This is great as people are always building new and better solutions based on user experiences or to address some new need.

Should you always be pursuing the latest and greatest? There probably isn’t an definitive answer to that. On the one hand it is worth keeping an eye on what is emerging – take an interest and (here is perhaps the critical point) see if it is a great fit for your business and marketing plans. On the other hand there seems to be a danger equally worthy of consideration and it’s this: “Is this, as cool as it is, actually a distraction?”

Is the cool tactic your new best friend? There is a danger of completely switching direction. You know the sort of thing. You have been using the same tactic for a while and it’s been working, but, well….. it’s kind of familiar now and this great, cool new thing just emerged. Perhaps I should try that instead?

Here is the rub. Checking out the latest is usually a good idea. Unless you are certain it will negate everything that you were doing before, doesn’t it make sense to consider whether it is a replacement or simply complimentary or (horror) actually quite cool but not a good fit for you (however much fun it might be)?

Effective marketing requires a great understanding of your target market. Your marketing plans to address that market should be fluid enough to embrace new tools and tactics that can help, but the overall framework should always be there. Without it, cool stuff can easily become a “bright, shiny thing” that is tough to resist and quickly becomes a distraction, not adding to the overall marketing effectiveness.

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What’s the definition of success for your business? Most small businesses are selling their time and expertise to deliver a service to their clients.

So the question I want you to reflect upon is this…

“What does success look like?”

Now before you start answering with responses like, “I’ll do $X Million in sales this year.” – STOP! That’s not exactly what I meant.

The real question is this…

“What does success look like for your client(s)?”

Remember, your clients? It’s generally fair to say that you’re in business to provide an outcome your clients. When you do it right, what does it actually look like for the client?

If you focus on taking care of that, then the rest will almost certainly take care of itself. So what does success look like for the client when you do it right?

Spend some time and clarify success for your small business.

• What are you passionate about?
• What is it that you’re trying to do for your clients?
• What difference do you want to make?
• What do you “love” doing for them?
• What is it that they will have or be able to do because they bought your service from you?

This definition covers a broad range of issues for you and your business. All aspects of your business must be working well together to achieve this success. Be as specific as you can.

By-the-way, you’ll end up with some pretty great material to use in your marketing messages.

Now, if you really want to make this a valuable exercise for your business, then I challenge you to take the results of your own brainstorming and sit down with a few of your best client(s) to see what they think and get their input.

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Marketing Inertia works kind of like the  Law of Inertia in physics. Technically it’s Newton’s First Law of Motion, but it’s commonly referred to as the law of inertia.

Newton’s first law basically states…

“A body at rest tends to stay at rest and a body in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and direction unless acted upon by an external force.”

Notice the two parts of the principle. One part refers to the behavior of a motionless object. The other part refers to the behavior of a moving object.

Every business has its own Marketing Inertia. And much like Newton’s first law of motion, it tends to keep doing whatever it’s doing. In other words, it’s either staying at rest or staying in motion.

When your marketing is at rest, nothing is happening. The business isn’t flourishing and growing because you’re not consistently attracting new clients. This tend to happen either because you stop marketing to work on existing clients or you’re just not sure where to start.

On the other hand, if your marketing is in motion it tends to stay in motion. You’re creating clear and compelling marketing messages that speak to the needs of your clients and prospects. You’re working regularly and consistently to put your message and your expertise in front of your target market.

So how’s your marketing inertia?

Unfortunately, for too many small businesses the marketing body is at rest. And to make matters worse, they seem to be waiting for some kind of external force to put it in motion.

So here’s a little marketing secret…

The external force that’s needed to put your marketing in motion is YOU!

You have to take action to put your marketing in motion.

* Schedule time for marketing in your calendar every single week!

* Build and continually add to your repository of value. Make it your mission to find as many ways as possible to distribute, share, and give away this value through articles, tip sheets, special reports and audios, etc.

* Get proactive about generating referrals.

* Stay in touch – follow-up, send thank you notes, forward articles & resources of interest, invite them to events, etc.

