring again.

When you’re having a feast of business, there’s plenty of money coming in, you’re getting recognition for your talents, and your energy level is usually high. But you may also feel constantly pressed for time, have to disappoint some clients you can’t adequately serve, and lose out on future business because you can’t respond to new opportunities.

When a business famine strikes, you have the time to develop new business and provide good service to the clients you still have. But you may also be low on cash and not feeling so good about yourself, which gets in the way of effective marketing.

There’s a simple answer to this dilemma. You need to market for new clients consistently and persistently, no matter what state your business is currently in. But like many simple answers, this is not necessarily easy.

Here are some suggestions for how to always make time for marketing:

Sometimes the customer comes second.

If you spend all your time doing client work, you will go out of business. You need to set aside time not only for marketing, but to answer correspondence, keep up in your field, and oh yes, send out the invoices. Every time you rush to help a client with what they call an emergency, you set a precedent that you will be available on short notice. Learn how to say no compassionately, but firmly, when client requests interfere with you running your business to your own benefit.

Establish a time budget for marketing.

It’s helpful to have two different budgets — one for when you are busy, and one for when things are slow. If you’re busy, a minimal budget will keep your marketing rolling. In two hours per week, you can go to lunch, make phone calls, send out letters, or make contacts about speaking. When business is slow, you should increase your time budget up to 30-50% of your work week — more, if you aren’t doing any client work at all.

Make marketing a priority in your calendar.

Work expands to fill the time allotted to it. Think of the last time you wrote a proposal. If the deadline was next week, you probably wrote and re-wrote until it was perfect. If the deadline was today, you probably miraculously completed it on time. If you block out marketing time in your calendar, and schedule other important activities around it, you will find that those other activities somehow get done. Treat your marketing time just like an appointment. If something truly urgent comes up, reschedule it; don’t just erase it.

Get your marketing done first.

Sit down at your desk in the morning, and before listening to voice mail, reading email, or looking at your project list, tackle whatever marketing activities are on your agenda for the day. Spend 15 minutes, an hour, or two hours — whatever makes sense for your current marketing time budget — and then start your regular day. This has the added benefit of allowing you to engage in marketing when you are fresh.

If despite your best efforts, you do hit a famine period, there are some things you can do:

Take advantage of the lull to make a plan.

This could be a new marketing plan, or it could be a business plan where you do some financial modeling or revisit your strategic direction. I usually do this myself during the month of December, when I can expect a seasonal slowdown as my regular clients take vacation time and new clients don’t want to begin until January.

Send out a reminder.

This could be in the form of a postcard, email broadcast, or letter, with an announcement, special offer, or helpful information for your target market. If you are thinking, “Send a reminder to who?,” you need to take some to time to update and…

Use your contact management system.

Every independent professional needs some type of contact management system to track your clients and prospects, whether it’s sheets in a 3-ring binder, or software on your computer or phone. When business is slow, every potential client in your CMS who hasn’t heard from you in the last 30 days is worth a phone call, email, or letter. You are much more likely to get a client quickly from following up than you are from contacting someone new.
If you use a CMS, you’ll be able to…

Research where your business comes from.

If you track the source of every lead, you can then determine which sources actually delivered people who became clients, and then how much money each of those clients spent with you. It’s an extremely worthwhile use of some down time to find out which sources of business put the most money in your pocket, and then see what you can do to replicate them.

If you do a good job at consistent and persistent marketing, inevitably you will attract more business than you can handle, at least at certain times. Don’t be so afraid of this possibility that you allow it to hold back your marketing! If a client calls and you are not available, they will often wait for you. Having a waiting list makes you more desirable, and it also allows you to raise your rates because of the perceived demand for your services.

So don’t stay trapped in the feast or famine cycle. A steady diet of just enough clients will feed a happier, healthier, wealthier you.

How to create products: the first step

There is a flurry of entrepreneurial activity at my children’s school at the moment. They have all been given £10 and have been challenged to turn that £10 note in to profit.

It’s really interesting to see the creativity and initiative coming from them all. The headmaster has told us parents that it is the children’s projects and not an “Easter Bonnet Parade”. We have been warned off from helping out!

There’s a group set up as a shoe-shine shop every morning in the car park. That worked really well until another team decided to do the same thing and they started undercutting each other!

Another couple of boys are playing statues – just like the ones you see in busy tourist spots such as The Embankment in London.

There are other groups creating products such as bird boxes to sell, buying smelly rubbers to re-sell at a profit, selling ice creams and cakes (always a winner for after school hunger!).

