Many small business owners say they HATE to do marketing. But maybe they say that because they think marketing is sleazy? Marketing is not only essential it is NOT sleazy when it’s done in the right way. Marketing content is how you share your expertise. When prospects, clients and customers see you as an expert, they of course want to consult with you. Everyone always wants experts to provide them with the BEST solutions to their problems, right? Okay then…let’s look at an analogy about marketing and the time investment you lovingly and willingly make with your children.
Marketing is like spending time with your children. When you stay active, they feel loved and you feel complete. They are the joy in your life because they are SO precious. You can’t explain WHY you love spending time with your children AND your spouse. You simply love to spend time with them.
There is no substitute for your presence with your children and your spouse. Sure, your spouse’s connection with your children makes a huge difference. However, the love of one parent is no replacement for the love of the other. In other words, when you are missing from your family’s presence, there is only one you. Nothing can substitute you. They simply want you AND your spouse to be with them.
Your customers and clients are like your children and family. They cherish you, adore you and NEED to hear from you. They see you as an expert they trust.
You Share Your Expertise Through Marketing
When you come home your children and your spouse feel ecstatic to see you. They’ve missed you while you were away working, even if you work from home. When you give them dedicated time and show them your genuine caring, they want more of your time. It’s just human nature.
Think of your clients like your business children or business family, sort of. They want to hear from you. It’s like in the olden days when people had pen pals. You are their pen pal and they LOVE getting mail containing content talking about what’s important to them. What’s important to them needs to be important to you.
Marketing is an important part of creating, sustaining and maintaining your relationship with your clients and customers. So instead of looking at marketing like it’s a wasted time investment, see it as a way to show you genuinely care about helping your fans. After all, your clients and customers ARE your greatest business fans.
Focus on Achieving Your Business Goals
Marketing is a vital step in helping you achieve your business goals. It can be a movement of sorts. For example, are you in the “helping” profession? If so, you want people to know you are here for them. That includes sharing wisdom that helps them solve their problems and overcome their challenges. You “movement” is “getting help to live your dreams is a good thing in which to be involved.”
When you focus on loving, adoring, cherishing your clients and customers and the opportunity that comes with being able to help someone, consider marketing to be a lifeline to them. The emails you send, the blog posts you write, the content you write in general (or have ghostwritten for you) all helps them feel safer, like they are not alone. Did you ever consider this viewpoint? Well, it’s the way I see things. Your content is like a life preserver you throw to them to let them know they have a friend who is there for them.
Maximize Your Presence by Regularly Marketing
We seem to be drowning generally in too much information. However, when you think of your prospects, customers and clients like friends who heavily rely on your content to help them solve their problems, you can’t share enough information with them, Once they’ve identified with you as their hero for your topic specialty, they need to keep hearing from you.
Don’t Make All Your Marketing About Selling
The majority of your marketing needs to be caring content. This includes problem solving tips. When you send a letter that contains tips, strategies and secrets to improving a chronic problem, challenge or struggle for your clients, your fans see you as a friend. And, that’s an important goal for a small business owner. The more you share content that shows you are there for someone, interested in helping them feel important and significant, the more they stay your loyal business friend, too.
Remember The Research Showing Basic Reasons Clients and Customers Buy?
The human brain actually contains 4 basic ways of viewing life. Using these 4 basic views and a blend of these views, we make decisions about our situations and relationships. To recap, the 4 main brain views about life are:
- Accuracy
- Efficiency
- Get favorable attention for contributing/performing
- Be cooperative and accepted for who you are
When you market and nurture the minds of your readers, encouraging them with ways they can improve the quality of their lives, remember to address the most appropriate viewpoints for your target market. Doing so, you write the least amount of content for the greatest return of your marketing efforts.
Looking at the 4 brain views above, write your important marketing life line message to your niche and subniches speaking their language. In other words, deliver your message in the way they want it. Why? This is what makes the most sense to them. When your words make sense, you show you are “on the same page” as them.
“Like attracts like” is a common phrase to understand belief systems. If you hate to do marketing, you are actually repelling people from your business. If you complain about how hard marketing is and that you hate doing it, you increase the effort you need to apply toward marketing. It costs you more money to keep saying you hate doing marketing or you hate having to pay someone to do marketing for you because you are also saying, subconsciously, you do not like attracting people who need your business solution. So stop doing that and instead see marketing for what it is.
You are like a lifeguard at a swimming pool to those drowning in worry, confusion, panic, struggle. They WANT to hear how you can help. But make your marketing be more about how you can help than how much it will cost people to get your help. Adopting this mindset will help you enjoy doing business and marketing more than if you simply keep doing what you are currently doing…insisting that you hate doing marketing!
Questions or comments about this blog post? Please contact me and let’s chat! Call (408) 992-5529 or email me at [email protected]