[social_warfare]

SHOW NOTES

Cookie cutter templates are the bane of my existence.

Why?

Although they might have an incredible strategy behind them that worked really well for one person’s business…

They don’t guarantee the same success for you.

Marketing is overwhelming, and I completely understand why you might be eager to implement something else that’s already been laid out for you.

But those templates you keep seeking out were made with someone else’s offer, their funnel, their audience, and their business in mind.

NOT yours.

If you really want to stand out and strategically attract your ideal customers, you’ve got to craft a marketing strategy specifically for them.

Tune in to today’s episode to learn why it is so critical to have your own custom marketing strategy and to identify where you’ve copied and templated (even unintentionally) in your current strategy.

Once you’ve listened to this episode, tell me if I helped you identify areas of improvement for your marketing strategy over on Instagram (@emilyhirsh)!

If you want support creating a fully customized marketing strategy that attracts your ideal customer on autopilot and skyrockets your ROI, sign up for my FREE 3-part video training series Ads Like A Boss! Register now at marketingalwaysworks.com.

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Emily Hirsh:

Hello, and welcome to the podcast my friends. We are in the middle of a launch week. I have so much fun during launches, just the energy and I can’t even sleep sometimes. Like I just love it. I’m born for this. I told my husband, like, it’s like a game. It’s like how many people are going to get in here? How many people can I help? Like just seeing the comments that people like, I have so much more clarity and that this is a breakthrough for me. I mean, it just, it is like a dopamine rush,if that’s the hormone, whatever, it gets you really excited for sure. For me, we actually made a decision in this launch to try and keep the podcast episodes more real time. I should say I made that decision that my team’s going to listen to this recording and be like, we did? We’re doing these a little less than… Just kidding, but I wanted to make sure that the content, like, usually I’m really far ahead on my podcast. I’ll record, you know, six to eight weeks in advance at least a month ahead minimum, then it’s fine. But what’s happening in my life and the day to day is different in four weeks from now than when I record it. Which is fine for content, but with the launch I wanted to give you, like, I do want it to be more real time. 

So this episode that’s coming out, I’m recording right before it comes out and video number two in our video series Ads Like A Boss is actually going to be releasing when this episode comes out. So I can share real time of the experience of like video number one, and what’s happening this week. Versus if I prerecorded it weeks in advance, I couldn’t have done that.

So I’m kind of choosing to do that. So I want to, I just want you guys to know that behind the scenes, um, we got as much as we could done in advance for sure, for the launch. And I have so much support in supporting the people in the video series right now on my team. It’s been amazing, but also, um, I wanted to make sure, like when I put content out, I like to give you guys the real behind the scenes. So we are doing that right now. So this is like real time launch update. So video number one of ads, like a boss dropped on Tuesday, this of this week, and the first video talked about really mastering your marketing message and that marketing foundation setting that up so that you can then create a really great marketing strategy, converting strategy, and then paid ad strategy.

And I love what I’m seeing in the group. We, I actually challenged everybody from between video one and two to go talk to their ideal customer, get on a call, do it in a messenger conversation, a Facebook group, whatever it has to be in. We gave them exact questions to actually go ask their ideal customer, to then fill out their ideal customer avatar worksheet that we’re going to apply to their marketing and their strategy. So today I want to build on that because that’s what we’re going to be doing in the video series. So if you haven’t gotten access to that video series, yet this content will not be up for very long. And the third video drops on the following Tuesday, and then the content will be up for about another week and then we’ll take it down for ever. So make you do get access.

Marketing always works.com. If you haven’t joined it on the fun, we have a Facebook group, like I said, where I actually have two team members plus myself in there supporting with strategic questions, like marketing strategy questions for them. So it’s like tons of value. And plus I’m doing live CUNYs and trainings. So building on that, you know, the first step in your marketing, the first step ever before you start running ads is making sure you’re clear on your ideal customer. Making sure you’re clear on that ideal customer avatar. So you can write emails, create a strategy, write ad, copy, create videos, podcasts, everything, to attract that person. And I have counted at least seven people who have said it, you know, publicly said, which means there’s 10 times more in there have said, I thought I knew my ideal customer, but I realized I didn’t.

