How To Write A Marketing Strategy In A Business Plan

How to write a marketing strategy in a business plan. We're going to walk through every component. How do you do it? Most importantly, I'm going to show you how to make it really, really easy at the end. So there's four things I want to talk about. Number one is the go-to-market strategy. Number two, I want to talk about the major components of the marketing strategy. Number three, I want to talk about the actual marketing strategy itself. What are those components? What do you build in that's going to make it robust, especially in today's technical age? And then number four, how do you write a marketing plan similar to a business plan? Don't freak out. It's not that boring, but it's essential for your team to stay aligned. So again, this is one of those, get a pen and paper. This is important. If you want to make money right away and stay to the end, I'm going to tell you how to get tickets to a marketplace I do, where I guarantee you're going to make some money. If you do everything I say, everyone does, but you got to show up. So we got a lot to do and some links to click on. So let's begin. All right. So how do you write this marketing strategy? Now I got to tell you personally, this is the probably worst part for most of you because you think, oh my gosh, I got to write and type and I don't know how to do it. Nope. We're going back to talking again. So what ideally in a marketing strategy, you get some other marketing experts. If I'm your mentor and coach, you can invite me to the call, invite some of our teams to the call, but you want to be talking your strategy. And here's the points that you really have to get through. And once you talk it, someone can transcribe it. Now, at least you have a document you can go through as a draft, edit it and make it into your formal plan. So everyone has a timeline all the way down to email marketing timeline, text timelines. How often are you going to talk about what to who, right? So these are the components. First, you have to state your business mission. Like what is it? You have to identify your KPIs, right? Your key performance indicators for this mission. How are you going to achieve it? Right? Those are strategies. Then you want to fill in the tactics of how you're going to get there. You want to identify the buyer's persona. Like you call your, everybody calls it an avatar. Who are you marketing to? Like this year, we shifted our avatar more towards higher income earners because they're the ones getting pummeled in taxes. And I want to teach them to live corporate life. So before a couple of years ago, we would just target beginning entrepreneurs, but beginning and entrepreneurs typically don't know how to make money. And they don't listen very well. Quite frankly, employees tend to listen to better and they have the money to pay for the things to get stuff done. So it becomes successful faster. So that's why we shifted our avatar a little bit. You want to describe the content initiatives and what are your strategies? So this year, 2022 is very highly committed to about three things. The Make Your Kids Millionaires book, the NFT that wrapped in it, and now the Gen W Conference. As we move into next year, we're going back to monetizing your message, marketing, go, go, go. And I'm going to keep working with student athletes and coaches because I love those plans. So clearly define your plans. And you know, there's a lot of old school planning tools that will say, you know, what's your three year, five year? I know, you know, some people would say your 10 and lifetime goals. I mean, there might be like some ideas out there. You might have some big bucket list things you want to do, but really, I mean, I'd say quarter by quarter by quarter, given the volatility of the market, especially since the pandemic, you need to be super nimble. You can't get locked in and like just move down the road, whether it's working or not. You need to test it. You need to adjust, you need to shift. And that is usually why a lot of entrepreneurs or employees that want to become entrepreneurs hire us is to live that corporate life. And how do they even get this business up and running? Cause it's got to be pretty nimble and becoming more and more. And then what's your marketing budget? Shockingly, a lot of you do not plan for this and a real company spend 20, 30, 40% on marketing, getting a new lead. Now, as you, once you get leads, you'll spend less money getting your current customers to go again, but you've still got to have both of those inside of your planning. And then the last is who's your competition. What are they saying? How are they marketing? Because you're going head to head with a client, a buyer, looking at them and you and making a decision on who they want to go with. So I would encourage you to do a lot of video. I would be out asking them a lot of questions. Another thing we decided to do early in my career is be very high touch. You become a client, you get my cell phone. I can guarantee you there are some men, we don't need to name them. You know who they are. You're never getting their cell phone. In fact, you're, you're not even going to get by their gatekeepers. I think that's a massive mistake. It's interesting, but you're not really getting the help of the guru. You're getting second, third, and fourth tier potential help. Not like for me, if I'm a millionaire maker, you're going to talk to me. If you want to be a millionaire, there won't be a time that you don't have my cell phone number. We don't have a high touch relationship. So that's part of a strategy though. Some of you don't ever give your