Even the best writers cannot look at a blank page and produce fantastic copywriting.
The framework I explain in this video is something that you can apply to just about any piece of content you’re producing for your business to give your copywriting flow and strength.
In this video, I teach you a little framework that I learned right at the start of my career that has helped me constantly with writing copywriting in any medium.
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Copywriting is a Fundamental Marketing Skill
When it comes to copywriting it can be really difficult sometimes to figure out how you order stuff and what’s the best way to convey the information. And copywriting is a real fundamental skill in selling your product and in doing any kind of marketing. My first principle is Marketing is Education, Not Deception, and if you’re going to educate your customers about your product or service you need to learn how to write about it.
Where I Heard About the 3P Copywriting Framework
When I first started learning about marketing, I went to a marketing coach’s talk in LA. His name was Taki Moore. He was a coach for coaches, and I was working for business coaches at the time (they sent me to his workshop to learn). So, I learned a lot of my fundamental marketing from him.
One of the frameworks that he gave us during that workshop which stuck with me was the 3P framework for copywriting.
It’s called the 3P framework because it’s three words that start with P, haha fancy that!
Start with the Problem
The first P is Problem. When you start writing any copy the first thing you need to start with is the problem. This is where your research starts, your understanding of your target person – the ‘Step 1’ of the 5 Steps of you Content-Led Marketing Strategy that I’m always talking about, where you understand your target person – you need to know what are the problems that they have and, specifically the problems that they have that you are solving.
When you start any piece of copywriting start with the problem. Start with explaining the problem in better words than they can, and they will attribute the solution to you. That was what Taki Moore said to us and it’s entirely correct, it’s fundamental to marketing. Start with the problem.
Make Your Promise
The second P is Promise. So, once you’ve iterated what the problem is and they understand that you are addressing this problem for them, you then need to make a promise on how you are going to solve that problem. What is it that your product or service does that solves the problem that they have?
Show Them Proof
And then the last P is Proof. So, you’ve told them the problem, you’ve told them this is exactly how I’m going to help you with resolving that problem, now they want to know that you actually know what you’re talking about and that you have actually done it before.
Proof can come in the form of awards that you’ve won. Proof can come in the form of testimonials of happy clients. It can come in the form of PR and press that shows your recognition in society for what you do.
The best sort of proof, I think, is social proof. And that means that, when they can see it – if you’ve got reviews on Facebook, on Google, on LinkedIn, then these are places where they can see that real people have taken on board what you’ve offered and enjoyed it.
So that’s a really simple framework, I hope that helps you a little bit when you’re staring at a blank page and trying to figure out what to write. Just start with the Problem, Promise, Proof and I promise you, you will start to get a much clearer idea of what you need to write for whatever it is you’re writing.
If you need any help at all with this or if you want my input on your problem promise and proof, then please feel free to get in touch with me and I will be happy to help you out.
A big job of making marketing more ethical is about becoming aware of how some of our actions have unconsciously reinforced systems of oppression. One of the ways this happens is in the way that marketers use data.
I think this is a really important takeaway not only for marketers but for all business leaders that are trying to use data to set direction.
In today’s video I’m going to be talking about how ROI – Return On Investment – might become a tool that’s making your business less ethical.
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Where I Heard About How ROI Can Be Oppressive
Now, I was listening to a podcast episde on the Duct Tape Marketing podcast, about how to increase diversity in your business or something like that, and the whole point of it, and one of the things that I really took away from this episode, was that ROI can become a tool that’s increasing oppression from businesses.
Oppression Makes Sense When You Just Look at The Numbers
How this works is that if a business is constantly focused on the return on investment – the money put in having to match up to money out – it results in a business becoming really focused on making money. And then they stop focusing on things like benefits to the community and how the business can serve the community and serve people around them. Ultimately, they stop focusing on how they can serve to break down the barriers that are in the way for minorities and for anyone who is disadvantaged, because it just makes sense when you look purely at the numbers.
Now, this doesn’t mean that we throw ROI out the window. It doesn’t mean that we have to ignore return as a business. If anything, like, you must – you must – always be focused on the return that your business has.
So, How Can We Use ROI Ethically?
But the point here is that we need to start looking at return on investment as more than money. As more than profit. We need to be okay with putting investment in and the return being building a better business and contributing to the community.
Because when we do that we will be contributing to a better world.
And I think this needs to be a priority for all businesses. One of my values is “Sustainability is Not Optional“. We all – every single business in the world – need to start putting sustainability and fighting oppression and the Sustainable Development Goals at the forefront of all of our businesses.
