Erik Huberman is founder and CEO of Hawke Media, a leading outsourced digital CMO agency for companies including Evite, Bally Total Fitness, Verizon Wireless, Eddie Bauer, Red Bull, and many other brands.

Erik and his team provide complete sales, marketing, and e-commerce for clients. As a serial entrepreneur and brand and marketing consultant for eight years, Erik previously founded, grew, and sold Swag of the Month and grew Ellie.com’s sales to $1 million in four months.

He frequently speaks at events and recently filmed a television commercial airing on CNBC. Erik cultivates a positive environment at Hawke Media, filled with hardworking people who reached their business goals in year one and are on track to do so in year two as well.

3 DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF MARKETING

1. Awareness Aspect – Get the word out there, make it known that you and your business actually exist. Advertise. Maximize the power of social media by using Facebook, search engines, TV and online radio advertisements. Get people interested in you and create an advertisement that will give you conversions without doing all the work.
2. Nurture And Brand Trust Aspect  – This is all about telling people about your brand and showcasing what you can do for them. Ask yourself, How’s my website? Is it displaying all the contents my existing and possible customers need to know about my product? How is your email campaign? Is it still effective? Does your marketing plan leads to more customers?
3. Follow-Up Aspect – Your customers and prospects might be asking the question, “Why should I believe in you?” Now that you have new customers, you’ve got to show interest and go deeper in explaining why they should trust your brand and not your competitors…and why they should give you their hard earned money.

It is also good to note that nowadays, there are too many companies out there falsely making claims about their products.  Everyone has been burden. People are skeptical now, so in today’s business environment, third party validation is very important. Check out a few examples:

• Coca Cola no longer needs to try and prove that they’re Coca Cola because everyone knows the brand and what they’re getting with it.
• If your brand is a Supplement and you’re new, you should expect that people won’t know anything about your product. Build and strengthen your brand around what you’re selling.
• If you are in the fashion industry, validity is less needed however, you need to work on your social media group engagement and strategy. Your social media group should give you a face value, they should be a group with one aspiration and that is to prove that your brand is cool.

“Marketing is all about people.  
Everything you do is to convert people on both your brand trust” 
– Erik Huberman -

THE NUMBER ONE REASON PEOPLE FAIL TO SUCCEED IN BRANDING AND MARKETING

People love to get into analysis.  The have the “maybe this will work” mindset.  Always dipping their toes constantly on “maybes” instead of actually jumping in and giving it a shot.

THE ONE ULTIMATE TRAIT FOR MARKETING SUCCESS

A lot of new ideas are introduced everyday about marketing and you can find them just about everywhere. However, none of them will affect the fact that nothing has really changed.  If you’ll look at it deeply, it’s still all the same – especially for the past 3 years.  The only trend that has really boomed on the internet, is the introduction of Social Media advertising…like Instagram. Speaking of new social media advertising, in terms of ROI social media marketing trends, Snapchat has not really performed and Pinterest hasn’t really seen any promise yet.

What is more interesting, is you’ll see so much gibberish marketing offers right now

It really takes discipline not to chase the new shiny toy all the time and actually just focus on what’s working and be okay with the fact that you don’t need an overly complicated marketing plan, just a simple one.

STOP WASTING TIME AND START SELLING VALUE

In Marketing, you should always remember that there should be a good balance between gaining peoples trust by nurturing relationships that will eventually produce sales later and making direct offers. Whatever your marketing strategy is, the end point should always be how you place “Value” on your products or services.

If you have the ability to explain the real value of your product, then there’s no need for you to sell it “hard”.

If your prospects understand the value you products, then you don’t need to “hard sell” your offers because they will just see importance of buying in to your product without thinking about the price.

The main driver of any business is the “word of mouth” and if you can articulate your value in a sentence that can be rearticulated by others, then you are in the right track.

“Value is working on the emotional appeal
of the product or service that you’re providing,
once you master this,
you are going to be very successful”
Erik Huberman

THE BEST ADVICE FOR NEW ENTREPRENEURS IN 7 SECONDS

Erik interviewed so many entrepreneurs, he is also writing for Santa Monica Daily Press and Forbes Ink, he talked to thousands of people about how to run a business and being successful. So what is his best advice?

