The Entrepreneur's Guide To Modern Marketing. Justin Theng
the model below, you’ll see “profitable marketing” right in the middle, where it should be.
So our target here is profitable marketing, and to achieve this we have three pillars around it:
1 Map - You have to have a plan in place so you would know what to create. This is a schematic that you’re going to follow to measure success and to know where you’re going. In fact, all the people out there you want to talk to about your business won’t know how or where to find you. More on that later.
2 Message - This is the part of your marketing that is specifically tailored to the audience that you speak to. It touches on the problems you solve and the solutions you deliver. It’s the communication you put out there that gets random strangers to give you their details, so you can continue the conversation. You don’t have to try to be everything to everyone. If you do, you’ll miss the opportunity to be someone special to anyone.
3 Method - This is what most people think of when they think of marketing. It includes the marketing funnels, the technology, the platforms, the social media and the techniques.
Why are these so important? Well, without a map, there will be no traffic to your website. Without a method in place, then you have no leads. Without a clear and unique message, there will be no sales.
Still with me?
Now look closely at the overlaps between the map, message and method circles. It looks like a three-leaf clover. It’s not a four-leaf clover because luck has nothing to do with it. When you map out your marketing strategy, and apply the right marketing messages the result is effectiveness. Take compelling messages and apply it to the right marketing methods and you get more leads. Take the methods and map it to delighting customers and you increase your money.
These three parts work together in a continuous cycle to build your marketing profitability.
The Accelerators
Now let’s look to the outer edges of this model. These are the activities that successful growing businesses use, distilled down into nine accelerators for marketing success. These will also form some of the chapters of this book, so let’s go through them briefly before we get into the nitty-gritty.
The Map Accelerators
Around the Map, you have the Technical Setup. This is your plan for technology and tools, specifically within digital marketing. I’ll show you exactly what this looks like to save you the guesswork and expensive trial and error. Next, we will look at the Sources. Where do people come from? Where is the traffic coming from? Then we’ll have a look at your Flight Plan. This is really just a one-page plan that will help you measure your success indicators. These indicators include:
Traffic
Conversion rates
Traffic to leads
Leads to customers
And the conversion rates between all of those.
You need to measure all these so that you can improve it. You can’t improve what you’re not measuring.
The Message Accelerators
Then around the Message, we’re going to have a look at your Brand Persona, and how messages map to a customer journey in The Value Radar. Finally, in this section, we’ll look at creating your Advanced Buyer Personas.
The Method Accelerators
Around the Method, we’ll look at your Funnel, and Automation and the Team to make the dream.
Ready To Go?
Now you know what this book will cover, let’s get into the 3M Marketing System extensively in the upcoming chapters. Everything you need to plan and implement what you’re learning directly into your business, will be provided for you in worksheets and templates. All you need to bring is the entrepreneurialism, the business knowledge, the experience, and the expertise.
We’ll combine your experience and my knowledge of marketing best practices to create maximum impact. Throughout the book, I’ll be assuming a certain level of marketing knowledge but in case I use a marketing term you’re not familiar with, I’ve included a glossary at the end of this book.
This book is not meant to be a comprehensive course on marketing. It’s a map of the terrain, so to speak. It’s a helpful guide to navigate some of the pitfalls I’ve seen in business. For some entrepreneurs, it will be more than they’ll ever need. For others, It will just be the starter course.
So are you ready to dive in and start creating profitable marketing? Because I am. I’ve worked extremely hard and diligently to put a whole bunch of IP and proprietary techniques into simple to use frameworks. I want you to be able to implement straight away into your business. Gear yourself up and remember: trust the system. Let’s do it!
Build A Market
There are lots of businesses that create Buyer Personas, but in my experience coaching many of them, I have found their personas to be generic and unusable. If you haven’t yet created Buyer Personas, don’t worry. It’s better to do this once, and do it right, than to need to redo it. That’s what led me to create the Advanced Buyer Persona template. This is an important part of your marketing as it allows you to tailor your marketing efforts specifically to the type of person who is most likely to purchase.
Buyer Persona Basics
The first step in your marketing plan should always be to create a Buyer Persona. A Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. It’s based on market research as well as real data and experience about your existing customers.
Creating a Buyer Persona makes it easier for you to have a solid structure and context for your business. It makes it really easy to map out content and communication plans. It also makes it easier for you to craft your messaging style because you’re imagining a person that you know. The Buyer Persona makes it seem like you know the person to the point where you feel like you know how they think and how they would want to buy, research or think.
With this, you can have a more tailored sales conversation, or marketing messages, with your target audience.
The Buyer Persona also makes it easier to allocate your team’s time and resources and achieve alignment across your organization. For example, you may have one person who is an expert in one area of marketing and another one who looks after technology or sales. You may not have a huge team yet. But when you do have a team, it helps make them more customer-centric, because everybody is referring to the same ‘person’. The exercise helps everybody involved acknowledge that these days, the customer is at the centre of the universe.
A persona helps you learn about the following aspects of your ideal customers at a minimum:
Their challenges
Their goals
Personality traits
Demographics
It helps you to set a strategy that’s aimed at attracting the most valuable visitors, leads, and customers to your business.
Why Buyer Personas Matter
This worksheet that I have