As the old adage goes, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? What about your marketing strategy? If you have the best product, service, widget, or invention and no one knows about it, does it truly exist? If the most talented person, the most innovative product, the greatest sales pitch to pass one's lips is created and no one is around to witness it, does it, he, or she exist?
The point is, you need an opportunity to do business, in order to do business. And regardless of your paradigm, whether you are a recording artist or owner of a small family–owned and operated bakery, your craft, talent, or passion is indeed a business and must be treated as such, if you expect it to evolve and earn money. Sure, I understand it is your passion, and it is easy to get caught up in the love of it, but at the end of the day, your passion is a business. Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Beyoncé are all brands, and despite all the fun it appears to be, they are in the business of sales: merchandise sales, record sales, concert sales. So yes, you need an audience. You can't sell something to an inanimate object. You need a real, live, breathing, responsive being to act as your audience, who essentially is going to purchase your product, idea, or talent.
In the performance and entertainment arena, you need an audience to develop a fan base from. You can't become famous if no one has ever heard of you. Even if you have the most incredible powerhouse singing voice known to man, if no one has ever experienced your game-changing talent, it is entirely irrelevant. The late Michael Jackson, formerly known as the King of Pop, exuded more talent in one pinky than some of us in our entire body. Yet, if Michael Jackson had a severe case of performance anxiety and put on historic concerts only in the privacy of his bathroom, with a shampoo bottle acting as his microphone, would he have left a legacy? Of course not! Because no one would have ever known of his talent. If no one has ever heard you or heard of you, you will never develop a fan base, get bookings or gigs, land a record contract, or become famous.
You could have the most amazing keynote speech, or be the most incredible speaker, trainer, or consultant, but if no one knows of your expertise, accomplishments, or capabilities, chances are you will not be recognized by the elite speaker bureaus and booked for speaking gigs worthy of your talent.
A career as a sales professional is no different. It can be rather frightening entering a career field that is solely or mostly based on commissions, such as a real estate agent or an automotive sales professional. Without the appropriate level of visibility, market awareness, and branding, you are going to have minimum success and starve (metaphorically speaking and sadly, in some cases, literally). On the other hand, a commission-based career can be extremely rewarding.
The field of sales is one of the most incredible careers one can embark upon. It allows you the ability to make as much money as you can earn, yet a large majority of those who enter the sales arena crash and burn, and are forced to leave their sales position for a traditional career or job with limited growth potential and no opportunity to earn massive revenue—and not because they lack the skill, ability, or talent, but because they lack an audience—someone to listen, someone to purchase whatever it is that they are selling. Why? Simply because they lack the knowledge to effectively prospect for new business, become visible, generate leads, and create new opportunities to do business.
To be clear, it doesn't matter what industry you are in. It doesn't matter if you are a sole proprietor, small business, corporation, doctor, lawyer, psychologist, dentist, chiropractor, singer, musician, speaker, sales professional, entrepreneur, or author/writer/blogger. Everyone needs visibility. Everyone needs an audience. Skill, desire, passion, likeability, intelligence, hard work, dedication, tenacity, desperation, need, and having a great product or service just aren't enough. The bottom line is that you are either visible or invisible. So unless you're David Copperfield or a ghost, being invisible isn't a desired result for any profession. So how can you become visible? Congratulations, my friend, for recognizing the importance of visibility (mind-set) and your commitment to reading this book (skillset). You have taken the first step toward visibility awesomeness!
With the sensory and content overloaded world we live in, it is difficult to become findable, never mind relevant, especially if you lack a strategy, resources, content, and a commitment to stay the course. This book is going to give you a methodical, proven approach to create a massive visibility strategy, while creating an unfair advantage over your competition, and consequently increasing your profits—a respectable goal for any business owner.
There is fierce competition out there, competition that comes in all shapes and sizes. And believe me, I've seen it. They are ready to inherit your customers the first opportunity they get. Chances are, when I say the word competition, a vivid picture of your direct competitor that offers similar or the exact products and services that you do comes to mind. You may even envision their horrid logo or obnoxious jingle, or hear the chant of their lame slogan, “ABC Competitor does it best, yup, no guess.” But what about the competition of attention and stimulus? We live in the technology age, with tons of digital pieces starving for our attention—for example:
You need to focus on how you, your company, and your product(s) are going to be found. How are you going to stand out against all of the noise from all of those different sources? You have to have a focused strategy, with a beginning, middle, and end in mind. I should probably mention here, early on, that I am a Franklin Covey Certified Trainer and Facilitator and continuous student of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I have adopted the seven habits into my personal and professional life and frequently apply these principles to all that I do. You will hear me mention these habits from time to time as they have become deeply rooted within me.
