It's 2024, and the world is changing fast.

Like it or not, you've got to embrace AI, or you'll be left behind. One quick and effective use case for AI is creating a marketing strategy.

In this article, we'll guide you through a seven-step process for leveraging AI to create a marketing strategy. This is the same seven-step marketing strategy people have paid me $10k or more to build for them.

And because my dream with my community Verified7 is to build the largest and most connected 7-Figure Plus Entrepreneur Network, you get this strategy for free.

In this article, I wrote more about generic tool categories than specific tools because it's more important to understand the underlying philosophy so that the tool still works for you in three years (a long time in the AI age).

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Step 1: Define Your Million-Dollar Avatar

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First, identify your ideal client avatar who will help you reach your $1 million goal. The avatar must fit these 3 criteria:

1. They have a pain point they want to solve as soon as possible.
2. They have enough money to spend on your solution.
3. You must be able to reach your avatar easily.

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Pain Point

"I don't have enough time for [insert activity you sell]" runs through your avatar's mind. If you look at yourself (or people in your life), you'll see that most people don't feel like they have time anymore.

Therefore, when you build an effective marketing strategy, you must find a pain point people would drop everything to address now. Imagine your avatar is experiencing a severe toothache, with their tooth bleeding and on the verge of falling out. Now, they'll make time for it.

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Enough Money

To create a Million-Dollar Marketing Plan, you must market to a target audience with enough money for your product. Your marketing strategy must have ideal customers who have money, credit, or access to resources to spend. Otherwise, you'll never hit your business objectives, such as adding one million more revenue.

Remember that a target audience with a bleeding neck but limited financial resources may not best fit your million-dollar marketing strategy.

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Easy to Reach

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To reach your avatar, consider their accessibility and any gatekeepers that may hinder direct communication. Gatekeepers, such as personal assistants or procurement departments, can filter messages intended for your avatar. Navigate these barriers by developing marketing strategies to engage with your avatar effectively.

Identify your avatar or target audience within your chosen marketing channels based on their online profiles, behaviours, and interactions. Leverage platforms like LinkedIn or social media groups where your avatar is active and engaged. By focusing on channels where your target audience is easily identifiable, you can target them precisely and improve the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

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Use AI tools (LLMs such as ChatGPT, Claude & Google Gemini) to help you.

Creating a marketing strategy is much easier now than it was before. You can conduct market research and come up with a comprehensive marketing strategy just by using LLMs.

I personally love to use the voice feature in ChatGPT, where I just tell them about my target audience with 3 or 5 ideas. Then, I'll ask them to help me think of who I can target who has the pain point, has enough money, and is easy to reach.

If you have a pro-subscription, many CustomGPTs in the GPT store can help you with this specific kind of research.

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Step 2: Develop an Irresistible Core Offer

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Now that your buyer personas are built out, you want to create an irresistible core offer. Something so good that your prospects feel stupid saying no to. This requires you to understand your competitive advantage, value proposition and unique selling proposition.

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The Perfect Offer

The perfect offer would create instant results with 100% probability and have zero cost to them. Since we can't deliver that perfectly, we can work towards

• Reducing the pain of implementing and the time cost to them.
• Increase the value of the dream outcome by having a unique selling proposition.
• Increase the perceived likelihood of success.

Writer's Note: A USP is not just a tagline but a way to deliver unique value that no one else can.

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Make your core offer expensive enough.

We'll discuss the "bait offer" or "lead magnet" later. For now, charge enough, or your marketing strategy will fail. "Expensive enough" is a price something you feel slightly uncomfortable about, but deep down, you know it'll be worth the price your client pays.

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Utilise AI to craft your irresistible offer.

Don't know how to do it? Ask the AI. Tell them about your ideal client avatar, your business objectives, mission statement, company values, and anything you care about most. Then, tell them to play the role of an expert marketing strategy planner and to come up with an irresistible offer for you.

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Step 3: Choose One Marketing Channel That Best Suits Your Product, Your Target Market and You.

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Yes. We choose one marketing channel first. Because one marketing channel is enough for most businesses to create a $1m marketing plan.

Most small business owners get their marketing objectives wrong. Instead of pursuing marketing leadership in one channel, they expand their overall marketing efforts to include all sorts of different strategies, which keeps them stuck spinning marketing tactics plates.

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Product-Channel Fit

Product-channel fit isn't something regularly talked about. However, you must ensure your chosen marketing channel aligns with your product's unique features and benefits. Consider how effectively the channel can showcase your product's value proposition. Different marketing strategies suit different products, from email marketing to content marketing to user-generated content.

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Avatar-Channel Fit

Select a marketing channel that resonates with your avatar's preferences and behaviour. Does your avatar like to read, and do you need to do search engine optimization to drive website traffic? Do they trust user-generated content in social media posts more than advertisements?

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You-Channel Fit

Most importantly, the channel you choose must be one that you can be great at. Not everyone is good at photo and video content. Some people, like me, prefer writing. Social media channels vary drastically. Even if your product and avatar fit the social media platforms chosen, if you don't fit it, you'll never be the Niche Channel Leader.

Your chosen marketing strategy and channel must fit you, which will allow you to stay focused on understanding that channel and its potential customers. If you enjoy your marketing activities, you'll be able to increase sales down the line.

Step 4: Create A Lead Magnet

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After you've decided which channel to choose for your marketing strategy, you must create a lead magnet.

