Copyright 2003 by Gerry Foster

One of the things I love most about what I do for a living is the opportunity to remove the mystique about marketing services and thereby offer specific approaches that help people fulfill whole new possibilities.  I get a “high” from being able to show people how to forward their commitments and vision, catapult over everyone they compete against, and take their business or career across the finish line.

My strength is being able to show service providers how to completely change the direction of their lives just by mastering certain key principles often overlooked by even the most experienced marketers.  And out of my own experience I’ve helped thousands of people reinvent who they are for the possibility for who they might become.

Yet, in the same vain, I have come across many service providers who are content to simply have a dream.  Dreaming is fine, but for most mortals, reality is what brings home the bacon.  When it comes to marketing services, converting dreams to reality requires action – specifically, strategies and tactics.

For instance, if you want to increase your business by 25%, how do you expect to do it?  More importantly, are you willing to do it?

See, it’s easy to put down on paper starting and ending dates, who has to do what, and what it will cost.  But following through is what matters most.  It’s mixing all the right ingredients – strategies, tactics, and action programs – so you can cook, eat, and enjoy the fruits of your efforts.

If you’re really serious about wanting to make sure your marketing plan gets implemented successfully, you must get past any worries or anxieties pertaining to that.  I’ll be straight with you.  A lack of money, or time, or knowledge isn’t what’s holding most people back when it comes to marketing their services.  They’re afraid that if they do any marketing, they’ll run into a bear just around the corner!  And that big ol’ bear sure seems real!!

I’ll break it down for you:

• You want to get in front of more prospects, but you can’t deal with the thought of feeling frustrated, disappointed, rejected, foolish, or embarrassed if things don’t go according to plan.

• You want bigger sales and profits, but you can’t deal with the thought of failing, spinning your wheels, or wasting valuable time and money.

• You want to locate and land non-referred clients, but you find all kinds of excuses for not promoting your business.

Heck, you may be more afraid of trying than you are of dying!

See, it all comes down to a marketing fear called “I can’t handle it!”  It’s the disturbing thought of not being able to cope with any unpleasant emotions.  This sort of anxiety about marketing, in varying degrees, pervades the minds of even the most successful service providers.  Marketing then gets put on the back burner or ends up being something you walk around as if it were a dead fish on the beach.

So what do you do?

You take the high road.

How do you get there?

You build a ladder of opportunity.

But in order to climb the ladder, know that each step is as challenging as it is crucial.  Yet, if you have a steady climb and make the best possible use of your resources, you can quickly make it to the top.

Look.

Your climb does not have to be complicated or expensive.  Most people think the more complicated or expensive something is, the more valuable it is.  That’s crazy.

You’ve got to associate what is simple and inexpensive with what will work and not make marketing difficult.  Focus on climbing up the ladder one step at a time, and put your time and efforts into multiplying your effectiveness by getting past your fears.

Here Are
The Rungs Of Your Ladder:

1. Know Your Five P’s.  This is Marketing 101 but it still works.  Decide on what services are needed by a viable target market that will sustain and grow your business (product), what to charge so that your services will be purchased in substantial amounts to generate a nice profit (price), what distribution channels are most appropriate to make your services available to buyers (place), what market niche do your services fit into where they will have a special appeal (positioning), and what are the most cost-effective and appropriate methods to attract your ideal “A-type” clients to those services (promotion).

2. Define Your Niche Market.  Identify the types of clients that will enable your business to thrive.  A niche market is a gap in the marketplace – a part of an overall target market – where your services will have unusually strong or even unique appeal to potential clients, as compared to competitive offerings.  As an example, a human resource consultant could describe her niche market as “medium size financial services firms who do not maintain human resource departments, yet they want to keep employees happy and retain as many key people as possible by providing top notch training to them.”  If you have limited resources, niche marketing is probably the most feasible marketing approach for you to take. 

3. Develop Your Statement of Mastery.  Your services cannot stand out in an overcrowded marketplace without very strong and very precise service differentiation.   A SOM is a crisp, powerful statement that clearly, unmistakably distinguishes you from your competitors.  It can reflect your vision or mission statement.  It can be an advertising tag line.  It can take on a variety of forms, but it must be true and offer what your clients want.  Examples:  “You don’t have to look your age” (Dermatologist),  “Your whitest teeth, by tonight” (a BriteSmile Dentist), or “Lose 10-15 pounds in 30 days, without going hungry!” (Weight Loss Consultant).

4. Decide On Your Goals, Strategies, Tactics and Programs.  These are the basic elements of your marketing plan.  Let’s say your goal is to “add 5 non-referred clients” a month.   Your strategy might be “make an offer prospects can’t refuse.”  The tactic spells out a specific method for carrying out the strategy.  In this case it might be to “offer a try-before-you-buy free report” that will make your market come forward with minimal effort and expense on your part; another tactic might be to “offer your services at a price that’s too good to turn down.”  And the program details the specifics to be used, such as “create a one-page fax for the free report and broadcast fax it to 15,000 potential clients during the month of August.”  Each program will have a budget and indicate who is responsible for specific tasks.

5. Write Your Marketing Plan.  It’s not enough to realize that you need to market your services.  To make your marketing efforts go well, you need to tie everything together from steps 1-4 and develop a written plan.  This plan should clearly state your goals and objectives, your marketing message, and specific plans for attracting new clients.

6. Measure Your Plan’s Effectiveness.  Few worthwhile things can be accomplished all at once.  When you move steadily up the ladder a step at a time, it’s much easier to see and take the next step, than to try to rush your way up to the top.  If your goal is to “add 5 non-referred clients” a month and you decide to send out “15,000 faxes offering a free report,” you can make X number of follow-up phone calls to people who ordered and received the report.  You can set Y number of appointments.  And you can close Z number of sales.  Set those as your goals for the week and/or the day.

• NOTE:  It’s very important that you not only set up measurable goals but also that you chart your progress (i.e. so many faxes sent out, so many qualified prospects, so many follow-up phone calls, so many sales calls made, etc.).  Do not rely on conjecture and opinion.  Establish benchmarks or milestones that you can manage yourself against.

I have a story that summarizes this article and illustrates the danger of not taking actioin.  It’s called, “What Went Wrong?”

There were four people.  Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody.  There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.  Anybody could have done it but Nobody did it.  Somebody got angry because it was Everybody’s job.  But Nobody asked Anybody.  It ended up that the job wasn’t done and Everybody blamed Somebody when actually Nobody asked Anybody.

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Please contact me directly by phone at 949.499.1174 or by email at gerry@masterymarketing.com if you would like to discuss ways to expand your client base, sales and profits.