Effective Marketing Secret #7: Consistency Is CRITICAL

As I begin writing the conclusion to this 7 part series of effective marketing secrets, the fact that I haven’t written in a few days probably doesn’t leave a very favorable impression, especially since this last secret is all about consistency.

Consistency in what you say. Consistency in the end results you deliver. But most importantly, consistency in communicating with your marketplace.

Believe it or not, not everyone is going to jump all over your offer (assuming of course you’re presenting an offer EVERY TIME) the first time they see it.  People’s lives go through cycles and let’s face it, life gets busy.  As a result, it’s silly to expect a prospect to purchase your particular product or service the very first time they encounter it.

You see, there’s something in marketing called the Sales& Marketing Spectrum (see below), which is the idea that people enter your sales or marketing process at various points along a spectrum of ‘readiness’.

At the far left you have people that have just begun the process of thinking about your particular product or service as a solution to their want or need.  At the far right you those people that have money in hand and are ready to fork it over.

The problem is, there’s a whole bunch of space that separates those two types of prospects and the time it takes a prospect to move from the far left to the far right could be days, weeks, months, and in some cases years. And it’s in the space between where they entered your sales process and the far right where they finally become a customer that they’re researching and trying to find answers to their questions, concerns, and issues.

So, how can you be sure that your prospects don’t forget about you or your solution during the time it takes them to move from the far left, where they’re just starting to investigate possible solutions, to the far right, where they’re finally ready to buy?

The key is to consistently communicate with them. While this communication is much more effective if it’s a direct communication, that’s not always possible.  You certainly don’t want to call Mrs. Prospect every day to tell them about how much better their life would be with your product or service.

However, you DO want to make it possible for Mrs. Prospect to receive this information EVERYDAY if she so chooses.

Fortunately, there are many tools that allow you to communicate with your target market in ways that don’t seem intrusive or over-bearing, and while I could go on and on and on about all the available tools, I’ll save that discussion for another day.

The idea I’d like to convey is that given the time it takes the majority of your prospects to go from just beginning their search to actually forking over their cash, is time you should be using to develop a relationship with your prospects and position yourself as THE EXPERT.

The only way you can do both of those is to be consistent with your communication. In upcoming posts I’ll talk about putting some systems in place to help you be more consistent at communicating, but for now, I challenge you to do a better job at communicating with your target market. Don’t be a stranger. Share your knowledge and expertise. Help them realize that no matter how much they search, research, and study that you truly do offer the BEST answer to their problems, wants, and needs.