Some individuals have a hard time promoting themselves. Perhaps it goes back to being taught that humility is a virtue and bragging is bad. What is that fine line? Marketing gurus love to get their hands on a business that doesn’t understand or know how to promote themselves. In the next few paragraphs let’s review some of the steps to promote yourself and your business:

1. Determine your values, mission and what your personal brand represents

As you think about promotion and how you want to promote, you need to clearly define what your brand represents and what you want the first impression of you and your company to be as you come in contact with new prospects and existing customers.

2. Prepare a Marketing Plan

As with selling a new product if you don’t talk about it or let it be known that it exists how do you expect to have any sales? I have seen this first hand with the products that I have designed. Those products that I had a clear plan for were the products that were successful in reaching their individual sales goal.

3. Gather a list

After spending a long time with marketing organizations one of the highest priorities for a company is to build strategic lists for their company’s offerings. Continually reviewing, updating and gathering leads will determine your bottom line and overall success. One of the questions to ponder is, “am I tapping into the right groups to get the customers I need? “List building is a skill and can be learned.

4. Humanize your marketing

You may be asking what do I mean by this? After spending a lot of years in the financial industry it was painfully apparent that a lot of individuals don’t like their picture being taken and don’t see the value of putting their individual face to their company. Now with the growth of social media people can find so much about you before they even talk to you. The positive side of this is that as a lead they are even more qualified.

People buy from people. Instead of relying on phone, e-mail, texting and a website, the most profitable business is still done by connecting face to face. So as you plan your marketing and promotion create tactics that include being in person, and providing content that is somewhat personal so people can connect with you.

Promotion can provide rich and rewarding experiences. Ask and you shall receive is a fundamental principal. Putting it out there in the universe is the pathway for prosperity. To quote a colleague who recently ran a campaign to promote me and my recent activities, “get over yourself,” and watch the lead generation tool work its magic.

While sitting in a restaurant the other day, I noticed the table next to me and how the serving staff was very attentive to this table and to all the surrounding tables.  What was interesting about my observation was how those folks sitting at the various tables were interacting with the restaurant staff. Each table was a little different.  One table was very gregarious and laughing it up while another table was very quiet and didn’t seem to notice those serving them.  The third table appeared to be very demanding and extremely rude from what I was observing.

Now if you have ever worked in the service industry you will probably recognize these different behaviors. Do you notice those serving you? Or do you go through life expecting service and never really acknowledge great service? Some service professionals are trained to be invisible while others are trained to connect and take more of a sales role. It is extremely interesting to observe political candidates and how they treat service staff at a networking function. If you have never done this, I would encourage you to try it sometime. Some individuals have a tendency to put forward an air of superiority while others are cognizant that they are not the only individuals walking the planet.

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