Oct 30, 2015 | Communication, Social Media
“Self indulgent nonsense that passes as digital marketing strategy”.
That is what it often is, perhaps usually, but it can also be the road to success when leveraged by a truly expert marketer.
But everybody is a marketing expert, it is easy, just common sense, surely?
Why is it then that I see so much crap, so much waste of time and money, often lots of it.
Big businesses are the worst, the marketing people spend money like it is not their own.
Hang on, it isn’t.
By contrast, small business is intimidated by the jargon, the smoke and mirrors that has been so prevalent over the last 100 years, joined recently by the mystery of digital. They shy away and often do not take advantage if the greatest single marketing opportunity that has ever opened up for them .
The ability to not just send a personalised message to an individual, but to see what they do with that message, respond appropriately, and to enter into a ‘conversation’ with them.
I know there are lots of self styled gurus out there blathering on about people becoming engaged with brands, wanting to carry on a conversation with their favourite brand, and promising to deliver such an outcome, when common sense says it is crap.
Look at your own behaviour.
Do you crave the attention of a ‘brand’ do you actively seek a ‘brand experience’ crave digital interaction with your brand?
I thought not.
Most people are not thinking about interacting with their favourite brand of yogurt except when they are in the supermarket, or their head in in the ‘fridge looking for some brekkie, despite the protestations of digital marketing bag men whose job it is to flog a digital inventory of some sort.
Be careful, and ensure that you build the foundations of great marketing, get the fundamentals in place, then you can go ahead and win.
Oct 23, 2015 | Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Courtesy: “First dog on the moon”
I am getting pretty annoyed with the enthusiastic panting of the toothy self appointed social media guru brigade extolling the ‘awesomeness’ (my current second most hated word) of social media.
They give the serious advisors amongst us a bad name.
It happened again during the week. At a casual SME meetup, there was one of these types there flogging the line that all you had to do was give him some money, and you would make it back 10X (actual claim) because he was able to focus his specialist and exclusive Social Media expertise on your objective and ‘Abra Cadabra’ money would appear.
The loaves & fish story have nothing on this lot.
Social media is just a fragment of the challenge of Social Marketing enabled by the technology that not just encourages, but demands that your ‘targets’ (will have to think of another word) have the opportunity and means to communicate with the marketer.
As I have heard it said, ‘it is not communication until the intended message is received, understood and has elicited a response’.
Seems to me there are a few questions you should ask yourself about your message:
- To what extent does it assist the prospect move along the journey to a transaction?. We do not engage in social marketing for our health, it is for a commercial outcome. Therefore measure it against the progress towards that outcome, recognising there are probably many other things in your message mix, from deliberate marketing communication aimed at the prospect, to random stuff like how clean was the company delivery truck was when it passed your prospect at the lights last week.
- How does the communication add value to the prospect?. If you cannot add value in some way, why should the message assist the journey to a transaction?
- What do they do next as a result of seeing your message?. If they do nothing, it is just another of the 95 gazillion messages they might see today, if they do something as a result of seeing it, whole new ball-game? It is great to have someone take action as a result of your message, greater if that action not just moves them down the transaction path, but if they also share it with their networks. In effect they are not only acknowledging the value of your message, they are endorsing it to their networks. This is the gold at the end of the social marketing rainbow.
Social marketing is pretty easy to write and talk about in a superficial way, but very hard to put into meaningful practice. It takes careful and creative analysis of your prospects and your own value proposition, as well as the construction, content and nature of the messages sent. This is not an exercise conducted with a fairy wand and pixie dust, it takes serious marketing thinking and experience.
If it sounds almost too good to be true, grab your wallet and get out, because it almost certainly is.
Sep 18, 2015 | Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Blogging is a journey
Writing a blog can be confronting, and often small business owners shy away for the commitment. Make no mistake it is a commitment, but so is anything worth doing.
After 6 years and 1400 posts, and a lot of reading of posts by others, I have learned a bit, I hope, and assembled a few tips:
Be selective. Starting out you cannot do everything, so pick the platforms that suit you. Logically this follows some thought about where your target market hangs out digitally. This particularly relates to those in your field who are influencers.
Create an engaging profile. Every platform offers the opportunity to create a profile. Do it thoughtfully, considering the things that your preferred readers might like to see. Too often I see profiles that are incomplete or look like resumes, in the latter case, unless you are actively looking for a job, it is not of much interest to anyone but your Mum.
Upload a photo that does you justice. Your profile photo is like the headline photo in the front page of a newspaper, and you only get one chance to make a first impression.
Background images. Again, most offer the opportunity for a background image, this is the opportunity to confirm your expertise, or the thing you want to be remembered for. Unless, you are a Vet, no cats allowed.
