My usual answer is ‘I know nothing about marketing’, but that’s misleadingly false.
What I mean is that I don’t know how you should best successfully market your business or yourself. And that I’m not even sure what my next marketing move is going to be.
I’m also hinting that I disagree with most of what I’ve been told by marketing (and sales) experts. So if they do know what they’re talking about, by implication I’m the ignorant one.
What my answer conceals is that I’ve taken an interest in marketing since university days when I engaged with P+G in extended encounters while considering it as a career; and have since attended many marketing courses and seminars, testing numerous strategies with varying degrees of (mostly lack of) success for myself and colleagues.
I reckon most marketing is doomed to fail. Or to put it more kindly, it’s a numbers game with a consistently low score.
Kind associates sometimes tell me I’m good at facilitating, training, coaching, writing, inspiring projects and the like – but no one has ever mentioned an appreciation of my marketing prowess.
And yet… I could fillet my notebooks and bookshelf for consistent and pithy nuggets of advice. I could review what I’ve observed in practice. I could produce tips and hard-won pointers that may prove useful.
Here are a few top-of-my-head chart contenders:
- Most of my sales are from people I know. Posts such as this are the best way I’ve found of reminding them of my existence.
- Most of the rest are the result of recommendations from connectors within my networks.
- There have also been occasional sales ‘just like that’ from buyers watching me present at conferences or similar events.
- Conversely I’ve also invested significantly in events and trade shows that produced zilch.
- There’s definitely a numbers game going on – if you make more noise, more calls and more effort, you get more meetings and more sales.
- Within the numbers game you can’t predict who it will be that turns up trumps – it really is stats and probabilities.
- Credibility seems important – track record with clients, a book, reputation of being good to work with.
- A clear offer seems important too – though opinions on niching and explicitness of process vary.
- The technology changes, but the principles don’t.
- Even if you employ or buy specialist advice and support, you have to make the hard decisions yourself.
- If your choices allow it, it makes sense to aim to market and sell with a view to:
- Bigger ticket items
- Repeat business
- Work you enjoy doing
- Work that will scale
- Making money while you sleep
So what works for you – either as buyer, seller or co-conspirator?
