- Hey, guys. Adam here.
And in this video,
I'm gonna help you become a better digital marketer
by showing you some of the most important things
you need to know about digital marketing right now.
You see, digital marketing has been made
to seem way more complicated than it actually is.
That's a shame really
because it's actually pretty straightforward.
That said, if you do want to get the best results possible
from your digital marketing,
you're going to need to know and understand the strategies
that I'm gonna be sharing with you in this episode.
So, my promise to you is this.
If you watch this entire video,
you will be a better digital marketer at the end.
So, let's get to it.
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So, the very first thing that I need to share with you
are the differences between digital marketing
and traditional marketing.
Brace yourself for this one 'cause it's pretty profound.
Actually, it's not profound at all.
And that's what makes it so interesting.
You see, digital marketing is really just marketing
done through the use of digital channels.
That's it.
So, when we're talking about digital marketing,
well, we're talking about marketing
through the use of channels like SEO
or Search Engine Optimization,
social media, pay per click ads or online Facebook ads,
Instagram ads, or anything like that.
Not to mention email marketing or website optimization,
or anything that really takes place online
or through the use of digital media.
You can contrast this with traditional marketing
using traditional media.
Things like TV or the radio or newspapers,
or magazines or billboards.
Basically, anything not digital.
Now here's the deal,
traditional marketing and traditional advertising
and everything that goes into it, well, it still works,
but there are some significant advantages
to using digital marketing and all the digital channels
that we now have available.
First of all, digital marketing tends to give you
a much larger audience size.
Really, you can reach anybody that's online
and there's billions and billions of people online.
Next is audience targeting
because not only are you able to reach
these billions of people.
Well, you don't wanna reach all of them because all of them
are not going to be the perfect fit for your business.
Rather, you can be laser-focused and selective
on only the most ideal and perfect people
that you wanna target.
Digital marketing also tends to be significantly
more cost effective than running say,
an ad in the New York Times
or heaven forbid, a Super Bowl commercial.
Again, these are designed to appeal to mass markets
and to try to reach everyone.
Probably not your goal.
Rather what you wanna do is be laser focused and selective
with your marketing and reach again
only those people most likely to buy.
Digital marketing also allows you to get immediate feedback.
And this is probably one of my favorite benefits
of the channels.
After all, if you think about running,
say a magazine ad where you've got to think of the copy
and the creative and what you're going to say,
and then you've gotta get it all written up
and sent to the magazine.
It's gotta get published and then distributed.
Well, you could be looking at weeks at best,
months and maybe many, many months
before you ever figure out if this worked or not.
Digital marketing on the other hand.
Well, in theory, you can write an ad
and have it online in a matter of minutes.
Immediate feedback, immediate correction, immediate results.
Plus, digital marketing tends to be a whole lot easier
to measure and to track because everything's digital
which means we've got a digital trail allowing us to measure
costs and results and everything in real time
so we can make adjustments and tweaks
and optimizations on the fly.
Again, contrast that with waiting three months
for your magazine to come out
and figure out if things worked or not.
And you can't measure clicks on a magazine.
So, the best you can hope to do
is well, really, either have them fill out
some kind of a form on the magazine
or visit a digital channel
which ties us back into digital marketing.
Anyway, there's obviously some serious advantages here
to choosing digital channels going with digital marketing.
But again, that's not to say that traditional marketing
doesn't still work.
It does.
The point here is to take a look at either traditional
or digital marketing and then sort of take a few steps back
to the strategies and the fundamentals and the principles,
the consumer psychology, the buyer behavior,
why people do the things they do
and then focus on mastering and learning that.
Then, you can apply that to digital channels
or traditional channels or any other channels
that come out in the future.
All right, the next thing that'll really help you
become a better digital marketer is to understand
the differences between strategy and tactics
and when to use them.
Strategy is all the big picture stuff.
And this is really where you wanna focus your efforts.
