marketing strategy – Alphadog Success

How Your Ideal Client Saves Your Time And Money

Why is an Ideal Client important? One of the most fundamental aspects of your marketing, product development and business plan is knowing who your ideal client is. Without this knowledge, you won’t know how to write your content in a way that’s attractive to your clients, and you won’t be able to tailor your products or services to their unique needs. When I talk about content I mean everything that you develop for your clients or potential clients to draw them to you and help you solve the problems that they face in their everyday lives, so everything hinges on this. When you know who your ideal clients are, your client attraction efforts will become vastly more effective, because you’ll be able to pinpoint what they want, what challenges they have, where they’re looking for information about your industry, and what trends and mindsets influence the way they search for products and choose who to buy from. In this blog post, I’ll bust some myths about having ideal clients that cost businesses thousands of dollars each year, and I’ll tell you the nine things you need to know about your ideal client, as well as how to choose your ideal client if you aren’t sure who they are. Why some businesses avoid having ideal clients: One of the costliest myths that businesses fall for is the idea that they don’t need an ideal client. Some of their reasons seem sound, but they’re based on misconceptions about what clients want and how client attraction works. Here are two of the reasons why people fall into that trap: Reason 1: They’re afraid of driving clients away. If you could potentially target a wide range of different demographics, why would you want to alienate some of them by narrowing your niche? That’s a fear that many business owners have when they first start to consider identifying an ideal client. They believe that the wider the net they cast, the more clients they’ll draw in. Reason 2: Their product could be used by anyone. Some businesses could, in theory, serve almost any client under the sun. Life coaches who teach universal success principles that apply to anyone, chiropractors who could work on anyone who has a spine, and businesses that sell food are all examples of people with a very broad potential audience. If you’re in such an industry, why would you want to narrow your client base? Why not having an ideal client WILL cost you: If you share these concerns about having an ideal client, here are four truths about client attraction that should put your mind at ease: What’s attractive to one client won’t be attractive to others. People are the most inclined to make a purchase when your marketing speaks to their exact challenges and needs. When someone looks at your offer, they should think “Yes – that’s EXACTLY what I need! It’s like that product was made for me!” If you try to create and sell offerings that are meant to apply to everyone, there’s a good chance that they’ll be partly applicable to everyone, but ideal for no one. Your clients will look at your offer and think, “Some of that looks good, but a lot of it just doesn’t apply to me”. If someone is motivated enough that they’re actively looking to buy, the chances are good that they’re looking for something in specific. An offer that’s only a partial match, or that seems to be designed with a different demographic in mind, will be rejected. One excellent example I’ve heard a few times is that of a pharmacy. If you try to sell an “everything pill”, will anybody trust it enough to buy it? Probably not – and even if they did, there’s a good chance that they wouldn’t think to look for it. If you have a headache, the chances are good that you’re looking for a pill designed to treat headaches. Unless you were already aware of the “everything pill” before your search began, it probably won’t even occur to you to look for it. You could walk right past it and not even register it. When you know exactly who your clients are, what they need, and what they struggle with, you’ll be able to create products and marketing materials that are exactly what they’re looking for, and you can learn their language and phrase your marketing in ways that appeal strongly to them. You don’t want to waste your time and budget on people who are less inclined to buy. Your ideal clients aren’t the ONLY people who will buy from you, but they are the people who are the most likely to make a purchase. If you were fishing, would you cast your line or drop your net repeatedly in random parts of the lake, or would you specifically target the areas where you knew you’d catch the most fish? Would you use bait or a lure that’s good for all kinds of fish, or the ones that will attract the specific type of fish you’re looking to catch? The same principle applies to marketing. You’ll never have the time and budget to reach ALL the possible demographics at once, so you should spend that time and money on the demographic that needs and wants your product the most, and that’s the most likely to make a purchase. You don’t WANT to attract every type of client. Not every client is a good one, especially if you’re selling services as opposed to products. If you’re going to have to spend any amount of time working with a client, you don’t want to attract the kind of people who are lukewarm about your services, and who will drag their feet, complain, nitpick, make unreasonable demands, hamper your efforts, and prove impossible to please. You also don’t want to attract people who aren’t able to get the full benefit from your offering. If something outside of your control will prevent you from getting

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8 Important Tasks for One Person Marketing Teams

