Marketing 3-4-5™ is designed to be actionable which means you can use it today to implement effective marketing through simple 15-minute activities.
The approach includes:
As a result... you'll move toward your goals and have choices.
Local communities and small businesses are outmanned and outgunned by bigger competitors when it comes to marketing. Competing on their terms is a dire situation but small businesses have an unfair advantage these corporate companies can't recreate: Authenticity and Relationships.
Our Marketing 3-4-5™ Framework is designed to simplify local marketing so you can become effective and efficient without having to become an expert. It will help you make better marketing decisions, waste less time and money, and avoid falling prey to fads and fast-talking salespeople.
It's important to understand that marketing is not just about customers, it isn't just advertising, and it is something you can do effectively to reach your goals, help others, and positively impact your community by following this proven process.
Join our mission to #TakeBackLocal by effectively marketing yourself and supporting others in your community.
Marketing is more than advertising, a lot more. In fact, while attracting customers is a major driver there are other reasons for you to market your business.
Effective marketing gives you choices depending on your goals (your “why”) such as growing your business, staffing up, giving back to your community, or even working less.
Your “why” is different from other businesses and it will change over time. The important thing is to understand why marketing is important to you now so that your actions reflect that.
Depending on the nature of your business and your personal priorities these three “whys” will vary in importance.
Why do people work with you? Your customers’ and employees’ “why” is also unique. Perhaps you are a gifted practitioner, provide unmatched customer support or people love your store.
People choose to work with you because of your:
Alignment with any one of these can be sufficient to make someone want to work with you.
Knowing what makes you unique - the unique parts that people care about - is critical to effective marketing.
It needs to be important to potential clients and, as much as possible, unique to you.
For example, there are over 1 million real estate professionals in the United States and most of them can competently complete a transaction but do you actually want to spend an afternoon in the car with the real-estate agent looking at homes? Competence alone isn’t enough.
As such, the key to differentiating yourself is to help people realize that your business, your products, your services, and even YOU personally have unique benefits that they should care about.
This means you need to utilize your website, blog posts, social media, and email newsletters to share real-world examples.
How people find and engage with you is where the rubber-meets-the-road.
People regularly, and foolishly, say things such as “I get all of my business from referrals and word-of-mouth”. This is an excuse to not practice effective marketing.
People find you or your organization through:
Referrals are always great and the best way to attract customers and employees but you don’t want to feed your family based on the unmotivated goodwill of others.
If the idea of managing multiple marketing channels sounds daunting that’s because the way most local people do it is simply unsustainable. As you’ll see below, the Marketing 3-4-5™ approach to creating and distributing content is surprisingly straightforward and will even help you drive more referrals.
We know that as a business owner you don't have a lot of time so Marketing 3-4-5™ is designed so you can fit marketing activities into those 15-minute downtimes throughout your day.
Whether you’re between client meetings or waiting for someone to enter your store, you can create something meaningful in your free time.
Maybe business is good and you don’t think you need to market your business.
Perhaps you actively use social media but do so nearly exclusively.
Or, you're like most local businesses that simply don’t do anything and think their lack of experience, time, technical expertise, or other excuses are valid - they are not.
Marketing doesn't have to be complicated, time-consuming, or expensive but it does need to be done and you can do it. We’ll show you how.
Marketing 3-4-5™ will make YOU effective and efficient by using local marketing & SEO secrets everyone should know, by working smarter not harder...
"I've seen a lot of different marketing [concepts], but this one is different. This is one I can actually do and immediately see the value/potential." - Chris W., Financial Services
Follow this step-by-step guide to local marketing from scratch to apply a Marketing 3-4-5™ approach for your business.
Marketing continues to get more complicated
The internet has become incredibly fragmented between your website, social media, email marketing, cross-promotion, and search engine optimization (SEO) but the Marketing 3-4-5™ approach to content distribution simplifies the process.
