Conversion Vs. Growth - What Are You Doing?

Conversion

Remember when you built your website and obsessed over the front page, the product pages, and the bio pages - especially the bio pages!  All that effort was directed to one aspect of the customer journey - conversion. 

These “static” pages exist so that when someone arrives on your website they can find what they need quickly and easily contact you.

But these pages don’t bring in new customers.

Growth

Go to analytics and check the top 10 pages on your website.  If you’re executing a growth strategy at least half of them should be blog posts.

New content is what gets distributed across social platforms, it’s what grabs people’s attention and generates shares which in turn generates traffic II: which in turn generates links which in turn generates greater visibility in search, which in turn generates traffic :II

The Power Of A Single Post

If you don’t have any blog posts in your top 10 pages, maybe it’s time to sit down and think of what you could create. 

I’m not talking here about an easy to replicate and systematize process, not like a weekly or even a monthly thing, I’m talking about something pretty one-off that you would be super proud to create, publish and shout about.

While consistency in publishing is important, throwing in the occasional longer form content piece is a good way to build anchor posts that will consistently drive traffic to your business.

Dealing with Loss or Grief? Listen to this, it really helps you feel better.

Image Credit: Learn Music Theory.net

Plan A! - Launching A Digital Product Pt. 1

TL;DR - You Have To Create Something of Value

Earlier this year I had an opportunity to buy the domain name Musicto.com - it fit beautifully into my long term strategy as the artist music2work2 so I jumped on it and went about the process of establishing a record label.

Here’s the brand positioning statement:

"For people who have to address a specific task or challenge and are looking for music to help, musicto publishes albums designed to create the optimal sonic environment.  Unlike other music sites, musicto creates music for specific actions and behaviors and does not charge a subscription fee."

Identify How The Money Flows

The music industry has been nuts for the last 15 / 16 years.  Digitization burned down the production and distribution models while the mobile revolution took care of everything else.  As an independent record label I don't care about sales - I don't care about downloads or CDs, all I care about is streams. 

As more people pony up the $10 a month to Spotify or Apple or Tidal to access all music everywhere - we begin to make a living.

Identify The Behavior You Want

The behavior our label needs is for someone to listen to our music - that's it.  They don't have to buy it - they just have to select it from the almost infinite choice they already have in their hand.

Traditional labels are well aware of the new paradigm and a whole new breed of gatekeepers have already arrived.  The music industry is back and money has started to flow, payola is alive and well in the form of Playlist Influence and once again the public are being seduced by large corporate budgets.

Our marketing strategy is to bypass the music industry and connect directly to the people.

Identify Product Market Fit

My Dad died last year.  The music that was coming out of me was pretty down tempo - sure it was pretty, but it was sad and I didn't know what to do with it.  As we brainstormed possible album names from Music to Write An Essay to, Music to Beat Procrastination, Music to Walk to, etc., one leaped out at me...

I knew there were hundreds and thousands of small to medium size organizations that provided services for people dealing with grief.  I also knew a link back from them, with their relatively high non-profit domain authority, would deliver a great bang for our outreach buck.

People don't search for Grief Music but they do search for Sad Music, almost 100,000 of them a month.  If we could become the #1 search result, we'd have cracked it and I'd have to stop writing Simply Friday emails.

Our first release became “Music to Grieve to.” 

Identify Plan A

The idea was simple - create something of value that the grief organizations would share with their audiences.  This would result in links and social shares and drive us to the top of the search results.

Much as we loved the album we didn't think that the organizations would blindly market it for us, so we started researching grief and in particular how music impacted it.   It took over 2 months and cost over a grand in research and writing costs, but after multiple revisions, we finally had a long form, research backed article that showed that listening to sad music was actually good for you.

We compiled a spreadsheet of the leading grief organizations - wrote a basic outreach letter that touted the benefits of our information and asked them to share it with their audience.  We sent out the first 20 emails and waited.

Next Week:  When Plan A Fails...

Dealing with Loss or Grief? Listen to this, it really helps you feel better.

Flossing & Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Did you see that report that says there’s no evidence that flossing works? 

Apparently the studies funded by Proctor & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson (a family company!) that said flossing helps to remove plaque, were discredited back in 2011.

Apparently what flossing is really good for is sustaining a $6 billion industry.

And This Is Relevant How?

The argument being used by Dentists to refute this report is that flossing is actually good for you but that most people are doing it wrong.

Here’s the tenuous link to digital marketing…

Content strategy works - but most people are doing it wrong!

Your Content = Your Teeth

I know it’ll come as shock to most of you but, content production is probably the easiest part of your marketing strategy.  

Oh sure, it takes a while to find the format that works for you and it takes even longer for you to get good at it, but nowadays there’s no barrier to producing and distributing content.

