“If whatever you’re doing isn’t working, don’t do it harder. This is like waking up behind the wheel of a car, realising you’ve drifted off the highway and flooring the gas pedal in response.”

This is a direct quote from Oprah Winfrey’s life coach, Martha Beck, and if Oprah has a life coach, you can bet I’m going to listen to what she says. 

This really struck me, because it applies to every aspect of our lives, but particularly to growing our businesses. We convince ourselves that if we can do more, we’ll unlock the key to success. 

If we just post a bit more on Instagram, or write more blog posts or send more emails, we’ll hit a magical tipping point, where the growth kicks in and scaling your business becomes easy. 

Doing more and doing it harder isn’t the answer. 

Working smarter, only on those activities that will bring about rapid change, is the only option that makes sense. And yet we have a hard time accepting and acting on that idea. 

We procrastinate, filling our days with small, urgent tasks, sometimes doing anything we can to avoid the ‘deep work’ we really need to do. We do this because investing time in a new strategy is a risk. ‘What if it doesn’t work and I’ve wasted my time on it, but still have all of my daily tasks piling up around me? Is it really worth it?’

The answer is yes and I can give you that answer because I was that non-action taker, the serial buyer of courses and memberships.

And now I’m not. Hard as it is, I have restructured my business so that I can focus only on strategic ‘deep work’ activities.

And it feels bloody brilliant.

I promise you can get to this place too – there is no magic tipping point where just working harder pays off.

People often ask me what they should do first when it comes to marketing their business.

If you focus only on the following activities, you will scale your business. These are the bona fide needle movers.

1. Do your research and create the lead magnet your clients are asking for
2. Build an automated email sequence to nurture those leads
3. Create engaging content to build the relationship
4. Design a conversion event that suits your audience
5. Decide how you’re going to feed your funnel

Let’s explore them in more detail.

1. Do your research and create the lead magnet your clients are asking for

The foundation of every good funnel is a lead magnet. ie. a freebie that someone wants in return for handing over their email. Sure lead magnets are technically free, but no one loves more of the wrong kind of email, so your audience is likely to be picky. 

They will only pick your lead magnet if it solves a problem for them. Most business owners think that they know their ideal clients inside out. But guess what…I still get caught out all the time. 

When I survey my audience (which I do every 3 to 6 months), there are ALWAYS answers that surprise me. I might think I know what they are struggling with the most, but often the things I think are problems, are just superficial symptoms and not the root cause. 

Your lead magnet and the content you are going to show them after they have signed up really needs to resonate or it’s not going to convert them into raving fans who want to buy from you. 

Before you create anything, you need to do your emotion-based research (check out my blog where I’ve written about this extensively), but then you need to dive deep into their answers. 

Here’s the fill-in-the-blanks question you want to answer.

My audience of _____ wants to  ________ so that they can finally _____.

Here’s my worked example…

My audience of creative business owners wants to control the process of creating a website that fits their vision and brand, so that they can finally showcase their product with confidence and resonate with more of their ideal paying clients.

2. Build an automated email sequence to nurture your leads

Once someone becomes aware of you and trusts you enough to give you their email, this is where the fun begins. 

I don’t know about you, but when I give my email away to someone, I do wonder how long I’ll last before I ask to be taken off their list. 

Here’s what gets an unsubscribe from me.

• Too many emails
• Starting to sell too early
• Only communicating about promotions and not providing enough value
• Not showing up consistently enough in my inbox to remember who the hell they even are

This is why automation is important. You can create content that logically follows on from your lead magnet that doesn’t have a sell-by date. You can set it and forget it, knowing that the content in your emails is going to solve problems and build trust with your ideal clients. Who doesn’t want that?

These emails exist to build relationships and excite people about how you can help them. 

And the best thing about an automated sequence (if you are using the right email platform), is the minute that they become a paying customer, you can yank them straight out of the sequence and start to welcome them as your VIP client instead.

3. Create engaging content to build the relationship

You want to know what’s in these relationship-building emails? Pure value and nothing else. It’s too early to pitch your services. Instead, take your lead magnet as your foundation and build on it. 

