Duct Tape Marketing

I know the overwhelming majority of sales books out there extol the virtues of listening. And, I guess there is a time and place for that, but here’s my theory.

You know who makes a great client for you. You have a core message that presents your value. You can explain the benefits of doing business with your firm…and, you don’t need to do business with everyone.

What’s the best way to motivate referral sources?

One of the best ways to find out what would motivate a referral source to cough up great referral is also one of the best ways to find out almost anything about your targeted market. Ask them!

You know your prospects need what you sell. You know they want what you sell. Heck, you know that they even sent away for information on your service and requested a quote.

But the fact is you are missing one major piece of the puzzle.

No matter how brilliant your marketing is, how pretty it is, how expensive it is...the only question that is worth addressing is this - Does it sell?

Most businesses focus all of their marketing attention on advertising or lead generation. That's fine, you've got to make the phone ring, but if you don't turn a significant amount of those leads into new clients, then your marketing is little more than an exhausting exercise in grab ass. (sorry about that, my high school football coach used that word when we weren't accomplishing anything - and it seemed to work here.)

You know, the small business owner gets whacked around all day trying please the many forces that plot to take them off course.

Half the time you feel like you are making it up as you go. And that’s a great way to forget why you do what you do and who you are.

One of the most effective ways that I have found to stay on course is to create and use what I call a “Marketing Mantra.”

People today are bombarded by so much information that they have become numb to what feels like advertising or, during political cycles like we are in today, out and out fabrication.

Small business owners should resist the temptation to copy what passes for advertising today and focus on telling the truth. I don’t really mean to imply that companies are lying about what their product or service can do, I just mean that they aren’t giving us any reason to believe in or trust what they have to say.

When it comes to marketing on a shoestring, throw out the textbooks.

Effective marketing - marketing that gets results - can be creative, seemingly radical, surprisingly simple and most important, inexpensive.

Getting results with little or no budget requires a willingness to step out and take some risks. Ready, Fire, Aim is still better than, “I know there’s a gun around here somewhere.”

One of the most powerful driving forces in human nature is competition. The desire to overcome something or some company, the need to win, the cause, can in many cases be more important than the day-to-day work of the company.

If your company and your people are to ever reach some level of greatness, you must identify and focus on beating something, on creating and communicating a reason for being.

You can make the sale. You know your core message. You know your target market inside out, right?

The line between business and life is so blurry and close for the typical small business owner that I think you need to approach goal setting in an untypical fashion. Forget about the silly notion of separating the two. It’s not going to happen. No, what you need to do is find a way to marry the two and be at peace with that.