No matter how busy it gets, not marketing your business should never be an option.
Busy-ness is a phase and eventually things slow down, and then what?
The reason you want to keep your prospective client pipeline full is to give yourself options.
You can always say no to enquiries from not-so-ideal clients, but if you stop marketing, you won’t have the chance to say yes when a cracker of a client comes a-knocking.
What’s more, when the word gets out that you’re too busy to take on new clients, it will still be out there when you’re not.
Once you stop, refilling your pipeline of prospective clients is slow, time consuming and usually expensive because you would have lost all the momentum you’ve built up.
I know what you’re thinking… that’s all well and good coming from a marketer, but the reality is you only have so many hours in your very busy day. That’s true… so only do the smart stuff!
Know your ideal client.
Make the most of your marketing budget and your time by knowing your ideal client.
A clear understanding of your ideal client has the dual benefit of focussing your marketing messaging so it ‘speaks’ the sort of language those you want to do business with will ‘hear’ above the noise of your competitors. Apart from using your budget well, it will attract more of the right type of enquiry and that means you’re back to having options. You can say yes, no or maybe.
Let’s face it, even at your busiest, you can make room for an ideal client. I don’t need to tell you how common it is for clients to stay with their accountant or financial adviser for 10, 20, 30 years…a lifetime of advice for them and recurring fees for you!
Keep it simple.
Marketing doesn’t need to be complicated, nor does it need to be too much.
You don’t need to write lengthy newsletters comprising a dozen articles.
It’s time consuming and wasteful!
Clients and prospective clients are busy too, and they simply won’t read that much in one sitting.
Rather than pack all that time and expertise into one marketing item, divide it up over weeks or months to create regular contact with your marketing database and increase your brand awareness and remind your audience of your scope of expertise.
Even if you’ve got a lot to share (say you have several specialisations or business divisions) send less but do it more often.
Then make more of the content you’ve created for your email marketing. That is, prepare it once and use it in multiple applications:
Email it to your database, upload it to your website blog, post it to social media channels, use it (or a modified form of it) as a script for a podcast or short reel.
Get help.
If you’re that busy, you can afford formalising a marketing function for your business.
Even if you don’t need it right now, it’s an investment in your future business success. You’ll be glad you did when things inevitably return to normal, slow down or you lose a client or three!
If your business doesn’t warrant an inhouse marketing coordinator, or you don’t want the permanence of a role long term, outsource.
Marketing communication services such as ours enables you to set a budget, decide on a schedule of communication comprising email marketing and social media that suits you. Best of all, you’ll know that a team of experienced copywriters, social media coordinators, graphic designers and web developers will do all the heavy lifting for you.
If you’d like to know more, take a squiz at our website. Click this link, then if you found this article helpful, feel free to pass it on.
If you need help with your marketing communication or perhaps you need a new or updated website or other resources, please give us a call on 07 5477 0197 or email marketing@boldcorp.com.au.
Further reading:
Ideal clients – how to spot them
Creative and practice business marketing
Maximising Lifetime Value – regular communication is the key
We’re here to help!
At Bold! we specialise in helping professionals and business owners to use marketing to grow and be successful. Over the past 27 years we have fine-tuned what we call our ‘Do-able Marketing’ model. It is underpinned by a 7-Step Do-It-For-Me (DIFM) Marketing framework that overcomes the THREE key issues that professionals and business owners have told us prevent them from marketing their businesses: Time, Affordability and Accountability.