Problem in selling time

But the problem with a lot of the businesses they’ve set up is that they are not sustainable. They are basically selling their time for money. If the shoe-shine boys don’t show up one morning, they are not making money. If the car wash team decides not to wash cars, they are not making money.

And it’s the same problem that many of you have. As coaches, consultants, trainers, designers, it’s very easy to be caught in the trap of selling yourself by the hour. When you come to the holidays or a dried up pipeline, your cash flow disappears.

It’s not easy moving away from the time = money business model.  Deciding how to create products – and where to start – is tough.  Don’t get fooled by all the 6-figure-business-in-6-weeks home study courses that are plentiful on the internet.  Creating a business around products can’t be done one weekend with a sprinkle of fairy dust and blissful hope.

But you can start by questioning your business model and look for opportunities where you can start to create products.

Create products – keep it simple!

Can you write out the process that you work with your clients and create a simple “how-to” guide?  This can be one of the simplest step to take to create products.  It can be as basic as a PDF document that is delivered via email when someone buys via a PayPal link.

Are there opportunities to offer group workshops? I know a workshop is still selling your time but offering what you do to a group means you are able to package your skills and increase your day rate often by 10 fold. Plus running live workshops are a great first step to creating online programmes and DVDs to sell from your website at a later date.

I met some fantastic VA’s at a recent conference who had started offering short, practical two hour workshops to clients about the topics they helped clients with, such as WordPress and Email Marketing.  It was working really well for them. (And it’s where I started too!)

What about creating a series of how-to videos? It could be you talking to the camera or over a powerpoint presentation which you deliver as a 7 part course delivered each day by email.

The possibilities are endless.  But I do know that coming up with the ideas on what products to create is only half the battle.

Putting the ideas in to action is the other half. And it’s this half that seems to put most of you off from coming up (and committing to!) with the ideas to make money while you sleep.

Technical set-up is NOT your job

Technical set up should not be done by you.  You have skills in other areas – such as coming up with the idea of which product to create first.  The actual creating and set up – the videoing, the PayPal set up, the email marketing system sort out, the landing page – can be done with the right support – I promise you!

And if you feel you need help with finding the right support – usually in the form of a good Virtual Assistant – then do check out my quick and easy “How to Hire a VA” course.  It will show exactly what you need to do to get one hired.

The secret in getting this right is in the delegating and outsourcing of the set-up of products to someone who knows exactly what to do. This is NOT your job!

Create products – the first step for YOU to take

Start with the first half first. What do your clients want to see you do?

What products do your clients right here and now want to see you create?

(This is a really important step to take – don’t skip it!!)

If you don’t know the answer to that, ask them!! And then once you’ve got the idea, then commit to making your product happen … remembering to outsource and buy in the expertise to get you through the technical set up.

What about my kids? Are they creating products?

Back to my kids’ school and what my children are up to. My daughter is, well, doing something typical of an 11-year-old child! As a group they are tying teachers to trees and then charging their friends 50p for a 3 second squirt of foam at them! Think I’ve got some business lessons to teach her!

My 9YO son, on the other hand, has bought four chickens with another boy and are now selling “farm fresh” eggs to the teachers. As they only have a few weeks left of school to sell the eggs (do the sums – each chicken lays only one egg a day doesn’t give them a huge return), they plan to sell the chickens “point of lay” for twice the money they bought for (still less than half that the Surrey housewives will pay normally for their Egloo Chickens!)

My favourite story so far was that he decided that the children selling cookies needed to buy his eggs so they could bake more cookies. Hopefully this a sign of greater things to come!

Tick-tock, tick-tock!

Have you ever found yourself saying that you’ll get round to doing some Marketing ‘when you have more time’? That you’ve just got too much else on your plate at the moment, what with serving your current clients, and juggling all your other business obligations.

Most people think that Marketing is something to be squeezed around your other business activities, and relegate it to the bottom of the pile – something to be done as an afterthought once everything else has been dealt with.

This is a big mistake, because until you DO make time to prioritize your marketing you’ll never have the systems and strategies in place to consistently attract your ideal clients, which means that your business growth will be erratic and patchy, which is a very stressful way to try and develop your business.

Today I’ll be sharing with you FIVE steps to enable you to finally be able to prioritize your marketing, whilst still having time for the other parts of your business and life!

Step One: Get Your Mindset Straight

Your external actions are generally based on your internal values and beliefs. So I want to suggest a way of being able to see your marketing in a different light, which will in turn allow you to re-prioritize your actions.