Pay attention to your marketing inertia… and keep it in motion.

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One of the most common responses to THAT question is: “Very busy”. That does that mean really? Of course it is a conversational statement, but is being busy, particularly in marketing, necessarily a good thing in its own right?

It is easy to make yourself busy. In marketing your small business there are countless things you can do with your time. To take a simple example, let us consider Social Media and online networking. Applications such as Linked In, Twitter, Facebook, Brightkite and others can be hugely time consuming. They may be a perfect fit for your business, but how do you make sure you are spending your time wisely?

This is true of all marketing activity. It may feel as though you are getting a lot done, but are you sure that the time you are putting in is really yielding the results you want, or at least going in the right direction? If you are unsure of the answer to that, you might be engaged in “busy work”.

There are a couple of things to bear in mind for all your marketing activities:

1. Planning – Do you know your target audience profile intimately? That includes their demographics, their issues, characteristics and where to find them. Make sure you have taken all those into account as well as researched the tools and tactics you will use and then committed to them. Ensure that you know what the deliverables and indicators of success will be and most importantly, make sure you know how it fits into your overall marketing and business goals.
2. Measurement – How will you know when you are making progress? Conversely, when will you decide it is time to adjust or change course? Without these terms of reference there is a real danger you will get sucked into doing the work for its own sake, without keeping the goal (usually increased revenues!) in mind.

Being busy can be great. Having a thriving business is great and will certainly keep you busy. However make sure that you are not engaged in activity that you really enjoy, but that isn’t getting results. Also make sure you know why you are doing anything on the marketing front and also that you are not avoiding marketing altogether and making yourself busy with less productive work!

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What side of the Marketing Edge is your business on?

What’s the difference between a successful small business and a struggling one? It’s not as big of a difference as you might think.

You can take two small businesses that by all appearances are exactly the same. They provide the exact same service with the same level of experience and professionalism. Yet one business is very successful and the other struggles to keep the doors open.

So what is the difference? What makes one business grow and prosper while the other struggles to attract clients consistently? What is one business able to do that the other is not?

It is not a matter of marketing intelligence. It is not a matter of skill, talent, or luck either. Every business has pretty much the same opportunity to create their level of success. It’s just that some take the opportunity and some do not.

The opportunity to create business success takes more than marketing “know how.” If that’s all there was, then everyone should be realizing tremendous success. There’s a never ending supply of marketing “know how” available through books, marketing audios, web sites, seminars, workshops, etc.

The Marketing Edge is what separates most successful small businesses from struggling ones. It is your willingness to take regular and consistent action on doing the things, particularly the simple things that you can be doing. That is what successful businesses do. They do the marketing actions that they can do consistently.

Successful businesses do what unsuccessful businesses do not do. It’s not necessarily that they’re applying bigger and better marketing ideas. Instead it usually comes down to the fact that they’re taking action consistently.

You see here is the deal when you’re talking about an edge. Every edge has two sides to it. On one side of the edge is “doing”. But, on the other side is “not doing.” And the struggling businesses tend to not do the things they could be doing.

Applying the marketing edge means consistently doing the things that you can be doing. The marketing “know how” is all out there for you to absorb. It’s taking action on the simple things that you can over time that will produce the results you seek.

• It’s taking the time and effort to actually define your target market.
   
• It’s taking the time and effort to clarify and articulate your uniqueness and differentiation in the marketplace.
   
• It’s taking the time to create a core marketing message that actually grabs attention.
   
• It’s creating a simple process to ask for referrals from every new client.

Be willing to take regular and consistent action on doing the things you can do. It’s not more marketing “know how”, but getting into action. That’s the marketing edge and the key to greater marketing success in your business.

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How long should you commit to a certain marketing tactic? Perfectly reasonable question, especially if the tool in question has a high cost associated with it! However it is also hazardous as an approach unless you tread with caution.

Why?