First, you must begin with the end in mind. You know that you want to be found, but have you put enough thought into what it is exactly you want to be found for? What are your visibility goals? What is it specifically that you are trying to accomplish? What is your purpose? This is very important to acknowledge, for without a clear purpose, you have no guidance and without guidance, you cannot control where you are headed. Frankly, almost any road will get you there.
I suggest you take out a notepad or open a new Microsoft Word document and take some time to answer the following questions. These questions will get your mind set in the right direction and assist you in understanding how far on the path of visibility you currently are. Keep in mind, the only difference between where you are now and where you want to be is what you do. You already have a great product or service, or maybe you are the product—you just lack the roadmap to becoming visible. So, let's get those brain juices flowing and structure your end in mind.
Be specific, not generic, and make sure not to spread yourself too thin by trying to push too many services in one shot. By spreading yourself too thin, you risk diluting your relevancy and your potency, and furthermore, you risk taking away from your core competency. Chances are, you've probably heard the disparaging phrase “jack of all trades, master of none.” While I am not implying that just because you are good at multiple things (notice I said “disparaging”), you cannot possibly master one or more of those things, I will say that it is my opinion that spreading your focus can have an adverse effect. Also avoid being too generic or vague. You need to find balance and a niche, and work on solidifying your existence within that niche. A rule of thumb I live by and a concept that will be introduced to you here shortly is “be careful of distractions disguised as opportunities.”
I am going to provide a few examples that may or may not be the line of business you are involved in, but the basic principles may and can apply. In fact, many times you can grab nuggets from other industries and experience major success because you are doing something completely different from your competition. It provides your audience with a fresh perspective. A lot of times I see businesses that are trying to keep up with the big fish and mimic just about everything that they are doing. They are constantly in a state of exhaustion (physically and financially) because they are trying to keep up. It's important to be unique, a leader, a trend setter. Sometimes all it takes is a little risk to try something outside the box, and the payoff can be extremely rewarding.
If you are, for example, one of the following:
This is such an important question that you need to be able to identify the answer as soon as possible. I am a business owner myself. I know you might feel like saying, “Everyone or anyone,” but that is too broad of a stroke. You should not take a shotgun approach to your business. A precise focus on your targeted audience is very important.
After you have identified who your audience is, you now need to know where your audience is—whether you want to break it down by:
It doesn't really matter. Once you identify who they are, it will then be relatively easy to find out where they are. The question now becomes, do you want to go after them, or have them come to you? You might be confused by this question and tell yourself that this doesn't make much sense, or that it just doesn't seem possible. How can “they,” my potential audience, come to me? That is exactly what this book is going to teach you. I call it reactive selling. Let them come to you. Why exert more energy for minimal return when you can exert minimal energy upfront, for a stronger (more gross) and easier close later.
Cold-calling someone is a much harder close or a much harder sale compared to someone (an individual, company, association, bureau, etc.) coming to you for your product or service. If you are being approached, it says the person is (1) interested, (2) a serious buyer, and (3) looking to purchase relatively soon. Picture yourself going fishing. You've got your fishing gear on, fishing pole in hand, and bait all ready to go. (If you are not the fishing type, humor me. Trust me, there is a point here.) Imagine two ponds in front of you. You can choose to fish in either one. The first pond is empty, but you have the opportunity to draw the fish to you with your selected bait. The second pond is already full of fish. All you need to do is throw your fishing line into the water and boom…you've got your fish. What pond are you choosing? I would bet it is the one full of abundance, possibility, and opportunity. You have access to such a pond, right at your fingertips, literally. This pond is called the Internet.
Once you analyze the data in regard to conventional advertising and marketing versus digital marketing, you will see that reactive selling is the smartest, most powerful, transparent, and cost-effective strategy you can adopt for success.
