by Karen Skidmore | 05,20 | Business Planning, Marketing Articles
I’ve always run my business from my diary. If a meeting or call with a prospect goes into my diary, it happens. Simple.
It’s the same with my important ‘get done’ tasks. If they go into the diary, I treat them as I would a meeting or call with a prospect. I show up and they get done.
And it’s why whenever I plan out a marketing campaign, either for myself or one of my clients, I look for the opportunity of where the live events are. Not stuff like ‘launch date’ or ‘decide on the price’. I mean a live event where you have to show up in person.
For many marketing campaigns, there’s often an event; a workshop, masterclass, webinar or Facebook Live. You can discuss the pros and cons of running these events at different times and days of the week. But until the date is fixed, it difficult to get any real implementation energy behind the campaign.
The real traction starts from the moment when you get a date in your diary … and then start telling people.
Even if your next new product is an online one and you are not intending to be there ‘in person’ with your customers, always create the opportunity to run one, either in the building awareness stage of your marketing or in the selling and conversion part.
Yes, there are plenty of good marketing reasons to do this, including creating higher levels of engagements, but the truth is until a date for a live event where you have to show up is put in your diary, it’s really easy for a project like this to stay in the ‘I’d love to do’ stage.
Let me give you an example.
Yesterday I ran the first round of Pod calls for our new 90 Day Planning Cycle in Momentum. Two of the members were both in the same situation of discussing a new product they are launching in the next 90 Days.
One was a 12 week mastermind programme. The other was opening up a new membership community. There were a lot of details still to be worked out; the product names, onboarding logistics, price, payment plans, etc, etc. Both of them could spend the next 4 weeks working through all this … but we all knew that stuff was going to get in the way if there wasn’t a real ‘I’m showing up’ date in the diary to work towards.
Both of them had young children at home. Yup, not only are they both running a busy business but also home schooling two children each. The reality was that there was always going to be more pressing things that could potentially distract them, making it easy for them both to push milestones back.
Start from where you are and don’t try to work out all the details BEFORE you begin taking real action.
And, in both of these cases, the ignition needed to kick start both these projects was getting dates in the diary of when to run the live support sessions. Not think about doing a survey and asking their list when would be a good time to. But making a decision for what’s right for them, based on their current commitments.
If you are short on time, there are always things to distract you that feel far more urgent and important at the time than your new marketing campaign for your new programme, membership community or product.
If there’s no commitment from anyone else to show up on that day, then there’s a very good chance you’ll let yourself off the hook. And this is one of the BIG reasons why so many new product projects just don’t happen in so many businesses.
They stay in the ‘I’d love to do’ stage.
Once the dates are in the diary, making decisions about product names, pricing, processes … well, they are going to happen. The energy will HAVE to flow towards this project of yours. You’ll have to no choice but to be committed to the dates you’ve put in your diary to show at an event.
So I’d love to know what date you are going to put in your diary.
If you’ve got a marketing campaign or new product idea that’s been stalling over the past weeks, what event can you decide to run to ignite you into action?
Until next time, do less, be more and play bigger.
by Karen Skidmore | 03,20 | Marketing Articles, True Profit
We are about to go through one of the most intensely disruptive phases of how we do business. As I write this, countries across the globe have shut their borders and here in the UK, we are realistic about what’s going to happen over the coming days.
With the prospect of no longer being able to travel, many of my clients who deliver in-person training, coaching, therapy and support are being faced with cancellations and postponements of work with no real idea on when and how it’s going to happen. I have my own in-person training day coming up soon so I’m not so glib to know we simply shrug our shoulders and wait patiently for the bookings to return. This health crisis we are faced with is going to affect our businesses and some more than others.
However, this is also a huge opportunity to stretch your thinking and evaluate how you may still deliver your programmes and services, despite not being in the room with them.
When I first started up my coaching business back in 2004, it was a mix of phone coaching and face to face. At first, I believed that face to face was more powerful and I would charge less for phone call coaching. My thinking was that because I wasn’t ‘there’ for them, being on the phone somehow diminished my impact and expertise in being able to help them. I was, of course, challenged by my coach at the time (because that’s what a good coach does, yes?!) and I was able to see that the choice of delivery should never be an excuse for reducing prices. And, in fact, virtual can often be seen as a premium option.
