The thing I am saying you might have forgotten is your marketing.
This happens more than you think–you have a brilliant product or service, and you’re also brilliant at selling... the step you can sometimes miss out is marketing. Put those 2 ingredients (service and sales) together and you have something really successful, but it might not have sustainability. Where are you going to get your leads from when you run out the ones you have right now? How are you going to expand into new markets? Or create new products or product lines? What’s your key difference to competitors (and the new ones who haven’t arrived on the scene yet?). How are you keeping your fans loyal? What’s your key message and tone of voice so you’re always ‘saying the same thing’ in the market?
Can you see where I’m going with this?
And it’s ironic too as when I started my business–a Marketing Consultancy–I did NO MARKETING. Yes, the irony is not lost on me! But I had a good service–doing what I used to do as my job but as a consultant, was well known in my industry (at the time business software) and was pretty good at selling (although often my work sold itself). So I never really ‘had’ to do any Marketing–I was busy through referrals and, while ‘technically’ I did do networking (attending events for my industry, and in some cases organising them!), I had no newsletter, speaking gigs, blog, or marketing plan AT ALL!
I have clients like this too–some are small ‘solopreneurs’ who just got good at what they do and got their first clients through word of mouth, alongside some bigger corporate clients who just developed a great product and sold it well. But Marketing makes a difference (and yes, I would say that but it’s true). It builds your brand, it gives you consistency in a market and it builds assets for your business.
Marketing assets are your brand, your tone, your messages, your opinion pieces, your design, your presence in the market along with your consistent customer communications too (to keep those repeat purchases and referrals coming). You can run a (often very successful business) without Marketing, but you can run an even better one with it...
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