As we all wave a fond farewell to 2017, we should also be slamming the door on random marketing for good.
If you forgot how to avoid random marketing in general, read our primer article on When Marketing Goes Very, Very Wrong.
Instead, let’s make 2019 the Year of Purposeful Marketing.
No more stabbing in the dark at random social media platforms hoping and praying someone will notice you.
Instead an airtight marketing plan that will zero in on your ideal client like a heat seeking missile.
But first, we need to wipe the slate clean. New Year’s are built for this kind of delicious creative destruction. Get out a blank sheet of paper.
Step One.
Make sure you have ONE lucrative expertise that talks to ONE client in your market. Shed that old 2018 “generalist” skin, and become a highly sought after 2019 “specialist.” This is called positioning.
Step Two.
Re-examine how and where you engage with your high paying premium clients (logo, website, copy etc). Are you speaking their language? This is called branding.
Step Three.
Set a goal and a budget, then build a campaign. Refine, repeat. Refine, repeat. I highly recommend enlisting the help of an expert marketing team to start. This is called marketing.
Step Four.
Make sure that once your ideal client finds you, you know exactly how to repeatedly land, engage and quietly delight them. This is called systems.
Step Five.
2019 = Best. Year. Ever.
Let’s take a closer look at some possible questions to be asking yourself for the marketing bit, or Step Three from above.
How do you reach clients? Pretty basic right?
Should you use email? twitter? facebook? instagram? print ads? posters? direct mail? video ads? youtube? networking? smoke signals?
It’s impossible to say "yes, yes, yes and yes” unless you know with unwavering certainty 100% who your high paying premium customer **actually** is.
Everyone is trying to find that millennial sweet spot - but it’s more than likely that your customer is actually NOT a millennial. Especially if you are a high end portrait photographer.
Millennials spent a wad on their wedding recently, and are probably broke. The last thing they want to spend a ton of money on is an expensive portrait session.
SO, it begs the question - are you wasting your time on instagram if it’s actually GenXer’s you should be trying to reach? Shouldn’t you rather be spending your entire marketing budget on a robust Facebook ad campaign or a large magazine print ad campaign then? Do you even have a budget?
These are all questions you (or better yet, your marketing team) should be asking and answering before you even open up one social media account.
Start to ask yourself questions like these so you can tear down whatever was holding you back in 2018 and build something new and exciting for 2019.
So here is your first and best checklist re-cap as we dive into 2019 (your most amazing business year ever!):
What is your unique area of expertise? Figure this out, and your marketing will start to magically fall into place. Be tough on your business! Make the very, very, very hard decision to be a sole expert in one lucrative thing. It’s the most game changing business decision you will ever make.
How does your unique expertise walk and talk in the world to engage your ideal client?
Once you have positioning and branding nailed, write down your sales goals (monthly? yearly? quarterly?) and build a targeted sales campaign. Refine, repeat.
Spend the time to build your own signature system (simple is always better) to turn clients into raving fans.
Enjoy your work and have a reliable pipeline of high paying clients year round! Like I said, Best Year Ever!
This all sounds like a lot, huh?
Maybe 2019 should start with a gift to your business.
The gift of our 3 week Private Roadmapping session. At the end of it you will have the an actionable foundation for all the steps above. Whether you choose to move forward with our partner design team, or on your own - you will def be on the way to your best year ever.
Tell us your dreams for 2019! I know we can achieve them together.