Author: Daljeet Singh

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Ethical Marketing Philosophy

How to Write Good Email Subject Lines

Writing email subject lines is the bane of most people’s existence. Honestly, it’s not just you – even experienced marketers stress out about how to write the best email subject line.

In this video, I talk a little about the mindset I think you should have when writing subject lines, and present some formulas that could help if you’re struggling with coming up with good subject lines for your emails.

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How do you write a good subject line?

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do it will help me loads and if you click the bell then you’ll be notified when I release new videos.

Subject lines ugh!

These are the bane of most marketers’ existence. Believe me, it is. You think it’s just “Oh, you just need to write a line.” It’s difficult. Anyone who’s written a subject line knows this. It is super difficult.

I’m gonna use this video to show you a few formulas that you could use but also just to make sure you’ve got the right mindset when you’re sitting down to write your subject lines.

First: Test & Measure Everything

The first thing I need to make sure that you really understand is that you need to test and measure everything.

Take every advice you hear about subject lines with a pinch of salt because it will all have been tested and measured on something that isn’t your audience, that isn’t your product, and, most importantly, is not at the time that you’re using it.

People respond to subject lines so dramatically differently at such different times and events in the world will change the way people react to subject lines. So you need to test and measure it for yourself.

And your audience is completely unique to everyone else’s. Your product is unique to other people’s. So, test and measure. Test and measure everything that’s the first thing you need to know.

Test One-Word Subject Lines

The second thing I want to make sure you do is test one-word subject lines.

Now, this used to frustrate me immensely in my previous job when I used to work for business coaches. I used to work for Shweta Jhajharia and when we were doing our emails then, when the clients were doing emails, it was always one-word subject lines. Those were the things that worked really well.

There’s a lot of theory as to why that works. I think the most compelling of which is that in one word you can convey so little that people need to open the email in order to figure out what you’re talking about with that one word.

But one-word subject lines work. The open rates work. That’s my experience. And as I said at the start of this, take everything with a pinch of salt. If you’re thinking, “It won’t work for me,” test it. I think this is the first thing you should be testing if you’re trying to increase your open rate on your emails.

Of course, one-word subject lines don’t work for everyone. It doesn’t work for every audience, it doesn’t work for every product. It doesn’t work for everything that you’re trying to do in email. But it is the place to start if you are concerned about your open rate.

Formulas to Test Subject Lines

What I’m going to give you now is a formula that I think you can use to test your subject lines.

I kind of like to stay away from the gimmicky things like ‘add numbers’,  ‘add pound signs’, you know ‘use clickbaity headlines’ – that kind of thing. It may work, you may want to test it, it’s all over the internet if you really want to find it.

But I think to distill down to the thing that I think you should really try is to use a subject line that really speaks to your target person. And these formulas might help you do that.

The PAS Formula

The first formula is the one that I’ve seen a lot, that I learned a lot when I was first starting in marketing which is PAS. Pain, Agitate, Solution.

And the whole point of PAS is that you’re trying to dig down deep into the pain that you are solving as a business, you want to drive a little bit harder, and then you want to present your solution.

And when it comes to subject lines you probably only need the P and the A in the subject line and then you need the Solution in the email itself.

And that’s the whole point of subject lines – you need to make sure that you’re giving a payoff. Please, please, please don’t use clickbaity subject lines that don’t give a payoff.

An example of this PAS type thing is that let’s say you’re selling vegan cheese and you are like okay… or you’re selling vegan pizzas. And your subject line might be:

“Cooking sucks, especially after a long monday.” So you’ve given this pain of cooking sucks, you’ve made it worse because it’s on a long monday. And then you open the email and it’s like, “You don’t have to cook, your pizza can come right to your door.” So then you’ve given the solution.

So that’s the PAS formula that’s pretty common.

Instead of PAS, Try BED

The reason I don’t really like the PAS formula is that it comes from pain. And that means your marketing starts to have a few negative words in it – which can be great, it can really drive people really well – but it can become a slippery slope into some really bad marketing that has some really bad unintended effects.

So I thought about it maybe we can flip this formula around and we can do BED, which would be Benefit, Enhance, Deliver.

And so you can do the same sort of thing you do with the pain and agitate and solution thing but instead, start with a benefit. Start with a reason why people would like the thing that you’re doing and then drive that home by making it even better and then deliver that result to them in the easiest way.

So going back to the vegan pizza example you can have the subject line as, “Vegan pizza that actually tastes like cheese – and it stretches!” And so you’ve got that benefit you’ve got that enhancing – it does the stretchy thing – and then when they open the email it’s like, “Delivered directly to your door within 30 minutes.”

