If your marketing strategy isn’t setting you up for success, you may need to take a step back. It is so important that you have a deep understanding of your ideal customer before creating a marketing strategy. Without this foundational knowledge, a marketing strategy simply cannot be successful.

In this episode, I’m diving into the process of establishing a 90-day goal, and creating an exact strategy to execute and achieve that goal. I’m  highlighting the importance of leaving room for pivoting, adapting, and optimizing, and I explain why a clear focus for 90 days is essential to sticking with a plan and achieving success. Tune in!

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

Well, whenever you invest in something, if you can think, how can I get back that investment quickly and have kind of a short term strategy for that, especially if you have an audience to leverage, that’s something you could implement quickly if you haven’t done it in a while to try and generate some cash for your business. 

You are listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers Podcast, episode number 487.

Hello, you guys, welcome back to the podcast. I hope you are having a great week. I cannot believe we’re going into March. You guys were going into the last quarter of q1, which is crazy. It’s been a great start to the year for me, which I’m excited about, but it just, time just goes so fast. I don’t know if it’s kids or just the pace at which we all live our lives these days, but I am consistently like, it’s Monday and then it’s Friday, it’s Monday, and then it’s Friday. So pack in those, I don’t know, trips for me is what helps me slow down time and be present. Somebody asked me today or the other day in a podcast interview what is happiness? And I said, happiness is presence. Because I think if you can create that presence in your life, especially with kids, you have that fulfillment feeling, which being present is a constant effort.

All right, so this is a part two episode, but it can stand alone on itself. If you didn’t listen to last week’s episode, I walked through part one of my process when I do VIP days. And the reason I’m doing this is one, to kind of showcase for you guys what that means. Of course, if the it’s of interest of you to do that and work with me in that capacity. But even more than that, I think it’s very helpful for you to understand my process for doing this because it can be replicated in your business, not with my strategic eyes on it, without actually doing the VIP day with me, but I shared my entire process of the things I look for before even going into the VIP day, the audits that I do, what I look at, and then the five things that are pretty much what I find in every single case that is missing from companies marketing and they’re really good.

So if you haven’t gone back and listened to those, I think it’ll definitely give you some clarity around what is possibly missing from your marketing and where you are so close to everything that you’re doing. You don’t even see this. So that was part one. And then I wanted to make a part two, which is today’s episode, which will go into how I then established the plan. And I really wanna emphasize like the, the part one of what I did and, and everything I walked through beforehand. I think that’s what most people miss. And even like marketers and agencies miss, we put so much into the beginning with a client or you know, when I do a v i P day, that foundational understanding of their business and that deep dive and all of those things. Because without that you can’t go create a really good strategy.

There’s so much you know, marketing isn’t complicated, but it does have to have a lot of depth to it. It can be very simple, but it needs to go very deep. And so there’s so much to understanding a business and the ideal customer and the messaging around that and the offer positioning and the experience you’re trying to create. That if you don’t dig deep and understand that first you can’t go create a strategy. And I think this is where so many people mess up, whether it’s with another agency or they buy a program and they try to implement some sort of templated marketing strategy and that’s why they never work because the depth was not there around the messaging and the experience and the overall brand presence. And so therefore it’s not able to be created successfully. So after I do that deep dive and after I, I identify those five things I shared that I was looking for, then I’m ready to create the strategy.

And usually this happens after some back and forth. Like I’ll do my deep dive, I’ll do my auditing, and then I’ll have some back and forth with the client just to clarify that I’m on the right path and get their thoughts. And that takes a little bit of time in the v i p day digital, a couple hours of of that. And we’re able to go really deep with that. And then from there I can create the strategy. And so I have kind of the four things that really go into that strategy after that really deep audit and understanding and research and collaboration is done. So the first thing, and this is super important, is really establishing like what is the clear next 90 day goal, vision and focus. And I really like working in 90 day chunks. I think it’s hard to get much farther out, especially with marketing.

