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Of course, we need to be profitable and we need to be making money every month as a business. But a lot of our success in terms of growth and new sales coming into the business are a result of what you did 3, 6, 9, 12 months ago. And so you have to understand what you’re doing today is going to impact the future. 

You are listening to the, Not forLlazy Marketers Podcast, episode number 409.

Hello, everybody happy Monday. And welcome back to this series. I am excited for this episode. I’m excited for this whole series. It’s been one of those things where I kind of shared at the beginning, I was experiencing a couple of weeks of lack of inspiration and almost like creative block. It was like writer’s block, but not for writing but a podcast block if that’s a thing. A content idea block, and this entire series kind of format and topics just hit me on a walk. And it just all came together in like 10 minutes. And it was just like the clarity of what I needed to bring to you guys. And it was so inspiring for me to bring it that I was like, we have to do it next week, true to my form. But I have felt like as I’ve recorded it, I’ve gotten more excited about releasing this because I think it’s going to help so many of you. 

So I hope you guys have been enjoying the series. If you’re listening to this episode live right now on Monday, when it comes out, I’m doing a live Q&A today at 1:00 PM Eastern time. And two things are going to happen on that Q&A. Number 1 in 15 minutes I’m going to show you guys how to audit your marketing and know your exact next steps. It’s a process I just went through myself in my own marketing. It’s something that I help clients and members of Market Like a Pro do. So I’m going to show you that in 15 minutes and then the rest of the time, as long as you guys want to hang out, I will be answering questions and supporting you, giving live coaching, supporting you with your marketing, answering questions, and just hanging out with you. So that’s happening today at 1:00 PM Eastern time.

And if you go to hirshmarketing.com/live, you’ll be able to add the event to your calendar, which has the Zoom link. So I hope to see you there and it’ll be super fun. I haven’t done this in a really long time With that said, let’s dive into rule number 4 in this series. There are five total rules. So we’ve got today and tomorrow left, and we’re going to talk about today’s rule in marketing and marketing in 2022 and how to be successful is: the success is in the long game. And I’ve talked about this in the series so far in other episodes, but it’s so important. And it’s such a mindset shift that I am dedicating this episode to it because it’s such an important rule to incorporate into your marketing strategy and everything you’re doing. So this might be a slight like rant podcast, but I almost want to have this so that in a year from now, I can come back to it and be like, you guys, did you listen to me on this podcast coming out in June 2022?

Because I believe this is so important. If business owners right now are not consistently showing up to generate new attention, to get people in their world, to generate new leads, they are going to struggle so much in the months to come. And so not realizing, not connecting that everything you do with your marketing in this current month to generate new leads, to generate people coming into your ecosystem and consuming your content, growing your audience, growing your email list, communicating with them, providing value to them, connecting with them. Everything you do this month is going to impact your business in the 3, 6, even 12 months to come.

And this is only amplified in the last year, the amount of touchpoints, the amount of time it takes for a lead or somebody in your audience to actually take action, to become a customer, to even sign up for a webinar has increased because people are more hesitant.

There is more, fighting for their attention. It’s harder to do. And so what people don’t realize is the actions that you take today, they’re not for the quick wins. You need to be playing the long game. Of course, we need to be profitable and we need to be making money every month as a business. But a lot of our success in terms of growth, new sales coming into the business are a result of what you did 3, 6, 9, 12 months ago. And so you have to understand what you’re doing today is going to impact the future. Playing the game of trying to get quick wins over time will build up and take you down. And when I see people do really like scammy marketing things or what I would deem as unethical marketing things where you’ve got fake urgency, or you run a flash sale just to get money, but then you don’t deliver on it.

Or you say that the cart’s closing and then it doesn’t, or you have a promotion and you say your price is going up. And then you don’t raise your price. What that does is it chisels down at your audience’s trust in your brand. And I mean, think about if you had a friend and they were like, let’s meet up for coffee at 10, right? And then they show up at like 10:20, and you’ve been waiting there for 20 minutes. You may not say anything and you may let it go, but you’re not really going to forget that you might be irritated at that. Right? And then the next time they go ask you to go out to coffee, you might be like, well, I don’t know if I want to do that. They didn’t really respect my time.

When little things like this happen, somebody might still be like, oh, they’re probably a good person. They’re probably a good business, but I have this doubt in my mind now. And especially when it comes to first impressions, you can’t redo a first impression. And as much as you hate that, as much as you struggle with the pressure of that, the reality is we are constantly making judgments about people around us, about businesses. We’re constantly making assumptions and judgments and then pulling meaning from that and assigning meaning to it. And so if you have a business where you do that, where you say I’m going to raise the price, because I need to get money right now. And then I don’t actually raise the price or I say, I’m going to raise the price or that the cart is closing. And then it doesn’t. Or I say that you can’t get access to the webinar replay.