That’s just a really simple example but it’s a great way to do subject lines in a way that has this ‘sell the next click’ thing and really delivers on that and really amps up the emotion inside.

Key Point: Be Emotive

And that’s the key thing I want to leave you on is whatever you’re testing, anything, any kind of test that you’re trying to do with your subject line, just try and make sure you’re looking at it from an emotive point of view and not just a descriptive. Your subject line is trying to create emotion or like stoke emotion and not just describe what is in the email.

So I hope that helps you with testing your subject lines if you need any help you want to talk it out have a little sounding board, I’m happy to have a little call with you and discuss what you’re doing what you’re trying to achieve and maybe I can help with some ideas.

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Step 5: Managing Your Marketing Resources

Don’t Learn Marketing Tactics

When you’re starting to learn marketing, it can get super overwhelming – there are so many tricks and tips on what to do on Instagram, Facebook, Email, your blog to get more people to pay attention to you.

But as a business owner, you really shouldn’t be spending all your time learning how to use those platforms. You should be spending most of your time doing the marketing work that’s going to continue making your marketing effective further into the future.

You need to think about strategy, not just tactics.

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Think strategy, not tactics. In this video, we’re going to be talking about the mindset that you need to have as a business owner when you’re thinking about marketing because it can get really, really overwhelming.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do it will help me loads and if you click the bell you’ll get notified when I release new videos.

Learning Marketing is Overwhelming

So, today want to be talking about a mindset that you need to have and it’s really important in marketing because there are so many things in marketing. Have you ever sat down at your desk and thought, “Okay, I’m gonna do marketing for my business today!” and then you just look at all of it and it’s just– there’s so many things to do! So many things to learn. There are so many courses on marketing. There are so many tricks and tips to learn on how to make Instagram work for you, how to make Facebook work for you, how to make email work for you… it can get really, really overwhelming.

Learn the ‘Why’ Not the ‘How To’

The point is – and this is the key thing you need to have in your head – is that you need to think strategy, not tactics. And what I mean by this is that you need to be thinking about how these things work and why these things work rather than how to make them work.

In the end you should be leaving the tactics to the people who know how to use them, the people who use them all the time. Hire a person who knows how to use social media, if social media is the channel for you.

Marketing Strategy Questions to Ask Yourself

But as the business owner, as the architect of your marketing strategy, you need to be thinking,

“Is this the right channel for my marketing?”

“Is this where my target person is?”

“Can I convey my unique selling point really clearly on this medium?”

“Is this platform a place where people are going to take the action that I want them to take?”

These are the kind of questions that you need to be asking and have the answers to not,

“How do I post on Instagram?”

“How do I get more followers on Instagram?”

Getting more followers on Instagram is the result that you want to get because you know that Instagram is the place where your customer is.

Example of Strategic Questions for SEO

And the same thing goes for something like SEO or email, right. What is the kind of person that is going to be using that? If it’s SEO you’re thinking,

“Is this something that people actively search for on Google?”

“Is this the kind of thing that Google is going to promote?”

“Is it saturated on Google?”

These are the questions you need to be asking yourself.

This is Step 1 and 2 of the Content-Led Marketing Strategy

So, as a business owner, you need to start taking a little step back from all of the shiny things in marketing and think strategy. And that is why my whole thing, when I’m teaching marketing, is all about strategy.

It’s all about thinking, “Who is my target person? Do I understand them really well? Do I understand where they come from, why they care about my product, what drives them, what makes them want to buy the thing that I’m selling? And how am I unique? Why do they want to buy from me in particular?”

These are the first two steps of the content-led marketing strategy, and they are the most important, I cannot overemphasize this. This is what it’s all about. It is about strategising, and as a business owner – as a smart business owner, as an ethical business owner – you really want to be building your marketing strategy around that foundation.

Because then it doesn’t matter what channel you choose. It doesn’t matter what tactics you take, the strategy is the bit that’s going to form a solid foundation that will keep your business running no matter how the market changes.

And believe me marketing changes so much. It changes so often, you’re never going to be able to keep up unless you are actually actively doing marketing all the time.

So, focus on strategy, not on tactics and believe me you’ll have a better business.

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Ethical Marketing Philosophy

The Ethics of Targeting Oppressed Communities

When you’re trying to figure out your target person (or niche), you may find that you’re targeting a community that has historically faced oppression.

So how do you then make sure you’re selling to this community without furthering their oppression and the disadvantages they face? Doing so might appear like taking a hit to your bottom-line, but doing this may well also increase your sales as you genuinely support the very community you’re selling to.

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What are the ethics around targeting a systemically oppressed community? Hi I’m DJ from Rainbow Dragon Digital and in today’s video I want to talk about that really difficult gray area of where you are trying to sell to a community that has been historically and systemically oppressed.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do it will help me out loads and if you click the bell you’ll be notified when I release new videos.