This concept of return on investment is one that really needs to be tweaked in the minds of business owners so that we start looking at it as that return can be a benefit to all, and not just our own business.
I hope that you enjoyed that video a little bit about business ethics if you disagree, if you have a comment on it, if you agree, I would love to hear from you. Please comment and let me know.
Step 1 in the content-led marketing strategy I’m constantly touting is “Understanding Your Target Person”. Well, there’s another layer ABOVE Target Person that’s just as important to think about in order to refine your marketing messages.
In this video, I explain the difference between a target person (or target market) and your niche, and three ways that you use to think about what kind of niche(s) your business is serving!
In this video I explain the three ways that you can choose your niche and what that means for you, and how you should be shaping your marketing around it.
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So, Step One in the Content-Led Marketing Strategy that I take everyone through is Understanding Your Target Person. Your target person is slightly nuanced from what a niche is, and some people do get these two things confused.
Target Person vs Niche
So, just to clarify what the difference is, is that your target person is the individual who is going to be making the decision to buy your product or service. The niche is the segment of the market that you are serving.
Why this matters is because your marketing is actually more shaped by your niche than it is your target person. It’s shaped by both, obviously – understanding your target person is really important for some of those really fine details when it comes to discussing your product or service, but your niche matters on a much higher level, on a much broader scale.
The First Way to Choose Your Niche
So, how do you choose your niche? There are three ways: the first way is Industry. So, you might be choosing an industry like corporates, you might be choosing sustainable companies, you might be choosing schools, you might be choosing the hospitality industry. These are industries that you might want to niche your business into.
The Second Way to Choose Your Niche
The second way is Culture. And what I mean by this is community and people who have gathered together through shared interest. So, this might be something like hippies, this might be something like festivalgoers, this might be something like rock fans, it might be something like conservatives, it might be something like bird watchers. There’s lots and lots of different cultures and this is probably where most people end up niching.
The Third Way to Choose Your Niche
The third and final way that you can niche is by Product. And what I mean here is that you narrow your offering down into a more specific area of the thing you offer. So, an example here might be instead of a marketer you might be a brand storyteller or a copywriter. Or maybe instead of a healing practitioner, you’re a reiki specialist. Or instead of a corporate fashion company, you’re a corporate sustainable fashion company.
Does Choosing a Niche Alienate Your Other Markets?
There are a few little niggling details that I’m sure you’re wondering about here. A lot of people worry that when they’re targeting a niche, they’re going to alienate everybody else. And this is a fair concern.
Now, if you feel like your product can serve a particular niche, but it also serves a whole lot of other niches, then understand that, lay that out in front of you: what are the different niches that your business serves?
And then segment your marketing accordingly.
What Happens If You Don’t Niche?
This is really important because if you don’t niche, if you don’t understand your niche, if you don’t try to communicate within your niche’s jargon and their language, then your marketing is going to become watery.
As they say, if you’re trying to market to everyone, you’re going to end up selling to no one. So, really, try and understand some of your niches and put some marketing out there that’s targeting those niches.
It Is Ethical Marketing to Have Multiple Niches with Multiple Strategies
Now you don’t have to change your whole business and make it all centred around that one niche. You can have different marketing for different niches and that is fine, that is totally ethical. You’re not changing what you do, you’re not changing your offering or your prices, what you’re doing is you’re changing the way you communicate what you do so that they better understand it.
One of my first principles is that Marketing is Education and Not Deception, and this is where we start to walk that line.
And I want to be really clear here that you’re not trying to tell your niche that you do something that you don’t do. What you’re trying to do is understand your niche so that you can explain what you do in the words that they understand. And so you are educating them on what you do in a way that that they understand, that they respond to.
If you feel like you need any kind of clarification around your niche around your target person, you want to dig down deeper into that it’s something that I’m really enjoying doing with my clients and enjoy doing with people that aren’t even my clients. So, please get in touch I’ll be happy to help you dig down into that target person and refine your marketing a little bit deeper.
This is such a common question that I’m always asked. Google is so ubiquitous it just seems ridiculously obvious that all businesses should jump on and try and flog their wares on there, right?
Maybe not! Here’s my quick take on what to consider before jumping into Google Ads.
Today I’m going to be talking about Google Ads and whether you should be trying them.
