Do you see it? Are you already using it? Or maybe you’re just curious. Either way if you aren’t already putting a digital marketing strategy together then you’re about to get left far behind by your competition! What am I going on about? Why the HUGE opportunity that the internet represents. ESPECIALLY for local businesses! There have been other events along the way that dramatically shifted every aspect of Life, especially business. The printing press which revolutionized not only production but also forever changed the face of commerce not to mention every other aspect of Life. Then there was the original internet, radio. There’s no denying how it transformed our communication, especially the way we promoted our thoughts and creations. Did you know that: The TV is only 92 years old The US average 2.71 tv’s and only 2.55 people per household $69B was spent in tv advertising in 2018 Compared to the internet which is now only 36 years old: 22B active users world wide 78% of the US has a social profile $107B in ad spend in 2018 Do me a favor. Draw a circle. That’s your market. That represents every dollar that can be made in your specific industry for your specific product and services. Now how much of that market are you winning? How much of it do you own? Are you winning enough, or do you need to be winning more? Your market share is determined in a large part by your marketing strategy, or more so today by your digital marketing strategy. How are you reaching your customers? Now you can climb right into the conversation your customer is having, and join in in a way that builds trust and establishes you as an authority. Leading them to realize they would be missing out if they didn’t buy from you! Of course the problem is that, just like you there are millions of other businesses out there trying to do the same thing. So where do you start? Get Your Free Perfect Buyer Cheat Sheet Reduce ad spend and increase your ROI by targeting your PERFECT BUYERS every time! Define your audience and discover targeting opportunities that you might be missing. Stop losing money by including the wrong people in your targeting. Zero in on the exact type of customer who is most likely to purchase from you. GET MY FREE PERFECT BUYER CHEAT SHEET NOW! Who Are You Targeting? The first thing is to understand who you’re targeting. A lot of business owners skip this step or don’t really dig in to this question as deep as they should. Understanding the exact type of person you’re trying to reach is vital in helping to craft the message and even knowing where to put your message. The better you understand your customer the more effective every aspect of your marketing will be. From ad copy to the offer itself, knowing your customer is vital. Take the time to create as thorough a customer avatar as possible. Here are the areas you want to look at when thinking about your customers. Customer Targeting Here are some key areas you can use to target your ideal customers Demographics Age Gender Marital Status Occupation Job title Income Education Level Goals and values What do they want to accomplish? What is most important in Life to them? Sources of information Books Magazines Websites/Blogs Influences Professional Education Struggles and pains What are the biggest challenges in their life? Fears? Worries? Concerns? Objections to the purchase Biggest objections to purchase Biggest doubts Free Market Research Template Without thoroughly understanding your market and competition, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. This template provides important information which helps to identify new market opportunities and competitive advantages. Stop leaving money on the table for your competitors! GET MY FREE MARKET RESEARCH TEMPLATE Which platform will you be using? Although there are hundreds of social platforms out there to choose from, I recommend picking one or two to start. You can always expand as you grow your marketing efforts, but especially in the beginning it’s important not to spread yourself too thin. The platforms to start with is directly dependent on your target customers. Where do they hang out online? There’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, Google Adwords, Ad Roll, Native Ads, email marketing, and about a few hundred thousand other choices of platforms and mediums for marketing. So, what do you do? If you’re not sure dig through your current data and knowledge of your customers. You can also use social listening tools like Sprout,Mention, or Hootsuite to see which platforms subjects related to your industry are discussed on. That’s where you want to start. It’s not about Advertising, It’s about providing VALUE! One thing that a lot of businesses forget about social media marketing, is that it’s SOCIAL. Yes, that’s right. People actually go on there to be social. Not to see ads or buy something, but rather to chat with their family and friends. So if you just go on their to vomit on them about what a great service or product you have, they’re most likely going to simply ignore you. The average consumer is exposed to around 5000 ads per day. Let’s say that you’re a Buddhist monk, with a superhuman level of mental control and were able to block out 50% of that messaging. That means yesterday you saw about 2500 ads. Name 5. That’s right, just 5 and don’t cheat. Don’t just name ads you remember seeing at some point. Name 5 ads you saw yesterday. (I’ve asked this question to a few hundred business owners and I’ve only had a