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SHOW NOTES
Do you want to crush your marketing goals and have massive success?
I think it’s safe to say that anyone listening to this podcast would answer yes to that question.
I know all too well that when you’re deep in your marketing process, it’s sometimes hard to differentiate between making NEW content + launching more products vs. going DEEPER and focusing on one major goal – right?
In this episode, I’ll walk you through why it’s important to constantly take a step back and focus on these 5 key ideas, plus the questions I constantly ask myself and my to keep our upwards momentum.
I’ll be diving in to:
- The main goal should have before you do anything else with your marketing
- How to stay in a mindset of refining and improving
- What you should always leave room for in your strategy
No matter where you are in your marketing journey, this episode is a must-listen.
Tune in, screenshot the show, and share with your personal takeaways on Instagram stories (tag @emilyhirsh for a shoutout!).
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Emily Hirsh:
Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you’re having an amazing week. It is full-on summertime here in Austin. I’m actually, as of recording this it’s so crazy. It’s like June 1st comes and then a switch is flipped and it’s like 90 degrees every day. We’re supposed to have like a day where it’s 105 degrees Fahrenheit, which for my international friends, it’s 40 degrees Celsius, so, so hot. But by the time this podcast comes out, I will be in California with my family for five weeks. We are going there. And, we’re actually, I’ve shared this on the podcast, but we are remodeling our master bedroom and our master bathroom. And I have never done a remodel project because we just bought our house last year. So like, we didn’t have enough going on with a newborn and businesses and three kids, young kids.
We decided we’re going to do that too, which it’s been fun. But I didn’t realize how much work it’s going to be. Like, I’m like “It that’s easy. It’s just a master bathroom. It’s not that big.” But we’re like totally gutting it and redoing everything. It’s so much fun to plan out a remodel project and get to custom design it however you want from the tile to the walls, to the bathtub, like I’m so excited. So we will be posting the before and after, but I’m taking the kids to California. So my husband can work on the house projects. Cause it’s hard to have the kids when there’s dust everywhere and construction. So that is happening in my world right now. And I hope you guys are enjoying your summer wherever you are. Hopefully getting some vacations in. I know COVID probably messed with some of our plans, but we are rolling with it.
All right. So today I want to dive into the five keys to massive marketing success. And these are foundational things that I’ve probably talked about in one way or another, but I think it’s always a good reminder to have these things, you know, at the front of your mind and make sure you’re prioritizing them and make sure you’re paying attention to them and creating that marketing success for yourself. So I believe if you focus on these five things that you will have marketing success. And I also believe that even if you’re successful right now, or you’ve had success in the past and you think, you know everything to the marketing success, which I don’t think everybody, anybody thinks like, “I know everything” but unless if you think I’ve got it all figured out, sometimes these things even hit me where I’m like, “Man, you know, I forgot about that. I forgot about what I teach. I forgot how important it is to stay focused. And I forgot this.” And so it’s just really good reminders to make sure that you’re keeping the foundation in the front of your mind as you try more strategic things.
So let’s dive into that. The first thing I talk about so much, I think I have like three or four different podcast episodes on this and different angles of it because it’s so important. You guys, it’s so important. I even take those podcasts and we give them to our clients when they come on, because I just want everybody to listen to this. And that is, you have to be focused and focus on one strategy, and one funnel until you get it to a million dollars.
I did a podcast because someone came back and was like, well, what if you know, I have this funnel and then I have this other product. And, and you know, like what if this, is the case then is that an exception to the one funnel rule? There’s pretty much no exceptions. You’ve got to get one solid funnel converting and ideally making a million dollars before you start to build another funnel. Now that doesn’t mean that you can’t add in upsells and down sells to your funnel. What that means is you have to get super focused and honed in on one strategy that you are committed to making that work. So that could be a webinar funnel. That could be a self liquidating offer funnel with upsells. That could be an application funnel that could be a challenge funnel or a video series funnel, whatever it is. Your main goal is connected to one main offer that you want to sell.
