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00:00

This is Ted, your host speaking on today’s show, we have Tim Fitzpatrick, who will be sharing with us the fundamentals of marketing and finding your ideal client. Now Tim is a marketing expert with over 20 years of experience in marketing, business development, sales, management and strategic planning, with his experiences growing a wholesale distribution company which he co owned by an average of 60%, a year before selling it and his experiences in the real estate industry. Tim shares verse his best actionable advice, which include what the fundamentals of marketing are, how we can find our ideal client and how to craft an effective marketing plan. Now, I really had a very good chat with Tim during this interview, so I know you enjoy it, too. If you enjoyed today’s episode, hope you learn anything new. Remember to subscribe to the show, so you never miss an episode. Show the friend. If you had the time, why don’t leave a review for the show. He will help us grow a lot and will greatly appreciate it. Now as a way to say thank you and to show my appreciation to you guys. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. As always, all episodes, show notes, tools and resources can be found on tatio.com. That’s tdt.com. Now let’s dive right in. Tim, thank you so much for joining us. Today is such a pleasure to have you with us. Thanks for having me, Ted. I’m excited to be here. Okay, Tim, let’s start with a little icebreaker so we can get to know you a little bit better. The show of us who is Tim Fitzpatrick when he isn’t working?

 

01:27

Oh boy, when I’m not working. I married I have two kids, two girls that are 11 and 10. I live in Colorado just outside of Denver. So I love being outside man getting out. You know paddleboarding, mountain biking, hiking, skiing, so when I’m not working, I like to spend time with my family. And and get outdoors. How does it feel like to be outnumbered at home? Yeah. You know what, though? Dude, I have two dogs that are that are both males. So the it’s kind of they tipped the scale a little bit? Not much, but just a little bit.

 

02:04

That’s nice. That’s nice. So Tim, show us your story. How do you go from being a math major to become a marketing expert today? What was the journey that got you here? And how did you end up starting with auto marketing.

 

02:17

So my entrepreneurial path, like most is, has not been straight, you know, it’s not this straight road, it’s a winding road. I was not one of those kids that was like super entrepreneurial, and you know, was gonna start my own business. I fell into entrepreneurship. After I graduated from college, as you mentioned, I was a math major, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was always good at math. So I figured, hey, math is man, it’s used in a lot of different things, I’m sure that I can use this to my benefit. And, you know, in whatever I decided to do, when I graduated, I ended up getting involved in a wholesale distribution company, I became a partner in that company. And I was the partner that was managing that company on a day to day basis, was managing all the day to day operations for the company. And we grew it about 60% a year for over 10 years. And then in 2005, we sold the company, and I ended up staying on with that company, all the partners ended up having a three year agreement. We stayed on work for the company that bought us. And in 2008, my contract was up, I ended up actually staying with the company, but I moved from Northern California where I was to the Denver area. And you know, we all know what happened in 2008. You know it? Yeah, man, it just things melted, we actually got bought by a public company. And so they were men, they were I think they were they were apprehensive, fearful of what was going on. And in early 2009, they ended up closing, like 30% of the locations in the US. And I actually ended up getting laid off which, you know, some people might go, Oh, my gosh, you got laid off or the company that bought you, but it happens more often than you might think. Yeah, that can be quite common. So what happened after So, at that point, you don’t mean at all my whole professional career had been in distribution. And so I took a little bit of time, you know, thought about, you know, what’s, what’s my next step gonna be? I’d always been interested in real estate from an investment standpoint, I wanted to learn more about it. So I became a residential realtor. And, you know, that was early 2010. Which again, man them the real estate market was in the middle of a meltdown. At that point, you chose a really bad time to enter the real estate market. Yeah, what what are you doing? But I think there’s opportunity in any market and in that market, it was foreclosures there. People were going into foreclosure. So I started knocking on people’s doors that were in foreclosure. And I started to do short sale business where I was negotiating with the bank. To get them to approve a sale of the home for less than what it was worth. And man, I, I was putting myself outside my comfort zone. Every day doing that I learned a ton. But about two and a half, three years into it, man, I was dreading going to work. Every day I’d wake up and I was like, Oh, my God, I got to do this all over again. And what’s the point of owning your own business if you’re going to read it every day? So I started looking at shifting gears again, thought about, you know, where my skill sets really lived, what I enjoyed about distribution, because when I was in distribution, I didn’t feel like I worked a day. I loved it so much that it was just that was it. It was like, How can I do that again, and that’s when I got into marketing. I started my company reality marketing. And, you know, I’m not going to tell you that hasn’t been a winding road either, you know, our products have shifted a bit our service, our services have shifted multiple times, where we are now is we’re, you know, we’re offering more comprehensive, you know, marketing, strategy, fundamental, help people get the fundamentals in place, and then help them manage that plan on an ongoing basis. So who are your primary clients, two primary clients now, our service businesses, coaches, consultants, professional service providers, their marketing is no different than the marketing for our own company. When we’re testing things, we’re really more testing things on ourselves, and then talking to clients about it. So that’s, I guess, the the long story of how I ended up where I am now,

 

06:32

Tim, I think what is really nice about what you shared is really the idea that you have to be brave enough to experiment, you clearly did that when, despite spending all those years in warehousing, US decided to explore real estate, decided that you didn’t like it, and still went on to go to start real too. So no debt was never seen as a failure. But it just gave you more experiences. And you actually managed to connect the dots to make it all work out in the end. So Tim, let’s pick your brain as a marketing specialist. What are the fundamentals of marketing? And what are the dangers of skipping them?

 

07:07

The fundamentals in any discipline, I don’t care what it is, whether it’s marketing, or entrepreneurship, or, you know, hitting a baseball, the fundamentals do not change. They are the same today as they were 50 years ago, and they’re going to be the same 50 years from now, with marketing, I think it is so easy to skip the fundamentals. Because we see, what I see most often is people are they’re battling information overload when it comes to marketing, there’s so many different channels, so many different tactics. And it just makes business owners just you know, you get overwhelmed. You’re like God, where where do I even start?

 

07:46

Yeah, and you become paralyzed without information?

 

07:48

Yeah, there’s just too much information. And when you’re overwhelmed, you can’t create a plan. But a plan is what we all need to be effective. I don’t care if it’s marketing or anything else, you have to have a plan. Even a bad plan is better than no plan. So um, but nobody talks about the fundamentals. They want to get tactical, immediately, I got to have a website, I got to be on social media, I have to have a podcast. The problem is, if you skip the fundamentals, you’re going to waste time, and you’re going to waste money, because the fundamentals laid the foundation for you to build the rest of your house from there’s a quote from Michael Jordan, where he said, Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise. Like professional athletes make it look easy. But it’s not. They took so much time to get the fundamentals in place where they don’t even think about it. We need to do the same thing in our business, we have to have those fundamentals of marketing in place. Otherwise, everything we do is just a crapshoot. And inevitably, most of those things if they work, they don’t work as well as they could or should.