Content of Consequence™ like business blogs, events, job openings or volunteer opportunities, coupons, and more should live on your website, get shared to social media (primarily Facebook), sent via email, and cross-promoted by your Local Connections™ which enables you to rank higher and more broadly on Google.
Content should live on your website so you can share it to Facebook or send in email newsletters as a preview. Then, when people click on your content wherever they see it they go back to your website.
Google is Big Brother and sees just about everything that happens on and around your website as well as the content you create and the people who engage by reading and sharing it.
Google and Bing love content and, as a result, business blog content provides businesses with a natural SEO boost. Plus, search engines like to see that content is engaging so whenever your content is shared to social media (even by you) it can further reinforce your position.
You probably want to rank on Google for all of the content you create. If it lives on your site, visitors and Google both see it and it’s easy to discover other related content.
Yea, yea, yea, “blog” is a confusing 4-letter word and while it sounds offensive to a lot of business owners, business blogging is different.
Business Blogging is simply creating content drawn from real life. Content Marketing, therefore, enables you to share your passion, expertise, and experience with easy-to-understand examples. Our business blogging tools simplify this process and can be added to any website.
A blog is simply an article of some-sort that lives on your website - each post has its own page which means it has a unique URL and context matters - which means the content should be weaved into related pages throughout your site. Posts can vary dramatically in length but usually includes a title, at least one image, and a few hundred to few thousand words.
It’s an expression of your value and, frankly, something you should be proud of.
"Without examples, nobody knows what you’re talking about. Without examples that are relevant to me then I don’t know what you’re talking about." - Brian OstrovskyOur brains are hardwired to engage with stories, to share them and remember them… industry-speak buzzwords, not so much.
Additionally, we live chaotic lives and we’re prone to take what businesses do for granted. Consistently reminding people of the value you deliver and the benefits they receive as a result is a surprisingly simple yet effective way to stay top-of-mind.
To make this a little more clear, let’s imagine that you sit down with a friend over a glass of wine or a beer. As you’re chatting, they ask you about your day at work. What would you tell them? This hypothetical conversation is what can make up your blog!
The key is implementing a simple and repeatable approach to blogging as well as our Universally Simple Local Blog Post Template for Small Businesses, Nonprofits and Community Organizations™ which utilizes a prompt-based approach.
Glad you asked.
Prompts are simple questions that guide you in creating content simply by answering them. Here’s an example for businesses that do something with a visible outcome - which is to say, you can see what was done which we call "Highlight a Creation."
First, take a picture of what you did and then answer the following questions:
With this simple set of prompts, you can quickly “Highlight a Creation” to demonstrate the benefits of working with you with real-world examples.
A prompt-based approach enables you to quickly create business-specific content that is compelling and engaging - creativity not required!
The most common topics or themes that you may want to use in your business blogs are:
If you can remember what you do at work then you can be effective at business blogging.
You probably haven’t thought of marketing as a moral issue but it is because you have 3 constituents who are relying on your efforts.
First is your organization - maybe it’s just you or maybe you have employees, whoever is involved in your organization is relying on you to effectively market.
Second, are your customers. If you offer something of value that will benefit me and I don’t find you or understand your ability to help me then I may not work with you and I end up suffering as a result.
Finally, your community relies on you. If you don’t effectively market yourself then you’re a drag on your community’s efforts however if you effectively market yourself then others in your community are elevated alongside you.
If you go further and participate in local efforts to #TakeBackLocal and cross-promote with the folks you truly care about then you’re actively working to strengthen your community.
Marketing is important, Marketing 3-4-5™ and our local marketing tools are here to help.
Start implementing your marketing with Locable and this small business marketing guide & checklist
It's important to understand that marketing is not just about acquiring customers or advertising, but also about recruiting employees, positively impacting the community, and more.
Marketing 3-4-5™ you to make better marketing decisions, waste less time and money, and avoid falling prey to fads and fast-talking salespeople.
Join our mission to #TakeBackLocal by effectively marketing yourself and supporting others in your community.
