IAM2281 – Creating a Strong Marketing Strategy by Understanding Your Target Market

Title: Transcript - Mon, 28 Oct 2024 06:33:07 GMT

Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2024 06:33:07 GMT, Duration: [00:16:58.89]

[00:00:00.28] - Gresham Harkless

But I really think having that understanding of exactly, like what a website is and how it's not just something you put up there, which is one of the pitfalls I think a lot of people run into is that they don't see it as a way for you to potentially get more opportunities for your business. It can actually be like a living, breathing, non sleeping employee that can advocate for your behalf. It's just all in how you leverage it and how you do it. Hello? Hello, hello, this is Gretch from the I Am CEO podcast and I wanted to share with you one of the episodes that I was a guest on for someone else's podcast. I always talk about how important it is to build a media company. One of the next best things you could do is be on somebody else's media company. So I had the pleasure of being a guest on this podcast and I wanted to share a little snippet with you because it would help support the eight business pillars we've really been trying to focus on with a lot more of our content and a lot more of the solo episodes that I'm doing. So make sure, of course, that you subscribe to our podcast, but of course, you take some time out, check out the show notes and subscribe to the podcast that I've been featured on as well too, and get to learn about some of those eight business pillars and how you can continue to kind of leverage and build that up so you can go from builder to architect, to, of course, rockstar and luminary. So this is Gresh signing out. I hope you enjoy this I Am CEO special episode.

[00:01:22.31] - Diane Helbig

People don't realize how much they really know about things. Like I hear people say, oh, come on, everybody knows that. When the truth is. No, they don't. They don't know as much as whoever this person is who decides to start a business around a particular subject.

[00:01:43.04] - Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. I think it's kind of like that imposter syndrome where we either think that we either downplay what we know, and I struggled a lot with this myself, so I definitely can speak to that. Or you sometimes don't realize the amount of information, you know, so you either think it's not a value or, you know, more than sometimes you even give us give ourselves credit for. And I think that kind of, you know, has to do with that imposter syndrome. But I think that it goes so far to, even for me, like in my early days of business, I would basically just sit down with people and really thought they were pulling my leg when they Say they didn't really know how to do that because a lot of times the things that we do best are sometimes gifts that we have and we do them so naturally that we need other people to say, hey, you should maybe start a business or that's really something I want you to create more content about. But a lot of times we don't give ourselves nearly enough credit for it.

[00:02:39.78] - Diane Helbig

Yeah, yeah, I think that is absolutely true. Okay, so if someone is thinking about creating a marketing strategy, are there steps that they should be going through? I mean, you mentioned before, you know, start at the end, think about your audience and information that they want. Once someone knows that like, are there, are there steps, additional steps they should go through, are there different avenues, they should maybe think about sharing information that maybe are a little out of the norm.

[00:03:17.40] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, so I definitely think that there's, and I have like kind of like a six step process for exactly how you should do that. But kind of like, you know, you just said, and you know, I touched on a little bit, is that usually you really want to answer? I usually say about three questions. I call it like kind of like the pre work you do before you even jump in. I think most of the times we jump into, you know, platforms, which is, there's always a time and place for that, you know, to experiment. But I think when you really want to think from a strategic standpoint, you want to understand your target market, you want to paint a picture of exactly who you want to target, you want to know their age, where they like to spend time, what time of day they want to eat lunch, just all of those things. And understand that that's going to always be a continual kind of process, that market research, so to speak, where you're going to be learning more and more about your avatar, your target client or customer. But once you get clear on that or have an idea of that, I should say, then you, I think you get crystal clear on your resources. And the reason that that's important because a lot of times depending on the amount of budget that you have for your marketing, you might have, especially when you're starting, you might have more time than you have money to devote to your resources. So maybe you're going to do different things, but maybe that starts to adjust as you get more established in your business. You start to get more clients, you start to be exactly how you want your business to run, so to speak, and you start to shift exactly what actual steps you're taking. And then I think the last question before you probably jump Right in is you really want to know. I often use the phrase secret sauce. You want to know that thing that makes you unique or makes your organization unique. And a lot of times that can start from why you started your business. I can't tell you enough how many entrepreneurs and business owners I talked to that say, you know, they were frustrated with this or, you know, they didn't like that or this didn't exist, so that's why they decided to start their business. A lot of that is exactly what is that secret sauce of what makes you unique, what makes you tick. But also if you're founding your organization, it also can help you, help you figure out what makes your organization tick as well.