 

09:01

So Tim, please share with us what are the fundamentals of marketing?

 

09:04

Yes. So what are the fundamentals? I call them the marketing strategy trilogy. So there’s obviously three. First one is your target market, you know, who are you going to serve? How are you going to serve those people? And who are your ideal clients within that target market? Okay, not every everyone out there is not a great customer, for me or for you. We have to really understand who those great customers are for us. Once we know who those ideal clients are for us, and we understand them as it relates to our service. When we can enter the conversation that they’re having in their head and when we communicate with them. They’re like, Oh my gosh, you know, he she they get me, right. Once we understand that, then we can start to create the second Fundamental wishes, which is your messaging. And your messaging is how you communicate what you do. And the value that you provide. that’s essential, you’re never going to convert people. If the message you put out there doesn’t isn’t of interest to them and bring them in and engage them. But you can’t create a message that’s going to be clear and engaging until you first understand who the heck your target market is. And then the third aspect of that is your plan, you have to have a plan of how you’re going to get that message in front of those people. That’s it. Everything else from marketing standpoint, is about different channels and different tactics within those channels. But none of that stuff is going to work well, if you skip those three fundamentals.

 

10:50

So guys, as Tim has just shared, the three important fundamentals to marketing, firstly, is identifying your target market. Next is what is your message going to be to them to communicate your value. And third, you need a good plan to bring this message to your target market, don’t skip any of these fundamental steps, or you may end up wasting a lot of time and money in the process. So Tim, let’s dive a little bit deeper into your first fundamental point, which is finding your target market, people tend to go too broad when you’re doing your marketing, how can you really hone in to their target market? How can they find them?

 

11:23

So I think the easiest place to start for an existing business. So let’s assume that you’ve been in business for a while. You have current customers, you have past customers, the easiest place to start is with those current and past customers. And I want you to look at them. And I want you to ask yourself three questions. Who do you enjoy working with? Okay, why do we want to work with people that make our life’s difficult? There’s no point in that. So let’s look at the clients that we’ve loved working with. Who are your most profitable clients. And a lot of business owners hit the hit the have the myth that their most profitable clients are their best clients, the clients that are driving top line revenue. That is often not the case. Because large clients have a tendency of man asking for a lot. Sometimes people discount to high volume customers, so they may not be your most profitable customers. But if we’re going to stay in business and do a great job for cut for our customers, we need to be profitable. So we need to look at who our profitable customers are. And then the last thing I want you to ask yourself is, who do we do our best work for? If we do work day in day out for people that we get great results for awesome things are gonna happen. So when you ask yourself these three questions of your current and past customers, you end up with a subgroup that you answered positively to all three of those questions. So everybody in that group you love working with, they’re profitable, and you did great results for them. It’s that group that you then start to do the real work, which is, who are these people in this group? You know, demographically, like the numbers, you know, the numbers, the demographics are gonna vary depending on the type of business you’re in. Are you serving business to business or business to consumer? But that could be, you know, age ranges? You know? It could be where they live geographically? Do they make a certain amount of income? Are they in a specific industry? Do they have specific titles? All those things? Are demographics, the demographics help us start to paint a more accurate picture of who our ideal clients may be?

 

13:48

Tim, one important point that you just highlighted is that just because the client brings in a lot of revenue may not mean they’re highly profitable Klein? And what do you really want to find the clients that give you that high margin of profit, and you’re right, larger clients may not be your ideal client. Sometimes they may be asking for a bigger scope of work with a higher rate of discount, so that may really eat into your profit margins. Now, back to you, Tim, you spoke about demographics. But let’s talk a little bit about psychographics. in your own words, you describe what psychographics means, and how this is really another important factor that we need to learn when we’re looking at our ideal client. Yeah.

 

14:26

So I think the psychographics are equally if not more important than the demographics and the psychographics are about your ideal clients, thoughts, feelings, aspirations, as it relates to what you do. You know, what are the what are the common problems that they have, that you can solve? What results are they looking for? What benefits are they looking for, you know, what are their goals? All of those things help you get more into their into their head then Just looking at the outside and the exterior of who those people are. And it’s the psychographics that really help you craft your message, which is that next step, but we can’t craft that message until we understand the psychographics. And the demographics. But when you look at the demographics and the psychographics of that group of current and past customers, what inevitably ends up happening is there’s 123 subgroups that have that are common. And it’s those subgroups that you can look at and go, hey, these may be ideal clients for me. Right? And that’s how you can then hone in on who your ideal clients are within that target market. Right? So, for example, like let’s say you work with chiropractors, okay, well, that’s a target market. But not every chiropractor is going to be an ideal client for you. There are certain things about specific chiropractors that make them better clients for you. It’s that information that you really need to hone in on because once you have that information, now you can start to identify where those people are, online and offline, so that you can determine where you need to be. But then you can also use that as a, as a measuring stick when you start to have sales conversations with people. Is this is this chiropractor going to be somebody that I can actually help or not? No? If you don’t have that measuring stick, you’re like, Okay, yeah, cool. I can help, which is what a lot of us do in the beginning, right? We attract, we try to attract everyone people come in, and we’re like, oh, yeah, cool. they’ve, they’ve got a heartbeat. They’re breathing, they’ve got money, they want to pay me awesome. And we ended up finding is not every one of those people we work with is a great fit.

 

16:54

So guys is really important to really hone down and who your ideal customer is. Think of the psychographics demographics and geographics of your ideal customer and craft your message to reach them. Don’t try to reach everyone, because that will not help you in the long run. So Tim, I’m going to be a little bit cheeky, I’m going to ask you for a live demonstration. Who are your own ideal clients? And how did you find them?

 

17:16

So I, our ideal clients, I mentioned briefly a high level in the beginning of our conversation here, there are coaches, consultants and professional service people, experts, people that are selling their knowledge as part of their business. And for me, it just one I like working with those types of people typically. But a lot of the issues that they run into are no different than the issues that I ran into when I first started my business. And so in a sense, I was my ideal client, which really helped me better understand those people that I intend to attract and work with. And you know, and so our clients, typically they’ve been in business for a while they’ve had some success, but they’re hitting a ceiling, and the the thing that they want to break through, they want to continue to grow. But they’re just not quite sure what to do, and, and how to do it. And that’s where we can come and get involved. And, you know, it may sound surprising to a lot of people that we focus on the fundamentals, yet our ideal clients or people that have been in business for a while. There’s so many people that skip the fundamentals. And inevitably, that ceiling they’re hitting is because something in one or multiple of the fundamentals is off. And when we correct that, then we can put a plan in place. Sometimes some of the things that they were doing, that weren’t working all of a sudden start to work. You know, it’s not that they had the wrong tactics. They had the they had the right tactic at the wrong time.

 

18:57

So Tim, let’s say we have found our ideal client and we have a message to reach them. Can you share with us your tips on how we can make effective marketing plan?

