Are you a business owner who needs to get more eyes on your content and more people to take a look at your business? If your business needs more customers and you're ready to build an audience of raving fans and loyal customers, implementing this six step process will quickly help you achieve your goals.  Improving your marketing approach may be just what your business needs. 

In this tutorial, we are going to show you some of the approaches you might be using that are not serving you well. We'll also show you things you can do to start getting results. 

We'll show you how to change your perspective and help you make better connections with people who are actively looking for the products and services you have to offer.

Incorporating these changes into your business will help you sift out people who are not interested in what you're promoting so that you only interact with people who are interested and want to learn more.

When you hear this, you might think we're talking about something complicated or hard. Read on for simple changes you can make and improvements you can implement in your spare time. 

This tutorial assumes that you have a product to promote and a platform that you will use to communicate with your audience. If you don't have these yet, take a look at these articles on things consider when select a product to promote and how to select a platform for your business. 

Do Any of These Marketing Approaches Sound Familiar?

Laying the Groundwork Needed to Improve Your Marketing Approach

Step 1. Know Your Audience 

It's important to learn as much about your potential customers as possible. If you don't know your potential customers, you won't know how to improve your marketing approach in a way that is effective. Find out more about your prospects by researching your industry and selecting a niche. 

Selecting a niche that matches your product gives you a tremendous head start when it comes to coming up with product ideas and creating solutions. 

A niche is an area of specialty. So for example, you may have a product that falls under the category of Retail Apparel. Under that high level category, you can narrow it down into luxury, mid range and value based apparel. You can drill down even further to specialize in jeans, accessories, tops, t-shirts, suits, corporate wear, business casual attire, formal attire, etc.

Step 2. Change Your Language

When you are talking about your products and services start using the language of your target audience (people in your niche).

When your goal is to educate, you use different language versus the language you use when selling and convincing.

Take note of the words, phrases and language people in your industry and niche are using to describe what they are looking for, any trends, ideas people are looking for, and any problems they may encounter as well as how your product provides a solution.

Once you learn who your audience is, and you've created introductory content that educates them about the solutions you provide, the next step is to start using the words, descriptions and phrases of potential customers and those in your niches are using in your social media, sales and marketing materials. Then you'll be ready to move on to Step 2, using your platforms to generate more leads and sales. 

Improve Your Marketing Approach Podcast Episode

Step 3. Leverage Existing Platforms.

Use your platform to create educational content (start out with at least 10 articles or videos) that explains your company and helps your audience know more about what you and how you can help them without selling. 

To create blog posts without selling, build your blog with content like tutorials, images, videos, and audio that informs your audience about the "how-to's" that lead to success with your products and services. 

If you have a YouTube channel, you can start making informative videos, that discuss topics that will educate your audience about the topics they are interested in.

If you're on Etsy, WooCommerce or Shopify, start creating new products for your shop that will help your ideal customers solve a particular problem. Place a call to action at the end of your blog posts that lead potential customers to your shop. 

The Shopify platform gives you the ability to create a blog. You can use the blog to create articles that will educate and inform readers, driving them to your shop.

WooCommerce is also a platform that works with WordPress, a powerful blogging platform that can be used to drive new customers to your shop.

You can use a WordPress blog or YouTube channel with your store to drive new customers to your store. .

Discuss potential customer's pressing issues and include things like industry news, statistics, customer testimonials, quizzes, images that show the solutions or people using your product. 

Themes and Systems That Do the Heavy Lifting

Step 4. Set Up Systems That Qualify Your Prospects 

When someone visits your platform, you need a system that converts them into a lead. First the system needs to make sure they are interested (qualified) in your topic. If they are interested, they will take certain actions, like signing up, leaving their email, phone number or both on your platform.

Qualifying people who visit your platform enables you to only work with people who are interested in learning more. It enables visitors to raise their hand and say yes, please send more content like this!

By using this method you end up with a group of people who have contacted you, who have given you permission to contact them, people who want to hear what you have to say.  With this approach to building your business, you'll have a consistent process that consistently brings in a stream of new people for you to talk to.

No spamming, no arm twisting, no making your friends and family feel guilty if they are not interested.

Step 5. Set Up Systems That Educate Versus Selling 

This is where you are going to use the educational content you created in Step 3. When you created the educational content and placed it on your platform of choice, you were creating a system.

Your platform is a system that distributes the content to your audience. You can distribute content 24/7 using automation tools. 

This action alone can totally change the dynamic of your relationship with potential customers.

Working your business in this way helps you come across as someone who is knowledgeable about the topics that matter to your audience.

Step 6. Set Up Systems That Will Distribute Social Media Posts

When you promote your educational informative content on social media, you are getting the word out to potential customers about your business in a non-spammy way.

Putting your social media posts on autopilot with a system that consistently sends marketing messages to your audience. Use the language and phrases you came up with in Step 3.

Once you know what to say, you can use tools like Canva to create images and videos for your blog, YouTube, eCommerce shop and social media posts.

Next you'll set up systems that will send your posts out on a schedule. Setting up systems that do the heavy lifting can easily be done with tools like Thrive Suite and Mailchimp (or any email marketing provider). Take a look at our video that shows you how to get started.

Learn to use sales and marketing tools that do the work, even when you're not around. Make it easier to reach your sales and marketing goals. Sign up for our free course below to learn more.