It's no secret that the world of digital marketing changes fast which is why in
this episode I'm going to be breaking down 5 of the absolute most important
digital marketing skills you need to master if you want to stay on top of
your game. Let's get to it!
Hey there my name is Adam Erhart, marketing strategist and welcome to The
Marketing Show. Alright, so it really is no secret that the world of digital
marketing changes at an absolutely crazy fast pace and what works today may not
work tomorrow, what worked last week might not be working today and and so on
and so forth. This is why it's incredibly important to make sure to stay on top of
your game by consuming content like this, engaging in other people's content,
making sure that you're putting your own strategies and your own tactics to the
test and sort of analyzing the data, seeing what works and what doesn't so
that you can stay ahead of the curve, always getting the best results possible.
It's funny, actually, looking back over my career and over the last many years of
doing all kinds of different digital marketing from web design and SEO, moving
through paid ads and social and content strategy and essentially, just how
different the stuff that we're using today inside the agency is, compared to
the stuff that we were doing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 years ago. I mean it's almost
completely different now. Attention spans are shorter. There's new technology. The
way that customers and clients engage with content online, it's almost
completely different. So, the stuff that kind of got you to this point, isn't
going to be the things that are going to take you forward into the next decade.
And that's what this video is all about. Alright, so let's get things started
with what I believe is probably one of the most important skills that you need
to master which is: Marketing Fundamentals. Now, I've spoken about this
before in my what is digital marketing video. If you haven't seen that yet, I'll
make sure to link it up in the cards as well as the description below. But
essentially, digital marketing is just marketing done digitally. I know, it's not
really profound but at the end of the day that's really what it is. This is why
it's really important if you want to succeed with digital marketing to make
sure that you're dedicating and allocating a sufficient amount of time
to really mastering the basics of marketing, those fundamental principles
like positioning and differentiation and all the points around branding and how
to really build kind of a solid and likable brand for today's day and age.
I really can't stress this enough. It is absolutely, fundamentally, crucial that
you understand the basics of marketing and fortunately, once you sort of gut
these into your system, once you've spent some time learning them and really
trying to master them, here's the beauty, this time is going to be really well
spent because human behavior, which is essentially really what marketing is, is
understanding and leveraging different aspects of human behavior, how you can
sort of I want to say manipulate but essentially, influence the direction and
the decisions people make, well, regardless, human behavior really hasn't
changed all that much. At the end of the day, we're still just people. This means,
by even understanding the basics of how people work and how they make buying
decisions, well, you're gonna be able to apply this information this year, next
year, for the next 5-10 probably the next hundred years. For example, by spending a
little bit of time learning about consumer behavior, marketing fundamentals,
you'll probably come across the fact that consumers make buying decisions
emotionally, not logically or irrationally, this doesn't mean that you don't want to
include logical or rational elements, it just means that you want to lead with
the emotional aspect first so you can sort of get that buy-in and get that
conviction and then follow up with the logical and rational elements of your
product or service, so that you can allow them to justify the decision to
themselves and to others. The beauty is that once you understand that one
very simple concept, it's really never going to change and it's going to be
able to be applied to all of your future marketing making it all that much more
effective moving forward. If you'd like a bit of a refresh on marketing basics and
essentially, foundational marketing principles, I'll make sure to link up a
video on that in the cards and in the description box below as well that you
can check out right after this one. Alright, the next skill that you're going
to want to master, moving forward, is: to Focus on Conversation Generation. Now, as
a die-hard proponent of direct response marketing which is really all about
generating those leads and getting them to take action as soon as possible, well,
a big element or a big switch that we've been seeing lately is sort of a
transition from straight-up lead gen to conversation gen because at the end of
the day you can generate all the leads you want but what you probably want are
those conversations that are going to lead to bigger and more essentially,
buying opportunities for your business. Now yes, lead gen
is still very much alive and still very much a part of the stuff that I consult
on and the stuff that we do inside the agency. But, if you really want to take
your marketing to the next level and really master it, you're gonna want to
