Landscape Digital Show

Episode 90 of Landscape Digital Show reveals why entrepreneurs Richard Branson and Steve Jobs focus on customer relationships to make peoples lives better.

I recently listened to an interview with Richard Branson about his journey to becoming a self-made billionaire. He admits to having lost count of exactly how many companies his Virgin brand owns, though he s sure its somewhere north of 200.

When asked where he gets his inspiration for starting or buying into a business, Branson gave this.

A business is an idea that makes people's lives better. ~ Richard Branson

That mindset of putting customers first is where most entrepreneurs start. It s what powers early innovation. But over time the energy of that focusing vision begins to lose its spark as the business seeks to scale customer relationships.

Start with The Customer Experience and Work Backward

In a recent article published by Google, a CMO made this statement.

People don t just want a product to buy, they want an idea to buy into. ~ Unilever CMO Keith Weed

That idea is the brand and customer experience that it represents. And that brand experience is bigger than any product because there are potentially millions of possibilities that it can become.

How do you make experiences that unlock possibilities for making people s lives better?

You have to start with the customer experience and work backward. What incredible benefits can we give to the customer? If mistakes are made it means decisions are being made, and that s good. Support customers and learn from these mistakes. Some will be unhappy but it s a proven way of getting there. ~ Steve Jobs

In business, the debate is whether customers have a relationship with products or the business. Many would say that Apple s strength is its products. However, in addition to product innovation, Apple revolutionized retail by changing how people buy.

Did you know that Apple s sales per square foot of retail space are more than double that of any other retailer?

That intentional sales intimacy makes Apple better for its customers by understanding how its customers like to buy.

Fall in Love with Personas That Become Customers

Enterprises like Apple love to accumulate data about customer experiences. Your company can too by mining the data from its customers, and one of the best ways to do this is having one-to-one conversations that generate meaningful information that doesn t necessarily fit into a checkbox.

This is how audience or buyer personas are made.

According to the Buyer Persona Institute, Many buyers give up because nobody is really helping them. This is the big opportunity for any size business that takes the time to explore these five buyer insights to create descriptive buyer personas that get to the heart of what its customers want.

#1. Priority Initiative

Determine the most compelling reasons that buyers decided to invest in your solution and develop strategies that trigger these actions.

#2. Success Factors

The outcomes a buyer persona expects to achieve from a solution like yours, and the risks involved with achieving it, must be clearly understood.

#3. Perceived Barriers

Every industry has its perceived barriers. Use content marketing to remove obstacles by pulling back the curtain and sharing true and relevant stories that resonate with buyers.

#4. Buyer s Journey

Buyers seldom make decisions in isolation. Family, friends, and others influence their decisions. Understanding these influences enables a business to allocate resources to address these needs.

#5. Decision Criteria

What motivates buyers can be a complex process, or a decision based almost entirely on emotion. Decision criteria often surprise companies that are in love with their products and services.

More important is to fall in love with the buyer personas that become customers.

You want to discover what your customers are seeing, thinking, feeling, and doing at each and every touchpoint with your business. This is what Apple figured out with its unique retail environment that allows consumers to test drive its products, get answers to problems, and face-to-face conversations with trained experts.

This human approach on top of exceptional products is what makes Apple one of the most successful companies in the world.

If you are going to make people's lives better you have to know what that means from their point of view. You have to ask good questions and record the responses to truly get to the heart of each and every customer relationship.

Just remember those customer relationships are a business asset that requires maintenance and care.

And when it does everything else in your business works too.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to create descriptive buyer personas by exploring the 5 buyer insights laid out by the Buyer Persona Institute.

Then use that clarity to translate those personas into new customers.

The post Customer Relationships That Make Peoples Lives Better appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 88 of Landscape Digital Show reveals why recent Facebook News Feed changes are indicators of audience engagement expectations on every platform.

The recent Facebook News Feed updates are more than signals to change how you market on Facebook.

They are indicators of what your audience expects on every platform.

If you speak to live audiences you know people will only wait so long for you to engage them before they start making a path to the door.

Asking for a show of hands, by the way, is not engagement.

That's the equivalent of a Facebook like, which Facebook has said is no longer relevant. What is? Comments, because comments are deliberate and thoughtful actions, as compared to shares and likes that are passive and less likely to spark audience engagement.

