multipurpose businessman in the box office

Occasionally I talk to these businesses that tell me, “You know what? We like what you have to say, but we're just going to hire a marketing person.” The question I ask them, which usually gets them to stop and think is, “Which one? Are you going to hire an SEO person, web guy, email girl, social media poster, ads expert, Google person, writer, designer, system integrator, strategist? So, which one, and who are you going to hire?” Because generally speaking, marketing is not as simple as getting one person to do one thing, there's a whole bunch that goes into it. It is a marketing success system.

Today we're going to talk about the three-headed marketing success system or the three-headed marketing mindset monster. Nah, it's not that scary. But have you ever listened to or read the book The E-Myth Revisited? In a past blog post, I talked about Blinkist, which is basically cliff notes for audiobooks, and I went back and re-listened to The E-Myth.

The E-Myth Revisited

What it talks about is a concept that most businesses are started by technicians. They're really good at one particular thing, but they're missing the skills to really make a business hum.

Most businesses need these three people: the technician – the person who does the job that's consumed by customers, the manager – the person that makes all the operational decisions about workflow, and the entrepreneur – the big visionary, the person that can see beyond what's happening daily. This was no more important than last year where some businesses had to grow to meet demand while others had to scale back and shrink, and the ones that survived were the ones that had all three of these people.

The Business Of Music

Now, being in the music business, I understand that concept. You get musicians out there that can go to a gig and they can play. But when it comes to actually managing the business, the marketing of the band, the brand of the band, the websites, usually you've got some people in the group that can handle some of those things. But the really successful ones have managers and business managers and tour managers and a whole bunch of people around them to make the band successful.

When it comes to business, it's pretty much the same. Most technicians, are good at something, maybe creating websites. So, they create a website business, but it takes much more than just being good at something to be successful. Now, you can hire or outsource a lot of those jobs no matter which position it is, but the bottom line is you need all three. What I want to do today is talk about that from a marketing standpoint.

Goin' LinkedIn Live

I've just been granted access to LinkedIn live, which is pretty cool. I have a bunch of friends in marketing who said, “Dude, how'd you do it?” It took a long time and a lot of applications. But finally I got through, and now I can do this online show. I'm going to be doing it every Saturday morning. I'm going to call it Bacon and Coffee, and it's going to be quips and interviews with people that have been on this show.

One of my favorites is Mark SA Smith. Recently, we were having a conversation. I said, “Dude, would you come on and help me test the system so that when I hit the ground running next week, I'll be ready to make sure that all the technology's working.” He said, “Sure.” So when he came on and we were doing this test, he mentioned that a good marketing program needs three things, and it really emulates what I was talking about with The E-Myth.

He calls these three things the strategist, the manager, and the technician, very much like The E-Myth.

The Strategist

How Ordinary People Help With Your Zone Of Genius

The strategist is like an entrepreneur, but when it comes to marketing, they understand the purpose and the big picture behind what you're trying to achieve. The strategist will help you figure out what is the outcome that you want from the marketing efforts. Is it sales? Is it sales numbers? Is it leads?

They'll also figure out what needs to be measured. Can you measure relationships, current, and past ones? Can you measure the cost of acquisition? How much is it costing to get new leads? And finally, how do you define success? Is it an increase in sales? Is it increases in leads? Is it improvements to your systems? What is it? That's what a strategist does. They create the overarching plan. So, are you or somebody in your marketing doing that job?

The Manager

The next one is the manager. Now, this is the traffic cop and the project person. What they do is they figure out what feeds what. How is this going to work? How am I going to integrate all of these pieces? In my case, I take an eBook, and I turn that eBook into blog posts. Then I turn those blog posts, and I turn those into email drips. That is a system. So, it all feeds into each other.

Then if we take it to social media, does that social media follow the content. In other words, you put up posts and they lead to blogs, which leads to people clicking and downloading eBooks, which then leads people joining your email broadcast list, and gives you somebody to contact as far as a lead or potential sale goes.

Then that manager decides what happens next. Who answers questions or problems? What is the system that we're going to integrate to enhance the relationships of our current customers or leads? The manager is the traffic cop that makes the system work, and they're the ones in charge of ramping things up or scaling things back depending on the time of year, the customer base, whatever's happening. They're managing the entire process.

The Technician

The last person is the technician. This is the doer and the person on the team that actually get things done. As I've told customers before, it's rare that you're going to find somebody that can do everything. You're going to need people that are going to manage each part of the process, somebody who understands the website and the technology and creating the content and reading analytics and dealing with social and dealing with email. Each one of those has its own skillsets when it comes to writing. You need to have people in place that can do the right part of the project at the right time. That's what the manager manages.

The other thing that the technician does is optimize the process. They review and update. They do A/B tests. They do everything they can to optimize the process of communicating to help improve relationships for your sales staff. Then finally, they provide reports and feedback, and they also are keeping an eye out on what are the cool trends, the latest gadgets or tools out there. They try them, and they play with them. They implement them based on what the strategist has defined as the goals of the overarching system, and the manager defines which processes need improvements.

Final Thoughts

So that, my friends, is my three-headed marketing monster system, or marketing success system, and once you have that in place, you need those people, the strategist, the manager, and the technician, to work together as a cohesive team to start making your marketing much more successful.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about this marketing success system. Have you had to overcome any of the presented concepts? What worked and what did not live up to expectations? Do you have any ideas or advice you could share?

To learn more about this and other topics on Internet Marketing, visit our podcast website at http://www.baconpodcast.com/podcasts/

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