When I teach my principles of True Profit™ Business, I actively encourage my clients to create and design a business model that fuels them. So often the need for in-person work comes up high for many spiritual, intuitive and introverted coaches, therapists and trainers. But I also see a lot of people use their fear of using technology as an excuse not to explore virtual work; especially when their industry norms are to be in the same room as their clients. Professionals such as nutritional therapists, counsellors and image consultants often tell me that their clients would expect to come and see them in person, so doing virtual sessions just wouldn’t work. But is that really the case? Or because everyone else does it this way, so you should too?
I get that for some of you who physically treat your clients, that virtual work will be far more challenging, if not impossible. But for many of you, these next few weeks could be a great opportunity to challenge your norm and explore the work that you do with your clients via platforms such as Zoom.
And just because webinars are now seen as something free to offer as a lead generation marketing tool, this does not mean you can’t charge for them. But only if you do the thinking and create the value through the experience, support and your expertise.
Going virtual doesn’t mean you need to drop your prices.
And here’s why.
- Your expertise does not diminish because of a change of platform. Just because you are not in the room with them, you don’t suddenly know less or lose a qualification.
- The experience changes but not the value. If a one day training workshop is reduced to a 90 minute webinar, yes I get that your client may expect a discount because they may be thinking about the time it takes you to deliver. Now it’s less, then they pay less. So it’s up to you to really think about the support before and after the virtual session. What can you offer to make the session more experiential? Printed workbooks sent out in the post before the event or prep work to be done before people show up to the session are two great add-ons that can be adapted from your in-person agenda. So you may charge less than a one day training but not proportionally so.
- Adding value through on-going support. Your clients need help implementing after your session so you have groups available on Facebook and LinkedIn as well as platforms such as Mighty Networks and Slack. For intimate, small groups it could even be a simple WhatsApp group as long as everyone is OK with sharing their mobile phone numbers.
- Recordings and playback. One of the huge benefits of virtual training and support is being able to record and provide your clients with the audio or video file after the event. Keep it simple to begin with. You don’t need to overcomplicate the process by signing up for big digital course platforms; share files on Dropbox or upload onto a private video hosting sites such as Vimeo.
- The convenience of availability. Don’t let the fact that you no longer have to pay for venue or catering costs reduce your pricing. The convenience to your clients means that they no longer have to travel and they have more time back in their day so that is a huge value to them. Never assume your clients are going to see this so it is up to you to highlight this in your proposition.
We are going to be experiencing some dramatic and chaotic times over the coming weeks and months and this is your opportunity to disrupt your current thinking and explore how you may continue to serve your clients, and avoid a high level of cancellations.
Yes, delivering your services and programmes virtually will need you to learn new skills and adapt your style. But for those of you who do this and learn how to deliver powerful virtual training, you are going to be in high demand in the very near future, especially so for those of you who support your clients’ health, mental and spiritual well being.
Now is the time that your clients need you more than ever.
Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
by Karen Skidmore | 03,20 | Marketing Articles
Why is it that some people seem to just love picking up the phone. They relish the thought of speaking to people. They get excited by the prospect of prospecting. But, if you like most people who run their own business, making sales calls, reaching out to potential clients and following up on your proposals is usually NOT something you like to do. Yes, you know on a logical level that this is important, but you’ll do anything to avoid the action of doing it.
And it doesn’t matter how many templates, scripts or systems you download or try out, even with the seemingly right tools to get on with prospecting, why do you avoid doing the work?
Empty the dishwasher. Iron your socks. There are so many other important jobs that conveniently get added to your to-do list so you find yourself distracted enough to not have the time to prospect. Not enough time. Such a convenient excuse … but how is it harming your business?
