Picture this:
You’re a month away from launching your startup… When you discover a competitor is about to crash the party with the exact same product….
But TEN times the resources. They have millions, billions even, to throw at marketing. They hired the absolute best talent money can buy, and they’re ready to undercut you at every turn.
This terrifying competitor is your ‘Product Terminator’.
How do you beat them? What are you going to do to make your marketing so good that even THEY can’t compete? And how do you do it while only knowing the fundamentals of marketing because you absolutely hate it and don’t want to spend more than a week learning about it?
That’s what I’ll teach you in this article. You’ll see how to think beyond ‘incremental improvements’ and achieve a true competitive advantage. Let’s get to it.
If you’re going to start marketing, you obviously need a plan. The better you can envision how everything is going to work, the higher the likelihood of success.
Now that we got the obvious out of the way, here are the elements of amazing plans:
You can come back to this plan to think about your specific situation later. Now, let me go deeper into some of the parts of the plan, so that by the end – you know exactly how to make your own.
It’s going to look like a TON of work for one person, but in fact, you’d be surprised to see how beneficial it would be to just do a quick analysis for each of these steps. Just you, one Google Doc, one keyboard. That’s all you need. Write down your thoughts and plan your actions, even if they seem to suck at first. Any written plan is better than nothing.
Ahh… the most boring topic on the planet, “research” 🤓. If you’ve been an entrepreneur for more than 5 business minutes, you probably heard a lot of the same advice.
“Know everything there is to know about your customer. Know them better than they know themselves. Know this, know that, blah blah blah…”
Here, we don’t give you regurgitated advice. So what exactly should you look out for?
When you think about your customers, start with getting some clarity on their Identity, Pain Points, Motivations, and Blockers.
For Identity, find out what they identify as. Not the “I identify as a helicopter” kind though. I mean, what do they think of themselves as? What groups are they part of? What words or visuals make them think “Oh! That’s me!”
For Pain Points and Motivations, get as granular as possible. If you can, BECOME part of the market. If you can’t, make sure to survey people from your market or spend some time in relevant subreddits to understand what people say and need.
Pro psychology tip: be aware of the Hawthorne effect (people acting differently when they know they’re being observed). Survey as many people as possible to get a representative sample free from bias.
And if you already have a product and you want to talk to your audience to see what features you should add, don’t blindly listen to them. What users explicitly request and their underlying needs may not always align! So always think about the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’ when plotting your next move.
Last but not least, what is standing in the way of them achieving their goals? What are the “Blockers”? Why are they not where they want to be?
If you know these things, you’ve basically done most of the job. It’s not a lot, I told you it’s for entrepreneurs who don’t want to spend their lifetime learning marketing 😉
For your competition, you can perform SWOT and PESTLE analyses to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and external factors.
Emotion over logic – there goes another cliché you’ve heard a thousand times. But again, let me tell you what you haven’t heard yet.
Good marketing forms an emotional bond with you. Be it through an ad, or Instagram reels, or…
… this blog post for example, isn’t it making you feel all kinds of butterflies???
Anyway, an emotional connection makes you feel understood, and seen. It evokes feelings of trust and authority.
So, everything you put out there – every post, every tweet, every meme – should aim to strike an emotional chord with your target buyers. If you can make people feel something, you’re more likely to get a sale.
Now… let me tell you about some different online marketing channels where you can connect with your potential customers.
Content marketing refers to videos, posts, and articles you put out online. The best thing about content marketing is that it’s evergreen. Yes, it’s a struggle at first, but once the numbers start growing (and they will start growing), the content you put out will get you customers for years to come.
Another benefit is that posting content boosts your credibility and gives you perceived authority. Just post things that help your target avatar overcome their problems and move toward their desires.
And don’t sleep on live Q&A sessions on social media. This can really enhance customer engagement and build strong relationships with your audience. You’ll also learn more about your audience while having a chance to address questions and concerns directly.
Having a dynamic website paired with a content-rich blog is a very, very good tactic to grow your brand. Showing up on Google and all that, you know?
I’m sure you know what Google is, so let me get down to the tips.
Don’t just randomly write or hire someone to write, do your keyword research. Without it, your startup risks missing crucial online opportunities. Sure, writing will help grow your brand, but writing about something people are actually researching… that’s something else.
Also, keep your brand image uniform throughout all these channels. And no, it’s not just aesthetics. Having a uniform brand means people will resonate with you no matter where they interact with your brand. You don’t want to be giving mixed signals to people, that’s not nice 🙁.
With email marketing, you get to have a more personal, 1-1 conversation with everyone on your list.
You can create relationships with your list, sell your products, run promotions, and do all kinds of exciting things. For now, you just need to know one thing – keep growing your list, show up in your audience’s inboxes as often as possible, and give people a reason to read your emails.
Everything else will fall into place.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a funnel.
Source: Wikipedia: Funnel
Okay? Great. Bye.
*ahem*, a funnel describes your customer’s journey with you from the initial stages when someone learns about your business, to the purchasing stage.
That’s the Google definition. In simpler terms, it’s just the “steps a customer takes to go from cold to sold”.
At the Awareness stage, your goal is to grab the attention of potential customers who haven’t heard about you yet. Here, you need to stand out and evoke emotions, not just appeal to logic (as we’ve discussed).
Content marketing, SEO, and paid ads are your best friends here. From those, you can direct visitors to a landing page where they give you their juicy info in exchange for something of value, for free.
Then, you come to the Interest and Evaluation stage. Now it’s time to engage and inform your prospects. Educate, entertain, and show them how your product solves their needs better than anything else. This is where the private 1-1 conversations in email marketing come in.
From the emails, you can get them to click a link… and so they enter the Intent stage. They’re looking at your sales page and seriously considering buying your product.
But there’s a problem now – they have some objections that are preventing them from buying. Your job is to overcome those lingering thoughts, either on your sales page or with outstanding customer service. Or both 🙂.
Testimonials and positive reviews also play a huge role here, as people like to know they’re not being scammed.
Hopefully, a % of people will go on to buy your product. But you have some work to do even on the checkout page – the Action stage.
Eliminate all possible barriers and sources of friction. As in, don’t redirect the user to a billion websites or ask unnecessary questions. Just have them buy and reassure them along the way.
Wheeeeew… they bought your product, good game, right? No. Now you’re in the Loyalty stage – you need to keep your customers happy and in love with your product. Existing customers often provide more value than new ones, so retaining them is key.
This is just one example of a funnel. It doesn’t have to have these exact steps, I just put an example so you can see how your marketing is supposed to capture attention and then lead a smaller percentage of people down each step.
If you want to create a marketing plan for yourself, I highly recommend you check out our Customer Journey Map course. It’s a very simple course that explains funnels on actual examples. Yes, no useless theory, crazy thing in the 21st century, right?
I tried not to go too much in-depth about marketing since I know you despise it. If you’re able to understand the essence of using emotions, doing market research, and using the different channels in your funnel – you’re good to go. Let’s recap, real quick:
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