In session 40 of A Marketing Podcast, I focus on some of the hurdles that small businesses have when adopting social media. I also talk about the difference between the major social channels in regards to the type of messaging and content that you should develop to optimize the engagement of potential customers in those channels.

Why small businesses struggle when adopting social media

To get on board with social media as a marketing, and potentially a communications, tool the measurement of its success needs to be established from the get-go.

In my experience, the number 1 reason why businesses of all sizes struggle to find value in social media is the way in which they try to measure its effectiveness as part of their marketing budget.

The typical measurement for any marketing is a boost in sales.

Social media, however, is better served by the volume of engagement and size of a community. Let me explain:

social media requires a sustained level of effort of a long period of time in order to produce tangible results. Social media by its very nature is about being social, not being a salesperson.

I like to explain social media as a party, or even better a networking event. How many times do you walk into a conversation and say hey I’m Matt, here’s my thing you should buy??? I’m wagering never.

But if you join the conversation, maybe listen for a while, then add value – you’re more likely to be included, listened to, and seen as someone that can provide future value.

That’s how you should use social.

So with that in mind – measuring social media is not about the boost in sales, it’s about the growth of community and growth of engagement.

So why do small business struggle adopting social media – they’re looking for short-term results and measuring the wrong things.

Personal Social Media vs Business Social Media

First off, the most important thing is to keep your personal social media, personal. Unless of course, if you’re providing a product or service that is a result or relates to your personal experiences or life.

The two main reasons for keeping things separate:

* Your personal tone and brand is not the same as your businesses, so mixing those would create confusion to potential customers

* Mixing your personal opinions and thoughts in the business social channels, essentially means your businesses opinions match yours. And that can be dangerous!!!

Context of Social Media Channels – Different content and messaging

Different social media channels warrant different messaging. This is important to know when adopting social media.

Not all social channels are created equal, and the way in which people consume content on each channel is different. Knowing this means we need to adapt our content for each channel we use, to ensure we’re talking the way in which our audience expects and is looking for.

The channels that you select as part of your marketing strategy should be based on the content you already have and wish to create. and a little about how much time you have to spend managing your social media.

Let’s quickly cover the content expectations in the main social media channels:

Facebook – Facebook content if probably to most comprehensive of the social media channels (except maybe LinkedIn more on that in a sec). You can use all types of content mediums, but more importantly is that Facebook users aren’t necessarily attracted to one form of the content verse the other. From short textual posts to short stories accompanied by videos. So Facebook is a great place to start if you have the time to put a fair amount of effort into creating content.

LinkedIn – Known as the B2B social channel, also has the ability to deliver many types of content mediums. However,

In session 39 of A Marketing Podcast I walk through setting up Google analytics and claiming your Google business as part of your marketing platform setup. Ensuring that you can monitor and review your website’s traffic and interactions with various content and campaigns is imperative in understanding how your marketing is performing throughout the year.

Creating A Google account

In order to setup the various Google services available to us, we need to have a Google account created.

I recommend creating a new account for your business in order to separate your personal access and information from your business access. This is more important if you work in a small business that has multiple employees. By having a business specific account your can provide access to your employees without worrying about access to personal content. You can alink your personal email/Google account to your analytics and AdWords and other accounts later if you wish.

To create a new account visits google.com (you’ll be redirected to the regional version of google for your location)

Click on the sign in button and then the sign-up link. Simply enter the required details and continue the signup process.

That’s it – pretty easy!

Setting up Google analytics

Now that you’ve created your google account you can begin setting up the various services Google provides that will help us with your website and marketing monitoring and reporting.

Let’s start with setting up Google analytics.

GA is the Industry leader in analytical data for your website. Plus it’s free to install and use. There simply is no better alternative for those of you getting started out, as well as experienced marketers. There are higher level analytical tools for larger sites and for deeper dives into integrations with other systems and so on and so forth. But for your website, Google Analytics is the way to go.

Creating a new account

In order to start tracking and viewing your website’s analytics, you n eed to create an account within Google analytics.

