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Intro: And one of the keys to your success is getting to the place where you are operating with speed, with  proactiveness, and you’re able to stay out of that reactivity, and you’re able to predict your success from  metrics and KPIs and what they’re telling you, before it gets to that critical point.  

You are listening to the Not For Lazy Marketers Podcast, episode number 395. 

Hello everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I have been so loving all of your messages and feedback  throughout this series, and the things you guys are going to implement. I know I had some really  specific strategies and tactics I was recommending that you go implement. So if you haven’t caught up  on the series, this is the fourth of the fifth episode all around the Marketing Momentum series, and I’m  loving the feedback, and I hope it makes the biggest difference in your marketing and your success, and  gets you back into that momentum with your leads, with your sales, with overall business growth. 

If you haven’t shared this series yet on social media, remember you can share it and tag me  @Emilyhirsh, and then you’re entered to win a business audit with myself, which is a 30-minute call,  beforehand, you submit me some information on your business, what you’re struggling with, all of those  components, and then together, I will help you deep-dive and kind of solve that and audit it, and tell you  the next steps I would do or recommend doing. So you can enter to win that up to five times, but you  have to share the podcast on social media and tag me, and that will enter you to win, and we’ll be  announcing this Wednesday next week, which is May 4th, and we’ll announce the winner on social  media, we’re going to give away two winners. 

So today’s episode is titled Speed is Queen, and this is part of the Marketing Momentum series, and  what I’m trying to do throughout this series is really tie in what are the key ingredients to a successful  marketing strategy, and to successfully generating leads and sales in your marketing strategy, what you  need to pay attention to, and then I also had you do an exercise in the second episode that really helped  you create a 90-day marketing plan and got you focused, took away the overwhelm. Today, I want to  talk about, this is more like an ingredient. This is an ingredient to success in marketing, really in business,  but especially in marketing, and it’s where I’ve seen a lot of business owners fall short in their marketing  in the recent months. So one thing that small businesses have an advantage on, all of us… All of you probably listening would  be considered a small business, we’re not corporations. I don’t know, maybe you are listening to my  podcast, but most of my audience is small businesses like myself, we are bootstrapping, we’re building a  business from the ground up, we’re doing new things all the time, but the benefit of it, in not being this  big corporation, is we have the freedom to really move quickly, and to be really nimble and flexible, and  be able to pivot and adapt. And I think that one of the things being an entrepreneur, especially a small business owner, teaches you,  is the fact that you have to be so flexible and you have to be so willing to pivot, and that there is no such  thing as one business strategy or one marketing strategy that’s going to just work forever, and once you  figure out what that one is, you never have to do any work, or you never have to make any changes, and  you’ve made it. That just doesn’t exist, and I think as soon as we start to realize that, and the faster that we start  becoming nimble and flexible, and the ability to pivot, the faster we start getting results. And the reality  is, if small businesses aren’t doing this right now, if you guys aren’t doing this, you’re not operating in  this way, I think you’re very quickly falling behind. You can’t afford to fall behind, and the industry and  the market, especially online and in the last couple years, changes at such a rapid pace. 

So “Speed is queen” is one of our company values, and our company values come a lot from what I value  and what I’ve built the company on from the ground up, and this is one of my individual superpowers  that has really become my company’s superpower, and I think is a massive reason that we’re able to  positively impact our clients and our members of Market Like a Pro, is because of how fast we move,  and because of the expectation that I set for my team that if there is something not converting, or we’re  not hitting KPIs and goals, or we’re not profitable, or any of those things that indicate we’re lacking in  success, we need to have actions in place before we even get to the critical point, and this allows a  constant state of proactiveness versus reactiveness. I think as business owners and in your marketing, you don’t want to be in a reactive place  constantly, where you’re like, “I’m not hitting my goals, wake up, I’m stressed, there’s a fire over here,”  and it’s like, “I’m trying all these things. I’m running on that hamster wheel, nothing’s working, I’m  frustrated” and you’re constantly reactive, like your ad costs have been going up for the last two weeks,  but you haven’t been able to do anything, you have a to-do list that’s a mile long, you don’t have time to  write your new ad copy, but you need to, so you shut your ads off, your funnel isn’t working, but you  don’t have time to re-record your webinar, you guys know what I’m talking about, that’s where a lot of  people are. One of the keys to your success is getting to the place where you are operating with speed, with  proactiveness, and you’re able to stay out of that reactivity, and you’re able to predict your success from  metrics and KPIs and what they’re telling you before it gets to that critical point. And so every day in  your marketing that you don’t take action, or you’re a bottleneck in your business, it’s money lost, and I  want you to really think about that, every day… Let’s just look at your marketing. This is true for your  entire business, but let’s just look at your marketing. 

