M&M's Marketing

If you’re anything like me you went into business because you have a passion to help others improve their business or life in some shape or form. You love what you do and you get totally excited about serving others in a powerful way.

But no matter how much passion you have and no matter how brilliant you are at what you do, you’ll quickly come to realize that a large part of your business is marketing. Without this magical piece, clients won’t find you or buy what you have to offer.

And here lies the problem – most of you didn’t go into business to become marketers and most have little or no training in this domain. For most people marketing is a total mystery but ignoring it can cause you to miss out on valuable opportunities.

There are always two questions my clients ask when we have a conversation about marketing and sales: “Vanessa, where do I find potential clients?” and “How do I start a conversation without appearing pushy or too salesy?”

The first suggestion is to get clear on your “3Ms of marketing.” Lack of clarity here can lead to all sorts of problems further down the road. These include not being able to find clients who will hire you, having less than ideal clients who are too demanding, and feeling like you’re constantly on a financial and emotional roller coaster.

The first M is how you craft your marketing message. What’s important to understand is that potential clients don’t care much about what you do or how you do it. They listen to everything through their own radio channel called WII‑FM, also known as “What’s In It For Me”?

All too often entrepreneurs get so excited about what they do they forget to speak the language that answers the WII-FM question. So when crafting your marketing message, you should focus on the kinds of problems you solve for your clients and the solutions they are looking for.

The second M is for your market. Your market is the people you love to serve and the more clearly you define your market, the easier it is to identify and find your dream clients and attract them to your business.

To define your market – I recommend that you consider 3 factors:

1. Demographics: consider how old they are, how much money they have, whether they are married or not, religion, political affiliations, etc.;
2. Psychographics: this is about using demographics to figure out more about their lifestyle, their behaviours and their buying habits. You can think of it like this: demographics explain “who” your buyer is and psychographics explain “why” they buy.
3. Energetics: we’ve all had the experience of admiring the cute guy or girl from a distance who might appear to be a perfect soul mate, only to discover on the first conversation or first date that there is simply no spark there and that your life philosophies are worlds apart. Is there an energetic connection between you and your prospect?

The third M is media. Now that your have the first two Ms, it’s time to choose the media through which you will connect with your dream clients. Examples can be networking, attending or hosting your own events, speaking, social media, newsletters, blogs and video to name but a few. The secret here is to choose just a few to get started and once you have those working systematically and consistently, you can consider adding more.

Marketing does take time and involves an element of experimentation. Keep at it and if you need some help getting the message and media right, please contact us!