Rev & Reach Episode 23 – Focus as a Growth Hack

00:00
Hello everybody. I’m Lori Jo Vest, here with another episode of Rev & Reach, where those of us here at PopSpeed Digital Marketing LLC give you a look behind the curtain at how we do digital marketing so that you can experience more success with your digital marketing efforts and get more ROI.

So today I want to talk about focus. One of the things that we run into frequently is clients who think they have to be everywhere, all at once, all the time. Not true. We have had situations where a client is on one social channel and gets an incredible amount of leads in one month. We also have situations where clients are on all the channels and they just don’t get much. It’s a really interesting balance.

But if you think you should be everywhere, you’re not right on that one. That is one of those things that people believe — that there may be an opportunity there, so they should make sure they’re there. And if you spread yourself too thin, you risk a couple of different things. You risk spending energy trying to reach your audience on a platform where they don’t play. Or maybe you’re on a channel where a certain type of content really performs well, but you don’t have the budget to create that kind of content, so that’s not what you’re sharing — and then you don’t get any results. And, you know, there are a lot of different people saying a lot of different things.

01:38
I always like to remind people that marketing is really subjective. A lot of times you’ve got somebody in the client seat who has some marketing experience, maybe they have no marketing experience, and you hire the experts so they can come in and do the job.

Some things are subjective. If you have a request for your marketing team and they push back, give it some thought. Maybe they’re right, because subjectivity means you could be wrong. I’ve had clients come in — when I worked in video production — and say, “My wife doesn’t like the look of that graphic.” Really? Okay, so should we change it? And they will spend money making changes to things that their wife looked at.

02:24
So it takes all kinds. From the “we’re in the trenches every day” perspective, I will tell you that you can’t listen to everybody. You have to focus in on who you’re going to listen to, follow their advice, and get to the point where you’re succeeding with that advice and that formula — and then maybe add things onto it.

But if you try to do everything all at once, you’re going to dilute your efforts, and it’s also going to make things much more difficult for you and a lot harder to get ROI. And I’ll give you an example.

03:01
We talk a lot about our dental practices because it’s one of the places where we’ve really had great success. And we have a practice that is really good at what they do. They’re not inexpensive. They are probably one of the higher-end practices, and they’re very open about that, because the way they do things is different.

So we put them on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and we really didn’t know where the magic was going to happen. Some of their patients are younger — in their 30s — maybe they had some kind of dental disease, or maybe they were in a car accident and need full dental replacements. Or, more likely, they’re in their 60s, 70s, maybe even 80s, and have lost their teeth and dentures are making them crazy.

So you’ve got a really wide range of audiences. We thought maybe we’d pick some people up on Instagram, and we also prioritized Meta and Facebook because Facebook is a great place to reach an older audience.

04:07
Well, let me tell you — we got a lot of younger people there. It was really surprising. But the focus channel became Facebook, with Meta ads generating leads, because that’s what worked. And that was really pretty easy.

We did a little on Instagram. Never really got us much by way of leads. The client was really excited and told us they wanted to try TikTok. They didn’t have a bigger budget, so they weren’t able to create custom content for TikTok, but we put them there. And basically, we got zero followers, zero views, zero likes. Nothing happened.

And it was because their content wasn’t the right content for TikTok. TikTok likes educational, inspirational, hilarious, fun, entertaining content. Entertaining is the name of the game there if you really want to succeed.

So what I really want to say is: pick three or four things and start with those three or four things and do them really well.

05:53
Maybe you’ve got a great website. You’ve got a great LinkedIn page. You’ve got your executives using LinkedIn. You’re doing some Instagram to reach younger business people who might not be on LinkedIn. And you’ve got some things going on YouTube. That’s a full plate.

If you add three or four more channels, you’re going to dilute the effort. And if you even just do what I described — those particular channels — and focus on doing them really well, you would most likely see results.

So if you think you need to be everywhere all at once, you just don’t. It’s not something you need to do.

07:20
Another piece of advice that fits in here is to figure out where your audience is before you do anything. Strategy is so important, and a lot of people don’t spend enough time researching the audience on these channels before they advertise.

Maybe you’re really comfortable on Instagram, so that’s where you go. Well, if your product isn’t really reaching an audience on Instagram, just because you’re comfortable there doesn’t mean that’s where you should be.

AI is your friend. ChatGPT is your friend. Google is your friend. Do the research. Where does your audience play?

When I talked about dental practices earlier, we had an older audience — retired people, playing digital games, playing cards, happily retired. Those categories are so easy to reach on Meta and Facebook.

Remember: attention is finite. Execution energy is finite. Budgets are finite. So where can you focus that attention to get the best ROI?

The algorithms on all these social channels reward consistency, repeatability, and engagement — not just throwing things up once in a while, but being there consistently, three days a week, engaging with people, sharing other people’s things.

Focus doesn’t limit your growth. It accelerates it.

08:50
If you focus and get really good at one channel, then move on to the next. Do your homework. You cannot be everywhere all at once. Your audience is not everywhere all at once.

They are not on TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook — all at the same time. And if they are, they’re not spending much time on some of those.

So pick one primary channel where you know your audience is already playing. Pick one core message. What problem do you solve best? And pick one success metric. Is it leads? Is it booked calls? Is it sales? Not likes. Not shares. Not followers.

Focus, adjust, optimize. That’s how digital marketing works.

09:25
You do not have to do everything all at once. If you try to, you’ll fail. Start with one channel, one message, one metric. Be strategic. Pay attention. Check in every day. Engage. Measure what happens. Then move on.

I’m an open networker on LinkedIn at Lori Jo Vest — I’d love to hear from you. Let me know that you listen to the podcast when you connect with me.

We also have a website where we keep past episodes, transcripts, and show notes, and there’s a contact form there where you can let me know what topics you’d like us to cover on Rev & Reach. We’re here to help you get more ROI from your digital marketing.

If you’re watching this on YouTube, please hit subscribe, give me a like, maybe even a share, and we’ll see you back in a few weeks with more information to help you get better results from your marketing. Take care.