Get a really good mailing list of potential customers and keep adding to it!
Send emails to prospective customers. Wait for them to buy. That’s it. Blog ended.
If only it were as easy as that. But it’s actually the most difficult thing for many business owners, including me.
Many of us assume that our product or service will sell itself so we spend ages making our websites look great and writing lots of good techie stuff because “content is king”, hoping it’ll attract lots of potential customers.
Of course, we know that’s not the case. And one of the main reasons that any business fails is because they don’t get the message out to enough potential customers. Think about how much time and money traditional businesses spend on marketing and advertising to find customers. You can have the best product in the world, but you’ll fail if you don’t have customers. And the simple point is that you’ll only find customers if you LOOK FOR THEM.
And I’m just as guilty as the rest of you.
It’s only been in the last year that I’ve started to work on growing my list and things have really started to happen. It’s making a huge difference.
And now I really do appreciate that the most important ingredient for a successful business is having lots of potential customers who know about you!
Yes, I know. D’uh. I really should know that. But there I was trundling along in a sort of okay, satisfactory way, when my techie friend started a campaign of nagging this year, to get me to work on my list. “What’s the point” he said “of writing all this really good stuff for your website if it’s only getting a few hundred visitors a month”. So he nagged and nagged me for months and slowly I started to work on that list. Now I get a few thousand visitors to the website a month. So I know it works.
And I’ve only just started this part of my business development in earnest. I’ve spent a lot of time on my product over the years, now I’ve started “taking it to market” properly. I’ve only just started the process and know that the marketing side of the business is just as important as the product itself..
We’re not all born marketers or salesmen and for many of us, the whole process is right out of our comfort zone. And yet it really is one of the easiest things to do because for the most part, it’s simply a case of developing relationships online, whether you’re a carpenter, an accountant, an event organizer or a life coach. And by approaching it in a methodical way and incorporating it into my daily routine, it’s becoming easier.
So how do you do it?
Well there’s no one simple way to do it and every online marketing guru will have different ideas about how you can market your business online. Personally, I think that the important thing is to find 3 or 4 things and do them consistently. Write down a proper marketing programme and apply the same level of attention to it as your website or designing products/services.
It’ll take a bit of time and error before you find what works for you and your business sector, but here are some things that seem to get results for most people:
- Start tweeting regularly.
- Go onto LinkedIn and get involved with a few groups on a regular basis.
- Do a regular newsletter, keep it short and conversational.
- Find some discussion forums for your particular industry and contribute on a regular basis.
- Set up a Facebook page for your business – it’s less formal than a website and should take less time to set up, so easier to get going.
- Subscribe to newsletters/discussion groups run by others. Chances are they’ll subscribe to yours.
- Write a regular blog.
- Do videos about your business and post them on your website/facebook page.
And if you want more ideas or some professional help, there are literally thousands of businesses out there who can help you design and run a campaign. Sign up to a few newsletters and you’ll be swamped by offers of free advice, free books, free guides etc. And that’s before you start paying for anything.
The important thing is to decide what you’re going to do and do it consistently.
Set yourself time every day/week to do specific tasks and do it. Set targets that you monitor regularly to follow your progress. It won’t happen overnight, but if you keep going at it, you’ll start to see results.
I wish I’d done all of this years ago, but at least I’m doing it now and seeing results.
Marie
October, 2014