Do you find clients, or
do clients find you?

Sometimes in life, it is easy to be tempted by apparently obvious answers to our problems, when the real answer is neither obvious nor easy.

Take services marketing as an example. As a general rule, businesses which provide services are meeting a need in the form of expertise, experience, or time which the client or customer doesn’t have.

Whether the services are sold by the hour, or packaged into fixed-fee “solutions”, owners of service businesses invariably see them as products to be sold.

From a marketing perspective, the pressure is on to move as much product as possible and there is a focus on initiatives to find customers for the product (service).

This focus on finding clients can become your default definition of marketing – a concentration on pushing the service – instead of a system for clients to find you.

Consider the key differences between the two. When you focus entirely on finding clients for your services, the following invariably apply:

• Each set of actions tends to form a separate campaign, sometimes without any overall connecting strategy.
  
  
• Most outbound marketing involves “delivery costs” – printing and post for direct marketing, space or time for advertising – and to make it worse, much of the audience which is reached is not your market.
  
  
• If a tactic is repeated it means repeating the costs, even if the details remain identical.
  
  
• If you decide to adapt a campaign for another market or delivery mechanism, this will involve additional costs for the adaptation and more for the delivery.

When you focus on developing a system for clients to find you, the following tend to apply:

• You base your marketing around the messages you want to get across – using different channels of communication, but keeping the core messages the same.
  
  
• Because the most effective communication channels are free, you tend to use them and there are fewer “delivery costs”.
  
  
• Your message-based strategy means your efforts are self-targeting, so there’s less waste.
  
  
• Adaptation for different communication channels is easier. Repetition is usually possible with minimal cost.
  
  
• With lower per-unit expenses and higher conversion ratios, costs-per-sale compare favourably.

With comparisons like this, you’d think all service businesses would market themselves this way. The reason they don’t is because it is not obvious, and because “push” strategies seem easy.

It can be difficult to understand the perspective which potential clients might have of the questions your service provides an answer to.

It can be more difficult to develop strategies and material to attract potential clients, qualify their interest, and encourage them to respond. But the effort is worth it in the end.

If you want to concentrate on what you do best, while we develop a tailored “clients find you” system for you, please contact us to discuss consulting arrangements to meet your needs.

If you want to achieve additional leverage by learning how to do this yourself, the services of The Marketing Coach (yes, that's me!) are ideal for you. Individual Coaching is available for less than the cost of a part-time junior office assistant (click here for details).

For more information about the difference between marketing to find clients and marketing for clients to find you, ask for the special report “Pull Marketing – what it is and how it works” by the Marketing Coach.