And that’s what I hear all the time. I actually just did a testimonial video with an ignite student. And she’s like, I thought I knew my ideal customer. I got into ignite, went through your material and realized I did not know. And I did not have my foundation together. So building on that foundation, once you’re able to define your ideal customer, you can create a strategy for that customer. And this is where people always do it backwards. And I see this so much. I see it being taught backwards. I see people doing this backwards, where they start with the strategy. They start with the strategy template in. They’re like, okay, I saw this coach or I took this course or I’m gonna, you know, funnel, hack and replicate this person’s funnel that I like. And they, I saw this out there. So they start with that as the foundation of like, I am going to create a webinar funnel with this exact template and this many emails in this format, or I’m going to create, you know, a challenge funnel, whatever it is, but they skipped over defining their ideal customer.

Now my value in my belief, in what I teach in our course in my content and here, what I’m going to talk about today is that your strategy has to be customized for your ideal customer. So step number one, you have to define that person, understand that person, put yourself in the shoes of that person. And then you can create the strategy. And I’m going to give you guys some examples, because this is such a common issue that I see. And I think the reason that it happens is because marketing is so overwhelming. So we need a blueprint. That’s what most people are really seeking, which is fine. There are, you know, general marketing templates and things that work. For example, webinars, webinars work across many different industries, selling many different products, selling memberships, selling thousand dollar products, 2000 like webinars are great, but there’s differences.

And I’m going to talk about those differences in how you lead up to the webinar, how you actually deliver the webinar, what happens after the webinar that all need to be considered for your ideal customer in order for it to be, you know, converting at its fullest maximum capacity. And I think people are searching for a template because it’s so overwhelming. And so they get hold of a template or a strategy or a method, and they like stick onto that and they don’t have any room for adjusting and for actually like taking a step back and considering their ideal customer and whether or not this strategy exactly like this is right for that ideal customer. And that’s where people mess up. And I understand because of marketing can be overwhelming, but what I’m encouraging you guys to do and what I talk through in today’s video in the training, but what I’m going to kind of touch on in this episode is take a step back, put yourself in the shoes of that ideal customer and then make sure the strategy makes sense.

So here’s where I see the biggest gap is really in the amount of nurturing that you need in order to get to the sale. That’s what differentiates the most because you have a lot of variation. So if you’re selling a $2,000 product and then somebody else is selling a $200 product, you don’t need, you need way different levels of nurturing. The $200 product. Somebody could come in and buy it. $2,000 product. A few people might come in and buy it and be those action takers. But a lot are going to need nurturing a lot are going to need content beforehand, knocking down objections, building trust beforehand. So if both of those people implemented this same exact strategy, they’re going to have a gap. Either the person selling the $200 product is going to be paying way too much for too many ads and too many steps to get to their offer.

Or the $2,000 product person is going to have not enough steps and not enough nurturing and not convert to sales. So this is, this is where I see it the most. And here’s a really common example because several masterminds programs, people out there teach this, they teach, you have to go opt in like a lead magnet, PDF opt in, and then you re target those optins to a webinar. And then you pitch on the webinar. And that could be a good strategy like that. I’ve seen, worked dozens of times, but we’ve had a handful of clients come in who are like, well, this is my strategy. You know, I created it inside of this program or with this coach. And all I’ve done is I, I run ads like that. So I run ads, you know, all my cold traffic goes to the optin and then I re target those people to the webinar, but they’ve never tried cold traffic to the webinar.

They never even tested it. And so in about over half of the time running cold traffic directly to the webinar will convert to either the same amount of sales or sometimes more than having people go over that extra step. Especially if you like, a lot of these people are selling a thousand dollar or less product, and they’re so set on, like, I can only get people to my webinar who have opted in for this lead magnet. I can’t skip that piece. I have to go, you know, lead magnet and then webinar. So what happens is every step you put in your funnel as a filter, right? Like every step, there’s a percentage of people who aren’t going to make it through to the next step. So if you’ve got an optin maybe 50% of those people who opt in are going to sign up for your webinar and then maybe 30% of those people are going to actually go to your webinar and hear the offer.

