First Article in the Series:
Marketing that Works
The last series of messages focused on “Making Work Play”. Most of us need to earn a meaningful income from our daily work. Yet work need not be the drudgery that we associate with the term. “Making Work Play” focused on utilizing your passions, strengths and values with a goal of 75% of your work time being spent doing what you do best with clients you love serving, your Ideal Client. That sounds like a really lofty goal. If you have been following along you know that it can easily be accomplished with some bite-sized steps. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Now that you know what you like to do and who you want to serve, the next step is to let those Ideal Prospects know you exist. With last week’s message, you began to understand your Ideal Client better and why they look to you to help them. You know what pains them and you have a solution. Now they just need to know about it!
The majority of marketing plans fail for one reason. It is not that the message or service isn’t relevant or needed. It is not that the material failed to impress. The primary reason marketing plans fail is…drumroll…they are not executed! Time, energy and effort go into developing a plan and then poof! Dead on arrival. Not even tested. Never got out of the box. A myriad of reasons and excuses keeps most marketing plans a great big secret.
Yet you are different. You are prepared in a way that most are not. You know specifically the type of client you want to attract, you enjoy serving them and you like being around them. That doesn’t mean you won’t kiss some frogs along the way. Many a prospective client masquerades as an Ideal Prospective Client until you get very good at ferretting out the “wanna-be’s” from the real thing. Yes, that means you will be discriminating. Remember “Making Work Play” is about doing the things you do really well with people you enjoy serving.
I know I have repeated myself with the prior sentence, and a few times more within this message. Yet it bears repeating. In the span of time you invested reading this message, your mind shifted from “Yes, my Ideal Client, and doing what I do best” to “Discriminating? Do you mean I will have to tell people no?” Yes, you will say “no” because you have taken to heart that you have a gift to share with people that appreciate and value that gift and you will not share it with anyone who does not. Got it?
Next week we will delve into creating a marketing plan that works. All that is needed is you and your consistent message consistently!