Wednesday, 31 August 2011 14:57
Deciding on overall marketing strategies are vital, of course.
Do you offer individual coaching or offer packaged programs? Do you emphasize social media over teleclasses? And do you go after individual clients over companies? But when it comes to day-to-day marketing decisions, tactics are what count.
Let's imagine a marketing scenario where you're the hero.
You chose the strategy of speaking to professional groups. One of your associates also decides on the same strategy and you go about it in similar ways. You both contact organizations, send materials, follow up, get booked for talks and give a number of talks over a few months.
But you've studied the finer points of the tactics of marketing with speeches and your associate hasn't. Your speaking strategy emerges with twenty ideal new clients while your friend gets only three or four, ultimately deciding that speaking is not a profitable marketing strategy.
But you know differently, as you implement several tactics that your associate didn't even consider. Here are just a few of them:
1. You contact organizations by phone to make sure you send your materials to the right person and pre-determine if they even use speakers at their events. Your associate sends blind emails to organizations. You got requests for more information from qualified groups, they got very few.
2. You asked if they'd like information on your talk by email or by snail mail and sent what they requested. Your associate didn't even ask. If there was a nibble, they immediately sent their information out by email.
3. You promoted one talk in your materials and included a detailed write-up about your topic and a complete bio that they could use in their promotion. Your associate sent a list of several talks to choose from with few details. They included other information but not much that could be used in promotion.
4. When you followed up you used the phone and didn't try to sell. You just asked questions, found out more about the organization and focused on developing a relationship. Your associate sent email follow-ups several times talking only about how great his talks were.
5. When you prepared the talk, you put together very focused slides with more graphics to highlight key points and not too many words. Your associate put together about four times the slides, mostly with bullet-pointed lists.
6. When you gave the talk, at the end, you offered more information in the form of an article. You held up a copy of the article and asked for a show of hands from those who wanted a copy. Then you collected business cards from about 80% of the audience. Your associate mentioned an article as an afterthought and simply asked people to email him if they'd like a copy. He didn't collect cards and got less than 10% of the audience requesting his article.
7. Finally, at the end of the talk, you offered a complimentary Strategy Session to those who were ready to produce results at a higher level and got about 25% of the audience to request a session. His associate never even considered offering a strategy session.
8. After the talk you emailed your article and invited them to join your e-list. You followed up with those who requested strategy sessions and sent a pre-session questionnaire to prepare them for the meeting. Your associate waited for the phone to ring.
9. You earned $250,000 from your speaking strategy. Your friend generated about $30,000.
So, yes, strategy is important, but tactics rule!