The Six Stages of Marketing

Here at Working with Dog, we are passionate about building dog brands. I mean, we’re literally writing the book on it… We definitely believe this is the secret sauce that separates the great from the many. But branding can often be misconstrued as just ‘a fancy logo’ or ‘pretty packaging’ [which are both important but not all-encompassing] – we believe the brand is the foundation – just the beginning – the very first stage of marketing.

When we teach and talk about marketing, we break it down into 6 stages. Branding is squarely within the first stage [attract] which is largely about building strategy- but there are 5 more stages that follow, which are really the tactical ‘doing’ part. These stages are the ones you probably think about when you hear the word ‘marketing’ – these are the activities that ensure people are actually seeing, using and engaging with your brand, product or service. All 6 stages are important for a business that performs at its peak – so let’s get to know them:

The 6 Stages of Marketing

1. Attract   /  Build a Brand + Platform
2. Broadcast   /  Build Awareness
3. Engage    /  Build Relationships
4. Convert    /  Encourage Referrals / Revisits
5. Measure    /    Collect Data & Analyze
6. Improve   /  Apply Data

The purpose of each stage is to ultimately ensure that you always have a long list of people lining-up to work with you. The key to making these stages work, is to to make it a solid part of the routine in your business [for you and for your team too if you have one].

This routine should be built around the process of finding new leads, moving them through the stages of the ‘sales funnel’ and slowly changing them from ‘stranger’ to ‘friend’ and along the way… converting them into paying clients!

Here at Working with Dog we call this process the 6 Stages of Marketing:

1. Attract
2. Discover
3. Engage
4. Convert
5. Measure
6. Improve

This is not nearly as complicated or time-consuming as it sounds when you plan it in to your daily activities. In fact, the big scary ‘Marketing’ monster, can actually be quite simple and doable when you start to break it down into small bite-sized chunks.

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1. Attract

This is my favorite stage. As I mentioned, this is where the branding bit happens, but that’s only one part of your marketing strategy – which is the beating heart of creating revenue for your business.

I want you to think for a minute about a dog. Your dog, or a dog you know or love. Consider their ability to assist us in hundreds of ways, from bomb sniffing, seizure detecting and poacher tracking to their mid-air ball catches – their uncanny  ‘don’t be sad mom’ snuggle timing – the way they know exactly where that snack was on the sidewalk last time you passed by… their obsessive pee-sniffing… All of this magic comes down to their highly sensitive, tightly honed senses. All of the skills dogs have come from a bundle of clever, muscular mass informed by super-human sensory input.

I want your business to perform as well as that tracking, comforting, super frisbee-catching dog. Operating at its peak… Informed by its own set of highly specialized senses. Unfortunately, unlike your dog, your business is not born with these senses intact… They need to be identified, sharpened and supported. These senses, which are at the root of every decision your business makes or activity it engages in, are as follows:

Your 6 Marketing Senses:

1. Sense of Self / WHY do you do what you do? What do you stand for?
2. Sense of Sight / WHO are you for? Who are you NOT for?
3. Sense of Hearing / WHAT do your people want and what will they pay for?
4. Sense of Touch / WHERE do your people encounter you?
5. Sense of Taste / HOW [pre-sale] How do you optimize for the ‘easy yes’?
6. Sense of Smell / HOW [post-sale] How do you keep demand + desire high?

Helping you discover and optimize these senses is what I do best in my 1:1 consulting and courses, this is my super-human skill, but you can get a long way on your own by simply addressing each of these senses, in order. Do this BEFORE you start placing Facebook Ads or sponsoring events… This is the only way you’ll know who you should be speaking to and what you hope to get out of these activities.

Get FREE Help with your Marketing Senses

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2. Discover

Find More of your People

Once you’ve optimized your 6 Marketing Senses – it’s time to go find fresh new leads! This is the research phase, where you find out where your people are & what your opportunities might be to reach them. This is the stage MOST people think of as ‘Marketing’ – tons of tactics can help you in this pursuit and this is a LOT of what we teach and talk about in the Working with Dog membership community

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3. Engage

Share your WHY with the world {Get them to fall in love with you}

This is one of the most important (and often ignored) stages in marketing! Engaging is all about starting conversations: creating + sharing content with your target audience. This is not a hard sell, it generally shouldn’t be about YOU at all – we want to generously offer valuable content & insights on topics that will interest our potential customers. This stage is all about building relationships.

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4. Convert

Present irresistible opportunities to turn fans into customers

A conversion is the process of causing something to change – you want your audience to ACT! Our favorite tools to increase conversions are: Powerful Promotions, Urgency & Scarcity and Referrals [Word-of-Mouth] – need help with this? Get inside #wwd and we’ll teach you!

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5. Measure

The only way to know what’s working is to be able to measure it

We focus primarily on the following forms of measurement:

1. Google / SumoMe Analytics [Go get SumoMe NOW]
2. Social Media Analytics 
3. Surveys / Feedback
4. Sales /Customer Data

Of course one could argue you can never measure ENOUGH but there is a point where it becomes overwhelming for most entrepreneurs. If you’re not regularly looking at your web or sales data you are definitely leaving money on the table [and possibly costing yourself extra time + resources!]

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6. Improve

This is the critical step between where you are now & more revenue – many of us never reach this because we’re ‘too busy’

1. Fix the Problems – Make sure especially you’re nailing Marketing Sense #5: being ‘easy to do business with’ – reducing friction where ever possible
2. Optimize the Basics – Get out of ‘fire fighting’ mode as quickly as possible to start making incremental upgrades
3. Scale Your Successes – When you find something that works – scale it up!
4. Look for new Opportunities – Try to keep your head above water so you can see great opportunities when they float by

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Want to learn more details about the exact how-to’s, do’s & don’ts of all this? Then get in Working with Dog! We talk about this stuff with each other and our expert contributors every day – we answer your questions live – we attend conferences and talk shop with smarty pants know-it-alls who give us the inside track… We are much stronger together than apart:

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