When Your Target Person is in a Oppressed Community

So step one, in you know the marketing strategy that I have based my entire website around is Understanding Your Target Person. And for a lot of people, their target person will be a member of an oppressed community, such as the LGBTQIA+ community, such as black people, such as persons with disabilities. These are all- you know there are lots and lots of communities that have faced historic oppression, that have faced and continue to face systemic oppression. And it becomes really difficult as a business as an ethical business to think how do I market to this community without contributing to that systemic oppression.

Now as an ethical business you really don’t need to panic if you discover or realise that your target person is actually a member of an oppressed community. It is actually a super great marketing opportunity to not only do the right thing and be a great ethical business but also to get more customers. And here’s how you do it.

How to Make This An Ethical Marketing Opportunity

The first thing you need to do is go back to that step one, understand your target person and that means understand their oppression. Not only understanding the oppression that’s happening today but understand the history of the oppression. Go back, do some reading, do some learning, really understand who it is that you’re targeting and where they’ve come from as a community – not just as individuals but as a community. If you can really understand the history of their oppression you will already be miles ahead of your competition in terms of making sure that you are actively helping this community.

Be Actively Against Oppression

Which brings me on to the second thing that you need to do which is not just not be discriminating or not be oppressing but you need to be actively against oppression. What I mean by this is is exactly the conversation that’s been had and continues to be had around BLM, the Black Lives Matter movement, which is we need to stop just being not racist but we need to be actively anti-racist. We need to be actively acting against oppression especially if you, your business, and your own community is in a position of privilege, you need to be using that privilege to act against the oppression that other people are facing.

Now, in the business context, in your marketing context, this is only beneficial to you. Because if your target person is in this oppressed community and you as a business are taking an active stance to support that community, to act against their oppression, this only benefits you because those people will therefore like your brand more will want to buy from you more and you will be serving your ultimate purpose, which is to serve that community.

And so, actually as a modern ethical business, serving a community that’s systemically oppressed – it should be easy. It should actually be the easiest thing.

But What About When You Serve A Privileged Community?

The real difficulty comes when your business perhaps doesn’t serve an oppressed community. Maybe when your business actually serves a privileged community. What do you do then?

Well, in my opinion, and this is just my opinion, I think if you are conscious that your target person is a part of a privileged community then you need to really observe who it is that that privileged community typically is exerting systemic oppression on. And the people that that community is exerting systemic oppression on, you need to start taking an active stance in dismantling that systemic oppression.

It can be really difficult as a business to take the decision to be anti-oppression and take the hit to your bottom line that that entails. And if it doesn’t take a hit to your bottom line then there’s a good chance that you’re not actually doing anything anti-oppressive and you’re doing something that’s more performative.

But I think if you did take that step and you did take that hit to the bottom line, I think your customers, you know the ones that are actually ethical, they’ll appreciate it and it will be better for your business overall, as long as you’re playing the long game and you want to build a business that is ethical and continues to last.

I hope that helps with you using your marketing to help break down systemic oppression. It’s something that I’m really passionate about something that I hope that more businesses will become passionate about and I think we’re seeing it happening. So, I hope you get on board with that train and you are helping to break this stuff down so that we can live in a better world together.

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Step 2: Defining Your USP

A Goldmine of Selling Points

There’s a much-overlooked source for finding your strongest selling points that could be a game-changer for small businesses looking to improve the quality of their marketing message.

And you don’t even have to do much writing… (or thinking!)

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You may already have a gold mine at your disposal to find your selling points. Hi I’m DJ from Rainbow Dragon Digital and in today’s video I’m going to talk about a source where you could be finding loads of selling points and you might have missed it.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do. Hit the bell and you’ll get notified when I release new videos.

So, this gold mine I’m talking about are your reviews!

If you don’t have reviews…

And if you don’t have reviews, then I’m sorry but you should be getting reviews! You should be asking your customers to please leave you reviews on Google, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on wherever it is that your customer lives. Ask them: “Please, please, review us! We need your reviews!”

Don’t be afraid to beg for reviews! They’re really, really important to your business.

Have you been looking at your negative reviews?

And if you do have reviews I would hazard a guess that you have spent most of your time looking at the negative reviews. And you’ve got some negative reviews really burned into your head. They are like things that you remember so much. And they’re really front of mind when you’re making business decisions – you don’t want to disappoint a customer the way you did that one.

However, your negative reviews are not the place where you’re going to find the best way to grow your business and make your business better.

Your Positive Reviews Are Your Gold!