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My Experience with Google Ads
I have quite a bit of experience with Google Ads. In my last job, I was working on them all the time both with the clients that the business coaches were working with and for the business coaching firm itself.
And the fundamental answer, the short answer to “Should you be trying Google Ads?” is, “Yes.”
Let me explain why.
The Two Different Types of Ads
So, when it comes to ads there are two different sides of ads. There are Search ads and there are Interruption ads. These are two forms of marketing almost.
What is Interruption Marketing?
The idea here is that Interruption Marketing is all about getting in front of people when they’re not expecting it, when they’re not looking for your business. Things like Facebook ads, billboards, flyers – these are interruption marketing. Where you’re interrupting someone’s flow and trying to get their attention.
What is Search Marketing?
Search marketing on the other hand is when people are actively searching for what you are providing, or actively searching for something, and you then show up in front of that search to try and be the best one there.
There are pros and cons to each of these things and you may want to use different ones for different cases.
When Would You Use Interruption Marketing?
Interruption marketing is really great for brand awareness. It’s really great for getting in front of people that have a similar niche to the people that you’re looking for and maybe helping people find things that they may not even know that they want yet.
When Would You Use Search Marketing?
Search Marketing on the other hand is super, super effective in terms of ROI (return on investment). You’re getting in front of people that you know are looking for the thing that you’re selling. And this is where Google is the undoubted leader.
If You’re Considering Starting Google Ads…
Google Ads has always been super complicated to use. It will involve a bit of a learning curve, if you’re going to start using it. But it’s probable that your business, whatever you’re doing, will get some benefit from Google Ads.
That said, if you’re going to start Google Ads, be prepared to throw some money away first because there has to be a bit of a testing period. You have to spend about a month or two kind of figuring things out, so you have to be prepared to throw away about a month or two of budget.
How Much Budget Should You Use?
And how much budget should you be using? Well, how long is a piece of string, right? But I think as a minimum you should be looking to spend about £500 a month. So, if you don’t have £500 – you don’t have a £1000 – to throw away on a marketing strategy that might or might not work, don’t start Google Ads. You don’t have the resources to do that yet. Only once you are at a level where you’ve got the resources to be okay with throwing away a thousand pounds, that’s when you can start looking at Google Ads to amp up your marketing.
Google Ads Isn’t Your First Channel
And so, on that point, Google Ads is not a place to start. And this is really important, and I think Google would really disagree with me on this one, but I don’t think that Google Ads is a place to start your business. Google Ads is a place to amp it up.
The places to start your business are communities. Are to find the places where your target person hangs out and get in there. You need to be much, much more targeted with your initial marketing. Google Ads is a wider net.
And this is a key point that I think a lot of people don’t quite get about Google Ads. It isn’t a super narrow net. You aren’t able to target this really narrow group of people. It is much narrower than something like a billboard, but it is still quite a wide net and you need to be okay with kind of hooking in some people that aren’t going to buy from you.
If You Need to Find Out More
Now, Google Ads is a way bigger topic than I would want to cover in a video blog otherwise I could talk for hours and I have done entire hour-long workshops on Google Ads before.
So, if you’re thinking about Google Ads, if you’re not really sure, you want to hear a bit more about it, you want to get more into the nuts and bolts of bidding, and what kind of structure needs to happen on Google Ads – please, please get in touch.
I helped out Impact Hub with this, I helped out some other people with this, so please get in touch. I’m really happy to talk about Google Ads with you and find out whether it makes sense for your business.
It’s very established in marketing that when you’re trying to sell something, you need to focus more on how the product solves a problem for your customer. That can sometimes mean agitating pain points in order to highlight how your product solves those problems.
Should you be pushing on pains or drawing in with benefits?
Hi I’m DJ from Rainbow Dragon Digital and in this article I’m going to talk about this really core marketing concept of pains and benefits and which ones you should be focusing on as an ethical business.
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.
Pains and Benefits, Not Features
There’s this really core concept in marketing where you want to make sure that you focus on pains and benefits. This is really fundamental. A lot of the time businesses focus on their features, what they do, and how they do it, rather than focusing on what it is that your target person actually wants and satisfying the needs of your target person.
Now, a big thing in marketing is making sure that you’re solving a problem for your target person. And when I go through that, you know, Step One of my Content-Led Marketing Strategy, the way my videos are structured and everything, Step One is Understanding your Target Person.
Wants, Needs, Fears and Frustrations
When I do the exercise of understanding the target person with a client the whole thing we’re trying to get to at the end is Wants, Needs, Fears, and Frustrations. And I talk about this in another video but what I really want to talk about here is where you should be putting more of your effort. And in the end what I’m talking about is positive marketing.