 

19:05

So the way I look at marketing plans, is keeping them simple. So I look at them in 90 day sprints. I think too many people when they look at planning, they I think they plan too far personally, when when you put together a one year marketing plan, there’s too many components. And frankly, it’s too long a period of time. You know if anything over the last year and a half has taught us with this pandemic, you know, if you had a year long marketing plan at the beginning of 2020 in March, a lot of people would have just burned it put it up on the shelf to collect dust, and they had to shift gears so let’s keep it simple. If we overcomplicate things, they’re inevitably they’re not effective, right. And I can’t one of my mentors said complexity is the enemy of results. When we make things complex, they are too difficult to implement, they’re too difficult to try and troubleshoot when things go wrong. There’s too many moving parts. So I use a six step 90 day marketing plan. So I’m going to run you through this. And all the stuff that we’re talking about today, I’ve got a resource link for your audience. They can go there, there’s templates, all that stuff is there to help. Okay, but here’s the here’s the 90 day plan. First step, target market, who are your ideal clients, I want you to have a paragraph minimum of who your one to three ideal client types are. So if you have two ideal client types, I want two paragraphs, one for each of those ideal client types. Who are they? All we’re doing in this first step is just keeping Top of Mind who we intend to work with. Okay? Second step, what’s my goal? What’s my marketing goal for the next 90 days needs to be specific, measurable, it’s going to be time bound, because this is a 90 day plan. So this might be you know, I intend to bring on 10 new clients in the next 90 days. Okay, we have to have an idea of where we’re headed, right? We got to keep that picture there. But it’s also important to understand a goal like that has a lot of variables beyond our control, right? I might take the action that I need to take to hit that goal. And I don’t hit it because of outside extenuating circumstances. That’s okay, those things happen. I just like to tell people don’t get too caught up in in an outcome based goal like that, because there are things beyond your control. But we do need to have an idea of where we intend to go. Okay, at least a direction, right?

 

21:46

Yeah. Step three, what’s our marketing budget? And what our resources, this gives us an idea of what we have to work with. So that we’re realistic about what we actually put in our plan. Do I have $500 a month to invest my marketing to 5000? And from a resource standpoint, this is about time and capability? Is it me as the business owner, do I have some time to invest in my marketing plan to implement it? Do I have people on staff, and those people that are actually going to implement is this in their skill set? You know, if you were on my team, Ted, and I said to you, hey, I need somebody to spend five hours a week managing our social media. And you said to me, what’s Facebook? You know, I mean, you’re probably, unless I can level up your skill set, which I probably can, right, you may not be a good fit. So we need to make sure that the resources that we’re have we have, are in that it’s a good fit, that they’re in the right seat, and they have the capabilities to implement that. Okay, so that’s what we’re doing in step three. Step four, is we’re looking at our current marketing plan. And a lot of people may not have a current marketing plan, or it’s very loose, it’s, you know, they don’t really have it down on paper. And it’s not very clear. That’s okay. All this step is doing is helping give us a baseline of where we’re starting from, we cannot outline or create a plan to get to where we want to go. And until we know where we’re starting from, it’s like my GPS, it can’t tell me how to get to the airport, until I tell it where we’re starting from. So all I want you to do in this step is write down, what have you put in place? And what do you continue to do on a regular basis from a marketing standpoint? That’s all we’re doing here. Okay, once we have that in place, then we can move to the fifth step, which is what am I going to focus on for the next 90 days? What’s my 90 day marketing plan? And this might be one or two priorities that you’re going to focus on, depending on what you have to work with. And that’s okay. But the beautiful thing about this is, this outlines your priorities. And what you’re going to focus on, which helps eliminate distraction. So that next week when somebody says, Oh, my God, you know, Ted, you got to be on clubhouse. It’s the latest, greatest thing. You actually have the discipline to go, You know what? I’m not saying no to this, I’m just saying no, right now, maybe I’ll put this on a list and evaluate it later. But until I get this stuff done, no. So I’ve got my priorities and guess what happens when you know what your priorities are? You have clarity. And when we have clarity, our stress goes down. Right? We get stressed and we get overwhelmed because we don’t know what our priorities are and we don’t have clarity. That’s what this plan will do for you. Now, the sixth step is metrics, what metrics Am I going to track the metrics or measurements that help you determine whether the actions you’re taking are actually making an impact. So many people don’t know whether their marketing is working, because they don’t have metrics that they’re tracking. So I don’t want to, as a math major, I can go into the weeds on metrics, I just want to keep this high level and want to say a couple things that I think are really important for your listeners, one, in marketing, there are so many vanity metrics that don’t mean anything. How many visitors are going to your website, how many email list people you have on your email list? How many followers you have on social media, none of that stuff matters, if you are not generating leads that are turning into customers. So I like to tell most people to start with three metrics. To start, you can always branch out from there. But one, how many leads are you generating? There’s a lot of people that aren’t tracking the number of leads that they’re generating. The second thing I want you to look at is where those leads are coming from. Okay, those two things tell you whether the actions you’re taking are generating leads, and which channels or tactics that you’re using are actually generating leads super important, right? And then the third metric is how many of those leads are converting to customers?

 

26:27

That is, really, it’s really powerful when you know, hey, for every five leads, we bring in, we get a new customer, or every 10 leads, whatever those numbers are for you. There’s no no right or wrong there. But once you know what those numbers are, now, you can start to look at Okay, how can I improve this, right? Or, have we maxed this out or you know, are you can look at your overall goals, and know, okay, well to hit our overall goals, we need to get X amount of customers. And to get X amount of customers, we need to get y amount of leads. That’s really powerful, because you can start to work things backwards when you know those numbers. So those are three metrics that I recommend people start with. And then from there, if you want to start to track more, you certainly can. But those three are going to give you a hell of a lot of information, have a lot of actionable information that you can use to start looking at, okay, at the end of my 90 days, what’s worked, what hasn’t? Where do we need to make course corrections, you update your plan. And then you wash, rinse and repeat. It’s so it’s just you plan, you implement you optimize? And that is a endless loop. Tim,

 

27:52

those are great tips. Now, guys, why not consider applying a 90 day marketing plan, like Tim suggested, have a proper plan with a proper deadline and destination that you want to get to and always recalibrate at the end of the process, look at what worked and what didn’t work and double down on what worked make your marketing plan effective and efficient and better in the long run. Tim, let’s speak a little bit more about information overload. There are so many social media platforms out there right now, what advice would you have for an entrepreneur who’s just starting out with his marketing? What should the approach be when they’re approaching all these social media platforms? I personally think that they should actually focus on just a few platforms and do it well, as opposed to trying to do everything at the same time when it’s starting out. What do you think

 

