Another Excuse Newsletter

Welcome back to the Another Excuse Newsletter. It isn’t just another excuse, but a reason to start that thing you’ve been putting off.

What to expect this week:
👓Perspective - What would this look like if it were easy?
🔨 Tool - The State of Marketing
🍿Consume - FUZED
📖Concept - 5 Levels to Marketing

Latest Podcast Episode

This week’s guest is Stanley Henry.

Stanley is the founder of The Attention Seeker, a full-service Social Media & Creative Agency. He started the business 5 years ago and has grown it to over 25 employees and $5M in annual revenue. He has created content about his journey since he began and he shares a lot of valuable advice and insights into the industry.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How company started
• How their services developed over time
• Lead Generation: Inbound vs. Outbound Approaches
• Public salaries
• Embracing Rejection and Understanding Your Target Market
• Creating Original Content to Showcase Capabilities
• The struggles with cashflow
And so much more

You can check out the episode here.

Perspective

What would this look like if it were easy?

This is a question we don’t ask ourselves enough.

Most of the goals or aspirations we have are big audacious goals, that we tend to put off because of how big they seem.

But if we ask ourselves this question:

What would this look like if it were easy?

Things suddenly seem a whole lot easier.

Not because we’ve changed the goal, but because we’ve actually given it some thought.

Most of the time we can break things down into smaller goals, to gain momentum.

We’re motivated by progress.

If you’ve got a big goal that’s too daunting to start, you’re never going to make any progress.

But if you take a step back and find ways to make achieving that goal easy, then you’re off to the races.

Small incremental steps that feel like wins are all you need.

Everything can be broken down to look a whole lot easier, we just never take the time to actually do it.

So next time something is weighing on you, break it down and come up with a strategy.

It will seem a whole lot easier.

Tool

The State of Marketing

It’s important to stay up to date with industry and market trends.

Whenever large companies like Hubspot release a report I pay attention.

What are the marketing trends?

What platform has the highest ROI?

How valuable is influencer marketing?

What content resonates?

How is email marketing changing?

These are all questions that a report like this can answer.

And it provides answers that every business needs to know.

A report saves you time and means you don’t need to do all the research yourself.

It points you in the right direction and helps you test your hypothesis from an educated perspective instead of blind guessing.

You’re already months ahead of your testing and figuring out what works for you and your business all because of reports like these.

You can check this one out here.

Consume (Read / Watch / Listen)

@neilpatel

There is no point in creating content for social media unless you use FUZED. So what’s FUZED? Well FUZED stands for, funnel, unique accoun... See more

FUZED

Content creation needs a strategy.

Neil Patel breaks down the FUZED strategy when making content.

Funnel
Unique accounts reached
Zero-click
Engagement
Dwell time

Social media content is usually top of funnel content and you’ve got to keep that in mind.

If you don’t have the rest of your funnel sorted then you’re wasting everyone’s time.

Your goal is to reach your target audience beyond your followers, you’ve got to keep that in mind with every post you create.

Most of your content should keep people on the platform as directing people off the platform negatively impacts the reach of your content.

A huge goal should be to encourage commenting, engagement is what drives the most reach.

The longer you keep viewer retention, the better your chances of reach.

Keeping all of these aspects in mind when creating content should help with your profile growth and sales down the line.

Concept

5 Levels to Marketing

Shaan Puri did some thinking while watching UFC 300.

And he realized that there are 5 levels to marketing.

He calls the 4th level Dana White, holy shit moments, and he thought this was the pinnacle, but it isn’t.

There’s one more level to it, but let’s break down the first few levels to understand how marketing works.

1. Every shitty startup website.

This is marketing that describes exactly what the company or product does. You’re just trying to make a sale and you haven’t given the copy much thought.

2. Selling a solution to a pain point.

Now you’re getting somewhere. Your ideal customer has a problem and you have the solution. Your copy and marketing are focused on highlighting that pain point and alleviating it with your product or service.

This is the level that most companies market at.

3. Sell a lifestyle.

You create a lifestyle around your brand. You make it aspirational and people on the outside want in.

Some of the companies at this level have created their own categories.

Think about companies like Lululemon and Slack.

4. Sell a feeling.

This is what Shaan calls the Dana White level.

You’re a merchant of feelings as a content creator and Dana white sells holy shit moments.

Disney sells you lifetime memories for your family experience. and Hermes and Rolex sell status.

And the last level which has become very popular is,

5. Sell an identity. 

Creators are creating communities, a way of living and brands are trying to keep up.

The obvious examples are religion and politics. They give you an Identity and a purpose.

A few other examples are lifestyle sports events like Cross Fit or Hyrox and the Don’t Die movement started by Bryan Johnson

So those are the 5 levels of marketing.

Which level are you at right now?

Thanks for Reading

Now start something!

P.S. Feedback is welcome and needed! If you’d prefer to send me an email and not respond, you can do so here: [email protected]

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