Without further ado let's get started and today, I'm going to be covering inbound marketing
and looking at the flywheel methodology and how you can implement...
Before I get into the topic itself, the week never stops at SF Digital! We just wanted
to share some of our wins. So, to summarize, our content management calendar is finally
fully working. It's been a number of weeks of hard work. Just that we have a lot of content
out on the day and that's taken a ... We're really pleased. Thanks again to all my team
... Also our internal systems, we're actually creating all our videos and sub videos that
are from ... masters like today, that's also complete. Complete as much as anything ever
is! No such thing as perfection! [...] There will still be tweaks. I know that for sure
but in essence, we are done. So, we are pleased!
The third win is that we've recruited a social media manager in recent days. She's doing
amazingly well and has already helped gain more subscribers and followers which again
is boosting our work and helping us to reach out to our audiences. I'd also like to share
our biggest win which is that we have managed to beat some of the leading names in the marketing
world and have managed to get ourselves ranked in Google for quite a lot of our videos. In
fact, over 100 of our keywords now are ranked on Google in video terms and as you can see
these are known as three packs and we are already here on certain keywords. Obviously,
this must have been micro and macro goals and you can see that we are featured on all
three slots for videos in that spot, rather rude of Google to take the number one spot!
How dare they! Their own platform but as you can see we have taken the following two spots,
and again we have taken some spots here but the best one probably is this one where we
have come ranked above leading names and these are industry leaders: HubSpot, WordStream
and indeed Google. We are above them on that particular keyword, so really, what we're
demonstrating is that consistency in posting and systemising your outputs, the traction
will build. This hasn't happened overnight but it's not actually been that long either.
So, it just goes to show that with consistency, you can also achieve this and we are not a
big agency. We are a small but growing agency. We are certainly not one of the big boys but
hey, let's see where we end up, maybe soon turn into one of the big players!.
How are we doing all of this? Well, it's really by implementing systems and working through
our workflows and our process and that's taken time. That's not something we've done overnight
but we can only do that if we actually understand the theory behind what we're trying to achieve.
So, today hence I've chosen to pick this topic about how we can actually encourage inbound
marketing and also like I say using that model of the FlywheeI method, just demonstrate to
you how you too can start to achieve some inbound results. Now, if you talk to any business
owner including ourselves over these last 18 odd years since we started our business,
you'll often find that you know, businesses have changed completely from where they started
to where they may be today and that's certainly true of us - where we started in 2002 with
a part-time photography business. There's no resemblance to where we are today but that's
not just down to the activity of our business, the output of what we're doing.
Actually, the real reason that change has happened is because of our customers, our
clients, because if our business is to change it's actually going to be led by the clients
that we are servicing...
Now, the flywheel model.
Now, if you think of a flywheel and what it actually represents, it's actually a really
energy-efficient device or machine if you like and how much energy is produced in that
device will depend on its size its speed and also its friction so things obviously working
against the energy and to activate that flywheel in terms of marketing terms, we would start
where I've just placed this arrow with basically a 'stranger.' I'm demonstrating this model
assuming that this is, let's say day one of your business, you have zero customers and
we would obviously have to start with strangers to engage with us. Of course, more mature
businesses, you could be anywhere in this journey at any moment in time. There will
be some people, some potential clients that are still strangers to you. There'll be some
that are already turning into prospects. There'll be some who are your customers. Hopefully,
there will be many who are so thrilled with your services, they themselves will become
your promoters in time, that's how you ...
The 'strangers' side of things. We need to put a bit of energy in. We've got to engage
with them and there are a number of ways that you may choose to do that. So, you may go
down the paid advertising route. You might decide you're going to go through the customer
referral program. Again, that's a little bit tricky with strangers because until they become
your customer that's going to get hard for you to actually start from a zero point with
them. You might choose to go through content marketing and indeed video marketing.
In our case, we, as you all know, for those of you that have been with us many times before,
video marketing is a key core activity for us and all our strategy has been devised now
very, very tight tightly around video marketing and that is our main core of activity, that
is ... moving on from there, strangers then becoming hopefully your prospects. So, they've
not quite turned into your customers yet but they are looking to possibly engage with you.
So, again you might think about setting up good sales teams, systemising how you're going
to follow up your leads and just creating a structure in there. Now, I don't know about
you but one of my petty hates is if I was to go to a trade show or I ask a salesperson
to contact me in, let's say four months time for whatever the reason and they don't, they've
lost me because I asked them to do something, I'm half ready but I wasn't quite ready hence
I've given them the heads up I'd like contact in four months time but they don't bother
to follow up.
This becomes crucial to actually making sure you never lose a lead. Now, depending on which
country you're in culturally, this can be a tricky fine line or tightrope to walk. If
a customer or a prospect doesn't give you a timeline, it's very difficult to know am
I calling too soon, am I calling too late and so it does become a little bit personal
as to how you're going to actually deal with that. Now, in the portrait photography business
yes, I would have lots of families particularly the mums of households who would say, You
know, they're busy with XYZ. "Call me in two weeks time." or a certain time of the day.
Everything would go into the CRM system, everything would be marked with a date or a time and
it would all be set up as a task.
I would never forget to ring back when someone had asked me to ring - now, of course, I may
still need to follow that through, they may still put me off till the next call. Not a
problem. My theory would always be, "It's never a no until it's a no. Until then, it's
always a maybe." It's always worth pursuing and checking that prospect out. Hopefully,
you will convert them to a customer and here again, it's really important to have your
systems in place. We certainly are quite serious about client account managers and putting
a personalised contact into place for our client. Again, for that to happen efficiently,
we need to have workflows and of course processes. So, it doesn't matter whether you know, Uzair
or myself, we are the first point of contact for our clients. If it goes on further down
the line to our teams then they are able to handle and know work that has been done so
far because it's all been systemised... program. For those of you that were with me on my last
presentation, you know that I talked about Asana and how we use that to support our processes.
Communication, strong communication both internally and externally.