Lessons

Lesson Info

When to Add Advertising

Let's talk about when to add advertising to your working marketing campaign. If and when you're willing to invest in that campaign through advertising the next thing to consider is the marketing goal that you have set for yourself. Again, not for advertising for advertising sake. But rather advertising with a marketing goal in mind. And remember this goal always contributes to your growth and/or your profit. You're going to want to budget in a way that will help you reach your goal. And you do not want to invest scared money. So when I say scared money it reminds me of something that Bethany Frankel said. I love the Housewives on Bravo TV, and she's a housewife on New York, and she said, she's a fabulous business woman, a real mentor as far as what she's built and how's she's used her platform and her reach to grow online. I love watching her business grow, and she said, "You never want to invest scared money, "because if you are walking into a casino "and you have $20 and you have to ...

pay the rent, "you are guaranteed to lose that $20. "But if you're walking into a casino with $20 to play with, "you're probably gonna go home a winner, "because scared money never wins." And that's so true. When you advertise and when you're setting a budget you do not want to set a money goal that scares you. It's going to make you nervous. It's gonna make you jittery. Remember, this is a gamble and we can make it a safer gamble, but it's still gonna be a gamble. It needs to be an advertising budget that you can set and feel comfortable about, that you can trust and that you can believe in its results. Even if it does not result in immediate sales, you can trust that it's getting your brand out there. You can trust that you're gonna learn from that money, and you can make that investment confidently. So it's really important. Of course, we're going to patiently and methodically test your marketing campaign organically with low cost, no cost methods and in small doses before running wild and spending hundreds of dollars on an advertising campaign that runs for a couple of days. There are ways to test it and to see if it's working and engaging and then deciding whether or not you'll go forward. You can always adjust the budget. You can set a budget for $5 and see how you feel about it. But just do not set an advertising budget that's scared money. Don't push yourself. This is not the place to stretch yourself or push your comfort zones. Next, I'm pulling up the marketing calendar. This is the marketing calendar we created in market your Etsy shop to sold out success. For just a quick recap in case anybody is just joining us, or looking at this for the first time, we set up a marketing calendar that was 12 months. I recommend it be perpetual and you start that marketing calendar in the month that you're in and go 12 months forward. But for display sake, for the course syllabus, I just created a January through December 12 month calendar. You're plugging in the most important data. You want to be the owner of your business. You want to have the steering wheel and drive your own business, so you are putting in first where you need time off, where you want to proceed with caution, where your personal schedule comes first, because after all, that's why you created a creative business so that it would work with your lifestyle. Then the next thing you're gonna do is plug in any data you know or any big money makers that you have and when I'm saying data, I'm saying know for the seasons of your business, know the rhythm of your business, know and notice when it feels like nobody's on the internet and notice when it feels like everybody's on the internet and plug that in, because you want to always boost what's working. That's the theme of this session. You always want to boost what's working. So if your marketing calendar is working well, if you know you have a time that you have a lot of traction with customers, that's where you're gonna place a sale, because you're gonna boost what's working. And if you have a marketing campaign that's winning and doing really well and you're customers are going crazy because they love what you've offered, again, you're gonna boost what's working. You're gonna boost it by adding an advertising budget. This is the marketing calendar we created. This is what we built our marketing strategy and our marketing campaign around. With the add of advertising, the add of an advertising budget, now we'll really have a solid campaign that will not only help us profit, but will also help us grow. Because now we're gonna get more people that have never seen us into it's a great time to introduce the business, because things are buzzing and things are doing well. I'm always creating an advertisement for two reasons. I'm either building my list or promoting a sale online. I want to, it's, again, I'm either reaching for customers, or I am converting them. I'm looking at slow down times for list building for my business because growth isn't my issue anymore. When you're first building a marketing campaign and you're just starting out, I like this to be all about growth. My offers are gonna be about growing my business. But now I'm looking to increase the profits. I already have a winning business model, and so when I put in opt-in offer, I'm trying to introduce my business to people right before I know something big is gonna come up and gonna come out. That will give me six to eight weeks to talk to them for a little bit to introduce myself better, to warm them up so that I don't meet them and then right away try to ask for a sale. I'm looking at the down times for list building seasons, and I'm adding opt-in offers at slow seasons, but right before something big is about to go off. I'm going to pull up an actual opt-in offer that I have and show that to you in a minute. But again, I want you to notice that I've put those opt-in offers right before a big launch or a big season because I like to boost what's working. So I'm just trying to make a big season even better. I love the non-hurried nature of this promotion. I love, especially for my blog, I love the auto responders that I have going on. We talked about yesterday I love this topic and it deserves its own day, but