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The top 7 marketing strategies for independent professionals on a budget

Written by: Susan Martin

Article Overview: American companies spend billions of dollars each year on marketing. As a matter of fact, in 2001, U.S. advertising expenditures alone topped $230 billion, more than doubling the $105.97 billion spent in 1980. (Source: "Advertising: Exposure and Statistics" November 2003 newsletter of the Media Education Foundation)

The top 7 marketing strategies for independent professionals on a budget

American companies spend billions of dollars each year on marketing. As a matter of fact, in 2001, U.S. advertising expenditures alone topped $230 billion, more than doubling the $105.97 billion spent in 1980. (Source: "Advertising: Exposure and Statistics" November 2003 newsletter of the Media Education Foundation)

Now, these figures may seem staggering to the independent professional on a budget, but don't panic; there are lots of effective strategies you can utilize that will help you grow your business fast. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Identify your niche. One of the easiest ways to attract customers is to figure out which group of prospective customers you get your very best results for and go after them exclusively. Many professionals are afraid to do this claiming that they'll be leaving someone out, but many marketing experts agree that niche marketing as the easiest and fastest way to get business.

2. Position yourself as an expert. Why? Experts make more money and get more media attention and that's free advertising! Let's face it; it's easier to trust a specialist than a generalist who's trying to be everything to everyone. Once you've identified your niche, let the world know about how you can help.

Provide free information products, write articles and white papers about the problems your clients face and how they can solve them. Conduct workshops, seminars and tele-classes specifically geared towards helping your prospective customers and before long you'll be regarded as an expert in your field. And, while you're at it don't forget to, collect names, emails and addresses of prospects to keep filling your pipeline.

3. Develop ongoing relationships with complementary professionals and build your referral team. These are other professionals who sell non-competing services or products to the same niche customers you are targeting. For instance, my clients often need the services of bookkeepers, accountants and business attorneys. Likewise, they refer business to me. Here's a couple of other examples:

* Residential realtor, mortgage broker, real estate attorney, home improvement contractor, architect and interior designer.

* Commercial printer, copywriter, graphic designer

4. Institute a system to keep track of all of the people who are interested in your product or services, and find creative ways of keeping in touch with them on a regular basis. To start, go through your notes. Put together a list of all of the people you've spoken to in the last 6-9 months who've showed interest in you but haven't become paying customers.

Follow up with them in a variety of ways: call them to touch base, use email, ask them to subscribe to a newsletter, send them interesting articles, or invite them to join you at events. It takes numerous impressions to make the sale; that's why you see commercials on TV over and over again for the same products. By keeping track of all of the people who've showed interest and keeping your business on their radar screen you'll turn more of them into paying customers.

5. Let your satisfied customers help you sell your products or services. Here are a couple of ways to do this:

* Ask them for referrals - right away (if you were a car salesman you wouldn't wait for the new car to get dirty and dented!)

* Ask them to write testimonials for you, (also right away) and compile a list of testimonials to use in your all of your marketing collateral.

6. Create a marketing calendar and keep to it consistently. Scheduling marketing activities that take place weekly, bi monthly, monthly and quarterly will help you to avoid the feast or famine syndrome that most independent professionals fall prey to. And, by doing so, marketing will become easier since it becomes a regular part of your business life.

7. Identify innovative ways to get more business from existing customers. It's much easier to get business from customers who are already happy with your services or products. So develop additional services or products to keep customers coming back for more.

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Marketing is Marketing - I think what seems to be getting lost here is that marketing is marketing. Whether you use broadcast, print, event marketing, cause marketing, PPC or other internet marketing strategies makes no difference. Your strategy needs to include all the appropriate different outlets. And 'appropriate' is defined by more than just where your market can be found - your budget is also an important factor. The Expedia example is a good one - they do a lot of PPC advertising, but they don't rely on that alone - I see their billboards everywhere, ads in magazines and commercials on TV and radio. That makes sense, they are a business to consumer type of company and they have the budget. However, let's say you are a smaller company or a startup selling B2B, focused on the small business market. With a limited budget, 'traditional' off line advertising can be priced out of your range, but with PPC you can create an advertising campaign that fits your limited budget. Something you might not have been able to do with local print or broadcast media. And depending on your local market and the product/service niche you are in, it might be fairly easy to obtain organic search results. So in this case it would make sense to spend your limited budget on online marketing, strictly from an ROI point of view. Later, when you have the budget a mix of the two would make sense if you can reach your target market through traditional media. The reality is that most people reach for the computer to look up information these days, and if you're not there being found - your potential client will find someone who is. That means that part of ANY marketing strategy that includes advertising needs to have some kind of online component to it.
Marketing vs Web Optimizers vs Usability - Hi BigJim22, I must be honest - I haven't really read a lot of Seth's articles on web site strategies. What I have found though is that there always seems to be a three way conflict between marketing ideas, SEO strategies and usability issues when doing web development. The secret is to balance between the ideal situation for each of these. Since a website needs to be found, visited and acted upon we need a strong combination of marketing, SEO and usability to be successful. It's something we struggle with constantly at Last Minute Training and I'm sad to say - we still haven't found the right combination.
Re: How do you budget your life? - Why Budget? Here are twelve good reasons: A budget is a guide that tells you whether you're going in the direction you want to be headed in financially. You may have goals and dreams but if you don't set up guidelines for reaching them and you don't measure your progress , you may end up going so far in the wrong direction you can never make it back. Can you imagine the government or a major corporation operating without a budget? No, and neither should you. A budget can help you meet your savings goals. It includes a mechanism for setting aside money for savings and investments... A budget helps your entire family focus on... A budget can keep you out of debt or help you get out of debt. A budget actually creates extra money for you to use on things that matter to you. A budget helps you sleep better at night because you don't lie awake worrying about how you're going to make ends meet.........................
Re: Why Your Business' Website Is Not Making You Money - Hi All, Internet marketing is the new kind of viral marketing which helps your business to grow online on internet. It also depends upon your budget because to get high ROI, you also have to invest bunch of money.
Re: Promote Websites You Don't Own! - For most new small businesses jumping into online marketing for the first time I would steer clear of PPC advertising. For a while at least. Without a decent understanding of how search works and the whole PPC thing, including quality score, split testing of ad copy and landing pages, negative keywords, etc., you burn through your money pretty quick while trying to just learn and often end up with a deeply negative return on investment. Instead I would maybe spend that part of the budget on doing more of some of the other things you mentioned. Maybe buy another directory link or two. Another press release. More local offline advertising. Save the PPC for when the budget is not quite so tight and those other marketing efforts are already bringing in business. You can then better afford the learning curve costs and time required to get it right, and most importantly get it profitable.


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