First and foremost, because this is the foundation
that all of your future marketing efforts and tactics
and tools and software and things like that
are gonna be built on.
Get this part wrong and nothing else matters
because nothing else will work.
Now, there are a ton of different strategies and approaches
and ways to look at your digital marketing,
but pretty much no matter how you look at it,
it always comes back to four basic
and really solid principles
that have stood the test of time
and are gonna be just as relevant today
as they are a hundred years from now.
I call these things the core four
and they make up the center
of my "Hub & Spoke" model of marketing.
The core four are made up of model, market,
message and media.
So, let's unpack those now.
The model is essentially your business.
Your offer, your package, your servicing,
the pricing that goes with it,
how you deliver whatever it is
that you deliver to the market.
It's important here to design your model,
design your business around what is the most enjoyable
and profitable and in demand by the market.
'Cause the worst thing you can do is build a business
that you absolutely hate.
Next is the market.
These are the people that you're going to serve
and you don't wanna say everyone or anyone with money.
You wanna be focused, laser focused
on exactly who is going to get the best results
from your product or service.
And also the market that you're going to most enjoy serving.
In marketing, we call this an ideal customer avatar
or an ideal client avatar.
And it's made up of demographic details
like age, gender, income, occupation.
Geographic details like what city or state
or province or country they live in.
And psychographic details like what are their values,
their attitudes and their lifestyles.
Next is your message.
And here's where you're going to clarify
and connect with your ideal target market
by speaking directly to them about their pains
and their problems and their frustrations,
and how your business is uniquely positioned
to help solve that for them.
Telling stories about previous customers
and previous client results
is an incredibly effective way to do this
as are getting testimonials directly from them
and running case studies
proving that you know what you're talking about
and have done what you say you're going to do.
I think that made sense.
The point here is that to craft truly effective messages,
well, you've gotta understand who your market is
and what really makes them up
and what makes them do the things they do.
So, a little bit of market research
and having a few chats with your customers never hurts.
And the fourth part of the core four, and again the center
of that "Hub & Spoke" model of marketing
is all about media.
And this is where you're going to go,
where you're going to do your marketing,
which digital channels you're gonna choose.
Most businesses do this completely backwards.
They start with the media by hearing a great thing
about Facebook ads or YouTube marketing.
Maybe starting a podcast.
And then they just rush in there,
forgetting all about the message
and the market and the model.
So, unsurprisingly, well they're building their business
and they're building their marketing
on a pretty sketchy foundation.
This is why if you go through the steps in the right order,
starting with the model, moving onto the market,
identifying the message.
By the time you get to media,
the choices should be evidently clear.
Like, crystal clear.
You should know exactly where your ideal target market
is present and active online.
And this is going enable you to go there
and ignore everything else.
The reality is you don't need to do everything.
You don't need to be everywhere.
You just need to be the places
where your ideal target market are present and active.
This is gonna save you a ton of time and money and headache,
and wasted energy by spreading yourself too thin
on channels that simply aren't gonna deliver results.
All right, so that was the strategy.
The core four, the high level stuff
that goes into making the right decisions.
Tactics on the other hand are how you're going to execute
everything I've just talked about.
The tactics are the details and the actionable steps
or executable things that you're actually going to go
and put into practice.
So, the strategy being the business model you're using,
the market that you're going to go after,
the messages you're going to use and the media choices
that you're going to deploy your marketing on.
And then the tactics being things
like what frequency are you gonna post?
And what kind of content are you gonna post?
And what schedule or level of consistency
or how many memes are you gonna throw in?
A tactical question would be
what's the best time to post on social media?
A strategic question would be
which social media platform should we be on?
That's the difference.
All right, the next thing that you need to know
about digital marketing is the difference
between organic and paid.
So, let's start with organic.
Organic content and organic digital marketing
is essentially anything that you create for free.
So, anytime that you make a post on Facebook
or an Instagram story or a YouTube video,
or anything like that and you're not paying money
to have it promoted, you're creating organic content.
