Question

Gary Vaynerchuck is a well known Marketer. He can be controversial. Review Gary's Facebook, LinkedIn, Newsfeeds and if You have Amazon Prime Follow The Leader: Gary Vaynerchuck. The Follow The Leader Series is a Great series just to view.

1. What are the key factors in Gary's success?

2. What can we learn as marketers from Gary?

3. What is Gary's philosophy of doing business?

4. What does Gary need to change?

5. What can you apply to direct marketing from researching Gary?

Answer 1

“If you’ve lost your hustle, it’s because you aren’t in tune to why you’re doing it”
– Gary Vaynerchuk

Answer 1. Key factors for his success are:

a. To find the most creative solution, look at the problem from different altitudes: Vaynerchuk constantly encourages his team to “bend the lines” around a problem — in other words, change the way they’re looking at it to expand the range of possible remedies.

b. Being brutally honest about what’s possible will help you achieve the seemingly impossible: There are times when expectations are patently unachievable. “People often get caught up trying to solve a problem that they absolutely 100 percent cannot solve,” Vaynerchuk says. “So you have to defuse the chance of failure by using the truth. Just say there’s no way to achieve it.”

c. The best answer is often a question: Watch enough episodes of #AskGaryVee and you’ll start to see a pattern in his approach to answering questions, one I saw him deploy repeatedly with his staff and clients. He cuts straight to the heart of the question and what it says about the asker — their motivations, their fundamental assumptions, and what their real question should actually be.

d. The most successful companies, old or new, think like startups: Many of Vaynerchuk’s clients are large, established companies — Toyota, Nike, General Electric — with long histories, rather than the scrappy startups you’d think would gravitate to him. But once you get to know him, this makes sense. He has a unique ability to leverage innovative solutions to solve legacy problems.

e. The best leaders know when to fool their employees: One of Vaynerchuk’s most consistently impactful leadership strategies is to instill in his employees a presumption of success.

Answer 2.

1.     Don't make excuses

One of Gary Vee's current favourite questions is simply, "And?" The point that he's making is that even if people rattle off a long list of complaints about their current conditions, it ultimately comes down to, "And what are you going to do about it?" When you find yourself in an unfavourable situation, you can either complain about it and do nothing or you can try to change the situation you find yourself in.

From a marketing point of view, you can take this attitude and apply it to your campaigns. If something doesn't work as well as expected, don't waste your time playing the blame game. Instead, focus on what you can change and get cracking. After all, what's the alternative?

2.     Hustle, hustle, hustle

Hustle is one of the most important elements in the Gary Vee philosophy and it's pretty easy to see why. When Vaynerchuk talks about hustle, he's talking about the need for people to put their all into something if they want to make it happen. So if you're working 9-5 and have kids to look after as well, hustle means getting on the computer at 10 PM and trying to follow your dreams by launching a business, learning a new skill or doing whatever else it takes to get you to where you want to be.

From a marketing point of view, hustle means continually trying new things and working hard when everyone else is taking a day off. When Oreo went viral with their "Dunk in the Dark " tweet, it was because a group of their key employees were hustling by watching the Superbowl from a special "war room" so that they could react to it as a brand in real time.

3.     Specialise

Vaynerchuk constantly teaches his followers to know what they're good at and to follow it through to its logical conclusion, and there's no reason why you can't do the same as a brand. After all, that's basically what Red Bull did. They specialize in extreme sports, which is why they sponsor events and athletes, share footage and even pull stunts like their epic space diving project with Felix Baumgartner.

He's not saying that you and your brand should look to space, though. If you're a finance company then perhaps you can specialize in mortgages or if you're a business consultancy then you could focus on management. Make this focus the basis of your content. After all, Vaynerchuk himself first found fame as "the wine guy". Why can't you do the same in your industry?

4.     Jab Jab Jab Right Hook

This is the title of one of Vaynerchuk's many thought-provoking books, and this one focuses on a concept that helps you to soften up your audience before you hit them with a sales message. The idea is that your approach to marketing should be a series of jabs in the form of entertaining or educational content before delivering the right hook and hitting them with a call-to-action.

This is particularly relevant to content marketers and digital strategists because it requires a fundamental rethink. Perhaps instead of putting all of your webinars and whitepapers behind data capture forms, you should give some of them away as a sign of goodwill. Focus on hitting people with a series of jabs before you try to land that right hook and get people to purchase your product.

5.     When you get knocked down, get up

Not all of Vaynerchuk's business deals have been a success and he makes no secret of that fact. He often says that he secretly hopes that he loses his empire just so he can build it all back up again. He's not saying you should go out there and deliberately scupper your business, but he is saying that when things do go wrong, you need to get back up and try again.

This is particularly relevant for modern marketers because not everything works. That's why we measure our analytics. Sometimes things go so drastically wrong that all you can do is pull a campaign entirely and start again, just as McDonald's had to do after their epic #McFail. What else can you do? When you're McDonald's, you can't just give up.

Conclusion

One of the biggest lessons that Gary Vee can teach us comes from a recent video in which he told the people who'd come to see one of his keynotes to leave the room, go home and start working. Ultimately, blog posts like these are a great way of finding some inspiration and picking up on some practical tips, but that's not going to do you much good unless you actually use them.

So go ahead and start working. Get your hustle on and put these tips into action. Thanks to the internet, there's never been a better time to get your voice out there. Start by positioning yourself as an authority on whatever you're passionate about and focus on your jabs so that when you're ready to deliver a right hook, people respond to it.

Above all else, remember to stay true to yourself and to play to your strengths. Work for what you want and don't make excuses. You'll be a success in no time.

3.

1. STOP TRYING TO CONVERT YOUR CUSTOMERS

If you’re trying to convert your customers, you’re doing something wrong. I spend zero time convincing people to believe what I believe in. This is the mistake that most business and start up entrepreneurs are making: they’re wasting good time and energy trying to convert those who won’t buy, when they should be taking that same time and allocating it to reaching more people.

2. DON’T HESITATE WITH MAKING THE SALE

As a salesperson, there are a ton of mistakes to avoid. Going in for the sale too quickly, fudging the facts, or not believing in your product come to mind first, but there is another problem that is even more obvious and even more problematic: poor execution when it comes to actually asking for the customer’s business.

3. WORK HARDER AND FASTER IN BUSINESS

Burning the candle on both ends: we’ve all been there. You have clients that you make amazing work for, and, on top of that, a whole company working for those clients that needs your attention too. Or maybe you have two jobs: working days in an office and nights at your real passion. How do you do both? How do you keep yourself from being totally washed out? Well, you might not like my answer, but it’s how I operate and it works: you need to work harder and faster. Not just harder, but also faster.

4. GIVE WITH NO EXPECTATION OF RETURN

It goes without saying that you should always be looking for ways to provide others with value, (in life too, not just business). Creating a media site, writing articles, and making videos builds relationships with existing and new customers, as well as business partners. It is the number one way to sell a product right now.

Answer 4. Gary does't need to change, we need to change.

Answer 5. We should inculcate his ideas. Learn from his marketing techniques. Like:

1. Hustle!

2. Bet on your strengths. Triple down on what you’re good at and ignore the rest.

3. Patience! It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

4. The market, is the market, is the market.

5. Ideas are shit. Execution is everything.

6. Jab, jab, jab, right hook. (Give, give, give, ask)

7. When you give, with expectation in return, you lose.

8. The biggest ‘tell’ that someone is a loser – is complaining.

9. Ignore the Opinions of Others

10. Legacy matters. Who will be at your funeral?