E01: What Is Marketing Domination?
Welcome to the first episode of the Marketing Domination Podcast! The goal of this show is to help small business owners absolutely crush it online with some killer marketing strategies. We're all about making things simple and effective, so you can stand out from the crowd and see real growth.
👉 Listen to the first episode right here!
Today, we're tackling the big question: what exactly do small business owners need to have in their marketing? Then, I'll walk you through our unique Marketing Domination framework, which is designed to get you results, fast.
Our framework breaks down into three key steps:
Building a Sales Funnel: This is where we create a seamless path for your customers, from the moment they discover you to the moment they make a purchase.
Filling the Sales Funnel: Here's where we pump in traffic. It's all about getting eyes on your business through smart, targeted strategies.
Optimizing the Sales Funnel: Lastly, we fine-tune the process. This means tweaking and adjusting based on real data to boost conversions and sales.
We're going deep into each of these steps, focusing on essential elements like branding, slick website development, engaging content creation, and crucial data analysis to make sure everything’s working like a dream.
What You’ll learn:
Many small business owners struggle with marketing because they're pressed for time and often lack the know-how. That ends now.
Our Marketing Domination framework is about three things: build, fill, and optimize that sales funnel to make your marketing efforts unstoppable.
From branding to content creation, we cover all you need to know to craft a marketing strategy that not only looks great but also brings in results.
Stick with practical, actionable strategies that resonate with your goals and reach your target audience effectively.
Keep a close eye on your sales funnel and continuously optimize it. Staying dynamic is key to marketing success.
——————————————————————————————————————————
EPISODE 1 TRANSCRIPTION
INTRODUCTION
Sean Garner [00:00]:
Most small business owners feel overwhelmed and confused about how to market their business so they get more leads and customers and are seen as the clear industry leaders. They're in the business actually each and every day running it and they're so busy putting out fires that they don't actually know or have the time or make the time to be able to market their business properly.
Well, the goal of this show is to equip small business owners with tips, strategies and interviews with other industry leaders so you know exactly what you need to do to grow your business so that it stands out online from the competition. Welcome to Marketing Domination.
Guys, my name is Sean Garner and I am so excited to get this podcast officially started again for serving small business owners. I have been in the online marketing business world for several years and if you scroll back through this, you'll see various iterations of my career in online marketing. From being in the online fitness space to the online fitness business coaching world to where now I own Sean Garner Consulting where we are a digital marketing agency that serves small business owners as a certified StoryBrand guide where we help them build, fill and optimize their sales funnels. And the whole reason I wanted to start this podcast was for a couple of things.
Sean Garner [01:23]:
One, a lot of the marketing content that I've seen out there is more so geared to people like me. It's for marketing agency owners and helping them to know tips and strategies about how to, you know, the technical side of actual marketing. Or the opposite is that it's almost ethereal, it's not very practical advice. This show is set for small business owners.
If you are a small business owner or entrepreneur and you want to know how to market your business, that is the goal for this show. If you are a marketing agency owner and you're trying to look for like super tactical things on how to set up a retargeting pixel so we can, you know, hit people with ads and stuff. We're going to talk about that, but not in the detailed stuff for tutorials and stuff like that.
Sean Garner [02:05]:
That's not what this is. This is going to be practical advice that busy small business owners can take if they want to grow their business. My wife and I, we own several companies. We have a medical clinic that we own. We have an IV therapy lounge. We do some short term real estate marketing with Airbnbs and VRBOs. Plus we have the marketing agencies and a couple other smaller side projects that we do. And I know how much time running a business can take and oftentimes the marketing takes the backseat because you are running it.
THE GOAL OF THE MARKETING DOMINATION PODCAST
Sean Garner [02:30]:
So what we're going to do is we are going to equip small business owners so that they can be successful with their business online. Because I am super passionate about small business owners as being one myself. And just seeing them having to go out and compete in the business world is tough. Right? So why are we going to make it even more difficult than it needs to be?