Every day that you are not moving forward with progress and with actions, whether that’s the new ad  copy, whether that’s moving towards relaunching your ads or launching your ads, whether that’s getting  content out there, whether that is fixing your email sequence, improving your webinar, whatever the  action is, every day you’re not doing that, or you are a bottleneck because you have 2,500 other things to do that marketing now falls at the bottom of the to-do list, you’re losing money, and I want you to  think about the impact that is having compared to what if you either got support, or you took things off  your to-do list, and you got more clear about what was going to make the biggest impact? And that is  something that we have to constantly kind of face with ourselves, because I have learned the hard way,  every day that I’m a bottleneck, it’s progress and money lost, and so specifically with marketing, you  need to always be moving forward. 

 Now, let’s pause for a second, because you’re probably thinking, “Well, how do I know what I need to be  doing every day?” So if you are tracking your numbers, if you know… And this episode isn’t about the  details of tracking numbers, but I do want to touch on it. At every point that somebody should take  action in your marketing strategy, so click on an ad, convert on a landing page, purchase a product, open  emails, those are all actions that people should be taking. So each time there is an action somebody in  your marketing strategy or your funnel should be taking, there’s a metric tied with that action that you  need to be tracking, and you need to be proactively tracking those things, because then data will drive  your decisions, and that’s another company value at Hirsh Marketing, is data drives our every action and  decision. So if you’re tracking all of those actions, all of the elements and components of your marketing strategy,  then you’re able to see when something starts to slip, or you’re able to see when you’re not actually  hitting your numbers. So let’s say you want to get an $8 cost per lead on your ads, but you were there  and now they’re going up, they’re at $10, they’re at $12, they’re at $14. Okay, that is like a trigger for  you to now go what? Refresh your ad copy, update some audiences, launch some new campaigns, and  try to get that ad cost down. But you can’t wait until you’re at $30 cost per lead and your ads are way  expensive and your leads have dried up before you go take those actions. So the way that you make  progress every day in your marketing is by, number one, knowing your numbers, and then letting that  data drive your decisions. 

And I would break this down into a monthly, weekly thing, where you set goals based on data, and then  that drives what you’re working on. And so two episodes ago, I did talk about the plan of how you can  plan out over the next 90 days what you’re going to work on and what you need to focus on now. That is  best paired with some data if you have it and you know, “Here’s all the things I’m doing to generate my  audience, grow my audience, generate leads, generate sales, and here’s what I know is working.” If you  don’t have data, you need to get that. But the key is you always have something that’s going to move  you forward in making progress, and it’s backed by data. It’s not just like, “Okay, I’m posting on social  media seven days a week, and I’m checking that off my to-do list.” Is that actually resulting in what you  want it to do? Is that resulting in it? And you need to understand that. So, I also want you to think about how often, because you’re afraid to make a decision or get help or  take a risk, do you actually slow down your growth? If you guys got the help you needed in your  marketing, in your business, if you were willing to take that risk with the expense, or you’re willing to  say, “Hey, this podcast is not perfect, but I’m just going to put it out there,” or “I am just going to start posting on social media, I don’t have the perfect calendar, I don’t have the process in place,” what are  you not doing because you have not chosen to make the decision which is holding back your progress? 

 This typically comes up in two places, it comes up in investing in support, spending money in your  business that you’re afraid you won’t make back, or in putting yourself out there in a way that you’re not  used to doing. It also can come up in doing something new. So something that you’ve never done, it’s  normal for you to question, “Am I… Should I do this? Am I going to totally fail? Is this going to suck?” I  want you to reflect after listening to this episode on what are those things for you right now? What are  you choosing to have in the back of your mind, not make a decision on, or make a decision that is do  nothing, that is actually potentially slowing down your growth? And that’s the first part of this, is sometimes people don’t operate in a very fast way because they’re  afraid of failing, or they’re afraid of spending the money, and so then they just go into paralysis and they  do nothing, and months goes by and they’re not making progress, and they’re like, “Why?” And that’s  clearly why. The second piece is sometimes when people find a problem, like their marketing isn’t  working, their ads aren’t working, their webinar isn’t converting, their emails aren’t getting opened, they  take a long time to take action, and I think a lot of times, it’s because of two reasons. They, one, don’t  have time because they’re trying to do way too much, and two, they don’t know what actions to take. 

