Generating interest in your products or services in the marketplace can be complicated. Are your customers in waiting on Pinterest or thumbing through the yellow pages? Or do they look on yelp or angie’s list or get help across the back fence from Marge, their neighbor?
Sending messages out to the market is a necessary investment in creating sales. This is not optional. If you are not spending time and money marketing, advertising, testing and tracking, your business will shrink and die. Maybe not next year, but it will shrink and die.
If you have not reviewed at least 5 marketing proposals and said yes to 1 of them this month, I have bad news. You are just pretending. Pretending to be interested in increasing your sales. Pretending to grow your business. Pretending to be successful.
There are 3 straightforward and simple steps to get your inbox full and phone ringing, but they take some thinking and planning. If you are a technician, like an accountant or surgeon or engineer, get 2 or 3 colleagues together to work on these pillars with you. You need big picture dreamers and poets to help. Better yet, hire a marketing professional ( I can send some referrals 🙂 ).
Step 1 is to generally assess the people you are talking to. Their role in the organization, their age, their experience and how long it takes them to make decisions. There should be 3-5 of these profiles. If you are stuck, look at your best customers and profile them to start.
Step 2 is to assess how those people from step 1 gather information to make a decision about your services or products. Make a list of methods and then the way that information is delivered or consumed. Social media or google research? Referral from professionals or review sites.
Step 3 is create content. Content is simply material that can be viewed, read or listened to and deliver it via blog, email, social media, display ads and social ads. Follow the problem, agitate, solution and call to action model for content as much as possible.
Get prospects to call you by investing in marketing. Testing and tracking your marketing ensures that you are investing in marketing that is producing sales. Test new marketing methods every month and reap the rewards.