C.J. Hayden, Contributing Editor
My clients and readers often ask me to help them figure out what's wrong with their marketing. The first question I ask is how much marketing have they actually been doing, since many times failures in marketing have more to do with its quantity than its quality. But assuming you have been actively promoting yourself and making a sufficient number of contacts with potential clients, here are some other ways in which your marketing might need fixing.
There are three areas you should examine -- the package of services you are offering, your marketing strategies, and your sales methods. In order to market and sell effectively, your package of services should meet the following requirements:
- You are offering something people believe they need.
- Your clients perceive the value of your services to be equivalent to the price you're charging.
- Your services are available where and when clients need to use them.
- Either there's plenty of business for everybody in your field, or your competitors have no overwhelming advantages.
When your package of services doesn't meet these requirements, improving your marketing strategies or selling skills won't be enough. You may need to revisit some of the basic premises of your business. Talk to your colleagues, clients, and others in your target market to find out more about what your desired clients need and how they want to receive it.
Depending on what you discover, the solution may lie in repositioning your services against those of the competition, changing your pricing structure, or offering your services in an entirely different way than you have in the past.
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