Finding Marketing Activities that Work for You

When I started my business it seemed there was a master list of marketing activities that I was supposed to do:

• Get involved with the Chamber of Commerce – it’s for small businesses, after all.
• Attend networking events – connect with people and let them know what I do.
• Join my professional association – get known by my peers, build a referral network.

Of these three, only the third one worked for me. As it turns out, if you’re not that great at making small talk with strangers, being in crowds of people you don’t know, or going downtown on a weeknight in your grown up clothes, the first two marketing strategies aren’t that effective.

Finding the right places to put your marketing energy can be challenging. It can also be a fun, exploratory process, and how you approach it makes all the difference. Let’s take it step by step.

Step 1

Look at what assumptions you’re making about which marketing activities are best, then ask yourself if these assumptions are true. One assumption I made is that live networking events were the only way to really meet people and let them know what I did. Turns out that’s not true for me.

Step 2

Make a list of marketing activities you think you should be doing and/or that all the cool kids are doing. For me, all the cool kids seem like they’re buying Facebook ads.

Step 3

Let your assumptions and shoulds go. Clean the slate, clear the deck, begin again. Make a new assumption that there are no sacred or special marketing activities. Once I let go of the idea that live networking was the only and best way to market, I was able to see other ways I could get the word out. Similarly, when I acknowledged that I didn’t want to use Facebook for marketing, I could cross it off my list.

Step 4

Experiment to find what is a good fit for you, marketing-wise. Look at lists of marketing activities (such as the Daily Actions list in the Get Clients Now! book) and pick the ones that seem interesting to you. If you’ve listed five or ten activities, find a way over the next one to two months to try them out and see which ones feel like the best fit. After I gave up on attending networking events, I started experimenting with writing articles and giving presentations at a local store, and it turns out I liked them both. Although I was a bit shaky at them when I started, I was curious to see if they’d work, which they did, and once I did them a bit more I gained confidence and skill, which made them work even better.

Step 5

Do the activities that are the best fit over and over; rinse and repeat. Marketing activities are most effective when you find ones that you like and you do them regularly. This serves two purposes: 1. You gain expertise at that strategy, which makes it more enjoyable and effective; 2. Doing your marketing activity consistently builds confidence and trust with your potential customers.

Give yourself the freedom and permission to let you of your marketing shoulds and find things you enjoy. By doing things you enjoy, consistently, the people who are a fit for you and the work you do will naturally emerge, which is good business.