And then I send it anyways or do things that are just not what you would do to a real person. That’s going to build up. And the reason why business owners are doing that is for the quick wins,  because it might get them a result today. It might slightly increase your sales conversion today, but it’s not going to increase it in the long run. So the game is not about those quick wins. It’s the long game. Also, gone are the days of having a lead just buy right after they hear your offer for the first time, because there are too many options, there’s too much hesitation, there’s too much competition, and there’s too much fighting for their dollars and attention. So the way that this can translate into your marketing is following what I’ve said so far in this series, but also something I’ve talked about for a really long time.

But what I believe is becoming more important is your monthly business budget, right? A real business will constantly put money back into their business. Okay? So you make money. Some of that needs to go back into your business. The more you put back into your business, the more your business and the faster your business should grow, right? You need to have a non-negotiable marketing budget. You need to have an amount every month that you’re committed to spending on marketing. Obviously you’re

going to spend that strategically, but you need to be spending money to get new people, to see your brand, to get new emails on your list. And you need to understand, I’m committing to, let’s say it’s $1,000 a month and I’m going to spend that as strategically as possible, but I’m going to spend it. It’s not optional because I have to grow my audience and my leads so that I’m successful in the months to come.

If you don’t do this, mark my words, one year from now, you may not have a business because your audience will have dwindled. Your list will have dwindled. And I don’t say this to be like, oh my gosh, you guys should be scared. I say this so that you can get on board, making a commitment to your marketing and playing that long game. Building relationships, building loyal followers, make that the goal. The goal is build relationships, grow my following, grow my true believers who follow me and I can just serve them and provide so much value. And I do that consistently grow that email list, serve that

email list, everything I’ve talked about so far, figure out how to solve their problems, make sure that number is growing at the bottom line of marketing. Like if we just boiled it down to like, what is the one simple goal of marketing?

I think a lot of people would say, well to generate sales generate leads. Yes. But at the end of the day, why we do anything with marketing, it’s really to do two things. It’s to get eyes on your business. It’s to get people to pay attention to you. Your ideal customer who didn’t know who you were before they saw that ad or before they saw that piece of content or before they started following you and looked at your Instagram stories, it’s to get eyes on your brand. And then it’s to make a connection with those people. Digital marketing has changed things because it’s allowed where you can have these very fast experiences. And you know, with digital marketing in general, people started to be able to track like this lead does this and then they go to the webinar and then if they watch the webinar, and I am all about data, data should drive all of our decisions, but you can’t always track everything, every component of human nature.

And so what’s happening is it’s shifting back a little bit like we’re going in this cycle where in the past, marketing was just about getting people to pay attention to your brand, getting eyes on your business, right? Billboards, magazines, radio ads, all of those things were just, do you think someone could say like, oh, a hundred people listened to my radio ad and out of that, 10 people signed up for my webinar, right? You couldn’t do that. Or this many people saw my magazine and I got this many conversions. You could track somewhat the conversions and, and rely on asking people where they saw you, but they may not share. And then it might be that they saw you on the radio or, or the magazine or the billboard. You don’t know, but companies put their marketing budget non-negotiable towards that marketing towards that brand awareness.

And so digital marketing changed this where now people, especially in the online space, because it’s super easy, got kind of coined in digital marketing. It’s passive. Run your business without working really hard and just launch your funnel and sit back and watch it literally does not exist. It can be, it’s possible, but it’s not easy. If you’re in it for it to be easy, just quit right now. Digital marketing changed things in the sense that you could now see, okay, I got this many leads and now these leads did this thing, which you can still see that. But what you’re not seeing is those touch points. What you’re not seeing is how many times did they see your post or watch your Instagram story, or maybe even see five of your ads before they actually clicked on one. 

And they actually took action. You can’t see all of those micro-steps. But what you can do is be consistent with it. And so people and business owners who aren’t adapting to playing that long game and remembering, and that’s a core foundational principle of marketing that it’s never changed. This is just becoming more important. This is becoming front of mind. Now that we’re in this era and we’re going into this time period. And so the worst thing possible thing that you can do for your business is to not keep garnering new attention on your brand and keeping that attention over the next several years when things might be a little harder. If you choose to say, well, things are really hard. So I don’t want to do this. If you choose that route, you will pay for it in the years to come. I promise you and it may ruin your business.