Here it is : You are actually in TWO businesses. You are in the business of Marketing your services and programs, and you are in the business of Delivering your services and programs. You cannot be successful at the delivery, unless you are also successful at the Marketing – because it will be the marketing which gets you the clients to deliver your service to.

Marketing to attract more clients is not a ‘Nice To’ it’s a ‘Must Do’!

Once you accept that fact, you’ll no longer treat marketing as an optional extra.

Step Two : Plug the Leaks in Your Day

Get rid of the time drains in your day. Just because you work for yourself doesn’t mean you should take your business any less seriously than if you were going to work for a boss in a corporate company.

Monitor what you actually DO during your allotted working hours, and cut out anything which isn’t directly related to either marketing your services, or delivering your services.

All the other stuff can be done either before or after those hours (or during your allotted coffee/lunch breaks)

That means no more chatting to friends on the phone, buying your Christmas gifts online, arranging the PTA schedule, and vacuuming!! (after all, you wouldn’t do that in a corporate setting would you?)

Set your boundaries, and be crystal clear on what’s work time, and what’s non-work time.

Prioritize your business tasks for the week ahead, and make sure that you have blocked out time for marketing and client attracting actions.

Step Three : Take Control of Your Time

Streamline your actions. The term multi-tasking should be banned when it comes to growing your business! If you flit from one task to another in a random way, you never fully get into the flow of any one thing, so you are constantly under-performing.

Instead, chunk your time for certain tasks, and then schedule them into your monthly planner.

You could have all your client appointments in the morning only, or 3 days a week only.

You could block out 3 hours per day for your marketing activities, or cluster it for two days per week.

You could allocate one day per month for shooting all your videos for your blog.

You could build in one day a month as a Business Growth Focus Day where you go out of your normal everyday workspace to strategize on your business.

(Note – remember to also block out time off from your business. Yes, growing a business takes committed effort, but it you’re frazzled and burnt out from never taking time off you’ll be doing yourself, your business and your clients a disservice!)

Step Four : Create an Actionable Marketing Plan

Develop a step by step Marketing Plan. As you start to set aside this time for doing your marketing you’ll want to make sure that what you’re doing has the best impact possible. Unfortunately just having a random selection of marketing activities will not serve you well.

Take some time to create a joined-up marketing plan so that each strategy fits with your other ones, and builds up into a System, so that at any given time you know exactly what you should be doing, and when to do it.

You’re looking to incorporate online and offline strategies which will work for you 24/7, and connect with your ideal target audience in the way that appeals to them.

Additionally, you have to realise that marketing is not usually something which has overnight results – many marketing strategies are things which, when done regularly and consistently, will gather momentum over time. So have a little patience, track and tweak as you go, and stick with it!

Step Five : Don’t be a Lone-Ranger

Get help as quickly as you can. In order to create a sustainable business you need to realize that you can’t do everything by yourself.

Once you figure out your marketing plan, look at which tasks can be outsourced to a Virtual Assistant (VA). You can access a VA from anywhere in the world (because they work virtually), and you literally only pay for the time they’re actually working on your tasks. Even if you think you can’t quite afford it yet, just think – if you can gain an extra 5-10 hours a month by giving them some of the admin type tasks to do, and then you use those hours to connect and work with some new paying clients, your VA investment will quickly pay for itself and then some.

Find a coach or mentor who can help guide your marketing and business growth. Often in your own business you are too close, and you can’t see the wood for the trees. A mentor will help you see more clearly what steps need to be taken, will ask the questions which you may not necessarily be comfortable with asking yourself (which allows you to get firm, and treat your business as a business), and will hold you accountable – and trust me, when you know you have to report back, you WILL get things done much quicker!

About the Author: Tanya Smith is known as the Marketing and Mindset Mentor. She helps Service Business Professionals such as coaches, consultants, trainers and service business owners to consistently attract more ideal clients and bigger profits by using joined-up marketing strategies which work, and how to use leverage to reach more clients and make more sales without burning out. Tanya is known for simplifying the complicated, and guiding her clients in a step-by-step approach.

You can check out her FREE resources at www.InnerGameProfits.com/free-stuff starting with the ‘Get More Clients Marketing Plan’ full of usable strategies and fill in the blank templates to apply in your business today.

You know about the 80/20 rule, right? It’s the guideline that 80% of your return comes from 20% of your investment. For example, 80% of your referrals come from 20% of the people in your network. 80% of your new business comes from 20% of your prospects. 80% of your new contacts come from 20% of the networking activities you engage in. And so on.

