What do you need in place to support a successful business online? The Venn diagram shows three areas of expertise you need to build a productive email marketing strategy.
Allow me to introduce you to Sarah. Her business is going reasonably well but she needs to take it to a higher level. She longs for more customers because she knows those who use her services really benefit. Sarah has made a start developing her email marketing strategy. Each post in this sequence explores one of the issues Sarah faces.
This post describes three essentials for email marketing. This sequence of blog posts focuses on the third: media channels. Other sequences in this blog cover the other two essentials. Even when you have a clear vision for your business and know how to market and sell your products and services, the practicialities of getting your message out there can present a significant barrier.
Remember: for success you need all three working together, something all business owners find challenging.
1. Your Business Why?
You cannot communicate effectively if you do not know and understand your business. Here are 5 elements you need to know well:
- Branding – how your business is seen from outside
- Products and Services – how your business achieves its purpose
- Proposition – your business’s why? Explains why your business exists.
- Problem – the problem, owned by your market, your proposition solves.
- Market – who they are and how you find them
2. Your Business Narrative
The stories and teaching you use to explain your business why? Stories and teaching depend upon your:
- audience – people and context
- media channel
- sales funnel
3. Media Channels
Most businesses use several channels, online and in-person. Your strategy needs to look something like this:
- Hub 1: Your website – likely to include several landing pages.
- Hub 2: Your email list, built within an email service such as MailChimp, Aweber, Infusionsoft, Kajabi (there are others)
- Spokes 1: sources that push new prospects towards your hub – eg social media, business cards, public speaking.
- Spokes 2: Products and services – these may be online or in-person, so long as prospects can register and pay online.
Imagine a wheel where your website (Hub 1) and email list (Hub 2) are the hub and everything else is the spokes.
All your media channels (Spokes 1) should point towards your website. You use these to market your business to new prospects. Aim to engage with them to the extent they wish to find out more. Great content in social media, points them to your website, where they find out more. Once they visit your site, invite them to join your email list.
Use email to directly offer new ideas and training. Encourage prospects to visit your website when you add more material, eg blog posts. This should be genuine valuable material, unobtainable elsewhere.
Use emails and your website to sell products and services too.
This is a basic overview. Your aim is to find an approach where these three essentials overlap to best support your business.
In future posts I shall explore this approach to marketing in more depth. Each post explores one of the 21 reasons email marketing is essential in more depth.
