I met up with two other business owners last week for some informal networking/glasses of wine and chatter! We’ve all run our businesses for some years and regularly compare notes. We all of course have our moans and niggles about our businesses. Two of us were saying to the third that we were envious that she had clients on a retainer so she could predict her cash flow to a certain extent. I was just saying how fabulous it would be to have a repeat customer and to this of course they laughed but on a serious note they realised that it’s a tough and never-ending marketing cycle that we planners go through to  gain and sell to new clients all the time.

But we can’t complain, according  to one of our WPE speakers last spring (business coach from Action Coach) research has shown that any successful business has to market on many fronts and not put all their eggs in one basket, very true in the case of us planners who cannot rely on a customer coming back of course. It was quoted that a minimum of 7 different forms of marketing need to be applied consistently in order to achieve success. Of course they have identified almost 100 different forms of marketing in existence and we all have our own preferences and things we’d prefer to avoid and don’t suit our style. But get trying a new technique or two this year and the results could be excellent; how about trying a mailing campaign, a local exhibition, a newsletter to past clients or a competition? After all we all need to be in good shape for what looks like a promising year for 2010.