More Clients - the Online Marketing Newsletter
for Independent Professionals
from Action Plan Marketing
and Robert MiddletonIn This Week's Issue: A marketing plan isn't that complex - it's more like a marketing recipe.
Whipping Up Marketing Recipes
Let me tell you how to get a blank look from Most Independent Professionals. You just ask this one simple question:
"What's your marketing plan?"And the answer goes something like, "Ah, well, I don't really have a plan per se... I'm doing a little bit of networking and working on my web site.. thinking about an eZine."
Please don't be offended. It's not your fault. You're in business to help your clients produce results. You're in business to consult, to coach and to train. Marketing is often an afterthought.
Just the thought of creating a marketing plan puts many people into overwhelm. Projections, market studies, demographics and segmentation are enough to make you queasy.
Me too. So luckily this isn't the kind of plan I'm talking about!
In my marketing world, a marketing plan is more like a "marketing recipe" for one specific marketing activity.
And creating this marketing recipe is the next step you take after you've done some pre-plan brainstorming to generate some basic ideas about how to put this marketing activity into action. (See last week's ezine in my archive.)
What I like about marketing recipes is that, just like cooking recipes, after you've made the recipe once, you can repeat it forever and get exactly the same results.
I have all sorts of marketing recipes I've used over the years: Recipes for networking, for getting speaking engagements, for adding names to my eZine list, for developing an effective online sales letter, for following up with prospects and turning them into clients over the phone.
None of these marketing recipes were great flashes of brilliant inspiration. Far from it. They came out of brainstorming, research and testing. Many of them were adapted from recipes others had used successfully and a few combined recipes from various marketing chefs I know.
So the best place to get good, tested marketing recipes is from books or manuals like the InfoGuru Marketing Manual. You study recipes from more that one source and then carefully create your own recipe that will be palatable for you and your prospects.
And then you try it out. And you refine it a bit. And then you talk to your peers about it. And then you try again. It might take a little while, but with this approach, before you know it, you'll have a delicious marketing recipe that always works - it attracts more clients to your business.
Below I'd like to share with you my basic approach to creating a marketing recipe. After doing my research and getting specific ideas for strategies and tactics, I put it together like this:
Marketing Activity - What marketing activity will you use? You want to focus on just one per recipe such as networking, speaking or teleclasses.Purpose - What do you really hope to accomplish if this marketing activity is successful? Just like you'd imagine a perfect cake, imagine a perfect marketing result.
Intended Results - Other ancillary results. List at least half a dozen or more. The clearer you are about what you want to get, the more likely you'll carry out your plan.
Your Target Market - Who you will approach? Be specific about who your ideal clients are, where they are and how you can get their attention.
Basic Game Plan - This is what you glean from your research. What ingredients (strategy and tactics) will you use and how will you combine them to fit your situation?
Message/Attention - What core marketing message will you use? Every marketing activity starts with an attention-getting message, whether verbal or written. What's yours?
Marketing Materials - What printed or online materials will be needed? Perhaps you'll need a web page or an article or a flyer or a handout as an integral part of your plan.
Heart of Activity - What's the primary or central communication between you and your prospect? What exactly will you say verbally or in writing?
Offer and Call to Action - How and when will you ask for action? What are the actual words you'll either say or write to get people to take the next step?
Follow-Up - How and when will you follow up? You can't leave this out! Follow-up is the bridge between marketing and selling.
Timeline - List of actions with due dates. Carefully think though when you can fit these to-dos onto your calendar.
If you want to actually get results from your marketing, working on developing a marketing recipe like this is what will get you there. Just start with one ingredient at a time and start cooking.
* The last few eZines have focused on some of the ideas from my new Action Plan ToolKit which I'll be rolling out in a few weeks. So keep posted!
* The More Clients Bottom Line: Think of a marketing plan as a marketing recipe that has certain ingredients mixed in a specific way and cooked at a set time and temperature. Use this formula to create and implement any marketing plan.
Resources to help you develop your own plan
The most important resource for any marketing plan are marketing recipes (strategies, tactics) that have a proven track record. You also want to understand the principles of how marketing actually works to persuade prospects to work with you.
Good places to start for most Independent Professionals are the two main products below offered by Action Plan Marketing. They give you the information, resources and support to develop detailed and proven marketing strategies for your business.
The InfoGuru Marketing Manual
This manual will help you develop a complete, workable marketing strategy to attract new clients to your business. Includes detailed information on all the marketing activities that work best to attract clients if you're an Independent Professional plus an online Support Forum to answer any marketing question you might have.
http://www.actionplan.com/infoguru.html
The Web Site ToolKit
This ToolKit provides you absolutely everything you need to create a high quality web site that will establish a solid foundation for all your marketing. It will show you what to put in your site, how to write it, format it and design it for the best possible results. Includes dozens of tools and resources plus samples of web sites you can emulate.
http://www.actionplan.com/wstk.html
Until next week, all the best,
Robert Middleton
ACTION PLAN MARKETING
Cracking the Marketing Code for Independent Professionals~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
210 Riverside Drive
Boulder Creek, CA 95006
831-338-7790© 2005 Robert Middleton, All rights reserved. You are free to use material from the More Clients eZine in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear. The attribution should read:
"By Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. Please visit Robert's web site at http://www.actionplan.com for additional marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional service businesses."
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