A Monthly Marketing Plan (you can actually use)

After sharing in September how you can make the most of your relationship with your team and train them in a more effective manner, I wanted to pivot to talk about marketing and provide you with tasks that your team can help you execute.

One of the many reasons that a team member is an asset is because their work should enable you to close more business and serve more clients – not just do the administrative work that a business requires.

By training your assistant on the marketing tasks we’ll talk about today, you transition their role from an overhead expense (something you pay whether or not you make money) to a revenue-generating position. In time, every time you send out marketing content, you should be closing new clients into your business. So those activities directly impact your bottom line.

In the beginning…

Now, the first time you post on your blog, create an advertisement, or post on social media, you may not get clients.

That’s because research shows that it can take 3-5 impressions before someone is willing to buy a new product or service, and that’s with national, name-brand companies like Tide or Starbucks. It’s often harder with online businesses or when offering services.

There’s incentive to start now and stay consistent: you need to establish your business and brand as a solution, and rarely you’ll find someone who hears about your company today and buys immediately. This is especially true if you have a higher priced service or products.

The first couple months of your marketing are going to be about getting traction and attention. Let’s talk about what that looks like on a weekly basis for a service or product-based business.

What do I do now?

The first thing you’ll want to do is decide where your content should be shared, and if you’re just starting out, then I want to introduce you to my 5 point strategy for marketing.

Here’s what it looks like:

The goal with this plan is to get into different locations in a variety of formats. I promise, if you discover that videos are the worst way for you to communicate, it’s not a lifelong commitment. Here’s your marketing plan for the next 4 weeks:

This week: Write 1 blog post and share it on Twitter or Facebook

Week 2: Share your blog post in an ezine to your email list

Week 3: Record a video expanding on the blog post you wrote and share it on social media

Week 4: Create a list of 3-4 topics you can share and pitch them as guest posts. When you get published, share it in your ezine and on social media.

Let’s go through your monthly marketing plan in detail. Remember that if you’ve been marketing for your business for ages, then this might seem too simple, so I’ll have a task specifically for you later in this post!

Week 1, aka this week, it’s your job to share about your business. What problem you solve. What type of clients you serve. What inspires and motivates you and how your clients transform by working with you. You can do this whether you sell personal training, makeup, or websites.

It’s your job to tell leads and potential clients what you do. Otherwise, there’s no reason for them to hire you.

{Feeling stuck and thinking that you have no idea what you can write about? We’ll have some resources for you in today’s swipe file, so don’t worry!}

Do you see in the diagram how each point connects? That’s because your blog post is inspiration for a video post, something you can share on social media, an ezine, a point of interest for that guest post, and with the right SEO, a piece of marketing that will attract people who have the type of problem you can solve.

By sending out this post on social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, you’re fishing by putting out the info that your leads might be interested in – exactly where they’re hanging out.

It doesn’t matter if you hate Twitter or think Facebook is a vapid hole of procrastination. If nothing else, I want you to hear this:

The reason why marketing on Facebook and Twitter works is that those are the sites where people hang out, looking for a distraction. If you share something that they need right now in their life or business or relationship, then you’ll get traffic back to your site.

Remember that stat that it takes 3-5 times of someone seeing about a product before they’ll buy? Content works much the same way. The first time it pops up, your lead might think, ‘oh, I should check that out’ and promptly forget. But if you’re sharing in multiple places, your community will start to share, and then you’re setting up these gentle reminders.

It’s a little bit like the Ice Bucket Challenge – remember that? You ignored it until 5, 10, 20 of your friends participated and then you had to join in!

By the way, social media sharing links right back to SEO when you become known on these platforms for discussing your topics. And may help you land that guest post or interview when others online see you’re an expert in this area.

