Marketing Tips
Have Daily Marketing Goals
Break your goal down into daily tasks, that way each day will feel like a success.
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You need a plan of action to understand how you are going to achieve your goal and measure your progress along the way. Start with the goal and work backwards to understand what your daily tasks need to be.
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Marketing plans are the first step to telling a business's story, without the plan you are spinning your wheels, wasting money, and missing key components of the story.
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Show Don't Tell Your Marketing Story
True story - The boy in this photo was 15 years old, at his uncle's wedding, when he asked the lead singer of the band if he could play the guitar with them.
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The lead singer announced to the wedding guests that this 15 year old kid was going to come up and play. That everyone should be kind, give him a chance because it takes a lot of courage to get up and play in front of a crowd, especially with a band he's never played with.
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This is when things got interesting - This boy started jamming with the band, not a cover song, not a song everyone knows, but just jamming out an original tune with men who had been playing for decades.
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The band member's jaws literally hit the ground, as they watched this 15 year old kid play with them. I have to photos to prove their mouths were in fact hanging open. At the end, the lead singer got up and said "Now that is talent, you can play with us anytime."
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That is how my son showed he was a rock star, instead of telling everyone he was. That was my proudest mom moment, until the day he let me listen to a song he recorded with his sister, as the lead singer. Then it was my jaw hitting the ground.
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The point of this story is ...
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Show the market what you do and how you can do it better than anyone else, without preaching how great you are.
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The best storytellers show a story, they don't tell it. They give enough details while leaving enough room for the reader to add their own impressions, experiences, and emotions.
You Got to Pay to Play on Facebook
In the days before everyone and their dog got into content marketing and posting on Facebook, social media had the power to do amazing things for a brand.
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In today's world, you have to pay to play - but before you do you need to understand how Facebook ads work or else you'll end up spending a lot of money you didn't need to spend.
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It's not good enough to occasionally put a look at me ad every once in a while. It takes a strategic plan of action to ensure that you are getting the best ROI possible. Keep the sales ads to a minimum.
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Boost highly engaged with posts each week, even if all you do is spend $5 a week, it will grow your following, your engagement, and your brand as you stay top of mind. As people engage with your boosted post, your organic impressions will go up and the cost per impression will decrease, along with the cost per click.
Get Curious about Your Business
Forget everything you know about your business, industry, and product. Wipe your mind of all data and facts.
Now, what would you want to know about your product, service, business, and industry? Write down all the questions you can think of.
Theses questions can be used to create content on your website through articles, FAQs, videos, infographics, and images. Use that content to create social media posts to share with your following.
Get curious again. Read articles, posts, and whatever you can find out in the information highway. You never know what ideas may pop into your head.
Online Reputation Management
In today's digital world, you can build your own online reputation and manage the effects of any and all negative feedback. Fear is the only thing keeping you back from success and that my friend, is not an acceptable reason to hide from the power of digital word of mouth.
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Reputation management includes:
Blog posts
Website
Social Media
Reviews
Everything you do adds a brick to your reputation story, be it online or off. Digital enables you to mitigate any negative effects by allowing you to be a part of the conversation.
Screw up royally? You can apologize and stop the talk by taking responsibility for your actions, this turns a negative into a positive reputation story because you have just proven you are responsible, mature, and accountable.
Someone is not happy with your product or service because of their own opinion, high expectations, or limited understanding? You can use that to educate others on what to expect from you, what you did do, and how you tried to satisfy an unreasonable person by going beyond reasonable expectations. This shows that you are a professional, you do your best, and you have policies in place that you stand by.
Headlines are Vital to Your Marketing
This stat sucks. You put in all that work to write a post, article, web copy, and only 20% on average read what you type. Makes you wonder how many people actually hear what you are saying in a conversation.
To improve this result, a headline must do the following:
Inspire curiosity to know more
Summarize what the article is about
Use keywords
Lead to something of value
Do not promise one thing with a headline and deliver less than expected results, that is called click bait and, as we know, social media and search engines frown on this practice. It will also damage your reputation because you will be seen as delivering less than expected returns... You don't want that.
