[social_warfare]
SHOW NOTES
If you’re not the very first person that your audience thinks of when they need what you and others in your industry offer….
Then you’re doing it wrong.
And you’re missing out on tons of sales that are going to your competitors who have better brand awareness and visibility.
There are two keys to achieving that top of mind status:
- Valuable Content
- Consistency
Following Step 2 of The Hirsh Process can help you get there.
That’s what I’m exploring in today’s episode as I break down what kind of content should you be putting out, how much of your ad spend should you dedicate to brand awareness and visibility, specific strategies can you implement in your marketing for this, and more, to make sure you’re always top of mind for your audience.
Be sure to tune in, and then head over to my Instagram page (@emilyhirsh) and comment the answer to this question on my most recent post:
Do you think you’re top of mind for your audience? If not, why?
If you want support with integrating this strategy into your bigger picture marketing strategy, go to helpmystrategy.com to see if you qualify to work with Team Hirsh.
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Emily Hirsh:
Hello my friends, I hope you guys are doing awesome. I am in California still and so grateful to be out of the Texas heat. I just am having, I’m just so happy right now. Like, my business is doing really well. My team is doing really well. I’m managing having three kids somehow really well. I’m in California with my family, and I’m just so grateful that I can leave my house for a month and still work, not only because I can still work and make money, but also because my company runs itself without me, for the most part. Obviously I want to still be involved, but, and I want to work, but I have such a flexible schedule that I can move around if I want to take a half day off or whatever I want to do while I’m here in California, but not to mention, I also can come here for a month and just take my kids. And my kids are just like having such an amazing time, and it’s so fun to see them and just like this pure joy, every single moment of every single day right now. And I just know they’re going to look back on their childhood and be like those months we used to go and stay with Mimi for a month. So that’s what’s happening in my world and I’m super grateful, just happy all around and feeling very much in momentum and love it.
So today, what I want to talk about is top of mind marketing and kind of what that means, how you should be thinking about it in your business, and just kind of a reminder that it’s very important. As part of The Hirsh Process, this would be considered the brand awareness and visibility, where you’re constantly putting out some form of content and actually promoting it so that new people see it so that you’re staying top of mind, and so that when somebody needs what you have to offer and maybe they didn’t need it the first time they saw what you have to offer you, you are top of mind. Your company and your brand is top of mind for them.
And my question to you guys today, and kind of what I’m pushing, all of you to remember is, are you doing this? Are you prioritizing this in your marketing? Are you looking at your marketing and your business growth growth as a constant investment where you are making sure that you stay top of mind and that you put out consistent content, you put some money behind that consistent content so that new potential buyers, potential customers, potential leads constantly see your content from your business and think of you the first time they need what you have to offer?
Now, this podcast idea was inspired because I am reading The Ultimate Sales Machine book, which is a great book. I know it’s one of the classics, like it’s really good. And he read some stats in that book and I was like, “oh, this is so good to remember,” and that is 3% of potential buyers are ready to buy right now. So that’s very small percentage. So 3% of the people who see your content and come into contact with your brand are ready to buy right now. That’s it. The rest of the 97% are not ready to buy right now. Seven percent of people are open to the idea of buying because they’re dissatisfied with their current product or service. So they’re open to it, but they’re not necessarily ready to buy right now, but they’re open to be persuaded because they’re dissatisfied with their current product or their current service. A third of people are willing to consider buying. And another third are not interested at all. They won’t switch. Like they don’t want it, zero.
So what you care about are the people who are obviously ready to buy right now, those are easy, right? Those are ready to go leads. Those are probably the people who will turn into customers, and those are the people that a lot of people in marketing focus on, which is great. But then you forget about all the other people, the 7% of people who are open to the idea of buying because they’re dissatisfied with their current product or service, and the other third, other 33% of people who are willing to consider buying, but you have to convince them and you have to show up over and over again. And you have to have that top of mind awareness.
