Marketing without an integrated strategy is like playing poker, tennis or football without knowing the rules, keeping score or having a game plan. You could put in a lot of time, energy, and capital, and still end up losing the game. Has this happened to you?

Winning at business is the same as any other game, whether your objective is to beat the competition or just to be the best in your industry. To be successful, you need to know the rules of the game, have a clear strategy and track your progress.

Here are some of the most essential rules to follow to succeed at marketing your business.

1. Written goals are motivating and can help you succeed.

Define your objectives for revenue, lead generation and conversion rates for the year and then break those down for each quarter. Commit them to writing. Next list the weekly and daily tasks you and! or your employees need to accomplish in order to reach your goals.

2. The more qualified prospects you can attract, the more clients you'll have. A clearly defined lead generation strategy will bring in the new prospects you need to be profitable.

3. It's easier to convert prospects to clients when they are lo'bking problem. It's much harder to convert people who don't have a current need or concern, even if they are members of your target market. Instead of seeking prospects, prompt prospects to look for you.

4. You' ll get a better response from marketing messages that are focused on client problems and concerns, not on your credentials or descriptions of products and processes. If you're not getting the response you'd like from your mailings, ads or web site, take a second look at your marketing message. A few changes in your marketing copy can increase response by factors of ten or more.

5. Integrate your tactics and message across your marketing materials, ads, and web site to prompt people to seek you out and contact you. Trying to generate leads without an integrated strategy is like playing football without a set of plays for the quarterback to use with the team. He'd end up throwing the ball only to find the receiver had gone the other direction or go for a field goal on the first down.

6. The purpose of having a web site is to generate leads.

Once you have a lead you can use it to generate sales. Once you get prospects to your web site or reading your marketing materials, make sure you prompt them to contact you.

7. Most sales are the result of a relationship based on your credibility and the value of your products or services. Developing these relationships can take weeks or months to build. Your marketing strategy should facilitate this process of building relationships over time, with multiple opportunities for contacting prospects.

8. The easiest people to sell to are past customers. Prompt first time clients to buy from you again and again.

Keeping Score

In order to know if your marketing is working you need ways of keeping score. Which marketing results are you tracking? Which additional ones should you define each month and quarter to track?

Keep track of these important 'scores' to evaluate your marketing:

1. How many prospects seek your firm out each month? Is this number growing each month by five to ten percent?

2. What percentage of people who are exposed to your ads, your web site and other marketing materials give you their contact information so you can stay in touch with them?

3. How many people are on your house list of qualified prospects? How fast is this list growing each month?

4. How many people buy from you each week? What is the dollar volume of each sale?

5. How many sales come from repeat customers?

Whether we're talking poker, tennis, or marketing your small business, the objective is to improve your performance and succeed more often. When you have a game plan, know the rules and track your scores, you can continually find ways to improve your marketing and grow your business.

Have you ever put on a jacket you haven’t worn in a while and found a twenty-dollar bill in one of the pockets? You’d forgotten all about it, so discovering it is like getting a gift. If you’ve been in business for a year or longer, you may have gifts in forgotten pockets–sources of additional revenue waiting to be discovered and tapped.

There are four ways to increase your net profits: reduce costs, increase prices, attract more clients or sell more to existing clients. When you consider that it costs you at least 60% and as much as 600% more to sell to a new client than to an existing one, it’s clear that your best prospects are existing clients.

Are you selling as many of your services or products as you could to your existing client base? Could you increase your revenue by doing a better job of marketing to your existing clients?

You’ve established your credibility and the value of at least one of your services with existing clients. They made a commitment to work with you at least once. How can you leverage this trust and client satisfaction into additional sales?

The biggest mistake that most small business owners make is to think that after they’ve completed the initial sale, their marketing job is completed. The opposite is true. Once you’ve made your first sale to a client and secured a commitment from them with a payment, you should begin your marketing effort to get them to buy again.

Of course, you don’t want to constantly be “selling” to clients. That would get tedious for you and your customers and they’d be unlikely to want to maintain the relationship. Instead, continue to educate them about their areas of need and how you help clients. Use your products and services to provide value and to educate clients so they can discover what they need and want, even if they’ve never thought about it before.