I love what Dean Jackson says about "More Cheese, Less Whiskers". The rat is deeply wired to go after cheese. They love cheese. However, if the whiskers appear, the love for cheese is overridden.

Your target audiences are the same. They want the bait that you lay for them, but they'll smell the slimy snake-oil salesman from a distance and RUN.

Anyway, you usually offer 4 main categories of lead magnets to new customers for free.

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Category 1: Free Information Packaged Up To Be Compelling

This would be infographics, ebooks, templates, checklists, case studies, white papers or free courses.

These have marginal costs to deliver at scale, so it's compelling to the person offering it (you). However, since it's one of the most common marketing strategies used, you have to do market research to check if your target audience is sick of this already.

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Category 2: Free Widget

Free widgets have become an increasingly popular lead magnet in the digital age. They offer potential customers a valuable tool or resource to solve a specific problem or streamline a process. These widgets can take many forms, such as AI chatbots, generators, analyzers, or even mini-apps that integrate with existing software.

One of the main advantages of offering a free widget as a lead magnet is that it provides immediate value to the user. Unlike informational content like eBooks or whitepapers, widgets offer a tangible solution that can be used right away. This instant gratification can effectively capture leads and build trust with potential customers.

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Category 3: Free Trials, Consultations or Webinars

Basically, you're creating an environment where your client gets to try or learn something, and then you can sell to them later.

They allow you to bring up your client's pain points so you can start driving sales. Personally, if you run any business that requires leads to show up on a call or in your store, free trials are my favourite way to generate leads.

Why do I like it so much?

Because this marketing strategy allowed me to grow my business from $2,500 per month to over $300,000 per month in 27 months.

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Category 4: Coupons and Discount Codes

Coupons and discount codes have long been a staple of lead generation strategies, offering potential customers an incentive to try a product or service at a reduced price. In the digital age, these offers have become even more prevalent, with businesses using targeted email campaigns, social media promotions, and affiliate partnerships to distribute codes and attract new leads.

This is a key marketing strategy to consider, especially for e-commerce brands.

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Step 5: Produce Marketing Assets

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There are many marketing channels, and each requires a different marketing plan. Here are some marketing strategy basics for the channels:

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SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

our marketing assets should include well-structured, keyword-rich content that provides value to your target audience. This can include blog posts, articles, and informational pages that address your avatar's pain points and showcase your expertise. Utilize AI-powered tools to optimize your content for search engines, ensuring that it ranks well for relevant keywords and phrases.

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Google Ads or SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

Your marketing assets will primarily consist of targeted ad copy and landing pages. Craft compelling ad copy highlighting your unique value proposition and a strong call-to-action (CTA). Use AI-powered tools to generate visually appealing and engaging ad creatives that grab your avatar's attention and encourage them to click through to your landing page.

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Instagram, Facebook, TikTok & Audio/Visual Social Media Marketing

Your marketing assets should be highly visual and engaging for social media channels like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Create eye-catching images, videos, and graphics that showcase your brand's personality and resonate with your target audience. From Sora to Pika to RunwayML for videos and Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and Midjourney for images, it's 10x cheaper and 10x easier to create enough content for your social media calendar.

Across all channels, it's important to incorporate a strong hook that captures your avatar's attention and draws them in. This could be a thought-provoking question, a bold statement, or an intriguing statistic that relates to their pain points or interests. Once you have their attention, craft a compelling story that drives emotions and establishes a connection with your brand. Use AI-driven content optimization to ensure that your story is structured in a way that keeps your avatar engaged and motivated to take action.

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Step 6: Set A Test Budget (or 3)

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Something many small businesses get wrong with their marketing strategy is that they think of the marketing budget wrong.

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The Wrong Way

1. Come up with a marketing budget of how much they want to spend on marketing.
2. Find a marketing agency to run the marketing campaign.
3. Ask them to use certain marketing tactics and marketing channels.
4. Give the marketing agency some key metrics to hit.
5. Pray, complain and repeat the cycle while wondering why their marketing strategy doesn't get them the results they want.

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The Right Way

The reason I wrote "A Test Budget (or 3)" in the subheadline is because that's really how you do it if you want to do it well. A strong marketing strategy with clear marketing goals that fit their business goals would do it this way.

Instead, you must do it like this:

• Decide on what sort of budget you can use for 1-5 test campaigns.
• Get clear on the benchmark threshold in terms of the key metrics you need.
• These key metrics are often CPL, CPA, CAC, LTV:CAC, LTGP:CAC or CAC Payback Period.
• In simple terms, the marketing goals and metrics for a marketing campaign must determine whether you get back more than $1 for every $1 you put in.
• And if you can get it back fast enough, you scale that marketing strategy until it hits a certain constraint.

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The Most Important Thing To Understand About Your Marketing Plan

You come up with a test budget because you don't know which channel, offer or avatar will work. When it works, you'd want to put in as much as possible into that channel until something else breaks. Maybe this is your team's capacity or your inventory.

If you can put $1 in to get $5 out, would you put $100k into your advertising?

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Step 7: Scale, Scale, Scale!

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In case I didn't drive my point above home, here it is again. The #1 objective of a marketing strategy is to put as much money into marketing strategies that print money for you.

The whole point of a marketing plan is to find channels that give you excellent ROI and then scale it up. You've put in all the marketing efforts. When your marketing strategy shows a positive ROI, please... Scale!!