Data has proven that you are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down, yet businesses and individuals alike fail to take this simple action. Why is developing and writing down your marketing plan so important? In this episode, Chris Casale and Ryan Smith chat with Cody Butler about his book, The 90-Day Marketing Plan, and how to develop your goals by beginning with the end in mind and staying committed to them to create lasting success.
Here are some of the podcast episode highlights:
What issues do entrepreneurs and SMBs struggle with the most?
Cody Butler: [00:06:14] Most people go into business, it seems like they have a skill or passion or they’re in a job that they’re exceptionally good at and they start a business because they can see that they can have more. They think that they can have more by starting a business.
They can have more finances, more freedom, stuff like that. And they get to do what they said. They tend to be very good at something.
We’re talking before the show you mentioned, you know, they tend to be very good at something, delivery of a product or service. And they think that that’s going to be sufficient to carry them, carry them through, so it’s the whole build it and they will come scenario, which just isn’t true at all. It’s like build it and you go broke. It is more accurate, say a lot of business owners.
They take what limited capital that they have going into business and they put all of it into creating the product or getting the business open. And marketing really is just an afterthought. They don’t think about how this product or service is actually going to get into the marketplace, which is a huge mistake. They just think that business will show up, know magically somehow said, you know, they simply don’t have a plan when it comes to actually marketing that business.
They simply don’t have one at all.
What’s the first thing that you do to help SMBs and entrepreneurs to realize their big picture goals?
Cody Butler: [00:07:42] So it’s the 80-20 Pareto Principle. It’s that says 80% of your results come from 20% of your input. So 80% of your sales will come from 20 percent of your products, 80 percent of those sales will come from 20% of your sales team.
80% of your leads will come from 20% of your marketing channel. So it’s like it’s identifying what are the high impact activities in your business? What are the 80-20 activities? So who are your best? Who’s the 80-20 of, you know, your customers? Who are your best customers?
What’s the 80-20 of your products? What are the most valuable products in terms of revenue, profit, stuff like that? What is the 80-20 of what you’re doing in terms of going to market?
So really, no business, especially small business, doesn’t have the resources to be on every marketing channel. They don’t have the resources that they’re trying to do too much with too little. So it’s like focusing on your best product, your best people, your best routes to market and put all of your focus on that and then take an 80% that you’re wasting and reinvest it into the 20% that work.
So you’re going to get effectively you’re going to get a 500% increase in results for no additional resources. It’s just simply a reallocation of existing resources into a more effective area of your business.
What inspired you to write The 90-Day Marketing Plan?
Cody Butler: [00:09:38] I started examining what (SMBs) were doing and started to see some patterns among what they were doing, and started to apply those results to the businesses that I was working with. And they all got the results.
And, you know, I’m working down to 5,000 businesses now. I see the same things, the same stakes in the same results happening. Success leaves clues so that the thing that most businesses don’t really understand is that marketing is the money part of your business.
No marketing equals no money. Great marketing equals great money. There’s a direct relationship between that, the skill level of your marketing and the money that your business produces marketing is the money aspect of your business.
So business owners don’t really understand that. So they put their focus in the wrong place. They put their focus on systems. They put their focus on products. They put their focus on bookkeeping. And in any one of 100 things they can put their focus on, but they don’t put their focus on marketing.
“The average business owner should be spending at least 70% of their time on sales and marketing, at least a bare minimum.”
-Cody butler
So I would say like the average business owner should be spending at least 70% of their time on sales and marketing, at least a bare minimum. I spend probably 90% of my time on sales and marketing.
The other 10% or the rest of the business, I give it to somebody else because their skills can be purchased, but the sales and marketing part concept, whereas most business owners, I would say they spend probably 10% of their time on sales and marketing nine percent of the time on the business.
They need to flip that around.
What’s your advice to SMBs that say they don’t have the budget?
Cody Butler: [00:12:38] So when someone says ‘we don’t have the budget, that’s not in our budget’, what they’re actually saying is we’ve set aside X amount of money to lose this year to feel as though we’re doing something to the business. That’s what they’re saying.
They’re saying we don’t understand marketing at all. But we’ve set aside this amount of money that we’re happy to lose this year. Because if I understand, it’s like I just said, why would you limit that deal? So the real question. Well, the question you want.
The point you want to get to is not how much is this going to cost? But the question you should be asking me or asking yourself is how much can I spend? That’s the real question. So wait. When you start asking questions of yourself like that, how much can I spend then? Then, you know, your marketing is working.
“If you try to be all things to all people, you’ll be nothing to anybody”
Cody Butler: [00:15:29] If we can define our audience, we can find our audience. And, you know, it all starts with like a lack of clarity. I mean, focus, clarity, isn’t it is a force multiplier.
In your business, in a force multiplier, in your life, once you start to get clarity, that multiplies the force of all other activity.
So instead of putting a very general message out to a very general audience, which really doesn’t land anywhere, if you try to be all things to all people, you’ll be nothing to anybody.
You know, when you become try to become very specific thing to a very specific person, then that multiplies the effects of everything else down the road.
Identify how your audience consumes content
Cody Butler: [00:27:46] How does your audience consume content? Is it going to be through a blog? Is it going to be or is it through video? Is it through radio? Like an older audience might like, you know, radio style stuff like podcasts that figure out how they consume content and then pick a platform.
So if you, you know, video content, you can distribute through YouTube, through through Facebook. If it’s written content, you can distribute it through a blog. It’s radio style content, audio content. You can distribute it through a podcast.
And these these means are free. So your goal is to give a prospect, the ability to binge on you if they want to. So if somebody comes into contact with you, like let’s say somebody is watching this interview and they’re coming into contact with me for the first time, they could spend the next two days of their life just watching videos of me if they want to.
They could be binge for two days if they want to. I give them the opportunity to get to know you. If they want to do that without them raising their hand and become invisible and scaring them, says somebody contacts me and says, hey, can you send us some more information about what you do?
There’s a fear that they’re going to be bombarded with sales material. Right?
If they type in Cody Butler and they go to YouTube or Facebook and they can spend two days consuming content anonymously with no risk whatsoever. So you want to give people that opportunity. So Youtube’s awesome for that. Facebook is awesome for that to just pick your platform, whatever, whatever you want to do and make an effort to put content out.
You can’t put content out too too often.
One takeaway you’d want our audience to hold on to after listening to your interview, what would that one takeaway be?
Cody Butler: [00:48:50] So I would say, you know, it’s kind of comes together like content is really important because that’s going to fall into the category of a follow-up.
So one statistic we haven’t talked about, which is which is superimportant, is that 50% of people that inquire about a product or service will go into a shop or, you know, 50% of those people will buy that product at some point, but only I think it’s only 15% will actually buy within the first 90 days.
So 85% of your buying universe is actually going to make that buying decision from day 90 and onwards. So that that’s your biggest opportunity, right? That is understanding that only a very small percentage are actually going to make that decision to make that purchasing decision within the first 90 days.
So if you don’t have a process in place that follows up and nurtures that prospect and keeps you top of mind, we’ve given them content, given them a stuff like that you’re missing out on. 85% of the available market out there.
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