- Hey, my friend. Adam here.
And today, I wanna share with you
a marketing strategy that simply does not fail.
I know, sounds too good to be true,
but the reality is if you walk through the steps
and the process and the frameworks
that I'm going to be unpacking for you here in this video,
you apply them to your business
or any business that you're doing this marketing for,
results are all but guaranteed.
Of course, the devil is in the details.
There are nuances to all of this,
which is exactly why I'm gonna be showing you
the things that you need to do
in order for this to work for you.
The first thing is, of course,
nailing your market to message match.
You get this wrong and it doesn't matter what else you do,
it's simply not going to work.
The next thing is something called connection content.
And this is a massive shift
to the way that marketing used to be done in the past
and to the strategies, tactics,
and all of the methods that we're using today
that are getting the best results.
And the third is a little something
called algorithm leverage,
which I promise you, sounds way more complicated
than it actually is.
But it really has to do
with working with the social media platforms and networks
so that you give them what they want
so they give you what you want,
which is more eyeballs, more clicks, more traffic,
more leads, more customers, more sales,
more pretty much all of the good stuff
that you need to run your business.
So let's start with market to message match,
and then at the end, we're gonna put all of this together
into that one cohesive strategy
that just always works all the time for all people,
everywhere, in all situations, no matter what.
All right, so do you wanna know
that the single biggest reason
that most marketing doesn't work,
it's not because it wasn't funny or clever or creative
or new or exciting or any of that nonsense?
Nope, it can all pretty much be boiled down to marketing
that's saying the wrong things to the wrong people.
Or to put it another way, this marketing doesn't work
because it's either unrelated or unappealing
to the target market that it's trying to get in front.
Now, an unrelated message
simply means that the marketing that you're creating,
the words, the images, the videos that you're using,
they don't sound or they don't feel
like they're for the person that they're aimed at.
In other words, your target market is hearing your message,
they're seeing your ads, they're looking at your content,
but they think, "Nah, it's not for me."
So they keep scrolling, they click away,
they hit the back button,
or they just move on to something else.
What you're trying to sell simply isn't resonating
to the present fears or pains or problems or frustrations
or any of the things that are actually present
in their everyday reality.
This often happens when there's a bit of a mismatch
between what you think your product or service does
and the real benefits that the customer or the client gets
on the receiving end of it.
This is why it's painful
when you see marketing that simply rambles on and on
about features and statistics and metrics
and all of the tangible or physical
or attributes that are involved
in whatever product or service you're selling
rather than focusing on what really matters,
which is the end result, the benefits,
all of the outcomes that someone's going to get
as a result of engaging and interacting with you,
with your business and with your offer.
All right, the second part of this then is unappealing,
and that just means that what you're saying
just isn't that good to people.
Now, this doesn't mean that you or your business
or your product or your service is bad,
just the way that you're communicating it
makes it feel like they just don't want it.
They don't need it, they don't even really care.
Fortunately, the solution here is simply marketing.
It's repackaging, it's reformatting the message,
the promise, the unique selling proposition,
the differentiation, how you're spinning it,
the words that you're using,
all of the ads or social media or emails or videos,
and all of the creative aspects of it
to essentially put it in front of someone
that makes them say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really want that."
And fortunately, the solution to both of these problems,
having unrelated or unappealing marketing,
really just comes down
to nailing your market to message match,
ensuring that you're doing the right things,
saying the right things for the right people.
And I wish I could tell you that there was an easy hack,
a shortcut to getting this right every single time.
But the fact is you are going to need to put in
a little bit of blood, sweat and tears,
a little bit of research,
a little bit of conversations with your target market,
going to Amazon and buying all the books
around your target market
and around looking at your competitors,
looking at their messaging,
their websites, their social media,
talking to ideal customers and really trying to dig deep
into their pains and problems and fears and frustrations,
asking your existing customers
what was it about your business
that prompted them to buy in the first place?
What solution is your offer solving for them?
What solution is it solving
that they didn't even know they really needed
until after the fact?
Something that may catch you completely off guard,
which is amazing,
because the more that you're able
to uncover these hidden gems,
the more you're able to bake that
into everything that you write and say and do
when it comes to your marketing.
Customers don't buy when they understand,
they buy when they feel understood.
And the only way to make them feel understood
is to understand them.
Now, the good news
is if you happen to be the owner of this business,
then the odds are pretty good
that you've got a really good handle
on who your ideal target market is.
In fact, you may have started your business
as a solution to a former version of you.
