By Ilise Benun
www.marketing-mentor.com
A marketing machine is a well-oiled system designed to get you the clients and the projects you want. Once you put it in place, all you have to do is keep it going and the prospects will start coming.
A marketing machine is made up of 3 things: a singular focus on a market, a couple of effective marketing tools that work well together and the attention of one person to keep feeding the machine.
Step 1: Choose a market:
Your marketing machine needs a focus on one market, which isn’t to say you can only work in one market. But it’s best to start with one, get it going and then add additional markets later. Using a variety of marketing tools within a single market means that your prospects will see your message in more than one place–at a trade show, in a publication they read, in their inbox–and it will have a much stronger impact. When it comes to choosing a market, start with what you know, especially if you’re going out on your own after working in-house or for another design firm. A marketing machine built on past experience will yield clients more quickly than one you built from scratch.
Qualify your market. Before you begin your outreach, make sure the market you’ve chosen is fertile ground for your services. To qualify the market, ask these questions:
1. What is the current state of this market? If it isn’t in a growth mode, this may not be a good time to get in.
2. What is the size and type of projects available from this market? Determine if you’re able to handle them profitably and if you would enjoy the work.
3. Are other service providers like you already working in this market?
Step 2: Choosing the tools for your marketing machine:
Your initial marketing efforts must include proactively reaching out to the prospects in your chosen market. The best tools to start with are networking and cold calling. From there you can add publicity in the publications read by your prospects, public speaking, exhibiting at their trade shows and more.
Step 3: The engine of the machine:
Statistics vary on how many marketing efforts, or “touches”, it takes to turn a new prospect into a client, but the average is more than five, sometimes as many as nine. That’s right, nine times that you need to reach out, one way or another, educating your market about how you can help them, reminding them that you exist, helping them get to know you and building trust, before they sign on the dotted line. That’s why follow up must be the engine of your marketing machine.
There are two main types: follow up to the individual prospects that result from your proactive efforts, and ongoing follow up to your network of prospects, clients and referral sources. Both are important.
E-mail is the ideal follow up tool for individual prospects. After an initial conversation or meeting, make it a point to follow up right away. Build on the momentum of your freshness in their mind by sending an email message in which you thank them for their time and express your eagerness to work together.
Briefly reiterate your understanding of their challenge and refer to an experience in your background that shows you are the right resource to help them.
If too much time passes before you follow up, sometimes even a day or two, the conversation may slip into the recesses of their mind, or blur with that of others like you, and therefore won’t make as strong of an impact.
Excerpted from “Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor”, a free e-mail newsletter published by Hoboken, New Jersey-based consultant, Ilise Benun. Benun is also the author of “Stop Pushing Me Around: A Workplace Guide for the Timid, Shy and Less Assertive” and founder of Marketing Mentor, a one-on-one coaching program for small business owners. For more information, visit www.marketing-mentortips.com.
