Episode 24: How to Create a Strong and Successful Business Model

In today’s episode we’re going to make sure that you understand how to create your strong and successful business model and really get to grips with the fundamentals that are going to underpin and accelerate your success.

This could help to make potentially multiple businesses for you and multiple incomes. It is also the driving force to you achieving your dreams and why you set out to be an entrepreneur or business owner in the first place.

Here are the highlights from this episode:

{1:13} Targeted audience v’s targeted buyers

{3:57} Marketing based on behaviour

{6:47} The importance of online visibility

{10:32} Nurturing people into paying customers

{13:30} Partners, alliances, strategic alliances & business partners

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Welcome to episode 24 of Dawn of a New Era-The Chronicles of a Serial Entrepreneur. The podcast for business owners by a business owner, talking about the real honest truths, the hardships and the successes of running multiple businesses in an ever-evolving digital world. Now, in episode 24, we’re going to cover how to create a strong and successful business model. This underpins everything. You can have the best strategy, the best people, but if you don’t have a model that is set to actually achieve your business goals, then it’s never going to work. Regardless of amount of resource and effort that you put in. Now, one of the fundamentals that I see from working with clients and setting up my own businesses. Now I’ve been working in the world of digital marketing for the past 20 years, but it really comes down to something quite basic. And it’s something that many business owners are tempted to overlook because they’re caught up in the idea.

And this is often the case. As entrepreneurs, we’re really creative, we’re risk-takers sometimes and we want to just get our business up and running, we want to dive in at the deep end. But if we look at what the fundamentals are, I would say that number one is audience. Really looking at a target audience versus targeted buyers. Because how audiences are constructed is that generally a business owner or entrepreneur will come up with an amazing idea, and then the business model and structure will follow. Now, the bit that’s important, and regardless of what stage you are in your career or business, whether you are actually a seasoned professional or a CEO or just looking for getting your side hustle into a new startup, it doesn’t matter. The same principles are true because if only one out of 10 people in your target audience need your solution and nine of them aren’t prospects, then you’re wasting 90% of your time and resources.

Now, let’s think about this. If you have a target audience of people, these are people that potentially you feel may be interested in what you are selling. Be it a product or a service, be it business to business or business to consumer, a target audience are people that you choose. Now, my approach and something that I know absolutely can’t fail is that when you look at the strategy differently and you look at targeted buyers, then everything comes into play because we start to market differently. We start to create messaging for intent to purchase. And what does this mean? Well, it means, instead of just putting your content out or your messaging out or your marketing out to people who you think might be interested, who fall into characteristics or demographics that you feel are correct. It’s a different way of marketing, it’s all about behaviour.

And purchase intent is where the magic really happens because the target audience could be men or women living in a certain location, for a certain job title, a certain age, interested in particular interests. Or it could be an education level or a relationship status. Now, these are all pie in the sky characteristics and demographics that you could be targeting. But it doesn’t ever mean that it’s relevant or that your message or content or solution is going to resonate with these people. These are people that you think are interested because they’re similar to either current customers you have, or for maybe the focus group or people that you constructed your product or service around. Now, a better way, a more efficient way, and an absolutely guaranteed way of being successful and actually driving customers that are profitable into your business is marketing based on behaviour.

And this whole new concept is super successful. I have never met a startup, I have never met a business, I’ve never met a client who isn’t successful, who operates this strategy within their business model. And it’s all about understanding who your audience is. Yes, develop a persona, an avatar, an understanding of all these commonalities. But that’s the basis. If you never move your target audience into targeted buyers, it’s going to be a struggle. And remember, if only one out of 10 people in your target audience need your solution and nine of them aren’t prospects, then you’re wasting 90% of your time and resources. And that is the most common pitfall of every business model that I see. Now, the exciting thing is, if you just take this small shift and you apply it to your business, you market differently. So how do you target buyers? How do you market based on people who are interested, who have intent to buy?

Well, it’s all about where your audience are. And where they are in the sales journey or decision-making journey. So if your audience is too large or too diverse, your messaging is going to be completely off point, completely out of kilter. Remember, you’re not marketing to an industry, you’re not marketing to a static niche or market, you’re not marketing now to a human being. Now, your marketing has to be super specific, super relevant and super timely. Now, to do this, it’s all about hitting the right people at the right time. And you might say, well, Dawn, that sounds great, but how on earth do you do it? Well, if you think about it, if somebody is interested in what you do, the first thing to understand in your business model is how do you reach the people who already know about the product or solution that you offer, or know about your business?