People's attention spans are half the size of a tweet. A headline gives them enough information to give them an opinion or a trivial fact, enough to decide if they want to read what you wrote. So inspire curiosity by:
Asking a question
Giving a stat
Inspiring fear
Promising satisfaction
Providing education
Being in the Know
Headlines are vital and not easy to write. You won't always get it right, however, if you analyse the data you can tweak it until you get the result you want. That's the great thing about digital, it can be edited and measured.
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Marketing is a Competition
What do competitors do when they want to win?
Professional athletes live breathe and sleep their sport to ensure they are in tip top shape. Chess players study strategy and play the game daily to become masters. Anyone who strives to be an expert in their field of study, industry, or game, is hyper focused and committed to their craft.
To get people's attention you have to be committed, focused, and persistent. Constantly learning what others are doing, finding your competition's weakness and building your strengths, practicing each skill until you can do it in your sleep.
Do you want to be an expert in your industry? What does it take to come out on top? That is what it takes to tell a story to the marketplace that they will engage with.
Don't just throw things onto your social media platforms, create a website and forget it, print out brochures and hand them out. Do more. Be more. Focus on how to tell a marketing story strategically and then measure the results, tweak the message, and get better.
Marketing Tip - Know Thyself
Knowing yourself will enable you to tell a story that is unique to the marketplace and will attract 'like minded' customers to your business. It is always easier to sell to someone who trusts you and we instinctively trust those who are like us, unless we know we aren't trustworthy, but that's a whole different kind of post.
There are lots of ways we can find out about ourselves, here are a few ideas:
Make a list of things you like to do
Make a list of your favourite things
Make a visual collage of images you like
Make a visual collage of your goals
If you want to get even more introspective start asking yourself those tough questions and write the answers in a journal to come back to. Questions like:
What is my purpose?
Why do I exist?
Why am I a (career title)?
Why do I love my life partner?
What do I love about my kids?
Why do I want to be successful?
What does success look like to me?
Understand you behaviours, reactions, and choices:
When I get stressed I ....
When I am hurt I ...
When I want something I...
When I lose/win I...
What about your buying choices and lifestyle:
I buy (item) because it is ....
I chose to wear (fashion) because the image I want is...
I like to (activity) because it makes me feel...
I live (city) because it is ...
Knowing yourself and embracing who you are, will help you define your target market better. All these questions and statements can be used to understand the type of customer you want.
Be you, tell your story well, and live fearlessly.
Marketing Tip - Know Your Data
Ever get frustrated talking to an opinionated person who never has facts to back up their theories?
Can you think of someone who is a blow hard, full of hot air, talking out his backside?
We all can and we don't want to be that person who can't prove what they say is true. Experts back up their theories with examples, facts, and data. They are credible because they come across as knowing what they are talking about.
The easiest and most memorable way to back up your claims is with engaging stories.
Bring those stories of your past business successes into your marketing to build your reputation as an expert with a proven track record who can be trusted. The hardest part of trying to back up a statement with an authentic story is keeping all the data organized and easily to access, then to present it online in a way that enhances a user's experience.
When I worked in the online review industry, clients would have a pile of reviews on our site that were more valuable than testimonials on their own because our site authenticated the data. To ensure that visitors to the client's website would benefit from off site reviews they embedded a widget that drew the reviews from our site to theirs.
Plan out your website and how you will showcase your examples, data, and facts to back up your claims of outstanding customer service and quality that is top notch. How will you bring it all together in a way that adds credibility and authenticity to your story?
Grab a pen and paper and start drawing...
Marketing Tip - Know Your Customer
Do you trust pushy salespeople?
No one likes to be treated like a number. Don't treat your potential customers like commodities. In today's world people are more cynical, more informed, and way less patient, not to mention less forgiving.
It takes someone 5-8 times to see your ad, message, product, before they even pay attention enough to start on the buying cycle. Don't put them off by being too in their face so they close the door to your message all together.
Ask yourself,
Why does someone need my product or service?
Who needs my product or service?
When do they need me?
What questions do they ask me?
What objections do they have?
What ways can my product or service be used?
When you have these answers you can start to construct a story around your product or service that will connect to your target market because they identify with the message. Be strategic in telling your story so you aren't making it a sales pitch every time, it isn't a constantly asking them for something, and it builds trust.
