- Started your first business?
Trying to figure out what to do next
or how to actually get customers and make sales?
Here are 20 marketing tips to help you get attention
and get your business growing,
starting with tip number one, pick your people.
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Before you even think about starting to promote
whatever product, or service, or offer
you're planning on launching,
you first need to ask yourself
one of the most important questions
in all of business, who cares?
And why?
I guess that's two questions.
You need to be able to answer the question
of who are the people that need
whatever it is that you're selling in their life?
And what's it gonna do for them?
Understanding your audience
and the customers you're trying to attract
isn't just about knowing their age, or gender,
or geographic location.
The real secret to success here is deep diving
into their wants, their needs, their pains,
their habits, their behaviors.
It's about making them think,
"Wow, did they make this just for me?"
See, one of the biggest secrets in business
is that you're often able to 10X your business' profits
just by changing to focus on a different segment
of the market, or in other words,
changing the people that you're choosing to serve
and sell to.
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Here's the deal, whether we like it or not,
people do judge a book by its cover.
And your business' brand is that cover that customers see
and makes them form an impression about you,
good, bad, or fugly.
So it's important to control the narrative.
Take control and decide what kind of image
you wanna put forward right from the start.
So ask yourself, is your business more James Bond
or Mr. Bean?
Bert or Ernie?
Batman or Robin?
Catwoman or woman with too many cats?
Figure that out because consistency is key.
Each email, tweet, and social media post
should sound unmistakably you.
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I love me a good meme.
Classic.
But social media these days is so much more
than just funny cat videos,
or trying to hard sell someone into buying something.
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This is why probably the best piece
of social media marketing advice that I can give you
when you're just getting started is to figure out
where your ideal customers are spending their time online,
and then dive in there.
Engage, ask questions, answer questions, start discussions.
Social media success today
is not about being everywhere all the time,
doing all the things at all kinds of random locations,
and more about being targeted and focused,
and spending your time only where your ideal customers
are present and active.
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If there are people out there actively searching on Google
for solutions to a problem that your business solves
then SEO, search engine optimization, is a powerful tactic.
It's the digital equivalent of placing your store
on the busiest street in the city,
rather than say in the middle of the Sahara Desert.
Is there a store that sells water around here?
(wind howling)
SEO, however, isn't a one-size-fits-all strategy
and there are some markets and industries
that are usually too competitive to justify going after
like insurance, and credit cards, mortgages, real estate.
But if you're in a less competitive industry,
have a local business, or a niche product or service,
then a little bit of SEO could be your golden ticket.
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Imagine for a second, spending five years of your life
writing the best book that the world has ever seen,
and then taking that book, putting it in a box,
hiding it away in your basement, never to be seen again.
It sounds crazy, right?
But that's exactly what happens when you create content,
but then don't do any work to promote it,
to share it on social media, to send it out in an email,
or to do anything you can to make sure
that people actually see it.
There's a saying in marketing that content is king,
but promotion is queen
and they rule the kingdom hand in hand.
That sounds very poetic.
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Remember when everyone said email is dead?
Well, the joke's on them because even today,
in fact, especially today,
as more and more people get burned out
and jaded on social media,
a well-crafted email can create connections,
drive sales, and keep you top in your customer's mind.
Email is still one of the highest return on investment
producing marketing tools available,
but the real power of email is the control
that it gives you to reach your customers directly
without hoping, wishing, and praying
that the social media algorithms
will smile favorably on your content.
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There's a saying in business that goes
your net worth is your network,
meaning it's about who you know.
It's about connections.
And who you know can often outweigh what you know,
especially if you are a good, kind, hardworking person,
because do you know who wants more of those kind of people
in their lives?
Yeah, everybody.
In the early days,
this might mean joining networking groups,
attending conferences, or local events,
maybe going to seminars,
or just reaching out to other people
in order to try to provide as much value
as you possibly can.
If you do this right, by again, being a good,
kind, hardworking person that genuinely wants to help
other people, the relationships you form here
will pay you back 100 if not 1000 times over.
