One of the biggest struggles entrepreneurs and side hustlers run into is losing sight of their business objective(s). Everyone wants to generate sales and revenue, but to get there, it’s a journey. (And sometimes we get stuck, but all it takes is a few simple tricks to put us right back on the path.)
That’s what happened to me recently. I didn’t get physically stuck 30,000 feet in the air (although ironically, I was on a plane when this happened;) I just lost sight of the big picture.
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Here’s an analogy for you
Let’s pick a goal. Let’s say we want to generate $10,000 in the next three months. How do we plan on doing that? For simplicity sake, let’s say we want to sell 10 items worth $1,000 each
How do we plan on promoting that? Well, we’re gonna run social media ads, email our existing list, and partner with a few brands.
What do the social media ads look like? Are we targeting them properly? Is our email list engaged?
Do you see that the more we dig into, the more detailed we get. This is where the 30,000 feet analogy comes from.
- At 30,000 feet, we can see the big picture, but we lose focus on the details and can’t see them.
- At 10,000 feet, we can see more details, and in this case, the objective is to generate $10,000 through social media, emailing, and partnering
- At 1,000 feet, the objective is to create copy that converts the viewer to making a purchase
- And to dig even deeper… at 10 feet, the objective can be our targeting capabilities! (Ability to use pixels, how to get in front of my audience using an integrated marketing campaign, etc.)
A Real Life Example
Just like all businesses, I was tasked with generating more traffic to our site. I thought of a ton of ways (and even came up with 45+ ways here,) but I forgot one thing… What value does a website visitor bring to my site if I don’t convert them to a lead.
My 30,000 feet objective was to generate an engaged audience through various traffic generation tactics.
I would check the website stats daily through Google Analytics to see if my traffic tactics were working (and they were) but while making some updates on a flight, I had completely forgotten to set up a lead generation funnel! (Hence getting stuck 30,000 feet in the air.)
What benefit do I have bringing in new traffic if I can’t connect with them ever again… We had all these new visitors and no way to connect with them again in the future!
Luckily, I caught it before it was too late. Who knows how long the site would’ve gone on for without optimizing for leads?
My Path To A Solution
If you’ve ever had a similar situation where you seem to be getting too deep into tactics and forget the overall picture, here’s what you do.
- Finish what you’re doing and walk away from the task for at least an hour. Work on something else, take a break, or even hit the gym
- Come back to the task and ask yourself, “What is my overall objective and what do I need to do to achieve this goal?” “Did I do anything to make progress on achieving my objective or did I go off the path?”
- Now you can clearly see if you’re on the right path or you simply need to re-adjust your attention!
Our team also loves to use one pagers. It’s a simple sheet that highlights everything you need to do to complete a task. There’s a ton of templates online you can find, or you can create your own.
Here’s an example of a one page marketing plan by Matt Kuter
Click here to download the template above! If you’re interested in the traffic tactics I came up with, click here to download.
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