So when you read those stats, I was like, those are such great reminders. You know, there are things we know. There are things that we know that everybody’s not ready to buy right now. That’s like an obvious truth, but do we really remember that in our marketing? Do we really take into consideration how am I staying top of mind? How am I being consistent? And that is where you will win in your industry and outperform all other competitors. If you stay the most top of mind so that when people associate your brand, your name, with the problem you solve and when they think, “hey, I need X, Y, Z,” they think of you.
And so how are you going to do that? You’re going to do that through valuable content and consistency. Those are the two things. And that is how you stay top of mind. And that’s why I believe you should take five to 10% of your ad spend budget and put it behind brand awareness and content promotion so that new people constantly see your content and think of you when they’re ready to buy. Or you’re just starting the process of convincing them to buy because they’re willing to consider buying it, but they’re not like “I need this right now,” actively searching for what you have to offer. Only 3% of potential buyers are doing that right now saying, “I need what you have to offer.” Your job and your marketing is to convince the other 40% of people who are willing to buy because they’re either dissatisfied with their current, I combine those. So 7% of people are open to the idea of buying because they’re currently dissatisfied, and then the other 33% are willing to consider buying, maybe they don’t have it yet, like they’re open to the idea, they would be interested in the idea.
And so your job is for that amount, those percentages, those 40% of people, which is way more than the 3%, what are you doing to stay consistent and top of mind for them? Are you putting out regular content in the form of podcasts, in the form of videos, blogs, whatever? Are you putting out value? Are you building that trust in those relationships? And then are you actually investing in making sure that content gets to those people that they see it and not the same group of people see it? And this is what I love about marketing and business is when stuff like this starts to pay off and when you’ve been in business for a long time, you start to see, “oh, this person has been on my email list or has been following me for a year and now they just came in and bought.” And it’s hard to track the direct, like ROI on that because you might’ve done a webinar a year ago, and then they signed up for it and they’ve been sitting on your email list, consuming your content for the last year, but then today they decided, or, you know, last week they decided, “hey, I need help with business coaching and so I’m going to reach out to you because you’ve proven to me through your content, through your consistency, that you are the best option for me.”
And, you know, I’ve seen this personally in our own business through several ways. One, I did recently a ton of interviews with our Ignite students, avatar interviews, and every single one, I asked them, how’d you know about me? How long have you been following me before you bought Ignite? Not a hundred percent, but a lot of them I’d say 75% had been following me for awhile, had listened to my podcast, had been on my email list for a couple years. They had been following me, then I came out, you know, with Ignite, or they saw Ignite and they decided to buy. And I was top of mind for them when they chose, “I want to go learn Facebook ads. I want to buy it.”
Same with our clients. We get, I’d say over half of our clients, probably like again, 75% of our clients have been following my brand for in the years, like years. And so that just goes to show you again, which I harp on this so much, but business is about the long game. And so if you’re not willing to play the long game, leave. Just kidding, but you know, if you’re not willing to play the long game and have that patience, then you’ll be, you’ll struggle and you’ll feel pain with that because if you, it doesn’t mean you can’t be profitable. And the direct, immediate return on your ad spend or your investment into your business, you should be profitable, but you should also be dedicating a percentage of your time and money to playing that long game, which is what visibility and brand awareness does.
And right now in the current economy, especially this is really important because if people are feeling pain in their life right now, and like, they can’t invest in what you have to offer, they don’t want to buy it yet, that doesn’t mean just like stop and give up and stop marketing your business. And then, you know, wait for this to pass and then market it because you’re afraid, or because you think, “oh, people are not going to be buying, or not going to be spending as much money, or investing right now, because maybe the economy is not in the best place,” or whatever your audience is potentially going through.