And I want to help small business owners compete against the big, huge industry dominators so they can be the industry dominators. I think that your revenue that your business generates shouldn't dictate the success of your marketing abilities. I think there's a lot of things that small business owners can do to be successful with their marketing, growing their business, and unfortunately, they just don't know these things. So that's what we're going to do on this show. So kind of my goals for this show and kind of setting the expectations on what to expect.
Sean Garner [03:23]:
Goals are we're going to serve small business owners if the content we create doesn't help small business owners learn what they need to do to market their business, to get more leads and customers, and to be seen as the industry leader and, and help them grow their business, we don't need to be posting it on this show. That's what this show is all about, is serving small business owners to market their business.
What you can kind of expect for these first series of episodes is I'm going to take you through what I call the marketing domination framework, where it is a step by step process on what I believe small business owners should do to set up the foundation of your marketing.
So, the first episode today is I'm going to give you a high level overview of what this system looks like, and then we're going to break it down step by step on the next probably about eight to twelve episodes so we can show you guys tactically how to implement some of these things into your business.
Then we're going to start interviewing. I've been very blessed and fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of successful other business owners, entrepreneurs, thought leaders in the small business space. So going to be bringing them on to then speak into some of these topics. Then some other things I've got planned in the future is actually taking you guys step by step through a client process on taking a business from nothing and walking you guys and giving you guys behind the scenes access as we actually set up this marketing.
Sean Garner [04:42]:
So if you are trying to, you know, bootstrap some of this stuff and do it yourself. I want you guys to know exactly what you need to do so you're not wasting your time with busywork, but you're doing things that are actually going to move the needle forward and grow the business. So that's my goal for this show. I hope to serve you guys and add tons of value to it.
So let's get into the very first episode of marketing domination. And what is marketing domination? To me, I created the marketing domination to me as a statement, but it is also a product that our agency sells. So marketing domination was created as a marketing system so that small business owners can stand out and compete with bigger businesses. I want real experts to be seen online, not people that are just better at posting content online.
HOW I BECAME A MARKETING AGENCY OWNER
Sean Garner [05:31]:
My personal story is whenever I was in the fitness industry for about 11-12 years and I was so frustrated towards the end of my career is whenever I went in from doing, you know, owning gyms and being an in-person trainer to where I started doing more stuff online. I was a fitness advisor and writer for Men's Health magazine. I had an online fitness brand where I was selling online fitness products and training and coaching. And I was so frustrated because I had over a decade of experience, I had done some, humble brag, really cool things and got really great results for people in the fitness space.
But there were people that were making a ton more money than me and they were reaching a lot more people just because they were better at marketing. And that's honestly what led me down this journey to understanding the digital marketing space to where now this is what I do full time as run a digital marketing agency because I was so upset that there was people that were making more money and standing out online as the expert just because they were better at marketing what it is they do.
So that is why I created marketing domination, as I saw this with myself now with all the other dozens of clients that we've had the opportunity to work with and serve, a systematic process and foundation of what I think really good, successful small business marketing should look like. So that is my thought process on what marketing domination is.
WHAT IS A SALES FUNNEL?
Sean Garner [06:55]:
But this is ultimately what marketing domination comes down to. It comes down to three things. The very first thing and it all, I'm sorry, it has three steps, but it all is all surrounded by the thought of a sales funnel.
So you may have heard the term sales funnel before. I'm going to tell you what I think a sales funnel is, because if you’ve seen anything in a digital marketing or online space, you may have heard of a company called ClickFunnels, who really popularized the concept of a sales funnel. But how they use it and how I use it is a little bit different. So for them, they look at a sales funnel as a type of web page that only has a straight linear navigation to where it doesn't have a bunch of different options. You won't have blogs and about us pages, but you drive someone to a landing page and the page is linear to where you can only go to the next page.
Sean Garner [07:45]:
And they walk you through this funnel. Typically it's some type of a lead generator page that you're driving traffic through to paid ads. Then that's taking you to some type of a sales page. Then that takes you to some type of order page and that takes you to some type of upsell or Downsell page and some type of a thank you page. That's what they call a sales funnel, is a different type of website.
