Your Marketing Headspace: Rules of Thumb

You can approach marketing a lot of ways. Since I'm so fond of the number 3, I tend to approach it as a triangle:

• How you think about marketing
• Things you purchase for marketing (when you have more money than time)
• Things you do for marketing (when you have more time than money)

The foundation, though, the place you always need to start is "thinking". If you're not clear in your head about how you think and feel about marketing, you'll expend time, energy, and money that you don't need to. Most of us aren't exactly swimming in excess time/energy/money so doing a little thinking first is worth it.

There's two aspects to "thinking about marketing".

• What do we already know is true generally?
• What is true for me specifically?

Let's start with what we know is true, generally (aka, rules of thumb). Next week I'll write about what is true for you, specifically, about marketing.

You will give someone at least 6 business cards before they manage to hang on to one.  That's why you print a bunch and give them away like popcorn. And why you always have your business cards on you. Where do those business cards go? Same place as missing socks I suspect.

It can easily take up to 6 months from the time someone firsts asks for a business card to when they actually book an appointment. Sad but true. Expressing interest is often the first step in a complicated dance (inside them, not with you) that gets them to actually booking an appointment. Or maybe they'll book tomorrow. Patience, grasshopper, patience.

People need to be in a conducive-to-thinking-about-massage headspace for your marketing efforts to have any effect. It's why I think grocery store bulletin boards, for example, are usually pointless places to leave your business cards (unless it's a small town or tight community where everyone uses that board to find local merchants). If they are absorbed thinking about something completely unrelated to massage, your massage will likely wash right over them. Where are your potential clients when they are primed to hear a message about their body, their health, and about spending money on themselves? (No, I don't have the answer. That depends on who you want to attract.)

You don't have unlimited time, energy, or money. Focus them on attracting clients who are just right for you. We can't reach everyone and we don't want to. Focus the resources you've got reaching the kind of people who are a really good fit for you.

Unless you have a gigantic budget and/or unlimited time and energy, it will take 2-5 years to build a self-supporting private practice. You heard me folks, 2-5 years. That's true of virtually everyone. You might be able to do it in a year if you really bust your glutes and every single star in the sky aligns perfectly but you aren't going to have a full schedule in your private practice in 6 weeks. It just doesn't work that way. This is a marathon, not a sprint (so you may not want to give up the day job right away).

Notice I said "private practice". It doesn't take 2-5 years to get a job working in someone else's shop and have a full schedule (if they know what they're doing). This only applies to private practice.

People need to hear / see your marketing message 5-8 times before they remember they've even seen/heard it once.  Not 5-8 times until they take action; 5-8 times before it weaves its way down through all the layers of noise, news, and consciousness and takes root as something they've seen once.  You have to keep putting stuff out there just to be noticed.

Marketing is as much mystery as science (translation: we're all guessing). Even huge corporations with full-time marketing departments headed by people with multiple degrees make stupid marketing decisions (New Coke, anyone?). Marketing is based on figuring out how people think, how they will value something, and what will generate a reaction. It's about the human psyche and that's still a lot of mystery to all of us. Don't feel bad if some of your marketing efforts go splat. Everyone's do sometimes.

Anyone else out there got any good rules of thumb for marketing? I'd love to hear them!