Investment VS. Cost: Marketing is an Investment  

You can look at everything you spend money and time on as an investment or a cost.

What difference does that make?

Well for me when I see an expense as a cost, it is the cost of doing business. I pay and use the service or consume what I bought and when I’m done, I have nothing left. Examples: rent, utilities, subscriptions for software I use, equipment that has a short life span.

When I make an investment I’m using money but when I’m done paying for something, I have an asset that continues to give me value. Examples: real estate, long term equipment, relationships with strategic partners, marketing.

Whoa, where did marketing come from on the list of investments?

Once you stop don’t the results stop coming in?

Not if you’ve designed your marketing properly.

First, let’s define what marketing does.

It introduces your company to new people and nurtures them until they are ready to buy your products or services at the prices you want to sell them for.

Marketing done well makes sales easy. Your sales team is only talking to people who know you and want to do business with you at the price you want to sell for.

Now, to set up a system like that requires an investment.

While the end goal of marketing is generating sales it’s really doing two jobs:

  1. It’s helping you sell your products and services
  2. It’s creating an ever-growing audience who wants to do business with you.

Long term, option 2 is far and away the most valuable but option one makes it possible to afford option 2.

That is the challenge with marketing.

Most if not all business owners want results now and not later and only causally are interested in growing an audience who wants to do business with them.

I’m guilty of this myself, after all, who wants to wait to collect a check.

What I remind myself of is that growing my audience and strengthening my relationships is what’s giving me my future growth and has every year since I started Go Social Experts. It’s not uncommon for someone to follow me one, two, or more years before they spend money with me.

Now, over time, you’re going to build more elaborate systems for following up with people but start simple.

What can you do right now to grow your audience along with selling?

Growing your audience can be anything from collecting email addresses of interested people to getting people to follow you on Facebook or Instagram. It could even be getting them to watch a portion of a video or to respond to you on your Facebook or Instagram profile. Maybe, depending on your industry, it’s getting people’s physical addresses.

Once you have these to connect with people you have to have a follow-up and nurturing system created.

What does that look like?

At first, it can be a weekly email or blog post like you’re reading here. That doesn’t cost much, but it does take time.

It can be a podcast you create. If you’d like to listen to me and discover more about social media marketing I have a podcast. You can listen at www.gosocialexperts.com/podcast or find me on iTunes at Go Social with Brian Hahn.

It can be a weekly video you post on various platforms.

There are many options. Pick one and get started.

Then it takes a conversion event. Something small to sell or something that people invest time, like a webinar or sales video or even a sales letter you send to prospects.

If they don’t buy the first time, try again.

As you continue to reach out and sell while providing value, you’re growing your audience. Use your systems to follow up until your prospect is ready to buy.

All of this is an investment of time or money and it takes some testing. What offers does your audience respond to, what price are they willing to pay, how much time will they invest in you?

This investment can be a few hundred dollars to many thousands of dollars a month. It all depends on the economics of your business. What makes sense for your business may not make sense to another.

My larger clients have audiences in the 100s of thousands and routinely sell 10s of thousands of dollars a day or week.

My smaller clients have audiences of 100s and routinely sell a few hundred dollars a day or week.

Social Media Marketing can work for all, but the investment required differs.

If you’d like to discover what makes sense for your business set up a time to talk. We’ll spend 30 minutes going over what you’d like to achieve and I’ll give you ideas of how to make it happen. At the end of our call, I’ll ask you if you’d like help to make it happen. If yes we can talk about what that looks like and if not I’ll wish you well and you can take what we talked about and get started on your own.

Go to www.gosocialexperts.com/callbrian30 to pick a time that works for you.

Looking forward to talking with you.

Brian