3 Marketing Lessons Professional Service Providers can Learn from Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Most people are familiar with the story of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. As a quick reminder, take a look at the following short video…

Goldilocks found that Baby Bear’s things – his porridge, his chair, his bed – were “JUST RIGHT”!

They were JUST RIGHT for Goldilocks and they were JUST RIGHT for Baby Bear as well.

But... have you considered that the things that Goldilocks rejected as not being right for her were JUST RIGHT for someone else?

Think about it.

The 1st bowl of porridge Goldilocks tasted, the 1st chair she sat in and the 1st bed she laid in were NOT right for her BUT they were JUST RIGHT for Papa Bear!

Similarly with the 2nd bowl of porridge, the 2nd chair and the 2nd bed – they were NOT right for Goldilocks BUT they were JUST RIGHT for Mama Bear!

So, what are the underlying Marketing Lessons that Professional Service Providers can learn from this story?

Well, for starters, here are 3 lessons:

1. Targeting
2. Experimentation
3. Diversification

Keep reading to see where I'm going with this.

STOP trying to target EVERYONE!
Determine who YOUR right client is.

Is it Goldilocks?
Or is Papa Bear or Mama Bear a better fit for what you do?

Do you want to work with older people or younger people?
Is your service geared towards a particular gender?

Or, perhaps your right clients are bears who love porridge.
Or is it more specific… Mama Bears who love porridge?

When you figure out who YOUR target audience really is, you can start to understand them - their needs, the hopes, their dreams, their fears, and so on.

With this understanding, you will find that reaching them will become a whole lot easier. You will be able to speak their language. You will be able to touch them on an emotional level.

Then, they will be more likely to trust you and want to do business with you.

Be willing to try NEW forms of marketing UNTIL you find YOUR “just right”!
Did Goldilocks stop after tasting the first bowl of porridge and decided that porridge is not for her? No, she did NOT!

For a moment, let’s think of the bowls of porridge as PPC (pay-per-click) Advertising. There are different forms of PPC advertising: Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Twitter Ads, etc.

Each of these has its pros and its cons. Some work better for some industries. Some allow more granular targeting options.

If Google Ads didn’t work for you, does that mean that PPC Advertising is no good?
No, off course not!

Day after day, Google Ads is producing a substantial ROI for many businesses. So it DOES work!

Before you write off using Google Adwords, consider the top reasons why it has NOT worked for some businesses:

• Poor choice of keywords - focusing on highly competitive short-tail keywords
• NOT using the right keyword matches - Broad Match, Modified Broad Match, Phrase Match, Exact Match
• NOT using Ad Groups within the Ad Campaign to group keywords effectively
• NOT using negative keywords
• NOT monitoring the campaign regularly and tweaking/optimising as needed
• Poor landing page design
• NOT testing different aspects of the campaign - ad copy, landing page elements
• Expecting too much with too little - does your budget match your goals?

If you've done these things correctly and Google Ads still failed you, then you should consider trying other forms of PPC Advertising before giving up on this form of digital marketing. Perhaps Facebook Ads would be a better fit for your niche.

The point is that you should be willing to try NEW forms of marketing UNTIL you find YOUR “just right”!

The age-old saying, Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Basket holds true in the online marketing arena as well.

Let's loosely stretch our analogy a bit further.
If porridge = PPC Advertising, let chair = Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and bed = Email Marketing.

[DISCLAIMER: any reference to the sequence of marketing strategies to try is purely for explanation purposes.]

Now, going back to Goldilocks in the story. Once she got to the porridge that was just right for her, she ate it all up. Then she moved on to the chairs.

Once she found the chair that was just right for her, she sat a while (unfortunately, the chair broke). Then she moved on to the beds.

Once she found the bed that was just right for her, she laid down and fell asleep.

What can we learn from this?

Well, when you find a form of online marketing that works for you, focus on it. Get the most you can out of it. Get it to the point where it's self-sustaining BEFORE moving on to trying other forms of digital marketing.

If you look long enough or closely enough, you can find marketing lessons everywhere, even in a children's story.

When it comes to promoting your business online or offline, remember these lessons:

1. Define YOUR Target Audience and get to know them better than they know themselves.
2. Be willing to try new forms of advertising until you find YOUR "Just Right" one.
3. Do NOT put all your eggs (lead generation hopes) in one (marketing) basket. Diversify your marketing efforts so that you have multiple, well-performing traffic sources.

At the end of the day, when you lay down in your bed, you'll be able to rest easy knowing that everything in your marketing world is JUST RIGHT!