focus on that next step which is essentially, turning those leads into
conversations. Now, it's a bit of kind of give-and-take here about what you're
willing to sacrifice on the front end and how valuable a lead is compared to a
conversation and that's kind of a whole other discussion but what I want to make
sure you understand here, is that when you're structuring your marketing
campaigns, you really want to think a little bit further down the funnel and
really concentrate on not just generating that lead but turning it into
a conversation. But, more on funnel marketing in just a minute here. Now,
here's a bit of a prediction. You see, over the last couple years we've been
seeing a ton of people flood the scenes with lead gen services and all sorts of
different agencies and consultants offering traffic generating lead
generating services like running Facebook ads or YouTube ads or basically,
anything to get leads. But, where you've got an opportunity to really shine,
whether it's as an agency or as a business owner or entrepreneur, is really
thinking further than that and again focusing on those conversations because
generating traffic really isn't that hard, it really just comes down to
finding the right people that you're trying to get in front of having the
right offer message that you can sort of work around to make sure it's
irresistible and then choosing the right media source, whether it's Facebook ads
or Instagram ads or YouTube or whatever. So, traffic is pretty much everywhere but
what isn't everywhere is the skill or the art or the ability to take that
traffic and actually convert it into a conversation that gets somebody
interested in doing business with you. Alright, so the next skill that you're
going to want to master moving forward is something that I alluded to just
earlier, which is: Full Funnel Marketing. Essentially, what you want to do here is
be aware and be cognizant of the entire customer journey, both, pre sale and of
course post sale. But, that's something entirely different. Rather, what I really
want you to do is, when you're running your marketing campaigns, think about
every step that a customer prospect or potential customer is going to have to
take in order to, essentially, become a paying client or customer with your
business. Now, obviously this is going to involve some element of lead gen which
is that very top of the funnel, that cold traffic, the people that have no idea
who you are or what you do or why they should even care. But, I want you to then
take it a step further and focus on the warm traffic. You see, essentially once
you've generated that lead, how are you gonna take that lead and turn it into a
conversation and then for bonus marks, take it a step further, how are you gonna
take that conversation and move it from warm traffic to hot traffic by actually
getting them to take their credit card out of their wallet and become a paying
customer. Now, I know that's a lot of stuff to think about and if you've never
really come across marketing funnels or sales funnels before, I appreciate it's a
lot to take in so I'll make sure to link up a video on marketing funnels as well
as one on sales funnels again in the cards and the description below so
you're gonna be able to check those out right after this video too. The main point
that I really want to leave you with here, though, is that really marketing
isn't siloed or isolated, it's not just one element of either generating traffic
or doing lead gen or even generating conversations. But rather, I want you to
think about the entire marketing funnel from that very first moment that someone
gets introduced to you and to your business, all the way through to the
point that they become a paying customer or client. And then again, if you want
even more bonus marks, think about all the touch points that are gonna happen
after they become an actual paying client or customer, how can you really
make sure you're delivering a phenomenal experience that's going to lead to
better retention, better customer loyalty and more ratings and reviews and
referrals for your business. Alright, so the next skill that you're gonna wanna
master, is probably no surprise and should probably, hopefully, be pretty
obvious but it's worth saying anyways because still not enough people are
dedicating the time, energy and resources to this phenomenally powerful tool and
that is: Video Marketing. You see, when it comes to marketing your business and
when it comes to really building on that know like and trust factor, well, nothing
really beats face-to-face communication. The ability to sit down, look someone in
the eye, have a conversation, understand where they're coming from and how or if
your business is even able to help. But, obviously getting face to face with
every single one of your potential prospects or customers, well, might be
hard, might even be impossible which is where video steps in and it really is
the next best thing, because it allows you to not only hear someone's voice but
you can see their face, you can read their facial expressions, you can try to
judge, whether they're coming off as take or genuine or fake and salesy kind
of slimy. The other thing with video is that it allows you to build a ton of
trust very quickly because again, short of being in person and really able to
read the body language and and hear the inflections and the tone of voice and
the style and all that, well, it really is the next best thing in getting all of
