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Category: Digital Marketing

  • Why Should Anybody Buy From You?

    In today’s world of hyper competition and online v offline purchasing options, why should anybody buy from you?

    We’re all in business of one form or another, of one size or another.

    But whatever type of business you run, one question should keep popping up in your brain. “Why should anybody buy from me?”

    Now, we all know that we’re not the only alternative that our target audience can avail of. If you think that you don’t have any competitors, you won’t last long in business. There are always other solutions to the problem faced by your target market.

    why should anybody buy from you

    When a person wants to buy something, there are lots of factors influencing their decision, including the all-important subconscious ones. We sometimes joke that the marketing person in your business beavers away in the background, trying to build the best associations between your product or service and what people want (you might call that branding), while the poor auld salesperson has to actually face the potential customer and relate to that person.

    Of course, for many of us, the marketing person and sales person is one and the same – it’s you.

    Let’s consider why people might not buy your product or service. Reasons often include :

    • They found an entirely different solution
    • They found what they perceive to be the same product / service as yours, but at a better deal
    • They don’t feel secure about your offer
    • They simply get distracted and forget
    • They don’t actually know what they want

    Here’s a thing : be specific – offer a specific product for a specific audience. Be sure your product offers value to your clearly defined target market.

    So, why do people buy a particular product or service?

    People want to move away from, or reduce unhappiness

    Or

    People want to move closer to, or attain happiness

    Now, which are you offering? How are you providing value and how are you relating to those needs and wants of your audience?

    So, here’s the killer question.

    Does your prospect believe that your product or service can fix their problem and help them achieve their goal? Do you help them move away from unhappiness, or towards happiness?

    Keep asking.

    Why should anybody buy from you? Because you’ve a grasp on value, what people want, where you stand vis-a-vis the competition and what your compelling branding communication consists of.

    Oh, and you’ve a great product or service.

  • How Long Should Marketing Videos Be?

    We’re all gone very visual now.

    And demanding.

    Your target market is looking for visual content. They react best to visual. And their preferred format is video.

    At one point, the top social media marketing gurus were predicting that Facebook, for example, may well become a video posts only platform. That hasn’t quite transpired, but we can still see where things are headed.

    Different social media platforms allow for different lengths of video to be posted – Twitter has a 140 sec max, Instagram has reels of 15, 30 and 60 seconds, while longer videos can also be uploaded (previously known as IG:TV), Facebook apparently 20 minutes (but that would be way too long).

    Whichever platform you’re posting to, remember that you’re in a highly competitive marketplace and people’s attention spans are shrinking all the time. You’d be doing very well to hold a person for anything like 2 or 3 minutes, let alone longer.

    So how long should marketing videos be?

    how long should marketing videos beWell, there are a number of factors.

    First, how quickly and succinctly can you get your message across? Remember that your marketing video needs to have just one focus. It should not try to be all things to all viewers. Give it one core message and one ‘hook’ only. And get it across in the shortest time possible.

    Next, you’ll probably want to brand it up, maybe with your business logo at the beginning and end, or constantly on-screen in the top corner. Don’t forget to brand it at the start, because most people won’t watch through to the end.

    Also, can you get on screen yourself?

    Finally, you’ve got to include a ‘call to action’ – what you want viewers to do. Do you want them to pick up the phone, book a ticket, visit your website, come into your store, submit their email address?

    As a general rule of thumb, you should aim to complete your marketing video in 60 to 90 seconds or less.

    Now, there are of course exceptions. If you’re putting up a ‘how to’ video on your YouTube channel to help your target market or existing clients, for example, then the focused viewer will happily watch it for 5, 10, 15 minutes or longer, if they perceive value and they are going to learn something.

    By the way, be aware that ‘native video’, i.e. clips uploaded directly, work much better on Facebook than links to the same video on your YouTube channel. So when you’ve created your masterpiece, upload it straight on to Facebook and separately onto your channel (if you wish).

    And then there’s the wonderful Johnnie Lawson, Visual Artist, whose videos are mostly 1 to 8 hours long! Check out some of his meditation and relaxation creations on his YouTube Channel. Oh, and by the way, he has over 168 million views and 400,000 subscribers, so he’s definitely doing something right.

    Just goes to show you shouldn’t take what others tell you as gospel …

    How long should marketing videos be – Resources

    For greater detail on the technical specs of your marketing videos for social media, check out this article from Hootsuite.

