Marketing Runs Deep: Episode 5

Hey,

This is Bryan Hatch, CEO and founder of AutomateBIG. Today's lesson in Marketing Runs Deep is a fun one. What makes you money now, versus later? Like always, I want to jump right into it, so we can get you what you're after, and help your business grow. No matter if you're a starter, if you're already a mover and a shaker, and you're making good things happen in your business, or maybe you're working for somebody, and you really need to learn the marketing skill set, so that you can level yourself up in the business. That's what we're doing here today.

What makes you money now, versus later? The stuff that makes you money right now is ads. What I'm saying by that is that if you look... In your holistic look at your marketing campaigns and efforts, your ads have got to be a part of that. Advertising in some way, shape, or form. I highly recommend using social media. That's the best way to get your word out there, and a very targeted way, considering. There are some pretty cool avenues that are coming up that I'm excited to share in later videos. Either way, your advertising is extremely important to make you money now. You see, if you have a page that is built around getting people to take action, you can actually make things happen right now. Like an opt-in page, you can have a low price offer. You don't need to be super well known to be able to run ads and make some money.

That part of the business is great, because... I have a business that we just worked with that don't have a bajillion followers, by any means, but were able to run several hundred dollars in ads over just a few days, and were able to generate hundreds of opt-ins. Because the pages we were creating made that work, so now we have a lot of opt-ins. What I'm saying is advertising works to make money now, because it can get you human beings and conversations now.

A lot of the times, a lot of people think, "Oh, well advertising, that's not what I'm doing now, if I'm a starter, or if I'm a budding business," and that's true. You've got your advertising, but you also have other things like referrals. I know of businesses that run millions of dollars through their business and referrals is the basis of their business, which is fine. That's another way to be able to make money right now, is to get referrals, to network, to talk to people, and to make it a lasting effect in the lives of the people that you know right now, and that's awesome.

Now, the second part of that referral, if you look at it in a very, very specific way, is affiliate. There's one thing to say, like, "Hey, dude or friend, do you know anybody that could use my product or service? Great." That's helpful, but that's not what I'm talking about in the affiliate space. What I'm talking about in affiliates, is that you have a program set up that says, "Hey, people that I know, that you know me, and you know what I offer, here's a way for you to share my message to other people. There's some assets to create there. I want you to hear that clearly. You're going to have to create assets in the affiliate now, just like you're going to have to create ads now. If you create an affiliate partner program right now, that could be a very quick way to be able to make a lot of revenue right now, instead of focusing on every other avenue that people tell you. If you have ads running, and you have referrals coming in, you make money now, and the affiliate program is a phenomenal way to do that. That's another deeper dive that I will go into later, but it's a way for you to treat everybody that's working with you in a way that you can compensate them for the referrals they are giving you, and it's trackable. Cool?

The next piece that's kind of on the negative side over here, is the organic. It's the shooting the videos like this. It's getting the word out there. It's doing the blogs. It's doing the social media posts. There's kind of a negative side to that. You put out a ton of messages. I know, again, experienced business owners that have million dollar businesses that just haven't focused on their social media platform. Even then, it's still a little bit of a lift, and a harder look, because they're already making a lot of money without using social media. Your social media is kind of a bummer in the short term, but I want to tell you how that actually can make itself out for you and your business.

That's kind of the bummer, is you got to put the time and the effort into the pages. If someone goes to your social media handle, or your whatever, your YouTube channel, your Facebook page, wherever it is, and they see some videos, or some content, well, that's what they're going to understand from you. If they see lots of content, and a lot of valuable, intentional pieces of content that help them, then they're also going to see that, and respond appropriately. Just know that's a really good thing for you to look at, is even though it's a bummer now, it's what also makes money. There's stuff that's a bummer, but I want to talk about the later part.

