What is your marketing strategy? 

That sense of overwhelm you just felt when reading that question…you’re not alone. Many people feel overwhelmed when asked about their marketing strategy because they lack clarity on what should be included. Today, I’m jumping into the what and the why behind these 4 critical pieces that MUST be part of your marketing strategy:

1. Building an Audience
2. Lead Generation
3. Sales Conversion
4. Retention

If you’ve been searching for a starting point for creating a successful marketing strategy that converts, this is it. Listen in! 

 Ways I can support:

[Free] Join me LIVE to learn my proven formula for generating consistent leads & sales: https://www.hirshmarketing.com/training

Looking for Hirsh to support your marketing? http://helpmystrategy.com

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

And whenever there’s a lack of clarity, if we create that clarity, we can find a simple way to get to that end result. And so the first thing is, anytime you’re creating a strategy in your marketing or you’re trying to do something in your marketing, we need to understand why we’re trying to do it.

You are listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers podcast, episode number 496.

Hello my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. Wow, how are we Almost through q1. This is so crazy how fast time goes. I have been, I don’t know, I’m not fully ready to give you guys an update post the event that I went to. I have a lot of, just more like on the personal side of things going on and processing. I did, I did this, the event, which is always very transformational for me with George Bryant, my good friend. Within that there was a two hour breathwork session, which if you’ve never done true breathwork, like somatic release breathwork, it’s a lot. It has the same impact as psychedelics can have on your body. So that was a lot. And then I did an MDMA session also. So the rest of the week I have been just processing and I’m actually a very quiet processor.

Like I just need to go inwards and think and talk to a few of my very close friends. So there will probably be more updates in sharing, but I always, I have to process first before I can share from a responsible place. So, and it’s all this time on the personal side of things, like not business is great, , I can do business all day long. And that is easier for me, but I know that they’re, they’re very obviously intertwined and so there’s some things I need to address personally that will help me in the long run as a leader. But, so anyways I just wanted to share that with you guys. I’ve been a lot quieter on social media and I think like people who are connected to me energetically, you can tell that I am processing and like going through something.

And I’ve had even my nanny the other day was like, are you okay? So I know I’m, I’m showing up a little bit different right now, which is okay, we’re human and there’s seasons. So anyways I’m super excited because this week on Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern Time, I am doing a free training. And here’s the thing you guys, this is gonna tie into today’s podcast episode, but when I look at almost every conversation I have about marketing, like I had probably 35 really good conversations about marketing at the event I was at. When I look at the questions you guys submit, when I look at the conversations in my messages on Instagram, there is one consistent theme almost across the board. And that is how much people are lacking a really clear and effective marketing strategy. And I think it’s because there’s so much that could go into a marketing strategy that it becomes overwhelming and really it really confusing to people.

So with that, I decided I’m gonna do a training all about how to create your marketing strategy using my formula and creating a strategy that’s going to take you from not getting consistently, it’s not selling your offer, not getting consistent sales, like throwing spaghetti at the wall, not knowing what you’re doing, to having a really clear plan. And I have a really awesome formula that I teach that this is what we implement for clients and it allows for customization, which is really important in your marketing strategy because what my strategy should be should not match your strategy for a various number of reasons. And so I’m gonna take that training, I’m gonna take that formula and teach it on a live training on Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern time. There will be no replay. I do that because you guys show up. It just makes it more urgency.

Like I’m being totally transparent. I want more of you there live. Because here’s the thing, if you sign up for it, we both know you might have all intention to show up live and then you don’t. And then you have the intention to watch the replay and then you don’t. Typically we’ll put something out after that, like a a mini version of the training, but the actual training, you can only see it at March 23rd, 11:00 AM Eastern time. So if you wanna sign up, you just can go to hirsch marketing.com/training, be there live. Also, if you’re there live, I’m gonna be giving away this awesome resource we made, which is 10 funnel strategies that are crushing it this year for our clients, for myself. We have this great resource and you can look through that proven strategies to be profitable and you can implement them in your business if they fit.

