Bring your expertise to the forefront by focusing on what you know when you take your first marketing steps. You can’t do it all, so start small, use your expertise and make it happen! One channel is all it takes to get started, so go for it!
In today’s video, I zoom in on a really important reminder – just in case you need reminding – that you don’t have to do everything when it comes to your marketing. In fact, starting small, with one channel, can be the ultimate way to get started and harness your expertise in the process!
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Comparison Destroys Creativity
Today’s video is inspired by a meme I recently saw online, starring a crayon and a pencil. The crayon says, “I’m not sharp enough,” while the pencil says, “I’m not colourful enough.” And underneath the pencil and the crayon, it simply says something like “Comparison destroys creativity.”
I thought this meme made a lot of sense when it comes to marketing as well.
Protect Your Marketing from the Comparison Game
A lot of businesses, small or large, start out by comparing themselves to their competitors. And this is a helpful way to begin! In fact, one of the first things I suggest you do in Step 2 (of my 5-step approach to marketing is to check out your competitors, see what they’re doing, see what their message is and try and differentiate yourself from them by identifying what makes you unique.
Comparing yourself to others may be part and parcel of marketing, but at the same time it’s easy to look at other businesses and to feel overwhelmed, thinking to yourself, “I have to do all the things that they’re doing; I have to be on all those channels; I have to really push all my marketing out at the same level otherwise I’m not going to be able to compete.”
And if you’re not careful, you might find that you struggle to focus your marketing energies, leaving you with campaigns that lack the strength of your expertise and creative sparkle.
Start with One Channel!
Remember, you can’t do it all, especially at the start of your business journey, so the best thing to do is start small – start with one channel, start with what your resources can manage, start with what you can manage – and build up from there.
To really focus in on where to start, start with your expertise! Just go for it – go and do the thing that you know how to do. You can figure out all the other channels and strategies later… but first, you need to get your content into a place that you’re familiar with and you know how to use.
The hardest thing with anything (marketing, writing a book, whatever it might be) is getting started, so just do it! Start with one channel and get it done. I believe in you!
If you would like to find out more about focusing on one channel at a time – the right channel for you! – then please do get in touch. And if you’re already on the journey with your first channel, I’d love to hear how your one-channel start is working out!
Staying on top of marketing technology trends can be exhausting – but not all marketing has to take place online. By turning the marketing process into a cycle you can take a fresh look at some old ideas – and maybe find a novel way to reach your target person along the way.
In today’s video, I talk about the cycle of marketing channels – and if you’re worried you might be a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to the latest marketing tools and technologies, I explain why that may be a good thing for your business.
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Marketing Needs to Be Novel
Marketing is all about getting yourself in front of people and getting them to notice you, and one of the best ways to achieve this is to offer something new – something novel.
Our brains are wired to notice when things are different – when things are new when things are not as we expect them to be – and they are also wired to completely ignore things when we expect them to be there, as we don’t have the capacity to absorb every single bit of information that’s thrown at us (which would be information overload!).
As a result, our brains are constantly sifting through the information around us to sort the important new things from the same old things we see all the time, taking notice of what we need to know and ignoring the rest. This tendency of the brain speaks to the very essence of marketing – it reinforces why it’s so important that your target person is able to see your USP so you can stand out from the crowd. If you want people to notice your business, your marketing needs to be novel.
Do You Need to Keep Your Finger ‘On the Pulse’?
One of the strongest ways to be novel in this digital age is to have your finger on the pulse – to know all the new technology, get onto channels that are not being used yet and see if you can be the first to dominate that space.
And yet, for some of us, it can be exhausting to follow the latest advances in technology and learn how to use them on the off chance that your target person will see your message. If after all your time and effort you miss the people you want to reach the most, or the technology doesn’t take off as you expected, then you’ve spent a lot of time learning something for nothing. Why not save your energy for something else?
Avoiding Banner Blindness to Maintain Marketing Effectiveness
Marketing works in a fairly consistent way:
Something in your marketing picks up and gains traction.
