Is your mindset limiting your business? How to embrace marketing with soul
Love to market your business with more confidence? Find out why successful marketing comes down to mindset – and four steps to embrace marketing with more soul.
Do you feel like you’ve invested loads of time and effort into marketing your business but aren’t really getting anywhere?
If you’re not naturally inclined to selling yourself, then putting on that marketing hat can be tricky. But if no one knows you even exist, how are you and your business meant to thrive? Maybe it’s time to step back and find out what’s going wrong.
Are you making one of these two marketing mindset mistakes?
You can have all the skills and budget in the world, but at the end of the day, marketing comes down to mindset. If you love and embrace marketing with the right mindset it will work for you. And if you don’t, it won’t.
Here are two common mindset reasons why marketing fails:
- Thinking it’s not honest – too many small business owners find marketing a chore or feel it’s somehow ‘dirty’ or dishonest. They’re afraid to charge the amount they want and focus too much on the competition.
- Falling into victim mentality – in other words, finding every reason outside of yourself as to why things aren’t working, such as not having a shop front, places won’t advertise, marketing is too expensive etc. Successful people are not victims, they take ownership of their actions. And if other people can find solutions, so can you!
Don’t feel bad if you recognise any of these traits. After all, making mistakes is how we learn what works and what doesn’t.
And actually no matter how inexperienced or afraid you are, or how much you think it’s a necessary evil, everyone has a natural flair for marketing to some degree. We all pass information on by word of mouth for instance, and have the ability to understand human behaviour in various ways.
Four steps to marketing with more soul
So if we are all able to successfully market our business to some degree, how can we overcome a limiting mindset and start selling our business with confidence?
Here are four steps you can take to help you market with more soul, connect more with your audience and in turn create the potential to grow your business.
1) Decide who you are
Find out what it is that makes you and your business special. Trying to make money without regard for the products or services you’re offering doesn’t work. Know fully what you stand for, what your vision is and boldly share it with the world. This is purpose, and purpose adds clarity to what you’re offering.
2) Express yourself
Once you’ve decided who you are, you need to give yourself a voice. Tell people what you’re passionate about and what impact you want to have on the world. This message of purpose needs to be clear so it can resonate with your audience. If the way you’re portraying yourself lacks passion, creativity and energy then people are going to sense it and be put off.
3) Know your customers
Tap into the core of who you’re selling to. Figure out what problems you can solve for them and how you can bring value to their lives. People want to be understood by you, and care about how they feel when they make a purchase. By having a genuine interest in your customers, you’ll develop an offer that they will truly want and need.
4) Be of service
This is the real key to successful marketing. Show how you are the solution to your customer’s challenges by communicating with them 100% authentically.
By removing the neediness from your business, with less emphaisis on selling and more on service, customers will be attracted effortlessly. It will also take away the worry as to whether a prospect will buy or take advantage of your products or services, because you’re concentrating on the giving and not receiving.
Marketing is easy when you do it with soul
If you’re lacking in any of the above areas don’t be afraid to ask for help, because if you do everything on your own it dilutes all your efforts. Then once you’ve started addressing them, see how easy marketing becomes and how simply the business grows with new ease, clarity and direction.
Sue Pickford works for Intouch Accounting, the expert contractor accountancy firm for Limited Company contractors.
Photo by Mitchell Orr