So with that, what I wanted to talk about today to kind of seed the training on Thursday is what exactly goes into a converting marketing strategy. And this episode is going to be really simple, like the concepts in it are going to be really simple, but here’s the biggest thing. When I, if I were to sit down and look at you and say, Hey, like what is your marketing strategy? My guess is that a majority of you would feel some sort of overwhelm and some sort of like, ah, chaos with what it is. And I think that’s because there’s a lack of clarity as to what a marketing strategy actually is and what actually belongs in a marketing strategy. And whenever there’s a lack of clarity, if we create that clarity, we can find a simple way to get to that end result. And so the first thing is, anytime you’re creating a strategy in your marketing or you’re trying to do something in your marketing, we need to understand why we’re trying to do it.

What are we trying to achieve? And this is really true for anything you do in, in business because we get so caught up in like, we need this funnel or we need this many social posts, or we need this many videos, or we need to create a podcast or we need to do this. And if you just take a step back and say, what are we trying to achieve with the actions that we’re trying to execute? Then you’re able to have a more clear strategy. So what I wanna start with is there’s four parts to a marketing strategy. These are like the components that need to go into every single strategy. And knowing this and remembering this is going to help you make sure that you have the right components to get to the end result you should be trying to get to. Because I think a lot of you get lost in why you’re even doing it, which is where we get caught up in posting on social media, just a post running Facebook ads, cuz we think it’s gonna save things, reaching out and you know, launching a podcast because we think that’s the answer.

And so losing track of the why is why people suffer and why people really struggle with their marketing. So there’s four things that must be inside of your marketing strategy and I’m gonna go much deeper on Thursday about how to fill these things. So make sure you’re there Thursday, hirsch marketing.com/training. But right now I’m just gonna seed this and give you the overview. This is a good episode. If you have like your notes open on your phone or a piece of paper because I want you to remember these four components and then reflect on are you filling these, do you have these as a part of your strategy? So the first component of your marketing strategy is building an audience. That’s where we all have to start. We can’t do anything else. We can’t generate leads in sales without that. So first part of your marketing strategy, first a layer if you will, is audience building, which this comes in the form of obviously content, a podcast, videos, social media.

I refer to it as visibility and brand awareness. And so when you look at your marketing strategy and you ask yourself, am I currently building an audience with new people every single day? And if the answer is no, then ask yourself, how can I build an audience with new people every single day with the least amount of effort and the most amount of impact? And that’s what I want you to ask yourself at each one of these four stages because this will help you get clarity on the biggest needle movers that are going to actually bring results in your marketing. So every one of you should have some form of visibility and a brand awareness strategy. If you go back last week, I did a complete episode just all about visibility ads and brand awareness. And so if you wanna dig into that specifically, I highly recommend you go back about a week on the podcast and you listen to that episode if you wanna dig into that.

But everybody needs that as a foundation in your marketing and your audience should be growing every day with this. You can also ask yourself, how do I know if this is working? Well, you know, if this is working, if your audience is growing, is your social media follower growing? Is the number of conversations you have in your DNS growing? Is your podcast following and downloads, growing your YouTube channel? Your engagement on social media, whatever you are doing, whatever actions you’re taking, have very simple metrics that you can track of. Is this working or not? And if it’s not working, what do I need to change? What is working, what is not working? Okay? So that’s the first layer. The second layer is lead generation. Every one of you, regardless of your e-commerce, regardless of your high ticket digital product, you need to be generating leads.

Leads are name, email address, maybe phone number, and you own that asset. And that is an asset to your business. And those are leads that are your ideal customer and they have chosen to come into your world because they got something for value in return. This can be in the form of a lead magnet, a quiz, a webinar, a VSL funnel. It can be from the the e-commerce side, it can be some sort of lead magnet related to your product. You need to be growing your list because that’s an asset to your business. So that’s the next piece. And so you can ask yourself, do I have a lead generation strategy? If Emily was to come in and look at my business and do a quick snapshot overview, would she see that new leads are being added every single week, every single month into my business of my ideal customer?

