Are you the typical solopreneur?  You are excited to begin your marketing plan and you envision the masses running to purchase your product or service.  You put your ducks in a row and kick start your plan.  You complete step one and no sales.  It stings but you are okay and you proceed to step two, again no sales.  You reach step four and still have not made a sale and now you are questioning your plan.  You make it through to step six and your resilience fails you and you stop.  Obviously that just didn’t work.  You now begin looking for the next solution to your problem which is the lack of a profitable marketing plan.
Unfortunately you did not give your plan a fair shot.  Most of us don’t purchase because we read an advertisement a few times.  We have to build trust and that can take some time and consistency. Check this out…This was written by Thomas Smith in London in 1885 and reprinted in Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson.
20 Steps From Resistance to Relationship
1. The first time a man looks at an ad, he doesn’t see it.
2. The second time, he doesn’t notice it.
3. The third time, he is conscious of its existence
4. The fourth time, he faintly remembers it.
5. The fifth time, he reads the ad.
6. The sixth time he turns up his nose at it.
7. The seventh time, he reads it through and says, “Oh brother!”
8. The eighth time, he says, “Here’s that confounded thing again!”
9. The ninth time, he wonders if it amounts to anything.
10. The tenth time, he will ask his neighbor if he has tried it.
11. The eleventh time, he wonders how the advertiser makes it pay.
12. The twelfth time, he thinks it must be a good thing.
13. The thirteenth time, he thinks it might be worth something.
14. The fourteenth time, he remembers that he wanted such a thing for a long time.
15. The fifteenth time, he is tantalized because he cannot afford to buy it.
16. The sixteenth time, he thinks he will buy it someday.
17. The seventeenth time, he makes a memorandum of it.
18. The eighteenth time, he swears at his poverty.
19. The nineteenth time, he counts his money carefully.
20. The twentieth time he sees the ad, he buys the article or instructs his wife to do so.
At what point do you give up? Take this to heart and the next time you launch a marketing plan hang in there. That doesn’t mean you don’t test and tweak because you absolutely do. It means you must not stop before giving it a real opportunity to be successful. Happy marketing.