Okay. So we are talking about volume control in your business today.
So what is volume control that is about the number of connections you make and bring to your world on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
That is the volume control. The number of connections that you make.
And then the question becomes…
How do you bring in those new connections?
Is it best to advertise on Google or Facebook or LinkedIn or wherever or are we talking about organic marketing.
People generally think about those two options but there is actually a third option and that is the, the hybrid option which is a combination of advertising and organic.
We all know, and we’ve discussed before that of the people who you connect with only 15% of them may do business with you in the next 90 days.
And the balance could do business with you in the following 18 months.
That’s a two year period.
So if you are just advertising, you are leaving a great deal of money on the table because you are not nurturing the people you connect with.
Whereas the organic method is entirely about nurturing and that takes time and effort to actually connect with people.
So in both cases, you are, if you accept that time is money, spending money or time to bring those people into your world.
Only advertising can leverage the number of people you are bringing into your world.
So ultimately the volume control that you have is the amount of money you can spend, or the amount of time you can spend to bring people into your world.
In talking about volume control, we also have to consider intent.
So I talked about Google and Facebook and LinkedIn, for instance, but we have to consider intent when we are talking about making connections because there’s passive intent and there’s active intent.
Passive intent, you will find on Facebook because people on there are not looking necessarily for a solution.
They don’t go to Facebook to answer a question…
how do I do this?
For instance.
They’re just on Facebook scrolling through their newsfeed and up pops your post which hooks them in and they read it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to take action.
So it’s passive intent.
They’ve gone to a party and they’ve run across somebody and they’ve had a quick chat and they’ve wandered away without really reacting.
Whereas on Google, and that would include Youtube which is the second biggest search search engine after Google, people are much more likely to be searching actively for a solution.
So they realise they have a problem.
They may have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to the problem, but at least they’re actively searching for a solution.
Whereas Facebook, they may not even realise that they have a problem at all.
Two very different places on the customer journey.
People start by being Unaware.
You find them on Facebook.
Then they become Problem Aware.
You find them on Google.
Solution Aware.
They have searched and found 3 or 4 different solutions.
And then they become Aware of Your Solution.
They find your solution to the problem they are trying to solve?
And then finally you get to the Deal
U P S Y D
When it comes to budget the cheapest traffic, the least expensive traffic, you will find on Facebook… the Unaware traffic.
As you move up the ladder towards the Deal, traffic gets more expensive because there is more and more competition for those quality prospects.
A lot of people start by advertising on Facebook because that is where they’re gonna find the cheapest traffic.
You do that by setting up your business page and getting likes on your business page and then re-marketing using those people as the seed for a look-alike audience to find more people who want to like your business page before starting to advertise to bring all those new prospects into your world.
So in that way you have more control of who you are actually targeting with ‘paid traffic’ whereas with organic, on Facebook in particular is, you have no clue when you make a friend request, whether that person has any interest in what you are doing at all really.
I mean, they may be a coach, or an accountant, or a restaurant owner, depending on which market you are targeting, but you have no clue where they are on the journey or from from being unaware to solution aware etcetera…
It just depends on throwing friend requests at a wall and hoping that some of it sticks. It works if you have time to spend doing it.
So intent really matters.
The other organic piece, of course, is blog posts, guest posting, podcasting and being a podcast guest
All this takes time and energy with very little or no control over the volume of new prospects you are going into your world.
The question becomes…
How much time do I have to do this?
That is how much time do I have to actually search for possible new prospects and put out high quality organic content?
Where am I on my journey to build my business now?
This second question is all about your journey…
If you are just starting out with your business, you have no real clue whether your offer converts and you only have by default, a rudimentary understanding of who your ideal client is.
You’ve just only developed that thinking.
And you have no real confirmation/feedback from your audience as to whether your theory is correct. If you start advertising at that stage in your business, you are going to spend up to $5,000 for instance, on confirming your suspicions.
If you’ve got $5,000 to burn and you’re in a hurry, be my guest… But I would suggest you take it slowly and start with organic.
And then, when you know your offer converts, you have refined your understanding of your ideal client and can express that very specifically, you can start advertising.
That advertising should not be seen as an investment, a capital expenditure.
It’s money that’s coming from your business income.
No income. No money. No business. No advertising.
Instead of burning through cash you don’t have, it makes perfect sense to test your market using organic methods and not burn capital.
Ultimately even if you do have $5,000 to burn, actually burning, may appear a simple way of doing it, but actually, I wouldn’t recommend that you do it.
You can validate your offer, with organic just as quickly.