    Updated Oct 2021

  • Remarketing Tools from Facebook and Mailchimp

    As a small business owner, you’re probably using Facebook Pages and some email marketing system or other. Mine’s a Mailchimp, thank you for asking. But are you using the powerful remarketing tools these platforms offer?

    Placing the Facebook pixel tracking code on your website allows you to build audiences on Facebook of website visitors who have taken actions, as defined by you.

    For example, imagine you have an online shoe shop. You could build an audience on Facebook of people who visited, say, your ladies’ boots page, but did not purchase, i.e. did not visit your post-purchase ‘confirmation’ url.

    Alternatively, if you don’t sell online, you could still use the pixel to simply count website visitors, irrespective of what actions they do or do not take on the site. The ‘audience’ (or group) thus built can be advertised to down the road.

    To get into remarketing (aka retargeting) using the pixel, learn more from Facebook here.

    Remarketing tools from Facebook and Mailchimp

    Mailchimp, meanwhile, is a wonderful email marketing system. The basic idea here is to gather email addresses legitimately and forward occasional newsletters via email. However, the system offers much more, including remarketing automations. Here, you set up certain “if, then” scenarios and craft good emails to be sent when the trigger occurs.

    For example, let’s imagine you’ve sent a newsletter and one of the articles is selling a certain event. You might set up an automation to forward a second, more in-depth email about that event, to encourage bookings. Or a follow-up video link, perhaps.

    Learn more about Mailchimp automations here.

    Remarketing tools from Facebook and Mailchimp

    I use both these tools and would highly recommend that you start to experiment with them also. They build brand recognition, play a role in brand reinforcement and, ultimately, help drive sales.

    Remember that book you looked at on the website of that huge worldwide book vendor, but didn’t purchase? Have you noticed it popping up on your Facebook newsfeed … Or that flight you checked, but didn’t book…

    That’s remarketing (or retargeting) in action, right there.

  • How much Time do you Waste each Week?

    There’s no such thing as “not enough time”. There is the time that there is and none of us can increase or decrease it. I wonder how much time do you waste at work each week?

    We often hear others, and indeed ourselves, uttering those great words “I don’t have time for that”. Again, there’s no such thing as not having the “time for that”. If I say that I don’t have time for that, I’m simply saying that I’m not prepared to allocate time for that. It’s a question of two things : time allocation and wastage of time.

    how much time do you waste

    Whether or not we like to acknowledge it, the fact is that we all choose what to do with our time and, consequently, what not to do with it. Sometimes, we choose to waste it. Indeed, sometimes that’s perfectly fine and we call it ‘downtime’, ‘vegetating’, or whatever you’re having yourself.

    But here’s the thing. Unconsciously wasting time can be a terrible hurdle to you getting on with your business. I hear people regularly telling me about the time they waste, for example, on social media. Mindlessly scrolling down the Facebook or Twitter feed. Engaging with stuff they really don’t need to be engaging with. A tap of the ‘like’ button here; an inane comment there; now and again a love heart…

    I’m a big fan of social media. It’s a wonderful place to learn and communicate stuff, with Twitter being my favourite. It’s also a great way of driving people to your website and, ultimately, making sales for your product or service. But if you’re running your own small business, like I am, you’ve simply got to control the time spent on these platforms.

    I used to be very good. Then I went through a phase where I started to spend too much time on them, looking at cute photos of cats and reading unimportant news stories. I’ve now gotten much better again, thankfully. I can tell you that just these last two weeks, I’ve sent proposals to a number of target clients which I wouldn’t have forwarded had I been wasting too much time on things bringing no benefit to my business. Now it’s up to me to follow up.

    Nor, by the way, do I spend my evenings on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or whatever. But that’s another story and you might reflect on how much of your precious family time gets wasted glued to smartphone screens …

    How much time do you waste each week?

    So here are some tips on, yes, reaping the benefits that social media offers your business but, no, not wasting time looking at that cool video showing goats leaping across a mountain gorge.

    1. Just because it’s coffee time, doesn’t mean it’s ‘get distracted’ time.

    2. Make a list. You hate lists? Doesn’t matter. Make one anyway and do it every single working day. On the list, jot down small jobs and break up big jobs into smaller tasks. You’ve got a huge tender document to complete by Friday? Do one section today, one section tomorrow, and so on.

    how much time do you waste each week

    3. Schedule your posts for your Facebook page and other platforms. Do that on, say, Monday morning before 10 am. Then all you have to do for the rest of the week is interact and engage with those commenting, which is what it’s supposed to be all about anyway. Right now, I’ve got 15 scheduled posts already up.

