Calling all service providers! This is your MARKETING PLAN if you’re in a service-based business including:

• Digital Marketing
• Copywriting
• Content Creation
• Web Design
• Anything that delivers assets to customers

Follow this 4-step plan to properly market your business.

Your #1 job as a service provider isn’t necessarily what you’d expect. Watch the episode below to find out what you should always be doing first instead, along with other marketing tactics to build and scale your business the right way. Are you implementing all four steps in your business?

Video Transcript:

Hey, Julie here. Today I’m doing marketing 101 for service providers. This means if you are a digital marketer, a copywriter, content creator, web designer… anything where you deliver an asset to a customer, here is your marketing plan.

The first step is, I find it’s really helpful to create a sellable asset.

So what do I mean by that?

A lot of people don’t know how to sell. They feel lost. They feel like they’re being slimy.

And so a sellable asset is a piece of content that you create that helps you sell.

Think of it almost like a security blanket so that when you go to talk to people- whether it’s in person or online, you have something that you can show them that you can present to them that helps make your case.

So I have a few types of saleable assets that I want to explain here.

So the first is a playbook.

A playbook is a great way to show people how you work in your business.

So basically you could have a playbook for how you work with customers to build their website. Or how you work with customers as a videographer or a photographer.

Create a playbook where they can kind of walk through step by step the story of what it looks like to work with you. This is a great sellable asset. it’s almost like a knock-off on the traditional like brochure in digital format.

The second kind of sellable asset that service providers can use are case studies. And these are really powerful.

Now you may not have it at the beginning and that’s okay, but you want to look for that one client or customer that you know will be a great case study.

Don’t look for the newbies. Don’t look for the people who have nothing to sell.

Look for people who are already making good money because if you can use them as a case study, it’ll be that much more powerful.

And your case study can be done in written format or in video format. It can be very casual. You can interview your customer and your client. You can even offer to reduce a cost or even do it for free because the case study will sell again and again and again.

The third type of sellable asset is a webinar.

Now a webinar is actually more about making sales because it has content and then it has a pitch, but depending on the type of service you’re offering, especially if you’re offering a package something that people buy over and over and over again, a webinar is great because it can get people to the point of making an app an application filling out an application and then getting on the phone with you.

And so this works great if let’s say you are a digital marketer who focuses on Instagram.

And everyone kind of has the same Instagram package.

You can do a webinar on the power of Instagram and then get people to apply.

Next something like SlideShare or a traditional PowerPoint presentation.

This works great if you actually go to people’s businesses locally and you want to show them a presentation of how your marketing services can help their business.

This works remarkably well. It’s pretty traditional, but you can do it in SlideShare or PowerPoint you can automate it or you can bring it to the person, face to face.

And finally the last way to create a sellable asset is with a free course or ebook.

Be careful with this particular asset because sometimes your ideal customer doesn’t want a course.

They just want the work done for them.

So sometimes courses don’t work as well, but books do. Downloadable PDFs and things like that.

So the first step in your marketing plan is to create the sellable asset that’s going to work best for your business.

The next step is to do attraction marketing.

Now I am a funnel builder and I love building funnels but I don’t think that building a funnel when you’re just getting started is a great idea and here’s why:

First, you have to learn how to sell one to one.

Then you can learn how to sell to cold traffic through a funnel.

So attraction marketing is when you make everything about you attract your ideal customer.

So I’ll give you a really tangible example.

When I was a web designer, I would use my Facebook profile, my cover photo, my avatar even the links on the little sidebar, and it would always lead to my web design business.

This way even when I was talking about nothing that had to do with web design, people who were interested in me would click on my profile and they would see, “oh look she does web design.”

This works really, really well if you want to go into Facebook Groups and you want to get people’s attention and you want to build relationships.

A lot of groups don’t allow any kind of promotion so your best shot is to make your profile as attractive as possible and then put up a post on your profile that talks about your web design or whatever it is that you’re selling.

Then go into the group and start answering questions.

Just aim to be helpful because chances are several of the people who look at the answer to your question will click on your name go over to your profile and there will be your wall bait, your cover photo and everything advertise your business.

So once you have your sellable asset and you’ve optimized things like your LinkedIn and your Facebook profile for attraction marketing, and you’re learning how to sell one to one whether it’s in person or on Facebook, the next thing you want to do is create an irresistible introductory offer.

Now, this is very typical in a sales funnel but for a service provider, introductory offers tend to be a little bit more expensive because you’re still giving your time.

Think of something that people need all the time.

A perfect example of this in my business was I had a lot of bloggers who hired me to design their new blogs.

But first, the problem was they were over on a different platform outside of WordPress and they needed a migration.

I noticed that this was low-hanging fruit that people were asking for all the time and so I created an introductory offer for a hundred and seventy dollars to migrate their entire site. This was awesome because people bought it over and over and over again.

So in your business, there’s probably something that people ask for a lot. Make it irresistible.

Even if you lose a little bit of money on that first offer, it’s okay- because you can usually upsell them to some sort of ongoing package maintenance package or even get them to a more expensive service.

The last step in your marketing plan is to create as many systems and automation for your

existing clients so that you can spend the bulk of your time doing marketing.

A lot of service providers get stuck in the day-to-day work of their business.

Because they think that they have to do all of it but you can use things like automated tools, automated systems, contractors to help get the day-to-day work.

Because your job as a service provider, believe it or not, your number-one job is to actually sell. Not to do.

And this is a hard mindset switch for people who are solopreneurs because they’re wearing so many hats.

But until you get to a million dollars in revenue your number-one job as a business owner is to sell your services.

Your second job is to fulfill them.

So create as many systems as you can. As many streamlined packages as you can and outsource when you can so that you can spend a lot of time selling.

So to recap the steps are:

Number one create that sellable asset.

Number two leverage traction marketing in person and online especially on Facebook to attract people to you.

Step 3 make sure you have an introductory irresistible offer and even if you lose a little money it’s okay because you can upsell them later and

Step 4 is to automate and systematize everything you possibly can, remembering that your number one job as a service provider is to sell.

I know the best conversations happen after the camera stops rolling so if you have a question about your marketing plan for your business leave me a comment below and for more videos like this you can go to Juliechenell.com.