Every week I get a number of questions from people who visit my site. A lot of the answers I give can benefit others so this week I will answer them in public.

Leave a comment if you have something similar irking you or have a perspective on the questions.

A Facebook is a huge channel. When approaching it from a marketing perspective it’s easy to fall into the trap of approaching it differently than we do when we are using it with our friends and family.

Pay attention to what you share, like and comment on in your own feed. Are they overt, direct marketing and sales messages? Probably not.

Businesses get traction on social media when they share and curate stories their audience resonate with. People share and interact with these stories when they make them look good in-front of their peers or reaffirm already held beliefs. Look at Humans of New York or Upworthy for examples of this.

In the case of a virtual assistant service; aligning with the audiences beliefs around freedom, entrepreneurship and the concept of being ‘busy’ would be a start. Purely the act of curating content for this audience is valuable to them. Giving in this way without expectation of return will paradoxically give you a far greater return in every area.

A Without an overall strategy hiring an internal marketing person will replicate what you’re doing now – just with an extra salary on the payroll. If you are going to hire someone you either need to prepare a strategy for them to execute or hire someone at a level that they will do it for you.

Many companies engage outside help (like me) at this point. The strategy comes first and gives them confidence that the investment they are making in a new staff member is much more likely to succeed. This approach also helps focus on what type of skill set you should be hiring for rather than just a ‘marketing person’.

In summary; work out what you should be doing to grow your business and it will become clearer who should do it.

A Short answer:

No – You’re not stupid. Get as much data as possible

Long answer:

Ask yourself the question: What is right for the audience?

The nature of a marketplace like a price comparison site is providing transparency to the consumer. To provide price transparency you will need the largest source of data available. This means publishing content without a clear revenue model.

I’ve designed or run (and continue to) dozens of B2C marketplaces and have learned to always make strategic decisions that favour the consumer side. Marketplaces aggregate demand and supply. You need supply on one side, in this case groceries, before you can generate demand on the other side. Look at how many people have tried to compete with TradeMe but lacked supply of listings to attract enough buyers…

Businesses will always go to where the audience is. Build a valuable audience and then you can commercialise them on your terms.

Gym’s are strange places.

There’s the machine people who seem to sit there for days idly peddling, barely raising a sweat. There’s the muscle heads who scream, throw weights around and wan’t everyone to know they are there.

There’s also the guys who are using the latest piece of fancy equipment and inventing extremely complex new exercises.

What could possibly go wrong?

They have the best intentions but they arent doing things that worked for hundreds of years

Exercise is a lot like business.

Despite the latest, trendiest fad the old way’s often work.

Big, shiny ideas are everywhere. They come to us in the middle of the night, we read them on blogs and scribble them on whiteboards.

Idea’s are magnificent, powerful things that fuel innovation and passion.

But just because we CAN do something doesn’t mean we SHOULD.

My Dad used to tell me that more millionaires were created from dry cleaning than any other business.

Dry cleaning.

It’s not sexy or disruptive or innovative. It’s washing other people’s dirty clothes.

But they have a strong business by solving a problem for a large group of people in a way that people are prepared to pay for.

That’s what makes a good business.

A good business is not made by viral marketing campaigns, celebrity endorsements and massive PR.

Do those things help?

Sure. But unless you’ve got a good product that solves your customer’s pains and gives them tangible gains then you’re always going to be tough.

How I Regularly Disappoint Clients

I work with a range of businesses to grow their revenue through digital channels. When we get to the end of the strategy day there are two things the client often feels.

Relief.

Disappointment.

Relief in the sense they have tasks to execute to move them towards a goal.

A pang of disappointment that most of those tasks are logical and simple.

They wan’t to use the latest and greatest tactics in their business and regularly they do.

But until they have laid down a base of proven actions that deliver measurable ROI they shouldn’t.

Choose Three Things

What one action will improve traffic to your website in the next 30 days?