What if it wasn’t the practical doing bit of prospecting that you’re struggling with? What if was the way you feeling into prospecting that was holding you back? If you were able to design and create your own rituals that allowed you to feel energetically ready for prospecting, would this make a difference? First, let’s clear on what I mean by prospecting.
What is prospecting?
Prospecting isn’t cold calling. It isn’t buying a database or sending blanket emails to any email address you can get your hands on. It isn’t buying space at an exhibition and handing out leaflets to everyone who walks past your stand.
Prospecting is the simple act of initiating or following up on a conversation with someone who you think maybe an ideal client. You may have met them before at an event. You may have even had a conversation with them in the past. They may also be someone you’ve never conversed with but you’re connected to on LinkedIn or Facebook. And they can definitely be someone you worked with before in the past or a friend or even your next-door neighbour.
My point is that anyone you feel may fit your ideal client avatar is someone you can potentially initiate a conversation about the work that you do and the services that you offer. And in this world of social media noise and trying to be visible, us small business owners and entrepreneurs have the potential of cutting through that with the simple process of reaching out to one person at a time.
You can not kid yourself that working on your marketing funnels or content or brand is enough to attract enough clients. If you are still waiting to be discovered or hoping to get to the stage of having a waiting list for your services and programmes, you simply can’t afford to wait for people to approach you. You have to spend some of your time – even if it’s just an hour a week! – to reach out to and follow up and start conversations with potential clients.
As a British person, I know how up-tight our Britishness can get us. We are historically a very polite nation who would apologise for having our foot stepped on and wait patiently in queues, with only the occasional silent tut. This Britishness can really pull a lot of people back from the idea of prospecting. Just think of the reaction you may have had when you read that a friend or a next-door neighbour could be a prospect 😉
There’s a lot of fear that comes up with prospecting, too. I get that. Your mind monkeys can get really noisy every time you even think about the idea of initiating a conversation with someone you may want to sell to.
Combine this fear with British politeness and you can find all sorts of things flying through your head …
‘I would hate to be a bother. What if I interrupt a meeting or they are in the middle of something when I called them?’
Would they really pick up the phone if they were in the middle of something important? And what if they were delighted to hear from you?
‘I hate getting emails that are trying to sell me something. I’m sure my potential clients would feel the same if I sent them all these emails that I’ve been told I have to send out.’
If you hate the emails you get that are trying to sell you something, it’s usually because you are NOT interested in what they are selling. How many times have you had an email that you’ve been really pleased to get out of the blue that’s saved you money, time or told you about something that has changed your world?
‘Those messages I get on LinkedIn, trying to get me to book a call with them, are really icky.’
Ditto as above. When you get the right message from the right person at the right time, that opportunity to speak with them directly is an amazing opportunity to get your questions answered quickly.
For every mind monkey thought, I will be able to re-frame it for you. But I don’t have the time – nor the inclination TBH! – to be doing that ALL day for you 😉
What I want to share with you today is something far more useful; a list of rituals that you could adopt to help create the right space, energy and environment to ignore the mind monkeys for a short while and make prospecting far more do-able and approachable. And, just to be clear, I’m not a natural prospector either, which is why I know how important creating rituals are in making sure it happens in my business!
What do I mean by rituals?
Most human beings are creatures of habits. Habits such as brushing your teeth in the morning or taking your supplements with your breakfast are often so ingrained that you don’t even have to think consciously about doing them. Other habits such as biting your nails or chewing on a pen can be triggered by nerves or your mind’s way of wanting you to concentrate. Some people want things in a certain way to feel comfortable and relaxed, so will have certain bedtime rituals. And others will be religious in their evening face cleansing rituals.
Rituals have a wonderful power in that they can help prepare you mentally for the task ahead and create an environment and the energy conducive for the activity you need to do.
Think back to how I joked about the dishwasher and ironing of socks being more important than prospecting. If you’re using these tactics, then this is your own way of using a ritual to avoid the task. So what if you used certain rituals to help you transition into the right state and environment for prospecting? What if you create your own habits to raise your energy, which in turn helps increase your confidence?
Here are some ideas for you.
