540: The Root & The Why Behind All Your Marketing — The Anti Marketing Hack Series #1
I have a special series coming at you this week! Every so often, I like to dive into a specific topic that speaks directly to our heart of hearts. In a world where everyone seems to chase the latest hacks and quick fixes in marketing, I wanted to take a different approach. Instead of focusing on short-term tactics, I’ll be exploring the timeless principles that form the foundation of successful marketing – The Anti Marketing Hack Series, if you will.
Tune in to find out what these principles are and why these are the elements that hold true now, ten years from now, and have been constant for the past twenty years – no matter how the digital landscape and economy change.
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I have a special series for you guys this week. It’s been a little while since we did a series on the podcast. And if you are a newer listener, every once in a while, usually about every other month or sometimes every month, I will do a series on the podcast where I usually have about four or five episodes that all go together and we will release some extra outside of our, every Tuesday, Thursday tuning.
We’ll do it every day in a row. So this is a five part series that’s going to come out over the next five days and it’s all around the components of marketing that are always true. And I was inspired to do this series because I was thinking about wanting to do a series and how everybody always talks about the hacks, right? It’s always like, here’s a hack, here’s how to get a quick win. Here’s how to get a quick fix in your marketing in your business. And a lot of people end up chasing the hacks chasing the templates that they can plug and play. And the reality is those things usually don’t work, but they’re always based off of something foundational. That is true. And so I was like, I’m going to do the anti hack marketing series, like, forget about the hacks. Let’s talk about what is going to be true now, 10 years from now it was true 20 years ago. Like, it’s always true, no matter what happens in the economy with Facebook, with digital marketing, with businesses, no matter what happens in shifts and changes, these things will always be true because when it comes down to it, these are the things we all need to be remembering and paying the most attention to. And so a lot of what I teach, but also how we execute things for clients is based on these five things I’m going to talk about and it’s the anti hack marketing series. So we’re going to dive into the first one today, which is the root of all your marketing and what I believe everything in your marketing comes back to whether it’s paid organic, email marketing, your sales funnel your content. I think it all comes back to this and that is relationships. So you’ve definitely heard me talk about this on the podcast and I’m going to dive into this a little bit more now. I think that relationships and building solid relationships with your audience, with your leads, with your customers and honestly in general, like just relationships are always at the root of a lot of what we do. But I think the relationship is the why behind everything we do in our marketing. And so remembering the why helps us choose the what and the how OK, successful marketing when you boil it down, like if you were to just put it in the most simplest terms, I think it is creating trust through relationships because that trust leads to people following you, it leads to them taking action and it leads to them buying. So when you think about getting somebody to take action from that could be watching your content, watching your social media to signing up for a webinar or downloading your lead magnet. All of those things are actions all the way to purchasing your product or service. Think about the relationship you need to create in order to do this. And so this is a massive part of what I do in my marketing strategies when I create custom strategies and it’s why they always work because I pause and I consider the relationship that we need to create, the trust that we need to build with the person at the stage. They are in the customer journey, right? So for example, if I’m focusing on how do I build an audience, which is the first step in marketing is how do I build an audience? How do I generate followers? How do I generate people consuming my content and starting the beginning phases of the relationship, the actions I’m going to take are probably going to be different. Then somebody who has been on my email list has, you know, taken many actions with me before most likely, and is more familiar with me and now I’m ready for them to buy. And so what I do is I consider the different stages, which there’s three stages in marketing that I teach and it’s part core, part of our process, which is one, your audience, building your audience, that’s stage, one part one, then you have leads and then you have sales. And as you can imagine at each one of those stages, if things are going kind of how they should be in a marketing strategy, the relationship is deepening. And so the way that you can talk to people and the experience, you can create shifts and changes, right? So again, if I’m first looking at AAA company strategy from a zoomed out big picture, I’m gonna first focus on how are we building an audience? What are we doing to kind of fill in the gaps there? Make sure we’re building an audience and what do we need to do in terms of type of content? We should create the medium of the content, we should create what platforms it should be on, how frequent it should be. All of those questions are answered by what’s the experience and the relationship we’re trying to build with people who don’t know who we are yet, then we go to the second step, the leads. Ok. We have people that are probably new, but also maybe some people who have watched our content. And if I need to build a solid relationship with them, I need to provide value. I need to serve them. I need to earn their trust before I ask for anything before I ask for the sale. So what do I need to do? Right, and so on. And then I move on. Ok, now they’re a lead and I have a little bit more of a relationship with them. How can I talk to them now? And so I try to look at marketing and boil it down to imagining a single person, your ideal customer and putting them in the persona of one single person, give them a name if it helps you and then looking at what is the best way for me to genuinely build a relationship with them and I use the word genuinely because this is also important. You can’t ever have a solid relationship with anybody if it’s based on you, expecting them to give you something in return. Is that a real relationship? No. Imagine in life if you were trying to make a friend, but you were like, well, I’m only your friend if you do XYZ for me or I’m only gonna date you if you do this, this and this for me and I’m not doing