Continuing on with our series of 7 Ways to Avoid Costly Marketing Mistakes, check out these simple and effective strategies:

3. Create a marketing calendar. This way you won’t be tempted to give up. Grab your planner, Outlook, or your Post-It notes -whatever you use to organize your time. Make a day each month that you will dedicate to marketing. There is the creation of your project and the implementation as well. For example, if you are going to have a newsletter sent on the 10th of the month, you may need to get your self sitting down and creating it by the 3rd of the month! And you know what I’m going to tell you, my busy business owners………..OUTSOURCE! Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to do it all yourself because truthfully, you can’t and you won’t! Get yourself a great assistant (either live or virtual) and have most of this stuff done for you. As Nike would say – Just Do It. You’ll thank me later.

4. Systematize or suffer. You may have heard talk about how you need to have systems in place. Well you don’t really, unless that is, you want to have insanity in its place. You get to choose! What I mean by systems is that with the newsletter example, you have a template already created, you have the format down, you have the VA or other administrative assistant primed and ready, so all you need to do is create content. No reason to reinvent the wheel. For each marketing piece you do, create a file detailing all the steps you went through. Yes, there will be more work up front, but in the end, you can hand the file off while you are sitting on a beach somewhere. That’s my hope for you!

5. Don’t guess, test! That’s the biggie in marketing. How do you know what works if you don’t test? You may need to have a “How did you find us” question, or some other way to capture that info. Test your marketing pieces on your target market, and not your husband, wife, friend or neighbor! If they aren’t your market, their opinions don’t count. There are way too many ‘dream stealers’ out there who don’t get what you do and can’t really be a good resource for your questions. Find a group of your target market and ask them if you can run by some marketing pieces with them. You can incent them with freebie stuff, but very often people LOVE to help and give their opinion. Just gotta ask.

Do research to determine what your market responds to. How do you find these???? Check out discussion boards by doing a Google search for your content ideas, or send your clients a survey. I’ll give you an example of why testing is important…One of my clients recently wanted to conduct teleseminars for her market to highlight some classes she wants to offer. She was getting advice from a speaker friend of hers in how to do this, but when we poked around a bit, we discovered that while the speakers target market would participate in teleseminars, this may be a really foreign concept to my client’s market. It would have flopped for her, so we got from her market how they best would like to receive the information.

Are you seeing it yet? A few simple tweaks can make all the difference in creating a focused, successful marketing strategy. Join me next time as I share my final two suggestions.

Blessings,
Therese

(I wrote this back in the summer, but wanted to ‘dust it off’ because it’s so true…hope you enjoy)

Loving My ‘Hate’ Mail

There it was.  Right on my Facebook wall.  Not in a private message to me.  No…on the wall.  The snarkiest comment I’ve ever gotten, just sitting there for the entire FB world to see.

Earlier in the day I had written a status feed asking for some support in picking a title for a new opt in piece, and had ten wonderful folks giving their ideas.  They were kind and friendly and encouraging…all the things I know to be true about my Facebook community.

Then his message came in.  It went like this:

“I wonder, have you ever noticed how incredibly self-absorbed you are?  Everything seems to be about you, even when it appears to be about “helping” others.”

YIKES!!!!!!

In that moment, I had three thoughts running all together.

The first – “Ouch!”

The second – “What a jerk!”  (Ok, I am human and was offended)

The third – “Woo Hoo!…This means my marketing is working”

Thoughts one and two are pretty self explanatory, but this article really is about the third concept – the one that you may not have heard much about, so let me break through some of the myths of marketing here.  We all know that we want our marketing to attract our target clients, right?  But here’s the flip side…

Good marketing serves to REPEL the wrong client.

Most of us spend so much time trying to be all things to all people, hoping not to ruffle feathers, and ‘win’ clients over, that in reality, it serves only to make us invisible.

So when “G” decided to blast me, I took great comfort in that fact because he’s SO CLEARLY not my market that the fact that I pissed him off, means that who I am being is working.  See, I have made the commitment to play very full out.  That means being a bit edgy, singing karaoke, and showing who I am.  It’s all about authenticity.  And I know the “risk” of that.  When you are operating to be safe and not ruffle feathers, you fly under the radar, so would likely never get this kind of blasting.

But…you also never connect deeply with the folks that resonate with your message and appreciate your work.  The ones who need what you have to offer.

In fact, here’s a cool “God-thing.”

One minute after “G” sent this to me; I got this post on my wall:

“Hi Therese,

Just wanted to wish you a wonderful weekend! You are such an inspiration to truly live our dreams – I appreciate all your reminders – you consistently keep us motivated – and in the ‘mindset’. So glad to know you and work with you!”

This person is clearly MY TARGET MARKET so appreciates how I express myself in the world.  That’s what I want for you.  To have your ‘tribe’ clearly find you, connect with you,  and value the work you do.  Oh, then hire you as well!

Now I’m going to challenge you.

Do you have the courage to stop being bland?  Are you willing to take a position?  Trying to ‘play nice’ and get along are the rules we learned in kindergarten.  No great movement can come about when there are not courageous leaders willing to take the hits and speak up from the place of passion inside them.

Here’s my request.

Look at your website, brochures, 30 second commercial, and any other marketing material.  If someone got a hold of it, is it very clear who you serve, who you DON’T, and what you stand for?  What has to shift in you to get out from under the cloud of obscurity?  Trust me….the more you step up and play big, the more we all win.

In fact, I’m so inspired by “G’s” snarky comment that I’d love to help you in any way I can to be able to step up and stand out…and repel the folks you need to repel!  Feel free to send me your website and I’ll be happy to give it a quick scan and give you’re a mini-consult (no fee!) to tell you how you can tighten up your message.

Now go shine your light!