Part 2 of my series outlining how I have gone from being a marketing idiot to at least having a plan….
In part 1 of this series, I recounted the mistakes that I had made with my marketing and the initial steps that I took to correct them. In this part I will focus on the areas that I found to be missing from my marketing.
Following on from the Results Academy programme we identified a few key areas that I had simply failed to implement, they key areas are summarised as follows:
Lack of Referral system
It was plainly obvious that I had no formal strategy for gaining referrals.
- I did not know how to ask for referrals
- I did not know who I really wanted to do business with
- I did not have a process in place to thank people for referrals
I was not building my profile online
Although I was aware of the many tools available to build a profile online, I honestly just did not consider using them as a valuable marketing resource.
I was stuck in the trading time for money trap
This was a huge issue for me and something that was holding both myself and my business back. It had never occurred to me that I could build a profitable business that did not require me to be forever selling my ever decreasing time.
The changes
The first change to make, was to sit down and focus on exactly who I wanted to to business with. This was not a simple case of just picking company names that I liked the look off, but actually getting inside the head of the individual and company that would benefit from my services:
- Who are they
- Where are they
- What do they do
- What pain are they suffering in their business
- What do I offer that can help them
- How do I thank people who refer me
Once I had done this and written it all down, it became clear that I now had a targeted prospect profile both from the business and individual point of view. This formed the foundation of my referral strategy.
The second key change was to build my profile both offline and online, it was during this process that I realised that BNI was no longer for me. My reasons for leaving BNI are posted here, the bottom line being that I needed to focus my networking as well as my marketing. My online profile building is still in its infancy and at the present time I do not have enough data to justify publishing what online tools are working for me and those that are not, however when I do have all the data in place it will be the subject of a further post.
The last change and one that is very much work in progress is moving the business model from time based selling to more product selling. This is to me an immensely difficult task given the nature of the business that I am in however I do at least have a plan to implement some quite radical changes, which will be published in a later post.
The Results
The big question, have the changes worked?
The referral strategy has been a huge success for me as I mentioned in Part 1 I have seen a net increase of 45% in qualified referrals. Importantly the referrals I am getting are actually for individuals and businesses that I want to do business with.
My profile building is starting to prove successful, but as mentioned earlier is still in its infancy. 4Networking is really starting to prosper for me and I am getting some great results.
In part 3 I will focus on some other marketing areas that I am in the process of implementing….