The key to any successful marketing campaign is having the right strategy.
In this video I reveal several strategies that I believe are highly relevant for 2021.
One very effective strategy is building your own list.
Building your own list helps you to own your own audience and not be dependent on a channel controlled by someone else, such as Facebook.
Creating a funnel is one of the examples on how you can start building your list.
In this vein, another helpful tip is to look at multiple marketing channels.
Don’t just rely on one channel… diversify into other channels such as YouTube, Instagram and even Tik Tok.
Next is by developing key relationships with key influencers.
The major component in developing relationships is by networking with high-level influencers who can give you quality referrals.
And make sure you choose to work with high quality clients as that will determine what type of clients you get referred to.
In any case, check out the video I made below for more details on these strategies.
Video Transcript
So, the first thing that’s really working right now for us is that we’re building our own lists and this applies mainly to our clients, not so much to us because we’re at the stage where we’re not really actively building our list right now, because we actually have more business than we can handle right now in our business in our agency.
So, why do you need to start building your own list?
I know some of you have heard this before, but why you need build your own list is because if you are, for example, running Facebook ads, if you happen to haven’t gotten banned yet, well, you know, you’re going to get banned sooner or later, right?
And especially in Q4 this past two months, three months, people who have been really complying that have been, really just following the rules and all that, still get banned and people’s businesses are suffering, right?
I’ve got friends who are like, you know, previously used to spend $500, $1000, a day on Facebook and then the ad accounts get banned, now they set up a new account. They can only spend RM40 a day. All right, and you know, that totally stuffs up their whole business and my hope is that you don’t have to ever fall into this trap, right, where you’re completely, just relying on Facebook, or Google, or Pinterest, or one of those traffic channels for 100% of your business.
That is a very, very dangerous place to be.
To do it long term, right, you need to build your own list.
And I’m not sure whether you guys have noticed some of the work we’re doing with Vince Tan.
What we’re doing right now is we’re building his list, okay? Our goal is over the next 6 to 12 months, build a list of over a million people. Okay. And right now, what we’ve done is we’ve built a funnel where it’s like, really, really comprehensive.
We got multiple free downloads up front and all that stuff. And right now, the funnel for every dollar we’re spending, we’re actually recovering that $1 back.
So in essence, what we’re doing is we’re building a list at zero cost, okay? Because it’s what we call self-liquidating funnel.
Okay so we have lead magnets coming in We have upsells. We have automated webinars, all that stuff all in place so that basically we keep increasing our list every week without actually spending money.
So we’re actually net, I think quite even at the moment or even a slight profit from this funnel. So we can afford to pump in more dollars and keep building our list. Because we know that eventually one day Facebook or whoever you know cost will keep rising, stuff will keep getting more expensive, Facebook will keep banning your ads. Okay, so I think that’s a very important way to hedge your business, if you’re relying just on Facebook traffic right now.
I guess to top it off, an extra tip from this is to actually look at alternative channels.
Which is what we diversified into massively this year, is that we started advertising on other channels, such as YouTube and various other Google channels. We’re also trialling with other social media channels right now as well, if you know Facebook suddenly changes this policy or someone else changes policy, our business and our client’s businesses are not dependent on one traffic channel.
But ultimately, it’s good to have your own list.
So say, for example, with Vince right now, he has about 30,000 people in this lists. So we’re launching a new summit soon, right? And through this 30,000 we’ll probably get one, two thousand people coming for that summit as well, right? So that saves a lot on advertising costs as well, and it’s a smarter long-term play.
So, if you’re not building your list yet, make sure you start building your list.
Yeah, look I think if you can master Google and Facebook, two channels, that’s enough, right, for now. Okay, because, most of us are probably small business owners and the more you try and diversify too much, you will also have problems as well.
So yeah, make sure you look at other channels. You should, for example, is a great way to diversify which is also under Google Look at those other channels, definitely.
All right, so that’s tip number one.
Okay, so tip number two is to develop key relationships, okay.
Now, I guess this applies for both B2B and B2C, okay? Okay, so this year we’ve tried multiple channels to get clients for our business. Okay, awesome.
Alright, so, this year, just to give you a bit of background, previously, we were massively into promoting seminars, right, in our agency, What happened was during the coronavirus as you know, all the events stopped. So our business dropped drastically, right?
Thankfully, we managed to pivot quite quickly into webinars and virtual events.
But we also wanted to get more clients.
So we tried a lot of stuff, like we tried SEO, we tried paid ads, and all that stuff, right? But the issue there is we did get leads but the quality of the leads were not exactly the type of people that we want to work with, right. And generally kind of like pretty broke, you know? It’s like, okay, I can only have enough money to do one webinar, kind of clients. So that wasn’t general, that’s the main type of people that we were getting.
So, we decided that we want to pivot a bit right, where we kind of like tried different strategies and what really worked was developing relationships with key influences, okay?