Now, if somebody is going onto, say the internet, onto Google, for instance, onto a search engine, and they are proactively typing the words in for your product, your service or your solution, then you know that the purchase intent are there. These are buyers that you should be targeting. But how do you do that? Well, the first thing is looking at where your audience hangs out. Instead of thinking about what their characteristics are, which are very static, we want to be reaching people based on the behaviour. People who are actually searching for your product or service or solution. Now, you imagine if your business is then appearing in Google. So online visibility is definitely the foundation. One of the things that we talk about a lot in business today is online presence, online visibility. And this is so true. It’s about being in the right place at the right time, at the time that your customer or potential customer is reaching out.

They have a need and they now are in the evaluation stage. And you need to be the chosen person, you need to stand out from the crowd and you need to be that person that they choose. So appearing in search engines, being visible online. Now, this could be using search engines to get your content out there. It could be social media, it could be having that visibility so that your message is always out there and it’s hitting them at a time that they’re interested. Because if someone’s proactively searching, that’s one thing. But what about the people, the amazing people, the potential market that you have of the unawares, how do you reach those people? Well, again, it is so true that if you are creating content and you’re pushing that out into the market and your content is sitting there and serving you while you sleep, then you have this huge, huge potential to really make a difference in converting customers.

Because if people are searching, your business, your brand, your product, your solution needs to be available. If people are on channels that have an audience that is within your target, then that is something that is going to be super successful for you. Because to be able to show up each and every day, to be visible in front of more and more people, to get more and more reach, more visibility and more brand awareness, this is the key. And that momentum is the driving force behind your whole business because you have to be in it to win it. Online visibility, I cannot stress how important this is. The more people who know about you, then the scale of probability is that the more people that you potentially could have as customers and convert. So when you think about your audience, really drill down into the messaging. And think about maybe focus groups. If you have existing customers, talk to them, find out why they chose you.

What was the most persuasive piece of content that they engaged with? What was the tipping point that made them buy versus your competitors? How did they find you? What were they searching for? How did you reach them in the first place? How did they come into your world? Did they find you online? Was it word of mouth? Because as much as I’m about digital marketing and online marketing, we must never forget the foundations. The absolute best thing about business is word of mouth and human contact. But the thing is that if you keep that brand awareness, that online visibility, the amount of people that we as a business in all of my businesses actually serve as customers, they’ve come from referrals. And that’s just by people knowing what we do, how we serve our customers and how to get in touch with us.

So this online visibility can mix absolutely online and offline because visibility is everything and perception is everything. Because if people see that your brand is scaling and growing, that you’re serving clients, you’re having success, you cannot help but position yourself in this industry as somebody who is being a fundamental resource, be it for a product or service for their clients. Now, think about your audience and think about this whole essence of not just targeting your audience but targeting buyers. And think about showing up in your business each and every day and thinking about, if you have reached new people, how can you nurture those people through to paying customers?

Don’t just forget them and don’t just take them through part of the journey, this is an end-to-end process. So you have to think about as much in your business model of the business processes and your goals about what is the process, the actual customer journey that you are going to serve. And how you can reach your customers or potential customers at each stage of this journey. From them not knowing who you are, to them understanding the value of your business and your product or your proposition or your services, to then actually purchasing. And don’t stop there. Remember, you need to take these people through, because these people, these customers can be your best advocates because they can be your referrers and they can bring people back into your business.

Because if you have a strong value proposition and people can really see why you stand out from the crowd and why you’ve got this edge over your competitors, then yes, you’ll be successful in reaping customers. But you need repeat customers. So how do you get them back into your business? How do you get them to remain and to repeat purchase? And how do you, in turn, get them to be your advocates, to refer and recommend and even review and give you the all-important social proof behind your business? Because let’s face it, a lot of people will look at reviews. People are definitely affected by looking at weighing up this person versus this person. And sometimes, it’s a customer review that will be that persuasive content and that tipping point.

