Do You Walk The Line?

This article was submitted by Michelle Gartner, of Gartner Web Development.

In earlier posts I reiterated the idea that in the business world you are your biggest cheerleader. Emphasizing that no one else is going to do your marketing for you, and the need for you to be aggressive and unrelenting in your marketing.

Now let’s put these points into a proper perspective. We have to be aggressive, not passive about marketing, because if we don’t put time and effort into marketing it won’t just happen. We also need to continuously repeat our marketing efforts to get results -that’s where the unrelenting comes from. However, we also need to listen to our leads, prospects, and customers about the best way to pursue relationships with them via our marketing strategies.

When I first started actively learning about marketing and it’s applications with web development, I didn’t have a clue. I wrote earlier about the “light bulb” experience I had when listening to Microsoft Webcasts on marketing. In one of the very first webcasts I listened in on and took notes, I learned a little bit about brand name recognition.

As human beings we live in a sort of vacuum, believing our own experience and ideas indicative of a larger whole. It is news to us then on a personal level that people don’t remember our names and faces. We tend to operate thinking people are very well informed about us and our business. Therefore it was very telling for me to find out a little bit about the statistics behind brand name recognition in these first webcasts. For example; it takes approximately three contacts with a prospect for them to remember your {business} name. Furthermore, it typically takes a minimum of nine contacts with a prospect to make a sale.

Thus another light bulb moment; that’s when I realized why my marketing wasn’t producing the instant results I expected. It really explained why my one newsletter or one initial email campaign didn’t net my business, a lot of callbacks and leads. Being kind of new to the marketing game, and coming to the conclusion that a good marketer did not rest on one campaign- my knee jerk reaction was to hit the marketing fast and furious. Now here’s where we need to show some restraint.

While it’s true that we have to make quite a few contacts before netting that seemingly elusive sale, we as marketers need to value the relationships we are building and not just on the customer level. We need to listen to what our prospects our saying and have their permission to market to them. It is not about hitting leads and prospects fast and furious with a volley of cold calls and then following up with emails, in order to make a quick nine contacts and then nail a sale. Good marketers are going to find this key balance between aggressively marketing and listening to those we intend to market to. If this concept of permission marketing sounds familiar, then you know a bit about Seth Godin and his revolutionary ideas about how to properly go about marketing. If you are new to the concept of permission marketing- don’t worry, we’ll delve deeper into that topic in an upcoming post.

I’ll leave you with this; did you construct a marketing plan this week? If you have a plan, did you actively work on your marketing plan? Are you listening to those you market to? More importantly do you have their permission to market to them?

Tie these concepts into the Core Habits for Internet Marketers that Chris wrote about earlier. Reading; read up on permission marketing or perhaps branding and brand name recognition. Listening; if you are actively marketing are you listening to your prospects? Are you paying special attention to the more subtle cues they are giving you on how to best market to them. Networking; are your networking habits conducive to building real relationships?

I’d love to hear from you, leave me a comment- Do You Walk the Line?