cell phone out. You stay too far away from your client. You wonder why they're not getting the result up to you, how you want to do it. How do you create a go-to market strategy? A lot of times it's called the GTM, right? How to get to market quick. And there's old theory. My son just graduated finance, accounting degree, taking all these business classes. Same thing. I financed some business classes, never was taught how to be an entrepreneurial marketer. Like this isn't taught. Like we could pull somebody right out of marketing school right now. And they're taught old school theory, the five P's. Oh my gosh. Like that's a 1960s, seventies thing. So how do you get to market quick in this economy? Now, if you are somebody that's maybe just starting out or you haven't really tested your database or are offered something in a while, by the way, this is the first part of your database. Whatever's in this phone is the first part of your database. You can connect with all your contacts. I would do a survey and I would ask them, Hey, I'm a money expert. I'm looking at coming back out, offering some products and services to really take care of you. What are the top three things you want some help with, right? Or I'm in wellness. What are the top three to five things, or you could be more specific and just say yes, no, you know, whether they want that kind of help, you need to know what you're going to be marketing. What is the content that people want? Not what you think too many people go into the little spare bedroom or they go into a little cave, go away to an Island. I think that's hysterical and writers go to wait an Island to go write a book. Why are you writing a book by yourself? You need to write a book with people because people are going to buy your book. So I have a huge distinction in being really engaged, almost call it focus group style. When I go to market on anything, so people don't want to buy it. I am not going to build it, build it. I guarantee they're not coming is really probably the name of this whole talk we're going to give right now, because too many of you are building things. They're already built. My favorite during the pandemic was this a couple of groups were for $40,000. They're going to build you an eight hour masterclass. It's all going to be automated on the internet. Well, that's fabulous, but you don't even have a database. You don't have followers. You don't have a marketing strategy. So what is a stagnant brilliantly? I mean, they looked beautiful, but they would just sit there like nice little brochures that would have no visitors. So all of the build goes after you make the money, right? I have this saying says don't move without money. So let's talk about the marketing strategy. How do you test and how do you get people excited about buying from you, paying you, and then you take the money and you go build it afterwards. So let's talk about the components of a marketing strategy. What's in it. So there's four components, in my opinion, of a marketing strategy. The first one is again, find your buyer and what do they want? Number two is then designing the content specific for them and then adjust as you go. This isn't going to be perfect. So those of you who think it's all going to be done, perfect set and automated without any adjustments, we're adjusting every day, if not multiple times a day, depending on what's going on and then nurture your customer. Your customers are your best new buyers. Believe it or not, when your customer will buy one thing, they'll buy the next thing. They'll buy the next thing. The people that first bought my millionaire maker book in 2006 were a lot of the same people who bought make your kids millionaires in 2022. Right? That whole span of keeping a marketing strategy, keeping them connected, keeping them segmented, talking to them on a regular basis and acknowledging them is a huge part of your marketing strategy. So let's break it down a little further. Number one, I want to find out who your buyer is and like, what's their pain, right? So in money, I have a great big wide open canvas because everyone has a lot of money issues and there's so many topics that are inclusive in money and business, but where is your avatar? Where do they hang out? Are they all on social media? Do they actually meet like physically in groups because everything in the world is opening back up? Are they there? What's their pain point? How did they get the pain? How are you going to solve the problem? You're going to need to find a lot of this out and you say, well, how do I do it? I use surveys. I use surveys. You can use polling. You want to ask people what they want, where their issues are. We're currently again, this is 2022 recordings. We're in a recession. I want to know what people want. What are they concerned about? What's interesting is they're more concerned about the recession in the stock market and interest rates. Then I hear a lot of people complaining about paying for inflationary prices, which is shocking because the inflationary process could be actually managed. In fact, that go to the link below. I have a beat inflation process that you don't have to go like wildly with these over-elevated, over-escalated smaller products, inflationary issues. So it's interesting because you think people would be caring about that. They don't. And what's interesting in a recession, people are caring a lot about debt. I don't care about your debt. I care about how you use good debt so I can use that and you can use that to become a millionaire. Back to marketing. Again, I want to find your pain. I want to find the issues and they don't say the same. So again, you're