1. Commitment needs to be general, as well as specific – in other words you need to have a big picture commitment to your marketing success and how that plays into your overall business (and indeed your life) plan. This will underpin everything that you do and needs to be there.
2. Specific commitment to a task needs to be in that context – picking marketing tools and tactics is actually easy at a superficial level. There is a reason that we don’t cover this on the Get More Great Clients program until the last quarter of the course and it’s this: it is easy to pick an inappropriate tactic when you haven’t planned adequately. There are thousands of tools out there – choosing is the challenge.
3. Committing to the tactic itself can blinker your thinking. When you pick a marketing approach and start to implement it, measure the results in the overall context of your plan. Beware getting involved in it because it is fun, or staying with an ineffective tactic because you have already spent money on it. This is where commitment can be mis-placed. You are not using a tactic simply for its own sake – there is a much bigger picture
4. Use timeframes with care! Marketing is an ongoing commitment. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set a limit on the tactics you use, but nor does it mean blindly following a course for a specific duration, regardless of the results being achieved. Take time to review with your partners, service providers etc. how long to run a particular tactic and the likely cost before you embark on it, but make the higher commitment to continually review progress and adjust accordingly.

Commitment doesn’t mean there isn’t room for change and adjustment. On the contrary. However it is essential you have a sound base for all your marketing activities. In that way you will quickly know how things are going and be in a far better position to decide to a) keep going as you are, b) make some adjustments or c) stop doing the activity entirely.

That is a far sounder base than trying something because you like the sound of it, or saying to yourself: “I’ll give this a try”. That is far more like throwing darts than really having a marketing strategy to which you are committed.

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I’m referring of course to the Staples Easy Button from their television commercials. If you’re not sure what I’m referring to here, stick with me because you’ll still get the point. Staples is an office supply company that was running some TV commercials on a concept called the “Easy Button.” Maybe they’re still running them, but I’ve stopped noticing.

The typical commercial showed a few people in some business setting trying to deal with some kind of business issue. Someone in the group would suggest using the “Easy Button” and whatever issue they were dealing with was magically solved. The point is that Staples makes any issues relating to office supplies easy to deal with.

When it comes to marketing (and business in general), there is no Easy Button. But, that doesn’t stop lots and lots of small business people from looking for the Magic Marketing Button. For too many small businesses marketing is hard because they don’t really want to have to work at it.

You spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to become extremely competent, if not a master, in your field. But all of that won’t count for much if you don’t know how to consistently generate leads and attract new clients. That takes marketing on your part which means some work. Sorry, there is no Magic Marketing Button.

Becoming a decent marketer also demands an investment of your time, energy, and money. You won’t become a better marketer by searching for the Easy Button or the Magic Marketing Button. It just doesn’t happen by luck, accident or overnight. You need to commit to make it happen.

Successful small businesses and professional are prepared. They know their stuff because they commit the time and energy to learn what it takes and get it right. They don’t foolishly waste their time by stumbling around looking for the Magic Marketing Button.

When you’re in small business, then your part-time business has to be marketing. Yes, it does take some work. But, if you’re willing to commit some regular and consistent time to actively work on your marketing, including becoming better educated, then success is highly attainable.

[Please Note: This post is in no way intended to be any sort of indictment against Staples or their Easy Button marketing campaign. I love their Easy Button commercials and wish I had one myself. You should see my desk and office area on a typcial day]

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Won’t I limit myself? This type of thinking is common, understandable, but ultimately self-defeating. Trying to market to everyone is effectively marketing to no one. People like to work with specialists who “get” what they are about. When you spread the message too thin you will appear to be a generalist and, importantly, sound much like your competition and that isn’t really a good thing.

An example? One of my good networking friends, Todd Baker is an insurance specialist. Any of you who network will know that is a well represented industry. It can be difficult to distinguish between insurance companies. Sure some have different plans, shop the market more and so on, but essentially the messages coming from them tend to sound very similar.

As you can see from the image to the left, Todd specializes further and has a range of policies  to serve the contractor market. This is his truck and it is pretty clear who his market is.

