Tag: social media
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New Release: The Entrefluential Life Podcast, Episode 26: How to Identify Shoppers With the Best Long-Term Value
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The Entrefluential Life, Episode (lwith Mystery Guest (Giselle Thayer) Now Available
Got a 2022 Marketing Plan?
It’s a New Year, Time for a New Marketing Plan.
I have developed the habit of starting the year off by taking a step back to see the Big Picture 🖼 of what it is that I want to accomplish for the year. What it looks like for me in 2022 is a guy playing 7 chess ♟ games at the same time: real estate investor; real estate consultant; real estate brokerage owner; writer/marketer; lawyer; filmmaker; and musician. That’s a lot to juggle! 🤹♂️
When planning for your year ahead, do you find it best to compartmentalize each project?
I do! 🗂 So, this happened a couple days ago…
The heading says “business plan” but it’s really a top-down view of my marketing plan. Here’s how it works.
Start at the Top!
Rather than do what the others are doing, starting at the bottom of the pyramid and working their way up, I’ve taken the advice of one of my new quasi-mentors, Kathryn Porritt of Business Bravery to start at the top!
1. Top-of-Funnel Prospecting:
For me, the top-of-the-funnel is comprised of two types of ideal clients: platinum clients (those who own businesses and earn over $1MM per year) and premium clients (those who have salaried positions, usually at the c-suite, and earn between $200K to $999,999 per year).
Q: How Do I Reach Them?
The answer is multi-channel marketing. This includes:
- Direct mail,
- Social media ads,
- Custom FB audience (OWL + Batchskiptrace + RPR),
- CrunchBase,
- SunBiz.org (FL business owner),
- SBA.gov (National business owner search),
- Branding ads,
- Press releases (PRNewswire), and
- Book tours
2. Middle-of-Funnel Prospecting:
This is akin to a database of your standard clientele (income < $200K per year). You’ll be able to reach them using Omni-present Marketing as well, but using different media and channels. Here’s a sample:
- YouTube videos,
- Udemy courses,
- Kajabi courses,
- Email list,
- Paid traffic on fiverr,
- Publishing one book a year,
- 365 days of blog posts,
- Podcast,
- TV show,
- Seminars & webinars,
- Instructor courses live,
- Business cards and brochures,
- Booths at trade shows and association conferences,
- Booths at arts & crafts festivals,
- Sponsorship branding,
- Pop-up kiosks at the mall,
- Direct mail (postcards) campaign,
- Brand advertisement at the movies,
- Hotel magazine ads,
- Airline magazine ads, and
- Local and National real estate investor ads.
3. Bottom-of-Funnel Prospecting:
Since we’ve already covered everyone using income bracketing, let’s just say that anyone who has not yet been exposed to your brand (aka Cold Traffic) is, by default, within this container. The objective here is to ✈️ taxi all cold leads onto your Brand RAMP (read Professional Services Marketing by Shultz and Doerr) so that all prospects will recognize, articulate, memorize, and prefer your products and/or services. 🛫
Over to you. What does your marketing plan for 2022 look like? Does any of this resonate with you? Chime in! 🛎
Cheers!
John
Frequency or Frequency?
How are you showing up to your sphere of influence (SOI) and potential clients? Are you tuning in to their frequency?
In this context, frequency is decibel of sound that your audience (SOI & prospects) listens in?
Are you communicating to your audience with frequency?
In this context, frequency is defined as the number of times you show up and communicate.
For the former, there is a pre-requisite that you know how your audience prefers to communicate about your subject matter. You can research the answer to this query by going to Quora or Reddit to see what questions and answers are shared around your subject matter. (That’s the easiest method.) Alternatively, you could conduct surveys to a random sampling of your audience to determine their communication styles & preferences. With this background research completed, you’ll be able to tune in to their frequency and get your messages across effectively! 📡
As for the latter, the level of frequency in which you need to show up is dependent on the level of noise surrounding your audience. In our Social media age, you will need to show up more often in order to be seen by your audience. Traditionally, the rule of thumb was market to your audience seven times. 7️⃣➕
Today, because of the high quantity of content distribution, you should be showing up about 20 times per prospect. 2️⃣0️⃣➕
You may think that 20 times seems like a lot, because it is a lot, and I may not sit with you well to communicate with one person 20 times on one social media platform. I think the same way too. The good news is that you can mix up those 20 messages over multiple social media platforms so that you don’t come across as desperate or pushy. So let’s say you shop for times on Facebook, four times on Instagram, four times on LinkedIn, four times on YouTube, and four times on Twitter. Now you have made 20 contacts with your audience over 5 channels – not too shabby!