You can have an idea of what you’re going to do, but so much changes so quickly in marketing that if you don’t leave room for pivoting and you don’t leave room for, you know, if you’re gonna go launch a new funnel, for example, to sell your offer, you don’t know if it’s gonna work really well or not. You don’t know how much optimization is going to be required to get it to work. So if you, you know, plan that it’s either going to work or that you’re gonna have to have a new thing in 90 days, you know, you don’t know the answer to that until you go try. So that’s why you have to leave room for pivoting, for adapting, for optimization, for taking what’s working and doing more of that and taking what’s not working and doing less of that. So I really like a 90 day goal and that’s why we, we work with our clients in a minimum of a 90 day segment too, because that is enough time.

That is plenty of time to completely strategize, launch a strategy, get enough data back, and during that time, here’s the really important make changes during that time to see progress. Any marketer who tells you you have to sit there and wait for like months at a time to see how something works and you’re just like waiting to see people come through a funnel is full of it. Because after you know a hundred people in a funnel which can happen at different paces based on budget, you’re able to start making some changes and some optimizations. And that’s why that speed is really important. But you wanna have a clear focus for 90 days. And a lot of times people don’t actually give their funnel and their strategy enough time to optimize into work before jumping to a new things. And even I’m guilty of this, I’ll tell you guys like I recently was just like, well, maybe we should change the whole funnel.

And my marketing coordinator was like, well no, because we can change our emails and we can change our ad copy and we can do this to optimize it before we decide to change the whole funnel. And I’m like, you’re right. Tell me my own advice. So having that very clear 90 day goal and focus allows you to stick also with that focus and knock it completely sidetracked or distracted or jump over to something different just because you have a bad week or a bad day with something not working, it also gives you that kind of like direction of where you’re going. So that’s the first thing I establish. And for most people, what that’s going to be is the co the core offer that you’re going to be promoting, that you’re going to be focusing on, and the strategy that’s gonna get you to your goals related to that.

So it’s not focusing on multiple different offers and multiple different parts of your business. Like it is one core focus that you can align yourself, your actions and your team if you have one to this focus. The next piece once you have that is establishing the exact strategy that you’re going to execute to get you there. So at this point in developing the strategy, we have a super deep understanding of the ideal customer of the offer itself, of the offer, positioning of the brand, of the values, of the brand, of the messaging, of all of those components that now once we add our goal, we can say, okay, what’s the exact right funnel strategy that we’re going to execute to get there to accomplish this goal? And, and this digs deep into, there’s four parts into this. So first of all, the funnel itself, everybody has a funnel, even if that’s go to your website and buy your product.

Everybody has a experience to take someone who has no idea who you are, who’s in your audience to potentially a lead and then a sale or directly to a sale if you’re e-commerce. So what is that experience? It’s defining that. It’s figuring out, you know, what is the best thing for your offer, for your audience and for your business itself because it’s unique and it’s different than mine. So this could be a webinar, it could be a challenge, it could be a lead magnet, it could be a VSL funnel. If you’re a product business then it could be straight to specific products with upsells, with email sequences to try to get customers coming back. What is that experience? To create an awesome experience but also a nurturing, to actually convert your audience in leads. And this is absolutely custom for every single business. There is a lot of different possibilities, but I’ve said this before and I’m gonna say it again here.

The most important thing that your funnel is going to do that your experience is going to do is it’s going to one showcase to your audience and your leads a possibility to achieve their results. Show them mistakes that they’ve been making, provide them value through clarity, value through clarity. Whether that is things they’re doing wrong or a possibility they didn’t see a way to accomplish what they wanted that they didn’t see. And the second thing is, you’re gonna create a gap that your offer fills. You’re showcasing, hey, this is possible. Hey, you’ve been doing this wrong. Hey, you can achieve this desired result, but you need X, Y, Z and here is my offer. So every single funnel experience has to do that. And I cannot emphasize this enough because I feel like people don’t understand how much the content and the experience before even getting to your offer matters.

