I learned the hard way…
There Are No Magic Bullet In Marketing
Marketing is not something you set-up once and walk away from feeling confident that it will magically keep driving leads and new customers.
That would be awesome!
But… marketing is an iterative process that improves with time, patience, data and optimization.
There is no easy way out and just two options to choose from:
- Learn the craft and do everything yourself (which takes A LOT time)
- Hire somebody who has spent 1000’s of hours and 1000’s of dollars perfecting the craft (which takes money, but MUCH less time)
Only through testing, failing, tweaking, retesting, identifying your key performance indicators, tracking and measuring EVERYTHING…
You will make progress and you will make $$$. If you fail to work within a framework, do not have a plan and do not have a process, you are taking a big gamble.
Your progress depends on your process
And every successful marketing process begins with understanding what makes your customers tick and researching or “spying” on your competitors.
The 1st of every successful 5-Steps marketing funnel that we have built for our clients is…
Stage 1: Spy on Your Competitors & Get To Know Your Customers
By the end of this article, you will know how to quickly, easily and effectively research (spy) your customers and your competition.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Muhammed Ali was one of the greatest boxers ever. What you may not know, is that…
Ali was ALSO one of the greatest marketers ever.
“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can’t hit what the eyes can’t see” directly applies to…
Stage 1, of the 5 Stage Marketing Funnel and creating a marketing strategy in general.
Unless you know where your customers hangout and:
-How old they are
-How they speak
-What gender they are
-What they like
-What keeps them up at night
-And how they think…
You’re flying blind. And remember what Ali said…
“The hands can’t hit what the eyes can’t see”
So don’t do that.
A blind pilot will always overshoot the runway.
Spending a little bit of time researching your audience on the frontend, will save you a ton of time in the long-run and save you moolah.
Good news…
You can eliminate 80% of the blind-piloting, guess-work and iteration formerly required to build a successful marketing platform.
How?
- By Spying- “Spy” websites like spyfu.com, whatrunswhere.com, simlarsite.com, buzzsumo.com will save you hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars. No need to reinvent the wheel.
Your top competitors who are making the most money all have high-converting email funnels, that convert cold traffic to email subscribers, email subscribers to new customers, new customers to repeat customers while educating, entertaining, provide value and building rapport in between all direct and indirect sales promotions.
2. Easily Accessible Customer Reviews- Websites like amazon.com have 100,00’s of products or books on subjects similar to yours, that your customers have already reviewed.
We are talking millions of customer reviews for every product and industry under the sun.
This is REALLY important
So I am going to reiterate: There is TON of customer data that is you need in order to get inside your customer’s head and it’s…
Cruising Amazon is a free, easy and effective way to get into the minds of your audience. Here’s how you do it:
- Go to amazon
- Look up a product or a book that is related to your product or services
- Go into the comments and reviews section
- Make note of what people loved and what they hated
- Look for trends and overlapping comments that get repeated
- Ignore the outliers (ones that have no commonalities with other reviews)
- Make note of the specific adjectives that these people use and plug them into your sales copy (do they use slang, nicknames related to your product, service, industry, etc)
Ok! Now go do it or… Click below to set up a free consultation if you would like us to do your customer and competitive research for you.
For more info on defining your target market, check out my friend Neil Patel’s article on the subject matter.
Oh and remember, if you do not have the time or resources to do this stuff yourself, click the image above. We can do all of the heavy-lifting for you or set-up a free consultation to give you a headstart.
Oh… and lastly, 3 years ago I visited one of Ali’s and one of my personal hero’s prison cell on Robbin Island, South Africa. In 
Mandela’s autobiography, The Long Walk To Freedom he also teaches us an invaluable marketing lesson.
Mandela’s first step in abolishing apartheid was… you guessed it… researching and learning his audience (the enemy).
Now consumers are not your enemy, but in their minds’, you are the enemy until proven innocent. They must trust you in order to buy from you and you must learn everything about them, in order to earn their trust.
Mandela learned “Afrikaans”, the colloquial language of his white captors. Because he had likened himself to the white Afrikaners by learning their antiquated language, these racist prison guards found it more difficult to hate him (they were shocked that he had taken the time to do so, considering he was deemed an ANC terrorist that wanted to kill all whites).
Boer Warriors – Circa 1850
After softening them up, Mandela steadily continued to methodically befriend these hard-nosed prison guards. He would inquire about their families and notate his learning, he read dozens of books about the Boerish wars (Boer– Dutch: “husbandman,” or “farmer”, a South African of Dutch or German origin. Today, descendants of the Boers are commonly referred to as Afrikaners), learned the words to their songs and discovered that at the core of the Afrikaans culture, was their beloved game of RUGBY. I also love rugby and played for 10 years.
They feared if Mandela came into power, he would ban rugby, outlaw their songs and try to erase their history.
Ah ha… once he had discovered their biggest fears, main objections, and core values he knew how to win them over and sell them on his product (abolishing apartheid).
1995 World Cup Championship (Right After Mandela Abolished Apartheid)
Next thing you know, some of his captors (now friends) were illegally allowing him to communicate with the outside world and ultimately, he was granted a full pardon. Mandela was elected prime-minister, used his knowledge of the Afrikaners cherished rugby as the cornerstone of repairing black and white relations, ended apartheid and changed the world.
BUT… I have an important question for you!
What was STEP 1 of this seemingly insurmountable task????
RESEARCH AND KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE (or ‘enemy’ in his case).
Thanks for reading!
banderbuzz
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