The “Fingers Crossed Marketing Method”, have you heard of it?
Have you ever come up with a brilliant idea or “slogan” for your business and just knew that everyone who saw it would love it! All your friends and family think your service is great and are totally supporting you.
The only problem is, when you started to try to sell it, no-one wants to buy. Sure every now and then you might get a great referral but your business just isn’t growing at the rate you had hoped or even projected it would.
Your slogan is awesome, your branding looks great, people are buying from your competitors so why the hell aren’t there a flood of prospects coming through your door.
The answer is probably that you’ve been using the Fingers Crossed Marketing method. So, what is this method we speak of? It’s throwing or even very diligently putting together your branding, tag line, slogan or messages based on what you do and how awesome you are at it without actually creating a marketing campaign or ads that create massive desire in your perfect prospect and future clients.
You could keep doing what you are currently doing, like building your brand awareness (works for Coca Cola and Maccas doesn’t it) and putting ads up on Facebook or in the local school newsletter?
Or you could really get to know your prospects and create a marketing message for all of your ads, emails and communication that creates massive desire.
How do we throw away the “Finger’s Crossed Marketing Method” and do marketing that generates real and solid sales enquiries from people who know you have something to sell them?
A mentor of mine taught me that our largest competitor is not actually the business down the road or the other guy online who has a cool website but is actually your prospects inaction.
Did you get that?
INACTION is the thing that you are competing against. How do you get someone to get off their bum, pick up the phone and book an appointment with you?
I’ll give you the heads up right here, it’s not how great your logo is, your company name or even how professional your website looks.
Honestly, as soon as I heard him say that, my mind popped and my income skyrocketed (as soon as I put this new info into action)!
It was no longer about staying in front of my competitors (because I always wanted to be bigger, better, stronger and faster), it is all about creating so much desire that my prospects wanted to book in a consult with me and then become a client.
Do I have your permission to be completely straight with you?
I’ll take the fact that you are reading on further as a yes.
You could keep doing what you are doing and have slight to no growth with new clients all the while spending a fortune on expensive ads online (I know I few people who still think radio advertising is a great idea for small business too).
But, I don’t think you are in business to waste a small fortune on ads and marketing campaign that doesn’t work. Do you really want to stay where you are in your business or do you have dreams to create a pretty decent income for yourself?
I know what it’s like because it used to be like this for me too.
You see other less smart business people driving around in beautiful cars and living in great homes looking happy and wonder what the hell they are doing that you are missing and not doing.
Keep doing what you are doing and you’ll never get that nice car and home.
OR
You could really take the time to research your “perfect and ideal” client, find out what problems they are coping with and then create a brilliant marketing message that really speaks to them (throw away the tag line that you thought was great). You then see a flood of new enquiries coming in. IF and thats a capital if for a reason, you do the research and create a campaign that delivers a promise that has integrity.
I know I’ve written this in a really basic and simplistic way and it can be a lot harder than it looks to empty your head of what we think we do or sell so that we can create a message that speaks to our prospects and delivers the outcome or solution to a problem they have.
In other words, if you can create a message that explains your prospects problem better than they can articulate it themselves you will have a consistent stream of new prospects coming into your business month in month out.
A question I love asking people is….. What would 30 to 80 new enquiries coming into your business month in month out do for your sales? I bet you would be adding new clients, increasing revenue (and ultimately profit) so that you can make the money you dreamt of and live the live of a successful business owner.
Throw out the fingers crossed marketing method and you can do just that.