And this is where simplifying down to, “Okay, here are the problems, here are the things that are not  working based on data,” and then understanding based on that, “Here are my actions that I could take,”  not to say you’re going to do all of those things, but that you could take, and then from there, you  intentionally choose what you’re going to do. So similar to the process I taught you guys the other day, is  first figuring out what’s the problem? That’s the first step, we have to find where the gap is, what’s the  problem, what could I improve? From there, it’s like, “What could I do?” And thinking creatively, like  “Here’s all the things I could do if my ads aren’t converting. I could write new ad copy. I could change my  audience. I could launch new campaigns. I could hire an agency. I could join a program that tells me  what I should do. I could buy a course. I could create a whole new funnel. I could create a new offer. I  could change the title of my webinar.” Right? Those are all things that you could do, not to say you’re going to every single one of those, but from  there, now you need to find what you are going to do and what you are going to try, and then you need  to go do it, and you need to do it tomorrow and this week, and not sit on it for weeks, because every  day and every week that you do that and you sit on it and you don’t take action, you are losing money  and you are losing time, and so the ability… The way that you speed up in the… You speed up the ability  to take action faster by making sure you can bring clarity to the overwhelm you might be feeling, or  bring support to the overwhelm you might be feeling. 

The reason why a lot of people don’t take action is because they don’t even know what action to take,  and so the first step is to clarify that. Also, so many entrepreneurs set themselves up to not have  support, and then therefore to get a strategy executed, it takes them months, right? There’s so many of you out there who are doing it all yourself, you’re building your funnels, you’re writing your funnels,  you’re doing the tech, you’re doing the design, you’re doing all the ads, that’s a full-time job, and I’m not  just saying this because you can hire us, I’m saying this because I want you to compare, “How much is it  costing me doing that versus what it would cost for me to get the support?” People do this in other places in their business too, but the second too, like if you’re in that place  where you’re doing all those things, okay, let’s say you finally get it launched, you build the funnel, you  create the ads, you’ve got the strategy, you do all of that and you get it launched, well, then the second  you have to change something, like you need to get new copy, you need to get a new webinar, you need  to change your title, you need to update your funnel, you don’t have the capacity to do it. 

Weeks go by, results are suffering, nothing’s happening, you turn your ads off, and now you’re burned  out and discouraged. That is a cycle I have seen hundreds of business owners in. And so part of this is  realizing, it’s not just about getting that funnel live or getting those first campaigns launched, that’s  honestly the beginning, and then you have to be able to have the ability to pivot and adapt and change  things and add things and improve things and put in new copy, and that’s never going to end. So right now, you need to kind of be faced with reality of either you need to get support, or you need to  build in process and time in your own schedule and your own business where you are able to  understand what decisions need to be made, and then take action on those decisions that are going to  impact your numbers. And with marketing, every day that you’re not taking action, everyday you’re  letting an ad sit that is starting to saturate, or a webinar that’s just not converting, and obviously you’ve  gotten enough data through like… I’m not saying launch your webinar tomorrow, and then the next day,  change it, but a lot of times, people launch a webinar, they start to get leads, they start to get things  coming through, it doesn’t convert, and then they take forever to make a change. And this is where combining the ability to not be afraid to fail, sometimes you just have to take a lot of  actions and be as strategic as possible as you can with those actions, but also not be afraid to just  experiment, and to just be like, “You know what? I’m going to try this. I’m not sure if it’s going to work,  but I’m going to try it. At least I’m taking action, and I’m taking intentional action based on my data, not  random throw spaghetti at the wall action that’s making me feel productive, but I’m not actually  productive, I’m taking intentional action that I don’t know 100% guaranteed this is going to make a  difference, but we’re going to try it, and then we’re going to compare, and we’re going to try it again.” 

So that is the value, speed is queen, that’s why it’s a value in my own business, that’s why it’s a value for  our members, for our clients, and it is one of the biggest things that I think differentiates us as a  company, is that when you go a lot of times with other agencies, they’ll tell people like, “You just have to  wait, you have to wait to get the data,” like “It’s going to work,” and it’s like, do you think overnight  someone’s going to snap their fingers and all of a sudden the algorithm’s going to start working? You  have to be taking action, and no, not to say you change an entire funnel, but there’s little micro actions  throughout the entire process that you can be doing every day, every week, every month, and if you have a really hard time knowing what those are, it’s going to cost you more money trying to guess and  trying to fly blind yourself than to go get support. 

So I do want to mention, if you want that support, you can go to helpmystrategy.com and just explore  working with Hirsh Marketing, just see how we can potentially support you, because we’ve got our  done-for-you, where we basically make those decisions for you and do it for you, but we also have our  done-with-you, which for a lot of business owners, you need that hand-holding, you need that guidance  where someone actually tells you, “Do this, do this, change this, do this,” and gives you that support.  Without it, you are really flying blind, so go to helpmystrategy.com. 

I will see you guys tomorrow for the final episode in the Marketing Momentum series, and this is going  to be a good one, because I’m talking about the lies the industry’s telling you, so there’s a little sneak  peek. For those of you guys who love my rants, tomorrow’s going to be a good one. I’ll see you then. 

Thanks for listening to the Not For Lazy Marketers Podcast. If you loved this episode and want deeper  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.

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