Although Todd can serve additional insurance needs, this focus on a niche market is powerful because it is specific, different and it is very clear who the message is intended for. Of course it isn’t all about logos on trucks (although it looks good!) but more about identifying a target audience, understanding that audience and focusing on their issues and challenges in your marketing message.

Of course, you don’t need a car wrap necessarily. The point here is that really identifying who you serve, the passion you have as a business owner or independent professional and then going to market with that, is a great way to differentiate your message and stand out from the crowd.

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How do you stand out? One of the ways to do this is develop a marketing message that sounds different from those your audience typically hears. This is a separate topic covered extensively in the Get More Great Clients program, but there is something that is equally important – CONSISTENCY of application.

Meaning what? By way of illustration let’s examine the often used marketing tactic for small business – networking. There are numerous books written on this topic alone and various “networking gurus” to help you develop your networking skills. It is certainly a vital marketing tactic for many.

It is one that requires consistency to be successful. It is (like most marketing efforts) long term. In fact once you commit to it, it is continuous. In the early days of building your network this is particularly important because:

• Lack of awareness – people probably don’t know you and if they do, they probably don’t know what you do
• People are busy – remember you are not the only one networking. Others have their own agenda and most likely they are also looking to build relationships. It is a mistake to assume that everyone will remember you and your services when they meet you once, fleetingly at that networking meeting
• You look more serious about your business when people see you often, and at more than one venue. The first time you meet someone, however interested they are in what you do, there is a better chance they will take you seriously when they see you regularly.

So, early on it is important that you establish your presence. Regular and consistent attendance (as well as developing networking skills) is absolutely key.

However once yo are established on the “circuit” YOU STILL NEED TO BE A CONSISTENT ATTENDER!

Why is that?

• Out of sight, out of mind – Once you disappear, it is surprising how rapidly people forget you. You don’t need to attend quite as frequently as when you were building your network, but you still need to be there.
• People assume the worst – despite the virtues (and necessity) of positive thinking, the economy is still tough for many. If you assume that the work is done in building your network (which it never is by the way) and consequently draw back from networking, many people will notice. Those that do may well assume things are going badly for you. That isn’t a message you want getting out
• Mixed messages – you want people to associate you with your message and what it is you do to help your clients. They will lose that if it isn’t reinforced.

Although this is networking related, the general point is broader and applies to most, if not all, your marketing efforts. Gaining attention is one thing but really building awareness takes time and consistency whether you are using direct mail, advertising, social media, bill boards, presentations – whatever.

Decide on the tactics, commit to applying them consistently. It is the key to marketing effectiveness!

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You might not think that you are a marketing and sales person. But, if you own or work in a small business then that’s exactly what you are. Whether you like it or not, feel like you’re good at it or not – you are a marketing and sales person.

Even if you don’t have all the maketing skills yet, most small business people have the keys to being great at marketing. It’s often a matter of being conscious and leveraging your two greatest marketing assets.

The two greatest assets you posses are your Attitude and Belief. When these are positive and show through your marketing and sales efforts, then your results will increase.

Let’s take a look at these two small business marketing assets more closely.

(1) Attitude: Be enthusiastic and passionate about your value proposition to the marketplace. You know that what you offer can make a difference and have an impact on your clients.

Make sure that positive attitude about making a difference comes through in your marketing. When it comes to marketing, if you feel good about yourself and you have self-confidence because you are doing everything for the benefit of your clients, you’ll become more attractive to prospective clients.

(2) Belief: You don’t have to have a degree in marketing to get great marketing results. But you do have to believe in yourself and your actions. I often refer to it as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What do you believe is possible through your marketing efforts? If you believe that can’t do something, you’re right. And, that’s because you won’t do it. On the other hand, if you believe that you can learn what it takes to get better marketing results you will.

Learn to embrace and leverage your two greatest marketing assets.

If you’re persistent in pursuing your business and your small business marketing with a positive attitude and belief that you can, sooner or later you’ll find what works for you. You’ll discover the marketing strategies and tactics that allow you to begin attracting attention and bringing in new clients consistently!

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