- Hey, it's Rick Kettner here and in this video,
we're gonna explore the best marketing strategy
for promoting a new business or a new product.
Essentially, we're gonna be looking at a simple method
that you can use to choose and execute
on the best marketing opportunities
for your specific business.
Now, this is a follow up to a previous video
that I published on 33 ways to get more customers.
You can find the link to that video
in the description box below.
And of course,
if you're interested in learning more about how to build
and grow your business,
then I recommend that you subscribe to the channel
and turn on notifications so you don't miss
out on future videos.
But let's get into it.
The number one reason why new businesses fail is
that they don't attract enough customers.
And the reality is a lot of businesses make it
through the other stages like
coming up with a brand name, coming up with a logo,
even building out a basic product or service,
but unfortunately, many of them fail when it comes
to actually attracting prospects
and converting those prospects into customers.
So that is the entire focus of this video.
We're gonna be going
through a simple four step framework called
the bullseye framework.
This is from "Traction" by Gabriel Weinberg
and Justin Mares.
A really great book for startups that are looking
to attract customers to their business.
And this is a simple like I say,
a four step process that you can use to attract customers.
The very first step is to brainstorm marketing ideas.
So what you wanna do here is you wanna go
through all the different ways
that you could possibly attract customers to your business,
and you wanna come up with realistic scenarios
for how you might execute on those opportunities.
Now, I mentioned earlier
that I recently published a video covering 33 ways
to get more customers.
You can go through that video,
that's 33 different marketing channels
that are covered in that video.
And the idea here,
even though we're not gonna be pursuing all 33 channels
at once, we'd be spreading ourselves way too thin.
The idea here is to come up with realistic scenarios
for each and every one of them just
as an exploratory process.
So, for example,
if you go down the list and you see content marketing,
you wanna come up with a realistic scenario
for how you might promote
your business using content marketing.
What kinda articles could you create?
What kinda videos?
Would you create a podcast?
You wanna explore exactly how you might pursue
that opportunity if you absolutely had to.
And then you wanna do the same
as you go down the list with search advertising,
social advertising, hosting live events.
You might consider, would you host a local meetup,
a small meetup group with enthusiastic customers,
or would you try to put on a big fancy event
and invite other speakers?
Whatever the marketing channel might be,
the idea here is to simply explore the possibilities
to reasonably brainstorm what you could do
if you absolutely had
to pursue the various different marketing opportunities
that are out there.
And the reason why this is important is because oftentimes,
businesses get stuck in a rut
where they really only pursue marketing channels
that all of their rivals are pursuing.
So if you see another potential competitor
using search advertising,
you might be tempted to just say,
"Okay, search advertising is the way
"that you market this kinda business."
And that really limits your options.
And unfortunately, when you follow that kinda strategy,
you're actually playing into your competitor's strengths
and you're pursuing a channel
that is already gonna be competitive, right?
So by its very definition,
the most popular channels may not necessarily
be the best opportunities.
Sometimes they are still,
sometimes they aren't.
So, that's the entire point of this first step is
to actually explore what you might do if you had
to pursue different channels in order to just flush them
out and see what might be possible.
Step number two is to select promising channels.
So this is a very important step where we start
to narrow the field.
Instead of pursuing all 33 channels,
we're gonna narrow it down to about three to five
of the most promising opportunities.
And when I say promising,
because you're a startup,
your number one priority should be speed.
So you wanna find channels that are likely
to create results for you quickly.
And of course,
you also wanna choose channels that are likely
to offer a lot of customers, right?
So you're talking about both volume of customers
and speed at which you can actually attract them.
And of course another consideration would be your ability
to attract them profitably.
So just because a channel can deliver a lot of customers,
and can do so quickly,
it might not be cost effective to pursue it.
So that's the kinda thing you wanna be thinking about
as you narrow down the field to three to five
of the most promising channels,
or the most promising opportunities based
on your initial brainstorming.
Then it's time to move on to step three.
And step three is something that I think a lot
of businesses skip over just naturally
when they try to pursue marketing opportunities.
And step three is to perform inexpensive tests.
