Client Grabbing Marketing Plan Part I

Do you hear the winter winds blowing yet? Neither do I, but I’ll let you in on a little secret, your competition is already gearing up for their fall/winter advertising blitz. If you aren’t preparing your marketing strategy for the fall you might as well throw your money on someone’s lawn because they are going to rake it in. Don’t worry, nobody was born knowing this stuff, but that’s what makes an expert worth the money they charge, isn’t it? You’re just starting out and money is tight, you’d rather not pay an expert for their advice if you can apply a little elbow grease and learn a few things on your own, right? That’s what I thought. Let’s get started, and hopefully, by the end of this series, you’ll have a solid action plan for developing your client base through smart and efficient advertising.

Since you know that effective advertising takes advantage of the seasons you now need to think about how to leverage that to your advantage. How do you think the cold months will affect your business? Do you think business will slow down, or pick up? If you said pick up you’d be right. My experience in running my own dog walking business was that things ramped up quickly starting in September and went straight through the winter. One of the reasons, and it’s going to be the basis from which we will build our marketing plan, is that people don’t like to walk their dogs on snowy, icy streets, in the bitter cold. Now there’s a revelation! When your potential clients get up in the morning it’s dark, and when they get home at night, it’s darker. The last thing they want to do is take the dog for a long walk. Poor Fido!

That’s where your service really takes on a major appeal. Let’s face it, guilt is a big motivator. Heck, I can imagine a lot of tough decisions would never have been made if guilt wasn’t a factor. When was the last time you threw some messy garbage out the window of your car on an empty road? You didn’t, and that’s my point. “Hoot, Hoot, Don’t Pollute” said Woodsy the owl. Aw shucks, I wouldn’t want to hurt a poor little owl and neither would you, which is why we don’t litter. That ad campaign, which was pushed very hard during the late 70s and early 80s, worked very, very well. Prior to that folks used to toss their trash everywhere, and the streets and parks were filled with litter. That’s when Woodsy the owl showed up, along with a few Native Americans. Dressed in traditional Native American garb (think old western movies) they stood on precipices, overlooking the dirty, garbage ridden wastelands, and wept at our selfish indifference. It was emotional stuff and it got the nations attention. That campaign pushed all the right buttons, and here we are some 25 years later and our streets and parks are now mostly clean. This is powerful. That ad campaign changed a society’s behavior by changing its collective attitude. It replaced selfish disregard with a feeling of sadness and guilt when we considered tossing a McDonald’s bag out the window. It introduced shame without creating resistance. So how can you harness the power of guilt when it comes to your business? You’re about to find out.