[social_warfare]
SHOW NOTES
During this time of universal crisis, it may feel harder to stay focused than usual. Afterall, you’re being bombarded with endless social media distractions that have the potential to derail both you and your business.
One of the most important things that you can do for your business is STAY FOCUSED.
This is one of the biggest mistakes I see entrepreneurs make time and time again. They get distracted and make snap decisions based on the current climate and scrap their offer (that was probably working before the crisis) in order to launch a brand new one.
I’m not saying that that is a bad choice every time. Sometimes the potential is there for you to launch something new.
But, most of the time, your audience still needs what you have to offer and it’s just a matter of positioning it so that it’s solving their problem today.
Right now is a really good time for brand awareness and visibility, meaning putting out content and attracting people to that content.
Don’t launch a new offer, don’t change your business, don’t quit what you’re doing unless there’s no other choice for you to do that.
DO shift your messaging to be relevant to your audience’s needs NOW.
In episode 180 of the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast, I’ll explain how you can tweak your business’s messaging so that it’s as effective as possible in the current climate. Plus, I’ll lay out the important questions you need to address in order to see the most success in your business right now.
Listen in to this short + sweet episode, and please share your thoughts on my latest Instagram post (@emilyhirsh)!
Key Points:
[3:06] Focus one of the most important things that you can do in your business
[3:21] The biggest mistake I see people making as entrepreneurs over and over again
[5:51] Think about your audience and what they’re currently experiencing
[11:44] Don’t launch a new offer, don’t change your business, don’t quit what you’re doing unless there’s no other choice for you to do that.
[13:40] Step up your connection in your business with brand awareness, visibility, and with getting actual email leads in.
[17:01] Avoid the distraction in a crisis because there’s a lot of it.
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Emily Hirsh:
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. How are you all doing? You guys doing okay? What crazy times! I have good days and bad days, definitely and the hardest thing for me is just it’s so overwhelming sometimes with all three kids, a newborn. My other two kids are young, three and five. No house help right now so all the cleaning, all the cooking, all the laundry. Obviously I’m not doing it all myself. But between my husband and I, it’s like we cannot keep up and I see him like… It feels like 10 minutes a day. It’s like, okay, in the morning, “Ready? Go.” And then at night it’s like we’re exhausted and we get barely any time by the time we get the last kid to sleep. So if you are there too, I feel you.
I am so grateful for all the work. It’s like the universe knew or something. Because before William was born, I did a ton of work in my company. I basically documented processes in every department, overhauled everyone, went through and found everything that’s broken and put it on our waterfalls to fix it in the last quarter. So I’m only working like 25, 30 hours a week right now, and I’m not feeling overwhelmed about work, and my company’s doing great. We’ve got a 100% retention rate. We’re signing new clients. So for that, I’m extremely, extremely grateful. And I really think the universe knew or something because before I had William, I really … I was working like 40-plus hours a week so I had all these things I wanted to get done before he was born. So it was kind of cool timing in that sense.
Today what I want to talk about is the danger of distraction in a crisis because I’ve seen this come up with friends of mine, with students, with clients, with people just on Facebook and my newsfeed talking about this or watching them do this, and I think it’s a really important topic. So if you follow me, if you’ve listened to past podcasts, you know I’m huge on focus. I personally believe it is one of the most important things that you can do in your business is stay focused on one offer, one funnel, one strategy until you get that to the multiple millions and then you can add upsells or downsells.
But the biggest mistake I see people making as entrepreneurs over and over again, sometimes without even realizing they’re doing it, is they’re like, “I have this course, and then I’ve got my personal brand over here, and then I have this, and I’m going to do all of them. I’m going to make all of them successful, and I’m going to split my time, my money, my resources across all of them,” and it just … It never works. It will never work to the extent that focus would work.
So with the crisis, and with everything that’s been happening, and when our economy started tanking, and definitely … you know people had to close their businesses, and were losing customers, were losing sales, there’s a panic that happens. And I felt it, too, because there’s a big unknown. So I definitely, like that week when everything got real, I felt the … I don’t want to call it panic, but it’s like the urgency of needing to take action and do something. I doubled down on our current clients, and so that’s when I was like, “We’re going to audit every account.” I sent an email out to my clients with an update. I doubled down on our current clients.
