The Authentic Marketing Framework -- my whole strategy summarized!

I'm going to try to summarize my whole marketing philosophy in this one video. Hopefully it doesn't go for eight hours long. Try to keep it to 20 minutes to make it succinct. So first of all, this is something that I recommend all of you do who are creating knowledge in the world. It's good to occasionally try to figure out how to, how to summarize your whole philosophy in a few words and then of course in more descriptions based on those few words. So let me give you the few words of my marketing philosophy first and then we'll get into the details. So basically there are three stages for every authentic business. Audience building, offer, creation and expansion. Okay, so audience offers, expansion. And hopefully as you understand what these things mean, you can pinpoint where you are right now in your authentic business and then go from there. And at each stage, so it's a bit of a matrix. Maybe I'll have someone create a graphic for me at some point. But at each, at each of the three stages there are three things to do. Okay, three things to pay attention to. The first thing is the goal. The goal of each stage is to get to what I call quantity of quality. In other words, more of the right thing. Okay, I'll describe all this later, but just let me give you the succinct two minute version first. And then the method of getting to the goal. The method is rhythm of testing, your regularity of experimentation. And then the values for all three stages in the authentic business framework is authenticity of caring. So hopefully it's kind of elegant to have these words, audience expansion offers. And then the goal, method and values. And so let's kind of go from there. Okay, so the first thing that you've got to do in an authentic business is to build an authentic audience. Otherwise you'll be serving people that you don't really, you can't really serve well and that you don't really resonate with. So you've got to build an audience that you really enjoy and who really enjoy you. And that is the first thing. So let's talk about each of the three. Three things under audience. So goal, method and values. Okay, so the goal of the audience stage, which a lot of you are in right now, is quantity of quality of audience. So you've got to first get to the quality of the audience. Like who are you really wanting to connect with? And then get more of them. Okay, and how do you. And then the method is the rhythm of testing. Okay, how do you get to build an audience that's quality. You have a rhythm of testing. So that's what I'm doing right now. My side businesses, my side projects, I'm testing audiences to see which ones will like. So how do we build a quality audience, an authentic and quality audience. Any guesses? Through authentic content. So content is really throughout the whole entire business, but it starts in the very beginning. You don't, in my opinion, you don't start. Okay. In my opinion, you don't start by trying to confirm and figure out, okay, before I even put anything out there, who are my ideal clients, who are going to be the people that I'm serving for the rest of my life? Because it's going to change. And this is something that very few people tell you when it comes to business trainings. Like things change a lot. Who your, who your ideal client is will change consistent, continually. I mean, even now, my ideal audience, even 10 years into my business, I've been making money full time, full time income for 10 years in my business, same business. It's basically business coaching, business training, marketing, consulting. And my ideal audience keeps changing. It still continues to change. Now, like I said, the energy signature, like I said in other videos, the energy signature is like the same. But like who they are and what they're about at least kind of morphs over time, keeps changing. So don't be afraid to not to just not define your ideal audience. So what do I mean then by the first stage of clarifying the audience? Basically the first thing is to say who is going to like me for who I am. That's really what I'm trying to discover in my side businesses. I'm going to just post whatever I feel most important and most passionate about posting and I'm going to see who resonates with that and whoever resonates with that. I have choices among the people who resonate. Maybe there's 10 different people who resonate with this and maybe certain of the 10, I feel more, you know, resonant with them. Okay. So you really start by seeing who's attracted to you as you are with or without makeup. If you like putting on makeup, put on makeup. But if you don't like putting on makeup, don't put on makeup. Okay, however you talk, however you write, you don't have to be an excellent writer, you don't have to be an excellent speaker. Just from wherever you are, you build an audience first. And then you figure out from among the people who are who like you, who, who do you like? That's really, that's how you do it. Okay. Among the people who naturally enjoy your authenticity, who do you authentically enjoy? Okay, so that's the rhythm of testing and the authenticity of caring. The authenticity of caring for the people you actually care about. Right. And in the audience building stage, part of your caring is really getting to know the people that you want to serve. Like I said, if 10 people are attracted to you, you look at their profiles and you really like three of them. Like, oh, yeah, I really, I would enjoy hanging out with these three. Well, then reach out to those three and say thank you for commenting on my posts or for liking my posts. And I just, I'd love to, I'm trying to get to know my audience a bit better and I'd love to get to know a bit more about you. What do you do for a living or whatever questions you can ask them. But actually, let's go on to the second stage. So the audience, the audience building stage is really about testing to figure out who's naturally attracted to you, who you're naturally attracted to. Okay. So you get to figuring that out through content, consistent content. Again, you