Facebook Zero Teaches What Works

The most recent batch Facebook changes that will be rolling out over the coming months have been referred to as Facebook Apocalypse or Facebook Zero. I like Facebook Zero because it's easier to spell and it reminds us of the reach our content will get if we don't change our ways — zero.

Mark Zuckerberg announced posts that spark meaningful conversations between people will have a prominent place in your News Feed. This will be measured by both the number and depth of the comments.

It's necessary to develop a strategy that gets people talking to each other, but without using click bait. For example, if you ask people to comment you are technically baiting them and Facebook is saying they will demote that type of content.

In addition to click bait, actions to minimize or avoid completely are posting content from outside links, such as your blog or other news sources. Facebook s rationale for this about-face is apparently to make room in the News Feed for content people really care about, which surprisingly is not video.

According to Adam Mosseri, Facebook's Head of News Feed, "Video is primarily a passive experience" because when you are watching it you are not typically talking (engaging) with friends. Interactions between people make memorable experiences whether that experience is Facebook or face-to-face at a live event.

To understand why meaningful conversations are the benchmark for assessing the value of content you only have to consider how algorithms and machine learning drive Facebook s advertising model. Comments are content that makes Facebook increasingly smarter and that makes it more valuable for targeting audiences with Facebook ads.

Here are three ways to make encourage engagement to make your business smarter and better for its customers.

#1. Social Listening Is Good for Business

For more than a decade I've studied how social media influences business marketing. Social media's greatest value is giving people a voice that adds context for people that are listening — and the platform or business that is mining that data.

Businesses only need to help their customers feel safe and in control to encourage these conversations. That's what Facebook and YouTube have recently done. When customers feel truly valued they will open up about the experiences they desire most.

And that's what businesses want to know.

#2. Collaboration Makes Experiences Better

Nobody wants to be sold to but everyone likes to buy. For that to happen you have to give them opportunities to test-drive your product or service because everybody makes decisions in her or her own way.

This is how content marketing moves people to action. It helps them take intermediary steps that guide them along the buyer's journey with relevant, interactive content.

My landscaping business planned for collaboration with our customers because actively engaging them got them to take ownership. They showed up prepared to get the full value of our expertise and experience because we built a process that showed them how and why that works for them.

When you make customers collaborators the co-creation process always leads to better outcomes.

#3. Communities Lift Everyone Up

Facebook said that its News Feed will favor posts in Facebook Groups because presumably, that is where these conversations are happening. To be clear, a post is a post whether it is on a Facebook page, personal profile, or within a group. But the post most likely to reach that larger audience is the group post.

Groups are communities of people getting what they want while helping others too. In addition to Facebook groups, its good business to be active in other communities that support you and your business.

Get involved. That s what Facebook is teaching us. Sitting on the sidelines observing is not likely to further your efforts to make friends or earn more customers.

My plan is to build systems for reaching people that are personal, human and collaborative. One example is content marketing with a voice and tone that resonates with the audiences my company can best serve. Then I ll use technology like Google Analytics, my CRM, and comments to measure that.

If content is king, comments are its most valuable form for helping people think, feel and do more of what they want to do.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to change how you market to your customers to keep them engaged so that your business can help them do more of what they want to do.

Let me know if you'd like some help with that.

The post Audience Engagement: How to Get Them Thinking, Feeling and Doing appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 89 of Landscape Digital Show reveals a content audit plan for closing the gaps in your content marketing process and closing more sales.

We've talked about how to perform a content audit in episode 28. This is something every business should begin right now because depending on how long you ve been in business it may take a while to complete.

What should happen next is implementing a content audit plan to make the best use of that content.

Your content is a body of work that attracts everything your business needs to thrive, provided it is put to work in the right places.

The common perception is that content sells. Some of it will but not in the way that many people think. For example, people don t watch one YouTube video and then say, I want to work with this landscaping company.

There are only two types of content, conversion content and intermediary content. Conversion content converts to a sale and intermediary content accomplishes everything that leads up to that.

Your content has to attract the attention of buyers and move them along a prescribed path or journey, taking them all the way to the finish line, a sales conversion.

Unless you are converting 100% of your leads that path or journey is a process that has gaps in it, but don't worry about that because you can close them by organizing the content from your audit to fix that leaky boat.

Here s how that works.

Organize Your Content by Intent

Every piece of content has a job to do and the more specific it is the better.

