Telephone Directory Marketing – just don’t do it!

When someone kindly subscribes to my newsletter, I always ask them a question:  “What’s your biggest challenge in your business?”

Out of all the answers I get, the most common one by far is “getting more clients”.  And this is where the problems start.

Wanting to “get more clients” is understandable.  If you don’t have any clients, you haven’t got much of a business to run!  But is it you just want any old client?  Will any client who walks in to your office, picks up the phone to you or sends you an email do?

If you have just answered yes, then your marketing is doomed for failure.

If you are out to attract anyone and everyone who may buy your product or services, then you may as well pick up a copy of your local telephone directory, open it up at the A’s and start calling everyone listed, one by one.

Hopefully a shudder just went down your spine when you read this.  You just wouldn’t do this would you?

And yet if you have not clearly defined your target client and focused your communications and marketing literature on speaking out to that one targetted person, then you may as well go do the telephone directory marketing approach.   You’d probably get a better hit ratio by phoning the first 1,000 people on the list.

Stop trying to solve the problem of “getting new clients”.  Start identifying your target clients – the ones whose problems you know you can solve.

Because if you don’t do this important step in the marketing process, then that telephone directory may just be your only answer.

Other articles you may be interested in:

1. 7 Steps to Attracting New Clients to Your Business
2. Spray and pray marketing: the problems and the solutions
3. Why niche marketing works for small businesses