Yet the business isn’t coming in. Your thoughts: my marketing isn’t working!

Is it not?

Have you ever employed someone? Or, have you ever worked for someone? You were given a task – or a set of tasks – and you called that…your job.

What are your marketing method’s jobs? What’s Facebook supposed to be doing for you?

The universal answer is “make me more money” or “bring in clients” or “spread awareness,” but unfortunately, it’s just simply not specific enough.

It’s no surprise that the number of clients I have has increased dramatically – people looking to really maximize their presence on the web. But the trend with many of them is the same – they’re frustrated because “nothing is working,” when in fact, they can’t know if it’s working because they never gave it a job.

Here’s an exercise:

1. Ask yourself, “What’s my overall goal for my marketing methods?”
2. Ask yourself, “How will I know that I’ve reached that goal?”

Your ability to really answer those questions will directly impact your marketing’s ability to work for you. You can’t employ vague marketing techniques and then expect specific results. If you want a bigger list, determine how much bigger is big. Does one additional name count? Does five? What about five hundred?

Example: Heidi’s overall goal is to make more money (problem A). Her marketing methods are a newsletter, a blog and some social networking – she can hardly remember which ones she has (problem B). She also wants to increase hits to her website (problem C) and build her list (problem D).

Over the past year, Heidi’s business has stagnated. She doesn’t ever go on her social networking sites because she doesn’t have time. She gets little to no leads from her website. She posts a blog once or twice per month.

“My marketing isn’t working!” she said.

“Isn’t it, though?” I ask calmly.

“What do you mean? I am getting no business!” Heidi exclaimed.

“Oh. I think it’s because your marketing methods didn’t know that was the point.”

Do you see where I’m going with this? Her marketing methods have no focus. They don’t have a job to do. People without jobs are considered unemployed. Marketing tools without jobs are considered unfocused. They don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing.

Part of focused marketing is deciding what you want your marketing to do and then specifically determining how it should go about doing that.

In Part 2, I’ll talk about how to give your marketing a job along with how to give it a performance evaluation, so you can know whether or not it is really working for you.

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