Major controversy has developed over whether it is more beneficial to invest your time and money into conventional marketing and advertising mediums like radio, television, and print, or to place your focus, energy, and resources into digital marketing efforts. Digital marketing and advertising are the clear choice and here is why. Conventional marketing and advertising are intrusive—meaning that it is where and when people don't want to be bothered. The reality is that people no longer wait for the Sunday newspaper to hit the front doorstep so they can search for ads to help make a buying decision. People don't gas up the car, get the family all buckled in, and drive down Route 66 looking for your billboard, in hopes of getting some pertinent information that will make them feel more comfortable in their decision to purchase a product or service. Sure, they may take notice of it, but they are not intentionally searching for it. In fact, with all of the new “no texting while driving” laws recently put in place, it is obvious that people are too distracted to look at the road, let alone take the opportunity to look up. Furthermore, people don't watch CNN or even Keeping Up with the Kardashians in eager anticipation of the commercials so they can get excited about a product or service.
Conventional media and advertising have lost the dominance they once had. And if you are not willing to change your thinking patterns and marketing philosophies and processes, you are risking extinction of your product or service. If you are not constantly in a state of evolution, you are then in a state of regression. Believe me—the world will not wait for you to catch up.
People are tired of being bombarded by the “shotgun,” “spray and pray” approach of conventional advertising. Some conventional marketing advocates reading this may be offended by what I am saying, but I am only speaking the truth and more importantly speaking from experience. As a business owner of several multimillion-dollar companies, I have experimented with both conventional and digital methods and at first was somewhat reluctant. But I saw in advance where the future was headed and made the decision to trust; for return on investment (ROI) reasons, I have chosen to participate strictly in digital mediums, and, wow, has it paid off! I believe it is fair for me to assume that some part of you, or maybe all of you, must agree with me or feel the same way. This is why you agreed to invest your time in reading this book, because you realize the importance of partaking in the digital age, even if that realization lies somewhere deep down. I understand that change can be scary. I also understand change can be uncomfortable. But this is not the first time we have been down this road, and it surely will not be the last. Think of the evolution of cell phones. They started off as large cinder block–looking devices with modest options, but they served their intended purpose, a purpose we were all quite astonished by. Wait, I don't have to be connected to a landline to speak to someone? I don't have to wait by the phone at home in anticipation of a phone call? I can make or take a phone call on demand, while running errands? As the size of the phone began to dwindle, the functionality of the phone began to increase exponentially, leading to the development of the smartphone. Not everyone was sold on the idea, and not everyone transitioned without hesitation. Quite honestly, the new capabilities were downright scary and intimidating for a decent majority, yet fast-forward to today and practically everyone has a smart phone, and our kids are just about born with them. The point is that, like a cell phone, digital advertising is not a fad or a phase. It is a permanent structure that is rooted deeply into our culture and will only evolve further. Even companies that once offered or still offer conventional marketing services are adapting and growing to accommodate and fulfill the wants and needs of today's buyers. Take a look at the yellow pages, for instance. We once depended greatly on this five-inch bible of information to determine what companies were available to conduct business with. Today, that same bible of information is conveniently located at www.yellowpages.com. Yellow pages didn't choose to fade away—they chose to adapt and evolve. Just like we must do. We must go where the fish are if we want to not only survive but also thrive. And that is why I chose to title this book Winning the Game of Googleopoly and not Winning the Game of Comcast, or Radio, or Billboards, or Newspapers.
Some may not even agree with my assessment and may not consider traditional advertising intrusive or annoying. They may even consider it a form of branding. But the reality of the situation is that conventional advertising no longer has the effect it once did, and statistics prove it. These numbers show that conventional advertising is declining year after year, and traditional ad sources are losing revenue at alarming rates. And why? Simple—because people are tired of the noise! They are tired of having things that they don't want or need constantly forced in their line of vision. And they are finding ways to negate them, to go around them, to avoid them, and to block them. It is kind of like the cat-and-mouse game between a highway patrol officer and a motorist who owns a radar/laser detector, looking to speed with the comfort of not getting a ticket. This very concept is happening with advertising. Americans are arming themselves with the radar detectors of anti-intrusive advertising.
You know these detectors as and most likely possess:
Did you know that an astounding 77 percent of viewers use another device while watching TV?1 Let's allow that to marinate for a few seconds. This means that if you have 100 people in a room watching television, 77 of them would be head down, eyes down, focus split, logged onto their computers, smartphones, iPads, or whichever electronic mind candy they choose. This tells me that your potential audience is listening to the television, rather than watching the television.
