This blog post was written by Framework Marketing Director Michaela Wain as part of her series of blogs surrounding her company and experiences with business.
When I woke up on the first of January 2021, things were exactly the same. Nothing had changed, no one had waved the magic new year wand and my business was all of a sudden receiving millions of enquiries, but for some reason I felt different. The build-up of all the stress from 2020 felt a little less heavy, things just seemed a bit brighter. I am not entirely sure why, but I think more than likely it was just a switch in my thoughts. I had decided that this year was going to be different and I was going to make sure it was, day by day, one little change at a time.
January 2nd came, and I decided to go for a big walk, clear my head and plan my first quarter. The focal point of my business plan is always marketing and sales. Without these, we have no chance of trading – it is the most important part of all companies, we need those sales or nothing else matters. So, I came up with my plan, which I think is amazing (obvs) and I am pretty sure I will be a millionaire by 2022, retired by 2023 (too optimistic, maybe?)
It goes without saying 2020 was the devil’s armpit of years, one which I don’t think we will fully appreciate the magnitude of until we have time to look back and reflect. That being said, we should have all learnt a lot from last year: how resilient we are, how we can adapt and navigate through business storms, how we can juggle being stay at home parents and Directors and how hard we are willing to work to continue doing what we love. As always, my most important marketing tip is consistency, I cannot express enough the importance of consistency!
Unfortunately, in business no one really cares how great you are until they are hooked. They care about themselves, their problems and what they want to achieve, so that is how your website should be structured. Of course, there are those people who would like to know that but more about you before purchasing so you will have an about us page with that additional info on, but your homepage should be all about your customer and about your previous customers.
CONSISTENCY
When starting a company every day, we get up crack on, get knock backs, crack on, make mistakes, crack on. It is the consistency of getting up and cracking on day in, day out which separates successful start-ups from failing ones. The same goes with marketing.
Look at any social media account with thousands of followers or even millions of followers and you will see the consistency in their posts. Every day without fail, creative content, interaction with their followers – relentless posting. If you aren’t consistent, things will ultimately just fail, we have to be consistent, day by day to get to our end goals.
ANALYSIS
You must analyse all forms of marketing, you must give it time to perform, but also keep your eye on anything you do, if you pay for it or not. It is the only way to improve. You may think you know your audience, but you might be surprised by the response you get back from them. You might think a blog you have written was amazing and would kill it, then it tanks.
You might think an advert you have done could have been worded better then it smashes it. You have to keep your eye on all you do and record the results, doing more of what people responded positively to and less of what didn’t work. You would be surprised how many companies we work with who focus on themselves and what they want to say, instead of on their customers and what they want to hear.
Framework Marketing: Proactive vs Reactive Marketing
Know that when it comes to marketing it is not about you, it is never about you, it is always about your customers and what they can get from you. Analysing the material you put out there and the results will help you know what your customers want without them filling out a weekly questionnaire.
Know that when it comes to marketing it is not about you, it is never about you, it is always about your customers and what they can get from you. Analysing the material you put out there and the results will help you know what your customers want without them filling out a weekly questionnaire.
WEBSITE
I cannot express this one enough, it is the most important part of all your marketing. You can spend hundreds of thousands on marketing but if people are still just landing on a website that your uncle’s neighbour designed when he finished his graphic design course at college, then I can promise you this, it will be a huge waste.
People will visit your website for more info, your marketing has hooked them in, but they are by no way sold. Your website needs to give them evidence of what you are doing to help them, they want to be sold to, they need that extra push to get them to send the enquiry or make the call.
Framework Marketing: Digital Marketing Tips – Website Development & Design
What is your website doing to ensure they are sold to? Are you telling them you have been going for 10 years and that you are experts and are giving them loads of useless info about you?
Or are you saying “I know this is your problem, I know this is what you are looking to achieve, and actually I have done this for 10 years, here is Graham, our previous customer telling you all about it”.
Framework Marketing: Free Marketing Template
You should be very clear on the journey your customers will take when landing on the website, and what actions you want them to take. Again, analyse these stats and see how long people stay on each page, what is your most popular page, what is your most popular call to action, what pages aren’t working, so you can go on to improve all of these.
SOCIAL MEDIA
The genius headache that is social media. This is my favourite free marketing tool, because it is incredibly effective, it’s fast paced, and it allows immediate interaction with your customer; helping speed up your sales process.
People are always concerned that they don’t have the time to post, don’t know what to post, get insecure because people don’t like their posts, and all that. You have to let go of your ego when it comes to social media. I have done posts which have gone viral and done posts which have tanked, it happens, who cares? I can honestly say no one, have you ever read and post and scrolled on by? I have with 90% of the posts I read, I don’t remember each one, it’s really no big deal so don’t worry about it.
What I will say, when it comes to socials it is the same as your website it has to be about your followers/connections. It can’t just be you talking about you, you have to find out what your followers want to hear, you can literally do a poll and ask them why do you follow me A, B, C and do more of what they want. You also need to interact with your followers, you aren’t God, your time isn’t more important than theirs’, they aren’t there to listen to you on a soap box, people want interaction, take the time to respond.
