Know-How Exchange : Strategy

A campaign is a detailed plan of attack: it outlines who you will serve, how you will serve them, how often, and in what ways. It highlights what your ideal buyer craves, it focuses on that person's pain or problem, and it aligns the solutions you offer with the emotional needs of the prospect.

All this requires thought, insight, and planning. It needs researcb, it needs honesty, and it needs acceptance on your part that you do not know all the answers, as well as needing a deeper understanding of why you are worthy of people's time and money. Why you? Why your solution? Why now? Why this price? And for what kind of return in terms of benefits and values.

The ads you have in high end magazines? What do they say? How do they look? How do they sound? Where are they placed? Who looks at them? Who then sees them? Who, in turn, reads them? What, thend, do those people think? And having thought those thoughts, what actons do then then take as a result and how to do you pay attention to those actions? Likewise for your money mailers and for your postcards.

Unless yout material is speaking to people's needs you may be wasting your time, your money, and perfectly good trees. The role of your marketing is to generate revenue. This means every dollar you spend needs to be bringing in three or four times its outlay in income. How are you going to accomplish this as a goal with your current messaging? The role of marketing is to make people happy—so happy in fact that they find themselves compelled to give you their money. How will your marketing make people this happy, and, as a result, how will it increase your fiscal happiness?

Gary's given you a great answer.

Additionally, have you stepped back to figure out what of the actions you're currently doing is working "best"? If you're not sure, you need to ask new clients about how they found you. You didn't mention if you have a website/Facebook/other online presence. These days, it's vital to at least be able to be found (it can be a one page "flyer" which gives the basics about your business).

You've got 20 years in business. That means you have happy clients who come back year after year. The essentials of business is dealing with clients. After all, they're the ones who give you the money that turn your profits.

My corner of marketing - which focusses on SMEs in their various guises - looks at what you do and who you do it for. And those you serve who most appreciate the work you do for them. It's not hard for a sole trader to dig out some stunning reviews of one kind or another. Not just the bland "they're great" sort of thing but more complex reactions that tell you something about yourself that you've never really seen before.

I say this because in my experience most small businesses have never considered what makes them special.

You can use this in all sorts of ways, and online marketing has huge advantages over anything else for one reason and one reason alone. It's fast and cheap. You can get information back in the space of an afternoon that you can use across all your other channels (postcards, ads in magazines - the sort of thing that's way more expensive but does a better job in the end - the point is to hone the taglines and copy online to use elsewhere). You will get a lot of info on this from the likes of Perry Marshall and Howie Jacobson.

If you're interested in Facebook, do try https://isfb4me.com, Perry Marshall's site for Facebook newbies.

I hope this helps, if you get back to us with more info and thoughts about the things that have been mentioned, I for one have a heap more to offer. Only focusing it on your immediate needs would make the job a lot easier ;-)