As a champion, success is your number one goal! It’s pretty much guaranteed you didn’t make it to the top by snoozing through life; and if you did snooze, you didn’t hit the top as quickly as you could have. As an entrepreneur, you didn’t “make it” by honoring your bedtime and perfecting your pitch … it’s either one or the other. Chances are your brain is always running and you have multiple internal conversations with yourself, daily; lose sticky notes of ideas (so many stickies!), have to remember hundreds of names, know when to speak and when to make tough decisions. It’s exhausting, and it takes special people; but, that’s why you’re the champion of what you do. You run your playground so others can play in it according to your rules. You’re the expert and you call the shots.
And all of that is just to keep your current clients happy. How do you obtain new ones? How do you reach them? You’ve done EVERYTHING the social media gurus have told you to; you’ve a presence on:
Facebook
Twitter
Google+
LinkedIn
match.com (*ahem*, where were we? Oh, right….)
YouTube
Instagram
Snapchat
The next best thing ...
Yay! You did it! You found a way to spend hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on “advice” geared toward everyone, but you. No, really, no matter who is reading this and where you are, what you’ve learned is how to market anyone but yourself.
Let’s be real. Yes, you may learn a thing or two in the pay to play webinars and you may even learn all of the accolades about your host including who they worked for (insert popular company name), how long they’ve been in the industry and all of the success stories they’ve gathered over the years from lost little social media sheep, just like you!). Now I, in no way, shape or form am discrediting the knowledge, success nor mind-blowing resumes these social media saviors have! They’ve worked hard and learned the system just enough to give you a very narrow path by which to guide your marketing efforts. A path that can only be truly seen and walked on with the light of strategy; without it, you’re stabbing in the dark.
Waaaaay back in middle school, we all learned the order of operations (Refresher course: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally = Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction). I’d like to introduce you to the grown up, I need to pay my bills and employees version of the order of operations: GOST which equals Goals
Objectives
Strategy
Tactics
Out of the 4, strategy is and always will be your best friend. It will take you places you never knew you could go and will never, EVER lead you astray. Implementing any social media, marketing tactic or even developing a website without your new best friend, strategy, is a lost cause. Let’s flash back to teenage years. Remember the club scene? The bouncers, the 90s music, but oh, the lines!? With this new BFF of yours, there are so many clubs strategy can help you sneak into.
For instance, Search Engine Optimization/Marketing: you’ve been trying to get in for so long! It’s where all of the cool kids hang out, but they’re all big brands; there’s no way you’ll ever be able to hang with them. But, alas! Here comes strategy, your friend, with it’s keyword plan. It tells you the secret code - the words to use on all outward appearances - and gives you the confidence to go chest to chest with the bouncer who lets.you.in! With your newfound confidence (in strategy), you decide to test out your luck on social media, your website, newsletter and blogs! They work. Strategy has not let you down.
Now what you don’t know is strategy’s just the middleman, only accessible through knowledge, expertise and critical analysis of your brand. This is what we do. This is who we are. We live to create tactic-tested, target audience-approved, customized (versus one-size fits all) brand marketing strategy for you, and only you. Brand strategy is not meant to be received nor implemented to the masses through a webinar. Rather it is executed through a unique process tied to reaching your success through internal and external business channels, analyzing your goals, understanding your objectives and implementing tactics that meet your audience. Dr. Seuss (God, love’em) said it best: “Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!”
GOST for life!