Question: what do I say 20 times?
I’m glad you asked! Use the F.O.R.D. method (family, occupation, recreation, dreams). Spread your communication out so that you communicate four times per day.
Start With a Post that Talks About Your Family.
Share an activity that you just did or will do together. People know, like, and trust (KLT) other people who are similar to themselves, so you can earn cool points if you happen to be engaging in similar family activities as your audience and their families. 💁♂️🤱💇♀️🤷♂️
Make Your Next Post About Your Occupation.
We all know that there are good days and bad days at work. Sharing your ups and downs humanize you and makes you more relatable to your audience, just don’t bash anyone from your workplace because you might have a boomerang come back at you. You can vent while being civil. And if you are venting, ask your audience for advice! People love to help other people that are facing similar challenges that they have gone through themselves, it is in our human nature to do so. 🏢 🤫😩😮😬
Write Your Third Post About Recreational Activities.
When was the last time you and your family had a picnic in the park? If you haven’t done this in a while, I recommend that you pack a bag or picnic basket (are those still a thing?), a blanket large enough to provide space for everyone in your family, f&b, and perhaps a good book to read together. Snap a photo and share it! 👨👩👧 📸
Lastly, End Your Posting Day by Talking About Your Dreams (or Your Audiences’ Dreams)!
What are your plans for the future? What plans does your audience have that you can help them achieve? People love to dream about the life they want, but seldom do they write it down and reverse engineer a path to achieve their desires. You can serve them well here.
Q: But When Should I Post?
Let’s follow the KISS method (keep it simple, silly). All of us pretty much start our days between 6 and 10 a.m., so let’s start posting in 4 hour increments (frequency) beginning at 8 a.m.!
8️⃣AM➕1️⃣2️⃣PM➕4️⃣PM➕8️⃣PM
In closing, knowing the frequency at which your audience communicates 🗣👂 and communicating with frequency 🗣✖️4️⃣, using the 🚘 F.O.R.D. Method, across multiple social media channels 🎙 📺 🖥 📲 will provide you with the quality, quantity, and variety sufficient enough to break through the 🚪 barrier of noise (other people’s messages) to get your communications heard by your intended recipients. 👏 🤩 🥰
Charitable Giving Can Grow Your Social Media Channels and Increase Your Revenue!
I just finished reading a case study about the following pizza co. who’s earning more dough by being a benefactor to charities (sorry for the blatant pun.) 😚
Here’s What They’re Doing:
i Fratelli promotes their charitable giving weekly using social media, allowing residents surrounding their 10 corporate-owned and 5 franchise stores to vote from a selection of local NPOs, churches, and high school booster clubs as the beneficiaries – on any given day, 15% of a stores sales are contributed to a worthy cause. More than 100 charities have benefits since 2016.
The Results?
In the first quarter of their charity campaign, the pizza restaurant chain tripled their Facebook impressions, grew their retweets by a whopping 5X, and earned a 300% ROI in sales!
Here’s How They Do It:
- Uses influencers to share the story
- Cross-promotes posts on FB, IG, T, and blog
- 1 in-house team member spends 20 hours/wk on content creation (4-5 posts/wk)
- Uses Google Analytics to monitor PPC AdWords campaign
- Occasionally uses FB Ads campaign to promote a specific sweepstakes or event (less than $500 spent in total)
- Targets the organization’s supporters when promoting a fundraiser to ensure they reach the right audience
- Tags the Convention & Visitors Bureau on “DoughNation” posts so it gets retweeted to their followers
The Conclusion?
Charitable giving bolsters your biz’s positive brand image, increases sales, and provided an opportunity for viral sharing which translates to free marketing exposure (wider reach).
Action Steps:
- Consider what charities you can align your business with
- Capitalize on post shares and retweets with allies such as the chamber of commerce, the visitor’s bureau, and other civic-business entities
- Allocate your social media charitable marketing tasks to an in-house marketer or outsource to a reputable media company
Want more info? Here are some stats on the impact of charitable giving in 2019.
