Do It! Marketing Blog: Marketing for Smart People™

These 7 Strategies Will Make Your Marketing WORK

As one of the few experts who only preaches what I practice - and what has worked for hundreds of my students - here's the real deal on the 7 key strategies that need to be firing on all cylinders for your business to grow.

Questions I get from smart cookies like you all the time:

  • David, what does it take to gain pre-eminence in my market?
  • How can I become the go-to person in my topic/niche?
  • Why am I still wrestling with the feast-or-famine revenue roller coaster?
  • How can I set and get premium fees when clients are tight with budgets?
  • How can I expand my reach, grow my list & build my platform?
  • How can I recession-proof my business so that I make money regardless of the economy and industry ups and downs?
  • I'm plenty busy - why aren't I making more money? 

All these questions have their answers hidden in one of 7 key areas of your thought-leadership business as a consultant, speaker, coach, author or independent professional...

Let's explore each one - and see how you can tune, tweak, and improve anything that's missing, not performing, or could use a major overhaul in YOUR business...

1. Speaking - obviously, this is my area of expertise. Having a solid speaker marketing strategy is vital to help you gain visibility in front of audiences who matter (aka buyers and decision-makers); generate leads for your back-end professional services; and generate significant revenue in paid professional speaking fees for your workshops, seminars, keynotes, trainings, workshops, and private events. Speaking is one of the most powerful lead-generators and revenue-generators in your expertise-driven business.

But how do you scale this above and beyond the audiences that you can reach through live speaking? The next pie slice has your answer...

2. Online Courses - The most successful experts, speakers, consultants, and coaches are embracing the power of online courses, e-learning, and digital distribution methods for their expertise. The first benefit here is pure scalability - your business can reach thousands (or tens of thousands) of ideal customers, prospects, and buyers through the power of online courses. As a source of revenue, online courses are hard to beat because you create it once - and get paid over and over and over. This allows you to create a freedom-based business where your value is no longer tied to your personal time, attention, and presence. Jackpot!!

But now how do you reach those thousands of eager prospects, buyers, and decision-makers? Let's look at the next piece of the pie...

3. Webinars - The day I fully embraced webinar marketing back in 2012, my entire business - heck, my entire life - changed dramatically. We are living in an "Attention Economy" - meaning, when it comes to getting clients, you first need to earn their attention and only then do you get the chance to earn their money :o) The #1 best way to deliver massive value to your subscribers, fans, followers, prospects, and buyers is with content-rich webinars that teach actionable strategies, tactics, and tools. You need to be radically helpful and radically generous. This is what converts strangers to friends and friends to prospects and prospects to paying customers who love you, buy, repeat, recommend, and refer like crazy.

But webinars presented here and there sporadically and without a clear strategy are not going to do the trick. So you need...

4. Funnels - A marketing funnel is simply a fancy word for a programmatic sequence of touchpoints - emails, videos, blog posts, webinars, PDFs, and other helpful communications - delivered in a specific sequence to a specific subset of people specifically interested in a certain one of your products, services, or programs. A marketing funnel is your lifeline that keeps you connected to prospects who are at various phases of the buying cycle - from merely interested in the topic (browsers) all the way to committed to investing in your solutions/services (buyers). A well-designed marketing funnel will take a cold lead from initial contact to signed contract in a pre-determined sequence designed to both add value, and extend offers and invitations to your relevant investable opportunities. Without a marketing funnel in place, you will never get off the "feast or famine" revenue roller coaster. And worse, you risk alienating people who are NOT interested in buying today while completely missing out on sales to the hot prospects who are ready to buy right now.

But what about long-term stability and predictable revenue? The best way to share your expertise and gain this benefit is...

5. Consulting/Coaching - Having longer-term engagements on your service menu - such as 90-day coaching packages or year-long consulting programs or monthly facilitated mastermind roundtables - is a great way to increase your impact on client results. Remember, people don't really value transactions - but they VERY much value programs and services that deliver transformation. And delivering results over a sustained period of time is the best way to guarantee your clients' success. Because of the greater depth, breadth, and duration of these engagements, it is much easier to get premium fees from premium clients who are deeply committed to the transformation you offer that will get them the results they truly want. These longer-term engagements also provide the foundation of your financial stability because the income is significant and ongoing.

But then how do you capture "lightning in a bottle" to let all the folks who can't afford your consulting or coaching know you are the real-deal resource who can help them when they're ready to transform?

6. Publishing - One of the best ways to do this is with publishing a nonfiction business book based on the expertise you already have. Writing, publishing, and promoting a business book that captures your methodology, training, and tools is an outstanding way to build your platform, expand your reach, and establish your authority as the "go-to" expert in your specific topic, niche, or industry. After all, you "wrote the book" on it so you must be a highly credible expert. And - some tough love coming up here - your book needs to be excellent. Not just good or very good, but truly great. It does NOT need to be long - in fact, the bestselling business books of all time are less than 120 pages in a small 5x7 trade publishing format. But just writing a book for the sake of having a book (and a crappy one at that) is definitely not going to help promote your expertise. That's why the book needs to be marketed, launched, and sold for the long-term impact it can have on your professional success.

