Marketing Archives - Page 13 of 53 - Creative Agency Secrets

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

LinkedIn changes you need

10 April, 2019/0 Comments/in Marketing, Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

Sometimes I just discover things by trying something new. Did you know that you can find people on LinkedIn using their partial email address?

I had met a lady whose surname I didn’t know – but I had her email on the meeting calendar invite – amandam@thisbiz.com [that’s not a real address]. And so I started typing it into the LinkedIn search bar and before I wrote the dot extension, pressed enter and her name and details came up. Handy.

When LinkedIn is not linked

I was researching Chris Reed whose speaking agency represents business women speakers. And couldn’t find him on my LI contacts – and so found the company instead, thinking that maybe I’d mis-spelled his name.

There he is, listed on the company site – but the links don’t work. Thinking this was a dastardly strategy he was employing to connect to people and then dis-connect, when he hits limits to connections. And so I wrote to ask him.

There’s currently a bug that’s impacting LinkedIn. People have been talking about it. Some people can’t find their connections and can’t even tag their connections on LinkedIn. Support team at LI are now working on it. It’s a pain now. Hopefully this gets resolved soon.
Chris J “Mohawk” Reed

You can have 30,000 connections on LinkedIn – so no chance I’m hitting the throttle back stage of connecting yet. And the ‘mystery’ is solved, although not resolved.

Sales Navigator plus plus

And if you aren’t yet using Sales Navigator for your new business development social selling on LinkedIn – do some research as it can be very useful.

But do also look at complementary services such as

ByPath.com uses Kompass data to overlay org charts to LinkedIn sales prospecting [Note: there is a NZ / AU local reseller I know]
MeetLeonard.com automation of repetitive tasks in LinkedIn like auto-sending bulk messages through in-mail.

B2B Podcasting rises

6 April, 2019/0 Comments/in B2B, Podcast /by Rebecca Caroe

The rise of podcasting as a medium to reach and influence audiences, grow brand awareness and promote your business continues.

I’m delighted to announce that Terry Baucher, a self-confessed “Tax Nerd” has launched his podcast – The Week In Tax with the help of Creative Agency Secrets.

Terry has long been a broadcaster called on by news media to be an expert commentator on tax matters – working with radio and TV stations in New Zealand. This heavily influenced our recommendation that he move on from a written weekly summary of tax news which had been drawn from his twitter feed, to an audio podcast.

Podcast set-up

We chose both an audio and a video medium for this podcast. [Note, this is not suitable for everyone] and SoundCloud is the distribution medium for the RSS.

The client blog hosts embedded audio files (easy for people to listen to who aren’t comfortable using RSS or Podcast apps) and remains the central source of all content. We also chose to add in a transcript for those who prefer reading to listening.

Could you be podcasting?

The medium is growing fast and many people now prefer to customise their listening and viewing to fit times of day they choose. Growing your brand reach through podcasting can be very effective.

Just ask Terry Baucher!

Christchurch and Creative Commons

19 March, 2019/0 Comments/in Case Studies, Digital media /by Rebecca Caroe

I care deeply about the Creative Commons movement – this blog has been licensed for share-alike attribution since it started in 2006.

The Christchurch massacre on Friday has highlighted one of the challenges of modern media. How to stop bad stuff being shared; and the converse, how to preserve good stuff for future use.

The New Zealand ISPs are working hard to take down far right websites and the much-shared live stream video the gunman made.

In contrast, Mike Dickison is working to preserve the positive images from the event for posterity. Read his 7 part twitter thread explaining why this matters.

Mike Dickison's work to store images in the Creative Commons — Mike Dickison’s work to store images in the Creative Commons

Can you contribute?

Images are requested.

If you’re a cartoonist or a press photographer or a media outlet or just someone who has a good eye, we need your images uploaded to @WikiCommons under an open licence, ideally CC BY SA. My goal is to create a gallery that anyone can easily draw from and reuse for free. Images are important. They’ll define these attacks to people around the world, to our descendants, to the history books. Too often the only images repeated after a tragedy are ones of anger and fear and hatred. We need to make sure all the story is told.
Mike Dickison on twitter @adzebill

Customer Reviews – what about the bad ones?

18 March, 2019/0 Comments/in Local Marketing, Marketing ideas /by Rebecca Caroe

Reviews are essential for businesses building brand visibility online.

But bad reviews make my toes curl. Sometimes they are fair, sometimes not. What can the marketing team do about this?

Different pathways for different reviews

Treating different customers differently is a core principle of good CRM. But until the review is published, you won’t know whether the customer is going to give you a good or a bad review.

Take a look at this – an alternative pathway for your “less good” business reviews.

Make every review count

Starting from a review page set up within our software, your customer then moves down three possible pathways. If they give you a 4 or 5 star review, they arrive here.

And this is of course, the normal Google Business Reviews page.

If the customer selects a 1,2 or 3 star in the first screen they head off a different path, to this page. Where the review is captured and forwarded to the business. But the crucial difference it’s not on your public Google Business page.

The red square links to the Google Business page, so the customer can post a public review.

Sneaky or “allowable” marketing?

You choose – would you do this for your brand?

I have the contacts to set up this service for any business – get in touch.

Podcasts for event promotion

13 March, 2019/0 Comments/in Podcast /by Rebecca Caroe

PodCon conference logo 2019

Podcasting is going mainstream – it’s the newest part of content marketing and frankly it’s about time!

Many people have been producing independent shows in voice format for years – I started one for my sport in 2013 – but only in the past year have brands started to get on board.

So why podcast in 2019?

There are three reasons – firstly, the pioneers are no longer alone – the mass appeal of storytelling podcasts like “Serial from This American Life” and “Under the Skin with Russell Brand”, Freakonomics and anything to do with Harry Potter has meant mass downloading of podcast listening apps onto devices.

Secondly, niche content marketers got in on the act early (like me) and so if you are a sports fan or a maker or follow politics there are now many different podcasts to choose from – all easily accessible.

And lastly we are short of time. Yes, even more than before. The on-demand nature of podcasts means you can listen in the car or while exercising or walking the dog. It’s easy to play, pause and then pick it up again later. And for the super-busy person, there’s the 1.5x and 2x speed playback settings!

Events lend themselves to podcasting

When planning the build-up to an event or having regular recurring events, there are already ample ways of communicating with your target audience.

But introducing the prospective attendees to the key themes of the event, the voices of your speakers and ramping up excitement about the day is really easy to do in a podcast format.

The Change Management Institute got its event speakers to answer 3 questions on a video call ahead of the event giving them unique content and a great preview of their international keynote themes to send round to members ahead of time.

And PodCon2 whose logo is on this article went one better – they allowed remote access at a cheaper ticket price by publishing all their event content afterwards in and audio feed as a stand-alone limited time podcast series.

Double down on success

Plus, if you choose to record video you can easily rip the MP3 audio file from the video and you have two birds with one stone. We then use the video for Instagram and YouTube advertising promotions.

But should YOUR event or brand podcast?

The answer is up to you but we’ve got a quick checklist of 5 questions to answer before making your deacon to move into podcasting for content marketing.