Step-by-Step New Marketing

1. Know who you are.   Have a clear USP and project it strongly.

<2.>Describe your ideal customer.   Where are they from? What do they do? What is their age? Their sex? Income? Hobbies? Charities?

<3.>Make a list of everyone you know — in both business and personal realms. Include everyone you buy from such as insurance agents, bankers, and so on. Add to the list people you used to know, for example, from high school, church, past jobs, and so forth.

<4.>Make a list of specific people or companies you know—or know of—who fit your ideal customer profile.   Ask all your good contacts to suggest others who fit. (This is your first chance to get referrals from them. Ask if they’ll contact the people for you or if you can use their name to contact them yourself.) Use phone books, online research, the library, and industry directories to find more names.

<5.>Make sure you have a database like FileMaker or Act! to save information about your contacts.   If it’s only a small group, you can even use file cards.

<6.>Develop a brief ezine to send out to your contacts to keep yourself in their minds and build your "brand" in their minds.

<7.>Schedule a time to contact people and companies you know and their referrals. If you don’t have enough of these, schedule a time to cold call likely prospects.

<8.>Keep track of every contact with people in your database, including what was said.

<9.>If your direct contacts and cold calls are not filling your book of business, experiment with one example of the 10 major types of marketing each month.   For instance, you could try networking as a combination of research and sales.

<10.>Develop a support group of one or more people who meet with you regularly to talk about marketing.

<11.>Have a bias for action. Act when you don’t feel like it. Act often. Sins of commission are much more useful than sins of omission. You gain more information by acting, allowing you to make better decisions in the future. Try at least one thing a week out of your comfort zone.

 

Rick Crandall is a business and marketing consultant and the author of Marketing Your Services for People Who Hate to Sell and 1001 Ways to Market Your Services. He can be reached at 415-209-9838.