Do you find marketing to be a constant struggle? It doesn't have to be that way. The most successful marketers make it look easy, because they have found a way to market themselves that is effortless. Perhaps you have tried to copy what those successful people were doing, and it didn't work for you. Here's why.

Marketing is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. You have to find your own unique path, the one that works best for you and your business. To make marketing easy, that path needs to be the one where you will encounter the least resistance -- both from the marketplace and from inside yourself.

Here are six steps to put you on the road to effortless marketing:

1. Be willing to let go of struggle. This may seem patently obvious, but stop and think for a moment. Is there some part of you that is attached to making things difficult? Is there a secret payoff you get from trying so hard? Whenever you find yourself struggling about marketing, pause and ask yourself, "How could this be easy?"

2. Market to the people you like, and who like you. A colleague once told me I would never earn a living marketing my services to solo entrepreneurs. "You have to focus on getting corporate clients," she said. "Then you can afford to work with entrepreneurs once in a while."

Thank goodness I didn't listen to her. Maybe that was the formula that worked for HER business, but it's not where my heart was. One of the reasons I became self-employed was to spend more time working in non-corporate environments. If I had followed her advice, I would have failed miserably.

3. Start with the people who are ready for your message. Yes, there is an entire population out there who would hire you if only they understood what it is you offer and how you can help them. You can make educating those people part of your long-term mission. But in the meantime, you need to make the car payment.

Seek out the customers who are most likely to already understand the value of what you do. If you are a reflexologist, you need to be speaking at the Whole Life Expo instead of at the Rotary Club. If you offer a workshop on corporate ethics, network with members of Businesses for Social Responsibility instead of the Millionaires Circle.

4. Choose marketing strategies that match who you are. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a mediocre cold caller. It just doesn't fit my personal style. So I focus on the strategies that are natural to me -- speaking, writing, and networking to build referrals. I've consistently maintained a full practice that way for over six years now.

One of my clients is also a business coach who targets solo entrepreneurs. Her business is identical to mine, but her personality is completely different. She loves to cold call, and has been able to fill her practice that way. Speaking and networking don't come naturally to her at all. It's a good thing she didn't try to copy me.

5. Find people who can pay what you need to charge. If you persist in marketing to people who can't pay your fee, you will encounter not just resistance, but a brick wall. Don't give up because it seems that no one in the population you want to serve has any money. You have to look for the intersection between your chosen market and people who have enough resources to hire you.

I've been told that people recovering from substance abuse can't or won't pay for professional coaching, but I have had several as full-fee clients. The intersection is that they were also entrepreneurs. People say you can't make money working with teens, but I have had three clients who do -- one as a coach, one as a private teacher, and one as a professional speaker. The intersection they found was teens with well-to-do parents or schools with funds obtained from grants and sponsors.

6. Pay attention to how people respond to hearing about your business, whether or not you are marketing to them. A client of mine used to be a computer skills trainer. When she talked about her work, people nodded politely. But what she really wanted to do was teach public speaking. When she began to talk about that idea, her listeners got excited.

The difference wasn't in the content of her message -- public speaking can be just as dry a topic as computer software. It was her own enthusiasm for the work that attracted so much interest. If you really want your marketing to be effortless, you need to be in a business that excites YOU.

Copyright © 2002, C.J. Hayden

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