Weak brand foundation

1. Unnecessarily mass producing content:

The last thing you want to do as a business owner is waste your time by creating and pumping out as much content as you possibly can week after week with no direction. When you post like that you can’t get any feedback on what your audience is resonating with and worst of all it can just tire people out.

You want your brand to energize people not exhaust them. There is a time and a place where producing as much content as possible may make sense but not without a very specific plan.

Wendy on the other hand decided against the approach Josh took. She didn’t put any effort into thinking about what might benefit her audience while showing her value as an expert. Since she didn’t put in the extra effort, when potential clients found her content they were unengaged and bored. Not only did her content fail to make an impression she lost all of that time creating the sub-par content. She also lost an invaluable opportunity to showcase herself as an expert to her Dream Client audience.

2. Posting in the wrong places

If you haven’t already you need to identify where your audience is. Are they on Linkedin, Twitter, or Facebook? Are they on YouTube? You need to figure that out first so you can then decide what content strategies you want to start testing. Wendy skipped this step and suffered the consequences later.

Your content strategy is a massive part of your overall marketing plan. It may take a lot of testing but once you figure out what strategies are working with your audience you can turn those strategies into a full blueprint. With a blueprint, you will have much more success because a blueprint is scalable and repeatable.

Josh took his time to find his audience while being adaptable. He gave his audience what they wanted and it shows because his efforts will continue to pay out in a big way.

3. Testing content strategies

So now that you know what you should be posting and where, you can plan out how much you’re going to be posting. This way it will also make it easier to track your progress.

Keep track of what type of formats and topics perform best. Maybe a certain intro to your instagram videos leads to 100 more views per video than compared to when you don’t have the intro in the video. Or you start to notice that a handful of blog topics always accel more than others. Double down on what is working, but keep testing to make your content strategies even better!

The more you begin to figure out what strategies are working, like we mentioned above you will begin to turn those into a fully operational blueprint that you can put to work whenever you want. Who knows, you may even make a better blueprint than Josh!

Sporadic tactics

1. Know why you’re trying something

Have you ever been excited to implement and test a new marketing strategy just to have the wind disappear from your sails?

Oftentimes it isn’t about effort it is about moving the right lines of the sail at the right time to send your ship on a path to success. Make sure the wind is in your favor.

Before you start testing any new marketing strategy you need to ask yourself a few questions:

Once you know your desired result do you know the step by step processes to make the result happen?

Can your plan be adapted if it isn’t reaching (reasonable) milestones?

If it works, will you be able to turn it into a blueprint that is scalable and repeatable?

As you start your marketing plan you need to be monitoring the results but don’t rush the process! Adapting and improving your plan overtime takes more finesse than force!

Making changes too early in a marketing plan can halt a winning plan completely! You could have been set for success had you just given it a week or two more! Having confidence in yourself and your plan is just as important as the tactics you’re choosing.

Let’s introduce another two business owners; Sally and Ron. Sally took her time and let her marketing plan develop. She knew that if she was constantly changing her strategies and testing approach that she would never be able to get the needed feedback to improve her campaigns or turn those strategies into a blueprint.

Ron unfortunately went a different route. He created way too many strategies that didn’t line up together and never let any of them develop before he started to poke and prod. In short he had no idea what he was even testing for, that is at the core of all of Ron’s problems. You will never be able to turn your strategies into a scalable, repeatable blueprint unless you know exactly what you’re testing for and why!

3. How to understand your results

We covered the importance of creating a plan and sticking to it but you need to have some guidelines for success to be able to measure the results.

Not letting your marketing plans develop is like taking a cake out of the oven too soon. The lesson learned here is that we all want to be more like Sally and less like Ron.

Bad messaging

1. The heart of relationship building

More often than not companies and brands will go above and beyond trying to get attention for their brand but once they have it they don’t have the goods to really capitalize. Or worse they really do have the goods but the audience doesn’t believe them.

Brands and companies have to build trust with their customers just like people do with one another. I am sure there are brands out there that you feel more of a connection to than others. The more effectively you can create that connection with your potential Dream Clients the better your marketing plan performs.

2. How to sell without selling

Because of the advancement of the internet, over the last few years businesses have been able to really focus on relationship building in a very profitable way. With the internet you can be promoting and selling your brand 24/7 365 days a year.

When you’re making smart content and driving traffic to your website people are beginning to become familiar with your brand. The more familiar they become the more likely they are to buy, it really is that simple!

We are going to bring in our last two business owners of the day. Adam and Phil.

Adam understands that building a website that converts gives him the ability to be building relationships and gaining new clients literally in his sleep.

Now let’s have a look at Phil. Don’t judge his outburst too harshly, we’ve all been there. But he could be doing things much better! Phil’s biggest problem is that he is still trying to fill his calendar with tiresome, beaten down methods. There just isn’t enough time in the day for Phil to reach half as many people as Adam can.

No one is breaking down Phil’s door to get a meeting with him while he’s sleeping because his potential Dream Clients don’t even know he exists. If they do know about his services he has failed to make a lasting connection.

So the question is how do you make that connection?
You have to make your messaging about them!

3. Make your message about your dream client

If you need a place to start, focus on the unique benefits of your service, not the features. When someone is becoming introduced to your brand they want to be seduced, not bogged down with technical vocab words.

Escape the pain of bad branding

There are many ways to explain the “Buyer’s Journey” at Helios we take it in 3 steps

Attention that leads to curiosity

Relationship building that leads to trust

Conversions aimed at Dream Clients