Marketing Archives - Page 13 of 53 - Creative Agency Secrets

seth godin, purple circle, marketing easter egg

Marketing using easter eggs

6 June, 2019/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Digital media, Marketing ideas, Sales, Strategy /by Rebecca Caroe

Little surprises that reward your customers are a really nice way of helping them to feel special.

Today I got a marketing easter egg from Seth Godin.

The benefits of careful reading

The message was short, barely formatted and it’s one I have waited a year to receive. Hidden in the fourth line was a surprise.

Don’t forget to look for the purple circle on the website to get the best price.
Seth Godin, The Marketing Seminar

…. and so I took a look.

It looked like a pretty piece of graphic art. But one of the circles had an embedded link. NICE….

Seth Godin, purple Circle, marketing easter egg, link hidden, — Hidden Marketing Easter Egg Link

How do you reward your loyal customers?

Sometimes I get frustrated when we make an offer and few people take it up. I think “That’s an AWESOME deal – why isn’t everyone paying attention and buying?” But I realise that I’m looking at it the wrong way around; I should be delighted that only the most savvy, the most loyal and most deserving customers are the ones who take up the offer.

I think of these as my “ultra-loyal” customers. They care enough to read. They don’t skip my messages and so I can give them a reward that others don’t take up.

Can you use an Easter Egg Marketing Strategy for your best customers?

Get insights into Seth’s thinking with his latest book This is Marketing – the course above is based on it.

Linkedin, company page, social media tips

10 LinkedIn Company Page Ideas & Suggestions

29 May, 2019/0 Comments/in B2B, Marketing, Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

Create a Showcase page – with updates just for these sub-sets which allows for segmentation of viewers.
Add Company page link to email signatures – update monthly with the pinned post.
The BEST imagery on the Company page – include your logo watermarked into the image. 1,536px x 768px.
Re-write the company overview text to reflect a niche positioning
Check hashtags to follow. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/follow/?filterType=channel&focused=true
Refresh your pinned post 2x per month. And re-share it to other channels.
Share your top 5 articles from the blog one every 2 weeks…. Yes repetition is worth it. And in 6 months change to new articles.
Get more comments by asking questions. “Are you watching the Cricket World Cup? What’s the best activation you’ve seen?”; Formula 1 Fails at Monaco – did you spot the bad branding in the Casino Tunnel?; What do you do to promote athletes in their off season?
Use URL Builder tool to track web links from your company page updates https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Set up Content Suggestions so you can do the 4-1-1 model of sharing 4 pieces of content from others to every couple of your own.

What are your top tips?

LinkedIN new feature, company page linkedIN

2 new LinkedIn Tools – Saved search and Article title edits

23 May, 2019/1 Comment/in B2B, Marketing, SEO, Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

Today I came across two new features in LinkedIn which will definitely help marketers and pro-active networkers. And one negative feature.

Throttle Control is ON

LinkedIn is clearly pushing for greater revenues – many of my favourite work-rounds for search and connecting are now getting blocked. Have you noticed this?

I got blocked from searching for 2nd / 3rd degree connections on 10th May. That was because I had apparently already used up my allocation for the month! It renews next month. So pretty irritating….. Having said that, there are some neat work arounds and some new apps which I’m trialing in beta which may help with some aspects of this.

In the meantime, pay up or go away. The choice is yours.

Saved Search Alerts

I was doing some searches and spotted what I think may be a beta release feature in the right sidebar…. I was searching in “People” for a search string. And so I made a search alert to save that search. In fact I made a couple.

The saved search name i18n_rail was default applied by LinkedIn. Probably code for something….. suggestions?

It appears to be similar to Google Alerts but with less functionality. The options are only for weekly alerts and to be received by email which suggests this isn’t yet a fully featured roll-out. But a nice touch, especially if we are all going to have to pay to use LinkedIn Search in future.

Company page article title edits

While uploading an article to our company page I noticed another new feature – you can edit the title so that the URL link title is not the default option.

You have to be in the admin view to use this feature. And isn’t it nice that 140 characters is offered as the link text? Importantly this is only link text, not the URL or destination title. I think this will be great for improved keyword searching and SEO – plus those of us who like to write long headlines will have a field day!

