Digital Marketing Strategy Webinar Replay

Welcome to the B2B marketing strategy. Today we're going to learn about how you can grow your marketing using the right strategy, grow your business using the right strategy. So first of all, my name is Joe Apfelbaum. I'll be presenting today. I am the CEO of Ajax Union, a marketing and business strategist and coach. And I've been at this company. I started this company 10 years ago. But I've been doing marketing for over a decade before I started this company. So I could say I have 2 decades of marketing experience under my belt. Who is this for? Who is this class for? So people looking for leads, anyone that's interested in B2B marketing, business owners, entrepreneurs, sales professionals, marketing directors, anybody that wants to grow and anyone that loves to learn. So today we're going to cover a little bit about Ajax Union. We're going to talk about how to create the right marketing strategy for your business, and we're going to talk about our specific marketing strategy process. So welcome. So first of all, Ajax Union is a B2B digital marketing agency based in Brooklyn. We offer companies digital marketing strategy, marketing support, and lead generation. When he started the company, I started it as a side hustle. And, you know, I had a full-time job at a company called thewatchery.com and the CEO was my mentor. And I remember walking into his office all the time, asking him for advice on my various different businesses I was doing on the side. And I started Ajax Union with a partner and I told him, you know, it came 2009 and I told him, hey, listen, you know, my business is really growing and my partner wants me to work full-time at Ajax Union. And he said, you know what, why don't you go be your own CEO? And I will become your biggest client. And I got very emotional and I was like, oh, well, I have no choice. I have to do this now. And quickly the company went from having just me as an employee with my partner to having 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 75 people in 2014. In 2012, we hit number 178 on the Inc. 5000. And in 2017, we rebranded ourselves to focus solely on B2B marketing. So we worked with over 1,100 companies. And we came up with this process called the Marketing Strategy Bootcamp, where we teach people how to create a written digital marketing strategy. And it takes 3 steps. So goals, target, and solution. And I'm going to walk you through these 3 steps today in a very easy way. But first of all, does this sound like you? I need more leads for my business to grow. Just in the chat box, if you're logging in just now, we just had a slew of people log in. So if you're logging in right now, just in the chat box, write, Yes or no, if this sounds like you. If this sounds like you, just give me a yes in the chat box. I need more leads for my business to grow. Okay, great. I need marketing to bring in new clients. Yes or no, does this sound like you? I need a better strategy to grow my business. You know, a lot of times people are growing their business, but if you grow your business with the wrong strategy, you're going to get the wrong type of leads. And the wrong type of leads for us was devastating because we closed clients, but they didn't last with us because they were the wrong type of clients. So this stuff really works. SEO, email research, infographics, social networks, webinars like this one, podcasting, all this stuff works, but these are tactics. You can only do this after you have a really great foundation for your business. And I always say energy without strategy is a waste of time. So are you sure you want traffic if you don't have the right strategy set up? So we can help you create the right strategy. And today I'm going to show you the 3-step process. So our company, Ajax Union, specializes in helping people like you create a digital marketing strategy that is written. So how do you create a digital marketing strategy? Because energy without strategy is a waste of time. So how do you do that? I'm going to show you this 3-step process of goals, target, and solution. Goals, which includes revenue, accounts, and budget. Target, which includes company, buyer, and value. and solution, which includes authority, positioning, and promise. And after going through this and doing this with over 10,000 business owners and looking at their strategy and realizing that they have a lack of strategy and that's why they're not growing, or that's why they're attracting the wrong leads, I realized that there's a process to doing this. So in the first stage, which is goals, target, and solution, we're going to, we're going to cover goals first right now, which is revenue, accounts, and budget. So let's talk about revenue first. So the question I have for you is, why is revenue goals important for your business? I ask people, how much money do you want to make this year? Most people say as much as possible. How much money do you want to make in your business? Go ahead in the comments and tell me if you know your revenue goal. Now, oftentimes when I bring in sales teams, marketing teams, and executive teams in a room and I say, what's your revenue goal for the year? I get different answers. I get some people talking about revenue, some people talking about profit. Some people talking about gross profit. Some people talk about gross margins or cost of goods sold or net profit. And so if you're talking different, different numbers, so garbage in, garbage out is famous, a mathematical saying that if you put in the wrong numbers to begin with, even if you have the best math in the world, you're going to get bad results. You're not going to get the right results. So if you want to determine your ROI, you've got to set the foundation by understanding how much revenue you want to produce and why you want to produce that revenue. How much profit, net profit, gross profit? What is your cost of goods cost for the various different offerings that you have in your