A good example here is one of the reasons
that I just got so in love and enraptured with marketing
is that early on in my career
when I first started learning about marketing,
I saw it as the solution to starting my own business,
to becoming an entrepreneur,
to providing the lifestyle and the financial independence
and all of the freedom that I wanted.
So I went about researching and studying and implementing
all of these different marketing strategies and tactics
on myself first in order to see what works and what doesn't.
I got pretty decent data and I figured,
"Hey, I should probably show other people
how to do this as well."
Hence, the business was born.
Hence, that's not a word I use often.
Now, of course, there is a right way and a wrong way
to go about creating all of these messages
and making sure that they match with your audience.
And that's what this next point,
connection content, is all about.
Can I tell you a secret?
Now, I can't see you nodding in agreement,
but I can only assume you answered yes,
so let me tell you something.
People don't like doing business with businesses.
They like doing business with people.
Which means the more authentic and relatable and human
you're able to make your brand and your business,
the better.
In fact, one of the biggest advantages
that most small businesses, most creators,
most marketers, most solopreneurs have
is that they're not massive mega empires
with all kinds of different red tape and bureaucracy,
and whose messages need to go through 15 levels of approval
and it ends up coming out the other end
completely watered down and bland and boring
and irrelevant and ignorable.
You get to be you.
You get to talk in your authentic voice.
You get to dress how you wanna dress.
You get to serve the people that you wanna serve.
And you get to do it in the way that is the most beneficial
to both you and to the people that you seek to serve.
Now, I'm not talking about being unprofessional
and just putting all of your faults and flaws
on display for the whole world to see,
but I am talking about being a real genuine human
and essentially allowing your true personality
to come through in everything that you do and create.
First of all, it's a whole lot easier
to make content this way.
Second of all, it tends to go over a whole lot better
with the people that you're actually trying to help.
You also don't need to share
every single aspect of your personal life.
For example, you may not know and may not care
that I'm married with four kids and a dog,
how I like snowboarding and playing guitar,
and occasionally painting, even though I'm terrible at it.
Now, sure, I do mention all of those from time to time,
but they're not core parts of my content.
And whatever is personal to you,
whatever makes up your daily, everyday life,
you can decide whether to include it or to leave it out.
Because a very important point to remember here
is that you're creating content to help people.
In the end, it's about the person
on the other end of the page or the screen
or the camera lens or whatever it is, it's about them.
So if what you're sharing you feel is of benefit to them,
then, by all means, feel free to share it.
If, on the other hand, you simply want to share
about a recent surfing trip to Maui
'cause you wanted to go surfing in Maui,
well, I'm not sure that's gonna help anyone
unless you teach surfing in Maui,
in which case, you should probably make that content.
Now, the second key here
when it comes to creating connection content,
aside from being authentic and genuine
and really allowing yourself to try to provide
as much value as you possibly can,
is that more really is more, especially today.
Fun fact, the businesses that are succeeding the most today
are creating not just some content
but a whole lot of content,
and they're typically creating it in an omnichannel manner,
meaning they're showing up on Facebook and on Instagram
and on Twitter and on LinkedIn and on YouTube
and on TikTok and on Pinterest and on everything,
which I appreciate sounds ridiculous
and overwhelming and exhausting.
So, some good news, some bad news,
but then maybe some good news at the end.
Let's start with the good news.
If you do things using the strategy
that I'm about to propose to you now,
you're going to be able to create one piece of content
and then splice and dice it and share it
across all kinds of different social media networks.
So, you can essentially create once
and get paid a dozen times or so.
More good news is you really don't have to do everything
and be everywhere.
You're much better off to be selective and strategic
focusing on the channels and the platforms
where your ideal target market is present and active,
going there, doubling down there,
and ignoring pretty much everything else.
The bad news is you do actually have to create
this first piece of content
and the kind that we're seeing the best results with,
and we have for quite some time,
does take a little bit more time and energy to create.
Typically, it's around some kind of long form content,
so we're gonna unpack that in just a minute.
But the good news, like I said,
I think we've come full circle
with our good news, bad news, good news thing,
is that there are ways to make creating this
faster and easier than ever before,
both by tapping into technology
and recent advances in artificial intelligence
and ChatGPT and all kinds of fancy stuff.
But before we dive into the nitty gritty details
of how to put all of this together
and actually implement it in your business,
first, we have to talk about the third piece
that ties this marketing strategy together
which is algorithm leverage.
It's probably no surprise that most people these days
are spending an enormous amount of time on social media,
whether we're talking about Facebook or Instagram
or TikTok or YouTube,
the time is hours and hours every single day.