What is Positive Marketing?
When I talk about positive marketing, I’m trying to say that you want to be spending more time talking about those wants and those needs. You want to be spending more time pulling them in according to the things that they want to go towards.
That doesn’t mean that you should ignore the problems. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t push on pains. The whole thing that you’re doing, after all, is solving a problem for people.
You Can Push on Pain, But Don’t Create It!
But you shouldn’t be creating pain. If the pain that you’re solving is not something that they have constantly, then agitating that pain can definitely be a marketing strategy but it’s one you should use very sparingly.
The Larger Effect of Negative Marketing
The reason I say this is that in the end everything you do – everything you do – as a marketer, as a business, is contributing to a wider world and to a wider effect. And if you are constantly talking about pain, then you are kind of contributing to a more negative environment in general. And a more negative environment around your business.
Use Positive Marketing and Make Your Business Sexy
But if you find really clever ways to talk about the positive things, about the ways that you are satisfying those wants and those desires – making your business sexy in whatever way it is that you do – you will create a positive environment around your business and you’ll be contributing to a way better business world.
I hope that kind of gives you a bit of an angle to think about when you’re talking when you’re thinking about how you’re trying to communicate your business service or product to your target person.
If you want to go over this in more depth, I’m really happy to have a half-hour, one-hour conversation with you just to go over the nuts and bolts and really dig in deep into that target person that you’re targeting. Just use the form below to request it!
Otherwise please enjoy the other videos and let me know if there’s any content that you want to see more of.
I was sent some gifts from a zero-waste organisation I was ordering from. When I posted about this on my Facebook group, there were some concerns about gift marketing.
Here are my thoughts on using a gift marketing strategy – of sending surprise gifts to your customers – and how you can do it more effectively.
In this video, I’m going to be helping you decide if giving gifts to customers is a great way to do your marketing or not.
If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already, please do. It would be really helpful to me on YouTube and you’ll get notified when I release new videos.
My Experience with Gift Marketing by Proper Soap Company
I recently ordered from a company called the Proper Soap Company (who I do NOT work with at all by the way!). The first time I ordered, they gave me some free soap off cuts. The second time I ordered they gave me some free bath salts.
Gift Marketing is About Surprising & Delighting
Now I think this is a really, really great strategy. It’s really made me, as a customer, feel surprised and delighted. And these are the key things – you want to surprise and delight your customers. This is really important in any marketing – that you’re giving that element of surprise will always make your marketing better.
So, when this happened to me, I went on to my Facebook group Marketing for the Many (where I help people with ideas and questions and whatever else comes up) and I knew there were a lot of zero waste companies in there, so I thought it made sense to share it, saying “Hey this is a strategy that a lot of you might want to start employing.”
But Does This Create Expectation?
The pushback that I got from this was, “Do you think this might create a bit of expectation of a gift going forward?” It was Tara who brought up that comment and she had a really, really good point.
Your Gift Marketing Should Surprise Them…
The key thing here is going back to that “surprise and delight”. I think it’s really important that if you’re going to use gift giving as a marketing strategy, you need to make sure that there’s an element of surprise and that you’re delighting them with it.
So, how do you achieve the element of surprise? You offer gifts irregularly. This should not be a systemised process. This should be a completely randomised process, so that they never know when to expect a gift.
…And Delight Them!
The other thing that you need to do is delight them. So, when you give them a gift, you need to make sure that you are really clear that it’s a gift, and really clear why you’re giving them a gift. And if it is just a random gift, saying that it’s a random gift is the way to delight them. Inform your customers that this is a gift.
This is something the Proper Soap Company actually didn’t do that well – they just kind of threw the gift in there. I could have easily mistaken it for just a mistake, and who knows maybe it was a mistake! But the key is that I think if you’re going to do gift giving, you really, really, really must make it clear that it’s a gift. Especially because that then also mitigates against the idea of them expecting the gift.
The One Thing to Take Away From This
The one thing I really want you to take away from this though is that gift giving makes sense, okay? And even if you’re not a physical product company and you’re a digital or a service company, you can still give a gift. It’s all about giving them something of value that you are otherwise selling.
You will have something that you are otherwise selling – give it to your customers because this is all about making sure that your existing customers are super happy, so that they buy from you again and again and again.
