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your business could sell the best product in the world and still fail if it doesn't have a good marketing strategy thankfully though you don't need a Harvard Business Degree or even any experience with business to create a great marketing strategy for your company all you need is to understand the what the who the where the how and how you will work your Marketing System to be able to have a strategy for consistently attracting customers this is called the 5w marketing strategy and it's a methodology that I created to make the process of creating a marketing strategy for your business super simple in this video I'm going to be walking you through how the methodology Works how you can use it to create a marketing strategy for your business and how you can implement it to grow your business so we start out with the very simplest question what do you want to sell and while your business might sell several different products it is best to craft your marketing strategy around one specific product at least at first later on you can build out your marketing strategy to work on selling your other products as well but you will get the best results if you focus on one product at first now if you're trying to decide between multiple products that you sell which one should you focus on first well you basically just want to pick the main product that you sell and if you're not sure what that is then think about which product best kind of exemplifies the main way in which you want to help your custom customers or the main mission of your company go with that product first because you want to craft your marketing around that main goal of your company to make sure that you're attracting the right people for the right reasons deciding what product to focus on selling with this marketing strategy is the first part of the what component of your marketing strategy but it's not the end of it we need to go a little further a little deeper and work on the positioning around this product you can think about the positioning as basically how you'll explain this product to your prospective customers so let's get into that in most Industries multiple companies sell products that are very similar they might be virtually identical or they might just be products that help customers solve similar problems or accomplish similar results so step two is to analyze those products that are sold by your competitors that are similar to the product that you are trying to Market so that you can Market your product with an understanding of the landscape in which you are marketing it you are not Marketing in a vacuum the people who are hearing your marketing messages are also going to be hearing marketing messages from other people from your competitors in the industry so you need to make sure that you're taking those other messages into account because your competitors will be making arguments about why their products are the best and you need to make counterarguments about why actually they should choose yours think about it like you're planning to go on a hike you have this destination that you want to reach but you would be foolish to plan your hike without considering the terrain over which you're going to hike you need to think about what directions the path goes if there might be Boulders or trees in your way or maybe a mountain in your way now of course all of those obstacles are surmountable you might want to scale the mountain and of course you can walk around the trees and clamor over the boulders but if you don't anticipate those obstacles and have a plan for how you are going to overcome them then you quite possibly will fail and never reach your destiny but let's not get ahead of ourselves here before we figure out how to navigate these obstacles we first have to Simply identify them so to complete step two you need to create a list of all of the products out there that are being sold that are similar to what you are trying to market now you might be able to name several of these just off the top of your head you know products that you've seen your competitor selling but you also would do well to do a little bit of Googling search for terms that you think your customers might be searching for when they're looking for a solution to their problem and you also could consider asking chat GPT you could type in something like what products might customers buy when they are looking to and then just insert the result that your product creates and chat GPT might be able to add a few more products to your list or at least give you some different types of products that customers might consider that then you can look into further with Google step three is to identify the differences between these products that you have listed so you know what the other products are you know what you are selling and now you need to try to figure out what are the differences between these different products now I find that this tends to be easiest if right now you don't worry about why your product is better trying to prove that your product is better just focus on identifying those differences are these products in different formats do they provide different levels of service or accountability are there features that your product includes that your competitor's products don't include just think about all those differences and make a list of the things that set your product apart from the products that are sold by your competitors once you see what those differences are then ask yourself this why did I decide to make my product different in these ways this is a much easier and more comfortable question to answer than trying to answer the question how is my product better than the competitor's products okay instead think about the reason why you chose to make your product different because more than likely you had a really good reason why you thought that your product would be better if you made it than this way so start with that question why did you decide to make your product different in this way to identify how your product is in fact better now marketing your small business can be a lot easier if you have a little bit of help and that is why I've partnered with Meo for today's video Meo is a free platform you can use to pay subcontractors or to have your clients pay you so yes like I said Meo is free it's also super easy to use and and it's become my go-to way for