What's up brand builders! Stephen Houraghan here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in
this video you're going to learn 15 digital marketing strategies
that you can use to grow your brand so you can stop waiting around
for referrals and start taking some actions that will grow your business.
now if you're new to the channel and you want to build brands that go beyond the
visuals using strategy psychology and creative
thinking then you're in the right place make sure you hit that subscribe button
and the notification bell and you'll be well on your way
now before we jump into the techniques and the strategies let's just
have a quick chat about branding versus marketing now branding and marketing are
both very very important when it comes to building a brand but they are very
very different branding wants a relationship whereas marketing
wants a transaction marketing is all about the where and the
way the marketing messages are placed out there into the
marketplace and branding is about what those messages are going to say
and how they're going to shape the perceptions of the brand
now marketing can take on many different forms and the marketing industry
itself can be a bit of a shady place there's always somebody out there trying
to sell the next silver bullet the magic
pill that will turn a brand that is obscure
into the next big thing but there is no magic pill there is no
silver bullet it's all about understanding the landscape to make
informed decisions about where you should place
your resources with the right combination of tactics
you can guide your audience through the customer journey to shape
their perceptions along the way and ultimately influence
their decisions so that's what we're going to talk about in
this video we're going to talk about 15 different tactics and techniques that
you can use to bring your audience through your
customer journey and help to shape those perceptions and influence those buying
decisions number one develop a clearly defined
brand strategy now this is absolutely without a shadow of a debt in
my experience anyway the biggest mistake that I see business
owners make they do not have a clearly defined
brand strategy and they go out into the marketplace with their marketing tactics
and marketing techniques and they don't have a plan
that will shape their audience's perception about what they want them to
know about their brand you need to have an idea about
what position you need to own in the mind of your audience so you need to
know who that audience is you need to
understand and know the position that you want to own
in their mind and then you develop a communication strategy
that will help to shape those perceptions in that light if you go out
into the marketplace and you go out with a handful of marketing tactics and
you don't have a strategy to influence those perceptions
then any marketing tactics that you put out there will be absolutely wasted
number two create a marketing funnel now a prospect
doesn't just go from being a prospect to a customer just like that
there are a series of steps that they will need to take before they
become a customer and on average it takes around about seven to eight touch
points before a prospect will start taking your
brand seriously and if you understand what your customer journey is
if you understand the steps that your prospects need to take to
become a customer then you can map out an experience that will take them from
one step to the next so understand that customer
journey and map out a marketing funnel that will take them
from one step to the next number three create a compelling
offer now this was a big one for me for many years I had up on my website the
services that I offered but I didn't have a
compelling offer and then I came across somebody called
Ryan Deiss now if you know Ryan Deiss then you know he is a marketing genius
and I've got a lot of time for Ryan Deiss I've learned a lot
from Ryan Deiss and one of the things that I learned from
him was the importance of having a compelling offer it's all well and good
getting traffic to your website where they can
see what it is that you do but if you don't have a compelling offer
that will incentivise them to take action then
they're not going to take any kind of action so understand
what your audience is looking for understand the outcome that they're
trying to achieve and create a compelling offer that
focuses on giving them that outcome number four
create a lead magnet now lead magnets are nothing new they've
been around for many many years but they're going to be around
for many many more years to come because they are compelling there's just
something compelling about being able to fix one of our
problems with an easy to digest lead magnet and easy
to digest solution that's packaged up into a
download so if you understand the problems that your
audience has and the pain points that they have and
you can package up a solution in a handy and compelling lead magnet
then you will be able to get their email address and follow up with them
number five automated email marketing now this goes hand in
hand with that lead magnet that we just spoke about because once you have
their email then you need an automated system that will
follow up with them on autopilot now this is without a doubt one of the most
effective ways to nurture your prospects because if you take a
little bit of time to think ahead and think
strategically about what they need to know
in order to become more ready for what you have to offer them then
you can write out a series of emails that will go out every single day or
every single week and slowly give them a little bit more information and this
will all contribute to those seven to eight touch points that we need
on average to take a brand seriously and as I said if you're able to get that
email address and you have a system in place
that will give them a little bit of information at a time and slowly nurture
them then that is one of the most effective
ways that you can use to nurture your prospects number six
content marketing now in this day and age you have to be
creating some form of content whether that's
videos or blogs or instagram carousel posts it really doesn't matter but you
need to understand again the challenges that
your audience has and put out content that will help them now you don't have
to spread yourself too thin here you don't have to do
all forms of content and there's an Instagram influencer that I follow
called Dain Walker and he's up to about 135,000
Instagram followers at the moment and he's
amassed that following just by creating Instagram carousels
and that it brings in a tremendous amount of traffic
into his world so as I said you don't need to spread yourself too thin
but just pick one of those areas and go in hard and create some valuable content
number seven website SEO now if you are going to take the time
to write blog posts then you might as well do it correctly
you might as well understand the mechanics of
SEO and what you need to do to build SEO-friendly content
and that's all about understanding the title tags the H1's H2's the meta
descriptions and the external linking interlinking
etc if you don't have that information if
you're not knowledgeable it doesn't take you much
to get the information that you need but the benefit here
is that SEO-friendly content on your website will raise the domain authority
of your overall website and it will push your articles closer to the top of
Google so that when someone searches for the information
that they need and you have an article then they can find you through google
and end up in your world number eight video marketing now video
marketing has a huge advantage because there's less
competition in the video world when compared to the blog world because
the barriers for entry on video are higher you need to have
more skills to create video and if you're going to put your face in
front of video not everybody can do that now
everybody does have a fear well most people certainly have a fear of the
camera when they first get in front of it but that's a fear you