Creative content can be difficult at times, the easiest thing you can do is show people your journey, don’t worry about things being perfect you can literally record what you are doing daily, and provide some useful information alongside it. Just think when you are doing a post, what are my followers getting from this? Is it funny, informative?
Tips on platforms – if you sell B2B then LinkedIn is where you have to be, at the moment the algorithms are generous and favour those who post, there aren’t as many hoops to jump through to get followers and allows anyone with decent content to take off. Instagram is amazing for B2C but there are lots of restrictions now which has slowed down visibility on the site, TikTok is still new and, like LinkedIn, favours good content so B2C. I would say need to be on here, you don’t have to tailor your content for the platform, TikTok isn’t all about singing and dancing, stay true to your brand and provide content that your followers want to see.
Framework Marketing: Digital Marketing & Social Media
SCHEDULING PLATFORMS
I can’t say how much this changes my clients’ life, it is hard to remember each day to post, to think of random posts which are interesting and relevant. We use a scheduling platform for our clients, we will have a meeting at the beginning of each month, review the previous months posts and the success rate and we plan out the upcoming months’ posts using these analytics. We then use a scheduling platform where we add all of the posts day by day and leave it to do its thing.
We check in every few days and see what is happening and what is doing well, but it makes life so much easier when we set some time aside and dedicate a creative session where we are thinking of only social media posts, making it much easier to come up with the ideas. Throughout the month you are still able to post on social media as well, so this will just give you the foundations to be consistent.
BLOGS/VLOGS
A great way to help with SEO is blogs. Within the blog you will use your keywords which are on your website to help you rank on search engines and people be able to find you, also search engines loves websites being constantly updated.
Framework Marketing: What is SEO?
You need to blog consistently (we do it weekly) and talk about something relevant to your company. On top of this it is great content for social media and positions you as an expert in your industry. Hopefully you are reading this blog thinking wow these are game changing marketing tips, when I have the cash to spend on an agency, I’m going to go to Framework Marketing because they know their stuff. You want to get the same from your blogs when your customers read them.
AUTOMATED CRM MARKETING
This seems a little more technical and to be honest it is. But once set up, it is a game changer all companies will have a CRM (customer relationship management) in one form or another, some use complex tailor built CRM’s some use Excel spread sheets, but everyone has to have one. What I will say is moving CRM’s or starting a new one can seem daunting but for me the most valuable thing we did for efficiency was to get a CRM with built in marketing automations.
What I mean by this is, all of our customers and potential customers are in a database, from there we can automate emails to them in different sequences, so I will have a four chain email campaign for special offers which will get sent out every few days automatically and I will just pick up the replies. I add people to the sequence and leave it to do its thing. It’s a great way of marketing when you don’t have loads of time. You can also see how many times someone is opening emails and opening attachments, so you know how interested they are, how good the content is.
E-CAMPAIGNS
This is amazing for brand awareness and lead generation. When it comes to E-campaigns you are of course best to use your own database first of all, however, should this be exhausted or small then use an external company. This can be a bit of a minefield as there are lots who claim a lot, so you need to really do your homework, get testimonials, check other companies results.
Framework Marketing: Traditional vs. Digital Marketing
But when you use the right company it can be great. Our sister company Design and Build UK has a database of approx. 290k decision makers within the construction industry, meaning we have a huge pool to market to for our clients when doing e-camps. We understand our audience and how they want to be spoken to and the best approach for them, meaning we get the best results for our clients. We actually have a 100% retention rate when it comes to E-camps, so 100% of our clients have done more the one E-campaign with us, which speaks volumes. Those are the kind of stats that you want from a company who you will use for E-Campaigns.
There are many rules when it comes to designing the emails, the links, the design and wording, so if you aren’t an expert in this yourself then I would outsource or you could end up risking losing your database from future marketing which is really frustrating, it’s so easy for people to opt out now, so make sure your content is good.
PPC (PAY PER CLICK)
This isn’t something I would advise doing yourself, definitely use a reputable company as this can cause you to blow a lot of money very fast when set up wrong.
When done right, it is an amazing tool. Set your budget and ensure they are clicking through to a strong upsell part of your website and wait for the leads to come in. As well as being great for lead generation it creates brand awareness, so if people aren’t quite ready to buy yet, then hopefully when they are ready you will be the brand they go to as they have been exposed to your brand previously.
DOWNLOADABLE LEAD GENERATOR
This is some kind of tool, video, free sample, free advice, guide on your website which people can download or add their details to in order to receive a free sample.
The reason this is so valuable is because it is the best way to capture your visitors’ details. It’s all well and good to get thousands of hits to your website but if you don’t know who these people are then it’s a bit pointless. So, what you need is something so unbelievably tempting that they have no choice other than to add their details and download the info.
You will see on our website we have a free marketing plan template; I know when people download this, they are my exact target audience, I have the details and they will be added into the sequence of emails for the upsell. Again, this will also position you as an expert in your field as you are giving away invaluable advice for free, therefore being the go to person in your field.
I hope these tips are useful for you and if you need any more help when it comes to marketing then check out www.frameworkmarketing.co.uk there are lots of blogs and free tools to help you on there.
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