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Ariel: Marketing Plan

Okay. Your marketing plan in seven steps. Number one, set your goals. There's a Harvard study that happened many, many years ago. 3% of humanity writes down their goals, and those people that did were studied for 50 years, and all of them, 100% of them had, like, incredible lives. The ones that didn't were a bit loss and just set your goals down. Just do it. Writing your goals down and looking towards them Well, it turned out that in this Harvard study, which is incredible and you can google it, you'll find it. It has nothing to do with how much money you have. It has nothing to do with what race, where you come from, what your background is. It has to do with How do you look at yourself and what are your goals? Do it. It's amazing. Short term, long term start with three months and in five years, and by the way, marketing plan and life plan should kind of go together. I really feel this way, especially for entrepreneurs. Our life is our work. These things are interwoven, and as we go o...

n to social media, they become more and more collapsed. It's okay, toe. Have your life in your work because your work is your life. How many of us are working from home? We have a laptop were always plugged in. I mean, I live in New York. Not one person isn't walking down the street, you know, communicating like every minute of the day. Next, identify your niche. We just talked about it, so I don't need to. Number three. Create that signature story two and three should be relational. Absolutely. Number four. Create the customer archetype. We just talked about that right out who that customer archetype is. And as you go along, your journey, My customer archetype that was perfect for me four years ago is completely different from what is now because now I'm in my forties and I have different new interests. And it's different for me now than it used to be when I was in my twenties and only wanted to do was go to the rock and roll show. Now I want a different type of perfect archetype so you can outgrow your perfect customers. You go on your journey and that's okay, but you want to stay cognizant of that Number five. Build your website with a blogged, No blood, no site. That's how I feel. Six. These are the six rooms of your social media house. My book talks about this and you're going to be hearing about this for the next several days, so I'm not going there. But these are the things that you should be aware of. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, blawg and newsletter newsletter. I hope someone talks about newsletters because this is an amazing way to communicate with your tribe and share a lot of you. For those people that are not Hans, living and dying on social media all day long on the final step is create consistent, compelling content. That's the number one thing, really. But the point is, once you begin to reveal your plan and start with your social media, it's gotta consistently be be put out there. Now, that doesn't mean you have to, like, swallow the bitter pill of content creation. There are plenty of people that could help you. Maybe maybe you're related to them. Maybe they're in your tribal talk about that a little bit, too. Um, I gave everyone a pyramid, which is my social media food pyramid. I likened it to the food pyramid that we were taught, which they don't teach anymore because it was it was not the right way to eat. But I had a client in my office who was frustrated out of her mind hating on social media, and we were eating breakfast. And so I made this for her. And I said, Look, if you can if you can eat a well rounded diet, you can certainly do well rounded social media. So that is some that is what that is, what that's about. I just want to call this out that, uh, this pdf of this there's a backside as well is included as bonus materials when you dio go and purchase this workshop. So this has a lot, and I read it for creative life, right? So it's not that one, but it just it's I love how you've taken the food pyramid concept, and because it is, it's overwhelming. It is when you look at this is you break it down. Yeah, so self promotion is like the fats and sweets. Lay off it and let's do a lot of like grains and greens And that would be more like sharing content and sharing other bills, photos and quoting other people in shining a light on others, etcetera. The mindset needed to be successful at Social is how can I help or be useful or informative? Not What do I get? Remember in the beginning of this talk I talked about, you know how much we dislike when other people are pushing loudly there bad stuff, a Seth Godin says, And it really makes us feel completely allergic to social. Never think about this, especially for those of you who are just beginning to build your platform and you're stopped by this because you don't want to do that. We live. A coach of mine that I worked with was an amazing sales coach. He talks about sales. His name is Larry Sharp. You should definitely look him up, he says that we live in the most allergic to sales society, America, the United States of America. In the world. We hate to be sold to the concept of that used car salesman or that pushy person. We dislike this immensely, but we are also the number one consumer country we love to buy love it you love to buy. We love to buy things that are relational. Tow us. We love to buy things that we feel resonate with us. So how do you turn the conversation into