It is the positive reviews that are going to help you. What I mean by this is that your positive reviews are exactly the things that your customers were so happy about that they were willing to go on and write about it. That means they were so, so happy. They weren’t just satisfied, they were happy!

So you want to go and look back at your reviews. Go back and read through them again. Because it is not natural for us to absorb those positive reviews and keep them front of mind. So go back and review them. You might have forgotten some of the really, really good reviews.

And you know – that’s a nice exercise anyway it feels good to read good reviews.

Look at what was important to your customers

But more importantly, take a look at what they’re saying. Take a look at what are the things that were important to them. What are the things that really made you shine in their eyes? And those are your selling points. Those are the things that your customer genuinely cares about and those are things, if you don’t have them front and center on your website or on your marketing material wherever it is that you communicate with your customers, get it on there!

That is your gold. That is the thing that’s going to sell. That is the thing that is going to make new customers want to work with you.

I hope that helps. I hope that is a really quick thing that you can do right now and improve your marketing immediately and if you’re struggling with it or if you’re looking at your reviews and you’re not quite sure how to word it, please feel free to get in touch, I will be happy to help you as long as I have the time to do it.

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Step 5: Managing Your Marketing Resources

When Do I Automate?

In one of my mentoring sessions, one of the major goals they wanted to achieve was to figure out where and how to automate their marketing and sales processes.

This stimulated a discussion that I later realised should definitely be something I share in a video!

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When is it the right time to automate?

In this article, we’re going to talk about the process that you should go through in order to decide what to automate and how.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do it’ll help me with my YouTube functionality and if you press the bell then you can be notified when I release new videos.

Wasted Time on Sales & Marketing – What Do We Automate?

The reason I wanted to do this video today was because one of the businesses that I’m mentoring was thinking that they really want to automate loads of processes and start freeing up a lot of their time that is being wasted in managing their sales team and managing the marketing leads and stuff like that.

They thought that automating is definitely the way forward in making sure that they can start working on their business instead of just getting caught up in the day-to-day.

Now the problem was though they weren’t really clear on what they needed to automate. And that was, I guess, the big question is like, “What do I automate?” So, before you can start automating anything you need to know what are your processes.

Flowchart Your Processes Before Your Automate

The way to go about figuring out what are your processes is, honestly, pen and paper. To me it’s this is the easiest way to do it is that you get a piece of pen and paper and you start drawing out a flow chart.

What I mean by a flow chart is you draw a little box and you write what’s happening in that box. You draw an arrow that says for this situation go here for that situation go there.

There’s obviously flowcharting rules and you can google about flowcharting rules and if you want to follow those rules properly you can do that. It’s good in terms of if you need to communicate it to other people, maybe to get an automation expert to help you, might want to follow flowchart rules.

However, if you’re just trying to do this for your own internal sense to get an understanding of your process just do what makes sense to you. Write down on the piece of paper what makes sense to you. Map out how everything works. Where are all of the moving parts? When a lead comes in, who is the first person to do any action on that lead? What do they need to activate? What do they need to email? What do they need to call? What questions are they asking? Write down everything that you can think of.

Figure Out The Most Common Path

But this can start to get overwhelming especially when your systems might be really complex depending on what the customer needs. This example of the business that I was mentoring, they’re providing psychological services to people through an app and so it obviously gets quite complex once you start digging out into what that customer needs once the lead comes in.

So, how do you figure out a flow chart when every single individual question creates a whole new path?

The key here is a saying that my old boss used to say Shweta Jhajharia she always used to say systemise the rule and humanise the exception. And what this means is, think about the most common path.

What is it that almost every single one of your customers do? And there will be a common path that most of your customers go through. Design your automation based on that most common path.

And then have an escape function. As soon as something happens that means they have to divert from the common path, then you start humanising. You get someone involved that will require that extra level of expertise.

Then once you’ve got this path defined you can then see how much of that can be automated.

Automation Doesn’t Have to Be Machine-Done

Automation doesn’t just mean getting a computer to do it. Automation can also mean creating a process that means a human can follow that process without much thought.

And that could be you, that could be a team member, that could be an outsourced person who you don’t really have to think about too much you just send it off to them and they do it.

When you’ve got a system in place, you don’t have to do any training, you don’t have to do any checking and updates. You’ve got a process it’s systemised. That is a form of automation.

Now, obviously, automation is very complex and there are lots of ways to do it lots of software to use if you want to have a discussion about it at any point you absolutely can message me let me know what you’re doing and I will be happy to help you as long as i have the time to do it.

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Ethical Marketing Philosophy

Is Cheap Outsourcing Ethical?

It’s become pretty normalised for businesses in higher GDP economies to outsource work to less developed countries. It’s often considered an almost primary option for reducing business costs. But can we really call this kind of business ethical?