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Feedback can be tough to take sometimes,
especially when you're first getting started,
and you've yet to build up the tough leather skin
of a grizzled veteran entrepreneur.
But feedback is also often the mirror
that shows your businesses true reflection
and can serve like free consulting from your customers.
So embrace it, learn from it.
Make changes if they make sense
and then get back to work trying to provide
the best products or best services possible.
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Another important thing to learn in business
is that you can't be all things to all people
all of the time.
You need to find your business' sweet spot,
your zone of genius,
that area of specialty or expertise
that you're able to dominate in,
that one area or one thing
that you're able to do better
than pretty much everyone else.
This is what gives your business
a unique competitive advantage,
something that you're truly able to excel at
that your competitors just can't touch.
The good news though is that when you're clear
on what you do and who you do it for,
well, for everything else that someone comes to you for
that you just don't want to offer,
you're able to make referrals,
recommendations, and join affiliate marketing programs,
so you can be compensated for the work that you pass along.
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One of the fastest ways to increase your revenue
is to stop looking outwards for new leads and new customers,
and instead, focus inwards on the existing customers
that you already have,
and doing everything in your power to keep them happy,
and sticking around for as long as possible.
Studies have shown that increasing customer retention rates
by just 5% increases profits by 25 to 95%.
In other words, customer loyalty is everything,
but you can only get there by making it a priority
and building it right into your core business model.
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Ever heard of the Titanic?
They said it was unsinkable and then it sank.
Point is even the best can fail.
So while you definitely don't wanna spread yourself
way too thin, you do always wanna make sure
to diversify your marketing strategies
to safeguard against unpredictable shifts
in the market or customer behavior,
or literally the million other things
that could and probably will change.
This is another reason I like email marketing
as it puts you in control,
rather than the social media algorithms,
but we already talked about that,
so let's keep moving with this next step tip.
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If a picture is worth a thousand words
then a video is worth a million words,
maybe more.
This isn't to say that text, and audio, and images
no longer work,
it's just that for most people,
most places, most of the time,
video works better, like a whole lot better.
Whether you're recording a product demo,
a behind-the-scenes look at your business,
or a fun introduction, or educational piece of content,
video allows you to deliver more information faster
and in a format that both your audience
and the algorithms absolutely love.
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The key to marketing success is to be able to put in $1
and get back two, or five, or 10.
Like a moneymaking machine,
your marketing needs to deliver results.
Otherwise, what's the point?
But the only way to do this consistently
is to know your numbers.
This means tracking and monitoring
where your customers are coming from,
understanding what they buy, when, and how much,
and assigning values to each marketing activity
your business engages in so you can track
what's working and what's not.
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If you're just getting started
or struggling to figure out what your next best move is,
then one of the best things you can do
is simply take a look around
and see what other people are doing.
Not to copy them exactly.
That's unethical, often illegal,
and completely ineffective
as the best that you can hope for
is coming off as a second rate copycat version of them.
But for ideas, inspiration, and to help you map out
a competitive position in the marketplace.
For example, if they're slow, you could be fast.
If they're cheap, you could be expensive.
If they're full serve, you could be completely automated.
Do it yourself.
Or you could just try to do whatever they're doing
a little bit better by adding some other element
that they may not have thought of before.
Every business has to make trade-offs
in their business model,
choosing to prioritize one thing over another.
And it's in these trade-offs and in these sacrifices
that there are unique opportunities for you to excel at,
capitalize on,
and carve out your own unique position in the market.
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One of my favorite definitions of entrepreneurship
is that entrepreneurs solve problems
for a profit. (cash register dings)
Solve a big problem,
make a lot of profit, (cash register dings)
Solve a big problem for a lot of people,
make a lot more profit. (cash register dings)
Solve a big problem for a lot of people
who need that problem solved right now,
well, make a whole lot more profit,
and make it a whole lot more quickly.
One of the biggest mistakes most new business owners make
is trying to solve a problem
that nobody really cares that much to solve,
or trying to overhype and oversell something
in completely the wrong way.