28:34

what you choose to take on with social media is going to depend a bit on your budget and your resources? Right? If you have more budget, more resources, well, then you can take on more. But as a general rule of thumb, I think a great place for most businesses to start is man pick one or two, no more than that, that really resonate with you, your audiences there and go deep on those didn’t nail those, and then you can start to expand from there. But I think people get overwhelmed with social because they feel like they have to be everywhere. And they’re like, Oh my god, I can’t, you know, I’m posting, but then, you know, they just, they end up doing none of them well, because they’re spread too thin. So, you know, for example, I work business to business, right? LinkedIn, look, we’re on a lot of social channels. But if I had to choose one for my business, it would be LinkedIn. Our ideal clients are there they are on LinkedIn. That is the place for me to be. So go deep there. Um, the other thing that I would say about social media, where I think a lot of people hit roadblocks is they just post Well, you know, posting content is not going to move the needle, in my opinion. You have to it’s social media, you have it social, you have to start interacting and engaging with people. If you want them to engage with you, you don’t unless you have a huge following on some other social media channel, and then you move to another one. Most of us are not just going to automatically attract a huge following, we have to, we have to be consistent, we have to have a plan of Hey, what are we going to post? When are we going to post? And then how are we going to interact and engage with people. And that takes time, right? To engage, you have to share other people’s content, you have to tag people mentioned people

 

30:45

get social, Tim, you know that. So true is social and media. So just posting is not enough, you got to get social, you got to get involved in your community, you got to talk to people, you got to interact, collaborate, do the social aspect. And I think a lot of people are missing their part out. Tim, now give us some tips on what entrepreneurs tend to neglect in terms of marketing, what are some low hanging fruits that they can really implement

 

31:08

even today? So a few things. One is those fundamentals right? If you do not have the fundamentals in place, you gotta get those in place first. Otherwise, like I said, before, you’re gonna waste time, you’re gonna waste money. And that could be six months from now, a year from now, you know, multiple years from now you come back and go, we got to do this, just take the time to do it a few other things. After the fundamentals, your website, is the it’s the hub of your marketing, I don’t care if you are 100% referral business, okay. When people are referred to you, they are not reaching out to you, without checking you out. Yeah, they go to your website, whether you choose to believe it or not. And if they go to your website, and it looks like it’s from 1995, you’re losing business, and you don’t even know it, because they’re not even calling you. The flip side to that is some of the people that would love to refer you may not even be referring you because they go to your website, and they’re like, I can’t refer somebody here. Yeah, I’m gonna refer them and they’re gonna go there, and they’re gonna go, Dude, why did he refer them? To me, these people don’t look like they have their stuff together. So even if you’re 100% referral, your website is super important. Everybody is going online to check you out before they reach out to you. So you got to get your website, right. From there, the next logical place, there’s a lot of low hanging fruit. But I think the biggest one that people overlook, is what is already working in your business. What is what is already the best one or two things you are doing that are generating leads and new customers? That’s the best place to start. Because oftentimes, those things that are working are not completely optimized. Can you do more of it to generate more? Or are there gaps that you need to fill that will make those perform even better? That’s the best place to start in your plan. Start with the end for each of those one or two things that are already working, and just look at the process to see, are we missing something? Can we do more of this to generate more leads, maximize those opportunities first, then you can start to expand into other channels and tactics.

 

33:32

Then let’s talk a bit about communicating your message. How can we communicate our message without coming off as scammy? The best place

 

33:39

to start when you’re looking at your messaging is to interview ideal clients. One of the resources that the link will talk about here in a little bit, is a customer insights survey. There’s been a 1415 questions on there. as business owners, it is so hard for us sometimes to articulate our value and what we do because we were in it. We don’t think about it objectively. We can’t see the forest through the trees. Our clients, our past clients oftentimes can articulate that and you you write it down after you as you’re interviewing, and you start to review the notes and you’re like, Oh my god, that makes perfect sense. Like why did I not see that? It’s because we’re too in it, man. We’re learning it every day. So that’s the best place to start. At the very least when you interview, current and past ideal clients. You can at least confirm the thoughts you have about them are are the thoughts you have the assumptions that you’re making accurate or are they not? And if you need to tweak them, then you can. But that’s an easy place to start. For people that are just beginning their business, right. You can still you can interview or talk to people that are in your target market. Okay, and do the exact same thing and get that information from them. But all we’re talking about here is we’re just getting information about, Hey, you know, when you before you started working with us, what was the problem that you had, you know, that you were looking to solve? Why did you choose to work with us? You know, what are the benefits that you’ve realized in working with us? It’s questions like that, that helps you dig below the surface, to really understand the things that you need to hone in on. Okay? Because, look, the when we talk about people’s problems, and or the results that they’re looking for those, those are the hooks that, that, attract them and get them interested in what we have to say. So we need to understand in their words, what that is, okay. And then from there, you can then start to use a framework that we recommend from a storytelling standpoint to craft your message. But that’s the first place you start.

 

35:58

And thank you so much for sharing all your actionable advice today. But if the listeners should only remember one thing today, well, we’d like it to be?

 

36:05

Well, that’s a great question. Um, I would just say, Don’t skip the fundamentals. Take the time, a lot of people are impatient. They think short term. Next week, next month, three months, they don’t think long term. We’re in business for the long haul. And you’ve got to make decisions for the long term. And be patient because yes, are there things we can do from marketing standpoint that can yield quick results? Yes, we can. But most things from a marketing standpoint, take time, you’re, you’re you’re putting in the effort to build that momentum. And once you hit that momentum, man, as long as you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to be in great shape. But too many people think short term go, I need to generate these today. And they get tactical immediately. And they pay the price for that. So take the time to do the fundamentals, it will pay off in the long run for you, I guarantee you.

 

37:06

So Tim, how can our listeners get in touch review, if you want to get your help.

 

37:10

best place to start is our website, which is reality marketing calm. So that’s ri a ltot marketing.com. The free resources I mentioned are reality marketing.com forward slash Ted dash to tons of free resources there. If you’re getting stuck, and you need help, just click on the get a free consultation button on our website. I’ll be happy to chat with you. Help You Get some clarity on where you should be focusing right now to get to where you want to be. So another great place to camp with me personally. LinkedIn. It’s linkedin.com forward slash in forward slash Tim P. Fitzpatrick. But our website, we produce a ton of content. It’s all there. All the links to our social are there. So the websites the best place to go,

 

37:59

Tim, thank you once again for being on the show. I really appreciate it and I definitely learned a lot.

 

38:04

Thanks so much for having me, man. It’s been fun and we should do it again sometime.

 

38:08

So guys, that was Tim Fitzpatrick, a marketing expert who just shared his best tips and how you can get your marketing right. So why not have a think about what you can do to improve your marketing game today. So guys, I hope you found today’s episode useful. Don’t forget to support the show by leaving a review, subscribing to the show and sharing with a friend. And don’t forget about the Amazon gift voucher giveaway. If you do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon all tools, tips and resources available on tedteo.com. That’s tedteo.com. That’s all for me today. This is Ted Teo, signing off.