And what makes all of these components really take off? It's about how you articulate and distinguish them with your messaging and packaging, which means you need to master...

7. Copywriting - Copywriting has nothing to do with patents, trademarks and copyright notices ;o) "Copy" is written content conveyed through online media and print materials. Copywriting is one of the most essential elements of effective marketing and successful selling. It is the art and science of strategically delivering words (whether written or spoken) that get people to take some form of action. Good copy resonates with the reader and is relevant, valuable, attractive, and effective in communicating the value, impact, results, outcomes, and emotional payoffs tied to investing in and benefitting from your products, services, or programs. The better you are at copywriting, the more prospects, leads, and sales you will generate because you'll be able to quickly get your prospects to "get it, need it, and want it" when considering buying from you.

 Grab your FREE copy of the Strategic Marketing eBook.

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Tags: marketing for speakers, thought leadership marketing, professional services marketing, trusted advisor marketing, product development, professional speaker marketing, marketing for authors, marketing for consultants, thought leadership, doit marketing, doitmarketing, product development for experts, 50 shades of pay

50 Shades of Pay

doit marketing 50ShadesofPay

Strap in and hang on - you are getting the mother lode of product development ideas right here in this post. Yes, that's right - below are 50+ ideas to help you productize, monetize and distribute your expertise.

Why is this important to you? (Yes, MORE important than reading about 50 shades of whips, handcuffs and lingerie...)

Well, here are some questions to help you answer that for yourself...

As a speaker, author, or thought-leading professional, do you...

  • Feel exhausted by long days filled with time-consuming one-on-one client work, running from one meeting to the next, and an endless stream of emails and phone calls... 
  • Find yourself frustrated by chasing the broken business model of trading hours for dollars... 
  • Fear that your business is taking over your life with less and less free time for creative play, family and friends, and proactive planning and business development... 
  • Wish you could LEVERAGE yourself and your knowledge to generate more PASSIVE income... 
  • Want to figure out how to work with better clients while making even MORE money and working LESS? (Yes, really!!) 

Shhh... Here's the SECRET you don't want your friends, clients, spouse, neighbors, or colleagues to know: Although you are very successful, you still want MORE... and you're really not sure how to get to that next level...

Somehow, some way, you want to grow your thought leadership platform so you get:

  • MORE Leads 
  • MORE Clients 
  • MORE Consulting Work 
  • MORE Speaking Engagements 
  • MORE Profits 
  • MORE Passive Income 
  • and 100-300% MORE Revenue... 

Which will in turn, help you generate:

  • MORE Clarity 
  • MORE Confidence 
  • MORE Control 
  • MORE Cashflow 
  • MORE Time Off 
  • MORE Leverage 
  • and dramatically MORE Freedom...

The secret to adding LEVERAGE to your business is to DIVERSIFY the methods and media with which you share your expertise with the world.

You can use the online course methodology to create ANY of the following:

  1. Paid online courses (to generate revenue) 
  2. Free online courses (to generate leads)
  3. Books
  4. Booklets
  5. E-books
  6. Minibuks
  7. Workbooks
  8. Field guides
  9. Study guides
  10. Manager's guides
  11. Survey and research tools
  12. Template packs
  13. Audio programs on CD
  14. Audio programs as mp3 downloads
  15. Audio podcasts
  16. Audio interview series
  17. Audio quick-takes
  18. Video programs on DVD
  19. Video programs on streaming media
  20. Video subscription series
  21. On-demand video mini-lessons
  22. E-learning modules 
  23. 12-36 month consulting packages
  24. 3-12 month coaching programs
  25. Teleseminars
  26. Special reports
  27. >>> Quick station break - article continues below and you'll want to get your hot little hands on this free speaker profit maximizer cheat sheet >>> 
  28. White papers
  29. Webinars
  30. Action Packs
  31. Implementation Kits
  32. Meeting Starters
  33. Email courses
  34. Online forums
  35. Assessments
  36. Toolkits
  37. Card decks
  38. Manuals
  39. Handbooks
  40. Laminated quick reference guides
  41. Personality profiles
  42. Games
  43. Online quizzes
  44. iPhone apps
  45. Android apps
  46. Mentor programs
  47. Self-coaching materials
  48. Membership websites
  49. Audio Powerpoints
  50. Roadmaps
  51. Checklists
  52. Worksheets
  53. Reminder cards
  54. Posters
  55. Flipbooks
  56. Master classes
  57. Bootcamps
  58. Executive mastermind groups
  59. Certification programs
  60. Licensing programs

...the list is limited only by your imagination, your personal preferences, and your revenue-generating goals for your product(s) and your business.

 

Tags: marketing for speakers, thought leadership marketing, professional services marketing, trusted advisor marketing, product development, professional speaker marketing, marketing for authors, marketing for consultants, thought leadership, doit marketing, doitmarketing, product development for experts, 50 shades of pay