    4. Never visit your personal ‘newsfeed’, aka ‘home’ on Facebook during office hours. Indeed, only use the Facebook Pages Manager App when on that tool for work.

    5. Stop checking your social media, email, etc, so often.

    6. Get yourself a task timer.

    7. Turn off the radio, stop talking to time wasters, etc.

    8. Stay focussed and resist the temptation to drift …

    So sit back and reflect on how much time do you waste each working week. I’m sure you’ll realise that improved time management is achievable, if you put your mind to it. And by the way, did you watch those crazy goats?

  • What’s Instagram all about?

    In the seemingly endless struggle to get a grip on social media marketing, many small businesses tend to blindly jump onto every platform they come across.

    But just because Mary next door says she’s gone on Instagram and it’s “doing wonders”, doesn’t mean you and your business should blindly follow suit. Same goes for Facebook and all the rest.

    The important question to ask yourself is : who is in my target market and where do they hang out, whether on- or offline?

    As a generalisation, Instagram is mostly populated by females (about 60%), and over 90% of users are aged 35 and under. It’s great for fashion, food, travel, sports and the like, but know that there are relatively few 45+ on there and not as many males of the species either.

    Having said that, it’s comfortably the fastest growing of the major social media platforms.

    Instagram is about visuals – striking photos and lively videos. Indeed. the use of filters to doll up your photos is encouraged. This makes travel, food and fashion great. If you want to follow one Irish account, go check out the wonderful Jennifer Wrynne.

    what's instagram all about

    So, what’s Instagram all about?

    Well, here are some things you need to bear in mind when considering it :

    1. You cannot place a live link in your post or video. In other words (at least until you become an Instagram rock-star), the only place you can have a link to your website is in your bio. What does this mean? It means that somebody who sees your photo and likes what you’re about cannot get straight to your website to browse your products or services. What does this mean? It means massively less sales as a direct result of you being on Instagram than, for example, being on Facebook. [Check Update May 2018, below]
    2. As a result of the above, you need to look at Instagram as being a PR / publicity tool and not as a sales channel. It’s great for initial brand recognition and subsequent brand reinforcement.
    3. Having said that, 70% of your posts (on average) will not be seen by your followers. It’s like Facebook in that regard.
    4. Sharing (in Facebook parlance) the posts of another person or business isn’t really an option.
    5. Show your personality. As mentioned above, Instagram is about your brand. Try not to be stuffy and overly serious. It’s a fun platform!
    6. You can sign up for and view Instagram on a PC, but you can only upload via your mobile phone.
    7. The use of multiple hashtags is not frowned upon, in the way that it is on Twitter, so use them to get your posts found. You can happily use 10 hashtags or more per post.
    8. Use the Location option when posting, if geography is relevant to your target market.
    9. Stories are a series of photos and/or videos that you deliver over a 24-hr period, counting from the first element. They then disappear. They’re fun for an event, workshop, special short-term offer, super announcement, store opening and so on, but don’t last. Why bother? Because they place you at the top of the screen, in the very best ‘real estate’, as the yanks would say. Aha!

    what's instagram all about - stories
    Note “Stories” at the top of the screen

    What’s Instagram all about? It’s about branding and enjoyment, but recognise it for what it is and what it isn’t. And, oh my gawd, don’t spend all your days and nights on it …

    Update May 2018 :

    Verified shops selling physical products (not services), through their Facebook Pages, can now have live links within posts that direct people to an online shop for the product featured in the post. Read https://help.instagram.com/277800139422805.

  • A Flying Leopard Cannot Change Its Spots

    A few short years ago, amid great fanfare, Ryanair announced to the world that it was changing the way it did business. Changing its spots, if you will. The airline, declared Mr. O’Leary, would “try to eliminate things that unnecessarily piss people off”.

    Apparently, this change of heart was due to some significant shareholders being worried about the capacity of one of the world’s biggest airlines to grow yet further under its previous ‘customer service’ regime. Read this 2013 Conor Pope article.