Like all such guidelines, this one is inexact, but helpful. If used correctly, it makes you stop and think. Where are most of your returns coming from? And where is most of your effort going?

Imagine how much less time and money you could spend on marketing if you could simply identify the 20% of your current efforts that are really the only ones that matter. You could let go of 80% of what you’re doing.

I can’t guarantee everyone can do this. Some of you are already pretty smart about how you market yourselves. But here are some places to look:

Where are your clients actually coming from?

You may think you know the answer to this question, but I find in many cases that people’s assumptions don’t match the data. Review every client you’ve worked with in the past two years and try to determine how that client entered your life. Make a list of not just the source of each client, but what you may have done (or made available) to produce clients from that source.For example, “Referred by Mary Smith. Met her for coffee last month,” or “Inquiry from my website. Signed up for my special report two weeks ago.” If you can’t uncover data like this about every new client, now is the time to start tracking it for the future.

Notice any patterns this analysis suggests, and strategize how you might reproduce these successes. Where could you find more referral sources like Mary Smith? Or what potential referral sources already in your network have you never met for coffee? If most of the new clients originating from your website are those that requested your special report, is that request form available on every page?

Where are your highest paying or lowest hassle clients coming from?

The quality of your clients can make as much difference to the success of your business as the quantity of them. Select the top 20% of your clients from the list you made above — either the ones that paid you the most or troubled you the least — and consider how you might acquire more clients like them.Notice not just the source of these top clients, but also what characteristics they might share. You might discover that your highest paying clients are those who themselves are in a higher income bracket. Or that the clients who give you the least trouble are the ones who have worked with professionals in your line of business before. These are valuable clues to where the majority of your marketing efforts should go.

What marketing approaches are costing you more money than they bring in?

When you can see exactly where your clients are coming from, you can also determine where you’re paying too much to get them. Common places for overspending are print and online directory listings, pay-per-click ads, search engine optimization fees, and multiple association memberships.Compare not just what you are spending on each potential source of clients to what revenue you received from it, but what profit you ultimately made. A $500 ad that brought you a $500 client has earned you nothing. And an ad that produces many inquiries but little paying business consumes time you could better use to produce income.

What are you currently doing that you haven’t gotten a single client from?

Some marketing techniques take time to pay off, but if you’ve been using a particular approach for several months and no clients have yet resulted, it’s time to reconsider. You probably need to either abandon this approach or fine-tune it.If you belong to a networking group that isn’t producing referrals for you, consider whether you should seek a different group that’s a better match for your target market, or stick with the group and start meeting its members for coffee. If you’ve been cold calling corporate prospects without results, you may need to drop cold calling and focus on referrals and introductions, or your telemarketing skills may need considerable improvement.

By making judicious use of the 80/20 rule, you can eliminate the least productive marketing activities you engage in and ramp up those that are more effective. You can also focus most of your marketing on the client sources and type of prospects that have worked well for you in the past. And that can put you in the 20% of entrepreneurs who have a successful business instead of in the 80% who don’t.

“Say cheese”, says the person behind the camera.

And you say cheese. Your facial muscles are frozen. You have a dumb, goofy look. And under your breath you’re muttering, “C’mon Take the picture, take the picture, c’monnnn!”

Click! You blink. The picture’s been taken.

And then the photographer runs across to you, all excited to show the nice digital photo. You take a look, you roll your eyes. You cringe. Because you just detest the photo.

It looks artificial. It looks posed. It’s not you. It looks like all those ‘cheesy’ pictures you’ve seen before.

It’s not unique.

How can it be unique? You weren’t yourself!

And that’s the whole problem with uniqueness. You’ve tried too hard. In your business you’ve tried to your darndest to get your own uniqueness. And you’ve failed miserably. Because you froze.

And the uniqueness you sought to find, looked like the cheesy picture in the third paragraph.

When asked about your uniqueness, you mumble something like ‘service or quality,’ which means nothing to most people.

The funny thing is that Sarah had the same problem

You see, Sarah has a yoga class. And a yoga class is a yoga class, right? Sarah twisted her brain like a pretzel, but she just couldn’t come up with a form of uniqueness.

So she did what all the experts recommended.

She asked her clients. And some of them shrugged. Some of them gave her mixed answers. And that left Sarah more confused than ever before.

Then she did what most businesses do. She gave up. She figured her business would just remain a commodity. To hell with the uniqueness. Trying to find what was unique was too hard.