And how, you know, they’re your ideal customer is because they came in with something your ideal customer would’ve been interested in, right? If you have a lead magnet about how to lose weight and you’re a weight loss coach, well your ideal customer is obviously gonna sign up for that. Somebody who doesn’t wanna lose weight is not gonna sign up for that. So we can deem for the most part that they’re your ideal customer. So that just comes from, are the leads coming in clear on the problem I solve as a business where there’s sometimes a lack of clarity is if you’re a lead magnet or the way people are coming into your list is totally unrelated to the problem you solve as a business, or there’s a big disconnect there. And that can be even, it doesn’t have to be like, oh, it’s a totally different topic.

It can just be, let’s say that you target businesses and your lead magnet is attracting brand new business owners who haven’t sold their offer before, but you wanna work with people who are at six figures. So that’s an example of a disconnect that you may not even see, but it is a big disconnect because you’re not attracting your ideal customer to the offer that you wanna sell. So ask yourself the question of am I consistently generating leads if I’m not, and are those leads my ideal customer? If I’m not, what is the most simple and effective actions I need to take in order to get that in place? And as I walk through this, we’re at two out of the four components. These are in order of importance. So if you said no to audience, that’s your first priority. Now, if you move to leads and you said no here, that’s your first priority.

Notice I’m saying leads before sales. Most people go to, I need to sell more. And so they’re like, okay, I’m gonna try this. I’m gonna post more on social media, I’m gonna throw together a funnel. But they’re not doing it methodically in a way that you have to build upon each other. Why? Because your audience and your leads are likely gonna need multiple touchpoints before they buy from you. So if you don’t have those things in place, your actual sales is not going to work. The third component of the converting marketing strategy is your lead conversion. So that is sales now, but this has two parts. This has selling, it also includes nurturing. I include nurture in this component because at this point we’ve got, we’re building an audience, we’re generating leads of our ideal customer. Now we have to nurture and indoctrinate those leads so that they wanna buy.

And so this typically happens in most strategies. You have two ways you have your initial ask for your offer. So typically when somebody comes into a lead magnet, a webinar or a quiz, there’s an initial ask. It might be on the thank you page, it might be in the first couple of emails or the first email, and it’s happening almost right away. That’s for the type of people, the personality type that’s like me where I don’t need a lot of evidence, I don’t need a lot of relationship building. Like when I know, I know and I will go buy the thing that’s gonna solve my problem. If you’ve done your job with that initial touchpoints, content and, and information and I trust you and you’ve built my trust, which can happen quickly because I have a really good read, then I’ll buy really quickly.

And there is, you know, that type of personality type, I think it’s called a generator. I don’t know, there’s probably like hide D on the disk, right? Those people are going to buy quickly with less nurturing, okay? Because they make decisions really fast and they’re not afraid of, of risk or of something not working. Like when they know they know, okay? So you’re gonna have that initial ask for your offer, which is gonna probably happen within the first, like either immediately or 48 hours of somebody becoming a lead. And then it moves back into nurture and then sell again. So then you’ve got all the people who came in, let’s say to your webinar funnel and they didn’t buy in that, you know, five day series that you had webinar, and then you’re pitching and you’re sending out sales emails and they still didn’t buy.

And this is where most people are like, well, I didn’t get sales or I got one out of a hundred sales. Well what about all the 99 rest of the leads who didn’t buy it? Doesn’t mean they’re just a no right now. They’re not a no forever. So how do we nurture them? And this is where most people have a gap. Like if you’ve made it this far, you’re doing pretty well in your marketing. I’d be really surprised if you have really solid nurturing in place. And so then it’s looking at, okay, how am I gonna take all these leads who most likely have heard about my offer but right now chose that it was not the right time? I haven’t, I haven’t proven to them that they can make a buying decision that they feel safe enough, that they feel confident enough that my offer is gonna get them the result they want no questions asked.

