Sometimes the most brilliant, black-belt in jujitsu marketing tactic you can come up with to generate more business doesn’t work out as planned.

This could be the result of poor positioning, a price point that’s off the mark, or incorrect messaging. But whatever the reason, the result is not the money-making side kick you envisioned.

Admittedly, I’ve fell victim to some of poorly executed marketing ideas myself. And sometimes–maybe because I’m a slow learner–I just can’t figure out why my great idea didn’t work.

This is the story of one such real-life strategy that failed miserably for me. But I still really, really believe someone out there could make this work, which is why I’m sharing it with you now.

My Failed Attempt to Generate Leads From Lawyers

Below is the basic premise of my failed marketing strategy along with the actual report I used to test .

Step 1: Segment Your Market

For this test, I targeted lawyers in the Fargo, ND area. I like the idea of targeting lawyers because they’re everywhere. Seriously, Google search local law firms versus Starbucks locations and you’ll see what I mean.

If you can find and apply a marketing technique that works for lawyers, you could move from city-to-city, state-to-state dominating that niche over-and-over into eternity. A great example of a company who’s doing just that right now is FindLaw.com.

Step 2: Find Lawyers In Your City or Township

There are a couple of easy ways to do this.

1.) Go old-school: Pick up a phone book to find the contact info for law firms in your area.

2.) Use Google Maps to find an abundance of lawyers and attorneys in your area. I found 325 in Fargo alone. See what I mean:

Step 3: Collect Email Addresses

Get the email address of each law firm you want to target. Most can be found in the footer or contact page of their website. Enter these into an Excel spreadsheet for improved organization and tracking.

Step 4: Create a Special PDF Report

Here’s where you really pique your market’s interest: A PDF report that exposes how other lawyers (chiropractors, doctors, tax preparers, etc.) are robbing their firm of eager clients every month through search engines like Google.

Show them monthly broad-match search volume from the Google Keyword Tool for keywords relevant to their business. In this example, stuff like “fargo lawyers” and “fargo attorneys”.

Next ask them to perform some of searches in Google so they can see first hand who’s beating them out locally.

Step 5: Open The Lines of Communication

Let your prospects know how to get in touch with you and make sure there’s a sense of urgency to the situation.

I gave the limited time for a free site analysis a try, but you will be able to come up with something better. After all, this attempt at lead gen didn’t work out for me.

You can download the “special report” I made here. Feel free to download it and tweak if you want. I converted it to Word Doc format so it would be easier to edit. (The formatting got a little messed up when I converted it back to Word, sorry about that.)

If you find a way to make this work, definitely let me know.

And with that, let me know about some of your failed attempts to develop more clients. This is a no judgment zone–at least from me anyway. I can almost guarantee I’ve had worse ideas than yours.

If you’re interested in hearing about any of these epic failures, ask away in the quotes.

In business and in life, we’re taught the importance of working hard to eliminate weakness.

Looking back to high school this principal certainly held true for me.

My short comings were always in math. As a result, I spent considerable after-school time in Mr. Chandler’s classroom straining to pinpoint the area of an acute triangle and memorizing vital quadratic equations.

The concept makes sense. By hustling to eliminate points of weakness, we become well-rounded individuals and learn the value of hard work to overcome challenges in the process.

But there’s a flaw in this guideline which becomes apparent when you commit too much time and effort to developing weak skill sets in hope of becoming average at best, when you could be refining the talents that make you truly exceptional.

Reflecting on my high school math class example, I eventually passed, but there was no chance I’d ever become the next Grigory Perelman. (I just Googled “math genius.” Grigory Perelman is the first name that came up.)

Find Your Strength.

This is the core concept behind the book Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath. Instead of concentrating our efforts on areas of weakness, areas where we will never be exceptional, building on and identifying your natural strengths is a better alternative.

Because within these pockets of natural strength are the areas you’ll have the best chance of becoming truly exceptional.

This concept holds true for SEO business ownership as well: By leveraging your own strengths and teaming up others who are strong in other areas.

A simple way I put this concept into action is by outsourcing any technical and design work. I’m not too much of a coder and it would take me way too much time to learn. Even if I did learn, I’d never be as good as someone I outsourced the work to.

In this situation, it makes sense to leverage another persons skill sets, instead of focusing on my own weakness.

As you likely suspected, identifying your natural abilities or talents is what Strength Finder 2.0 is all about.