[00:05:36.19] - Diane Helbig

An organization that I heard about that created, they had a baby and they couldn't get the baby to sleep and so they created this product. And there's always a reason, right? I mean, if you're going to start a business, there's a reason, there's a dissatisfaction in the marketplace or there's something that you have noticed that is a need that people have. And so really being able to hone into what is it about that and what is it about you that is valuable gives people that, as you call it, secret sauce, which is great, that differentiator. So talk to me some about web design because this is another place that I think a lot of new businesses and a lot of small business owners struggle with what really are some best practices, especially because it changes all the time. But what are your thoughts?

[00:06:37.26] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, even in going through those six step process, I have like a kind of an acronym, I call it recipe with three Ps in the middle. But one of those, that second step is actually the crust, or I call it the crust of the foundation. And the reason I call it the crust is because it kind of brings everything together. So when you're thinking about your website, a lot of times it's what you're going to draw people back to. And granted, you know, there's a lot of different opportunities out there. There's social media, there's, you know, blogs, podcasts, so many different things that you can do. And a lot of times you can embed, you can, you can build those into your actual website. But the, one of the reasons I say it's your crust, because it brings everything together is because you really want to think about how you can draw people there. And it's one of those platforms that you own more than anything else. So when you are using social media and different Platforms. A lot of times you don't control things like the organic reach. You don't control, you know, how many people see your posts a lot of times without, you know, doing advertising, of course. But your website usually own, you can, you can update it, you can, you know, decide to move, you know, pictures or images around. You can have your call to action higher. And you can usually do that either if you have the web skills or if you know a developer or designer to do it. But I really think having that understanding of exactly like what a website is and how it's not just something you put out there, which is one of the pitfalls I think a lot of people run into, is that they don't see it as a way for you to potentially get more opportunities for your business. It can actually be, you know, like a living, breathing, non sleeping employee that can advocate for your behalf. It's just all in how you leverage it and how you do it. And I think having that strategic mindset helps you to kind of understand that so you can start to take those steps to create a website that is able to do that and accomplish that clearly. And I mean, there's a lot of different kind of things that you can do from a website design standpoint. But I think just understanding that from a strategic standpoint, that my website is actually something that can advocate on my behalf when I'm sleeping, when I'm eating, when I'm going to meetings, whereas this opportunity or this platform doesn't necessarily have to do that is a big thing that I think a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners miss out on.

[00:09:10.26] - Diane Helbig

Yeah, I do too. I think that's a great point and I love that it's working for you when you're sleeping. It's that unpaid employee really who's getting information out there and doing all that. Would you recommend that people, like, if they decide to do a podcast or a blog or video, that they host it all from their website or should they start someplace else and then maybe they can migrate it over? I mean, what are your thoughts on that?

