Jeff GibbardStrategist. Speaker. Coach. Leadership Expert.
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Founder, The Superhero Institute. World's Most Handsome Strategist, Keynote Speaker. Author: The Lovable Leader. Host of the Shareable Podcast.


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I would encourage you not to over-complicate at this stage of the process. Your marketing plan, as well as your business plan, will adapt and change over time as you learn more. But from the outset, there are a couple crucial things you need to consider. Here are 5 areas that you should start with:

1. Audience: As others have mentioned, is to identify who your target market is. Age, Gender, Geography, Interests, Income, Company Size, Job Title, etc. The more you know, the better.

2. Message: Once you understand who you are attempting to reach and influence, you need to define what your message is to that market. This message should be new, novel, and differentiated from other options they have relative to the solution you provide. It should also address how you solve a problem for this audience. This means you need to deeply understand this audience and what they need.

3. Channel: Once you know the audience and the message you need to pick the type of media that you will use to reach them and where you will reach them. Are you using videos, blogs, podcasts, emails, billboards, postcards? Pick the place where they already are.

4. Leads: Next, you need to identify what qualifies someone as a lead and how you will get them into your system. Will there be a form on your website? Do they have to call you? How many steps is the process? These are all questions you should answer.

5. Sales: Finally, all of your marketing efforts should result in a sale. The question then becomes how can people buy from you? Are they ordering something off of your website? Do you need to send them an agreement to begin a retainer arrangement? What does the sale look like to you?

These are just the basics. But it is a great starting point for you to begin thinking about your business from the first touch point of a prospective customer until money has been made by your business.

Let me know if you'd like to discuss this further on Clarity.


This might be my favorite topic to advise on outside of Leadership.

Meetings with investors can be a nerve-racking experience. In advance of any important meeting, the most important thing is that you mentally prepare yourself so you can be ready to present yourself and your idea confidently and effectively.

Success in any patch is often less about the information and more about persuasion. Many great ideas have not been funded simply because the pitch was terrible. Many awful ideas have been funded simply because the pitch was outstanding. The difference between these comes down to how you approach the meeting and command the attention of your audience.

My first suggestion is that you sit down to read Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff. https://amzn.to/2H4MR6Q

This book will teach you the fundamentals of a concept known as Neuro-finance where you will undertand how the human brain receives and processes information. In short this will help you understand how to command the attention of the investor and be seen as new, novel, and interesting is of utmost importance.

Some key points about the substance of your pitch should include:

What are the market trends in your favor?
-Is now a particularly good time for your app/product because of the economy, changes in peoples behaviors, or new advances in technology?

How is your product different from the alternatives?

How hot is the deal?
-Are others interested in investing?
-Or is this deal otherwise dead if this investor does not put money in?

Investors are more likely to put their money in deals that others see value in. Further if no one else is investing, then the investor has all of the leverage and you have none.

These are all just some things to think about at the outset.

Let me know if you'd like to discuss this further on Clarity.


I would encourage you to think about outreach more broadly than just LinkedIn. While LinkedIn is a great place to find potential customers (sales) and new team members (recruiting).

Many busy professionals require the help of a virtual assistant, or junior team member to help with their outreach efforts. You can make a career out of it if you can master the process, price it appropriately, and provide results in excess of the investment your client makes.

Specific to LinkedIn, this means being able to identify people who fit the description of your clients target market for new sales or team members. It then would become your job to send the initial communications and requisite follow-up messages to either setup an in-person meeting, product demo, or any other objective that your client has.

Simply put, your job would be to expertly handle the manual and emotional labor of finding someone, connecting with them, and achieving an objective with that them on behalf of your client.

Let me know if you'd like to discuss this further on Clarity.


Let me start off by saying that I have never used Naver. However, after more than a decade of using every new social media bright shiny object that has come out, I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that virtually all social media strategies are the roughly the same.

After some brief research on the features available on Naver it appears as though it is a combination of search engine, Q&A, and private messaging. There maybe other features but the point remains the same there are functionally five strategies for social media that work across every platform.

1. Create Content. Amplify with ads.
2. Engage people directly
3. Reach new audiences through intermediaries
4. Analyze your data to make better business decisions
5. Use social media as a (mostly) qualitative research tool for marketing and sales decision making

Hacks are short-lived and unpredictable. However, understand that the best hacks rely on the ability to provide a combination of attention, affinity (likability) and value (information, entertainment or infotainment). There's value in that understanding because those three elements are the primary factors in your ability to success beyond average results.

