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in this episode I'm going to teach you four principles of marketing strategy that when applied will immediately improve the results of all of your marketing campaigns if you want to learn how to truly get better results from your marketing then you're gonna need to tune out disregard and pretty much ignore 90% of what's being pushed online today and instead focus on the proven marketing fundamentals that actually drive real business results and that aren't based on the latest hacks or tricks or tactics but are instead rooted in deep foundational marketing principles and that's why in this episode I'm gonna be breaking down four principles of marketing strategy so you can start getting better results right now let's get to it hey there my name is Adam Earhart marketing strategist and welcome to the marketing show the biggest problem with marketing today is that it's overwhelming so many different tactics and strategies and tools and software to try it's hard to know where to even get started and this is a shame because at the end of the day marketing really isn't that complicated it's really just communicating value to your customers in order to position your product or business or service as the logical and best solution to the problems that they're going through but with everybody screaming at you to try this social media network or try this piece of software or try this new funnel or this new hack or whatever it is it's easy to see that things can get way over complicated and way confusing and way overwhelming way too quickly and when all of these different strategies and tactics are getting thrown at you with posting on this social media network or using this piece of software or this tool or whatever it is well it's easy to see why so many people get stalled or stuck and really have nowhere to go the problem with all of that is that's really superficial marketing it's just kind of the final piece of the puzzle when really what's actually gonna deliver those solid business results that you're hopefully after are the proven marketing fundamental concepts things that are based on consumer behavior and buyer psychology and basically all the deep-rooted stuff that hasn't really been here for decades if not hundreds of years after all we as humans well our species really hasn't changed that much in the last few hundred maybe even few thousand years we still try to avoid pain we still try to gain pleasure and it's marketing's job to help to bridge the gap from wherever your customers are right now to where they'd like to be so by being here now by watching this video you're gaining a significant competitive advantage in your business and in your marketing in general because the principles that I'm going to be sharing with you are the exact same ones that we use inside the industry and are used by the top professionals in order to achieve those outstanding results so with all that said let's dive into principle number one which is alignment the way that I like to describe alignment is also market message media match which might be a little bit of an easier concept to grasp once we've unpacked it here for just a minute essentially what we're trying to do here is we're trying to figure out what we're trying to do who we're trying to do it for why we're doing it how will we even know that we're successful and essentially making sure that our marketing is accountable to the end objectives you see really determining the what you're doing who you're doing it for where you're gonna do it and the strategy behind him that's the hard part of marketing the how to do it the actual tactical implementation the mechanics of marketing that's kind of the easy part really a quick Google search they'll pretty much show you almost anything you need to know about how to make a post or how to run an ad or how to create a video anything like that but the strategy behind it the real deep understanding of your market and of your product and of the pains of your market and how you're uniquely positioned to solve it all of that high-level strategy stuff that's where things get a little more complicated and this is why it makes sense to take a step back and really make sure that you're being strategic about your marketing and that you have alignment across all of the different platforms and all the different channels and all the strategies you're using so let's unpack this piece by piece to really make sure that you've got it because it is an incredibly valuable exercise to go through any time you're running any kind of marketing at all and it all starts with market this is essentially the who the ideal target market the person that you're trying to sell or trying to market to the best way to really go out there and really determine and really isolate and really describe your ideal target market is creating something called an ideal customer avatar which is basically a fictional representation of a number of different characteristics that accurately describe the person that you're trying to market to these are gonna be things like their demographic details like age gender income occupation things like that their geographic details like what city state province country they live in and their psychographic details which is really all the head stuff like what are their attitudes their beliefs their organizations their affiliations basically everything that they think and feel and sometimes say your goal here is to really try to understand your ideal target market better than they even know themselves because when you do that's when you're able to create marketing that really resonates and really connect because you're going to be speaking their language alright so let's move on to the next part which is the message and this is the what essentially this is what you're going to be saying to them in order to make sure that it is resonating and the two are connecting with them the first thing that I want to make sure that you really understand when it comes to the message is a point that I call miracles and miseries their miracles are your ideal target markets wants and dreams and desires and basically everything that they're after and then their miseries are their fears and their frustrations and their nightmares and everything that they're trying to move away from your job as a marketer is to help them bridge the gap away from their miseries and towards their miracles ideally your business or your product or your service is that bridge that helps them get across the gap and moves them away from their pain and towards their end objective or whatever they're after the other thing here is when you're crafting your message you do need to come up with more than one kind of message because at any given market at any given time there's going to be different segments of the market some who are gonna be ready to buy right now and some who are gonna need a little more warming up a little more coaxing and who just may not be at the stage to buy right now but who will be buying later for this reason you want to make sure that you've got that direct offer also known as a hard offer that really goes out there and says exactly what you do who you do it for and why they should care as well as how they can take action right now but you also want to make sure you have a soft offer or a transitional offer for those people