One of the things that interests me about human nature is we assume that somewhere out there is the silver bullet; the one idea that if we find it, will solve our problems.
It doesn’t matter what the field is, I’ve noticed this phenomenon time and time again. Marketing is no exception.
The funny thing is, if you were to ask anyone if they believe that there is a silver bullet that would enable them to build the business of their dreams; almost no-one would admit it.
And yet, we keep looking for new ideas and not implementing those that we know. Almost every customer I speak to says something like; “I want more new clients.”
We want the silver bullet that will have customers beating a path to our door and us rushing to the bank with bags of cheques. We don’t stop to think are the basics in place? Am I doing what needs to be done consistently?
Marketing works if you do it consistently. It takes effort to do this but it’s definitely not a one time thing.
I’ve found that there are 7 things that need to be in place for marketing to really produce results. The items themselves are quite mundane, but in the majority of businesses I deal with, at best, only pieces are in place and almost no small business takes the time to implement them systematically.
Those that do, reap the benefits:
They grow more rapidly
They are more profitable
Their owners feel less stress
Customers come back time and time again to buy more
Their customers are less price sensitive
I’m going to give you the 7 things you have to do in a moment, but I know almost no one reading this will act on them.
Why?
Because they seem so mundane, they seem almost obvious, they are simple but not necessarily easy. This makes people sceptical. They believe it can’t be that simple, so they keep looking, they don’t change their behaviour and they continue to get mediocre results.
The amazing thing is that in almost every discipline, success comes from doing a few things really well time and time again. It’s almost never about more information, it’s about more action, more practise of a few important things. So it is with marketing.
So here are “The 7 Musts of Marketing:”
1. Identify and focus your attention on ideal prospects. In every niche there are ideal prospects vs. all prospects, so define your niche tightly and avoid the trap of thinking you can serve everybody. You can’t.
2. Understand precisely the pain of your prospects in your niche.
Using your knowledge of your ideal prospects and clients and their pain, create a Unique Marketing Identity that you will use as a theme in all of your marketing; written or verbal.
4. Understand the life time value of your clients. This information will change the way you budget for marketing. Once you know how much a client is worth to you, it’s easy to figure out how much to spend to acquire one.
5. Only when you have completed and are comfortable with steps 1-4, should you focus on adding growth strategies. Without 1-4 you’ll often be disappointed by your results. There are only 4 ways to grow a business.
A. Acquire more prospects
B. Get each client of prospect to spend more each time they buy
C. Get each client of prospect to buy more frequently
D. Increase your margins
For each of these strategies there are dozens of tactics. Invest in learning several under each strategy. Only do those where you can measure the impact.
6. Resources such as people, time and money have to be set aside to ensure that marketing is done consistently. You can’t turn marketing on and off and expect to be successful.
7. Create systems and routines so that your marketing happens automatically. Having no routines, will result in inconsistent application and reduced results.
I hope you get to implementing “The 7 Musts of Marketing”. If you already know about them, ask yourself if you are doing them. If you are doing them, ask yourself how well you are doing them. If you are doing them, and are not where you want to be, it just means there is something more you need to know. If there something more you need to know, commit to finding out what you need to know and implementing it. Effectively implementing these ideas will change your life.
There you have it. This is my secret; I have built 5 successful businesses of my own using these 7 concepts. I also use them in my consulting work with my clients and I teach people how to build a business based on them in my Rapid Growth Mentoring Program. There is a lot to each one and I still learn every day, but I have never seen them fail when applied. If you apply them too they will not fail you.