What’s Best–Quick Sales Or Slow Burn Marketing Strategies?

Photo by Curtis MacNewton on Unsplash

Have you ever been frustrated at how long it can take to sign up enough clients, and wished there was an easier way to do it?

While there may be a part of you that loves quick results, as the tortoise showed the hare, this isn’t always the best way to get clients or build a sustainable business. It depends on a few factors:

• What do you want?

There are often many goals we are working towards in business at any one time. Do you have any specific financial targets in mind e.g. to generate a certain amount of money to be working with a certain number of clients, each month or year? Maybe your goals are a specified volume of sales, to build a community, to generate multiple streams of passive revenue or to get your message out to more people.

If you’re looking for a quick sale, you’re narrowing your market down to the 3% of your ideal clients who may be looking for what you’ve got to offer, when they hear of you. This is the highly competitive and tiny part of the market.  To compete here you’re likely to need to be offering a highly attractive product/service at a fairly low cost or an irresistible offer.

However, if you have a longer-term view, you could instead focus on nurturing trust and relationships with the 67% of the market who may be interested in buying from you in the future but are just not ready to do so yet. This may take longer to get clients initially, but developing deeper relationships with a greater number of people, where there is less competition, could be far more enjoyable and fruitful in the long-term.

• Who are your ideal clients?

When your ideal clients are those responsible for their spending (consumers, budget holders or business owners) the ‘sales’ process is likely to be quicker than when dealing with those who need to check with others before they buy. Sometimes business-to-business transactions can take several months, or even years, to convert into paying clients.

• What type of product or service are you offering?

Some products lend themselves to be impulse buys, whereas others need more time, money or information before people will make a purchase. This highlights the importance of knowing the buying habits of your ideal clients.

• What is your price point?

Typically, the higher the price, the more time it takes to convert leads into paying clients. Quick impulsive sales are more likely to be for lower priced products,  highly discounted or compelling special offers.

• What other income do you have coming in?

If you are in a critical situation with money, spending your time on only long-term income generating strategies will hold you back from earning money right now! Instead, I suggest primarily doing what will bring in money quickly and not allow yourself to be distracted by the ‘nice to haves’ – e.g. unless you are running a website based business, you don’t need a website to start earning money!

Spend your time getting out there and finding out what people need and are willing to pay for that you could provide–then offer to help them. It may not be your ideal way of earning money, but bringing in money will make you feel better and make you more attractive to potential clients when you meet them. Would you buy from someone who is desperate for business?

Once you have sufficient cash-flow to live off, then allocate time to develop and implement longer-term plans and strategies.

• How do you want to attract business in the long-term?

If you’d like the bulk of your business to come from referrals, developing good relationships with clients and business partners takes time. However, in the long-term, you’re likely to spend less time marketing or ‘selling’ as others will be sending clients your way.

By contrast, when you focus only on quick sales and don’t spend any time developing good long-term relationships with potential, existing and past clients, you’re going to be spending more of your time in the future and money doing marketing and sales. And if you’re a heart-centered soul, this is unlikely to make you happy.

What sounds more appealing–chasing the quick sales or building relationships with those interested in what you offer, knowing if do this well you will convert some of these leads into clients in the future?

It’s up to you…

And of course, you don’t need to choose one or the other. I know my marketing works i.e. it generates an easy flow of clients when I adopt a mix of both short and long-term marketing strategies.

If you’d like ideas on how to attract more clients, I share over one hundred marketing strategies in my free ebook 101 Ways to Attract More Clients: With Heart, Integrity and Social Impact. In this book, I also explain the common mistakes people make when trying to get clients and the core marketing foundations it’s important to put in place before spending too much time promoting your products or services. Click on this image to download your copy.

You may also want to check out my other related blog posts: 12 Quick Fire Strategies to Get More Clients Now and 13 Slow Burn Ways to Build a Profitable, Joyful and Sustainable Business

Just like any other skill you’ve learned in your life (and do well today), building a successful business simply involves learning how to do this with confidence and ease. With there being so many marketing strategies to choose from, there are some that will work well for your business and other’s that don’t. There are a series of steps you can follow to help work this out when ever launching a new business, product, service or book–I share these in the free e-book I mention in this post.

Here’s to your success!

Alisoun Mackenzie is The Compassionate Business Mentor, Author, and Speaker who empower business owners and social entrepreneurs to turn their passions into profits and make a difference in the world. 

She is also the author of two Amazon Best Selling books Give to Profit: How to Grow Your Business by Supporting Charities Social Causesa and Heartatude, The 9 Principles of Heart-Centered Success.

Alisoun is also the founder of The Heartabiz Hub training academy and author of these free ebooks:

• The 9 Secrets to Signing Up Clients Without Selling (click here)
• 101 Ways To Attract Great Clients, With Heart, Integrity & Social Impact (click here)
• 52 Ways to Raise Funds for Charities and Social Causes Through Your Business  (click here)

You can connect with Alisoun here:

• Alisoun’s website – www.alisoun.com 
• Alisoun Mackenzie Facebook Fanpage (for tips on authentic living and business mastery) – click HERE
• Give To Profit Facebook Fanpage (for tips on supporting charities and social causes) – click HERE
• The Heartabiz Hub Facebook Group – connect, share ideas and enjoy the support of other like-minded business owners. Click HERE.

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