Digital Marketing Insider | January 2013

January 2013

DIGITAL MARKETING INSIDER

HOW TO GET MORE STUFF DONE WILL YOU SIGN YOUR LIFE AWAY? BEING GOOD IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH THE 5 TYPES OF PROSPECTS & HOW TO SELL TO EACH OF THEM BUSINESS MATHS FOR DUMMIES

Contents

02 / A Note From The Editor 03 / How To Get More Stuff Done 04 / Will You Sign Your Life Away?

05 / Being Good Is Not Good Enough 07 / The 5 Types Of Prospect And How To Sell To Each Of Them (Part 1) 08 / The 5 Types Of Prospect And How To Sell To Each Of Them (Part 2) 09 / Business Maths For Dummies 10 / Entrepreneur Insights 11 / Get In Touch

About Us We create great looking online advertising campaigns that enhance your brand, we use scientifically proven online advertising methods to drive visitors to your website and adverts and then we optimise your site to make sure those visitors become paying customers that tell all their friends and come back for more.

Our team is different, we live in the UK so we understand how & what brits love to buy. We’re successful online entrepreneurs, world class copywriters, website optimisation specialists, online advertising mavericks and the geekiest SEO people!

01

A Note From The Editor

First a warm welcome to January’s edition of the Digital Marketing Insider, produced by ROARlocal.com.

If this is the first time you’ve received this a hearty welcome to you!

You’re receiving this because we want to show you what we’re all about and also give you some usable strategies to help your businesses grow.

Of course, many business owners are being completely distracted from working on their businesses by Christmas and sadly for many business owners Christmas was a bit of a disaster for their sales wise too..

Now for those businesses with an online presence however, according to Nielson online sales were 7% higher this year compared to last, that means BUT overall sales were down 5% from last year.

That means that the high street had MUCH lower sales than last year BUT online retailers crushed it!

Now more than ever you must be online, selling your products on the high street is becoming harder and harder, so this month I’m bringing you some great guides to sell more of your stuff online and to dominate your marketplace online.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading this month’s magazine it’s jam packed with our usual level of brilliant content and as always if we can help you in any way please get in touch.

Best wishes

Neil.

02

How To Get More Stuff Done

by Neil Asher

“The number one priority of an entrepreneur who gets out of their creative zone… is to do whatever it takes to get back in it.”

…Said my friend Joff, a few weeks ago when we met up for a cigar and chat.

As fellow entrepreneurs, meeting idly mid work day, the topic of conversation naturally gravitated toward business, entrepreneurship and success.

This creative zone is Joff’s (and Abraham Hick’s) metaphor for what you might know as “The Zone” – that place you go where your work just flows, the best decisions get made and your success is created. Getting people there is what I do for a job. Staying there should be your biggest concern.

There’s a number of factors that can pull an entrepreneur out of this sweet spot.

One of the most unexpected and deadly is the act of juggling multiple projects.

It’s a tricky issue to define. As entrepreneurs we see the big picture; every project requires us to juggle. Every business contains many moving parts.

Multiple projects hurt us when we treat them as multiple horses in the race. It’s dangerous to hedge your bets by not betting big on one important thing.

Were you to dedicate yourself to nothing but the single biggest project or business idea you have, you run an enormous risk.

What happens if that project fails? You’ve just spent the last year(s) betting big and when your horse doesn’t finish, you’re humiliated.

At an unconscious level, you know this.

That’s why you juggle three projects at once – if one fails, at least you can tell people you were juggling two others.

Those other two are still full of potential and might just work out, right?

Entrepreneurs juggle multiple projects to insulate themselves from the Failure Bogeyman.

To commit to that one thing, the thing that matters most, requires enormous courage.

It requires you to believe that the commitment and the risk of failure is worth it. It demands that you eliminate all your secondary horses-in-the-race. It insists that you lean into the the fact that if your single remaining horse falters, you have to make it get back up again or admit defeat.

It’s tempting isn’t it, to have a few horses? It feels good.

“I’m working on a couple of things right now – and X isn’t going so well, but Y is looking good!”

This might as well be the motto of every wanna be networking group ever, where terrified business owners meet to chat about big ideas.

So why is it better to commit to one thing?

It comes back to the question of creative vortexes. AKA getting into (and staying in) The Zone.

When you’re flipping your focus between three different business projects, it’s too easy to hit resistance in one then switch to the other. There isn’t any reason to try to outsmart your obstacles or do the inner work required to overcome them. If one horse stops moving, you just start focusing on (and talking about) another. Easy.

You fail to do the most important work an entrepreneur can do: Finding your creative vortex and figuring out how to stay there, even when things get tricky.