I mean, you add in email to the list and website browsing,
and you're basically consuming
the normal adult person's waking hours.
This is why you need to understand
where people are present and active online,
and then you need to make it your goal
to not only get in front of them with your content
by showing up consistently and repeatedly
over a period of days, weeks, months, and years,
but you also need to understand
the fundamental system and strategy and equations
behind how the algorithms work.
So I promise you, they're not as complicated
as they've been made out to seem.
And when you understand how the algorithms work,
you can give your content, give your message,
give your business the highest likelihood of success
by ensuring that you're putting out the best stuff possible
in the best way possible.
Fortunately, this part of the video
is going to be relatively straightforward
because the way that the algorithms work
is relatively simple to explain,
certainly not easy to fully understand,
certainly not easy for all of the signals
to be taken into consideration,
but they're not weighted evenly.
Meaning there are certain factors
when it comes to creating content for social media platforms
that are going to allow you
to get most of the bang for your buck.
So here's the secret.
Winning content on social media
is simply a factor of getting people to the platforms
and having them stay on the platforms
for as long as possible.
That's it.
I mean, I wish I could tell you
it was to use blue instead of orange,
or to use big words instead of small words,
or caps instead of lowercase, or emojis or not.
But all of those are tactics, they're hacks,
they're things that are going to change over time
as consumer behavior change and the platforms change,
but they're not the real drivers of success.
The real drivers of success come down, again,
to really understanding your ideal target market,
what kind of content they wanna read,
what kind of videos they wanna watch,
what kind of podcasts they wanna listen to,
what are the pains that they're going through,
what are the questions they have,
how are you going to be the one
that's able to create content
that solves and answers all of those questions for them.
When you prove yourself as a reliable resource,
a reliable source of valuable assets
and valuable information
that actually genuinely helps people,
not only do people start coming back for more,
but they also engage with your content,
they spend longer on it.
And all of those are sending incredibly powerful signals
to the social media platforms
and to the social media algorithms,
which makes you significantly more likely
to rank and to show up in people's feeds.
Now, of course, how do you create viral content?
How do you create content
that people want to stick around for
and want to listen and want to engage with?
Well, obviously, that's easier said than done,
and again, it is going to come down
to a foundational understanding of some marketing psychology
and some consumer behavior,
some of the different strategies you're able to use,
some copywriting, all of the things that we talk about
in these videos and every other video
that I've pretty much ever put out.
But just know that it's not as elusive
as you may have been told.
There is a method to the madness,
and it's not always just a roll of a dice.
Luck plays a part, but a very, very small part.
And in fact, I would even argue
that the longer that I spend in this game,
the less that I would say luck has to do with it.
Okay, so to bring this all together
and then dive into some of the tactical stuff,
the one marketing strategy that basically never fails
is showing up again and again
in front of your ideal target market
with valuable, relevant, helpful, enjoyable content.
That's it.
Now, we could call this content marketing if we want,
but it's too broad.
It's not specific enough
and it often has to do with just making stuff
and putting it out there and hoping for the best.
That's why I wish I had a fancy name for this,
but the closest that I've come is somewhere along the lines
of direct response content marketing.
Which if you've been in marketing for any length of time,
you know that's a terrible name, and I'm working on it.
Essentially, direct response content marketing
is content marketing done with some kind of goal,
some kind of objective.
It's accountable, it's measurable, it's guided and strategic
in regards to who you're putting in in front of,
what you're hoping to accomplish,
whether that's in the form of a lead or a customer
or a sale or in the form of a vanity metric,
something that's not necessarily
going to drive your business forward today
but can help to not only feel good
but also kind of juice the algorithms a little bit
with a like or a comment or a share.
Now, when it comes to direct response content marketing,
when it comes to creating valuable content
and putting it out in front of people,
there are a number of different options
that you have available.
Obviously, you have video
or you can record videos much like this.
You can share your thoughts,
you can try to help people through this medium.
Another option if you don't wanna be on video
is by using audio.
Obviously, a podcast is the main driver
that comes to mind here.
The problem with podcasts
is that they're typically very hard to rank for,
to have discovered,
unless you happen to appear on a trending podcast
or get a really big guest or have someone else share
through their distribution platform.
This is why podcasts are typically best
for people that already have large audiences.
And then, of course, there's text.
Text is still a fantastic tool,
and in fact, many platforms prioritize text above all else.
LinkedIn is a pretty good example
where both text and videos seem to do about the same.
Twitter is predominantly text and very short text.
