As a business coach, I will sometimes start with a client who is either feast or famine but rarely has consistent work. This can come about due to industry situations but more often is due to how the marketing is done. One large part of my business coaching is helping clients get their marketing and sales on track.
Marketing Strategies
Market Different Services
One client I worked with was a seasonal business and whilst summer was always great for him (feast) often his winters were dead. We determined he did, in fact, offer other services which were non-seasonal (so could be easily done in winter) so we built a marketing plan for the 12 months of the year, with focus on a different service or product every two months. His core service was always being marketed, but the focus services then had him busier in those traditional dead months. A seasonal business can be anything from tax agents and bookkeepers through to lawn mowing and pool services. If you take control of your marketing, then you can even out your workflows better and have a strong business all year round.
Market All the Time
One client came to me complaining of having a ‘roller coaster business’. She marketed when it was quiet, got busy and then stopped marketing. She completed the work, got quiet again …. and so goes the roller coaster ride. It was stressful; super busy at some times and dead as a doornail at other times. Her marketing budget was all over the place too; often paying for marketing when things were quiet and cash flow not great. This is a simple concept, market all year round. Don’t wait to get quiet, put in place marketing that occurs all the time. Do your networking when you are busy, continue your Adword campaigns when you are busy (although you might turn it down a tad if too busy) and generally have a plan that continues whether you are focussed on it or not.
Get things done in advance
As an avid blogger, I am always blogging (one of the many strategies that has me on Page 1 of Google) but what I do is get ahead with my content. For my blogs, every Monday I write 2 or 3 and but we only post 1 a week. This means I am gradually getting further and further ahead. If it comes a Monday I am flat out OR am having the day off or on leave, that’s fine because I have built up heaps of stock to allow us to still continue posting. I do the same with my social media content; building up libraries of content, so that the posting of it is easy, consistent and regular; whether I’m working on my marketing this week or not.
Get help
When it comes to writing blogs, creating social media content or simply posting things, it pays to get help to keep this going. If you have an assistant who can post regularly (or even use Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule) then that is one less thing you have to focus on. Some social media companies will actually do your social media for you, including content creation. Others require you create the content. Whatever be the case, having excellent content to post is critical, as is having someone who can consistently post for you.
Strategy, Consistency & Constantly
In marketing, simply put, you need to have a strategy. Often working with a professional to determine the game plan will be critical. Who are you marketing to? What is your message? Are you approaching it in the right manner? Have you got a marketing budget in place? Once you have the plan and strategy in place, then it comes down to consistency of constantly marketing. Random hit and miss marketing doesn’t work. Flooding the market one week and then being absent for the next 3 weeks does not work. Putting it off till “tomorrow” definitely does not work.
I understand everyone is busy these days and with people being bombarded at every point with marketing, you need a plan, you need help and you need to be consistent in both your message and your delivery. If you need assistance with marketing strategies, plans or getting started, please contact me and I’d be happy to talk to you. I also work with clients to ensure their sales conversion is optimum; as otherwise, there is no point having awesome marketing that generates heaps of opportunities but we are unable to convert these opportunities into paying customers. Marketing and sales is a two-part process to success.