For example, I’ve been working with a sports trainer to complete my recovery from shoulder surgery. In our first session he showed me which muscles needed to be reprogrammed with exercise to return to normal functioning. The obvious conclusion of his explanation was that I needed to work with him again to achieve my goals. Just by sharing a little knowledge he successfully extended the project.

Help Prospects Become Clients by Focusing on their Problems

People buy solutions to problems or needs that they know exist. Get your prospects’ attention by focusing your marketing message on the problems you solve in order to get them to visit your web site or contact you. Then use your conversation or your marketing copy to help prospects further define their problems or concerns. Do this well and they’ll clearly see the need for your products and services.

Continue to Educate Prospects and Clients

Clients buy from you when they know how you can help them. That’s why they initially bought your products and services. Once you’ve signed on a new client, don’t assume that they understand the range of services or products you market. They may not even fully understand what they’ve bought. Instead of selling clients on additional services, educate them. You’ll create a perception of need and increase sales.

Transform Client Satisfaction into Additional Sales

Do you have clients and customers that appreciate your products and services? Don’t wait until your contract is complete to tap the goodwill you’ve generated by helping them. Regularly ask them questions designed to get responses like, “I couldn’t have done it without you”, “Worth every penny”, etc. Just after your clients have provided positive feedback is the perfect time to ask them a couple of questions to identify needs and to mention the solutions you provide.

Once you’ve gone to all the effort to attract a new client don’t walk away from the rest of their needs. Educate them at every step of the way about the problems you solve and they’ll understand why they need more of your products and services. You’ll discover pockets of opportunity to help your clients and increase your revenue.

“I hate making marketing calls. I don’t know what to say and how to say it. I’ve been assigned to find new clients and in the past four weeks I brought in zero new clients.”

Do you ever feel this way? Are you tired of being turned down? Are you frustrated by your limited success selling on the phone?

Making any of the mistakes below takes the fun out of your job and can kill your sales.

Using Push Versus Pull Marketing

Most of us don’t like pushy people who talk about themselves all the time. Think about your marketing. Are you constantly pushing information out about yourself, your products and services? This may be pushing prospects away when what you want to do is pull them in.

Not Generating Enough Qualified Leads

Marketing is about starting conversations with prospects so you can learn what they need and help them understand the solution you provide. To bring in more business, help more people understand what you do and prompt prospects to contact you.

Responding To Inquiries With an Email or a Letter

Nine times out of ten, when you send a prospect a written response to a query, it won’t result in a sale. Pick up the phone and you can use their questions to start a conversation. With just a couple of additional questions you can learn what their objectives are and then you can sell them the solution.

Quoting Price Too Soon

When prospects call, one of the first questions they ask is about pricing. Tell them right away and you risk ending the conversation and losing the sale. Dollar figures by themselves are meaningless. When a prospect asks what you charge, don’t tell them until you’ve had a chance to learn what they want. Then put the price in the context of the value and quality solutions you provide.

Wasting Time With People Who Aren’t Buyers

No matter how good your system is for qualifying leads, you’ll end up on the phone with people who can’t afford your services or won’t benefit from your products. Conversations like these can take up way too much time.

Use your qualifying questions and their responses to determine within the first three minutes of a conversation whether or not the person you’re talking with is a promising prospect. If not, thank them for their inquiry and move on to your next call.

Talking Too Much

You know your services and products inside out; you could talk for hours about product features or benefits. Don’t. You’ll lose your prospects attention, especially if you’re marketing over the phone.

Not Clarifying Value From the Client’s Perspective

You have a crystal clear idea of the benefits of your products and services; you want prospects to understand these benefits from their point of view. To help prospects understand the value you provide, get them to define what they are looking for and what it’s worth to them.

Not Getting To “Yes”

Your primary objective is to get the prospect to say, “yes” when you ask them whether they want to place their order or sign up for your services. Set up a pattern of “yes” answers and you’ll increase the chances they will say “yes” when you ask them to buy.