But for most people, most of the time,
the strategy that you're going to get
the most bang for your buck with is video.
Now, this is where things get interesting.
Well, they've changed a little bit
in the past couple months.
See, for a long time, my advice and my strategy
was pushing people towards short form video content.
Think YouTube Shorts, TikToks,
Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels.
This was because all of those platforms
were giving a disproportionate amount of reach and traffic
to people that were creating this kind of short form video.
They kind of still are, but things have changed.
This is because both the creators of these forms,
of short form video content
as well as the platforms themselves have realized
that short form video content isn't as profitable,
not for the creators, not for the platforms.
But do you know what is profitable, has been profitable,
and will continue to be profitable for a long time to come?
Long form video content.
Think YouTube videos, think webinars,
think live presentations.
Think anything that's going to allow you
to communicate using your voice, using your face
or some kind of eccentric body language motions.
Talking with my hands all over the place here.
Basically, something that's going to allow you
to deliver just a massive amount of value
in the shortest amount of time to the most amount of people,
not to mention video content gives you
a significant advantage over podcasts
and over text-based content
in order to splice and dice and take this content
and get it out to as many platforms as possible,
which, again, we will talk about in just a minute.
Now, the reason that I loved suggesting
people start with short form video content
is number one, because they were getting a significant boost
in the algorithms.
They were promoting this.
Instagram wanted more reels, TikTok wanted more everything.
YouTube was trying to boost their shorts.
But those things have kind of changed.
And the second reason that I was promoting it
is because creating a short form video
is significantly easier,
both in regards to time and money investment
but as well as difficulty and courage or mental capacity
to wrap your head around sitting down in front of a camera
and just talking for 10 or 15 minutes.
In other words, short form video content was a nice easy way
to dip your toes into the water,
to get out there and start creating videos,
which pretty much every single business,
entrepreneur and marketer needs to be doing.
But like I said, things have changed.
There's been updates to the algorithm.
There have been updates in consumer behavior.
There's all kinds of different discussions
around different short form social media sites,
whether they'll be banned or not,
whether their algorithm will change.
But the one thing that has stood true
is long form video content.
So, my advice, my strong suggestion here
is to find the courage, to find a way
to get in front of a camera
and to just press Record and to start going.
One of the most common questions I get
is "What's the first video I should make?"
or "How should I do this?"
or "What kind of lights or camera, of microphone?"
I promise you, none of that matters
if it's preventing you from recording that first video.
Simply grab your phone, record a video, get it uploaded.
You could always improve something on the second video,
and the third and the fourth.
There's plenty of time to invest in higher quality gear,
to spend more time thinking about thumbnails and titles
and topics and structure and storytelling.
There's plenty of this.
There's a long time ahead of us
in the world of video marketing,
and it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
So here's my suggestion.
Grab a pen and a piece of paper,
use the Word Docs on your phone or Google Docs
or whatever you use to write things down
and write out a basic outline
about things that you're comfortable talking about
in regards to your business
and something that would help someone.
I don't know, if you sell sock-knitting courses,
you could write out the Beginner's Guide to Sock Knitting.
If you sell industrial water chilling equipment,
you could write down 10 things you need to know
before buying your next industrial water cooler.
I have no idea where these examples are coming from.
If you sell sunglasses, you could write down
the difference between your sunglasses and others.
Why choose this material versus that?
What about lens construction? Polarized or not?
If you sell coaching, you could write articles
that help people solve initial problems
that they may need to have handled before they come to you.
Or you could provide follow up
or feedback or answer common questions
like I often do on this channel as well.
Basically, just write some stuff down
and make sure that it's following
some kind of consistent, cohesive, logical order
so you don't end off going on too many random tangents.
Then hit Record.
Grab your phone, set it up on a stack of books or a tripod,
Have someone that you love and care about hold it for you,
though probably not that
'cause recording videos in front of people can be awkward,
and start recording.
From there, well, if you make mistakes,
if you say the wrong thing,
if you repeat yourself too many times,
that's what editing's for.
It's really simple, just go through, cut that part out,
clean it up, send it on its way.
Creating this kind of longer form video content
is going to do amazing things for you and for your business.
And I promise you, the sacrifice is worth the rewards
that you're going to get back in return.
So, with that said, I'm gonna let you go
'cause you've got some recording to do.
And if you'd like even more tips and strategies
in order to help you put together that perfect strategy,
well, I'm gonna link up a video right here
that's gonna answer some of your top marketing questions.
So make sure to check that out now,
and I'll see you in there in just a sec.