If you’re involved in marketing or selling professional services, I think you can agree that it’s often hard to create and implement an effective marketing plan that brings in business. But creating a marketing plan isn’t always enough, because marketing plans tend to skip some crucial steps in the process that help the prospect go from an interested party to a paying client. Duct Tape Marketing guru John Jantsch boils it all down into an easy to understand and implement marketing process he calls the “marketing hourglass” – John writes:
“..getting someone who has a need to know, like, and trust you” with the intentional act of turning know, like and trust into try, buy, repeat, and refer you get the entire logical path for moving someone from initial awareness to advocate.
The key is to systematically develop touchpoints, processes and product/service offerings for each of the 7 phases of the hourglass.
1. Know – Your ads, article, and referred leads
2. Like – Your web site, reception, and email newsletter
3. Trust – Your marketing kit, white papers, and sales presentations
4. Try – Webinars, evaluations, and nurturing activities
5. Buy – Fulfillment, new customer kit, delivery, and financial arrangements
6. Repeat – Post customer survey, cross sell presentations, and quarterly events
7. Refer – Results reviews, partner introductions, peer 2 peer webinars, and community building
Far too many businesses attempt to go from Know to Buy and wonder why it’s so hard. By creating ways to gently move someone to trust, and perhaps even creating low cost offerings as trials, the ultimate conversion to buy gets so much easier.
In order to start your thinking about the hourglass concept and gaps you may have ponder these questions:
- What is your free or trial offering?
- What is your starter offering?
- What is your “make it easy to switch” offering?
- What is your core offering?
- What are your add-ons to increase value?
- What is your “members only” offering?
- What are your strategic partner pairings?…” (Read more here.)
Whether you’re a solo lawyer trying to market your services, or a larger firm trying to build a new clientele, focusing on an effective marketing plan and process can help you turn interested parties into paying clients.
Susan Martin, Marketing coaching for professionals
