Edmonton Business Consultant | Foundational Marketing Initiatives

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Is Business owners, you know, they, they think that their business is this unique snowflake, the unique snowflake. They can’t possibly exist anywhere else. There’s nothing like it never has, never will be. And then what that caused them to do is most entrepreneurs then build their marketing plans based on feelings and they ignore overwhelming data on effective proven strategies that will work in almost every single industry. Yeah, yeah. I can see the home. Why I can be you and I cause it’s not, hi, thanks for tuning in for another episode of ask Sperl CPA today as the Edmonton business consultant, we’re talking about the business plan, foundational marketing initiatives. Denise, you know how passionate I am about these. Yeah, for sure. And we’ve seen a lot of money wasted on a lot of marketing initiatives that don’t work. Yeah. Um, so tell you, we’re going to try to help them with that. So the, the quote that we have here today is the Michael Gerber, Cole author of the myth. And he says, people who are exceptionally good in business art, so because of what they know, but because of their insatiable need to know more. And the statistic that we have are 50% of all Canadian businesses will go out of business in the first five years. And 42% of those failed business owners will list their inability to get enough customers as one of the primary reasons for their failure making the inability to get enough customers at 42% as the most common reason for business failure.

Now the story that we have here is business owners, you know, they, they think that their business is this unique snowflake, the unique snowflake, they can’t possibly exist anywhere else. There’s nothing like it never has, never will be. And then what that causes them to do is most entrepreneurs then build their marketing plans based on feelings and they ignore overwhelming data on effective proven strategies that will work in almost every single industry. Yeah. So Denise, how do we, how do we avoid this carnage? How do we help these guys avoid it? What are the questions we need to ask? Yeah. So Josh heard their basic marketing strategies that will work for almost every small business with Edmonton Business Consultant. Yes, there are basic small business strategies that will work for almost every small business. Think of, you know, the, the days of when the yellow pages used to exist, almost every single business should list in the yellow pages. It was an absolute no brainer. It would work 100% of the time if you listed in a cell in the yellow pages, although the yellow pages are gone, there are proven strategies that have replaced it. Problem is, they’re hard to see because a lot of the proven strategies, the ones that will definitely work are commingled along with ones that might work. Uh, and you got to separate, and this we’re gonna try to help them, help them do so. Isn’t the optimized Google my business listing with reviews on one of them? The first is the primary. It is like the holy grail. If you are going to start a small business, I any small business in almost any industry, an optimize Google by a business listing or Google maps listing where you list your business on Google, where it shows up and starting to get reviews.

I mean it is just huge because these guy really do care to help you in the morning! I mean 88% of your ideal and likely buyers are going to read those reviews. Um, and whether you get a hand to hand referral or they find you online, they’re going to look at the review. So get the Google my business listing. And if you don’t have that, Google my business listing set up and you’re getting reviews, your website isn’t going to show up anywhere. It’s going to be the, you spend a bunch of money on a billboard, the pretty billboard that sits in the middle of the woods and nobody sees it. So you’ve got to get that Google my business listing set up. You’ve got to optimize it and one of the things you got to do is start getting reviews. Do most businesses underestimate the versatility of lot of long form youtube videos? Yes, yes. A lot of people start to see social media content and they start to see little Facebook snippets and Instagram snippets and they think, okay, these really successful people are posting, you know, individual posts. They watch the Gary Vaynerchuk of the world. Uh, but they derive that content, that micro content from long form video content. Almost all of them do the exact same thing. So you start with long form video content and even if you don’t get to that, you know, micro content and and chopping it up sort of thing, there’s so much you can do with long form youtube videos. First of all, the long form youtube videos, you don’t have to get a million subscribers. You can get three views. Those are might be three views from your ideal and likely buyers. If you’ve put the right keywords into it and optimize it as such. And then you can use the content from the youtube videos to get your website to rank cause you need words for the website and you can get it from long form content. You can’t get enough content from, you know, 62nd videos.

So people are drastically underestimating. You know, how much you can repurpose it, what you can do with one single long form youtube video. Um, even if at all does get three reviews, there’s so many things you can do with it. Do you need a clear differentiation strategy before spending money elsewhere? Yeah, so before we start trying to sell stuff and spend a whole bunch of money on ads or a whole bunch of money, even on the website, before we even get to the website, have we compared ourselves to our competitors because we can’t just be as good as our competitors businesses and about being good. It’s about being better than our competitors. Doesn’t matter how good you are, if it’s not better than your competitors, it’s not good enough. So you’ve got to, you know, establish what are your value proposition of your competitors and what you are going to do over and above them and get top Edmonton Business Consultant. I would give these guys a call now at 780-665-4949 or go to spurrell.ca!

Edmonton Business Consultant | Are You Looking To Win At Life?

You got to work out that differentiation strategy before you spend money. And I would suggest that you need to do that even before you establish your brand. Because once you know what that differentiation strategy is, that might tell you what your brand and what your logo should look like and where you should be putting your brand and logo. Yeah. Do most customers eventually look at your website before checking? Oh, sorry. Before deciding to Curtis? Yes. Yes. So the foundational marketing initiatives, you got to have that website. Even if they found you on Facebook, even if they found you on Instagram, a lot of times they still have a mistrust with a Edmonton Business Consultant. They’re going to want to see the reviews. They’re going to go to go to your website to see if you look like a brand that they want to do business with. Are you high quality enough that they want to do business with you?