Now go and try these – tell me if you can find them in your profile.

Business positioning – do this

22 May, 2019/0 Comments/in B2B, Branding, Case Studies, Copywriting, SEO /by Rebecca Caroe

Can a prospect tell “at a glance” whether you are the right business for their needs? Web visits last ever-shorter durations and so your positioning [the message about what you do and for whom] is critical.

I was asked by a client to provide examples of marketing agencies who have good positioning on their websites.

Do you agree with my picks?

Good brand positioning copywriting

https://www.disruptiveunicorns.com/ We specialise in inbound marketing and lead generation on the HubSpot platform. Using design thinking, we help businesses scale in a sustainable growth manner.

One way to find out if you don’t want to work with them, is to re-write their offer in the negative. So if I don’t want inbound and lead generation – don’t go here. If I’m not using Hubspot I probably won’t get well-served either.

https://www.digitalmarketer.com/ Tools and Trainings for Digital Marketers

If I’m not a digital marketer needing tools or training – go away.

Below that they have 3 audiences identified – Teams, Marketers and Agencies so they offer further refinement of tools and training offers.

Digital Marketer agency audiences

https://spur.co.nz/ Creating live experiences that build brand love. We are a full service live-marketing agency. Our areas of expertise include sponsorship, experiential marketing, corporate events and promotional staffing.
We connect brands to people to create brand love.

So if I don’t want a live experience – go elsewhere. Using the bold words allows speed reading to focus in on key services and skills. The “Brand Love” message is lovely and slightly fluffy – who doesn’t want this for their brand?

And just for the contrast here’s one which is too broad in its positioning and non-specific in its offer https://www.interactivesponsor.com/

Which niche suits your brand?

Finding your audience and positioning your business to align is not something to do once and leave. The business world changes frequently and so fine-tuning your language, offering and audience is a useful exercise.

Remember – excluding prospects who don’t fit your ideal customer persona is important too.

Who’s your LinkedIn Follower?

6 May, 2019/0 Comments/in B2B, Lead Generation, Sales, Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

LinkedIn hides some of its best features – deliberately.

So here is my quick tip of the week to help you grow your connection base.

Do you know about your followers and following feed?

Thought not.

Log into your LinkedIn. Then paste this into your browser and take a look at this URL.

It lists everyone who is following you. The image below shows Philip Goffin – he’s following me. But I’m neither connected to him, nor following him.

Woo Hoo – lots of followers, Famous fellow.

Now for the inverse, Following. These are the people you are following.

What’s the use of following on LinkedIn?

Well, many times you want to see the News Feed updates from people, but you don’t actually know them and so connecting isn’t appropriate.

Or you just think you will see their updates for a while before approaching for a connection request.

Or you are hoping to quietly bring yourself to their attention without being too pushy – so follow them in the hope they notice you and send a connection request.

Go forth…. try it for yourself.

P.S. You can no longer export contact information from LinkedIn and so I’m advising clients to build contact lists outside of the platform for every new contact they make.

How to find digital marketers

2 May, 2019/0 Comments/in Marketing ideas, Pitching, Strategy /by Rebecca Caroe

You can look on freelancer websites and marketplaces. Some of these are specialist sites, e.g. Toptal is for UX/UI people.

Upwork | Hire Freelancers. Make things happen.
http://Freelancer.com
Clarity — On Demand Business Advice allows you to ask questions first and then hire the people who answer. You can buy advice over the phone by the minute. It’s a good way to get quick answers.
http://Peopleperhour.com
Expert360 | Freelance Management Software
Toptal – Hire Freelance Talent from the Top 3%
http://Freeup.com
Log In or Sign Up Linked In will allow you to search for people with those skills in your region.

After you have chosen the marketplace and the skillset you want; you will need to be expert in how to brief an agency, how to write an agency pitch and ways to select from a range of candidates for your work. That’s the subject of another question!

How to market a podcast

29 April, 2019/0 Comments/in Marketing, Podcast /by Rebecca Caroe

I got asked to give a high-level answer to this question on Quora.

My response is quite generic – the process applies to any marketing project – the detail of the methodology in each step is where each will differ.
The questioner was asking about a “new music podcast”.

