Today we are chatting about the five things that I look at or look for when I’m creating a custom marketing strategy for my clients. Now, in case you guys don’t know, I actually do one on one custom marketing strategies for one on one clients so we currently have four one on one coaching clients right now and two are specifically for marketing. So, I go through and I create this custom strategy that fits their needs that fits their ideal client that fits what they are comfortable with marketing wise. And so, I wanted to walk you through the five things that I look at in the beginning when I start creating that custom strategy for them.
1. Questionnaire to Assess The Amount of Time The Client Has to Spend on Marketing
First, for the custom marketing strategy process, I give them a twenty question questionnaire that goes through all the things marketing wise. Things like; what they think their clients respond to, what they feel like gives them the most traction, all these different things.
When I am going through and creating these custom strategies, I am looking at what is going to be the most effective use of the time they have on their hands. That is the number one thing I am going to look for. I will look at how much time this client says they have to market every single week. If you tell me on your questionnaire, I actually have five or six hours a week that I can play with marketing right now, great, I am going to create a strategy based on that. Or if you say, hey, I only have thirty minutes max, a day, to market, that is fine too. I am creating a custom strategy based off of that.
Now, why am I doing it based on the amount of time? It’s because I want you to be able to show up and be able to market in a way that is going to give you the most in return for the amount of time that you have. I don’t want to show up and give clients a marketing strategy or put ideas in their head about marketing that I know might take them maybe an hour a day to accomplish if they only have thirty minutes a day to accomplish the strategies. So that’s one thing people do when they are creating their marketing strategy, they think okay I need to blog, I need to be on Pinterest, I need to be on Instagram, I need to be on Facebook, I need to be doing all these different things. And the problem is they might only have thirty minutes a day to market, right?
So, if they have all these different things on their to do list and to show up and market, they are going to feel overwhelmed, they are going to feel like they are not getting anything done, they are going to feel like they are not getting traction for what they are putting in. Because they are putting in all this different effort into these different platforms and they don’t even know what’s bringing back the most traction off what they are putting out. So, when we are looking at marketing strategies, we want to first look at how much time do you actually have in a day or even a week to market and then figure out what strategies fit into that time frame.
2. Aligning Strategies that Fit into the Time Frame
The next thing I am going to look at is out of these strategies that fit into this time frame, what are the things that they are going to see the most traction with? If I have a client who says, hey, I want to or I really love Instagram, I love hanging out on Instagram, I am going to find strategies that fit into a time frame that I know they can accomplish. And I am going to find them strategies that are going to give them the most traction on that platform. If I know someone really loves Instagram and they see good results off Instagram, I am not going to try to pull them to a different platform to learn a new platform. I am going to tell them, great, we know that you get traction off Instagram, we know that maybe you get some inquiries off Instagram every single month. So now, we are going to double down or triple down on those strategies and find new ways for you to show up on that platform that is going to give you more traction. We don’t want you to abandon a platform that is giving us traction in the moment. Even if it’s just a little bit of traction, that means that your client is there, that your client is listening and they want to hear more. And so, we want to double down or triple down on those areas that we are seeing the traction. So, number one is how much time do we have to set aside for marketing every single week. Number two is what are the tactics that you are already seeing results with that you can double down or triple down on in that time frame to see even better results.
3. Figure out Your Strengths
Next, is figuring out your strengths. So, again, figuring out what platform you feel like your strength is because you are seeing traction from it. Or figure out your strength as far as, maybe you really love creating community, and you love conversations, and you love getting to know people. Great, we are going to figure out how to incorporate that strength into your marketing strategy whether that looks like making sure you’re getting on Instagram stories and talking about specific topics. Trying to get into people’s DMs or commenting on their photos and trying to start conversations. Maybe you’re really good at, maybe you’re a really funny person or witty person? We are going to try to incorporate that strength into your captions. We want to figure out what strengths that person has in order to bring that into these platforms that they are already getting traction on that way they can stand out more on those platforms to help bring more people in.
4. Reaching Your Ideal Client through Strategy Tweaks
Next, we are going to look at what are the times that your ideal client that you are trying to market to, are on the platforms. I know this seems really simple, we all know this, but the problem is, a lot of the time we forget to post at those times. So, we might look at if you are a family photographer, and you’re trying to get a hold of moms well maybe you know that your ideal client wakes up before their kids and they stay up after their kids, that is their ideal time.
So, maybe we need to adjust our custom marketing strategy to where instead of posting at nine AM and five PM, now you are going to post at six AM and 8 pm. Or if you know your ideal client is a bride, who maybe works a corporate job or a more demanding job instead of posting at nine AM and five PM, we are now going to post at twelve thirty and eight thirty because it’s at lunch break and its once they have gotten home, and they have cooked dinner, and they have showered and are relaxing for the night. We are going to look at those things and say okay how can we adjust the strategy that we created to fit into those time slots and get their attention in the best way possible.
5. Create Aligned Content Consistently
And then next, the final step we are going to look at is how can you start creating content based off of your strengths versus consuming content and constantly trying to research content.
That is one thing so many people get stuck in, I need to research more, I need to figure out more of what I can talk about, I need to figure out what other people are talking about. What we want to do is create content based off of your personal strengths, create the content based off of the things you know you are good at inside of your business and that your clients actually need and want from you.
I’d love to hear if you have a custom marketing strategy, drop a comment below!
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