In Allan Dib’s book, The One Page Marketing Plan, he talks about this idea of marketing like a hunter vs marketing like a farmer.
When it comes to growing your business, both approaches make a big impact.
Here’s what makes them different.
Basically, a hunter goes out, makes the kill, and feeds his family from what he killed that day.
There’s a ton of work, a lot of excitement, and plenty of adrenaline, and adventure. And when you make a kill the endorphins are pumping.
But, what happens when the hunter doesn’t make a kill?
He goes home empty-handed, a little dejected, and for that day, there’s no food on the table.
Compare that to a farmer.
With plowing, planting, watering, and weeding…there’s still a lot of work to do. And granted, at first, there’s no food. But come harvest time, there’s A TON to gather.
The family feasts, and then stores the food for months and months to come.
It’s not as sexy as hunting, but in the end, it’s much more fruitful.
Dib makes the point that most businesses are living with a hunter mentality: making cold calls, working cold leads, making hard sales.
Even the best salesmen feel the tension that if they don’t make enough sales…then someone’s going hungry.
Taking on a farmer mentality is a hard shift to make, but ultimately it’s much more productive.
There are more people in the pipeline, and those people are warm leads ready to talk-shop.
Not every sale will close, but that’s OK. Because your funnel is still churning and bringing in better leads (and more of them).
Here’s the deal, your website doesn’t have to be where you start.
For “quicker harvesting” I’d suggest creating your free helpful PDF (lead gen) that feeds into an email sequence that introduces what you do and arouses the pain you know your product or service can take away.
Be creative and give some legitimate value.
Don’t pull one of those “here’s 9 steps…but for the 10th you’ll have to pay” kind of deals.
That crap doesn’t work, seems shady, and gives people a bad impression of your business.
Once you’ve created your free helpful PDF, it’s time to make it available to the world.
Build a landing page for that landing page that requires people to give you their email address to download what you’ve created.
This can be on your current website, or you can use a simple tool like LeadPages.
Or even some online email marketing tools have the ability to build a landing page (I’m looking at you ConvertKit).
Write a series of follow-up emails that dive deeper into how they can solve the problem you attack in the PDF, and how you can help them overcome it.
Don’t be pushy, but don’t be passive.
Give more free help than you think you should, and then, in a future email, be confident while asking them to call you (or buy your product).
Once you have that set up and ready to automate then it’s time to get traffic to your landing page.
Believe or not, Google isn’t going to magically send people to your website. You’re going to have to pay.
You can pay in sweat equity by sharing it like mad within your own network. Or with real dollars spent on Google or Social Media ads.
But sitting and waiting isn’t going to work. That’s just reality.
Ads are worth it if you know what you’re doing (or can pay someone who knows what they’re doing).
So take some of your ad-spend (or find a little bit more) and drive traffic to your landing page where people can download your checklist / free guide / etc.
- That means the field is plowed and seeds are being planted.
- Your follow-up emails are like sunshine and water
- And your eventual (and assertive) follow up for the sale is when you get to experience harvest.
If you can start plowing now, then in a few more months (or weeks) you’ll start having more productive sales calls.
Which means more closed sales and a little less pressure to land the next deal.
This isn’t magic. We all know that not every seed will turn into a harvest…at least not immediately.
But over time, you may still want to do some hunting, but not because you’re trying to survive.
Your farming will take care of that.
I help hunters start farming in their businesses every day. It’s a simple process, but it’s not easy.
And sometimes an outsider gives you just the boost you need to get rolling.
Shoot me an email at [email protected]
Or click that “schedule a call” button.
Either way, it’s time to start marketing like a farmer.
