READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Actions to actually do and actually write down, so just preparing you for that. All right, the first thing we’re going to do is separate your marketing out into the following categories.  This is in your head right now we’re thinking about this. I want you to just be thinking about your  marketing in these three categories: audience, leads, and sales. What I want you to do is rate each one  of these on a scale of one to five. 

You are listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers Podcast, Episode number 393. 

Hello everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Happy Tuesday if you’re listening to this when it comes  out. This is episode two of our bonus series, our bonus Marketing Momentum series, where I am super  excited to talk about all the things you need to do to get your marketing into momentum, working, and  converting in today’s industry, in today’s kind of way that digital marketing is working and what’s  important and what has changed. The cool thing is I have actually seen a shift in the last couple of months, where a lot of our clients and  members of Market Like a Pro are releasing positive results and I think that the way that we’ve been  looking at marketing and the things we’ve been encouraging people to change and pay attention to and  build this holistic strategy is starting to really pay off and that’s exciting to me. 

 As a reminder, if you’re tuning into this series, or if this is the first episode you’re tuning into you, there’s  going to be five episodes all coming out this week, and if you share the episodes, like screenshot this  and share it on social media and tag @Emilyhirsh, you’re going to be entered to win a business audit. I’m  going to give away two free business audits, and so basically, that means you’ll tell me about your  business, where you’re struggling. It can be marketing, or it can actually be anything related to business.  One of my superpowers is sitting down with someone, having them tell me, “Here’s all my problems,”  and then I’m like, “Here’s what I think you should do.” Obviously, I’m not 100% right, but I do have a lot  of intel, and it’s also one of my superpowers to just quickly get to the root of a problem and come  up with a solution, and so we’ll do over a 30-minute call. I’ll go through that with you. 

You can be entered to win up to five times because we have five episodes and we’ll be choosing the  winner Wednesday next week, so you have until Wednesday next week to submit, and we’re going to  choose two winners. You can submit up to five times. All you have to do is screenshot the series, the  podcast, tag me @Emilyhirsh, and then you’re entered to win. You can enter five times. 

Okay, today’s episode is the three-step marketing audit and strategy plan. This is a pretty tactical in-the roots episode, so I would recommend if you’re walking or you’re doing something as most of us do while we are listening to a podcast, I would pull out your notes app, or I would get a sheet of paper, or I’d  come back and re-listen to this again as a second time to really let it sink in because I’m going to give  you actions to actually do and actually write down. Just preparing you for that. 

All right, the first thing we’re going to do is separate your marketing out into the following category. This  is in your head right now we’re thinking about this. I want you to just be thinking about your marketing  in these three categories: audience, leads, and sales. What I want you to do is rate each one of these on  a scale of one to five based on your current efforts and success in generating those three things. 

Let’s talk about it just a little bit. Audience would be growing your following, getting more people  listening to your podcast, consuming your content, new people coming into your brand, coming into  your world, and consuming your content. That’s what falls under the audience, anything that’s related to  free, valuable content, anything that’s related to your following. This is not your email list. This is your  audience of people watching your videos, listening to your podcast, paying attention to your social  media, consuming what you put out there. Is that growing? That’s what we’re going to measure it on, is  that growing, is that increasing day over day, month over month? Is it also a quality audience? Do you  feel like it’s random or do you feel like you’ve got a strategy there and that is increasing and it’s  consistent? You’re going to rate that on a scale of one to five, one being the worst, five being the best.  Where do you fall there? 

Leads is generating names, email addresses. In some cases, phone numbers generating leads to turn into  sales. Here, it’s number one, are you generating leads? Is that happening on a consistent basis? Do you  have a strategy? Are they quality leads? Are they quality? Are they the right people? Are you clear on if  they’re the right people? The most important thing here is is it consistent or is it random and if they’re  quality. Those are like the two big things I rate it off of, so rate that from a one to five. 