Um, so if you know you need to have that website, you know, if you want to avoid, uh, you know, having an optimized website, you’re probably going to avoid profits the exact same way. And a lot of times your only way to sure you want to be a landscaper and get a lead on Facebook, great. Get a lead on Facebook, but someone is going to come in there with better differentiation strategy, a better website that communicates a higher quality brand and they’re going to be able to charge a premium price. And the only way that you’re going to get the project is to charge less money. And that’s not a sustainable method. So what happens if you generate interest one way but your website is bad. Yeah. So you think about the, the you generate in interest on that Facebook or Instagram site, you know, you think that they’re just going to call you from that.

That’s not what happens normally. Normally they’re going to say, okay, I see this person. I wonder if they’re good, let’s Google them. And because we’re all secret detectives these days and we’re going to Google them and see what they are going to look at the reviews and this person have any reviews, we’re gonna look at their website. You know, you’re only going to get so much time. Is there a value proposition that you can communicate in that website in order to justify that you’re actually better than than your competitors? Or if not either there a lot of times they’ll get interested in you and they’ll find one of your competitors who looked better on Google. Uh, so the good interests you on Facebook, we’ll find them. One of their competitors looked better than you. You’re on Google, you won’t even know. You just basically, you know, we’ll spend time on social media to get someone else or lead, not even you will lead and if they do call you, they’ve probably called other people who look good on Google because now they’ve googled your competitors too. And if you haven’t built out that value proposition, you’re simply going to have your charge with less money and work for less and less and less. Um, are there other marketing strategies that will only work for specific businesses? Yeah, the, when we look at those foundational marketing initiatives, we’re looking at the Google my business listing, your differentiation strategies, your website, maybe some sales training in there. Now there’s other marketing strategies that will only work for, for um, specific business. Let’s say like, are we going to do Facebook, are we going to do trade shows or other events? Are we going to do networking? Are we going to drop some print media? Maybe we’re going to have an outbound call strategy. Um, those aren’t the foundational marketing initiative. Those are more, you know, specific they are gonna work for some businesses. So what are some examples of strategies that will only work for specific businesses that need Edmonton Business Consultant?

I like the, the Facebook example. I mean, let’s look at, even in our business, you know, we run Facebook ads to get people to come to our business bootcamp, but because it’s a social event, it’s a group setting and people are in that social set of mind when they’re on Facebook. But we spend our money advertising for the firm on Google. All right? The same thing. Let’s pretend you’re a plumber. If you know, I always use it. If your basis flooded, you don’t search Facebook, you search Google when you’re in that moment of need, that pain point where you want it right now, Google is right now, um, you know, we see a lot of, uh, fitness-based businesses. Their Facebook ads are fantastic. I mean, their Facebook ads will do tremendously better than there. They might outperform their, their Google ads because it’s a social atmosphere. It’s on a a pain point. Google driven. Uh, they didn’t even know that this type of, um, you know, uh, fitness training was available and we educated them on Facebook when they were in a, a kind of a social set of mind. Right? So do you separate the common strategies and business specific strategies in the plan? Yeah, so I like to separate them into, these are the foundational marketing issues. These is what you need to do. And, and those foundational marketing initiatives look very similar no matter what business that you’re in. A, you’re going to do some derivative of them. You know, you’re going to get some reviews, you’re going to get a website that looks good, you’re going to flush out your differentiation strategy to make sure your brand is on point. You’re going to do that in, regardless of whatever business that you’re in.

And then those pipeline marketing initiatives are, we’re going to run Google ads, or we’re going to run some Facebook ads or some Instagram ads, or we’re going to do some posting. We’re going to do some networking. Those are more specific to your business and your vision and your current circumstances. Um, you know, and we’ll separate those in the business plans. We realized that we can’t just do those pipeline and Marcie initiatives and ignore the foundational market initiatives. So did the pipeline initiative initiatives often only work if the foundational initiatives are in place almost every time. So although you can just turn, you can just buy a whole whack load of Google ads and you have no reviews and you have a bad website or no website. I mean Edmonton Business Consultant can help, yeah, it might work. If you throw enough spaghetti in the, on the wall, some of it might stick.

Um, but let’s, let’s make sure that that uh, was sort of throwing this big at the wall makes let’s make that a bucket. We’re throwing spaghetti at a bucket and it lands in the bucket. Um, you know, we want to make sure that Facebook ad, you’ve got to realize just because we get them interested on Facebook just because we get them interested with the Google ad words, that we have enough reviews to back it up, that we’re credible is our branding on point enough that we can justify, uh, you know, the price that we’re charging for the value that we’re delivering. Um, a lot of times those pipeline initiatives, people will give up on really good pipeline initiatives, give up on Google ads. They’ll give up on Facebook ads when the ad wasn’t a problem. It’s they didn’t have enough foundational initiatives to convert that sale once someone was, uh, interested. Right? So I think that’s what we have here today. As always, please hit the liken subscribe button so we can continue to deliver you tips on how to beat the odds at business. And as always, if you have any comments or questions you don’t, we love to see them below or do our best to respond back. Please be sure to call us now as soon as possible because these guys are here to help! Just dial 780-655-4949 or go to spurrell.ca! And if you’ve got something unique, we’ll even try to make it the topic of a future video. Thanks very much.