It's All in The Details

By Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing

Ultimately the success of marketing is in the details. It's not about more effective networking or speaking engagements or online sales letters. It's not even about transforming your marketing mindset.

Those are all concepts, not action items.

To be successful at attracting more clients and building your business, you have to have a hunger for detailed how-to, hands-on information.

When I see someone implement a marketing strategy successfully, I always ask the questions, "How exactly did they get that result? What did they do? What was their approach? What are their secrets?"

And when I learn the exact how-to steps, I work at implementing that idea in my business. Usually I have to customize it to fit my particular situation. I've done this many times with spectacular results.

This week I'm going to do something unusual in this eZine. I'm going to share a detailed marketing action plan I just implemented. I usually don't do this. I save these for my Action Plan Marketing Club.

100 New Members in Two Days

I just did a special promotion for the Action Plan Marketing Club and 100 new members joined in two days. Welcome if you're one of those new members!

Here's the step-by-step plan I used to get this result:

1. I put on a TeleClass called "Transform Your Marketing Mindset" that I promoted in this eZine twice. As a result, about 250 people signed up. If you have a smaller e-list, you'll have a smaller number, but you can also promote it for a longer time in various other ways.

2. I held the TeleClass last week and made it the best I possibly could with real hands-on techniques. This is the same TeleClass you can listen to at the link at the bottom of this page.

3. At the end of the TeleClass I talked about how this information on Marketing Mindsets was also a part of the Fast Track Program in the Marketing Club. And then I made a special offer to people who joined the Club: "Get the first month of the Club for free."

4. Then I sent an email to everyone who had signed up for the TeleClass (whether they had attended or not) with a link to the TeleClass recording and to the Marketing Club Special offer. By the way, I used AWeber, the email management program, to handle the signups and the follow-up emails.

5. Next, I sent an email to my whole e-list, letting people know about the recorded TeleClass and the special offer for the Marketing Club. You should have gotten this email. (Whether you read it is another question!)

6. As a result, a total of over 1,360 people went to the web site and requested to hear the recorded TeleClass and to learn about the special Club offer. Maybe you were one of them.

7. Then I sent two more emails to those people the following day (through AWeber) to remind them of the special offer. This is more emails than I usually send, but people get more ticked off if they miss an offer than they do if they get a couple extra emails!

8. As a result, about 100 people signed up for the first free month of the Action Plan Marketing Club. I'm hoping that a good percentage of them will feel they got enough value to say in the Club for many months to come at $29 per month.

Here are a few thoughts on this kind of marketing action plan:

1. This is a combination of pull and push marketing. The pull is to offer something of value for free. That was the live and recorded TeleClass. The push was the offer for the Marketing Club. A combination of pull marketing (which builds trust and relationship), and push marketing (which offers an incentive to act now), are especially powerful when used together.

2. There's always something enormously compelling about a free offer. We often shy away from something like this, fearing people won't value it. Sometimes that's true. But if only 50% (or even lower) stay in the Club for a number of months, the promotion was more than worth the effort it took.

3. It's important to put a time limit on such promotions. It's just human nature to put things off. When you make a promotion only one or two days, people realize they need to make a decision now or loose out (even if the savings was only $9, which is the usual first month fee.)

4. Promotions like this have several moving parts. You need a web site and the ability to put up web pages quickly, an email manager such as Aweber, and knowledge of how to connect the web pages and Aweber (easy once you get the hang of it), and a recording program (Peak LE for Mac or SoundForge for PC) to enable you to edit the audio quickly and upload it to the web.

5. It's important to customize a plan to fit your needs. You can use this TeleClass and TeleClass recording strategy to promote an initial session of your services, a discount on an online product, a workshop, or a more in-depth TeleClass series.

6. With this marketing action plan, you've had a chance to "look under the hood" of one of my successful step-by-step marketing strategies. I hope it gives you some ideas and provides some inspiration for developing marketing action plans of your own.

Of course, I can't end without a call-to-action!

This is the kind of how-to, hands-on marketing plan and strategy you'll find in the Action Plan Marketing Club. Just implementing one action plan successfully (not perfectly) will pay for your membership in the Club for several years.

If you'd like to check out the Club, start with the complimentary recording on "Transforming Your Marketing Mindset" and then consider giving the Marketing Club a test drive for one month, for only $9 (less than a cup of coffee and piece of cake + tip).

TeleClass on Transforming Your Marketing Mindset

If you really can't afford $9 to try this out, then just wait a few months for the next special offer. In the meantime you can keep struggling with your marketing, avoiding marketing, or just hope the economy improves ;^)

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The More Clients Bottom Line: Marketing Action Plans are focused, step-by-step campaigns that lead your prospects in the direction you want them to go and where they are very willing to follow. They are not a vague collection of random activities that you hope will turn into new business someday.

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Please let me know if this detailed marketing action plan was useful to you. Please share on the More Clients Blog (click on comments below).

Comments

[CK Wilde]

Thanks, Robert, for showing that a marketing plan can be simple and quick to implement. It is so easy to be paralyzed by thinking a marketing plan needs to include a year's worth of action.

[Judy Murdoch]

Ditto everything Winnie said.

And, from my own experience, it's really important to tweak so the process fits your own biz and audience.

There's often some messiness at the beginning. If you don't get an amazing result right away, try and experiment until you hit on something that works.

Recipes are wonderful AND they're meant to be acted on if you want something delicious to eat!

Robert, thanks for your generosity sharing your process. And for the inspiration to take action and apply it to my own business.

[Winnie Anderson]

Robert-
Thanks so much for this detailed information. So many other gurus just tell you what to do but don't tell you the how. Or they don't seem to cover it in specific detail. This is not only great, useful information told in the right order (it's a great recipe!), it's an example of why I'm a reader, a purchaser, and now a member of your marketing club. Great content, explained clearly, that will have a payoff when applied.

Thanks very much for the information and your committment to helping people.
Winnie Anderson