Strength Finder 2.0 is short book. The value lies in taking a 30-minute rapid fire quiz online in which each question must be answered within 20 seconds. Rath limits the time you can answer each quiz question in order to get your “gut” response.

After completing the skill test on www.strengthsfinder.com, the website creates a list of your top 5 talents based how you answered the quiz along with some action items on leveraging existing talents.

I’m not going to get into the specifics of the research behind Strength Finder 2.0 in this article, but you you can find out more about the science of it here. Also, here’s a free strength based development pdf put out by Gallop if you want to start identifying your strengths now.

This won’t mean much if you haven’t read the book, but here are my top 5 talents according to Strength Finder 2.0:

So if you’re ready to stop fighting nature and start focusing on the talents that make you truly exceptional (like me), you can pick up the book pretty cheap at Amazon. There might even be a few ways to check it out for free online, not sure.

And if you’ve read Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath already, share your talent set in the comments below. I’d love to see the results others got from it.

There are three reasons I’ve decided to do a pre-launch:

1.) I want my product to solve the problems that confront SEO entrepreneurs. To ensure the Enterprise SEO Package accomplishes this goal, I’ll be making it available to just 15 people to test drive.

These 15 people will basically become business partners and will provide detailed feedback on what’s missing with the product and ways it can be improved before the official launch. If you decide to come onboard, we’ll be in close contact for the next couple months to continue developing the product.

2.)The second reason I’m doing a prelaunch is that I want real case studies and testimonials before the official launch. I’m confident the Enterprise SEO Package combined with some hard work on your end that I’ll get at least two or three stellar case studies out of the group. The Enterprise SEO Package provides the exact processes, strategies and documentation I use for my own SEO business. It’s worked for me and I’m certain it will work for you too.

3.) I want partners with skin in the game for the official Enterprise SEO Package launch. Since I’m asking you to provide detailed feedback and recommendations for design of the final product, I want to share the benefits of your hard work by making you an exclusive affiliate for the official launch in 2010. The 15 people that help test and develop the Enterprise SEO package will be made exclusive affiliates for the official launch. These select affiliates will be receive a healthy 75% commission for each sale.

To learn more about the Enterprise SEO Package, you can view the product page here. This provides all the details about the upcoming SEO business kit.

If you’re seriously interested helping create a product that delivers real value to the market and make yourself some serious cash in the process, I encourage you to order the Enterprise SEO Package Version 1.0 and become part of a tight-nit group of entrepreneurs working toward the same goal.

Last time, I talked about some ways to meet business owners face to face. It’s a great strategy that’s often overlooked in today’s Twitter-centric world.

Of course, sometimes meeting a prospect in person doesn’t make sense. Fortunately, there are some other client-building techniques you can add to your virtual client building tool belt when you’re not able to make a real-world connection.

Try email.

Dropping an email to a business owner that gets his curiosity up or opens ANY kind of communication can work.

Your response rate is likely to be lower than with a phone call. But it doesn’t take as much work either.

Attached is a template you can personalize to entice local business owners to schedule a consultation. Use this initial email to play local businesses against their competitors who already rank for valuable keywords. It works brilliantly.

Pick up the phone.

All this carry on about “I don’t want to cold call” etc etc etc.

Well, it’s time to suck it up. Business owners call other business owners all the time when they have something valuable to share.

Just remember these words: “I have my own business…”

They work like magic when you want to talk to a business owner.

Stop being a whimp and pick up the phone.

One secret…you can call some business owners after hours and leave a message that forces them to call you back out of curiosity.

Also if you’ve opened communication through email or direct mail the sooner that conversation moves to a higher level (phone conversation or face to face) the higher your chances of getting hired.

If someone emails me back and I have their phone number I’m calling them on the phone immediately.

That will convert a huge number of prospects into paying clients.

Ask Questions and Be Interested.

If you’re talking to business owners and trying to tell them about PPC, SEO, or any other service YOU WANT TO SELL THEM, then you deserve to crash and burn.

Stop thinking about yourself and get interested in them and their business.

Ask questions and then listen.

Gather information.

When you’ve built some rapport and trust you can use that information to create customized suggestions.

When the business owner gets excited about one of your suggestions you can establish the value of that idea to the owner, ask for 50% in advance to get started and run with it.

These are some of the best ways I know to sign a clients fast. But what do you think? What techniques have you applied successfully to drum up business?