{Also in this week’s swipe file are my favorite tools for automating your social media messaging so you don’t get sucked into distraction during your work week, plus easy ways to get your team to help out!}

Week 2 is about taking what’s on your blog and sending it directly to the people who want to hear from you. In next week’s video, I’ll share more about how you can request email addresses and how to build that list, but once you do you’re going to need to communicate with them.

The reason you can’t simply assume that leads will read everything on your blog is that people are busy. But when you get into the habit of saying “yo, I wrote something that might be able to help you out, check it out here…” then you’re not only positioning yourself as a problem solver but as a resource who cares.

{Don’t have an email list yet? I’ll review 2 great options for you in the swipe file along with guidelines for getting it all installed on your website without stressing out.}

Take inspiration from the national brands that everyone knows, such as Starbucks. You see marketing on TV in the form of advertisements, promotions on Facebook, social media posts from clients (because they spelled your name wrong on the cup!), billboards, email updates for card members, and so much more. If you stick to one form of marketing then you’re limiting how many people you can reach.

Even if you don’t have a potential client base as large as “people who like coffee, tea, baked goods, or smoothies,” you still need to be in multiple places. Why not start with email, which is both cost effective and the one way those on your list have given you permission to reach them already?

Which brings us to week 3.

Week 3 is the hardest step for most entrepreneurs who are hiding behind their computer, anonymity, shyness, or fear. The challenge is simple: set up your webcam or smart phone camera and share, just for a few minutes, about your last blog post. Why is it important for you to put this information out there? What questions did you get that were really good? What else can you share about this problem or solution?

{In today’s resource swipe file I have some examples for you on how to make this work and a guideline on how to use Periscope for these videos if you are nervous about shooting and want the quick and easy way to do video!}

And if video really freaks you out then an easy alternative is an audio recording like a podcast or MP3 that you share.

Video works for the same reason that social media does: different people like different ways of learning. Some of your clients are never going to sit for an hour and read your entire website and blog but they will love video. Others won’t read your email but will download a podcast and listen during their daily commute.

Again, you need to be comfortable alternating how you share content to reach different people.

Feeling like you’ll never get this all done on your own? That’s what a team is for! More resources on that coming soon!  Right now your focus should be on creating the content.

{Do you have perfectionist tendencies? In today’s swipe file I’m going to share bonus resources for how you can embrace just getting started, even if your content isn’t perfect.}

Week 4 you’re going to expand on your topic and ask yourself where you should be sharing this information online. The easiest way to break into media is with a guest post, so your task is to create a simple pitch and ask 5 websites or blogs if they’d be willing to host you.

The greatest thing about guest posts is that when you choose the right audience, you’re expanding your reach to people who may not already know you but need you. You can add a little bio in your post and share your most recent video or blog post and include your follow links for social media. See how it all connects?

Getting your name and brand out there on other sites will improve your social media ranking because, let’s be honest, no one goes to the seventh page of Google.

And guess what? If they say, ‘no thanks’, then you’ve got topics for next month! By following this formula you’ll continually get your marketing message out to the world and begin to see results in the form of more readers on your blog, followers on social media, sharing of your content, comments, and ezine subscribers.

These are the people who are potential clients, because they’ve opted in to hear more from you.

And when you do get published, send that post out on social media to encourage your followers to check it out. We even share media and guest posts in our ezine because those features often address topics our audience wants more information about right now.

When you have a monthly plan, you’ll not only know what needs to happen this week but each week.

Now, for those of y’all who have a strong marketing plan already, you have a different challenge.  Here are 4 things you can do this month to strengthen your marketing:

If you’ve been blogging forever: share a topic on your blog that you’ve never talked about before. This could be something personal, a tip you’ve never published – anything!

If you’re already a social media master: set the goal to increase your social media followers by 10% by increasing your reach and engagement.

If you’re an old hat at media appearances:  schedule at least one new interview or guest post with a site you’ve not yet been featured on.

If you love videos and already use them in your marketing: try a live video format such as Live Google Hangouts, a webinar, or Periscope to get even more comfortable with videos without editing.