This is by no means an exhaustive list so please write down your own ideas as they come to you. Or even share them in the comments below. I’d love to know what you try.
- Make your own Success Scrapbook and read it through before you start your prospecting. Print out, write out and stick your favourite testimonials, thank you notes and positive comments into a scrapbook so you have them all in one place. It’s really easy to forget about the nice things that are said to you throughout your working week, so keep them all together in one place and use them to remind how bloody brilliant you are before you start reaching out to people.
- Dance wildly in the kitchen. OK, so this may not be your thing but dancing whilst no one watches is a great way of getting any repressed negativity out of your system, as well as making your laugh at yourself. This is one of my favourite ways of rising my own energy.
- Clear your desk. A cluttered desk not only distracts you but can also have a detrimental effect on your clarity of thinking. If you say you like working in chaos and enjoy the creativity of having books and papers everywhere, but you still can’t ‘find the time’ to prospect (or other excuses to this effect), then I challenge you to clear some space and see what difference it makes.
- Make a cup of your favourite brew. Not only do you need to be hydrated to do your best work, the simple act of brewing your favourite tea or coffee also helps create the short time to mentally transition from your previous task to prospecting. The time it takes to boil a kettle, and stay there to watch it boil (that’s important – this ain’t a multi-task moment!), can slow down your breathing, centre your thinking on the task ahead and helps grounds you.
- Mediate. Yup, even just 5 minutes of mediation can slow you down sufficiently to feel more into your power. Laura Coleman of Be Mediation calls mediation your pause button. And this is a great practice and ritual to help calm your Mind Monkeys.
- Decide how you want to show up. I asked this to one my Momentum Pod groups the other week because we were discussing prospecting rituals. Curious, being of service and interested were some of the ideas shared. Imagine if you stepped out of those feelings of doubt and fear (don’t want to interrupt or be a nuisance) and into feelings of opportunity (I wonder who I get to speak to today?). Being conscious about this decision on how to show will have a dramatic effort on the results you get.
- Smug, burn or incense. Many of the clients I work with are what we may call spiritual. They have a strong connection with their intuition, may call themselves empaths and are more often than not introverts. They are often already using rituals such a sage smudging, lighting candles and crystals in their every-day but don’t think to use these rituals to help frame and prepare for their prospecting time. I find the simple act of lighting a candle and striking my singing bowl a really great of bridging myself into prospecting time. It connects me to who I am focusing on and helps me turn down my mind monkeys for that hour. So if this your thing, try it.
What else can you think of that you know could work for you? Music, your working environment, time of day and so many other things will affect your energy and desire to prospect. Using simple rituals like these can have a quick and immediate impact not just on the way you experience prospecting, but on your results too.
It’s all very well having the latest, sure-fire way of getting leads from LinkedIn or the best script or email templates, but if you don’t feel energetically connected with the process, you are going to do anything and everything to avoid the work. Try one or two of these rituals out and let me know how they make a difference to how you embrace your prospecting and what impact you make.
Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
by Karen Skidmore | 03,20 | Marketing Articles
With the set up of each new social media profile, there comes the drive to get noticed. From the elders of Facebook and Twitter through to the new kids on the block of TikTok, you are taught that for them to ‘work’, your content has to be seen. But not all of us are born to be visibility extrovert. Myself included!
Some of you may start your journey into social media by lurking; silently watching, clicking and reading everyone else’s content as you scroll through your news feeds. At some point, you may feel ready to participate so you start to comment and share interesting stuff that you find useful. But you quickly realise that spending all your time reacting to what you scroll through, just becomes a huge time suck. The hours that you spend scrolling, clicking and scrolling some more, doesn’t land you any clients. Quite rightly, you begin to question what you’re doing.
But then, at some point, you find yourself falling down Alice’s rabbit hole of visibility.
Social media experts will often talk about the importance of visibility because if you aren’t seen, your potential clients are not going to find you. I am sure you already know that your clients aren’t sitting around, waiting to discover you. In fact, if you’ve been in the business game for long enough you will already know that most of your clients don’t even know they want you until you start conversing with them and exploring opportunities together. Thus starts the chase to find out how you can become visible, following the theory that if you appear more often to more people in the social news feeds, you are more likely to be found.