I hope that’s been helpful I’m obviously going to be making way more videos please let me know in the comments if this was helpful to you or if you would like different content on something else, I’m happy to make whatever it is that you want to hear about.
This concept may be one that you’ve already realised for yourself, but I’ve found that sometimes businesses with more complex target persons haven’t quite thought of their marketing in this way.
It’s really important to be considering who exactly is your target person, not just the person who has the problem your business is solving…
In this video I have explained a very simple concept – one that most people get straight away. It’s that the target person that I talk about in Step One: Understand Your Target Person may not be the person you’re actually selling your product or service to.
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This is a really, really simple concept and most people are a bit like, “Of course!” as soon as they hear it, but sometimes people haven’t quite thought of it this way.
Make Sure Your Target Person is Defined Correctly
The first step in the Content-Led Marketing Strategy, which is how everything is structured on this blog and on my YouTube channel, the first step is Understanding Your Target Person. And a lot of the time the Target Person is a customer, you know the person that they’re serving, the problem that they’re solving, but sometimes it’s not.
The fundamental thing you need to understand here is that your Target Person is the person who decides to buy your product or service, not the person who benefits from your product and service.
And this is a really important distinction, especially in service industries. The person who’s benefiting from your service is quite often not the person who’s going to open the wallet and decide to pay you for the thing you do.
An Example: Grow To School
Let me illustrate it with an example. One of my clients, Grow to School, serves schools. They go into schools, they teach teachers how to take their regular curriculum classes and do them outside, in any outside space. And this isn’t like PE outside, it’s doing history or geography or whatever outside.
Now, they have multiple people that are important in their business. The first, the obvious one is the children, right. And understanding the wants, needs and fears and frustrations of the children is really important in their business. But the teachers are the ones who are going to have to be doing this thing – so they’re quite important because, while they care about what the children’s wants and needs and fears and frustrations are, they have their own wants, needs, fears and frustrations in relation to that.
Neither the teacher nor the children are the target person in this case.
The target person for Grow to School, is the headmaster or the business manager in the school. The person who makes the decision to employ them to help the school do these things.
They obviously need to speak to the teachers, they need to make sure that how they’re communicating makes teachers inspired to take them on and feel that they have this, you know, enormous amount of experience in doing this, so that they can genuinely help them. But the target person that’s really important for their marketing activity is that headmaster, the one who is making the decision.
This is the case in a lot of businesses so it’s really not quite as simple often as the person your product is solving the problem for is not always the person that you’re targeting your marketing to. It is important to make that distinction.
I hope this has helped you understand that distinction and maybe considered whether you need to refine your Target Person and refine your content a little bit more so that it’s a little bit stronger in selling your product.
If you need any help with it at all if you just want to be a sounding board or if you need any actual help with strategising and creating this Target Person profile, feel free to get in touch. I can send you templates, I can walk you through them, just let me know and I’ll see how I can help you.
Your product or service may not be selling because of behavioural resistance.
In today’s video, I’m going to talk to you about something called behavioural resistance and why that might be what’s getting in the way of your marketing.
If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel please do. It will help me loads in terms of getting my YouTube credibility up and also so that you can be alerted when I release new videos.
Where I Heard About Behavioural Resistance
I want to talk to you about this thing called behavioural resistance and the reason I want to talk to you about it is that I was listening to this podcast a few weeks ago and it was talking about how doctors during covid have started taking up telemedicine a lot more. It’s meant that people can be treated for very simple, easy problems over the phone without having people come in and wait in a crowded office. They’ve had to do it because of covid.
The thing is telemedicine is not new. It’s not a new invention because of covid. It simply had more take-up because of covid. And the reason that doctors were not using it before was not because it’s less effective – this has proven that it is more effective – the reason that they weren’t doing it is because they had behavioural resistance. Which means they just didn’t like it. They weren’t used to doing it. Their behaviour had always been to see people in the office.
And, you know, in that particular example there are many reasons why a doctor may prefer to see someone in person, there may be lots of things they miss. But in the end, the data shows you that telemedicine works and it’s helped alleviate a lot of the problems in the medical system.
Why Does Behavioural Resistance Matter in Marketing?
Now, why does this matter in terms of marketing? Sometimes you might have a really good product, you might have defined your target person really well, you really understand their wants, needs, fears, and frustrations, your product absolutely solves a problem that they have, and you are absolutely like it’s ridiculously clear that this is the thing that they need… but because they haven’t done it before – because it’s new to them – that is the reason that they’re still not buying from you.
