My “Developing” Approach to Marketing and Sales after 1 year of business
A lot of people are starting businesses now. And one thing they will most certainly need is marketing.
I want to use this story to compile all of my marketing lessons learned so far. It’s really exciting to run a digital marketing business and you learn a lot.
How I got here:
YouTube video content and Instagram content
Why did I choose digital marketing?
CENTS and this thread from The Fastlane Forum:
GOLD! – CHECKLIST: How to Start a Digital Marketing Agency & Hit $5K in Less than 90 Days
I’ve been meaning to write this post for a long time. It’s basically the story of how I started a digital marketing…www.thefastlaneforum.com
Crush it by Gary Vee
Jab Jab Jab Right Hook and got inspired by his story.
Been doing digital marketing for a year now. Wow, time flies.
Teaz’e Daquiri Lounge — did some photography and organic social media management
Yun Global- created content and did some organic social media management
Ground Up Biz
My realization — Chasing people down vs them finding me. Permission marketing vs interruption marketing. Prospecting.
Books to assist — Expert Secrets and Traffic Secrets by Russell Brunson
Where I am going from here: still learning about business and learning that I will probably need to do my own thing but I am a bit hesitant.
This message may apply to all business owners not just marketers but I believe all business owners have to be marketers.
What I’m doing with search, evergreen, keyword planner. people are searching 24/7 and having an automated funnel set up for them takes a lot of brainpower.
I wish I could hire the right people but something inside me wants to program too just to say I did it.
Screen YouTube analytics
1. Pain points
What keeps people up at night?
Bills and kids and big dreams.
Habits are so deeply routed as well as routines that become hard to break because of auto-pilot. Not impossible but do consume energy.
Why don’t people think about their marketing every day because we are in survival and put out the fire mode?
2. Client Retention
My Clients are always busy but they find time to do other stuff and it feels like I always have to call. okay not always, not throwing anyone under the bus I am grateful for all the people who have given me a chance. We all have lives and responsibilities other than the business we run.
3. Funnels
Drive as much traffic — My current Quora traffic-driving strategy. Funnels are key for digital marketing business success as they allow you to attract clients online in a systematic manner.
Understand the awareness levels of each of the prospects you encounter.
4. Interruption marketing vs Permission marketing
Getting better at driving traffic
Lead magnets — types I have experienced so far best and worst
Landing pages
Automated email warm-up sequence — how I subbed to a few marketers and influencers emails and plan to hack their whole front-end setup
Can also leave meaningful comments and post helpful content
Make it available for them so when they are ready it is there
But it’s me running away from phone calls and being lazy with the internet. But I’m also thinking email marketing is an unexplored frontier and so are SMS messages.
Conversion rate
where I have lacked in making the volume of offers a day for being discouraged and maybe realizing I didn’t want to run a full-scale business but would need a corporation for wealth. I don’t think I can get around that part.
5. Virtual Networking
Virtual
DMs and calls
Virtual nurturing of relationships
Calendar for birthdays and other important days. Having a way for people to book your calendar if they are interested and making that as easy as possible.
6. Value ladder
Can computers/automation make offers for me?
Can computers/automation flawlessly deliver my product for me… without me being present?
Spending too much time as a technician.
Value array — the elements people are competing on. Or the layers of value that people are adding to their products.
What do you think?
7. Business model canvas
Visual representation of what elements make up your business
Wouldn’t hurt to do a SWOT analysis here too
8. Take advantage of free Business courses on YouTube
Continued education. Logging what you learn and creating playlists that can be referenced later. Purchasing relevant courses and possibly partnering with friends to learn together and be accountable and share what each of you has taken away.
Keep learning and document what you learn
9. Staying motivated
When you’re not closing. When it gets difficult or repetitive doing a task. Entrepreneurship is not an easy task. Picking up the phone to make sales calls is not necessarily easy. Closing deals and managing your time when you are the boss is not so easy. Could stay motivated with tapes or a speaker like Jim Rohn.
When the bad days come, you will need a reserve of resources and people to help you stay motivated. We all need someone. We all need a support system.
Audiobooks & favorite speakers
10. Daily production
Habits and routines
Key performance indicators or KPIs to measure the exact units of what’s important for your business to grow, because there are many numbers that may not matter as much when you are getting started.
Tracking your time. One thing about the digital marketing business model, if you don’t produce then you will not eat. This means content as well as engagement with new and existing customers and prospects.
11. Track your numbers
Why do it?
Because it gives a clear picture of your productivity and shows from a numerical perspective your worst and your best performances. Spreadsheets are so helpful and basic sum and average functions for productivity-enhancing.
Without the numbers you really don’t know how much time things are taking and you cannot do a deeper analysis of your key numbers to modify performance.
Where to do it? Successful people know their numbers and use them to weigh their performance against what they are capable of.
How often to evaluate and review?
12. Process Flow Diagrams
Map it all out
Creating visual aids for everything you do in your business. Any business, especially a digital marketing business will benefit from having all processes eventually documented for easy review.
Google Drawings + examples
13. Leveraging rainmakers
Top producers are candy to the digital marketing business model. You can leverage people who have already created an audience of people you are targeting and present your message possibly for a fee or value added.
Takes work to get into their channel but if you do it could significantly change how many people you talk to so it is worth the work. Also advertising to people who are following or engaging with these types of people.
14. Follow-up and automation or reminders
Everything is in the follow-up. The money and the relationship. Technology!
15. True to the calendar and booking systems
Need a central calendar and maybe some Socrates calendars too with reminders. Time is the most important asset you have so manage it wisely per your focus in life.
16. Documentation
A central place for storing company documents and also resources you find online, video playlists etc.
Knowledge base. Getting into the habit of taking notes and storing them in a central location which will be your storage for business documents.
17. Project management
Know what’s going on under the hood for your business. We must all have a basic understanding of project management and its importance in our lives. To make your digital marketing business more efficient, it’s key to understand the differences between operations and projects. Then learn the stages of project management.
18. No is the start
Sales statistics
No is a word most people don’t like to hear.
No doesn’t always mean No. In some cases, it certainly does but in sales maybe not so if you dig deeper and have thicker skin. Go For No by Richard Fenton is a great resource to learn about the power of hearing this word in sales.
In different departments, even in a small company so I use Trello to organize each project for different departments.
19. ABC always be closing to even more important in my opinion AMO always make offers
Review your numbers. The lifeline of your digital marketing business is closing new offers and improving the value of your current offer(s). I think its best to have one core offer and make that one as amazing as you possibly can.
20. Job or business
System vs you and all your 24 hours a day
Can’t get trapped in the employee slot of your business and will not be able to grow if you are a choke point. Start with the end design of your business in mind (or at least have some idea) and reverse engineer the projects and milestones. It may be best to develop your digital marketing business from different perspective such as working in and working on the outside of your business to notice inefficiencies and make improvements.
21. Profit
Some people start businesses out of passion or new ideas. While that is fine, others evaluate a business based on problems and profit potential. Because profit is what keeps the lights on. Some people start them when they notice a problem that the market is really not solving well or at all.
Make sure you think about how much profit your business will generate and how to keep costs low because a business is not a hobby.
Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think with a Comment!
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