How To Create Business Success In 2023 Pt.1

 If you’ve been in business for a while, then you know how quickly things can change . . . and the changes never stop!  That’s why having a blueprint for success as a business owner is so important, that way, if they’re changes that affect your business, you can easily pivot and implement them into your already-established blueprint.

Over the past three years in our agency, we’ve been perfecting such a blueprint, and over the next three blogs, I want to share with you this blueprint so that you too can implement it into your business.  We’re all about giving you tangible actions for success, so let’s dive in and start creating a plan for your business success!

The first part is all about creating a social media marketing plan that brings in your ideal traffic.

Figure Out Your Ideal Client

I know it seems simple and you’re probably thinking, “Another person talking about figuring out your ideal client” . . . and while yes, it seems simple enough, you’d be surprised at how many business owners get this wrong.

The two common problems we see when it comes to business owners and figuring out their ideal clients are:

• They think everyone is their ideal client, end up marketing to everyone, and it greatly affects the results they get on social media
• They think their ideal client is someone that it actually isn’t and end up spending time creating content that brings in the wrong type of audience

The reason that so many people talk about making sure you are dialed in with your ideal client is that it’s literally the foundation of everything this blueprint will be built off of.

We can give you the million-dollar blueprint, but if you’re targeting the wrong type of people with your content, marketing, and products, then it’s not going to work.  So really take the time you make sure that you get this right.

When we figured out who our ideal client was, we filled out a 59-page ideal client avatar that took us 2 hours to complete.  Was it frustrating?  Yes.  Did it help us figure out exactly who to market to?  Yes.  When you make sure the foundational things are done correctly, it makes it that much easier for your business to experience quick success!

Do Your Market Research

You wouldn’t believe how many business owners skip this step . . . thinking that they already know the types of content that will work for their audience.  Here’s the thing: doing your market research is like reading books written by successful people . . .

It shortcuts the success process by learning from people that have already done it.

This doesn’t mean that you copy/paste the content that they’re creating, but it does give you some sort of idea of where to start when it comes to creating your social media marketing plan.  One place to pay special attention to is their comments section.

The comment section is a great place to learn about what type(s) of content people are wanting the most.  If you start to see some common questions among the comments, then that gives you pretty good idea that people are craving this type of information.

This business might not have the exact same ideal client as you, but if they are in your same industry, chances are you’re going to be creating similar types of content for them.  Study the videos they create, look at the frequency they post, and try to get a handle on what their overall strategy is.

• What type of content did really well?
• What content didn’t do so great?
• What content got the most shares/saves?
• What content got the most comments?
• What frequency are they posting?

These are just a few of the questions you should be asking when you’re doing your market research for content creation.  The truth is, you should be doing market research for every single aspect of your business, including the products you sell, where you market, and everything in-between.

Doing your market research before you launch a product, create a marketing plan, or start creating social media content can save you time and also give you a quicker path to success.  This step, figuring out your ideal client, and the next step is paramount if you want this blueprint to work in your business.  

Create Your Content Pillars

Now that you know who your ideal client is and you did your market research, you should have a pretty clear idea of what your content pillars should be.  Your goal when it comes to your content pillars should be to figure out three things:

• What topics centered around your industry can you create content based on?
• What problems does your ideal client have that you can solve?
• What content was resonating when you did your market research?

Ideally, you want to have 3-6 content pillars that you can talk about, teach about, and solve problems as they relate to those pillars.  For example, we own a digital marketing agency, so our core content pillars are:

• Branding/Personal Branding
• Social Media Marketing
• Website Design
• Email Marketing
• Facebook/Instagram Ads

So when we go to create content, we already know the types of content we are going to be creating.  These are topics people ask us questions about, the expertise we have, and the problems that we can solve in people’s businesses.

What we do is rank each pillar based on the response we get from our audience.  We create the most content around the pillar that gets the most engagement and reach, which in this case for us is our social media content.  Then the second pillar, and so on.

This allows us to create a social media marketing plan that we know works, because if the whole goal is bringing in as much new traffic as possible, we know we’re doing that because we’re creating the content that people want to see the most.

Now it’s your turn!  Even if you think you know what your content pillars are, I invite you to go back and make sure that these are still the same content pillars that make the most sense for your business.  Then rank them like we did, that way you know which pillar you should be creating the most content for and how to get the best results out of your content creation.

Figure Out The End Goal

You’d be surprised how many business owners create a social media content plan, know what they’re going to post every day, and think that it will bring them the results that they’re looking to get, only to find out that their business isn’t making money.

There’s a reason for that . . . and it’s that you’re not thinking about the end at the beginning!

Most business owners create content simply to create content, but the ones that are truly successful create content that leads their audience in a specific direction . . . let me explain.

If your goal is to sell a specific product, then your social media content should center around giving surface-level value that leads a customer/client to that specific product/service.  I’ll use our agency again as an example.

We sell social media marketing services as a package for business owners.  So when you go and look at our social media content, you’ll notice that we talk about the systems and strategies you should implement into your social media marketing plan if you own a business.

It gives business owners the information to be able to do it themselves, but guess what?  Most business owners don’t want to/know how to do it themselves, so what they end up doing is purchasing services from us.  They see we know what we’re talking about, so they feel comfortable trusting us to help them build their brand.

The goal when it comes to your business should be to figure out the answer to this question: “What is the ultimate step I want my client to take?”  Typically, the answer is going to be to sell a product or service.  Knowing this, you can reverse engineer the process and create social media that is “top of the funnel” content.

Create A Social Media Marketing Calendar

Now that you know who your ideal client is, you’ve done your market research, you know what your content pillars are, and you’ve established the end goal, you can start to create a social media marketing calendar that actually streamlines your business.

As we talked about before, most businesses create a social media content calendar, but what they’re really doing is simply creating content that has no overarching purpose.  Throughout this blog, we’ve given you the tools and information to now create a social media marketing calendar with purpose.

When you create your social media marketing calendar, you want to:

• Map out what content you’ll post on what day
• Write out the captions for each post
• Have a CTA that takes people toward the next step
• Put that next step under what’s being posted on what day

When you do this, you’re now creating content that leads people into the next step, which is bringing them into the spaces that YOU own (but more on that in the next blog).  Right now, your sole focus should be to figure out all of the foundational things we talked about in this blog, figure out what the end goal is when someone lands on your page, and finally, to create your monthly social media marketing calendar.

This will set you up for part 2 of this blog series where we talk about what to do with all the new traffic coming onto your social media accounts.

Conclusion

Making sure that you get your social media marketing right for your business is in our opinion, the most important part of your business, because if you don’t get this part right, then you’ll find your business struggling to build demand while will affect the amount of traffic and leads coming into your business.

Now you know what to do!  Take these steps, create your social media marketing calendar, and if you have any questions that come up, you can always DM us on Instagram at “Themarketvibe” and we’d be happy to answer them.  See you back here next week for part 2 of our series!