    Now, I should declare at the outset that I’m a huge fan of Ryanair and thank it enormously for the massive expansion in the number of destinations we can all fly to non-stop from Ireland and, of course, for its low fares. The over-the-top rules and regulations that characterised its modus operandi never really bothered me. Indeed, I specifically bought a cabin bag that didn’t break its dimensions rule. I never allowed it to weigh more than the permitted 10kg. I never put a bag in the hold.

    But this year has seen that, it would appear, a flying leopard cannot change its spots.

    flying leopard cannot change its spots
    Screengrab of Ryanair’s Website

    Just a few short years into its new cuddly, friendly skin, Ryanair has reverted to type with its new, unnecessary splitting of groups (often, families) that book but don’t choose the option to pay for allocated seats.

    So, off to Girona we went this summer without taking up this option and, lo and behold, we were placed all over the plane. Not even two of the five of us were on the same row, on either the outward or homebound legs. And all the other families around us were complaining of the same. For that matter, neither flight was full, so that wasn’t the reason. Clearly, it’s policy. In the past, we never once paid for priority boarding or seat allocation, yet always got to sit together. No longer so, it would seem.

    Conor Pope wrote about this in the Irish Times in June 2017.

    Luckily, our youngest is now 13, so it’s not a big deal for us.

    You’ve heard it before, “don’t over-promise and under-deliver”.

    In your marketing communications, if you make some sort of promise or declaration about your customer service and the experience your customers will have, be sure that your customers will indeed have that experience.

    Oh, and try not to unnecessarily piss people off.

    And I haven’t even mentioned the outrageous cancellation of hundreds of flights this autumn …

  • Email Marketing for Customer Retention

    Email Marketing for Customer Retention

    Gathering email addresses (with permission), with the aim of incorporating email marketing for customer retention into your overall marketing strategy, is a great way to go and worthy of special attention.

    You can do this with online list building services like Sumo, or paper versions of the same thing stuck on your counter top beside your till. Try Facebook contests (get entrants to send email by message, not in public comments) or have people put their email address in a goldfish bowl to enter an in-store competition. Don’t ignore the opportunities at trade and consumer shows. Same for networking events and as part and parcel of your ongoing interaction and communication with your existing customers. Stick an invite to join your mailing list in your auto-signature.

    Note that, even in its free version, Sumo offers very nice pop-up and slider email capture forms, including the type that appears only as your website visitor is about to leave.

    When a person gives you their email address in the full knowledge that you will market to them, there is a clear indication that they are happy for this to happen. There is a commitment; a sign that they think you are ok. They’re offering you the chance to develop them into loyal ‘fans’.

    Now, don’t forget that, like all other elements of your varied pro-active communication with your audiences, whatever you write about in your email marketing must be of interest to your customers and prospects. It’s up to you to provide them with opportunities to gain value.

    There’s little point in constructing a lovely email about stuff they simply aren’t interested in. Vary the content of your emails and keep track of their success. Learn to know what works and what not so much. Come up with different articles for your different audiences.

    email marketing for customer retention

    Is Email Marketing Worthwhile?

    Sure, it can be contended that the success rate of email marketing might be low, in terms of click-throughs to your website and purchases (where relevant).

    But it can equally be argued that the investment is pretty low too. Especially if you’re disciplined enough to be noting down what it is you want to say in your next email as you go about your daily tasks. Where this form of marketing can indeed be slow and time-consuming is if you find yourself sitting down to write your next email without having put any thought into it previously. That’s a sure-fire way of ending up wasting time staring at a computer screen or looking up videos of cuddly cats on YouTube.

    DO NOT click on that link!

    Jot down your ideas as you go. Have a focal point for each email. That might be the pure selling of one particular product or other this month, or simply providing useful non-salesy information for your customers next time. Think about what your customers want and remember that this is, at a minimum, brand reinforcement you are engaging in.

    Email Marketing for Customer Retention – Tools

    There are several well-known email marketing platforms that dominate this market. I use Mailchimp, which is free for those who have fewer than 2,000 email addresses on their list. Indeed, automation services (for example, where you want to automatically send an email to a person who has read a certain blogpost on your website) no longer incur a cost.

    Mailchimp (and other services) also offer landing page options, so you can have a stand-alone URL that comprises of nothing other than a sign-up form. Wonderful for requesting sign-ups at outdoor events, trade shows and the like.