the opposite story? Larry says that if you ever go to a networking event, the worst thing that you can do is push your business carded someone. This is equivalent to pushing your social media message that someone, it's like when I was still do. But especially back in the day when CDs were hot, when I used to speak at music conferences, all these musicians would shove their CD at me, and I felt like I was trying to stab me with it. I don't I don't want this thing. I haven't asked for this thing. However, if I did see a musician and I was interested in them or I saw them perform and I asked them for a CD, that's the paradigm. One thing is selling. The other thing is buying. So if you're out networking and by the way, world 1.0 relates very deeply. Teoh Web 2.0, in the real world, where you have relationships and customers and business. And by the way, you're also talking to people that you know in the real world all day long on your social sites. You have to remember that that pushy sales, the attitude turns people off instantly. So don't even think about it. Only be useful. Be informative. Be honest, be helpful. And that will help you come to your signature story, your niche in your customer base So we can go back through some of those marketing plan steps and highlight some of those if people have questions. Because I raced through all seven of them way didn't raise through, we did raise through. But we do have some more questions coming in about the signature story such So maybe we can do a few the few of those absolute. And then, since we do have a bit of time, we can go back. But to you so question from Cleo Boston How do you overcome the phobia or fear of truly not knowing how you are perceived? Ask, ask. Um, this is something we forget to dio at. Start with your best friends. So it's not like What do you think of me? Everyone you know you might want Teoh. You might want to do this. Just my business CEO. She's amazing. She just recently sent an email out to the 10 people she trusts the most who she works the closest with. And she said, I'm really having a hard time defining who I am as a business. Can you write me a letter telling me what's great about me and what's not great about me? This would be so helpful to me. This is one of my best friend. She runs my company of Notre for 20 years. This is like a sister, and I was so thrilled do that because she didn't actually know how she was occurring to me because we're in it all day, right? We're like strategizing and doing business stuff. We're talking about the business all day, and then we talk about her husband or kids. We forget to talk about that. And so I wrote her a letter just saying, This is what you do for me. This is how you occur. To me ask, that is the first place to start. Ask your number one client. Ask a client that you pissed off. What about that exchange it's hard. This is This is the ugly stuff, right? Because you don't want to do that again, or someone that you know was like it. But not yea about your about your relationship with them. Find out what it was that irked and annoyed them if that's too confrontational to a pole. So I love surveymonkey. You can create a free survey, and you can send it out to people. It can be anonymous. You can ask, What do you like about my business? What do you like about what I'm saying? My messaging, my persona and you can do multiple choice or free form answers. Get some people really giving you honest feedback because I think that's the only way you're ever gonna find out. And they're sort of seems to be sort of two things online. You don't get a whole lot of neutral online, right. You get haters and flame er's and you get people who are completely in the U N world by you and into supporting you club. And so it's very easy to get a little bit off kilter. That's that's a really profound question, and thank you for asking it because it really is about How am I occurring? Am I doing something that I don't know about? Is it am I offending you on my not saying enough? My saying too much of my overwhelming really, really good to get feedback from your And if you don't have a client base yet, if you're just building one, ask your friends, your neighbors, your relatives. This is a great place to start. What's the best thing about me? What's the worst thing about me? You know, like that we have a question, actually, from Argentina. Oh, it's Mira and she wants Know what advice can you give me if I have two different if I have to. Niches in different languages. Okay. Keep those separate. Yeah, keep those separate. It is really hard to collapse. All that stuff, I would say if it's going well, and if you're building both niches equally well, keep them separate. Actually, I like this one as well. From Stacy Jacobs. She doesn't nonprofit photography for came with their patients, but she feels tourney in terms of advertising it to chemotherapy based on her business site. Yeah, doesn't going to nonprofit sites because she doesn't want to self promote kind of. And she's wondering, how is there How could I gracefully mention that? Or should I say that it doesn't look like so it doesn't look like, Yeah, this is really this And this is the part, right? Like you don't want the look at me, especially with a really sensitive thing like this. Um, I would first ask, Does she have a blawg? And if you do, you could do a very elegant post about why I take photos of Does she actually take photos of patients? People who are balding from chemotherapies? Yeah. I