Marketing Your Consulting Services.pdf - epiheirimatikotita.gr

Luick tip . . .
Post a positive affirmation about marketing where you can see it every day:
on your computer, in your Day-Timer ® , in your wallet’s clear window.
• “Marketing? It’s a mystery to me. Isn’t that what big companies like Coca-Cola
do? They have entire departments and they conduct research, do taste tests, and
study the buyers’ habits to know what kind of ads to buy and how to sell more
Coke.”
Marketing is all of these things and more. For the consultant, you will do some
research about your clients and your competition. You also need to assess yourself.
Once you put your data on paper, you will be able to develop a solid marketing
strategy for your consulting business. But it’s not a mystery. You can follow the
ABCs of marketing and select some effective as well as enjoyable marketing tools
and activities. You will learn a lot about how to market in this book. You will not
learn a great deal about marketing theory. My intent is to make creating your marketing
plan as easy as drinking a Coke!
• “I’ve been in business for nine months and have already spent thousands of dollars
on my brochure. I don’t see a payoff.”
Brochures alone will not sell your services. I learned that the hard way. We designed
and printed a great brochure to market a product. But it failed. The entire
campaign barely paid for the brochures! What went wrong? Lots. Timing was bad.
The price point was too high. The concept was too difficult to sell in a brochure.
But there is good news too. We learned a huge amount with that failed effort. As
Tom Peters is fond of saying, “Fail faster!” Fail faster and get on with the successes.
• “I don’t do any marketing. It’s too expensive and takes too much time. Besides,
my clients wouldn’t like it if I became a pushy salesperson.”
This is the comment of an uninformed person. Must you become a pushy salesperson
to sell your consulting services? Of course not. In actuality, if the person
who was quoted above has any business at all, some marketing is happening. It
may be subtle personal marketing, but marketing is occurring. Do you believe you
Marketing: What’s It All About? 7