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Follow This Simple Seven Step Plan to
Market Your Professional Service

You are a professional, not a salesperson.

You enjoy helping people financially with your expertise, but you’ve got a dilemma -- you can’t help them if they don’t know about you and how you can help.

So now you need to learn how to market your business yourself, or to figure out how to outsource your marketing.  Whichever you choose, you have to do a few basics yourself, because you’re the one guiding your business.

Here are the seven simple steps to marketing your professional service:

1. Choose your ideal client.

You need to choose who your ideal client is in order to be able to talk straight to him in your marketing message.  No one is compelled enough to act if your message is general or vague.  If you need help figuring out who your ideal client is, check out this article by Maria Marsala.

2. Walk in your ideal client’s shoes.

Get inside your ideal client’s head.  What does she want?  What is he afraid of?  Write a quick “character sketch” so you can write and talk straight to that person -- or choose a friend you already know who fits the profile so you can imagine you are communicating with them.

The reason you do this is because you are there to serve your client, not the other way around.  When you do that, they are attracted to you.  So empathizing with your client will guide how you communicate with them.

3. Sketch out a marketing map.

Decide what methods you are going to use to reach your ideal client, and map out your action plan.  This does not need to be more than a page long.

A business or marketing coach can really help you jump start this process so you get results faster.  Click on Maria Marsala’s picture on the right if you’re interested in developing a one page plan.  Her help is reasonably priced and should give you great ROI.

4. Craft your marketing message.

It’s not about you!  Focus on your ideal client in all your communication.  They want to know that you understand their problem and how to solve it.

Forget all thoughts of selling.  As a professional, the idea of selling almost certainly makes you nervous.  And “selling” in the traditional sense is counter-productive.

Instead you want to have a conversation with your prospective client.  Focus on listening more than talking, on helping rather than getting, on their needs instead of yours.

Check out some tips in our telephone marketing section to help with this.  Not only will you feel more at ease on the phone, but all your communication will become clear and easy because you’ve clarified your purpose and erased that inner tension that comes from “needing” clients.

5. Get your message out there!

Create your own brochures or postcards with the latest easy-to-use software, or get them done inexpensively, if you are going to communicate with your prospective clients offline.  You will need these when you network in person and to mail for follow up.

Consider using radio, newspaper articles, or other media to get exposure for your business by giving great info. Our friendly PR expert, Annie Jennings, can help you get major media exposure with all her great tips in our educational marketing section.

If you want to use primarily the internet, then you will need to build your own website or have one built for you.  Both are easier than you think.  Join our membership to get our “Go for Google Gold” report on website marketing and how to build your website into a valuable asset.

Whatever you choose to do, get your message out there.  Don’t let fear stop you.  And don’t get stuck in planning to avoid facing the fear of rejection when you actually get your message out.  You will tweak your message and your methods as you go. 

Don’t even think about trying to get it perfect the first time, or even the tenth.  This is a relationship with your prospective and current clients.  You listen, you talk, and you adjust as you go. 

6. Gather your “leads”.

You absolutely must develop a system for gathering the information about the people who contact you.  Otherwise you can’t follow up with them. 

First, make sure your marketing message delivers a clear call to contact you, and then gives them all the ways to do that that you want to make yourself available through.

Put your phone number on every piece, and if you have a website, always drive give them a reason to go to your site. 

Second, request or require full contact info, including phone number, postal address, and email address.  Offer incentives for each of these, such as a free CD, an insightful download, or a free consultation.

Third, decide a central place where you will keep all your lead information.  You can keep it in more than one place.  You may have all the info in your autoresponder for your website, if they’ve given you their email address.  You may gather it in your computer contact system (such as Outlook).  Or the online postcard system may be the easiest place for your to keep your lead info.  (See our postcard marketing section for this.)

Whatever you choose to do, make sure to set up a system and follow it.

7. Follow up until they say “Stop.”

Create 12 to 24 specific marketing messages, at least one a month, to send to your prospective clients.  On average it takes seven to ten “touches” before people act on a marketing message.

You can follow up online or offline.  The most effective results come from using both.

Online followup is easier and cheaper.  You need to do it as part of building asset value in your website (get our “Go for Google Gold” report to learn about that).

Offline methods like using the phone or the mail often make more of an impact.  They hear your voice or get something helpful in their hands from you.  Check out our postcard marketing section for creative direct mail ideas. 

Your prospective clients are busy people.  They have things come up that delay their action.  And your follow up may come just when she or a friend needs you.  Don’t stop following up until he says to.

That’s it!  It really is simple, though not all the steps are easy.  Just break it down into action steps and take them one at a time.  Use our resources here, join us on our radio programs to ask questions, or take our teleseminars with our experts.  We’re glad to help.