[This transcript has been automatically generated by a digital software and will therefore  contain errors and typos. Please kindly take note of this and only rely on the digital transcript for reference.]

00:00

This is Ted, your host speaking on today’s show, we have Tim Fitzpatrick, who will be sharing with us the fundamentals of marketing and finding your ideal client. Now Tim is a marketing expert with over 20 years of experience in marketing, business development, sales, management and strategic planning, with his experiences growing a wholesale distribution company which he co owned by an average of 60%, a year before selling it and his experiences in the real estate industry. Tim shares verse his best actionable advice, which include what the fundamentals of marketing are, how we can find our ideal client and how to craft an effective marketing plan. Now, I really had a very good chat with Tim during this interview, so I know you enjoy it, too. If you enjoyed today’s episode, hope you learn anything new. Remember to subscribe to the show, so you never miss an episode. Show the friend. If you had the time, why don’t leave a review for the show. He will help us grow a lot and will greatly appreciate it. Now as a way to say thank you and to show my appreciation to you guys. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. As always, all episodes, show notes, tools and resources can be found on tatio.com. That’s tdt.com. Now let’s dive right in. Tim, thank you so much for joining us. Today is such a pleasure to have you with us. Thanks for having me, Ted. I’m excited to be here. Okay, Tim, let’s start with a little icebreaker so we can get to know you a little bit better. The show of us who is Tim Fitzpatrick when he isn’t working?

 

01:27

Oh boy, when I’m not working. I married I have two kids, two girls that are 11 and 10. I live in Colorado just outside of Denver. So I love being outside man getting out. You know paddleboarding, mountain biking, hiking, skiing, so when I’m not working, I like to spend time with my family. And and get outdoors. How does it feel like to be outnumbered at home? Yeah. You know what, though? Dude, I have two dogs that are that are both males. So the it’s kind of they tipped the scale a little bit? Not much, but just a little bit.

 

02:04

That’s nice. That’s nice. So Tim, show us your story. How do you go from being a math major to become a marketing expert today? What was the journey that got you here? And how did you end up starting with auto marketing.

 

02:17

So my entrepreneurial path, like most is, has not been straight, you know, it’s not this straight road, it’s a winding road. I was not one of those kids that was like super entrepreneurial, and you know, was gonna start my own business. I fell into entrepreneurship. After I graduated from college, as you mentioned, I was a math major, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was always good at math. So I figured, hey, math is man, it’s used in a lot of different things, I’m sure that I can use this to my benefit. And, you know, in whatever I decided to do, when I graduated, I ended up getting involved in a wholesale distribution company, I became a partner in that company. And I was the partner that was managing that company on a day to day basis, was managing all the day to day operations for the company. And we grew it about 60% a year for over 10 years. And then in 2005, we sold the company, and I ended up staying on with that company, all the partners ended up having a three year agreement. We stayed on work for the company that bought us. And in 2008, my contract was up, I ended up actually staying with the company, but I moved from Northern California where I was to the Denver area. And you know, we all know what happened in 2008. You know it? Yeah, man, it just things melted, we actually got bought by a public company. And so they were men, they were I think they were they were apprehensive, fearful of what was going on. And in early 2009, they ended up closing, like 30% of the locations in the US. And I actually ended up getting laid off which, you know, some people might go, Oh, my gosh, you got laid off or the company that bought you, but it happens more often than you might think. Yeah, that can be quite common. So what happened after So, at that point, you don’t mean at all my whole professional career had been in distribution. And so I took a little bit of time, you know, thought about, you know, what’s, what’s my next step gonna be? I’d always been interested in real estate from an investment standpoint, I wanted to learn more about it. So I became a residential realtor. And, you know, that was early 2010. Which again, man them the real estate market was in the middle of a meltdown. At that point, you chose a really bad time to enter the real estate market. Yeah, what what are you doing? But I think there’s opportunity in any market and in that market, it was foreclosures there. People were going into foreclosure. So I started knocking on people’s doors that were in foreclosure. And I started to do short sale business where I was negotiating with the bank. To get them to approve a sale of the home for less than what it was worth. And man, I, I was putting myself outside my comfort zone. Every day doing that I learned a ton. But about two and a half, three years into it, man, I was dreading going to work. Every day I’d wake up and I was like, Oh, my God, I got to do this all over again. And what’s the point of owning your own business if you’re going to read it every day? So I started looking at shifting gears again, thought about, you know, where my skill sets really lived, what I enjoyed about distribution, because when I was in distribution, I didn’t feel like I worked a day. I loved it so much that it was just that was it. It was like, How can I do that again, and that’s when I got into marketing. I started my company reality marketing. And, you know, I’m not going to tell you that hasn’t been a winding road either, you know, our products have shifted a bit our service, our services have shifted multiple times, where we are now is we’re, you know, we’re offering more comprehensive, you know, marketing, strategy, fundamental, help people get the fundamentals in place, and then help them manage that plan on an ongoing basis. So who are your primary clients, two primary clients now, our service businesses, coaches, consultants, professional service providers, their marketing is no different than the marketing for our own company. When we’re testing things, we’re really more testing things on ourselves, and then talking to clients about it. So that’s, I guess, the the long story of how I ended up where I am now,

 

06:32

Tim, I think what is really nice about what you shared is really the idea that you have to be brave enough to experiment, you clearly did that when, despite spending all those years in warehousing, US decided to explore real estate, decided that you didn’t like it, and still went on to go to start real too. So no debt was never seen as a failure. But it just gave you more experiences. And you actually managed to connect the dots to make it all work out in the end. So Tim, let’s pick your brain as a marketing specialist. What are the fundamentals of marketing? And what are the dangers of skipping them?

 

07:07

The fundamentals in any discipline, I don’t care what it is, whether it’s marketing, or entrepreneurship, or, you know, hitting a baseball, the fundamentals do not change. They are the same today as they were 50 years ago, and they’re going to be the same 50 years from now, with marketing, I think it is so easy to skip the fundamentals. Because we see, what I see most often is people are they’re battling information overload when it comes to marketing, there’s so many different channels, so many different tactics. And it just makes business owners just you know, you get overwhelmed. You’re like God, where where do I even start?

 

07:46

Yeah, and you become paralyzed without information?

 

07:48

Yeah, there’s just too much information. And when you’re overwhelmed, you can’t create a plan. But a plan is what we all need to be effective. I don’t care if it’s marketing or anything else, you have to have a plan. Even a bad plan is better than no plan. So um, but nobody talks about the fundamentals. They want to get tactical, immediately, I got to have a website, I got to be on social media, I have to have a podcast. The problem is, if you skip the fundamentals, you’re going to waste time, and you’re going to waste money, because the fundamentals laid the foundation for you to build the rest of your house from there’s a quote from Michael Jordan, where he said, Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise. Like professional athletes make it look easy. But it’s not. They took so much time to get the fundamentals in place where they don’t even think about it. We need to do the same thing in our business, we have to have those fundamentals of marketing in place. Otherwise, everything we do is just a crapshoot. And inevitably, most of those things if they work, they don’t work as well as they could or should.