People start responding to it.
Other people see that other businesses are using that approach/marketing channel effectively.
Everyone starts using it!
The trouble with this process is that when everyone starts using it, people eventually start ignoring it because our brains think, “I’ve seen that before; I’m just going to start ignoring it.”
A really good example of this is ‘banner blindness’. Think about all the display banners you see on the internet. You can pay for Google Ads to display banners on websites that deal with particular interests, which is where you might hope to reach your target person. However, if people automatically filter out those banners because they know that they’re ads, you risk losing out on your investment because your target person has seen it all before. This is why Facebook has to keep changing up the way it shows its users advertising content – it needs to hold people’s attention.
Turning the Marketing Process into a Marketing Cycle
If a marketing channel loses its effectiveness, meaning people stop using the channel, this is where the marketing process can turn into a marketing cycle – you try something new, something novel, something different to reach your target person, which takes you back to the beginning of the process, helping you avoid the concept of ‘banner blindness’. But you don’t have to change from one technology to another – you could find a novel approach in older ideas that may not be in use any longer but still have the power to reach people.
A good example of this might be direct mail. Businesses used to send out enormous catalogues showcasing things you could buy from them, but direct mail marketing is far less popular these days. However, this means that the competition in that space is less than the competition in the email space where so many businesses target their customers. But this is just one example – there may be other, more retro, and appealing marketing channels that you might be able to get some really good results from because they’re not in use anymore.
Time to Get Creative and Embrace Your Inner Dinosaur
If you feel like you aren’t keeping up with today’s marketing trends, don’t panic! Instead, try sitting down and thinking about what might work for you and your business to help you find an alternative way to reach your target person. What marketing techniques really worked for you at the start of your career – or even when you were a kid? What marketing tools seemed to work once upon a time but aren’t being used anymore? You may find that you can create a whole new marketing channel for your business by dusting off some tried-and-tested old-school favourites.
If you’d like to talk through your marketing ideas to help you reach your target person, please do get in touch – I’d love to help you out.
Spending time building your Instagram followers may seem a worthwhile marketing investment, but is Instagram the right channel for you to be focusing on – or might there be other marketing channels that better deserve your attention?
If Instagram follower numbers are on your mind, check out this video for insight into why Instagram may – or may not – be the ideal marketing channel for connecting you to your target person.
Check out more about Duct Tape Marketing’s “Marketing Hourglass” here.
In today’s video, I talk about Instagram followers – how many you have, and how many you feel you need. Boosting your follower number requires valuable time and effort, so it’s worth checking whether Instagram is the right channel for you to focus on – might there be other areas of your marketing where your time may be better spent?
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 be notified when I release new videos.
Why Instagram Is So Appealing
Instagram is one of those marketing channels that business owners are starting to be drawn towards, thinking, “That’s where people will see me, that’s where people are buying things.” It can also operate as a storefront for your business: it has shop features and provides ways for people to buy, plus there are lots of influencers on Instagram who may be attracted to your product or help bring attention to what you do.
It also relies on less content – it’s not as filled with text as other social media platforms, which makes it quite appealing if you’re more comfortable being creative visually rather than through words. In short, Instagram is full of great features – and it can be a fun marketing channel for interacting with your customers.
When Instagram May Be the Perfect Channel for You
There are three key reasons why you might want to focus on boosting your Instagram follower number:
People can check you out. Imagine you want to talk at a conference. You could reasonably assume that the conference organisers are looking at your Instagram following to establish whether your involvement may be valuable to the conference – if that’s the case, building your Instagram following makes good business sense.
You need to be perceived as popular. You might also want to make sure that your Instagram following is high so that your customers perceive your business as popular – maybe that’s important to you, or maybe that’s important to the success of your business, but either way it’s a good idea to boost your follower numbers if popularity leads to sales success.
