How to think about marketing

Here's an exercise to give you clarity on your business and how you market it.

Start by creating a vision of the kind of client you want. Write down a profile, complete with a name, a background, likes, dislikes, lifestyle, etc.

Then, write a storyline about how they would come to find out about you. If it's through a web search, what other pages did they look at? Are they at work? Are they feeling impatient, at ease, looking for a distraction?

What would their immediate first impression need to be to keep them from hitting the Back button? What steps would make them WANT to take each step from no interest to mild interest to initial contact to hesitant trial then to full client?

It's best to approach this with the presumption that the potential customer is looking for a reason to eliminate you. Your job is to provide the tools and incentives for them to convince themselves to keep going.

This is what I call the Decision Chain (more on this in a later post). And it really is a chain. All it takes is one weak link and the entire chain becomes pretty much useless. BUT if all the links are strong you can keep building on it to take them from full client to buzz generator.