Because if that experience overwhelms your leads or confuses them or fire hoses them with way too much information, they will not buy. So that actual content and experience is very intentional and very important and it has to balance being very valuable to build the relationship and build the trust while not overwhelming and confusing them. Okay, so within this strategy is the funnel itself. And then you also have the email sequence. And this could be email, text messages, dms, it could be different things, but what is your follow up? Once someone comes into the funnel, once they buy their first product or opt into that webinar, that lead magnet, what does that experience look like? And I’m all about mapping out longer email sequences right now because I think having that automated very valuable follow up built into an experience is very effective. It’s working for me, it’s working for clients and it’s really great.

So what is that email sequence? How are you indoctrinating them? How are you nurturing them? How are you bringing them to your offer? And then number three is what is the two parts to your strategy, your ongoing every day lead generation and sales generator and your live launches and promotions that are going to capitalize on all the leads and audience that you’re building every single day and help you capitalize on them throughout the time? So for almost every client, like I guess there’s some cases where it wouldn’t be as relevant, but for almost every client and for sure in my v i P days, I am mapping out, and this goes a little bit beyond the 90 days because it could be, okay with these 90 days we’re gonna focus on this evergreen strategy and then after that we’re gonna do a live launch or we’re gonna do a fresh, you know, webinar topic or something.

So it has built into it, what are those four times a year, different live launches, different experiences. And it doesn’t have to be the exact topic. You don’t have to know that because you really want to get the data and the intel from the next 90 days to help drive your future topics because you wanna understand what people responded to the best you can gather like questions, you’re getting different responses and things. And then you can take that and create the next live thing and create the next fresh wrapping paper or different thing that you wanna do. But the important thing is, you know it’s coming because if you wait 90 days to even start planning that, it’s gonna be another one to two months before it even happens. And I recommend this four times a year. So what is this ongoing regular consistent strategy and what’s the live launch cash infusion strategy?

The fourth thing, fourth thing is cash infusions. Cuz I’ve done this for both my v i p days. They invested in the v i p day. And so what was important to me was that they made that money back quickly and both had some of a warm audience. And so we actually strategized together a promotion they could do like the next week to capitalize on their hottest leads. And in one case it was their actual customers to try to get, you know, one or two high ticket sales. That was the case for both of them. This is highly custom, but whenever you invest in something, if you can think, how can I get back that investment quickly and have kind of a short term strategy for that, especially if you have an audience to leverage, that’s something you could implement quickly if you haven’t done it in a while to try and generate some cash for your business.

So those are the things that I’m looking at in the exact strategy that we’re going to use to get someone to their next 90 day goal. Then we also, from there, now we have the strategy, now we get to deep dive into some more of the messaging and positioning in the previous, you know, part to this I talked about the overall messaging and positioning changes that we do and things we look at and things we deep dive into. But now that we know the strategy, so for example, in one of my v i P days, we knew, okay, we’re gonna do a webinar. And we had, she had like four different options that we chose from, we chose one. And so from there, now we get to deep dive into the actual messaging around that specific strategy. So the copy on that page, I audited the webinar itself like two times and the pitch and, and like very intentional with how everything was gonna be laid out.

Because once we have that specific experience we’re trying to create, now we have to create specific messaging within there. And with that comes, anytime you want someone to take an action, you have to be clearly communicating the outcome and the promise and the benefit, right? So if it’s a free webinar or a free checklist or a product itself, you have to have your messaging very clear about how you’re gonna talk about that and what, you know, frustration and pain points and, and dreams that you’re going to speak to for that person. So we get to dive into that. If there’s anything related to social media for the actual strategy and executing it, how we’re gonna leverage it on social media how we’re gonna leverage the content, the videos, all of that. Once you have your strategy, now you can be more specific. And this is exactly also what we do for clients is first they go through our strategy process and then from there we we go to the creative team and we say, okay, based on the fact that we’re gonna run ads to x, y, z, to this webinar lead magnet product, we need specific angles and video ideas and creative requests for that exact offer, that exact strategy that we’re gonna run.

