The truth is some marketing strategies don’t make sense. Here are 3 principles you should base your marketing on if you want leads to say “Yes I do” to you.
Here’s a basic conversation most entrepreneurs have with their new subscribers/leads;
You: Will you marry me?
Subscriber: Huh?
You: *Looking deep into her eyes like she means more to you than the whole world* I said, will you marry me?
Subscriber: But I just met you.
You: Yes I know. But love conquers all…even first dates. I just want you to marry me.
Subscriber: Okay that’s it! I’ve had enough *she lets go of your hand, grabs her bag and walks out*
You: *you get up in disappointment, then spot the huge bill the waiter just left you* Oh crap! Did I spend that much? But she hasn’t even eaten!
You know what this is right?
You spend so much on a marketing campaign and then for every new lead you get, the first thing you ask is for them to purchase your $1,000 consulting service immediately.
No free giveaway…
No value packed autoresponder emails…
No free 15 minutes consultation…
And not even a welcome email introducing who you are.
Wow! And you want her to marry you immediately? You’ve got some guts.
This happens every time, and not just with professionals who sell high end services. It happens with newbies too.
And the common mistake you’re probably making is this…
You haven’t given them a reason to spend their money on you.
You tell your friends about your service on Facebook, yet the only message you pass across is “hire me now”.
You post in forums about how much of a badass website designer you are, you don’t have a portfolio to show, and yet your call to action is, “contact me to design your website”.
The truth is….
Some Marketing Strategies Don’t Make Sense
And this only applies to people with marketing strategies.
I’m not just referring to the strategies with six figure budgets. I’m also referring to the ones low budgets where the service in question costs just $100.
Both require some form of effort, skill and probably financial investment. But if the process isn’t done right, you’ll burn a lot and get no results.
The problem isn’t not knowing what to do. It’s being ready to do things the right way.
Yes, there’s a right way to market your service business and no, it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. You still need to find out what works for you.
But there are some principles that work, regardless of the industry.
1. Give Them A Reason To Listen To You
Why should anyone spend 2 minutes of their time reading about your service? Really, we all have better things to do.
While you can get someone to fall in love with you on a first date, for sensible people, marriage is still out of the question. You both would still need to know more about each other. The same goes for your potential clients.
Yes, they may love the way you describe yourself, but they still need to know more about you, especially when you don’t have a proven track record that they know of.
So what do you do?
Show them a portfolio. Even if you’ve never had a client before, you’ve probably done some personal work on your own. If you’re a designer, get all your designs in one place and provide potential clients with a link. If you’re a writer, write the kinds of articles you would write for clients and send them the links.
What if you’re an editor? Check for already published articles online, check errors, show your edits, and send them links.
2. Give Some Value First
Content marketing naturally obeys this rule. Why? Because content in itself is value. When you write a blog post and link immediately to your services page from your by-line, it may be perceived as asking for too much on the first date.
But in reality, it isn’t because you’ve already helped the potential client solve a pending problem in that blog post.
What if you just post on Facebook about your services, what do you do then? If you design, and you feel you’re good at what you do (you probably are), then show your friends some design tricks. What if you’re a Business Growth Consultant? Tell your audience of entrepreneurs how they can experience growth in a particular area of their business.
Why?
Not everyone can implement your solutions on their own. Some would still need you to do it for them. And you can NEVER run out of such people.
How else can you give value?
Develop a free giveaway. This is often referred to as a lead magnet and is a way of making your new audience see you as a leader. What you do here is help your potential clients solve a present problem. But instead of giving it all out completely free, you make them give you their details (oftentimes, their email address) in order to get the solution.
Being that this blog is for people who want to build service businesses online but probably don’t know how, my free giveaway is simply a 20 step blueprint showing you how to get your first few leads online. You can see how this method works here.
It’s less commitment for a first date because all it asks is, “let’s do this again some other time”. And most likely, the answer would be “Yeah, I’d love to”.
3. Don’t Allow Them Forget You…Ever
There’s something called “Top Of Mind Awareness”. This simply means ensuring that whenever your potential client thinks about something related to your service, they remember you first.
For example, as a graphic designer, you want your potential clients to remember you first whenever they think “Oh! I really need a logo for my website”. Or as a human resource consultant, you want to be at the top of their minds whenever they think “My team really pisses me off. They’ve gotten so lazy and I’m confused about what to do with them”.
How do you make this happen?
Show up…every day. Now I don’t mean trying your best to pay visits to the 100 leads on your list every day. That’s not even humanly possible. With email, coupled with the fact that your subscribers are online, you could send a short email every day to your list and in the process, give them one or two simple solutions.
Ben Settle of bensettle.com is an advocate of daily emails. Don’t ask me how he does it, because he just does it. I guess it’s just discipline anyway.
When I first started out as a Freelance writer, I had to write a sample article for my first client. But I was able to put that into a portfolio to show the clients that came afterwards. Now, I have a portfolio of top-notch articles published on authority blogs for new clients who need my writing services.
If you’ve been involved in your field for a while and you want to start getting clients for your services online but don’t know how, check my Work With Me page and reach out via the form. I’d be happy to help you out.
This post was mainly written to help you generate ideas on marketing your services business. As you can see, I gave a bunch of value in this post, and then made my pitch about my services at the end.
Even if you want to do this on Facebook or LinkedIn, remember, value comes before asking the big question which is, “Would you want to marry (hire) me?”
What do you think? How do you market your service business online? Share your experiences in the comments below.
Image credit: www.beliefnet.com/