business? What does your net profit need to be in order for it to make sense for you to grow your business to that level? Like, we had a choice. Should we be a $3 million company with $1 million in net profit, or should we be a $10 million company with a quarter of a million dollars in net profit? Those are the choices. Sometimes you have those to make those choices because At a certain level, your fixed expenses change and you can't maintain an infrastructure that size. And then it's hard to keep growing without keeping to invest, especially in a cash-suck business. So you have to determine your capacity and what your goals are. You focus on top line or bottom line and figuring out your target. So you're not going to get an ROI if you can't define your ROI. If you don't know what your ROI is and you begin with your revenue first, second, you get into your accounts. What type of accounts do you want? What is your average revenue per account, average revenue per user? A lot of people don't even know what ARPU is. They haven't measured this. And I'm talking about companies that are $5, $10, $15, $20 million, and they haven't taken the time to do this because they're so busy just trying to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And I asked them, how many accounts you need? And they say, 3,000 accounts. And I say, don't you know that 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your clients? They're like, how do you know? I said, let's review your books. And we actually look at their books and we realize that when I say, are all accounts created equal? They say no. All accounts are not created equal because the top 5% of accounts are accounting for 60% of the revenue that's coming into the company. So instead of trying to get another 3,000 accounts, why don't you get 200 of the right accounts? And so some companies are focused on monthly recurring revenue, one-time type of business, lead-in product, backend. You have to account for your churn. So you must understand your accounts if you want an ROI. And then the third thing is marketing budget. When I say, what is your marketing budget? What do you say? What is your marketing budget? People are like, how am I supposed to know what my marketing budget is? And I say, if you can't determine your marketing budget, why are you marketing? And they're like, what do you mean? I don't have a budget. I have an unlimited budget. Just send me results and I'll be able to spend. Does that resonate with you? Would you say something like this? Most business owners say this. They're like, I'm not going to set a budget. I'm just going to start spending money and see what happens. I'm going to throw things at the wall. And if you don't— And some people say, if you don't test, you're not going to learn. And if you don't learn, you're not going to earn. Marketing is about testing. And then people say, well, how much money can you burn so that you can learn and earn? And I say, wait, you don't need to burn any money. You can use a scientific method to figure out what your marketing budget needs to be. And this way you're not burning any money. So we have a calculator. If you go to ajaxunion.com/calc, you can actually fill out a calculator that will measure your cost per acquisition, your lifetime value. And you're going to be able to figure out how much money you need to spend on marketing in order to grow your business. How much, how can I create a marketing budget? How much should I be paying per lead? How much should you be paying per qualified lead, per sales qualified lead, per proposal? You can figure all this out using our calculator. You go to ajaxpain.com/calc. So your lifetime value of your customer, how much your customer is worth over the course of the lifetime value of that customer, plus your CPA, your cost per acquisition, is your real ROI. Because people don't think that they're getting an ROI based on the first hit. You never base ROI based off the first hit because you're leaving a lot of money on the table because there's a backend you need to focus on. So how fast can you afford to grow your business? That's what your marketing budget needs to determine because you may not be able to grow as fast. You're like, oh, unlimited. No. If you sent me a billion clients right now, I'd go out of business trying to service them. I'd lose them all and they'd all want refunds. They'd all do chargebacks. It's not going to work. Does this make sense? Yes or no? You got to get your foundation in order. If it makes sense, say yes in the chat box. This is very important. A lot of the stuff you might say, oh, I already knew this stuff. You knew this stuff, but do you have this stuff written down? Did you share this stuff with your sales and marketing team? Did you share this with your customers, with your collaborators, with the people that matter to help you grow your business? Number 2, target. Target is company, buyer, and value. So let's review company, buyer, and value. What does this mean? There's a concept called firmographics. We only want amazing firms, amazing clients. So you take into account the geographic location of that company. If you had a choice of companies or where you wanted to work, what would that choice be for you? For me, it's in the tri-state area. For our backend product, it's in the tri-state area. Demographic— what revenue size company do you want to work with? We want to work with companies that are $10 to $100 million in revenue. And psychographic— ideally, we'd like companies that are focused on valuable service, not so much on price. Not because we're not Affordable. We have, we do have affordable marketing solutions, but we want people that will value our high quality that we produce and the fact that we specialize in B2B versus everyone else that's kind of just doing everything. So that's the thought process. You want to figure out the opinion. You want to figure out the attitudes, the activities, the behaviors and values and interests of your ideal