What I’m about to tell you is the raw truth about what it takes to achieve sales and profits for the long term.
Some people are more interested in chasing shiny objects.
Others prefer excuses over hard work.
What I’m going to say needs to be said for the greater good for the marketing community.
A lot of marketers are fading away for 1 simple reason.
It wasn’t that long ago that the only thing required to have massive success was an offer and an email list.
Because information wasn’t easy to find, people paid a premium for it.
Every week there was a new product launch and everybody supported each other.
Once YouTube exploded in popularity people started sharing content with each other.
Buyers now had options and some of those options included free content on YouTube versus a $2K product launch.
To survive you needed to up your marketing game big time to compete with free.
Unfortunately, a lot of marketers failed to catch on in time.
The next big shift happened with long form content.
Neil Patel and Jon Morrow pioneered long form blog content and that raised the bar for everybody.
Only a few short years ago information was harder to get and you could charge a premium for it.
Now you can find blog posts and hours of step-by-step videos on YouTube about any topic.
A lot of marketers have not been able to change, and they are struggling and not sure why.
So how do you sell in this market?
They are hanging on and don’t realize that the light at the end of the tunnel is the train about to run them over.
It’s now easier than ever to create thought leadership and that changes everything.
Thought leadership isn’t something you do once. It takes consistency, and what you did in the past doesn’t count for much these days.
But the payoff is massive.
I’m always creating content and sharing it.
Notice I said content; your pitch to your list to buy from you is not content.
Thought leadership marketing requires going past the surface and giving your audience something to sink their teeth into.
Doing this amplifies everything else.
Can you imagine if your opens and clicks were 2x the industry average?
As a thought leader everything changes.
I hear people complaining daily about something not working.
Facebook campaigns don’t convert and cost too much.
Landing pages don’t convert like you think they should.
Nobody shows up for your webinar. And the few that do, don’t buy.
You think Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn are a waste of time.
People don’t book any strategy sessions with you. The ones that do think you are commodity and don’t buy.
I think you get the point.
If you have sophisticated clients, they don’t just sign up after doing a Google search.
They look for your thought leadership and decide if you should even be shortlisted as a possible option.
Being an expert is no longer enough. Nobody cares what you did in the past.
They want to see what you are doing now.
Experts are a dime a dozen.
Thought leadership needs to be your goal.
If your digital marketing campaign isn’t working, answer these questions.
Can you show me a trail of thought leadership that makes people want to do business with you?
And was your thought leadership seen by anybody?
Now you see why you have been struggling.
I guarantee somebody in your niche is getting all the business they can handle using the same marketing channels.
Yet your campaigns are failing no matter what you do.
Your don’t become #1 and then start doing thought leadership.
Instead, you lead with thought leadership marketing and that makes you the #1 choice in the market.
Thought leadership marketing is a never ending process of creating top of mind awareness that leads to better positioning and all the clients you can handle.
The days of running ads and expecting great results are over unless you are willing to do thought leadership at the same time.
Otherwise you’re just noise in the marketplace.
Effective thought leadership marketing is what you have to do to stand out today.
Thought leadership campaigns aren’t the thing you run if you are struggling to keep the lights on because they aren’t cheap.
But when they are done right it allows you to command higher fees, work with better clients and be the person everybody wants to work with.
Want to see what this could look like for your business?
Book a strategy session today.
Thanks,
Charles