So think about the resources in the business at that customer journey. Think about what content you can serve, because marketing is impossible without great content. You need to have the sales resources, the nurturing resources, these amazing nuggets of information that are the persuasive content. A review or a testimonial is a resource for your business and it’s a huge asset. Now, don’t forget that when you’re thinking about your demand generation strategy, which is like your blueprint, your customer journey, that you have to think about these key motivators. And this is where if you have customers, they come into play. And running these focus groups will be super, super important, and you will learn how to utilize the messaging that converted current customers to keep polling in. To really utilize demand generation and this powerful strategy of what worked then, and just re-utilizing it.

And this blueprint then can be used again and again, the template of success for your strong and successful business model. Now, last but not least, before I finish this episode, I really want to hone in on something. And this is something that I would accredit and definitely say is a huge attribute in each and every business. And something that is the ongoing foundation, the accelerator that has managed, well, has impacted and allowed us to manage businesses. But also, something that has catapulted success for startups, for clients, for my own businesses. And this is partners, alliances, strategic alliances and business partners. And I don’t mean having a business partner in the business. You could be a solopreneur, you could be the head honcho, the CEO of your own business or startup. But when I talk about partners and strategic alliances, this could be suppliers, this could be the people within your business.

And again, strategic alliances and partners could be collaborations. These could be current customers. These are the people in the business … and don’t forget your team. And that doesn’t mean that you have to have staff in the business. This could be your team of suppliers. This could be the people that are making the business go round. The people who are either operationally part of the business, the people who are the profit of the business, those all-important customers. It could be the people that could inject this visibility, be it online or face-to-face, but through collaborations, through partnerships. If somebody has a target audience that you think I could definitely reach some target buyers, then these collaborations, these important partnerships can really, really strengthen the success. But as I say, it can speed the success up so that you have this strong business.

Now, don’t put all your eggs in one basket and just have one strategic alliance, multiple alliances, and you’re building the momentum again. If you’ve done something with one partnership, then seek further collaborations. And don’t just sit back on your laurels and think, well, this is working. Think about how you can emulate that success and keep templating what’s working and re-utilizing and pushing out. Because what’s the point of re-inventing the wheel when you’ve already got things that are working in your business. So go back and look at either your existing business model or your new business model. And think about the foundations. How are you reaching your audience? How are you getting that all-important target audience? So that you can target buyers at different stages of the customer journey, and truly understand what the stages are of this journey from someone becoming aware to your biggest advocate.

And think about the resources within the business. Not just the processes and goals and operations, but how you present this value proposition, how you present the edge over your competitors. And the fact that, how do you get these customers coming back again and again, over your competitors. How do you retain and get referrals? And remember these all-important strategic partnerships, these alliances and collaborations, because there’s no need to go alone. There’ll be things that are working in your market, and it could be a competitor has set up their own strategic alliance, it doesn’t mean to say that you can’t do that too. So the demand generation strategy will be the driving force of your success for your strong and successful business model. And this blueprint of your customer journey will really, really show you what’s working. And remember the content that is helping you persuade someone from a prospect to a profitable long-term customer.

So I hope you found this episode useful. And this is going to be super, super useful in kicking off January in the new year. Because this month, the next three months, the next six months, the next 12 months, there’ll be so many businesses starting. There’ll be so many businesses pivoting and evolving, and really trying to make this year the most successful that they possibly can. So make sure that you understand how to create your strong and successful business model and really get to grips with the fundamentals that are going to underpin and accelerate your success and make maybe multiple businesses for you, multiple incomes. And also, the driving force to you achieving your dreams and why you set out to be an entrepreneur or business owner in the first place.

So don’t forget, connect with me on the social channels @dawnmcgruer, and also check out all the other podcasts and episodes on dawnmcgruer.com. You can also check out the free group on Facebook. If you just search for our Business Consort, Marketing Motivation and Mindset, you can come and join us in the amazing community of entrepreneurs. So remember, there could be some more collaborations in there and people that could really strengthen your strong and successful business model.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode, and don’t forget I’m going to be with you each and every week. So, download and listen on dawnmcgruer.com or on iTunes and come and join us in our Facebook community too. All the details are on the website and I’ll see you next week.

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Dawn McGruer's Marketing * Motivation * Mindset Group

Speaker. Author. Podcaster. Strategist.

Multi-award-winning speaker, strategist & best-selling author of Dynamic Digital Marketing - Helping to inspire entrepreneurs to rise to meet today’s challenges and be powerfully present to shine online.

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