02 Dec Wheel and Spoke Marketing Model
One of the biggest mistakes small and solo business owners make is doing random, or what I call “shot in the dark” marketing, and expecting great results. With this approach you place an ad here, an article there, and maybe go to a networking event. It’s like throwing a dart at a target in the dark and hoping you hit the bull’s eye.
Why doesn”t this approach work? The problem is that since there is no overall strategy, plan, measurement or follow through, the results are minimal and random. I’ve seen people working so hard and still not getting results and this is one of the reasons.
Using a “wheel and spoke” model can get your started in the right direction.
The wheel and spoke model is where a number of “satellite activities or strategies” help to send leads or clients pouring into your business, website, blog or product page, which is represented by hub of the wheel at the center.
You can use this model for your marketing. If your goal is to get 50 new clients this month, put that goal in the center or hub of the wheel. Then create the spokes with the marketing activities you’ll do to get those clients. With marketing, I recommend only using 3 spokes so you don’t get overwhelmed and confused with too many. So if you choose, for example, online marketing, direct mail, and networking as your 3 marketing spokes, you stay focused on those and carefully measure the results to see what’s working.
I developed a “wheel and spoke” business building system called the Maximize Your Profits Now Model. Here is what it looks like:
In this model you have 10 different profit strategies working together to send a flood of clients into your business. You can learn more about how it’s used here:
Using this model will help you focus your marketing
You can also use a similar model to drive targeted traffic to your small business website. Simply create a series of mini-websites (the spokes) with just a few pages each. Better yet, create them for free in blog format at http://www.wordpress.com/. For just a few bucks a month you can get a unique web address for each mini-site. Have each of them link to a product or service on your main website, which is the center of the wheel.
In minutes you can create a mini-site for each product, service or market you serve and then create a links back to your site. Add a new post or article on a regular basis and each time you do it goes out on RSS feed and is picked up by the search engines.
You can also get others to link to your mini-sites to send traffic to them that flows through to your main site. This is a strategy used by many savvy online entrepreneurs and it will work for any small business.
It’s not a lot of work but the dramatic increase in traffic can’t be ignored.
And please leave me your comments!
Janis
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