handful that could do it and I’m convinced that most of them were because they simply refused to not be able to answer.) One of the ways to overcome the noise you’re competing with, is to make sure that you respond to everyone that engages with your brand online. Don’t treat your online profile like a billboard. Provide value, engage, help educate your customers and you will be well rewarded with lower marketing cost and increased conversion rates. Pro Tip:The key is to be top of mind when the person is ready to make their purchase. The anatomy of effective digital marketing. Effective digital marketing will lower the cost of customer acquisition while simultaneously increasing both the immediate and lifetime value of your customers. This isn’t achieved by one ad. Effective digital marketing understands that the customer journey is broken into pieces and moves customers seamlessly from one phase of that journey to the other. This journey starts with awareness, then into analysis, conversion, and then through the retention and ascension phases. The first part of this funnel is the awareness stage. This is when you are first reaching out and making people aware of you, your brand, and what you offer. This is also the time when it’s easiest to segment your audience into their specific interests. I don’t care what your business is, not all your customers are going to be interested in all your products or services. By segmenting your new prospects immediately, it allows you to speak to each of them regarding what they are most interested in. Pro Tip: Segmenting also allows you to easily discern which services or funnels convert best and troubleshoot the ones that don’t. After the awareness phase comes the engagement phase. This is the phase where your new prospect is aware of you, aware of what you have to offer, and is deciding on whether they want to purchase now and whether they want to purchase from you. This is the juncture where you are attempting to provide enough of the right type of value to initially acquire the customer. Conversion rates at the end of the funnel tend to be significantly higher when you start by offering the potential client, some type of specific value in exchange for their contact information. In the subscription phase the client is usually given this “Lead Magnet” in exchange for their email address which then allows you to market to them for free via email for as long as the remain on your list. This can also be achieved through subscription to social channels. Pro Tip: The key to a well converting lead magnet is that it must offer a specific solution to a unique problem or challenge. It must be easily consumable 5 -15 minutes and be congruent with the offers in the funnel, especially your core offer! Get Your FREE Perfect Buyer Cheat Sheet Build a perfect Quick Conversion Offer with this checklist. Use this as a quick reference guide of how to build a Quick Conversion Offer that converts. Click here to access your Perfect Buyer Cheat Sheet. After the lead has made it through the awareness stage and has taken the lead magnet, the next phase is the conversion phase. There are several ways this can be done but I strongly recommend that the initial conversion be an offer with the lowest possible barrier to entry. What we refer to as a “Quick Conversion” product. This can be combined with the lead magnet offer as an up sell or delivered later in the follow-up email series. Either way this product should be under $50 (depending on the industry) and it should be an over sized value for the potential client. In other words the quick conversion offer, should really be a great deal! The other thing to consider with your quick conversion offer, is that it must really lead in to your core offer. It should basically usher the customer right into a purchase of your core offer. Once the customer has purchased the your quick conversion offer, take advantage of the opportunity to excite them about your brand. Communicate with them the best ways to utilize their recent purchase and share with them previous testimonials. This type of follow up will leads nicely into your core offer and will dramatically improve your conversion rates. Pro Tip: By combining the quick conversion offer with an up sell to the core offer and even potentially another high margin product can significantly increase both your conversions to the core and value maximizer products, but can also significantly increase the immediate and lifetime value of each customer. Now if there is a phase in the process that I have seen business owners neglect the most, it would be the retention and ascension phase. Your core offer purchases should have the same follow up leading into the value maximizer offer which increases the overall profit margin of your entire funnel. In Closing Digital marketing offers an amazing opportunity for local businesses that has never been seen before. The ability to really reach your customers and compete with big box stores without having millions of dollars into advertising but there is a catch. YOU HAVE TO DO IT RIGHT! You can’t just vomit all over the audience and expect to make sales. At least not many. Today’s audience is over saturated with marketing messages and has become also blind to it. But if you know how to properly structure and execute your digital marketing strategy, there’s never been a more cost effective or higher producing form of marketing ever before in history.
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