paying the contractors that I work with so you just log into Meo you can add the person you're paying you can choose how you want to pay them and what is so cool about Meo is that it allows you to send the payment however you want to send it so you can send it from your bank account for free or you can pay a small fee to pay from your credit card if you want to but it also allows the person you're paying to get the payment how they want to get it and what most contractors want is to get a direct deposit an a transfer straight into their bank account because that's the easiest for them but if they want to receive a check in the mail which some old school contractors still want well meu can actually do that for you for a small fee so the platform itself is free your account is free and the person you're paying does not need to make an account at all and then if you want to use some of these extra features like paying with your credit card or sending a paper check in the mail then they've got really reasonable fees for those add-ons funds so I've been loving Meo and I would highly recommend you check it out if there's anyone in your business who you need to pay or if you have customers who need an easy way to pay you there's going to be a link down in the description that you can click to give Amelia a try for free you can also probably find that link in the top comment as well okay now let's get back to talking about how to create a marketing strategy to grow your small business the final step to complete the what block of your W marketing strategy is to Define your USP or unique selling proposition this is the thing that sets your product apart the reason why customers should choose your product rather than the product sold by your competitor here's a template you can use to write your unique selling proposition product name so your product name is the only type of product so whatever type of product it is that uses and then name your differentiating Factor so here are a few examples of what I mean for example kettle chips that's the product is the only potato chip that's the type of product that are handmade with natural ingredients and deliver an insanely satisfying texture and crunch so that last part there that is the differentiating factor the reason why people might choose kettle chips over La potato chips for example here's another example Bose speakers so that's the specific product are the only speakers that's the type of product that every other speaker brand compares thems too now this one is getting a little snarky right they're not even naming a specific differentiator they're just basically saying everyone knows we're the best everyone Compares themselves to us so why don't you just choose the one that everyone's comparing themselves to right you might not be able to get away with that one but I've got a couple more examples for you so the next one here is Creator FastTrack that's the name of the product is the only YouTube strategy course that's the type of product designed to grow channels to 1,000 subscribers in just 3 months months so there you have the differentiating factor the thing that sets Creator fast trck apart from the other YouTube strategy courses on the market okay and then my last example for you is this 100K Mastermind is the only program that guides course creators to build High converting Evergreen sales funnels and fuel their funnels with ready to buy leads providing a complete system for consistently generating passive income so as you can see from these examples your USP can be longer or shorter but the main goal here is to to explain why customers should choose your product over the product sold by your competition so that completes the what block of your 5w marketing strategy so now we're going to move on to the second block which is the who block where you define who you are marketing to so why is it important to Define exactly who you are marketing to why don't you just say why your product is the best and then let the people who want a product like that choose to buy your product since they understand that it's the best well here's the thing if you don't Define who and then Mark it to a specific type of person then your marketing messages overall will probably be to General to appeal strongly enough to any one type of person as you're going to see in a few minutes here there are many different reasons why customers might choose to buy the selfsame product and so if you don't speak to the reasons why your target market would want to buy your product then they're going to choose to buy a competitor's product that does speak to their specific needs and reasons why and that can lead you to end up wasting your marketing budget and all of your time trying to Market to the masses where you could get a lot more mileage and make a lot more sales if you instead focus on marketing to a specific type of person so the very first attribute of your target market is simply going to be what they want you've already defined what you're selling so your target market is simply people who want that type of thing so for example if your company sells headphones then your customers will first and foremost be customers who want to listen to music or other audio content but as you can see by this example defining your customers just by what they want can leave you a little bit short I mean think about it people want to buy different types of headphones because they have different goals for their listening experience some people they just want to consume the content they just want to listen to the podcast or hear the music and so a cheap $20 pair of headphones will do the trick people really want to have a great experience while they are listening and they're a little bit pickier so they want to spend more maybe $200 on an upgraded pair of headphones and then there are still other potential customers who are professionals and they want to use their headphones for work and they need really high quality sound to be able to do their job really well and buying these headphones is really an investment in their career so they are willing to spend upwards to $2,000 for these headphones so here's the big big question who exactly is your product for who did you design it for who is it best suited for you can start by defining your target market your who based purely on what they want but then you need to consider those deeper motivations of why they might