After doing marketing for various clients over the years, I learned that there's no such thing as a traffic problem.
Even new businesses don't have it.
Everyone seems to think they have a traffic problem. How do we get more people to see our website? How do we get more people to see our product?
Well, here's a way.
Go to the traffic stores – Google, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.
And in the next 30 minutes, anyone... can buy ads and show their products to literally anyone they want to reach in the world.
Want to reach oil & gas CEOs in Malaysia? Run ads on LinkedIn. Want to reach Gen Zs? Shoot some videos and run them as ads on TikTok.
The problem isn't traffic. The problem is conversion.
Why nobody buys your stuff.
To answer this, first understand the difference between advertising and marketing.
Advertising is interruption. Advertising is showing up in front of people who did not expect you, interrupting them, and trying to get them to buy something.
Advertising used to be everything a business needs to do. Plan an ad, run it on TV and that's it for the year.
Marketing has changed, caused by the seemingly unlimited choices we have in the market today. Just visit the toothpaste aisle at the supermarket, and you'll be overwhelmed by the choices.
When everything is the same, customers began differentiating by price. But customers have grown to want more as well – to improve their moods, their status, and their quality of life. They began to choose to buy from brands that make them feel something.
So, marketing comes down to this: Who already knows, likes, and trusts you?
Who trusts you and already listens to you?
Everybody wants more conversions.
The problem is taking shortcuts to achieve it. We've been brainwashed to think that if a marketing campaign doesn't bring 10X sales, then it's a bad marketing campaign.
Rather than sell on first contact, the better marketing strategy is to build an audience. Well, how do you build an audience?
You start by giving. Anything that makes someone's life a little better, is a great gift. You could:
- Create content that helps them become smarter, entertained or more informed.
- Help them solve their problem, for free.
- Give a sample of your product or service for free.
A 1000 true fans.
As you start giving and building an audience base, you don’t need a huge audience either. You just need a small, highly-engaged audience – to make the figures you need.
In the words of Kevin Kelly, you simply need a 1000 true fans.
A true fan is someone who will buy anything you produce. They will drive 200KM, go out & beyond their way and do anything to support you.
Many businesses think they need a huge audience. So they implement mass marketing and hacks.
But the truth is having a 1000 highly engaged audience is better than having a 20,000 email list, made up of people who don’t care about you.
So, when do people become customers?
That’s the golden question, isn’t it?
People buy things when they have trust. I buy a pair of Nike because I trust the shoes will last. At the same time, I trust that the pair of shoes will increase my status.
If you’re selling anything, you need to build trust. And trust takes time to build.
Trust grows at the speed of a growing coconut tree, and falls the speed of a coconut dropping.
That's why at DailyCMO, we're invested in this long journey of building trust. It will take a long time, much longer than we'd like. But it's the only honest way of building a business that people love.
How do I know if I've built trust?
By asking this question: Would your customers miss your business, if it were to vanish tomorrow?
