Set It and Forget It – Bad, Expensive Idea

Last week I was contacted by an out of state “firm” who had trawled Meetup groups for clinicians seeking marketing help and wanted me to recommend their services to “my constituents.”

In checking out their glitzy website, I discovered that their offer included an onsite assessment from “secret” patients (as if my practice were a clothing store or restaurant), a report replete with statistics on demographics, psychographics, and growth goals, and a strategic business plan – all for only $5000.

Further checking showed their minimum recommended level of budgeting for marketing was $5000 a year, and included items such as promotional incentives and gifts to get new clients – common practices in some industries. This firm could apparently accomplish everything for me short of driving new clients to their appointments.

Hmmm. When you’re a one person show, it’s very tempting to want to outsource all the thinking and planning and implementing of business operations and client attraction work. An offer like this appeals to our desire for set it and forget it marketing.

I can remember the time when I too wished I could hire a promoter to get clients lined up at my door. It would have been a great solution to the anxiety and insecurity I felt about having to talk about the benefits of counseling in a way that would convince people they needed it, and that would persuade them that they should hire me.

What this approach to marketing your private practice fails to consider is that tactics that work in retail, or for large impersonal clinics with multiple clinicians and admin staff don’t work for counselors and coaches with a solo practice.

Our distinguishing feature is in the quality of relationship we build and sustain with prospective, current and former clients. That takes constant personal attention. It can’t be wholly outsourced.

No slick advertising or website / brochure produced by an out of state consulting firm can successfully capture your unique personality and healing presence.

Phew – you’ve just saved yourself several thousand dollars.

Coaching questions:
When you feel resistant to marketing your solo practice, what anxieties and insecurities are under that resistance?

What do you need when feeling those anxieties and insecurities?

How can you feel them, and not let them stop you from extending your warmth and humor and genuine personality when connecting with potential clients?

What Stops You?

Have you ever made a marketing plan that sounded good in your head or on paper, and discovered when you tried to put it into action that you have trouble forcing yourself into carrying out some of the items?

I developed a new marketing plan for a specific new project of mine this week, and have already found a pitfall.

Seems that what I thought I needed to do is requiring more effort to talk myself into than I anticipated. Does that happen to you?

What's the solution?

It's probably not the idea itself that's faulty. It's the assumptions behind it that haven't been completely made conscious, or thoroughly examined.

Sometimes it's the shoulds that get us. My pitfall action item is a should -- I thought I should attend more networking groups. But I hate those. I assume I'll feel awkward, I believe I won't know what to say. That brings up sabotaging fear. I reschedule, postpone, make excuses not to go.

Re-examining that should I remember that social networking isn't my strength. It's never going to be easy, I think. I'm never going to like it. Hmm, two more assumptions. Are they really true?

Will I be stopped on my road to achieving my goals by these assumptions? How can I coach myself (and you, if you're on the Should and Assumption road) out of this pitfall?

I ask myself (and you):

• When you've felt awkward and scared before, what did you do to overcome it?
  

I took flower essence remedy Madia to strengthen my communication ability, and created a mental mantra to reinforce the sense of feeling comfortable, having fun, feeling accepted by strangers.

• How can I make it easy?

I can start with small or purpose-focused groups, like workshops instead of meet and greets. That's easier because I can mostly listen. The pressure is off to talk about myself.

• What do I need to experience so that I can like it, and how can I manifest that?
  

I need to feel a sense of comfort, belonging, and control. I can manifest that with convenient time and place, getting there without traffic, imagining being / playing the role of an extrovert, making a game of how many names I can remember or cards I can collect, being able to leave when I want, using my interviewing skills to start conversations, etc.

What about you? How have you gotten beyond being stopped before? How can you make it easy? What do you need to experience, and how can you manifest that?

3 Realistic Expectations for Solopreneur Success

Because few of us in the counseling, coaching or naturopathic medicine professions have been trained for being in business, we tend to have unrealistic expectations about how long it should take to consistently turn a profit.

Likewise, we can be overly idealistic about how soon marketing efforts will start bringing in clients. And the danger of this is that we adopt a shotgun approach to setting business goals and working an effective marketing plan.

Exact timelines will vary according to what degree of resources you start out with, how much time is available to work on your business, and how persistent you are at following through on a small number of daily tasks. But there are some generally realistic timeframes to keep in mind.

If you are like most solopreneurs I work with who have a small pool of resources to invest at the beginning, and are financing the launch of your business on personal credit cards or family loans, it will take longer to get a continually full client load.

The realistic expectation for the time it takes a one-person businesses to truly succeed is about 5 years.

If you are reluctant to set business goals with targets for where you want to be in 6 months, 1 year, and 3 years, it will take longer to feel and be successful. The more organized and business-like you are in your approach to running your business, the faster it will settle into a nice rhythm of keeping clients coming in.

The realistic expectation for success without a detailed business plan is from 3-7 years.

