Are you feeling the weight of pressure and overwhelm as you set your business goals for the year? You’re not alone! I recently had a conversation with a client who was struggling with a lack of success in their marketing efforts, and decided to go back to the basics to help them regain confidence and rid that sense of defeat. 

In this episode,  I’m diving into my 4 golden rules to guaranteeing marketing success…rules you can control, focus in on, and change in order to improve your results and achieve your big picture. 

Listen in as I unveil simple and actionable steps to help you master these 4 golden rules, and reveal which rule is the most crucial for your success.

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

We get caught up in like, we need this complicated strategy, or we’re missing this big bell and whistle or shiny object or thing in our strategy when really marketing just boils down to these four things. And these are the things we can control and we can actually change and we can improve, or we can make an adjustment or an optimization to try to change our bigger result in our bigger picture.

You are listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers Podcast, episode number 473.

Hello my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are having a great week. Happy Thursday when this episode comes out. I am having a great week. I am excited for so many reasons, and it’s just one of those weeks where things are going really well. I’m feeling really in alignment. I’m not feeling stressed. I’m feeling like I’m balancing my health and family and business really well. This week we have our bootcamp happening, which is me doing two trainings a day, which you would think, oh, that would be really stressful and a lot on my plate, but it, it hasn’t felt like that. It’s felt really good. I’ve, I spent time beforehand prepping for all these, so I’ve been able to just like, go into the trainings and the engagement and the group and everything that’s happening is making me so excited that it has been awesome.

On top of that, I got my cold plunge working. So I have done, if you’ve listened to my podcast, I’ve done so many cold showers. It was like a thing for me last year. I think I went, it was like 420 days or something in a row, a cold shower every single day without missing a day. And I was like on my streak. I did it through covid. I did it through the stomach flu because I didn’t wanna break my streak. I eventually did break my streak one day when I was traveling and after that I was like, okay, I really want this cold punch and they’re not cheap, the nice ones. And so I waited like a year to buy it and I finally pulled the plunge and pulled the plunge, it’s called the plunge. Pulled the plug the end of last year and got, got it.

Took a little while to get here, got it set up, did my first plunge this morning, 41 degrees, two minutes, and I feel amazing. So I’m really excited about it and just, yeah, feeling really good. I have my first v i p day this week. I sold two out of three of those spots already, so if you didn’t catch that a couple weeks ago, I opened up spots for a full eight hour v i p day with me where we can dive deep into your marketing, into your, all parts of your marketing email strategy, organic, your offer, even your actual funnel strategy, every single thing. And it can be virtual or in person. This one is gonna be virtual and I’m just super pumped cuz I, you know, did a deep dive in her business and I can’t wait to do this day with her.

So if you’re interested in that, you can send, send me a dm. There’s one more spot for the quarter. And there’s a couple of people I’m talking to, so it may go, but I’ll probably open up about three every quarter. So for q1 we have one more spot available and I would love to do it with one of you guys. So today’s episode is gonna keep it simple. It’s gonna be marketing focused, but I think that everybody kind of needs this reminder. I’m feeling like we are in a place where at this time of year, at the beginning of the month, people feel a lot of pressure to come out the gate really strong and get all their strategies and their goals and, and things that they, you know, had planned or want to plan going. And then people start to feel maybe a little bit of guilt or overwhelm or like they’re behind, they’re falling behind already.

It’s like, we’re going into February soon and I haven’t done X, Y, Z, and like, that’s how people get out of momentum. And so I was having a conversation with a client of mine recently where, you know, something wasn’t working and she was starting to, to spin and be like, maybe this doesn’t work. And you know, why is it me? And so I love the opportunity to have those, because a lot of times people just need the perspective of this is actually normal and here’s what the action we’re gonna take. And I feel like that’s something that I do really well, which is break things down into very simple concepts and give people back confidence and take away their overwhelm. And so I’m calling this kind of the four golden rules to guaranteeing your marketing success. And really it’s the four levers that you can pull, the four things.

And so what I said to this client was, we get caught up in like, we need this complicated strategy, or we’re missing this big bell and whistle or shiny object or a thing in our strategy when really marketing just boils down to these four things. And these are the things we can control and these are the things we can focus on and we can actually change and we can improve, or we can, you know, make an adjustment or an optimization to try to change our bigger result in our bigger picture. So my goal with this episode is that you, if you’re at all in the place of overwhelm or you feel like I don’t know what to work on next, or I don’t know what’s working, or maybe you’re that person who feels like you need some big complicated shiny object strategy and you, you feel like you need that, but your foundation isn’t working how it should, then this is for you and to kind of ground you back into action and simplify everything.