You could easily succeed if you had a dedicated team, a million-dollar marketing budget, and 48 hours in a day. But that’s not how real life works. Especially for a new entrepreneur or one-person marketing team. It’s easy to get into the “if only” mindset when you’re the only employee/marketer at your company. But if you want to grow your business, it’s important to get solution-oriented. Try to focus on getting the biggest ROI from every marketing activity you have the time and resources to execute. To help you out – I’ve compiled eight incredibly important marketing activities that a one-man or one-woman team can execute that will start moving key metrics. No more dilly dallying around with things that don’t move the needle. 1) Set strategic and measurable marketing goals. Before you start posting, sending emails or scheduling tweets, be sure you’ve properly set goals for your marketing. Think of your marketing like a road trip. You wouldn’t start driving until you’ve found your destination, and mapped out the most effective route to get there. In the same way, you should always make sure your activities and goals help you drive your business forward. You wouldn’t want a goal of converting more leads into customers if you aren’t converting visitors into leads already. You can’t pull people through the funnel until you’ve gotten them there in the first place. And of course, ensure the goals you set are measurable. For instance, if your goal is to increase visitor-to-lead conversion rate, think about whether you have the tools in place to measure whether you’re doing that. If you need help determining which goals are right for your business, check out my guide to setting SMART goals. 2) Establish exactly who your target audience is. With only so much time in the day to devote to marketing, you want to make sure that every piece of content you produce (ebook, landing page, blog post, or email) is on-target and effective. Wouldn’t it be frustrating to spend a ton of time creating content that falls on deaf ears? The best way to guard against wasting your time creating content is to create and use buyer personas/ideal client/customer avatar/etc. If you’re not familiar with buyer personas, they’re models for what your ideal customers are like. A persona includes information such as what sort of person they are (education, income level, or job, for example) as well as what’s important to them (saving time or money, for example). If you haven’t developed them yet, or you think you could put a little more elbow grease into ones you already have, here’s a free checklist to help you nail down your market research and target audience. If you put together buyer personas now, and then create every piece of content with a persona in mind, your content will work harder for you — in fact, you may find persona-driven content results in your audience marketing your content for you! 3) Focus on the right social media platforms. Now that we have some important baselines established that will make your subsequent marketing efforts pack a more powerful punch, let’s figure out the right places to spend your time (so it’s not wasted in the wrong ones). And if there’s one area rife with opportunities for misspent time, it’s on social media. It’s tempting to try to be on all of the social media platforms because everyone else is doing it, and it feels like that’s what good marketers do. Fortunately for you, they are most definitely wrong. Instead of wasting your time engaging on social networks that won’t help you achieve your SMART goals, strategically choose one or two platforms to be on and knock them out of the park. To find out which social networks you should spend your time on, check out your analytics. In your sources report Identify which social networks are already sending you the most traffic, and then capitalize on them. If you have closed-loop analytics, I also recommend drilling down further to see which networks are sending you the most leads and customers. Have access to all of this information will help you make better decisions on which social networks you spend your marketing time. You may find that a top social network for you isn’t Facebook or Twitter, but rather a niche social network specific to your industry. Instead of wasting time on a big social network because it’s something you’re just “supposed” to do, switch your efforts to social networks that will pay off big time for your business. 4) Schedule out social media posts/updates. Now that you know where to spend your time on social media, let’s make your time spent on it both efficient, and effective. First, let’s talk about scheduling your content in advance. Instead of freaking out every day trying to find something amazing to post to social media, sit down once a week to think of all of the subsequent week’s social media content. While you may have a couple things come up that warrant posting – like breaking industry news, for example – bucketing your time like this will make you more efficient. (platform itself, buffer, later, hootsuite, etc.) Alright, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s make your time on social media more effective by thinking about the best times of day to publish your content. I encourage you to look for timing trends for your own social media presences. 5) Create evergreen content to reap short and long term benefits. Since content creation can get pretty time consuming, focus on creating evergreen content – content that stays relevant over a long period of time — to pack the biggest punch. This type of content pays for itself over and over again. Because it’s not time-sensitive, search engines will continue to drive traffic to evergreen posts, helping to drive leads long after you hit publish. If you’re having trouble finding an evergreen topic to write about on your company’s

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Does Anyone Know Who The REAL YOU Is Online?

There’s thousands of individuals and companies marketing themselves out there – and you are one of them… So, here is my question for the day: Who are you? Because as you can see, when you search through products, people, and services online – mediocrity and conformity is already 99% of everyone else’s day. Not to sound harsh, but most people just follow what is trending or what is hot, and while that may be an awesome way to make some quick money – regarding a long-term and life purpose – it is not exactly fulfilling, is it? It is just a means to an end if we think about it that way, and not sustainable. But you probably started online to make money – that is a given. You also probably wanted to have the flexibility and freedom it brings. Internet marketing has great potential to earn a large amount of money in a short amount of time. It’s a great way to learn. Most times, it is easier than your best friend’s 9-5 job, isn’t it? However, when we skip from one affiliate product to another or try to promote several things aimlessly with no real long-term vision or lifestyle design goals, we are not really building a future for ourselves overall… And as human beings, our long-term goal always stretches beyond money. In fact, as we get older, it is much more about – How can you serve and add value? How can you discover your life’s purpose? What really makes you happy? Who are you? The most difficult part in life is to really discover who you are (you: not the kid of your parents, not the wife of your husband, not the student in school, not what society thinks about you or expects from you, etc.). Once we go away and discover the answer to that – to what we really want from life, we can then apply our knowledge of who we really are to what we really enjoy doing – and in marketing terms – that can also bring money to the table. That’s where the start is. Trust me: Do what you love and what adds value in your personal opinion –and the money will follow. Picking a job or service or product is not the first thing you need to do – not yet anyway. Discovering yourself is the starting point. There is nothing before that point. The only other thing is what others are and what your position is in THEIR circles – not what your position is in YOUR life. Take a break and make a list. List all of the things you loved as a child that you have forgotten about, but still like doing. Then name five strengths you have in business and by nature. Also list five weaknesses. After a while, you will start to see a pattern – things you are good at and that you can offer. There is a reason you have the specific skills that you do; you are unique in these delivery skills and traits. Focus on what you LOVE to do and what you are good at and live from that end first before you decide what path to take. You are here for a reason. What is it? Who are you really? “You did not come into this world; you came out of it. Like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.” – Alan Watts