choose to buy your product over your competitors to further Define your Target customer so ingly steps five and six of crafting your 5w marketing strategies are step five Define your who B based on the result your product provides and step six narrow your who based on the motives that would cause some people to choose your product instead of an alternative option so now that You' figured out what you want to promote and who you want to sell it to the next big question is how will you promote it and so this moves us on to the third block of the 5w marketing strategy which is the how block this block is going to answer questions like how will you get the word out how will you differentiate from your competitors and how will you ultimately close the sales now if you are an action-oriented person then this is probably the part of creating your marketing strategy that you've been waiting for because this is where you're going to decide what you're going to do to Market your products it's actually kind of hilarious how many businesses create marketing strategies without first defining marketing goals because how can you strategize for something if you don't know what you're trying to achieve now now following the 5w marketing strategy you've already clarified what you want to sell and to whom you want to sell it and so now creating your marketing goals can be as simple as simply stating how many whats you want to sell to those who's here's an example of a marketing goal to show you what I mean sell 500 bottles of red pills to truth seeking women now a super simple marketing strategy like that can be a fine starting place but as you further develop your marketing strategy you will want to create more specific goals for each individual platform you choose to be on or each individual marketing tactic that you choose to employ now if you're wondering how big your marketing goal should be here's my best advice work your way up start with a really small goal and work your way up to bigger goals so for example I would recommend starting with the really small goal of just to sell your first 10 units to validate your idea and confirm that there really is demand for this thing that you want to sell once you achieve that goal then you can move on to setting a 6-month schal and for this one I would recommend that you just estimate how many units you think you might reasonably be able to sell don't try to shoot for the moon here just try to be reasonable and realistic and think about how many units you might be able to sell in 6 months now once those six months come and go then you'll be able to see how many units you were actually able to sell and that will allow you to forecast how many units you will try to sell over the next 12 months so here you can be a little aggressive you know push yourself a little bit try to sell a little bit more than twice as much as you sold over the past 6 months but this isn't yet the time for those crazy big goals when I like to start setting those big goals is after the first year now we know what's possible and we can push ourselves to do better in the future so for your seconde goal you'll want to set it as a multiple of your first year goals so so if you want to be more conservative then you can just try to increase your sales in year 2 by 10% over year 1 so for example if you sold 100 units in year one then in year two you can try to sell 110 units if you want to be moderately aggressive you can increase by 50% so try to sell 150 units in year 2 and if you want to be really aggressive then try to double your efforts from year 1 selling 200 units in year two okay so you've got your goals set but how are customers is actually going to find your brand or choose to buy your products it's time to map your customer Journey you need to be intentional about creating a plan that you'll guide customers on to find your brand and choose to buy your products now this is a great time to just acknowledge that customers will find your brand in all sorts of ways and they might choose to buy your products for reasons that are outside your control that's totally fine but we don't want to leave everything to chance we want use our brains and create an intentional plan that we are going to use to try to attract customers a path we will guide them on to try to lead them to the sale customers can do what they will and that's fine but we need a plan now when it comes to creating this plan there are three legs of the customer Journey that you'll want to include the first leg is visibility how will customers discover your brand the second leg is engagement how will you connect with those customers build a relationship ship with them and get them ready to buy and then the third leg is the clothes how will you ultimately prompt the customer to make that buying decision and how will you facilitate the sale let me give you some examples of each of these different legs of the customer Journey so for visibility maybe customers see your ads on Facebook click on those ads to visit your website or maybe they see your videos on YouTube because YouTube recommends them or they're ranking in search so after your customers arrive on your website maybe they read articles that are on your we weite to be able to learn more about your expertise and to build trust with your brand or maybe after they discover you on Instagram then they follow you and they consume your content on your Instagram account or maybe after coming to your website from a Facebook ad maybe they opt into your email newsletter where you send them emails every week to build that relationship with them and fill them in on how your company could help them now finally we've got the Clos leg so here are a few examples of that maybe after your customer is on your email newsletter list you send them emails to tell them about your products and to promote certain products which prompt them to buy then they click a button in the email and are taken to your checkout system or for another example while your customer is browsing your website maybe they see certain products that are currently on sale so they click the button to buy now and are taken to your checkout system then now once you've mapped out your customer Journey your marketing strategy kind of writes itself because if you know the path that you are trying to lead your customers on then your marketing strategy is simply to lead your customers along that Journey so you