So at the end of the day, creating consistency while also preventing yourself from getting into that quick win mentality is going to guarantee your success. Okay? So you need to create consistency, but not let that consistency become how do I get sales this week? How do I get leads this week and get them to convert this week? Of course we need that, but you have to remember the sales I get this month are probably from my three, six months ago actions. So if you’re not taking action today, if you’re not

playing that long game today, if you’re not making sure that every interaction with your business is a positive one and not a negative one, then you’re ultimately going to pay for it in the months to come. I recently had a new copywriter write for us, and they wrote this email.

And it was basically a story that was not real. And I had to talk to my team and say, you know, this is great copy, but even writing a story or sharing something that isn’t true one time, if people start to connect that and they start to go, oh, well like that one time they shared the story that I’m not really sure if that’s a real story. Then when I share real stories, people aren’t going to believe it. And understanding that that just chisels away at the success of building that trust and people taking action with your business. So what I want you guys to do leaving this episode is just reflect on your marketing strategy on your expectations. That’s a big part of it, your expectations for your marketing strategy and what it should be doing, and the success you should have and ask yourself, are those expectations playing the long game, or are you so focused on next week?

And in the next 30 days that you are blindsided to how that’s going to impact the next 3, 6, 12 months for you. And this is one of those things that people don’t like to hear. And this is one of the places where I stand out in the sense that I don’t care. If you don’t like to hear it, I’m going to still tell you the truth, because I’m going to still help you win if you are willing to understand this truth, because of course I could sell you guys Hey, do this thing and in 30 days you’re going to have a six figure business or a profitable ad. But the thing is then I could never deliver on that. So I would, and so many businesses do this. I’d get you on my email list. I’d get you in believing in this result, maybe even buying the offer.

And then when I don’t deliver on it, it’s just a matter of time until that’s a house of cards that comes crashing down. And I don’t think a lot of business owners understand that because they see the initial wins. They’re like, oh, well, maybe this does work. People want it. So they’re buying it or they’re signing up for it, but it catches up with you. And you also have to remember everybody who comes into contact with your brand. There are the touch points they have to have with you, and there’s their experience. But there’s also that they’re going to talk about you. They’re going to talk about your brand. They’re going to share it with their other friends, with their family, with their coworkers, and that needs to be positive. So if you’re not playing the long game, it’s only a matter of time until a massive shift happens.

And the reality is, I think this has been catching up to a lot of businesses in the last year. And if you’re one of them where you’re like, oh crap, that’s me. I haven’t been playing the long game. You can still turn it around. You just have to make that commitment of how are you going to create that consistency How are you going to invest back into your marketing, deliver on what you say, and create that trust, that long term trust, knowing that every customer likely has to have so many micro touch points. It’s arguably 30 to 50, 30 to 50 micro touch points. Watch your story. See your ad, go to your website, consume a social post, read an email. 30 to 50 before they buy. And that means they likely aren’t going to be a customer for months down the line. It’s very rare that someone has no idea who you are and buys within the first couple of weeks.

Like I said, on a different episode, that usually only happens if they heard about your business and they were recommended to your business by another person that they follow. And they’ve already had that amount of touch points with that person. And they instantly trust. Think about if you’ve bought something, right? Do you go just instantly buy something because you saw one ad and decided you needed it? Likely not, unless you really needed that thing. And it solved a problem for you that day. But the times you probably do that is if somebody you follow is recommending that brand or that

product, then you’ll be like, yeah, I’ll buy it. Because they recommended it. They use it. I can buy it. Otherwise you’re going to take a little time to build that trust, to make sure it is what you want and to make sure you feel comfortable buying it. All right, everybody, tomorrow is the 5th and final episode of this series where I’m going to talk about rule number five. I hope you guys have enjoyed this. If you’ve loved this series, please share it. That’s what you can do back for me. If this has provided any value for you,  send this to somebody, send the link to somebody who you think would benefit from this, share it on social media, and tag me so I can say thank you. And I’ll talk to you guys tomorrow.

Thanks for listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers Podcast. Each episode is brought to you from the trenches of Hirsh marketing, where our team of industry-leading copywriters, marketing strategists, ads, managers, graphic designers, and tech wizards use their unique genius to help our clients profit more and scale faster than they ever dreamed possible. Want to see what happens when we unleash our experts on your brand? Head over to helpmystrategy.com and apply for a free strategy audit with team Hirsh. No matter where you are in your marketing journey, we have solutions to take you to the next level and beyond. So apply for your call today and discover what marketing magic we can create for you.

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