There are a million and one ways of marketing. However the key to success in today's market is to make sure that instead of trying to 'sell' to your potential clients, you get their details, keep in contact and build a relationship with them.

This is called Lead Generation and it means that instead of a new customer just being a one-off bit of extra cash in your bank account, they become lifelong, happy clients who rave about you to all their friends!

Now there are two massive benefits to this approach:

1. The more happy clients you’ve got who are raving about you to their friends, the more referrals you'll get. Which means you'll get new clients calling you out of the blue all the time who are already sold on how great you are, instead of you having to work hard to find them and get them interested.

2. The other massive benefit is that marketing just got waaaaay easier! No longer do you have to feel the pressure of dreaded 'sales'. All you are trying to do is pique some interest and get their contact details. In fact if you can get them interested enough, they will GIVE you their contact details so you won't even have to ask!

And even better, most of the best ways of getting someone’s contact details are cheap or even free. Sounding good so far? Definitely.

The key to making this work though is to ensure you’ve got at least 5 or 6 Lead Generation methods in place at all time. The reason being is that if one source of potential clients dries up then you've still got several more to keep you going.

How many lead generation or marketing processes do you have in place at the moment?

I personally have a list of about 25 that I've found work really well for this industry and I try to make sure I use about 10 of these at any one time. This means I've got a constant, steady stream of customers contacting me all the time, no matter what the season, economy, market or situation. Which creates a solid business and an owner who can sleep at night!

The reality though is that most people find themselves so busy they only try 1 or 2 methods, if any. They might have chucked out some fliers once or twice but they never really get a response so eventually they just gave up. Or maybe they had some brochures printed and it costs thousands and noone came in. Sounding familiar?

If you've experienced this and you aren't happy with the level of new clients your marketing is generating, then take an hour out, go back and look at the marketing you did and check... were you trying to sell the potential client something, or were you just asking for their contact details?

Albert Einstein once said insanity was "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Have a look and see if you can approach your marketing from a different perspective for different results.