How to Change Your Business without Spending More Money

In my inbox was a newsletter from Ryan Holiday.

Ryan is known as The Modern Stoic Guy, publishing books on Stoicism and how it can help live a better life in our modern world.

But he’s also the guy that dropped out of college to serve as Director of Marketing for American Apparel during their most successful, and controversial, period.

His first book was called, Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator. His second book, Growth Hacker Marketing, explained why traditional marketing is no longer effective and why growth hacking is better. It was named one of Inc. magazine's top 10 marketing books of 2014.

He’s a master marketer.

He recently made a huge change in how he markets himself and his projects. And this change can make a dramatic difference in your business too.

How do I know?

Because some of IMA’s clients are already on this path and the results are incredible.

Let’s dig in

Holiday sets things up by saying that he knows someone that spends $20,000 a month on a publicist. He also knows an author who spends the same amount out of their own pocket each month on co-op (extra prominent placement at airport bookstores). And that he knows many people who spend more than that on advertising.

He says that he has hired publicists. That he has paid for co-op.

That he used to spend six figures a year, out of his own pocket, on Facebook ads for Daily Stoic.

Then he says, "But several years ago I made a decision that changed my business and radically transformed my career. I stopped spending money on all of that.”

So what did he do instead?

He went ALL IN on content.

He redirected that money and hired a videographer. He hired a social media manager (and not an intern, an actual professional. Big difference!). He hired an additional researcher. He hired a bunch of people.

He took the entire budget that he had been putting into advertising and built a content team.

And what did that new team do?

• They built a podcast.
• They started making YouTube videos.
• They started cutting clips from the speaking engagements that he gave.
• They wrote explainers and SEO pieces based on his work.
• They launched a brand new newsletter to a new niche.
• They started a new Instagram account.
  

They generated and executed a Content Strategy. So what? What’s the big deal?

The big deal is that this works.

And that it’s incredibly cost effective because you don’t have to pay Google and Facebook.

This is organic.

The clicks back to your website are free.

The impressions are free.

The brand equity you are building is free.

Let’s look at an example from one of IMA’s clients.

We helped them craft a blog and video strategy. The blog posts are created by IMA but the video is all done in-house by an employee.

I want to focus on the video part.

Their employee was already on salary but had enough bandwidth and expertise to create one video per week. Last fall we started their YouTube channel and started uploading new videos.

Today, YouTube is the top social media channel driving traffic to their website.

In the past 28 days, they have amassed ~ 7,000 Views, 340 Hours of Video Watched and 60 new Subcribers to their YouTube channel.

And the results are starting to compound because they are feeding the algorithm and the algorithm is rewarding them.

Most importantly, they are not paying YouTube a penny for these results.

At IMA, one of our core beliefs is about Adding Value to your customers. It’s one of the key philosophies of the Digital Marketing Quadrant (along with removing pain for customers).

This type of content adds a ton of value. It benefits the viewer. It educates your potential customers.
It makes a difference.
Think about your competitors for a moment. Are they adding value? Are they removing pain? Or are they just offering discounts and sales?
Likely that latter, which opens a huge opportunity for you.

Does this mean we don’t recommend running ads?

Absolutely not.
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We are not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

In fact, what happens is we get more bathwater (?). Or a bigger baby (?)

You get the idea.

For this client, we now have a treasure trove of awesome video content to use in our Facebook Ad campaigns. When they want to sell more of something we know that we can create a Facebook campaign using this awesome video and run ads that promote and educate and, most importantly, generate revenue.

It works.

We believe in the full funnel. That means Top, Middle and Bottom all working together. Educating the customer, removing pain for the customer and presenting the customer with an offer that removes all the friction from their decision making process.

But adding a content strategy to your Top of Funnel efforts is incredibly effective.

So look around.

Do you have an employee that has a little extra time and a lot of knowledge? Could they make one video a week? Could that one video make a huge difference in your growth.

It could. But it’s up to you.

If you’re interested in learning more about this idea contact me today and I'll provide a free framework to get you started.

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