This failure means that your three (or seven!) horses all proceed very slowly. Unless you’ve developed herculean powers of delegation, the rule “Energy flows where attention goes” remains true. Your pack of horses fall behind as you jump between them, losing precious time and energy with every switch you make. Every time you start to get into the zone, you have to pull yourself out to attend to one of those other projects.

Admittedly, the people who bet big on the one important thing sometimes lose. Just don’t get sucked into using those examples as proof that the “many projects” way is better. Ever met anyone who simultaneously hit three home runs?

Entrepreneurialism has always been a crazy game. It’s always been high risk. You’ve always been insane to try in the first place. This is why you’re awesome.

Don’t let the fear make you “diversify”. You’re an entrepreneur not a stock broker, so act like it. Pick what matters and crush it.

Too busy running your business to spend time marketing it properly?

Then why not let us look after that for you, get in touch for a tailored quote today

03

Will You Sign Your Life Away?

by Neil Asher

“Before we meet will you sign my NDA?” Oh how many times have I been asked this.

Running a digital marketing agency we get to see LOTS of businesses and in some cases entrepreneurs ideas for their business.

Every now and again someone (usually a rookie entrepreneur or a PLC) will ask us to sign a non disclosure agreement (NDA) for those of you that don’t know an NDA creates a confidential relationship between the parties to protect any type of confidential and proprietary information or trade secrets.

So for instance you have an idea for a business, you want to keep your idea secret, but you need to talk to people about it so you can get suppliers, marketing, employees etc on board, so you have a lawyer draw one up and you’re good to go…. right?

The problem is people think their ideas are great, and that they are the first one to have them.

There are 2 difficulties with that line of thought, 1. Your idea is worthless (see here).

2. Unless you have patented your idea you don’t own it.

Now I like contracts we use them all the time in fact, they are a necessary part of business as are the lawyers who enforce them.

However usually when a rookie entrepreneur asks us to sign an NDA they have invariably done an online search for an NDA template and simply added their business name and ours to it.

There are 2 HUGE problems with this; 1. A generalised NDA by defination has to cover everything, so everything they discuss becomes covered by the NDA “we plan to market our services online and use banners ads to do that” is covered by the NDA for instance 2. By signing such a document you risk restricting who you can do business with in the future.

That’s just dumb.

So my advice is don’t sign them, send whoever has asked you to sign such a thing to this post BUT, If you are asked to sign a document that has been drawn up for the purposes of that meeting and the confidential information is outlined then that’s a whole new ball game, this is good, they know what they’re doing and have demonstrated respect for your business by not asking you to sign your life away on a document they downloaded for £20 (or worse for free) online.

If you want good companies that deal with multiple businesses to sign an NDA you’ll have to get a proper one drawn up, yes it’s expensive (£500) but that’s the price of doing business and for the record EVEN if they do sign you then have to enforce it… which will have your lawyer gleefully rubbing his hands together at the thought of a long protracted court case.

Not good.

The companies that will sign the pro forma NDA either; 1. Didn’t read it (very often the case) 2. Assumed you’d never have the capital to pursue them legally (it’s VERY expensive to pursue these cliams), or 3. Are not creative agencies that work on multiple businesses sometimes as share holding partners So we’d love to sign your NDA if you have one drafted for us but we can’t sign one that you copied off the internet or paid £25 for as we’d be signing our lives and business away.

04

Being Good Is Not Good Enough

by Neil Asher

You want to be more desirable to your prospects than anyone else who’s offering what you’re offering. You want to stand out.But you may have noticed it’s harder than it sounds. Unless you’re in a magical new market, there are already lots of people doing what you do.

You can try to: •

Beat them on quality…but there’s always someone firmly cemented in the top spot, and fighting an opponent with the high ground ain’t often a sustainable business model

•

Be cheaper than the competition… but slimming down profit margins and attracting tire-kickers isn’t really the way to wealth and success either.

•

Offer some feature no one else is offering…which is nigh impossible in most markets, where everything buyers want is already being provided

This all makes standing out rather hard.

So what in the blue blazes do you do?

You Can’t Follow the Standard Advice, That’s for Sure Business old schoolers (and plenty of GURU’s) tell you you’re supposed to develop a Unique Selling Proposition, or USP. They tell you to pick a benefit that’s different from what the competition is offering and dominate it. They tell you to advertise the hell out of it, to the point where you own that segment of the customer’s mind.

Sounds great, but there’s only one problem: It doesn’t work anymore.

The idea for the USP was invented in the 1940s to explain the success of advertising campaigns. Back then, there were substantially fewer advertisers than there are now, and it was much easier to find a unique benefit.