can take the plans that you created for each leg of the customer Journey For example your plan for visibility how your customers will discover you and you just turn it around so now instead of being about the customer it's about you and what you'll do so for example if your customer Journey starts with customers discovering you from Facebook ads and then clicking to visit your website well then your marketing strategy will be to advertise your products on Facebook with Facebook ads and no you are not cheating this is a totally valid way to write your marketing strategy and don't worry we're going to get a little bit more detailed with it here in a couple minutes but this is a totally valid way to create a marketing strategy and keeping it simple like this really will keep it focused on those most important marketing obes Ives and help you avoid getting distracted by Vanity metrics now something that I love about the 5w marketing strategy aside from the fact that it's a really effective way to promote your business and sell your products is that it is a system it's a method for creating marketing strategy that gets progressively easier as you go through it so we get to kind of frontload the work you start out with some of the hardest steps where you have to make maybe some tough decisions about you know what you're going to sell and who you're going to focus on selling it to and those sorts of things but then by the time you get about halfway through it the steps kind of start to do themselves the decisions you made with those early steps inform the answers to the questions that are asked in the later steps so for example at this point we are up to step 10 of creating your 5w marketing strategy and step 10 is to choose what platforms or channels you're going to use to Market your business now this is a decision that a lot of entrepreneurs and marketers really struggle with there are so many platforms out there how can you possibly decide which ones to focus on don't I need to be on these other ones right that can be overwhelming and confusing and really tough decision but because you've already mapped out your customer Journey you've already decided where your customers will find you where you'll build that engagement with them and where you ultimately will close that sale and so you've actually already chosen your marketing platforms so now what I want you to do is just look at that customer Journey look at that simple marketing strategy you've outlined and see okay what platforms did I already name so for example if you are planning to use Facebook ads then okay Facebook will be one of your platforms and maybe you are planning for customers to then learn more about your business on your website and maybe you're planning to finally close sales via email marketing okay so then your platforms are just Facebook and your website and email marketing now if you do this I know what will probably happen you'll look at this short short list of two or three platforms and you'll say but wait a minute what about Instagram what about Facebook what about YouTube videos don't I need to have a podcast right okay so we are conditioned to believe that we need to be in all the places but to be completely Frank with you most small businesses get the very best results if they focus on an extremely small number of platforms yes you might feel like you need to be on Instagram just because everyone else is but if Instagram is not a platform that you chose as one to work towards one of these primary marketing objectives visibility engage engagement and closing sales then you don't need to be on Instagram now I do want to acknowledge that you might want to be on Instagram and if you want to be on Instagram it's okay to be on Instagram right it's not necessary for the growth of your business and I think just even having that distinction is so helpful because now you know kind of what bucket it falls into you know what kind of energy you need to give it and on the other hand for all those of you who actually don't really want to be on Instagram or whatever the platform is this is so helpful because it really releases you of that feeling obligation of doing what everyone else is doing now if you love being on Instagram then keep being on Instagram if you have a podcast and you love podcasting then keep doing your podcast if it's working you don't need to stop it but if your business isn't growing as quickly as you want it to where it's not making as much money as you want it to then my best recommendation honestly would be to limit the number of platforms that you're on even down to this extreme bare minimum of maybe just one platform for visibility one platform for engagement and one platform for closing sales and a couple of those might just be your website and email marketing not even any social media at all as I mentioned before most small businesses with small teams get the most mileage and the best results by focusing in on just one to three platforms which may or may not be social media now as your team grows you might decide to spread your net a little bit wider and be in more places but here is my rule of thumb when it comes to potentially adding another platform this this is what I've learned from trying to add more platforms over the years it typically takes another fulltime SL dedicated team member to add another platform now that doesn't necessarily mean it takes another 40 hours a week to add another platform but it does generally take one person who focuses on that platform as their main job now when you hear me say that you might be like wait a second I know this person who's in like 20 places and they just do it all on their own or maybe you're that person maybe right now you are repurposing your content on 20 different platforms but here's my question for you how is that going for you like really how much growth are you seeing on all those different platforms based on my experience my guess is that the answer is probably not a lot because in my experience I have been able to grow on one platform when I was doing it myself and then if I added another team member who is dedicated to a different platform then we could grow in two platforms but it really takes at least one person per platform and when you see some of these really big brands that publish a whole lot of content often times they have a whole team of people on each individual platform so now we come to the final