anything for you. So marketing isn’t about how we manipulate and change and coerce this to, to equal somebody doing something for us. Watching our content opting into a lead magnet. Buying our product marketing is about how do I pour into my audience and leads and serve and provide value and expect nothing back but trust that if I do that, I will build a solid enough relationship that they’re going to no brainer want to take action. I think that a lot of business owners, I don’t even know if it’s a lot. I know it is a lot, but it’s usually the not successful ones, prioritize the wrong things in their marketing and they lose sight of the fact that the core of your marketing is just based on relationships. And so if you imagine a single person, your ideal customer and your goal, if I told you your goal, your only job is to build a genuine relationship with that person where they trust you, they want to be around you, they enjoy, you know, your presence and that equals your content. What would you do in order to do that? And I can guarantee you, it’s not some of the things out there that people are teaching because that’s not how you build genuine relationships. And the reality is if you focus on this, if you make this your number one priority, then all of the other things in your marketing that you’re trying to accomplish, become easy getting people to consume your content becomes really easy when you’ve made it your priority to pour into your audience with the most valuable and intentional content that you could possibly create. Getting people to sign up for your webinar or download your lead magnet becomes easy when you’ve listened and created the most valuable resource or experience that you could create for them and you are doing it in a way that you hope they take the next action because that’s what’s best for them. And you know, you can support them. But if they don’t, you still love them and you still are there for them until they’re ready. And then to the final step of sales, it is extremely easy when you’ve created an offer that serves your audience and nurtures that relationship and is a no brainer next step. But especially when you’ve done the previous two things of building an audience and generating leads. And I say easy, I don’t actually want to use the word easy. It’s extremely simple. It’s not easy because it takes time and it takes refinement. We can also look at our marketing through the lens of relationship. And if you’re a newer business or you haven’t nailed your marketing yet, you’re kind of like somebody who’s learning how to date or learning how to build a true friendship. Like you’re going to try some things, it’s not going to get the response you want, you’re going to try some other things and maybe those things will work that happens to us in relationships too. And we learn from feedback and what works and what doesn’t work. So when I look at how we support clients with this, which I wanted to give you guys in each one of these episodes. In this series, I wanted to give you guys some insight into how we actually execute this tactically. So it starts when we create the strategy. And I think that’s the biggest thing because we will look very deeply at the ideal customer and the emotional elements of the ideal customer. That’s really important. I want to hone in on that for a second. I am not looking at the demographics. I’m not looking at age or gender. Where do they live? Da da da, I’m looking at what keeps them up at night. What are they scared of? What are they frustrated about? What is their dream? What are those, what’s called psychographic, the emotional components? Because people make all decisions based on emotion. So first we start by looking at that and then we have the idea of who we’re trying to build the relationship with. And we create the customer journey around that taking into consideration the three different parts, right? Because again, somebody who’s never met you, you’re going to potentially speak differently, but for sure, create a different experience for somebody who’s never met you than somebody who’s been around you for six months. And that’s true in marketing too. Like I’m not going to go up to cold traffic who’s never heard of me and say, hey, book a call with our team. And as the first thing I say, like, why is there no relationship, there is no foundation for that. There’s no trust, it’s not going to work, right? You have to create that journey that builds the relationship over time. OK? And so we create that customer journey and we put the relationship at the forefront. And also this is true. If something isn’t working, let’s say we’re getting leads and they’re not converting. Well, we look at why, what, and what we are not doing to earn their trust to build their confidence in taking the next step and their belief that this is what they need. And that could be various things. It could be the offer itself, it could be the messaging like there’s always an answer in that. But we put the relationship first. And as I said, in the beginning, a true relationship doesn’t have strings attached. And I get a little, I get a little agitated when I hear people say, oh, I’m just so tired of everybody who wants everything for free. And I understand why people say it. And you may have said this, but here’s the reality and I promise you this because I have learned this firsthand in my business. People who want something for free today, a percentage of those people every single time are going to be ready to pay in a, in a certain period of time. It could be three months, it could be six months, it could be 12 months. It could be three years. Why do you care? Right. Why do you care how long it’s going to take if you’re in it for the long run? We just did our free challenge a couple of weeks ago. I know that 90% of those people that participated in that challenge can’t afford our services yet. Did I let that stop me from giving it our absolute all was I in the Facebook group going, oh, I’m not going to answer their question because I know they’re just in this for the free thing because the reality is, I don’t know when that person who’s in it for the quote free because they can’t afford anything else is going to implement what I’m saying. Take the incredible experience we created and then sign up to work with us in six months. And I know for a fact, I’m in my business for the long game and I can tell you hands down. That is why I win in this industry with my own marketing. And it’s why we sign a record number of clients. It’s because I’m consistent with my relationship building. It’s not because I have a magical overnight strategy. That was a little bit of a tangent. But I want you guys to understand building a true relationship means there are no strings attached. It means you’re willing to show up for as long as it takes for someone to trust you to become a customer. Now, does that mean that you should go years before you have your first customers? No. And if that’s