And ideally it’s a thousand dollars plus of average cart value that you can get. So you can actually make money, but you’ve got one focus in everything you do is driving that. Your paid traffic, your organic traffic, your strategies, your funnels, your copy, your messaging. It’s going to the same audience. And you’re not trying to add in new things when it’s too soon, because it’s really common for us to have a successful, let’s say webinar or a successful application. And just start to see the success and start to see the momentum, and then be like, “I’m going to try a whole different funnel. I’m going to launch this different webinar, or I’m going to do a challenge instead of a webinar, or I’m going to do a self liquidating offer funnel instead of my webinar, or I’m going to try to do both, but your webinar hasn’t gotten the momentum it needed.” So one core offer, one main funnel, one strategy that you’re focused on and you don’t move away from that until you’ve made a million dollars.
That is my role. That’s the first key to success is that you can stay focused. You’re not launching new things. You’re not changing your products. You’re focused. Okay. The second key to his massive marketing success is clarity and constant improvement and refinement of your messaging. So the other thing you’re going to hear me say a lot. If you listen to my podcast or you go back and listen to it is how important messaging is in your marketing messaging is everything. The way you connect to your audience, the way you know, your audience, how deep, you know, your audience, how deep you can speak to them and get them to listen to you and trust you. The deeper you can go, the more successful you’re going to be. And so, constant clarity around who your audience is, what their struggles are, what their obstacles are, what their fears are, what their goals and dreams are, the way they speak, the language they respond to and clarity over who they are on a deep level.
You can always get more clarity around that by listening, by listening to your audience. When they ask questions on a webinar, by listening to your audience, when they respond to your social media, by listening to your audience when they’re on sales calls, by listening to your audience when they post in Facebook groups, whatever it is, they will guide you in your content. Most of the time. I let you guys do that all the time. I get questions on webinars. They become my podcast content. And then I get questions on webinars or get emails back or engagement somehow. And that drives the way I write. We write our webinar ads or our webinar titles, or our opt in pages. We’re constantly listening to our audience because you guys have the answers and I’m, sir, I’m here to serve you. So constant clarity around your messaging and constant improvement to your messaging.
So getting that clarity and then listening, okay, where can I improve. You know, where do I need to, to make things more clear or make things, you know, more deep? That’s a common one. We, we stay on that surface level of, in our messaging too much. And it’s, it’s maybe going to attract your ideal client, but it’s just not going to stand out from everybody else. And so therefore it won’t attract the ideal customer the way we want. So how do we go deeper? So constant clarity and then improvement on your messaging. You’ll never be done with this. And I really believe a lot of the entrepreneurs who are, who see success. They know their audience better than anybody else out there in their industry. And those are the people who are able to see success because they’re able to connect with their audience in a deeper and better way than anybody else. And therefore their brand stands out more.
The third key to massive marketing success is obsessing over your numbers, obsessing over your numbers in terms of setting goals that have metrics tied to them. So you have something to measure and then obsessing over your numbers in the actual data and results that you get. So you can measure those against your goals and find the problems, your numbers and your data should drive your actions, because you might think something will work, or you might think something’s broken in your funnel or in your marketing strategy. That’s really not. And if you’re not paying attention to the numbers, you’re kind of shooting in the dark. Not kind of, you are, you are shooting in the dark if you’re not paying attention to your numbers. So obsessing over those numbers and getting those right and starting out with numbers. So the first step of the Hirsh process is defining your success.
How many new email leads do you need? What costs per email lead are you going to pay? What is your landing page conversion goal? How many sales are you going to get? How much are you going to spend? How much you’re going to make off of that, spend at least having a foundational number that even if you get it wrong, you’ve got a goal that you’re working towards and you might have to adjust that goal after you start getting data, but we can’t just start marketing and, you know, pull something out of thin air and be like, well, I’ll just spend a thousand dollars and see what happens. That is not strategic. That’s not a key to having that success. So obsessing over your numbers, setting goals that are attached to numbers and then actually tracking your numbers properly so that you always know where you could fix your funnel.
Do you need to fix your ads? Because the cost per click is too high. Do you need to fix your landing page? Because your landing page conversion is not right? Is your sales conversion bad? Do you need to look at your webinar, your followup emails, your sales. Like there are so many conversations I have where somebody is like, here’s my situation and I’m not successful. And then I dig deeper and I’m like, well, what is your landing page conversion? Or what’s your sales conversion? And they don’t know the answer. And if you don’t have those answers, you can’t find the problems and then you can’t solve the problems. So the key to marketing success is obsessing over those numbers so that you always know where you should put your time and energy into improving your funnel.