Your articles, videos, pictures & witty comments are just like teeth - everyone has them!

Promoting Your Content = Flossing

I’m not talking ad spends - although that’s definitely a good way of getting your content in front of people - I’m talking about what you do to ensure that other people will find, view and link to your content.

Remember you’re producing this stuff so that when someone comes looking for your services or products:

1/ they’ll actually find you because people will have linked to your content and the search engines see the links and think - this must be good stuff - so they put you higher in the search results and...

2/ when people do arrive on your site they see all this great information that answers their questions, demonstrates how wonderful you are and so they choose you to meet their needs.

What Should You Do?

Well, everyone’s different so your situation is likely unique but there are things to consider.

Technical stuff like targeting the right keywords, formatting content in the right way, getting the filename right on your video, things which are tedious and take longer than you wished they did, these are super important.

But the holy grail of generating links is creating a community that looks out for your content - that is kinda stoked you took the time to produce it, that reads it when they see it and shares and links to it.

You only get this by investing your time in them - by reciprocating, by creating real world loose relationships with strangers.

It requires you spending as much time (preferably more) on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc than you do creating your content in the first place.

Need Help?

We can help with the technical stuff - I have access to trusted people who know how to set things up and can take the tedious bits off your hands.  

As for the whole outreach, community building stuff, that will be unique to you and will require some strategy - that’s when you should talk with me.

Dealing with Loss or Grief? Listen to this, it really helps you feel better.

Image credit: Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash

The Things Inside You That Will Help Market Your Business

What are your core values?

What are the guiding principles that you will pass on to your family?

Your Unique Selling Proposition

The beauty of being an owner of a smaller operation is that you can instill your values into how you do business, and how you do business is the only thing that really differentiates you from your competition.

How This Applies To Marketing

Content strategy can be challenging - what should your new blog, video or image be about, what should you be liking, sharing or commenting on?

What I’m suggesting is that you take a step back from ”What” and start looking at “How.”

Frame Your Content Through Your Core Values

If you know your core values, if you’ve gone through the process and worked them out for your business, working with content becomes easier.

When you’re creating new content, don’t just describe a thing, tell the story of why it’s important to you and how it reflects what you believe.

Likewise, before you share or comment on other people’s content, ask yourself how that interaction reflects your core values.

The Next Step

This can be pretty tricky to grasp but once you’ve got your head around it, the impact can be huge.  If you haven’t gone through the process of establishing what your business’s core values are, now might be a good time to start.

I’m going to be talking more about this over the coming weeks and will be sharing the process of how I worked them out for my own business.

If you’d like to see how it can work for you - get in touch.

Feeling a little down? Listen to this, it really helps you feel better.

Image credit:  Steven Van Loy on Unsplash

Is Your Business Wasting Time On Facebook?

Look - I get it - we all need to be on the platform - that’s where the people are and that’s how we can be found - but this idea that once you’ve got your page up and running you need to keep your audience engaged by posting great status updates is just ridiculous.

Unless you have a dedicated resource and they’re really good at finding and identifying hysterical stuff that is even funnier than the stuff your own friends post and share - well - ain’t nobody got time for that!

Do This

Have a good looking business page, share your blog posts, shoot and boost video, otherwise use Facebook as a super targeted advertising platform to go and find new customers.

If you have no budget, use the time you’d normally spend finding and posting stuff and login as your page and start liking and interacting with other businesses where your customers might hang out.

There are of course exceptions to this rule but for most business owners who don’t have a marketing team, the days of organic reach are over - Facebook is an ad platform, and a bloody good one at that!

Feeling a little down? Listen to this, it really helps you feel better.

Image Credit: The Internet!

How Long It Takes to Get Good At Content Marketing

Between 120 and 150 hours

Now don’t quote me on this, I’m not exactly using the Scientific Method here - I’m just reflecting on how long it’s taken clients over the years to consistently generate interesting content.

No Short Cuts

Execution of a content strategy is ultimately an expression of you and your business - it’s unique - you can’t steal it, can’t replicate it from somewhere else, all you can do is start your own journey and get better along the way.

So What?

We’ve become so enamored with the Gladwellian idea of 10,000 hours that the thought of this journey becomes daunting and we don’t start - at least - most of you don’t.

But if you knew it was just over 100 hours - well that makes it way more doable doesn’t it?

I mean - allocate 2 hours a week over 50 weeks (pity you poor Americans and your crazy vacation habits) and that means you’ll be rocking it by Quarter 2 next year!

Do It!

There are ways of going about this that make it easier - if you’d like a hand, drop me a line.

Find yourself procrastinating and avoiding your work? Listen to this, it really helps you get things done

Image Credit: Just Do It! by Shia LaBeouf on YouTube (You should totally watch this!)