And then the final thing that gets discussed is budget and goals to get to that 90 day goal that we’ve already set. So maybe we’ve said, okay, I wanna sell, you know, two of these a month or something. It depends on obviously the price, whatever that 90 day goal is. Okay, now we look at, now that we have the strategy and we know, okay, we’re gonna get leads through this funnel, we’re gonna maybe pay an average cost related to $5. Like we figure those things out and we figure out, okay, what’s the actual ad budget that we need to accomplish our goals? Like what are we gonna start without the gate to start getting data to start leveraging that and to start getting leads in the door and seeing where we can improve. And here’s the thing, you guys, with all of these, there will absolutely be optimizations.

Like I am not gonna nail a strategy the first time. The overall strategy, yes. But then there’s gonna be an email that has a low open rate that we can improve. There’s gonna be improvements that we can do to the webinar. There’s gonna be constant feedback we’re getting from the leads if we’re listening and from people who aren’t buying that we can take and improve the email sequence, the ad copy, the webinar itself, all of those things. And that is constant. And so within that, even first 30 days, we will find gaps and we will find holes that we can improve. And this is where marketing just becomes a process. It really is. It really is looking at, okay, here’s my entire strategy. Here’s my customer journey. Here’s every single place I want somebody to take action. Here’s the first place they’re not taking action.

And so here are the, the factors that contribute to that email, ad copy, whatever it is. And that’s the, the places that I can go improve it and I can go change. And so what can I do better here? How do I dig deeper? How do I improve the messaging? How do I make it more clear? And a lot of times it is messaging. You know, there are obviously times where you’ll, you’ll try something and it maybe is the strategy itself or it’s a bigger thing like the offer itself that you’re sending people to. But for the most part it’s smaller tweaks and things that you can shift and make, especially once you have something to start to, to work a little bit. And those optimizations are never going to be done. And that’s why both my v i p days are now working with us as clients because they want to have that constant support.

We did the deep dive, we did the reset in their business. We, we did the, the brand new strategy, we created that. Now we get to execute it and also we get to go and improve it constantly. I’m still constantly improving my messaging. If anybody makes you feel like they’re not, it’s not true because there’s constant feedback coming to you from your audience, from your leads, from your customers that you get to go leverage in your strategy. And then there’s also data that you get to leverage. So that is kind of part two, how I create the strategy. And then the important thing to note is then we go launch it and immediately we look at the data. How are the ads? How is the funnel? Are people watching the webinar? Are they going to get to the page? Where’s the potential drop off? Where could we do better?

And then what are the actions associated with that? And then we’re taking those actions and I feel that that’s also what people are missing because they’ll put a lot into developing an entire strategy and, you know, building it all out. And then once it launches, if it doesn’t work exactly how they had it planned, they turn it all off, right? And they totally switch strategies or they get gun shy. And so understanding like that’s normal to not have something just completely work out the gate, but to have it maybe work a little bit, get some traction and then need refinement. That’s kind of the reality and how to go into it with your, the right expectation so that you’re set up for success. All right, you guys, I hope you found this helpful. If in any capacity you want support, you want a VIP day with me or you wanna talk to our team about having our team, you know, do the strategy and execute everything for you, run the ads, look at the data, write the ad copy, audit, the landing pages, really a whole marketing team in your back pocket.

Just send me a message on Instagram at Emily Hirsch. We can chat more, we can see which option is the best fit for you and what next step is the best fit. I know that we can help you and support you cuz we do it for so many clients and our process really truly does work. So thanks so much for tuning in and I’ll talk to you guys on Thursday.

Thanks 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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