Your First Marketing Method Didn’t Work? Good!
One of my solo business friends is writing a book for customers who need home ownership solutions.
She hunkered down in a hotel for five days and methodically wrote each chapter.
Before leaving the office for this writing marathon, she created a Web site to sell the book, and she also advertised its availability in U.S. newspapers.
My friend returned to her office the next week, excited that the book’s contents were ready for editing, formatting, and printing. But there was one problem she hoped would not occur.
Just one response arrived to her book’s offer, and that response was from a salesperson wanting some of her advertising dollars.
The newspaper source had been very successful for previous ads promoting her other services. Why didn’t it work this time? Could be:
She mentioned the events to me during our weekly brainstorming session. My first words were, “Good! It’s wonderful that you tried this method and found that it’s not the way to advertise. Now you can move forward and explore other options you would not have considered if this one worked.”
My friend agreed. Thankfully, there wasn’t a big cash outlay for this national advertising source, so she still has plenty of funds to explore other avenues while the book is being printed.
When your first option doesn’t work, sometimes you feel very let down, especially when working alone and you have time to stew over disappointing results. Your mind goes round and round, thinking about wasted money.
Finally, you wake up out of the funk and start going through files, looking at results from other campaigns and recalling where promising referrals were uncovered. Then, after crafting plans B and C, you move forward to find your audience.
It truly is great to bomb the first time. It doesn’t seem so when it’s happening because it’s more efficient to duplicate the same methods. But in this economy, change is the only thing you can count on.
As you create campaigns, be sure to craft several options to get your message across. If the first plan doesn’t work, you’ll smoothly move to the next, and the next, until you find your market.
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Comments
I appreciate your feedback and look forward to sharing many more marketing tips, techniques, and profitable practices with you and other soloists.
Hi Shirley, can I make a suggestion regarding your site? Drop the Content Link ads. They are probably not doing your online venture any good in the long term. ost people find them as irritating as pop-ups.
Just a thought ;0)
p.s. Your writing is just great - keep it up.
Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..
Matt Hanson