Prospects, consumers, and shoppers alike are all tired of the old-school tactics and antiquated strategies of the past. We live in an on-demand universe where people want, no, expect information, when and how they want it—and quickly too! Hence the term on-demand. It is evident that our patience for retrieving information has diminished. This is why we often see phrases like “Click here for a quick quote,” or “Get your credit approved in 60 seconds or less.” And if you fail to provide the information they are seeking, with a tap of a finger or click of a mouse, they will certainly move on. I discuss this in greater detail later in the book.
So we've established the fact that conventional marketing and advertising are indeed intrusive for the consumer, where and when people do not want to be bothered. But did you realize they also lack transparency for the marketer? In other words, there is no true way to calculate a return on investment (ROI). Yes, each of the mediums can articulate circulation, viewers, and listeners (how many fish are in the pond), but how can someone possibly identify out of all of those viewers, listeners, or readers which folks are legitimately interested, in-market prospects? You can't! It is very difficult—next to nearly impossible—even to quantify it. Obviously, if you are running an ad in the newspaper, television, or radio and someone comes into your business or calls you on the phone and states it is a direct result of the ad, you can quantify some value. But does that value surpass the monetary investment? Probably not. The problem as I see it is you must ask yourself the following. Can you identify exactly how many people actually saw the ad? No. Can you identify out of the people who did see the ad if they were even in the market for your product or service? No again. How about this: can you identify out of the people who did see the ad whether they even cared? Definitely not. Let's just say that we did have a means to generate that statistic and you found that some did care about your product or service: Can anyone assist you in identifying out of those who did have an interest how many people actually cared enough to take action—in other words, how many people called or visited you or your business? You might say yes, or you believe so, but that brings on a whole new set of challenges. You see, in order to measure a true ROI, you must have a viable tracking system to manage lead generation and prospects. This might include call monitoring and tracking software and/or a customer relationship management (CRM) solution. If you do have these tools, the question becomes, are they set up the right way with the right content and strategy? Are you and/or your team fully trained on these tools and maximizing their effectiveness? And if you possess these tools, are they set up the right way? Are you using them for each and every action item, every single time, without exception, without fail, the correct way? If you cannot answer yes to these questions, you have a problem. You see, in order for you to be able to quantify true ROI, you need to have an accurate tool of measure, housing accurate data and resulting in accurate field intelligence. Otherwise, “garbage in, garbage out.” The last time I checked, garbage won't buy you anything. In fact, it can cost you.
Conventional advertising and marketing cost a fortune for a majority to afford. If you are a sole proprietor, actor, musician, speaker, singer, car salesman, karate instructor, or personal trainer just starting out, how on earth are you going to afford a conventional marketing spend? Or maybe you're not just starting out; maybe you've been doing this for a long time now but haven't quite made it and have limited means to work with. How do you intend to pay for the advertisement source? The answer, of course, is that you can't and you won't. It is like the chicken or the egg concept with some business owners. They need an audience to purchase whatever it is they are selling in order to earn money. But if you have no audience, you cannot make a monetary return. You need to make yourself visible—make yourself seen. And in order to do that, you must pay to play, and conventional advertising is the most financially challenging way to go. I am not trying to deter you from your dream of mainstream media notoriety; I am just trying to give you a reality check. Unfamiliar with the cost associated with conventional advertising? I will give you an example in the Philadelphia market. Television would need a budget of at least $3,000 per month for at least three months to have an even slight impact on the audience. That is quoting you direct numbers from my Comcast rep in Philly. I personally ran TV commercials for a very popular independent recording artist, promoting a hot new single on the radio with a major label feature with Meek Mill of Maybach Music Group. As a matter of fact, her TV commercial for her new track was even played on the highly anticipated Kardashian wedding episode: $9,000 in 90 days for about 60 TV commercials. Was it worth it? It depends on how you define “worth it.” It provided some notoriety and credibility, but did it provide ROI? No, definitely not. Maybe if we had a million-dollar budget and were able to commit to a full campaign, but it was too expensive to keep up the initiative on TV. Same thing for radio ads—we were spending thousands of dollars for radio ads on Clear Channel. But the way that conventional media works is through frequency and repetition. You would spend thousands of dollars per month to air a 15- or 30-second commercial, and for what—brand awareness? It just doesn't make sense, not when there is a much cheaper way, a more effective way, with lasting results.
