Get On Your Phone!

You know the difference between you and your customers when it comes to your business’ digital footprint?

You experience it on a big screen - they experience it on a phone.

Think about it - when it’s time for you to “do marketing” you’re at your desk using your office computer or a laptop.

Social Is Mobile

We all have Facebook pages, most of us have Twitter and Instagram accounts.  We have them in order to increase the reach of our messaging.

Having run several rounds of Facebook ads for different clients I can tell you that the vast majority of social traffic that comes through to your website is overwhelmingly mobile - in some cases over 90%.

Design For Mobile First

We just changed the landing page for a current Facebook campaign when we discovered that the average time on page for mobile visitors was less than half that of desktop visitors. 

Turned out that the beautiful layout that worked perfectly on a large screen became way too text heavy and complex on a mobile screen.  It was a simple fix, but with nine times as much mobile traffic as desktop - we should have started with the mobile design first.

Get Off Your Desktop

The next time you “do marketing” spend some of that time on your phone, you might be surprised at how different you look.

Find yourself procrastinating and avoiding your work? Listen to this, it really helps you get things done

Image Credit: Smartphone Abstraction by Jonas Smith on Flickr

How To Make More Time For Marketing

As the son of a Doctor and husband of an Attorney, I’m well acquainted with the “Professions” and the idea that you don’t work at Medicine or the Law, rather you practice it. 

Digital Marketing is no different.

The more you do it - the better you get

The basic mechanic of content marketing is that people will share information that makes them look good.

I’d posit the reason content marketing takes so long to see results is that it takes a lot of practice to consistently produce the good stuff.

If you follow this logic, the most important indicator of digital marketing success is simply how much time you spend doing it.

How to get more time for marketing

You could of course invite the local Victorian coven round or borrow Hermione Granger’s Time-Turner - and good luck with either of those - but a slightly less esoteric way is to use your calendar.

This article from Forbes (which came up in a client session yesterday as we discussed this very issue,) makes the point that the super successful live and work by their calendar. 

While I’m not suggesting that you adopt the defense attorney’s 6 minute schedule, I am suggesting that if you start putting time in your calendar for digital marketing, it’s more likely that you’re going to do it.

Add time spent on marketing to your KPIs

Finally, if you really want to change your behavior, add “hours spent on marketing” as a line on your KPI document. 

If you start allocating time for marketing in your calendar - and you actually stick to that time - it’s easy to add it up at the end of the month.

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Written while listening to: The Bench Dev 1. by music2work2

Image credit: Lost in time by Alice Popkorn on Flickr

You And Your Newsletter

Coca Cola spends over 3 billion dollars a year on marketing.

While some of that is allocated to content creation, the vast majority is spent on ensuring people see what they come up with.

While they get to play with TV, billboards and sponsorships, what do we have?  Short lived social content with the lifespan of a fruit fly, blog posts that may not get seen, expensive Google ads or targeted Facebook ads that can do more harm than good.

Newsletters beat advertising

If there’s one thing I know to be true from working with business owners who have adopted a content strategy, it is that their email newsletter is the number one source of revenue.

Email trumps everything because it arrives in the customer’s inbox.  If you can consistently produce a good newsletter you’ll create more value around your brand than any of Coke’s multi-billion dollar campaigns.

Are you doing enough?

If you don’t have a newsletter, you should change that. 

If you do, take a moment to look at how you are promoting it.  I would suggest, for most businesses running a content strategy, your newsletter signup should take precedence over any other call to action on your website.

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Written while listening to: New Fazioli tracks by music2work2

Image credit: Pepsi-Coca-Cola Reversion by Graham Smith on Flickr

Why You Should Stop Worrying About Marketing

"Stop worrying about how your brand might look if you get marketing wrong!  The fact that you are trying and failing will do more for your small business' reputation than just about anything else."

When a big brand tries something and it doesn't work out - such as the Nationwide Superbowl ad or American Apparel's Challenger tweet (which just makes me feel old!) - there is a public outcry, their brand is damaged and they presumably lose sales as people decide not to buy from them.

However, when you put something out that doesn't work, not only is your audience vastly smaller (and therefore missing the macro affects that social media piles on the big brands,) people know that it's you - a human being trying something - and it's much easier to relate to and forgive a person than it is a brand.
 
I'm not saying you should go out and become a social media douche, publishing link bait crap just to grab people's attention, but I am recommending that you learn in public.

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Written while listening to:  Session 3 - 191 bpm playlist by music2work2

Image credit: What me worry by SL Snyder on Flickr

Why Digital Marketing Takes So Bloody Long!

I've got a new site launching this week - check it out:

http://schatanopticalgallery

Guess how long it took from first meeting to today?

5 months.

5 months!

I know - crazy right - for a 10 page website!

Where the time went

June was spent establishing what it was we were going to create and why, July was all about defining the look and feel.  August and September focused on words and images and booking photographers and caricaturists. 

The last few weeks have been spent putting it all together and we've still got to launch the blog!

Total time spent

Total hours so far on the gig are just over 35 - so technically speaking, yes - we could have done it in a week - but that's the point.

Digital marketing isn't your business, it is an adjunct to your core activity and as a result will always take longer than you think it will.

It's not a race!

Digital marketing is not about who gets there first - it is about who does it best - consistently - over time. 

Incorporate it into your weekly operation, say a couple of hours a week, and you'll develop a habit that will grow your business into the future.

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Written while listening to: Create Flow Playlist - music2work2

You have to do this, before you can do this

I love this visual from Russell Davies.

There are so many takeaways but I'm going to highlight just one.

When it comes to digital marketing we all look at the bigger companies in order to learn from them.  I mean it makes sense right -  "amateurs borrow - professionals steal" and all that?

The internet can make us look huge and bigger than we actually are, but here's the thing - don't model yourself on the best player in the field if you don't have their story.

The days of copying the rich guys and hoping that the public won't notice are dead and gone.

People expect you to be able to present yourself professionally online, that's now a given, but what they're really looking for is authenticity - and that - for you and your business - looks like nothing else on the planet.

If you're feeling a little derivative, call me on 310 980 2499 or email me and lets chat.

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Written while listening to: July 20th Development  - music2work2

Image Credit: Russel Davies

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