Fifth Article in the Series:
Marketing that Works
Early on in this series I said that most marketing plans fail because they are never executed. The difference between the plan you are creating and most other marketing plans is that yours is created around your passion and strengths, your unique service and the value you bring to your clients that you love working with.
Many “marketing plans” are a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden realization that the pipeline is no longer full of prospective clients. For those in the service business, marketing goes like this:
- Marketing effort consisting of events, networking, newsletters, speaking engagements and the like – what you created from last week’s message.
- Efforts pay-off with several new clients and no time to continue the marketing efforts – a capacity constraint.
- OR, the more likely scenario, marketing efforts are stopped since there are so many new clients and you don’t feel the need to market anymore. Uh-oh!
A few weeks or months later, there is not a single prospective client in sight.
Would you say that the above marketing plan was successful?
I say it is not. If a plan is not sustainable, whether due to capacity limitations or “success dysfunction” (my own new phrase), then that plan is not successful.
To create a successful marketing plan, it needs to be an approach that “lights your fire” and you have no trouble starting and continuing your outreach efforts. You have done this by identifying clients you enjoy and love to serve. Your marketing efforts are built around meeting more of those same types of people. What’s not to love about that?
The plan must also continue in the spite of its success. Just in case I wasn’t consistent in my recent messages about consistency (Earn Mindshare Through Branding and The Importance of Consistent Messaging), success comes over time with repeated messaging. That does not mean three weeks or three months — that means continual. And there you will find yourself moving into the realm of the known, liked and trusted expert.
P.S. We will address capacity constraints in our next series on efficiency and productivity. If you are eager to move ahead, then consider what needs to happen with those “less than” Ideal Clients!