The Rear View Mirror

Here’s a simple question…

On the business growth highway… in rear view mirror… Are you looking at your competition or if your competition looking at you?

Be honest.

Chest beating won’t change the current state of your business.

Don’t look at the books, don’t ask one of your employees or your business partner…

Just give me your first instinct?

Who’s looking through the rear view mirror at who?

You may not like the answer to this question, but it doesn’t change the simple fact that many of us are struggling to keep pace with our competition (This is especially true of my insurance industry brothers and sisters chasing national direct writers…) let alone pass them by.

But don’t fret… Don’t worry… And certainly don’t feel sorry for yourself.

I’m about to give you access to the HOV lane, fill your car with jet fuel and release the handbrake.

The solution to your rear view mirror problem is…

Value First Marketing

The days of a high return on investment from interruption marketing (think the commercials you skip past with your DVR) are over.  People will pay money to not see your advertisments.

Think about that for a second.  People will pay money to NOT see your advertisements.

That’s a double win for traditional advertising mediums and double loss for you.

But doesn’t everyone use traditional marketing to let consumers know what products they sell?”

Haha… I love you for asking that.

NO… The reason that your competitors are looking at YOU in their rear view mirror and not the other way around has nothing to do with advertising budgets or product offerings or customers service…

…if you’re losing ground in today’s marketplace it’s because you’re competitors have learned about Value First Marketing.

The Flow of Value

Here’s another question:

What makes blogging and social media and email and all the other forms of digital marketing so much different from the traditional marketing mediums?

Digital and social marketing strategies reverse the flow of Value from Provider to Consumer - Click to Tweet

For as long as people and organizations have been selling things to other people and organizations, the flow of value has always been from Consumer to Provider.

Provider – You want to know what I know?

Consumer – Yes

Provider – Pay me my money!

And the consumer did because the consumer wanted the knowledge and the only way to get that knowledge was money (or trade)… but either way value was always given by the consumer first.

NOT ANY LONGER!

At least not if you want your business to exist in 10 years.

Well… maybe… maybe your business will exist in 10 years but certainly forget about any level of success.

Empower Your Customers

Soooo… In the digital world value flows from provider to consumer.

But what the heck does that mean?

That means you, as the provider, do everything you can to empower consumers before they ever spend a dime in your business.

Take this blog for example…

I write two blog posts and the Content Creation Curation every single week.

I do How-to Tutorials and I recently launched the Content Warfare Podcast.

Everything that I know about Internet Marketing I give away for free (except the incredibly awesome social tools book, but you can even get 90% of that for free if you were to scan through all my blog posts) with little to no restraint.

I do everything I can to Empower You!

My hope… Is that when the time is right, you will consider hiring me to speak to your organization to educate, inspire and ultimately set everyone listening on the path to success online.

My hope… Is that the value I’ve given you over the years instills trust that I can help you become a success Online.

But regardless if you ever hire me or not I will forever Deliver Value First through content…

There is no expectation of sale.

Success in the Digital World

Success in the digital world comes from Provider delivering every ounce of value they can to the customer BEFORE money exchanges hands…

Scary… Yes.

A lead of faith… Yes.

Critical to success… Absolutely.

So how do we fix our rear view mirror problem?

Reverse the flow of value.

Reverse the flow of value from your business to the consumers you wish to make clients… Deliver value like your business depends on it…

…Because it does!

Thank you and Good luck,

I am Ryan Hanley and this is Content Warfare.