don't figure this stuff out and then start putting stuff out there. No, you put tons of stuff out there and then see who's attracted. And then see who you're attracted to. Okay, so that's the first stage, audience building. So once you have some consistent commenters of your posts. Okay, consistent likers, sharers, commenters of your posts. By the way, the audience building part, my favorite way of doing that is through Facebook ads. I think Facebook ads is the most easy and precise way of testing different types of people and then figuring out who it is you like. Because you can look at their Facebook profiles. You can look at the Facebook profiles of your likers, your commenters, your sharers. Okay. Can't do that with Google Ads. Unfortunately, with Twitter ads, that's going to be my next thing to try out, maybe Twitter ads. But the thing I like about Facebook ads is you can advertise, you know, 300 to 500, you know, 300 to 500 word written content, which is a really nice experiment to say, do you care about this topic and do you care about my energy signature enough? Problem with Twitter and LinkedIn ads and things. And Google Ads is like, they're just really short. And so it's not, you know, you kind of attract a lot of the wrong audience. So that's why I love Facebook ads. I think there's a really nice balance between being able to write a lot and advertise. That and then picking. Choosing exactly who you're advertising to and then studying them. It's a really nice kind of everybody wins. Okay, so that's the first stage, by the way, as I'm going through this, feel free to post your questions and comments and anything you want to ask me. Okay. About any of these stages. And I'm going to have a blog post about this. After I record this, I'll confirm the blog post and put it up here as a comment. Just so you know, this is how I always do my live videos nowadays. I used to have a writer's block. I used to talk it out through my videos first and then I'll write it out later. But because of consistent writing, I overcame my writer's block. 40 years of writer's block. I overcame it by consistent writing. So now I don't have writer's block anymore. I'm able to write my blog post, first, draft it anyway, and then I talk to you based on the ideas in the blog post. And then I kind of, after the live video, I maybe do a little bit of editing, and then I post it and then I add a comment to the Facebook video and the YouTube video with the link to the full. The full text. So, okay, first stage, audience testing. Audience building. People who like you for who you are and that you also like. Got it. Build, build. You know, I don't know what the number is going to be for you, but some people might say 100 fans, you know, Facebook fans. Or just at least when you have, like five or 10 people that you notice regularly liking and commenting on your post that you like also, then it's time to move to the. Maybe not five to ten. Let's just say three to five. Okay? Three to five people who regularly comment and like your posts that you study their profiles and you like them, too. Okay. You would like to serve them in your business, too. They're potential and potentially ideal clients for you. Okay, second stage is offers, offer building. First stage, audience building. Second stage, offer building. Now, this is going to be a surprise to a lot of you because a lot of you kind of were trained in business to first figure out by journaling in your own closet who you want to serve and what you want to offer them, and then get out there to try to sell stuff. And that's why it doesn't work a lot of time, because you're completely not in the right ballpark with the people you want. If you're not in touch with the market, if you're not in Touch with the audience through Facebook ads or whatever way you're getting out there with your content. Your journaling in your own closet about who you want to serve is not accurate. You have to be out there with your content and then see who comes to you. Okay, number two, offers. People, again, journal about their own offers in their own closet and then they try to shove it down people's throats with aggressive marketing. That's how we all learn. Figure out what you want to offer and then get out there. Use sales funnels, right, to try to trick people, manipulate people into buying it. Because it's your scarcity. You know, all these psychological tricks. Excuse me. Still getting over cold. Third week, hopefully fourth week, next week, hopefully better. But I'm at a weird stage of the cold where, like, I have this annoying cough. Anyway, I'm here anyway, so offer building now. Why at the second stage? Because now you have people who like you and that you like that you can then ask about offers. So now you can contact those three to five people who are your consistent engagers and find out what it is they have bought in the realm of what you might want to offer. You know, I don't know if you're going to offer coaching or consulting or mentoring or healing or teaching or training or programs or books or T shirts or, you know, whatever software. I don't know what you're offering, but you have some sense that it's going to be in the realm of what you're trying to help people with. What? What are you trying to help people with? Okay, now talk to them about what they have bought in that realm. What have they bought already? What have they already spent their money on to try to get help in these areas? Because what they have spent money on is the market's vote for what should be more in the market. A common mistake people say is, well, I don't know if I want to offer this because so many people are already offering it. That's a good thing. If so many people who. If so many other people are offering, that's the same kind of thing. That two things happen. One is if they're actually making money with it, that means there's a market for it. Yay. That means you can also go in and make money too. Number two, because the market is always unlimited. Let me say this again for solopreneurs, for small business owners. I'm not talking about big corporate, you know, market