Here are 4 steps to help you market like a rock star

Are your marketing efforts less than effective in connecting with prospects and clients? If so, they may need a wholesale makeover, starting with a complete realignment of your time and priorities — and a total revamping of how you think about your business and prospect outreach.

Says who? Darnyelle Jervey. And she knows more than a thing or two about effective marketing. Chief executive officer of Incredible one Enterprises LLC, Jervey is a leading business optimization coach, speaker and strategist who teaches business owners to grow their companies by mastering brand messaging, marketing sales and operation.

At a Wednesday morning focus session of the Million Dollar Round Table 2016 annual meeting, being held in Vancouver June 12-15, Jervey clued attendees into best practices needed to achieve marketing success as insurance and financials services professionals. The following is an abridged version of her presentation.

You’re not in the business you think; you’re in the business of marketing your products and services. Without marketing there is no sale. And if there is no sale, there is no business. So everyone is a marketer. Consider this your primary business title.

I want to use our time together to help you explore how to take pride in your new title and position yourself as a problem-solver to help more people leverage insurance and financial services to live their best lives.

I’m going to share with you the fundamentals of the ROCK Star Marketing Formula. And, more importantly, I’m going to give you an opportunity to experience the formula and apply it to your individual businesses. Before we jump into the formula, I will share a few key concepts with you.

Key concept #1: The universal law of business says, “Get found by a group of people.” I call these people your Audience of One: those who have the exact problem that you solve and who are ready right now to pay for a solution to that problem.

Why might it be important to ensure that they are ready to pay for a solution now? Because if you want to grow your business, you need to get clear about those people who had the problem bad enough that they will pay to solve it.

Key concept #2: the Incredible Factor. I believe that each you has an Incredible Factor — your HUG or Hot Undeniable Gift. I’m referring to that thing you do naturally that other people praise you for. Now you think nothing of it, but it changes the lives of others. That’s your HUG, and, yes, each of us has one.

The second component of your Incredible Factor is your SBM or Signature Business Move. This is about the way that you show up for those you serve. It’s the process, proprietary or innate, that you use that consistently makes success predictable for your clients.

And lastly is your USP, or Unique Selling Proposition: how you show up both differently and compellingly in the marketplace. You know that as consumers, as well as humans actually, we are all programmed to notice what is different. It is our differences that make us the obvious choice for our ideal clients. That’s your USP.

So we take your HUG, SBM, and USP and put them in a client/brand magnetic package, and we call it your Incredible Factor. Knowing your HUB, SBM, and USP is essential to marketing like a ROCK star.

I found that no matter how long you’ve been in the business, taking the time to refine your Incredible Factor is a rewarding experience.

See also: Lead generation traffic sources that produce results

Key concept #3: The Business Building Process. Over the past seven years, working with thousands of clients from every service-based industry, I’ve gathered that building a business comes down to these four pillars:

• Pillar one: Brand messaging is how you become known. If I say, “Just do it,” what do you say? Nike. You know that because, with consistency, Nike has delivered this brand message.nAnd the good news is that even without Nike’s budget, you can do the same to become known by those you desire to serve.

• Pillar two: Marketing is how you get found. The whole point of marketing is to get found by those who have the problem that you solve.

• Pillar three: Sales are how you get paid. We have all heard the saying “Nothing happensnuntil somebody sells something,” right? I would like to add to that: It’s as honorable to sell as it is to buy. As you develop an effective sales management system, you can start to predict your revenue cycles and “consisticize” your business growth.

• Pillar four: Operations are how you build a business. Only after you’ve become known,ngotten found, and paid, do you have a business around which to create an operationalninfrastructure. So we focus on creating systems to make success predictable in every facet of your business so that your marketing efforts actually move the needle in your business.

At the end of the day, marketing is just a conversation. Here’s how I define marketing: Marketing is the act of creating a powerful message and then deploying that message through the appropriate delivery systems to a defined target market in a way that will have prospects willingly make an emotional investment in it.”

What’s your core marketing message? I find that people tend to overthink it. The truth is, if you can’t say what you do in one sentence and show the sense of urgency and the problem you solve, you are a marketing rookie.

Marketing is strategic. It takes a bold mind-set and confidence in your products and services, a strong consistent brand message, and strategic marketing and positioning to become a marketing ROCK Star.

Having worked with thousands of businesses and tested numerous ways to market, I now realize that the most effective marketing is what we call Magnetic Marketing. It’s marketing that is experiential, educational, based on a problem, and emotionally tied to the prospect. And when marketing is magnetic, it opens you up to get the attention of 67 percent of your ideal market audience.

See also: Marketing 2.0: strategies for online lead generation 

Here is how the average market is broken down:

• Three percent of prospects in your market is active. This means they know you exist. They like you and trust you. And they have likely even done business with you in the past.

• Seven percent of your market is open. This means that they know you, like you, and trust you and are open to buy from you when they have the problem you solve.

• Thirty percent of your market is aware of the future. This means that they aren’t sure that they will ever have the problem you solve, but if they do, they know you’re there.

• Thirty percent of your market is unconscious. This means that they have no idea who you are and why they should care.

• Thirty percent of your market isn’t interested. This means that they have no intentions to buy from you now (and maybe never).

• So most people spend all of their time talking to the 3 percent who are active and the 30 percent who aren’t interested. And they miss out on the 67 percent who could become their next clients. And this is where the ROCK Star Marketing Formula comes in: to help you gain access to the 67 percent you’re currently likely missing with your marketing.

So here is the formula for ROCK:

• Realign your time and priorities and shift the way you think about your business and marketing.

• Outline your Audience of One and the problem you solve.

• Create client Magnetic Marketing messages and materials.

• Know how you’ll serve your clients for life by creating a problem/product progression plan.

Let’s jump in to the first step in the formula.

See also: When times are hard, sell

ROCK star formula step #1

Realign your time and priorities around marketing. Realigning your time and priorities is about recognizing that you should be spending a minimum of two to four hours each day on marketing-related activities. That’s between 10 and 20 hours each week.

And, yes, you heard me correctly—25 to 50 percent of your time each week must be spent on marketing. This little realization alone helps many business owners understand why they may be experiencing feast or famine in their business.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to realign your time to two activities: (1) focusing on client attraction and business development; and (2) working directly with existing clients.

Client attraction is using education-based marketing to pull prospects toward you. There are pros and cons to client attraction. On the pro side, you’ll have prequalified leads and fewer rejections because prospects self-selects, which tends to lead to higher conversion rates; and an ability to educate your prospects, which builds thought leadership.

The cons: Client attraction is a lengthy process. And it’s typically resource heavy: Tou’ll spend lots of time and money getting prospects’ attention.

Business development entails leveraging targeted prospecting to get straight to your ideal clients. These leads are typically cooler as you likely haven’t had them self-select in any way. On the pro side, it’s a more direct approach to getting to your most ideal clients, costs remain low, and you have greater control of your target market this way.