If we look at the later section, you've got things that actually pan out in the longterm. The people that have done the effort of putting... I mean, guys, sometimes we think that the people that are blowing up on social media just came out of nowhere. Now, there are people that have worked really hard for a year, and had great success after a year. I'm not saying that you can't become big within a short period of time, but still it's a year. I want you to think of anybody that's big on social media. They haven't just started in the game from nothing. They haven't. They might've had a viral video that helped them launch quickly, but everybody I know that makes money after their following, not just has funny videos, or a viral video but goes out and gets some followers.

I'm saying people that work with their following to make money, those are the people that have done the hard labor. Usually three, five years' worth of effort. That is the longterm game of the social media. While it's a bummer today, and maybe it's hard to get the videos up, and to get all the production going, that's hard, but the longterm is really big. I was talking to a business owner just this week, and he has thousands of videos, professionally produced, that are ready to go. He's been doing that work for years to make that happen. I think that that's one thing you have to realize, that there's a negative side, and there's a positive side for the longterm. How you make money in the longterm is you have a following. You have an email list. You have people that are following you consistently. It's those kinds of things in the longterm.

The other part of that long term that I just mentioned, on the e-mail side, is your campaign. Your funnel. You have to have a process built. That's where the automation in AutomateBIG comes from, is you want to have a process for the people that follow you, so that they can go through and learn more from you, and obviously buy stuff from you, eventually. Buy some stuff from you at the beginning. Whatever it is, we want them to have a process to go through, so that you can stick with them for a long time, and they can stick with you for a long time. That is painful in the beginning, as well, because you've got to build the pages, and you've got to make sure you put thought into the content. You can't just throw something up, and expect that everybody's going to just fall down over themselves to give you their name and their e-mail address, or their phone number, or pay you for things. You've got to do the effort.

The funnel is one massive lift over the longterm. I know plenty of people that, short term, the ads are a way to get leads and opt-ins, but you have to pay that. That's a way to get people looking at your message. I can spend $1,000 getting people to watch my videos in a single day. I could spend $1,000 in one day and get people to see my video, but if there's no funnel behind it, if there's no process to take people through, then that $1,000 that I gave up, and gave and paid Facebook, or whoever it is, or YouTube, or wherever, then it does me no good. That's why in the longterm strategy, I know plenty of people that can look from outside like, "Oh, they're making millions of dollars," but you have no idea that they're going in the hole thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the front end, because they know their funnel produces millions of dollars for them on the backend. Make sense?

You need to have a funnel. A campaign, a marketing campaign, that says, "When somebody opts in, they get these three e-mails. At the end of that, or in the middle of that, we're trying to push them to buy this product." Then from there, we're going to buy another product. We've talked this with my step ladder approach, if you've looked at that, but note that there is a process for people, and that is a funnel. That is a campaign. That is a formula, as I like to call it, that allows people to go through a really cool process with you. That is one of the reasons why you want to go look at the longterm.

Now, the part that goes down, because you don't need it as much, is you don't need those referrals. You don't need the affiliates. You don't need those partnerships. While you'll still want them, you don't need them as much. That's going to be a level that decreases as your campaign, your funnel, and your organic strategy come together. I hope that makes a little more sense about what you can do to make money now versus later. Now, you can get traffic quickly, if you have some well converting pages. Later, you can do a whole lot better if you have a funnel and a formula and a process that takes people through. Because if somebody loves what you do, your service, your offering, and you neglect to treat them like they're a part of your family longterm, then they might not come back to you, or they might not look at you, or they might not see. That's the part of the funnel, is you have to have a progress path for everybody coming through you, so that they know where to go with that.

This is another way that you can build out a process for your business that makes a lot of sense. It makes you money now and later, but you've got to do the heavy lifting now. That's the big difference that a lot of people aren't willing to admit, and that I want to be able to acknowledge that if you do the work, it's going to come, but you have to put in the effort longer term than you think, and you've got to keep digging. You've got to keep going. Put in the effort, make it happen, so you can make money now, you can make money later, and this is just one small way to Automate Big.