There are numerous problems with relying entirely on a conventional advertising or marketing campaign:
You may be on the complete opposite side of the spectrum and not fall under the same category mentioned earlier. You are not a small business, an individual person, or a startup. In fact, you are a large company with a large advertising budget, who can easily afford TV, radio, and print. That is great! But the fact that you can afford to use these conventional advertising opportunities doesn't mean that you should use them. Affordability shouldn't give you the license to spend irresponsibly—not if you want to grow your net profits. You do not want to just exist in the black; you want to dominate in the black and continue to evolve.
You must put first things first—that is, put the most important things at the top of your list. These are the items you must act upon quickly. More importantly, you need to be careful of distractions disguised as opportunities. This is a very important strategy and a strategy that you should always employ when designing a marketing plan initiative. As I discussed earlier, there is so much noise in the world, so many shiny objects lurking in our paths, fighting for our attention. There is so much sensory-overloaded content that it is easy to become confused and distracted. There are so many options, so many directions to take—from blow-up gorillas to airplane banners. Which way do you go? How do you pick the right strategy? The answer is simple…pick the best strategy, the proven strategy, backed by hard data—a strategy that will give you the largest ROI on both your time and your money. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, in advertising and marketing that can even come close to the power of the Internet.
Here are some important facts to consider:
It took…
The Internet is the most powerful marketing mechanism ever created on planet Earth. Conventional advertising outlets, such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and billboards, have been rapidly losing reach and revenue to the point that major entities like newspapers and radio stations have been sold, consolidated, or gone bankrupt. And the simple reason is the Internet. It has completely changed the game on so many levels. The Internet allows consumers (content consumers) the opportunity to consume the content when and where they want. They are no longer slaves to conventional media. At one point, if you liked a recording artist or a certain song, people would glue themselves to the radio waiting for their jam to come back on. The same went for a favorite TV show. People would rearrange their schedules so they wouldn't miss a TV show or a soap opera. Nowadays, people only need to go to Hulu or Netflix to watch their TV program. They can record the fight, the news, or whatever else they want to see on their DVRs and watch it later on, at their leisure. As for radio, there is Pandora and iHeartRadio, and even better for music enthusiasts are Vevo and YouTube, due to the visual component. People can consume as much as they want, whenever they want, and best of all…for free!
As a business owner, I walk in the same shoes as you do, and I find comfort in knowing that Internet/digital advertising provides advertisers, marketers, business owners, professionals, artists, and so on the opportunity for transparency that we so greatly deserve. Instead of just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks, as we have done in the past, the data provided by the Internet is completely transparent and traceable, down to the penny. Even with Internet advertising you must put first things first, but you are no longer flying blind. You can see and determine which Internet tactics are the most effective for you and the market you are trying to penetrate. If you spend money on:
Pay-per-click
For transparency you should identify:
With this information, you can evaluate your ad budget-to-visibility ratio and adjust accordingly. If you find that certain keywords just aren't producing results, you simply eliminate them. This way you can dedicate a larger portion of your ad budget toward the keywords that are most effective for your targeted campaign and that are illustrating success and, most importantly, results. What is great about this is that this evaluation can occur in real time and with the ability to alter the campaign rather quickly, unlike a television or radio campaign, where you commit to a specific length of time and wonder what the results were. You do not have the option to change stations or time slots until your contracted campaign runs its course.
Display ads/banner ads
For transparency you should identify:
Social media ads (Facebook/Twitter)
For transparency you should identify:
As mentioned before, conventional media is limited to providing only an estimate of what their viewership, listeners, and readers are and have no way of identifying exactly how many people will see the ad, care, or, most importantly, act on it. On the other hand, digital marketing has the capability to supply the marketer or advertiser with these answers. It can tell you exactly:
Again, would you rather throw your bait into a pond and hope that a fish swims by and happens to notice, or would you rather throw your fishing line into a pond full of fish that are specifically looking to chew? They are hungry and in search of what you've got. All you have to do is make yourself available as a choice, and when done correctly, the dominant choice.
The bottom line is that the majority of the world uses the Internet for just about everything. The Internet is the first place people go before they ever step foot into a business, pick up the phone, hire a trainer or consultant, or buy a service or product.
Regardless of whether you are an individual, small business, or a large corporation, the most powerful and cost-effective form of advertising is the Internet. There is absolutely no other advertising medium that comes even close for effectiveness, affordability, reach, and ROI.
For more information about how important it is to be visible online, and how digital marketing can drastically improve your ROI from advertising, please visit http://www.googleopolybook.com/understanding-online-visibility.