The way you control the volume is clearly dependent on how well developed your business is.
The awareness that you have to start with… The question is where am I on my journey to build my business just started?
On the beginning of the runway.
Just taking off.
Just getting some cashflow.
And then ask what is the most suitable form of traffic that I should I should work on, bearing in mind, your ability to express who your I ideal client is and who your offer is for.
When you’ve done those two things, you need to think about awareness and where your audio, your most likely audience is to be found… Most likely buyers are going to be found.
So the awareness piece in UPSYD is very important in your strategic thinking because awareness is, is fuel and it actually needs to be in your mind when you sit down to write your organic posts or your advertising, because you’d write a complete different piece, if it’s organic to if it’s advertising to whether it’s on Facebook or the traffic will come from Google to the page on your website.
This is NOT necessarily in copywriting territory.
I understand why you might think it is but the page on your website doesn’t have to be a conventional landing page with an opt in box at the bottom.
If you are advertising on Facebook, the copy for your Ad or the video that you make for the Ad – knowing your audience is probably unaware or close to being unaware – will be much more conversational and educational than it would be if you were advertising elsewhere.
…More like a natural organic post.
Because you first need to call out your audience and empathise with them, then educate, then tell them what’s in it for them before you give them the call to action.
And you can that in an Ad in less than a thousand words.
The conventional wisdom is that people won’t watch more than a three minute video. That’s not true.
People will watch a 20 minute TEDx presentation that interests them.
I proved that, when I produced an Ad for a client which was 18 minutes long. He used that same Ad for nearly two years without editing it.
He was getting quality clients from it.
So the bottom line is don’t listen to conventional advice.
The longer the copy, the higher quality, the traffic, you will get.
The three minute advice applies to un-targeted traffic.
If you’ve actually happen to host your video for your website on Wistia and you look at the metrics for just about any video, most people drop off in the first 10 seconds.
After that, the actual drop off rate is gradual for the rest of the video… Whether it’s three minutes or 18 minutes.
So the volume control is your marketing and your marketing strategy and understanding where your ideal client is on their journey.
Then choosing the right place, according to your budget, understanding where you are on your journey to building your business…
All these different pieces fit together like a Swiss watch to run smoothly, given a clear strategic overview… And that overview is informed by fundamental first principles.
So if you are going for volume of opt-in subscribers, then you are thinking about conventional ways of doing things. Three minute videos, landing page, optimise the landing page.
Get as any people as possible to subscribe and then carpet bombing them with emails until they either unsubscribe or they buy from you.
It works but the downside is a massive burn through of the audience at your targeting.
Remember that your audience should be an inch wide and a mile deep.
If you do burn your audience in the UK, then you are going to have to go and find another audience in America or Canada or Europe or Egypt or Australia, or New Zealand who you can burn through.
And you have to change your Ad copy, change your Ad creative and do all these things in the market that you are burning, because if they’ve seen your Ad once and they didn’t like it, they’re going to ignore it the next time round.
So the volume control depends on your sensitivity to who your ideal client is and how you want to take care of them.
If you are just happy to join the one funnel away gang, then, you might be a little less sensitive on that end of the scale than you should be.
No names. No pack drill.
Your understanding of all the pieces that I’ve talked about… the customer journey, where your business is, your budget in time or money, your urgency to bring in new clients, your thinking about your audience, your way of approaching your market… All these things have to be taken in to account when thinking about making new connections for your business.
A lot of thought has to be put into that.
It is, is vital to have thought through all those different pieces before you get to the point, with metaphorical pen in hand, you start writing – whether it be a landing page on your website or some other copy – Are you gonna do the conventional thing… a headline, sun-head, some bullet points or maybe a VSL.
If you haven’t done the thinking, you can’t design your landing page because you don’t know how it’s going to be seen by your or viewed by your audience.
Your landing page on your website could be just a very simple white page with black text on it, with a read, more call to action on the bottom.
In other words, something which is completely unexpected to the average person and the way they have been treated.
Most landing pages look the same. When you land on a Click Funnels type landing page, they all look the same. You recognise what’s going on as you, as soon you see it.
If you are familiar with it, then how many millions of other people are familiar with it and are they already resistant to that sort of page ?
You know… ‘Oh, it’s that sort of page‘ and bounce immediately?
It may have worked three years ago or even five years ago, but if continue to follow conventional advice knowing it is less and less likely to work as well as well as it used to… then what?
Lots of things to think about when it comes to the volume control of your business.
Put a great deal of thought into how you’re going to approach the whole process…
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