What one action will improve conversion on your website in the next 30 days?

What one action will improve the profitability of your customer in the next 30 days?

Choose something that works.

Using the right tools will make you faster and more efficient.

But choosing the right sales and marketing tools can be like pulling teeth.

This is what Michelle and I do for fun in the weekends

If you type ‘marketing tools’ into Google you get a mere 529,000,000 results…

Here are 3 that I use:

None of these are affiliate links and I’m not getting paid to promote them.

1.Yesware

Yes. I operate at inbox zero

I’m a bit nervous about this one as it’s my dirty little secret and not everyone is going to like it.

I have automatic tracking on all the email’s I send using this tool.

What it is:

Yesware installs a status bar at the top of your Gmail inbox. Every email is tagged with a tracking pixel that loads when someone on the other end opens your email. It also tracks links that you insert into emails and lets you force a registration on people who open them.

How to use it:

If you’re in an email exchange with someone you want to impress or sell to you can use tracking to engineer serendipity. See they opened your email? Send a ‘hey I just saw this article you might like’ or ‘thinking about your project and had this idea’.

Devious? You decide. I prefer to have as much information as I can.

http://www.yesware.com/

Free plan gives you 100 emails per month. Basic version is $12 USD a month

2. Active Campaign

I’ve talked about email and marketing automation frequently – and for good reason.

They are the highest ROI strategy to make more sales for most businesses.

What it is:

Email newsletters and marketing automation for small and medium businesses. Active Campaign is perfect for most without going to the complexity and expense of something like Infusionsoft.

How to use it:

I’ve showed you how I use automation to capture and nurture people automatically by giving away as much value as I can. Setting aside a day or two to copy this funnel would be one of best time investment’s you could make.

If you wan’t someone to create and execute one for you then send me an email.

https://www.activecampaign.com/

Start’s from $9 USD a month for up to 500 users

Canva

You know those nice images you see posted on social media with a quote incorrectly attributed to Albert Einstein? Chances are they were made in Canva.

How to use it:

If you lack design skills then Canva have thousands of pre-done templates for social media, proposals, designs and more

What it is:

Design is very important as it defines the impression of you. If an image in presentation or proposal looks cheap and nasty then it doesn’t create a great impression of your expertise. If in doubt be minimalist with your design choices.

https://www.canva.com/

“Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.”

Bill Gates said he would always ‘hire a lazy person to do a difficult job’ at Microsoft ‘because a lazy
person will find an easy way to do it’

I take great solace in this because I’m lazy.

I spend a large amount of time working out how to do the minimum amount of work for the maximum result.

When I was a sales person I always had the least amount of customers and prospects but mine were consistently more valuable. It’s just easier to get someone to spend more rather than finding a new customer.

It’s because I’m lazy I love marketing automation.

I also love it because it works.

Marketing automation is technology that repeats repetitive tasks through multiple channels.

I use marketing automation on this site to generate leads, enquiries and opportunities.

It works like this:

In all there are 10 emails in the sequence. When the sequence has finished a subscriber gets weekly posts or interviews.

I wrote 10 emails and they get sent hundreds or thousands of times.

The content aims to be helpful and gives away ideas of how you can execute different strategies in your digital marketing.

Most people will either do nothing with them or implement a small number themselves.

Some will ask me to do it for them.

So what happens when you regularly send people helpful, actionable content?

They open and click. A lot.

If you don’t know much about email marketing the average email open rate is usually around 20% and click rates average 3%.

and the most responded to email in the sequence? It contains 10 words.

It’s personal and ‘expects’ a response.

How to get started with Marketing Automation

1. Choose a platform http://www.infusionsoft.com/ – powerful but complex and $$. http://www.activecampaign.com/ – cheap and simple. I use it.
2. Start an email list – offer something that people wan’t in exchange for their email address
3. Write 8-15 short, helpful emails. Don’t aggressively sell. Show your expertise and value.
4. Make occasional offers