Your audience is on Instagram! This is the ultimate reason to be focusing your marketing energy on Instagram. If the people that you’re serving are using Instagram – if they buy from Instagram and are influenced by Instagram, and they’re inspired by your Instagram posts enough to comment and correspond with you – then that is an excellent reason to focus on getting those follower numbers up, because the people who are following you – hopefully, if you’re doing your marketing ethically enough – will be a good match to your target person.
The Problem with Obsessing Over Follower Numbers
Instagram follower numbers recently came up in a conversation with one of my customers. They wanted to get their Instagram following up, but I didn’t think it was necessarily the right thing for their business. However, it did leave me thinking that there may be some unhealthy concerns out there when it comes to getting social media follower numbers up.
If you haven’t seen the documentary/docudrama The Social Dilemma, I highly recommend it. There’s a lot of discussion at the moment about mental health and social media use, which may lead to an unhealthy obsession with getting those follower numbers up.
If this sounds like you, perhaps take a moment to check in with yourself on this. Are you obsessing over your follower numbers? If so, is it for good reason? Is it really to serve your customers? Or is this satisfying some kind of inner need that you might want to review?
I’m no therapist, but if you feel as if you have an emotional attachment to those social media follower numbers, on Instagram or otherwise, I would tread very carefully and consider seeing a therapist. I don’t mean that in a condescending way at all – therapy is super helpful and it’s really good for making sure that you’re not taking yourself down a negative path.
Is Instagram Worth Your Time and Effort?
Is Instagram really good for your business – and are you using it effectively? It’s worth asking these questions. It might be that you’re wasting a whole lot of your valuable time and effort trying to grow your Instagram, and yet it’s not turning into business or boosting your reputation. You may be getting lots of likes and follows – but if this isn’t serving you or your business, it may not be a worthwhile use of your precious time.
How can you tell if Instagram is the right place for you? It’s time to go back to my five steps – those five foundational, strategic marketing concepts I talk about so often, in particular the first two steps:
Step 1:Understand your target person. Identify your target person. Get to know their wants, their needs, their fears and their frustrations. Get into that target person’s headspace and understand them.
Step 2:Define your (real) USP. What is your USP? What makes you different? What makes you unique?
Once you really know who you’re talking to and what you’re trying to say to them – that you are super unique and why they should buy from you – then you can figure out if Instagram is the place to talk to them. Are your target people on Instagram? And if they are, is that where they want to hear about your USP?
Remember: If your USP doesn’t fit on Instagram very well, then you might want to either reconsider whether that USP makes sense or not, or change the way you’re communicating on Instagram.
Focus Your Social Media Marketing Energy Wisely
Steps 1 and 2 of my five steps to creating a successful marketing strategy are important for any marketing channel, but they’re especially helpful if you’re obsessing over a channel and you feel like it’s not giving you the returns you need. Go back to both steps and take a look at whether you’re really in the right place, doing the right thing, and saying the right thing to the right people. Everyone’s business is different, so you need to find the right solution for your business – no one else’s.
Time is a finite resource. Use your marketing time wisely and your business will reap the rewards! If you’d like help with focusing your social media marketing priorities, please do get in touch.
When you’re a small business or solo business owner, tackling all the complicated Search Engine Optimisation language can feel like learning how to do a whole job. Is it really that necessary for business owners to be able to understand all the ins and outs of SEO?
Well, I think you probably should care about SEO, but you also don’t have to know EVERYTHING.
Hi I’m DJ from Rainbow Dragon Digital and in today’s video I’m going to talk about that one that loads of business owners are always obsessed with which is Search Engine Optimization.
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 get notified when I release new videos.
So Search Engine Optimization. It’s the one that like loads of business owners are like, “Oh, I need to do more. I want to appear on Google.” And the big question, is should you actually care? Does SEO really matter?
Short Answer: Yes, SEO Matters
The short answer is yes. Search Engine Optimization matters because Google handles trillions of searches a year. I think it’s estimated at something like five billion searches per day! So, people are using it. That is where people go to find information. Bottom line is yes, you probably should be trying to make sure that you’re appearing correctly on Google.