You see Sarah was asking the wrong question

She was trying to look inward. Because the question isn’t: What’s unique about my business? But rather “What do I *want to do* in my business that’s different from everyone else?”

Let me explain.

I asked Sarah what she’d want to achieve for her students most of all? Her response was lightning quick and I backed up two steps at the speed and ferocity of the answer.

“Injury,” she said. “You can really hurt yourself in a yoga class if you’re doing the wrong thing. I want every student to have Injury-Free Yoga.”

Tum..dee..dum. Can you see it? Sarah couldn’t see it. Her uniqueness was *Injury-Free Yoga.* Plain and simple.

What do I *want to do* in my business that’s different from every one else? What do you want to do that’s different in your business? What’s your dream for your customer?

Ask Tom Monaghan, founder Dominos Pizza

Today you take quick pizza delivery for granted. But if you zapped your way back to the swinging, hey-groovy seventies, you’d grow old just waiting for a pizza.

You’d call a pizza place. You’d ask, “Can you deliver?” And about seventy-nine hours later, you’d be still tapping your fingers waiting for the pizza guy to arrive.

Tom Monaghan did what Sarah did. He couldn’t find anything unique about his business, so he invented his uniqueness.

He worked out how to get a pizza to his customer in 30 minutes or less. And then he came up with Dominos now historic slogan. Dominos Pizza. In 30 Minutes or It’s Free!

Yup, the pizza man invented his uniqueness.

Are you getting the point?

You can’t find uniqueness. It’s easier trying to touch your tongue to your nose (Don’t try that! I know you will. )

The uniqueness has to be invented. Here’s how you do it. You look at your business like you were a monarch surveying his kingdom.

And then make this big, warm wish for your royal subjects. If you could, what would you do differently?

Then do it. And once you’ve got the swing of things, announce your uniqueness to the world.

Ah, but hang in there a second…

Once you’ve decided what you want to do better than anyone else, survey the neighbourhood. Does any other competitor do the same? And does your competition stress their uniqueness?

If the answer to both those questions is No, then go right ahead and proclaim this uniqueness to your customers. It doesn’t matter if your competitor does the same thing. If you’re the first one to announce it, you own it.

If you don’t believe me, ask Cindy Russell

Cindy Russell runs 9 seconds-A search engine optimisation firm in Tampa, Florida. So what’s sooooo different about a search engine optimisation company?

Simple. Cindy invented her uniqueness.

Her proposition is simple. If you’re a real estate agent in Milwaukee, she won’t work with another real estate agent in Milwaukee. She’ll work with a real estate agent in New York — that’s ok. But she won’t have two real estate agents scrapping it out for top search engine rankings in one geographical area.

Now that makes Cindy different. Her customers know their privileged information stays privileged with Cindy. They realise the advantage of working with someone who has the integrity to pass up instant income for client secrecy. And they’re willing to pay more to get Cindy’s enhanced service.

Cindy’s onto a good thing with her self-created uniqueness.

Oh, oh hang on…Having a point of uniqueness isn’t enough

Once you do get your uniqueness going, you’ve gotta blah, blah, blah it to the rest of the world. Keeping it hidden on page six, paragraph seventy three, isn’t going to help you one little bit.

Most businesses know their uniqueness. They’ll even tell you their point of difference in a conversation. Yet, you won’t find it on the front page of their web site. It’s swept under the carpet in their brochures and newsletters. When they stand up to speak, they forget to make it an important part of the spiel.

If you look at the bottom of our newsletter, you’ll find the uniqueness. It says: A real newsletter – Not a disguised ad.

That’s what we decided to achieve. It’s our own invention. Get your uniqueness where it can be seen on a consistent basis. Not hidden under a bushel.

In Conclusion: You too can create your own uniqueness

If you’ve been frozen so far, un-freeze that cheesy slogan. Be who you want to be. You’re different. You know it. Now let the world know about your point of difference too.

Invent it!

Last night, I was running my email marketing workshop for Merton Chamber of Commerce and one of the delegates asked me “If I only have an hour a day, what should I spending my time on”. And it got me thinking…

The mistake that many small business owners make, when they are marketing their business, is spreading themselves too thinly when it comes to marketing.  They run around paddling like mad, doing this and that and not really looking at whether their activity is generating results or if it is the right activity for them to be spending their time on (this can be very easily done when social media is part of your marketing mix!).

