Michael Jordan is a great one to research on the topic of Consistency and Repetition! True in all areas of life especially Sales & Marketing!
Small Business Marketing is an area of itself and as per some of my earlier articles, one of the largest issues I see out there as a Marketing Mentor is REALLY LAME CONSISTENCY. Sorry to just start on the negative, but I am not going to sugar coat this issue that is costing many great Entrepreneurs and their families dollars!
Before I go into my rant, err – I mean my constructive piece of compelling writing I wish to thank the awesome Ciaran Keating (East Software) for asking me to talk more on this idea. We are in this shared “Northern Think Tank Project” and touch wood – this link will be content in his upcoming newsletter so yay!
So back to my original article – Basically too many have great ideas, great technology, great thoughts – they then make a great decision and say hire me to help them (of course I think that is a great decision x x) but then they either don’t do the work at all, or start / stop over and over again. The reality is that regardless of how great you and your technology is – without consistently interacting with the market you aren’t going to get anywhere near the results you deserve.
Putting my money where my mouth is, I am going to use one of my favourite “Early Game” Marketing Strategies, Business Networking. I built my 6 Figure Business originally out of doing that 3 x times per week and constantly meeting people for coffee / lunches. I would work my butt of giving referrals in the hope of getting them and doing my best to sell my services.
Networking can be exhausting work, but make no mistake – it does totally work and if you do a bit of Google Research, it won’t take you long to see Richard Branson backing up my logic here (or perhaps I am backing up his logic!).
The point being is that I would meet countless people that would say Networking wouldn’t work and almost always, it would be due to Marketing Consistency. That is, they aren’t either doing it enough – or worse, just coming and going without creating any compelling reason as to why someone should hire their services.
In some cases, I have had silly billy people tell me it doesn’t work and they go Networking 1 x per Month! Yes, 1 x per Month. I would say go at least 12 x times per month. So in this case, my consistency and workload itself would have a massive impact over theirs.
When I started my business 3 years ago, one of my friends (who I had a falling out with eventually) started his business the same time I did. Were were friends at the time, but our relationship really started to wane as that person was always they were “Better than me” and they were “Just more experienced” (true or not, it’s not very nice to push someone around like that).
I would go Networking at least 3 times what that person did and would be meeting people 1-on-1 all the time to work out how we can help each other. That person always had this big idea of “Seminars” and even went as far to say that “I am just a little thinker”. At the time, my self-esteem was quite low – so I put up with it, eventually I unfriended them on Facebook and never again!
Even though I think I am way better than them, let’s say I wasn’t. The fact that I SOLD MORE AND BETTER helped explain why I succeeded in my business and they went back to full-time work.
My big lesson early on was the importance of consistency. As a Marketing Mentor early on when I didn’t have the awesome track record I do today, I would often get hired over way more experienced people than me because they could see my clear focus and would trust me more over the “Big Shots that come and went”.
Even though I have used Business Networking as an example here, pretty much this point applies true in most other Marketing. Be it knocking on doors, Facebook Posts, LinkedIn Group Contributions, Sticking to Fortnightly Email Marketing and calling up your channel partners asking for referrals every month or so on – CONSISTENCY IS KING!
I hope you have enjoyed my article awesome people and have a great day / night out there!
Edward Zia – Marketing Mentor and man who just became great out of doing it more than everyone else! x x (Well, I at least think I am great. I so hope the market does too!).
2 Responses
My name is Chris and I suck at consistent marketing. Is there any examples of a marketing default diary which could help me in the Awesome Marketing Vault!!
Thank you Chris for the great answer! From Corporates to Small Business, out of all my years guess what the best Marketing Default Diary is? Microsoft Outlook. Put all your items into your calendar and beautiful! Make sure it sync’s with your phones too and sweet!