happening, there’s probably an issue in the messaging or the offer because you should always have some people, a percentage of people who are ready to take action soon. But obviously everybody’s at different stages of their life and business, right? And so that doesn’t mean you’re just sitting back, pouring everything into your business and getting nothing out of it forever. It means that it’s a step by step game, it’s three steps forward and then you maybe sometimes one step back and you’re in this for the long game. And so you see the value of building these long term relationships and you understand that there’s probably less than less than 5% of a group of people, whether it’s leads or your audience who are actually ready to buy now. And so many of you forget about that 95% that if you stay focused on, I promise you, if you stay focused on and you stay consistent for 3 to 6 months, you will start to experience that snowball effect where all of a sudden you’ve got someone converting who’s been around for six months and you didn’t even have to do anything to get them to convert because you’ve already done it over the last six months by being consistent. OK. So when we work with clients, this is where our custom strategies come into play. This is how we create custom strategies because we’re considering the ideal customer, which has to be the foundation of it all. We can’t create something if we don’t know who we’re creating it for. And then we’re creating this custom strategy to build the relationship with them and building the relationship. What kind of plays into building the relationship is both the way you speak to somebody, the messaging and then also the experience that you create both of those things you need to have dialed in, right? And this is also why templated strategies never work because when have you ever seen a genuine relationship built off of a template? Imagine, you know, you’re on the dating apps and you go out on dates to try to build a genuine relationship and you say the same thing every time to every person and you follow a script and you use a template. Would it ever work? Imagine it with friendships? Would it ever work to have a genuine relationship? If it is with every single one of your friends, you just use a template and you say the same thing. No, you have to create something that is custom to your business and your offer and who you are. And I’m not saying you have to say something different to every piece of your audience. But sometimes you might create a piece of content that is going to speak to this category of your audience and then a different piece of content that’s going to speak to another category. The point means nothing can ever be templated that’s genuine. There’s core foundational principles, which is what we’re talking about this week but not templates. This is also why businesses who jump right in and only focus on how to get the sales loose. So I kind of was just touching on this, but I want to bring it up again. It makes so much sense, right? If you are just jumping into your market and you’re like, OK, send people to my website, send people to my sales page. Why would they buy? Have you ever done that with a company? Like maybe with e-commerce? But even then the ad itself or the experience to get them to that page has built enough of a relationship that it will work or they’ve had a friend or something who’s vouched for the product. But have you ever actually bought a service or a product where you just had no idea who sold it and you had no trust or experience in relating to that company? Probably not, right? If you, if you focus instantly, instead of focusing instantly on how do I get the sale, which is what we’re all in marketing for, right? We are in business, we all want to make sales. We got to grow our business. Money is the scorecard. Instead of focusing on that, focus on how do I build the relationship, which builds the trust, which leads to the sale, make that your priority. OK. Every business wants the sale, of course, but the mistake they, people do not realize and put together, even though it is really simple, it’s easy to lose track of is a sale only happens after a relationship and trust is developed a genuine relationship and genuine trust and trust can take a little bit of time. So this first episode in this series is for you to pause and ask yourself, have I gotten lost in the goal of making sales and forgotten the pathway to get there is relationships and the why behind everything that we do is to build relationships. And so how do I bring that into my marketing more? How do I bring that into the way that I speak about my, to my customers, to my leads to my audience? How do I bring that in the experience I create? How do I bring that in the way I talk about them? Because I can guarantee you if you’re sitting there and going well, I just can’t stand all these people who just want something for free and they never buy my thing. Check yourself on that because that’s not the way you’re going to talk about. The people who are going to potentially buy your product or service, right? Like that’s not the energy you want to put out. And so I understand that people put a ton into their business, but if people aren’t buying, nobody’s buying, there’s a gap with the way you’re talking to your audience or the experience you’re in the relationship you’re creating. Otherwise, just understand it is again normal for 95% of a group of an audience or leads to not convert right away. And that doesn’t mean you write them off. It doesn’t mean you’re like, well, I gotta go find more. There’s so much opportunity in that 95% that we miss out on. All right. All right, everybody, that is episode one of this series and again, there’s going to be five and they are going to come out every day for the next, I guess, four days after this and each one is going to be a really core foundational marketing principle. That is true in all of your business forever. No matter what happens, no matter what changes it is going to serve to give you really good reminders that you can’t afford to forget in your marketing but are so easily forgotten. And it’s ok if you listen to this and you’re like, shoot, I am somebody who said that about my audience or I am somebody who has forgotten that relationships are no strings attached. It’s totally ok if you’ve done that because we’ve all been there. And I think unfortunately, a lot of the industry kind of pushes us in that direction because they make us believe that business and marketing is like these quick wins overnight successes. And so when you’re not getting that, you’re frustrated and that’s a result of you being frustrated. And so this is not my judgment towards you. If you are at all in that place, it is an opportunity for you to pause and reflect and make some shifts and changes. You can get back on track with the relationships being the priority. All right, everybody. I will be back tomorrow. Thanks so much for tuning in.