It’s so easy to get overwhelmed by all the marketing vehicles we have at our disposal these days. Should I Periscope? This is the hot question right now, right? And then you pop on Facebook for ten minutes and you see your 6 closest people doing 6 different things that seem so cool and amazing that you can’t help but stop and ask yourself if you should be doing them too. And before you know it you are shooting videos, hosting Telesummits, and placing Facebook ads, and yet you still have no clients!
Well I’m going to show you why today.
You might be ‘out of alignment’… like something is deeply off with how you are showing up in your business, and people don’t believe you. This could be the case…or perhaps it’s much simpler. Perhaps you just aren’t choosing strategies that fit the 3 stages of marketing.
There are 3 Stages of Marketing
MEET → ENGAGE → ACTIVATE
Often times when people randomly pick activities without thinking through the three stages, they make the biggest mistake a marketer can make.
First let’s talk about the three stages.
- MEET
This may seem obvious, but you have to meet people before they can buy from you. This can be an in person introduction or a virtual introduction. It can be made by a person, by you personally, or by technology, but you must be introduced. In the meet stage, it’s all about them, not you. You meet them where they are and invite them into your world. (A.k.a. your list!)
- ENGAGE
The engage stage has to do with building your ‘know, like, and trust factor’ so that people get to know you and what you are about and you offer them loads of value along the way. It builds a relationship with your right clients such that you are the one they think of when they are ready to make a change. This stage is still about them, but you’re letting them know you.
- ACTIVATE
The activate stage is when the ball is in your court. This is when you prompt them to take action because you have something going on in your world… something that is time-sensitive. Either you are spiritually called to offer something in the world at a specific time, or you are financially called (i.e. it’s part of your revenue plan), or both, and you create a ‘campaign’ or a ‘launch’ to activate people to work with you ON YOUR TIMING.
Where Marketing Breaks Down
You need to select strategies in each of these buckets so that you move people to work with you. If you aren’t doing this, you may create the following scenarios:
- You meet and don’t activate. Let’s say all your strategies have to do with meeting people. You are hosting telesummits, you are participating in check-list giveaways, you are networking like crazy, and you are growing your list. You may even send lots of valuable free content to your list in the ENGAGE stage. But if you never launch a campaign to activate them to buy from you (maybe because you are afraid of selling!) you might be surprised to find they don’t come ask to work with you all on their own, and surprise! No money!
- You activate but don’t meet. Let’s say you have a list of 32 people, most of whom are friends and family and your mastermind buddies who have seen you cry at least 3 times now. You decide to host a webinar to launch your new program (yay- activation!). You hope some other people will promote it, but you’re kind of afraid to ask. So you mention it in passing, but only your one friend with 2 followers passes it on. Now you’ve got 2 people signed up for your webinar – your mom and your sister – and you consider cancelling. What to do?? You activated the appropriate percentage of your list – you just forgot to meet people too! Rather than throw out your ability as a webinar leader, go back and add in a meet strategy next time first!
- You meet and activate but don’t engage. Let’s say you had three speaking engagements in the month of June. You added 150 new people to your list – yippee!! But your next activation is planned for September. You plan all summer for your exciting September launch… and you start emailing your people. Only they haven’t heard from you in 3 months, and they have had 3 other amazing speakers since you blew them away on stage. They think your name sounds vaguely familiar, but they don’t remember signing up to hear from you and quickly unsubscribe. A regular communication strategy is critical! (Newsletter, weekly tip, video blog, (PERISCOPE?), etc.)
Overlapping Strategies
It is entirely possible for you to meet, engage, and activate someone all at once. Let’s say you have a speaking gig in front of a prime audience in which you are able to sell your services directly. That one talk may play all three roles for 10-20% of your audience or more! Great!
Or you may have a partner promote your free webinar and three of the people on their list need exactly what you have to offer right now – boom! Meet, engage, activate in one fell swoop.
We love when that happens! Those just may be your very best clients – the ones who are ready to buy right when they happen to meet you. However, you won’t always be able to sell, and they won’t always be ready to buy no matter how captivating you are. So you need a plan for when they ARE ready!
Your Action Step
Take a look at your marketing plan. I always encourage my clients to have THREE primary strategies. Once you master and systematize one, you can add another one, and another and so on.
Do you have at least one strategy in each of these categories? (Or do you sequence your marketing such that you alternate between strategies?)
How strong is your muscle for ignoring bright shiny objects that don’t fit your strategy?
Choose your 3 current strategies you are mastering and stick with ‘em. And remember it’s all a test!