528: The #1 Most Important Strategy To Implement In Your Business & Marketing Today
In today’s episode, I’m discussing a strategy that is crucial for success in marketing and business: the ability to pivot and adjust on the fly. Many of us crave structure and predictability in our businesses. We meticulously plan our strategies, create to-do lists, and expect everything to go accordingly. However, the reality is that things don’t always work out as we envision. There’s a level of unpredictability when it comes to how people will respond to our marketing efforts, especially if we are trying something new.
This is where the ability to pivot and adapt becomes essential. Throughout this episode, we’ll explore real-life examples and discuss how to incorporate the ability to pivot into your business and marketing strategies.
If you’re ready to discover the most important strategy in your business and marketing, listen in. Let’s embrace the uncertainty and unlock new levels of success!
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh
Hello everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are having a great week. I am coming at you fresh from a week long trip in Colorado so I feel amazing and I came back to Austin and it’s 100°f outside today. Austin had like a delayed Start to the heat and then it went from like 85 to 100 no inbetween for the foreseeable 10 day forecast and beyond. So I am just like I hate the heat I hate I don’t even know why I moved to Austin sometimes I mean I do but and I love it all the other months out of the year um but I just can’t not be outside and even in the morning it’s 90° it’s ridiculous. So I am already like planning the whole summer of multiple trips and I think next year I’m just going to pick a spot and we’re going to go there for three months because I just can’t. I did plant a garden this year last minute and way too late but I have enjoyed that because it gives me a reason to like go outside and you have to you have to literally water the garden 2 times a day and it has like an automatic drip set up to it but it’s not enough because it is so hot and if you don’t then all of them start wilting. So. That’s given me a little purpose to go outside and get like a 10 minute break but after 10 minutes I’m like dying so anyways I love the mountains I did some amazing hikes and just got such quality time I went with my my mom and brothers and it’s like once a year I have 3 younger brothers and we just have So much fun together and we have a really good relationship and it was just really awesome to get that break and that really quality time with them and lots of laughs and fun and good conversations.
So anyways, this episode was inspired actually mid-last week I pulled up the notes app in my phone and was like. This is my podcast episode coming up like I just had that thought that came through and I knew I needed to talk about this. So this is inspired from something that I see so often in clients and also myself something that I’ve learned over the years as an entrepreneur that I think is 1 of if not the most important strategy and characteristic and component that you implement into your marketing in your business and in the title of this episode I put strategy because that will bring you guys in but it’s not like oh it’s a webinar or it’s a call booking funnel. It’s not that type of a strategy. It’s a strategic thinking of your mind and your mindset really that will contribute to your success and you guys are all looking constantly. Everybody is looking like you know what marketing strategy is working and this is something that applies to everybody the problem with specific strategies like a webinar or a product funnel or. Um, you know a live challenge or those different types of strategy has to be so custom to your business so there isn’t a one-size fits all strategy. But this is a strategy that applies to everybody and this strategy is the ability to pivot and adjust on the fly. This is probably one of the most important qualities that you can have in your marketing and in your business, especially if you’re running a live launch and this came to me last week because I was supporting a client who was running a live launch and we had to make some big pivots. The initial like topic that we chose for the webinar and the direction for the launch didn’t land as well as we thought it was going to land and I think this is like a massive cutting edge that I have is I can see something like that happening or maybe it happens even to me because it does happen to me sometimes And then I can take that and I can make changes super fast and on the fly and I think over time I have learned as a business owner. How important this is and this wasn’t always easy for me because I very much like every business owner wants to be able to have A plan and a strategy and it just work out exactly how you plant and you get all the assets ready and you have it all planned out and you have it all created and you’ve got like the to-do list and it’s all organized I think a lot of people want it to work out that way but it almost never does. A percentage of what you’re doing needs to have room and accommodation for flexibility because you just don’t know every single time How things are going to happen and play out and so if you can’t quickly pivot and adapt and adjust and this is especially true in a live launch because this has to be there in a live launch because you have such a limited amount of time when you have an evergreen ongoing Funnel. You have a little bit more flexibility to take time to make those pivots and adjustments. But of course the longer you take the longer. The results aren’t going to be where you want them to be so this is something that I think I do really well. But I haven’t, I wasn’t always like this like I wanted things to work out exactly how I had planned and when they didn’t I felt like something was wrong, but the thing is it’s actually more normal to have to make pivots and adjustments on the fly. And I’m not talking about your entire launch or your entire strategy I’m talking about maybe ten fifteen percent of it maybe more like the client last week that I was helping