But there’s so much SEO Stuff
But the problem that business owners come up against is that there’s so much stuff. When you go look up SEO, there’s just so much technical stuff that you need to do to get SEO to work for you and it’s really hard to figure out what is it that I actually need to do as a business owner, especially when you’re on your own, or if you’re in a small team, and you don’t have a huge amount of resources. Do I really need to spend all of this time figuring out all this technical stuff?
Yes and no. So, the thing that Google wants – let’s go back to the steps of our content marketing strategy, the steps of any business. Who is their target person and what is their USP?
Google’s USP is to try and make sure that people find what they need and find it as fast as possible. So Google wants to make sure that when someone’s searching on Google that they find the the content that they’re looking for.
The One Thing You Need to Do for SEO
The key thing that you need to do, the one thing, is always make sure you’re doing what Google wants you to do with your website, which is to produce good, relevant, and informative content.
This is why your content strategy is actually super important. Go back to step one: who is your target person? Step two: what is your USP and then step three, when we’re choosing channels if we’re choosing SEO, we’re choosing that we want to make sure that we’re appearing on search (because maybe your product is something that people do search for, your service is something that people do search for) then your step four of creating your content – your content is key to appearing on this channel.
You need to make sure that you’re writing content for things that people actually want to know about, that people are actually searching for.
So, yes care about SEO but the kind of goal of SEO is getting content that people want to search for.
Produce Good Content, Hire Someone For the SEO Technical Bits
Basically, the bottom line is if you want to appear on search first produce content that people want to read. The technical bits – putting things in meta tags and alt tags, and things like putting headings in the right places, and putting keywords in the right places, doing schema – these are technical know-how that you don’t actually need.
You, as the business owner, as the small team, you don’t NEED to know all of that technical SEO stuff (see this video for more on that!)
What you need what you HAVE to produce is the content, is the knowledge, the expertise of your product or service. You need to produce that, then you can hire a marketer, hire an SEO specialist to come in and use the content you’ve created and put it in the right way that Google can read it correctly.
So my bottom-line advice for SEO as a channel is first, produce good content, then hire someone who knows what they’re doing to put it in the right place for you.
If you want to have a chat about your content or what you might need to do for SEO, get in touch with me. I’m happy to have a conversation with you.
Most business owners want to start using paid advertising on digital platforms to reach their audience and can even be reasonably familiar with the basics of it. But there’s a big difference in the way ads appear and who they appear to on different types of platforms. And perhaps not in the way you might initially think.
When doing paid advertising you need to think about interruption and search marketing.
Hi I’m DJ from Rainbow Dragon Digital and in today’s video I’m going to be talking about a really important distinction between different types of paid advertising that you need to be aware of as a marketer or business owner.
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What is Paid Advertising?
When it comes to paid advertising there are lots of different platforms that you can use. Most people are familiar with Google Ads, they’re familiar with Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads or Twitter Ads and that sort of thing.
And these are what I’m talking about here where you pay so for an advertisement to appear somewhere that you think your customers will be.
Planning Your Paid Advertising
Now there’s obviously lots of steps you need to go through to make sure that this works. You honestly cannot just jump onto a paid advertising platform and hope it works. You will end up wasting money unless, of course, your product is ridiculously unique and you are a complete tech wizard, you will find that that you need to do a little bit of planning.
But the planning isn’t you know isn’t super difficult. It’s the same steps that I’ve got for your content strategy plan.
It’s the Same as the Content Strategy Plan Steps
Step 1: Who is your target person?
Step 2: What is your USP?
Those first two steps are super important it will help you.
Step 3: You’re choosing that channel. You’re choosing the paid advertising channel in this case.
Step 4: You’re creating content that matches that channel. So, the right content for that channel.
Step 5: And then you’re timelining your process.
Literally, it’s the same plan.
But in this video, I want to talk to you about these two different types of paid advertising and why that really, really matters in terms of making sure you’re getting the right content on and making you’re targeting the right person.
