“A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 TRUE FANS to make a living.”  —Kevin Kelly

We’ve always wanted to have a successful business. Karen, a teacher and Trevor, a serial entrepreneur that got stuck in the trades to make ends meet, began learning about internet marketing. We both saw the potential of digital marketing and started learning all we could on the subject. The gurus made everything sound so simple. In theory, it is. In execution, it isn’t.

Karen spent years taking care of the children and transitioned into taking marketing courses. While Trevor was working full time, sometimes out of town, he was always perfecting his knowledge and working on the skills necessary for a digital marketer.

It was hard. Very Hard.

We were frustrated. The more we  learned, the more frustrated we became. Everyone had an opinion or a course that promised a sure bet to making it online. We found out that most of them were making money teaching people that to make money, all you need to do is just teach a course on how to teach people to make money. It was all so convoluted.

We kept on going. We kept learning. Our goal of discovering how to use digital marketing to create steady streams of customers and revenue was possible. Suffering from SOS (shiny object syndrome) and only having a few hours a week to work on the new venture, we weren’t seeing the results we had been hoping for.

We felt like complete failures. We had accumulated a wealth of knowledge but lacked the courage to move forward with our vision.

Our problem was that we weren’t going all-in on our dream and trusting in our skills.  We were dabbling. We dabbled in affiliate marketing. We dabbled in building funnels. We dabbled in social media, starting groups and pages just trying to see where our message would catch on. We would see some things start to happen and then our attention would be pulled away by the next shiny object or personal crisis. The problem was that we were trying to do it all.  Though digital marketing sounds really simple, there are a lot of moving parts that all require a certain set of skills to perform well. Just to give an idea of what it takes to make one successful Facebook ad campaign it requires:

● A product that people want.

● Facebook fan page

● Facebook business account

● Images and videos

● Well constructed headlines and ad copy

● A landing page or website that is optimized for conversions

● Shopping cart – merchant accounts – tracking for shipping

● Thank you sequence

● Upsell sequence – each with their own pages, headlines, and copy

● Retargeting pages with images, copy and videos

● An email sequence and SMTP service

● And on and on.

We were dumb. We knew it. We needed to do something different or continue in this death spiral to nowhere land.

Facebook ad campaigns are complex and they are only one part of a successful digital marketing strategy. Other parts include website design and SEO/SEM, graphic design, blogging, video editing and creation, building content, scheduling posts for social media and so on. Sure there are people out there that claim that it’s a lot simpler than what I’m describing, but to do it right it takes all of these things to actually reach new clients and turn a cold viewer into a devoted follower.

During the journey we listened to a lot of podcasts on business and marketing. Every day we were exposed to stories of people just like us that wanted to change their lives and start a business to break free from the 9-5 and live life on their own terms. It was both encouraging and discouraging at the same time. On one hand it was uplifting to hear the tales of those that made it. In a short period of time they were able to quit their job and go full time in their business and really make an impact in their clients’ lives. The hard part was hearing of all of these success stories and comparing where we were on our journey.

Many of these successful people had some things in common. They had a coach or mentor to help them, guide them and challenge their thinking and actions.  Another key was that they went all in on their business and they got a team together to help do the things that were bogging them down so that they could do the important things that helped them to grow and scale.

That was it! We realized that we needed a coach. And we needed to have a team of people in place.

We were on the hunt for a coach. After meeting with a few different people we found that they were only willing to coach us to be in their MLM, not help us build our business. So we took our search online. We found someone that is no-nonsense, provided training in sales, marketing and financial planning and is respected in their field. Not to mention, he is also super wealthy. Having someone to help us get our thinking right regarding our business was instrumental. He taught us that we had to have lots of inventory or products to sell so that we didn’t have to try and sell on price. Our first plan was to offer only social media management as a start because it is has a low barrier to entry and it’s something we could manage while I was still working full time and Karen was in school. This was a mistake. In order to be successful we had to be able to offer more services. We knew this was the key to winning in the online world. A company cannot just dabble with an online platform and expect to be successful. We made it our mandate to provide all of these services because we realized after years of studying all of the things that made the really successful companies win big, was committing to marketing and advertising. As Russell Brunson teaches, “the company that can spend the most to acquire a customer wins.”

It takes at least 5-12 exposures to your product or service before a customer will be interested in engaging with  you. It takes that many more to complete the transaction. Knowing this it was clear that in order for us to help businesses win, we had to create a system to get our clients in front of their ideal customers using multiple digital channels.

We have discovered a proven digital marketing strategy that we liken to a conveyor belt. These ‘conveyor belt’ initiatives are like the gears of the system. If they aren’t all freely moving in the direction of a sales conversion, your ‘pipeline’ initiatives like PPC ads, social media advertising, networking, outbound marketing and others will not be as effective. The goal is to attract and convert the RIGHT customer for each business we represent.

But how were we going to do this? To staff a team that could do this in an effective and efficient manner costs hundreds of thousands per year, not including equipment, software and tech support. If we were going to make it big and make such audacious claims, it was necessary to take a huge leap and go all in.  

The only way we could do this was to find the best talent from around the world and have them work for us. Outsourcing many of the tasks to fully vetted sub-contractors is how we make this happen. We partnered with an amazing company, led by someone who knows what it takes to build multi-million dollar companies from scratch. Not only did we secure the best talent, but an amazing mentor and coach.

Through this journey we learned that it takes a team to make big goals happen. It also takes dedication, commitment and courage. Now we have a digital marketing system that can be used by any company to help it scale and grow.