share stuff. I'm talking for those of us who are solo providers, okay? For small businesses, you can pretty Much. And okay, I should secondarily say this. If. Yeah, even locally, I'm even gonna, you know, go that far. No matter if it's local or virtual. Okay, if you're a small business owner, your market is unlimited. No one else is taking away your market. No one. It's only you that's limiting yourself. Okay, if more people are buying this or that or this or that that you want to offer, that means there's proof there's voting in the market for these services and products. And secondarily, there is educating in the market about those services and products. And more and more people are more and more aware of, oh, look, people are buying this. Maybe I should buy it too. If you want to get into a market where, like, you're the only person you know who's offering this, how do you not. How do you know that 10,000 other people haven't tried offering it and it didn't work for them? So now they're. Now they want to get a job. Oftentimes that's true. That's why you're the only one trying it out. So it's dangerous to offer. Be the only one in the market. Now you can offer something a lot of people are offering, but do it in your own flavor, do it in your own unique way, and that's a wonderful thing. So, for example, business training, marketing training, you can toss a rock and hit another business coach, right? Like, there's so, like, there's like 10,000 business coaches for every business owner out there, it seems like to me anyway, but. So I'm in a very, very competitive market, but I bring my own personality to it. I own my own authenticity to it, and that's why it works so well for me. Right? And you could do the same thing as long as you find your authenticity of caring. So in the offer stage, you're basically having conversations. What are they spending money on? What have they thought about spending money on? What are they still looking for that they can't find? They want to spend money on it, but they haven't been able to find it. They haven't been able to find your way of doing it. And so you could provide your way of doing something that they. If they've thought about spending money on, does that make sense? Okay, so that's the offer stage, the quantity of quality, meaning you got to figure out first what they want to spend money on. And then you have a rhythm of testing of, hey, well, now put it. Put your outline together for, hey, I want to sell this to you all will. You buy it. And if they buy it, wonderful. Then you can scale. You can have. Sorry, not scale. If they're buying something that you're offering. Okay, important. If they're buying something you are offering, then I recommend that you make additional offers that are related to that thing. Okay. Surrounding that topic. You make additional offers around that. Okay. And if anyone has any sort of comments on what ideas are coming to them for this, go ahead and comment below and we can do a little bit of brainstorming. So the rhythm of testing of offers. I recommend that you test one offer a month if you can. Now, if you're really busy, then test one offer a quarter every three months so that by the end of each year, you have tested four to 12 offers. I test an op. Well, I used to be testing an offer a month. Now I'm repeating some of my old offers and I'm testing new ones also. Right. And those of you know, I mean, this year thus far, I have repeated two of my offers from last year that worked really well. Joyful Productivity and Facebook ads. Those two classes worked really well. So I'm offering it again, and now I'm testing something new. I've never taught authentic content writing. I've never taught writing before. So that's gonna. That's a new offer test. And thus far it seems to be working. So then I'm like, ooh, what else could I offer in the realm of writing? Okay, so excuse me. So, all right. The authenticity of caring for the offers part is like you are doing this not just for the money. And of course, that's almost goes without saying. You're my audience, so you're naturally going to be people who care about more than just money. You care about actually helping people. So almost comes without saying that your offers are really because you authentically care about helping others, and you're putting things together because you really believe in it, and yet you really would enjoy it. You would enjoy delivering. Okay, so that's the second stage. It's offers. The third stage is expansion. And most of you probably aren't there yet. Maybe a few of you are. So I'll be really brief on this. Expansion is now taking the offers that are working and expanding it with additional advertising and additional partnerships and other ways like search engine optimization and what else? Additional, basically, advertising, partnerships, and SEO are the three main ways, in my opinion of marketing something. But partnerships can include a lot of different creative ways of doing it. Influencer marketing, partnering with others to sponsor certain blogs or podcasts or video Channels, et cetera. Okay. So in the expansion stage, the quantity of quality means finding outreach methods, expansion methods that you really enjoy. The quality of. Of the expansion method is really aligned with you, and then doing more of it. Quantity, meaning putting more of your effort and energy and money into the expansion methods that really match your strength. So you've got to test. Excuse me, you've got to test enough expansion methods so that you can see what you're really strong at. Okay. And the authenticity of caring. And the expansion means that you are. Even the way you expand is in a caring way. And not just profit driven, money driven. But it's kind of like the way I expand is I expand greatly through content. Even a lot of my advertising dollars is really just to bless people with content. A lot of my Facebook ad dollars, not even to sell anything. It's just to. You see my Facebook videos, you see my text posts. You don't even know that I paid money for that. Sometimes you don't notice that the sponsored word. But a lot of my ads are