Setting up google analytics starts once you’ve logged into your new account.

Navigate to: google.com/analytics

Then click on admin then select create account. If you don’t have any accounts yet you’ll see a big button, if you do then the create new account button will be at the bottom of your accounts list.

Enter your account name. I use the full name of the website – so A Marketing Podcast. Then enter the website name I use A Marketing Podcast Website. These are the Account name, and Property name for later reference.

Update the various other fields on the creation form such as timezone and industry. And also select the data sharing settings you’d like to use. totally up to you!

Then click get tracking code! and you’re done.

Installing your tracking code

Next step is to install your tracking code on your website. From the previous step we created your new account and obtained our tracking code, this code is a JavaScript snippet that needs to be placed on every page of your website.

The best place to put your new tracking code is right after the body tag. If you’re using a wordpress site, or most other Content Management Systems, you can obtain plugins to make it easy to put your tracking code into your site.

Another option is to use the Google Tag Manager system. You’ll need your website developer to help implement the tag manager code. But once in place, you can manage tags and codes (for things like Ad-words) without requiring help from your developer. Something to consider.

Once your code is in place and GA can see it you’ll get a verified notice in the property management section of your new account.

In session 38 of A Marketing Podcast, I provide an overview of how the year is going to unfold for the show. I also get started on the first theme of the year, digital marketing setup. In particular the setup of your brand elements and website. Including some basic SEO setup and considerations for your new website.

The Plan for 2017

A themed approach to the year – one theme per month. The theory here is that you can plan for what themes you’d like to tune in for as well as know what’s coming to plan ahead in your marketing.

Themes:

* January – Digital Marketing Setup

* February – Inbound Marketing

* March – Advertising your SMB online

* April – Search Engine Optimization

* May – Social Media for Small Business

* June – Keeping up with marketing trends

* July – Day to day marketing

* August – Marketing Automation

* September – Communications in SMB

* October – Customer Journey Mapping

* November – Festive Season Marketing

* December – A Year in Review

Small Business Digital Marketing Setup Checklist [DOWNLOAD]

Before we get started on today’s topic, check out the setup checklist I’ve created that this month will cover.

With this month’s theme being all about digital marketing setup – I’ve created a checklist to walk you through the steps to complete your online presense to be ready for all your marketing efforts. It’s called the small business digital marketing setup checklist and you can find it here: http://www.amarketingpodcast.com/digitalsetup

Visual Brand Elements

In order to perform any marketing, digital or otherwise, you need to have your brand taken care of.

Building your brand is an entire process to itself, I’m not going to cover that today, but what I am going to cover is the minimal set of visual digital assets you need for your marketing.

List of assets you need:

* Company Logo – of course, no surprise there, however, the more sizes and colors you have it in the better

* Color Pallet – primary, secondary and tertiary colors

* Font Stack – know what fonts your brand should be using, and make sure you have a web font was chosen (Google fonts is a good place to start

* Brand Imagery – lifestyle shots, product shots, etc.

Setting up your website

Obviously to do any digital marketing you want to have a website. Although, not technically required, let’s just say it’s easier to market your business with your own website.

You can rely heavily on a social channel but you want to have your own owned property where you control everything – that’s your website.

* Most of you likely have a website already setup, but for those of you just getting started in business there are a few things to consider:

* Select a domain name – Godaddy is the way to go

* Web hosting – You can easily create an entire podcast on web hosting and all of the options available to you. I use 1and1 Hosting for A Marketing Podcast. They have many options to choose from.

* Your actual website – the files that create the pages of your site

* Basic SEO setup – more in a minute on this one.

Web Hosting and your Website

To figure out what type of web hosting to use and to build your website,

In session 37 of A Marketing Podcast, I give you a quick review of the year of 2016. I also talk about the plan for 2017 and what I have in store for you all.

2016 Review

Thank you to everyone who tuned into the podcast! You’re the reason for the show and I sincerely hope you’re getting the value you expect and have been able to implement a few things from the show.

