Marketing Smarter, Not Harder.

Why Starting Small Can Help You Achieve Big Marketing Wins

Marketing success isn’t elusive. It might seem that way because maybe you've tried lots of different strategies, but you don't seem to be any closer to billionaire status and taking over the world with your awesomeness.

You don't need to be a genius, but you do need to have a goal.

Your marketing goal is the end result you want to achieve. What is it?

The lay of the marketing land

Where in the customer journey is your goal located?

Is it in acquisition? Do you want to get more unique visitors, whether that's directly, via search engines, or some other referral, or increase their interactions each visit, even if they don't convert but just spend more time on your website? Or improving your Click Through Rate by improving your ads?

Maybe your goal is in the activation stage where you want to turn visitors into email subscribers, reduce the percentage of visitors that bounce away from your website because it's not relevant to their needs, get your visitors to start a trial, or take folks from free members to paid members.

Your end goal could be about retention—getting those visitors to keep returning frequently or increase the number of users or members that you have.

Or, maybe, it's all about revenue for you—getting people to go through the sales process and not abandon their carts, pay more per order, or increasing the lifetime value of your customers.

And then lastly we have referrals. Maybe your goal is to get more five-star Google reviews or testimonials from happy clients, increasing word of mouth referrals, or getting more shares for your social media posts.

Somewhere in those five segments lies your marketing goal.

The best type of goal

Creating a SMART goal—one that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely—is a goal on steroids. For example: “I want to increase my profits by $5000 a month, within 30 days” is a lot more powerful and defined than “I want to make more money this month.”

Kiss wishy-washy goals goodbye and start your marketing success with the end in mind: Your marketing goal has to be strategic and realistic and be reverse-engineered to succeed.

Your chance of success is exponentially higher if your goal is realistic. You might question how realistic your goal is if you're not an expert in that segment. Make an educated guess. And do some research. Once you've decided that your goal is achievable and realistic—to the best of your ability, then it's time to start doing some reverse engineering and testing.

Food, Glorious Food!

Are you singing along with me, or am I in a totally different demographic than you?!

You've probably heard the question asked, “How do you eat an elephant?” answered, “One bite at a time.”

That elephant is your marketing strategy.

It's big, it's bulky, but broken down into manageable steps is the way to get fed.

Talking about food: Pick the low-hanging fruit—it's always easier and more rewarding. What are the tactics that provide a higher yield, preferably in the shortest timeframe, or with the least amount of work, that will help you eat that elephant faster?

OK, enough food talk. I’m getting hungry. 🤣

Run some small experiments

Get confirmation that you're on the right track by running some small experiments. You may have heard of an MVP – Minimum Viable Product. It's where you're testing the waters with a product that has the minimum amount of features required for people to still want it. Like promoting an online course with only an outline, because why build a whole course on Deep Sea Fishing for Retired Rocket Scientists only to find those folks aren’t learning online? They’re too busy fishing.

But the minimum we are talking about is for tactics, your MVT—Minimum Viable Tactic.

You've likely heard the term ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.’ This is where that phrase is gold. Remember at the beginning we covered reverse engineering? You have your goal, you know which customer journey segment your goal falls into, and you have your timeframe. Now decide which tactics you're going to use, and run some tests.

This is where you have to be aware of what's working and what's not working. You might be looking at your numbers on the dashboard of your email marketing platform, digging through your Google Analytics, or watching your ad spend on social media. Whatever it is you have to consistently pay attention to it, because remember—there is an M in your smart goal.

It has to be Measurable.

Working backward is perfect because you start with the end in mind and you're just mapping out how to get to the destination. That's pretty easy to do if you're working with numbers. For example, if your goal is to acquire 500 new email subscribers in 90 days. You can do the math and easily work out how many new subscribers you need each week. If you don't start hitting the average number in week one or two it's definitely gonna be harder, if all elements stay the same, to hit that goal.

You'll also want to decide how long you're going to hold until you fold if you have a crappy hand.

Testing your MVT will make it obvious what needs to stay and what needs to go in your marketing plan.

Don’t be distracted

At this point in time, there are about a million and one marketing tactics to choose from out there on the inter-webs. Don't let bright shiny objects distract you from effectively and efficiently executing—like having to learn a whole new platform or software to accomplish some tasks you can do using what you have, and already know how to use. Find the ways, with the least amount of friction, for you to get the job done.

Because done is better than perfect.

So, with the million and one marketing tactics out there, you could spend weeks reading a hella lot of free downloadable PDFs [and all the email marketing you also got as part of the package.] Or attend a bazillion webinars with people hocking their wares to turn you from zero to Marketing Hero in a week.

FOCUS! Don’t get distracted. 🙂

Go with what you know and/or hire help as needed to turn your assumptions into marketing tactics and strategies that work for you, or hopefully not this—don't work for you.

You're not going to know until you've worked through your test tactics. Just know that what works for one person, or one company that seems very similar to you or yours, probably won't work in the same way when you run the tactic. There is no one size fits all when trying on various marketing strategies for size. But trying them on for size will give you a clearer idea of what fits best for your needs.

Time to go big

Your testing should last a couple of weeks to give you a good enough idea of the tactic’s success. Before you go into full-on test mode remember to take the time to reflect and understand why it worked or didn't. Once you have your proven-to-work MVT it's then time to maximize what you’re doing and scale up.

Having your MVT will save you time and money and a whole lot of headaches.

Can you imagine posting like a crazy person on Facebook and nobody is paying attention, then deciding that posting more will turn that around? I call that the Spaghetti on the Wall Marketing Method. Pretty self-explanatory really.

Knowing what works and what doesn't, and why, will make your marketing more effective.

Know your numbers

As you're going through testing your MVT keep in mind that you have to keep monitoring your numbers. Use an online note-taking service like Notion to keep your brainstorming and MVT results in one place where you can easily find them. That not only helps you now but in the future, for anyone that you hire to help you work your marketing plan.

Keep on truckin’

This part is really just the rinse-and-repeat section. You tested, you kept what worked, you scaled up so now just keep on going until you're not getting the return on investment you desire. If you're an analytical type you're probably really excited by the opportunity to start a new spreadsheet and play around with the numbers, but if you’re like me, and a creative, it's going to sound as exciting as going to a month of dental appointments. I feel your pain and I know it's hard to keep track, but just try really damn hard! Because this works.

So, remember, start with the end in mind, test, test some more, then cement your successful tactics into your marketing strategy and marketing plan. And let me know how it goes!

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