Why Your Marketing Isn’t Making You Money (Ep 38)

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 38 of Digital Marketing Made Easy with myself, Dawn McGruer, founder of Business Consort and speaker, author, and trainer. Now, I published my book back in 2019 now, Dynamic Digital Marketing, and it still continues to be a huge driver into my business. Now, this podcast started in 2018 and again, we have recognized so many opportunities and absolutely have driven and benefited from revenue and sales as a result. But in this episode, we’re going to be looking at why your marketing isn’t making you money.

Now, when I talk about things like my book, my podcast, I have another podcast which is Dawn of a New Era as well. One of the things that I suppose myself and also other colleagues initially thought about podcasts was, how does it make money, how does it actually grow your business? Now, this could be something you are considering yourself. And it’s quite hard to explain how the podcast has actually monetized my business or driven sales and revenue. Again, the same with the book, because yes, my book came out, it’s available globally and we’ve sold absolutely hundreds of thousands of copies. Now, do I see the sales from that book as a huge driver? Well, no, I don’t because, let’s be honest, when you go with a publisher, they take a lot of the share of it and you would certainly never be publishing a book with a publisher thinking that you’re going to make huge, huge money. You make attractive amounts, that’s for sure, but it’s certainly not the key strategy for growth within the business in terms of money.

But where it does grow is it is a huge door opener. It’s one of the things that positions me because number one, obviously, I’ve had a publishing contract, it’s available globally so my reach and visibility is increased through publishing the book. Now, the same goes for the podcast. Now, the podcast is free to listen to, so how does it actually drive money? Well, if you think about it, it’s down to the visibility. It’s how to really increase your visibility to get customers and how you use those two mediums to do that.

One of the first things you’ve got to consider is that if you are looking to generate more sales, get more clients, get more customers into your business and cash flow and profitability are key right now, then, for sure, doing a book or podcast are not going to be the quickest of wins. Yes, they will open new opportunities for you, and ultimately they will help give you that visibility and nurture potential clients into customers, but it’s a slow burn. Why is so many businesses marketing plans or why are their marketing plans failing?

Marketing plans fail because businesses focus on the wrong area

Well, because the focus is in the wrong area. Something that I teach a lot, be it on retreats, coaching programs, or indeed on courses, or qualifications is that there are two fundamental types of marketing. The first one is your maintenance marketing. And this is really the bottleneck, the bit where so many business owners, so many marketers get caught up and they get stuck. Because you can put a lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of effort into these processes, these channels and not see sales. Why? Because when you start focusing on, let’s say your social media, there has to be a strategy in plan. You have to think about when you’re posting that it has to be strategic, there has to be a purpose and outcome. And every part of your social media posting or content creation has to be aligned to your business goals.

Content creation has to be aligned with your business goals

You have to think about, is that post, is that social media activity taking me one step closer to the business goal? Now, quite often the two are not aligned, they’re seen as separate entities. And this is again where problems arise, because you can be hugely visible, but if you aren’t actually turning your connections into paying clients, then your efforts are in vain. Most businesses find it difficult to see a return on investment through social media. It shouldn’t be that case, because if you are posting and let’s say you’re calling out your ideal audience to get in touch, to direct message you because you’re looking to work with X, Y, and Z. Ultimately, if someone reaches out to you in a direct message and says, “Yes, I definitely want to explore or find out more information about working with you,” then that’s a genuine lead.

Look at the feature versus the benefit

But if we just go into sales, sales, sale mode and don’t use social selling, which is when we post things continuously, like, here is a masterclass, this is the date, this is the time, do you want to come? It’s so same, same it doesn’t stand out. And even just by subtly switching up the tone and saying, “Hi guys, I’ve just created this brand new masterclass. When I last ran it I had 400 people on it, I had 20 people on it,” whatever it’s going to be, and this is the outcome that it does, or it’ll show you how to get your next five clients or whatever, “Who wants a copy?” Those sorts of posts start to get engagement rather than just putting something out. And it’s again like in marketing, if we look at the feature versus the benefit, don’t just talk about the masterclass, talk about the benefit and see who wants it. Start getting engagement.

Now, again, when we look at things like SEO. SEO could be creating blog content, putting blog posts on, making sure that that key search term brings up that page in Google search results so that it’s driving traffic. But unless you’re actually getting onto page one and position one, let’s imagine. Position one on Google, if someone does a search for a particular keyword, 44% of that traffic will choose that first listing. If you’re at the bottom of the page, even by position three you’re down to 8%, so the bottom you’re going to be 1%? You have to think about if you are driving traffic through that blog, does the blog have call to actions in it to drive action, to take those people one step closer to becoming a client? Are you attracting your ideal client? And indeed, is there enough traffic and volume to be generating enough leads?

Even when we look at things like email marketing, list building. List building is something that should happen organically by you offering something so magnificent that is so aligned to your ideal client’s pain problem and challenge that they want to sign up. But unless you’re actually doing something with that list and nurturing them through to becoming a lead at that stage most people are just a suspect, which means that if they sign up for something free, they’re interested in that topic, but they’ve certainly not reached out and said, yeah, I’m ready to buy, or I’m ready to inquire.

Let’s consider, if you are driving traffic to a website or even a landing page, 97% of people are in browsing mode. That means only 3% of the traffic that you get, or the visitors onto your site and landing page’s are ready to buy and inquire, so you have to have the scale and volume. Now, if you look at content creation, content is only as good as the traffic is getting. And many businesses get caught up, and you may have fallen into this trap, where you’re just creating, but you’re not getting enough eyes on it. We’re starting to see that visibility is great, but if that visibility isn’t actually nurturing that person through to becoming a lead and indeed the leads are turning into clients, then it’s not going to generate money.