And so now it’s your job to create that confidence through nurturing, through relationship building. So that can look like an e a longer email sequence that can look like sending them more content that can look like sending them more valuable resources. It’s not bombarding them with an information overload. It is saying, what do they need to know and see and feel in order to feel safe buying from me? That’s your nurturing. And then you’ll ask for the sale again. And that’s your experience you’re creating. So that’s the lead conversion. And that comes in the form typically of longer email sequences of content that we’re, you know, in intentionally giving people and leading them back to the offer over maybe the next like two to four weeks. And then maybe you even do it again. Like I have a nurture sequence. We just plan one for a client that’s six months long over time.

Like it’s gonna go initial sale, nurture sale, a bunch more, nurture sale, nurture sale again. And so it’s creating a really long experience and pathway for them to be able to be brought into the sale when they’re ready, which we’re okay giving people that long because we play the long game hands down. Okay, the fourth piece of your marketing strategy, which can come later, this doesn’t have to be figured out like day one, this can come later on. This is something that you wanna work up to, but you really want these first three things in place and working first, and then you get to work on these, which is resell and upsell. So a really healthy business is going to be able to take the leads and then the customers that it turns into leads and do two things. One, potentially resell those customers into other services, other products and get them to spend more with your business because you’ve already worked so hard to get them through the first three steps.

It’s not actually that hard as long as you deliver with your offer to get them to say yes to you again because you’ve already gotten that first hardest. Yes. The other thing could be upsell. Maybe there is an additional product or offer or service that you wanna feed these people into. For me, an example would be we’ve got our agency clients who maybe wanna sign up for a v i p day with me or they wanna upsell into having us do a full-blown funnel build because they’re in our elite package and they need that help. So I guess I would also include in here potentially downsell like for your leads who didn’t buy but are really warm and they’re just not ready yet. How can you create an ideal customer with other offers to move them into your core offer?

So this comes with time, this is probably something that, like I said, the first three steps of your strategy have to be working first and then you can focus on resell, upsell and potentially downsell. It is not like, you know, Russell teaches, oh, have your entire value ladder in, have this all in place to start your marketing. I don’t believe you should do that because I also believe that the first three steps one should be working, but two should drive what you do in terms of resell, upsell, and downsell because your leads and your customers are gonna give you feedback that’s gonna drive the other things you can offer them and the other ways you can support them. And you can’t have that all figured out until you have leads and customers consistently coming in. But a really good marketing strategy has this backend built in because what that does is it makes your ads more profitable, it makes your efforts more fruitful, and you’re just getting more out of what you’re already doing.

And so there are sometimes, especially clients who come to me that are already at seven figures where we find a lot of opportunity and growth in the components of here, like leveraging their existing leads and customers versus going out and finding new. We definitely wanna be bringing in new, we want that, you know, levels two and three working, but we also don’t wanna be sitting on opportunity that we are wasting because we’re so busy looking for new. And so a lot of times if you are at that seven figure level, there’s a lot of ways you can capitalize on existing leads and customers that will pay off a lot before you go find new. And maybe you just keep running what, you know, you probably have if you’re at seven figures, you’ve gotta have new traffic coming in anyways or you’re not gonna be hit seven figures.

So focusing on that, there’s a lot of opportunity for businesses at that level, and that is including myself, this is something I focused on a lot in the last year. So those are the components of a converting marketing strategy. And as I said with each one, asking yourself the question of do I have this in place? And if the answer is no, what is the most simple and effective actions that I can take to create this and to move this forward? And then that is what you focus on. So I’m gonna break this down in a lot more detail on Thursday and help you actually design what your strategy is and do an audit on your own business. So if you wanna go to hirsch marketing.com/training, join me live on Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern time, there will not be a replay. So come hang out, live with me. I will stay on and answer all the questions until all the questions are answered as I always do. Thanks so much you guys. I’ll talk to you 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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