For me, a sales funnel is the overall process and system of taking somebody who doesn't know you exist and funneling them through different stages of a customer relationship. So they get from not knowing who you are to starting to like you, starting to know who you are, starting to trust you, and ultimately becoming customers, but then even at a deeper level, superfan customers for life. That to me is what the sales funnel is and for marketing domination.
THE MARKETING DOMINATION FRAMEWORK
Sean Garner [08:33]:
It surrounds itself around this sales funnel concept. We have three different steps or phases to what a sales funnel is. So step one is for marketing domination. We believe that you need to obviously have a sales funnel. So the very first thing that you have to do is you have to build a sales funnel. Second thing that you need to do is you need to then fill that sales funnel. Because, you know, Field of Dreams is a great movie, but not a good marketing strategy. If you build it does not mean they will come.
Sean Garner [09:01]:
So we have to actually be able to fill the sales funnel up. And the third thing is we need to optimize that sales funnel. Once we've built this thing and we're starting to send people through, well, now we actually have data to make good decisions. But I tell my customers this all the time. We don't make decisions in our business, in our marketing based upon personal preference or emotion. In today's world especially, we have so many data points. We make decisions based upon data. And so after we've been able to build the funnel, fill it, then we start optimizing it.
Sean Garner [09:33]:
With all the data that we have coming in, we're going to know what keywords are working well. What are some steps we need to add some extra automation to and we, so that way we are not filling this bucket up and it's leaking out the site and we want to optimize our sales funnel. So that is our approach and philosophy for what marketing domination is.
Now what I want to do is I want to break down each one of these steps at a very high level overview so you understand what it takes for each one of those steps. And then in the future episodes, we are going to break down those steps even more into the individual aspects of it.
So if you feel overwhelmed by anything that we talk about, just know in the future episodes that are coming out, we're breaking down each one of these steps. Because with this show as well, I want it to be actionable. One of the quotes that I say to myself and to clients all the time is knowledge without execution or application is meaningless.
Sean Garner [10:31]:
So if you're listening to this podcast as you're working out, driving and you don't take something from it to go make and grow your business and make your business better, I'm just going to be honest, you are wasting your time. Instead of listening to this podcast, you probably should have been working on your business.
So the goal for this is that as you're listening to it, there is going to be something actionable with each episode that you can take. So the actionable thing that I want you to do today is as we're getting ready to go through these steps of what this marketing domination framework looks like, from building, filling and optimizing your sales funnel, you are starting to take a mental note of what aspects you have in place or that you need to optimize.
Maybe it was on the to do list for a long time and we need to kind of go back through and start cleaning this stuff up. So, this is what the marketing domination framework is, it’s step one is build a sales funnel. So for us, a sales funnel, whenever we're starting this process out, the very first thing that we start with is your branding. So to build a sales funnel, we have to start with the branding.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BRAND MESSAGING
Sean Garner [11:31]:
That's kind of the foundation of everything that we do. We have a different approach to that. So as a certified StoryBrand guide, we focus the majority of our branding on the words that we speak. Your branding is two different aspects. There's the visual aspect of your branding, which is unfortunately what most people think of and over focus on, especially when it's a new business and exciting. And then there's this second aspect of it which is the messaging of your brand. So we want both of those things. You need both of them, and they're both important and they need to work together.
Sean Garner [12:04]:
But unfortunately, most people just focus on the visual aspect of the branding and not the messaging. So for overall setting your branding, what you need is you're going to need a logo. You're going to need colors, fonts, so that way everything looks cohesive as you put things together. But I think oftentimes, especially when it's a newer business, they get too excited about that aspect and they forget even about the words that they're using in their brain.
They're excited about making t-shirts and hats and business cards and seeing their logo on maybe a side of a building or a vehicle. And they're not actually thinking about the words that they're talking about. They're more concerned about the colors and logos. I don't want to discount that stuff, but to me, I have very rarely, I don't want to say never because I don't like using like over and always and stuff, but I have very rarely, if ever heard a customer say, wow, that business has a cool logo.
