This is the final part in the series I’ve been doing called What Is The Perfect Marketing Strategy For Your Business? Today I want to wrap it up with a final story and some thoughts. We’ve covered the six major points, and if you haven’t listened to them, go back and listen on BaconPodcast.com, or go to PerfectMarketingStrategy.com. You’ll find ’em all there.
6 Steps To Success
The first one is break down your current sales. Where are you making money now? Number two, where do you want or need to increase your business? Number three is to build a home base. That’s your website. Number four, create content around the message that you want to get out there. Number five, distribute that content. Finally, number six is measure the results.
Get Rich Quick…
Way back in the 1990s, I owned a recording studio. I had a lot of people in there who were pretty famous. A lot of sports stars that you may know, TV stars. Heck, I even got to spend some time with Louis Farrakhan. Not my choice, potential client. But one of those clients that I worked with for a while was a guy named Carleton Sheets. You may have heard him, you may not have.
Basically he was the king of infomercials back in the ’90s. He was one of those guys that would teach you how to get rich quick in real estate with no down payments. His philosophy was, “Hey, all you’ve got to do, it’s so quick and easy, follow my strategy and you’re going to make tons and tons of money.” But one of the things he never talked about in the commercials, and from what I’ve heard from people that have actually taken his courses, is he didn’t cover things like problems with tenants, repairs, evictions and other things that often plague people who purchase real estate.
Just like Carleton Sheets, there are a lot of gurus out there teaching you how to get rich quick on the internet. Just create a big email list or do Facebook ads, or all these other things. But really, one size does not fit all. Especially when it comes to businesses. Each one of us is unique. I want you to think about this. There are five basic steps that you have to wrap your head around along with those six things that we talked about.
Plan
The first thing it takes is a plan. Nobody can make that plan for you. A coach can help you create a plan, but ultimately it’s you that has to do it. You have to lay out the steps necessary to become successful and then follow them.
Time
The second point is that it takes time. One of my clients sent me an email, and this is after a week, and said, “Hey, we had a couple of sales, we’ve had some good engagement, how do we get this going faster?” The reality is that I tell all my clients upfront, it takes time. Usually in order to see some kind of consistency in sales, it takes about three months. This is definitely not a get-rich-quick scheme. This is a commitment.
Commitment
That’s the third point, is it does take commitment. That’s means you have to do things on a regular basis. I often talk about my strategy of every single morning do a quote of the day, every night doing a caption contest, and then interspersing other things in there like this podcast, or my blogs, or speeches that I’m giving, or something along those lines.
It takes a while to build your audience, and so the first thing you have to do is create that brand, get that brand awareness out there, build the audience for it, and then you can start to monetize that. As a matter of fact, one of my favorite podcasts is The Solopreneur Hour with Michael O’Neal, and he calls that BAM. Branding, Audience, Monetize. So Michael, hats off to you for that! I love that concept, and that’s exactly what I’m talking about.
You have to be consistent in what you do. You’ve set up the plan, you have to give it some time. But you’ve got to have a commitment to continually do something on a regular basis. I often say that content is king, which is the fourth piece of the Marketing Strategy puzzle that I talked about. You’ve got to create great content. It has to tell a story. It has to create emotion. Getting that content out there is huge. But consistency is queen.
Flexibility
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So, if you just expect one story to go out there and all of a sudden it’s just going to open up flood gates of money, that’s not the way it works. It takes content and it takes consistency. The fourth piece of this puzzle is it takes flexibility. You have to look at the signs. What are people commenting on? What are they engaging with? Where are people actually being involved in the content that you’re putting out there?
Now, content involvement or engagement comes in three ways. It’s likes, comments, and shares. If people like your stuff, it’s pretty easy. I give that a single point in my measuring system, which I talk about in my book, “It’s Not About You, It’s About Bacon.” One point for a like, because all they’ve got to do is click, and now on Facebook, they can like, they can put a laughing face, a sad face, a love, whatever.
The second one is a comment. It takes a little bit more time for somebody to actually think and type and spell it correctly, hopefully, so that gets five points. When people leave comments, they’re engaging, they’re actually responding back to you, and a lot of the time you have to respond back to that comment. You can respond back with a like or a heart, or a laugh or whatever it is, or you can respond back with your own comment and start a conversation. Sometimes that makes the most sense.
The final one is a share. If people are sharing your content with their audience, that is the holy grail of engagement. Watch the signs. See how people are engaging with your content, and see what is getting the most and do more of that, and less of the other. You have to be flexible and build that along the way.
Help
The final step that you have to take is to realize when you need help. It takes help sometimes. I often talk to my coaching clients and tell them, “Work to your strengths and hire to your weaknesses.” I’m really, really good at talking, I’m not so good at typing. So I hire virtual assistants who help me actually correct my spelling and help me better enunciate the words I’m trying to get out of my mouth in a way that reads better. I’m Captain Typo. Work to your strengths, hire to your weaknesses.
Final Thoughts
Here are my final thoughts on this whole concept of the perfect marketing strategy for your business. Number one, in the free market economy, does everything have to be free? No, it doesn’t. Often you have to keep learning, you have to invest time to continue to learn, to evaluate, to grow. It also helps to share your experiences. Get out, network, learn from other people. And sometimes that looks like a mastermind group, so maybe you want to find and join a mastermind.
So, my final thought for you is I’m going to leave you with a quote.
Invest in yourself… to the point that it makes someone else want to invest in you.
That, my friends, will pay dividends for years to come.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas or questions about showing the concepts presented. Have you had to overcome any of the presented concepts? What worked and what did not live up to expectations? Do you have any ideas or advice you could share?
