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Focusing on an omnipresent marketing strategy will help you have a more profitable Q4 and help you build a sustainable strategy that can see you through tough economic times. In this episode, I'm breaking down what omnipresence is, how it will help you and how you can get started today. Plus, a little pep talk at the end!

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With rising petrol prices, food shortages, skyrocketing interest rates and inflation, people are worried. And it’s driving a shift in buyer behaviour. That means we, as small business owners, are worried too.

But now is not the time to sit on your hands. This is a time to come together. This is a time to gain new capabilities. And this is a time to thrive.

We can't necessarily change what's going on on the outside, but we can decide what we are going to do. So this is about me, challenging you to change the thinking in your head and the strategy that you are going to use to approach it.

So this episode is going to be split into two parts. We'll start off with the strategy, where I'll give you some numbers and predictions for the rest of this year. It's really important that we can interpret the data and use it to our advantage, and I want to make this really simple for you to understand. And then I'm going to end with more of the energy behind this and basically give you one big pep talk right at the very end.

A breakdown of the numbers

So we're going to start off with some positive news. Sales, all-round have decreased year on year (that’s not the good news).

The good news is that given the significant surge of the last two years, there is no cause for alarm about the health of online shopping and people spending money online. Despite the economy, online sales overall are growing.

So let's get into what you need to know based on the data and this is going to apply both to product and service-based businesses.

People will start shopping for Christmas earlier than ever before. More and more shoppers bought in early November over the last two years due to things like inventory and supply chain issues. But this year, inflation will be the main motivating factor driving early purchases. According to research, 42% more shoppers worldwide plan to buy gifts earlier. This means you need to be planning your Christmas sales and marketing now.
Loyalty is shifting to experience and value. People want value for money, even if it means switching to a new brand.
People will seek out sustainability. You need to know your values and communicate them to your audience. According to research, 88% of consumers now expect brands and retailers to state their values clearly, and 64% will stop doing business with a company if they’re not aligned. Further research shows that 83% of people will be looking for sustainable brands and products this festive season.
Mobile commerce is going to grow by 20%. Overall sales are going down, but mobile shopping is on the rise. In the first five months of 2020, live stream shopping apps in the US grew by 77% to 2.3 million. That’s not even factoring in TikTok or Instagram. eCommerce sales from mobile are predicted to increase 21% on the sales in 2021. So mobile needs to be at the heart of everything you do.

Practically and strategically, what can we do now?

One of the biggest patterns that I came across when doing this research is that consumers are going to shop for fewer items at fewer retailers. So if you want to have your most profitable quarter of 2022 in Q4, we want to focus on an omnichannel approach.

Building omnipresence in your business

Omnipresence is a core marketing principle that a lot of people seem to have forgotten because we're all complaining about Instagram. But we're also all focusing on Instagram.

So, what is omnipresence? What is an omnichannel approach? It’s the strategic distribution of your message, brand, and marketing. It's when your audience feels like everywhere they look, there you are.

Your audience will come to realise that not only are you always there, but they are always learning something valuable from you, seeing examples of the kind of results you deliver, or feel more and more connected to you as a person.

When executed well, you can be incredibly precise in what you share, when you're sharing it, and who you're sharing it with so that the people in your audience feel like you're reading their minds when it comes to the messages they see from you.

That is how you get people to come to you and ask you to take their money without ever pitching a single product to them. Think about it this way: energy, attention and money form a cycle. Where our energy goes, our attention goes, and money flows.

The main reason omnipresence works so well is that it channels the flow of attention to you, allowing you to apply it to your business and turn that attention into money.

When you’re being omnipresent it means you’re showing up at the right time.

It's always been the holy grail of marketing to be in the right place at the right time and with omnipresence, that's exactly what you are doing. You're getting your name in front of your audience continuously so that you become the only choice for them.

It's not just the timing of it, but also the frequency. We don't just try to show up magically when they're ready to make a decision (when we're ready to launch something).

It's about those in-between moments. It's about showing up consistently in a way that offers value and builds a relationship.

Finally, you become omnipresent with the right platforms. So like we said for many people, we think ‘oh well I'm on Instagram and I have an email list, my marketing strategy’s done’. But they're just two channels.

Look at YouTube, Tik Tok, your blog, a podcast, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Those are all channels where you can show up for your audience.

So basically, with this strategy, you can quickly become an authority in your niche. Most of what we do online is always about more content, more followers, and so on. But omnipresence is about depth. It's about having a smaller audience and increasing your relevancy by being in front of them with the right frequency, timing, and platforms.

When this happens you become top of mind with your leads, and you become a consistent feature of their life. And this concentrated effort and attention make it nearly impossible for your potential customers not to see you every day. How powerful is that?

Now, I want to keep it real. There is a downside with this: if you are only omnipresent, so if you are only focusing on showing up as much as you can, on as many platforms as you can, but you're not being relevant or intimate then you’re probably being annoying.

I bet you can think of a social media guru or a business guru who is constantly on your newsfeed, but you have no idea what they stand for, no idea what they're selling, and no idea why you should care. They're not relevant. So basically, they're just being obnoxious. We do not want that.

Omnipresence comes down to delivering your relevant messages on the right platforms, with the right frequency, at the right time, based upon the customer journey of your potential customer, along with the interest in what you've shown them beforehand.

