Transcript:
What is digital marketing? Why do I need it? Nobody is really aware but the numbers are staggering, a quarter of the planet are on Facebook, there’s over a billion Instagram users and LinkedIn continues to grow. I know LinkedIn is changing as there’s sort of a backlash of ‘not on LinkedIn users’ as we’re seeing more sort of Facebook type stuff being posted, but it is still growing. The oldest Millennials are now 35 and growing and they’re digitally native. It’s interesting watching my kids who join society, as the first place they go is online and to places like YouTube rather than trying to find a book or something. It’s very digitally integrated. And they expect you to deliver whatever you do as much of it digitally as you can and spend quite a lot of time on social. And we’ve all got our screen reports from our phones.
It’s pretty much clear now that we’re in some form of work from home, hybrid set-up. So you’ve got there was a big leap in two days, I think 35% of all turnover during a lockdown was via online retailers. And, people have got used to sitting and realising ‘I can just do it from my phone’ so we’ve now got better prices and it’s harder getting people into the shops again, but life’s changed. And the generations Z, they’re quite hard to get to, they’re called hidden audiences, because they don’t do terrestrial TV, they watch when they want to watch and they watch through different channels. So the world has changed because of COVID.
So when we talk about digital marketing, what are the components? This diagram in front of you is actually a cut down list from about 120 icons, I could have chosen or different aspects. We as an agency, because KUB is as an agency as well as a coaching business, we cover all that stuff. That’s pretty much the core of our offer. It’s quite surprising how it’s grown. So people say ‘Oh, I’ve done a bit of social media, or I’ve done a bit of email, and the websites not working particularly well’ but that is because there are a lot more components.
(This will be available as a presentation to the WhatsApp group and you’re able to look at this at your leisure.)
We have to think about it as a system, when you say your website doesn’t work, maybe it’s because social media is not working properly. Or maybe if you’re a B2B business, your LinkedIn is not working, maybe not posting enough? Have you found the right keywords? It’s a very misunderstood area because people see it as a dark art or whatever, but it’s not- it’s a process.
I use the right hashtags and the right keywords and so forth, it’s the basis for the right sort of content, which is going on to your website, LinkedIn. Are you reminding people via email what you’re doing? You know, everybody’s really busy so a lot of it’s all about interrupting people’s attention so that they can go, yes, I forgot about that, thank you for reminding me and they then go to the website and so forth websites are becoming a lot more interactive rather than just sticking a brochure on there. Yes, a brochure is nice to have but it needs to be interactive, are you gonna make it into videos on to the web chats and things that allow people to then engage with the website? And a lot of this stuff has become more to the forefront over lockdown, because that’s the only bit businesses have got to communicate with their audience.
What does that look like in reality? We use a tool called Create a fantastic tool, we’ve got the paid for version, but the free version is equally brilliant- it’s just restricted on what you can actually do. You’re only allowed 60 elements, three projects. I love this programme,I sit with clients and map out their journey, because everybody’s journey is different. So we map out what their journey is, what their preferences are, where they’re at currently so forth. We can build a current state of what you want now and you can build a future state of what you’d like it to be. So you’ve got to develop your own digital marketing ecosystem. So when somebody says, I’m going to do your digital marketing strategy, that should be what comes out of i- What is the process? What is the flowchart? What is the journey?
Now, the other thing you need to be aware of, if you’re not already, is the phrase omnichannel. If you’re a business, more and more people are expecting you to communicate with them in a way that they want to be communicated with. I think, this year, we’re going to see WhatsApp for business, we recommend you put webchat on your website because all people prefer to communicate via that mechanism.
Our phones don’t ring anymore. We’ve got WhatsApp for every single client, it means really fast communication. We obviously use the phone for certain sectors, our phones never ring unless its suppliers trying to sell us things. But for others, it might be an online shop and you’ve also got to think if you’re a service business, how do you productise what you do? For example, we’ve taken all our knowledge and put it into a book so that we answer that question. So if somebody wants a real low cost way, you can get the book and find the answer. Therefore, we’re now a service business so we’re actually on Amazon. So it’s been creative in the way that you package up what you do and so forth and make it applicable to what people want.
So what we’re going to work on now is one of my main bugbears, whilst ive been running workshops, is I say ‘who do you sell to?’ And they go ‘oh, yeah, we sell to everybody’- No, you can’t do that, not anymore. In a product lead, when you just sold stuff, but you didn’t really know who or why people bought it, and so forth, which was the case 20 years ago, whatever. Now, it’s completely different. When we use tools like LinkedIn advertising, Facebook advertising, and so forth, we have got to be really precise on the audience we are targeting. So we have a single buyer persona, google it and you’ll see lots of images and so forth, people talking about it.
