Quick start to your marketing plan, well you need to allow at least fourteen hours.
And then the time you spend thinking about it.
But you don’t make thousands of pounds a month by spending a few minutes making a plan and executing it in one day.
The Pain
A lot of the pain we face with marketing is not knowing what bit to do when.
Every book, video, blog post or course gives us a new idea.
You end up trying a new thing every week, second and third guessing yourself.
I also believe people are either too lazy to work it out or outsource their success and hope it works.
Which is why I meet so many people paying £500 a month for SEO, but they never put new content on their website.
SEO is Dead!
In the decade I’ve been running London Bloggers Meet Up I’ve heard the term ‘SEO is dead’ around a million times.
(And I am downplaying that stat).
I have yet to see the time when SEO is dead.
The right, helpful content helps you optimise your website for search engines, and it’s always been that way.
The short cut
Anyway, after thirty-odd years of the internet, we’re still sending emails and going to a search box to type in words.
We’re all looking for the secret edge, the magic trick and the shortcut, me too!
But after reading hundreds of books, taking online courses and running workshops not stop for years, I’ve got it down to these three books.
Emails and blogs once a week
And it is the painful art of consistency that will make you stand out, not desperate discounts, free beer or table football in your coworking space.
If you’d opened a coworking space in the London gold rush of 2014 and had done a blog and an email every week, your consistency would have you killing it in SEO now.
Since I got into coworking in 2010, I’ve met very few people bothered to maintain an email newsletter and write on their website.
And in 2021, having a website that shares who you are and makes people want to leave you their email address is one of the most valuable things you can have.
We have thousands of people we can email every week between all our projects, which kept the show on the road in 2020, it has taken years to build up those emails.
Too late to start?
But it is never too late to start.
And one side bonus of the COVID is more people are online than ever before.
And more people are looking for a space to work near where they live.
This podcast we did with David Brown shows how valuable a ‘local coworking space’ became in 2020 – listen here.
The mental leap is hard.
We’ve struggled too, for over ten years the gang and I’ve been running weekly events on MeetUp.com.
Through 2020, I did not know what to do because my mindset for meetup.com was stuck on ‘in person’ events.
I could not make the mental leap from in-person to online with Meet Up.
We had hundreds of people attend our other online events every month.
But I never got the Meetup.com going again until 2021.
Now is the best time to get going.
At some point, we’ll all be going to work somewhere other than our kitchen table.
So putting words on the internet for people to read who and what we are about is an action we can take today.
So turn off Netflix, head over to Amazon and get these books and grab a note pad while you’re there.
How long will this take?
These three books come to around 14 hours listening time in total.
They have worksheets and help you work out what to do, which will also save you time.
One of the main reasons for reading these books is to know what to tell people in your team or a marketing consultant what you want.
The person who shows up to a web developer and knows what they want building gets better value than someone who makes it up as they go.
Pro-tip. Hire a writer
One of the best things you can do is hire a writer.
When you have someone to write blog posts for you, this gives you the backbone to email people and share on social.
Useful blog posts help you get found in search, and give you something to share on social media.
Instead of paying someone £500 to do some SEO stuff, deliver that to a writer to write you a post a week.
Even in 2021, so few coworking spaces post relevant stuff to the internet, you’ll stand out in a few weeks.
The Only Three Books You Need
12 Week Year
I am always raging about this book.
I’ve been following this formula for four years.
While I still have not got a private jet on 24-hour standby, I know myself, have more confidence and learn how to keep track of where I’m going.
This book shows you how to map out your next five years and work in 12-week chunks towards that, no pissing around.
Every Monday for the last four years, I’ve had a weekly accountability meeting with my mate Karen, and I dread to think where I would be if I had not done this.
We follow this in our marketing team for our startups PayPugs and Velvet and the Coworking Assembly.
When you know where you are going in the next twelve weeks, you also know what not to do.
So all those shiny objects don’t seem so attractive anymore.
The book comes with downloadable worksheets and if you want to commit there is a workbook you can get here.
I wonder how many of us sit down and plan what we want in the next 12 weeks?
How about one year, three years and five vs how many of us get up and hope for the best.
They Ask You Answer
When this book and BIG FIVE framework landed, it solved the question I was forever being asked, ‘what do I blog about?’
I’ve been following Marcus’ since 2011 and used his example of ‘answer peoples questions’ in workshops.
I’d often delight in saying that no one gives a shit that you were ‘London Small Business of the year 2010’ they are looking for ‘how much is a?’
I’ve worked with Marcus online and in person, and I’ve taught this in workshops with clients ever since.
This book spells out how many small and medium businesses have made millions in revenue from writing blog posts that answer peoples questions.
I’ve met people who have worked with Marcus selling everything from pools, sheds, car leasing to consulting.
They’ve blown up their businesses by writing two to three posts a week that answer peoples questions.
In my workshop, I get people to openly talk about what customers and members ask and then have people write down the answers.
Often people get solid drafts for 12 weeks worth of blog posts done in three hours by working together in a group.
A blog section on your website that performs well beats paying that mystery SEO person £500 a month.
If you want to support and accountability, you could join me in MYMO to learn and practice this stuff every week.
Marketing Made Simple
The four hours it will take you to listen to this book will save you hours.
I’ve spent five days locked in a room in Nashville with the authors learning the contents of this book at it has transformed the way I work in a year.
We used this framework the new website for PayPugs.
It took us three weeks from ‘let’s make a new website’ to ‘hit publish’ and a few days after we hit publish we were getting more PayPugs leads.
Marketing Made Simple give you the path to a straightforward website, a clear message, and building an email list.
It also comes with a simple worksheet to fill in and design an action plan to give your team or marketing consultant.
Don’t want to read the book? You can join the online course here Marking Made Simple and do the three-hour online class today.
Why read these books?
These three books are the ‘best of everything’ and all references other rock-solid work of people you will have read about before.
One of the most challenging and ugliest things is working out what bit to do, and the combination of these three books will help you:
- Get a plan in place for your business.
- Know what to write that will help you get found online and allow people.
- Follow a simple framework, so you know what NOT to do.
Still, stuck?
Book a call with me to work out your twelve-week plan
Or get you whole team on a workshop with me to make a plan, start a podcast, build an email list.