Now, this doesn't mean that it's free content
because odds are good, you put time and energy,
and probably a decent amount of money
behind the content that you're creating.
But by not paying to promote it,
it's still classified as organic content.
So, if organic marketing is putting out content
and not paying to have it promoted.
Well then, paid marketing is the opposite of that.
Putting out content and then paying the networks
to promote it and distribute it to even more people.
Basically, with paid media or paid marketing, paid ads,
you're running advertising to whatever message
or whatever content that you're putting out there.
Now, the big players in this space right now
are obviously the kingpins like Facebook ads,
Instagram ads, and YouTube ads,
LinkedIn ads and Google ads.
Essentially, the major networks with ads
added to the back of their name.
Organic content shows up in the news feeds
of people that follow you.
Whereas with paid marketing and paid media,
it shows up in the news feeds
and on the phones and on the devices of the people
that you choose through targeting.
Now of course like all marketing strategies,
there's pros and cons to both.
Organic is free essentially in nature,
but it's going to be a little more limited in reach
because the way the algorithms work
is they kind of favor paid media
'cause they like to make money.
Paid media on the other hand
has the obvious downside of costing money.
Well, bright side, it allows you
to reach a ton of people very quickly.
So, essentially the choice between organic and paid
comes down to time versus money
but also the rate at which you want to experience results.
All right, now let's talk about one of my favorite topics
in all of marketing, direct response versus brand awareness.
Direct response marketing is unsurprisingly direct
in its goal to get a response.
Man, marketing sure isn't very creative sometimes.
Basically, when you do direct response marketing,
you're creating an ad or you're creating a piece of content
and you are focused on getting an immediate
and tangible return, something like a lead or a sale,
or a phone call, or a visit
or a sign up or something like that.
Direct response marketing would be run a Facebook ad,
expect to generate a lead, send out an email,
measure the number of conversions, promote a video,
track how many people signed up for a free trial.
All of these are direct response
because you're expecting something ideally immediately
and you're gonna be able to track and measure it.
So, you can do more of what works and less of what doesn't.
Now, contrast all of that with brand awareness marketing
which is essentially more focused on longer term
and building trust and authority
and your brand name in the market.
With direct response, we're measuring things
like leads and sales and conversions.
With brand awareness, we're measuring things
like trust and authority, and possibly mentions,
but a lot harder to quantify and to measure
because they're a lot more intangible.
The reality is long term to build a scalable
and sustainable and profitable business,
well, you do need a pretty decent mix
of both direct response marketing
and brand awareness marketing.
But you have to be wary of the cardinal sin of marketing.
You see, one of the biggest mistakes in all of marketing
is running brand awareness marketing campaigns
and expecting direct response results.
This is a recipe for failure and one of the biggest reasons
that many people claim their marketing just isn't working.
It's because they're using the wrong tool for the job.
Like following a recipe to bake a cake
and then getting really frustrated
when it comes out like muffins or bread
or anything that isn't cake.
This is why it's incredibly important
that you use the right recipe or strategy for the job.
I'll write another incredibly important thing
you need to know about digital marketing
is the difference between search and discovery marketing.
When it comes to search versus discovery marketing,
the biggest and most important
or keyword, if you will, is intent.
Basically, what's the intent or what is the reason
that someone's using a specific platform
when they log on in the morning or at noon, or at night?
So, let's start with search.
And here we're talking about platforms
like Google and YouTube.
Basically, any other search engine.
When someone logs onto Google, for example,
well, they have intent.
They're there to find an answer or a solution or a product.
They're there to do something or buy something
or learn something or take some kind of action.
This is where you as a marketer
want to show up in front of them
and basically answer their question
or give them the solution to whatever it is
that they're looking for.
Some strategies here are using SEO
or Search Engine Optimization,
as well as Google ads which is pay per click advertising.
