I’ve recently been exploring what I consider to be the essential rules for business owners who want to market themselves effectively, based upon The 16 Monumental Secrets of Guerilla Marketing presented by Jay Conrad Levinson in his national bestseller GUERILLA MARKETING.
So now you are committed to your marketing plan. You see it as an investment, are dedicated to maintaining consistency in your efforts, and are confident in promoting your business. Now what?
Secret #5: “You must be patient in order to keep a commitment.”
This is the part that is less exciting–maybe even dreaded–for most of us. We live in a time where instant gratification is commonplace and instant results are expected. The trouble with marketing is that the results aren’t often traced back to your campaign in a concrete way. The messages that you send out are received by your audience and stored; you never know when or how they will surface but the point is that you’ve reached the right people, made an impression, and continue to remind your target audience about your presence in the marketplace. It is important to keep in mind that marketing is powerful in ways that can’t always be measured. Reality suggests that often in life things don’t always move as fast as one would hope, which is why I strongly encourage my clients to set their patience meter all the way up to 10 and keep forging ahead.
I will be the first to admit that patience is not my forte. I want things to happen now, not later—whether it’s a phone call, a sale…anything really! But a healthy dose of patience goes a long way, especially for your sanity as well as the continued success of your marketing efforts over the long haul. Branding yourself takes time, and once you’ve done that, it takes more time and patience to keep that top-of-mind recognition. Exercising patience will allow people searching for solutions you provide to discover you and moreover, to ascertain why your brand is the right choice for them. It’s not on your schedule, it’s on theirs and when they just so happen to be looking for what you have to offer. It is at this point that they discover you are the RIGHT choice based on the consistent and credible message you have put around your brand and yourself as an expert in your industry. Furthermore, you never know when the opportunity for referral will strike and you want to be the first name that comes out of someone’s mouth.
Finding ways to sow the seeds and then watching them grow all takes patience. It comes down to a willingness to dedicate yourself to developing your brand along with circulating the heck out of your consistent message to your targeted audience. It takes relentless discipline, fortitude, and vigilance in addition to patience, but the marketing marathon is rewarding beyond measure for those who are patient and stay the course. Think for just a moment about the times when you were patient and when you were not. In each case, didn’t the time you demonstrated patience bring forth the greatest positive benefits? You bet it did, so your commitment should include being patient with your branding efforts.
by Paige Zutavern, President
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