Then sales, if you’re generating an audience, you’re generating leads, you should be making sales.  Obviously, if you rated audience and leads one, your sales is probably a one, too, because there’s no way  you can be making sales without generating an audience in leads. Here, sales are obviously, are you  generating sales? Are you getting people to buy your offer, to buy your product, to buy what you sell?  Are you converting your audience and your leads? If you rated the other two really low, naturally this  one will probably be really low. Is it happening? Are the sales consistent? Are they coming in? One to  five, rate that. 

Okay, now, you’re either going to open the notes up on your phone or you’re going to get a piece of  paper if you haven’t already, as you were writing these and I want you to separate it out or make three  different categories of audience leads and sales and I want you to write down everything you’re  currently doing for each category, everything that you are doing right now to grow the following  categories of audience, leads, and sales. You might be doing nothing, so then you would write down  nothing, but for example, if you are posting on social media three times a week, that would go under the audience. If you are building a webinar funnel that would go under leads, and probably sales, too.  Maybe recording your webinar or optimizing your webinar would go under sales. 

Think about the actual things, the projects you’re working on, the processes that you might have in  place in your business right now, and the actionable things that you’re doing right now that are building  and improving these three categories. Take a minute, write everything down, and then pause, and think  about everything you could be doing. I am a queen of focus. I don’t want you guys to commit to too  much stuff, but for the purpose of this exercise, just for 20 minutes, I want you to get really creative  here and to not have a lot of boundaries of what you could be doing. You’re not doing all these things. I  want you to go into that knowing that. You’re going to write down what you could be doing, but you’re  not going to go do all of them. 

What this does is it’s going to force a little bit more creativity and a little bit more thinking outside of the  box for the purpose of this exercise. If you come up with something that you feel, “That’s a crazy idea.  That would take way too much time,” or, “I don’t have the team to execute that,” or, “I can never do  that,” or, “I suck at that,” if those things start coming up in your head, I want you just to write them  

down. 

For everyone, for the audience, it probably is going to be at least five minutes in each category. I want you to  take five minutes, and I want you to think of everything you could be doing to grow your audience and  write that down. Posting on social media, creating a 30-day reel challenge, launching a podcast,  everything you could think of if I said, “Look in the next week, you have no choice but to grow your  audience or you are going to be broke. You have no choice but to do it,” what are all the things you  could do? Same thing for leads, same thing for sales, repeat those processes. The key in this is that you need to be really specific. Be as specific as you can and let the walls come  down around the thoughts in your head going, “I can’t do this,” or, “I don’t have the support to do this.”  We know that. You’re not going to do all these things, but we need to expand our creativity here and  push ourselves a little bit to think of what we could be doing to improve all these categories. 

Spend about five minutes on each category and do that and then make sure you’re specific. “Build a  funnel,” that’s not specific, right? What funnel? What strategy? What do you have to do?  Something that would be more specific to that would be, “Build a webinar funnel with a webinar  about…” and, “Launch it by blank with blank.” As specific as you can get about what you could be doing,  the better it’s going to work because at the end of this, if you have a bunch of broad ideas, you’re not  going to be able to take actions and actually go execute them, so be as specific as possible. Let the guard  down that has you thinking, “That’s not possible,” or, “I don’t have the support,” or, “I can’t afford this,” because you’re  not going to do all these things and write down everything that you could do. Then at the end of your list, I want you to add one thing in each category that you could do but you’re  really unsure. What’s the thing that you feel the most scared about, feels risky. It feels uncomfortable,  but you also know in your gut that it could be really great?

An example of this, especially on the  audience side, I think comes down to posting a reel everyday on social media, or maybe it’s spending  $5,000 on ads, or spending an amount that makes you uncomfortable on ads, more than you’ve ever  spent, but you also, “Oh, if I do it, I know I would get some momentum.” 

 Maybe it’s hiring a marketing team. Maybe it’s hiring a VA. In each category, I want you to identify that  thing. You guys know what I’m talking about, that one thing out of your list that you could be doing, but  you’re not sure about it, and it feels the most risky, but it also kind of feels like the most exciting thing  and the most promising thing, maybe on that list, but it’s definitely risky, and it definitely makes you  uncomfortable, and it pushes into that discomfort zone. A lot of times, this is in investing in money for either support or ad spend, or it’s putting yourself out  there more. It’s launching that podcast, it’s launching that YouTube channel, it’s doing something that you’ve had in your head forever and you just haven’t done it. I want you to just identify each of  these, what is that thing? I’m not saying you’re going to do it, you guys, I just want you to identify it. 

