What Is The Perfect Marketing Strategy For Your Business?

Brian Basilico — May 30, 2018 Follow @bbasilico

— May 30, 2018

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Your Perfect Marketing Strategy

This is the beginning of an eight-part blog and podcast series, and I’m going to cover the overarching topic of “What is the Perfect Marketing Strategy For Your Business?” The reason it’s eight parts is that I’m going to give you a broad brush overview today and then dig into greater detail across six different posts. Finally, I’m going to do a summary.

I’ve done a lot of coaching and teaching with a wide variety of clients in different industries. I’ve found that there are some common places where people tend to struggle, and one of the biggest ones is with BSOS, which stands for bright shiny object syndrome. What people tend to get focused on is, “Hey, if I just do Facebook ads, I’m going to be able to find my audience,” or, “If I just do Instagram, I’ll reach the millennials” or whatever.

What’s missing with that is a comprehensive strategy. They need to implement an entire system that pulls things together that you can execute step-by-step to help ensure that you’re going to get the results that you desire

So let’s lay out the six pieces that I have seen people use to multiply their business incomes.

1. Break Down Current Sales

The first piece of this perfect marketing strategy is this: You have to break down your current sales. With that said, I’m assuming that you already have a business and you’ve been in business for maybe a year or more. If you haven’t, that’s okay, but if you have been in business for a while, you have data to analyze which will tell you a lot about your business.

What are your customer’s business income levels? What are the genders of people buying your products and services? Are they young? Are they old? Are they male? Are they female? Who are they, and what products and services are each one of those people purchasing? Men might purchase something different than women. Young people may purchase something different than older people.

So you need to start out with who bought what, when, where, and why. What I suggest is you write this down, you break it down and put it into a spreadsheet, and this will help you start to spot trends in the way your business has been evolving over time. I do this every single quarter. I certainly do it every single year.

2. Ask Where You Want To Increase

The second piece of the puzzle is, where do you want to increase sales? Obviously, if your business is focused on particular things today, that might not be where you want to be in the future. What kind of inventory do you have? It could be time. It could be products or services. Do you have a new offering that you want to try to get in people’s hands and make them aware of?

Most importantly, what are your most profitable products or services? Think about those issues. “Where do I want to create this increase in business? Where would I like to focus, and why?” Without some clearly defined goals (not just that you want to increase revenues), you will more than likely flounder or miss your targets at best.

3. Build A Home Base – Website

The next piece of this is you have to have a home base to send people, and that would be your website. If you don’t have a website, I strongly, strongly suggest you get one. Even if it’s just a single landing page. Lately, a lot of people believe they can run a business using something like landing pages or lead pages. That would be a single page just to sell one product or service.

Single page websites are all just that, single pages, but really, having a website that focuses on each one of the things we talked about is going to help you succeed much better and much faster. So what you should do is create a page for each product and service that each of the customers you outlined in the first section wants to buy. The people that you have been selling things to will vote with their visits and their questions. What are their problems? And what is your solution to those problems?

You also want to create pages on the new offerings, the things that you want to focus on. Then you have to create some content that teaches and educates people as to why you are the best option and the best solution to their needs. You have to make sure there are calls-to-action everywhere. You want to start to create conversations. I’m a firm believer that a lot of time, it takes more than just filling out a form and going back and forth on email.

Often it’s just better to set up a time to get on the phone to talk to people. More often than not, it’s the best way to create those new sales. Having a detailed conversation with someone is the best way to start and build relationships. So, yes you should get people on your email list, but more importantly, get them to pick up the phone, or at least agree to a time when you can call them.

4. Create Content

The next thing that you have to do is create your story. What is the story behind how you got to where you’re at? What are you doing, and why are you interested in doing it for YOUR customers? You want to make sure that that story is broken out for each one of those audiences as well. So start writing these pages and you developing content you could use as a blog. Your story is one of the most important components of what you’re trying to get across.

You have to make sure that this can also be repurposed into some additional content, such as turning it into interviews, a blog, a podcast, maybe something like an e-book or a real book. Maybe you turn it into checklists or white papers or something you could give away that supports your story. You want to make that story and that content stand out in a way that makes people engage with it, so that they’ll engage with you on a one-on-one basis.

5. Distribute The Content

Next, you have to distribute this content. That content basically resides on your home base website, as a podcast, a blog, or something that would help people get back to that information and those sales pages. You want to use every possible opportunity to get the word out there. That could be something like social media. I love social media to do this, but like anything else, it’s an ever-changing and evolving thing. You have to put it out there, but you can’t control how it falls further down the newsfeed with time. As it becomes buried by new posts and content, you have to find ways to get it back in front of eyeballs and earballs again.

You got to be careful not to be too redundant or to post the same thing too many times, but you want to make sure that you share it on as many platforms as you can.

Next, look at additional distribution options. Can you email this information? Can you text it to millennials? Can you give presentations about it? Can you do interviews about it? It could be local, national, or international via webinars. What else can you do to get your content in the eyes, ears, and hands of people? Maybe it’s a postcard. It could be shared as a thank you letter. It can be any or all of the above.

6. Measure The Results

Last but not least, the sixth piece of this puzzle is analytics. You want to measure the results. You need to be looking at your Google Analytics. What is happening on your website with this content? Where are people paying attention? What happens when they click on a page? Where do they go next? Are they generating those phone calls? Are they filling out your contact form?

Also, look at the analytics inside of each one of the social media platforms. Facebook has analytics on business pages. Twitter has analytics. Instagram has analytics. Most every platform has it. You can see engagement. You can see what people are spending their time on. It helps guide you to do more of what’s working and less of what isn’t.

The other thing you want to do is circle back and look at your QuickBooks. See if you’ve had any rises in sales in the areas where you’re trying to increase that new business. Do you need to build a new website, content or even a new platform for people to purchase from you?

Make sure you continue to ask your client questions. Find out what problem did this solve? What could have we have done better? Make sure you’re engaging with your audience so you can continually circle back and revisit each of these six steps!

Final Thoughts

That’s it. Those are the top six things. Break down the current sales, question where you can increase sales, build a home base, create content, distribute that content, and measure the results. Then it is time to start over each quarter… lather, rinse, and repeat, and keep working it over and over.

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?

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