Businesses are always looking for more clients so I’m pretty sure you are too. A key element to gaining more clients is successful marketing. Although I know you know that I’m wondering if you are holding yourself back a bit from doing all you can to successfully market your business.
Let me explain…I meet numerous owners of small businesses who struggle with their marketing. From what I’ve seen there are several reasons why this happens. I’m going to share the top 3 reasons with you and importantly explain how to get over them so you can market your business successfully and gain more clients.
1) Feel certain types of marketing are too pushy. LinkedIn is a really good example of this. Most of us these days have LinkedIn accounts and use them to varying degrees. But very few people I meet have used LinkedIn to grow their business because they feel it’s too pushy to message their contacts and let them know their business exists. Do you fall into that category?
2) Believe that doing one or two things to market your business is enough. Generally people are always looking for more business than they have now so although your words may say using two marketing channels is enough, your head is actually telling you something different.
3) Have convinced themselves that marketing won’t work for them. If you fall into this category I imagine you are getting most of your new business through word of mouth referrals. Referrals are a fantastic way to grow your business but they are a passive way to do it and you can’t bank on them happening. In a nutshell…you could be doing more.
When you are your business (ie you have no other staff) how you feel directly impacts on your business performance. On the days you feel like you can take on the world things go well, and on the days when you feel like you are never going to be able to grow your business to the size you need it to be, things don’t go so well. The phrase that covers that is mindset. Successfully marketing your business comes down to your mindset.
Do you believe you deliver value to your clients?
Do your clients say great things about what you do?
Is there a need in the marketplace for what you do?
I bet you answered yes to those questions. That means there are people out there now who need your products/services. Currently your lack of marketing means these people are not getting the help they deserve, so therefore you have a duty to tell these people you exist. So if you follow my logic marketing becomes a tool by which you help your clients, rather than a mechanism to grow your business (that is just the lovely by product of you helping your clients). Therefore marketing is just a process for you to communicate to more people that you can help them. That isn’t pushy!
We are all problem solvers for our clients, the way to successfully market your business is to know who will benefit most from your products & services, to describe the value they get from your products & services, to add in your uniqueness, and then tell people you exist!
I understand that doing what I just described can be a real challenge. If you need some help then please simply email me.
So what action are you going to take today to tell people about how you can help them?