Marketing Strategy Bootcamp 2018

Hello, my name is Joe Apfelbaum and I am the CEO of Ajax Union. And today I want to talk to you about the Marketing Strategy Bootcamp. I want to tell you something very interesting. You know, when, when we started our company 10 years ago, we were servicing hundreds of clients at the same time. And one of the biggest failures that companies had, especially startups, one of the biggest failures is that they didn't have a strategy. They just came to us to do tactics, and we were really good at getting them to the top of Google. But getting you to the top of Google, if you don't have a great foundation, it's not going to help you be able to grow your business. You might end up growing your top line, but you're not going to be able to grow your bottom line. Or you might end up growing your bottom line, but then you're stuck because you can't figure out how to be able to scale. So we came up with this incredible foundation for every single business that you have to have this foundation in order for you to be able to scale. In order to be able to have a successful business and actually get an ROI from your marketing. So this is what a digital marketing strategy looks like. So the first step is you got to have your goals done. Once you have your goals clear, you got to get your target clear, and then you got to understand your solution. So let me take you through this really quickly. Step number 1, when it comes to goals, you have to understand the difference between revenue and profit. You really have to understand What are your revenue goals? What are your profit goals? What are your net profit goals? What are your gross profit goals? Where do you want to be in a year from now, in 3 years from now, in 10 years from now? Have a vision for your business from a revenue standpoint and set very specific goals so that you're not stagnant and you're actually growing. When I ask somebody, what's your goal for the year? What do you want to accomplish? What was your goal yet last year? What are you forecasting per month, per week? They're completely lost. Like, people don't forecast this out. They don't have the numbers. And some people that do have the numbers, they're not 100% clear if it's revenue, if it's profit, if it's net profit, and all that stuff. So I want to create massive clarity for you in terms of your revenue goals. Then in terms of accounts, I take a look at your current accounts and identify which one of them are one-time, which one of them are recurring. Break down your accounts in different segments. Which one of them are sucking the life out of you, and which one of them do you love serving? Try to figure out who are the most ideal accounts for you so that we understand what your actual lifetime value is. We got to look at your churn. You got to understand what churn even means. When somebody's evaluating the worth of a company, they're looking at churn, and I want to explain to you what that means and how to put that into your goals so that you're later going to target the right companies. And then the third step is having a marketing budget. When I ask most business owners, what is your marketing budget? They're like, I have an unlimited budget. If you can get me results, I'm I have unlimited amounts of money. But the reality is you're limited. There's always a limit to how much you can grow based on your inventory, based on your business, based on the market. There are limits to growth in a profitable way. So you really want to understand is what is your cost per acquisition? What does your cost per acquisition need to be? And you back that out from your lifetime value and you back that out from your gross margins. So you really have to understand your goals and most people don't do that. Get this. This is not just a financial thing. This is a marketing thing. And if you don't understand business, I'm going to teach you how to properly set your marketing goals. Once you got your marketing goals ready, you need to figure out who you're targeting. So it starts with picking the right types of companies. Now, how do you pick the right types of company? When I ask most business owners, what are you targeting? They're going to be like, anybody that wants to spend money with me. But if you're doing that, then you'll be like everybody else and you got to be the lowest cost provider. If you know exactly who you're going after and you're walking into a networking event, you know who you can ask for and the likelihood of you getting a really good lead as a result of knowing who you're targeting is much, much higher. So the companies, how much revenue are they doing? Where are they located? What industries are they in? So there's a bunch of different factors that we could look at to pick the right type of companies. After that, we look at the buyer. Who is the buyer within the company? Did you know within a B2B play, there are 4 different types of personas. There is the buyer, the user, the influencer, the decision maker. You got to get to know who the most ideal one is within the types of companies that you're going after. And you need to create an avatar that lists out what they see, what they hear, what they feel, what they say, like really break down who this person is. So instead of being anonymous, you're super intimate. And with the companies, instead of just targeting everyone, you're only targeting ideal companies. And after you do that, you want to understand how you can add value to these people's lives. A lot of people are selling features, features, features, but features speak to logic and we're emotional human beings. If you're an emotional human being, you got to talk with emotion. That means you got to talk about benefits. And in order to do that, you need to figure out their pains, their gains, their dreams, their fears, and we have a specific formula framework for getting that done so that you can create your unique solution, which is the third step. Your unique solution is to have authority. You need to have a unique selling proposition, which means from going to bland to being unique. You need to have the right positioning statement from being the lowest cost provider to actually having leverage. And you need to have a brand promise. So instead of begging and trying to get people, trust me, trust me, trust me, instead you have an amazing guarantee. And if you put this together, if you put goals, If you put target and if you put solution together and you create this incredible marketing strategy for your business, you're going to have a much more solid foundation and you actually get an ROI. You see, I'm sitting here in my basement in Brooklyn and I'm about to go on a major run and I'm so excited about talking about this with you because I know that if you take this class, if you learn the step-by-step process that you need to take in order for you to build up your marketing strategy, you're going to have more confidence in your business. And you're also going to be able to put on your running clothes and then go for an amazing run and have a blast because at least you have that clarity. Before, you didn't have any direction. Now you have complete and total clarity. And with great clarity comes great confidence. And with great confidence comes great responsibility. So hopefully you enjoyed this video. I look forward to speaking to you soon, and I hope you take this class because for me, when I did this for my own business, it really was a game changer, and it allowed me to not only increase my top line but also my bottom line. And I love doing these boot camps and these workshops for business owners like you so that we can help you grow your business. If you want to email me, you can email amazing@ajaxunion.com, and we can answer any questions that you have about this. Thank you very much. Once again, it's amazing@ajaxunion.com. See you soon. Bye.