EP1: The Marketing Layer

ProfitLayer with Timothy Dick - Business building explored layer by layer.

“If you don’t have a good product, you can spend millions of dollars and a lot of time in marketing, but it won’t work.”

- Timothy Dick

Marketing is not a trendy advertising method.

A lot of people think marketing is business. We have a lot of ‘experts’ and ‘gurus’ out there teaching ‘marketing.’ What they’re actually teaching is an advertising method. People often look at a certain tactic and mistake it for marketing. When you break it down, the layer of marketing is all about helping people and solving a problem. It’s that simple.

In order to have an effective marketing strategy, there are a few key questions to ask:

What are you offering? Does it solve a problem? Most importantly, does your market recognize the problem that you’re solving? You could have an excellent product, and spend millions in advertising, but if your market doesn’t see the problem, they aren’t going to give you their money.

It can be easy to get distracted by the array of marketing platforms available. Each platform serves a purpose, but it may not serve you. Everything may work in the proper context, but it’s important for you to determine what is the most effective, least expensive, and fastest path to getting your product in front of your target audience.

“The two major metrics I look at are the cost per acquisition and the return on ad spend.” - Timothy Dick

Broaden your scope. Enhance your marketing.

As business owners, it can be easy to default to a trendy marketing strategy or zero in on one platform or channel. One of the worst situations we see is a client who may be doing millions per month, but they are only utilizing one platform. Everything is changing all the time. Anyone who tells you that you can put all of your focus on one platform is ill-informed. Algorithms and trends shift regularly. If all of your marketing eggs are in one proverbial basket, a single algorithm change could set you back at square one. Having multiple channels will ensure that your profits will remain unaffected in the midst of ever-changing marketing algorithms.

“I’ve seen people optimize optimize optimize… but it’s not actually what they should be optimizing for if they want a healthy business. What is good for cheap leads, won’t be good for profit.”

- Nic Peterson

This week, take a step back and make a list of all of your marketing channels. Where are all of the places you get your business? Take an objective look at that list and ask yourself, are you comfortable with the number of marketing channels you are utilizing? Take this list a step further. Add the sources of random clients that you didn’t gain through intentional marketing. You may have some channels working for you that have been underutilized and could be strong marketing channels for your product or service.

How to get involved If you would like more information about Timothy Dick, and the success businesses have gained through work with him, please visit his website.

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