Note that detailed doesn't have to mean extensive. You don't need a 20 page business plan with charts and graphs. Start with 3 goals -- big, medium, small -- and target dates -- long range, mid range, near term -- by which you intend to achieve them.

If you are impatient or scattered in your marketing strategies, or trying to make a method work that goes against your natural personality, it will take longer to generate powerful client attraction. The more concrete, specific and consistent your marketing activities are, the faster they will pay off -- although not always in the direct ways you can measure.

The realistic expectation for highly effective marketing to be producing a steady stream of clients when you're a one-person show is from 12 months to 3 years.

These timeframes may sound like a very long time when you need clients now. There's no time like the present to get started on focused planning and follow through.

Overwhelmed? Not sure where to start? Email for a brief strategic steps chat.

The 4 Legs of Effective Marketing

Effective marketing strategy has 4 main legs:

1. who your ideal client is
2. what type of marketing personality You have
3. how much persistence you are able to commit
4. what stage of development you're in (what your marketing need is)

No one leg of strategy is THE answer for everyone.

Know who your ideal client is. This drives where and how you market, and what your marketing message needs to say. We all have to start here.

Know what type of marketing personality You have. This helps construct a marketing plan that can be consistently followed to get results. We all present ourselves and our business better if we lead with the strengths of being an introvert or extrovert, and use the style opposite from our own to supplement primary activities.

Know how much persistence you are able to commit. Carve out the necessary daily/ weekly/ monthly time, nurture the energy, gain the skills, and do the follow through -- all are needed to make your marketing efforts work.

By the way: four hours a day is optimal to start. Four hours a week is better than 4 hours a month. The more persistence you put in, the faster your business will grow.

Know whether you need to fill your pipeline, follow up with a contact list, get more chance to talk about your work, or become more efficient at converting interested people into clients. Those are the four stages of client attraction development for solopreneurs in the healing arts.

When you know which stage you're in, you'll know exactly what marketing activities you should be doing.

Need help? See The No Hype Mentor for a coaching package that's right for you.

Raise Your Hand if You Don't Have a Marketing Plan

Yep, that's what I thought. Most counselors, coaches, and solo-NDs don't.

When I ask my clients what their marketing plan is, I often hear answers like this: I'm looking into graphic designers, thinking about branding and planning to get a website soon. Or, I was thinking about taking brochures to doctor's offices. Or, I don't know, what do you think.

Well, what I think is that the idea of writing out a plan is intimidating to a lot of self-employed sole proprietors. We aren't really sure what's supposed to be in a plan, don't know the right way to make a plan, or the process is just too overwhelming.

The idea of a marketing plan triggers distaste for self-promotion, fear of being too visible in the public eye, insecurities about being on our own as business people, and sets off those feelings of being a fraud. Besides, if we'd wanted to do all these businessy things, we wouldn't have gone into the healing arts, right?

Some rugged individualists resist planning because we think it will pin us down, fence us in, inhibit our range of movement. Usually, these are the types who jump from one idea to another, without building a solid foundation or a clear, coherent, compelling message. (I've been guilty of that, so I can talk. LOL)

There are many benefits to having a marketing plan. It prevents going into panic when clients drop off and new intakes have dried up. It ensures you are connecting with the right prospective clients in ways they are likely to respond to. It keeps you from spending money foolishly on unnecessary advertising ploys pushed by unscrupulous hucksters.

So let me ask you this -- how healthy is your business right now? Is it thriving the way you want? Do you have a waiting list of clients, clamoring to get an appointment this month? Can you confidently project what your client load will be a year from now? No?

In other words, how's it working for ya to take the haphazard approach to marketing? I'd bet it's maybe giving you sporadic returns on investment, but not paving the road to sustainable success.

Starting to feel the need to get your marketing plan together? I'm here to help.

Magical Thinking in Marketing

In counseling, we often deal with clients who have what we call magical thinking -- the tendency to base decisions and life on irrational ideas and cognitive distortions of reality.

Interestingly, as self-employed business owners, many clinically competent counselors, coaches, and naturopathic doctors engage in magical thinking when it comes to marketing. I thought it might be instructive to see this laid out in comparison to several of the types of cognitive distortions we more easily identify in our clinical patients.

All or Nothing Thinking -- Have you convinced yourself that all you need to do is have a website that lists the benefits of your services and your contact info, or put an ad in a newspaper or phone book, or a profile on a locator service, or get one time advice, and when that doesn't bring in enough clients to fill your practice, you do nothing else?

Marketing is like housekeeping. It's never finished. There's always something more that can be learned and done. It has to be part of your daily business-keeping routine.

Magnifying and Minimizing -- Are you magnifying the expense of getting your marketing foundation in place and minimizing the long term payoff in doing so? Are you over-relying on scattered piecemeal activities and under-utilizing a structured marketing plan?

Solopreneurs in the healing arts tend to sabotage themselves with a pay-as-you-go mentality, rather than having a mindset of investing in what creates life energy for their business and for the future. Many marketing tasks cost little more than time and self-discipline. The secret is in knowing where and when to put your resources for easiest maximum benefit.

