Marketing with a Singular Focus

“I’ve been in business for X number years. I’ve got a podcast. I’ve done over a hundred episodes. I have a blog. I’m posting on social media. I’m super consistent. And from the outside and from all the feedback that I get, everyone thinks that I’m like wildly successful….. but the reality is, I’m not sure if I’m going to get three clients this month, and three clients are what I need to make to make money.”

I saw this post by a woman who was talking about her business in a Facebook group and wished I had saved it, because it is giving me a lot of content and I would love to just give some feedback!

She was obviously writing this out of frustration, but also just partially sharing her journey. Comments like,  “Well, it sounds like you have a money mindset issue”, or “It sounds like you’ve got some mindset stuff going on that I could help you address”, as a strategist, I found them very frustrating. There are areas where people have mindset blocks, but everyone keeps going to these mindset blocks first, rather than looking if she has a strategy in place that is working.

I clicked into all the links that she had shared and was looking at her marketing. She’s doing a decent job. Is super consistent, which is very hard for most people. However, there were leaks and holes galore in what she was doing, and there was no clear path for clients to take to go from social media to her blog, to signing up for her email list, to becoming a client.

I didn’t even look at what she has going on with her list. I just looked at the front end of things. 

As an example, she would post on social media, without any clear call to action. Something like, “If this is something you need help with, this is what I do”. That’s not a clear call to action! And to be quite frank, people hate to be sold to, but they love to buy! Think about any time you go into a car dealership. Even if you know you’re in a desperate need of a car, you will literally say to the car salesman “No, I’m just looking”.

Her podcast was not clear. She was sharing multiple links to the different platforms where the podcast lives. iTunes link, Google link, and other multiple links in the post. She wasn’t actually driving traffic to her blog to then capture them and retarget them to then get them on her email list. No “join my Facebook group, join my email list” said at the end of the podcast. A clearly defined client journey was missing as well. 

What really shocked me was that half the comments were, “Hey, I feel the same way,” and the other half were, “Well, this is a mindset issue.” Not one person mentioned that it could potentially be the strategy or that she was not clear in her marketing.

One common goal

Marketing isn’t linear! It is not “Do this thing and then X will automatically happen” Marketing is an ecosystem! 

Online business is an ecosystem and you have to feed and nurture that ecosystem all towards one common goal. You have to always be working towards this one common goal so that you can then continue to expand that ecosystem out.

Let’s take a podcast for example. You want to get your people on the podcast to subscribe to the podcast. Once they’re subscribed to the podcast, your next step is for them to sign up for your email list or to share an episode. The ultimate goal of a podcast listener is to get them on your email list so that they’re in the ecosystem that you own in your business.

Let’s face it. Podcasts can get shut down. Facebook can get shut down. Instagram can get shut down. You don’t own those platforms. You don’t own those ecosystems. So the one thing that you do own in the online space is the email address. You have X number of people on your email list. That is a hard number.

If you don’t understand what your client journey is and what the goal is that you’re always working towards, then marketing your efforts can become very fragmented. When your efforts become very fragmented, you can be doing everything right and still get no results. You can be super consistent, you can have everything in place and just not get results because,

1. 1. 1. you don’t have a clear next step for the client to take, 
      2. you don’t have a clear path and a clear journey of how they can move from a person who’s just consuming your content to a raving fan, to client, to VIP client 
      3. you don’t have a process with which that happens inside of your ecosystem.

When your marketing is fragmented, you’re also not always driving traffic towards a singular goal. This, it’s a struggle for me because I see it over and over. I see people get so frustrated and end up quitting in business because they were just given bad advice. A lot of times people would be like, “Oh, launch this program for this avatar and launch this other program for this other avatar that’s a little bit further along, and do all these things.” Any time you’re launching a product or a program that is not along the client journey that you are serving, you’re going to be met with resistance, because ultimately, you’re starting from square one again in terms of this marketing with a singular focus to build an ecosystem.

That’s not to say you’re not going to get ancillary stuff. I have a lot of people that come to me who are also marketers that want support. That’s just a natural fit, but I don’t market to marketers. My goal is online entrepreneurs. People who want to go from trading dollars for hours to being able to create a business that is scalable and leveraged.

That fragmented approach to your marketing is literally going to put you out of business. 

Going back to the FB post from this woman, there were lots of dead ends. 