And then maybe three or 4% of those people are going to buy. So if we’re cutting out half of the amount of people who are going to see the webinar from the beginning, then we’re already starting with a more expensive lead generation strategy. And I’m not saying that’s a bad strategy. That’s the differences. I’m not saying the people out there teaching that teaching that strategy are wrong. I’m sure that strategy worked for them, but you have to consider one. Did I test that for my own business? And two, is that the right strategy for my ideal customer? Because if you’ve never tested, what if I take out the optin step and I go straight to a webinar, what happens? Do the people convert? Do the people sign up for the webinars? Do they still buy on the webinar? Do I get a, maybe a little bit more expensive cost per lead because they’re colder traffic, but I’m still getting conversions.

And now I cut out this whole step of opt-ins. And so it, it works out. You have to be willing to have that flexibility and consider that in your own strategy. The other thing that happens is you’ll have a coach or somebody who runs a program or people out there teaching a marketing strategy that I am sure that marketing strategy and system worked for them and their business. But that’s such a narrow minded view. Everybody’s business is different. You’ve got a different offer. You show up different on webinars than they do. So of course, you’re going to convert different. You have a different price to offer. You have a different audience. And so teaching one strategy as being the strategy is extremely detrimental. And so, as you can tell, I’m very passionate about this because I’ve seen a lot of people waste money being stuck in this strategy.

So what I’m encouraging everyone to do, if you’re listening to this podcast, and if you go listen to my video, number two on my training is I walked through some scenarios like, okay, if you sell a product between this price point, you can go with this type of a funnel, but now I want you to customize it. And so the pieces that you’re going to customize are one, how much nurturing does your audience need before they get to the offer? Do you think because you have a higher ticket offer and they have to build that trust with you, that you need a opt in and then a webinar. Do you need a video or podcast episodes that they consume before they get to the webinar? Like those are the ways that you can customize your strategy. Also the emails and the followup after, you know, what, what could be something that you send people to, who don’t buy?

How many emails do you have? How much time do you need to give them to buy? And then let’s talk about the actual delivery of the funnel. Do I need to do to a webinar? Should my webinar be 30 minutes? Because my audience doesn’t have time. Should it be 60 to 90 minutes? Because they’re going to sit there and consume every piece of information and they want to be a part of that. Should I do a challenge? Like, is my audience respond better to a challenge? Are they going to respond better? Just three mini videos. Those are all the things you need to consider. When thinking about your strategy, which you can’t consider until, you know, your ideal customer step one is knowing your ideal customers. Step two is create your strategy for that ideal customer. If you’ve guys have followed me for a while, I do this all day long.

Like I think about how does my audience consume content? What kind of content do they want? How much nurturing do they need? And, you know, that’s where things like our private podcast feed launch came from is like, okay, I know my audience is consuming content. I’m having a hard time with my webinar show up rate. I’m going to try this. And I ended up, you know, trying something that got 507% ROI and had never really been tried before because I’m taking into consideration my ideal customer. When thinking about my strategy, another really big difference in audiences that you have to consider is if you’re in the B2B, like you’re targeting business to other business owners and entrepreneurs compared to business owners, to consumers, B to C. So if you are, you know, a coach targeting other business owners, you have to consider the difference between targeting consumers.

And the difference is usually the business owners are more expensive to get in on the front end. So you’re going to pay more for your webinar. Registrants, you’re going to pay more for your video, you know, video series, registrants opt-ins, whatever that first step is. You’re usually going to pay a little bit more because you’re dealing with a more saturated space, but your sales conversion typically will be higher if you do it right? Because business owners are able to consider, you know, what you offer most the time as a moneymaking offer, they will make more money or save time, which that makes them more money. It can be a business, six pens for them. They’re used to kind of investing back in their business. So they sell easier. If you’re targeting consumers, you probably will pay less cost per lead. Your webinar registration will be lower.

