Each of these components can help you attract more brand new clients and each level can help you get the most out of your existing relationships.
The first component is the niche. The niche is your target market. It’s who you’re going after. This is the center of any marketing. When I talked to Dominic he and I were both commiserating that whenever we would get confused in terms of helping clients or clients would get fuzzy about a next step, not being sure what to do, it always came back to this. About looking at the niche of who are you going after.
The second component is the irresistible offer. What are you offering to this niche? A lot of people make the mistake in marketing of thinking, “Oh, I’m going to design this product and service,” and then it’s like, “How do I market it?” is a separate step.
I think if we’re going to be successful in business we need to step back and think of the marketing in the design process itself. Meaning, how can we make the product so irresistible inherently, that it’s easy to sell, versus just a generic sort of bland, boring product and service and then figuring out how we can sort of sell the sizzle and not the steak. That’s the second component is the offer.
The third component is the hubs. This was one of the things that really made so much sense to me when I was talking with Dominic. A lot of people at my trainings would say, “Well where do I advertise? Where do I market? How do I find people?”
I never really knew how to answer that. I always give kind of vague answers but now the answer’s really clear for me. Where you find them depends entirely on who you’re looking for. One group of people is going to hang out in one place. Another group’s going to hang out in another place.
It’s not just about where to find them. It’s also about a way to build trust with them. That’s a lot more powerful than other things you may have tried. So that’s the third component, the hubs.
The first is the niche. Second, what are we offering them? Third the hubs, where do we find them?
And fourth, word of mouth strategies. Again you’re already getting passive word of mouth but are there things you can do to accelerate it and get more word of mouth? Yes.
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Once you’ve identified the niche you want to attract, it’s probably a good idea to ask yourself, “Where do they already spend time, money or attention? What are the events, groups, businesses that they already trust? Who are the individuals they respect?” After all, if you can align yourself with those groups – those hubs – well, you’ve made your life much easier.
But what makes a good hub in your niche’s network?
9 things . . .
1. credibility: they are trusted and respected by your niche, they are influential to the life, work, opinions and practices of your niche (e.g. maybe they’re pushing the envelope, on the cutting edge and an industry leader or maybe they’re committed to the basics etc).
2. reach: they have a large sphere of influence and reach a lot of people within your niche
3. list: already established, well organized and set up communication mechanisms through which they are regularly in touch with your niche (e.g. email list, mailing list, blog etc).
4. mutual respect: you already know them and they trust you, you have an authentic relationship with them, you genuinely respect them and already endorse their work to your clients and friends, you’re a really big fan of theirs
5. cooperative: they are open to endorsing quality things to their list, they’re excited to partner and collaborate
6. active relationship with niche: your niche already spends a good deal of money, time and attention on or with them
7. shared vision: you share a common vision and set of values
8. fresh: you haven’t maxed out this relationship already (e.g. maybe they’ve already endorsed you to everyone they can think of)
9. service: they’re passionate about meeting the needs of your niche
NOTE: You may have to create your OWN hub if none exists and be a host for your community.
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Hubs can help you spread the word.
Why? They’re well connected and well respected.
They’re like the one’s and two’s in the photo to the right. Their circles overlap a lot of other people’s circles. An endorsement from a ’1′ can mean more to you than an endorsement from ten ’4′s. Placement in the ‘right’ media can save you a lot of time and money.
When you start thinking about your niche market, and how to reach them with effective word of mouth marketing – you immediately need to start thinking about the ‘hubs’ in their networks. You need to ask yourself, “who do they already trust?”
Luckily, it’s not that hard.
These seven questions will take you most of the way there.
1. EVENTS & LOCATIONS: Where does your niche gather, congregate, celebrate and hangout?
2. BUSINESSES: Where do they already spend their money?
3. GROUPS: What formal groups are they a part of?
4. SUPPORT: What resources or groups exist to support them?
5. WEBSEARCH: if your niche were to search for a solution to their problems on google, what would they type in?
6. PUBLICATIONS (on and offline): Where do they go for news and information that is relevant, credible and valuable for them?
7. INDIVIDUALS: Which individuals do they most trust (whether globally or locally)?
If you’d like get cool posts like this in your inbox every few days CLICK HERE to subscribe to my blog and you’ll also get a free copy of my fancy new ebook “Marketing for Hippies” when it’s done.
It occurred to me recently that the bulk of my business has come from this one technique.
But it’s something I do that I’d never taught explicitly. Or ever seen taught.
If you’ve followed my work at all, you’ve heard about how important it is to identify your hubs. To think about, ‘who is it I’m trying to reach? And who’s already connected to them? Where can I find them?’
And you might have also heard me harp on how critical it is to have a customer database. Huge.
But let’s combine those two notions: database + hubs = a database of your hubs.
Here’s a practical thing you can do immediately that could change your business entirely.
Create a spreadsheet in excel or what have you with the following columns:
Priority: what priority are they to you? how good a hub? Try to give everyone on it a 1, 2 or a 3. 1 is a super good hub and 3 is just okay’.
Type: in my case there are holistic schools as one type. Then there are groups, holistic centers, people, retail and online listing type hubs.
Niche: what niches are they focused on? In my case, it’s either green or holistic or both.
Group/Business Name:
Contact Name: Who is the best person for you to talk with there to make things happen?
City/Province: Where are they? If you’re limiting your reach to a city – you might make it neighbourhood based. If you’re international, you might make it country based.
Email:
Website:
Who Referred Them: This is great to keep track of. Then when you call them or email them you can remember to say, “I was talking with _____ and they said to call you.”
And I would challenge you to see if you can come up with 100 hubs for your business. This sounds hard but it’s actually easy once you sit down and really focus on it. Once you’ve got this database you’ve got a lot of directions you can go. You’ve got a list of key people to invite to your special parties, to take to lunch, to give special invites to on your events, to ask to spread the word to their lists. How to use this list is another topic. But having this kind of database can be a total game changer for people.
If you’d like get cool posts like this in your inbox every few days CLICK HERE to subscribe to my blog and you’ll also get a free copy of my fancy new ebook “Marketing for Hippies” when it’s done.
I'd like to give you a hefty summary of the content I cover - my take on how you can get more clients and increase your cashflow without doing things that feel 'gross'. I'll send you emails from time to time (only cool stuff, don't worry). Your email will never be sold. No spam. Etc.
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