Client Magnet

Tom Fishburne is a genius. His cartoons are always spot on.

I see this all too often with clients that are overly dependent on referrals & word of mouth. I’m beginning to believe that the old business adage, “feast or famine,” is simply a signal that the business is poor at marketing their services/product. I know there are seasonal/circular patterns to some businesses, but good marketing helps to offset these normal variances. And marketing done properly (ie. planned, tied to measurements, evaluated, tweaked and relaunched) can become a system to generate predictable results.

For instance, I know that everytime I publish a blog article on Fast Company I’ll get a spike in web traffic. Google Analytics shows me that ~10% of those people sign up for my email newsletter, Client Magnet. Once they are on my newsletter, it typically takes six to eight months for them to call/email me about working together. Publishing articles has become a system for me.

If you’re still counting on the volume fairy, you need to know that generating consistent sales isn’t rocket science. Consistent sales comes from consistent proactive marketing. Pure and simple. You cannot leave it solely up to your word of mouth stream which is too unpredictable from month to month. You may be great at what you (and probably are), but you need to become a better marketer to grow your business.