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Is outsourcing cheap labor ethical?

In this video, I want to discuss the ethics of outsourcing work to countries that have weaker economies so that you can pay them less.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do I share lots of videos about marketing tips and also about marketing ethics. (And hit the bell if you want to be notified when I release a new video.)

Outsourcing Marketing is Normal, Right?

So, it’s pretty normal in today’s society that a company in somewhere like the UK or the US or Australia, they outsource some of their simpler tasks to countries like India or Philippines or Indonesia. And it seems reasonable because you can pay them less and you’re supporting a country that has a desperate need for work.

Now let’s talk a little bit about the ethics of this though.

Is Outsourcing Really Supporting Other Economies?

Are you really supporting the country that is desperate for labour or are you exploiting people who are desperate for work?

I think the key point here is are you paying the minimum wage in the country where you’re earning money? Because ultimately if you are paying someone less than the minimum wage in the country where you’re earning money, then you’re paying them less than you are legally obligated to in your country. To me that sounds like exploitation.

Disclaimer: I’m Not An Economist!

Now, I realise that there are loads and loads and loads of complexities around this, and economics is definitely not my expertise, so I would love to hear from you if you are an expert in economics and you have an alternative viewpoint on how this is genuinely beneficial.

But if you are a business owner and you are thinking about hiring someone in a foreign country because it’s cheaper – and your primary motivation is that it’s cheaper – then I would really stop and consider whether you are acting within the ethical boundaries that you set for yourself as a business owner.

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Step 1: Understanding Your Target Person

Your Most Important Business Decision-Making Tool

I ran a workshop a few weeks ago on marketing for hospitality businesses. One of the participants was telling the restaurants on the call that they should all be looking to build their own app. His reasoning made sense, in an old-school business sense.

I was grateful he had mentioned it because to me it highlighted a deeper and more important tool that business owners – especially those who want to practice their marketing ethically – should be keeping in the front of their mind.

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What is the most important decision-making tool in your toolbox?

In this video, I’m talk about this really important mindset that you need to have when you’re making any decision in your business.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do it’ll help me you know get YouTube features and of course you’ll be notified when I release new videos as long as you click the little bell.

The Suggested Strategy That Prompted This Video

So, I was running a workshop recently for a bunch of hospitality businesses that ranged from large franchises down to a local social enterprise and there was a lot of peer sharing that went on rather than just me teaching and it was really great. What was interesting though was that one guy started speaking up about a strategy that he thought all the other restaurant owners on the call should be using.

His suggestion to everyone was that every restaurant should be building an app. That every single restaurant should be building an app because things like Deliveroo and Just Eat, they take a large chunk of your share every time someone orders food through them. And I found this interesting, and I probably disagreed with it a little bit.

Do This Because It “Affects the Bottom Line”

Now, his reasoning was that, you know, they’re taking a chunk of your (share) and what he kept saying was, “This is affecting your bottom line, this is affecting your bottom line.” And I was like…I was so uncomfortable with this, and if you’ve been following my videos you’ll you’ll realise I was immediately uncomfortable with this, but I also realised it was actually bad business sense.

Why Using the Bottom Line is Bad Business Sense

Now, rather old school, or perhaps simplistic, business logic is if it’s affecting your bottom line it is the first thing you need to do, it is the first thing that you need to take action on and it is where you start with making your business more profitable. While, I understand the logic there, I think there’s actually a stronger way to make your business better especially in the long run.

The Better Tool in Your Business Toolbox to Use

So, the most important question you’re asking yourself, the most important tool in your toolbox, is not “Is this affecting the bottom line?” but “Does my target person want this?” And what’s funny about this is that when you start building your business, when you start making all your decisions based on whether your customer actually wants it or not, you will impact your bottom line! It’s just a longer game. You just need to go beyond the numbers that you’re seeing in front of you on the sheet that you’re looking at and instead start thinking about, “Well, will this create long-term gain for my business?”

So, going back to the example of the app for the restaurants, now that might work for maybe a large, franchised business that has a large audience that might be eating quite frequently at their restaurants and people want to get it cheaper than if they go to Deliveroo. But it might not work so well for a small social enterprise with limited resources who need to do what’s most valuable to their customer right now. But it may also work for that small social enterprise if they know they’ve got a large loyal following that do want to have that sense of community, maybe an app makes sense.

But the important thing here is that decision should not be being made based on whether it affects the bottom line but based on whether the customer wants it.

So I hope that that mindset shift helps you just a little bit make your business a little bit better, makes your business serve your customer a little bit better.