It’s even more reason to market to continue to invest in your business and in your brain awareness and staying top of mind so that when things turn around, because they will. We don’t know if that’s in a couple months, in a year and we don’t even know, you know, as of now recording this, the extent of what is going to happen with the economy, but it, in some cases, it is when people are in a tough spot right now, but it doesn’t mean just give up your marketing. It means continue to invest in top of mind, choose to market through this, grow through this. And then once things do start to improve, everybody will have you in mind and your business and your brand in mind, and will choose you and you’ll experience tremendous business growth.
And so a lot of marketing and business and growth is about being willing to understand and play that long game constantly, and have a balance between yes, I have to make immediate return on my investment. Of course, I have to be a profitable business. I have a team to pay. I have myself to pay, what am I doing if I’m not a profitable business every month, but also what am I investing back in the long game, in that longterm payoff of being a consistent brand?
You know, for the last four years, I have specialized in Facebook ads in marketing. I have not wavered from that. I’m very consistent with my content with this podcast, with videos, with webinars we do, with growing our email list with nurturing, our email list, with showing up on social media. Yeah, all of those things that, you know, I couldn’t sit down and tell you, “well, every month I know for a fact I make X amount from posting everyday on Instagram,” or I don’t post every day, but “for posting regularly on Instagram, I make this much money.” I can’t really tell you that because I don’t know who sees all those Instagram posts. I don’t know when that one post might spark somebody to then go to our application. I can’t control that same thing.
Even with ads, I make a great immediate return. We get about 200 to 300% return on our ad spend as my agency, like our ad account, that we run webinars to get clients, to getting Ignite students, we get a two to three times return on our ad spend, but then I also get people who came to a webinar five months ago and become a client, and that’s kind of like icing on the cake. So if my immediate investment in my marketing is profitable, which that should be the goal. You don’t want a, you know, not profitable business, but also keeping in mind everything I do, if I’m paying for more than my ad spend and I’m profitable is getting contributed into this snowball that’s growing, and this snowball that will get bigger and bigger and bigger.
And so this podcast, what I really want to push you guys and question for you and have you just take a moment to reflect is, are you staying top of mind? If you were to look at your industry, whether you solve the problem of losing weight or improving your parenting or supporting other business owners, grow their business, grow their team, make more money with XYZ, whatever it is that whatever problem you solve, that you’re very clear on, and you look at your industry and your audience with what you do in your content, and your investment into reaching new people. Do you think you will be the first to come to mind to your audience? And if not, why? And what can you do to change that every day with that consistency? Because consistency will win and consistency with your investment and your time and money and growing your audience, growing that brand awareness and being the first person, the first brand that your audience thinks of when they need the problem you solve, because that’s 40% of your audience that’s in that boat where they’re not actively looking for what you offer today, but they are willing to consider. And they might wait a month to go and take action or they might wait six months, but they’re still there. And you might not even see them directly. You don’t see everybody who’s reading those emails.
Like I said, seeing those Instagram posts, seeing those ads, you want to be everywhere. You want to be top of mind. I want people to think about my business “Facebook ads? Hire Hirsh Marketing because I’ve seen their ads. I read their emails. I see their podcasts. They’re everywhere.” That’s what the power of marketing does. You feel like you’re everywhere when you’re not. You’re not having to hustle around and do all this work, but you’re being strategic with how you show up, building trust, building your audience, and staying top of mind.
So that’s my reminder for you guys today. If you want support with integrating this strategy into your bigger picture marketing strategy, because there’s a lot that goes into that, there’s a lot that goes into a full marketing long game, long term strategy. That’s something we really specialize in at Hirsh Marketing, because it’s so critical to the success of your business. All of our clients and partners that we’re working with, we are committed to not just, you know, next month success and 90 days from now success, but long term growth and success. I love, love, love the clients who have been on my roster for over two years, and I’ve gotten to, we have gotten to be a part of their business growth and of their transformation and have this long term success and see it pay off that way. That’s super rewarding and super cool. So you can go to helpmystrategy.com to see if you qualify to work with Team Hirsh in some capacity. We’ve got done for you and done with you options. Thanks so much for tuning in today guys, and I’ll see you on the next episode.