Shoulding on Yourself -- Do you tell yourself you should be networking, seeking referral sources, blogging, speaking, etc, when that goes against your innate personality and skills? Do shoulds form the basis of your marketing expectations: for example, you should be getting clients because your website presents your credentials and the benefits of your work?

Assumptions and pre-judgment really get in the way of successful practice building, especially when you don't evaluate their validity or get input from experienced advisers. Marketing is a heuristic game. It requires you to be self-observing, self-evaluating, and self-correcting without getting stuck in shoulds.

Jumping to Conclusions -- Do you construct your own roadblocks by assuming what your colleagues will think of you if you market this way versus that? Have you concluded that niche marketing will limit your client base without actually trying it?

Personal insecurities and an unconsciously defensive attempt to escape them are at the root of this form of magical thinking in business.

A client attraction coaching program on the best marketing activities for your personality, along with work on your confidence level, can alleviate these destructive forms of magical thinking.

7 Shoestring Budget Marketing Musts

Lots of my clients allocate a miniscule amount of their business budget to marketing. Cautious about taking financial risks, and invested in getting trackable results, they tend to have a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) marketing mentality.

It's psychologically understandable to want your business to pay for itself. It may even be an absolute necessity for now. However, it is assuredly an unwise long term practice that won't lead to sustainable success.

So I have these suggestions for smart initial spending on a shoestring to get the most value from your marketing dollars.

1. Remember that nearly all marketing expenses are very likely tax deductible, even for sole proprietor businesses. Spending on marketing is like putting money in a savings account -- the pay off grows over time, and you collect nicely on your year end income tax return.

2. Spend all you can on building an attractive, sticky, interactive, user-friendly website with a compelling marketing message.

3. Invest in help for crafting the best marketing message that makes the deepest emotional connection with your ideal client if writing isn't fun and easy for you. (remember that writing for marketing purposes is different from all other writing)

4. Use an inexpensive online printer like www.VistaPrint.com for your business cards. Don't bother with ordering brochures at first. Print fliers, tipsheets, even brochures from your own printer on an as needed basis, unless you need more than 30 or so at one time.

5. Take advantage of all the low cost online locator services, and free social media and blogsites to connect with potential clients.

6. Pay for online credit card processing capability -- such as PayPal, as one of several examples -- to make it easy for clients to buy your services and products.

7. Develop a marketing plan that gives you a clear path for growth within the limits of sensible, reinvestment in your business spending.

5 Marketing Lessons from Getting My Deck Rebuilt

1. Over-protective preparation may be a waste of time, but will make you feel more in control of the chaos.

• They told me to cover all my electronics, so I bought huge plastic bags and encased everything, then I sealed all the windows with plastic sheeting to keep construction dust out. Probably a bit over the top, eh? LOL

• In marketing, solopreneurs often think that more is better -- it's not. Do only what is needed for the purpose you are aiming at. But you won't be sorry if you take the time to hone your marketing message and develop your marketing plan to it's highest potential effectiveness.
  

2. Making big noise is okay -- do it early in the day, in small bursts, then take an early lunch, and quit at 3 pm.

• Workers are hammering and drilling and sawing and banging on the walls at 7 am. Oy! That's practically like the middle of the night for me. But they are efficient, the sounds have variety, it doesn't last long, and they are done early.

• Marketing is effective when it makes some big noise to get your prospective clients' attention. It's even more effective when it makes the right kind of noise, using various approaches, in limited doses, then respects the clients' ability to make their own choices.
  

3. Take frequent breaks -- work a little, get coffee, work in a different area, confer with colleagues, work some more, rest, etc

• Frequent breaks allow for proper pacing of the job, while conserving personal energy. Corrective consultation, new directions, a little social interaction, all make the work go faster and be more pleasant.

• Self-promotion becomes over-bearing when endless. Clients hate the constant sales pitch, and you don't get useful feedback and input from colleagues. Better to pace yourself, evaluate results, make changes, and come at it again.
  

4. Be careful about promising a timeline or a specific result.

• I think it's a genetic pre-requisite to be in the building trades to never guarantee how long things will take or exactly what it will look like when it's done. Ever try getting a firm answer from a contractor? Forget it.

• A coach might argue there is an accountability issue here, but there is a good lesson too in not setting up expectations that can't be met. Novice self-employed marketers in the healing arts will do well to perfect how to be accountable without inflating unrealistic expectations with their marketing message.
  

5. Ultimately, it won't be as awful as you imagined -- the disruption won't be as bad or as unrelenting as you may have expected.

• Being used to an exceptionally quiet work environment, I imagined needing alternative office space for the 3 weeks or more this construction may take. I fled the premises yesterday with my laptop and cell phone. Today, with my desktop computer unbagged, I've barely noticed the work outside my office door.

• Marketing is an unfamiliar activity for many self-employed business owners. You might imagine all sorts of hassles, challenges, and results that never manifest. Putting yourself in the experience of it is the only way to know for certain how to work around the frustrations.