Why You Need the One Week Marketing Plan
There’s a rock in my pool room with the word “Patience” carved into it. I think my sensei gave it to me, or it could have been my wife, or my neighbor . . . apparently there’s a long list of people who feel this is something I need to work on.
If truth be told, I don’t think I’m alone. I imagine there’s lots of stuff you would do, if only it was simpler. Me too.
Unfortunately, simple answers usually only exist for simple problems. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I find that the more challenging the problem, the more we have to think “deep into the game,” as the chess masters say.
For example, let’s take the topic of getting more new clients.
On the surface the answer should be simple: Just ask them.
“Hey you. I realize we’ve never met, and you don’t know me, but wanna buy my stuff?”
Okay, perhaps we say it a bit more elegantly, but haven’t you been guilty of that? I know I have.
It’s what’s called selling to strangers.
Does it work? Sure—if you’re willing to talk to enough people. It sort of reminds me of my strategy in the ’70s of going up to women in the disco and asking them to go out with me.
Did it work? Sure. All right . . . occasionally. But what about the quality, you ask? Well . . . that was a bit suspect.
The problem is that if our strategy is basically asking strangers to do business with us, not only do we get a lot of rejection, but we also have no filter on the types of clients we eventually wind up with.
Granted, if you have no clients, the idea of having any clients, regardless of how bad, sounds good. But I think it’s important to remember that the goal is to have both quality and quantity.
So how do we accomplish this?
The key is having a system to follow. I don’t know about you, but when I have a plan, when I know what the next steps are, then I’m much more likely to stay the course. I’ll see something through to the end. Conversely, when I’ve only figured out one step in the process, then I’m very likely to give up (or get distracted) after I do just that one thing.
So if your marketing effort has been filled with good intentions but little tangible results, I’ve got something for you. It’s called the One Week Marketing Plan, and over the next five days we’re going to work together to eliminate the need for you to chase after clients once and for all.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the success of any company depends upon having a consistent flow of new prospective clients. Unfortunately, far too many businesses rely solely on their existing clients and referrals as their primary methods for getting new business. While this may prove to be a successful strategy in the short term, it invariably leads to the “feast or famine” roller coaster that so many businesses experience.
Here’s what I believe.
1. Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive, time-consuming, or confusing.
2. You can have a highly effective marketing system up and running, doing what it’s supposed to be doing in a week.
3. The key is to focus on a system rather than a series of unconnected activities.
4. Ultimately, successful marketing is all about developing relationships first and selling things second.
5. Anyone can do this.
This book will show you precisely how to set up your marketing system. The key is to follow the steps. Don’t worry about step #4 until you’ve finished step #1. It would seem obvious, but many people fall into this trap.
The bottom line is that if you do what I tell you to do, you will never again have to worry about where your next client is coming from.
I realize that’s a rather bold statement, so who am I to make that claim?
In many ways I’m not terribly different from you. For years I struggled with those feast-or-famine business cycles and wondered if there would ever come a time when I could stop chasing after clients and have them seek me out.
Looking back twenty years ago to when I first started my own business, I’ll be the first to admit that the transition from corporate life to entrepreneurship was not easy.
One of the things that took me by surprise (although it shouldn’t have) was that while I had a relatively impressive résumé with Pepsi and Kraft Foods, I discovered that I really didn’t have a large network of contacts. Pretty much everyone I knew worked where I had worked. Thus, it wasn’t long before I had lapped the track more than a few times hitting up my meager list of contacts for leads and referrals.
Like most people, I heard that networking events were a good way to meet prospective clients, so I joined a few groups, went to Chamber of Commerce meetings, and even tested a couple of Rotary groups. The problem was that I’m just not real good at “meet and mingle” events, so I never got much out of them. Most everyone I met said they got a lot of business from these things, but for some reason these types of events never worked for me—I found myself falling into that trap of hanging out with the few people I already knew.
I was getting a bit desperate when I borrowed an old cassette program from my cousin Jerry. It was Dan Kennedy’s Magnetic Marketing, and it was my introduction to what’s referred to as direct-response marketing. Simply put, this is marketing in which you attract new prospects by offering them something for free and then follow up with ongoing messages to build trust and convert them into paying clients. It’s a type of marketing in which you can immediately track your results, so you don’t waste your valuable marketing dollars.
To be honest, I first resisted direct-response marketing because the examples I read about focused on restaurant owners and plumbers. I thought that my clients were different—they’re too sophisticated for this type of marketing.
But I really liked the idea of using free information to get prospects to raise their hands, and then using a planned drip-marketing sequence to build credibility and eventually turn these prospects into customers and clients. I figured that I really didn’t have anything to lose, so I modified what I learned to focus on my niche, which was consultants and others who offer valuable advice and services.
Anyway, to make a long story short, it worked. Really well, as a matter of fact. I went from making $45,000 to $97,000 the following year. For someone like me, who had $1,800 in my checking account, that was a huge leap forward.
And it got better.
I kept experimenting with ideas; some didn’t work—but a lot of them did, and in two years my business was up to around $250,000. That was in 2002, and as you may recall, this was when the Internet really started to take off. All of a sudden websites became a lot easier (and cheaper) to create. Now there were these programs called autoresponders that enabled someone like me (who had absolutely no technical skills whatsoever) to automate almost the entire marketing system.
My income increased by 50%. And then it did it again.