So once you have this list, you should have a list for all three categories, everything you are  currently doing, everything you could be doing, and you’ve really thought it through. I would take  30 total minutes to do all of this at least, and really, when you get to the point where you feel, “I can’t think  of an anything else,” just give yourself a few more minutes and really sit there, no distractions,  everything you can think of, and give yourself that time. Make sure you have everything there. Then you have to take a step back from this list, so you have to give yourself at least three or four  hours where you go do something else. If you can go for a walk, if you can completely disassociate from  work, if you just sleep on it until overnight, you just need to get the list out, and then I want you to let it  sit for a time period. Ideally, it’s overnight. You sleep on it, you go for a walk, you connect with your  family, you step away from the list. 

I recognize I’m recording a podcast episode and I’m going to talk about the rest of the steps. That’s why I  said, “Come back to this, or at least document this,” so you can actually follow this whole process. I  promise if you guys follow this, it’s going to be really powerful. Also, you can’t skip steps. When I say,  “Take a step back from the list,” and if you’re the person I know because I do this where you hear  someone telling you to do something, and you think, “Well, I’m the exception. I don’t have to do that. I  don’t need to take a break from my list. I’m just going to go to the next step,” okay, I see you because I  do that all the time. I promise you, this is going to be more powerful if you can take a break from it and  you can process it subconsciously and come back to it, so I want you to take a break, at least go for a  walk, sleep on it if you can, and then you’re going to come back to this list. 

After you’ve taken that break, don’t cheat, after you’ve taken that break, you’re going to come back,  and now, you’re going to re-look at this entire list. You’re going to look at everything you listed. You’re  going to look at the things that make you the most uncomfortable. You’re hopefully going to have time  to have processed it. Maybe you came up with a few more ideas you needed to add to your list at that  time. Maybe you were able to be like, “Oh, that actually wouldn’t be so bad. Now that I wrote it down, I thought about it. Maybe I should do that one.” What you’re going to do is solidify one to two  specific actions that you’re going to actually commit to. This is why being specific was really important. 

Out of all of those things that you wrote down in each category, I want you to pick one to two specific  things in each category that you can move forward with and actually commit to. If you only committed  to doing these things that you pick, let’s say you pick one from each category, so three total things, if  you only committed to those three things for the next 90 days, I want to make sure you could actually  do it. If you only did that for the next 90 days, what would happen? Would that impact your business  growth? You have to be confident that it will. It might be risky, but it’s going to impact positively, or  at least you really believe it will. If it ends up not, then it’s going to be something we learn from, and  that’s still positive. But you have to walk away with choosing the most important things in each category that you can  actually take action.

What this could look like is in category one, for the audience, I wrote down all my  ideas of how I could generate an audience. Maybe I wrote down, “I could launch a YouTube channel. I  could launch a podcast. I could increase the amount of podcasts I put out. I could start interviewing  people on my podcast. I could increase the amount of social media content. I could go be a guest expert  once a month on a different podcast,” you have all these ideas. What’s the one you think is going to  move the needle the most and that you for sure are willing to commit to? You’re going to choose one to  two, more than two is too much. If you choose a big one, like launch a YouTube channel, I mean,  that’s obviously a big deal, so don’t choose more than just that. That’s plenty for the audience. 

Then leads, maybe you’ve got to build this specific funnel or redo this webinar, do a live launch, or spend  more money on ads, whatever you have there, choose the thing that’s going to make the biggest  difference, one to two things. Again, make sure you think, if you can focus on this for 90 days, will this  make an impact? If you only did that, will it make a big enough impact? 

