I read a fascinating article this morning about a woman who took a $1,200 stimulus check and leveraged it into a TWO MILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS in less than one year. In the article, she shared something that I want to highlight for you: “The only difference between where you are now and where you want to be is information and execution. Information changes situations but only when applied.”

So true!

This woman, Ellie, started out by studying everything everyone ELSE was saying about her area of expertise (money/finance), and learning where the gaps existed. She then used part of that stimulus check to purchase graphic design tools and good lighting, and she built herself a website. She then embarked on transforming her knowledge into courses that she could sell. She’s not getting the entire $2M from courses, but her business coaching and speaking engagements make up a substantial part of her total revenue.

She leveraged, among other things, email marketing to scale her business.

We provide a LOT of information about email marketing through this blog, programs we offer, and of course, the software platform we provide. Yet for many, execution remains the missing component. Fact is, there’s a ton of information about practically everything, but HOW YOU EXECUTE with that information in hand is what is critical.

Question: With all of the information we and others share about segmenting leads into different interest “buckets” and only sending relevant content based on interests, why do so many marketers and solopreneurs still send the same email every time to every person on their list?
Answer: Because it’s fast and easy.

Question: We, and others, share that content is critical to marketing. Why do so many marketers and solopreneurs continue to NOT have a blog, to NOT produce effective lead magnets to attract people into their lists? Or why do they do these things but so inconsistently it’s like starting to roll the boulder uphill from the bottom again every time?
Answer: Because it’s hard to commit to a schedule and faster and easier to just do things when the mood strikes.

I’ll tell you the truth: it’s not easy for us to make time every week to write a blog post here on our website. But we do it. We do it to stay in touch with the thousands of people who click through the emails we send that contain the link to the latest blog post. We do it because consistency is critical (as we stated in our last blog post) – so you don’t forget us out here in the wild wild interwebs. We do it to provide you with the marketing information you need to scale your own business.

As people, we tend to gravitate toward the things that are easiest to do. Me too.

But, in most cases, that which is easy is not the same as what will truly grow a business.

For email marketing to be truly effective, you want to segment your leads and only send information that is relevant to their particular interests. You want to adopt a communication cadence so people don’t forget you. You want to create content that will address your audience’s pain points, frustrations, or opportunities.

You want to earn a position of trust with the people on your list.

To make all that work, you’ve got to DO the work.

That means finding out what truly pains the people you wish to serve, finding the gaps in what everyone else is talking about, and combining your big idea with their pain points to create a business model that will attract the right people into your world (and your email list). There’s a recipe for how to find those challenges, fears, and frustrations from your audience HERE.

It means taking the time to find out the WHY of your audience, so you can segment them into different buckets – and then taking the time to create emails that will communicate with each group differently. We have a blog post all about that, HERE. (And there are other posts about lead segmentation throughout our blog.)

It means establishing a schedule for creating content and sticking to it; adopting a communication cadence that will keep you in touch with the people on your list, as we previously discussed – keeping them warm and responsive and, dare I say, eager to hear from you.

If Ellie had depended ONLY on her Instagram posts to grow her business – without her website and email marketing efforts – would she have reached her $2M milestone so quickly? If she had not executed on all of the marketing knowledge she gleaned from her research, what would have happened to her big idea?

As Ellie said in one of her recent Instagram posts, “All you need is social media, a product or service, content & consistency.” Translation: she is using social media to drive people to her products/services, capturing their attention and their email address, and consistently delivering relevant content to their inboxes.

It’s nice to know we aren’t the only ones preaching these things. 🙂

And now you have more information than you had before you read this. What will you do with it?