57 appointments in a day and a half
And the moment I realized that result was the floor, not the ceiling.
I’m writing this from seat 3C in Delta first class.
I just left New York City after speaking at a conference. Tomorrow I’m on stage in Minneapolis at another one. Two cities. Two days. Same world.
That’s not an accident. And it isn’t ambition. It’s the play.
Two weeks ago I was at 1200 person conference at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville.
We had books. We had a booth. We had real conversations.
In a day and a half, we booked 57 appointments.
Not contact cards. Not “I’ll email you next week.” Actual calls on the calendar before the conversation in the booth was over.
That’s the number. But the number isn’t the lesson.
The lesson hit me sitting in my hotel room that night.
This audience has local chapters. They have a member directory you can look up. They get mail at their offices. They live on LinkedIn. They have podcasts.
We had just produced one of the best event runs of the year. And I realized we were leaving 2x or 3x of it on the table.
Because the event was one node. Not the whole strategy.
The Visibility Illusion
Here is what most firms believe.
They believe they are doing marketing.
They post on LinkedIn when they remember. They send a newsletter when they have time. They go to one event a year and scan badges. They follow up once or twice.
Then they go quiet.
They mistake a little bit of activity for presence.
The market doesn’t see them. It can’t. The message is aimed at everyone, yet spread thin and inconsistently across channels that don’t connect.
That is the Visibility Illusion.
You feel like you’re marketing. The people you want to reach have no idea you exist.
Watch what most firms do at events...
They scan badges. They send one or two manual follow-ups. They sound like salespeople. They give up.
That is the symptom. The illusion is the cause.
Narrow + Deep = Be Everywhere Now
Here is the move.
Narrow means a defined group. Not “all financial advisors.” Not “all law firm owners.” The members of a specific organization. The attendees of a specific conference. The readers of a specific publication.
A real list of real names... Not anonymous “Internet” connections.
Deep means looking for every single way you could possibly be in front of that group.
Their events. Their local chapters. The podcasts they listen to. The publications they read. Their LinkedIn feeds. Their mailboxes. Their inboxes.
The book they’ll pick up. (Your book ;-)
You map it. All of it.
Be Everywhere Now is what happens when you put content in every one of those places. You appear to be everywhere that group looks. You appear bigger than you are. Inside that defined audience, you become the #1 player.
You don’t need more marketing. You need the same marketing pointed at fewer people, more times, in more places.
There are two distinctions worth keeping straight here.
Visibility is not presence. Visibility is one impression. Presence is repeated, multi-channel, across the contexts that matter to the buyer.
Reach is not resonance. A firm with 50,000 random impressions per month loses to a firm with 500 right people seeing the right message 20 times each.
The math the reach crowd misses is simple. “Dosage” is per-person, not gross.
How it played out in Nashville
Here is the whole play, in order.
1. Pick the right defined audience. A defined group. High concentration. Identifiable members. Real gathering places. A real online footprint. We didn’t pick “all advisors.” We picked a small sub-group.
2. Show up offline with your best asset in their hands. Books in the booth. Real conversations. The book does the IP work. The conversation does the trust work. The two together do something neither does alone.
3. Don’t take cards. Book the call right then. This is the line that separates the pros from the amateurs. The amateur scans badges, hopes, chases for two weeks, and lets the conversation go cold. The pro turns the conversation into a calendar slot before the conversation ends. Calls happen the following week. Momentum intact.
4. Then go everywhere they go between events. Local chapters. Their podcasts. Their LinkedIn feeds. Direct mail to their member list. Sponsor the chapter dinner. Same defined group, encountered everywhere.
5. Walk into the next event already known. The booth conversation isn’t cold the next time. It’s a continuation. The 57 becomes 100. Then 150.
That is what narrow plus deep actually looks like. Not a niche. A saturation map.
What’s coming in the next 12 to 18 months
We’re living through a recession right now... a trust recession.
Markets are moving towards a winner-take-all condition.
Inside every defined audience, the #1 slot is about to get taken. Once it’s taken, it’s gone for years.
More firms are waking up to The Snapback.
Digital arbitrage is dead. Building an ecosystem wins...what I call “Be Everywhere Now”
The smart firms are about to pick a defined audience and saturate it.
The first firm to commit to omnipresence inside a defined group becomes the obvious choice. The second firm to try the same play arrives to find the slot already filled. Same audience. Same channels. But a competitor already living in every meeting, podcast, mailbox, and inbox they planned to use.
Firms still chasing reach won’t slowly fade. They’ll wake up one quarter and realize someone owns the audience they thought was wide open.
By then it costs 5x to dislodge them. If it’s possible at all.
The window is open right now because most firms are still chasing everyone. That window closes faster than people expect.
The Choice
You can keep doing scattered marketing aimed at everyone, and stay invisible to anyone who could buy.
Or you can pick one defined audience and become unavoidable in it.
You don’t need a bigger marketing budget. You need a smaller target and a deeper saturation map.
Pick one defined audience right now. Name every place they show up. How many of those places are you currently present in?
That number is your starting point.
Steve “be everywhere now” Gordon
P.S. Next week I’ll show you the economics that make this play even more lopsided.
P.P.S. When you’re ready, our team is standing by to help you in four ways:
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Watch: What Amazon’s 30,000 Layoffs Reveal About the Future
Where’s Steve:
May 27 — Boston Small Business Expo (speaking)
June 2-4 - Strategic Coach CoachCON 26, Orlando
June 10 - Small Business Expo, Chicago (speaking)