For this challenge I’ve turned to Steve Bimpson. I’ve known Steve for a number of years and he is an Expert in Marketing & Sales with strategies to help you stand out. Founder of Think BiG, Steve has a passion for personal development and a love of Sales and Marketing, providing seminars & workshops in sales, networking skills and personal development. I’m going to let Steve have his say…

How to get more clients consistently: Avoiding the Business Roller Coaster

One of the biggest challenges facing any small business is to get more clients consistently and to maintain a good flow of solid enquiries for their product or service.

Given that 85% of businesses are either losing money or struggling to keep their head above water (according to HMRC), it’s obviously something that many business owners struggle with. One minute they can be rushed off their feet and the next minute they’re wondering where their next client is going to come from.

It’s the Business Roller Coaster.

The question is, why do so many business owners suffer from the Business Roller Coaster?

In my experience, it’s because of what I call HOPE Marketing.

What is HOPE Marketing?

The majority of business owners are not marketers by trade and HOPE Marketing happens when an owner lacks the knowledge and understanding to put together an effective strategy or plan to market their business. This lack of knowledge and understanding often goes hand-in-hand with the fact that they may not have much of a marketing budget and, therefore, can’t outsource effectively (not that outsourcing is necessarily always the answer).

In short, HOPE marketing is where you know that you need to do some marketing, but you don’t really know what to do or how to go about it and end up doing almost anything in the HOPE that it will work.

As you can imagine, HOPE Marketing is rarely very effective and is the primary reason that so many small businesses fail. I came up with an acronym to describe what HOPE Marketing looks like:

H HAPHAZARD – HOPE Marketing is carried out with wild inconsistency and is usually made up of what you might call ‘random acts of marketing’ – some marketing gets done every now and then. In fact, many businesses do no marketing when they’re busy (either because they are too busy to have time or don’t feel the need since they have enough clients at the time) and when you think about it, it’s logical that this ‘now you’re marketing, now you’re not’ approach leads to a ‘now you’re busy, now you’re not’ result.

O OPPORTUNISTIC – Because there’s no strategy or plan involved, too many business owners often take up any and every opportunity that’s offered to them with little consideration as to whether it’s relevant to their target clients or to their products/services. The main factor is often low price/affordability and/or ease of implementation – neither of which are necessarily bad – providing you know what you’re doing, in the first place.

P PRECARIOUS – HOPE Marketing is precarious for any business that needs to get more clients consistently – whether that’s looking for new clients (because they’re young and don’t have many) or whether they’re busy and are looking to scale up and grow.

E ERRATIC/ELUSIVE – HOPE Marketing produces results that are erratic at best and completely elusive at worst.

Of course, if a business owner doesn’t have much of a budget then they’re probably doing their marketing themselves. Although this may not be costing them much money, it can be costing them their valuable time. On the other hand, many business owners that do have money available to spend on marketing tend to find they get through it very quickly and end up with little to show for it.

In either case, it’s not good for business.

How Do You Move Beyond HOPE Marketing?

The best way is to address the primary cause of this style of marketing, which is a lack of knowledge and understanding. I’ve always believed that the top three skills a business owner should have are:

1. An in-depth knowledge of marketing.
2. A strong understanding of sales.
3. Knowledge, expertise and experience in their field.

And they need those skills in this order because they’re sequential: If they don’t have anyone to talk to about their business (marketing), and they lack the ability to convert some of those people into clients (sales), the knowledge, expertise and experience they have in their field is irrelevant because they either can’t convert people into clients or don’t have anyone to convert in the first place.

I mentioned outsourcing earlier and the fact that it’s not necessarily the answer. I say this because I’ve met a lot of business owners that have spent a lot of money with marketing agencies and had little to show for it. Whilst it’s easy – and natural – for them to blame the agency, the problem often lies in the owners’ lack of knowledge and understanding of marketing.

Why? I hear you ask.

Well, the brief that they give to their agency is only as good as their own understanding of their marketing needs. The better the brief, the better the results.

How To Get More Clients: Where To Start

Whilst marketing is a huge subject, there are some fundamentals that will help provide a great foundation for expanding your knowledge and understanding. Things like;

• The Four Ways to Grow a Business.
• Understanding Your Target Market.
• Lifetime Customer Value.
• 7 Steps to A Profitable Relationship.
• The Customer Journey.
• AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire Action)
• Always Begin With the End in Mind.
• Testing & Measuring… and so on.

Then you have the key elements of marketing – I call them the ‘Who, What, When, Where, Why and How’s of marketing. You need to pay attention to all of them if you want to get the best possible results.

Most importantly of all, you need to understand that marketing is rarely a one-off event, which is why random acts of marketing are so ineffective. Marketing is a journey and you’re the guide for your prospective clients. Your business is the destination – but you need to define exactly what that looks like, at the outset.

Finally, marketing should be JOINED UP. Yes, that’s another acronym:

J A Juicy Journey.
O Organised, structured and planned.
I Inspiring.
N Natural.
E Educational.
D Directive.

U Ultimately Uplifting.
P Full of Promise.

There’s a plethora of information about marketing online. The challenge is, much of it isn’t that great and sorting out the wheat from the chaff is time-consuming. Far better to find an expert that you know, like and trust and stick with them.

There are a whole host of benefits to doing that and it’s guaranteed to get you well away from the HOPE Marketing mind-set

It’s all too easy to fall into HOPE marketing – not measuring what works, and doesn’t. Sometimes throwing money at an ‘expert’ can feel like a solution but as Steve says, only if you know what you want to achieve and are able to brief someone on what you want. Outsourcing marketing – and of course various other services – to ‘experts’ can be a brilliant decision. People who know what to do, what works and how to achieve it in much less time than you could, and not taking you away from your business and passion but it’s not the easy, catch-all solution.

If you would like to talk to Steve – and I would certainly recommend that you do – please contact him at steve@justthinkbig.co

The points above link with our other blogs such as ‘Famine or Feast‘ and the Top 10 Challenges for small business that entrepreneurs discuss in our blog series. There are many other posts on key issues for small business owners and entrepreneurs across this site and to see new articles from the Outsourced Finance Director please subscribe using the box on the right-hand side of this page.
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