So here are the four components to your marketing, and these are really, like, everything pretty much fits into this bucket in your marketing. And so you get to focus on these, and in my opinion, these are in order of importance. Okay? So the four are one messaging. So I talk about this a lot, but this is the most important. And messaging means the way you speak to your ideal customer, the way you talk about your free offers, the way you talk about your paid offer. The way that you create content, the way you connect emotionally and messaging comes from a very deep understanding of your ideal customer. And it comes from a deep understanding and clarity around your offer and the problem and desire your offer fulfills and that feeds everything you do. And messaging shows up in your copy. It shows up in your topics of content.

You talk about, it shows up in your videos, it shows up if you create a webinar or any type of experience. It shows up on your sales pages everywhere. Messaging is everywhere and messaging is constantly improving. You are never done improving your messaging. And it’s probably one of the hardest things that you will do in your marketing and take the most refinement to get it right. And, and people don’t talk about this enough, okay? So messaging is that first one, and the second one is strategy. And this does come second and it comes after messaging. And the strategy is the actual way you’re going to grow your audience, grow your email list, attract leads, and convert those leads. And what a lot of people have is a very thrown together haphazard strategy. They know they wanna get sales, they know they need to grow their audience on their list, but they don’t have anything defined in a very clear journey.

And the thing is, everybody has a funnel, everybody has a strategy. Yours could be that you just go to your website and buy. So in the past when people have argued like, oh, well a funnel is like a, you know, a gimmick or a hype, I think we’re past that now, but it’s not because everybody has some sort of an experience that they’re creating for their ideal customer. And that can be really unintentional and simple and not really thrown together, or it can be very intentional. So your strategy is what is the content people are gonna see? How are you going to build your audience? How frequently are you going to post on what platforms? What type of content, what topics, how are you going to build that audience? And also how big do you expect to grow your audience? And then it’s how are you gonna generate leads?

How are you going to generate traffic to the very top of your funnel to that first experience, which is going to vary for the different businesses. For some of you, it’s an opt-in, it’s a lead magnet, it’s a webinar, it’s a vsl, it’s a challenge. Or if you’re an e-commerce, it’s to a sales page and it’s to a specific product and it’s getting people to order more products. And so it’s that. And then it’s converting those, converting those leads into sales. And so what is that journey you are creating? And that is really important to have dialed in. And you know, that’s the one thing we spend the first two to three weeks with clients going extremely deep on what that strategy is because it’s so critical. In order to get the marketing to work, there has to be intentionality behind that. So first we dive into the messaging, we make sure there’s a very clear understanding and clarification.

And you just complete clarity around how we’re gonna attract our audience, what that audience is, what the offer is both free and paid, and how we’re gonna talk about those. So that’s the messaging. Then it moves to the strategy. And then the third thing is you’re targeting and your lead quality or traffic quality. And this is the one that people like to blame first, but in my experience it’s generally not the problem. The problem is usually messaging and strategy, but it’s easy to be like, well, it’s just poor quality leads. There’s a lot of things in life and in business that the easy pro, the easy thing to blame feels very black and white, right? So if you look at your marketing, you think, well, it’s just a matter of finding magical audiences in my ads manager and then I’ll be successful. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Right? That’s not how it works because there’s audiences in Ads manager that are pretty much guaranteed that your audience is within those audiences and it’s up to your messaging and your strategy to actually attract that person. And then the fourth piece is your nurturing conversion, which I’m gonna talk about in a second. It’s up to that to actually convert them. Okay? So very rarely is it your lead quality. There are definitely opportunities to improve this and hone this in as you test and you figure out, does broad targeting is, does very specific targeting work for me? Does it work to target, you know, high income interests or zip codes? Like what is that? Strategy? And some of this comes from testing and seeing what works, but it’s oftentimes, and most of the time not the thing to blame when something isn’t working. It’s usually in the messaging and the strategy.