mean again, one in five people getting cancer. It's a hard time there. So many people that want to see that and want to go on that journey. I think you could absolutely do something that's really relevant and touching and moving as opposed. Teoh. It won't feel insensitive at all. If if you're there's a reason why you were called to do that right? Either someone you know or somebody love or you were touched by this. That's the piece that you can share. And you don't have to put a link toe by my photography here. You know, I don't think she's profiting from this, is she? No, no, no, no. So then again, you absolutely can if you talk about what your reason for that is, especially when it's something so that's huge. People want to see that, you know, And I think that's that's that's telling a truth that that, you know, that needs to be told. So I think that there is many, many elegant ways you can do that. You could maybe, um, show photography over the years. The one I think of it in the rock business. Melissa Ethridge When when she posed in Rolling Stone Bald. This was an image that a lot of people needed to see. So I think that's OK to Dio. And I think there's telling other people's stories. If they're okay with it on your blawg, showing the photos explaining why you do it, what your motivation for this is. No one's gonna get mad at that. There's there's nothing about that that says I'm selling this or look at me or this is a self promotional trip because it's not. It's clearly something like you with taking photos of women. They're not all going to be beautiful photos, and a lot of them might begin to, you know, might unfold for you and tell stories. I think that's great. Okay, From from Raj E J. If you had to start from scratch today, what are the three things you'd focused on in the next 30 to 90 days? And I'm gonna say from a social media perspective, Yeah, of course. So the first thing you want to get really, really clear on is what's your reason for wanting to do this? What's your long term reason again? If Social Media is in 18 to 24 month prospect, where do you want to see yourself? If you can do that, it's like you call the destination and then you ask for the directions. As Derek Sievers says. So I would say, instead of going, Oh, my gosh, what do I do for the next three months? Go Oh, where do I see myself in 18 months? 24 months? And then begin to reverse engineer that so bringing your brand and your messaging back to where you want to be is really crucial. I can only use myself as an example, but I'm now beginning to really address thought leadership, and that's my sort of my new area of total focus and the thing that I'm really turning me on. The question is, how do I weave that into a platform that's mostly been for self promoting musicians and artists in the independent musician community? Slowly would be the answer. So I would say the first thing that you want to dio after you've got your goals in your roadmap in place is get your brand in place statistically, and I'm sure you'll hear about this for the next couple of days. If people are clicking around the Internet and they go from your Twitter to your Facebook to your website, if it looks different and feels different and they can't connect the dots mentally, visually, you lose a customer like that. So start with your brand. What do you wanna look like? What you gonna feel like? What's your 15 2nd pitch? What's your word pitch? What's your What's your whole story told? Those are the three things I would dio, and then the next thing I would do is pick your favorite platform. If you hate Twitter, it doesn't matter how all day long someone will tell you it's the best thing in the world to change my life revolutionary. If you don't love it, you don't have to do it. I hate that idea that like I'm doing this like I'm taking my medicine. I don't want to take pen. I don't wanna castor oil. I don't want that. I want the feeling that this resonates and feels good for me. Truthfully. Facebook. Not my favorite platform. I don't like it. I don't like their rules. I like something that's a little bit more open, so I prefer Twitter. I am a gem, and I I have lots of ideas in a day, you know? So Twitter's my thing, and it's easy for me to use and I've got more followers there. So start with 11 platform, focus on it, get really, really good at it, and then add something in. For those of us who dance, you don't learn every dance at once. You learn, you know, tap, then jazz and ballet event something you don't just dance. So do that one platform. Get really good at it. Get really good at populating that one platform with content. Don't shine a light. Don't do the What do I do? Look at me, Pay me. Do the How can I be useful and informative here and again? For those of you who are scared about people, I don't really have a big platform to talk about. Being useful is simple. It's simple. It's recommending a restaurant you like. It's pointing out of video that made you laugh. It does not have to be this big, huge thing. Know that when I say thought leadership and we'll talk about that in the next segment. I'm not meaning you have to be Gandhi. I'm meeting. You have to do something that's useful and helpful to your community. So so Step one plan Step to brand Step three. Use one social channel for the next 30 days and use it well. And don't worry about all the other social channels. Build. Build your house with a foundation. First, start with one. Get better at it. This stuff is so over