going to need to be surveying, polling, having calls. I use our asklaurel.com memberships. You go to asklaurel.com, ask a question, make any requests. And we use that always as a place for people to come and ask questions and another way to survey because through their questions, I can see what they're wanting, what kind of product or service that I could create or provide to them. So as you're thinking about who your buyer is and where their pain is, again, really listen to them, engage with them. I had a question last night from ask Laurel where somebody said, once you get likes on social media, what do you do? And it's like, engage, ask them more questions. So be out there, ask them questions and go deeper with them. Now, number two is how do you define the content and how do you define your lead generation strategy? So again, every social channel, joint ventures, affiliates, I mean, how do you want to get it done? A lot of people think their content has to look like a book. And yeah, you could get an ebook. I would start with some articles, some reports and get a lot of content. I had tons of content, tons, five years of content before I actually wrote my first real book. Now I did a lot of collaborative books. That's the other way you can go to get some content, you know, couple together with 10 or 20 people and do a joint book together. That can easily work for some of you to start getting your content, but through your surveys, through your polls, again, the way I want you to capture your content is on a voice recording or an audio, a video recording. You want to capture it. You want to transcribe it and then make that your content. If you're sitting and typing, you're going to end up with your writer's block because you actually aren't a great writer. Most people aren't. And then you're actually looking at your brand. Why do you want to say it like that? When you free think and free flow your, your conversation, which is what I do for clients. I interview them and I just get them talking about their expertise. All this amazing content comes out. Then from there, you can do your first product. So you have to get some content out. So as you think about how you're going to really go to market, are you going to email? Are you going to text? Are you going to just be doing a lot of content posts? Are you going to do video? A video is absolutely required at this point. You know, photography is cute, but it's not really working like that. Most videos aren't even heard by the audio. They just scroll. And if they get a lead, like a caption that they want, then they'll actually click on that. You want your social media and all your social posts to go to a free gift. So I'll do that for you right now. Go to laurel.club, L O R A L dot club. That is what I use as one of my funnel mechanisms to when I go to market, I go out on any social channel and I'll say, if you want a free gift and you want some tickets to my Millionaire Intensive and you, you know, in my marketplace and you don't want to pay, click on laurel.club. It takes them out of any social channel, straight into my database, straight into my CRM. And it gives them also a free copy of my Millionaire Maker book. So all of you can go get those two things. And if you've already had those two things, go get them again, give them to a friend, like continue to get the engagement. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. So the biggest thing about defining your content strategy and your lead generation is you got to be consistent. And there are algorithms to how many times in each of the social channels you post a day, how you post, do you give your offers front facing? The answer is no. You give a lot of content, you redirect, there's a whole strategy to it. So like on our side, our marketing is our highest expense inside the company. Why? Because we want the right lead and getting the right buyer. We know we can solve the right problems. We can make the millionaires. So every algorithm is different. A lot of you, you need to hire help. And I know you're out there saying, I don't have any money. Well, then go to my marketplace and go make some. Our next one is October 11th and 12th. And you're going to come make some money. Now you have some money. You're going to get the flow of all these conversations we're having. Now, what's the next thing you got to do? You got to adjust as you go. Now, for some of you who are perfectionists, this is your hardest challenge because you want to be perfect. You want the funnel to be perfect. And you think you're going to like have it all right. And then it's going to work. You're going to be constantly adjusting, which again, if you're the content creator and you are the fulfiller of your product, there has to be some support here in marketing. Cause I could have a team of five, eight, 10 people all day long, working on marketing, messaging, targeting, retargeting, all of those concepts. And a lot of you, you don't know how to do it. Just like I, as the business owner, I don't know how to do all those things. I don't want to, I'm not the marketing expert, right? I'm the money expert. I'm the content expert. So I deliver the content. I hire teams to do it. Cannot encourage you enough to do that. Some of you are, you're not failing because your business is bad. You're failing because you don't have a team that's supporting you and can help you get it done right. Or you don't understand the concepts. The other thing that you really want to make sure that you adjust as you go, as you do some testing, split tests, like we just went live actually on some different ad channels. And we started with a really low