company. Okay. And once you figure out the ideal companies and you make, you can make a list of companies and you know who you're targeting, you want to figure out who the buyers are within the company. So you have to create something called an empathy map. And this is a sample of what it looks like. And this is what we do with our clients. We figure out, okay, who is the ideal client? What are they thinking and feeling? What are they hearing and seeing? Now I have a question for you guys. Are human beings making decisions based on logic or based on emotion? Go ahead in the chat box. Tell me, are they— Logic. Making— are they making decisions based on logic or based on emotions? Now, a lot of people would think logic, and that's the logical answer, but the reality is nobody makes decisions based on logic. They back up their decisions based on logic, but they make decisions based on emotions. So you got to figure out what people care about, what are the pains and gains, and this is what we actually do with our clients. And once we do this, it's kind of like revolutionary because we're able to produce an exact picture of what the buyer looks like. And there are 4 different buyers. There's a decision maker, influencer, buyer, user. Within a company, you got to figure out who you're targeting and what portion— part of the funnel they're going to be in, and what are they going to be thinking. Because you can't have a unique selling proposition, a UVP, a value proposition, which is a 3rd step to your marketing strategy, which is value. You can't identify what pain you solve and what the best solution is and who— why you're the best solution provider if you're just trying to target everybody and anybody. Your unique value proposition has to be unique. Your unique selling proposition, how you're different from your competitor, needs to be unique. You need to figure this out. And this is what a sample value proposition looks like: the pain you solve, what the best solution is in the market, and then why you are the best solution. And that is the second— that's what you need. You need to figure out your target. And the third step is goals— is solution, having the right messaging. So you got to create authority messaging, positioning messaging, And then the brand promise. So let's talk about this for a second. What is authority messaging? What is authority messaging? Authority messaging is the follows: why should I trust your business? So when I started off this class, I said that we're an Inc. 500 company, we're number 178, one of the fastest growing companies in America. I mentioned that I've been a certified Google trainer for many years and I've trained over 10,000 business owners on Google's products and services. So you have to have reasons. How many clients have you serviced? I mentioned we serviced 1,100 clients. How many years experience do you have? How many awards did you win? What PR did your company get? We were featured on the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Business Fox Business Network. What makes you the expert? What makes you the authority? Why should somebody trust you? And and like what word? What word do you own? Like Google. What is Google known for? Do you know what Google's known for? In the chat box, go ahead and tell me. What is Google known for? That's right. That's right. Everyone's writing search, search, search, search, search. When you're saying I want to search for something, you're not going to say I'm going to search for it. I'm going to say I'm going to Google it. I'm going to Google it. Exactly, Sarah. Thank you. We're going to Google it. What is Volvo known for? Go ahead and tell me what Volvo— somebody who said cars. No, everybody's known for cars. Volvo is known for something else. What is trucks? No. Yes, they do make trucks. But what is Volvo known for? When you're thinking about when you're a mother and you're expecting babies, what type of car do you want to get? You want to get a Volvo. Why? Because Volvo is known for safety. That's right. That's right, David. Safety. That's right, Sarah. Safety. That's right, Wes. Safety. So can people verb you? What do you do when you need to send something next day? No, you don't go to the post office because it might not get there ever. UPS? No, no, actually FedEx. You FedEx it. Yes, UPS also offers that, but people know it as— I'm going to FedEx that. I'm going to go to UPS and I'm going to FedEx it. That's really funny when people say, I'm going to go to the post— could you go to the post office and FedEx this? Anyway, FedEx actually comes to you. So Next day. That's what their thing is. Their value proposition is that they're, they're the next day provider. Do you hail a cab or do you Uber? These are words that these companies stand for. These are words that these companies stand for, and you have to figure out what you stand for as a company. So that's what your authority is. And then your positioning is— there's a positioning statement is an expression of how a given product or service or brand fills a particular consumer need. This statement, this positioning statement, is the process of identifying the appropriate market niche for a product. And getting it established in that state. So when you're thinking of a positioning statement, you're specifically thinking about answering questions like, what problems do you solve? What problems do you not solve? What do you perform better than your competitors? What do your competitors offer that we don't? Like really figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and of yourself and asking your customers, your potential customers, your marketing team, and then questions that you can answer yourself to figure out your internal positioning statement. And this positioning statement looks something like this. My brand provides X, Y, and Z in this industry better than anybody else. And we do this by 1, 2, 3. And this is the way that you do this. Here's an example that I found online. Bryce Company