The Show launched on March 31st, with the release of Session 1, 2 & 3.

A Marketing Podcast achieved 10,000 Downloads on October 7th, and sits at 14,250 as of recording.

I share to show you how the podcast is progressing and to segway into what A Marketing Podcast will be all about in 2017….

So what is the show going to be all about in 2017….

What’s in store for 2017

Still focusing on Marketing Strategy

I’m still going to focus on Marketing strategy for small business, but I’m going to work to deliver many more interviews and references to current and timely examples of marketing strategy to demonstrate how the implementation of solid strategy achieves success.

Monthly Topics and themes

The show will be themed based on a monthly basis. Meaning each month in 2017 will focus on a specific marketing topic. The final topics are still in development and I’ll share those as soon as they are finalized through the community newsletter. If you haven’t joined the email list for the AMP community you can do so at amarketingpodcast.com/joinamp

If you have a particular topic or theme you’d like to hear on the show let me know through the Ask Matt section of the website.

Same structure, but with more interviews and some marketing news

The structure of the shows will remain largely intact, but with more interviews and themes. Potentially more news as it relates to the monthly topic.

That’s all for 2016

Now that you know what your info in 2017, it’s time for the final announcement today, and that is that I’ll be taking a small hiatus until the new year.

With the festive season, busy times at work, and the launch of my first SAAS application www.podcasteasy.com – The CRM for podcasters, I don’t have the time to put together the three remaining shows for 2016. But I’ll be back and releasing the first show for 2017 on January 2 or 3.

As I mentioned earlier I’ll be sending out next year’s themes and topics in the next week or so to those in the AMP community and we’ll be in touch in 2017.

Merry Christmas everyone, may your time be spent with family and provide you with some time to reflect on all the good things in life. And we’ll get back to marketing in a huge way in early Jan.

Until then, bye for now!

Thanks for listening in!

If you have any questions about this session, leave them in the comments section below. If you enjoyed the show, let your friends know by using the social sharing buttons below. Your help sharing the podcast will allow me to help more business owners and marketers just like you be more strategic!

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, or your favorite podcast app/service. Please leave your reviews on the iTunes store. Ratings and Reviews are a huge factor in the success of the podcast, and your support of the show means a lot to me. I read every single review, so be honest and let me know if there’s something I can improve on.

In session 36 of A Marketing Podcast, I’m talking about 2017 Marketing Strategy Development. It’s that time of year to get your strategy developed and ready for the new year. In this session, I walk through the strategy template I’ve developed and outlined some of the tricks and tips to help you fill out each section and develop a strategy that’s going to make it easy to be successful in your marketing.

Session 36: 2017 Marketing Strategy Development

This session focuses in on the sections of the FREE 12 Page Marketing Strategy Template. You can Download it right here!

Theory behind the template

* Helps marketers develop a logic approach to establishing the tactics and marketing mix that will achieve your strategies goals and objectives

* Helps marketers and small business owners develop budgets that make sense by pairing back the best strategic approach to an obtainable budget amount. More on this later.

Establishing Goals and Objectives

[Related: Session 3: Establishing goals and objectives]

What a Goal is? What an objective is? It’s important to understand the difference so that they work together to achieve what it is you want for your business in relation to your marketing outcomes.

Create goals before objectives, and make sure that your objectives lather up to each goal. It’s also important to create goals that are obtainable, but still, push your marketing to achieve something worth achieving.

Understanding and Developing your target audiences

[Related: Session 4: Understanding and developing your target audiences]

There is always more than one target audience for your business. Make sure to consider them all and establish a good range of target audiences, whilst ensuring that your marketing makes sense to target each audience.

Developing target audiences can be performed in many ways. However, I like to divide the initial creation of target audiences into two main groups. Current customers, and potential customers.

Talk with your current customers to develop various target audiences based on information they provide.

Then work on establishing target audience of potential customers. Those that haven’t used your product or service yet. Or even whole industries and markets that don’t know that your business product or service, could be a fit.

