Build Your Marketing Plan (in 4 min)

Read time: 4 min, 23 sec

Hey there - it's Brian 👋

On Tuesday someone emailed: “how do I make a marketing plan?”

So I want to make the consulting answer available to you in this post.

His question is B2B. But my response will apply to you whether you’re B2B or B2C. SaaS, education, or any industry.

It’s all the same process.

So today’s issue is a marketing 101 course condensed to one post.

By the end, you’ll have a plan for:
• Who you’re targeting
• How to reach them
• How they become customers

Vote at the end on which topic you want a further deep dive on in the next issue.

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

P.S. join 13,753 business owners & founders receiving free digital marketing lessons every Thursday (from a CMO).

Marketing Plan in 1 Post

The hardest part of marketing is just figuring out what to do.

But the mistake that most people make is being so focused on choosing the channels:

• Socials?
• SEO?
• Ads?

If you only focus on channels, you get a lot of people seeing your site, but few become paying customers.

There’s much more to think about: messaging, building trust, getting the sale etc.

So how do we get people to buy our stuff?

Let’s build your marketing plan…

Who are you reaching?

“I don’t know if Alexis will like this.”

Executives at Sally Beauty Supply talk about their customer as if it were one person, “Alexis”.

They imagined their ideal customer, described her in detail, and put photos of “Alexis'“ around the meeting room. Every decision is aimed at one person.

It’s brilliant.

You need to understand WHO your dream customer is so you can find them, and convert them to a sale.

Write down things like…

• Age

• Income

• Where they live

• Who they trust

• Their frustrations, goals, and desires

Without this, you can’t speak to them in a way that they actually want to buy your stuff (or know where you reach them).

So now that we know who you’re talking to, let’s get into HOW we’ll reach them.

How are you reaching them?

This is by far the question I get the most. Where do I find my customers?

The most common mistake: they try all channels at once.

If you do too many you’ll just be okay at all of them. It’ll be too expensive to get customers.

Win at one channel. Put in systems to scale that channel. Then, expand to a new one.

Which channels should you use?

So what are your options for reaching customers?

Here are 8 of my favorite channels:

1. Email (cold and warm)

2. Socials (Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube)

3. SEO (Google, Bing, eventually ChatGPT)

4. Affiliates/referrals (peers, affiliate networks)

5. Ads (Newsletter ads, social ads, search ads)

6. Offline Events (speaking, community building)

7. PR Campaigns (news stations, blogs, newspapers)

8. Outreach (Cold and warm social messages, calls, snail mail)

Choose one and try it out. See if it’s working for you.

🙋 If you want a post on the pros and cons of each channel (and why you’d choose each), stay until the end to vote on next week’s topic. 

What are you saying to potential customers?

Say the wrong thing and you bring in the wrong people.

This means you’ll get a lot of people seeing your stuff, but few people buying.

We need to get the right people passionate about your solution.

Here’s a few things you’ll need clear as you craft your messages:

Unique selling proposition
What makes your solution the best choice (for that specific customer)?

Create a consistent brand personality
Are your messages fun? Quirky? Funny? Serious?

Brand story
What’s your backstory that makes people passionate about you?

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
Storytelling sounds fluffy. So I never paid that much attention to it. I got occasional laughs at stories at parties so I wasn’t too concerned.

Until I found out that storytelling is THE strongest way to persuade customers. Period.

I learned there’s a science to storytelling in a way that creates passionate customers (and learned how bad my stories actually were).

Don’t be like I was. I wish I knew earlier how powerful stories are for persuading customers.

Now let’s turn these people into actual customers.

How do they become your customers?

Only 3% of your prospects are ready to buy at any one time!

So this means you’ll need to consistently give them value. This way you build so much trust that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll buy from you.

You’ll need to build systems to:
• Collect contact info
• Send them value
• Sell
• Follow up

There’s far more options for each of these than you’d expect.

What contact information do you get? How?

To build a relationship you need to consistently reach the same person.

This means the algorithm based platforms (LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube) don’t work at this stage.

Your messages on these platforms reach people at random. We need consistency here.

So drive them to a landing page and capture their information.

Email? Phone? Address? Start with just one.

Options to contact them:

• Email

• Snail mail

• Text message

• Instant message (Instagram broadcast, WhatsApp/Telegram groups)

• Communities (Discord, Skool, Slack)

You’ll use these consistent channels to build their trust. But how?

How do you build their trust?

If a prospect doesn’t trust you, they won’t buy.

And when they first meet you on the internet, they won’t trust you. So let’s build systems so they can get to know how amazing your solution is.

The best way to build trust is long-form content. They get to know how you think (and learn far more about you than short-form content).

Types of long-form:

• Written (Blog, newsletter, email)

• Video (YouTube sent via email/text)

• Community (Discord)

Video is the fastest way to build trust since prospects feel like they know you better.

In content, you’ll need to prove that you can solve their problem.

A few ways you can do that:

• Show real results you’ve gotten a customer

• Give them actionable tips they can use right away

• Tell stories to make them passionate about your way of solving their problem

But eventually we need to turn them into paying customers. So here comes the sales funnel.

What’s the sales funnel look like?

Your sales funnel will entirely depend on where people are coming from.

If someone clicks an ad (and they’ve never heard of you), they’ll take much more persuasion than if someone loved buying from you before.

So we’ll design a different experience for how well customers know you:

• Cold: Don’t know you

• Warm: You’ve been sending them valuable things

• Hot: They bought from you

Cold will take much more persuasion than hot. They’ll need a longer landing page. More testimonials. Maybe a video.

So here’s a simple funnel as an example:

Hot is most likely to buy. They just need to receive an email that tells them there’s a new offer and how to sign up.

Start with one channel. Adjust the funnel until you’re happy with how customers flow through and buy. Then scale the channel.

And there you have it!

Your marketing plan in one email.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
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🚀 P.P.S. Want Brian to help you build your marketing plan?

If you’re over $1M in revenue and building out your marketing team, grab some time here.

I’m happy to help.