Sean Garner [12:55]:
I want to go give them money, right? But you have heard this “wow, it sounds like they're speaking directly to me”. So that's why I definitely, on the branding side, logos, colors, fonts, all that stuff is important. It needs to look awesome, but the words are what really sell. So for us, whenever we're doing our branding and creating a branding sheet for a client, we're doing all that stuff. But the main thing that we're focusing on to really make sure that we're optimizing is the messaging. So we are certified StoryBrand guides. So how our approach to our messaging is, is positioning the customer as the hero of the story and we are there to guide them.
HOW TO BUILD A STORYBRAND
Sean Garner [13:30]:
Story brand framework we're going to do tons of episodes on that, guys, because I love this stuff. But it ultimately comes down into seven different talking points for your marketing and all of your messaging that you use throughout your organization. Sales calls, sell scripts, internal communications, your website, social media, email, it all is going to come around the branding of your messaging. And so what it does is it's kind of the hero's journey of the words that you use in your marketing.
So it all starts out with your character. Your customers want something, but the second thing is there's a problem that's keeping them from getting what they want. That problem is seen and felt at three different levels. The external problem is the main thing they're dealing with.
Sean Garner [14:06]:
The internal problem is how that problem is making them feel. The philosophical problem is why is that problem just morally wrong that they have to deal with that problem? So they want something, but they have a problem. So that's where they meet a guide. That's where you come in as the expert to help guide them. And how you guide them is with empathy and authority. And so empathy is, I understand what it's like to deal with this problem. Authority is I've actually solved it for other people before. The fourth thing that we want to do is we want to then give them a plan.
Sean Garner [00:14:37]:
Hey, I understand that you want this. This is the problem. I've helped other people do this before. Here's the three things we need to do to get started on this problem. After we give them the three step process and show them how easy it's going to be to get that problem solved, we then want to call them to action. Do this thing. Don't learn more, don't discover more. Schedule your call, buy now, book an assessment, be very direct and call them to action so we can then step six is help them avoid failure.
Sean Garner [00:15:05]:
What's all the bad things that these business owners are going to continue to deal with if they don't do business with you or get this problem solved? So then step seven, last talking point is what are all the great things that happily ever after, the successes that the customer will experience if they do work with you and you have you solve their problem? So we create all of that. We also will then take those talking points and create a one liner statement which is just the talking points of your branding all put together.
So it's kind of like an elevator pitch to where you can very quickly talk about what you do, the problem you solve, how you do and how you make their lives better in a way that doesn't sound boring. That, friends, is your branding that serves as a foundation of building out your sales funnel. Well, once we have that branding solidified, then we can go on to continue to build the sales funnel with your website.
So whenever we're building out a website, the main thing that we're focusing on at first is the homepage. So typically there's five pages that we'll build out on a standard website marketing funnel. We'll typically have some type of a homepage sales page that's formatted out in a specific way.
Sean Garner [16:13]:
We will have an “about us” page because Google kind of likes that. We'll typically have a services page, we'll have a blog and then we'll have a scheduling contact us page. I love all those things and we're going to go in a lot more detail on those in the future. But all those pages serve a specific point and reason and we don't want to forget our branding as we're creating those.
So we've made this awesome branding script talking about all the problems we solve for our customers. We then want to make sure that that translates through everything that we do. So on the homepage we're going to do a lot of detailed versions on it. But the most important thing on the homepage or your sales page when people first go to it is the header.
HOW TO WRITE A GOOD WEBSITE HEADER
Sean Garner [16:49]:
That's everything above the folder before somebody has to scroll through your page. And on that header, like I said, we're going to go through more detail in the future. But the most important thing is that your header does these three things. It quickly answers how you make their lives better, what problem you actually solve and what they need to do to buy now or to get it. Most business owners are missing the mark here dramatically. If you open up their website and just look at it without scrolling, it's very difficult for the general person to actually know what you do, how you make their life better and what they need to do to get it. Most business owners, they're going to have some type of ethereal statement like “discover how our trust helps build a better life”. “Learn more” is their call to action.
