04 May Marketing Basics: Foundation Strategies
Today, we’re going to talk about one of the most essential things that you must understand in business if you want to have any level of success whatsoever.Here’s the wonderful thing about this magical stuff; it doesn’t just apply to online or internet business, it applies to all areas of business: Big business, little business, medium business, mom and dad business, grandpa business, kid’s business. Whatever the business is, it applies to absolutely all of them, online or offline, even both. Here it is, the marketing basics, the 101 of how to be tremendously successful when it comes to making money in business.
I have to throw in a little disclaimer, I’d like to be able to take the credit and go, “Hey. This was my idea. I came up with this,” but I didn’t. I’ve known about it for absolutely years and I’m sure it’s been around generations before that. Coincidentally though, I did come across it again just 2 days ago while reading a newsletter from a good marketing buddy of mine, Marlon Sanders. Someone you should look up if you haven’t come across his training yet. Anyway, reading through this newsletter, I love the simplicity of the way that 101, the 1-2-3 or the A-B-C, as I’ve always called it, makes sense. Here’s what you need to do if you want to be successful in business. This is, as I’ve said, just a snapshot, it’s a real quick insight. Yes, there’s a lot more that we can do, but these things you must do if you want to be, what? Successful in business.
You Must TARGET The Right People!
Here’s the first thing: You must target the right people. Hello? We know that. We’ve been in business for a long time, haven’t we? Or we’ve been getting started. You know that. Target the right people. Interesting though. Why is it that we often do so much advertising and get so little result? Perhaps we’re not targeting the right people. Let’s say we get a result and people respond.
Then You BUILD Your List!
Number 2 is you have to build a list. Yeah, this is typical internet marketing stuff; have to build a list. I’ll qualify these things in just one moment. Then you have a list or your database. Then of course, you have to make offers to them to have them buy stuff from you; that’s where we make our money. It doesn’t happen in the beginning. Often, we spend in the beginning. In the middle, building that list. We got to communicate with them. It’s not until Number 3, when we make offers to them, that they respond and buy, and that’s how we make our money.
Knowing this then, and you’re probably doing this now, why doesn’t it work for most people? Here’s the simplicity in this. Here’s what I love about it, and what I saw and was reminded again in Marlon’s newsletter. When we target people, we must target the right people. Yes. Who are the right people? Here’s the thing; particularly online, we get lazy and we want to build ourselves a list, so we just send it out there, we create our squeeze page and we get traffic from all sorts of places, and we give away a free offer of some sort and we build ourselves a list. Are they the right people? What we must do if we want to be successful in business is not just target the right people, we must target buyers, potential buyers, people who will respond to our offers.
I have two good examples here: One from mine last week where I sat down with a mentoring client who happened to run an art gallery, which was situated in a coffee shop. She was struggling. She had a list and she was making offers and creating events, but not getting the results that she wanted because the people on her list were not buyers, they were wanters.
They were people who wanted her art, but weren’t in the position to buy her art.
Can you see the difference?
Marlon gave a brilliant example in his newsletter, also interesting enough, using the art gallery thing. He suggested that if you have an art gallery, perhaps at the local mall or shopping center, and you see that there’s a shop which is vacant for a week or two, you could make an offer and very cheaply you could rent that space or at least the window. Put up some of your art in there and then hire one or two people, good looking guys or good looking girls, to go out and survey people. Here’s the key; to survey people who might respond to buying art. How do you do that? You don’t choose the teenagers walking past, do you? You would target those people by demographics. You might target them, seriously, sorry to say, but in that face-to-face situation by how they dress. Certainly, by their age; 40+ plus, good idea. If you’ve got a piece of art which is, you know, worth a couple thousand dollars, chances are that your new mom and new dad pushing the baby pram around with the twins it who’ve just had kids don’t have a few grand to spend on art. They might want it, but they’re not able to buy it.