Understand the platform. Whichever platform(s) you choose to start with, spend a bit of time understanding how they work, the features, and how you might be able to use them. Just having a profile up is useless, you need to be able to actively engage in the features of the platform to be noticed.
Follow and comment. Engagement starts somewhere, in most cases following those with whom you feel you would like to share a coffee with in real life is a good start. Once following, make comments on their posts, refer to other things they may be interested in, link to your posts, and create debates, offer an alternative point of view.
Learn from others. Social media has been exploding for the last 15 years. There are some real gurus out there along with all the wannabe’s. By watching and listening you will figure out quickly who they are, learn from them, model your digital behaviour on theirs, without copying, as you need your own ‘voice”. One of the gurus I have watched is Jeff Bullas, a true guru who lives almost around the corner in Sydney. By simply watching what he does, I have leant a lot.
Endorse and share. Sharing is an endorsement, if you feel something, is worthwhile, share it amongst your networks with a short note. These days it is easy to share on all platforms, but taking the time to write and endorse a post makes a lot of difference. Just clicking the ‘like’ button really means little any more.
Join groups. This is a great way to come to know those in a market who are the opinion leaders, and make a thoughtful contribution. I much prefer the closed groups, firstly because the rules can be set and you are less likely to be bombarded by irrelevant advertising messages, but more importantly because there is a common reason to be a member of a group, and if the reason is at the core of your businesses, it is clearly a good place to be.
Consistency. This all takes time and effort, but you have to be in the game to win. Those who find you worth following will get used to a rhythm, so once that is established, do your best to keep it up. Consistency in tone of ‘voice’ is also important. A blog is a personal thing, that is why people have followed in many cases, so outsourcing it can be a mistake. By contrast, having guest bloggers can be a great way to add value to your readers, and for your it offers the opportunity to attract new readers, point is that the guest post is explicitly written by a guest. I guest post regularly in a food industry magazine, it helps them with original and relevant articles and thoughts, and drives traffic for me.
Don’t pitch. When you use blog posts to pitch, if you do it too hard, you will lose readers. By all means offer access to landing pages that do pitch products or events, but they should be elsewhere beyond a soft invitation to readers who may be interested to click and go there. Hard selling on a blog post is the quickest way to put off readers other than being irrelevant or committing the sin of bad writing, I have seen.
Be visual. Human beings are visual animals, we respond to visual stimuli. Look at the reaction around the world to the photo of the little drowned Syrian boy being lifted out of the water. 
He is not the first to have been reported to have drowned, this was not the first story, it probably ranks at a number well over a million in the words written, but it grabbed the attention of the world like nothing that has gone before.
Be visible. Use social icons at every opportunity giving people as many opportunities to sample and connect as possible. It is a numbers game after all, and getting them to the front door counts.
Extend courtesy to others. Digital interaction is no different to face to face, apart for the obvious . People like to be thanked, acknowledged for their contributions, and have their efforts reciprocated. However, being selective in the reciprocity can be useful. There are many tools out there that just automatically do stuff, like follow or like. Following back an automated system is not the same as following back a person, so be selective and be careful who you like.
Start. Always the hardest thing, to make the commitment to yourself, and get on with it, dismiss the voice in your ear that tell you that you do not know enough, it is too hard, or that nobody will come. As we all know, the journey stats with the first step.
Jul 22, 2015 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Small business
Email marketing is the stuff of small business dreams.
For the first time they can communicate with their markets, being able to measure the effectiveness of their efforts. Unlike the days of broadcast media where the return on any set of marketing activies was extremely hard to calculate, and therefore out of the bounds of possibility for those without a lot of money to risk, knowing the return and being able to experience for a modest outlay is fantastic.
There are myths, legends and piles of horseshit proclaimed about digital marketing, and SEO and email marketing key amongst the fodder.
I thought I would try and dispel some of the myths by offering some views of the basics.
This one is about email marketing, SEO will come in a few days.
There are piles of data available from email marketing providers, from the freebie version of Mailchimp to the really sophisticated providers like Infusionsoft, and everything in between. Each provider does things a bit differently, and charges for the levels of sophistication and integration that can be delivered. But all deliver metrics that will help you better target your email communication.
Following are the common, and probably most useful ones.
1. Bounce rate.
Simply the percentage of emails that could not be delivered to a recipients inbox, they “bounce”. Usually this is because the email as written is incorrect, or the email account has been closed, often because an employee has moved on. From time to time, you will get a bounce from an address due to a temporary problem, or closure such as a maintenance closure of a recipients server. Generally these will be delivered when the problem is removed, but those undeliverable where there is no temporary problem should be “cleaned” out of your list immediately. ISP’s regard high bounce rates as an indication of spamming, and so are likely to take action against such accounts.
2. Delivery rate.
As implied, it is the percentage of emails successfully delivered. Simply the converse of the bounce rate.