There are 3 big problems with this theory.
- Visibility can kick up a big shit storm for a lot of people. ‘Who am I to be sharing this?’ ‘I’m not an expert.’ ‘What if people find out I’m really a fraud?’ Even before you’ve started dealing with your content plan and what kind of posts you are going to create, the fierce winds of doubt come racing through to put a stop to any kind of activity.
- Introverts can have a huge problem with the thought of being visible. A lot of social media content and visibility strategies taught today are taught by extroverts; those people who love to be in the spotlight. It doesn’t mean introverts can’t be visible, but the way that extroverts teach visibility can frustrate a lot of people, particularly if you know you are Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).
- Some high visibility strategies can have you busy, rather than productive. Social media is NOT your only marketing tool and yet many social media marketing experts will have you believe that Facebook or LinkedIn are the only places where to find your clients. Plus it’s very easy to overcomplicate your marketing and be spending too much of your time creating multi-level funnels because that’s what you’ve been told will ‘work’ for you.
Visibility is important, and yes social media gives you the opportunity to ‘get yourself out there’. But let’s get real about what visibility really is and how it applies to you and your business. Before you start creating your content plan and psyching yourself up for your daily Facebook Lives, here are seven things to work through.
Define what visibility means to you
Before you decide to throw yourself into any visibility marketing challenge, take a moment to ask yourself what visibility means to you. With many of the clients I work with, visibility isn’t about being seen by everyone, all of the time.
Visibility is about being seen by the RIGHT people.
Before you do any work on developing a content plan or deciding to begin a daily Facebook Live practice, you have to get really clear on exactly who you want to engage with. You may call them client avatars or ideal clients, but in my experience, too many people bypass this important step of any marketing strategy.
Define how many people you really need to engage with
Another important step I help my clients work out is their Business Heartbeat. This is the number of leads, prospects and sales you need each month in order for you to make the revenue you need. When you do this work, you often find you need to be visible to far fewer people. For example, if you are selling a £2,500 product or programme, your capacity for taking on new clients maybe just four new clients a month. So if it’s just four people you need to sell to, then how many people do you really need to be visible to? This can massively help those of you who get, quite rightly, overwhelmed by feeling they have to be chasing visibility statistics such as post views, number of likes and shares.
Unfollow and declutter your own newsfeed
It’s really easy to let other people’s visibility kick up your shit storms of fears and doubts. If you struggle with comparisonitis (And who doesn’t?? It’s only human and I challenge anyone who says they never get affected by this!), then control the machine that feeds it. You have total control over what appears in your news feed.
Unfollow people who don’t inspire you or even trigger you. Don’t kid yourself that you need to know what your competitors are doing. Other people’s stuff just distracts you and you need to focus on your own game.
Unlock your limiting beliefs
Don’t just push down your fears; bring them out in the open and deal with them. Some people are able to read an inspirational quote and feel fired up enough to charge forward with a new content plan. But for most of us mere mortals, there are often some deep-rooted limiting beliefs that need unpicking.
At a recent Mastermind Day that I run for my Impact Momentum members, one of my clients opened up to some real fears about her visibility. Because of the work that she did before she started her business, she had to be very careful of how she appeared online so that patients couldn’t find and connect with her whilst she was working professionally with them. There was a genuine reason why she was finding it difficult to shift herself now into visibility mode. A daily motivational quote wasn’t going to cut it here; she had to do some work on rewiring her thinking and making sense of her new journey.
Introvert versus extrovert
The more you know yourself, the easier you will find marketing. Every one of us is unique and you will have your own set of personality traits that you can decide whether you were born with or you adopted based on life experiences. There will be some parts of your personality that you know are strengths, and there will be other parts of you that you may not like, or feel are weaknesses.