This is critical
because even if an opportunity seems really promising,
and as you go through how you might pursue it,
it seems really attractive and it might be really exciting,
the fact is not all marketing channels are equal.
And sometimes you might be really surprised
to find out that one channel just isn't that effective.
And if you don't compare its results with another channel,
then you're really never able to make
that differentiation and to realize,
hey, this might be a half decent opportunity,
but over here is a much,
much better opportunity
that we should really be focusing all of our time
and attention on.
So this step is all
about just simply performing inexpensive,
simple tests to validate the potential
of each of your promising opportunities.
Now, one mistake a lot of businesses make
when it comes
to testing marketing opportunities like this,
is they try to overly optimize in the process.
So for example,
if you were gonna place ads on Google AdWords,
you might go on there and say,
"Okay, I have a $40 margin on my product,
"I can't afford to spend more than $40 per conversion here.
"And so if I'm spending more than
"that then this channel just isn't very promising."
And that thought process leads them to aim for targets
and to set their ad spend in a way
that is unlikely to provide really great results.
And the reason why this is bad is
because the only goal of this step here is
to validate two things.
One, that there are enough customers
in this channel that it's worth pursuing.
And two, that you have a vague sense
that if you took the time to optimize your efforts,
and to improve your ad copy and to improve your landing page
and your entire marketing funnel
as it relates to that channel,
then over time,
you almost certainly will be profitable.
That's what you're trying to figure out.
You're not trying to actually optimize
because if you do that too early,
you're ruling out a channel
before you even give it a chance to breathe.
So what you wanna do here is
just simply perform inexpensive tests
to validate there are customers there
and that it's worth your time
and energy to pursue things further.
And then afterwards,
later in the future,
you can worry about doing all that optimization.
In some cases,
it takes months if not years,
to really perfect your entire approach to that channel.
And that's perfectly okay.
You can do that in the future,
and it's not gonna affect your long term potential
with that channel.
But the idea behind this step is just simply
to validate that it's worth your time
to explore things further.
And then we move on to step number four,
which is to look at all these tests that we've performed
and to select one promising channel.
To select the single thing that we're gonna focus
on when it comes to building momentum with the business.
And this is incredibly important when it comes
to a brand new startup because you really can't afford
to be spreading yourself too thin.
And the reality is that when it comes to a lot
of marketing channels,
there's a bit of a winner take all dynamic
that happens with marketing channels.
Google Search is a great example of this.
The person that is able to best optimize
and best outperform their rivals when it comes
to advertising for a specific keyword
or a specific family of keyword phrases,
they tend to far outperform whoever is second
in that area, whoever is second best at utilizing
that marketing channel.
So it really pays to become an absolute master
at at least one channel when you're growing a business.
In fact, that's pretty common wisdom
within the marketing community that you really,
if you wanna have a successful business,
there should be at least one channel out there
that the entrepreneur or founder,
or at least one of the co-founders of the business,
is incredibly familiar with and is very proficient at using.
And that really gives the business a lot of strength.
And so the idea here is really simple, right?
You just wanna focus on one channel,
you wanna become really great at that one channel,
and you wanna absolutely focus your efforts
on capitalizing on all of the potential of that channel,
until of course,
you hit diminishing returns.
And that's the point at which spending more money
on the channel doesn't really give you more results.
You might find a point like let's say,
Google AdWords, you might find spending more than 50,000
in a given period just simply does not increase results.
And at that point,
it's time to revisit this process,
explore other channels and figure out what second
or third channel you can tag on to expand your business.
But that's really the process here.
It's really straightforward.
It's really simple.
It might almost seem too simple,
but that's okay.
And it's a very powerful way to like I say,
select and test and ultimately find the one channel
that is most promising for your business.
Anyway, that's it for this video.
If you have any questions or if you have any thoughts
or even suggestions for better ways to attract
and convert customers,
please share them in the comment section below.
And of course,
if you're interested in learning more about how to build
and grow your business,
then I recommend that you subscribe to the channel
and turn on notifications so you don't miss
out on future videos.
But with that said,
thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video.