Sean Garner [17:37]:
It's like all this ethereal stuff. It's not clear and direct. If we want to win and dominate online, we have to be clear and direct with our marketing and with our messaging and with our brand. So got our branding set up.
BUILDING YOUR SALES FUNNEL
Sean Garner [17:50]:
Next thing that we're going to do is we're going to build a website that everybody that comes to the website is not going to be ready to buy. Schedule a call, all that good stuff. So we want to have some type of a lead generator on there or a lead magnet, you may have heard. That's going to be something where people are giving us their information, typically their phone number or email address in exchange for something of value.
Sean Garner [18:09]:
This could be some type of a free guide, checklist, webinar tutorial series, something like that, to where we, they're not ready to buy yet, but they're interested enough in us to where they want to kind of learn more and they're doing that discovery section. So we want to make sure that we have something of value on our website to capture those people that aren't ready to buy.
WHY YOU NEED AN AFTER OPT-IN EMAIL SEQUENCE
Sean Garner [18:30]:
After they do that, we want to plug them into an email sequence. We want to stay in contact with them because the secret is not just in the lead generator thing we're giving out. We want to make sure that we're staying in contact with those people because obviously they were interested enough to look for what we do. They landed on our website somehow and then they weren't ready to buy. But they still think that we could solve the problem. But they need to get to know us a little bit more.
Sean Garner [18:51]:
Then we want to plug them into an email sequence that does that. We typically will do that over five to six emails. And over those emails, they're typically like, one is just delivering the asset. The second one is just overcoming or talking about the problem that we solve. The third one is about overcoming the most common objection we get. The fourth one is typically showing how our way of doing things is a little bit different. So kind of a mindset shift for them. And then the fifth one is a strong call to action, like the sales email.
Sean Garner [19:17]:
And then sometimes we'll add another email in there based upon the type of business that we're working with and how you space those out again, depending on your price point, your sales cycle and everything else. But we want to make sure we have something on our website that is collecting that information and then delivering value and staying in contact with those people.
After we have that stuff in place, that to me is step one of the foundations of a sales funnel. We have something where it clearly articulates what we do. We're able to send people to a place that we own. Because I love this quote that I hear all the time from Amy Porterfield is don't build your house on rented land. So on social media that's rented land, you don't actually own it. You own your website, you own your email, customer data and stuff.
FILLING YOUR SALES FUNNEL
Sean Garner [20:03]:
So you want to build your business around that. So we've got a place where we can send people to. They can buy our product or service or sign up, or they can schedule a call, an assessment, book an appointment, all of that stuff. And if they're not ready, we can get their information and we can follow up with them with a CRM tool, email marketing and everything else. So now we have a sales funnel built. Once we build it, just because we have that stuff doesn't mean people will come. So then we want to actually fill our sales funnel. We want to fill our sales funnel in a couple different ways.
ORGANIC VS PAID TRAFFIC
Sean Garner [20:33]:
How we like to start things off is with basic SEO and social media marketing. So what we'll do is to then start to fill the funnel. We'll start doing SEO, which just stands for search engine optimization. That means where somebody goes on Google or any type of search directory and they type in what you do or a problem that they have, your business or your website comes up.
So we're going to make sure that we want to do all that SEO keyword research. So we want to use the words that your customers are searching for in Google and search engines to make sure that that information is on your website. So that those search engine directories connect people to potential customers that are looking for that thing. We like to do this with blog articles and content.
Sean Garner [21:14]:
That's why I said one of the core pages that we think we should have on your website are blogs. And there's a ton that we're going to get into with that about using AI for blogs. Is it good? Is it bad? How to leverage things to make content creation easier. But we need to be able to start sending people to our website.
There's two ways that we do that. Also to back up, there's organic, you probably heard that, or paid. So organic is the free way of doing it. So it's creating social media content, blog articles and it is organically or just naturally sending people to it based on the things you're doing, networking events, all that.
