Marketing Mastery

A Program for Growing Your Business

Michael Van Horn and John Van Dinther

#1 in the series.

Sell your best work to more customers, at a higher profit, without driving yourself crazy.

These exercises target companies that are beyond the start-up phase but need their marketing to take them to the next level.

Identify your key marketing pain points and create a solution.
Get deep-dive guidance on specific social media platforms.
Tune your marketing through strategic thinking to achieve the results you want.
Manage your marketing team to get the best results possible without having to do everything yourself.

Get ready for next-level results through better marketing. Once you master your marketing, your world gets bigger.

Sequence of Topics

Get Started

Assess your marketing efforts. What’s working? What needs improvement?

Offering

What do you sell? What sets you apart? You’ll do a better job of marketing if you understand your products or services through the eyes of your customers—what makes you unique, how your mix of products and services fits together, and how all that benefits them.

Audience

Define which customers you want to reach and focus on them. Figure out how many customers you need to be profitable. Avoid the clients that will drag you down. Analyze your competition: If your desired customers aren’t buying from you, who are they buying from, and why?

Message

Once you’re clear what you’re selling and who you’re selling to, it’s time to convey that your offering is the best one for this audience. That means crafting a brand and a message that will draw in your desired customers and call them to action. Your message includes your pricing and your presentation.

Channels

What are the best ways for you to get the word out? Social media, blogging, paid ads, website, public speaking, networking meetings? Probably some combo. Make sure you’re using your channels effectively for your type of business and for your personal style, and that they create a funnel of customers toward you.

Closing

Now comes the payoff. You have a good offering; you know your audience; you have a message; you’ve used your channels effectively–and yet that doesn’t guarantee the sale. What are the best ways for you to close sales? How can you improve your technique? What bad habits do you or your people have that gets in the way of bringing in the business?

The Plan

Pull it all together now: make a brief but concrete marketing plan, create a budget, and track your activities and your progress. Set your goals, make the changes you need to make, and figure out how to get the most out of your money–and your time.

Warm up exercise

From the workbook

Top 10 Reasons Your Marketing Doesn't Work

“I have no time to do the marketing and also do the work. I much prefer to keep working on client projects.”
“This has always brought in a steady flow of business. I don’t understand why it’s no longer working for us.”
“We hired an expensive person to do marketing for us and they do great networking and social media, but it turns out they can’t sell.”
“People say our website looks dated, but we only finished it a few years ago.”
“We get so many hits on our social media. Why aren’t these translating into sales?”
“We’ve tried so many online campaigns—with Google ad words, Facebook, emails. I wish we were better at comparing results so we knew what was paying off.”
“I know I need to get out there and network, but I hate schmoozing and public speaking.”
“We paid a lot to a social media ‘expert’ but it turned out their expertise was in selling food items to consumers. They knew nothing about marketing our business-to-business services.”
“I hate making repeated calls to prospects. I don’t want to annoy people."
“I can’t get my sales reps to keep good records of their contacts. I’m afraid good prospects are slipping through the cracks.”

If you’re nodding your head yes to any of these, you need this workbook.

Ready to increase your selling effectiveness?

Discover the 7 Touches—Turn Leads into Sales. A practical guide to staying connected with prospects, building stronger relationships, and turning more leads into sales.

Proven Strategies

Build trust & real relationships.

Better Results

Turn leads into loyal customers.

Stronger Relationships

Build trust and stay top-of-mind.