- What's your biggest marketing obstacle?
- What keeps you from querying?
- What keeps you from networking?
- If you could talk to any expert about your marketing plan, what would you ask them?
Friday, January 9, 2009
Marketing Challenge It Is: Send me your marketing dilemmas
By an overwhelming margin, you voted for a 30-Day Marketing Challenge, and that's what we'll have, beginning next week. But first, I'd love to hear your challenges, so I can address them in the challenge:
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4 comments:
Hi Heather--Thanks for doing the marketing challenge. I followed your business plan challenge and used many of your posts to help me with my 2009 plan. I like the way you think!
What keeps me from querying: The clients I have keep me pretty busy so it's easy to say "I should be working on X deadline" instead of querying. My business plan calls for addressing two problems: (1) two print clients that are on the ropes and less reliable for steady work than in the past and (2) an association client that represented > 40% of my revenue in 2008, which makes me vulnerable. My business plan also calls for pursuing new online clients instead of print--but print is my comfort area, of course. So I need to find new clients that I like as well as the ones I have--I guess that's what keeps me from querying as I should.
What Lola said: Figuring out how to market yourself when you're busy with work right now. Querying is always very bottom of the list, so if I have deadlines it just doesn't get done (despite my having promised an editor I'd send some ideas). Any ideas on working this into my day without spending too much time on it?
Fear of failure, pure and simple. Particularly when I consider the adversity of a downturn/slowdown by some steady clients as a cosmic kick in the pants to do more to try to break into my dream markets. I understand that it's self-defeating to think, "It won't happen, so why waste the time querying/building a relationship/etc." But I still can't seem to just feel the fear and do it anyhow.
I, like Beth, am perhaps too thin-skinned for this line of work, as I get so easily discouraged by non response or negative response. I know I need to learn how to persevere with real confidence. Perhaps you can offer tips on doing just that. Thanks. Loved your Business Plan challenge. It really helped me.
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