him. It's overwhelming for me, and I run an agency that does this all day long, so I get it. You know, just start with the one question from the class right here, pages and other social media for small businesses, and they're all different. So really, I'm sort of ghostwriting as them. Yes. So what? I and I also do my own business and do my own page. So the thing that is hard for me is, since my business is new, I do want to kind of create a signature. You know, this is how I do things. This is how it looks. But of course you don't want every page to look the same, right? So I'm having a hard time kind of differentiating between how I write and speak and post and photograph, you know, do all these things for them and how it needs to look like them. Because, of course, the audience wants it to look like that. That restaurant owner is sitting down taking a picture of this fabulous food and saying, Hey, come on over and have this It's our lunch special, right? So how do I both build my signature and my business and my story, and then also create something unique to each of my clients that you and I have the same quandary, right? Because I do the same thing I manage communities on behalf of my clients who don't want do this stuff. So the first thing that I think you need to do is continue to build your tribe and continue to speak your truth and do your own business. I do not want anyone less than a self made millionaire to manage my finances, period, right? I don't go. I go to a business coach. I've chose her extremely carefully because I wanted someone who was happily married because that's what I would like to be one day with a great kid actually asked her this. I'm like, So has her son, you know? Can you imagine? I don't you know. And then I was interviewing a couple business coaches because it was a big investment for me. And it was very important when I found out that the other one had her husband who left her because he was cheating on with the best friend. I found that out, and I was like, Oh, that's not the coach for me because that's not where I see myself. People will begin to when they see you do it well, want some of that? And I think you could very easily blawg your way through the process. This is how I begin to get other people's tones and looks and feels. And this is my process. Don't worry about giving away the farm. That might be the other thing that's coming up in your head like I don't want to tell how we do that. There is so much work on Facebook. We could all start a Facebook marketing company today and all be rich. So it's OK, so I think continue to do it yourself and be good at it. Whenever I see the words Social media girl, I want to throw up a little bit in my mouth like because most the time they're not. And they say stupid stuff like, Well, I don't have time to build my own because I'm doing it for everyone else. No, you're not. No, you're not. If you can't do it for yourself, you so good on you to do that. And then I would say really, really get riel. Now you might have privacy issues. You might have clients who are like I do not want anyone to know that you run my restaurant and that you are me. You You can you can speak hypothetically and say the names have been changed to protect the innocent or whatever. But this is my methodology, and this is I mean, this is what we do in our proposals. We say we spend X amount of hours on the phone with you because you hate it. So we'll talk to you and then we'll do it. But we need to get to know you. And then we send them the most obnoxious intake form they've ever seen in their lives. And they call us crying. We go Well, sorry. You want me to be you. I got I got to know you so you can talk about that, too. And you could be self deprecating, are funny, which is my approach or maybe serious. And you'll die unless you're on social. And now, whatever your your way of doing it is, but you can do that. And I think you can just be really honest about like, this is how we do it. This is why it's relevant. This is the amount of love and care that I put into this, And this is why it's important if you don't, so you want to say that. But you know, I think that don't worry so much about that. I think just telling the truth about all this stuff. I mean, if you really, honestly think all these celebrities and actors and famous people are spending as much time on Twitter, they're not. They hired someone to do it, and you can usually tell when it's good or bad. When you blogged about that, like here's a really bad Twitter feed that clearly sucks. You know, our Facebook page that is not interesting and point out what's not interesting, because that's what's going on everyone's head. Anyway. One question that just came in was from Michelle in R V. A. You have a personal preference over Facebook pages, personal ones or business. Okay, here we go. It's tomorrow and the day after, but I'll go really quick on that. You need to have a fan page or a business page need Teoh, not optional. Why a personal pages for friends and family? A business pages for business? I know you're going to say, Well, I can't message everyone. They can invite everyone to events and people that won't come over to my pink. Everyone goes on my family age. Everybody's only on my first note, bitch. I've heard it all. I've been in 14 countries. I've heard this complaint a 1,000, times, so don't get upset If you got 5000 or people on your personal page, we only have a couple 100 people on your fan page of your business