it was the entire webinar topic and we pivoted mid-launch to a new webinar topic and did another webinar and that worked. And that’s actually a more normal case scenario than everything working out how you previously planned and I think especially in marketing this is something I have to train my team on this is something I have to remind my internal marketing team of And our clients because it is more normal to have to make those pivots and have that flexibility than not and it can really frustrate people who like structure and the security of the same thing and and like predictability but business is not really predictable. Because you’re trying to predict the way an audience and people are going to respond to something and especially if it’s new. You don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like so the ability to pivot and adapt on the fly and have a percentage of what you’re doing leave room for flexibility. Is the most important strategy that you can bring into your business and even deeper than that having that ability and leaving space for that and leaving creativity for that and leaving room for those ideas to come to you is important but second of all understanding that that is normal and that is To be expected is taking it to the next level because once you do that you become more open to it and what I used to struggle with is I would have something completely, You know, set up ready to go and I’d want it to work out exactly how we planned and have it super organized and then when it wouldn’t I would make it wrong. And I would get frustrated and I would say you know you know what am I doing wrong and I don’t want to do this and like I would really be frustrated because my expectation going into it was off I expected it to work out exactly how I planned it like it was a checklist or an s O p. And that’s just not how business works. That’s not how marketing works. A percentage of it can be like that. The foundation of what you’re doing can be like that and you want to have as much organization and systems as possible but you can’t predict other people’s responses. And what’s going to happen even if it’s a proven offer but especially if it’s not or especially if it’s not a proven funnel or it’s a new webinar topic or a new product or a new launch. You can’t predict it so leaving that space for optimization and flexibility and pivoting and adjusting. Is critical to your success and so the way that this may look in your business is you’re going to go into a marketing strategy and you’re going to be executing a strategy whether it’s a live launch whether it’s an ongoing evergreen strategy. Whatever it is and you’re going to have a plan.
We never start strategies without a plan without goals without projections without the customer journey laid out without everything you know, planned out to the best of our ability and we’re going to go in and we’re going to launch with that plan and we have a lot of organization within that and. You know my own marketing team is highly organized, highly systematized. That’s how we can literally do a live launch every month because we have it down Pat. But then when you go to launch you have to leave room for the last minute pivots and adjustments and I have seen. Many times clients who reject that and you know don’t want to do that or don’t listen when I have a specific client that I had this conversation with and I was direct with them and I’m like if you want this to be a success. We have to pivot and I know that sucks. I know that means like work that we both did on both ends. Is going to go to waste but we couldn’t have gotten to this point without learning what worked and what didn’t work and so we need to pivot now and so the clients who kind of reject this or delay this or become in denial about it. Typically it takes longer to get to the success. Whereas the clients who can operate with that flexibility and understanding that pivoting and optimization is normal really get to the success faster. And so when you go launch with a strategy you created like I said you don’t just launch and go like I hope for the best or let me see how this works out. That’s not at all what I’m saying, like you want to have as much structure as possible and a plan and you want to launch with a strategy that lays out. Visibility in your budget and your projections and your customer journey and your funnel and your emails and all of those things then you need to actually get data and see where things aren’t working and depending on the strategy you’re going to have to pivot faster than others like I said with a live launch like for example, a live webinar. And that was my client last week. It was a live launch, a live webinar and she only does it a couple times a year and so like this was our chance to get the sales. We had to get the sales marketing always works I stand by that you have to make the pivots the adjustments and there’s always a way and so we weren’t planning on doing 2 wo webinars and we went into it with the first webinar cost per lead was really high so we didn’t get as many registrants as we wanted in order to make our sales goal and so we could have either sat back and said okay well that just sucks like we didn’t get those conversions this time around. And so you know it is what it is instead I knew that this launch was important to the overall business like annual strategy because it’s only twice a year and we needed to create that revenue within a matter of a few days. We came up with a different webinar title, Dug deeper on the messaging we brought in our creative lead to actually do a call around the messaging. We came up with a different title. We put out new promotional material. We updated the funnel. She redid the webinar and didn’t have to redo the whole thing but really it was more like the front end of it because it was a cost per lead issue and we totally smashed our sales goals. And we went above and beyond our sales goals and so also a lot of times with marketing something I say is marketing starts when something isn’t working. That’s when the real true talented marketers get to come out because it is 9 times out of 10 more common. That you