In the end you can write all of the great content that’s addressing those wants, needs, fears, and frustrations, but they’re still not going to take it up.
If Your Marketing Isn’t Working – Is It Because of Behavioural Resistance?
What I’m basically trying to say here is that if you are having a problem with your marketing, and you feel like your messaging is all completely on point, then try and maybe take a step back and look at it from a slightly different angle. Try and see whether there is a behavioural resistance problem.
See whether there is a way that people have always behaved, even if it’s completely irrational, and see if there’s a way that you can go in there and break down that behavioural resistance. That might be with some slightly clever marketing or maybe some kind of no-brainer offer to give them a way to break through that behavioural change.
I hope that kind of helps you see your marketing in a slightly different light if you’ve been feeling like you’ve been struggling a little bit.
If you’re still unsure and you need someone to bounce ideas off, please feel free to get in touch using the form below – I am happy to have a conversation with you even if it doesn’t mean work for me my whole thing is that I want to help people that need it.
We are living in an age of data. It’s fairly established that when we are able to measure something, we are most likely to focus a bit more on that thing. As the adage that Peter Drucker made famous goes, “What gets measured gets managed.”
There is a lot to be said, however, about important things in marketing that cannot be measured and, more importantly, that not everything that we measure actually matters (and can sometimes hinder more than they help).
Marketing as an industry is obsessed with data and that means you often get flooded with a ton of metrics, that not only confuse non-marketers but also get in the way of even experienced marketers from using the data to quickly make good decisions.
If you’re trying to get a more birds-eye view on the impact of your marketing strategy, what are the Marketing KPIs (that is “key performance indicators”) that you should be looking at? Let me try and help make this a little clearer for you.
What are the KPIs that small businesses should be using to determine marketing success?
Today I’m going to go through the top-level metrics that you should be watching as a business owner to see whether your marketing activity is successful or not.
If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel, please do, it will help me loads with my YouTube credibility and you will get notified when I release a new video.
What are KPIs?
A KPI means a Key Performance Indicator and what that means is it is a metric that you’re using to measure to tell you whether your marketing is working well.
KPI is kind of a very generic term it can be used to refer to the whole business, it can be used to refer to a particular team member, to a particular project, to a particular department. So while KPIs can be generic, what we’re going to talk about in this article is the KPIs for marketing.
We’re not going to go into each individual channel or anything like that because the KPIs will change according to your channels. So instead of thinking about individual marketing metrics, I want you to think of groups of metrics that matter to your marketing and making sure that you have visibility across the marketing funnel.
The Five Different Levels of The Marketing Funnel
There are five different levels to the standard marketing funnel. This is not my invention this is basic marketing. Top level is Awareness, then you go down to Consideration, then you go down to Conversion, then you go down to Loyalty, then you go down to Advocacy.
Let me just run you through very quickly what each of these steps means.
Awareness is when people don’t know about your busines and you’re just trying to get them to understand who you are or find out that you exist.
Consideration stage is when people have found out you exist and now, they’re comparing you against competitors, comparing you against other services, and deciding whether they actually even need your service or not.
The third stage Conversion, when they’ve taken an active action to be involved in your business and done something that your business benefits from.
The next level is Loyalty. This is where they stay with your business, they buy again from you, and they continue buying from you when they have their need again.
And the last stage is Advocacy, taking it that step forward and talking about you – talking you up to other people and recommending your product or service to their network.
The Three Parts of the Funnel to Have KPIs For
Now why I’m going through this funnel is it’s important that that you look at this and that you have marketing KPIs across this funnel. I wouldn’t say you necessarily need metrics at every single stage of this funnel I think there are three groups that you need to pay attention to.
The Marketing KPI Group
The first is Awareness and Consideration stage. This is what I would actually say is “Marketing”. This is the stage where you’re trying to make sure that people find out about your business, that they find out about how your product or service satisfies the wants, needs, fears, and frustrations of your target person.
And so, these metrics – the metrics that you want to measure at Awareness and Consideration stage – are things like traffic and views and clicks.
The metrics that are about people seeing your product.
And this will change according to the channels you’re using. Like I’ve said there’s no specific metric that I can tell you is the most important – usually it’s something like traffic or users on something like Google Analytics. But basically, what I want you to think about is what are the metrics about them seeing my product or business.
The Sales KPI Group
The next level down is Conversion and this group, Conversion, which is on its own I think that is what we call “Sales”.
