Marketing Runs Deep- Episode 7

Hey,

This is Bryan Hatch, CEO and founder of AutomateBIG, and today we are going through another episode of Marketing Runs Deep. I'm excited about the topic we're going to talk about. It comes up quite often when I'm working with business owners out there that have some type of a problem. We're just going to dive right into it.

There is a difference between you and the guru. When I say guru, I'm talking about the expert, the person who's been in the business for a long time. Maybe it's your biggest competitor, someone that's at the forefront and a standout leader in your industry, and you're trying to take them over or have your piece of the pie, whatever it is. When you look at the guru, there are differences between you and them. We're going to jump right into how those make a difference in your business, how you can focus on the right things, and how you can make up for the differences that there are and still get ahead yourself in your business.

The number one thing to look at when you're looking at the difference between you and the guru is eyeballs. Now, I'm not saying that the guru has ten eyeballs, and you have two. I'm talking about the eyeballs that are looking at their pages, right? The people that are looking at what they're doing is a vast difference between most businesses. Right? Now, I'm not here to say that you might not be the next best in the field. You might have a competitor that has 6 million followers, and you have 5 million followers. Great. Or maybe you have 50,000 followers or 100,000 followers, and your competitors have 200. Whatever it is, there's still a difference between you and them, and obviously, you know it's the number of eyeballs.

Here's the thing that you've got to realize in that regard, if you're doing the same things that they are doing, it might not work for you. When you can afford to miss the mark because you have millions of followers that are going to look at what you do, you can still make a pretty awesome promotion. Right? Now, I've worked on those teams, I've worked behind the scenes and had many clients that are of these high echelon gurus that are working hard. I say nothing to the fact that they are working diligently with their teams to get ahead, but the problems they're working on aren't the same problems you're working on.

They have scale problems that you might not have because you don't have as many followers. I want you to think about that. When there is a difference, if you copy their page word for word and put it on yours, not plagiarize, but copy what they're doing and put it in yours and go, you might have some difficulty. We've had clients that wanted to do it just like these guys. We did it just like these guys and fell on our faces. I wouldn't recommend that you do that because, again, when you have millions of eyeballs, you can make a couple of mistakes here or there or work on your branding, in comparison, to some of the tactics you should be using in your marketing and still get ahead. You may be a little smaller or don't have as many followers, so you can't afford to make those same choices. Right?  Sometimes it's a small choice between this or that, but that's the number one difference,  how many people are looking at you vs. them, but how you operate because of that makes a difference.

Now, number two, the thing that you have to understand between the difference in you and the guru is experience. I have worked with many of these guys and I'm telling you, there's not a single one of them that didn't have a backstory. You might have heard about them recently or thought, "Wow, I didn't know this guy existed a year ago." You feel like you're on the forefront, or you are one of their early followers, but I promise you there were years in a backstory that they were working on and working on getting to the point where they are. Okay? Nobody is an overnight success. If they are, they're not a long term success. Sometimes there are good things that happen. Some of these gurus out there might've had a good promotion, or it worked out well for them in a given month, and then that perpetuated their success long term because then they did the right things.

So I'm not saying you can't have quick success, but I'm saying in the long term, guru status or mastery status takes a long time. That experience can only come from effort and energy. What I wanted you to know is how you need to operate with that bullet point, and that is you need to become consistent. One of the pieces of advice that you hear from an exceptionally valid guru is, you need to be consistent. You need to work hard and put in the effort, and you need to do the necessary things. Quit wasting your time. Quit being distracted. Those are great things no matter what kind of business or marketing they're talking to you about, those are great principles to put into place in your business.

There's a couple of things I want you to think about; there's a difference between the eyeballs and the experience. One of the things that come out of the mouth of gurus often is that; this is what works for me. I want you to hear that clearly, this is what works for me, that is not really positive for you. Now, is there maybe a backdrop or a lighting kit or something that works well? Okay, some things will work, but I'm talking about tactics in and of themselves.

If you have a guru that says, this is what's working for me, then you have to take that into context. If they're saying, this is what's working on my ad strategy, maybe they're running $10,000 or $15,000 a day in their ads. Well, if you take that same tactic over a smaller audience, you may not have the same results. So I want you to think, if they say this is what works for me, I'm not saying that it's all bad, I'm saying you need to have a question mark or an asterisk by that.

