I remember playing monopoly with my uncle Anthony when I was around 9 or 10 and nobody could beat him. Even when the chips were down and he was mortgaging all his properties to buy that one last available piece of real estate, “Bond St”, he managed to come back from the dead and win. I’ll never forget his mantra: Buy as much real estate as you can, as soon as you can!
Whether you love it or loathe it, Monopoly certainly has some valuable lessons
And none are truer for business today. Buy as much real estate as you can, or more broadly, build/buy as many income producing assets as you can. Your mission, in business, is to build as many marketing assets that continually bring you more and more customers as you can.
What does Monopoly in 2019 look like?
It’s all about owning virtual real estate. And that virtual real estate is called Mr Google. It’s your business’s mission to earn/pay/promote as much virtual.
But it’s got to be the right virtual real estate!
Just like real life, you need to own good quality, income producing virtual real estate. You don’t want a dog of a property that doesn’t generate revenue. You want the type that continually generates leads and sales day in day out whether you’re at work or in the Bahamas!
The secret to getting more customers than you can poke a stick at
Getting this process right will generate more customers than you can even dream of. It’s a marketing system that works day and night, 24 hours a day, every day of every week of every year. It works when you’re at work, and it works when you’re at your kids sports day.
And it’s the most valuable asset of your business.
Ultimately the valuation of a business is its FUTURE ability to generate free cash flow continuously! And this comes from having a great marketing system that continues to own more and more virtual real estate for your business.
So what does owning great income producing virtual real estate look like?
1. Google Ad 2. Google Shopping Ad 3. Google My Business Listing 4. Google Organic Results
It’s time for you to own search!
That’s right! It’s time for you to own more and more real estate on google.
It’s so much more than just doing SEO and Google Ads
There is a lot more to it than just doing some SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) or running some Google Ads. You need to build and implement a whole marketing system to “Own Search”.
Google’s job is to evaluate the real world
So when you search for something, it’s Google’s job to show what it thinks is the most authoritative, informative, accurate and valuable website in 1st position then the second one and so on down the list. So ultimately it’s our job to turn you into…
The most authoritative, expert, accurate and valuable…
business in your industry. There is no short cutting the process. If you don’t want to be the best at what you do, get out of the race. This is not for the faint hearted.
Google will chew you up and spit you out…
…the other end if you don’t do this right. If you try and short cut the process, if you try and trick, deceive or skimp on things, he will find out, and he will punish you accordingly. The business world is littered with stories of organic visitors going from 10,000 per month to 0 because of trying to circumvent the system. So let’s do it right.
The not-so-secret-sauce!
The good news is, there is a not-so-secret-sauce to building the holy grail of obtaining the virtual real estate we are all after and it looks a bit like this:
- Who are we selling what too
- Know what’s working and what’s not
- Great Campaigns, Google ads, SEO and local search
- Have a sh^t hot website
- Provide extraordinary value
An enormously valuable asset!
Doing that will build you an enormously valuable asset, one that will provide the kind of success that we all dream about. That will ensure you have more and more customers coming through the door this week than you did last week. That will provide the economic foundations for you and your family’s economic prosperity.
1. Who are you selling what to!
The most important question that all businesses need to get right.
- Clarity of target audience – what are their dreams, wants and beliefs. Who are they, where are they, what information are they searching for, what are their pain points and passions. And how do you know them better than they know themselves?
- Value – what are you really selling them. It’s not features, it’s not benefits, it’s the emotional connection your product/service makes. It’s all about feelings of hope, inspiration, pain, trust
2. Know what’s working and what’s not
We all love Homer! I remember one of his more famous quotes when he was dreaming of riches and success and talking to Marge “Money is all that Money’s Money”. In today’s world, “Data is all that Data’s Data”. It’s all about collecting, analysing and refining what’s working well for you and what’s not
- Track all marketing campaigns and the outcomes they produce for your business
- Reporting of this data so we can quickly see what’s working and what’s not working
- Analysis of results to see where improvements can be made
- Do more of what’s working
- Fix what’s not performing well
- Stop doing what’s producing no outcomes
- Recommendations and implementation
3. Great campaigns: Google Ads and SEO
This is the technical side to search and owning virtual real estate. You need to work with the right people/partners who can continually generate better and better results for your marketing $$$. That can continually ensure you own more and more positions in search;
- Strong search strategy underpinned by keyword research, competitor analysis and a great customer experience throughout the process
- Exceptional Google Ads campaigns built with targeted keywords, good structure, attractive ad copy and a high converting landing page
- Stringent optimisation process that produces more and more leads and sales to the business month on month
- Foundational SEO Campaigns to ensure:
- Technical Mr Google can crawl, index and find all the information on the site
- Strong user journey and experience on your website
- Good citations in major business directories
- Good backlink profile
- Long Term SEO Growth – see steps 4 and 5 below
4. A great website
In today’s world, there is no excuse for having an ordinary / poor / crap / average website. It’s never going to cut the mustard. Your potential customers are going to know (and choose your competitor that has a better one), and Mr Google is going to know and rank you on page 10. You need to invest in a great website that performs for your business on all levels.
- Awesome User Journey based on target audiences and what they are looking for
- Social Proof and Trust Markers that demonstrate how good you are
- Overall Content that informs and engages
- General look and feel that makes people stop and go – “Ohhh that’s cool”
- Brand and Story comes through strongly
- Value proposition, sales propositions and calls to action
5. Provide Extraordinary Value
The final, and most important piece to the puzzle is that you need to provide extraordinary value to me, your target audience for free! That’s right free! You need to start and build a ‘virtual’ relationship with me and expect nothing in return. The more value you add to me without having to pay for it, the more I will like you and the more I will be prepared to give you my money, trust and loyalty.
- Great content throughout your website, social and whole website that demonstrates you are a leader in your filled
- Educate and inform me so that I get better and better at what I do
- Make me laugh and cry with emotional connections
- Tell great stories that I remember and share with friends
It’s this value that will go viral!
People will love, share and promote your content for you. It’s the process of things going viral. And that is what google uses to determine if you’re better than your competitors, and whether he should like you at the top of page 1 (in position 1) or down on page 10!
