If we’re keeping it super, super, “10-Year Old Running Away From Home” simple, there are only two things to focus on to nail practice marketing.
- Your value proposition and how well you can explain your offer
- How you generate leads across only 3 funnels; referrals, COIs/ partnerships & digital.
Let’s talk about the first one by exploring a real bugbear of mine.
I can’t stand well-known sayings that make no sense. You know the ones.
“Head over heels”, is quite clearly the way most of us stand normally.
“I slept like a baby” only makes sense if you wake up every two hours demanding to be fed.
“I’m sweating like a pig” should actually mean you’re as dry as Robert Downey Jr’s birthday lunch.
Whoever coined the phrase “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” obviously never heard of polio. Or about a thousand other diseases.
But my personal favourite…
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”
Actually, you can quite easily by either:
a) Finding a thirsty horse.
b) Give a “Not Thirsty” some salt to lick.
Experts often work waaaay too hard when it comes to value propositions.
There’s no point wasting your time explaining to a horse what water is, why it’s important, why understanding more about water will improve it’s water literacy and how water is the key to peace of mind…
If you’re lucky enough to find a horse that’s thirsty, make sure the horse knows who you are, what you’re about, and that it can trust you…
…then lead it to the water.
That’s your preferred option. Find clients who know they need advice. There’s no easier marketing strategy than that.
If however, you can’t find them, you’re going to need some salt.
Salt isn’t good for horses in large quantities, but they like licking it.
There are clients out there who don’t manage their money well. That’s their salt.
They’ll do everything they can to ignore the issue until, one day, they get hit with the painful realisation of what it’s costing them. Pain and discomfort with their situation will drive them to change like nothing else can.
Your marketing can help bring that day forward, making them aware of the problem before it actually becomes a problem.
Voila. Thirsty horse.
