Brand Consulting and Brand Marketing Strategy
for Small Business, Consultants and Entrepreneurs

My colleague reported a huge sales boom this week, which we celebrated. “How did you do that?” I asked.

“Oh, I marketed my program,” she said.  “I’d been distracted for a long time by some tech issues and I finally got a chance to promote it again.”

Hey, that sounds familiar…

My client Christine just got a little burst of business also. She did an event last month and, even though they hadn’t attended, several new clients were reminded of her and called for appointments.

Similarly, I attended a networking event last week and came back with 5 leads to follow up on.

Time and again we’re reminded how effective it is to just …

Do some dang marketing!!

(Crazy, I know.) What exactly constitutes marketing?

Beginners:  Message + Visibility + Intention + Habit

• Be clear on your marketing message – who you help, the problems you solve and what big benefits your clients get from you.

• Get out and be seen! Whether in your local community or online, you have to get your message in front of your prospective clients.  You can try networking, speaking and writing, or any one of the twenty-four specific visibility methods I teach in my affordable Attracting Perfect Clients course.

• Know why you’re doing what you’re doing; carry your intention consciously into each activity.  “I intend to attract three Moms who are feeling stressed about their children and would benefit most from my services.”

• Build habits, or rituals, that you enjoy and will do regularly.

Advanced:  Improve One + Add One

Often, established businesses struggle to keep up their marketing activities. Consumed by client projects, operations and, well, running a business, they sometimes get lazy in their marketing, or distracted away from their big revenue generators.

My solution lately – and it’s proving to be quite effective – is simply to improve one thing you’re already doing and add one new activity.

• Improve one: For example, if you’re blogging twice a month, blog weekly.  If you offer a freebie when people sign up on your website, try a new one on a hotter topic.

• Add one: Then, do one thing you haven’t done, such as speaking engagements in your local area or answering one question per week one LinkedIn.

One of my clients has been giving lead-generating free webinars that attract new clients. Improving the sign-up process has helped him follow up more effectively, and crafting a better offer has gotten him many more appointments with interested prospects.  With that working well, he’s now able to try a new one for him: video blogging.

At this point you may feel skeptical.

“Oh, please!  I know I need to do more marketing, but it’s not like any of these ideas will help.  Real marketing should be comprehensive and strategic, like a military campaign. It’s gotta change with the times!”

Yeah … that’s not what I’m finding. We doom ourselves by looking for overly ambitious, big ideas or magical new methods that will finally do the trick.  There aren’t that many new methods. Social networking is just networking moved online. A website is just a mashup of your brochure and your office.

You can call it South Beach or P90X, but the truth is boring ol’ diet and exercise is how to lose weight.  Same with message plus visibility; it gets you clients!

At this point you may feel overwhelmed.

I do too, sometimes. So, stop doing ONE thing that’s not a good use of your time. It could be a marketing tactic that isn’t working, a task you should be delegating or a time waster like reading news online.

At this point you may feel motivated.  Hurray!  Here are your action steps:

1. Review the two categories above to see if you need to work on your beginnings or if you’re ready to add more advanced steps.
2. Schedule time on your calendar to work on getting those activities done.
3. If you’ve fallen off the wagon, do something today - even sending a keep-in-touch email, placing a 5-mnute phone call or writing a 300-word blog post.  That will get the energy moving again.
4. Celebrate! You did something crazy-good by getting the word out.  May abundant success follow!

Did you recently do a little marketing and get a good result? Share your story in the comments, why don’tcha?

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