who aren't ready to buy right now this could be something like some educational content or a downloadable PDF or guide or blueprint or cheat sheet or a lead magnet basically that you can offer in exchange for their email address so you can follow up later when they may be ready to buy lastly when it comes to alignment we have the media and this is the where this is where so many people all start and this is a huge mistake right because if you don't have your market dialed in first you don't even know what you're gonna say it doesn't make any sense to go out there and pick whichever social media channel somebody's telling you is best when again you may be way out of alignment and the social media channel you might end up choosing just because of a piece of advice that you got could be completely wrong for your market and for your style this is why one of the worst pieces of advice when it comes to marketing is that you need to do everything and be everywhere because in reality your market they're not everywhere so why would you be wasting your time and energy and money on platforms or on channels where none of your target market is present or active on so the alternative the solution here is to first identify your ideal target market figure out what you're gonna say and then really figure out where they're spending their time online so you can position yourself there and pretty much ignore everything else when you set up your marketing this way when you follow the principle of alignment a number of really really good things start to happen number one is you're able to justify your decisions to others to yourself and really make sure that you're doing the right strategic moves the other is that it makes your marketing accountable makes you accountable to your marketing essentially you have to answer questions like why am I even doing this and why am i marketing there and is my target market even on this platform and what are the best messages to send them and when you start to ask yourself these questions a number of really great things start to happen including some answers that maybe well maybe we shouldn't even be there or maybe we should be over there instead maybe we shouldn't say that maybe we should say this instead and it forces you to be strategic and therefore you're gonna get better results alright so now that we've got alignment coverage let's move on to principle number two which is the strategy of preeminence now the strategy of preeminence was given to us by a gentleman named Jay Abraham who says that your goal should always be to try to become your customers most trusted advisor and this is such solid advice especially in the world of marketing where so many people are out there trying to sell and trying to take rather than trying to give first and then letting the relationship flow naturally from there you see when you adopt this principle this strategy of preeminence this goal of becoming your customers most trusted adviser someone they can go to and really rely on well a number of really good things start to happen including you naturally become a more trusted source you naturally become more of an authority in your field and you're able to do your marketing from a position of power and from value rather than from need and from kind of always won't look in to take from people probably no surprise that we don't like people who are needy and are always trying to take from us in fact I'm sure if you look back over your experience you can think of a couple people like that in your life who always take more than they give you and it's not a good feeling so don't do that with your marketing but by aiming to become your clients or your customers most trusted adviser and always acting in their best interest again it's just an incredibly powerful principle and has been one of my main keys to success over all these years in most of my early conversations with my clients I let them know right away that when we start working together I treat their businesses just like I treat my own and I can make sure that whenever I would do for my business is something I would do for theirs and if I wouldn't be willing to do it in my business I won't be willing to do it in there's another term for this is a fiduciary which is essentially a legal requirement to act in your customers best interest obviously being a fiduciary is not required not even mentioned in the marketing industry pretty much in the business industry at all so if you're going to take the contrary an approach of actually taking on that responsibility of really truly seeking to serve your customers best interest first and really doing what's best for them you really position yourself differently and make yourself far more valuable and far more rare another way of looking at this is that your marketing should be valuable in and of itself meaning that your marketing should provide value to your customers even if they never decide to buy from you this is one of the reasons I'm such a big proponent and advocate for things like content marketing where you get to go out there and educate or inspire or entertain or inform and essentially just give a ton of value to the market knowing that further down the line this will be reciprocated but definitely not anticipating or expecting anything in advance you always want to aim to give more than you take because as we've already covered here people can sense it they know when all you're after is trying to make a buck in return they can truly tell when someone's giving from a more thoughtful and more selfless point-of-view now if this is something that you're not currently doing or maybe it's come across your radar a couple times but you haven't fully adopted it my advice is to start slowly but start looking into educational based marketing also known as EBM and essentially what your goal here is to just teach your market stuff you already know you see the beauty of educational based marketing is that when you're teaching and when you're sharing well it's really not costing you anything other than your time your energy maybe a bit of production value but you're giving a ton of value to somebody who could really benefit from the information that you know you take for granted plus a natural byproduct of this is that you do become a more trusted adviser and you do become kind of a a mini Authority or maybe even a mini celebrity in certain cases because we've been societal in conditioned to sort of respect and admire definitely appreciate people that share helped teach us things plus you probably know a ton about your business or about your product or about your industry probably way more than you're giving yourself credit for and you have to understand that on that and scale of knowledge with you being at like a ten your customers are down at like a 1 of maybe a 2 so there's a lot of information and a lot of knowledge that you can share to really help get them closer to the end result they're after all right let's move on to principle number 3 which is all about differentiation now one of my favorite quotes when it comes to differentiation is given to us by Sally hogshead who says different is better than better it's a tough quote to swallow but I kinda tend to agree especially in today's world which is hyper competitive the barriers to entry have all but been destroyed we can do business anywhere with anyone from all over the world