Performing a Marketing SWOT Analysis

[Related: Session 5: Performing a marketing SWOT analysis]

A marketing SWOT is different than a business SWOT.

It can be used as an analysis, or audit, of your past marketing efforts as well as helping you establishing the environment for your initial marketing efforts for your 2017 marketing strategy.

* Strengths – use them to position your business above your competitors

* Weaknesses – Should you improve them, or avoid them?

* Opportunities – get some advice on developing/identifying opportunities as you may not be able to see them from within your business.

* Threats – again work with someone external to help identify threats, and decide whether to avoid them or tackle them head on. Both have the potential for a high level of success but tread lightly.

Creating Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

[Related: Session 6: Creating your unique selling proposition]

Your unique selling proposition is crucial in setting your business apart from your competition.

It’s important to note what a USP is not!

There are three main questions to answer that help you develop you...

In session 35 of A Marketing Podcast I’m talking about executing a scientific approach to advertising. The approach provides you with a way to constantly compare and contrast the many different options and approaches there are to performing advertising, both online and offline.

Session 35: A Scientific approach to advertising

Thanks for joining me again for Session 35 of A Marketing Podcast, sorry about last week, the dreaded flu got me and I was in bed for a couple days.

But today’s sessions, I think, is worth the wait. Especially if you are doing your own advertising at the moment, or thinking about it in the future.

Today’s going to be about a scientific approach to advertising. buts its not a complex as you think. It’s about performing experiments in order to continuously improve the advertising that you perform and to maximize the bang for your buck.

Today’s show will include:

* The structure of a science experiment

* Developing a hypothesis

* Controlled elements in your experiment

* Variables in your experiment

* The experimental procedure

* Analysis and your findings

So let’s get started.

The structure of a science experiment

Remember back in high school when you were asked to prove a hypothesis and had to do so with controlled elements and variables elements.

Let’s review shall we.

All science experiments require the following to develop an insight or develop a fact:

* a hypothesis

* controlled element/s

* variable element/s

* procedure

Developing a Hypothesis

What is a Hypothesis – a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.

It’s the thing we’re trying to prove as true or false put simply.

In advertising this is the hardest part of the process. But the most important as well. Our hypothesis can be virtually anything but here’s an example to get you thinking…

“Is Facebook advertising better for my business than Display advertising through Google?”

or even better

“Facebook delivers more conversions for the same media spend then display advertising through Google”

As you can see I refine the hypothesis to help me establish something more measurable and specific – which makes it easier to prove/disprove.

Controlled elements in your experiments

The controlled element in your experiment will allow you to test different variable elements against each other. You must have at least one controlled element to execute a scientific approach to advertising.

The controlled element, may also require multiple elements such as in our previous example the controlled elements would be:

* the same budget spend

* the same targeting

* the same conversion metric

* the same advertising messaging (if not exactly the same words)

The more precise you can be in making as many things exactly the same the easier it is to pinpoint the variable and determine your hypothesis.

The variable elements

The variable elements are those that differ in your experiments. The variables for your experiment can be many, however you must work to have as few variables as possible in each experiment.

Again using our example, the only variable we want left over is the channel we’re using, be it Facebook or Google Adwords.

Now how do we actually perform the experiment???

The procedure to perform our experiments

In order to execute a scientific approach to advertising your experiment you must have a set procedure to test our hypothesis, by managing your controlled elements, and comparing the variables.

Here’s a simple procedure for our experiment.

1.

In session 34 of A Marketing Podcast I talk Customer Marketing Overview. I go over when customer marketing kicks in and things to consider to deliver the right message to your current customers in order to achieve up-sells and additional revenue from your current customers.

There’s a way to perform customer marketing that doesn’t seem like a heavy sales approach to up-sells at the point that they make their initial purchase from you. In this show I discuss how to a chive this in a way that not only gets more revenue but does so in a way that build loyalty and retention.