Should you be doing email marketing? Blogging? Facebook anyone? Twitter? LinkedIn? Networking? PR?  The list of marketing activities seems endless and the simple answer on where you should be spending your time, is … Do what works!

After my daughter Zoe was born in 2007 (before the birth of Women Unlimited), I was running my small digital design agency as a part time business from home.   I decided that I wanted to scale up my business and that I wanted to be working smarter, not harder.  So I looked over the last 3 years of running my business and evaluated where all the prospects and clients had come from.    In truth, it wasn’t a long exercise as, over that period of time, I had only had about 20 clients but as my service offering was a high value one targeted at a high income group (consultancies), this had given me a fantastic part-time income.

Word of mouth referrals

What I discovered was that ALL of my clients had come from word of mouth referral.  Every single one.  I had a website, but that website had not brought in a single new piece of business, it was a showcase and proof that I existed for those that wanted to check me out, but not a sales tool.    So the answer to ‘where I should be spending my time to get new clients’, was pretty obvious to me… I needed to be focusing on my existing clients and getting referrals from them, and building up a network of people who would refer me to others.  The next step was  joining my local BNI Chapter to build up new relationships and I can honestly say that joining BNI changed my business life forever, but that’s another story (one you will hear if you come along to either our Farringdon or British Library, Women Unlimited business club launch … ).

Women Unlimited’s favourite marketing channel

With Women Unlimited my main marketing channel is online versus face to face.  The two key areas that I spend my marketing time are in social media to build awareness and email marketing to sell our events and workshops.  Email marketing is hands down my most successful marketing activity.  80% of all our workshop and event sales come through the newsletter and event emails that we send out.  And I would say that 80% of the relationship that I have with Women Unlimited readers comes from our emails.  Could I be doing other things?  Absolutely! And I am trying new things all the time, however I cannot imagine a time where email marketing will not be our central marketing activity.  Why?  Because it works.

Where should you be spending your time?

Only you can answer this, but I suggest completing a similar exercise to the one that I did for Springmedia and Women Unlimited.  Sit down and look at where your business is coming from.  Ask yourself the following questions…

1. Where have my last 10 (or 100!) clients come from?

2. How easy were these sales?

3. What did I do to facilitate these sales?

4. How much did these sales cost in time or money?

5. Was the level of sales worth the effort?

6. What should I be doing less of?

7. What should I be doing more of!

How are you spending your time?

1. What marketing activities am I doing every day / every week

2. How effective are those activities against my business goals (sales, contacts, referrals, filling the pipeline)

3. What activities am I doing that I am not able to measure the results

Look at the results

Now, compare your two lists.

Don’t over complicate this.  Draw up a spreadsheet that answers these questions and be honest with yourself to determine whether the time that you are spending on your marketing activity is worth the effort and generating the results that you want.  Measurement is an important part of succeeding in business, so if you are not able to measure the return on your marketing investment, time or money, then revisit the activity and find a way or tracking the results.

It is likely that you will find one or two winners in your marketing mix.  These will stand out as being the activities that generate the most results for your business.   If you are wanting to take your business to the next level think about how you can scale those activities so that they will bring in more business.  What could you be doing to increase their effectiveness.  Think smart, not hard.

Next week we will look at how to up your marketing game in more detail.

How important is it that you have a clearly defined market niche for your professional services? Can’t you simply make yourself available to work for anyone who might need you? Doesn’t having a niche limit you to serving only a small portion of possible clients? Why would you want to rule out any possible sources of business? Discovering the answers to these questions can have a powerful impact on the success or failure of your business.

When you have a market niche, it defines either your target market — who you wish to target as prospective clients — or your professional specialty — the services you specialize in providing within the broader scope of your profession. The most effective niches define both these elements.

target your market

For example, a graphic designer could have the target market of the financial services industry and the speciality of customer communications. A career coach could target the legal industry and specialize in helping lawyers experiencing burnout.

But when you don’t define a specific market niche, by default, you are marketing to everyone and anyone. And that takes an endless amount of time and energy — resources that are probably already in short supply.

Consider the difference between the sun and a laser beam. The sun’s rays shine everywhere, reaching everyone and everything without discrimination, but this takes an enormous output of energy. A laser beam, on the other hand, points at only one thing at a time, but a tiny bit of energy can focus and direct it exactly where you choose.

no limits

Since you only have a limited amount of time, money, and attention to devote to marketing, wouldn’t it be better to spend it pointing your efforts directly toward the prospects most likely to become your clients?

