It would be nice if you really could just write, record, publish, and start making money. But there is one step missing, and that is the promotion and marketing step. When you think of promoting, you probably are thinking of promoting a product that costs money, but the truth is, you must promote and market even your free content for it to get enough eyes on it to make a difference.
Let’s start with an example of a blog post and what should happen when you publish a blog post to your blog.
- Create Blog Post – Create the post fully. Remember, you need to know what your goal is for that post so that you can measure the results. Your goal has to be tied to the action you want the audience to take.
- Edit, Format, & Publish Blog Post – After you think the post is finished, you’ll want to edit, format, and publish the blog post properly. You may have a system for this to ensure that you include affiliate links, links to other articles, and so forth for this post.
- Create Social Media Images for Blog Post – Each social platform you use to promote your content will need its own image. Since you will be sharing this more than once, you may want to create multiple images so that the share looks new. For example, if you have a post with 10 reasons, you could technically make a different image for all ten reasons and then share just one at a time each day.
- Create Internal Linking to New Blog Post – You may have plugins or other automation for your blog that helps you add internal linking to like articles or any other blog posts or content that is related to this post. Internal linking helps ensure that this post gets seen. Add its link to old posts and add other reading material to this post. Don’t forget that you can include in-content links, too.
- Share on Social Media Multiple Times – Now that the post is finished, and you have the right information and art to use to promote it, schedule the promotion into your social media software like Hootsuite.com or SocialSprout.com. If you don’t have that ability, you’ll need to schedule the posts on each platform manually.
- Share to List Members – Every time you publish new content, it’s important also to send a broadcast email which you can automate to your list subscribers. It will bring more traffic to the site and boost sales.
- Repurpose Blog Post – Now that you have finished that part, you’re still not done. Now you can repurpose this blog post into other types of content. Turn it into a podcast, a video, or 10 more in-depth posts and repeat that process over and over.
- Repeat – Keep doing this for every piece of content you create. The more you promote the content you publish, the more eyes will get on it and the more money you’ll make because you’re going to reach more people.
It might help you to make a list like this of all the things you need to do to promote any free content you’ve created. Then, all you do is look at the steps you need to take next to get the most out of the content you create.
If you set up a process for each piece of content created based on the goals of that content and the audience meant to see the content, you’ll see a big difference in the results you get. If you haven’t been doing this, go ahead and locate the top three most viewed or read pieces of content you have to start this process.
We’ve discussed previously that selling to an existing customer is a lot easier and less expensive than acquiring a new customer. While you do want to keep adding new customers to your customer list, understanding the costs will make you realize that you must also spend time marketing to your existing customers on a regular basis. The more you can increase the lifetime earnings from each customer you have, the better your business will grow, and the more likely it is to succeed.
Research Your Existing Customers
Using all the data you have about your existing customers will help you market to them, but it’s also going to help you create more targeted content and products which will help you get new customers as well as please the old ones.
Make Your Customers Feel Like VIPs
When you send regular messages to your current customers, it will make them feel important and will keep your business at the top of their minds. Regular communication with your customers ensures that they already trust you when you make a new offer to them.
Always Follow Up
Don’t just send one transactional “thank you” email to your customers. Take time to follow up after they have had time to start using their product when they should be done with it, and when they may want another when it’s replenishable, or when they need the next level product if it’s a digital “how to” product.
Let Them Help Create New Products with You
Once you have a satisfied customer or two, involve them with your future product development. Keep them in the loop about the benefits of new products, the names you give them, and even the colors you use for design by using that customer email list to send poll questions to them. You can also invite them to a special Customers Only Facebook Group, where they can discuss their product and let you gain valuable insight by observing the conversations.
Recruit Customers as Affiliates
If your customers don’t know that you have an affiliate program, set up your autoresponder so that you tell them on a regular basis about your program, how to sign up, and how much money they could possibly make from your program if they promote it to their friends. This gets them involved directly with your business, and they’re going to be even more loyal when they’re making money and getting discounts due to promoting to their friends.
It’s easier to sell to an existing customer than to go find someone new whose trust you have to earn. Spend time marketing to your existing customers every day at least as much as you market to new people. You want them to feel as if they are important too. This is really a no-brainer when it comes to customer relationships because so many businesses don’t put their customers first, that if you show that you are, you’ll stand out from the crowd.
One way to avoid doing too much busy work or tasks that aren’t productive is to create a master list of marketing tasks that work well for you in your niche. That way, when you do have some extra time, you can work on those tasks.
Think about the fact that if you went to work at a job, they would have systems, processes, and times for doing specific tasks. That’s what you need to have too. When you have this set up, you’re going to experience a boost in income within about 90 days because you are working smartly, building an income by working on tasks that earn money.
It seems like a no-brainer, but often, we just don’t think about the difference between important money-making marketing tasks and product creation tasks most of the time before we start working each day. But if you set up a system and have this list ready during down times, you’re going to experience a huge difference in your results.
The marketing tasks that will work for your niche may be different for another niche, but here are a few tasks to get your mind thinking in the right direction as you create your personalized list.
- Write a Blog Post
- Create an Instagram Image for a Blog Post
- Turn Blog Post into a Video
- Tell Your Email Subscribers About the New Post
- Upload Meme on Facebook Scheduler
- Go Live on Facebook to Promote One Thing
- Share Recorded Video to Other Social Platforms
- Upload Live Video to YouTube
- Reply to Comments on Social Media (Choose one Platform)
- Review Stats
- Check Email & Respond to 3 Emails
- Ask a Question to Start a Discussion in Your Groups
- Follow Five New Accounts on One Social Platform
- Review Email Opt-in Rates
- Review Email Open Rates
- Check Your Facebook Ads for ROI
- Transcribe Live Video
- Pitch Yourself to Speak at Events Online & Off
- Review Follower Stats
- Update SEO on 3 Old Blog Posts
- Send an Affiliate Offer to Email Subscribers
- Start a Contest for Affiliates
- Segment Your Email List
You should, of course, add to this list and create your own list. Anything you know that is a marketing task or related to marketing in some way, add to the list. Put the most important money-making tasks, like making offers, at the top.