Sean Garner [21:48]:
Or the second way is paid. So that is you are doing paid ads on Google, Facebook, Meta, YouTube, any of that stuff. So that way you are paying to put something in front of people so then they can come to your website that way. We're going to talk about all the benefits, pros and cons of stuff coming up.
Quick version. I think paid ads are great, but I don't think that that's where you should start because I don't want to pay for things I can get for free and also I don't want to pay for things until I've tested them with organic. Because especially with what we do and how we position our marketing with this marketing domination, we want to make sure that people see you as an industry expert and so we want to help you to create thought leader type content and blogs, emails and social content that make you stand out as the industry expert. So get all that stuff set up and we're going to start filling the funnel.
Sean Garner [22:37]:
So we got the blog article content. We're going to make sure we have our digital storefront built out with all the different social media profiles that are relevant to our industry and to where we want to stand out as the industry leader we're going to be creating content, but I don't want people to spend, especially small business owners, all day making stupid TikTok dance videos.
That might get you some likes from some friends and some people online, but that is not going to attract the customers for the type of businesses that we like to work with. We want to work with people that are actually industry experts. And if that's who you are, don't be making the dance videos. Again, just like what I talked about earlier, I don't want to say always or never, but I have never personally been online and seen an accountant, a lawyer, a professional service provider do some type of a dance video, and be like I need to work with them. Yes, it's going to be funny.
Sean Garner [23:28]:
You might laugh at it and double tap it, but you're not going to be buying from that. You're not looking at that person as the industry leader. So if you want to dominate, that's what bigger brands and influencer people do.
That's where I think small business owners have the opportunity to pivot, to look like the actual expert, be the expert that you are and showcase that. Don't look at what influencers are doing and try to mimic that for your small business because it's not the best approach to grow and dominate online.
So we're going to start filling our sales funnel with SEO, with content strategy, things like podcasting, podcast, guest hosting and everything. And we want to start driving traffic to the funnel because whenever we first build the foundations of the funnel, we're doing it off of our best proven practices and strategies. But if we're being honest, we don't know until we send somebody through it, right? We're making best educated decisions based upon proven practices and customer research and everything that we've done in the past for our business.
OPTIMIZING YOUR SALES FUNNEL
Sean Garner [24:28]:
But until we start filling it well, then we actually don't know what's working. So after we build our sales funnel, then we fill it well. Then we go into the next phase of marketing domination to where then we start optimizing it. So one thing that we do is we are big on data. I think that it's easy to get analysis paralysis because there are so many data tools that are out there. I think there's basic things that small business owners should be looking at when it comes to their marketing.
If you guys have ever looked at a Google Analytics report or Google search console or like social media marketing analytics, it can be overwhelming. So I like to break it down into just very simple metrics and then as you get more comfortable and you want to start getting more granular with your marketing and know very specific details and conversion rates on specific pages and stuff, then you can build that out.
Sean Garner [25:18]:
But I like to start basic and simple and then add on as things are getting set up. Whenever it comes to marketing, I was in the fitness industry, like I told you guys, for a really long time. So I use a lot of fitness analogies. But what I have found is with most small business owners, they are focusing on the small detail things and forgetting the big picture things.
The example that I give is when I was a personal trainer, I might have a client come to me for their first session that is, you know, 100 pounds overweight. And the main question they have is, well, what pre-workout should I be taking? Like, okay, that is something we do need to address eventually, but right now, instead of asking what pre-workout I should be taking, right now, let's, let's focus on big rock things, like how many days a week can I be training, how should I be sleeping, how should I be eating?
And things that are going to move the needle a lot faster than the really small granular thing of what, what protein powder would you recommend or pre workout? Like, that stuff is important, but we want to make sure that we're moving the needle with big rock things first. So when it comes to our data and analytics, the main things that I tell small business owners and we kind of want to look at is things like traffic. That's how many people are actually going to the place you're trying to send them.