The benefit of focusing on one strategy and one funnel is you’re so focused on that one strategy. You have so much room to constantly refine and improve it. And the way we do that is obsess over our numbers and let our numbers tell a story that gets us to constantly refine and improve our funnel. Some examples of this could be, you’ve got your landing page conversion to 30% challenge yourself to push that to 35%. How are you going to do it? Test some different headlines, optimize it for mobile a little bit better. Change out the copy, get the copy and go a little bit deeper. Maybe your webinar conversion is lower than you want or lower than you think you can get it. So you’re reviewing the webinar content. You’re figuring out how to go deeper with that. You’re figuring out how to refine and improve that webinar content to get that sales conversion up.
Even myself I’m, we are constantly looking like we’ll do a live webinar and then we’ll do an audit of all those results. Okay. What was every metric compared to the last time compared to the time before that? Where, where do we need to improve? Where do we need to step up? Where do we need to go deeper? Where do we need to refine? And then we do it again. And that’s the power of staying focused because it allows you to constantly refine and improve. And my suggestion is you stay in a mindset of refining and improving with smaller tweaks versus completely shifting and changing new strategies with a brand new funnel or a brand new offer or, or a new launch, like more often than not, you’re going to see more results from the refining and the improvement and the consistency with that. Than you are from the new, new, new, new funnel, new strategy, new this, the, because every time you launch a new strategy or a new funnel, you’re kind of starting back at square one and you are, you know, back at the beginning and having to do all the work of getting the data and making sure your messaging is right and your strategy is right and testing it all.
But when you’re refining and improving, you’ve got a foundation that you’re just building up and building up and getting momentum and hopefully getting to that scaling point. So as soon as you find a foundational strategy that works, like you’re getting some sales through your webinar and it’s working, switch your mode to refining and improving instead of new, new, new ideas and new visions. And you will go so much farther, so much faster, even though it might feel boring and slow, you’re actually going to move faster by going deeper.
I actually just had this conversation with a friend who’s also a client of ours. And I had to like talk him down because I was like, you know, marketing’s not about like casting this wide net and doing everything and, and, and getting like three opt-ins in a webinar and doing a weekly webinar and video content. And like do, do, do, do, do, which is where he was wanting. Cause he’s like, well, I just want to feel like I’m contributing. And I’m like, no, you’re going to see success if you sit down and you go deep on your webinar messaging, on the title, on the content, on the pitch. And like you spend eight hours on that on going deep with the messaging. So it’s about going deep versus wide and you’ll see more success because you’re going to have so much more, get so much more out of what you’re doing versus going wide and trying all these things and like half doing them or a quarter doing them because you can’t create quality when you’re not going deep enough. So move into the mindset of constant refinement and improvement.
The fifth piece to the keys, to massive marketing success. The fifth one is the willingness to try and to fail. And I did do a podcast about if you’re not failing, you’re doing it wrong because I think that you should be willing to spend a percentage of your money and your time trying new ideas that might not work. We do that all the time. And I like to be cutting the edge of doing that because if I find something that does work, I get to share that with our clients and I get to pass that information onto my audience. But I think you should always be trying to push a little bit deeper. Like, let me try this angle, or let me add this kind of crazy strategy and or this video that I’m going to think outside the box. And like, it might not work, but it might work really well. And that’s why, again, being able to go deep and be in a refinement and improvement space allows you to try little things and additions to your strategy that might totally bomb and not work, but it also might work really well.
This could look like, you know, a specific ad where you try this video, that’s kind of outside the box. It could look like, I shared in that podcast episode I did on failing how we shifted our application and positioned it as an assessment, but it actually didn’t work that well and it led to the step of where we got right now, but we didn’t actually like using the words assessment. So we pulled it back on the next webinar, but I wouldn’t have known until I tried it. Sometimes people come to me and they, and this has always happened since I started, and they tell me about a failed experience.
Here’s a really good example of one. I had a client. This was like two years ago, come to me. And they did a launch where they did a mini challenge for three days, and then they did a webinar and then they pitched their product. And at first, like they had a lot of engagement in the three day challenge series, but then they didn’t have a lot of people getting on the webinar and the way they had set it up was you had to get on the webinar to hear the pitch. So the people in the challenge, if they didn’t get on the webinar, they didn’t hear the pitch of the product, but that wasn’t working. It actually wasn’t getting sales. So then we switched it to just go directly to the webinar, cold traffic, anybody, you know, going to the webinar, they weren’t selling that expensive of a product. I want to say as a thousand dollars for a course, and instantly they were getting sales from cold traffic going to their webinar and then buying, pretty much because their webinar was so good, but they then had just spent the bulk of their budget, getting people through that mini challenge series when they realized we could have just put all that budget, going into our webinar and cut out the challenge series.