I believe that you don’t need to overcome these perceived weaknesses or that you need to have a specific entrepreneurial profile to make your marketing successful. When you accept who you are, right here and now, and know that whoever you are, you can design a business that showcases the best darn version of you. So rather than change who you are, change the way you market yourself and show up. It’s far easier. What this means is that it is OK for introverts to hate Facebook Lives. And it’s OK for extroverts to love them. You can be visible to the right people without having to do Facebook Lives; find your way of creating content, engaging and getting visible with the people who matter to you.
Know your metrics … but know that they aren’t everything
On a final note, I wanted to remind you that visibility for the sake of visibility is waste of your time and resources. The social media platforms are designed to keep you hooked. The number of likes and comments are there to draw you back in. Those three little dots that go up and down to signify that someone is commenting or responding to a message – yes, they are designed to keep you staring at the screen to wait. They have you hooked to be ready and waiting and staying online.
The algorithms share what is ‘popular’ but does that mean you only rely on their calculations to have your posts seen? No. Because you can reach out to individuals. You can engage with people. You can have conversations by picking up the phone, arrange to meet people for coffee or set up a meeting at the next conference or event you’re attending (or even speaking at). The clients I work with are never going to be social media influencers; that’s not their strategy. So be careful of being sucked into similar high visibility strategies that focus on the numbers game, rather than the impact you make with the people you want to engage with.
Visibility is important but what I hope I’ve been able to give you here today is a fresh perspective on how you approach this topic. Visibility is not just about creating content (noise?!) and sharing it on social media. Visibility could mean local networking. It could mean keynote speaking or it could be as simple as making sure you attend the top three industry conferences and events. It’s very easy to end up with over-complicated, digital marketing that ends up burning you out because you don’t enjoy the endless pressure to have to ‘show up’.
Take this time to step back and decide on how visibility can work for you and your business before you dive into creating a content plan. Visibility can be far simpler than you may think right now.
Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
by Karen Skidmore | 02,20 | Email Marketing, Marketing Articles
Constant and consistent. It’s good advice, isn’t it? Good marketing will (almost!) always fail if you aren’t consistent with it.
I know many of you are ‘creatives’; it’s a common entrepreneurial trait. But being creative also has its challenges. You get bored easily. You enjoy starting stuff, but completing it … well, that’s an entirely different matter! So ensuring you are being consistent with your marketing is important because we all know how long it can take for many of our prospective clients to come forward and say yes to us. Yes?
If you keep chasing new ideas, you don’t follow up on leads and potential business and you miss out on sales. However, there comes a time that you may need to change the rhythm. And that’s exactly what I have decided to do with my weekly Skidmore Spark.
For the past 15 years of writing and sending out my weekly email, I have stuck to sending it out on a Thursday. There was some science behind that decision – my email statistics told me that my open rates were at their highest on a Thursday – as well as some feeling behind the decision – deciding that Wednesday was a good day to be writing my content. But, as you may be experiencing yourself, email open rates and click-throughs have been erratic, to say the least over the past year or so. Plus I was finding that I was skipping some weeks because I got too busy to write.
Too busy to write??
No, that’s no good!
That’s when I knew that my consistent Thursday rule was not getting the best from me. So I am changing my rhythm; writing the week before and scheduling this email to arrive in your inbox for Monday morning. Will it work better for me? Who knows … but I am willing to give it a try.
And this is why I wanted to share this with you today. Because I don’t think we do enough change. I’m not talking about jumping from one thing to the next. That’s not change; that’s just shiny shiny mentality, trying to find the one tactic that’s going to work because you haven’t got a strategy. The change I’m talking about here is the change to our consistency; a change brought on by the consistent thinking of what’s working, what’s not and how do we adapt to our fast-paced society and economy.
It’s easy to be always looking outside our business for answers. To be asking Google or your Facebook hive mind. But how often do you look within? How often do you review, reflect and adjust your rhythm based on what’s going on inside your business? Last week in our Momentum group we had our regular 4 Week Review & Redo. It’s everyone’s opportunity to assess their progress in their 90 Day Plan and have the opportunity to re-set their compass and change their sails, if need be.
There’s a simple three-part process:
- What do I need to stop doing?
- What do I need to start doing?