I’ll admit this was pretty great. Instead of having to go out and try to strike up conversations with strangers at networking events, I literally had a waiting list of clients. Which meant that I could raise my fees, and even more importantly, choose whom I wanted to work with.
Anyway, that was my life for the next three years, and it was great.
But things change, and in my case the change came in the form of an international management consulting firm that was going through a tough patch. Surprisingly, for a billion-dollar firm, they didn’t really do any marketing. Virtually all of their business came from referrals and repeat assignments.
This worked fine until a number of their long-term clients didn’t renew their contracts and the referrals started to dry up. Then they started to get worried about how they were going to fill their pipeline back up with new business.
One of their senior partners read an article I wrote about my marketing method, liked my non-hard-selling approach, and asked me to fly up to New York to meet with him and some of the other partners.
That conversation led to a five-year engagement in which I trained 275 of the 350 partners on what we’re going to be covering over the next five days.
Did it work? Obviously I wouldn’t be telling you this story if the answer was “no,” and to be totally honest, the success they achieved was mostly due to their willingness to implement what I taught and embrace new ideas and approaches.
That’s when word got out about me.
It was a pretty heady period of time. But there was a price.
A lot of my work was in Europe. In the beginning it was terribly glamorous, and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. But it does wear on you. The eleventh time you go to Düsseldorf, it really becomes little more than just a v-e-r-y long consulting trip.
Plus, while I enjoyed working with some of the world’s top consulting firms, I had a desire to teach and apply this marketing methodology on a more intimate canvas—working with smaller companies who really wanted to make a mark in a particular niche. That’s what got me the most excited.
Which leads me to where I am today. My clients are in consulting, insurance, financial services, real estate, training, and fifteen other niche businesses.
The one thing they all have in common is a desire to have a waiting list of clients without cold calling or hard selling. Probably much like you, they don’t have lots of time or money to invest in marketing, but they have a strong desire to attract more consistent streams of new clients.
In the coming chapters, I’ll help you identify your most hyper-responsive niche market and show you how to get them to “raise their hands” and express an initial interest in who you are and what you offer. Then I’ll show you how to convert them from idle prospects into paying clients through a series of automated messages. If you’re not a writer, don’t worry—I’ll provide you with templates that will make this whole process easy to implement.
As these prospects enter your “drip communication” system, you will begin to build a relationship with them. They’ll feel as if they know you, even if you have never met face-to-face.
Sales trainer Greta Schulz, who attracts new clients using free online videos, says it’s very typical for them to tell her when they meet for the first time, “‘I feel like I already know you.’ They wind up quoting things I’ve said in my videos.”
Attorney Brian Mittman, who uses this type of marketing system at thedisabilityguide.com, says it helps him attract clients for his disability practice who have a deeper level of understanding about the claims process and thus make better clients: “I now have a person who didn’t rush to get an attorney like everybody else. They’ve read the information I offer, and they’re asking me whether I might be interested in their case.”
That’s really what the One Week Marketing Plan is about: gaining visibility in your niche market, educating people about the problems you solve, and having clients call you about how you can help them.
It’s worked for me, it’s worked for my small business clients, and it’s even worked for a billion-dollar consulting firm. Now it’s time to let it work for you.
Here’s our agenda for the next five days:
DAY ONE: You’ll determine which niche market to focus on. The key to attracting lots of new clients is to have a marketing message that speaks directly to a specific group. I’ll show you precisely how to identify the most responsive niche market and how to choose if you have more than one.
DAY TWO: I’ll show you how to create a compelling free offer that will motivate prospective clients to request it. This offer is the first step in the client attraction process, and I’ll provide you with a comprehensive template for creating one of your own in a single day.
DAY THREE: You’ll develop a simple one-page website that promotes your free offer and grabs names for your email list. Yes, I realize that technology can sometimes be a stumbling block, but I don’t want you to worry about that. All you need to do on Day Three is write the copy for the web page. I’ll show you exactly who to contact to get your site up and running for just a few dollars. As of this writing I have 65 websites, each one making a free offer and attracting new prospects, and I can barely spell “HTML.” Trust me, if I can do this, so can you. I’ll walk you through all the steps.
DAY FOUR: You will write five to seven drip-marketing messages (based on templates I provide) that will automatically be delivered to your prospects after they have requested your free offer. These messages play the dual role of building the relationship of trust and converting prospects into paying clients.
DAY FIVE: Now comes the fun part—driving traffic to your website and getting more new clients. Today you’ll write ads (again using the templates I’ll provide) and start running them on Google, Bing, Facebook, or LinkedIn. All you need is an advertising budget of $50–$100 and you’re up and running. By the end of the day, you’ll have targeted leads coming to your website.
Remember that while the goal is to have your campaign up and running in one week, if it takes a bit longer, that’s not a problem. Just make sure you don’t let inertia place its insidious hold on you. By the way, if you don’t want to personally do any of the work I cover, I’ll show you how to outsource it. Just see Appendix A for the least expensive, most reliable ways to find other people to do it for you.
I’m also going to show you how to use SEO, social media, video marketing, publicity, and joint ventures as tools to drive more people to your website and request your free offer.
One other note: Procrastination can periodically rear its ugly head, and there will be days, or at least parts of days, when you will have some resistance to the task at hand. Since everyone runs into this problem at one time or another, I’ve created Appendix C, “The Reluctant Marketer’s Toolkit,” and included some exercises that will help you move through whatever is momentarily keeping you from your goal of implementing your client attraction system.
Ready to get started? Let’s begin.