It has a very subtle difference from marketing. It needs to cooperate, it must come together, which is why I think that a content-led marketing strategy makes sense because content needs to be the thread through this funnel.
But the conversion stage is sales and I think sales is the most well defined when it comes to metrics. If you talk to any salesperson, they’ll tell you that they’ve worked very hardcore with metrics – much more than marketing level, because the marketing can be a bit more ‘fuzzy’.
Sales usually is very well defined – you’ve got purchases, you’ve got sign-ups, you’ve got memberships, you’ve got very specific things that you can measure that indicate that someone has taken an action with your business.
It is very clear when someone has taken an action with your business. It’s less clear when someone sees your business and what effect that has. Sales is super clear. Those metrics should jump right out at you.
The Customer Relationship Management KPI Group
The last group is Loyalty and Advocacy and I group these two together into what I would call “Customer Relationship Management”.
What you’re looking at here are metrics that are about the people who have already bought from you, continue to buy from you, and continue to feel a part of the community that you’re creating with your product or service.
This could be things like up-sells and cross-sells. It could also be things like responses and comments from people who are existing customers. It can be number of testimonials you receive, and things like that.
I would also say that at this level you might also be looking less at delivery-led metrics and more like activity-led metrics.
Result vs Activity Metrics
That last bit that I was saying is an important thing to define, I think. What I’ve been talking about in this video so far have been performance metrics or delivery metrics right – they’re the results. The results that you want for your business. But these are not the only KPIs that you have.
Your KPIs can also involve activity metrics.
So, going back to the funnel, your Awareness and Consideration campaign could have lots of activity metrics – things like number of blog posts you’ve put out, or number of social media posts you’ve put out, or number of billboards you’ve signed up for, or flyers you’ve dropped.
With the Conversion stage activity metrics can be things like number of sales calls you’ve made, or number of sales meetings you’ve had, or number of products that you’ve put up on the website. These are things that you can do but not necessarily the result.
But like I said at that Loyalty and Advocacy stage there might be a lot more activity metrics here. There might be things like sending out thank you letters to people, it might be wishing your customers a happy birthday on their birthday, it might be making sure that you’ve sent out feedback requests and a feedback follow-up request.
Activity metrics are also really important to consider because sometimes you can’t measure the result. You don’t know what effect is. But what you can measure is the activity and you can keep doing the activity to make sure that you’re maximizing the result even if you can’t measure it.
I hope that’s a little bit helpful in trying to figure out what metrics and KPIs you need in your business. It’s going to be super customised to your business. It’s going to be really important that you sit down and really think about what matters in your business and what metrics are important in the activities you’re doing.
If you need any help with it at all please feel free to get in touch, I’m happy to have a discussion with you even if you can’t afford to have me actually working on it for you.
Otherwise enjoy the rest of the videos on my channel and I hope to see you in another one.
When leaders get overloaded, they learn to delegate. But delegation isn’t just about passing over the task to someone else and then dusting your hands clean of it.
Here’s a simple framework that can help you make sure you pass over tasks in a way that’s efficient and ensures the task gets done with minimal delays.
In today’s video, I’m going to go through a little framework I made up that will help you dust your hands of tasks when you delegate them.
If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do it will help me a lot and it will mean that you will get notified when I release new videos.
This is Step 5 of the Content Marketing Strategy
Today we’re going to talk about delegating tasks. In the five steps of the, you know, creating a content marketing strategy that I talk about in my other videos, the last step is Managing your Resources. What that usually means is either managing your own time so that you can get it done or managing other people – whether that’s a freelancer, whether that’s a team member – to get the tasks done that you need to do for the channels you’re advertising on in the content you need to produce.
What Most Leaders Do to Delegate Tasks
What a lot of leaders often do when they are delegating a task to someone is they tell them how to do the task – they tell them what to do, or they tell them how to do it – and then they’re done. They absolve themselves of responsibility, they check-in at the end, find out that it hasn’t been done properly and the project gets delayed.
The DUST Framework for Delegating Tasks
Let me explain to you a little framework that I made up for a workshop that I think will be super helpful to you to help you actually release your time and make sure the task still gets done on time.
I call this the DUST framework – to dust your hands off from the task.
The first letter is D. D stands for Define.
What I mean by this is that you need to really clearly define what the task is. This doesn’t just mean explaining the task in your own words and making sure that all of the variables are considered.
What it really means is making sure that the other person has understood what the task is.
It’s not just making sure that you feel you have explained the task well it’s making sure that that person has understood it.