Anytime you are not sure what to do for your business, look at the list and do something on that list. You want to try to make a money-making offer to your audience at least once a day in order to maximize your income. When you make more money, you will have more freedom because you’ll be able to outsource and delegate even more tasks until you are truly the real manager of your business.
Sometimes when people start a business, in their excitement to make it, they bite off a little more than they can chew. This ends up causing serious overwhelm and is one of many reasons that people who want to start a business from home online tend not to make it. It’s not because it’s impossible, but because it’s so possible and you can do it in so many ways that it’s easy to get sidelined by “bright shiny object syndrome” and try to do everything at once.
Unfortunately, doing too much at once is usually not a recipe for success. Studies have shown that people cannot really multitask even if they think they are doing it. We all are not good at it despite what we tell ourselves. Therefore, if you pay attention to the studies, and you really want to be successful, you can create leverage by focusing on one thing at a time. Once you get the ball rolling and you’re earning money, it’s easier to branch out and do more, but make sure the one thing is in place and creating success before moving on to the next thing.
When it comes to marketing channels online, there are so many platforms you can use to get the word out about your products and or services. However, as just one person, it’s really going to be hard for you to do all of it and do all of it well. Instead, while you should set up accounts to get the right name for all social media platforms that your audience uses, you probably should not try to use each one fully every single day because you’ll spread yourself too thin.
Pick one marketing channel on which to get the ball rolling. You’ll create a snowball effect that will start paying off effortlessly eventually. Then at that point, you can move on to another marketing channel where you place your focus until it also is running almost on autopilot.
Let’s look at a few marketing channels that you may want to choose to focus on.
- Email Marketing – When you focus on email marketing, you’ll be focused on building your list, nurturing your list, and making more sales to your email list. This may consist of creating content for email messages, content, and bonuses to build the list and other actions. Focusing on email marketing over everything else is almost a no-brainer since it’s the most profitable form of marketing that exists today.
- Social Media Marketing – Using any social platform to market your services or products is social media marketing, whether you pay for ads or use content to get the word out. There are many platforms to choose from. It might help to choose the most popular to start with, build up that channel, then the other channels will grow almost on automatic once you announce them.
- Content Marketing – Using content to get the word out, to educate, inform, engage, and build your brand is a time-honored way to get more traffic and find leads and make more sales. Content may go on your website, social media sites, and in email. Sometimes content marketing focuses on using SEO to bring in traffic. Maybe you need to spend time ensuring you have enough of the right type of content on your site before you do the other channels.
- Affiliate Marketing – Once you have even one signature product or service to sell, starting an affiliate marketing program is a great way to duplicate yourself so that you can make more sales effortlessly. The affiliate is incentivized with a commission as well as awesome and effective marketing collateral that you create for them to use.
The marketing channels you choose depend on what your goals are. Do you want more brand awareness, leads, or sales? Maybe you just want more general traffic generation, or you want to educate your customers. Whatever your goal is will define the channel more clearly. Another factor in choosing the right channel will be your budget.
Also, within the marketing channel, you may want to pick just one thing – for example, with social media marketing, there are numerous avenues to go with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and so forth.
You may want to choose just one of those as well to focus on until you build up that platform then move on to the next. The main thing is, don’t stretch yourself too thin as you’re building your business. Outsource as soon as you can so that you can duplicate yourself and focus on more than one thing at a time.
Developing an effective marketing strategy is a necessary component of every business. However, it’s imperative that you set smart goals and measure your progress using the data points that you’re regularly tracking.
Here’s the thing: if you’re doing well and making money, it’s tempting to think you know what you’re doing and why and how you’re making money, but you’re only making assumptions if you aren’t tracking and measuring.
You may attribute your success to the wrong actions, thus risking interrupting your profit-making capabilities when you eventually make the wrong choice based on assumptions and not data. I mean a lot of the time, your assumptions will be right if you know your audience, but eventually – if you don’t use the data you’re collecting – you will make a wrong choice.
But if you use the data you have, the choices you make are more than likely to be accurate, thus helping you avoid actions that don’t lead to profit. What’s even better is your decision-making ability will improve as you keep studying the data, ensuring you are progressing in the direction you want to go.
- Set SMART Goals – Your first step is to set SMART goals. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. This simply means that your goals must be very specific, something you can measure numerically, and you can’t set the goals so high that they are impossible. They must be something you can really do and achieve in a reasonable amount of time.
- Study Data Regularly – If you’ve set SMART goals and know exactly how to measure to find out if you’re reaching those goals, you’ll need to study the data on a regular basis. For some things, like a launch, you may have to look at the data daily for a couple of weeks but for evergreen marketing materials you may want to check only every 90 days. If you are running ads, you’ll want to check their progress weekly to avoid wasting money.
- Tweak & Update – If anything isn’t going as you planned once you check the data, the awesome thing about digital marketing is that you can easily change things on the fly. For example, if you realize you’re getting lots of clicks on a certain share but no conversions, you can assume something is not right. The landing page may not match the information they clicked through on, so you’ll need to do some tweaking there.
Tracking and measuring results based on your SMART goals is going to help you improve your business in many ways. First, you’ll be more likely to catch mistakes; secondly, you’ll be able to update and improve results more often simply by checking to see if your assumptions (based on research) are really working. Plus, you’ll see clearly where you can make even more audacious goals so that you can keep growing your business.
