I’ve had the chance to do some digital marketing consultation work with a few new SMEs recently
After deep diving into their digital campaigns, I had a long chat with one of their senior leaders and also the marketing personnel. We went through some of the things that were working for them and also how they can better move forward in terms of marketing, especially online
Here are some of our discussion points, these points are relevant to many other businesses too and can be very helpful for your business if properly implemented
Copywriting that ‘SNAP’ people out of what they are doing
Getting a potential audience’s attention nowadays is a challenging feat, even more so during the current lockdown
Even though there might be an increase in online ads inventory, almost every business is trying to go online and almost every one is trying to sell something to survive – meaning that there is also a big surge in competition
Ads are becoming more commonplace nowadays and users are more prone to ad blindness
That’s why it’s important to use marketing angles and copywriting that have the ability to ‘snap’ users out of what they are currently doing and grab their attention. From my experience, these 3 types of copies are most effective
- Pain points – What is a specific problem for your target audience? What are they worried about or scared of?
- Benefits – What is the customer going to gain out of your product?
- Testimonials – What do other people say about your product? The more testimonials you have, the more convincing your marketing is going to be
Be very clear about what your offering entails
If you’re offering something, be very clear about what it is
List it down, ask a colleague to help vet through and see if they clearly understand what your offer entails. Then, ask a friend from a different industry to read through and see if they understand what your offer is about
If you’re offering some sort of free trial session, these details are extremely important:
- When is the free trial?
- How many free trials am I getting?
- How long is the trial session?
- What time?
- How will it benefit me?
- How do I sign up?
- What happens after I sign up?
- Why are they giving out free trial sessions?
- What is so different about their trial sessions compared to others?
Use more creative varieties in your Facebook marketing
Don’t just use 1 type of creative, use more
Use visuals, videos, carousels, stories, and multiple versions of them
Each variation of your collaterals gives you a chance to appeal to a different type of customer
You might have read or heard online that video is king and to focus on that, but I’m telling you that it’s not necessarily the case for everyone
I’ve seen simple visuals that have kicked a videos ass in terms of performance, and also a combination of visuals and videos inside a carousel ad that performed way better than I expected
In fact, my current best performing marketing collateral is a simple visual that can be recreated even in Powerpoint
Know your numbers
This is probably one of the most important skillset for a marketer or entrepreneur to have before starting any sort of marketing campaign
In a nutshell, you need to know how much you can afford to spend to acquire 1 customer
Here’s a simple example:
If I sell a burger at RM15, and I have a profit of RM10 – does it mean that I can afford to spend RM10 to get a new customer?
It depends
If you know on average a customer only eats your burger once in a blue moon, then it’s probably not a good idea to spend more than RM10 to acquire a customer
If your burgers are so special and you’ve got a bunch of hardcore fans that eat your burgers 3 times in a week, you can probably spend more than that to acquire a customer
“But I sell a service and it’s so complicated to track revenue, it’s not like they buy directly from my website”
Let’s say you sell marketing consultations
You bill a client an average of RM1000 for a project, and have a profit of RM700 after deducting expenses
You close an average of 1 client out of 15 prospects (6.7%)
Out of 20 people who clicked into your ad, 1 becomes a prospect (5%)
That means in average, in order to get a client, you need to get 300 clicks (20 clicks = 1 prospect, 15 prospects = 300 clicks)
RM700 profit divided by 300 clicks = RM2.33 / click
and RM2.33 is the maximum amount you can spend to get a click, and you don’t need very complicating tracking mechanisms to be able to know your cost to get a click
So.. no excuses, know your numbers!
Speed of response
Many businesses, especially service ones, require a certain amount of following up to close a sale. There are a lot of questions to answer and objections to overcome
How fast you respond to your customers will have a big impact in terms of closing a sale
Additionally, today’s customers have extremely high expectations in terms of speed of reply
A report by CMO council also stated that customers’ themselves think that the most important attribute of a good customer experience is fast response time
In fact, I place so much importance in this that I used to set this as a KPI for my travel agent staff that all enquiries are replied within 24 hours and we block out certain hours of the day just to clear customer queries
So if you’re going to run any marketing campaigns – make sure you have the adequate resources (chatbot, dedicated personnel, hotlines) in place to quickly respond to potential customers
Properly define a customer avatar
This particular point has been mentioned to death, and for a good reason
You need to tailor your marketing message and language according to your customer avatar
Selling to a professional athlete vs a casual runner – totally different marketing message
Selling to a working mum vs a stay at home mum – totally different marketing message
Selling to a fresh graduate vs experienced manager – totally different marketing message
Properly define who you are marketing to and put the time and effort into understanding them
- What is their demographics?
- What are their psychographics?
- What lingo do they speak?
- Where do they get their information?
- What appeals to them?
- What are their challenges?
- Hopes and dreams?
- Inspirations?
Then tailor your message in a way that appeals the most to each of your customer segments
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Apart from the list of main points for our discussion, we also touched on other interesting things such as
- Putting any filters or restrictions upfront (if you only serve a certain market or area, if there is a X day waiting period for your products or services etc)
- Differentiate via value, not price
- Using digital marketing to collect leads and nurture them with lower cost mediums
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Getting digital marketing right requires a lot of hardwork, focus and dedication from a team of people. In my experience, many businesses will just throw in the towel when they hit their first few roadblocks, and this is on top of unrealistic expectations of what digital marketing can do for their businesses
Don’t expect to invest on crappily done marketing collaterals and a non existent strategy and be able to turn your business around or bring your business to greater heights
Good marketing is a series of good decisions made out of deep understanding of customers and knowing what tools to use to reach them at the right moment