Discovery marketing on the other hand,
well, this encompasses brands like Facebook and Instagram
and YouTube to a certain extent.
Essentially, a user on these platforms may have intent
but they're probably more casually browsing.
After all, nobody really shows up in the morning,
logs onto Facebook or Instagram with a credit card in hand
looking to buy something.
This is why if you're doing search marketing,
well you can afford to be direct.
They're looking for something?
You have the answer.
So you can just give it to them.
With discovery marketing on the other hand,
you've gotta be a little more creative
and a little more entertaining.
You've gotta get their attention and then keep it,
and allow them to become interested
in what it is that you're selling or promoting.
Now, both search marketing and discovery marketing
are incredibly important parts to building
an overall successful and sustainable business.
But just like with direct response marketing
and brand awareness marketing,
you wanna make sure that you're using the right tool
for the right job at the right time in the right place.
All right, next I've got something
very important to share with you.
And it's something that rarely gets talked
about when it comes to marketing advice.
And that is the difference between marketing products
and marketing services.
Here's the deal.
Most of the marketing information out there
whether we're talking about textbooks
or courses, or even trainings,
they revolve around the marketing of products.
A product being something tangible that you can hold,
that you can see, that you can touch and that you can taste.
A service on the other hand is intangible.
You can't hold it.
You can't touch it.
You can't see it.
You can't taste it.
Plus, with services you often need to pay in advance
which requires a whole new level of trust.
This is why if you're marketing a service-based business
and you try to market it like a product-based business,
well, you're gonna be very disappointed.
Now, when it comes to marketing products,
you have the opportunity and the advantage
of being able to explain and to show and to demonstrate
how a product works, what it looks like.
You wanna show it in action.
Show the features, show the benefits
that the features will deliver.
Show the story behind it.
Everything like that.
Here's an example.
Let's say that I'm trying to promote and sell this pen.
Well, the fact that this pen has a lid is a feature.
The fact that it will prevent me
from getting ink all over myself, that's a benefit.
but you can take it further and you probably should.
For example, this pen lid also has a clip which means
that I can attach it to my papers or my notebook,
or even my clothes if I'm trying to sport that nerdy look.
Another feature of the pen lid itself
is the fact that the lid has holes in the top.
Maybe surprised to hear that the reason that pen lids
have holes in the top is to prevent suffocation
in case they accidentally or purposely get swallowed.
After all chewing on pen lids is an age old
albeit highly unsanitary practice.
Sometimes you just get hungry.
Services on the other hand,
well, they don't have that advantage.
So, the main thing when you're promoting
and marketing services is you want to sell the end.
Essentially, the end state or the benefits, or the outcome
or the results that someone will experience
after working with you.
In fact, when it comes to marketing services,
I'd go so far as to say it's pretty much
all about the end state and the benefits
and the outcomes and the results someone will experience.
The key here is to highlight the current pain
or dissatisfaction or discomfort of their current state.
And then of course, paint the picture
of how they'll be so much better
after having worked with you.
All right, the next thing you really need to be aware of
if you want to become a true expert in digital marketing
is to understand the differences
between B2B and B2C marketing.
B2B stands for business to business.
And this is where your main customers,
your main clients aren't regular everyday people,
but rather other businesses.
B2C on the other hand means you are a business
that sells to consumers.
Regular, everyday people and not businesses.
B2B, business to business.
B2C, business to consumer.
And just like everything I've shared with you so far,
there's some significant differences
in the way that you wanna market your business,
market your service, market your product, market whatever
depending on whether you're selling to businesses or people.
And this is why the next thing you're gonna wanna do
is check out the video I have linked up right here
on B2B versus B2C marketing.
So, make sure to check that out now
and I'll see you in the next episode.
Basically, B2B marketing typically focuses
on fewer but larger customers
and B2C marketing on more but smaller customers.
This means for B2B type marketing,
you're gonna have a little more incentive
to put a little more punch behind your pitch
because you're gonna have to market to fewer customers.
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