If you want to talk about any of this kind of thing I’m happy to have an hour-long session with anyone I won’t be selling anything I will just be talking about what you need in your business and helping you especially if you’re doing something that’s helping to change the world.

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Step 4: Creating Your Content Ideas

Just Sell the Next Click

A big mistake that many business owners make when writing their marketing is that they are trying to sell their product.

Here’s the thing, you aren’t selling your product in every piece of marketing you do – you’re just selling the next click.

Let me elaborate…

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When you’re writing content, Sell The Next Click.

In this video, I’m talking about a really important concept to keep in mind whenever you’re writing any content on any medium about how what it is you’re actually selling in that piece of content.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already, please do. You will help me loads and you’ll get access to new videos where I’m sharing loads of marketing tips.

When Writing Content People Start with Features

When you’re writing a piece of content, often start with the product, they start with the features and then they realise, ‘Oh no, I shouldn’t be selling the features. I should be selling the benefits and the pains, the problem that I’m solving.’ The problem, promise, proof that I’ve talked about in a previous video.

That makes sense, yes, you’re already halfway there. You’re talking about the problem, you’re talking about the benefits to the customer. You’re understanding the target customer and stuff. There’s another step you can take here and the best example is in Email Marketing.

Email Marketing Provides the Best Example

I’ve chosen email marketing as an example because everyone knows email marketing. They know how it works, they know the structure of it. You’ve received emails before. If you haven’t received emails, I’m really impressed and I want to know what kind of life you live…contact me? I want to know about these people who don’t have emails…

But as most people have experienced emails, they know there is a subject line, there is the content of the email and then they click on it and they go to a page. The key point here is that you’re selling the next click. So, when you write the subject line, you’re not trying to go with the problems and the benefits of the product and blah blah blah. What you’re trying to get them to do is open the email.

And when they open the email and they read the email, that email needs to sell the click to go to the landing page. You don’t need to talk about everything in the email. You don’t need to go through all of your problem, promise, proof. You probably will go through a problem, promise, proof cycle, but a very short one, a very sharp one that leaves them wanting more.

Therefore they click on the link, get to the landing page and when they get to the landing page you’re then selling them to fill out a form, to request whatever you want them to request, to buy whatever you want them to buy. So that’s where you’re really talking about the benefits and the pains and really driving it home.

Everything Has To Be Congruent

The key thing to remember here is that all of that has to be congruent. You cannot sell the click of the subject line with some clickbait-y subject line and then not give them payoff in the email. And equally, you cannot write the email and then go to the landing page and it be for something completely different, or not satisfying the curiosity that you’ve created in that email. The entire chain needs to be one thing, one piece of content, but you need to consider each piece as selling to get to the next stage.

This Can Also Be Expressed as “The Small Yes”

Another way to frame this is “the small yes”. You’re trying to get them to say the “small yes”. And this has implications beyond things like email marketing in that when you’re trying to get people to buy your product, get them to make a smaller decision first that gets them in the habit of saying yes to you.

The example that I’ve seen of this – and I apologise, I would reference where I heard this, but I can’t remember, it’s something that’s just stuck in my head, and I can’t remember where I heard it, it was probably in some training – but the example of the small yes is like a place that’s selling cars and the system on the website gets you to make some small decisions about the car first. You know, what colour is it, what tyres do you want, what kind of seats do you want, and so on.

So you make lots of little decisions. And as you make each little decision, you’re more and more likely to click the big yes when it comes to the price.

Don’t Make the Process Too Long or Decisions Too Difficult

There are good ways and bad ways of doing this. You can obviously make a process way too long and people will get fed up of it. Or you can make those decisions really difficult so then they give up because the decisions are too difficult. It’s a really fine art of getting the small yes, and understanding what degree it is that you can ask for.

It All Comes Back to Understanding Your Target Person

And what this all comes back to is step 1, which is why I constantly tell people to spend a lot of time in step 1, in understanding your target person. Really get inside their head, really understand them emotionally. Understand when they get impatient. Understand at what point you can push them to buy, at which point do you need to give them a bit more information, and at which point you can get them to give you a small yes.

I hope that helps you a little bit in understanding how you can amp up your marketing, improve your marketing in those small increments to give it a little more effectiveness in any channel on any medium you’re working in.

If you need some clarification, if you didn’t understand what I said, if you want me to maybe look over your writing, or your whole marketing strategy, your processes you’re trying to get those small yeses, please get in touch. dj@rainbowdragon.digital is the best way to get in touch with me and I look forward to hearing from you.

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Ethical Marketing Philosophy

You Don’t Want High Paying Clients

A reality of doing business is that it has to be profitable in order to survive – profit is the fuel that runs your business.

This has often led many businesses to focus on the ‘high ticket’ clients as the criteria of “can they afford it” becomes the most important qualifying factor.

