#037 - A 5-Step Marketing Plan

As I mentioned in Yesterday's episode about 90 day goal planning, I wanted to follow that up and share with you a five step marketing plan that has really helped me in this last year. So this is not something that's new for marketing. Many, many people talk about this, um, this particular system and the names came from a podcast, promote yourself to CEO. But it really is similar. Like you'll hear so many people talk about this and they just use different words or how, you know, they create their own signature system or whatever. But it's basically the process that you're going to go in when you're marketing your book. And I know a lot of you dread marketing, but sometimes I think it's just because you're just have the spray and pray strategy, right? You're just doing all the things and all of them are having a little effect, but you're really not doing the things that will move the needle forward. So what is this five step system? You know, I could talk about this for a long time, but I'm going to try to keep it short and sweet. So, so the first step is attract. So this is where you're finding new readers. The attract stage is what I've talked about. Often it's where you're either using SEO, search engine optimization, other people's audiences, like podcast interviews, summits, things like that, or paid ads like Amazon ads. So this is where you're attracting a new audience. Then the second step is engage. So this is where you're engaging people who are have found you and this is typically done through a lead magnet. So once they find you, then they can connect with you further. Now if you have a different kind of business, like a service based business, it might be a free call where they get on a call with you and decide if they want to hire you or if they want to do one on one coaching with you or something like that. But typically the engage stage will be for 99% of you, it will be presenting them a free training, a free PDF, some sort of freebie that encourages them to get on your email list. Number three is nurture. So number one was attract. And I think that's where a lot of people skip the step of attract. It's not social media, it is SEO. And SEO I guess could be Pinterest and YouTube, but it's not your typical SEO mindset. So attract is SEO, it is other people's audiences or paid ads. So that's step number one. Step number two is engage, where you're inviting them to join your email list by giving them a free lead magnet. Number three is nurture. So nurture is what I think most people think about with marketing. Nurture is social media, it's hosting a podcast, it's content marketing, blogging, all the things. And so that's where. That's where I think a lot of people get stuck is you're doing all of the things for nurture, but you're not seeing the results. And it's because you're not actually growing your audience. So if that's you and that's where you've been in, then I encourage you, yes, for focus on at least one nurture option. So for me, it tends to be my podcast. For you, it might be blogging, it might be something else, releasing a new YouTube video each week, some sort of content marketing. And it could. It could be just that you have a really.

You know, a really good email that you send out every week.

So anyways, if you've been focusing on the nurture marketing, you've been blogging, you've been doing social media, you've been doing all the things and you're not seeing the results, then it may be time to take a couple steps back and look at your attract strategy. What are you doing to attract new people to your audience, and what can you do different about that moving forward? And then check out your number two, your step two in this process, the engage step. And is your lead magnet magnet working? Is it compelling enough? Are people who come to that page signing up? And I recommend having some way to be able to see your statistics. How many people actually come and visit that page? Unique people that come and then compare it to the people who actually signed up for it. Because some people will say, oh, my lead magnet's not working. And when we really dig into their statistics, they just don't have enough people seeing it. And so that's where they need to step back into the attract phase. Right. And have more people, more traffic, you know, coming to that page. So step one, attract. Step two, engage. Step three, nurture. Which nurture is what most people think about when they think about marketing. And step four is invite. This is where you're actually gonna invite them to buy your book, to sign up for, for your course or your coaching or whatever it is you offer. And honestly, I think my audience in particular has a hard time with this. That's why we have so many resources to help you. In Christian Book Academy every month we have our many marketing messages kit, and in there we have make offer posts. Those make Offer posts are specifically to to have you invite people to do something with you. Now typically an invite step is gonna be, is going to be to buy something. But some of our make offer posts are to have people post a review or to have them do something else. And so when you think about this invite step particularly this is where you're inviting them to buy. So think about it that way. What are, how are you inviting people to buy when they do get on your email list? Do you have an automated email sequence that goes out to every person that signs up and one or two of the emails invites them to buy your book? If not, that's something you can set it up. You can set it and forget it. And you know what? Then you don't even feel like, you don't feel that tension about set pressing the set or the publish button or the send button because if you it's happening auto magically in the background and you're not thinking about it, but they're getting invited every time a new person signs up. And then the fifth step is delight. So when somebody gets your book, you want them to be delighted. You don't want them to be disappointed. You want to over deliver. You want to be helping, helping them get the result that they are here to get. So we really try to do that inside Christian Book Academy by providing way more than the value of 39amonth. I mean it really is amazing. I mean, I could charge 39amonth just for the templates and resources you get every month. I could charge 39amonth just for the voxer office hours and live calls that we have. I get charged $39 a month just for one of our modules. I mean it's just incredible the value you get in Christian Book Academy. And the nice thing about it is that when you join, you don't feel like you have to do everything to get the value out of it. And so you can focus on your step in the kingdom writer's path, the activities or the things that apply to you and you can ignore the rest. It will all be there when you need it. But you'll still get way more than your $39 a month value. And so this is the five step system. Let me just review it. Step one is attract. You have to have this step everybody, I mean you have to be constantly attracting new people otherwise your audience is going to get stale. You know, everyone is that was going to buy your book has already bought it. And honestly this happened to me back in 2019 where I felt like I was just marketing Christian Book Academy to the same people over and over again. And it wasn't working anymore. And actually maybe it wasn't 2019, maybe it was like 2020. And that's when 2021, we started doing the workshops and conferences. And so that became our attract strategy. Engage. Having a lead magnet that solves a problem that is compelling, that works, that gets people to convert and to sign up. And you may have to try several different lead magnets to find the one that's really going to work. And then step three is nurture. This is your social media content, Your blogs, podcast, YouTube, video marketing, any kind of weekly content marketing. Now, I recommend weekly, but I understand some of you are busy, so maybe it's every other week or maybe it's once a month, but you're just staying consistent with what you're doing. Maybe you're sending an email, you know, once a month or once a week. I mean, but whatever you do, just stay consistent with the nurture marketing and realize that the nurture marketing is where you, where your current audience is getting to know like and trust you attract is where you're attracting new people to you. That's the biggest, biggest aha moment I want you to have on this episode. Step number four is invite. You've got to invite them to buy your book on your website. Do you have a call to action? Do you have things that are inviting them to buy your book in each blog post or in the relevant blog post in your sidebar? Is there, you know, in emails? And I recently was talking to a Christian Book Academy member and she says, you know, I send out a tip of the week email each week and I, I share about my book, but it's not working. I said, well, have you done a dedicated email that has one call to action and that call to action is to buy your book? And she said no. And so sometimes, you know, we think we're putting those, you know, calls to action we think we're inviting, but if it's not getting the results you want, either you don't have enough traffic so you're not attracting enough new people, or people aren't opening your emails and that's more of a subject line issue, or you maybe haven't like done a dedicated make offer email. All right, I digress. That was a bonus tip. And then step five is to delight. You want to have a product that people are gonna love. And then there's word of mouth referrals, right when they're delighted in what they've received. So I hope that this has helped you and maybe you've had an aha moment today. If so, let me know me know if you're in Christian Book Academy, post in our private group. Let me know any aha moments you had. Otherwise you can email supportraining authors.com Again, the Five Step Marketing Plan is attract, Engage, Nurture, Invite and delight. Write it down, make notes and this could really change things for you this year. All right, I hope this helped and I will talk to you in the next episode.