At the end of the day, every platform is made up of people interacting with other people and include a mix of 5 available activities: Listening, Content, Engagement, Promotion, Measurement.

More on that here: https://jeffgibbard.com/elements-of-social-media/

Let me know if you'd like to discuss this further on Clarity.


There are two parts to your question: finding and convincing.

Finding influencers within your industry verticals should not be difficult as there are numerous influencer search engines as one method.

To start, try:
https://intellifluence.com/
https://thecirqle.com/
https://influencity.com/en/search

The second method is manual research. That is a whole topic on its own.

The more important part is the convincing. You can find and reach out to as many people as you'd like but if no one engages with you and takes you up on the offer, then it's a waste of time.

The important thing to understand is that this is no different than any other marketing or sales situation. Influencers are simply people with influence. If you were trying to get them to do anything their motivations will likely be the same as any other human being: value (monetary or otherwise) or status.

Figure out what is important to them and you're halfway there. Understand how they typically engage with brands. Do your homework and be prepared to ask them about the value they can bring to you.

Let me know if you'd like to discuss this further on Clarity.


Of course you COULD, but it's not likely unless you can overcome a number of people's hesitations.

First, the question of "is this person/store reputable or a scam?"

It's difficult to prove you are a real business without a website or something to establish trust with the prospective buyer. You'll need testimonials, a substantial following, or other forms of social proof.

Next, you have to make sure people feel comfortable sending you money. What is the guarantee that you won't just keep it? Once money comes out of your Cash app or Venmo, it's not coming back. When I order something from Amazon, I know that I can talk to a customer service rep in the event that ANYTHING goes wrong. What assurances are you giving people on Instagram that you can offer a comparable experience?

In the end, you're probably making things more difficult for yourself. Use Instagram to promote your products, use the DMs to drive them to a payment portal or store, especially if it is one that is familiar and trustworthy. Consider using any of the existing custom t-shirt and product selling platforms out there.

Let me know if you'd like to discuss this further on Clarity.


I'll give you some generalized advice from what you've provided but first I need to explain some of the reasons why this is tough for anyone to answer...

First, without knowing how many customers you already have it's tough to strategize a 100% increase. If you have 1 customer, it's different than 100,000.

Second, we need to know how long it took you to acquire the customers you have. A 100% increase could be substantial and if it took you 5 years to get 50,000 clients,
it's unlikely that you'll get another 50,000 in 3 months.

Third, without knowing what you are spending on SEO, Adwords and remarketing and subsequently what you're able to spend additionally, it's difficult to advise you. For instance, if you have a $1,000/mo ad budget I might advise one thing, whereas if you have millions of dollars to spend, I might advise something else.

Fourth, and finally, for now, without knowing your current and target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition), it's difficult to advise you on what new strategies or tactics to introduce.

All that said, I'd start by running a test remarketing campaign across every social channel that allows it. This will mirror your adwords retargeting efforts by re-engaging people who are you've already had an interaction with. IT should make your SEO and PPC efforts more effective.

Next, I'd make sure you truly understand the reasons why your current clients chose you and ensure that your marketing message reflects those attributes.

After that, I'd create some awareness advertising campaigns on social media, with the client-informed marketing positioning, targeted toward a lookalike audience of your current customers. Upload an email list of current customers and create a lookalike audience. Show them videos introducing yourself and then run a remarketing campaign to video viewers.

Finally, a highly targeted direct outreach campaign on Linkedin featuring case studies of the value you bring to your existing clients is never a bad way to work on bringing in new sales.

Let me know if you'd like to discuss this further on Clarity.


If you have something that outperforms SEO or PPC for generating sales, then you have something special on your hands.

SEO, Email Marketing, and Paid Search generally dominate online marketing as it relates to driving sales. This is true across most, but not all verticals. It is generally the case for eCommerce although social media can sometimes be more effective in certain categories.

Since this is well-known among eCommerce marketers, the best chance you have to validate your bold claim is to show bold results. Case Studies and testimonials will open the door for you. If ROI is 100% trackable, then this is the metric that you should focus on almost entirely.

From there, I'd suggest that you do two things:
1. Being a direct sales campaign focused on your target audience of ecommerce marketers.
2. Utilize your own platform to generate additional sales.

While you will likely not replace SEO or PPC, you could become a valuable addition to an eCommerce company's marketing mix.

Let me know if you're interested in discussing this further.


There was competition in the microblogging space and there still is, Twitter just had the "it" factor. People adopted it instead of other services. Developers adopted it instead of other services. The search features were better.

They just had the right mix of factors to beat everyone else.


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