 

09:01

So Tim, please share with us what are the fundamentals of marketing?

 

09:04

Yes. So what are the fundamentals? I call them the marketing strategy trilogy. So there’s obviously three. First one is your target market, you know, who are you going to serve? How are you going to serve those people? And who are your ideal clients within that target market? Okay, not every everyone out there is not a great customer, for me or for you. We have to really understand who those great customers are for us. Once we know who those ideal clients are for us, and we understand them as it relates to our service. When we can enter the conversation that they’re having in their head and when we communicate with them. They’re like, Oh my gosh, you know, he she they get me, right. Once we understand that, then we can start to create the second Fundamental wishes, which is your messaging. And your messaging is how you communicate what you do. And the value that you provide. that’s essential, you’re never going to convert people. If the message you put out there doesn’t isn’t of interest to them and bring them in and engage them. But you can’t create a message that’s going to be clear and engaging until you first understand who the heck your target market is. And then the third aspect of that is your plan, you have to have a plan of how you’re going to get that message in front of those people. That’s it. Everything else from marketing standpoint, is about different channels and different tactics within those channels. But none of that stuff is going to work well, if you skip those three fundamentals.

 

10:50

So guys, as Tim has just shared, the three important fundamentals to marketing, firstly, is identifying your target market. Next is what is your message going to be to them to communicate your value. And third, you need a good plan to bring this message to your target market, don’t skip any of these fundamental steps, or you may end up wasting a lot of time and money in the process. So Tim, let’s dive a little bit deeper into your first fundamental point, which is finding your target market, people tend to go too broad when you’re doing your marketing, how can you really hone in to their target market? How can they find them?

 

11:23

So I think the easiest place to start for an existing business. So let’s assume that you’ve been in business for a while. You have current customers, you have past customers, the easiest place to start is with those current and past customers. And I want you to look at them. And I want you to ask yourself three questions. Who do you enjoy working with? Okay, why do we want to work with people that make our life’s difficult? There’s no point in that. So let’s look at the clients that we’ve loved working with. Who are your most profitable clients. And a lot of business owners hit the hit the have the myth that their most profitable clients are their best clients, the clients that are driving top line revenue. That is often not the case. Because large clients have a tendency of man asking for a lot. Sometimes people discount to high volume customers, so they may not be your most profitable customers. But if we’re going to stay in business and do a great job for cut for our customers, we need to be profitable. So we need to look at who our profitable customers are. And then the last thing I want you to ask yourself is, who do we do our best work for? If we do work day in day out for people that we get great results for awesome things are gonna happen. So when you ask yourself these three questions of your current and past customers, you end up with a subgroup that you answered positively to all three of those questions. So everybody in that group you love working with, they’re profitable, and you did great results for them. It’s that group that you then start to do the real work, which is, who are these people in this group? You know, demographically, like the numbers, you know, the numbers, the demographics are gonna vary depending on the type of business you’re in. Are you serving business to business or business to consumer? But that could be, you know, age ranges? You know? It could be where they live geographically? Do they make a certain amount of income? Are they in a specific industry? Do they have specific titles? All those things? Are demographics, the demographics help us start to paint a more accurate picture of who our ideal clients may be?

 

13:48

Tim, one important point that you just highlighted is that just because the client brings in a lot of revenue may not mean they’re highly profitable Klein? And what do you really want to find the clients that give you that high margin of profit, and you’re right, larger clients may not be your ideal client. Sometimes they may be asking for a bigger scope of work with a higher rate of discount, so that may really eat into your profit margins. Now, back to you, Tim, you spoke about demographics. But let’s talk a little bit about psychographics. in your own words, you describe what psychographics means, and how this is really another important factor that we need to learn when we’re looking at our ideal client. Yeah.

 

14:26

So I think the psychographics are equally if not more important than the demographics and the psychographics are about your ideal clients, thoughts, feelings, aspirations, as it relates to what you do. You know, what are the what are the common problems that they have, that you can solve? What results are they looking for? What benefits are they looking for, you know, what are their goals? All of those things help you get more into their into their head then Just looking at the outside and the exterior of who those people are. And it’s the psychographics that really help you craft your message, which is that next step, but we can’t craft that message until we understand the psychographics. And the demographics. But when you look at the demographics and the psychographics of that group of current and past customers, what inevitably ends up happening is there’s 123 subgroups that have that are common. And it’s those subgroups that you can look at and go, hey, these may be ideal clients for me. Right? And that’s how you can then hone in on who your ideal clients are within that target market. Right? So, for example, like let’s say you work with chiropractors, okay, well, that’s a target market. But not every chiropractor is going to be an ideal client for you. There are certain things about specific chiropractors that make them better clients for you. It’s that information that you really need to hone in on because once you have that information, now you can start to identify where those people are, online and offline, so that you can determine where you need to be. But then you can also use that as a, as a measuring stick when you start to have sales conversations with people. Is this is this chiropractor going to be somebody that I can actually help or not? No? If you don’t have that measuring stick, you’re like, Okay, yeah, cool. I can help, which is what a lot of us do in the beginning, right? We attract, we try to attract everyone people come in, and we’re like, oh, yeah, cool. they’ve, they’ve got a heartbeat. They’re breathing, they’ve got money, they want to pay me awesome. And we ended up finding is not every one of those people we work with is a great fit.

 

16:54

So guys is really important to really hone down and who your ideal customer is. Think of the psychographics demographics and geographics of your ideal customer and craft your message to reach them. Don’t try to reach everyone, because that will not help you in the long run. So Tim, I’m going to be a little bit cheeky, I’m going to ask you for a live demonstration. Who are your own ideal clients? And how did you find them?

 

17:16

So I, our ideal clients, I mentioned briefly a high level in the beginning of our conversation here, there are coaches, consultants and professional service people, experts, people that are selling their knowledge as part of their business. And for me, it just one I like working with those types of people typically. But a lot of the issues that they run into are no different than the issues that I ran into when I first started my business. And so in a sense, I was my ideal client, which really helped me better understand those people that I intend to attract and work with. And you know, and so our clients, typically they’ve been in business for a while they’ve had some success, but they’re hitting a ceiling, and the the thing that they want to break through, they want to continue to grow. But they’re just not quite sure what to do, and, and how to do it. And that’s where we can come and get involved. And, you know, it may sound surprising to a lot of people that we focus on the fundamentals, yet our ideal clients or people that have been in business for a while. There’s so many people that skip the fundamentals. And inevitably, that ceiling they’re hitting is because something in one or multiple of the fundamentals is off. And when we correct that, then we can put a plan in place. Sometimes some of the things that they were doing, that weren’t working all of a sudden start to work. You know, it’s not that they had the wrong tactics. They had the they had the right tactic at the wrong time.

 

18:57

So Tim, let’s say we have found our ideal client and we have a message to reach them. Can you share with us your tips on how we can make effective marketing plan?