Who is your podcast audience?

What type of music, where do people find and listen to this music already e.g. live gigs, Pandora / Spotify, radio shows. Find named bands who represent this genre; find discussion forums (Reddit, Facebook, Quora) where people discuss this genre.
Create a persona for your ideal listener – age, type of music liked, why they listen, how they listen, when they listen.
Research media you can use for advertising (paid); content sharing on social (earned) and media you create like a blog or newsletter (owned).
Draw up a list of collaborators and joint venture partners.
Create a media pack for your podcast; download media packs from other media you want to use.
Plan your pre-launch; launch and ongoing marketing tactics so that you get your podcast name, branding, content in front of your ideal persona listener at a price point you can afford.
Measure what you do and the return on investment of your marketing.

In summary, you have a choice to either work it out for yourself as you go along or to buy advice from a marketing expert who understands podcasts is going to shortcut your learning; improve your outcomes and save you money in the long term.

If you scope the engagement well, you can collaborate with an advisor on the understanding that knowledge transfer is part of the project – you are being taught how to do the marketing yourself.

Podcasts – the last internet landgrab?

23 April, 2019/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

Podcasts are growing so fast that the big-money VC community have started to throw funding towards podcasting platforms. Last year Spotify got in on the act with three podcast business acquisitions and now the mega-big guns of Luminary will launch with a premium paid offering of exclusive podcast content.

Internet land grabs for all

Since the utopian early days of 2006 when this blog started, the internet has been carved up into big business ownerships first around blogging, then around social media and podcasting is clearly the next target in the sights.

Luminary is funded to the tune of $100m and will launch this week as (yet) another podcasting app. Its point of difference is the paid-for exclusive podcasting content which it has negotiated with big-name media stars like Russell Brand and Trevor Noah.

Luminary logo

The backlash from the little folks (like myself) who have built the podcasting part of the internet was predictable. A big network offering an advertising-free podcast service using media stars is hard to compete against. Particularly as the ground for competition is not only the content, but also the advertising funded model.

Independents withhold their shows

And so the war starts. Big-name networks and podcasting apps like Anchor and Parcast (owned by Spotify) are withholding their content from Luminary’s app. Read the reports from Podcast Business Journal and The Verge.

My view?

I believe firmly in the RSS feed as the tool which enables, enhances and mediates between the podcast creator and her audience. As a distributed form of content, podcasters are uniquely reliant on RSS and apps chosen by listeners as their preferred download, stream and listen medium. We are pretty powerless to influence how aggregators like iTunes, Spotify, Google Play and others handle our feeds. They set the rules.

Watch this space.

podcast, interview request, podcast guest, podcast host

Pitching podcasts

15 April, 2019/0 Comments/in Podcast /by Rebecca Caroe

I wrote this answer to What is the best way to pitch podcast hosts on being a guest. This process works for being a guest or as a host, inviting people to be your guest.

As with any sales job:

Find out what the podcast host’s topics, influences and areas of interest are
Judge whether what you can offer aligns with 1
Write a short, succinct proposal that ties up 1 & 2

Then keep good records of what you write, to whom and follow up within 1 week of the original message.

Always be polite, and thank them even if you get a rejection.

Following up the pitch

Now this is what too few other sales people do – add them to a mailing list and message them again within 3 months. Don’t write a pitch in this message. Just tell them what you have been working on and link to other podcasts you have guested with or articles you have published.

Then 6 months later, approach them with another pitch.

Rinse, repeat.

Pitching guests

Here is a sample pitch message I used. It starts by focusing on the guest and their need for book publicity, then it introduces the podcast and its track record and audience appeal, and lastly suggests a timeframe for the interview.

Dear Annie,

I saw your Facebook post about your book, Mind Games, being published next month and I wondered if you could come onto the Rowing Chat podcast to talk about it?

Rowing Chat is a monthly interview podcast focused on the sport of rowing – we have been publishing since 2013 and the network includes other podcast hosts talking about strength training, masters rowing and the US scene.

Do have a listen to some past episodes, and let me know if you have time during April 2019. My colleague, cc above, will do the scheduling.

Best wishes in rowing, Rebecca