By AJ Cassata.
A great product isn’t enough to create a successful business – what turns a business into an empire requires an excellent product combined with exceptional marketing.
Thanks to the Internet, it’s easier now more than ever to get a brand or startup in front of target customers.
With all of the free distribution tools like social media platforms, the playing field is equal now! You don’t need significant media connections or large upfront investment to advertise your brand like you would 40 years ago.
Although marketing & communicating with potential customers has never been easier, most businesses still struggle with this. They never seem to get the traction they want online, while some companies see amazing results from online marketing efforts.
What makes a difference is having the right strategy & approach.
The tools to help your business grow are out there, but you need to know how to use them. You need to understand how these platforms work and how to make them work for your business – and if you don’t, hire someone who does!
Digital marketing strategy development can be a bit overwhelming due to the abundance of options you have. Sometimes it seems like a new social media platform or revolutionary software pops up every day!
For the past five years, I’ve been helping other entrepreneurs scale their business, and I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t across dozens of industries. I’ve created & managed campaigns on tons of different platforms & social media channels. Through all of my experimentation, I’ve learned a lot.
In hopes of simplifying digital marketing while giving some actionable steps you can execute on, I want to layout 3 strategies that work across the board in any industry. These strategies will work regardless of if you’re a brand new startup or a 7-8 figure company.
The 3 Strategies That Work Across The Board
Google Ads
Facebook Advertising
Automation In The Sales Process
To help you understand how these strategies work in a real-world setting, I’ll walk you through how we applied them for one of our clients, a naturopathic medicine clinic in Arizona.
We helped the clinic max out its sales capacity. After implementing the three strategies just mentioned and nothing else, the clinic became so busy to the point where the soonest patients could book an appointment was three weeks. That’s an excellent problem to have, isn’t it?
On average, our online marketing campaigns had resulted in an additional 60-80 new client consultations per month for a Stem Cell Therapy service that’s worth $6000-8000 in revenue to the clinic – and that’s just upfront revenue, that’s not including the life-time value of the client.
Digital marketing can also do more for a business than make money – aside from helping to skyrocket sales of this business, we also lowered costs and helped to streamline operations & patient communications.
Our digital marketing campaigns had become such a stable source of new client acquisition that the clinic was able to stop spending on TV & radio advertising, which saved about $5000 a month in advertising expenses.
Like many companies, the clinic also had an inefficient & unorganized sales process, which cost the staff and the business owner extra time & expense.
By introducing automation to the business & its operations, we were able to organize their client communication process, reduce the work-load for the front-office staff, and alleviate pressure on the whole team. As a result, they could focus more on taking care of the patients, and less time on follow-up and scheduling.
So, let’s dive into these strategies so you can replicate the same success into your business!
Google Pay Per Click Ads
Placing ads on Google is extremely useful, as you can get in front of users with a high intent to purchase your product/service.
You pay to advertise on certain search-terms & phrases that your target customer enters into Google – this means that you get in front of the people that are already searching for the solution your business provides.
This is the low-hanging fruit, and where you should start. When my agency is onboarding a new client, nine times out of 10, we begin by rolling out campaigns on Google. The prospects you’ll find from Google ads are the farthest down the buyers’ journey and the closest to making a decision.
These people are already aware of the problem they have and the solution they need.
In the medical clinic’s case, we bid on terms like “Stem Cell Therapy In Scottsdale.”
Somebody who’s performing that search already knows what Stem Cell Therapy is, and they are likely familiar with what it costs, and they are just looking for the best provider.
A big part of marketing is about being in the right place at the right time, and that’s exactly what Google can do for you.
The beautiful thing about Google Ads is that you only pay when someone clicks – so your marketing dollars are only being spent towards people that are interested in your service or product.
However, you have to watch your costs to remain profitable. Before we were hired, the clinic ran campaigns on Google and was paying about $5 for each click. After we audited the account and performed optimizations, we were able to get the Cost-Per-Click down to between $1.50-$2.00, roughly a 70% decrease in cost!
A few tweaks to your campaigns can make a huge difference, which is why you must know what you are doing before you put your credit card in and start launching ads.
Facebook Pay Per Click Ads
With over 3 billion active users, Facebook is an excellent option for just about any business. Similar to Google, due to the sheer size, you’ll be sure that your target market is on Facebook.
Coming from a marketer’s perspective, I can say that Facebook has the most advanced advertising platform & AI, and when you learn the ins and outs of the ads manager, you can make magic happen to your business.
The benefit of Facebook is the hyper-targeting. Great marketing requires substantial targeting. Think about this – you wouldn’t be able to sell meat to a vegetarian, no matter how good your meat is. Getting your ads placed in front of the right people is arguably an essential part of any marketing campaign.
With Facebook, you can create your hyper-specific audience and hone in on your ideal customer. Facebook allows you to select parameters of who you want to see your ads. For example, you can choose based on demographics like income, age, gender, location, and psychographics like interests & personality.
For our medical clinic client, we were promoting a very niche service – Stem Cell Therapy & Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy. The doctor we worked with did not want us to promote everything his clinic offers; he wanted us to help promote those two services so that he could stand out in his local market as a specialist in those areas.
We were able to run particular ad campaigns to different market segments to promote Stem Cell Therapy, such as athletes, golfers, 60+-year-old men & women, even people who are considering getting a knee replacement. Regenerative Medicine is expensive as well, and to prevent people that couldn’t afford the service from booking consultations, we limited the ads to only show to people in the top 25% of income based on zip codes. This level of targeting just isn’t available with other forms of advertising!
Automation In The Sales Process
Facebook & Google are excellent platforms that help to drive traffic & leads for your business or startup, no matter the industry. However, gaining attention is just the first step! Once you have campaigns running & generating leads, now you have to convert those leads into customers! Leads don’t grow a business, sales do.
The medical clinic we worked with, like most businesses, had a sales process that needed much improvement. Lots of leads were coming in, but the clinic didn’t have enough staff to follow up with new inquires and leads consistently.
So, we implemented two new technologies into the business to solve this problem – email follow up, & an online scheduling system.
Before this client had hired my agency, he was having his front office staff call any leads that came in, to schedule appointments. We decided to eliminate this step – when it comes to your sales process, the more steps you have, the more opportunities there are for your leads to drop-off and lose contact.
We found that most of the leads the clinic was paying to generate, were never even getting in contact to schedule a consultation. The front office staff was too busy to follow up with every single lead coming in, which means the business was wasting money on all of the leads that didn’t convert.
To fix this, we created a funnel that directed all of the incoming leads to an online scheduling system, where the prospects could directly book an appointment with the doctor, instead of waiting for the front office to call and schedule them.
Not only did this take a load off of the staff and help the lead conversion flow, but it also made for better customer experience.
We also implemented automated email follow up, which would email the leads every day for three days after signing up for a consultation, to remind them to schedule online, and remind them to show up on time for their appointment.
As you can see, digital marketing can help your business with more than the front-end process of getting awareness, traffic, & leads. These technologies available to us can help convert your leads into customers, make your entire sales process more efficient, free up-staff time, and improve your customer experience.
In conclusion, digital marketing can seem a little daunting with all of the different strategies we hear experts preach, and with all of the different platforms, it’s hard to know where to even begin. So – keep it simple! For getting traffic, stick to the big two – Google & Facebook. From there, use tools like email marketing, SMS marketing & automated scheduling to help convert the leads into customers!
By automating the marketing and sales process, you free up time to focus on other essential and high-level tasks that your business depends on, such as business development, strategic partnerships & developing your team.
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