    Sample Landing Page Email Signup Form

  • 3 Free Tools to Amplify your Blogpost

    3 Free Tools to Amplify your Blogpost

    These 3 free tools to amplify your blogpost are easy to use and help disseminate your writing beyond the confines of your website.

    dlvr.it

    amplify your blogpost - dlvr.it

    (What a great name, by the way!)

    “Deliver It” does exactly what it says on the tin. In its free version, you can feed it one source of blogging and request that its system puts out your latest blogpost across up to three social media platforms. in my case, I pump my blogposts out onto my Facebook Page, Twitter account and LinkedIn profile. Great reach! Easy peasy. There is also a paid version, where you have greater choices. Visit https://dlvr.it/

    missinglettr.com

    amplify your blogpost - missinglettr

    I really like this new platform that I stumbled across a month ago or so.

    “Missingletter” takes your blogposts as they are published, looks at them, generates up to nine content snippets and tweets them out nine times over the next year. Don’t worry – you keep editorial control over those snippets, so if you feel one doesn’t really reflect the true content in your blogpost, you simply reject it. gain, there is a paid version with greater flexibility. Class idea! Visit https://missinglettr.com/

    Facebook scheduling

    amplify your blogpost - Facebook

    Yes, the behemoth of them all.

    When you’ve published your blogpost and it’s been automatically posted to Facebook through dlvr.it (see above), then you’ll want to repeat it out in maybe  two or three months. Copy and paste the blogpost’s url into your Facebook page, watch the preview being automatically generated, edit as required and hit the “schedule” button to give it a new lease of life later on. If you have your Facebook page and Twitter account linked through www.facebook.com/twitter, then it will also appear there.

    Remember to treat your blogposts like a product, rather than a promotional tool. The blogpost itself needs to be promoted, so use these three methods, along with others, including the ‘share’ buttons like I have below.

  • Video Marketing with Camtasia

    Camtasia from TechSmith is one of many screen recording and video editing tools out there. Video is all the rage these days, so you might like to take a look at this tool as a potential partner for your future strategy. And what’s more, they give you a 28 day free trial period – plenty of time to get to learn the features of video marketing with Camtasia before purchasing.

    Here’s one I made last week. Hope you like it!

    Getting used to Camtasia can be tricky and, like other online tools, you’ll make plenty of frustrating mistakes at first. But there’s great power in this tool, allowing you to cur and edit video snippets, add background music and a voiceover and, generally, make a decent video for your marketing purposes. Go ahead – give it a try!

  • 6 Tips to Improve your Facebook Adverts

    How to Improve your Facebook Adverts

    So we know and accept that, all things being equal, your Facebook Page reach has dropped (sometimes significantly) over the last year or two. I think that’s fair enough and, if you want to “pay to play”, then here are 6 tips to improve your Facebook adverts.

    1. Include a face in your ad.
    2. Be very specific about who you are targeting.
    3. Try out more than one image for the same ad.
    4. Red grabs attention.
    5. Positive emotions work best.
    6. Follow the AIDA Model.

    improve your Facebook adverts
    Advertising is an essential part of your Facebook strategy

    A face :

    As humans (and consumers), we like to look at other people’s faces. Employing a nice, smiley face in your ad will help grab attention on the cluttered FB feed.

    Targeting :

    FB offers incredibly powerful targeting options. Use them to narrow the focus of your ad to the target market that really matters to you and your business.

    Vary images :

    For one single ad content, you have the option of trying out up to six different images. play around and discover which image works best, then concentrate your effort on that version of the ad.

    Colour :

    Different colours signify different things and bring out different emotions in readers. Scroll down to the end of this earlier post for more on colours in branding. Red and yellow grab attention, but while the latter does not work on computer screens, the former most definitely does.

    Positive emotions :

    If I feel nice when reading your Facebook adverts, I’m more likely to click on them to prolong the pleasant feeling.

    AIDA :

    Standing for “Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action”, the AIDA Model helps us focus in on the purpose of our ad. If we can locate ourselves and our business on the steps of this model, then we can better decide what we are trying to achieve with any given advert. Knowing what exactly its purpose is helps us devise a better ad.

    Improve your Facebook Adverts

    Advertising is now an essential part of the Facebook game we all play. I generally recommend that even the smallest micro-enterprise with a real audience on the platform should dedicate Euro 300 pa to Facebook adverts (plus VAT). Use these 6 tips to improve your Facebook adverts and see what positive results you are able to achieve.