dollar amount testing the ads to make sure they convert, actually bring in a lead. And then you ramp that up. So again, every day you're going to be monitoring the different channels of all of your marketing. But I would go to market, you know, where is your client? You know, some of you, you know, Facebook is going to be more of your client. LinkedIn is going to be more of your client. I think it's fascinating. Some of you are looking for corporate CEOs. You're looking for, you know, a corporate contract and you're out on TikTok, like wrong channel. You need to be over LinkedIn. And some of you spend hours and hours a day on Clubhouse with no like Laurel.club as a redirect to pull them out of that social channel into your database. Now you can talk to them your way. So just be very mindful as you go to market, what you're doing and how you're spending your time. I see in the beginning for a lot of our clients, they waste a lot of time. You're just kind of poking around at a lot of things. You don't have a plan. You're not sure how algorithms work and you don't adjust. And then once you start getting customers, that's like a whole nother segment of marketing. You have to continue to nurture your customer and go back through over and over and over. What does your customer need? And as times change, they change. I mean, even if you are in wellness and nutrition every year, there's something new that's out about that, just like there is with money. And with us, every economic downturn or shift, we've got something to talk about. So do you. So you need to adjust and be mindful with your customers. Make sure you follow up and nurture consistently. So how to come up with marketing strategy? Again, I would talk to your customers, right? I would do a lot of pre-orders. So I'm going to actually introduce you to this concept. When we come out with a book, any book, I put up a book page is the first thing I do. I don't go hire a book team. I put up a book page. Hey, I'm going to write a book. Not even sure what the title is. I even put up some that are blank and say, Hey, new book coming. It's in the category of Yes Energy. It's a category of Make Your Kids Millionaires. It's in a category of whatever. Hey, how many of you want to learn about this? And then what do you want to learn? And you start a bunch of engagement. Once I get a lot of engagement, then I'll go for a sale. How about a $20 pre-order? And then once you get a lot of sales, like we had 13,000 sales on our kid's book before we actually hit the print, which then that also validated to McGraw Hill, our publisher, why they needed to print 25,000 because we had already pre-sold 13. So they're only going to have 12 into the market because ours are going to be consumed immediately. So if you want your books distributed, you want them out in the market, you have to do some strategy about it. I want you to click on my link. I want you to follow this channel, click the notification button. So you get them every morning and watch it. Like be in a conversation with the people around you. You have the, some of those five people. So why are you hanging with people that don't care about money? Don't care about business. Don't care about your goals. Are you really serious about being financially literate, business literate and becoming a millionaire? Well, then if you are, you tell the people around you and if they don't want to be on this journey with you, you atrophy them away. It's critical. You have to feed them away. They go away and you find people in our community. We have thousands and thousands of people that not only want this conversation, they're in this conversation and excited about learning this conversation. So make sure that you are always saying, you know, Hey, what did you learn every day? You want to be learning something new. And for those of you who are liking the content, please share it again. You're the, some of those five people, you all need to be watching it together along with your family. By the way, if there's any content that you want that I'm not talking about, go to the comment section below, put that in and we will get right back to you because we're out here filming and recording for you on a regular basis to make sure these channels jam for you. So again, any questions or comments, then the marketing strategy, how do you go to market? We can help you go quickly. We can actually do this for you for a very, very, very, I'd say high value, low ticket. I'm going to say as much as $1,500 a month. We can get this up running less than a month, making leads. You'll make sales. You'll come to our marketplace. We've got a system built in to help you more than any other group that I've ever seen. And we are with you every day. We're in conversations, go to asklaurel.com, put in any question, any requests, say, Hey, I just want to talk to somebody either about how to mentor with you, how to get that $1,500 a month marketing plan going, because we'll just do it because a lot of you don't know how to do it. And I can tell you, if you don't know how to do it, you won't get a lead, which means you won't get sales, which means you won't get cashflow, which means it's hard to make you a millionaire. So that's why we've stretched to this category. It's important. It's critical for you. It's critical for your business. So again, stay here every day. Go out to my search bar. Why don't you binge watch a little bit and take a pick a topic, good debt, how to improve your credit, how to use an LLC, pick a topic, binge watch for two, three hours, consume yourself in this content, lean in, keep learning, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.