 

19:05

So the way I look at marketing plans, is keeping them simple. So I look at them in 90 day sprints. I think too many people when they look at planning, they I think they plan too far personally, when when you put together a one year marketing plan, there’s too many components. And frankly, it’s too long a period of time. You know if anything over the last year and a half has taught us with this pandemic, you know, if you had a year long marketing plan at the beginning of 2020 in March, a lot of people would have just burned it put it up on the shelf to collect dust, and they had to shift gears so let’s keep it simple. If we overcomplicate things, they’re inevitably they’re not effective, right. And I can’t one of my mentors said complexity is the enemy of results. When we make things complex, they are too difficult to implement, they’re too difficult to try and troubleshoot when things go wrong. There’s too many moving parts. So I use a six step 90 day marketing plan. So I’m going to run you through this. And all the stuff that we’re talking about today, I’ve got a resource link for your audience. They can go there, there’s templates, all that stuff is there to help. Okay, but here’s the here’s the 90 day plan. First step, target market, who are your ideal clients, I want you to have a paragraph minimum of who your one to three ideal client types are. So if you have two ideal client types, I want two paragraphs, one for each of those ideal client types. Who are they? All we’re doing in this first step is just keeping Top of Mind who we intend to work with. Okay? Second step, what’s my goal? What’s my marketing goal for the next 90 days needs to be specific, measurable, it’s going to be time bound, because this is a 90 day plan. So this might be you know, I intend to bring on 10 new clients in the next 90 days. Okay, we have to have an idea of where we’re headed, right? We got to keep that picture there. But it’s also important to understand a goal like that has a lot of variables beyond our control, right? I might take the action that I need to take to hit that goal. And I don’t hit it because of outside extenuating circumstances. That’s okay, those things happen. I just like to tell people don’t get too caught up in in an outcome based goal like that, because there are things beyond your control. But we do need to have an idea of where we intend to go. Okay, at least a direction, right?

 

21:46

Yeah. Step three, what’s our marketing budget? And what our resources, this gives us an idea of what we have to work with. So that we’re realistic about what we actually put in our plan. Do I have $500 a month to invest my marketing to 5000? And from a resource standpoint, this is about time and capability? Is it me as the business owner, do I have some time to invest in my marketing plan to implement it? Do I have people on staff, and those people that are actually going to implement is this in their skill set? You know, if you were on my team, Ted, and I said to you, hey, I need somebody to spend five hours a week managing our social media. And you said to me, what’s Facebook? You know, I mean, you’re probably, unless I can level up your skill set, which I probably can, right, you may not be a good fit. So we need to make sure that the resources that we’re have we have, are in that it’s a good fit, that they’re in the right seat, and they have the capabilities to implement that. Okay, so that’s what we’re doing in step three. Step four, is we’re looking at our current marketing plan. And a lot of people may not have a current marketing plan, or it’s very loose, it’s, you know, they don’t really have it down on paper. And it’s not very clear. That’s okay. All this step is doing is helping give us a baseline of where we’re starting from, we cannot outline or create a plan to get to where we want to go. And until we know where we’re starting from, it’s like my GPS, it can’t tell me how to get to the airport, until I tell it where we’re starting from. So all I want you to do in this step is write down, what have you put in place? And what do you continue to do on a regular basis from a marketing standpoint? That’s all we’re doing here. Okay, once we have that in place, then we can move to the fifth step, which is what am I going to focus on for the next 90 days? What’s my 90 day marketing plan? And this might be one or two priorities that you’re going to focus on, depending on what you have to work with. And that’s okay. But the beautiful thing about this is, this outlines your priorities. And what you’re going to focus on, which helps eliminate distraction. So that next week when somebody says, Oh, my God, you know, Ted, you got to be on clubhouse. It’s the latest, greatest thing. You actually have the discipline to go, You know what? I’m not saying no to this, I’m just saying no, right now, maybe I’ll put this on a list and evaluate it later. But until I get this stuff done, no. So I’ve got my priorities and guess what happens when you know what your priorities are? You have clarity. And when we have clarity, our stress goes down. Right? We get stressed and we get overwhelmed because we don’t know what our priorities are and we don’t have clarity. That’s what this plan will do for you. Now, the sixth step is metrics, what metrics Am I going to track the metrics or measurements that help you determine whether the actions you’re taking are actually making an impact. So many people don’t know whether their marketing is working, because they don’t have metrics that they’re tracking. So I don’t want to, as a math major, I can go into the weeds on metrics, I just want to keep this high level and want to say a couple things that I think are really important for your listeners, one, in marketing, there are so many vanity metrics that don’t mean anything. How many visitors are going to your website, how many email list people you have on your email list? How many followers you have on social media, none of that stuff matters, if you are not generating leads that are turning into customers. So I like to tell most people to start with three metrics. To start, you can always branch out from there. But one, how many leads are you generating? There’s a lot of people that aren’t tracking the number of leads that they’re generating. The second thing I want you to look at is where those leads are coming from. Okay, those two things tell you whether the actions you’re taking are generating leads, and which channels or tactics that you’re using are actually generating leads super important, right? And then the third metric is how many of those leads are converting to customers?

 

26:27

That is, really, it’s really powerful when you know, hey, for every five leads, we bring in, we get a new customer, or every 10 leads, whatever those numbers are for you. There’s no no right or wrong there. But once you know what those numbers are, now, you can start to look at Okay, how can I improve this, right? Or, have we maxed this out or you know, are you can look at your overall goals, and know, okay, well to hit our overall goals, we need to get X amount of customers. And to get X amount of customers, we need to get y amount of leads. That’s really powerful, because you can start to work things backwards when you know those numbers. So those are three metrics that I recommend people start with. And then from there, if you want to start to track more, you certainly can. But those three are going to give you a hell of a lot of information, have a lot of actionable information that you can use to start looking at, okay, at the end of my 90 days, what’s worked, what hasn’t? Where do we need to make course corrections, you update your plan. And then you wash, rinse and repeat. It’s so it’s just you plan, you implement you optimize? And that is a endless loop. Tim,

 

27:52

those are great tips. Now, guys, why not consider applying a 90 day marketing plan, like Tim suggested, have a proper plan with a proper deadline and destination that you want to get to and always recalibrate at the end of the process, look at what worked and what didn’t work and double down on what worked make your marketing plan effective and efficient and better in the long run. Tim, let’s speak a little bit more about information overload. There are so many social media platforms out there right now, what advice would you have for an entrepreneur who’s just starting out with his marketing? What should the approach be when they’re approaching all these social media platforms? I personally think that they should actually focus on just a few platforms and do it well, as opposed to trying to do everything at the same time when it’s starting out. What do you think

 

