I have a couple of beliefs when it comes to marketing your services and attracting new clients.
So, why should you care?
For one thing, (and since it’s completely self-serving), I thought I’d share with you what Tom Winchester, who’s owned 3 companies (two of which he sold for astro-bucks) was kind enough to say, “Adopting these beliefs was the single most important change I’ve made to my business in the last 20 years.”
So what are they?
My first belief is that that attracting as many new clients as your business can handle is all about the story you tell.
Yes, having a client attraction system is important.
Yes, technology is helpful
But…at the end of the proverbial day…what really separates you from the competition…what makes you memorable, so that people refer you business…what enables you to get prospects to visualize the benefits of working with you, are…
So, what I’d suggest is take a minute and go to your website. Take a look at what you’re communicating.
Are you sharing interesting stories about you, your clients and their successes? If not, perhaps we should talk.
Secondly, I believe that WE MAKE MARKETING WAY TOO COMPLICATED.
And, again, I have a theory as to why.
I blame it on Google.
I Googled “marketing advice” this morning and guess what?
There’s only 99,300,000 results.
Now suppose I wake up one morning and say to myself, “Myself, we really need to get off our butt and start to do some marketing. Wonder if there’s any information that will be helpful?”
So off I go to Google. And what happens?
It’s not that there’s a lack of information (some of it actually quite good-especially my stuff). The problem is that there’s (obviously) too much information.
So why is this important?
Because if one takes even a modest dip into the pool of advice, it’s amazingly easy to get overwhelmed. And unfortunately when we get overwhelmed, we tend to resort to a default position: WE DO NOTHING. Which of course just makes matters worse.
I’m a firm believer that we make marketing far too hard. Way too complex.
It’s one thing to have a multi-step marketing system after you’ve put in place the basics. But if you attempt to go from having no marketing system, to one with 18 steps…well it’s no wonder why so many people give up in frustration.
It’s a bit like golf. My instructor tells me about cocking my wrists, keeping the club shaft parallel to the ground, body weight transfer…my mind goes numb with all the advice. While the reality is that my golf shot will pretty much do what I want it to do if I just…KEEP MY FREAKING HEAD DOWN and quit looking up to see where the ball is going.
The point is…when we keep things simple-good stuff happens. True in golf. True in life. True in marketing.
So here’s my advice.
All you need to do is to keep 3 things in mind. Three Simple Components Of The Marketing System. No big deal.
COMPONENT #1: Create something that you think your target audience would be interested in receiving, that you can give away for free. It might be an article, recording of a speech you gave, video, piece of software, book, assessment…whatever. The important point is that it should be something that your particular niche is interested in. (Usually this means that it focuses on a problem they’re suffering from.)
How do you find out what the best topic is? The easiest way is to simply…ask them. Put together a quick survey on SurveyMonkey and send it out to those who are already on your list. So what if you’ve only got 12 people on your list-survey them. That’s a heck of a lot better than sitting in your office deciding on your own what your niche is interested in. (P.S. The offer should be something you can send electronically at zero cost, rather than a “free consultation”. That’s not to say that a free consultation is a bad offer to make, you just don’t want to offer it at the very beginning.)
COMPONENT #2: Create a one-page microsite that promotes the free offer. That’s all it does. In effect it’s a long form sales letter with one purpose: Get your visitors to opt-in to get the “free thing”.
When people opt-in, their contact information goes into what’s called an autoresponder. That’s basically a database that then enables you to send these people additional messages that build trust & credibility, and eventually turns large percentages of them into paying clients. There are lots of services to choose from. The one I personally use and recommend is HERE.
COMPONENT #3: Promote the one page microsite and get people to come to it. Lots and lots and lots of ways to do that. Pay-per-Click advertising, online advertising on relevant association sites, direct mail (letters and/or postcards), social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter…No, not all “social media” is the same so you need to decide what’s best for you and your market), blogs, joint ventures (fancy way of saying, align yourself with those who are also selling to your target market), articles, white papers, books, PR, direct sales, speeches, webinars, telemarketing, teleconferences; the list goes on and on.
So here’s my point.
These are the 3 components of marketing. All you need to do is start with component #1 and progress from there. But by all means don’t start with component #3 (which many people do) since all you’ll wind up doing is spending money on driving prospects to a website from which they bounce off. It’s somewhat difficult to build a relationship with someone if they don’t leave any record of who they are when they come to visit.
Will this work for you?
It’s hard to argue against a strategy that fundamentally says, “Offer people something free and then stay in touch to build a relationship.” Although I hate the term “no-brainer”, in this case it certainly does seem to fit. The bottom line is that there’s simply no reason why anyone can’t have an effective marketing system up and running inside of 30-45 days.
Unless they start making it complicated.
As always please let me know if I can ever be of assistance.
Related links:
Read my newest book, Unique Sales Stories
Get some personal coaching from me
What HR consultant Tony Weinstein calls “Absolutely the best self-study marketing program available.”