So to break it down further, it comes down to five things:

Type of traffic – decide what source you are going after
Platform – determine the platforms you will use
Content – create content that suits these
Timing
Frequency

Here are some questions to help you figure out your platforms:

Where do your customers hang out?
What platform do you enjoy being on?
What can you manage to repurpose?

So there most important thing is the platforms you enjoy and where you’ll find your audience.

Once that’s decided, you can really move into gearing up your entire content strategy and add the frequency of what you’ll post. And remember that each bit of content should feed back into your overall business goals.

Once you've outlined all of those things, that is basically everything you need to start implementing omnipresence in your business.

What can stop you

I've helped so many clients implement omnipresence in their business, but I've also seen a lot of people waver and come up with excuses for not implementing omnipresence.

What I've learned is that there's always one mindset block behind those reasons people didn't implement it right away.

The first thing that comes to mind is procrastination. You have a long to-do list of tasks that you think you have to work on in order to generate revenue, you may be stuck on the hamster wheel where you need to be hustling to be able to grow and keep your business running. So you might feel like you don't have the time to look at the long term and look for the invisible ROI.

Another reason is that when you start doing it, and you put some pieces of content out there for people to consume, you may get discouraged when you don't get the results or the numbers that impact your business in the short term. You might miss that dopamine hit that you get from short-term victories, so you get discouraged, and you end up giving up on the whole thing.

Another common reason is wanting everything to be perfect. Sometimes you can re-write or re-shoot the whole content over and over to reach for perfection. Waiting for perfection with your content will lead you to not do it at all.

But the biggest mindset block that I found that makes people not do omnipresence is fear. And specifically, they're afraid of being seen.

This is a huge impediment to the whole process. And inevitably, it causes them to fail. They're afraid that when they put themselves out there, people will see that their content is rubbish, or that their results aren't great.

The bottom line is you can do this now or do it later. But if you do it later, it's probably going to be more expensive. And it takes time anyway to see results. Do this now and it will be that much sooner when you get to see a return on investment like you've never seen before.

A pep talk for you

I know at the moment, things are scary. We're being told we're in a recession, we're being told it's going to get worse.

The good news is that this is going to end, we will come out of this.

So I want to, first of all, give you the permission to breathe, and relax, just think about it.

I've been in this with you. I know it feels hard. In the past two and a half years, there's been a lot and the world has changed so much.

But the thing is, fear and finances don't go well together. We really need to make sure that you understand the vision first. Because once you know that, then you can start to understand what you need to do to get there.

The biggest and most important thing you can do right now is to lean into your audience for insights. A lot of people overcomplicate marketing, but it's basically a conversation. It's speaking to people and doing market research is one of the best things you can do right now.

This can look like sending out a survey, one on one chats with super fans or loyal customers, prospective customers, your ideal customers. You can just ask them questions about their experiences. Once you know the answers you can adapt your messaging around that. But you're going to be doing it through data and testing, not guessing. It's about letting the data lead you and your actions and your decisions.

Right now, for example, people want to feel safe and secure. If you sell something that is ‘nice to have’, how can we position it so that your ideal customer doesn't just see it as a ‘nice to have’ but sees it as a necessity? Because yes, sometimes it takes people a while to decide to buy from you. But there are also a lot of people that buy on impulse, and that comes back to being omnipresent.

It's your job to show up for both of those people.

Now with this as well, talking about what you offer daily needs to be weaved into your marketing strategy. I used to find it so hard to ask for the sale.

Honestly, I used to educate, and give value. I thought that the more value that I gave eventually, people would want to pay me.

Value content and relationship building is important, but we also need to ask for the sale. You have a business, and you have to keep building a business so that you can serve more people.

Your north star, your guiding light right now, is not new followers but your current followers and customers. And if you can make your sole focus to have one new customer or make one new sale every single day, every decision you can make can support that.

You can increase your prices, you can pivot, you can be creative, you can think outside the box, you have so much flexibility.

I also want to mention collaboration, and this doesn't just mean offers. But it means doing a guest blog post, going on someone else's podcast, doing a live with someone.

So remember, fear and finances don't mix.

Now sadly, there will be people who get scared and stop altogether. There'll be people who continue building their business on the side because they don't think it's the right time to go full-time. And there'll be people who have an idea for a business but won't start it at all.

When everything is going great, everyone's trying to start a business. But when the chips are down, people lose motivation. If you can be the person that keeps your mind right and stays focused and accountable, you can really build a strong business during the seasons. It's all about shifting our mindset.

What do I need to survive and thrive in this season? A lot of people are going to quit their businesses. What that means for you who is going to stay disciplined and dedicated and stick to it is less competition. Fewer people in the algorithm trying to get in front of buyers, fewer people running ads and ad costs going down huge opportunities for you to get ahead.

I don't want you to feel messy, or like you don't know what you're doing. We make the plan, tweak the plan and continue to take action.

Motivation is fleeting and is greatly influenced by outside factors or circumstances.

Discipline is steadfast, discipline gives you freedom. It's internally rooted because you know why you are showing up for your goals.

So motivation is fleeting, and it's based on external stuff. Whereas discipline is steadfast, it's internally based, you can control that.

Show up unapologetically, ask for the sale. Talk about your offers. Believe in them and be confident about them.

Believe in it, and own it.