When companies think about SEO it is because they want to be discovered online, right? So, they seek to rank for keywords and often pay top dollar to make that happen.

The problem is they fail to consider the intent behind those keywords. And this is why they have trouble converting those leads into customers.

Let s say your website ranks for lawn care services. You need to understand the intent of the people searching for those keywords, what they want to know so that your content delivers on that expectation.

This is why you want to study your analytics and test your content.

Think about the decisions buyers have to make throughout their journey to ultimately work with your company. Now organize your content to close the gaps along that journey to keep everything moving silky smoothly.

You can start by breaking your process into three phases, beginning, middle and ending or conversion. Within each phase there are specific needs your content must address, such as the following.

Phase I Attraction

• Give people ideas
• List problems you solve
• Identify who is not right for you

Phase II Engagement

• Show how you solve problems
• Asks for feedback
• Offer relevant suggestions

Phase III Conversion

• Profile award-winning projects
• Explain why investing in quality now pays off later
• Highlight industry leadership

This is how you make your marketing, selling, service and even recruiting better.

You close the gaps in your process by putting a theme or purpose to all of your content so that it can be used where and when it's needed, whether that is on or offline. Incidentally, these themes should be represented in your content marketing editorial calendar.

Hold Your Content Accountable

The value of content is its intent or purpose and you should hold it accountable to that by assigning it a job it can do well.

If the intent of your website it to convert buyers into customers, then you want to focus on putting your best converting content on it.

You will discover your non-converting or intermediary content is probably best distributed with a vehicle like a newsletter that gradually moves people along that buyer s journey.

If you really want to get the most out of your content, especially what you already have now, get it organized so that it can be employed for its best use.

Your business hires the best talent and trains them to keep your customers happy.

Why not take that same approach to getting your content working together as a winning team too?

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to complete your content audit so that you will have your content organized for fulfilling its intent, what it does best.

Hold your content accountable to your customers just as you do your team members because both are part of the same winning team.

Let me know if you'd like some help with that.

The post Content Audit Plan: Closing Sales Conversion Gaps appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 87 of Landscape Digital Show reveals the recent Facebook News Feed updates and why content with a voice is Facebook newsworthy.

As he has done many times before, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dropped a bombshell on the Facebook community that sparked exactly what Facebook wants from it's 2+ billion active users more meaningful conversations on topics that matter to them.

Like every other Facebook update more has gone unsaid than said, and that is probably by design. I agree with Mark Schaefer that Facebook may not be sure about how these changes will play out. But it's our job as marketers to figure them out.

Here s What We Know

#1. This is a major refresh. Facebook wants to steady the Facebook brand by addressing the top user concerns, such as seeing too many ads in our newsfeed and not seeing more from our family and friends.

#2. Person to person interactions will be prioritized. You will see fewer page posts in your feed, but it s not clear if that means fewer ads too.

#3. Posts that earn lots of meaningful comments will be moved up in the newsfeed. Longer, more thoughtful replies to posts will give content an even greater boost.

#4. Content that earns passive engagement will rank lower. Content that is viewed or read but receives few comments will rank below content that earns active engagement.

#5. Engagement-bait content will be demoted. This includes click-bait, vote-bait, and comment-bait. You will have to earn engagement by being an authentic and original voice.

In interviews following the first announcement, Facebook acknowledged the challenges it faces, including fake news, accountability to shareholders, and apparently, it s role in society for contributing to a greater good.

Putting people first seems to be Facebook s strategy for making everything happen. Mark Zuckerberg's announcement states, Research shows that when we use social media to connect with people we care about, it can be good for our well-being. We can feel more connected and less lonely, and that correlates with long-term measures of happiness and health.

This is great news for Facebook users, but how about Facebook marketers?

People Before Public Content

In a massively popular Facebook live video, Michael Stelzner, CEO of Social Media Examiner calls this statement from Adam Mosseri, Facebook s Head of News Feed the money shot.

"There will be less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses." ~ Adam Mosseri

This is the heart of the uproar from businesses that have pumped millions of dollars into Facebook ads to target Facebook users. Less publisher and business content clean up our personal news feeds, but since most of us use Facebook to build our business or personal brands, we may have to reconsider our priorities.

It's possible Facebook pages are dead for most of us, but weren t they already? Research indicates Facebook organic reach (the people you reach for free) has declined from 26% in 2011 to close to 1% today.

