The GUSTA marketing system is designed for businesses looking to develop deeper and stronger relationships with people in their networks, increase repeat business, sales, and referrals. It’s a framework that integrates email marketing with your social media strategy. We’ve had the opportunity to test it successfully for a few of our clients who provide professional services or personal brands such as keynote speakers, authors, and consultants.
It’s comprised of 5 steps:
1-THE GIFT
The first step for this system to work is to prepare a gift. A digital gift. A gift is a creative piece, a tool useful to a business. It could be a cheat sheet or checklist where you outline a series of steps towards achieving a business objective; an eBook with examples of how your services have produced results for other clients; maybe a video download with hacks for running a profitable operation. It is not informational but actionable.
A great exercise is to go outside your industry and learn what others – maybe even the competition- are using as gifts. These gifts are popularly called lead magnets, but I don’t like to use this term because it carries a “self-beneficial” motive. It’s not about you it’s about them. What I like to do is go to my favorite websites and with a secondary (junk) email address subscribe to receive their gifts. I then evaluate which ones are the most useful and why.
Once you have defined your gift, it’s time to give it away.
2-THE SET UP
As a business owner you’re probably meeting a great number of people at networking events, conferences, presentations. The tool I use to give away the gift is called Textiful which integrates with MailChimp. This is part of my EMAIL MARKETING strategy to bring new people into my database already consisting of clients and prospects.
Once you have made a strong first impression with someone you ask them to text by phone a ‘keyword’ to a specific ‘number’. The Textiful system will immediately prompt them to enter their email. An automated message will deploy instantly with your gift. You now have opened a channel of communication with this person.
Time for the show.
3-SHOWTIME
You want to produce a series of engaging and entertaining SOCIAL VIDEO snippets that will keep you in front of these people on a regular basis. The objective is to keep your brand top-of-mind. Think of it as a video series. For example, my clients will record a useful tip on video 3 minutes long on their phone, then upload it to YouTube or Vimeo, and finally embed it in their website as a vlog post. I like to create an animated GIF so I can send as a teaser with my emails.
The emails are driving traffic to your website where the actual video is watched. I suggest deploying an episode at least once a month. If you’re more comfortable on camera and want to increase the frequency, by all means, just stay consistent.
Now to capture data.
4-LOAD TIME
To later target these same website visitors, and audiences that “look like” them on social media, you have to add the right social media pixels to your website or landing page. You can add it to each individual page, or you can add a basic pixel to your website’s header. This process is a bit easier when creating WORDPRESS WEBSITES in my experience. But your developer should be able to help you with this, otherwise shoot me a message.
Time to launch your attack.
5-ATTACK
The pixel will collect data and give you access to a targeted audience of social media users, built on their engagement with your content vis-a-vis your website. Now you’re in a position to create retargeting Instagram and Facebook advertising campaigns with very specific conversion objectives.
This part requires a little more social media dexterity, but we have packaged a solution in 6 EASY STEPS. You can learn our system to run effective social media campaigns at our UPCOMING SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERIENCE WORKSHOP in San Diego.
And that’s how you integrate email marketing with your social media strategy. I would love to hear how it works out for you. Don’t forget to leave comments, like, and share on social media.
About the Author
Daveeed Wagner is the Lead Consultant at 1marketingidea, a social media experience marketing agency. Subscribe to receive fresh marketing ideas weekly.