3. Open rate.
The percentage of your emails that were opened, pretty obvious. These days, we get so many emails that often we just skim those that appear important and delete or leave the rest, and most of us have our spam filters turned on, so that emails from suspect sources or with suspect subject lines are dropped automatically into the bin. This can easily happen to your marketing email. The best way to avoid it is to have personalised emails, “Dear Fred” rather than just “Hi”, and ask those joining your list to put your email address into their “safe” list in their email account.
4. Click Through Rate.
Often shortened to CTR, this is the number who clicked on one or more of the links in an email message. This measure is one of the foundations of successful digital marketing. When a target or prospect gets something, but does nothing with it, generally the communication will be deemed to have failed. Depending on what you are doing, an expected CTR will vary widely. You could reasonably expect a higher open rate and CTR on a newsletter that has been subscribed to, than an overtly promotional message, even from a trusted source. There are various techniques used too increase CTR rates, the best ones being an offer of something for free, which is the most common, but surveys work very well, asking for 2 minutes to gather general market or product information generates good click through rates as people like being asked for help when it is anonymous, and simple contests, like ” Which of these three is out of context” questions also can deliver excellent CTR rates.
5. Sharing rate.
The percentage of recipients who click on the “share this” button to share on one of more of their own platforms, or forward to others. Digital marketers often talk about “engagement”, the necessity to get some level of engagement before anything useful can happen, and sharing is one very useful measure of engagement. Equally, if you get a shared email post or message from a trusted colleague, you are highly likely to open and read it, it is a referral of the message.
6. Conversion rate.
The percentage of recipients who clicked on a link in your email to complete a desired action. It may be signing up to a list to receive more posts, or a move to the next level of a sales funnel, or even straight to a shopping cart. The conversion rate is the key measure of success of any communication, the recipient has done the action that was the objective of the email.
7. Email ROI.
Pretty self explanatory, but vital measure, and can become complicated when you start feeding in variables. In its most simple form it is the revenue generated by a campaign divided by the number of emails sent. Email marketing is not free, it consumes time and resources, so measuring the return you get on the investment is a crucial activity, and is the one that makes this type of marketing so effective.
Most will have heard the cliché “the money is in the list” from email marketing people, and it is half true. To my mind, the money is only in the list when those in the list take some action as a result of the communication they receive. However, growing your list of engaged and responsive receivers, waiting for your next communication or offer is a building block of ongoing email marketing success.
Need assistance, there are plenty more posts on digital marketing on this site, and there are many others around, mostly trying one of the techniques to get you into their sales funnel. Mine is really simple, call me if a chat would help.
May 8, 2015 | Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
I am speaking to small businesses all the time, and there are a lot of common conversations that occur. One of the most common is about advertising, particularly as it relates to advertising with Facebook and Google.
The conversations take a pretty common route.
The first thing to understand is the huge differences in a potential customers situation as they encounter Facebook ads, and Google AdWords.
The reasons people go to these two platforms are different.
Facebook is social, people are not there to buy stuff, so the path from the social to a transaction usually has a number of steps.
By contrast, a Google search is very specific, “I want information on XX”. Sometimes it will be for the purpose of researching, and sometimes they are committed to making a purchase of a product in your category. They are a “sale ready” audience.
It is for this reason I often recommend people start with AdWords as a means to advertise digitally, learn, and perhaps later use Facebook.
Irrespective of the platform choice, following are the 12 things that make sense to me that you should consider as you start on the digital advertising journey.
- Learn about the platforms, at least in principal, so you understand the stuff told to you by so called experts, and are in a position to ask intelligent questions.
- Start small, figure what works, and expand along the best path, always being prepared to adjust as you learn more. Having a plan, and ensuring the plan is captured in a detailed brief is essential, even if you are doing all the work yourself.
- Tracking and metrics. Before you start, know the source of visitors to your website, and track the changes that occur after the ads are placed. The huge change that has occurred with digital advertising is that we can now answer the question “which half of our advertising is wasted.”
- Define those you want to reach, in as much detail as possible. There are many different, although overlapping audiences you can target: current Facebook fans, and their friends, your current mailing lists held in whatever form they may be, visitors to your website, your competitors customers and friends, (particularly Facebook) and “lookalikes” to any of the above. The choices in the platforms are pretty good, take the time to really understand the choices you are making.
- Build relationships with current customers/fans. We all know that it is easier to get more business from an existing relationship, whatever the form of that relationship, than it is to start from scratch and build a new one to the point where they are prepared to buy from you.
- Create “stickiness” and trust by offering free advice, content, and ideas, and advice, and in responding, do so on a personal level. Webinars, podcasts, lists, blog posts, all serve differing needs in the process and the old adage that you have to give a bit before you can expect anything to come back, still works.