And they were like, man, we wasted so much money. It was like $10,000. Like we wasted so much money because if we would’ve known, you know, we would have just put our strategy straight into the webinar and cut out the challenge series. And I’m like, yeah, but you would never have known that it didn’t work until we tried it. And you really felt like this was how you had to serve your audience. We strategize it. It’s not a bad strategy for some people, it does work. It didn’t work for your audience and your content, but we would have never known that if we weren’t willing to try and to test and get the numbers of that data back and then refine and it’s okay to have experiences like that. And they ended up totally profitable. We just funneled as many people as we could into that webinar.
It’s okay to have experiences like that. And you don’t have to look back on it and say, you know, I wish I would’ve known, I wasted X amount of dollars because I could’ve done this differently. Like there’s no way you would have known. You had to go through the experience to fail and have to call it a fail. You had to go through the experience that didn’t convert to then learn the experience that did convert. And that’s a lot of what marketing is about, it’s about, you know, learning and letting your data and your audience tell you what is and isn’t working. If you’re not willing to go through that and kind of step outside the box and take those sometimes risky early moves, you’re going to stay stuck in a place and maybe lack the momentum that you could be getting when you get a strategy that works really well.
Because, you know, in this example, once we realized people were converting, going straight to that webinar, we were able to massively scale it, which we wouldn’t have had the confidence doing that, you know, with their other type of launch or something that wasn’t working as well. So the fifth thing is that you’re willing to try and fail and you leave room for that in your strategy. And it could be, you know, a $500 test, like a low amount that you’re willing to test something new and also having the mindset where if something like that happens where it doesn’t work, you don’t look at it necessarily as you failed and that’s it and like it’s a doomsday, but you would just look at it and say, okay, well, I learned that doesn’t convert with my audience and that is valuable knowledge to know what does, and doesn’t work with your audience.
Because once you have that, you won’t make the mistake again because you’re learning your audience, going back to constant clarity improvement of your messaging and understanding of your audience, by failing and by having your audience tell you what they want, tell you what experiences convert and what messaging converts and what strategy converts to your audience and your business, you’re constantly learning what works and able to make shortcuts for yourself in the future. So anytime you have an experience where it didn’t work out how you wanted. And one of my interviews with our ignite students, I asked her her biggest fear with marketing. And she said it was our biggest frustration. And it was, when things don’t work out the way you thought they were. So like, you think something’s going to convert and then it doesn’t convert. And you’re like, I don’t know what the problem is.
Well, you’ll know what the problem is. If you follow the numbers, but you have to be willing to have those experiences and kind of shift your mindset. That they’re, they’re a part of it. They’re not just a part of marketing. They’re a part of business. Like I can’t tell you how many times I’d be like, this is the best idea ever. And then we do it. And I’m like, wasn’t as good of an idea. Didn’t work, how I planned it out in my head. But now I know, and I won’t do that again. And so that is part of business, part of marketing. So that’s the fifth piece to having that marketing success.
I just gave you guys a lot. That was five things in 20 minutes. So hope you wrote it down. I hope that was valuable. I was in the flow. They’re just like giving you that information. These are all foundational things that I’ve probably individually talked about in podcast episodes, but I wanted to do a reminder of like, these are the five things that you should really hone in on focus on and make sure you are staying true to in your own business right now and in your own marketing right now.
So thanks so much for listening today, guys. I always love to hear what episodes you really enjoyed. It does help me a lot with my content. So if there’s something you want to see, if you liked this episode more than other episodes, where you have that feedback, feel free to just email back our team. If you get a podcast, email, or love it. When you leave me the reviews on the podcast or Instagram me @EmilyHirsh on Instagram, you can send me a message and share the podcast out. It helps me make sure I’m creating constant content for you guys. That’s serving you, that’s supporting you with your marketing. So thanks so much for listening today, everyone, and I will catch you all on the next episode.