Many professionals, especially those newer in business, fear that choosing a niche will limit them in some way, because it reduces the number of potential clients they might serve. But as a solo professional or small professional services firm, you don’t need millions of clients, or even tens of thousands. Over the course of a year, you might only need dozens. It would be rare indeed to select a niche that was so small it couldn’t yield enough clients with numbers as low as those.

Instead of limiting you, what choosing a niche does is focus you. Just like pointing a laser beam, it allows you to direct your marketing efforts exactly where they need to go.

To understand this better, imagine any specific marketing tactic you might employ, say, attending networking events. Without a defined market niche, how do you choose what events to go to? How do you even know where to look for events that clients might attend? What do you say to the people you meet at these events about who you serve and how you help them? How do you determine which people at an event you should spend time getting to know?

When you haven’t defined a niche, your chances of making the right marketing decisions are often little better than if you were throwing darts.

specialise

It sometimes seems as if you might be able to avoid making a decision about your niche by simply making your services “available” and not actively marketing at all. For example, you could rely on your website, directory listings, social networking profiles, ads, flyers, etc., to bring you business.

But even this sort of passive marketing requires a niche to be effective. When an executive woman surfs the web looking for a financial planner, will she choose one who serves everyone, or one who specializes in helping executive women? When a corporate buyer looks up copywriters in a directory, will he contact one who does all kinds of copywriting, or one who stresses experience in the buyer’s industry?

Choosing a market niche allows you to not only seek out prospective clients through personal outreach like networking, referral-building, and phone calls, it allows you to attract them through online visibility and other less personal means. This is because having a niche makes it possible to craft messages that speak directly to the wants and needs of your target clients. Without a niche, you can only make generic statements that will attract no one.

everyone is unique

So don’t be fooled into thinking that the best way to get clients is to offer to serve anyone. Your prospective clients don’t think of themselves as “anyone.” They consider themselves to be unique individuals with very specific needs, and they want to be served by a professional who not only understands that, but is truly dedicated to helping people just like them.

Once you limit your marketing focus to a particular kind of client and/or a defined speciality, you may be pleasantly surprised by how much easier marketing becomes. You’ll find it easier to talk with people about your business, easier to write about it, and easier to decide where to go and what to do to market yourself. And you’ll probably also find that your marketing will begin to produce results with considerably less effort.

About the author: C.J. Hayden is the author of Get Clients Now!™ Thousands of business owners and independent professionals 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 www.getclientsnow.com.

The following business strategies for small business will help you grow your business, get more clients, retain your current clients and make you more sales.

First of all business owners need to understand that any business strategy needs to be implemented to be of any value. Knowing what to do and how to do it means nothing if you don’t put it into action.

Here a some simple business strategies for small business that will help you if you implement them.

Database Marketing.

Database Marketing is a business strategy that most small businesses do not use to its potential.

It is a simple strategy that involves creating a Database of all your current clients and prospects. Enter their names and contact details in to a program, management system or even a Xcel Spreadsheet. Group the Database in to Categories relevant to your industry. Categorize by geographical location, age, sex, previous purchase history, product needs or whatever category suits your business.

Once you have your Database categorized, you can then begin regular communication with your clients and prospects. Your communication should always be providing value to them. Deliver quality information that is of interest to the category you are addressing. The information can be hints, tips and strategies or you can even discuss a new product giving an independent review of its benefits and setbacks. Always be sure to inform them how the product will be of value to them either personally or to their business.

Give your Database Special Offers that apply only to them. Make them feel special that they are your quality or Premium Client. Have a special link in the communication so that you can track and measure the success of your campaigns.

Time your communication to an average of one every 10 days or so. This will keep your business in their minds. You should be the first one they think of when they need your product or service.

Making use of your current list of clients and prospects will help improve your conversions from Prospect to Client. It will also help improve your client retention.

Internet Stats show that an average of 7 contacts with your Database will result in a conversion to Prospect or Lead.

Referral Marketing.

Asking your Clients and Prospects for a referral is definitely a business strategy that brings great results for small business.

This strategy is reliant on you providing the best quality service, best quality products and outstanding customer service to your clients.

Showing your clients that you are the best in what you do will have them raving about your service and products to their family and friends. Now that you have satisfied clients, you need to ask the question. “Who else do you know that will benefit from our service?” Let them know that your business succeeds because of referrals from current clients.

You can offer incentives to your clients for every referral they make that becomes a new client. Consider a small gift of value, a free treatment or discount on a treatment. Send a Thank You card, free movie tickets or what ever you feel comfortable with.

