You should spend serious time thinking about how you market your business. You need to design and IMPLEMENT a system for delivering leads to your business. I am a student of guys like Jay Abraham and Dan Kennedy – guys who have helped millions of business owners like me build successful businesses. But there is an advantage that you have – and that I have – over those marketing geniuses. The advantage is this:
You know your business.
So it’s not a matter of having to learn how a business or an industry works. You already know how it works. You have a product or service that your market needs – you just need a way to bring them to you. Again…you need a system.
And I’m sure you have lots of time to sit around doodling marketing ideas on napkins and daydreaming about your vision for your business. Hey, I know where you’re coming from. I’m struggling with it myself right now. I finally managed to hack out a marketing plan but I’m already struggling staying on schedule because there’s just so much work to do. Not that I’m complaining. I wouldn’t want it to be the other way around. But you and I have got to have the discipline to carve out the time to build marketing systems for our businesses.
Your marketing is a funnel. At the top of the funnel are a whole bunch of prospective customers. But where do those prospects come from to start with? From whatever devices you use to promote your business – sales letters, advertisements, referrals – and of course search engine marketing. As these devices drive people to your website or cause them to pick up the phone, that’s where you hopefully move them further down the funnel. If you get them on your mailing list, that moves them along. If you can get them to request a free book or download, that moves them along. Anything that causes them to interact with your company helps move them along.
So what do you do with those prospects who request more information, download something, or perform whatever the required action is?
You want to do whatever you have to do to get them to trust you. This generally involves giving away a lot of free information, dripped to them indefinitely. In other words, once they have held their hand up and said “we are interested in what you have to say,” then you need to nurture that relationship until they finally buy something from you. Then you continue to nurture that relationship even more until they buy more goods or services.
In other words…you need a system for delivering prospects to your company and converting those prospects into paying customers. This is not something that should be taken lightly. In fact, it is probably more important than the actual product or service you are selling. There may be lots of companies selling the same thing. You have to figure out how to capture as much of your market as you can. As the owner or marketer for your business, that is job number one. Sell, sell, sell.