Marketing is the lifeblood of your service business. Without marketing, your business is unlikely to continue to exist. You must market to bring in new clients. Of course, marketing takes you away from time to perform the services you get paid for, so you may even consider it an annoying “waste of time”. You may even resent the necessity of marketing, and have a whole arsenal of avoidance techniques – even going so far as to do dreaded paperwork rather than marketing.
Let’s say, though that you have resigned yourself to the necessity of marketing. You accept it as a necessary activity. Maybe you’ve even gotten yourself convinced and committed to regular marketing. Now, how do you keep yourself motivated to continue to market, no matter what the results seem to be? Here are some ideas for how you can keep up your marketing motivation.
1. Remind yourself that marketing is both a long-term project and must be a necessary and consistent activity.
You can gripe and complain about this fact, but marketing is a constant in the life of your service business. You can’t expect to get results immediately, or if you only market occasionally. Marketing is a must and you must market regularly. It’s a long-term project and it’s unreasonable to think you’ll get new clients either quickly or from your every marketing activity you do. Marketing takes a while to gain momentum and the trust of your target market. Look at it as if you are building a strong foundation for your business, because, in effect, that is what you are doing.
2. Find marketing activities that you enjoy doing and have absolute certainty that you can stay committed to doing.
Don’t expect to succeed with your marketing by doing activities that you don’t enjoy. Choose those marketing activities that you like to do and that you are already good at. Don’t base your marketing plan on skills you dread using or are not accomplished at. You will be marketing long-term and unless you enjoy it, you will not be able to sustain the activity. In fact, if you choose your strongest skill where you are especially gifted as your major marketing activity, you’ll be the happiest and have the best chances to succeed.
3. Look for a way to create a support structure around your marketing activities.
Since marketing can, at times, feel like an isolating and disheartening activity, look for a way to create a support structure for your marketing. You might hire a marketing coach, or look for a marketing mastermind group. What you want is to associate yourself with others who are committed to the long-term project of marketing, understand what you are going through, and who are both knowledgeable and supportive when it comes to marketing. Create a place where you can get ideas, support and courage to continue your marketing efforts.
4. Expect inevitable disappointments, and plan for how you will deal with discouragement.
There will be times when you expend a great deal of effort and it seems that you get NOTHING in return. That may or may not be true. It could be that you have planted some seeds that will come to fruition in the future. In fact, that is very likely. It’s challenging to restrain yourself from digging up those seeds to see how they’re doing. However, figure out ways to cope when all your marketing effort doesn’t seem to be producing results. No, this does not mean drinking for solace. It means that you need a “marketing buddy” you can brainstorm with, a good hard workout, or a way to reinvigorate your commitment so that you can continue your marketing without interruption.
5. Have a policy that you will continue your marketing consistently – no matter what.
There are times in life where the only difference between a winner and a loser is that the winner gets back up from a disappointment one more time than the loser does. Build the “muscle” that keeps you in the marketing game – no matter what. Typically, when we persist that one more time, that’s the time when we experience a major breakthrough. This is a matter of exerting control over your emotions and performing no matter how you “feel”. Feelings are valuable indicators, but they don’t have to control your performance.
Commit to make marketing your business a habit, and you will find that you are having results in the form of new prospects and new clients. It’s a consistent process, and you must perform consistently. Use these few ideas to keep yourself motivated in marketing when it appears that your results are scarce.
Suzi Elton provides business writing that attracts targeted prospects to your service business and converts them into clients for you. She is a Robert Middleton Certified Action Plan Marketing Coach, as well as a professional writer. Her website offers a free series of 8 assessments you can use to analyze your own site.
