Everyone talks about marketing, but is everyone talking about the same thing? What does your marketing look like? And is it working?
Marketing should deepen your relationships with existing clients, keep you top-of-mind with COIs (Centres of Influence) and make you irresistible to prospective clients. If it’s not then maybe you need to conduct a marketing audit.
Marketing – risks and benefits
Poorly implemented marketing programs swallow hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars. To stay on top of your marketing is to eliminate waste; to recognise and respond to opportunities; to develop relationships with current clients; to invite referrals from your COIs; to maximise your chances of new business; and, overall, to increase profitability.
It was Lewis Carrol (of Alice in Wonderland fame) who said, ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there’. And this is also true of marketing.
Marketing self-audit questions
Q1. Do you have a marketing program and a marketing budget?
If the answer to either of these questions is no, you have work to do. You can’t build a successful business without marketing. It’s an essential , a non-negotiable. You need to put in place an organised, sustainable marketing program, and allocate a budget to bring customers to your business.
Q2. What’s working?
If you use email marketing, it’s easy to see what’s working. Email marketing provides analytics on critical data such as number of opens and click-throughs. This shows which content is resonating most for your readers. In other words, you can see what’s working.
Q3. What isn’t working?
Here are three common reasons why marketing doesn’t work:
- Your marketing communication is written to a general (aka anonymous) audience, and readers can feel this. Start writing to a specific individual who represents the people you most want to do business with. Readers can feel this too, and are much more likely to respond in the way you want them to.
- What you’re communicating isn’t relevant or it’s too salesy. Your prospective clients are busy, so you need to catch their attention, not waste their time. You’ll do that with information that’s genuinely helpful. That is, it promises to solve a problem, save money or create a convenience. Communicate information that resonates with your ideal client and you’ll earn the right to enter into a business relationship with them. And that’s so much more valuable than simply trying to get them to buy from you.
- Clients only follow up because you follow through. Your email marketing analytics show who clicks through to a particular page on your website. Contact them. It’s that simple.
What is effective marketing?
Marketing doesn’t need to be flashy and expensive. In fact, it’s often the simple, regular and meaningful communications with existing clients, COIs (Centres of Influence) and prospective clients that work best. Fundamentally, the purpose of your marketing is to attract new clients to your business and to keep them, because maximising client lifetime value is important.
Put simply, if you’re not marketing, it’s very likely you’re on the road to nowhere rather than on your way to success.