Then I moved to how do I shift my marketing messaging to attract new people still, which is when we did things like the podcast series. But everything I was doing wasn’t changing my offer completely, my audience completely, my business completely. And I’ve watched a couple of people, when this happens, be like, “Okay, well I’m just going to stop selling my offer that was probably working before the crisis and before this all happened, and I’m going to launch a brand new one.” And I’m not saying every time that that is a bad choice. Sometimes you do have so much potential that you should do that, and you should launch something new and that’s there. But most of the time, your audience still needs what you have to offer and it’s just a matter of positioning it so that it’s solving their problem today.
So I want if you’ve thought about I’m going to start a new business or what I sell isn’t going to work anymore and I have to create a new offer, if you’ve had any of those thoughts where you feel like, “I have to throw away everything and start something new,” or maybe you’re not thinking I have to throw away everything, maybe you’re just thinking I’m going to add something new, which could also be a mistake. So what I want you to do is think about, one, your audience and what they’re currently experiencing and really asking yourself like, “Do they still need what I have to offer? The content, and the delivery, and the promise of what I have to offer, do they still need it?” If the answer is yes, then you can still sell it. And you need to focus on shifting your messaging on the front end so that it’s speaking to them about the problems and experiences that they are experiencing right now in today’s climate and then sell the offer.
So let me give you an example of how I did that. We did not change any of our offers. Still offer Facebook ad services, still offer our course, still … everything is the same. But I did shift my messaging on the front end to talk about how Facebook ads are so cheap, because they are right now, how now is the time to focus on lead generation, brand awareness, visibility, how if you’re not running ads you’re going to fall behind, how you have to create a system to generate leads and sales still. So I’m speaking all 100% of the time now in our sales copy, in our marketing copy about today’s climate. But I’m still speaking to the same person, and I’m still using the same offer.
So if you know that your offer and what you have can still help people, and they still need it, and they will still buy it, just change the front end of the messaging. If you are like, “Okay my offer is dead now,” which I’m trying to think of an example. Obviously if you’re an in-person, non-essential business and you have a brick-and-mortar business, you can’t sell so you have to figure out how to sell online or how to deliver your services online. That is acceptable. That is necessary. That is an example of what you would need to shift and change. But deciding that because the economy’s crashing and business owners are struggling that now you’re going to launch a course about this economy-proofing your … or recession-proofing your business, or helping people through this, it doesn’t make sense because, one, we don’t know how long this is going to last.
When this episode comes out, who knows where the economy is going to be. So for you to think there’s a long-term year over year potential here for me to create a new course just about this crisis, there’s no way to really know that. So really, it’s about shifting your offer and you’re going to be … Or shifting the messaging to your offer. In most cases, there is a small percentage that I would agree and say, “Okay, the new offer makes sense. You have so much potential here. You should go with the new offer.” But you’re going to be pulled in by distraction.
So when this all happened, I had multiple people come to me and say, “You should create a course about how to start an online business and run it virtually and run your team virtually because you have over 22 employees. You should do that.” I mean, I’m talking like three or four different people who came to me and said that. And that would be an example of like, yes, there is opportunity for me to then teach brick-and-mortar businesses, and people with offices, and corporations, and whatever how to run an online business. But that would be me switching my audience, my messaging, my brand, my offer. That is not a very productive decision to make when I’m still able to sell what I sell. I just have to make a few shifts and changes to adapt to the current climate.
And most people are in that boat. Most people just have to make a few shifts, a few changes with their messaging and they can still sell their offer. So don’t jump into being completely distracted or creating something new or starting a whole new business and quitting yours because it’s just a snap decision. It’s going to distract you, and probably set you back a lot.
So those are the things that you have to weigh. And I think you’re going to get pulled in a … There is a lot of opportunity right now so you’re going to get pulled in multiple directions, probably, about all of this opportunity and be dragged in one way where you think that you should go there. And you have to really focus in on your current audience and think about, “How have their problems, and their desires, and their needs changed, how do I stay relevant in front of them, how do I still sell to them?” Don’t change your … Don’t launch a new offer, don’t change your business, don’t quit what you’re doing unless there’s no other choice for you to do that.