It’s the OFFER to the RIGHT PERSON that makes the difference!
That’s the difference between targeting people who want your stuff and targeting people who are prepared to buy your stuff. Marlon made a great suggestion: Create a special report on your squeeze page which was called ‘The Buyer’s Guide to . . .’ whatever it is that you’re offering. When you qualify people, you qualify them. Are they potential buyers? I said to my coaching client as we were sitting down, “When was the last time you surveyed these people?” “I’ve never done that.” “Okay. I suggest you do. What do you think you should ask them? ‘Have you ever purchased art before in your life, in the last 10 years, or whenever? Have you purchased art?” I love the stuff. I do creative arts at university, and I have purchased art. I’m a qualified potential customer for her business. If I had done all those things and just enjoyed the art, looking at it, going to galleries, but never bought, I’m not necessarily a potential buyer. I’m not going to respond to her offers. Does that make sense?
Which of course brings us then to Number 2: Building the list. We must build a list with potential responders, potential buyers. There are of course, many different ways to build lists: You can do them on Facebook, you can do them through Skype, you can do the email lists, the offline database, and if it’s her particular case, you want to mail offline to show some good photos and get people to open stuff. If you’re doing that kind of offline mail, you don’t want to use printed labels, and all of that kind of thing. I’m not here to talk about that today. Simply to build a list of qualified potential buyers, people who are more likely to respond to your offer.
We build lists; we build big lists, really, really fast with people who want free shit. It’s insane. You can’t build a business giving away free shit. It just ain’t going to happen.
Not just people who want free shit, all right? Sorry. But that’s the only way to put it. Here’s when most people fail, particularly in the online internet business world these days. We build lists; we build big lists, really, really fast with people who want free shit. It’s insane. You can’t build a business giving away free shit. It just ain’t going to happen. My suggestion to you is you look carefully at your list-building activities. Buyers, responders, people who are likely to purchase from you are a smaller number, which means you’ll have a smaller list, and that’s okay.
Here’s the thing; number 3: Making offers to these people. They must be offers which require a response; that’s the most important thing. “Here’s an offer.” No, not good enough. It’s, “Here’s an offer. Come and get it. Here’s a reason. Here’s a deadline. Here’s a special. Here’s a code. Here’s a something I’ve done for you, uniquely, to make this special in some way.”
We’re turning the marketing funnel a little bit sideways, not on its head; this isn’t brand new stuff. We’re turning it a little bit sideways, because we want to target people, but we only want to target people who would respond and potential buyers. Not just everyone who likes what? Yeah, that’s right. We don’t want them. What we do want is potential buyers; responders are those that we target. We build our list in a way that they want, not the way that we think; “I want to do email.” What if they don’t do email? What if they don’t like email? You’ve got to find out what they want. You build a list, a database of some sort, and then you make them offers; offers that they will respond to.
Let me just wrap this up very quickly. If you’re doing all of your marketing in the world, you’re targeting people, you’re getting all of the numbers, they’re coming onto your list, you’re making offers and nothing’s happening, chances are there’s a problem in that flow. Your marketing is just flat. Could be that your list is not made up of buyers, they just want things. We like free stuff. Could be that your list isn’t being delivered in a way that’s being received well enough. Could be that your offers are just appalling and not really special or unique in some way anyway. Could be you’re not making them often enough to train them that they need to respond to these things because they are limited. It’s a simple principle, Marketing 101, the 1-2-3, the A-B-C. Target people who are potential buyers, not just lookers. Build your lists, sub-lists, if you need to, a topic for another discussion. Then send offers to them that are highly-
related.
Last thought: How do you know which offers they are likely to respond to?
You ask them. Yeah, it’s that simple. You ask them what they want, and then you give it to them. All right. That’s today’s Marketing 101 lesson. I hope you’ve enjoyed that. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe here to my YouTube channel.
I look forward to talking to you again very shortly. Bye bye.
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