- What do I need to keep doing?
It’s a great little exercise to help you feel grounded and make sure you aren’t staying busy, running the hamster wheel. And it was from doing that exercise that I decided it was time to change the rhythm of my weekly newsletter. I realised I needed to break my Thursday send out rule because it didn’t seem to be working for me any more.
Try it out yourself. What are you consistently doing in your business? And is time for a change? I’d love to know what shows up for you.
Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
by Karen Skidmore | 11,19 | Marketing Articles, Pillar Articles
To get the leads you feel you need can be exhausting at the best of times; growing and managing free Facebook Groups, posting endless social content and running Facebook ad campaigns (that have the habit of eating up your cash flow!) are all popular ways of generating leads today. Focusing your attention on getting sign-ups to your email list or to get to people into your marketing funnel by offering low-cost digital products can be an important part of your marketing plan.
But did you know there are hidden gems and opportunities in your sales and marketing process that you may simply not be aware of?
What I want to shine the light on here today is you make you consciously aware of the exact steps your clients take with you. Because if you do, it will be far easier for you to spot where the potential opportunities are and do something about them.
And, in the process, you may actually discover that getting more leads, which can be one of the toughest and most expensive problems to solve, may not be the right thing to focus your time and energy on right now.
Let me give you a couple of examples first.
A client I worked with recently was growing her fitness business. She had been teaching Pilates for many years and as her children were growing older, she had the energy and time to step up her business. She had decided she was wanted to create some digital offerings and develop herself as a health coach, which would enable her to move away from having to teach four days a week.
She did exceptionally well in the first six months of her new business, as I helped her create huge numbers of leads through various Facebook challenges and webinars. Once she then decided she was in a position to outsource Facebook ads and hire someone else to run her campaigns, she really flew and was able to take her list from 500 to 4,000 in just three months.
But here was the problem; her sales figures were yet to go much above a few hundred pounds each month and she was struggling to sell enough of her courses to make the shift from teaching classes to online business. Her natural instinct was to go get more leads. But once I helped her shift her attention from lead generation to stages further down her sales and marketing process and work out why people weren’t buying, her business changed for the better.
She adjusted her offers, increased her prices and opened up her diary to allow her to speak to more people, rather than rely on them clicking on a sales page. The shift from only teaching in-person group classes to the online business she desired finally became a reality.
Another client I worked with earlier this year had an amazing Facebook Group, with more than 3,000 members active in it. Running free Facebook Groups is a popular marketing strategy today and, from the outside looking in, it can look like you have a thriving business. But the reality was, for this particular client, that her free Facebook members were sucking her dry of energy and enthusiasm for her business.
She was falling out of love with what she was doing and had essentially trapped herself in the lead generation stage of her marketing, drowning under all the messages, posts and day to day management of the group.
To get back on track with growing her business, I showed how to declutter her offers, streamline her prices and developed a marketing strategy that would essentially take her off Facebook so that she didn’t feel trapped, serving her free audience every day in order to grow her business.
And this is what I want to help you with today. Instead of only thinking that it’s more leads or better quality leads that you need and keep your focus on the lead generation stage, there may actually be easier and simpler solutions further down the line.
Let’s break down the stages and you’ll be able to see where you may need to shift your attention if your lead generation focus is getting you nowhere fast.
The sales and marketing process for businesses like yours can be broken down into five stages.
- Leads
- Prospects
- Conversion
- Value
- Frequency
1) Leads – these are the initial shows of interest.
Leads are not Likes on your Facebook page nor are they retweets of your blog articles (although both can give a good indication on whether you have a potential audience out there).
Leads are people who make them known to you and you have basic information about them. For example, emails subscribed to your list, registrants for your webinar or people in your free online groups. Leads are people who have shown themselves to you as being genuinely interested in what you share but all you know about them at this stage is perhaps their name or simple contact details.
Just think of leads as the initial handshake when you meet someone for the first time.
2) Prospects – these are people who have taken a step further into the enquiry process with you.