How to Define Your Target Client Avatar: A “Persona” Deep Dive
Some time ago I had the privilege of speaking with a former director of marketing of a condo conversion in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The gentleman had been responsible for driving sales for this project during the pre-recession boom, and back then anything superior to a cardboard box was flying off the market like a SpaceX rocket headed towards the International Space Station in 2020.
I remember seeing lines of buyers waiting to get into a new pre-construction development sales office to buy a condo or single family residence similar to what you may have seen outside of a popular night club or at an Apple store the morning of the release of a new iPhone!
Even with all of the fast equity buildup hype, developer sales still had lots of competition and I was very curious to know how this marketing pro ran his customer targeting to optimize sales. Here’s the “Aha!” result I got from his answer: market segmentation!
Start With Building Your Buckets: Market Segmentation
The former marketing director told me that he identified 20 types of potential buyers – that’s 20 different client avatars – and created a landing page with copy and graphics that specifically spoke to the wants and needs of each customer segment. Now, I was not a novice about market segmentation. During grad school, I took a feasibility studies class on hotel development and we segmented our prospective hotel guests into three groups: business class, government, and travel/leisure. But this was way beyond that! To identify 20 types of buyers is hyper-focused, granular research (and a lot of work!)
I LOVE IT!
So, the next obvious question should be, “where do I begin?”Fortunately, you’re reading this article and I’m about to guide you through the marketing segmentation forest!
5 Ways to Segment Your Target Market:
- Demographics (age, race, gender, marital status, income, education)
- Geographics (location specificity)
- Psychographics (Lifestyle)
- Purchasing Behaviors (by life stages)
- Brand Loyalty (Affinity)
Disclaimer: This segmentation is not intended to redline or dissociate any class of persons, particularly U.S. federally protected classes, from being presented with an opportunity to purchase your goods or services via your marketing efforts. Rather, you should market to all classes using communication skills that speak to each class in a way that resonates with them while accomplishing your marketing objectives (making sales). I would not travel to France and expect the wonderful residents there to speak in English to me. In point of fact, while studying abroad there, I tried to speak the little French I knew at every encounter. C’est mon plaisir!
You can use these 5 marketing segments as “characteristics of your client avatars.”
For instance, you can start defining a client avatar as: male, 25-30, 4-year degree, mid-level professional, married with children, $75k-$100k salary, lives in Miami, works from home, wants to home school his children, needs two extra rooms, one for a home office and another for home schooling, drives luxury vehicle, enjoys smooth jazz, fine European wines from Total Wine, follows Jane Monheit, Emilie Claire-Barlow, and Sophie Milman (my personal favorite jazz singers), and enjoys outdoor recreational activities that include hiking and paddle boarding. Websites visited include Pottery Barn, Ashley Home Furniture, Toll Brothers Homes, and Lennar Homes. Favorite clothing includes Nautica and Polo by Ralph Lauren. (Okay, so I’m borrowing my own personal characteristics – you gotta start somewhere!) 🤷🏻♂️
So there you have it, we just defined ONE client avatar; 19 more to go. 😉
After you go through the tedious process of defining your client avatar…🛑 (hold the phone! Isn’t there an easier way to get this task done?! Yes, there is. You need 20 profiles, so target yourself first, then ask 19 people that are different from you in 19 ways, but would still have a need or desire for your product or service, to target (identify) themselves, bada-bing! Get it done smarter, not harder.
Next, craft your marketing message to each client avatar with the following Q in mind: “How can I satisfy this person’s wants and needs”❓
Your answer should include a curated version of your brand message; the main content is about the features and benefits that your product or service offers, graphics and video that (1) showcases the value and benefits of the product or service in action, (2) includes testimonials that validate your authority and reliability, and (3) includes a call to action, all of which appeals to that one specific client avatar.
Third, find out where they are. each niche client avatar has social media platforms that they prefer to hang out in. Go there.
Fourth, give them what they want. Attract your client avatars by presenting information that either solves a problem or satisfies a desire. Your goal in the initial engagement stage is to drive them to your webpage, so present a compelling call to action that drives traffic to sales or a lead capture page.
In closing, getting hyper-focused on who you are trying to serve will improve your chances of getting higher conversions and the bottom line is the bottom line. 😉
John W. Tanner, J.D., M.S. 