The First Type of Paid Advertising: Search
The first type of advertising I want to talk about is search advertising. And this is the easier one.
Search advertising is when you are putting up an ad in front of people when they’re already searching for something. So the obvious example is Google Ads. But you’ve also got things like Bing Ads you’ve got Amazon Ads and stuff like that.
So, any platform where people are actively searching for stuff – this is search advertising.
And the important considerations around search advertising is that people are already searching for your thing. So, they’re already in Consideration stage. You know that marketing funnel it’s on my website and and you know the top step is Awareness and then the second step is Consideration. So, in search advertising they’re already in Consideration stage: they know what they’re looking for and they’re now looking to compare you against other options. Or they’re trying to find the best option for the thing they’re looking for.
For Search Advertising, Focus on your USP
So, you need to keep that in mind when you’re composing your advertising because you want to be really, really, really hard pushing on that USP. What makes you different? What makes you really unique? And the U in the USP – what makes you UNIQUE? What makes you better than other people this is what you want to focus on in search advertising.
It’s also where I would suggest that you might want to start actually, weirdly enough. Because even though it’s the second layer of the funnel this is where people are already ready to buy. They’re already looking for the thing. So, you’re actually probably going to get better results here, obviously, depending on your business.
The Second Type of Paid Advertising: Interruption
The second type of advertising I want to talk about is Interruption Marketing and this is where people often really get it wrong. So, interruption marketing is things like Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads and Twitter where you’re interrupting someone when they’re in the process of something else.
And this could also relate to a lot of offline advertising like flyers and posters and billboards. These are not things where people are searching. They’re you’re interrupting their flow and you need to get their attention.
For Interruption Marketing, Focus on Understanding Your Target Person
So, you can see immediately how the content really needs to be very different here. And you’re further up in that funnel now. You’re up at that Awareness level and you need to start making sure that you’re not just talking about your USP and talking about why you are better than your competition, you also need to be making sure that this target person understands that you understand them. And that’s where that target person exercise comes in really useful because your interruption marketing should be really, really understanding. Making sure that they understand that you are someone worth listening to.
And so when you’re interrupting someone you need to give them a really, really, really good reason to interrupt that flow and come to look at your ad.
There’s a lot of complexity around this, there’s a lot of detail, and there’s a lot of ways that you can not only get it wrong in terms of not producing the right stuff for your business but get it wrong in terms of producing marketing that’s contributing to that that Social Dilemma problem. That contributing to this idea of grabbing attention, capturing attention. So it’s a place to tread carefully in but if you do it effectively and you do it ethically it can be really powerful for your business.
Hi I’m DJ from Rainbow Dragon Digital and in today’s video I’m going to be talking about whether you should be sending stuff in the physical mail as a part of your marketing strategy.
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Why People Are Hesitant to Use a Physical Mail Strategy
So today I wanted to cover the idea of sending marketing through the physical mail, which some people are very hesitant to do because it can be expensive. It can be really, really hard to measure, and hard to know whether it’s actually worked or not or why it’s not worked.
And these are all very valid concerns and there’s a reason why physical marketing is no longer a major marketing strategy. Beyond you know digital marketing taking over almost everything, physical marketing is a very expensive way to go.
When Does a Snail Mail Strategy Work?
I want to talk about when you could use a snail mail strategy and when you should use it.
One of the clients in my old job, when I was working for business coaches, one of them won an award for Best Marketing Campaign. They were a design agency and the campaign they won for was where they sent these like tubes that were filled with this beautiful custom-made design for each person that they had sent the tube to. It was highly customized and very expensive to produce. But the thing that made it so good was the return from it – they got something like a 200% return or 300% return. Even though they spent so much money to make it, the clients that they were going after were the big clients that were going to bring them lots of money.
Marketing Isn’t Expensive Until the Return Isn’t High Enough
And this is kind of like a fundamental principle in marketing, generally, is that something is not expensive until the return from it is not high enough. You should constantly be trying to find ways to spend marketing money that’s going to bring more money in.