are going to launch something and it doesn’t work right away and if you just you know, throw up your hands and quit. It’s like you’re with the majority when you do that. But if you can look at it and say okay well this piece is working and this is what’s not working and here’s our hole and here’s an action We can take to fill that hole. That’s where the true marketers and the true success comes because more often than not, you don’t nail it and so that’s what we did last week and it was like within a matter of days because it was a live launch because we only had a limited time but there’s infinite solutions to that that was the right solution for her. And that was a custom you know solution and strategy that came from collaboration and talking to her about it and deciding what was best and her being willing to do that webinar. You know you could decide. Okay, we’re going to stop. We’re going to see through this launch and we’re going to do an extra bonus one in thirty days on a different topic. You could decide to do a cache infusion like that’s not. And not saying if a webinar doesn’t work in a live launch, All of you need to do a second webinar that was the right strategy for her based on the data, the experience, the resources we had available, her time availability and what made the most sense for her audience and the experience. Sometimes that may not be the answer. I’ve had this same thing happen with clients. We see the launch through we try to get as many sales as possible and we throw in a different live launch thirty days later and we play off the one we just did and we plan for it and we go into prep mode for it. Whatever we have to do to create the revenue for the business and the success for the business which is always custom to the client. But the key piece being and the key strategy component being. We are ready to pivot and adapt on the fly. We’re not unorganized. We’re not chaotic. We just know that people are unpredictable and we cannot predict everything in business things are going to get thrown at you in marketing and in business like. This happens to me too with the team, when a team member as just happened has a sudden death in their family and has to step away and we totally didn’t plan for that. We’ve got to pivot on the fly and we’ve got to jump in and we’ve got to adjust and we’ve got to take action. That is the way business works, marketing works and honestly life works and so that strategy in that Skillset if you can really adapt to that and lean into that in your business but also not make it wrong and I think that’s the biggest thing that I personally have learned over the years because the faster something doesn’t work and the faster you make Changes and sometimes they’re big changes and sometimes there’s small changes the faster you actually get to potential success. So I challenge all of you to reflect on Maybe your last promotion or maybe it’s your current marketing and ask yourself like how quickly Do I make changes? How quickly do I accept that something isn’t working rather than kind of be in denial about it and take action on it and create the flexibility and the space for me to be willing to pivot and adapt. And if that’s lacking. How could I bring that into my business more but in a very calm and grounded way like what you don’t want to do is become a chaotic leader where you’re in like panic mode because that literally does nothing and so when something isn’t working if you’re like oh my god I need to make money and. I’m going to be out of business and like this is terrible and I suck like you do not want to come at it from that place instead come at it from a very calm grounded place of okay, fact, this isn’t working fact here’s the whole. Okay, here’s 3 things we can do or here’s two things we can do and that’s something I’ve really learned over the years like not just in marketing like I said with team this often comes up I’ll get thrown curveballs up that could have completely derailed me a year ago like completely I would have been so stressed and Just like complete like my nervous system in overdrive and now I’m just like well, what’s the worst that’s going to happen and the only thing I can do is 1 step foot in front of the other and come up with solutions like what else is there to do. It’s the same thing with marketing. The only thing you can do is continue to find the solutions. Move forward making that progress forward and also just expect that this is the way it works. So I challenge you to look at your business, look at your marketing and ask yourself how much room are you leaving for pivoting and adjusting on the fly. How long does it take you to pivot and adjust if it takes you three months to make a change in your business you are losing out an opportunity because the faster you can do this in a strategic and focused way I’m not saying just throw spaghetti at the wall but in a strategic and focused way the faster you can do this. The faster you’re going to find what is working and be able to do more of that and to be honest, like this is even more argument to have experts supporting you with your marketing because it’s impossible to come up with all that on your own like if something isn’t working and you’re the only person trying to come up with new ideas to get it working. That’s difficult even, I don’t do that like you need other perspectives and people in there and decision making fatigue is so real for entrepreneurs. So if you’re the only one you’re probably delaying your success and delaying the ability to take action because. You have decision-making fatigue and you’re like I don’t know what to do so I’m going to leave it how it is yesterday and I’m going to leave it how it is today and then all of a sudden three weeks goes by so it’s even more reason to have experts whether that’s through coaching or done for you. Um, and you know where to find us if you want to explore working with us in that way. But I think it’s a huge Leverage for business owners to have that type of support and not be all on your own and in your own kind of echo chamber all right, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in and I’ll talk to you guys on thursday.