pretty much anytime so you really do have to aim to be different in a way that matters to your customers which I'll talk about in just a minute but you really do have to be aimed to be different in order to stand out I feel pretty strongly about this point mainly because when I first started marketing one of the first books that I picked up and consumed basically probably a good few dozen times at this point is Purple Cow by Seth Godin this book is phenomenal and it's all about being different and being remarkable essentially the story goes is that if you keep driving by fields and there's just brown cows everywhere well you're not gonna make a comment you're not even gonna notice but if all of a sudden you see a purple cow that stands out that's different that's remarkable fast forward to today's world though however and we see purple cows everywhere so again well there's a number of different options you have including maybe going back to being a brown cow maybe not even being a cow at all I don't weird farming references I'm making the point is is that in order to stand out in order to get attention in order to be remarkable you need to do something different and here's the key you want to make sure that whatever form of differentiation or whatever you're doing to be different is actually valuable and actually matters to your customers because there's no point really being different in a way that they don't care about or they won't even notice this is where I like to draw on one of the most common and most well-known terms and all of the business world which is the USP or unique selling proposition it's not really a new term it's been around since I think the 1940s but it's perfect here because it can help you find your key point of differentiation in the market place basically in order to find your point of differentiation or your unique selling proposition you want to find the overlap between what customers want and what you do better than anybody else and that's really the key we've got to find out what customers actually want what they care about and then you've got to match that up with one of your unique skill sets or one of your key points of differentiation when you put those together you do have a unique selling proposition it's going to be tough for others to compete with another option of course is to try to carve out a new niche or a new section of the industry or maybe even a new market altogether but be careful here because it's really easy to fall into the trap of doing something so new and so exciting that nobody understands or nobody even wants it and this is gonna sound pretty obvious but you don't want to sell something then nobody wants a better plan is to probably spend a little bit of time really dialing in on your companies and your business's unique strengths unique skills and and what you really do better than anyone else and then find that gap in the market that customers actually want but please do me a favor and avoid terms like we have better service or faster delivery or lower prices because those aren't unique selling propositions and pretty much everybody is saying them including your competitors all right moving right along to principle number four which is the 80/20 you're marketing this is one of the best ways to take good marketing and make it great and great marketing and make it absolutely world-class it's also a way to turn losing marketing around in order to start generating profits for your business the principle here is really 80/20 which is Pareto's principle essentially saying that 80% of your results are going to come from just 20% of your efforts this is very true in marketing and if you've been in business for any length of time and you've got a customer database that you can reference you're gonna start to notice trends where probably around 20% of your customers are going to be responsible for 80% of your results if you analyze your keywords across different advertising campaigns you'll probably see that 20% of your keywords are delivering 80% of your revenue and if you want to take a more customer service centred approach you'll probably see also that the bottom 20% of your customers are causing you 80% of your headaches and this same formula give or take a few numbers here and there can be applied to pretty much any area of your business that's where the magic really starts to happen because when you take this formula when you have accountable marketing and when you really start to dive in to the numbers and to what's really going on behind the scenes it starts to make making marketing decisions that much easier and that much more profitable and that's how you take good marketing and make it great but here's where the real magic happens and here's how you take great marketing and make it world-class essentially you 80/20 all your marketing and then once you've got that 20% that's giving you 80% of your results while you 80/20 it again further dive in and get even better data from it so you can get even better results from your marketing let me explain let's say for example you're running a number of different marketing campaigns across a number of different channels including Facebook Instagram LinkedIn and maybe Twitter well seeing as you're now accountable to your marketing you're gonna lay out all your numbers and you're gonna start to realize that well maybe 80% of your results are coming from just 20% of your networks which in this case is probably just let's say Facebook well simply doing 8020 on all this means you could scrap the lower performing networks and really start to divert more time energy and resources into Facebook but we can now take it a step further you see if you know 80/20 which you've just 80 then we dive further into Facebook let's say we're running ten different ad campaigns we'd probably see that 20% of the campaigns were giving us 80 percent of our results on the same sense probably our bottom 20% of campaigns are losing us most of the money and we've got some average ones just hanging out in the middle well by doing that 80/20 analysis we get to trim all of the fat we get to save all of that money and we get to reinvest it into our best performing ads which again is immediately going to increase our return on investment or ROI now if this is the first time that you're hearing about this concept or your first introduction to 80/20 especially in the context of marketing I recommend watching this section again just to really make sure that it sinks in you can also pick up 80/20 sales and marketing by Perry Marshall which is a fantastic book on the subject and goes into a lot more detail the key takeaway however on this principle is to really make sure that you're analyzing all of your marketing and you're really holding it accountable so you can find out the small things that are getting you the best results and where you're gonna be able to reallocate and reinvest your budget to make sure that you keep moving forward all right the next thing you're gonna want to do is check out the video I have linked up right here on digital marketing strategies for small business which is going to give you 20 actionable strategies to put into practice immediately so check that out now and I'll see you in the next episode one of the most important points to consider when you're constructing an irresistible offer is that you want to be selling a painkiller