Doing activities that focus on all three of these means you will have a strong client base which always books ahead and is extremely loyal. Which is the whole goal!

For each of these three steps you need to have specific strategies which will bring you new leads and get their contact details on your database and that will then convert them into paying clients and then get those paying clients to come back. If you just focus on one and neither of the other two steps, you can end up with holes in your marketing approach.

Obviously the level to which you do all three depends on the type of business you've got... If your business is mostly focussed around repeat business then you'll probably end up spending more time on step 3, but if your business is mostly focussed around doing intensive bursts with clients then they are healed and you move on to the next client, then you'll probably want to spend more time on steps 1 and 2 to get a continual flow of more new clients in.

For example

- In a Beauty Therapy Business clients should come back every 4 to 6 weeks

- With Laser Hair Removal clients come back regularly for a few months then hopefully only about once a year for top-up treatments

- In most Counselling or Chiropractic Businesses, clients come in regularly to start off with then only for maintenance type sessions every now and again

However no matter what type of business you have and how often you ideally want your clients coming in, you still need to get their interest to begin with, convince them to book and then get them to come back at some point in the future (be that regularly to begin with then only occasionally or be that every month without fail).

So as with everything, there is the easy way and the hard way of achieving this...

There are ways of implementing these steps that are going to be more time consuming and those that will be less.

And I don't know about you, but I didn't get into business for myself to spend hours staring at a spreadsheet or pounding the pavement with fliers. Funnily enough I personally quite enjoy the spreadsheet / planning aspect of things, but that's not all I want to do. I want to get out there and help my clients. And I want a better lifestyle for myself and my family.

You've got your reasons why you got into business for yourself and it could be a multitude of contributing factors... lifestyle, money, health, change in circumstances, a specific end goal... Whatever it is, I bet it wasn't to spend hours filling in spreadsheets or pounding the pavements with fliers. If you wanted to do that, you'd have trained to be an accountant or a postman, not a therapist or practitioner or even an entrepreneur!

And part of what we do is being and entrepreneur so we should be able to live that lifestyle where we get time for ourselves. Where we don't have to work 100+ hours a week just to make sure all the work gets done.

The best way of ensuring you don't end up doing this is to have a full marketing plan that addresses all three areas equally each and every month. Then you need to follow this marketing plan.

Without a marketing plan you could spend hours and hour at your computer typing stuff up or hours and hours of physically stuffing fliers in letterboxes because it has suddenly gone quiet. However with a solid, well-thought-out marketing plan, there will be a continual flow of new and returning clients coming in rather than feast and famine type periods.