Greetings from Los Angeles, where I’ve been fortunate enough to meet with a handful of world-class marketers and business experts to discuss how we can help companies grow faster.
I received some great advice from a particularly famous marketer, industry legend Dean Jackson. I realised later that the “marketing” tips Dean gave me were actually blindingly obvious “business” tips that often get lost in the gloss of advertising or the platform-led strategies popular online. Here are some of Dean’s tips:
1. Narrow your focus and target only one market at a time. The big mistake many business owners make is trying to think about and capture the broadest possible audience for their business – trying to be too much to too many people. It is the first thing addressed in my agency’s 10 Day Growth Accelerator. Time and again, we see the best results from those who focus most. It doesn’t mean you can’t look at other targets in the future. Dean says, “pick one target market, and make dominating that target market your absolute focus. Then, when youʼre dominating that single target market, move on to a second target market, and start dominating that one too”.
2. Use direct response offers to compel prospects to come to you. Direct response isn’t considered “cool”, but it can be damn effective; often a lot more effective than your shiny new ad or social media campaign. If you want someone to respond to your advertising, marketing and website, you need to set it up so they are hard to resist. If you’re selecting the right target market, then you want to be compelling. Usually, a simple, well-crafted headline, designed to speak precisely to the biggest issue for your target, can be worth a fortune to your business. It often means putting your ego aside to focus only on what your prospects really want … without any mention of you or your business up front.
3. Make it as easy as possible for your prospects to get started. This seems obvious, but many businesses actually make it difficult for customers to take the first step with them. What you should be doing is asking how you can present to people your service in a way that makes it effortless for them to get started. Nobody really cares about your process, system, or product as much as they care about the result you can deliver, without being burned. Give the prospect the most direct route to the result, with an offer that reduces the risk, and you’ll win them day and night.
-Craig Wilson
(This post originally ran in the The Newcastle Herald on 31 July 2018)
