2. Why 95% of business owners aren’t ready to work with you right now
How to get potential clients to know, like and trust you.
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When it comes to investing in marketing, you’ll want to know when to expect results.
I hear this a lot from the firm owners I speak to at Troika...
“How long will it take until we see results?”
“How long will it take leads to become clients?”
Don’t get me wrong, both valid questions. But the answer, like many things, is “it depends”.
And it can depend on a number of factors:
Who you’re targeting? - Are you positioning yourself as a generalist targeting all everyone? Or going laser-focused with a specific niche? (my experience is that niche marketing tends to outperform generalist)
How compelling is your offer? - Are you bundling your services into an attractive offer for your target market? Do your packages stand out compared to what others can provide?
The channels you’re using? - Something like Pay Per Click (PPC) would likely generate results faster than Search Engine Optimsation (SEO) (although whether PPC works at all for attracting high-value clients is another newsletter entirely!)
But it can also depend on something that is mostly* out of your control…
The fact that most of your market aren’t ready to work with you right now.
*I say mostly because there are some things you can do to nudge people along, but we’ll cover that another time
Think of it like this:
If you launched a newsletter for business owners in your target niche today, and got 100 signups tomorrow, out of those 100 signups, it’s likely that:
50% will never work with you (sorry, it’s just a fact)
35% would be willing to work with you at some point in the future > 12 months
10% would be ready to work with you in the next 6-12 months
5% would be ready to work with you right now
Those statistics are examples (although supported by work by Linkedin’s B2B institute) but they stand to prove the point.
When it comes to marketing accounting & bookkeeping services, I tend to view the market like this, from smallest segment to largest:
Your existing clients (let’s not forget clients can be a great source of new revenue by up-selling additional services)
New businesses without an accountant or bookkeeper (if you choose to focus here it really depends what your average fees are and whether they can afford)
Existing businesses in-market (looking) for a new accountant or bookkeeper
Existing businesses that are happy with their existing accountant or bookkeeper
Within each of these segments, you can then drill down further into specific niches etc.
So if most of your target market aren’t ready to work with you right now, what impact does that have on your marketing?
It means that your marketing needs to be less focused on the conversion (getting them to book a call, sign up now etc), and more focused on engaging prospects, longer term, with a view of continually adding value.
Here’s a really easy way to think about it…
Each of your prospects has a bucket, and that bucket can be filled with balls - special balls - called ‘Know Like Trust’ balls.
Do they KNOW you? - Do they recognise who you are, what you’re about, the types of people you work with?
Do they LIKE you? Do they enjoy engaging with you? Do they like what you have to say? Would they like working with you?
Do they TRUST you? Do they believe you can do what you say? Do you have credibility? Would they trust you if they worked with you?
When you think about it like this - marketing becomes a game of filling (the right) people’s buckets with as many of these balls as possible.
For some people, it might take weeks or months, for others years.
How do you do this? Content tends to work best.
Blogs, videos, podcasts, newsletters (just like this one). These are all ways you can put yourself in front of your ideal prospects, build a relationship with them over time, and ultimately get them to a point where they trust you enough to work with you.
We’ll cover specifically how to create a content strategy that does this in another newsletter.
But for now, we hope this concept helps to reframe your approach to marketing and when to expect results.
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Until next time.
- Matt & Jordan