Your costs, your cost per lead is going to be lower. They’ll eat up that free stuff. It’s not really a saturated market necessarily in, in targeting them. Cause there’s so many more of them, but the sales conversion might be lower. They might need more nurturing. They might need to see your brand three or four times before they decide to buy people have a harder time investing in their health than they do their business. Sadly, you know, we don’t, we don’t care as much about ourselves as we do oftentimes like our money and making more money as humans. And so you have to consider that when you create your strategy. So when you go to someone who’s teaching, you know, a strategy that worked for them and they target business owners, then you got a question. Is that going to work for my audience? If you’re targeting consumers, cause it might be completely different.

And you know, within that there’s differences. So let’s say I’m targeting a business owner. Well, what level are they at? Are they just starting out business owners or the million dollar plus business owners? Because my strategy is going to be vastly different for them. The content in my strategy is going to be vastly different because somebody who’s just starting now would probably participate in a challenge would show up for that would do the work would complete workbooks would show up for a multi-day thing. A million dollar plus business owner doesn’t have as much time has already made it to that level. It doesn’t want to go through a five day challenge. So again, if you take a strategy that worked for somebody, you might be targeting an audience at a different level, same with if you’re targeting, you know, moms or people in the health industry, like where are they at?

What is their biggest struggle? And there’s going to be differences within there that you have to consider in your entire strategy, how you deliver content, how much content you deliver, how long until, you know, you nurture and then pitch the offer, how much followup you do, how much nurturing you do after you pitch the offer, how much urgency you have, how you speak to your audience. Those are all things that have to be customized within your strategy. So in this video that you guys can get access to@marketingalwaysworks.com. I’m at my challenge is this. These are, there’s a longer time we have from today that this episode comes out October 8th until October 13th, the third video comes out. So you have, and we’re actually doing this fun, like work at session on Sunday, where you get on for two hours with me and my team, and we’re going to work, you’re going to get work done.

We’re going to have breakout session rooms for Q and a, but there’s more time. So what I want everyone to do is actually map out their strategy, take into consideration anything in their strategy. They have to adjust or shift or customize for their audience between now and the next video so that you have that kind of blueprint planned out. You don’t have to do anything or build anything, but you have that plan out. So I walk through that. We have a workbook, we have a funnel map that we give you to just kind of start you off with it, to look at, but everybody’s going to be planning that out. So I want you guys to come in and join me if you haven’t yet. And if you, for some reason are like, I’m not going to join. Cause I don’t have time or whatever.

Then at least in this episode, I want you to just start thinking about if there is any, anywhere in your marketing or your strategy where you’ve kind of had this more narrow minded, um, viewpoint, because you’ve maybe copied a template or replicated a template. Maybe even unintentionally. Sometimes we things that we like and we just kind of replicate it and then we have to be like, wait a second. Did that make sense for me and my audience? Where do you have room to improve that? Where do you have room to just test something new? Because you know, like that example of opt in to webinar, I’ve had at least six clients come on our roster where we they’re doing that. And they are actually, they had been running at, and they’re like, we only run ads, cold traffic to the opt in and retarget to the webinar because that’s what we were told to do.

And we’re like, well, we’re just going to test like 50, 50, 50% of the budget to the opt in 50% to the webinar, probably 75% of those people, definitely over half are seeing better results going direct to the webinar and actually making more money doing that. Cause they’re spending less because like I said, there’s a filter between every step of your funnel, not to say that’s a bad strategy just for them and their audience. It didn’t work. So is there a place in your current strategy where you have room to actually test something that you’re like, I haven’t thought about this before, you know, maybe this isn’t the best way to do it. Maybe there is a better way. Maybe I do need more nurturing. Maybe I should try this instead because you know your audience or at least you’re getting to know your audience.

You’re working on that. It’s constant work in progress. Come join me. Third video drops on October 13th and that one is all about your paid ads. So we’re going to take that customized marketing strategy and then create that customized ad strategy, tons of value. I put so much into these things and I have, like I said, I get so much out of when people get takeaways and just change the course of their business or get that clarity from the content is just why I do what I do. So marketing always works.com. I hope to see you guys in there. Thanks so much for joining me today on the podcast. And I’ll talk to you on next week.