Prospects have either requested a call with you, clicked several links in your emails to your various offers, filled in an enquiry form, requested a brochure from your website or even spent money with you, but at a low price point. It’s really important that you decide on your own definition of who a prospect is for your business because every business will be slightly different here, but it doesn’t need to be complicated.
Just imagine yourself with a room full of people, who maybe have heard you speak or explain your business and they’ve put their hands (maybe only tentatively to start with), wanting to know more about what it is to you. From their actions, they are showing you that they are interested in engaging with you about what it is that you can offer them.
3) Conversion – simple really; people get to this stage when they’ve spent money with you.
If you only have a handful of leads and maybe only speaking to one prospect every few weeks, then it is unlikely that many people are going to get this stage as you’re simply not going to be able to convert everyone. So your marketing problem may still in stage one or two. Go back to getting clarity on who you are marketing to and what problems you can solve for them because if you aren’t getting that initial interest, you probably haven’t got your audience or message clear enough.
But if you have leads coming in and you are building up an email list, but not making the sales, then you actually have a different opportunity. There’s every chance you need to review your offers, your sales copy, your positioning and how easy it is for people to actually buy from you.
With many clients I’ve worked with, low pricing and poor positioning is often the marketing problem that needs solving. Perhaps you don’t enough social proof; case studies, testimonials or client stories. Maybe it’s your bootstrapping approach isn’t giving the necessary trust factor or credibility needed to win your prospects over.
In many cases, it’s the fear of picking up the phone and having a conversation that stops many people from making the right sales; if you are relying on your website and social media presence to do the work but, in reality, your prospect needs to speak with you before they are willing to invest their time and money in what you offer, then you need to step up and bring conversation selling into your marketing.
Putting in the systems to make it easy for you to arrange phone calls or meetings with your prospects can be one of the quickest ways to increase your sales next month.
4) Value – this is the total amount of money each client can spend with you.
As a rule of thumb, the lower the price you sell at, the bigger list you need. If your average client spend is under £50, your marketing strategy has to focus on volume. You need to spread yourself wide and far and your list building activities have to attract hundreds, if not thousands of new subscribers each month. If your average spend is upwards of £2,000, your focus will want to shift to qualifying your leads and prospects; it’s not just anyone who will buy what you offer so you can get laser-focused on a smaller marketplace.
What this means is that if you’re focused on the lower end of the price band and struggling to generate enough sales from your Facebook groups, social content posting or ad campaigns, perhaps your problem is your offer. As with the conversion stage, low pricing is often the problem so never assume lowering your price or offering discounts is the answer to making more sales. This tactic often does the complete opposite and lowers your total sales; you end up competing in an Amazon marketplace where your customers’ decisions are based only on price. Not a fun place for your business to be.
5) Frequency – how often your clients spends with you.
Again, if your marketing strategy is low price, high volume but if there are only one or two things to sell to them, you have some hidden gems and opportunities. A lot of people would stay in stage one and simply exhaust themselves on the treadmill of getting new leads so that more people can buy their one or two products or courses.
But what if you created a higher-priced programme or a continuity/membership offer? Developing a full product suite can take time, often a few years to get right for your audience and market place. So you need to question yourself whether you are creating the space in your day-to-day running of your business to research and develop new product offerings, ongoing servicing packages or even affiliate offers.
OK. Where do you go from here?
What I recommend you do now is to take these five stages and spend 30 minutes thinking them through in your business. Don’t go into what I call “How Do I?” mode which means you head off to google and start searching for answers to questions you don’t need to answer right now. This will only knee-jerk you into more tactics, rather than thinking strategically about the shifts you may need to take.
Take yourself away from your desk and your screens and spend half an hour or so doodling out or mind-mapping some ideas. Step away from the need from finding a quick solution right now and look at your marketing with a fresh perspective. Perhaps you need to speak some of your current clients and customers; ask them about how they are solving their problems right now. Maybe you already know, in your gut, that what you are doing just doesn’t feel right. So ask yourself what would feel right?
It’s important to give yourself this space to re-look at your current marketing plan and spot the opportunities you may be missing.
Thank you for reading. Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