That’s when we start swimming in some less ethical marketing waters…

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You do not want high paying clients.

Hi, I’m DJ from Rainbow Dragon Digital and in today’s video I’m going to be talking about how targeting your customers based on how much they can pay could be a really bad idea.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already, please do. It will help me loads and you’ll be notified when I release new videos.

Your Target Person Should Involve Affordability Factors, Right?

So, a lot of marketers, a lot of business coaches, a lot of people who want to grow businesses will tell you that your criteria for how you target your market should involve how much they can pay. And I get it, this totally makes logical sense. If they can’t afford your services, why on earth would you target them?

Let’s start off by me saying that that is totally valid. I’m not arguing that you shouldn’t be using whether they can afford your service as a part of your targeting.

Yeah, I mean, I get it. It makes sense to be thinking about whether they can afford your services or not, and you don’t want to waste time with people who can’t afford your services, but let’s talk about that just a little bit and the kind of systemic problems there.

The Ethical Problems with Targeting Only Those Who Can Pay

Now, I know a lot of you have turned off as soon as I’ve said ‘systemic problems’ but if you want to be practicing your business ethically this is something you really need to consider.

If you’re completely rejecting people based on the fact that they can’t afford your product, then you’re probably contributing to a world where only people who have money are able to access the thing you do.

Now, this may be fine for a lot of people. Maybe if you do luxury goods, if you do something that’s not really that important but if you’re solving a really difficult problem that a lot of people have then you might want to consider how you’re able to help the people who can’t quite afford it.

And this doesn’t mean that you serve everyone who can’t afford it. This means that you find ways to make sure that you are helping some of those and you’re not only helping the people who can pay you a lot.

The Ethical Problem with Targeting “High-Paying” Clients

Now the other issue that comes in here with quite heavily targeting people who can afford your product is the phrasing of it and what that ends up meaning.

The phrasing of “I’m targeting people who can afford it” is more valid than “I’m targeting high-paying clients.”

This is where people fall into the trap.

They start to think, “Oh, these clients give me a higher margin and, therefore, I need to target them more.” They stop just targeting those who can afford it, and start targeting those who can pay the most for it.

You then start to craft your entire business around these people who can pay more, who can pay you exorbitant amounts for the thing you do, leaving the other people – who probably more genuinely need your help – to not have the best service from you.

The thing you need to be looking out for here is, are you giving your better service to someone only because they have more money? You might be giving a better service to them because they have bought more of your products and therefore you need to then provide more of a service. That is different from giving them a better service than the other people just because they’re paying more money for a similar thing.

It’s Not Just the Systemic Problems – It’s About Your Own Enjoyment Too

The really funny thing here is that it’s not even just about the impact on society or the fact that you’re supporting people who have more money than the people who don’t. It’s also going to be bad for you!

If you’re not aligning values – if you’re not using values as a higher priority than money – then you are inevitably going to end up with people who are paying you a lot who are not aligned with who you are and you’re going to hate working with them.

So, in the end, it benefits you as well to mitigate a little bit against targeting people who can just pay you a lot. It will make for a better business, you’ll make for a better world, and you’ll be happier as a businessperson.

I hope that makes sense to you if you disagree if you have a comment on it if you want to discuss this some more please put a comment on this video or on the blog post if you’re reading it watching it there or just send me a message. I’m happy to discuss this stuff I love chatting about it. So, please do message me if you want to talk about issues like this.

Categories
Step 3: Choosing Your Channels

Is Social Media a Good Marketing Channel?

At first, social media seems like the obvious choice for marketing for a small business – it doesn’t cost you any money and there’s that alluring possibility of going viral.

But is it really the best choice for a small business to focus their marketing time, effort and cognitive power on?

Social media is not my main marketing channel, and here’s why I don’t think it should be yours either.

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Social media is not where you should be spending most of your time as a small business.

In today’s video I’m going to be talking about why I don’t rate social media as a very good strategy for when you’re a small business trying to start up.

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do it will help me loads and it will mean that you get updated with new videos.

Woo! Social Media! It’s Free!

So, social media, right? Everyone’s like, “Ahh! Free way to get the word out! You know, I just need to get people talking on social media and then I can go viral and, you know then I don’t have to spend any money on like expensive marketing techniques.”

No, Social Media is Not Free

Firstly, I want to dispel this myth that social media is free. Social media is not free. Social media uses up a lot of your time. And your time, especially when you’re in the startup stage or small business stage, your time is so, so valuable because you are so important to the business at the moment. So, firstly let’s erase this myth. Social media is costing you. It’s costing you a lot in time. It’s not costing you a lot of money, it is costing you a lot in time.