Session 34: Customer Marketing Overview

When to start customer marketing

As soon as a potential customer makes a purchase you should initialize your customer marketing. That’s not to say open the flood gates to marketing right then, but start the process of developing your relationship with your customers.

Messaging for customers should be different the potential customers

Messaging for customers should not be about awareness and the benefits or solutions that your product provides, instead how you can improve their experience of the purchase they have made.

Plain and simple: improve the value of the purchase they have made.

Tactical approaches to customer marketing

Remarketing is great once we have a customer. Because we can get focused in our messages and promotions to our customers.

Email marketing is another great approach to customer marketing because we can communicate directly with our customers in a one-to-one basis.

Customer Marketing and E-mail Marketing

Get your customers email!

If you already have an email list up and running make sure that you can segment, or tag, your customers within that list. My favourite tool for this is ConvertKit – Get 30 days FREE by clicking this link and checking it out.

The reason to segment your customers out is so that, once again, we message differently to them.

Provide value in exchange for your customers joining your “member/customer” email list. Member only promotions work great, for example:

* be the first to know

* member only promotions/discounts

* new product releases and first access to those products for members only

These are also the content to put in your emails over time to entice additional sales to your current customers.

Marketing should be part of your customer support

When providing customer support, we should always be taking an approach to fix our customers issues and deliver up-sell or promotional items that relate to the purchase they have already made. So marketing at the same time as customer support.

If you’re providing customer support online, provide it in a way that again, solves the problem, but always keeps marketing in mind by using content on the website. Potentially, even referring to other products or services during the support call.

An angry customers is a great opportunity

More often than not the clients I work with do everything they can to avoid negative customers and issues online. However, they pose a great opportunity to develop a very happy , and loyal, customer.

The reason I mention this is that if you can turn an angry customer around, their story can be used in your marketing. Also, you can identify what went wrong and what may help other customers feel better about their purchase, and use that in your customer marketing.

Check out a favourite book of mine to help with this. It’s called Hug Your Haters by Jay Bear

Don’t be a pushy salesman

Deliver marketing to your current customers with great value adding up-sells. If you don’t have additional products or services that truly build on the valu...

In session 33 of A Marketing Podcast I talk about awareness marketing and how it’s more than just paying for impressions. I touch on the differences between brand awareness and issue awareness, as well as some thoughts on getting the most out of your awareness marketing to drive true awareness.

Session 33: Awareness marketing – Not just impressions

The different types of awareness marketing

I discuss the difference between the two main ways awareness marketing is used. Which is for brand awareness and for awareness of issues. An example being Breast Cancers pink color placement on various products and sports athletes to bring awareness to the issue.

It shouldn’t start and stop with impressions

Many marketers, and agencies, deliver awareness marketing by delivering as many impressions as possible. Now it’s not wrong to deliver as many impressions as possible, but the issue lies in impressions being the start and stop of the marketing success criteria.

I believe that engagement drives more awareness the impressions alone. Just think when you interact with a brand, or a brand interacts with you, your more likely to remember the brand and have that affect your future purchases.

Awareness marketing for small business

As a small  business, or small business marketer, performing the generic impression based awareness marketing doesn’t make sense. You’re likely working with pretty tight  budgets and are unable to pay for impressions.

My recommendation is to drive brand awareness through performing good marketing. The type of marketing that drives engagement or actions to develop real awareness of your brand.

Understanding that the first step in your marketing should always be awareness marketing. If you’re targeting new consumers with your advertising/marketing you should be delivering your brands visual elements, and tone anyway.

A real world awareness marketing example

I discuss the direction taken in my last marketing role. Focused on labor unions, public service workers specifically, and how the awareness marketing campaigns were performed and measured.

Research to help measuring awareness

In order to understand how effective your awareness marketing is, you need to perform research within the geographical regions that your marketing will be viewed.

In the show I talk about how to perform that research and a couple items to keep in mind so that your research can identify the level of awareness and by how much it is increased.

Thanks for listening in!

If you have any questions about this session, leave them in the comments section below. If you enjoyed the show, let your friends know by using the social sharing buttons below. Your help sharing the podcast will allow me to help more business owners and marketers just like you be more strategic!