Let all new clients know that your business has a referral system and they you expect at least three referrals from them if they are happy with your products and services. Every new client bringing in 3 new referrals will grow your business if you are the best at what you do.

Business Marketing Website.

This business strategy is the way of the future for small business going in to 2011. Consumers have certainly changed their behaviour in how they look for local services and products.

Historically, consumers went to the Yellow Pages, Newspaper Ads, Radio Ads and so on. Today, 85% of consumers search on the internet for a local service and products. If you fail to market your small business online you are going to miss a huge portion of market share that could be yours.

Your Website needs to be simple and it needs to be able to get your visitors to do what you want them to do. You have around 7 seconds to keep your visitor interested and to stay on your site. The content on your site needs to be good enough to show them you have integrity, you provide value and that you are the one they should be doing business with.

Big Flash Websites don’t really do much for your business. You need to have a website that is designed from a Marketing perspective to achieve the best results.

Once you have your Business Marketing Website, you need to have that Website on the Front Page of Google under the search phrases that are relevant to your industry. It is vital to be on the Front Page because that is where your prospects are looking. Rarely do people look beyond the first page and a large majority never go past Page three.

To get your business on to the Front Page of Google takes specialized knowledge and skill. We would recommend that you use the services of a Specialist Internet Marketing Consultant. Check out http://SolutionsToMarketingOnline.com

These three business strategies for small business are simple to implement and will certainly help you grow your business.

About the Author: Sene Iafeta works close with Paul Dwyer a Business Consultant in Brisbane. They help business owners solve problems within their business, provides them with proven strategies that will get them more clients, make more sales and put more money in the bank.

How easy to read are your prices?

If there is one question that comes up time and time again with clients who want their website reviewed, it’s this:
“Do I display my prices?”

My answer time and time again is YES! Of course! Why wouldn’t you?

“Oh, because I don’t want my competitors knowing what I charge.”

“I don’t want to put people off from contacting me.”

“I want to be flexible so I can charge more if I feel I can get away with it.”

Rubbish. Rubbish. Rubbish. And here are my reasons why:

Perception of being too expensive.

I was checking out a new webinar system earlier this week and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t find the page called “Prices” or “Packages”. All I could do was to either sign up for a free 30 day trial or fill in a form for someone to contact me.

I know they wanted my contact details first. They wanted to pull me in to their marketing system so they could follow up and wear me down until I decided to buy. But I wanted to know whether the product was within my budget.

By not having the price on their website easily accessible, my only thoughts were “bet they are too expensive!” (Note: this is a good strategy to take for luxury, top end products if you do actually want to create the image of being expensive in your marketing.)

Wasted time on enquiries.

If you want people to contact you for a price, you have to have the systems and spend the time to respond to these enquires. Coaches, you are the worst at this! You offer a free consultation – up to an hour of your time – only for the potential client to say “thanks, but I’ll have to go away and think about it”. Translated: “Thanks but it’s more than I thought.  I can’t afford your services but I don’t want to say this to you directly”

My conversion rate when I first started out went from 30% to 60% as soon as I put my prices on my website. If the prices put people off before contacting me, great. It saved me that consultation hour and I was able to get on with other stuff that did make me money.

If you have created the right product/service to provide a solution for your client’s problems, be confident about your pricing.  If you are not overcharging or under selling yourself, charging the “right” price is a good business decision!  It’s nothing to be ashamed of ;o)

Makes the sale easier.

If someone knows what you charge before they start talking to you, the whole sales process becomes so much smoother. There is no need for you to stumble over the question “What do you charge?” They already know, so you don’t need to feel embarrassed or awkward discussing it. (We really don’t like talking money, do we?!)

If you do a lot of bespoke work and have to quote per client, then make sure you publicize a starter package, for example. Or quote a price range, highlighting what they would get for that package.

Stuff the competition.

So what if your competitors know your price. If you don’t put it on your website, I am pretty sure – if they really wanted to – they would find a way of getting your price lists. You don’t have time to be getting in to petty price wars with other businesses.

So be bold. Be brave. Clearly state your prices or packages so your potential clients know exactly what they are in for, so that when you get to speak to them or they click the order button, they are ready to make the decision to buy.

About the Author: Karen Skidmore helps small business owners work smarter and use the right marketing tools so they can attract more of the right clients to their business. Karen created the Web Tech Club to show you how to use tools such as email newsletters, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  To subscribe to her free email newsletter and get access to practical advice and marketing ideas that will move your business forward, visit www.CanDoCanBe.co.uk