Tactical Tuesday: 6 Step Marketing

What’s on the iPod: Skinny Love by Birdy

I can’t believe it’s Tuesday and I’m just now getting around to telling you about my weekend. That’s a good sign, believe me.

Saturday I don’t even remember. I know it was slow and it involved reading. It always involves the farmers market, so I know we vegged up before we vegged out. We puttered around the house. I moved a few things from the basement to upstairs, but mostly it was just lounging and reading. The garden swing got some serious use. I can’t remember enjoying doing nothing more. Sunday I dragged him into the car and we drove. We ended up at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, but the destination was actually more the ride than where we ended up. We stopped along a lake and had a picnic lunch, and we drove back roads, which took us through some gorgeous farm country. A few Amish buggies and one farm stand later, we arrived home with fresh fruit and our bucolic fix for the week.

I like starting the week strong. After that nice weekend, I began with a call with a new client in the morning. I think we’ll be able to work together, and I’m eager to start. It’s a company I’ve admired for a while, and it was wonderful to hit it off immediately with the woman I spoke with.

The afternoon was spent alternating between writing and marketing. I’ve decided to make my “breaks” in writing less jump-up-and-get-something-to-eat and more two-minutes-to-market instead. Despite my ADD nature when I’m writing (I have to break when I’m on a roll — my brain goes a little faster than my fingers), the shift helped. Now I’m doing something useful with my time.

I’ve also decided to start a new series: Tactical Tuesday. which will become part of this blog’s theme rotation.My goal is to find a specific focus for each of the themes I give you — Technology Tuesday is self-explanatory, as is Monthly Assessment and Free Advice Friday — and really narrow down the advice to something you can apply right now.

Here goes.

Tactical Tuesday: 6 Step Marketing


1. Choose your direction. Marketing starts with committing to a direction. You’d not pick up a hockey stick and start slamming it at the goal not knowing which goal is yours. Don’t do the same with your marketing.
Build a list of potential clients you’d like to reach out to. Start with any of the following: magazine editors, companies in your specialty area, company employees in your LinkedIn groups, etc. Don’t contact them — just gather contact info from their websites or some other directory.

2. Choose your method. Some clients on your list will require a specific approach — magazine editors will most likely get queries, for example. For the rest, decide how you’ll first approach them. Email, snail mail, phone calls, social media, face-to-face — all are possibilities. Pick one for today.

3. Create your message. What do you want to say to your potential customer? If they were to ask you what you do, how would you answer? Write your script, paying particular attention to presenting benefits. For example, don’t write “I’ve been writing for 25 years and I have worked with over 50 companies.” Instead, write “With 25 years of exceeding the expectations of more than 50 companies, I’m ready to help you improve your communications messages.” Set up your message simply — state why you’re writing; give a little background on yourself, and; personalize it with what you’ve observed, what you’ve done in similar areas to theirs, where you’ve seen them mentioned in the press, how you can help them get mentioned in the press, etc.

4. Proof it, then send it. Please, proof your work. Show them you’re going to be careful with their project by being careful with your communications. Check name spelling, company names, and your own spelling/grammar. Then send it via whatever method you’ve chosen (or call them if this is your phone script).

5. Follow up. If you’ve not received an answer to either your call or correspondence, check back. It could be, as has happened to me on a number of occasions, that someone put your note or voice mail aside to get back to and simply forgot. In one-to-two weeks (no later than two weeks, if you can help it), write back or call again. I usually attach the original note for reference. If you’re writing via snail mail, you could switch to email for the follow-up correspondence, just to speed things up.

6. Repeat. If you don’t repeat the process, especially the follow up, you could be cheating yourself out of money. In one case, the client didn’t respond for eight months. When she did, it resulted in over $23K in extra income that year. Every day, go through this simple process again. Once you have a lot of marketing messages out there, make sure to follow up every day on a handful of them.

Writers, what are your own daily marketing methods?
How often do you switch from one approach to another?