Marketing has changed…
It didn’t happen overnight, but rather has been a slow and steady transition over the last decade or so away from “telling and selling” and towards “sharing and caring”.
There were a number of factors that led to this change but a few include:
- More consumer choices associated with living in a global economy
- Changes in consumer media consumption from television to online
- A more cynical attitude towards big business
- An increasing preference for “humanized” brands and companies (opposed to faceless corporations)
All of these factors continue to shift more power away from business, and into the hands of consumers.
With consumers holding more power today than ever before the worst marketing mistake you can make is forgetting about the customer acquisition path and going straight for the close.
(Side Note: The second worst mistake is highlighting the features and forgetting all about the benefits, and how your product or service actually helps your potential customer, but that’s another story for another time.)
Many large companies have already figured this out and are on the cutting edge of helping customers transition from first learning about their businesses, right through to becoming loyal repeat customers and brand ambassadors.
A few good examples are Oreo, and GoPro which are doing an amazing job of connecting with their consumers, and Red Bull who is leading the pack and incorporating social selling into every aspect of its brand and message.
These companies connect with their customers by providing valuable free and entertaining content every chance they get, and they know that the sale will come later.
They understand their customers and the acquisition path they follow from interested right through to purchased.
Knowing this, it’s important to start marketing your business now.
Not tomorrow, not next week, but right now.
A long term strategy will almost always provide better overall results.
You’re also able to approach your marketing from a position of authority and provide value, instead of looking needy by constantly asking for a quick sale.
Customers can smell desperation, and it doesn’t smell good!
Not only that, but a long term marketing strategy also builds a lot more goodwill, which means longer term and higher lifetime value customers.
So now that you’ve decided that this is the right path to take, how can you incorporate this into your business and get started today?
Thanks to social media, you can now set up and have a highly targeted, trackable, and analyzable know, like, and trust ad campaign running by the end of the day.
If you do it right, you can optimize and tweak it so it becomes even more effective over time, and delivers you a steady stream of leads and customers while at the same time delivering your customers great content and value.
Win Win?
You bet!
Below I’ve broken down a simple 4 Step System so that you can start benefitting from this system in your business as early as today.
The Super Simple Know, Like, and Trust Funnel
Step 1)
Create a blog post or valuable piece of free content that would help provide value to your target market and post it on your website.
Step 2)
Send targeted traffic to the content through paid advertising such as Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads, or YouTube Advertising.
Step 3)
Keep track of who viewed the content with a retargeting pixel
Step 4)
Send a follow up ad to those who viewed your first piece of content and direct them either to another piece of valuable content (if you sell a high ticket item) or to a sales page (if you sell a low ticket item).
The higher ticket the item you’re trying to sell, the more free valuable content you want to send them to before making a sales offer.
It’s really that simple.
Now of course the devil’s in the details, but at the very least if you create a free and valuable piece of content on your website and start sending targeted traffic to it you’ll already be miles and miles ahead of the competition.
Marketing has always been about know, like, and trust, and while building them takes time, it’s also highly profitable (and a lot more enjoyable) to do it right.