[00:09:50.92] - Gresham Harkless

I mean, I think it definitely depends on different scenarios, you know, going back to what your overall goal is. But one of the things that I think people miss out on is more times than not, I believe that you should again, you know, if you have a, you know, if you have a cooking site and then you decide that you want to do a sports podcast and something that's not in alignment, maybe you don't necessarily want to do that. But if it is in alignment, one of the great benefits of having content that's on your domain, and by domain I mean like the www.whateveryourourdomain is.com or.co or whatever that might be. One of the benefits is that you have constantly changing content that's on your website. So that's going to help you out from a search engine standpoint. So you're going to get more traffic and more people going to your domain. Your domain is going to look more credit credible, largely because you have that constantly changing content. So that, whether that be a blog or a podcast or even, you know, if you host, for example, you host your videos on YouTube, but you embed them onto your website and people are playing them from your domain, that's going to help you out. So I think just from that standpoint, assuming everything is in alignment and it's, you know, it's hitting your goal, I think that that's kind of one of the things that a lot of people forget get, like when they do a podcast, it's great to use, you know, a lot of these platforms out there. And a lot of times when you create a podcast, it will have the opportunity to host your podcast there. And, you know, there's definitely a place for that going back to, you know, understanding your resources. But I think when you kind of take a step back and once you try to have people go more to your website to get that free offer or to maybe download your ebook or to purchase your products and services, you want to start drawing people and getting more traffic and more credit on your actual domain. So that's why you want to, at the very least, embed your videos, your audio, create your blog directly on your domain. Because again, it's one of those platforms that you own, and I even compare it to building a house you want to build and put those bricks in place. And the more you create content, the more you have pages and posts, the more you start to build a bigger and bigger house that can benefit you down the line.

[00:12:20.74] - Diane Helbig

That's a great way of looking at it. So, gresh, you mentioned SEO a minute ago. And this is like the big mystery of any sort of digital marketing. So I'm curious, what mistake do most people make when they're working with SEO?

[00:12:43.02] - Gresham Harkless

There's a ton of them that people make, if I could say maybe a few of the biggest ones is that not understanding that you having a website and you being online, you pretty much have already started with SEO. I say a lot of times it includes everything you do online. So as I spoke about a Little bit earlier, that if you decide that you have your main business might be a cooking site or a cooking blog, or maybe you do health consulting for people that are cooking different recipes, and you decide to do a sports blog, and you try to kind of conflate both of those things, and you try to have both of those go to the same domain, that can kind of negatively hurt you from a search engine standpoint. Because all of a sudden your domain kind of has two different types of content coming to it and linking back to it. So I think that you want to be really. And it's not just, you know, a lot of times people, you know, tell their kids especially to say, you know, be careful what you put online and be careful, you know, what you post and things like that. You also have to do that from a business standpoint because a lot of times you will confuse search engines because they're not sure exactly what is to follow when you go to that domain. So you want to be very kind of diligent and careful about what you're doing from a domain standpoint. And if you do want to create that sports blog, then you want to put that on an entirely different site. And I think kind of along the lines of that is a lot of people will just get links and comment and post on places just because they hear something called backlinks, which are essentially links that are not on your domain going back to your site. So a lot of times they will just go to different sites. Like, you know, Fiverr has places where you can purchase, you know, a thousand links for $5. Not understanding that backlinks are not. They're not all equal. So when you have a link that goes from a different domain to your website and saying, hey, go to your. Click on. Click on this and go to your website, a lot of times they have different ranks as well. So when you have low quality backlinks, it can actually hurt your domain more than anything else because you have low quality links going back to your site. So, for example, like a. A podcast site like yours, where you have, you know, so many, so much renown and so much authority, not just from the awards that you receive, but also just from a search engine standpoint, to have a link from your domain going to a person's site is really high quality. But if it's somebody that maybe is not as trustworthy, it's not going to be equivalent. So just understanding that all links are not equal, somebody that has potentially been in business and has a higher authority from a search engine standpoint especially provides really higher quality links as well. And if I can give you one more is understanding that a lot of people say depending on what the name of their business is, when they search for their business, they can be found on search engines. That's another big thing because a lot of times unless you have a tremendous advertising and marketing budget, you may not have that brand awareness as much as you would for the service that somebody's provided. Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh again and I hope you enjoyed that special episode of the IMCEO podcast. Just like I mentioned in the beginning, we're really trying to laser focus on these eight pillars to show you as a builder how you can leverage these eight pillars and really level up there. So it helps to level up your business and organization. So hope you enjoyed this episode and definitely please check out the show notes so you can learn more about the pillar, learn more about the person that I guessed it on their episode, and of course learn more a little bit more about us as well too. This is Grass signing out. Hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.