A few years ago I asked one of my clients what she got from working with me. Her answer surprised me. I was expecting her to say something like “I get marketing knowledge and advice from you.” She did get that, obviously, but what she also got, that she valued more, was confidence. The confidence to define her marketing message and the confidence to deliver it.

Confidence is the second of the three part process that I started writing about last month. If you missed September’s post on Simple Marketing, you can read it here. Now let’s take a closer look at how to build confident marketing.

Are You Talking Yourself Out of New Business?

If you haven’t read the September blog, it really is worth a quick look, before reading much further. Simple marketing is about doing the strategic thinking. It’s about getting clear on what makes your business stand out, knowing what goals you’re aiming for, understanding the different ways in which you can reach your goals, and really identifying your ideal clients. When you’ve worked on all that, it becomes much easier to create a confident marketing message – one that speaks directly to your ideal clients, showing them what makes you the best solution to their challenge.

Recently I worked through this exercise with my client Mandy. We did an audit of her marketing – looking at all the marketing she was doing, what was working and what wasn’t. What became clear through our discussion, was that she was doing an awful lot of marketing! This is something I see far too often. Don’t have enough clients? Just doing more and more marketing is not the way to find new ones! Mandy’s list of marketing activities was very long and rather disorganised.

1. What makes your business stand out? Having asked Mandy lots of questions about her business and her marketing, we knew that her StandOut Strategy was Growth. (Check out the free test on my website, if you’d like to know what your StandOut Strategy is.) This means that Mandy’s clients come to her for help with growing their businesses (well, she is a business coach!) They are looking to be challenges, encouraged and inspired by her. Those are all words that Mandy needs to use in her marketing.

2. Where are you going? For Mandy, we changed “I want more clients” to “I want to be working with one more 121 client by the end of the year and one new corporate client.” Helping Mandy clarify her goals helped her to clarify her marketing messages. Instead of “I help businesses to grow” she can now talk specifically about the particular challenges being faced by her clients, that she can help them to solve.

3. How will you get there? Are you looking to work with more of your existing clients, or are you focusing on new clients? Mandy realised that many of her clients have the potential to give her more work, so we looked at a specific marketing message for them. For the new corporate client she wants to work with, she needs a different message.

4. Who are your ideal clients? Mandy used to be happy to work with anyone with a pulse and a credit card. She’s much more specific now, which means that her marketing messages can be much more tailored to who she actually wants to work with.

Can you see how answering these four questions can really simplify your marketing message? A simple message is much easier to deliver, which means you can do it much more confidently. Shorter messages are easier to remember too, which adds to the confidence level.

When someone asks me what I do, I can say that I work with coaches, consultants and trainers, showing them how to simplify their marketing, deliver their message with confidence and get the results they want. Its short and easy for me to remember, so I can deliver it confidently.

The Marketing Moment

Can you explain what you do in just 20 words? Don’t over think it. Don’t spend hours trying to craft the perfect phrase that will have potential clients queuing up to work with you. This is about coming up with a couple of lines that leave the listener wanting to know more.

Have a go and send me your 20 words – if you’re feeling confident enough to do it! If you’d like some feedback on what you send me, I’m very happy to do that. Put your words into a comment here, I’ll take a look and send you some feedback.