Neglecting To Ask For The Sale

If you want people to buy your products and services, you need to ask for the sale. This sounds obvious, but the tendency is to wait for the prospect to say they are ready to buy.

Why do we do this? Until you gain confidence in your phone selling technique, you’re afraid of getting turned down when you ask for the sale. If you’re working with qualified leads, many of the people you are talking with want to buy your products and services. Help them clarify the value and then help them make the purchase.

Forgetting To Follow Up On Sales

When you make a sale it may seem like the end of your marketing effort. Think of your first sale not as closing a sale but opening the door to a long-term relationship and you’ll increase future sales. When a prospect becomes a client, they’ve provided tangible evidence of their trust in you and your products and services. Follow up with a phone call to find out how the product or service is working and there is a good chance you’ll uncover a need for more of your products and services.

You don’t have to hate marketing on the phone. Learn what to say and how to structure the conversation and you’ll have more fun and make more sales.

You've got a great product or service that beats the competition hands down. Once you get in front of people or get them on the phone, they're sold. The only problem is you're not getting enough of those initial conversations with prospects started so you can convert them into clients. Instead of having your phone ringing off the hook with requests, you feel like your firm is the best kept secret in your industry.

Sound familiar?

Not Getting the Clients You Want? There is a good chance it is not the services or products you offer that is the problem. While you may be an expert in most aspects of your business, many service professionals and small business owners don't do the right things to market their products and services. They don't have a marketing strategy that works.

You are probably spending time and money on advertising, mailings, sales calls and presentations to prospects. But going through the motions of marketing doesn't guarantee results. More often than not, potential clients aren't fully aware of the range of your products and services and don't think of your company even when they have a genuine need, despite all your efforts. You could pour more time and money into individual marketing tactics and achieve only an incremental amount of growth. Or you could use these proven marketing strategies to attract clients and grow your business. The marketing strategy I help clients apply to build their businesses is based on five principles of highly effective marketing. Apply these principles to attract all the clients you want.

If you are like most service professionals and small business owners one of your primary concerns is generating as many leads as possible. Wouldn't it be nice if you could pick and choose your clients?

While you can't completely control who contacts you, you can use your marketing to position yourself to attract promising prospects and people who would make good clients.

Here's how.

As a small business owner, building a prospect list should be one of your core marketing activities. The more people are interested in your products and services, the better your chances to grow sales. Wouldn't you like to have the contact information for another thousand or more prospects for your products and services?

How should you spend your time and money to build a list of highly qualified leads? Here's an overview of common lead generation strategies.

Mailing Lists - You can buy hundreds and even millions of names to email, fax or mail to for just pennies per name. Yes, ten thousand or a million people could get your marketing message, but if they are not your target market, it won't help you a bit and instead could create a negative impression.

An accountant once told me that he never met anyone who didn't want to make 30% more money. Whether you want a better lifestyle or to take more vacations, buy a fancy car, spend more time with your family, send your children to college or to give it all away, you could always use more money.

If you sell services, your primary limitations on earnings are your costs and the number of hours in a week. Most independent professionals are already working well over 40 hours a week and can't work longer hours to increase earnings. Your goal should be to find ways to work less and increase your earnings. How can you market smarter and make more money?

An accountant once told me that he never met anyone who didn't want to make 30% more money. Whether you want a better lifestyle or to take more vacations, buy a fancy car, spend more time with your family, send your children to college or to give it all away, you could always use more money.

If you sell services, your primary limitations on earnings are your costs and the number of hours in a week. Most independent professionals are already working well over 40 hours a week and can't work longer hours to increase earnings. Your goal should be to find ways to work less and increase your earnings. How can you market smarter and make more money?

Marketing is like rowing. You pull hard on the oars to go forward, then lift them out of the water and push them back to finish the stroke and get ready for the next pull. Once you've got the sequence of the stroke right, you and your boat slip forward through the water and build speed and momentum. If you push when you should be pulling, the boat goes backwards, or, even worse, you lose your balance and fall into the bottom of the boat.