Marketing Tip - Be Creative
The only way to find out if something will work is to try... test... and analyse the result.
If you have a marketing idea and it fits within your marketing plan's objectives, goals, and parameters then try it. If it works - great, if not - well at least you gave it a shot. If it doesn't fit within your marketing plan and brand - Don't do it.
How do you get a creative idea?
Take a look at what your competitors are doing and then tweak it to match your branding. Don't do something because you think it'll go viral, do it because it tells your story within the parameters of your brand, image, and reputation.
Check out what you are engaging with on social media or online and keep a file using Evernote to inspire you when you are feeling creative.
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Break a design rule.
Ask questions about how people interact with your product, service, and brand - how can you show this interaction on social media?
Go through your social media analytics to find those posts people engaged with and make the same topic content using a different media. If it was a graphic, create a video. If it was a video, create an infographic. If it was an Infographic, create a podcast. I think you get the idea.
Bring similar social media post content together for a blog post or new webpage.
Marketing Tip - Build Squeeze Pages
A squeeze page, or landing page, is a webpage that tries to get information out of a visitor to build a marketing list for future contact.
If you want to build an email list of people who are interested in your product or service you can create a squeeze page offering a gift in exchange for the visitor's name, email address, and e-newsletter buy in. Gifts are usually an ebook, a whitepaper, a webinar, or another piece of unique branded content that educates a person about something.
Let's say your target market uses your service to look better. A squeeze page could offer an ebook on ten grooming tips, a video about the latest fashion trends, or a webinar on how to create an elaborate hairstyle.
Once you have the email address you can start sending e-newsletters on a regular basis to inform them about offers, ideas, and trends in your industry. It gives you another channel to communicate with your target market.
Do you sign up for e-newsletters to get some downloadable information, access to member only info, or a coupon?
Once you have signed up, do you open the e-newsletters that they send you?
Be part of the conversation and give us your opinion on email marketing and squeeze pages.
Share Your Passion, Tell Your Story
What are you passionate about?
Why do you do what you do for a living?
Do you love it?
Are you passionate about it?
I could talk about marketing all day, all night, and never get board. The topic energizes me and I want to learn more to understand more about it. This makes it easier for me to tell my story and build my reputation as a marketing manager for small businesses.
Show why you love what you do and customers will be interested. I mean if a guy who is passionate about backyard chicken farming can become the 'Chicken Whisperer' because of social media, you can find success in what you do.
Marketing Tip - Be Smart about PPC
The higher the ranking of your landing page, the less you pay per click, and the better response you will get.
Social media advertising is an evolving beast and what worked yesterday does not necessarily work tomorrow. That said, the more clicks the ad gets, the cheaper each click is and the more your organic reach grows, thereby decreasing your cost per impression too.
Are you spending too much on your advertising?
Adwords and social media PPC ads are an easy way to get your message in front of your target market, however, if you are not strategic and smart about how you run your ad campaigns you will end up spending too much and getting a lower response rate. You might even be damaging your reputation.
Adwords is about more than buying the right keywords. It's about creating a landing page that matches your keywords and adding content to it that visitors interact with.
Is your image in line with your brand?
Whether it is your personal brand or your business's brand, it is important to understand the difference between what your image actually is and what you want it to be.
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If you are a jeans and t-shirt kinda person and you are trying to portray yourself as a thousand dollar suit kind of person, there is going to be a lot of stress due to the disconnect.
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Know yourself.
Know your product / service
Know your target market
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From this information you can define a brand that reflects you and your value system better.
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Be yourself, people trust people who are like them not those trying to be like them. The fake it 'til you make it doesn't work if what you are faking is not who you are at your core.
Don't Throw Money Away on Advertising
You can build, build, and build your online presence and, eventually, people will show up, eventually, years down the road. Advertising will ensure people show up sooner.
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If you want to throw your money away you can put out all the advertisements you want and people will show up, they just cost you a lot of cash to get them there.
If you want to increase your ROI, decrease your ad spend, and get better people out, you have to understand how advertising works on each channel.
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Advertising is a strategy, a science, an art. Books are written on the subject and specialists make careers out of studying how to be better. If you want to save money on your ads, you have to get strategic, educated, and analytical.
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