those messages across. Plus, you're able to cram in a ton of value and a ton of
information very quickly. For example, if picture is worth a
thousand words, well, then a video might be worth a million words because you're
able to imply all sorts of different nonverbal cues and again, all of those
things that come down to style and tone and pace and so on. Now, here's the funny
thing with video, if you're not doing it already, you probably know you should be
doing it and even if you're already doing it, you probably know you should be
doing more. But, what is it that stops most people from getting involved and
really cranking out more video. Well, the answer is pretty simple and it really
comes down to this myth or this mistaken belief that everything with video needs
to be perfect. Now, this is understandable. After all, we've sort of been raised and
brought up watching really polished and really perfected videos through TV shows
and movies and basically, any kind of media we see on the screen. But things
have changed and essentially, the barriers to entry to creating video, have
come way down and we're really kind of tired and almost sick of overly polished
and Hollywood type productions, especially if they're coming from a
business or from somebody that you kind of want to engage with. In fact, in a lot
of cases we've done a number of different studies testing a really
highly produced incredibly expensive video against something shot with just
an iPhone that really is pretty low budget and when it comes to running them
as ads against the target market, the low-budget one often just absolutely
destroys the really expensive high budget one. Now, this isn't to say that
there's not a time and a place for a really beautiful really polished piece
of video media. But it shouldn't be the obstacle. You shouldn't let perfectionism
get in the way of you just really getting out there filming something and
publishing it. Plus, the other benefit of video is that you can mess up a whole
bunch of stuff and then just edit it out. And nobody will ever know. Alright, and
moving on to the fifth digital marketing skill that you need to master is:
Automation. And after all, there is so much to do and so little time
and this is where automation steps in as a very valuable skill, both for yourself
and for your own business. But also, potentially to offer to clients or
customers to help them automate some of their business. Essentially, automation is
the offloading or the delegation or basically using tools and technology and
software to take care of a lot of the repetitive tasks that you don't need to
be doing, probably shouldn't be doing, in your business but that still need to get
done. What this means is that you're able to get a whole lot more done, a whole lot
quicker and in fact, in some cases you're able to
get a whole lot more done pretty much instantly because the automation can be
set up ahead of time to just run behind the scenes and trust me, it's a lot
faster than any human being could ever hope to be. For example, in one of my
marketing agencies, we can generate a lead for a client using Facebook Ads, we
can take that lead we can nurture them with SMS and text and email and voice
mail and essentially, start the conversation from our end and follow up
with a very strategic sort of automated, follow-up sequence, right up until we get
that response and then from there, it gets even further automated so that we
can nurture them again and turn that conversation into a
full-fledged client. And we can do this all on behalf of the client without the
client needing to lift a finger, which is magic. And that's the power of automation.
It's essentially, like having a full sales team or a full marketing team or a
full appointment setting team or whatever you need to do, working for you
24/7 365 all the time without you needing to do anything once that initial
work has been put in and the automation is set up. But, even if you don't want to
get that fancy with automation, it's still a valuable thing to master and to
incorporate into your business and you can still use it to do some basic, but
incredibly important things, such as sending out automated email newsletters
that go out whenever somebody downloads your guide or buys one of your products.
Automated re-targeting and re-marketing advertisements that follow someone
around like a creepy stalker. Anytime they visit your website, automated
customer management that follows up with customers and makes them feel cared for
and looked out for. Even if it's a robot doing it. And, people like robots anyway.
Even automated grocery shopping which yes, is not marketing related but it
still saves me a ton of time. The point is, that using technology and
automating repetitive and really often boring process
this can save you a ton of time and make you that much more effective and
efficient and really getting the work done that needs to be done so you can
get back to doing those high leverage, really valuable activities that are
going to drive your business forward. Alright, the next thing you're going to
want to do is check out the video I have linked up right here on 20 digital
marketing tactics which is going to give you a ton more great ideas to really
drive your marketing forward. So make sure to check that out now. Thanks so
much for watching and I'll catch you next time, on the Marketing Show. Points
to consider when you're constructing an irresistible offer is that you want to
be selling a painkiller....