Day 581 – Tuesday

I had a follow up call with a potential client. I think we’ll figure out a way to work with each other but she isn’t ready to commit yet as she is overwhelmed with other things in her business. My slight frustration is working with me a lot of that would be taken care of but she is stuck thinking she has to do other things first. We’ll follow up in early December.

This is the reason you want to be talking to lots of people so there is a constant flow of people you are following up with.

Also my frustration about marketing companies that convince small businesses that they need to focus on “branding” and then sell them on a package of logo, website, matching colors, fonts, visual consistency and other stuff that doesn’t matter for a small business.

Yes, you should look professional. But when you are starting out you need customers and sales. And with the right offer to the right customer, you can get those sales whether or not you have any branding. Marketing is a multiplier. But it doesn’t cause sales to appear by magic. Marketing can’t produce anything if you are multiplying by 0. (I’m trying to work this into an idea for one of my marketing emails. If I rant too much my editor (also my girlfriend Chris) will rightly complain so I need to find a constructive way to channel my frustration.

Call with an existing client to give some advice.

Turned off one of the FB ad sets for Chris’ online Sons of Norway store because the ad set wasn’t performing as well as the other. It was expected that one would work better than the other. In this case even in early testing, the one I kept running is doing about 2x as well as the first. We are learning a lot so far.