The Marketing Bullseye. In Blackboard Fridays Episode 121, Jacob talks about Marketing. Need this implemented into your business? Talk to the international business advisor who can do exactly that – Contact Jacob, Learn More, or Subscribe for Updates.
Who is Jacob Aldridge, Business Coach?
“The smart and quirky advisor who gets sh!t done in business.”
Since April 2006, I’ve been an international business advisor providing bespoke solutions for privately-owned businesses with 12-96 employees.
At this stage you have proven your business model, but you’re struggling to turn aspirations into day-to-day reality. You are still responsible for all 28 areas of your business, but you don’t have the time or budget to hire 28 different experts.
You need 1 person you can trust who can show you how everything in your business is connected, and which areas to prioritise first.
That’s me.
Learn more here. Or Let’s chat.
Transcript
Avid Blackboarders will hear me talk a lot about how there’s a million things you could be doing in your business. One of the great challenges we have as business owners is that we change “could” to “should”… and start shoulding all over ourselves about all the things we feel we should be doing.
In reality, doing a small number of things and implementing them fully is the difference between business success and a very, very busy life of not really making much change in your organization. Nowhere is that more evident than in the topic of Marketing.
You know that there’s an awful lot of things you could be doing in a marketing space. But unless you’re actually a marketer or have a marketing background, chances are you’re overwhelmed trying to understand how to make the most of all of those opportunities.
Well, this week’s framework is designed to specifically help you narrow all of that down. It’s called The Marketing Bullseye and it has three components that overlap in a Venn diagram.
The Marketing Bullseye (and how to use it)
Let’s say you have a list of all of those marketing ideas – they’re in your head (I promise) so get them down on paper, by yourself or with your team.
How to shift “could do” to “let’s do”? You then assess those ideas against these 3 Criteria.
Marketing Criteria #1 Can We Systemise It?
The first criteria asks you to be honest: how easy is this idea for your business to systemize?
Every business is different. Don’t compare yourself with others. Relative to self, is that marketing strategy easy for you to systemize or is it something that’s going to require a lot of effort week after week, month after month, forever?
Ultimately, being systemizable helps make sure that you leverage this marketing initiative for long-term benefits. As a trained journalist, I write pretty – putting out a weekly newsletter is pretty easy for me and my team, so I’ve been doing it (in various forms) since 2008.
I’m also great on camera … but the filming and editing is harder for me to systemise. That’s why I partnered with businessDEPOT and Tyson Cobb at Practice + Pixels to create the Blackboard Fridays video series – together we made something special that my business couldn’t systemise on my own.
Marketing Criteria #2 Is it Cost Effective?
Again, this is a bespoke question for your business.
Let’s say I had a briefcase with $1,000,000 of cash in it … and I offered to sell it to you for $100,000. Would you want to buy it? Absolutely!
But is your business in a position to actually give me $100,000 today? A marketing opportunity may sound amazing – $1M of work for just $100K of investment – but if $100K is an enormous outlay for you, then this idea is not cost effective.
Yet.
When I run Revenue Projects with clients, the other element is to look further down the Revenue Flow Framework. You might be able to fund and deliver an amazing Marketing campaign (one of the 5 Attractants in the Channels category) … but if you don’t currently have the Sales Systems in place to convert leads to clients, or the Capacity to deliver on the work, then your idea just isn’t cost effective.
Marketing Criteria #3 Will It Move the Needle?
And the third criteria to ask yourself, will this marketing initiative move the needle? Does this marketing strategy actually have the potential for a sizable impact on your business revenue?
I find this third question really interesting, because it’s something that changes over time. When you’re small and in Start Up, a marketing strategy that brings you 10 leads a week or a month might be a fantastic thing.
As a bigger business, when you’re looking after an awful lot of clients, making a lot of sales, your marketing strategy may declare “don’t worry about 10, I need 100 or I need 1000 leads from this each week.
This third criteria is why The Marketing Bullseye is a great strategic framework for you and your team to return to on a regular basis. I often say there’s only two timeframes that matter in business: 20 years and 90 days, so doing this exercise every 90 days can be a helpful way of focusing your marketing strategy.
Some Examples of The Marketing Bullseye in Action
Let’s say you think to yourself, “I’ve been watching this ridiculously good looking + modest business coach who does a weekly video. It’s fantastic, everyone seems to love it, everyone seems to love him, we could do something ourselves along those lines. Let’s do a weekly video ourselves!“
Now you need to ask yourself:
- How easy is this for my business to systemize? Well, we don’t have any of the equipment, we don’t have any of the experience, and I’m scared of public speaking. It’s actually not that easy to systemize.
- Is it cost-effective? Well, we got to buy all the equipment, we’re going to have to invest a lot of time in getting that out every week.
- Does it move the needle? Would it have an impact? Yeah, absolutely, video is huge, none of our competitors are doing it, this would generate leads.
So how do you score this idea? Well it only delivered on 1 of the 3 criteria – it’s a tick only in the bottom right hand circle. It would move the needle (bring in a significant number of leads), but would actually be quite expensive and time consuming to create and try to systemise. It’s not a Bullseye for you.
If you have a big enough whiteboard (or blackboard, or online mindmap) in your business, you can actually start mapping out some of these strategies and put them on the chart where they live.
- TV Commercials? Okay, well, fantastic, TV commercial, that’s easy to systemize. You shoot it once and then it’s done. It moves the needle, it gets in front of a whole lot of our target clients. Ah, it’s expensive though, may not actually be that cost-effective for our business. So, it would sit up there joining two of the circles.
- Monthly Blog? For a lot of businesses, having a regular blog and a regular newsletter that goes out will actually move the needle, is actually cost-effective, and is easy to systemize. So, “blog and a newsletter” might sit right there in the Bullseye sweet spot. But if you hate writing, if none of your team are writers, you’re reluctant to use ChatGPT, then it may not be easy to systemize – it sits somewhere else.
The Marketing Bullseye in Summary
So this is the exercise you have to do for your business.
The outcome that you’re looking to achieve is a short list of only those items that sit right here in the bullseye – the three (give or take) priorities for your marketing business for the next 90 days.
And in that 90-day plan, you’re looking to start the systemization of those marketing tools so that they can continue to deliver returns after you go on to the next plan and the next strategy.
Your business will evolve and your business will grow. Efficient marketing is a key part of it. And to make sure that your marketing is efficient, just ask yourself:
- Is this easy for us to systemize?
- Is it cost-effective? and
- Will it move the needle?
Next Steps
Want to learn more about how this can apply to your business? It costs nothing to chat:
- Email me jacob@jacobaldridge.com (I read them all)
- Call, Text, or WhatsApp me +61 427 151 181
- Or just Subscribe https://jacobaldridge.com/about/subscribe-to-jacob-aldridge-com/ to stay in touch