1. 1. 1. She has many ways in which people could go and consume her content, but if they wanted to take a next step with her, it ultimately wasn’t very clear on what they should do. 
      2. A clear Call to Action is missing in her marketing. No sign up for the email list or to book a call or a “Here’s how you can work with me”. There was no direct sales conversation. There was a very passive sales conversation that made me feel, as a user, I was being sold to, which you’re going to shut down because people hate to be sold to, but they love to buy. You have to make sure that you have that feeling of this is excitement. They get to buy. It’s exciting. 

I bring this up because I think that there are so many people that have this issue in their marketing. They over commit themselves to the number of things that they’re going to do. Instead of doing their podcast really well, they’re taking their podcast, putting it on YouTube, on Facebook Live etc…, but they’re only promoting it one time and quite frankly, not doing it very well. This way they are not getting people to go to that next step, whatever that next step is.

A client of mine, who launched a podcast this week and also recorded the podcast on Zoom to have a video version of it. He was trying to plug the podcast, the YouTube, the description, the links, all that on his blog. In addition to all of that he was also saying, “Oh, I’m also going to share the YouTube link with the guests so that they can pick which link they want to share.” I had to stop him! “Let’s slow down for a second because what is the goal here?” 

What is the goal? Which one of these pieces of content do you want your ideal client to consume? Where do you want them to consume that? Because a podcast is its own ecosystem. YouTube is its own ecosystem. 

When you’re thinking about your marketing, you have to be clear of what your goal is. Where is my ideal client hanging out? This client of mine mentioned, “Well, I was doing a podcast interview yesterday and the client had some great visuals.” My response to that was “Well, that’s awesome, but it’s a podcast! You’re going to have to explain those and then put them in there.”  My client continued, “Yeah, but I want to be able to share that!” and this and that and the other. I asked him “Well, is that an exception or is that a rule? Because, if that’s what happens every time, then the focus should be on YouTube, not the podcast, or is that just an exception that happened?”

Oftentimes I think, we are marketing ourselves to the exception that happens in business instead of the rule which helps us keep a singular focus in business. 

I share both of these examples because they are wildly different, but also extremely similar. And this is a real issue in the online space because it happens all the time.

When you’re thinking about your marketing, you have to market in such a way that you’re always running it through the lens of is this moving my ideal client closer? Is this moving a prospect closer to becoming a client? It’s all about these micro steps that you take along the way.

Let’s look at the podcast again. Say your ideal client 

1. 1. 1. finds your podcast on social media
      2. clicks through to your blog and hits the subscribe on iTunes button
      3. Now you are in their ear to listen to the podcast whenever they log into the podcasting. 
      4. Once they’re listening to the podcast, you then want them to sign up for your email list.

So it’s all these little baby micro steps that you want them to take along the way to continue to commit to you and this client journey. 

But when your focus is fragmented and with dead ends and left-hand turns, or the person is just confused, they’re not going to move forward in their client journey. Be it because they’re confused or because it’s not clear. But the clearer and simpler you can make that path to, “Hey, here’s the goal”, the faster you’re going to grow your business.

The more streamlined you do that, so not making lots of exceptions to how you do certain things, because people become accustomed to expecting a blog to look a certain way or expecting it to arrive on a certain day or expecting certain things to happen, and the more you can meet them where they’re at with the problems that they know that they have, the faster you’re going to be able to build that ecosystem of your own.

The goal is always to get them into your ecosystem with another micro commitment to that next step. 

It’s a huge issue in marketing today because everything is integrated. So when you think about Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, podcasts, YouTube, or whatever platform, they’re each their own ecosystem. On some of these platforms, you can retarget people, but ultimately, you’re at the hands of whatever that ecosystem allows you to do.

Getting those micro-commitments to get them into your own ecosystem where you can

• • • nurture them and push them to that next step, 
    • get them into that next funnel, 
    • get them to experience that next thing with you

that’s how you’re going to grow your business and that’s how you’re going to succeed, with a clearly defined path where there’s not four or five or six different choices. Because the more choices that you give them, the more confusing that it’s going to be for them to move forward. 

It’s all about creating the path of least resistance and making it as simple as possible so that prospects can enjoy the buying process from you and be excited to take out their credit card and pay you.

So, think about where you can simplify in your marketing? Are you trying to post on too many networks and you’re not doing it or any of them well? Are you over committed in terms of the amount of macro content that you’re making? Where are places you can pull back a little so that you can actually do a better job in terms of content delivery that you are providing? How can you create the path of least resistance with the least amount of choices and the least amount of variables to get somebody to go from prospect to client? 

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