You have to build a pipeline

What is a different way? Well, instead of just focusing efforts on doing your social media, doing your SEO, doing all of the content creation, this is what we call maintenance marketing, you have to have balance. Yes, it’s fine to do those things, but there has to be things in your business that are actually going to drive the leads, that are actually focused on a sales first mentality. And yes, we are talking about marketing, but it’s about building a pipeline. Now, you may have heard this terminology and what it refers to is having a steady flow of leads that are converting into clients. Generally, if I meet a client who is not maximizing their digital marketing efforts to scale and grow the business, it’s because they don’t have a pipeline, they have visibility, but it could be inconsistent, infrequent. They could have a lot of money, a lot of effort, getting the visibility up in traffic, but nothing’s happening. If you think about it, you have to have some sort of compelling event, you have to have some persuasive content to get these people over the line.

How are people converting?

How do we get a campaign in place that’s going to actually drive people into your business and actually put revenue in and profit? Well, two things I focus on, and this is something I talk about a lot, is that I always focus on emulating what is getting me leads right now through online. Now, I still totally believe in a world of digital the power of word of mouth, the power of traditional marketing, going and showing up to events, et cetera. But if I’m looking at my online marketing strategy, I’m looking at all of the things, be it online or offline, that are currently moving the needle in my business. What is getting me leads, how are people converting, what is the thing that moves them over the line, the compelling event, or persuasive content?

Now, once you have an understanding of where your leads come from, then you start to get an understanding of what marketing campaigns you need to do. Now, things that do definitely work in terms of scale of visibility and volume for sure are ads, but you have to have the budget to put it in. And so many people try out things like Facebook Ads, but they don’t have the cash flow to maintain it, or to put enough money in to start getting the results. For me, it’s all about the organic, it’s all about investing your time and your resources in a way that doesn’t mean that you have to be putting big budgets out there.

I run round tables every week, I run a free masterclass every month. Now, the call to action for both those activities, these are high converting activities, is huge. The conversion for me is that I want people to do one call to action. And what is that call to action? Both of them drive to calls. Now, we do client attraction and conversion strategy calls and we add these in. As soon as someone has been invited to the round table, and then as soon as someone has attended, same as the masterclass, we are getting on a call. We don’t need big numbers, and this is the magic of it, you don’t need hundreds of thousands you just need really good quality people. Now, these are the things that move the needle in our business because I know that events work really well so they drive a huge amount of leads and convert them. How do I do this online? Through a masterclass.

I know that networking really works, word of mouth, and having conversations. Now, this is why the magic of the round table starts because, for me, it’s not having volumes of people on that but having these really good quality conversations, where I can really deep dive into their pains, their problems and challenges. Get a deeper understanding of where they are and what they need to do to solve their issues and to be able to grow their businesses. It’s almost getting them to experience your skillset and see how much value you could add to the business. And it is a way of showcasing you and your skills.

In business, for me, we spend time inviting people to this. Now we use LinkedIn, you imagine you can invite 4,000 people for free using LinkedIn. We use all channels, you can set up events on LinkedIn, you can set events up in Facebook, you can put them onto. There’s lots of different avenues. You can post into groups, you can ask people to put your links in there, you can do guest expert sessions to tell people about the free masterclass you’re running. There are so many ways of getting bums on seats, virtually for free.

You need to think about where you are getting leads and clients from right now

You have to think about in your business where are you getting leads and clients from right now, and how could you emulate that? Now that needs to be where 80% of your effort goes. Because if we know we have a proven system, a proven strategy, we have a methodology that is working for the business right now, we want to put more into that. Now, that’s where your effort should be, and then 20% should be on the maintenance marketing. Now, once you’ve built the foundations of the business, once you’ve got that all important focus where you’ve got a steady pipeline of leads and clients converting, maybe the switch can be a bit more onto the maintenance side, maybe you can look at doing other things. But the foundational layer is getting that steady pipeline, because when I speak to entrepreneurs and business owners, what do they say to me? Well, every marketer is basically saying, well, they want a more consistent, a more frequent cash flow of revenue coming into the business.

Once you get that, then you start to get bigger budgets, you can invest more, you could outsource more. It’s the swings and roundabouts. But when we look at why your marketing isn’t making you money, it could be quite simply that your focus is too heavy on the maintenance and not enough on the sales generating activities. What is a great activity to do, and this is something that will only take you a few minutes if you just jot down, look at where the leads are coming into the business and look at all of those leads when they convert and who is converting, what channel are they coming from?

And then again, this really helps to reduce the digital to-do list because you are focusing your efforts on things that you know that are actually going to have an impact to the business, both financially in growth and visibility, but also you then start to get the positioning because you are running something that is converting. And again, from a marketer’s point of view, the satisfaction is great, because you can start to see that you’re getting results and that all your efforts are really, really dramatically changing the way that you feed the pipeline.

I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast, and I would love to hear from you. Remember, come and follow me on all the channels, LinkedIn is one of my favorite channels so if you are using that, please reach out to me. Please just come and tell me if you’ve listened to this episode, and if you have found any value and let me know what your challenges are in the world of digital marketing. And also we’re here to provide advice so if there’s anything you’d like me to cover, feel free to reach out. And don’t forget to subscribe so that you don’t miss any future episodes. Have an amazing week, and I will see you on the next podcast.

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