The 3 Rules to Success (Ep 42)

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Dawn McGruer brings you actionable digital marketing lessons every other week. Whether you are an aspiring or experienced marketer, learn the latest SEO, content marketing, social media, email marketing, and online marketing tactics that are working today.

 
Dawn:

Welcome to episode 42 of Digital Marketing Made Easy with myself, Dawn McGruer, founder of Business Consort Digital and Social Media Academy and author, speaker, and strategist. Now I’ve worked in business for many, many years since I was 21, I’m 43 now. And it’s quite scary to think that the internet began over 20 years ago. And I’ve been kind of living my journey as the internet has unfolded, as digital marketing has grown and scaled. It’s like I have evolved my business with the growth of the internet.

Now in today’s episode, I’m going to talk about the three rules to success. And as marketers or business owners, it’s really important to understand what it is in business that allows a business to be successful, sustainable, profitable, and that allows it to scale and grow in an easy way. Now I see businesses growing and I see profit margins reducing, and this is really common. And we see this in huge, huge businesses whereby they’re investing so much money into marketing. Yeah, they’re increasing revenue, but what’s the difference in the profit?

I know many small to medium size businesses who are operating on like 70, 80, even in the 90s of profit margins. It doesn’t go hand in hand that the more you invest in your marketing, the more successful you’ll be, because there are lots of organic strategies, lots of ways of doing marketing for free. And when we talk about the rules to success, we have to understand what the activities are that can try and increase profit margins, get better results through marketing and ultimately save time, effort, and money.
There are two different ways to this. Now, I’ve always worked with marketers and business owners and everything that I’ve created has kind of grown through demand. Now that is an essential point that if you are creating something that someone wants, then of course the likelihood or the scale of probability is that you will succeed. Think about how you can incorporate these three roles to success into a role or business.

When I started my own business at 21 I really struggled

Now, when I started my first business at the ripe old age of 21, I literally struggled and it was hard. And any business person who talks to me about their challenges, I can 100% relate because I’ve been there. I’ve been in those shoes of those people time and time again. In the early stages of my business, it was so tough. I’d come out of a corporate role. I’d started my business at 21. I had a mortgage. I bought my house at 19, crazy to think. I don’t even think that could happen in today’s economy.
And then I had offices, so I had a huge amount of bills. And I honestly believe that if I invested a huge amount of money into my marketing, and I just plowed as much effort and time into it, that eventually things would fly, but actually the opposite was true. It just became tougher because I was burning out, I was exhausted. I just wasn’t getting the results I needed. I wasn’t pulling clients through and I was working 14, 16, 17, 18 hour days, so something had to change. And this is where the three rules to success came from. Because if I look at how my businesses have grown, I have three businesses that are multimillion pound businesses now, with a team of 17. But back then, it was just me. I was the marketing department. I was the accounts department. I was everything.

How did I grow my business? And how did I actually kind of get over that cusp of difficulty? Because I was in a feast and famine cycle. I had to understand that to get more customers I needed to get visible. This is kind of where the whole process started. I started to review what was working my business, where did my leads come from? What leads converted? Who were they? Where did I get customer referrals from? How was my business attracting and converting clients right now? How many leads did it take to get to that point? And this is when I started to think about customers, customers first.

Every business needs customers

Every business needs customers, they are the hub of everything. They are the lifecycle, the lifeblood of how your business will function. So you have to put customer first. And this is my first rule in business, customers all the way. Focus on the customers you have, delight them, exceed expectations, make sure from the minute that they start working with you, that within that 24 hours they’re absolutely immersed in how brilliant you are. Really think about the journey that you take them on from the minute that they purchase through to off boarding, when you can get reviews, case studies, you can keep in contact with that person. Think about retention, think about referral strategies and just really chart that journey through.

Then take it a stage further, and then start working on the piece where we call the pipeline, where do your customers come from? And start thinking about how you can build a pipeline where you are getting an abundance of leads, a steady flow of leads that are actually converting into paying customers. And this is the game changer because once you get a pipeline in place and you have a steady journey that is customer service, customer focused and customer centric, then the whole cycle goes in one.

Now the pipeline is about understanding who your ideal client is, understanding where do they hang out, how do you get in front of them, how do you attract them and reach them and convert them. Looking at where did your current leads come from, and customers will give you a big, big piece of research around this. And so many people come to me and say, “I don’t know who my ideal client is.” But of course you do. Every person that you sell to is an entity, a human being, right? Not a niche, not an industry, not a market. You know the commonalities of this person. You know what their pains, their problems, their challenges are. Look at your existing clients and start to build this profile so that you’re super clear on what you do, how you do it and why it helps your customer.

Now, once you’ve got that far, and you’ve started to understand where your leads and referrals come from now, you want to focus on activities that do more of that. And this is all about building a pipeline. And this is one of the biggest things that I teach day in day out. When I started the CEO strategy score, the biggest thing, the biggest driver for me to do that was when people came to me who were starting scaling or growing a business and said, “Dawn, I’ve never run a business before.” I hadn’t done when I was 21.
And they said, “It’s really difficult because you have to know everything.” They’re an expert in their field, but how do you actually grow the business? It could be that you’re an expert in accountancy, but then you have to know everything about sales and marketing, accountancy, all of those things, how do you bring all of those together? So in the cycle of growing a business, we need to understand this whole piece about building pipelines.

Now I started to teach this many, many years ago based on the fact that if someone had come up to me 20 years ago and said, “Dawn, would you like some help?” I’m going to help you build your pipeline. I’m going to help you literally find clients. I’m going to help you build a sales pipeline, so you can kind of get that piece sorted so that you’ve got a flow of customers coming in and that in turn is going to help drive cash to the business and increase your revenue.
I’m going to teach you how to increase brand awareness and get your consistent visibility. And in fact, I’m also going to help you automate and outsource your workflow so that you literally are freeing up time. And then finally, because you’ve never been a CEO before, I’m going to help you scale and step up as a true CEO, because who knows what a CEO actually was.

Consistency

These are the things that are important in business. And you have to remember that when you are growing your business, fundamentally it’s about making your business work for you, making things work in a way that suits you. If I think about the three rules of success, I think about customers. I think about everything I’ve said about building a pipeline, putting the customer first. But what is the second rule of business? Well, it’s about consistency and it’s about getting your marketing positioned in a way that it almost seems like serendipity, like your brand and business is everywhere, that you have this kind of ebb and flow of messaging. Your story is clear, your positioning. People know exactly what you do and why you do it, how you can help. But how do you do that? Sounds simple, right? But what are the actions?

When you think about consistency, you have to think about visibility. And I always use this quote, I’ve used it in all my courses, my events, and I use it with my team and clients. And I always say, marketing is only marketing when a customer can see it. This is the first switch, the mindset that you have to get into to understand that consistency is about getting your brand, your business, in front of your audience each and every day. But most importantly, pulling in a new amount of audience, new people, attracting your ideal client, building a really powerful network so that you are visible. Is about being super clear on what you are posting and really posting with purpose. And thinking about your visibility. Now this could be going live.

One of the things I’m doing at the moment is I said that there’s 98 working days or weekdays until the end of the year, that’s crazy. But I’m going to go live for 98 days. Will that increase my visibility and brand awareness? Absolutely. Will it increase my impact? Absolutely, of course it will. But will it actually build a way of resonating, relating and building, and establishing relationships with my audience? Of course it will. Because it’s a means of two way communication.
I’m not suggesting you have to do lives for 98 days, but you could. Integrating live into your strategy, making sure that when you’re posting, you’re posting with purpose, you’re thinking about what you want that person, that reader to think, feel, and do. And the same is true when they open your emails, you have to really think about the quality of your marketing and the consistency of it, making sure that you always in your mind, whether you have to write this on the wall, think about marketing is only marketing when a customer can see it.

The third and mighty rule of success is cash

I see so many marketers spending time, building websites, working behind the scenes. But if your customer, your potential audience, your leads, your suspects can’t see that, what does it actually mean? Well, nothing, because it’s not moving the needle in your business. Remember, customers and consistency.
The next one, the last rule, the third but mighty rule of success and it is cash. And what I mean here is, is understanding your numbers. And this is from a marketing point of view and a business and commercial point of view. You need to understand what revenue you need in a year, in a month, a week and a day. This is all about the maths of selling and really being clear on exactly what you have to pull in each day and having a roadmap to do that.

Understanding that if you need X amount of money in that day, how many customers do you need? And if you need like two customers, how many leads do you need to get two customers? What is the conversion that you are getting now? And where are those people coming from? And it’s about being super clear on your objectives. Growing your audience is great. Getting web visitors is amazing. And building people and a list in your email and putting people into that list is fantastic. But will they translate into true hard cash? Well, no, probably not. They need to be more aligned. They need to be more specific.

My focus has always been about getting more customers each day, getting more leads each day and getting more reach. Now, those things definitely will help move the need on. Now, the things that have helped me grow my business is my clients. If I think about the results that we get, we are increasing clients revenues by on average 20% in 30 days. How do we do that? Because we’ve got a laser focus on just the actions that need to be applied. Getting rid of the digital to-do list is the biggest thing, because you could be a busy fall.

When you hone in on these rules you make better marketing decisions

A marketer could be marketing 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And this 24/7 approach is not going to work. We don’t have that time. How do you become a smart marketer? Will you start focusing on three golden rules? Those golden rules are customers, consistency and cash. And once you start to hone in on those and think about nothing else, then you start to make better marketing decisions. You start to really think about, who have I got in my business right now and how could I convert them into a paying client? How do I get more people that I don’t know into my world? And how do I get those people to become a lead?

You’ve got to remember that web visitors, 97% of those people are browsing. That means that only 3% of people are ready to buy and inquire. We have to be quite savvy, getting people onto a free guide doesn’t mean that they’re ready to buy, doesn’t mean that they’re interested in that topic. So you have to be very careful that you’re not elongating your sales cycle, but you are using tactics that are focused on what’s working right now and doing more of it.
And again, if you do a lot of offline marketing, try and emulate what’s working offline, online. If you have to have a meeting with someone, have a virtual meeting. If you have to go and do a demo, do a virtual demo, try and think about all of the opportunities and chart that sales cycle, all of the touch points that you have.

One of the best things that I’ve ever done and I do this with clients a lot is that I plan out a conversation and I look at the fact that, right, okay, if I meet somebody, a stranger at a networking event, how would I introduce my business? I wouldn’t say I own an agency and an academy and a consultancy. I wouldn’t say those things, because it’s boring. It doesn’t open conversation. I would say something like, I help digital marketers maximize their digital marketing efforts to scale and grow their business. Or I help my clients master the world of digital marketing to scale and grow their business. I would tell them what I do for my clients. I would make it about them.

And then I would think about all of the different things, the way through to purchase that I would have to tell them. And I would jot them down on a piece of paper and that becomes your content marketing plan. Now I hope I’ve given you some food for thought. I hope you’ve enjoyed my three roles to success. Remember, please come and connect with us at Business Consort and at Dawn McGruer. You can find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. Those are the three core channels that we use, but of course we’re on all channels.

Now reach out and make sure that you go and visit our free resources. If you go to Google and you type in Business Consort, you will see it the top of the tree, number one ranking is Digital and Social Media Academy and that is us. If you go to the resources area, you will see we have a huge amount of free workshops, master classes. We’ve got podcasts. We’ve got all sorts of guides and videos and articles that will help you on your journey to help you master the world of online marketing to scale and grow your business. I hope you enjoy the episode and I’ll see you next time.

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