If you hear "this is what works for me" from a guru, you need to find out if, in comparison, what you do, what they do, if that's going to work for you, because it may not. And it may make you frustrated because you're doing the same things that they are. Running billboards may not be the best thing, but that's what they're doing. If you tried to do it, does that mean you're going to have the same level of success? Not necessarily. So remember, this works for me, is an asterisk. Not all of its bad advice, but you want to question it and see if that's applicable to you.

The second thing, if they say, "This is what worked for me when I was 100,000 followers, this is what worked for me when I was 200,000 followers, this is what worked for me when I was at your stage," that's solid advice! That can be really helpful. I want to help you clarify and see when you're listening to gurus, what is actually helping you. You need to weed through what is or isn't useful for you, and that's one tactic to do it.

Now, another great way to combat the difference between you and the guru is you need to focus first on your audience. No work can replace this work. There's nothing you can do that will replace doing this work because it makes all the difference from here on going forward. If you know the right audience that you're out there for, you're trying to take care of, you're trying to work with, you're trying to make a difference for, you're trying to change their life, then that is the audience you need to focus on. You need to know the frustrations they're going through, the pains they feel, just their day to day living. How does their life occur? Are they working full time? Do they work part-time? You've got to learn and understand your core target audience because if you don't know who they are, how in the world are you ever going to talk to them in a way that's going to move them or change their world?

The guru that has millions of followers has identified that audience, that community in a way that tells them, "Wow, somebody understands me." They also can have a lot of social evidence of saying, "Well, there's a couple of hundred-thousand people that feel the same way about that guy as I do," and that's great, but it doesn't necessarily do the same thing for you. Make sure you are getting so laser-focused on your audience that you are not just throwing out a message to everybody. How you speak to a woman versus a man is different. Even in a PC compliant world, you look at brands that are out there for women and men, and they don't look, feel or say the same things. They just don't, because they understand you have to talk to people differently.

Again, know your audience. Do the work. I plead with you to do the work in your audience to understand them. Know who they are, know what they're about. Call your customers. Just find out more about your audience, okay? The second way that you can combat the difference between you and the guru is to focus on your message. So now that you understand who you're talking to, your audience, your message has to be paramount. You have to know what to say. That's going to get that person to take action, right? You can't just say whatever you want or whatever comes out and hope that works for them.

See, the magic of the message is what goes on between the ears of your audience. If you know your audience and you know the conversations they're already having in their head of man, I wish I could do this, or man it's frustrating, or man I've been trying to do this thing and your product or service solves that frustration. If you understand the actual words they're using then those are the words you need to put in your message. The message that you explain and put out there in the world makes a huge difference.

When you get your audience right and you get your message right then, you can build a community. A community does not need to be big. A family is a small unit, right? Then you've got an extended family, and you've got a lot of generations of family. It can be lots of people if you look at it that way, but it has to start with a core group that understands and follows what you're doing. So if you have a core group of 50,000 followers, 20,000 followers, you have to talk and be intimate with those people so that you can help them get where they want to be. Then you can build a community around it for the rest of the people that come and join in your words from there about your product or service.

Now, the last thing you can do that's a way to help you get to the status of a guru is remember the difference between you and them is that they have good relationships. Make good relationships and spread your network out there so that you can help people and they can help you. People that are on your same level or people that have the same amount of followers you do or have complementary products to what you do if you reach out to them, then you can help their audience and they can help your audience. There's a really good combination there. Those are three tactics that you can use in your business. Did you focus on your audience, did you focus on your message?

Focus on getting some relationships that are going to make a difference for you. I'm not talking about the relationships that are the same thing you're selling. I'm talking about relationships that are complementary to what you're selling. Find someone else in the industry that can give you that hand down and pull you up, that's what happened to most of the gurus out there. There's someone out there that was a mentor or a helper to them that said, "Hey, I'll send an email out for you," or "I'll do this thing for you," or "I'll get on the interview with you,"  and they reached down and pulled that person up and they started finding a lot of success that way.

So those are three ways to do it and this is a way you can bridge the gap that's between the guru and you. That way, you can compete with a much better marketing campaign out there and do a lot better in your business with your product or service. Today's training is a lot of fun and it's another small way to AutomateBIG.