Three Ideas for Marketing Outrageously5 min read
share:
According to Jon Spoelstra, in his book, Marketing Outrageously, businesses need to embrace the concepts and practices of Marketing Outrageously.
He should know. He practiced this as the general manager of several sports teams such as the Portland Trailblazers and the New Jersey Nets.
He helped his teams not only increase their revenues, but to fill their stadiums with raving fans – even when their teams weren’t winning.
Look, it’s a must-read if you are interested in surviving and thriving during the pandemic.
Usually, in an article like this, I would outline all the key ideas the author teaches in the book. I’m not going to do that. That would only give you a reason NOT to get the book!
No, I’m only going to talk about three Big Ideas that can be game-changers for you as a self-employed professional.
Big Idea #1 – Do Whatever it Takes
Whenever we set a goal, we tend to hedge our bets. “Well, I’ll try to make it happen.” But that’s not something I’d bet on actually happening if that’s how you’re thinking about it.
Trying to reach your goal isn’t doing whatever it takes.
But this isn’t about setting huge, crazy, unreasonable goals either. It’s about setting an important goal, an achievable goal, and then doing whatever it takes to make it happen.
For instance, you want to attract X new clients or generate Y revenue by a certain time.
Once you’re clear on your goal, and have an unwavering determination to achieve it, your chances of success increase dramatically.
Big Idea #2 – Your Strategy to Meet with Prospects
I’ve always said that the purpose of marketing is to get meetings with prospective clients who are open to hearing what you have to offer.
So, you need to develop a strategy to accomplish that. I’ve always found that individual emails, emails to my list or giving a presentation (such as a webinar) are the most effective ways to make this happen. Other ways can work as well.
Whatever you do, it needs to be a strategy that you feel confident and comfortable putting into action. Usually the simpler the better. Big, complex strategies tend to have a high failure rate.
Once a prospect has agreed to meet with you, you need one more Big Idea to succeed:
Big Idea #3 – The Hard-to-Refuse Irresistible Offer
Now you’re meeting with a real-live prospective client. But what do you have to offer that they are going to find hard to refuse?
This concept was popularized in the Godfather movie. In other words, “If you refuse this offer, it’s curtains for you.”
Well, we can’t do that, but we can certainly make offers that are still very hard to refuse. Not a bland, boring offer – but something that gets the juices flowing.
Without an irresistible offer, your prospective clients will have no reason to buy your professional services. Strange as it may seem, almost everyone tends to miss this.
So, what makes an irresistible offer? Let me count the seven ways:
1. It’s an offer that is, well, outrageous. It’s unexpected, over the top, and ridiculous value. Your clients will get a LOT and they cannot lose.
2. It’s something that only you can really do. It’s an offer that utilizes your knowledge, expertise, connections, and whatever else you have in your professional toolkit.
3. Your clients should feel they’ll lose an opportunity by not taking the offer. If it’s just another program or service, what’s the big deal? But if the value is so unique and valuable, fewer will turn it down.
4. It needs to be an offer with guaranteed satisfaction. You can’t promise the world and fail to deliver the goods. So, how can you do that?
5. It needs to be a program or service you are passionate about. It can’t be just to make money. It needs to go beyond that to make a substantial difference.
6. It needs to be hype-free. No B.S. No fine print, no changing things in the middle of the project. No, you need to make your promises and deliverables clear.
7. It has to be the right offer to the right clients. Look, the offer of a free sample hamburger to a vegetarian is not a good offer. Not everyone is a candidate for your offer, no matter how outrageous it is.
So, how do you develop an offer like this and communicate it to your prospective clients?
Well, it’s different for everyone. You simply have to come up with something that meets those seven criteria. Yes, that takes some work, usually a lot of hard thinking.
The funny thing is, when working with my clients, many times they’ve actually come up with the idea for their offer themselves.
But they were often too scared to try it.
So we brainstorm, look at all the pros and cons, see if it meets the seven criteria, and then develop a step-by-step plan to put it into action.
Often it’s much simpler than they think. Sometimes it’s wickedly difficult, if not impossible. So we come up with alternate offers.
Here are a few recent clients who got results:
For one client in my current program, she started to reach out to people in her network. In two months she got a big client that has engaged her services almost full time.
Another client reached out to past clients with a new service. In less than two months he got three great projects. Now, he’s working on a new strategy to get in front of more prospective clients.
One more client lost all her business due to Coronavirus. But she implemented a new strategy with a very simple, but powerful offer. She is now booked up with work for the rest of the year.
This is something you can do if you put your focus on these three big ideas:
1. Do whatever it takes. Find a way, no matter what.
2. Find the best outreach strategy to reach your prospects.
3. Develop a hard-to-refuse irresistible offer.
And then go into action.
And attend my webinar on Friday!
I’ll talk more about Marketing Outrageously and also share more about my Marketing Action Group Program.
Not only that, I’ll make you an irresistible offer.
You don’t want to miss that!
Cheers, Robert
share:
