Lessons

Lesson Info

Class Introduction

We're going to be talking about how to launch a profitable digital marketing plan for your business. And I think that P word is important, because there's a lot of people out there who talk about marketing and business growth, especially in this city that we're in right now, and often times that happens unprofitably, at least for a while. Now, I didn't have the benefit when I was starting my different companies of going out and raising a lot of money. Not saying there's anything wrong with that. It's great if you can get it. But my assumption as we go through today is that you're not sitting on a giant pile of cash. You need to figure out how to grow your business profitably and predictably, meaning as you're going out there and you're acquiring different customers, they're actually giving you money from the get-go. So that's what we're talking about. I want to go through who this is really for and shape the discussion based on the type of business that you're in, the type of company t...

hat you have, even the type of role that you have within your organization. But I really want to kick things off with what will almost certainly be one of the most obvious statements, hopefully, that I make all day. If I were to say the grass is green and the sky is blue, you'd all nod and say, well, obviously. I think the same applies to this. Sales and marketing have changed. Does anybody have an issue with that statement? Is anybody like, "I don't know if I agree with that. "I think everything is absolutely, positively the same"? And I think it's safe to say that there's been a tremendous amount of change that's taken place in the fields of sales and marketing recently. Who remembers when this was a thing? Right? You remember? I mean, come on. I'm looking at some of you guys. We're about the same age, right? Not all of us, but some of us. I remember when this was a thing. I remember when it would arrive, and it had a prominent place in my kitchen as a child, because if you wanted to order a pizza or you wanted to find a shoe store, you were gonna let your fingers do the walking. It was your only choice. These barely exist anymore, right? So to say that things have changed, like I said, I believe is a very, very gross understatement. Some statistics really quickly. 57%, 57% is how far along the sales process a B2B customer is before they ever engage with a sales person. 57% of the way through the process before they ever talk. So if you're a running a business-to-business type operation, you need to know, or you're in sales at that, the people that you're talking to are 57% of the way through that process. Well, what accounted for the previous 57%? It's not like they're just walking around, you know? Oh, they magically all figured it out. No, they're doing their own research through different digital channels. So we're gonna talk about how do we meet them during that 57%? Now I don't want you think, "It's fine. "My business is offline, "so this whole digital marketing thing "doesn't apply to me." Right? Hopefully, whether you're B2B or you're B2C, you recognize that these industries have all been disrupted to an extent. But maybe you're thinking, "It's fine. "I have an offline company. "I have a brick and mortar business. "I have a professional practice." Maybe you're a photographer. So you're thinking, "This doesn't necessarily apply to me, because I'm offline." Look at this stat. This is from Spencer Spinnell, who's the Director of Emerging Platforms at Google. Now, admittedly, the stat is a couple of years old, but it hasn't changed that much. "While 97% of purchasing decisions "are starting on the internet, "less than 6% are happening on the internet." Now this is cool for a couple of reasons. Number one, we like to think that basically all sales, all transactions are occurring online. And that simply isn't the case. Now this 6% has gone up a bit but not much. Still, the vast majority of transactions are occurring within a 10-mile radius of people's homes. I think we all believe that Amazon is gonna change that. But right now, where we stand today, still the vast majority of transactions, the vast majority of money that is spent, is spent at the point of sale. And yet, 97% are starting online. 97% are starting online. So even if you're thinking, "No, no, that's fine. "People walk into a store. "They call me on the phone. "I meet them at trade shows," you gotta know 97%, they're starting online. So yes, sales and marketing has changed. That wasn't a trick question to lead things off. It was every bit as obvious as it seemed like it was. It's changed, and the rise of digital, it's only made things more complicated. And if you marketed or sold anything pre-Google, I remember when I first got started in 1999, Google was still a science fair project. It's only gotten more complicated. There's a company, chiefmartec.com. They put out this. How many of you guys have seen this chart? Seen this chart before? This is the marketing technology landscape. This is everything that you really need to know if you want to be really good at digital today. You just gotta figure that stuff out. You got that all figured out? You got advertising promotions over here, content experience, social commerce sales, data management. That's it. That's it. I can tell you as someone who teaches digital marketing, as someone who talks about digital marketing, if you're a digital marketing professional in this room, or if you're a digital marketing professional watching at home, or maybe you're an agency, do we have any agencies, by the way, in the room? You guys running independent agencies? What you should do when you see something like this, you should think to yourself, job security. The role of digital marketers is not going anywhere, because