just trying to bless people with content. So that's part of my expansion that really is authentic, authentically caring in my view. So I hope that this is helpful. I look forward to any questions you have. And the blog post is coming that I encourage you to read so that you can kind of get more nuances to all these things. And then the most important question is, how will you apply this idea? How will you apply these stages and this framework? Where are you and what are you going to do next as a result? To wisely use your time, your limited time in business? How will you wisely use your time? Follow this framework. That's what I do with my side businesses. That's what I recommend to all my clients, and that's what I'm recommending to all of you. So let me go and take a look at some of the comments. I'll call for some of the comments and then we can end the video or feel free to end it now if you just want to read the comments on your own. Okay. Daniel says, great. I am dipping my teas into building a virtual office. Great. I love it. Laura, thanks for your comment there. Oh, dipping my toes. That makes more sense. I thought dipping my teas was some phrase I wasn't aware of, but maybe you could start something. Yeah, yeah. Shweta says, yeah. Talking about in your closet. Yeah. A lot of us are kind of building, building the brilliant, most brilliant, amazing thing in our closet, and then we're so sold on it ourselves. That we think everyone else should be sold on it, then that's where the problem arises. That's where a lot of the heartbreak happens, because we have convinced ourselves of something without partnership with the market. And that's very dangerous. It's kind of like if you're in a relationship and you want it your way, and you convince yourself that this is right, this is true, and then if your partner isn't into it, you know, he or she would say, wait, how come you didn't discuss this with me? And we may have come to an even better solution, but you figured everything out in your own. By yourself, and then you try to push it on me. Right. That's. That's exactly what it is. I should make a whole other video on. That's a really good analogy, actually. Friendships, partnerships, family, whatever. It's the same thing with the market. You're doing it. You're figuring out yourself and then trying to figure out what. No, figure out with them. Figure out with them what you should provide. Then. Then, of course, I'll be happy to buy it. Right. So, okay. Laura says, is it a good idea to ask people who are likers on your post to like your page? Facebook suggests that I usually tell people no, because it can come across as desperate or needy. But I'm starting to possibly revise that advice. I think if you. If you find somebody who really. I'm going to say, generally, no, don't worry about. I mean, you could. I don't think it's that harmful. Especially that someone that you know is, like, continually liking your posts and liking your. I mean, but if they're continually liking your posts, what that means is they're following your page even without being a fan. Which is totally fine, because with Facebook ads, you can easily reach people who like your posts or comment on it or share it, even if they're not a fan. You could reach them easily again through Facebook ads. It's called Warm Engagers or Facebook Engagers. So it's. Yeah, so I don't care. I've never invited any of you to like my. A lot of you haven't liked my page. In fact, you haven't liked George Cal, Authentic Business Coach. But you keep coming back to my post, and that's all that matters, right? So I hope that helps. Yeah. Lisa Fontanella says, yes, my market is unlimited. It's true. You know, your market. If the. If the offering is right for your market. Now you offer jewelry as part of what you do. Do people ever run. Run out saying no? I'm done buying jewelry. No, right. People who are people who buy jewelry are more likely to buy more jewelry. Right. People who buy books are more likely to buy more books. People who buy coaching are more likely to buy even more coaching. Yes, they might have one coach at a time, but they're more likely to buy coaching than somebody who has never bought coaching. So the market is unlimited. It truly is. Now with jewelry, they can buy multiple pieces at once. With coaching, they usually buy one coach at a time. But maybe it's a one year cycle. They're trying someone else for now and one year later they'll try you. So don't worry about that. Yeah, so yeah, Daniel says, yeah, I like the point about offering authentic content first because then the market is really coming to you in an authentic way. So absolutely. Thank you, Peter, for your kind comment. Thanks for following the content all these years. Appreciate that. So, yeah, Shweta, let's talk about what additional offerings and you know, might mean. So Shweta, you offer ayurvedic perspective as well as doula type of services. And so if somebody buys your, let's say you're offering a program on ayurvedic ways of overcoming colds. Okay, you offer that program, people buy into it, you're like, oh, well, they're into that. Well, let me do ayurvedic methods of overcoming some other illness that's related to colds. I don't know what that is. Like, seasonal allergies, I don't know. You know what I mean? So, or yeah, I'm not, you know, probably not. I'm not good at brainstorming right now. But it's, it's, it's surrounding the things that are surrounding the thing that worked. You gotta be creative. Just be creative around that. Maybe brainstorm with a friend and brainstorm with a client on what else you might offer. So great. And thanks those of you who are joining me here. Sharon and Laura, Gudrun, Daniel, Shweta, Peter, Lisa, Esther, Antonio, Captain, let's see here. Catherine, Helen, Lisa. Thanks all for joining me. I hope this was helpful and go forward and journal about these things. But you should just be journaling about your strategy going forward. But immediately go out into the market, share your content, build the right kind of audience and then work with them to build the right kind of offers. All right? Be well.