And then the fourth thing is your nurture in conversion. So if you go through these first three, you hypothetically have good messaging, you have a dialed in strategy, you have a clear dialed in strategy, you’re getting quality leads, your targeting is clear, and then you’ve got to nurture and convert those. And so sometimes people’s struggle is you’re getting leads, you’re getting an audience, you’re growing that audience and you’re not converting them. And maybe that means they need to be warmed up more through nurturing. And most of the time there is a percentage of them that does need that always. Because if you’re lucky, three to 5% of your leads are gonna buy, and the rest of the 95 to 98, 90 7% are not gonna buy. And so what are you doing with those leads? And then the conversion plays into messaging, offer positioning the offer itself.

Is there a misalignment? Are you missing what people want? Where is that disconnect? So these are the four things, okay? So if you’re looking at your marketing and you’re saying, okay, it’s not working, then the questions to ask yourself is, are you getting traffic and leads and they’re not converting? Is that the problem? Do you have very clear messaging or are you getting people and they’re not taking action, which is generally a symptom of messaging that needs to be improved The way you talk to your audience, and you wanna know how I tell people to solve that? Well, it’s either one, work with experts like us that can pull it out and dig into it, which we do all the time for clients. Or two, it’s get on 20, 30, 50 interviews with your audience and do some research. And I’m not talking like, how old are you?

Do you have kids? Are you married? I’m talking about what are you frustrated with? If I could wave a magic wand, what would that be? To create a dream for you. Like the the really deep emotional level stuff. Okay? And then you look at it and say, do I have a strategy or am I just throwing stuff, throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping that people convert? Am I posting on social media and creating funnels and trying to put them out there and I’m not getting momentum is probably because you don’t have a strategy that also includes a traffic strategy. Like how are you gonna reach new people? And then you could look at the lead quality. But that’s the third thing of am I getting people and I know they are not the right people, okay, why are they not the right people? Is it the actual targeting or is it my messaging?

I see this often with clients where they’ll say something like coming in to work with us, you know, I wanna attract a high level business owner, but then their messaging is speaking to business owners who are barely making it and are struggling to get by. Okay, that’s gonna create a disconnect even with the best targeting in the world. So we have to fix that before we can get to the ads, right? And so that’s what we do in our audits. And then the fourth thing is nurturing conversion, which really comes down to are you getting leads in traffic that is quality, that are engaging, that are opening emails and they’re not buying? Okay, how do you nurture them and how do you improve your conversion? So those are the four golden rules. Those are the levers you can pull. Everything in marketing fits into those four buckets.

Your organic content, your funnels, your strategies, your copy, your design, all of marketing fits into those four buckets. And so if you look at it that simply, then you can understand, okay, what actual things and actions am I gonna change? And I see this all the time where people go, I want this big crazy strategy. I need this, this thing to come in and save me, or this person to come and save me, or this coach or this program or whatever. But they’re not actually clear on what that’s gonna do. Like their expectation is, oh, if I just find that, or I get the magic idea or the shining object, or I hire someone to come in and save it, that will solve the fact that my marketing’s not working when in reality the problem is solved from these four things. And so can you get somebody to come in and help you with these four things?

Yes. But it’s not gonna be some magical complex strategy. It’s likely gonna be the foundational things. And when you look at your marketing right now, where do you see the biggest opportunity? And go back to the very first thing because these are in order of importance. So messaging, strategy, targeting, and lead quality and nurturing conversion. So these are in order. And so if your messaging is not in place and it’s not strong and solid, you need to start there. If you feel like that’s good and that’s clear, then you can look at your strategy if you feel like that’s clear, et cetera, right? So these are in order of importance and in order of the way that you should go in your marketing. And when something’s not working, instead of getting into that overwhelm and spinning your wheels and you know, looking at a million different things, just boil it down to this and ask yourself, where’s the biggest opportunity, where’s the biggest gap?

And how can I tie that with specific actions? So if you’re listening to this and you’re like, oh, it’s my messaging, okay, then you need to do a deep dive. You need to hire someone to help you do a deep dive. You need to go interview your customers and you need to dig deeper on your messaging. If it’s your strategy, you need to hire someone to create a strategy for you, or you need to map out and create and define a very clear strategy, right? And so each one of these you can tie specific actions that you all can do next week, this month, this quarter, and that’s how you move your marketing forward. All right, you guys, I feel like I talked really fast, <laugh>, I’ve been doing trainings all week and I’ve been trying to cram like so much value into 20 minutes. So I feel like I’m on this roll of like, let me just give you all the value in a short amount of time so you can go implement. All right? Thank you so much for tuning in today, guys. I am happy to be back on the regular scheduled podcast. I appreciate all of you and I will talk to you next week.

For listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers podcast. If you love 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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