Questions

I've started a 1-person freelance marketing business and feel overwhelmed offering so many services I've started a marketing service offering everything to everyone who will pay. Only working with a few small clients so far and already starting to dread going into work. They need everything from Facebook ads, Instagram, to SEO, to Twitter, Pinterest, Google Local, article writing, press releases, email newsletters. I feel overwhelmed offering too much. If I just picked one service would that be better in the long run? Or do marketing services need to offer many different services in order to survive? Im afraid if I offered only say Pinterest Marketing, then I wouldn't be a success because Im so limited. I'm not interested in creating a mega-marketing agency, I just want a nice small service helping customers and working for myself, but in a happy way.

Niche down. It's fine to offer this huge range of services when you have the people to help you do them. By yourself, it's exhausting as you've discovered.

Good for you for actually doing something, and getting some experience. Your situation is common, you're not alone in feeling overwhelmed in your business.

From what you've written--and thank you for writing more than one sentence, so we have some 'meat' to work with--I think you would benefit most from developing a customer avatar.

Right now you're trying to do all things for everyone, which means you're trying to appeal to everyone. Instead, shift your focus to standing out and appealing ONLY to the most profitable and fun type of customer you can help. So a customer avatar is a description of that exact kind of person and their situation who you can best help.

Watch the video in this post: http://www.jasonkanigan.org/what-to-do-if-you-are-a-commodity/

When I started my business, there were a hundred things I could do. Copywriting, sales training, operations improvement, and a whole lot more. I tested my target market and discovered sales training was the thing they needed most...so I concentrated on that. Things took off.

Recently I was approached by a friend to be a partner in a new business focusing only on sales. The last seven years of experience I have in conversion of all kinds needed to be blocked out: the focus needed to be on the one service this business offers. Surprise, surprise: we've made more money than I did alone.

Focus is power. But you have to know who you are trying to attract and work with. Filter for those who you can help best and most profitably, and say No to the rest.

I know the idea of turning business down can seem terrifying at the start. But you have limited time like everyone else, and if you tie that time up with loser projects that exhaust and disempower and don't reward you, then you don't have the ability to take good projects.

Now if you get a great client, and you do well with the thing you focus on, and a month or two later they come back with, "Hey, we have this other thing over here and can you do something about that, too?" then yes, you can...and at a profitable rate.

As you continue in your business, you'll discover that the most important thing is not the money but your experience working on the project. Miserable project experiences aren't worth any amount of money. But the unusual thing is that the projects you have the most fun on are typically those you earn the most from, too, because it's the right fit and the customer really values you.

So filter for the type of person and their situation that you can help best, use that for your marketing speak, and then grow from there with the right kind of customer.

If you want help developing your avatar and marketing message, I'm available.


Answered 7 years ago

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