things are complicated, and they're only getting more complicated. So I want to do a really quick exercise. If nothing else, it'll get us talking and hanging out a little bit more. Let's come up with a laundry list of digital marketing tactics. Is anybody willing to write down and take notes? Anybody have handwriting that they can read? Sure. You looked up and made eye contact so I blame that on you. Yeah, that's on, see, you'll all learn. Everybody else from now is like. What are some of the crazy, disperate tactics, marketing tactics, thinking traffic. Alright, let's start with traffic. Anybody come up with any? Think of any traffic, Facebook advertising I heard. Google advertising, that's two. Can anybody think of any other ones? Instagram, heard that. Are you writing all these down? (laughing) Yes, I am now. Yeah, so we got Google, Instagram, what else? What else is out there in traffic? What about search, right? Yeah, you got all the organic, I mean, if we just go back over here, we think about, what are some of the other ones? We got three. Can anybody think of any more? YouTube? E-Mail, yeah, that's a biggie, right? We kinda all have one of those still, so E-mail marketing. Did you? What'd you say? You said YouTube. Yeah. I took credit for yours, so that's mine, so you have to, no I'm just kidding. Often times, I'll hear you say something, and you should know it's fair game if you don't speak up. I'm going to take credit for it. There was another one I think I heard. Did you have anything? You said E-mail. What else? Influencer marketing. Influencer marketing, absolutely. Influencer marketing is a, that's a new, a new thing that's out there, so that's a new thing that we now get to worry about. Okay, what about outside of traffic and awareness? What else is going on from a digital perspective that we need to be thoughtful of? Content marketing, blogging, podcasting. Anybody doing any webinars? Right, that all kinda falls under digital marketing. Perspective, you getting all these down? It's probably faster than you can write, right? Community management. Community management, yep. SEO Yep, SEO. Social, right? The management of the different social channels. How many are we up to, just out of curiosity? Well, I missed several on that last one (laughing) You missed several. And so, now, we're just talking about that. We think about, there's also split-testing. There's analytics, right? There's so many different facets and so many different aspects that go into creating this job security that I'm talking about and that frankly make digital marketing so complicated. All these disparate ideas floating around. Do you ever feel like you get shiny object syndrome? You come to a place like this, or maybe you attend a webinar and you hear about a new tactic that you need to worry about. So I've got a couple of goals that I want to accomplish today, but one of the goals that I wanna do, is I really wanna simplify this. I really wanna simplify the process and all the tactics around digital marketing. That's kinda my first really big goal that we'll get to hopefully at the end of just this session. Just simplifying digital marketing so that you have a process, you have a framework in place, for determining what do I need to worry about, and what can I back burner? What can I generally ignore at least for now? Cause if you try to chase it all, God help you. It's impossible. And there's new things happening all the time, so that's my first promise, is I wanna simplify this. My main promise, though, is that by the time we're finished, you'll have a proven and scalable plan for transforming strangers into rabid buyers and raving super-fans, profitably and predictably. I want you to have a framework for doing this no matter what type of business that you are in. You could be at a large company, you could be at a startup. You could be at a traditional brick and mortar, you could be at a digital first, alright? It really doesn't matter. The framework just flat out works. Who's gonna benefit most from this? Entrepreneurs and startup founders. Do we have any of those in the room? So you guys, wow, really? All of you starting things from scratch? That's great, cause you're gonna do this right from the get-go. I got to figure this out over time, yeah, hopefully. I got to figure this out over time and have to go back and fix a lot of things. Any small business, you're kind of beyond that stage? You're beyond the startup phase. Any small business owners yet? So you're kinda in that phase, right? This is critical because often times, when we start a business, we can have some success just through force of will, right? You have a really good product. You have an audience that kinda knows, but if you want to scale it and take it to the next level, we gotta get some of these processes put in place, so that's what we're gonna be talking about. Their freelancers and solos. I know there's some overlap in this. If you're a freelancer, you're a solo, you're all you got. Yeah, so you gotta get good at this stuff, cause if not you, who? Marketing and sales executives. Do any of you work in a marketing capacity in your business? You work in a marketing capacity? Yeah, so maybe taking some processes that you can bring back to your organization. We work a lot with marketing executives, especially people who were marketing executives in a pre-digital world that now are having to figure all this stuff out in the new area. The good news is, a lot of things that you were doing, not a lot, all, they all still apply, it's just bringing them into a new, modern framework. Digital agencies who are looking for an edge as well as traditional agencies who are looking for what's next. These are all the groups who are gonna benefit from this. So if you're in the audience today or watching from