Searching for the secret to marketing success? Actually, the answer isn’t a secret, it just looks like too much work to most people. The key to marketing success is:
Most people fail at marketing because they don’t have enough faith in their plan to stick with it to the end.They’ll half-heartedly try something once or twice and then discard the marketing tool as ineffective if they don’t see results immediately.
You have to consistently market over a period of time, usually years, to see the results. Consumers are constantly bombarded with advertising messages. It takes time to penetrate the clutter so that your message is noticed. Once you are noticed, the prospect needs time to learn to respect your expertise and judgment.
What is the best marketing tool? There is no one perfect marketing tool (although we think newsletters come awfully close). One person can use a marketing tool quite successfully, while another person has no success at all with it.
There does seem to be a trend away from marketing tools like cold calls and sales calls. Not only are these methods expensive, but they are also meeting with increasing resistance from consumers who resent intrusions on their time.
The trend is towards marketing tools that, over a period of time, allow you to display your competence to prospects. Blatant sales pitches are less frequently used – educating clients is the way to gain their trust and confidence.
Wondering how much you should spend on marketing? The real question is how much you want to increase the size of your practice. Marketing is not an expense, it is an investment in the future of your business. But like most investments, you can’t expect an immediate return. The payback comes over a period of years, not weeks or months. Marketing is something you must do on an ongoing basis to ensure the long-term viability of your practice.
Successful marketing is hard work. You need a carefully formulated marketing plan that utilizes several marketing tools over a long period of time. You have to have enough faith in that marketing plan to continue executing the plan even though you may not see results for years. That’s why persistence is the answer to marketing success – without it, you’ll give up long before your marketing efforts pay off.