If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur, being unique is a big deal.

Not anymore. Now, the world is saturated with advertising, and simply being unique isn’t enough. If you want to succeed, you need to go one better and develop something that will make you stand out as more desirable than any USP ever could:

The Next Generation of the Unique Selling Proposition Original Mad Man called it a “big idea.” He applied it specifically to advertising—but it works for all kinds of marketing platforms, especially websites.

He said: You will never win fame and fortune unless you also invent big ideas. It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.

Riiiiight…but what IS it?

“Big idea” sounds kind of vague to me, and also a bit grandiose. So I call it a concept—because that’s exactly what it is: a central theme or idea which binds all of your marketing together. It forms a kind of foundation for your marketing identity…and makes you desirable to your prospects in a way that nothing else can.

But you can’t just use any old theme or idea. You need some very specific elements.

Four, actually…

1. Uniqueness It may not be sufficient, but it is necessary.. That’s good news if you’ve been reading this thinking, “But Neil, I already have a USP that works well for me! Are you saying it’s no good?!”

No sir ee bob, I sure ain’t. It’s perfect. But you can turn it into something even better, that’ll pull in prospects even harder. Most unique selling propositions are just “big ideas” waiting to be set free.

If you don’t have a USP, well don’t worry. You can create a concept without one. I did.

In a way, it’ll become your USP—but not as you’d traditionally think of one.

2. Stories This is the one thing most unique selling propositions are missing. Add it into the mix, and you’ve got yourself a stellar motif.

And if you haven’t got a USP to work off, don’t worry. Stories are everywhere. You can turn even the most boring things into gripping stories with a little bit of application. You probably have a dozen great stories up your sleeve right now, just waiting to be told, and don’t even know it.

Let me give you an example.

Have you heard of our digital marketing agency client progressive property? No? Go ahead and check out their website.

One of their core values is “quality built to last.” Not exactly a unique claim, eh?

How many companies say something similar? It’s decidedly non-unique-sellingpropositionish.

But look how they turn this generic value into a concept. Check out their headline: “Building & Managing a completely Hands-Free Property Portfolio That You Can Retire on, Enjoying Financial Independence for the Long Term”

05

Quality? Check. “hands free property investing.” People don’t invest in rubbish.

Built to last? Check. It’ll create an income you can retire on…that’s longevity!

Concept? Check! How can you resist a done for you property building portfolio that you can retire on?

This is a great concept. Notice how it puts a unique angle on an otherwise ordinary claim, while at the same time implying a story that engages your imagination.

What makes stories so mighty? Well, they play into some very powerful psychological triggers: •

They tie your product to more than the sum of its features or benefits. When you link your product to a story, you’re linking it with something bigger than itself.

Something which appeals to a deep part of us.

•

They can engage your reader by getting him to empathise with characters, rather than simply evaluating features and benefits.

•

By having him visualise things, you bypass the rational processing parts his brain—and go straight to deeper, less critical centers.

•

Good stories are inherently viral! Have you noticed how when you come across a story that appeals to you, the first thing you want to do is share it with someone else?

3. Simplicity Another thing you’ll notice about progressive properties concept is that it’s all said in a single sentence. This is another thing that sets motifs apart from other kinds of ideas.

They must be simple. The best motifs make natural headlines, because they can be stated or summarized in a sentence or two.

Now, you gotta be careful here. If you read any good marketing authorities (Drayton Bird or Gary Halbert, for example), you’ll know that headlines should emphasize real benefits. They should pass the “so what” test, or the “forehead-slap” test. And if you’re working out a headline that isn’t going to be used in conjunction with a picture, that’s good advice.

But remember, a motif must contain a story.

It doesn’t have to contain a benefit (although it’s a good idea). David Ogilvy created some outstandingly successful campaigns with headlines like “The man in the Hathaway shirt” and “The man from Schweppes is here.”

Not strong headlines by themselves—but he coupled them with intriguing pictures that made reading the ad copy irresistible. A similar approach could work brilliantly on your website.

Whichever way you go, the point to remember is that a motif is simple. It should capture just one idea, and evoke one primary emotion in your prospect.

4. Surprise The interesting thing about uniqueness is how uninteresting it is.

Everything is unique in some way—and the mere fact that your motif is also unique does nothing to ensure its success. It must go beyond uniqueness and surprise your prospect. When he first comes across it, he should pause for just a moment—and then experience a tiny thrill.

Now, be careful. There’s a huge, inept industry in advertising built around being shocking or funny—as if entertaining people will provoke them to buy things.