provides men ages 24 to 35 with lower prices on sporting goods than any other sporting goods store. We do this by eliminating overhead, forming strategic partnerships with major brands, and matching any of the other prices on the web. So you think about how you get people to believe you. And this is not a public positioning statement. This is an internal statement. that will drive your external messaging. And off the positioning statement, you create the brand promise, which is what is your guarantee? Ultimately, what is your guarantee or your tagline? We keep your bottom line top of mind. That's our tagline. So why should I trust you? You know, trust is a very, very important thing that you have to build with people in order for them to want to do business with you. And oftentimes it's your messaging that you build trust with people based on your messaging. Think about this. When you're thinking of GEICO, what's the tune That you're thinking in your head. You're thinking 15 minutes or less can save you 15% or more on car insurance. That is their external tagline or their brand promise. BMW promises the ultimate driving machine. Now, is BMW that different than a Toyota? Yes, it's that different than a Toyota because that's their promise. That's their brand. It's a status symbol. There's actually a status symbol to driving a BMW. So what do you stand for? When someone's thinking of your business, what do you stand for? You got to get all this stuff written down. And so you could have a written digital marketing strategy. And when you put this all together, you go from having no direction to having an amazing strategy. Now we have a special offer and we are offering just in March, we're offering something called the B2B Marketing Strategy Bootcamp where I'll spend 3 hours with you and I'll break down all these elements so you don't have to wonder what success looks like. So I broke it down into 3 1-hour modules, which is the first one is your goals and target, which is your revenue goals, your client goals, your lead goals, really understanding it. And the 4 buyer personas, the 5 C's. And then the second module, I talk about the UVP, the SWOT, the pains and gains, the value and the currency. So you position yourself to be able to do what you need to do. And then targeting. Then the third one is targeting your target's persona, their frustrations, identifying your strengths, coming up with your authority statement, your brand promise, and your million-dollar message. And you are able now to produce both an internal message and an external message. And we do all this with handouts and with a finished marketing strategy. So if you were able to spend 3 hours with me and we would be able to write down a digital marketing strategy together, what would that be worth for your business? Typically, when we do this for companies virtually, we charge $5,985. But today, for part 1, goals and target, part 2, value proposition. And part 3, the perfect messaging. I want to offer you something very, very special. If you're interested in joining us, you can have this whole thing for $497. Is this something that you'd be interested in? Just write yes in the box. And we have 3 prerecorded episodes of me sitting there breaking it down for you. And it all comes together with the 3 handouts and a finished document, a finished document where that you could fill in a written document, a strategy, a digital marketing strategy. And a Facebook group that you could join where you can ask us any questions. So if you're interested in joining us for this, I'm happy to share all the recordings with you. Just go to www.ajaxunion.com/bootcamp and you can sign up to this. There is a 30-day money-back guarantee on this. So if you're not happy or it's too complicated for you or whatever, I'm willing to work with you to make sure to get this done. And again, there's 3 hours of recorded time that I spent with dozens and dozens and dozens of business owners and entrepreneurs and marketing directors to be able to teach them this stuff. So in the short webinar, you're not gonna be able to pick everything up right away, but if you take the bootcamp, you'll be able to spend the amount of time that you need in order to properly learn this stuff and do what you need to do to have a written marketing strategy for your business. You can understand your goals, you can understand the most important part of your entire marketing thing, which is your your target persona, figuring out how to come up with your target persona and figuring out your value proposition for your business. And then the third step is your messaging, both internal messaging and external messaging together with your authority. So if you're interested in learning how to do this, the step-by-step process together with the frameworks and the final product, which is a one-page digital marketing strategy written down, please go to ajaxteen.com/bootcamp and sign up now. And like I said, there's no risk on your part. I'm going to take the whole risk. So go ahead and sign up and I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have if you have more questions. So once again, I appreciate you guys coming to this. Thank you very much. And thank you, Basil, for squeaking the squeaker. She's really excited about being part of this as well. We have our company culture dog that likes making noise when I make webinars. And we find that adorable. So if you got value out of this, let us know what you got out of this webinar. I want to make sure that you got some value, that you spent some time with us today in the chat box. Let me know what you got out of this or what questions you might have for us. Once again, I'm going to hang out here for another couple minutes. So go ahead and ask me any questions. Thank you very much for watching this. I really appreciate you being part of this presentation. Once again, my name is Joe Apfelbaum. Our company is Ajax Heating, and this is Basil, our cute little dog. Thank you for watching.