A really good lead magnet should represent just a small part of your area of expertise because you’ll need to be able to expand on your knowledge after people sign up for it and that’s where your nurture email sequence comes in.

(You can read more about Lead Magnet strategy right here).

Here’s the blueprint for nurturing the hell out of your brand new audience members. 

Note: These steps don’t correlate to the number of emails you might send to get to know your audience and for them to get to know you. They represent points of understanding along the journey. You might have less emails or your might have more. 

1. Tell them what they can expect from you (ie. how often you are going to email them) where they can find your other resources and how to join your community, if you have one.

2. Set yourself apart. It’s time to let them know how you think differently from others and why. Don’t be afraid to tell your personal story to build trust and show that you understand exactly what they need.

3. Continue their education. You started delivering value by giving them your lead magnet. Now that you’ve got to know them, it’s time to expand on your lead magnet and help them understand how they can achieve with your help to guide them.

4. End your sequence with a call for clarity designed to cement the relationship and confirm that you are the expert they need. Clearly outline the most important step they can take next or the idea they should think about. (Don’t worry – you’ll be getting back to them!)

4. Design a conversion event that suits your audience

Hate selling? Well, duh. Most people do. Chances are, you just don’t have the right conversion event set up for your audience, that makes it feel effortless instead of icky. What’s a conversion event? It’s the interaction your potential client has with you to nudge them from interested to paying client.

If you provide a service like photography, copywriting or web design, it’s most likely going to a video call, phone call or meeting. 

If you’re selling a lower-priced course or membership, it might be to watch a live or recorded webinar. 

If you’re selling a template or download, it simply be an email sequence asking them to buy. 

Your ideal conversion ideal will depend on what you’re selling and how big of a commitment you’re asking for.

During or around the same time as you are pitching your services to your client, it’s time to change the content you show them from expertise-based value to evidence that you can do what you say you can do. 

At this, you’ll be wanting to showcase your best testimonials, case studies. social proof and behind-the-scenes content. They might see this kind of content in your emails, or via Facebook retargeting ads (preferably both). 

If you’re not collecting proof of how awesome you are, now’s a great time to start!

5. Decide how you’re going to feed your funnel

I’m a big fan of Facebook ads, but that’s just one way of bringing new leads into your audience so that they become aware of you. There are plenty of others. 

In fact, I always start with testing my funnels organically. I drip out the highlights of my email, blog and webinar content on social media to see what works and get instant feedback, which I can use to refine my content. I don’t start to put money on paid ads until I’m sure the content is working.

Once I’m happy with the content, I look for strategic partnerships, with people who can help me reach a bigger audience than I can do on my own. 

I do have a formal affiliate program that works really well but I also have a network of relationships with other business owners, who want fresh content for their audiences, which they themselves can’t provide. 

Ideal partners are businesses who you share an audience with but you don’t compete with.

For example, I recently guested in the Cole’s Classroom community, which is a membership that teaches photography but doesn’t teach web design or marketing. Hey presto! I was ready to deliver value with a free webinar in their community which brought a fresh audience into my email funnel. They got high quality content and I got a slice of fresh new leads. Win win!

And not forgetting SEO.  Setting out to create authoritative, cornerstone blog post content will also feed your funnel. I have one blog post on my site that brings in 10,000 unique visitors per month.

Pick a path to feed your funnel, create the assets you need to test your content and then move onto the next strategy. 

Organic testing, partnerships and SEO are the layers that make up your funnel cake. You can’t create them all at once, but it’s good to know what you’re working towards, right?

Ready to get stuck in?

That’s it. If you only do those 5 things, you’ll begin to build your email list, your relationships and your business. The rest is window dressing. 

Have a little word with yourself. Are you ready to stop working harder and start working smarter? If you are, then these are the building blocks you need to put in place to start scaling your business.

If you’d like to join an inspiring online community, you can find out more about Melissa’s online membership, The Marketing Fix, at www.themarketingfix.co.