This Facebook update may be the wake-up call small businesses needed. What are Facebook marketers planning to do about this? My informal survey from Facebook comments indicates the following.

#1. Run more ads. Facebook has not been clear about how ads will be affected, so many are planning to move ahead with business as usual.

#2. Reallocate resources to LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and other channels. All of these social platforms can and will continue to change. It makes sense to spread out resources to unlock new opportunities and minimize risk.

#3. Go all in on live video. Many businesses are taking this comment from Mark Zuckerberg to heart: We've seen people interact way more around live videos than regular ones.

#4. Consider Facebook groups. Here s another quote from Zuckerberg's announcement: The first changes you ll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family, and groups.

The one strategy I ve yet to notice is completely giving up on Facebook. Most of us have too much invested in it to walk away. The smart money is either planning to adapt now or taking a wait and see approach.

Content Voice is Facebook Newsworthy

Now that the impact of the Facebook announcement has been absorbed, the conversation has shifted to what s next.

Facebook refuses to call itself what most people consider it to be, and that s a media company. According to COO Sheryl Sandburg, At our heart, we're a tech company. We don t hire reporters. No one is a journalist. We (Facebook) don t cover the news.

You are the news when you make status updates that give honest, authentic, and original perspectives about what you see, feel, think and do in your day-to-day activities.

This is what Facebook wants from users, more engaging content that keeps people on Facebook. Give them what they want to get what you want.

Documenting activities and observations is a valid social media marketing strategy, especially with Facebook, but the people that do it well make it look easy because they have unique voices that engage (and sometimes repel) people.

You too have to find your content unique voice that adds value to the news you share.

Think of your content voice to be your communication style.

Does your style say you are light-hearted or all business?

You certainly want to be perceived to be a business authority, but never underestimate likability when it comes to engaging people with a message.

Communicating with an authentic voice may feel like a performance because it is. It s learning to leave the baggage behind to only put the best you ve got out there.

Clean, authentic, and relatable communication is a practice.

Now is the time to make that commitment.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

Take the time to check out the links in this show to thoroughly understand these recent Facebook News Feed updates.

Now fix your Facebook marketing strategy. To do nothing in the face of these changes is guaranteed to lose whatever Facebook audience you now have.

And be sure to check out this article for tactics for finding your marketing voice.

The post Facebook News Feed Update: Content Voice is Newsworthy appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 86 of Landscape Digital Show reveals how the web runs on writing and why the right words, voice, and tone will make your marketing better too

When you consider how much effort a business invests in getting discovered on the web, it's surprising that few dig deep enough to understand the essential components responsible for making that happen.

People use words to search the web.

They may be spoken or typed, but they are words nonetheless. If they happen to be the right words, and they probably are if your ideal buyers are using them, then you need to develop an intimate relationship with those words and discover how to use them in your writing, videos and other content.

Of course, there's more to writing for the web than just plugging in keywords. If you want to win with Google you want to aim for the best human experience possible for your target audience.

This is why the best copywriters are handsomely compensated for their work. People can tell. They may not know why they know, they just know.

Writing copy is seldom easy, but when it works it becomes your superpower. You can achieve that goal by respecting your brand story and finding that signature voice that best communicates it.

Hold on, there s one more detail that trips up many marketers. Every piece of communication must have the right tone for the platform and the audience it is targeting. That awareness is key.

Words Tell a Story

The words your business uses to tell its story in many ways is the story because words reveal a great deal about who we are and our communication preferences.

For example, whether your marketing copy says landscaper or landscape company matters to your audience just as much as if it says y'all or you guys. What s right is what connects with your audience.

The right words are like magnets that attract customers. That's why your most valued keywords should be in the headlines of your content, as well as the subheadings and the body content. The same is true for your social media postings.

In addition to understanding how to use keywords to optimize your content, always take a step back to study the promise of your words, that is, the story they tell.

~ Does your headline make a promise that matters to your audience?

~ Does the copy that follows deliver on that promise?

~ Are there examples and anecdotes that make the story interesting?

~ Is there a call to action to bring that audience closer?

~ Does your company have people prepped and available to guide those relationships?

Once again, people can tell. They intuitively know if there is a real person behind a social media posting. And they get a sense of his or her age, background, and personality.

~ What is said when your business telephone is answered?

~ How does your company reply to emails?

~ How about angry emails from unhappy customers?