home, feel pretty that if you can check any or all of those boxes, you're gonna be in good shape and glad that you showed up today. So what we're gonna be covering, an 8-step framework for mapping your customer journey, and simplifying your growth plan. We're gonna be talking about how to clarify your messaging so that even cold prospects get it. We're gonna spend a lot of time talking about messaging, cause messaging, number one, it matters, and it changes a little bit when we're thinking about it from a digital perspective, but so much of digital marketing, you think about all the things we talked about. They're about amplification, amplification of a message. So if your message stinks, the better you get at digital marketing, the faster you're gonna convince the whole world that you suck. And we don't want that to happen, so I don't want you to get good at this stuff, until you first really dial in that message, alright? We're gonna talk about how to craft the perfect offer that, again, delivers the right message to the right person at that right moment. If you've ever said to yourself, "I know my product "or service is good. "People just don't seem to get it." Often times, it's because you're presenting a great offer, often times, to the right person, but at the wrong time, in the wrong sequence. We're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about an awareness plan. How to leverage social channels to actually get the awareness and to convert it once you have it, and then how to execute and scale your growth plan even if you're not an expert marketer. So, real quick, little bit about me. My name is Ryan Deiss, I'm the CEO of DigitalMarketer.com, but prior to being the CEO of DigitalMarketer.com, for one day and one day only, I went by a different name, and that name was Millennium Man. This picture was taken of me in 1999. I was a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, and I went to a party, and it was a futuristic-themed party. I didn't have a costume, so I went down to the local thrift store. I saw this full-body blue spandex on sale at the thrift store, and I said I can duct tape an M on it and go as Millennium Man. It is in 1999, after all. I know what you're thinking, "Surely you washed it." No, I didn't. That would have made a lotta sense, but I was 19 years old and didn't know better. So, I show you this picture for a couple reasons. Number one, it documents easily the pinnacle of my coolness. I mean, without a doubt, this was, I peaked. This was as good as it'd ever get for me. I'm young, I'm thin, and I'm surrounded by girls, right? That's as good as it every got for me, but the main reason that I show you this, is this actually documents the most important moment in my life. This documents the moment before I met my now wife. See, this picture was taken, and then as soon as this picture was taken, I turned to my left, and I said to this girl right here, I said, "Hi, my name is Ryan." She said, "Hi, my name is Emily." And that was when we met. I met my wife. Now why do I tell you that story? It's because I learned two very valuable lessons from here that I'm gonna reference back to. The first is, all relationships start out as two strangers. All relationships, alright? If you think about, if you're in a committed romantic relationship right now, somebody that you share your most intimate moments with, there was a time when the two of you had no idea that the other one existed, and yet, now here you are today. The moment this picture was shot, I had no idea who this girl was who had her arms on my shoulder, and yet now, she's wife of almost 15 years, mother of my four kids, our four kids. She claims 'em too. That's a big deal, right? We started out as strangers. Now, as marketers, that's important. Cause your relationships with your customers start out as strangers as well, so understanding how this process of strangers becoming friends, becoming maybe more intimate, or in the case of business, becoming customers, that's critical. And if we pretend like, "Oh, it's business, "So it's different," then we're gonna miss the most critical and vital aspects of marketing, which is it's an H2H relationship. We'll talk about that a little bit more. Also, this picture reminds me that sequence matters. I'll tell you kind of a little bit of an embarrassing story, and then we'll move on, and I'll get away from this picture. I knew, so we began dating shortly after this picture was taken, and I knew within two weeks of dating this girl that she was probably the woman that I was going to marry, within two weeks. Now, I didn't tell her that, cause that's freaking creepy, right? That'd be a little bit weird if I were like, "Hey, I know we're both freshmen in college, but you're probably the girl that I'm gonna marry." She would flee, right? Understandably so. So, I learned, okay, I feel this way, I think this is true, I think it might be it, but I'm gonna kinda keep that to myself. Now, a couple of years later, after dating, now we're actually proposing, and, you know, a year after that, we're walking down the aisle. This is where the sequence really comes into play. Often time, the reason that people aren't buying what you're selling isn't because it isn't good, it isn't because they don't want it. It's because they don't want it yet. They don't know you well enough. You were proposing marriage on a first date, and you wanna fix your marketing. You don't have to fix your marketing. You might have to fix your sequencing, alright? So what we're gonna be covering, we're gonna map the value journey to get that sequencing dead on. We're gonna nail the messaging. We're gonna craft the offer. We're gonna talk about how to actually contract and convert people once you have all this stuff in place, and then get into some execution.