Pick The Best Marketing Practices For Small Businesses

Is it smart to pick the best marketing practices for small businesses when developing your strategy or is there something else to consider? 

If you do, the results we achieve are often underwhelming. Yet we are encouraged to do this by expert marketers every single day.

  • Slap an Ask quiz on the front-end (to frame the sale around the corner)….
  • Present a trip-wire offer (to create a customer and liquidate Ad costs ASAP!)….
  • Then offer an upsell, a down-sell and a cross-sell in quick succession (to increase LTV).
  • Bolt-on PLF to that (to use social pressure and urgency to sell a high ticket offer)…
  • Then the Perfect Webinar is shoehorned into the mix (because webinars are perfect for closing quick sales, right?)…

All these “Best marketing practices for small businesses” are mixed together just like we mix ingredients in a gorgeous chocolate cake recipe… 

And then what happens?

Something for sure but not what we expected.

What we have done is take parts from a Toyota, a Tesla, and a Ferrari - which are not interchangeable in any way, shape, or form - and slapped them together hoping that we are going to knock it out of the park.

When that doesn’t happen, we get to work optimizing each part in isolation. Changing the copy on our landing page to increase the opt-in from 20% to 30% for example.

Systems are not linear, they are circular

A system is the PRODUCT of the INTERACTIONS of its parts (not their sum taken separately).

The idea that if we optimize each step in our funnel by 10%, we will compound the output to achieve 100x the original result is false. Compound interest works in accountancy and finance but not if we are dealing with complex systems which operate differently.

There is no point in optimizing one part of a system unless it makes the performance of the whole better.

So we have to look at our marketing holistically. First, we have to decide what the primary function of our system is. 

If it is to make money at all costs, you could wind up with a lot of very unhappy clients asking for refunds. If it is to create happy customers, you could find yourself receiving endless referrals who are begging to give you their money.

There’s nothing more powerful than word-of-mouth marketing

Whatever you decide is the primary goal of your marketing campaign, that is what we should optimize for, even if it means that the CTR of our Facebook Ad campaign is lower than that you achieved with your mythical “Best marketing practices” campaign.

So start by asking yourself… What events need to happen for me to attract and earn the trust and attention of a happy customer? The answer is unlikely to be some B.S. Clickbait Ad….

Or some curiosity-based shallow-content squeeze page that makes a big promise and delivers some 'freebie' lead magnet (I hate lead magnets with a passion) that few people will ever read.

You may find that…

Talking about the only thing your ideal prospect is interested in (themselves) and the challenge they face is more effective... And that by doing away with your lead magnet altogether and leading with empathy and delivering powerful insights (value) without asking for anything in return, works best (enhances the system as a whole)…

Of course, none of these parts function in isolation. They work together as a whole to produce a result no group of parts could achieve by themselves. So the function of the complete system creates an ecosystem from which your happy customer emerges.

In the same way, a recipe may include 4 ingredients that when mixed together produce a quality that none of the single ingredients possess.

Bread becomes crunchy when baked, for instance.  This crunchiness is an EMERGENT property..Everything is transformed when you focus on your goal - happy customers, in this case - rather than optimising each individual part of your system.

Here are the lessons learned

  1. Your marketing system is not linear but circular. Changing one part in your system affects every other part.
  2. Optimizing each part of your system, in turn, does not compound the result and may make it worse.
  3. Stacking the “Best marketing practices” parts together doesn’t produce “Best in class” results because those parts were not built to work as one whole system.
  4. Decide on the primary function (goal) of your marketing system and optimize for that and only that.
  5. Everything changes when you optimize for the primary function (happy customers).
  6. Before optimizing a single part ask yourself how will this benefit the whole?
  7. The most significant leverage point in your system may require you to do something counterintuitive or unconventional (zag where others zig).

If you know anybody else who needs to read this post, it would mean the world if you shared this with them.

It would REALLY help me to grow my readership for which I would be forever in your debt.

It also helps give a boost to my fragile ego 🙂

WORK TOGETHER

You don't need another secret tactic or hack that promises much but delivers little -- You need a clear people-focused digital marketing strategy which gives you the mindset and vision you need to succeed. Let's get started.

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