~ Or social media comments from engaged customers that are ready to do more?

The holy grail of web copywriting is to sell people before they call your office or walk into your business, but there are many other touchpoints along their journey where words can make or break the deal.

All of it tells a story, and that story should be part of a grand plan.

Words are The Voice of The Business

SEO attracts attention with words. Voice makes that communication human by describing who you are as a company, your core values and how you go about helping customers.

Think of your voice like fashion style. Does your style say you are light-hearted or all business? You certainly want to be perceived as professional, but it s hard to deny the fact that most people want to work with companies that make the experience enjoyable.

Make a list of words that express your business culture and style. They will help you discover your writing voice. It may include words like these.

• Smart
• Friendly
• Innovative
• Established
• Easy
• Certified
• Discounted
• Guaranteed

Words Also Set the Tone or Feeling

One of the tricky things about writing is that you can be technically correct but wrong at the same time.

The difference is the tone or feeling your words express.

There's a big difference between the tone of these expressions.

~ Sorry about that.

~ I'm sorry.

~ I am soOOO sorry.

~ I m sorry about this and will get to work fixing it.

Writing that is tone deaf usually is too formal. It lacks the emotion that is necessary to show customers they are in a safe relationship and that they have control too.

As you may have imagined, it s usually best to write to show not to tell. This is one of the outcomes of a world of social media, and it means that sometimes you are writing your message first to then record that message with an engaging video.

Your tone can be brave, confident, or edgy. You have to decide what's best for your business.

Make a list of words that capture the tone or feeling of your brand too.

When you get serious about understanding and using the right words your marketing will begin to spark — because it will be more consistent across all channels.

If you stay with it that spark will ignite customer relationships.

Imagine your sales, marketing, administration, and production staff all using essentially the same — and right words all of the time. That will be a symphony to the ears of your customers that need the reassurance that everyone is on the same page.

Isn't it time to build your system of words that is the backbone of your sales, marketing, and service communications?

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, it would be nifty if you Liked the Landscape Digital Institute page so we can stay in touch.

Call to Action

You probably have a lot of systems in your business, but you need to add one more.

Take action to build your system of words that is the backbone of your sales, marketing, and service communications.

If you would like to know more about how we can help let s have a conversation. You can contact me here.

The post The Web Runs on Writing and Your Marketing Should Too appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 85 of Landscape Digital Show reveals how buyer personas are used to create laser-focused marketing that connects a business with its ideal customers.

This is our final Landscape Digital Show episode of the 2017 calendar year and the first in which I interview a subject matter expert – but don't worry, this is far from my 1st expert interview.

This content is an update of the 51st episode of This Old New Business podcast that was previously published at JeffKorhan.com. You can expect more expert guest interviews in the future right here at Landscape Digital Show.

We have discussed buyer personas a great deal on this show. Now you can take a deep dive into how they work to create laser-focused marketing with Adele Revella, the CEO, and founder of The Buyer Persona Institute.

Adele is also the author of Buyer Personas: How to Gain Insight into Your Customer s Expectations, Align your Marketing Strategies, and Win More Business. She offers a compelling strategy for marketers seeking the confidence to say: This is what really matters to our buyers. So here s the plan.

What Do Your Buyers Really Want to Know?

Adele Revella contends that marketers and companies, in general, are too isolated from what their buyers really think about as they are going through the customer experience.

She suggests interviewing buyers one-on-one to gain insights from their stories that can become case studies.

5 Rings of Buying Insight

Using The Five Rings of Buying Insight, Adele Revella lays out a predictable structure for creating experience-driven marketing that helps buyers that often feel lost. She says:

Many buyers give up because nobody is really helping them. This is the big opportunity. ~ Adele Revella

Insight 1 – Priority Initiative

Determine the most compelling reasons that a buyer decides to invest in your solutions and develop strategies that trigger those actions.

Insight 2 – Success Factors

The results a buyer expects to achieve from your business and the risks involved with achieving it must be clearly understood.

Insight 3 – Perceived Barriers

Every industry has its perceived barriers. Using content marketing to remove obstacles often involves pulling back the curtain and sharing true and relevant stories that resonate with buyers.

Insight 4 – Buyer's Journey

Buyers seldom make decisions in isolation. Family, friends, and others influence their decisions. Understanding these influences enables a business to allocate resources to address those relevant needs.

