So, back to the topic in hand, why are we doing all of this? Why are we putting out
so much content, creating our audiences, engaging with you on a daily basis?
It's really quite simple. We are looking to engage with our audience and look at how we
are going to build with our future clients. How are we going to give out meaningful content that
they are finding useful to get them to get to know us, get to like us, get to trust us
because if we can follow that process through that's when we're going to start and win.
Now, just a quick recap. Last week, I looked at the flywheel method or flywheel model on how to
grow your business and we had a touchpoint on the efficiency of a flywheel and some of
the things that might hinder the effectiveness of your flywheel model. It could be the size, speed,
it could be friction. We're not going to spend too much time on that today because I'd like to take a
deeper look into how we apply some forces to our business and those four main areas within
our marketing strategy that we need to think about. Now, we've got a rough drawing here where
we've got strangers, prospects, customers, and promoters and I've just put some very simple
arrows to show you that we need to apply forces, marketing forces to each of those areas, to make
sure that they actually transition through this cycle that we're looking at. Now, depending on
the size of your business and the maturity of your business, how long you've been in business, you
might have different people, different clients, customers at different positions of this wheel.
So, it's important to remember that, you might be at different stages of maturity within that wheel,
that you need to also nurture and manage through the process. It's not a linear process. We don't
start with everyone being at the same starting point at ‘strangers’ and everyone finishing that
cycle at the same time, because different projects will have different pipelines. So, obviously,
some will come and go and some will still be with you hopefully for many years to come.
So, let's start with strangers. Now, this is obviously, probably the hardest point.
How are we going to find strangers to get to know us initially and to see what we are doing
and what we are offering and we often - I'm sure you're you also have this in your communities
on your own personal Facebook threads - You'll see lots of ads popping up and lots of interest
and content being put out there because often people see that as a shortcut way of getting
strangers to get to know them. That's all very well. But if you are making a genuine,
fairly high-value purchase or engagement of a service, you will want to do your homework. You
will take another look at other platforms, the website that is your key area, where people are
going to go and see what you're really about. You don't have that social proof of a website clearly
showing what you do, what you offer, hints, tips, added value in general, that people can engage
and say, yes, I think I quite like the look of this company, I'm going to take this further.
It's a huge opportunity - it's not enough just to have a social media page set up,
with everything tucked away in different screens. We all know it. Social media is changing at such
a fast pace, that to keep abreast of all those changes all the time can be very confusing for
your audience. Just as they've got familiar with finding something in a particular place, the
platform goes and changes their functions again,
and this is why a website can be your absolute strong foundation, strong core to your business
because it's in your control. You get to decide when you're going to change.
You get to decide how you build your website to be a familiar and easy to navigate the site
using best practices in the industry so that you don't actually turn off
your 'stranger' that has finally decided to... And
it really is about adding value. So, your customer can't get to know you, this stranger, I should
say until you're able to actually connect with those really important that you pay attention.
Content marketing, now, I often tell people who are not blogging or not looking at that
side of their business, I normally ask them a little question, which is
'now who's the biggest reader of your blog?' And they're normally looking at me as if I'm asking
some kind of trick question, or I'm asking for a special magic number or some sort of
identity of their customers that are actually reading. I'm not, it's not a trick question!
I'm actually just trying to highlight to you that aside from the humans that are engaged,
the biggest reader of your blog is Google. Why do we go to Google? Google gives us the most relevant
information that we are looking for and so, if Google, through its bots, can see that, yes,
this website let's say SF Digital, are regularly updating their blog. They are putting out
meaningful, useful content. I'm going to give them brownie points because they are doing that
and so they must be worthwhile because they're getting the visits, getting the hits. So, they
are worthy of crediting them with points. Now, going back to the favorite win of the week for us,
where I showed you a blog post featured snippet. That's how that has got to that page because
Google is tracking what we are doing and is then able to put us in front of an absolutely huge
Google audience, somebody that has searched for that particular keyword.
And this is why your content marketing strategy
needs to be consistent, our blog posts now are regularly going out twice, three times a week.
This is part of our system of how we are outputting our content. It's not an 'I'll
do it if I have some time,' it's not a 'nice to have, but I'm far too busy.'
It is essential to all our activity. It's something that we are doing faithfully,
with all the team to make sure the content... And it's a work in progress where we started however
many years ago with blogs has evolved, where we started at the beginning of lockdown, which was
March for us, here in the UK, what we were doing with our blogs, even at that point has completely
changed, to where we are six months down the line and, you know, further to our planning meeting.
And, obviously our continual improvement, we are also going to be changing a little bit of
that content again, going forward. So, we are constantly, like I say, evolving and hopefully
improving our output. It's not enough, good enough is not good enough. It's about always improving
and trying to reach the best we possibly can. So, that's a little bit about content marketing now,
next one, video marketing. So, we've all seen, the huge explosion of people suddenly taking to their
devices and all putting out content on devices, various social platforms and Facebook, Insta,
some are playing with TikTok and many, many others, why do we do it? Clearly,
we as advocates of video marketing and campaigns for our customers. We know
this works - our audience, our strangers if you like, come to us, majority of the time
through our video marketing, but let's not forget that I've just talked about blogs.
So, how come you're now saying video marketing? Well, actually, if you were to go and take a look
at our blogs, you will see that the origination of that blog, is actually coming from the video,
so today's video will become part of a blog post, the video becomes embedded within that
page of the blog, but then there'll be a blog article, accompanying it as well. So, the video
marketing again for us is about consistent output regularly, putting out good quality information
and content that your audience will engage with. It's also a great advantage to be able to humanise
what is basically a very cold, hard face - the internet. How are you going to stand out from
the many businesses that are out there selling products... Being able to demonstrate what you do
and putting a face to the name will help with that engagement and increases the likeability.