Small Business Advice: Are You Image-Marketing?
If you’re a bootstrapping solo entrepreneur, image-marketing really should possibly be pretty darned low on your list of priorities.
But prior to I offend too a lot of folks, let me say if your competition tends to be heavy corporate kinds or mega-organization sorts, then you are most likely competing with mega “image-marketing” as nicely and could will need to do some level of that.
That said, here’s why I’d ditch image-marketing any day in favor of these 3 varieties of marketing that are far far more effective …
A logo does not a dollar make
My confession is in my quite first company, I lamented for weeks, going back and forth with my designer on making the perfect logo. But let’s think about this for a minute. Ask your raving fans and happy clients what your logo looks like. They almost certainly won’t have a clue.
Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t have one. I got 1 very by accident and extremely recently. Price me and literally 15 minutes one night while browsing a do-it-your self design website. I got it to fill some blank space at the top of my internet website as I was redesigning it. 
Your logo may possibly indeed make YOU really feel great. But your company isn’t about you, proper? It’s about your clients and their wants.
Other image-marketing distractions
A couple of other image things solopreneurs get overly focused on are fancy glossy brochures/flyers, designing the ideal company card, developing a multi-thousand dollar corporate-searching web web site, spending time and space talking about awards, recognitions, certifications, sending press releases that say absolutely nothing far more than “Hey, I’m here and my logo looks great.” or “Hey, I just got an award. You need to be impressed.”
Once again, I’m not totally against any of that, but there are so a lot of significant mistakes produced with each and every of these so-known as “advertising strategies” that it ends up becoming a waste of time and funds. Here’s how to feel about your advertising to obtain what you actually want – a lot more clients and a lot more money:
Action-focused marketing: It is critical that all of your advertising is action focused. It clearly answers the question “So what do you want me (as the prospect) to do?” When I land on your internet website, read your brochure/flyer, get your company card, or any advertising piece, does it specifically tell me what you want me to do next?
You do this by saying issues like click here, call now, download this now, get a totally free report, free audio, free of charge assessment, free of charge sample, etc. It need to invite me to do some thing that puts me onto your list and also takes me to the next step of becoming a possible client/customer.
Outcomes-based advertising: It almost certainly goes with out saying that you market your company to get outcomes, yes? Question is, are you measuring to see if you’re in fact acquiring outcomes? Solopreneurs groan when I say “Do the math.” But it’s required. Get your calculator out, see how much you’ve spent on points like networking meetings, ads, etc., and figure out how numerous ideal prospects, clients or sales it produced. Occasionally the problem is we don’t set up our advertising in a trackable way. So we remain clueless about what’s working and what’s not. Tracking may be the alter you make right away so you can shift to results-based marketing.
Remedy-focused marketing: Be certain that you clearly tap into what’s keeping your prospect up at night. What’s their burning desire, biggest frustration, most pressing challenge? And given that, what can you put into your advertising that positions YOU, your products and your services as the remedy to that discomfort/dilemma/burning desire?
People do not truly care how many awards you’ve won and how numerous letters you have behind your name (PCC, MCC, XYZ certified, blah, blah, blah). They want to know “Can you make this dilemma go away for me?” And your best advertising does a superb job of articulating the key problem(s) you solve and what you offer to do just that.
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