3 Key Questions
Lesson 4 from: Market Your Service Business Without Spending Hours on Social MediaTara McMullin
3 Key Questions
Lesson 4 from: Market Your Service Business Without Spending Hours on Social MediaTara McMullin
Lesson Info
4. 3 Key Questions
Lessons
Class Introduction
07:27 2How Many Clients Do You Really Need? And What’s The Best Way To Reach Them?
06:45 3Finding Clients (Is Not the Same As Building An Audience)
11:34 43 Key Questions
07:53 5Discovery
09:55 6Evaluation
06:47 7Conversion
16:23 8Sales Funnels vs Marketing Ecosystems
10:51Lesson Info
3 Key Questions
when it feels like your marketing is not working, it can seem like the answer is always more marketing, which is why it is incredibly important that you actually get in there and diagnose what's actually going wrong with your marketing plan so that you can address that specific thing instead of wasting your time on a whole bunch of more marketing, creating a great marketing strategy is so much simpler than you've probably been led to believe. And it all starts with three key questions. Let's take a look at what those are. So first we need to understand that there are three parts to any marketing strategy Discovery that's when new clients or new prospects find out about you and your business evaluation, that's when they start thinking about buying from you and then conversion, that's when they're ready to talk with you about actually working with you. So Discovery evaluation and conversion. And there's one question for each of those sections that we need to answer. So for Discovery, the...
question is what am I going to do to regularly connect with new prospects at this point in time? My guess is that your pro probably out there on social media or you think you're supposed to be out there on social media to connect with new people. But that is so not the only way to connect with new folks and we'll get into exactly how to do that here in just a few minutes. But first maybe just start the wheels turning there. How could you be reaching out to new people on a regular basis if it's not on social media. The second question that we need to answer goes in the evaluation phase and it's what will I do to help prospects determine if hiring me is the right move for them. This is often where email comes into play or content marketing, but it can also be a free consultation or an initial session, those kinds of things all fit into that value in category. And then finally conversion. This is where marketing starts to bleed over into sales and it's where we start thinking about actually closing a deal. So the question here is how will I start sales conversations with the right prospects and sometimes it's not you starting the sales conversations, it's your clients starting the sales conversation. So those are the three pieces of your marketing strategy and how you answer those questions is going to help you build out something that you know is going to cover all the bases so that you're not just kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall, but instead you are taking strategic action on intentional activities that are moving the needle for your businesses needs. Now, as I mentioned earlier, there is a workbook for this class and this workbook breaks down this process. So not only will it help you follow along with the class and kind of take in what we're talking about here, but it's also going to help you build out that just for you marketing strategy based on those three key questions. So if you haven't downloaded that yet, be sure to do that now. Now understanding that these three questions in these three parts of a marketing strategy are the focus of what we're doing. They actually help us determine where your marketing strategy, your current marketing activities might be going wrong. So let's walk through how we might diagnose what your marketing needs currently are. Let's imagine you have plenty of prospects but you're not getting enough clients. So that means plenty of new people are finding out about you. You might even be having a decent number of sales conversations but they're not converting, they're not actually turning into new clients. So again, you're doing a great job of meeting new people so keep that up. But are you helping those people understand how your business can help them? Maybe you're so good at reaching new people that all of the activities that you do are just about meeting new people as opposed to helping them decide whether or not working with you is the right move. And then finally, have you provided compelling opportunities to buy. Are you making clear distinct straightforward calls to action that actually bring clients to your door for a sales conversation? So if you have plenty of prospects, but not enough clients, those are the kinds of questions you need to be asking yourself. Now let's say you've got plenty of interest, in other words, people are saying, Yeah, yeah, this is great. I want to work with you. I can't wait to work with you. I can't wait for you to take this over for me. But you've got low close rates. People aren't actually turning that interest into a contract with you. So you've probably filled your pipeline through solid discovery. Again, good job. You've probably also given people the information that they need to determine that working with you is a great idea. But where you're probably falling down is that you haven't provided those clear and compelling opportunities to buy from you, your prospects may not actually know how they can hire you now from your position inside the business. That can sound ridiculous. But from a prospects perspective it happens so often, right. You're following along with someone, you're nodding about everything that they say or send you, but you don't know what it is that they actually do or how they can take advantage of it. So this is a really common need and if you've got plenty of interest, but low close rates, those straightforward calls to action can be the key to moving the needle. And then finally, maybe you have high close rate, but no new leads and you can't close conversations that aren't happening, right? So what this means is that I know, you know how to close a deal. You know that when you get someone on the phone, get them in that zoom meeting, that you're gonna connect with them and they are going to be ready to buy. It also means that people who find you understand why you're the one to work with, they know how you can help them. But what's not happening is that you're not getting out there and reaching new people or the things that you're doing to reach new people aren't actually being successful in that way. And so that's where you need to focus your attention. So thinking about your overall marketing strategy, we want to first consider those three marketing questions and the three components of a good marketing strategy. Remember that every marketing strategy has to fulfill those three objectives, Discovery evaluation and conversion. And now before we move on to actually getting into the specifics of that, I want you to diagnose your own marketing needs. Maybe you're thinking Tara, I gotta do all three and I'm just really dropping the ball and all of it. That's fine. I've got you but maybe you notice you know really it's just discovery. I need to focus on Discovery. I've got the rest figured out. That's great news now, you know where to put your attention in the next few lessons. I'm going to break this down piece by piece and offer you some different activities that you can use to make each of those pieces of your marketing strategy work and I'll share some examples with you as we go
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Onyinye Onyejiaka
Wonderful class. I love that her practical tips are realistic.
Matthew Whitenack
Tara is great. I have been looking forward to new content from her. This class is major departure from her earlier classes. In it, she essentially argues that we spend less time on marketing, doing fewer activities....because that nonstop whirlwind of content creation didn't actually help her business (which makes me question what I learned in her earlier classes). I think this new class could greatly benefit from more specific examples of where she suggests we meet our ideal clients since she's suggesting it isn't on social media or in their email inboxes. I don't think I have enough information to actually "do" anything after taking this class.
Ashley
Student Work
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