If you have the luxury of time, which I guess some of us might do in lockdown, then, yeah, go for it spend all that time on it. But be aware that you’re spending that time on that and not something else in your business.

Is Social Media Taking More From Us Than Just Time?

But also on the point of it being ‘free’, if you haven’t watched The Social Dilemma, I highly recommend you do. And, basically, there’s a big concern with social media platforms and all these free platforms that it’s not quite free in that, yes it’s free monetary-wise but you become the product. They’re now selling you and your data and there are far wider-reaching implications for that that they go into in a lot of depth in The Social Dilemma and it’s worth considering. And it’s worth considering whether social media is really a place that you want to be building the foundation of your marketing strategy.

Social Media Should Not Be The Foundation of Your Marketing Strategy

When we’re talking about the foundations of your marketing strategy this is where I’m really having the problem with social media. So, to be really clear, I’m not saying that social media is not something you should be on. I mean you might be accessing this video through one of my social media channels. I’m definitely not saying abandon social media altogether.

What I’m saying is it shouldn’t be your main source of traffic. It shouldn’t be your main target. Where you’re pouring all of your energy in your business because of a few reasons.

Your Social Channels Could Be Taken Away At Any Moment

One is that as we’ve seen with a certain orange world leader that if for whatever reason you come onto the bad side of any platform they have full rights to drop you. And one of my clients does some sex work and runs a spanking website dreamsofspanking.com and what we’re finding quite difficult is when all of these platforms are now starting to become very inhospitable to sex work.

Now you may be like, “Well, you know, my business is perfectly fine and it’s perfectly kosher. Everyone likes it. It’s never going to be a problem.” And, sure, that may be the case and probably is the case and so your social media channels will probably be fine but you have no idea if this company is going to start becoming unpopular soon. What happens when people do actually (finally) move off Facebook, what happens then? All of that effort and time that you poured into Facebook will then have to go into somewhere else. You’re not building a foundation.

Social Media is a Channel, Not a Strategy

So social media should be seen as a channel to push out stuff that you have built as a foundation elsewhere. So, this is the subtlety I’m looking for here. I’m looking for you to understand that social media is definitely a channel you should use but it shouldn’t form the foundation of your marketing. As in, if social media goes away, does your business fail? And if that’s the case, you need to be reconsidering how your marketing strategy is laid out.

So What Marketing Strategy Should You Be Focused On?

What I would recommend instead is that as with almost every business word of mouth is your main thing. So first, your first port of call, is make sure that you are incentivising the people who are already enjoying your business to tell other people. This will work through social media, naturally. Social media serves as a function of that strategy but the foundation of that strategy, teaching people to tell other people about you, can translate to a whole lot of different channels.

I would also recommend that you do things like building your own email list because you have a little bit more safety with keeping that list in check. And, you know, just building relationships is always the strongest thing in the small business world. And I know that there are a lot of people who have get-rich-quick and grow-fast type strategies that will disagree that building relationships is the best way to go. And they are absolutely right. It is not a way to get rich quick. What it is, is a way of building a business that has longevity and can last.

And so it’s what are the goals of your business? If your goal is to just make money really quickly then yeah go for these other strategies as your foundation and don’t worry about it if your business is going to die later, because you don’t actually care about that. But if you want to build your business as an asset, if you want it to be something that you can be proud of, then put in the time on the things that really matter.

If You Are Using Social, Automate It.

I hope that kind of helps you think about the way that you’re doing things on social media and think about the strategies you’re choosing to put your time and effort into. And if you are needing to use social media I would highly recommend you use some automation tools. I’m using one at the moment called Publer – they do not sponsor me or anything it’s just the one I am actually using – and other ones that people really love are Buffer, Hootsuite – and I’ve used both of them they are great, the only reason I moved to Publer was because they have a lot more free channels that you can use. If you’re interested, let me know I can definitely give you a little rundown of the different social media automation that you can use.

Target New, Niche Social Media Channels

Oh! There’s one more point I want to make on social media is that there are lots of new social media. So the big channels – Facebook, Twitter LinkedIn, you know, Pinterest – these are important to be on just to show that you have visibility. But if you’re gonna think social media and you’re wanting to think, “How do I get people to talk about me?” Go back to your target person, understand who they are, and figure out where they might be. They might not be on the social media channels that you’re thinking and there might be other social media channels, new social media channels, that people are flocking to as they start to realise these bigger ones are less ethical than they would like them to be.

This is obviously way more complex than can be done in any video blog so if you do want to know more please feel free to get in touch and I will be happy to walk you through a bunch of other automations and ways that you can use social media to best effect within the little ecosystem of marketing that you’ve created.