And whenever I see that happen,
this line from the late great comedian Mitch Hedberg
always pops into my mind.
- I saw a commercial that said forget everything you know
about slip covers, so I did.
(audience laughing)
- It's not that you can't sell something boring
like slip covers, or plumbing services,
or industrial insurance,
it's just that you need to position it in a way
so that your marketing talks about how your offer
is designed to solve a very real problem
that people actually have and actually care about.
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In the beginning do your best to connect with other brands,
businesses, and influencers.
This isn't quite like networking
where the goal is to forge relationships,
but rather to form collaborations,
business partnerships where you're both working together
towards some kind of common goal,
a shared webinar, a guest blog post, or a mutual shout out,
or collaboration can go a long way into helping each other
by tapping into each other's audiences.
The key here though,
especially when you're first getting started
is to be realistic and aim to find people
at about the same level as you,
so that you're able to offer
mutually beneficial relationships and collaborations.
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One of the most valuable things you can do
in your business journey is spend time learning
the proven marketing principles, fundamentals,
and strategies that were just as relevant, 10, 20,
even 100 years ago as they are today,
and that are going to be just as important
100 years from now.
Side note here, but this is what Marketing Insiders
is all about.
So I'll make sure to put a link up here on the screen,
as well as down in the descriptions below this video,
so you can check it out after if you're interested.
And these principles are so important and so profitable
because they're based on psychology and human behavior.
And we as humans really haven't changed all that much
in the past tens of thousands of years.
We still avoid pain, seek pleasure,
and do whatever we can to make sure
that we feel safe and accepted by those around us.
That said, the platforms, channels,
and technologies we use to communicate all of this
is dramatically different today
than ever before in history.
And it doesn't look like things
are ever gonna be slowing down.
So to stay on top of changes and trends,
make sure to subscribe to marketing newsletters,
attend webinars, and always, always keep learning.
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Every business has something called a marketing funnel.
Sometimes it's called a sales funnel.
Sometimes it's called a customer journey.
But they're all pretty much the same thing,
which is the process of taking someone
who has no idea who you are
and has never heard of you before,
and guiding them through the entire process
of becoming a lifelong loyal customer that loves you,
loves what you do, and wants to tell everyone they know
about just how great you are.
And you are pretty great.
So if you want your marketing to work better, faster,
and be more profitable than you've ever imagined
then you need to grease that funnel good.
Every click, every page, every step
should be completely seamless,
removing as much friction as you possibly can.
The goal here is to make it as easy as possible
for your customer to take the next step
and to be able to actually buy something from you
without running into roadblock after roadblock
that causes them to get frustrated,
give up, and go to your competitors instead.
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Today's customers have heard it all, seen it all,
and have been burned by maybe not it all, but lots of it,
certainly enough times to be more jaded, skeptical,
and cynical than ever before.
This is why big over-hyped promises
and unbelievable claims and spammy, scammy,
icky feeling marketing isn't good for anybody.
The alternative then is to be genuine, be real,
be authentic in your marketing, on social media,
and in your conversations with customers.
People have kind of a sixth sense
for detecting sketchy stuff,
so never be afraid to be your true, awesome self.
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Even the best and most compelling marketing messages
in the entire world are rarely a one and done type of thing.
One of the biggest reasons
that so many businesses' marketing completely fails
is that they're simply not doing enough of it
or not doing it for long enough.
You don't just send one single email,
or write one single social media post
and be completely done,
make billions of dollars and retire to the beach.
On average, and depending on what business,
market, or industry you're in,
you typically need around seven to 14 different touch points
or interactions with a customer
in order to get them to make a purchase.
Of course, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this.
The wrong way means wasting your time, and money,
and energy, and making all of your customers angry
in the process.
(trumpets blowing) Yay, business.
But the right way, that means more leads,
more customers, and more sales.
So to show you how to do things the right way,
I've linked up a video right here that's gonna give you
some of my best and most profitable marketing strategies.
So make sure to tap or click that now
and I'll see you in there in just a second.