block of your 5w marketing strategy which is how will you work your marketing strategy you have the foundation in place now you know what you're selling who you're selling it to how you're selling it where you're selling it but now how do you actually implement this system one of the first decisions you need to make here is why what type of content you will make and again this is one of those decisions that basically makes itself because depending on what platform you chose and what role that platform is going to play in your marketing stack will often determine exactly what kind of content you'll need to create for example if you chose Facebook ads as your visibility strategy okay you need to make ad Creative Images and copy For Those ads on the other hand if you chose YouTube as your visibility strategy okay you need to make longterm YouTube videos unless you chose YouTube shorts as your visibility strategy then you're going to make short form videos right so you probably have already made this decision if you haven't or if you made a very general sort of decision for example you chose Instagram but you're like okay there are at least three different kinds of content I could make on Instagram then now is the time to make that decision about the form of content that you'll make for each of those different aspects of your marketing plan now next you need to consider the substance of the content that you'll create what topics will you cover with this content now to make this decision the most important thing to consider is what the objective for that content is so for example if you're thinking about your Instagram content because Instagram is your visibility strategy then you need to make sure that you choose topics that will work to attract new prospective customers new people and not just any new people but the right new people now in planning these content topics there are two different layers to choosing the topics for your content the first one is more like the category of the content almost like a Micro Niche so for example maybe you're going to create recipes or you're going to create content about minimalism or content about marketing strategy or content about gardening or homeschool curriculum Okay so we've got these different topic categories but the second layer within each of those topic categories is the ideas that you want to repeatedly communicate so for example maybe you want to communicate to your prospective customers that they can do this that they are capable maybe you want to inspire them about what is possible maybe you want to communicate to them that it's not as hard as it looks or maybe you want to communicate to them that it's going to take more time than they think it's going to take communicating ideas like this is what sets great marketing above good marketing you can have an Instagram account that looks really good that has regular content on a certain set of topics and that content can look really polished but the thing that will Elevate one instagram account over another that will make one resonate with people so much more attract so many for more followers get so many more likes and ultimately drive so many more sales for the brand that has that Instagram account is the brand that communicates those ideas that convince their customers that they want the product that the product will work for them so that the customers then choose to buy the product okay and then one final aspect ECT of your content strategy to consider is just your posting frequency how often are you going to create content and what exactly will that schedule look like you haven't made this decision yet but it's generally a pretty easy one you want to think about your capacity for creating content which will largely depend on the size of your team if you're working all on your own you know think about how much time you have to devote to creating content and how much content you can create in that time if you have some help you might be able to create a little bit more and then just decide what days and times you'll consistently publish that content on most people and Brands regardless of the size of the team find it much easier to be consistent that is to regularly put out content when they have a predetermined schedule to hold themselves accountable to step 12 is to leverage social media so this is an optional step it only applies to you if your marketing strategy that you've outlined involves any social media platforms but if it does then you want to make sure that you are are getting the mostest out of each of those platforms because here's the thing most platforms give you exponential Returns on your time what do I mean by that well for an example let's say you put 1 hour per week into Instagram quite likely that is going to give you very minimal results let's say that that one hour a week might give you kind of a level one result so maybe this looks like you're maintaining your follower count you're getting a couple hundred likes on each post that you put out and you see a sale come through every week if you can put two hours in so this is only one more hour it is twice as much time though but if you can put two hours in most of the time this doesn't just give you twice the results this is going to give you 10 times the results so now this bumps you up to level 10 on Instagram maybe this looks like gaining another 100 followers every week maybe this looks like getting 500 plus likes on every post and maybe now you see 10 sales coming in every week instead of just one and then if you're willing to put in one more hour each week so now three hours that's not that much more time but it is three times the amount of time you were initially putting in but it doesn't just give you three times the result often it gives you 100 times the result so now we're up to Instagram level 100 and by level 100 I don't mean the very highest level of Instagram you might be able to attain I just mean 100 times the results that you got when you were putting in one hour so now maybe you are growing your account by a couple thousand followers every week May maybe you're getting a thousand plus likes on each post you put out maybe you're seeing a hundred sales come in and that is how most social media platforms work they give you exponential Returns on your time for every additional increment of time you put into one platform you see exponential returns now I do want to point out here