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, or your favorite podcast app/service. Please leave your reviews on the iTunes store. Ratings and Reviews are a huge factor in the success of the podcast, and your support of the show means a lot to me. I read every single review, so be honest and let me know if there’s something I can improve on.

In session 32 of A Marketing Podcast I talk about the power of a CRM tool in your marketing. I cover what a CRM is and how to sue it help develop marketing insight and even how to use it as part of your marketing automation process.

As with almost every session of the show I touch on the importance of knowing your target audience in marketing, and the CRM is a great tool for helping you do just that.

Session 32: The power of a CRM in Marketing

What is a CRM?

The acronym CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Management”, or “Client Relationship Management”.

The core functionalities of a CRM system, is to allow you the ability to record specific information about your customers. As well as information about purchases and history with your business.

Types of customer data to gather

Make sure that we have at least one piece of contact information for each customer. That means gathering an email, or phone number, of even postal address.

Second to contact information, is gathering additional information to help us develop our target audiences. So things like geographic, demographic, likes/dislikes etc. Collection information about purchases is a great way to gather additional information. Depending on your products/service different audiences may buy different products, so keeping track of those purchases and any related information.

Developing Target audiences from your CRM Data

Most CRM tools provide reporting features to help identify quick insights and information about your customer base.

Make use of surveys to build better information about your customers. Now that we have customers and their contact details sending surveys, and the number of response you get, will increase.

Once you get your survey information, or just from basic questioning of your customers, get it into your CRM tool. The cross reference, or combine your CRM with your survey data and see what you get.

Integrating your CRM in marketing processes – or marketing automation

Gather the information and insights from your CRM and base your marketing strategies, and even specific tactics, on that data.

[Related: Session 27: Getting Started in Marketing Automation]

Most CRM tools integrate directly into marketing automation processes. And those that don’t still allow you the ability to get the contact details out of the CRM and into your email marketing program.

CRM tools

These CRM tools demonstrate the different levels of CRM in marketing, and the range of tools that are available.

PipeDrive

* Focuses on marketing/sales funnels and integrates contacts in that process

* Find out more about PipeDrive

Hubspot CRM

* A free CRM tool that keeps track of customers and contacts and integrates into the Hubspot world of inbound marketing tools.

* Find out more about Hubspot CRM

SalesForce

* An enterprise level CRM and integration into LinkedIn and provides tools for marketing/sales funnels.

* Find out more about Salesforce CRM

InfusionSoft

* Great option for small business, and plays nicely with InfusionSoft’s marketing automation products. Still a very complex tool, but easy to understand and begin using.

* Find out more about InfusionSoft

Highrise

* A great place to start in your CRM implementation.

It’s Thanksgiving here in Canada! So naturally I was laid out on the couch full of turkey and didn’t get to putting together a full session for you to listen too. Sometimes you simply need to lay back and hang out with your family, so that’s what I did.

Next week though, I’ve picked the topic and it’s the Power of a good CRM in your marketing. So I’ll go over what to collect in your CRM, how it can be used in your marketing, and a couple systems for different levels and types of business that might be worth implementing if you don’t currently have a solution in place.

Obviously there’ll be much more detail in next weeks show notes but’s here’s what I’m going to cover:

* What is a CRM?

* What customer information to collect

* Gathering insights for marketing strategies and tactics

* Integrating your CRM into your marketing automation

* A couple CRM systems that may work for your small business

Ok guys, see you next week!

Thanks for listening in!

If you have any questions about this session, leave them in the comments section below. If you enjoyed the show, let your friends know by using the social sharing buttons below. Your help sharing the podcast will allow me to help more business owners and marketers just like you be more strategic!

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, or your favorite podcast app/service. Please leave your reviews on the iTunes store. Ratings and Reviews are a huge factor in the success of the podcast, and your support of the show means a lot to me. I read every single review, so be honest and let me know if there’s something I can improve on.