Positive attitude and control essential for marketing success

by Trey Ryder

Your marketing program cannot succeed in spite of you. It will succeed only because of your efforts and the decisions you make.

Far too often, I watch clients torpedo their own programs. I discuss everything I do in advance. We’re well on the road to success. And then when it’s time to make key decisions, it’s almost as if my client and I never talked about these subjects.

At the beginning, my client made the decision to hire my services. But now that the program is in progress, the decisions are often under the influence of third parties, usually a partner or spouse.

For your program to succeed, you need to control your marketing decisions and you need the support of people who influence your decisions. Then it’s important that you keep a positive attitude so your program can move forward.

Here are 11 tips that will help you keep a proper marketing perspective:

1. Stay focused. The results you want are new clients and referrals. Don’t get sidetracked with competing issues.

2. Listen to what prospects tell you. Prospective clients are your best source of market research, particularly when they attend your seminars, where you can meet and talk with them face to face.

3. Don’t beat yourself up when you make mistakes. Recognize your mistakes, try to minimize their impact, then correct them and move your program forward.

4. Consider your first efforts to be your trial balloon. This is when you get to practice at marketing. Consider your seminars as practice seminars. Consider media interviews as practice interviews. Pretend these initial efforts don’t count. This will greatly reduce your stress and you’ll enjoy yourself. Plus you’ll likely generate a few new clients.

5. Don’t focus on the number of inquiries you generate. Look instead at the number of clients who hire your services and the fees you generate. An estate planning lawyer who attracts 100 inquiries and generates 20 new clients might not earn anywhere near the fee that a personal injury lawyer could earn from attracting four inquiries and accepting one new client.

6. Don’t attach too much importance to any one result. Many variables affect your marketing results. If you think a particular method or step is important in your marketing program, don’t dismiss it too soon. Try it a few times, perhaps in different ways, before you draw conclusions.

7. Consider every marketing effort as your next test. Always stay willing to revise your plans and fine-tune your program. No astronaut ever got to the moon without making mid-course corrections.

8. Test small. No matter how confident you feel, any marketing effort can fall flat on its face. And many do. The smart money is on testing marketing tactics on a small scale rather than testing on a big scale, where the amount you stand to lose could be substantial. If your small test works, you can always increase your effort. But if your large test fails, your money is gone.

9. Test new methods against your current methods in an effort to improve your results. No matter how good your results are, you may be able to get better results by approaching your subject from a different point of view.

10. Look for results over the long-term, but expect short-term results as well. Marketing people may tell you not to expect results for several months. That’s a sure sign of a poor program or an ineffective consultant. You should start getting results as soon as you launch your program. Your numbers may not be large at first, but you should see at least some response to your efforts.

11. Don’t give up too soon. Every mistake you make is a learning experience that puts you one step closer to success. The more you learn, the more likely you are to succeed. Often, when you make a mistake, you learn something competing lawyers don’t know. Your experience becomes a major competitive advantage. You profit from your mistakes by keeping your program moving forward.

© Trey Ryder.