You need to really look at it that way and not just, “How much money do I have and can I afford this marketing right now?” You need to look at the longer picture.
But coming back to to the physical mail, I think the reason that worked and the reason that it was so successful was because it was highly customized. It was super beautiful and so when somebody opened it, was like opening a gift.
The Key Point: Don’t Just Send A Letter in the Mail
And this is the key point: if you want to use physical marketing, don’t just send a letter, send something that is going to surprise and delight. That is the key thing to keep in your head. Go back to your target person, think about who they are.
Think about what their wants, needs, fears, and frustrations are and find something that’s really going to make them so happy. Something that’s going to really surprise them and then that will be a physical mail marketing strategy that will work.
If you’d like to bounce around ideas around your physical mail marketing strategy, feel free to get in touch with me, I’m happy to have a chat with you.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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 a new video.
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.
Most entrepreneurs start thinking about their marketing in terms of choosing the marketing channels – “How do I start using Instagram to market my business?” or “Should I start marketing my business on Facebook?” or “Where is the best place to market my business?”
But the truth is, that’s really not the first place to start – and if you start with that first, you’ll end up muddling through some marketing work that gets maybe some results, but quickly becomes more work than you’re able to manage.
Here’s a quick explanation that’ll help you understand why starting at step 3 makes no sense…
Choosing where to start your marketing is not the first place that you need to start when building your marketing strategy.
In this video, I’m going to explain to you why Step Three: Choosing Your Channels is really not the first place you’re meant to start when you’re building your marketing strategy.
If you haven’t already please subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can stay notified about when I release new videos.
Do You Really Need to Be Marketing on Facebook?
I think it’s really important that I do this video because a lot of entrepreneurs when they start out thinking about their marketing they think, “Oh I need to be on Facebook, I need to be on Instagram. But these are places I don’t understand, and I kind of don’t want to but I know that I need to be on it.”
But they don’t actually know that they need to be on it yet.
Start With Step 1 and 2 of the Content-Led Marketing Strategy
If you don’t do those first two steps choosing the marketing channels becomes insane.
There’s loads of them there’s there’s like 80+ I think!
There’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn Email, Display Advertising, Google Ads, SEO you know it goes on and on and on.
You can’t do all of it you definitely can’t.
How Do You Choose The Marketing Channels Then?
Once you’ve done Step One and Two and you really know who you’re targeting and that message that you need to communicate to them, then choosing the marketing channels becomes a process of asking yourself:
Are those people on that channel?
Can I send this message to them through that channel?
Then you can start shedding marketing channels away. You can start removing them off your list because they’re not important because that’s not where your target person is.
An Example of Choosing The Right Channels: Teachers
A really good example of this was when I was doing a content marketing workshop once and there were multiple people on that workshop that did services to schools.
They either went in and helped them take the kids outside that’s Grow to School or they went in and they provided like pastoral care sports and drama and stuff for the kids, that was Kick.
A bit of a light bulb moment for them was that the beneficiaries are the kids – so they often are talking about the kids and the benefits to the kids. But their target person, their ideal target person, is not the children.
Their ideal target person is the teachers or the head teachers – the person who’s making the decision.
So when they then started thinking about the marketing channels that they need to choose, something like Facebook didn’t really make sense anymore.
Because with teachers, they either won’t be on Facebook (because they don’t want to be where their students are) or if they are on Facebook, they’re very careful not to indicate that they’re a teacher on Facebook, or they don’t have their real names and so on.
It then made sense that they need to use other channels to reach these teachers. Not something like Facebook.
That is why this this whole thing makes sense – why the order of these first three steps makes a whole lot of sense.
Once you’ve got your channels sorted, once you’ve chosen your channels – the ones that are best for your target person and the message you’re trying to send to them – then we flow on to understanding what content you need to create, which will be in another video.
Remember: If you’re doing anything ethical or sustainable please either join my Facebook group or send fill in the form below – I want to help you!
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