It does the opposite. Cleverness for the sake of cleverness is nothing but creative masturbation. It’s quickly appreciated, and quickly forgotten. There’s no lasting appeal in being cutesy or comical.

The surprise of a great concept is not that kind of surprise. Rather, it comes from an unexpected combination of ideas. For Progressive Property, it’s in taking a common guarantee and extrapolating it into a provocative picture.

Finding a way to juxtapose two ideas is the first step in coming up with a mighty motif.

Which brings me to my final point.

How To Invent and Use a Concept Developing a concept for your marketing, and putting it into use, is a topic unto itself. I’d do you an injustice to try to cover it here—so in a future post, I’ll cover it in depth, with practical examples.

Look out for it in a week or two!

06

The 5 Types Of Prospect And How To Sell To Each Of Them (Part 1)

by Neil Asher

I’ve isolated 5 distinct phases your prospect will go through as their awareness of their problem and your product increases.

1. Your prospect knows about their problem and knows that your product can solve their problem

2. Your prospect knows about their problem but does not know that your product can solve their problem

3. Your prospect knows about their problem but does not yet know that there is a product that can solve their problem

4. Your prospect knows there is something wrong but cannot articulate what it is they do not know that your product can solve their problem We’re called to solve all sorts of marketing problems for our clients; from excess inventory to launching new products, selling thousands of books to filling 5000 seat seminars and everything in between.

Most business owners tend to think their business and marketing problem is different, it’s not.

In fact all marketing problems can be traced back to one of five types of prospects and their awareness of your product or service.

It stands to reason that the more your prospect knows about you and your services the more likely they are to buy from you.

All the unsuccesful businesses we’re called in to help are marketing to the wrong prospect, and by that I mean they have not understood where the prospect is in the marketplaces awareness cycle.

5. Your prospect does not know they have problem (how to create a new market)

The important thing to note here is that each of these stages is separated from the others by a psychological wall. On one side of that wall is indifference; on the other, intense interest. So an advert that will crush it in the first stage for example, “Lose 10lbs with slimfast” will fail completely when addressed to a third-stage market where your prospect doesn’t even realise that slimfast can be made with built-in deodorants.

And a third stage ad for example “Who else want whiter teeth with no hard work?”

Will be old-hat, no-news to todays consumer, who has been barraged by whiter-thanwhite toothpaste advertising for years.

To sum up, then an advert which will work to a market in one stage of awareness will not work to a market in another stage of awareness.

And importantly it will not work, even to a market in which it has been successful, once that market passes on to a new stage ot awareness.

In my next post I will start to breakdown each market phase and how to market to them online, my next post details how to sell to phase 1 prospects.

Want us to look after your online marketing for you?

Then why not check out our new “Outsourced Digital Marketing Department” service.

07

The 5 Types Of Prospect And How To Sell To Each Of Them (Part 2)

by Neil Asher

Ok if you remember last time I told you the five main stages of awareness a prospect goes through in relation to your product or service. I also told you that whenever we’re called in to help a client who’s not doing as well online as they’d like to it’s because they’re marketing to the prospect at the wrong stage of awareness.

So now I’d like to start showing you how to market effectivly online to your prospect in each of their phases of awareness.

or this one from Toys R Us.

or this one from Domino’s Pizza.

As you can see from the examples above the remainder of the advertisement can summarise quickly the most desirable selling points. Then add the name of the business, or an offer, and close.

This is the typical online store (amazon), franchise, discount store (groupon), or used products type of advertising (ebay). It takes advantage of all the offline and online advertising that has been done on the same product before it.

Today I’m going to start with Phase 1

Its addition, its new thing, is the price or a free gift, or instant delivery or ease of pickup. Its prospect is fully aware he has all the information he needs.

Your prospect knows about their problem and knows that your product can solve their problem.

Here the marketers job is nothing more than coming up with discounts or special deals such as buy one get one free. Usually the price is the most important part of his headline and that is what should be tested.

Here your prospect is at their most aware.

Possible tests to run are:

Your prospect knows of your product knows what it does - and (importantly) knows he wants it.

Percentage discount; eg 25% off

Monetary discount – save £20

addition of bonus – buy one get a free (thing)

volume addition – buy one get one free

At this point, she just hasn’t gotten around to buying it yet. Your headline—in fact, vour entire ad only needs to flag the brand name, restate the main benefit and make an offer.

This is the position that Apple finds itself in for instance.

There is nothing creative about his job, and the marketing team should receive the lowest possible scale of pay.

Next time things start to get more interesting as we cover phase 2 Your prospect knows about their problem but does not know that your product can solve their problem.