can overcome so if you at least have the desire to create content
then you should start creating content your 30th video will definitely be
better than your first video and the added advantage here is that you
can get your personality across you can show that you're human and you can
demonstrate your expertise number nine leverage stories now this is
becoming more and more important because of our attitude towards push marketing
today those ads that are pushing features and benefits and
are all about the sale they don't really compel us to take any kind of action and
we're pretty irritated by them we tend to scroll past them but
if you understand who your audience is if you
understand where they've come from where they're going to the journey that
they're on then you can tell stories that will resonate
with them and a perfect example of this would be to
take a customer and shoot a case study shoot a creative video
of them talking about their lives where they've come from the challenges that
they were going through the emotions that they were going through and then
the transition that they went on and the success that they achieved if
you're able to capture a creative video talking about a
customer or shooting a case study then that will resonate
with who the audience is that they will feel that they recognize that story they
can relate to that story and they will connect with
your brand far more than an ad pushing features or
benefits number 10 YouTube SEO so
your audience is on YouTube because YouTube is the second biggest search
engine in the world and they use YouTube for
entertainment but they also use youtube to find out what they need to
know they have questions in and around the problem that
you solve and they're going to youtube to ask those questions now if you know
the questions that your audience is asking and you
know the answer to those questions then shoot a video and then understand
how YouTube works understand the SEO the
descriptions the keywords that you need to use and how you need to
construct your title and if your audience is on there searching
for your video you might just turn up as the first result or in the top three
results they might end up on your YouTube video
and then back at your website so it's a great way to
extend your reach and raise brand awareness by understanding
YouTube understanding the platform and how to get your videos to the top
of that platform number 11 live video now
this leverages all the advantages that video has in being able to
get your personality across and making the content
engaging but the algorithms absolutely love
live video so Facebook Instagram YouTube they love live video because
the interactions are a lot greater because there's just something about
live video and the feeling that the other person
on the other side of the camera is there in that moment so
this is a strategy that's very effective at the moment
and if you can leverage live video you can really use the algorithms
to extend your reach and grow your brand awareness
number 12 social media advertising now this can be
very very effective if you know what you're doing and that caveat is
very very important but they do provide the tools
if you understand and know who your audience is
what they want what they desire who they follow then the tools
that these platforms provide specifically Facebook
and the amount of targeting that you can use on Facebook is
so so effective and the cost is still very very low
per click at the moment so it's a great platform to leverage
if you know what you're doing and as I said that is a very very big caveat
because you need to understand the platform you
need to understand how it works and you need to understand
how marketing works and paid marketing works in this
environment there are a lot of business owners out there that think
they just need to go on Facebook ads and they take with them their
two three four five thousand dollar budget and
before they've learned how the platform works that budget is gone
they haven't made any sales and they believe it doesn't work so
it is very very powerful if you know what you're doing so take the time to
understand the platforms number 13 search engine marketing so
search engine marketing is all about keywords it's all about
getting your ads to the top of Google when
somebody searches for a particular keyword now
this used to be cost effective when these ads first came out and small
businesses could play in this space at any level really
but today it's very different the big brands
have moved in there it's pushed the cost up of these types of ads but there are
still keywords that you can find that can still be very very effective
and very cost effective and the added advantage
to this tactic is the mindset of the customer they are
more likely in buying mode because they're searching for a specific
solution and if they click on your ad and come
into your world then you can nurture them into a sale
number 14 audio ads now audio ads are nothing new
audio ads have been around since radio so they've
been around for generations but the audio ads that you can leverage today
are far more effective because you're not just
picking a radio station and sending your ads out there to
untargeted people you can leverage the likes of Spotify
and target based on the podcasts that your listeners are actually
listening to so if you know the podcasts that your audience are listening to and
you can leverage the platform to target your ads at those podcast
listeners then they will be on the train or in the
car or doing the dishes listening to a message from your brand
and that can bring them into your world and number 15 retargeting now if you are
going to play in the paid ad space then retargeting is
a great place to start because retargeting is all about the
premise that your audience has digested some of your
content before they've watched some of your videos or they've
been to your website in some way shape or form
they've shown some interest in what you do and what you have to offer so they
are the perfect people to put ads in front of so take the time
to pixel your website so that Facebook can
gather that information and create those custom audiences
and put those ads in front of those people and chances are
some of these people are just looking for the right moment in time and the ad
that you put in front of them might be that time and it might push
them over to become a converted client so really understand
the power of remarketing and if you are going to
start with paid advertising it's a great place to start
now look there are a lot of marketing tactics out there and it's very very
easy to get overwhelmed if you don't focus in
on your efforts so my advice would be this first develop
out and define your brand strategy so
understand who your audience is understand the image and position you
want to own in their mind and develop a communication strategy
that will shape the image of your brand in their mind
once you have that map out their customer journey know what
steps they have to take to become a customer and then select two to three
marketing strategies and go in hard if you do that you will
bring traffic to your website you will bring them into
your funnel and you will bring them through
your communication strategy that will nurture them that will shape their
perceptions and it will compel them to take action
but I'd love to hand it back over to you I'd love to hear
what your favorite marketing tactics are or marketing strategies or funnel
strategies if you have any thoughts or any challenges at all
around developing out your brand strategy or your marketing strategy or
your funnel then let me know in the comments below
I'll do my best to answer all of those if you like this video please give it a
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get yourself involved but as I said I would love to hand it back over to you
now I'd love to hear your experiences your challenges I'll do my best to
answer all of those until next time brand like a master and I will see you
in the next video!