In my previous post ”The Man With A Plan” I spoke about what I feel are the key elements to a successful marketing strategy. These elements came to my mind while chatting with Marketing Mentor and Business Coach Ilise Benun, the author of the Marketing Plan + eCalendar that I used as a base for my marketing strategy and of which I spoke about in my post ”Your One Person Orchestra”. They are:
- having a plan
- being consistent with the plan
- managing expectations
I have already covered what having a plan means. If you haven’t read it, please pause, click here to go to my previous post, and then come back. I will be waiting for you.
You read it? Good. Because having a plan is crucial. But just as important is following that plan consistently. If you are marketing yourself today as a fashion photographer and tomorrow as a landscape photographer, then your prospect clients will never know what to hire you for. But even if your offer is always the same, if you apply your marketing efforts for a week on your social media and then the next week on your print mailings and then stop for a while and then next month you decide to go with e-mailings, you might as well save yourself all the trouble because you will not get anywhere either.
What does being consistent mean? It basically means that after sitting down, doing your research and creating your marketing plan you must follow it to the last comma. Or at least for as long as it works. You are allowed to make amendments, but you just can’t go changing it every other day. It confuses your audience:
- Your message should be clear and free of confusions. You don’t want to send your audience mixed messages. If you are a makeup artist, advertise yourself as that. If you also do nails, say that you also do nails. But don’t say today that you are an MUA and then next month say that you are a Nail Artist. Your audience won’t know if you changed paths or if you are just being inconsistent. Either way they won’t hire you.
- You must choose your channels wisely and stick to them. Doing some trial and error is fine, but past the trial period you have to make up your mind. If you have done your research and you know that your audience is always on XY social network, then apply all your efforts in there. You don’t have to be in every single channel, you just have to choose the ones that the audience that you want to reach follows. And when you do, stick to those channels. If your audience follows your channel and you never post to that channel, they will get bored and leave. And they will never come back.
And with great consistency comes great regularity. You have to be both Consistent and Constant. If you are going to do this, you have to do it every day. Not just when you have the time or when you feel like it, but every-single-day-for-as-long-as-you-want-a-succesful-marketing-strategy. Period. Because results don’t come overnight, or at least not for the grand majority of us. Results are like the constant dripping of water that wears away the stone. And in this day and age, that stone is tough to wear.
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