- Understand the customer journey. Facebook particularly, but also Google, require conversion to a sale after the initial contact. To do that you need to provide access the offers, products and relevant information through a landing page process of some sort, leading to a shopping cart, or sign up form. At each point, the potential customer has to make a choice, “do I proceed or not?” and making that choice easy, to the point of automatic requires real understanding of their mindset.
- Landing page optimisation. The differences in performance of differing landing page copy and design is astonishing, so the optimisation of landing pages is a whole process, even an art in itself.
- Create the process before you place the ads. A very common common mistake is to place some ads, they often do not cost much, then when a response arrives, you start wondering what to do with it. Wrong way around. Have the process mapped out, with the follow up content written and the delivery sequences mapped out.
- Analyse and analyse. Obviously having the right metrics to analyse is important, but tracking visitors, conversion rates, and the path a visitor takes to a transaction is enormously valuable in optimising the process. To some extent this is a repeat of step three, but the emphasis here is on the continuous improvement by testing and tweaking of the communication.
- Have a budget, and stick to it. Tracking conversion rates and the cost per conversion at each point in the customers journey as per the point above is vital. The opportunity to measure the conversion costs has never been greater, so make sure you do, and you give yourself time to correct the mistakes you will inevitably make.
- Rinse and repeat, to learn and improve.
You can pay someone too do all this for you, but even if you do, it is reassuring to understand the principals of the process. Most small businesses are careful with the pennies, so making the effort to understand where your money is going, and how to maximise the impact gives the confidence to make the commitment.
Apr 21, 2015 | Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
I hate you
Small businesses are all aware of the power of Social Media, usually want to play, and mostly get it wrong. Following are the 11 Mistakes I have most often seen over the last few years. This is despite facebook being around since 2004, Twitter since 2006, and the others mostly 5 or 6 years, so you can’t really say this stuff is new anymore.
The application of Digital technology to marketing is the greatest innovation since Guttenberg put ink to paper. It offers small businesses the opportunity to be something other than bound by geographic boundaries and the economics of scale.
- You have no plan.
The last thing you want to do is overlook the first thing you should do every time you allocate some of your scarcest resources. Identify your target audience, do your research, determine your objectives, develop your content, and make your choices of the tools best suited. Then act accordingly, monitor results and improve, rinse and repeat.
- You are working solo.
Solo can be done but is really hard work. I picked up a typo in a mates newsletter a week or so ago, pointed out the page in an email, and he still could not see it. Working solo, you often miss what is right in front of you, and there are only so many things you can do yourself, so pick the ones you can do well, and are necessary, and ignore or outsource the rest.
- You think you are a writer
We are all taught to write at school, that does not make us writers. Of course, you’re not trying to be Hemingway, but quality writing makes a huge difference to the results, even in 140 characters.
- You fail to interest your audience.
Pretty obvious. We have so much blasting at us that we get little chance to impress, a fleeting second at best. Breaking through the mass of communication is critical. Best exercise I usually recommend is to haunt the shelves of your local newsagent for a while, read the headlines of the magazines. Those people know how to attract and interest an audience.
- You’re Not Being Yourself.
It is easier to outsource the blog posts and social media updates, but I recommend that you at the very least read and edit every post that goes out under your name. Authenticity is now almost a cliché, but that is why it is right. Unless you are Barak Obama, people will get annoyed that you are not writing the posts that are under your name. Social media is as much about opinions as they are facts, tell people what you think, recognising not all will agree, and perhaps even better some will dislike you and not come back, leaving a tighter group of advocates. Being a fake, bland, and opinion-less is a quick way to lose credibility and audience.
- You not consistent.
Be regular and predictable in the frequency and length of post, and keep the same style. To some extent this is inconsistent with the “be interesting” advice above, but it is a useful to be maintain the same persona. You would have trouble with a friend if they behaved inconsistently, sometimes late, sometimes early, often unpredictable and erratic. Once or twice can be fun, all the time is tiresome. Same in social media.
- You are careless.
Written communication is far more informal than it was in the past, but that is no excuse for typos, grammatical mistakes, and confusing messages. Some colloquialism and slang is OK, but a little goes a long way.
- You are not visual.
Human beings are visual animals, and visual is becoming easier by the day, so use it. There are many alternatives, stock images, your own shots, video, Instagram, vine, YouTube, and all the rest. Use it to make a point, stand out, and engage.
- You are not tracking the numbers.
This is the last, and most stupid of all, as well as being disturbingly common. The huge benefit of digital marketing is that suddenly, your efforts can be tracked, a genuine calculation of return can be made, suddenly we get to find out which half of our communication budget was being wasted before we had the numbers. if that is not enough, the free analytics are pretty comprehensive, more than most small businesses can easily use.