So, one of the guys that I’ve developed a very good relationship with is, for example, a guy called Tom Madsen, he’s based in Canada. And basically what I did to develop the relationship was that he needed someone to run some ads for his events. And I basically volunteered do it for free. Yeah, actually, not entirely for free, but kind of no risk to him. Okay, so he only paid us for results, right? Not for any retainer fee, or any fixed fee.
So, what happened is, now out of that, that event is starting to happen in January and basically he’s prepared to refer like 8 to 10 people to us as clients. All of these people are in his Mastermind group that have paid like 25,000 or 30,000 US dollars to be part of this Mastermind group.
So you know that they are high caliber people. They’re not like you know, the really poor quality clients, right? So yeah, the key there is to really, what we did there, we’re not ready to take on all 8 clients because we don’t have the capacity right now, because we’re just busy with so many other projects right now, but when I’m ready, you know, I will chat to him and probably be able to get a few across the board, right?
So that’s just one example of how key relationships can really, really help your business at this time and, you know, just to invest a little bit of effort into your key relationships.
In another quick example, I just want to give you, is that I met this other guy who’s also an agency owner, at one of this Mastermind groups, right?
So, he talked about himself and then I reached out after the event because I felt that, you know, I could give him a bit more pointers as to how to grow his business. So I reached out to him, he’s based in the US, and we had a one hour conversation, so I gave him valid value value, didn’t ask anything back in return. Two weeks later, he goes, “Hey Terrence, I’ve got this guy, e-commerce expert looking for someone to run his Facebook ads, so are you interested?” I said, “yeah sure”. So we hooked up and you know, basically that guy became a client.
So, you know, it’s just little things like this that you can do.
Of course, you need to be selective, right? You know, you need to make sure you’re nurturing the right relationships because there are people out there who just take take, take, take, take from you, and not give anything back, right? So, you got to be smart as well.
Have a bit of wisdom and use your intuition a little bit to develop this key relationships, and, you know, you just be amazed at what comes out it.
Even with Vince, we’ve been talking a long time but we’ve never did anything together. I’ve known him for like maybe three years but we’ve never done anything together. Only this year, when he launched his first summit and he’s looking for people to market for him. And he approached me and I said, “Yeah, sure, I’ll do it for you”. I didn’t even ask for any money or anything in return.
Just cultivate that relationship. And now obviously we’re partnering doing stuff together and he is constantly referring new clients to me.
So you know, sure, I might have missed out on maybe you know couple of $1000 of not charging him the first time around, but through that, the relationship now is worth so much more. And now he actually wants to buy a stake in our business as well, right, which we’re talking about right now.
Yeah, those are just some examples of how, it’s kind of like, bit of karma in play, but it’s a little bit more than that.
It’s kind of like strategically nurturing your key relationships. That will really make a difference in your business, okay.
And at the same time while we’re talking about this, it’s also important to nurture your existing clients and customers, okay?
Make sure you nurture your existing clients and customers. And, you know, because they are the ones who will come back with repeat purchase, who will refer clients to you and customers to you. So make sure you take care of them very well as well. Make sure you always be in touch with them and constant contact with them, okay.
This is a, kind of like non paid advertising in a way, okay? But works really well. So right now I just want you to think who are the key relationships in your business that you should look at nurturing right now.
Okay, so any questions so far on this?
Okay, so maybe some of you are like, where do I find this relationships to nurture, right?
So obviously, I’m not talking about nurturing relationships with your drinking buddies, right? Probably that’s not going to help you very much, okay? It might be very fun, but it’s probably not going to help your business very much.
So, I would say, one of the key places to look for this awesome relationships, are in like high-level Mastermind groups, okay? So not the free Mastermind groups, but where you actually pay to get in because then you meet high caliber people to network with. And a lot of the smart business people, smart entrepreneurs, they go to this like, high-level Mastermind groups. Yeah, sure, they get the learning, but that’s not the most important thing.
The most important thing is the key relationships that you can develop out of that with like really, really good influential people, okay.
So, like I know this, like for example, digital marketer by Randise, they have a war room like digital marketer’s war room, which I think cost something like $25,000 or $30,000 a year to be part of and they have meetings every month or two months, I’m not sure.
But that is like a super fantastic place to like network and people like, I’m not sure whether you’ve heard of Nick Kuznitch, who is recognised, as one of the top Facebook marketers in the world, that’s where he got his profile and that’s where he got his clients because he was part of that inner circle, so to say, which helped him to leverage his business, get on stages and built up his reputation because he says, “Look I’m doing Facebook ads for this guy and I’m doing Facebook ads for this guy”, right? And these are high-profile people in the industry, okay?
So, if you want to discover how to build key relationships, that is one of the places to go to.
I know, Vince has this Titanium Mastermind group, right, which I feel it’s not high level enough but it’s good enough, right? Because people are paying something like $5,000 a year to be part of the group, right? So, and he’s got retreat and everything and I’m not promoting it, right? I’m just giving you an example of what kind of groups you should be joining, okay?
So yeah, I mean you know, if you go down to your local Toastmasters and stuff like that or BMI groups, yeah, you get some clients but you’re not going to get very much, very good to relationships, okay?
So yeah, so hope that helped.