“Just Get It Done And Keep Going”
- Erik Huberman -

It is all about checking things off the list and moving forward. It is all about ideas and the skills to put it all together. It is how you quickly move and the determination you have to keep pushing forward.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE TRUE MEASUREMENT OF SUCCESS

Even after all of his triumphs, Eric feels like his success is still a long way out. Talking about his personal life though, he can definitely say that he is successful. Why? Success for him is being “happy” at the end of the day and it is doing what you love the most, day in and day out. Defining success by how much money you’ve made is kind of a joke and a lot of people don’t value those kind of goals anymore. Success is finding ways to make other people successful in what they do.

HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN ECOMMERCE WEBSITE

Starting an eCommerce website might sound like a huge undertaking, but it’s not as hard as you may think. Below, check out some of the steps necessary to start your own eCommerce website. Erik even shared his favorite tool to help you get started. Just remember to follow Erik’s advice: “Just Get It Done and Keep Going. Don’t just sit there and think about it.”

Shopify is Erik’s favorite eCommerce website mainly for the following reasons:

• It is inexpensive
• If you can build a Facebook page, then you can build a Shopify site

Once your Shopify site is built, all you have to do is figure out how to bring people to your site. This is where the magic happens, where the testing comes in.  If your marketing strategy actually works, driving traffic to your offers, then all you have to do is figure out all the different ways to sell your products or services.

GREAT MARKETING ADVICE MOST BUSINESS OWNERS FORGET TO FOLLOW

You may think it’s impossible to get the word out about what you do. That’s no excuse. Aside from everything mentioned so far, here are some additional golden nuggets of timeless marketing advice that you need to start following today:

• THE REAL VALUE OF YOUR BUSINESS IS REALIZED WHEN YOU DO WHAT YOU’RE BEST AT AND YOU TRUST OTHERS WITHIN YOUR COMPANY TO DO WHAT THEY ARE BEST AT. HIRING THE BEST PEOPLE TO WORK FOR YOUR COMPANY IS NOT DONE BY MOST SUCCESSFULLY BUSINESS OWNERS, BUT BY THEIR HR TEAM. THEY HAVE A CPA DOING THEIR ACCOUNTING AND A GROUP OF MARKETERS PERFORMING MARKETING. GREAT BUSINESS OWNERS KNOW, THAT IT IS NOT JUST ALL ABOUT TRYING TO DO EVERYTHING THEMSELVES.

• DO NOT TRY TO BE EVERYTHING TO EVERYONE. WHAT YOU NEED TO BE GOOD AT, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE STARTING AN ECOMMERCE COMPANY, IS BE GOOD AT CREATING PRODUCTS. THEN YOU HIRE PEOPLE THAT ARE GOOD AT ALL OF THE OTHER THINGS YOU’LL NEVER GET TO. IF YOU DON’T RELY ON OTHERS, THEN YOU’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO SCALE – YOU SIMPLY CANNOT HANDLE EVERYTHING ON YOUR OWN.

• DEPENDING ON YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE, FIGURE OUT THE BEST PLACE TO GET YOUR CUSTOMERS. YOU NEED TO OPTIMIZE YOUR CONVERSIONS WHICH CAN BE DONE BY NURTURING YOUR PROSPECTS WITH RE-TARGETING, EMAIL OR OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE.

• THE WORST CASE SCENARIO, WHICH WILL HAPPEN DESPITE ALL OF YOUR MARKETING EFFORTS, IS IF THE PROBLEM IS THE PRODUCT ITSELF. IF THIS SCENARIO HAPPENS TO YOU, ADDRESS THE ISSUE RIGHT AWAY AND HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH YOUR CLIENTS IMMEDIATELY. PRESENT ALL OF YOUR FINDINGS AND JUST BE HONEST.  PEOPLE MAY NOT BE BUYING YOUR PRODUCTS BECAUSE THEY JUST DON’T LIKE THEM. YOU MIGHT BE SURPRISED THAT YOUR CLIENTS WILL AGREE. BY DOING THIS, YOU ARE GIVING THEM THE OPPORTUNITY TO MOVE ON AND TRY NEW PROJECTS.

“Do what you do best and don’t try to do everything”
 ~Erik Huberman~

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Social Media Business Hour