page. That's okay, because the people that are actually interested in your business or on your business page and your friends are on your fan on your personal page. Um, so you do need one. Even though it's painful, hire someone to help you set it up. Don't buy fake friends. I'm sure that will be discussed tomorrow. On the day after, there's a lot of strategies that you can use to authentically build your tribe on your Facebook fan page or business page or or whatever. Page is not your personal page, but you Absolutely 100% need to have both. I feel personally, I feel so vain. Ones like be my fan. I mean, I think this is the other thing about social is we all feel like that, but it be my fan and let me share something with you are two completely separate conversations. It bums me out that the top people followed on Social are celebrities because I think we begin When I was just in Australia. They're really allergic to Twitter. And I kept asking like why this is the thing changed my life. I love it and they're like, Well, it's only for celebrities. It's only for famous people. I'm like, I don't know any celebrities on Twitter, But of course, if you look, it's all famous people that are in the top ranks. But the great conversations are going on in the in the people that only have a couple 100 followers, and that's where the good stuff is happening. In my mind, I don't care much about what Justin Bieber is doing in regards to creating content sharing it versus sharing content that has been written by experts in your field. It's is Do you have a recommendation for kind of how to balance sharing my own expertise? And is that is that touting myself, um, versus using somebody else's content? Do you have something good share? Sure. Yeah, well, then town, uh, you know, I mean, it turned out like when I went on my own journey with this stuff. I had, like, so much information that people wanted to hear, and so I just started sharing it. It wasn't like touting myself. It was like, OK, I worked with 500 people that have the same problem. Probably I could solve this by just talking about it. So that's that really, really great strategy. Is finding someone who you really relate to and love and making a comment about. This is why I love what they've just said and that puts you right into, um, into into the same campus, them shining a light on others and putting running with them in your pack. Even if they're you know, they're not even your equal. Maybe there's there, like, you know, the the top of your field. I think that's great, and I think it's important to do that. Never think of Social Media is a competition. If you think this is a competition, you're gonna hate it and it's gonna suck, and you're constantly gonna be looking at who has mawr and how many more and how many likes Anna. Don't do that. There's a 1,000,000, people on Facebook. You'll find your little niche. You only need. I mean, I've interviewed countless artists about how they make a living. They all have less than 1000 true fans full time living. You don't need millions and billions, and I think that paradigm of a 1,000,000 of anything is absolutely insane. And it's not for us mere mortals to deal with. I have an enormously successful business. Eight people work for me. I have an entire social stratosphere. The whole thing is maybe 20,000 people, and I've been at this for seven straight years. But I would say that to make a living, I only need of them to pay me in a year. And eight people make a living. So this is good. Okay, so, um, share other people's stuff, Share your own stuff. Don't brag, just tell the truth. There's no touting. And if you want, so what? Do it. You know, if you've done something, you've done something well. Facebook Page Management say it. You know, it's why you have a business. It's great. Okay, Marketing planning seven steps. Really quick. Recap, uh, set your goals right. Him down. Short term. Long term for those of you that don't like that. And you're more visual photographers out there. Vision board. My favorite thing to do. Big giant posterboard photos of things I like. I make different quadrants. I want my house to look like this. I want my husband to look like this. I want my babies look like this. I want my wedding. Don't like this? I want my outdoor activity to look like this. I put a photo up on a vision board five years ago of these lanterns and when I rent went to rent my home office, I walked into the office and those lanterns were on the ceiling. Does it work? Yes. To identify your niche. Really? Do this. I know it's hard. You don't want people to dislike you. But if the more you can get deep with this very, very important, create your signature story again an evolving process, it doesn't all pour out of you. But again, if you hide something and you're just being really vanilla, nobody will care. Have you ever like you read someone's by or you go to someone's website and you have no reaction whatsoever? Do you ever want to go back there. No. And it's funny brands that are all struggling in spending millions and millions and millions of dollars marketing themselves on Facebook. The only time anyone cares about a brand is when right a coupon. You know, I'm following craft. Not to like this craft actually do social media really well. But like the point is, most people sign up to follow brands that are like giant consumer grocery store brands because they want a sale. And then once in a while, a amazing grocery store brand has a moment of genius