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Grow Your Biz Faster With Focused Efforts

How To Grow Your Business While Doing Less By Working Smarter And Focusing Your Efforts

I get it…you’ve been working hard to grow your business…but for some reason you aren’t seeing the results you were expecting. But don’t worry, it happens to the best of us, it’s all part of the learning and growth process. After talking to numerous business owners over the last few years I realized most of them were facing a handful of very similar issues. Below is a quick outline of exactly what I tell clients. How to grow your business without adding hours of additional work to your already busy schedule! Review all the products or services that have brought in profits and will grow your business. Make a list of everything your offer or would like to offer. (If you’re brand new, then this will be something you can revisit when you have more numbers to work with.) Find the one or two core services (If you are in e-comm then you can get away with 5-10 products). Separate the ones that produced the best profits and focus all of your effort on selling more of those. SAY NO to anything that does not fall under those core products and services. This allows you to control your time and scale your business with more predictability and profitability. STOP following fake idols and countless guru’s. Find a real mentor, join a mastermind group, and pay the money to get into a REAL course. Outsource the time-consuming work so that you can focus on income-producing activities and being the best at what you do. If you think you’re getting all you need from YouTube videos and other free trainings, you are sadly mistaken. People come to you for your expertise or for the products you sell. It’s NOT because you were the person doing the marketing. Find someone that can help with your marketing and enlist them for training or services. Stop listening to all the noise. Stop chasing shiny objects. Focus your ad dollars on things that actually provide a return. If you’re unable to track a client’s engagement with your business from click to customer, then that’s your first priority. You should think twice before making any additional investments until that’s managed. Start with Google Ads then follow up with a social media campaign. According to the National Sales Executive Association, Very few people (≅ 2%) will actually purchase a product the first time they see an offer. The vast majority of them, ≅ 80%, will purchase between the 5th and 11th touch. This makes follow up and retargeting crucial aspects of your marketing campaign. Visitors that come from Google PPC campaigns are typically more responsive to social retargeting campaigns. They are more likely to become customers after viewing additional relevant ads/content on another platform. Data and Tracking are THE most important parts to grow your business effectively. If you do not understand what you are looking at and how to read the reports that are given to you, it’s a sure way to lose money. Make sure you understand which numbers are important to pay attention to, and how to find them. If you are using an omnichannel marketing strategy, then you will need to know exactly who came from where. This was you’ll understand which campaigns are successful and which you can do without. This may mean creating a custom tracking URL for each platform or campaign. Each type of business will have different performance indicators (KPI). Understanding what is essential to your business will help dictate how and where you choose to grow your business. Treat your social platforms like a job. Unless your business requires you to be on social media, 24/7 (it almost always doesn’t) use it only when you need to and then get off. Don’t worry about all the NOISE happening on social because it is just that…NOISE. You don’t need to field every reaction or comment as it comes in. If you want to use social media for your business, come up with a plan and stick to it. In general, I tell companies to start posting three times a week and gradually work their way up to everyday. Make sure the content is of high quality and features your core products or services. Most small businesses see success by posting original, authentic content and using up to 30 relevant hashtags (where applicable). YOU DON’T NEED A MILLION FOLLOWERS to be successful, do not buy into the cheap follower programs or software. Social platforms are getting smarter, and they WILL suspend your account for utilizing shady tactics. Plus, it’s much better to have fewer, more engaging followers than a bunch of empty numbers. Do you believe that YOU are why you can’t grow your business? Throughout the day the average person thinks over 50,000 thoughts, including good and bad, empowering and limiting. It is natural to doubt yourself, especially if you own or operate your own business. Sometimes you don’t see the progress because you are in the thick of it, or you lose track of your goals because life happens, and that’s normal! Creating confidence and finding your ability to overcome self-doubt happens gradually over time; there is no magic pill. What does help is controlling your mindset, managing your mental state, working with a coach, having a proven process, and keeping track of your goals. Having a proven process will keep you on task regardless of how you feel about yourself and your abilities. Writing down your goals and creating check-in’s is how you begin that accountability process. As you see yourself accomplishing and checking off goals, the fear of not being good enough goes away and the motivation to continue increases. So now I guess you are thinking, “Drew, this is great… but, what are my next steps?” First, as I mentioned above, you need to focus your efforts, so start by finding the most profitable products or services you offer. Having more offers will not grow your business. Second, choose no more than 2 subject matter

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