This is especially important for a freelancer, especially a new freelancer, if they are not familiar with your business yet, you need to spend that bit of time making sure that they understand you, you understand them, and you’re both on the same page about this task that needs to be done.
But it’s not only true for freelancers. If your team members are involved it might feel like, eventually, you can start skipping over a lot of this defining as you start having a little bit of a relationship and understanding of each other. However, try to remember to keep in that habit of defining the tasks properly to make sure that nothing slips through the gaps.
The next letter is U and U stands for Updates.
What I mean by this is that you need to make sure that, after you’ve defined the task and you’ve set them on their way, the next time you check in with them is not only at the deadline.
Because if you wait until the deadline, then if there were any problems along the way they might not have brought that up with you.
Usually, with a freelancer, you’ll find that the freelancer will bring up any issues along the way, or probably will schedule updates with you anyway. However, it’s important that you have in your diary updates that are happening so that you can make sure you’re still on the same page with the person you’ve delegated the task to.
This is super important to keep your task on track for the deadline that you’ve set. Otherwise, it’s way too easy to go off deadline because, I don’t know whether you’ve managed tasks before, but in my experience, any project inevitably has something that we didn’t think of at the start or a new problem crops up or, you know, a virus gets released into the world and things have to change!
Having these regular updates means there is a point when you know for sure that you’re going to get an update. It is also just peace of mind for you that you don’t have to keep thinking about this in the back of your head because you know exactly when the next update is coming.
The next letter is S and S stands for Support.
This is really important and one that I feel sometimes leaders don’t want to do because they feel like it’s more work. But if you don’t provide support when it’s needed the task will inevitably take longer.
What I mean by support is that during those updates that you have, you need to be not only checking that you’re still on the same page but also making sure that if any problem has cropped up, the person you’ve delegated to has all the tools that they need to solve that problem themselves.
This is a very important point. You are not there to solve the problems for them you are there to make sure that they have the tools to solve the problems themselves. If you end up solving the problem for them, you will not be delegating anymore you’ll be doing the work and just pressing a button on a person to get bits done.
It’s really important that you’re making sure that you’re empowering the person that you delegated to do the job but you’re providing whatever support you have to provide as the leader. You might be the one who has the information in their head or the one who maybe has creative control so you’ll still need to be involved.
Obviously, support looks slightly different depending on who you’re delegating to. If it’s your team member, support might look a little bit more like you helping them along, teaching them how to use a tool, giving them creative input.
If it’s a freelancer that you’re delegating to you might find that the support involves more like giving creative input, more like just making sure you’re on the same page, and making sure that they know how to use the tools that are integrated into your business.
The last letter is T and T stands for Thank.
This is so important and so many leaders start to slack on this last point.
Thanking is an incredibly important part of the delegation process because it not only means that the person feels gratitude to you for having this task and doing a good job at the task, but it also means that they understand what you like.
Let me explain that a little further. This is essentially positive reinforcement. I’ll give you an example. One of my clients that I work with one day a week, they are really, really good at this. Since the entire team is remote, we have this task management system and every time a task is done or there’s an update on a task that’s come in, they’re really good with saying ‘thank you for doing this in this way it’s really helped me’.
So, as an example, it might be, “Thank you for being really clear about what the problem is here it’s really helped me to understand what needs to be done next. Here’s what I think.”
Or if somebody has said that they’re unable to do something or that they don’t have time, they would say something like, “Thank you for being clear about your boundaries this helps me plan and time this project better.”
Even for things where there’s something that’s not gone right, you can still use thanking as a way to emphasise the parts that you enjoy about working with this person.
It’s also really, really important for morale, especially in a year like 2020, where we’re all needing a little bit of human connection. If you’re forgetting to thank your team members or thank the people that are doing work for you or with you, you’ll start to have less of a positive relationship with those people. But, more importantly, when you do thank them, you’ll have an extra positive relationship – and that means more to people now than at any other time that I’ve been working.
I hope that that framework was a little bit helpful to you in terms of learning how to make sure that when you delegate tasks, it’s done in a way that makes sure the task is completed on time and the people you’re working with are happy and you’re happy with the result.
If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel yet, please do it will really help me a lot, and please feel free to comment and let me know what you like, what you don’t like, if you want to see more of something.
If you need help with something, please feel free to get in touch – I want to help you. Even if you don’t have the money to hire a freelancer, get in touch, I’m happy to have a conversation and see how I can help you.
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