In the old days, when sitting with a client, we used to say, right, okay, there’s an empty chair, imagine who would be sitting in that chair, if they were your customer? Who would it be? Where and what would be their job title? What would be the things that we’re thinking about? What would be the sort of tasks they’re trying to get done? And over the last few years that’s been formalised. This term has been around for about 10 years, I guess. But people used to question, do I need to do this. But now it’s critical, you’ve got to be crystal clear on who you’re selling to and not every sector will be profitable, and you may need to use a different language. For example, selling to the baby boomer like me, you know, where the majority of the baby boomers have got a handle on technology, but we are not digitally native, we’ve had to learn. Whereas Generation Z are digitally native. So you’ve got to be using the right tools and the right language and so forth- they’ll have different challenges as well. So here we will see an example of a small business owner who wants 10 employees, maybe industry experts and so forth. From a marketing perspective, no one challenges or controls the marketing and so forth. And the goals are therefore to drive sales and in the business. When you can see somebody wanting a bigger business or professional marketeer, they’ll be there looking for different things. The small business is money poor but time rich or more professional marketing might be very time poor but have the money. Then we’ve got the larger ones, larger digital marketing persons and their goals will be completely different again. Generally we would sell to some of these but also we’ve never touched some of these because we don’t speak that language and we don’t have appropriate services for them. So it’s making sure that you really understand. So again, this is something we did using creately. This is a template you can use. We’re going to show your spreadsheet which you will be able to download. Here we have, you know, capture name, age, title, industry, and so forth what their interests are. And don’t forget for b2c and b2b it will be slightly different. So type of job title and their age, but the b2c and so we’ll go on to the next slide.
So the other thing we need to think about is what’s influencing- what’s their pain? I’m sure you’ve all or you have heard of the pain selling model? You’ve in the past, you’ve been to workshops, which talked about selling the benefits. So you have the further analysis of features, attributes, benefits, so, you know, selling a pencil, for example, the other benefit is it can, write? Why can it write? Well, the attribute is down its core its got some graphite, or used to be graphite. There the feature is, it is a piece of wood with some graphite down, where you sell the benefit that is used for writing, and you can rub it out and so forth. And well, that’s great. And you still need that but its not negated. But if you’re working or talking to somebody in a network, or you’re on LinkedIn, and so forth, and you’ve got to understand what their pain is- what is the pain that they’re trying to solve? Everybody’s got problems.
And it’s more efficient. People are better at quickly sorting those problems or getting rid of them or whatever. So we have, so the first job is to think about, and there’s a thing called if you want to go into more depth, there’s no value proposition canvas from strategizing. But I like this because it’s a simpler version of that, that takes a bit more explanation, whereas this is relatively simple. So think of that.
First of all, the task that that person is trying to do, what is it? What was the point? What are the things that they do in their everyday life? Or really look at an example. And then, you know, what are the feelings that come with the experience with whatever these tasks are? Is it frustration? Is it annoyance? Is it, you know, kind of get the job done? Or is it happiness because they’re doing, they’re being successful? So it’s about what really matters to them, what’s in the forefront of their mind? We then have what’s influencing them in the old days, when there was lots of attention.
But note, the information I remember, when I was MD of a waste company, I would literally interrogate salespeople, when they came in for all the information I could drag out of them. That can be all with their fancy sales scripts and destroyed it within the first few minutes because I needed that information. And these days, though, I’m seconds away from pretty much any information I need on most subjects, so that when I’m talking to sound so when you talk to a salesman, you’ve got all that information. So it’s important to know who’s influencing them. It could be social media could for example be it could be trade associations, if you’re selling to the law sector, that they’re influenced by other law firms, and you’ve got to know that you’re selling to them or sector because if you sell to a law firm, you’ve got to use X, Y and Z in an article for them to listen to you. Whereas in any other industry they wouldn’t. So it’s very sector specific and individual specific as to what influences, and what they prioritise. And then we get to the pain points.
So what is the pain? What are they trying to solve? And then you need to know the overall journey that achieves the goal, but users aren’t where they want to end up? Can you help them on that journey because that’s where USPs come in (the things that differentiate you from those people who compete with us). So for a marketing person, generate new employees, find new customers, etc. What influences? What’s the feeling of frustration? You know, dealing with agencies, dealing with their own staff, not understanding things, not being able to keep up to speed, time pressures, not understanding, etc. And then you’re influenced by the team, external consultants, athletes and so forth. The pain points, they don’t get enough inquiries, they don’t understand digital marketing, and they don’t have the time, money and technical basis skills- either all of those or some of those. Their overall goal is to make them generate enough inquiries and sales and an acceptable return on investment. So you can see how this pulls together for a marketing company.
The idea is you download that and fill it in now you might have several buyer personas for your business. And so typically, you may have up to three depending on the sort of business you are if you’re a manufacturer and solar for example. You might design B2B then you might be selling business to retail or we might design to consumers directly, it depends on your business model. If you’ve got more than three kinds that lack of focus in the business or you’re a large business.