that leveraging social media does not just mean putting in more hours on a platform you need to make sure that you are being strategic about this here are a few different ways you might leverage your social media content the first would be putting more effort into your content so making your content better if you spend two to three times as much time on each piece of content that you create then the content will be significantly better and it will get you much better results another example would be just taking the time to add captions or to configure the metadata of each of your posts you could take the same quality of content but get much better results with it if you take the time to configure those settings and then you can also lever social media by taking the time to engage with your followers in the comments section or to collaborate with other brands on the platform Step 13 of creating your 5w marketing strategy is to optimize your website for Google most small businesses and big businesses use their website as one of their key marketing platforms and so you want to make sure that it is easy for your customers to find and even more so if it is going to be one of your core marketing platforms for one of your three main Market marketing objectives now optimizing your website for Google is a huge topic that we do not have time for today but the broad Strokes are first of all making sure you are making content for Search terms that you want to rank for second making sure that that content is good quality and that it is as helpful as it can be third making sure you configure the metadata so that you are giving images appropriate names and putting descriptions for your articles on your website and things like that fourth is just making sure that your website is fast enough because Google prioritizes faster websites and then finally getting back links from other website which is just where other websites link to your content because Google considers that to be an indicator of the quality of the content on your website that was an insanely packed 30 second crash course on Google SEO now how can you measure the results of your new marketing strategy and make sure that it's working well you got to make sure that you are tracking and measuring your results so first you need to know what your goals are for each of your platforms second you need to set up some kind of tracking system so that you can see what kind of results you're actually getting and whether you're meeting your goals and then third you need to make sure you set aside time to regularly analyze those results but a key Point here is that you make sure that you are measuring your results compared to your goals not based on the metrics that the platforms try to get you to measure yourself on so for example Instagram might try to get get you to focus on how many people like and comment on your posts but is that really the metric that you most care about probably not if you're trying to use it as your visibility vehicle then the metric you most care about will be how many people are visiting your website from Instagram now metrics such as the number of likes or comments are still useful information and they can tell you how interesting people are finding your content and how much they're engaging with it so if you see that the number of visit to your website is down and also you're not getting very many comments on your posts well maybe you need to try to figure out how to make those posts more engaging because that will get you to reach more people on Instagram and get more people to your website right but just make sure that you are focused primarily on your goals not Instagram's goals for best results when it comes to tracking and analyzing your results I recommend that you set up a simple spreadsheet that you can track your metrics on on a weekly basis and then either monthly or quarterly set aside some time to analyze those results and make strategic course Corrections the final step of creating your 5w marketing strategy is to keep learning and plan for continual improvements here's the thing marketing a business is a long game you might not see much in the way of results in the short term but if you stick to your system then your results will compound over time and they won't just increase exponentially they'll also increase faster and faster as time goes on so create your plan today and then stick with it as you see your results continue to build but here's the flip side of that while marketing your business is a long game marketing evolves very quickly things are always changing new platforms pop up old platforms fade away and you need to make sure that you are adapting and that you are keeping up with the Changing Times that's one of the reasons why it is so important to be tracking and analyzing your results regularly so you can see if maybe something that was working for you is starting to not work as well this is also one more reason to focus on a smaller number of platforms ultimately it is so important that you have a growth mindset when it comes to marketing your business your ability to Market your business is not a fixed thing you can learn and grow and evolve and you might not be the best marketer today but as time goes on you can become a better and better marketer but that can only start if you create a PL plan and then you work your plan because that is how you'll be able to grow and develop now if you would like to see how I Implement these strategies in my own business to attract en close customers then I would love to invite you to a podcast minseries that I put together recently it's called the 100K method and it is 10 podcast episodes that walk you step by step through what the 100K method is and how I use it in my business and most of this is all about my marketing strategy and my sales strategy so I'm going to leave a link in the description below that you can find to listen to the 100K method and you also can find it by searching for the 100K method in whatever podcast app you use on your phone okay now as I mentioned marketing is a long game so you don't just need to start with a good marketing strategy today you need to be able to stay motivated and stay consistent longterm to get the results you're really after so next up watch this video right here where I break down some essential mindsets and habits for long-term success and how to stay consistent in your business long term