katarzynaradzka

I’ve been thinking about all the businesses out there, what makes some stand out from the crowd and succeed and others fail. I’ve even considered opening my own in the area I live in. Within the industry there are many businesses of the type I was thinking. How did they all survive? Make a profitable income? Since they sell the same service, the major thing that really differentiates them is how they sell themselves.

The successful companies are the ones who don’t always have the best product or service on offer. Sometimes what they are offering can be just OK but many people are going to buy it or use it anyway.

Why?

It’s all in the marketing.

Of course if you’re product or service (or writing) isn’t up to scratch than you’re going to have a hard time selling it to anyone, but if it’s pretty good, then all you need to do is work your marketing. The better marketing strategy in place, the better you’re results will be.

How does this work for a writer?

To be honest, I’m still figuring it all out. But there are a few things that I’ve noticed so far.

1. The more queries you send out, the more responses you receive. Sure it would be nice to get all positive responses, but I even like the negative ones. It means that someone has taken the time to look at my ideas, and responded. Of course, there’s a moment when I feel down in the dumps because I haven’t made a sale, but I snap out of it pretty quickly and move on. If one magazine doesn’t like my idea, than maybe another one somewhere in the world will.

2. No, should not be a part of your vocabulary. If you listen to ‘no’, then you are not going to get far. You can’t let it discourage you. Over the past year, I’ve received ‘No thank you’ many times, but in between there’s been a few ‘Yes, we’d like it’ and all the negative responses were worth even just one positive one.

3. You have to be different. Doing exactly the same thing as everyone else and following all the rules to the dot is not going to get you anywhere idea. As they say, rules are meant to be broken. Just make sure you know them, so that you are aware of which you can and which you can’t break.

4. It’s important to diversify. Don’t just stick to one form of marketing. Get yourself out there and use different mediums for different purposes. There’s newspapers, magazines, blogs, forums, websites, word of mouth and much more that can get you and your business noticed.

5. Be confident. This is your business that you are selling. Don’t shy away from admitting that you are a writer/photographer/actor/waiter/entrepreneur/singer/etc. Be proud of who you are and what you do, and you are more likely to make progress in the right direction.

So I’m taking this information in, and making July the month to concentrate on marketing. Recently, I haven’t done much, but that’s about to change. My first thing to focus on are queries. Lots of queries.