This is so important because I think that it’s also not in a natural entrepreneur’s mindset to play the long game. And I want you guys to think, starting a new course or starting a new business, we all know that it’s going to take a lot of time to get it successful. Well, I think that things are going to be significantly different in three months from now when things open back up and the economy is going to make somewhat of a comeback for sure. I mean, it’s shut down right now so of course the responses have been what they have with unemployment and everything. I mean, of course we’re going to be impacted, but you can’t base a business and a long-term course around what’s happening today because it is temporary. It’s pretty temporary. We’re not going to be shut down for years and years. That would be impossible.
The other thing is that it’s important to play the long game. Because right now is a really good time for brand awareness and visibility, meaning putting out content, free content, and attracting people to that content. And it’s a great time for two reasons. One, you can put ad spend behind it, and ad spend is really cheap right now. And two, people are consuming that content. Right now, I’ve seen way higher webinars show up rates. I’ve seen way more people watching videos, way more people listening to podcast episodes. All of those are up because people are at home wanting to consume content and also wanting to stay proactive, wanting to create a plan for themselves and their family.
So no matter what, no matter if your sales are down or not, right now is such a good time for you to step up in the connection places in your business with brand awareness, with visibility, and with getting actual email leads in. And if you play the long game, you’ll spend maybe a couple months doing that where your sales are maybe a little bit down. But then when things start bouncing back, and people start calming down, and things start going back to our new normal, you’re going to have all of this audience and leads that you’ve been nurturing and growing to capitalize on. And if you do that, you’re going to be miles ahead of the businesses who didn’t do that.
So it’s important that you don’t get so distracted that you lose sight of that. Instead, my advice to you is most likely don’t change your offer, and don’t create a new offer, and don’t even create a new funnel unless you really have to change something. Now, what has been working is doing like a live webinar right now because, again, the show up rate is really high. People are attending those. I did a live webinar, but I didn’t create a whole new webinar and a whole new offer so it’s different.
Most likely, don’t create a new offer. Don’t create a new funnel. Don’t change your audience. Don’t create a new business during this time unless you’re 5% of the people that that would be relevant for. Instead, I want you to double down and focus on your current customers and your current clients so you don’t lose them. Figure out, how do I serve them right now? What do they need? How do I up my level of service? How do I keep my retention rate up? How do I keep all those numbers up so that I keep those people who already are paid me there?
Then, think about your audience and ask yourself, “How do I solve their problem? How do I put out relevant content to them right now? How do I grow my email list? How do I grow my following? Grow my brand during this time? Using content during this time? Then, how do I reposition my offer and my selling, what I sell, so that it makes sense in this current climate, so that it’s solving the problem that my current audience is having?” And if you do those things, you will see success right now.
A lot of times I tell people instead of going and creating a new offer or a new funnel, just put all of that creative energy that you have around ideas of supporting people during this time and content during this time where you think it needs to be a new funnel or a new offer, a new course, or whatever into the brand awareness and the visibility. So instead, just put out free content around all of your creative ideas. Get your audience following you, and engaging with you, and growing that audience of real, true believers of people who are consuming your content because it will pay off so much in the coming months.
And I’m telling you, the businesses who prioritize that right now are going to have a great year. The ones who don’t are going to fall behind. Because if you’re sitting there waiting for this to pass, I mean, you’re not staying relevant and people are not paying attention to you. So I think that’s a massive mistake, and I think there’s a huge opportunity right now to connect with your audience, but you don’t have to change your audience or your offer to do that.
So avoid the distraction in a crisis because there’s a lot of it. There’s a lot of opportunity. You can probably think of four or five business ideas right now that you could go start. In fact, my friend Alex Charfen has been posting … Or like right now he was posting business ideas that he’s having that people could go start right now that would solve their problem. Because that’s the thing. There are so many new problems because of the current climate but it doesn’t mean you have to go solve them. It doesn’t mean the right choice is for you to go solve those problems and start a new business to solve them. Very unlikely that it is.
So don’t get distracted. Stay focused on your current audience, on your current customers, on your current leads, and just shift the messaging. Stay relevant. Give a lot of value, and play that long game. All right, guys?
If you want support with your marketing during this time, we have been offering so much support in helping people make those shifts to their messaging, to their strategy as needed to make sure they stay relevant, to make sure that they could continue bringing in leads and sales throughout this entire time. You can go to helpmystrategy.com to apply to work with us and I will catch you guys on the next episode.