28:34

what you choose to take on with social media is going to depend a bit on your budget and your resources? Right? If you have more budget, more resources, well, then you can take on more. But as a general rule of thumb, I think a great place for most businesses to start is man pick one or two, no more than that, that really resonate with you, your audiences there and go deep on those didn’t nail those, and then you can start to expand from there. But I think people get overwhelmed with social because they feel like they have to be everywhere. And they’re like, Oh my god, I can’t, you know, I’m posting, but then, you know, they just, they end up doing none of them well, because they’re spread too thin. So, you know, for example, I work business to business, right? LinkedIn, look, we’re on a lot of social channels. But if I had to choose one for my business, it would be LinkedIn. Our ideal clients are there they are on LinkedIn. That is the place for me to be. So go deep there. Um, the other thing that I would say about social media, where I think a lot of people hit roadblocks is they just post Well, you know, posting content is not going to move the needle, in my opinion. You have to it’s social media, you have it social, you have to start interacting and engaging with people. If you want them to engage with you, you don’t unless you have a huge following on some other social media channel, and then you move to another one. Most of us are not just going to automatically attract a huge following, we have to, we have to be consistent, we have to have a plan of Hey, what are we going to post? When are we going to post? And then how are we going to interact and engage with people. And that takes time, right? To engage, you have to share other people’s content, you have to tag people mentioned people

 

30:45

get social, Tim, you know that. So true is social and media. So just posting is not enough, you got to get social, you got to get involved in your community, you got to talk to people, you got to interact, collaborate, do the social aspect. And I think a lot of people are missing their part out. Tim, now give us some tips on what entrepreneurs tend to neglect in terms of marketing, what are some low hanging fruits that they can really implement

 

31:08

even today? So a few things. One is those fundamentals right? If you do not have the fundamentals in place, you gotta get those in place first. Otherwise, like I said, before, you’re gonna waste time, you’re gonna waste money. And that could be six months from now, a year from now, you know, multiple years from now you come back and go, we got to do this, just take the time to do it a few other things. After the fundamentals, your website, is the it’s the hub of your marketing, I don’t care if you are 100% referral business, okay. When people are referred to you, they are not reaching out to you, without checking you out. Yeah, they go to your website, whether you choose to believe it or not. And if they go to your website, and it looks like it’s from 1995, you’re losing business, and you don’t even know it, because they’re not even calling you. The flip side to that is some of the people that would love to refer you may not even be referring you because they go to your website, and they’re like, I can’t refer somebody here. Yeah, I’m gonna refer them and they’re gonna go there, and they’re gonna go, Dude, why did he refer them? To me, these people don’t look like they have their stuff together. So even if you’re 100% referral, your website is super important. Everybody is going online to check you out before they reach out to you. So you got to get your website, right. From there, the next logical place, there’s a lot of low hanging fruit. But I think the biggest one that people overlook, is what is already working in your business. What is what is already the best one or two things you are doing that are generating leads and new customers? That’s the best place to start. Because oftentimes, those things that are working are not completely optimized. Can you do more of it to generate more? Or are there gaps that you need to fill that will make those perform even better? That’s the best place to start in your plan. Start with the end for each of those one or two things that are already working, and just look at the process to see, are we missing something? Can we do more of this to generate more leads, maximize those opportunities first, then you can start to expand into other channels and tactics.

 

33:32

Then let’s talk a bit about communicating your message. How can we communicate our message without coming off as scammy? The best place

 

33:39

to start when you’re looking at your messaging is to interview ideal clients. One of the resources that the link will talk about here in a little bit, is a customer insights survey. There’s been a 1415 questions on there. as business owners, it is so hard for us sometimes to articulate our value and what we do because we were in it. We don’t think about it objectively. We can’t see the forest through the trees. Our clients, our past clients oftentimes can articulate that and you you write it down after you as you’re interviewing, and you start to review the notes and you’re like, Oh my god, that makes perfect sense. Like why did I not see that? It’s because we’re too in it, man. We’re learning it every day. So that’s the best place to start. At the very least when you interview, current and past ideal clients. You can at least confirm the thoughts you have about them are are the thoughts you have the assumptions that you’re making accurate or are they not? And if you need to tweak them, then you can. But that’s an easy place to start. For people that are just beginning their business, right. You can still you can interview or talk to people that are in your target market. Okay, and do the exact same thing and get that information from them. But all we’re talking about here is we’re just getting information about, Hey, you know, when you before you started working with us, what was the problem that you had, you know, that you were looking to solve? Why did you choose to work with us? You know, what are the benefits that you’ve realized in working with us? It’s questions like that, that helps you dig below the surface, to really understand the things that you need to hone in on. Okay? Because, look, the when we talk about people’s problems, and or the results that they’re looking for those, those are the hooks that, that, attract them and get them interested in what we have to say. So we need to understand in their words, what that is, okay. And then from there, you can then start to use a framework that we recommend from a storytelling standpoint to craft your message. But that’s the first place you start.

 

35:58

And thank you so much for sharing all your actionable advice today. But if the listeners should only remember one thing today, well, we’d like it to be?

 

36:05

Well, that’s a great question. Um, I would just say, Don’t skip the fundamentals. Take the time, a lot of people are impatient. They think short term. Next week, next month, three months, they don’t think long term. We’re in business for the long haul. And you’ve got to make decisions for the long term. And be patient because yes, are there things we can do from marketing standpoint that can yield quick results? Yes, we can. But most things from a marketing standpoint, take time, you’re, you’re you’re putting in the effort to build that momentum. And once you hit that momentum, man, as long as you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to be in great shape. But too many people think short term go, I need to generate these today. And they get tactical immediately. And they pay the price for that. So take the time to do the fundamentals, it will pay off in the long run for you, I guarantee you.

 

37:06

So Tim, how can our listeners get in touch review, if you want to get your help.

 

37:10

best place to start is our website, which is reality marketing calm. So that’s ri a ltot marketing.com. The free resources I mentioned are reality marketing.com forward slash Ted dash to tons of free resources there. If you’re getting stuck, and you need help, just click on the get a free consultation button on our website. I’ll be happy to chat with you. Help You Get some clarity on where you should be focusing right now to get to where you want to be. So another great place to camp with me personally. LinkedIn. It’s linkedin.com forward slash in forward slash Tim P. Fitzpatrick. But our website, we produce a ton of content. It’s all there. All the links to our social are there. So the websites the best place to go,

 

37:59

Tim, thank you once again for being on the show. I really appreciate it and I definitely learned a lot.

 

38:04

Thanks so much for having me, man. It’s been fun and we should do it again sometime.

 

38:08

So guys, that was Tim Fitzpatrick, a marketing expert who just shared his best tips and how you can get your marketing right. So why not have a think about what you can do to improve your marketing game today. So guys, I hope you found today’s episode useful. Don’t forget to support the show by leaving a review, subscribing to the show and sharing with a friend. And don’t forget about the Amazon gift voucher giveaway. If you do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon all tools, tips and resources available on tedteo.com. That’s tedteo.com. That’s all for me today. This is Ted Teo, signing off.