 Then sales, same thing. Now, if you have a lot you need to do in the audience and leads, sales might just be,  “Dial in my webinar,” or, “Increase my quality of email sequence follow-up.” It’s probably something  related to leads, especially if you have a lot of work to do in leads, but it’s the sales portion of the leads.  

We’re going to look at everything and you’re going to choose one to two things, specific things, be as  specific as possible, and you’re going to commit to those for the next 90 days. 

Now, the second piece of this is you’re also going to take inventory of everything you’re currently doing.  Some of you might not have very much here, so you might not have to do this part, but this is important  if you are doing a lot. I often see people doing a lot in the audience section and it’s not really doing anything. It’s just as important that you take inventory of everything you wrote down that you’re  currently doing and you make sure there’s nothing on there that you should stop doing. Is there  anything on there that you’re doing just because you think you should, and it’s become this ongoing  thing that you just do every week, posting on social media, or maybe it’s guest podcasting, but it’s not  really resulting in very much? Maybe you need to say, “I’ll give it one more month,” but it’s just as  important that you look at this and you decide, “What should I stop doing from this list?” 

 Again, there might not be anything if you’re not doing a lot, but there might be something there that  stands out to you, and you think, “Oh, yeah, that’s the thing. I’m posting on social media seven times a  week, it’s costing me four hours a week and it’s really not doing anything, so I’m going to change  that out for running ads or whatever,” so make sure you take inventory on what you should stop doing. By the end of this, you will have gone through, and number one, you’ve got a pretty clear marketing  audit of those three categories and where you fall, and you know what your rating is, and you’re going  to come back and do this again in 90 days. This is an every-90-day process. You’re going to audit those  three categories of your marketing. Now, you know where you fall, you know where the biggest  opportunity is, and usually, if the audience is rated really low, that impacts the other two, leads and sales, so  you really need to start at what’s the one that’s rated low, the first one, and fix that. 

 But now, we also have actions we’re going to specifically commit to over the next 90 days and  potentially actions that we are going to stop doing for the next 90 days. Then you’re going to go execute  those things, be really clear on them, and you’re going to come back in 90 days and you’re going to rate  your three categories again and you’re going to see where you fall and do this again. What you should  see is if you commit to your actions, your rating should go up. Also, I want to state that your goal is  never to have all fives in these three categories because you won’t, and that’s not being honest with  yourself. I don’t have all fives. None of our clients would have all fives if you’re being honest because  there’s always room for improvement. Your goal is not to get it to five/five/five across the board  because then what are you going to be doing? You’re telling me you can’t scale? You can’t improve your  business? There will always be opportunities. The goal is that you get it up above one, two, and then you figure out where the lowest rating is and you  increase it from there and you focus action specifically based off of those ratings. This is something that  you can do every 90 days and if you do it right and you say committed to the commitments that you put  in here, you should be able to come back and see those ratings start to go up and those commitments  start to make an impact in your ratings.

That’s the ultimate goal. 

 That is my assignment for you guys today. It was a very tactical, specific exercise episode. I want you all  to do it. If you did do it, tell me how it went, too. When you share on social media, I would love to know  what takeaways you had, what’s something that you feel was, “It’s simple, but also powerful,” or  

what commitments you’re going to commit to. I love when you guys share that stuff with me. It makes  making content so much fun to see the impact it’s having in your business and your marketing, so share it, tag me @Emilyhirsh on social media. You’ll be entered to win one of those free business audits with  me, which I’m excited about. We had so much fun doing them last time. Thank you so much for tuning in  today, guys. I’ll be back tomorrow with another episode as a part of the Marketing Momentum series. 

Thanks for listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers Podcast. If you loved this episode and want deep support with your marketing, head over to helpmystrategy.com to see how hirsh Marketing can help  take your marketing to the next level no matter where you’re at today. We help our clients scale faster  than ever, find hidden leaks in their funnel, experiment with new creative marketing strategies, and help  their business explode and be more profitable than they ever dreamed possible. Head over to  helpmystrategy.com and see if you qualify for a free strategy audit with Team Hirsh.

♥ LISTEN ON APPLE PODCASTS

♥ LISTEN ON SPOTIFY