08

Business Maths For Dummies

by Neil Asher Now remember that I can spend up to £49.99 to acquire a customer and still make a profit.

So, just to emphasise, my aim now is to acquire as many customers as possible within my target range £0.00 – £49.99 On Google I can acquire customers using keywords, suppose I have 100 keywords I bid on; - buy bucket and spades I am fortunate to have previously been one of the top affiliates in the world online, but it wasn’t always that way… for years I struggled and lost a fortune.

- bucket and spade reviews - things to take to the beach Now each of those keywords has a different type of person doing the searching.

Literally.

- buy bucket and spades (this person is ready to buy right now)

Then 1 day whilst reading a book on venture capital ( this one if you’re interested - http://www.amazon.co.uk/ Enterprise-and-Venture-Capital-ebook/ dp/B0051SIUOE ) I saw something that changed everything.

- bucket and spade reviews (this person is doing research)

Allow me to demonstrate with a simple guide.

Lets suppose I’m selling a bucket and spade.

The bucket and spade costs – £100 The gross profit margin is 50% so for every bucket and spade I sell I make £50 gross profit OK so now how much money can I spend to sell my bucket and spade?

If you answered £49.99 go to the head of the class! nb if you are selling things on the back end and you know your numbers often times you can do things MUCH differently. simply substitute life time value for bucket and spade.

OK now lets go to our marketing startegy.

Lets suppose we have 3 different strategies: 1. Google Adwords 2. Facebook PPC 3. LinkedIn (3 is a terrible number, better to have 10 but 3 is simple to follow right now)

- things to take to the beach (this person is looking for ideas) So it makes sense that each keyword will convert differently, someone who wants to buy a bucket and spade is going to be much easier to sell a bucket and spade too than someone looking for ideas.

Making sense so far?

So each of those keywords will have a different customer acquisition cost associated to it.

- buy bucket and spades – costs me £5 to make a sale (the number of clicks I get on my advert x the cost per click x the conversion rate) - bucket and spade reviews – costs me £25 to make a sale - things to take to the beach – costs me £49 to make a sale Based on how many people search for my keyword, then click on my ad then buy the product. So the cumulative total marketing spend (customer acquisition cost) increases or decreases based on the search intent of the keyword.

The cumulative total marketing spend (customer acquisition cost) increases or decreases based on the search intent of the keyword.

Now that’s Google, but, facebook and linkedIn are also the same, each ad network (google, bing, facebook, linkedIn etc) has a different customer acquisiation cost profile to it.

So Facebook’s range may be as cheap as £10 up to £50 for me to buy a customer.

So is it smart for me to focus on what it costs me to get someone to click on my ad? No. It’s smart for me to know my numbers, establish how much I can spend up to to buy a customer then do everything I can to buy as many customers as I can.

Some customers are cheap, some are expensive (relativly) BUT as long as they make money I don’t care.

Some keywords are cheap some are expensive. It’s all irrelevant. What matters is does it make a profit.

This little insight has helped me become one of the highest earning affiliates in the world, it’s helped me launch numerous businesses and is now helping my clients who engage me to do their digital marketing for them.

Try it in your business, you’ll be streaks ahead of your competition when you do.

09

Entrepreneur Insights

Interview with Jo Haigh (Mentor at the Rockstar Group and a partner in Corporate Finance Services)

What one thing about your childhood, personality or upbringing do you think had the biggest influence on your becoming an entrepreneur?

My Mother had to take over her father’s engineering business at 18 when her father died she took this from a little local business to a regional highly respected company sadly she died when I was 16 but I grew up in an female dominated entrepreneurial household where business was a daily topic of conversation.

How did you do at school and what did you most love or hate about school?

I did very badly at school my mother was very ill for most of the time I was doing o levels and my father’s business went bust however when I went to Huddersfield technical collage I was very lucky that I had an inspirational tutor who was the first person in academia to believe in me as a result I got 3 grade A A levels and a place to study law at university.

I have never been very good at following rules so was always the naughty one at school I have also subsequently discovered I am dyslectic which of course in my day was not recognised and was always told I was “thick “.

What would you say was the ONE THING that made the difference with your success with COMPANY NAME? I am always myself ( as Oscar wild said you may as well be yourself everyone else has been taken ) I am also very straight talking.

My personal values of be kind work hard and stay positive are very different for someone in my industry I think people appreciate I am authentic.

What ONE THING would you do differently, knowing what you know now?

Regrets I’ve had a few but all too few to remember as the song goes.

What really gets you buzzed NOW about being in business? What fulfills you most?

Seeing those people that I employ who thought they “couldn’t “ do things they never thought possible as I have believed in them.

10

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