How To Create Business Success In 2023 Pt.2

Welcome back to part two of our series on how to create business success online in 2023.  If you didn’t read the first blog, then you’re going to want to go back, because everything we talk about in this blog will be based on setting yourself up properly via social media.

In the last blog, we talked about how to optimize your social media accounts and set yourself up to start gaining more traffic.  Now that you have more eyes on your brand, the question is, what do you do with it?  Let’s dive in!

What’s The Best Platform For Your Business?

Now that you’ve established your social media marketing plan, you should be driving traffic to your platforms, whichever ones you choose.  The question now becomes: what do I do with all that traffic?

Social media is great for what it is (bringing in new traffic and building brand awareness), but it should never be a sales strategy.  The reason is that you don’t own the platform, the company does.

Say, for example, you run your entire business through Instagram.  That’s your only social media platform and that’s where all your leads and sales come from.  You COULD build a 6-figure business on there . . .

The problem is: what if Instagram makes changes to its algorithm?  Or even worse, disappears altogether?  Your entire business would change overnight and you probably struggle for a while to build your business back up.

However, if instead of relying on a social media platform like Instagram, you were driving that traffic OFF social media onto a platform that YOU own, like an email list, then you wouldn’t have to worry about things like algorithm changes.

Driving traffic to a platform that you own is vital for so many reasons, but one of the main reasons is that when you’re on social media, you’re simply one of the billions creating content, hoping that your audience will see it.

Instagram, for example, only shows your posts to 3-6% of your following, and the organic reach has dropped drastically in the past few years.  However, when you send an email out to your subscriber list, you know that it will land in their inbox and 100% of people will have a chance of seeing it.  That is why having a platform that you own is so important.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be an email list either.  You can choose something like an SMS/Text list or even a Discord group, which is becoming more and more popular.  The point is you want to choose something that you know your ideal audience will engage back with you on.

If your audience is over 45 years old, you probably wouldn’t choose a Discord group.  However, if your audience is Gen-Z, then choosing a Discord group might be a good idea.

Step one for you is figuring out which platform is right for you, and if you’re not sure, I’d suggest email, because everyone uses email, and the ROI that you get from email marketing is one of the best you can possibly get.

What Free Problem Can You Solve?

Let’s say that you’ve landed on using email marketing as your platform that you’re going to funnel people to from your social media.  The next question you need to answer is: what resource (guide, ebook, quiz, etc.) can you offer them for free that’s enticing enough for them to want to give me their email?

This is why we spent so much time talking about your content pillars in the previous blog.  If you know what your content pillars are and what types of content people want the most from you, then you can create free resources around those pillars. 

What we teach our clients to do is create what we call “top-level” social media content around their content pillars.  This type of content is very easy to consume and very easy to implement.  Then, you create a call-to-action that points people towards a free resource that is more of a deep dive around that type of content.

This allows people who like your social media content to raise their hand and say that they are interested in learning more about what you’re talking about.

Step two is looking back over your content pillars, and creating a free resource for each that people can then get in exchange for their name and email.  Side note: ask for as little information as possible when people opt in.  The more information you ask for, the less likely they are to opt-in.

Create Your Introduction

Once people opt into your free resource, it’s a good idea to walk them through some sort of introductory email sequence, rather than just lumping them immediately in with the rest of your email subscribers.

Normally called an “introductory sequence,” this email sequence gives you a chance to do three strategic things when someone first enters your email community:

• Allows you to properly introduce yourself to a brand new community member.  You can let them know who you are, what you do, and why you do it.
• Allows you to add extra value on top of your free resource, building even more brand equity and a relationship with your audience
• Allows you to offer an OTO (one-time offer) to your new audience members for a product or service that makes sense (usually at a discount)

There are a number of different ways you can create an introductory sequence, and a lot of email marketing providers will actually have these pre-built templates that you can follow as far as how many emails to send and the frequency of them.

The main thing is to remember that this may be the first time an audience member of yours has gotten the chance to interact with you this closely, essentially making this your first impression.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, so make sure that you’re blending your introductory sequence with great value and relationship building, as well as giving your new audience a chance to learn your story . . . because we all love a good story.

Offer Additional Paid Value

We touched on this a little bit above, but when someone first opts into your email list, it is a great time to offer them a special deal (known as an OTO) at the end of your introductory email sequence.

There are two reasons why offering a paid product/service at the end of your introductory email sequence is a great idea:

• First, people buy because of emotion then justify with logic after the fact.  There will be people under opt into your list immediately ready to buy.  If you offer them a product that’s a no-brainer (typically under $100 in price), and the value that you’ve offered up to that point had helped them, then they are very likely to buy that product/service.
• When you offer a product/service at the end of your introductory sequence, it gives you a chance to see who is willing to invest in themselves right off the bat.  A lot of times, people will separate buyers into a separate email newsletters because they’ve shown that they are willing to spend money through your email list.

Here’s the thing: if you don’t offer a paid product, then you have zero chance of making any money.  However, if even 5% that opt-in buy that OTO product/service, and say it’s $100, that means for every 100 subscribers you’ll make $500.

This revenue can then be used to re-invest back into your business, whether it be in the form of ads or somewhere else.  The point is: if you never ask, you’ll never sell.  Don’t assume that just because people are new to your list that they’re not ready to buy.

They raised their hand in the first place for a reason.

Conclusion

Ensuring that you’re taking your social media traffic and driving them to a place that you own is vitally important to the long-term success of your business.  The businesses that scale over $1M a year do so because they have lists that they own, are able to nurture, and ultimately, sell their products and services to.

Make 2023 the year that you prioritize growing a community that you own!