How persistent are you?
A few years ago saw the opening of the Hindhead Tunnel; a £371 Million road bypass project almost completed. It boasts to be the longest road tunnel in the UK measuring at 1.1 miles and is a most beautifully designed – almost TelyTubby like in appearance – piece of engineering work.
The A3 is a very busy dual carriageway that cuts the village of Hindhead in half and the traffic lights (just 400 yards from the end of our road) have become notorious in causing anything from 30 minutes to 3 hours of delay to both Southbound and Northbound traffic up and down the South East of England.
I moved to Hindhead with my family more than ten years ago when the plans for the Tunnel were still being debated. Hindhead back then was – in property prices – the poorer sister to the more desirable area of Haslemere. As the Tunnel project looked to be imminent, we decided the house we liked would be a sound financial investment. Once the Tunnel opened, Hindhead would become a village again; the juggernauts and lorries took away from the centre.
It took persistence!
But that was ten years ago. We honestly thought that a project like this would be approved much sooner. Campaigning for a new road started back in the 1970’s and yet it took more than 35 years for plans to be approved.
It took years and years of persistence campaigning to find a solution that suited the majority and approval from the Department of Transport.
Your small business marketing activity
What’s this got to with your business and marketing activities?
One of the reasons why so many of you fail at your marketing is because of a lack of persistence.
You may have read somewhere that it takes on average of 7 times to be in touch with someone before they become ready to buy from you. As the average consumer gets more and savvier and competition gets more and more competitive, this figure for most of you will actually be far higher!
I have had clients subscribe to my newsletter and receive it for two years or more before they feel ready to invest in business coaching or one of my products to help with small business marketing. It can take ten, twenty or even thirty times to be in touch with someone before they will buy from me.
It’s too easy to give up on your marketing efforts!
But it’s easy to give up. It’s easy to decide that after you’ve left one message for that potential client if they haven’t called you back within the week, you’ll drop them from your follow up list. After all, you don’t want to appear desperate do you?
It’s too easy to write off that direct mail campaign in which you posted one voucher to a few hundred prospects. You only got one response back so direct mail mustn’t work for you.
It’s too easy to publish a few tweets and start up a Facebook Page only to give up after a month because it’s not generated one spark of interest.
What if the campaigners for the A3 road bypass gave up after ten years? After twenty years? Or even after thirty? Yup, that’s right. We wouldn’t be enjoying a juggernaut free road through our village.
Hang tough. Be persistent and believe that if your proposition was good enough to shout about the first time, it’s good enough to keep on shouting.
You need constant and consistent follow up.
