Want to build your service business to six figures and beyond with digital marketing?
I understand.
I do too!
So, I’ve been learning, testing and experimenting to find out what to do, practically…
Now, I want to share what I have discovered with you…
This blog post is the result of several years of digital marketing experiments, so you may want to make sure you are sitting comfortably with a cup of tea or something stronger, as it’s quite a long, dense read.
Having given you fair warning, and without further ado…
Here’s how to “fine tune”, “scale up” and build your business with digital marketing…
First, continue developing personally.
Second, decide on your market positioning.
Third, engage and influence your market, consistently.
Fourth, hire and train your team.
Fifth, setup and deploy your systems.
So that you can create your profitable business and help lots more people solve their problems and achieve the transformation they desire…
I did!
That’s why I’m still in business, after 18 years, and I have created a step by step process to guide us towards success…
Step 1 : Continue developing personally.
One thing I have realised for a long time is that entrepreneurs are not necessarily the best people to run a “steady state” business.
In the initial start up phase of a business breakthrough transformation happens frequently, because there is so much to learn.
Gains come rapidly and feedback is virtually instant.
As your business progresses, breakthroughs seem to become less frequent and the emphasis shifts to incremental improvement.
This is not necessarily what most entrepreneurs enjoy!
The good news is, one of the most effective ways of marketing your service business is to tell your story and reveal some of your character and experiences and inject personality into your brand.
This may well mean revealing a degree of vulnerability and humanity and probably requires you to develop personally, because many people (including me) find it very difficult to share our story.
This is definitely one way to re-introduce excitement into your entrepreneurial journey, and combine the science of incremental improvement with the art of telling your story.
Here’s what you can do practically…
Exercise a : Make an inventory of your personal strengths and weaknesses.
Where do you add the greatest value?
What is the one big thing that only you can currently do in your business?
What are your “blind spots” that you need to develop or get covered by someone else?
Exercise b : Tell Your Story
What is your story?
What is the starting point?
What is the turning point or transformation?
What were your greatest discoveries in relation to the problem you solve in your business?
What are the learning lessons you want to share?
Step 2 : Decide on your market positioning
Any marketing idea will need adapting and adjusting to your market and to your unique value proposition and positioning.
Where do you want to position yourself and your business in your market?
You can experiment with…
“high end” – top few %. Focus on quality and service.
“mid – range” – somewhere in the middle. Balance of price, quality and service.
“low end” – basically competing on price and aiming for high volume. Focus on low price.
Make sure that your offer is congruent with your market positioning.
For example… That means that high quality, excellent service and low price is not congruent with any of these 3 market positions.
If that is what you’re doing… STOP DESTROYING YOUR VALUE…
and START to…
Step 3 : Engage And Influence Your Market, Consistently.
You can keep on experimenting, testing and measuring…
Like a mad marketing scientist…
Make your market your lab.
Keep track of how your market responds and start to make distinctions between what works and what does not work.
Test your marketing “face to face” with customers and potential customers, and automate when you discover campaigns that produce the desired results.
We have created a checklist called Measure your marketing by numbers to help you track crowd, capture, conversion, cash value and continuity every two weeks or monthly…
click here to download measure your marketing by numbers
I recommend that you become obsessive over the numbers, align your marketing with the results you want to achieve and design the response you want from your market.
Make sure you create a consistent content plan and develop a robust process to produce content, consistently.
Here’s a few questions to get you started…
Exercise c : Consider the Science…
Research who will most benefit from the skills you have?
Where do they hang out?
What keywords do they search for on Google?
Are these keywords “commercial”?
Exercise d : Now the Art…
How do you attain thought leadership?
Who is interested in your unique contribution?
What do you have to say?
How do you get your paid ads to pay for themselves?
Step 4 : Hire And Train Your Team
To take your business to the next level either you will need to change or you will need to hire a team to “fill in the blanks” around your blind spots, probably both, because you simply can’t be good at everything.
You will almost certainly need to learn to delegate, too.
Around the time that I was making my first hire I had a “hot seat” with John Carlton.
He helped me see beyond my then set of limitations.
Exercise e : When you’re ready to hire, consider…
What is your first hire?
What do you need help with first?
What skills do you need to complete your entire team?
Step 5 : Setup And Deploy Your Systems
When you have built up your business to have a crowd of over 2,500, an email list of over 1,000, you have achieved your first sale and proven your process, and you have a method to retain your clients for more than 3 months, then it’s time to invest in automating your processes.
Exercise f : When you’re ready to setup and deploy your systems, consider…
What systems do you need?
I think of it this way…
Most businesses have 3 functions…
Sales and Marketing
Operations
Finance
So, we have implemented systems to take care of all 3…
Infusionsoft for sales and marketing
Asana for Operations
Xero for finance.
I know it’s a lot to take in, but no-one said it was going to be easy (and if they did, they lied, there really is no such thing as “get rich quick”. Period).
Of course, each one of these steps can be expanded to a blog post in it’s own right, and I will aim to do just that in the months to come.
And, remember, everyone has to start somewhere.
So, if you want to “fine tune” and “scale up” your marketing, START HERE…