we talked about how when you're sending an email you can condition the buyer to read it. You always want to be conditioning the buyer to read it. There are emails that I get that I won't delete, I will leave marked unread until I have had the chance to open and read through the entire thing. My business role model in life, it's a man in business, and he sends these fabulous emails, and I will leave them sitting unopened and unread until I have a chance because I know I'm gonna sit there and read word for word. He's conditioned me to not miss a single thing he says, 'cause everything he says is so valuable, and it feels like he's speaking right to me and my needs. So when you're writing emails and you're sending campaigns like that, make sure that you're conditioning. It's not email for email sake. It's not marketing for marketing sake. Make sure that you're writing that email in a way that is conditioning your subscriber to open it, to love it, and to want to take in every word that you say. It's a big deal. For my blog, the non-hurried nature of this promotion, really gives me time for my auto responder to go out. I have an auto responder set up that sends about three emails all giving things. The first email welcomes them and they usually signed up for my free e-book. That gives them the free e-book, and that's all I want to do. I want to give them the free e-book. They're really not in the mood to read, and when they are gonna read they're gonna read that e-book. And then I tell them I have a way that will help them boost their social reach by 1,700% for free. And it's true. I have a way that is tested to boost social reach by 1,700% for free. It's a Facebook that I run. No strings attached because I'm really strict on the rules, and I will ban and delete at will if you break the rules. So there's no strings attached, and because I know I run it so strictly it's not the reason you signed up, but I want to invite you there. So I invite everybody to creative entrepreneur's by marketing creativity in which the whole name of the game for that group is to boost each other's social reach and it works. And it helps people get in front of more ideal customers. That's the next email that comes. I say to the very bottom of the first email I'm gonna let you have these materials. I'm gonna let you have a look around and get a lay of the land, get to know me a little bit, and then I'm gonna send you a way that will help boost your reach by 1,700% for free. Well, they're waiting for the next email. And when they get that next email they're gonna be excited to open it and excited to read it. So a few days later that email comes. But it doesn't come just with the invitation to group. It comes with a story about me and my journey online, and how far I've come, and how I've made things happen. I wanted to be a public speaker in this industry and so I created my own retreat. I asked myself what would I do if I knew if could not fail? What would I do if I knew I could not fail and there was no chance of failing? I made a list and I started to complete that list one thing at a time. One of them was I wanted to speak at a retreat. So I created my own. I made everything on my "if I could not fail list" happen, and I tell that story, and it really connects and resonates with creative business owners. You all are shaking your head like you're getting it too. Because it's a big deal to go do what scares you in this business and then at the same time it's the only thing that will get you ahead. I tell them that story. They love it. In fact, I get email replies that say, "I read every word. "You're the only email that I open "and I read until the very end." Great, I'm doing my job. You see that? I'm doing my job. And at the bottom of that, I invite them to the Facebook group, and I say come on let's go boost your reach for free. No strings attached. So that's an auto responder campaign, and it's a powerful auto responder campaign. You can see I'm going to do that before a big season. I'm gonna be doing that before I ask anybody, it's a great way for me to get in and introduce myself. And we're building a relationship just because I'm telling a personal, vulnerable story. That's what a friend would want to hear. They don't want to hear small talk. They don't want to hear fluff. They want to know, they want to get down to the nitty gritty. They want to know if you're worth getting to know, right? Because you're impatient online, and because it's important. It also makes me more comfortable with marketing, and marketing is a lot about being comfortable. So it makes me more comfortable, that about a month later our relationship is built a little bit. That I'm not meeting anybody. In fact, if you're in my auto responder and I'm having a big sale I will segment you out of my ask because it's too early. I'm not gonna ask you for anything. We've just met. So I'm set up to segment you out of my ask. So you just go through my auto responder and I'll catch you next time and see if you're interested in working with me later. But it's not the time to ask. I don't meet people and then ask them for a favor. It's jarring. So I segment them out. It makes me more comfortable, and your marketing plan is always about being comfortable. But if they got in six to eight weeks ago, then they get to join the excitement of the big sale or the big launch that I'm having. Lisa, I'd love to jump in here. You had mentioned that email marketing genius that you always read his or her emails, and we were wondering who that was. Oh, it's Ramit Sethi. He's actually been an instructor here on CreativeLive. It's Ramit and he has a site that's called "I Will Teach You To Be Rich." I love everything that he puts out. And role models often disappoint me. I will have a role model for awhile, and (laughter) and then I will outgrow them. Or it's a mentor that something happens, and it's not what I expect from them. But Ramit, oh my gosh, for years, for years, since I started, got online in business to this day. In fact, I just recently replied to one of his emails so nervous, like shaking to write the email, to tell him that I had invested in some business training with him and then he wrote back. I could not believe it, but yes. Ramit is my absolute, absolute all-time role model.