like Oreo. But that takes something that's that's a lot of and they took huge risks. They did the Gay Rainbow, Oreos and people you know posted. They'll never buy Oreos again. OK, but the point is like, you know, the point is you do take risks when you do that kind of stuff. But the other thing, like I said about the friends and family, remember, be a friend, be part of the family. Lucky for us, we're not Clorox Bleach. We don't have to figure out another conversation. No one hears that Clorox Bleach either. No, but the point is, that's not what we're doing. here we're doing. We're doing one on one marketing, four customer archetype. I find that when I suffer in my business, it's because I am totally out of alignment with my customer archetype. Life sucks when I don't have the ideal customer in my stable and it happens once in a while, I think. Well, I don't really like them, but they have a lot of money. Oh, I don't really like them, but this is really marketable. And I should do this and the night like I hate it and I suffer through the whole thing. We don't do that anymore. We have a saying, Like, if anyone sounds like they're irrational, we have We don't do crazy. Well, say I'm sorry. You know we don't We can't help you. That's okay. You're allowed to do that. Customer isn't always right. You actually chose the customer. Five. Build your website. I'm a big hater on big giant, expensive websites. WordPress. Awesome. Less than $1000. Awesome. Finding young designers to help you. Awesome crowd spring Awesome. Lots of ways to crowd source. Inexpensive and effective six. The six rooms of your social media house. Luckily, brass tacks coming tomorrow on the day after Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Blawg and your newsletter user isn't really social media, but in my mind it's online marketing and online marketing works with offline marketing and social media. For those of you who think you don't still have to go meet people face to face, go to networking events and actually communicate in the real world, um, you probably won't have a great and wildly successful business. The more I get out and speak, the more people I meet, the more I go even to networking events or parties. Or wherever I go, I meet a client. That's that's a truism. Get out from behind the computer. Seven. Create consistent, compelling content. Get a content strategy. I think there's one million blog's that we'll talk about that and everyone will talk about it for the next two days. This is not rocket science. This is the This is the part that goes after your true north. Your signature story. You're niches and your perfect customer. Be interesting and interested. That is my true north. Whenever I'm like knocking away the computer and I'm blogging something I always ask myself, Is this interesting? AM I interested? If I'm not interested, I probably shouldn't be doing this. I should be. So I actually, you know, had that up on a sticky note on my computer for a long time. Just think about that. I love that. It's good, right? It's simple. It gets right back to it. I love it. And come follow me on Twitter. Absolutely. At cyber PR. So thank you so much. What? Really you talked in the beginning about, um, people don't need another don't aren't looking for another musician, but they're looking for a connection. And I have seen a lot of people connecting toe what you've been saying so far already in this very short period of time. Eso Thank you when you said never think of social media as a competition, you don't need millions and billions of followers that really hits home because we do. We think of it as social media is a popularity contest, and I have to get 1000 likes on everything. I Oh, no. I'm so thank you for keeping it rial. You know, I have my Facebook talk. I actually showed the stats. The average Facebook fan page has less than 300 fans. But yet we're obsessed with 100,000 and this sort of you. There's a YouTube club for over a 1,000,000 views. Do you guys know about this? I can't tell you how many artists call me and say, I want my video to go viral. I'm like, Oh, well, you know, like it's not It's probably not gonna happen. It depends on what your vision of viral is. My video when I interviewed Seth code and has 10,000 views. That's viral for me. I mean, that's 10,000 people. It's amazing. It's on a 1,000,000 people. But that's fine. That's to me. Huge. When was the last time you got in front of 10,000 people? So that is a great, healthy way to think of it. Millions are for, like, the top 1% hundreds and thousands. That's for us. Yeah, well, I can tell you when you've been in front of 10,000 people. Yeah, you're on. Created by I am only in front of, like, 12 people. So that's all. So you think so? So and how thank you for resonating with so many people. What we're gonna talk about after we're gonna take a 15 minute break, everybody. What are we gonna talk about when we come back? When we come back, we're going to do something I'm so excited about Because it is the first time ever talking about this and it's thought leadership. And I believe that a really successful social media strategy you should be working towards thought leadership. And we're gonna look a thought leader archetypes. We're gonna look at tactics for becoming a thought leader and putting this on top of your social media strategy. And I'm gonna tell you what I learned along the way, becoming a thought leader in a really, really teeny niche that has produced me an incredible living.