Sean Garner [26:37]:
Like your website, your sales funnel process. Two is going to be conversions. So you're sending how many people? Let's say you're sending 100 people there. Well, you're sending 100 people there. How many, how many of them are either opting into your lead generator or scheduling a call, booking an assessment, whatever you're buying now, whatever your call to action is.
Then throughout that, we have several different analytics that we can look at throughout the individual pipeline. So if somebody does go through our lead generator, well, how far through the email sequence are they getting, how many emails are they opening and which email is getting the most clicks. I like to see what's working and double down on that instead of just changing things for changing sake. So I want to optimize what's working and then start bringing the other stuff up to par with everything else.
Sean Garner [27:22]:
Other things that I want to look at, especially for us with the sales funnel, we do a ton of SEO and search engine optimization. So I want to see what keywords are we ranking for? How is our position growing on Google? The other big metric I like to look at for optimizing is Google reviews. How can we get more Google reviews? Because if you are a small business that has a local service area that you're servicing, local Google Business reviews is the most important thing that you can get for increasing your ranking. So we want to look at all these things to make sure that we're optimizing our sales funnel.
Another huge part of this is your CRM. Your CRM is your tool to where you are taking all your customer information from your lead generator, from purchasers, and you're funneling them into a tool to where you can see all of your customers. You can have conversations with them, you're sending your email marketing through it. But the cool thing with these tools, that's where you can do all of your automation.
Sean Garner [28:19]:
So you're going to start to find as you're doing your marketing and getting through your sales process, you get some tasks that are just repeatable, monotonous tasks that you do over and over. Well, that's what you want to automate and optimize. Part of your sales funnel. What I see, a mistake small business owners often make, is they focus on trying to build out all of these automations and triggers.
And well, when this happens, this is going to happen over here and they're going to get sent this notification and they build all of this stuff out early on to where one, it's a waste of time because they didn't actually need to do it. Two, it's a waste of time because they built all that stuff out instead of actually just trying to focus on growing their business. And three is they're building things out without having people come through it to actually know what's needed. I like to have data, like I said, to make the decision instead of just guessing.
Sean Garner [29:09]:
There's some things that we obviously know we should create on the get go. But as the business grows, you're going to have a lot more data inputs to know what needs to be optimized, what automation where you could maybe leverage things like AI to help your business with the marketing and really optimize your sales funnel.
So recap marketing domination. You need a sales funnel. We build a sales funnel, then we fill a sales funnel, then we optimize our sales funnel. We are going to be breaking down the steps within those steps in the future episodes. So you guys know as small business owners exactly what you need to do to grow and dominate. I want this to serve as a teaching tool for small business owners so you can take this and know what you need to do to pivot your business.
Sean Garner [30:00]:
So this may have been an overwhelming episode for you. Like, okay, that sounds like way too much stuff. I promise you we are going to make it easy. We're going to break it down into each individual step and this is going to serve as kind of the foundational overview episode for what to come back to if you're just starting, maybe you join in later episodes.
This was the first one, a good one to start with because you have a really good foundation on what we're going to be walking down through together for the next couple of episodes. In the next episode, what we're going to do is we are actually going to start at the top of marketing domination and break through step by step what all of these things are and what you need to do for your small business to grow and develop your marketing so that you dominate online.
Next episode we are going to be talking about branding and what small business owners need to do with their branding.
Sean Garner [30:52]:
So that way you have a good solid foundation to build all of your marketing on. So all the action steps, guys, each episode we are going to have an action step for you to do.
On this episode. Your action step is to review your own current sales funnel process. Do you even have one? How are you filling it? What steps are you taking right now to have a consistent content strategy, whether it be organic or paid ads, to fill that sales funnel? And if you do have a sales funnel, what are some things that you could optimize right now?
Maybe some holes that you see in the bucket to where you are letting potential leads and customers leave your bucket. Maybe part of the optimization is and we're not even collecting data, we're not even looking at these analytics. So how do we even know what's not working?
Take this episode, guys, as a framework to view your marketing on, so you can grow and dominate. Thanks so much guys for listening. Have an awesome day and we'll see you in the next episode.