Insight 5 – Decision Criteria

What motivates buyers can be a complex process, or a decision based almost entirely on emotion.

Decision criteria often surprise companies that are in love with their products and services. More important is to fall in love with the buyer personas that become your customers.

Show Notes

• Learn more about Adele's work with buyer personas at Buyer Persona Institute
• Connect with Adele on Twitter at @buyerpersona
• The buyer persona is not the ideal customer. Listen in to learn more.
• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

This is your last chance to take action before we close this special offer.

If you are a landscaping industry professional in the United States or Canada, I m offering a limited number of free 30-minute telephone consultations. You can use this link to schedule that call.

You'll get a lot of ideas and maybe we'll decide to work together or not. There's no risk – only upside potential.

The post How Buyer Personas Create Laser Focused Marketing that Connects appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 84 of Landscape Digital Show reveals how to create marketing that moves a target audience to take action.

The purpose of marketing is to move an audience to action.

That's marketing's job.

It starts with attracting an audience. And that requires a deep understanding of who its members are, what they want, and everything that influences their experience of acquiring it.

Describe Your Audience in Writing

Start with the end in mind before you start investing in marketing.

Nearly every business has more than one audience. There are customers and future customers you wish to attract. Those two audiences have different needs.

To serve these customers your business must attract team members, some of whom are leaders and others followers. That's at least two more audiences, and there may be more, such as potential investors or business partners.

The trick is making marketing that shows you know them better than they know themselves. That's not easy to do if you are casting a wide net. So segment your larger audience and create marketing for each group within it.

You have to figure out how to sneak into your customer's mind. So segment your larger audience and create marketing for each group within it.

Describe each audience in detail so that it feels like a real person. This is what's known as an audience persona, and it should be committed to writing so everyone instantly gets it.

The truer to life that audience persona is the better your marketing will attract the people it represents.

What Are The Outcomes Your Audience Wants?

Now consider what gets these humans to take action.

Some buyers want a landscape company that is experienced, certified, and guaranteed. Others prefer edgier ones that are innovative and technology-based with exciting new offerings.

Which are you?

People today are doing their homework and checking you out from head to toe. Like you, they are fishing deep for exactly what they want.

Nobody is going to buy a product or investigate a job opportunity if it s not clear what the benefits are for taking action and what the risks are for not doing so.

This means your business has to be attractive. It s dating 101 that starts with intimately understanding the target you want to attract. That must be reflected in all of your communications.

Of course, there is more to marketing than websites, so you have to break down your message so that it plays well on social media and the other marketing channels you use.

How do you want to be perceived? That is your business persona.

Your business persona is the counterpart to an audience persona and is better known as your brand. That brand is everything that is said about your business, including and especially what your customers are talking about.

You ve probably heard that people don t buy products or services, but the outcomes they promise. Ah, now we get to the brand promise and how that aligns with the outcomes your audience needs and wants.

Making a sale is one outcome, but there are many others that must happen to pave the way for it, such as estimates, proposals, and presentations.

This is where content marketing enters the picture.

Does Your Marketing Make Customers Happy?

Let's keep this simple. Anything that promises to improve one's life or lifestyle gets people to take action.

Happiness is the way.

If you care about people and put that ahead of what you want you'll get what you want too. That's why content marketing is such an invaluable marketing practice.

Content marketing is the practice of consistently delivering marketing content that establishes authority, likability, and the capability to solve relevant problems, ultimately with products and services that earn profits.

For most landscape industry business, that content resides on its website.

When the right people visit your website you want them to take one of five actions before leaving.

1. Buy
2. Try
3. Call
4. Email
5. Follow

Only a small percentage of your audience is ready to buy now. It s your job to continue nurturing relationships with the rest by using content marketing to build your brand story in their minds with case studies and other stories that sell.

I'm now going to mention the word strategy because that's what we are talking about here. I've waited until now because it's a word most people associate with work and deep thinking.

Marketing is work, but it s also a path to getting what your business wants by helping enough other people get what they want when they want it, and in the way that works for their budget or lifestyle or whatever.

Get to know your respective audiences and what they want and design a marketing experience to help them get it.

If you take anything away from this recipe for business growth I hope it is the idea that marketing today is more than attracting leads and pushing them down a sales funnel.

Marketing nowadays is getting people to take an action that is right for them. Some people are afraid to take a leap, so just help them close a small gap and they ll appreciate and remember you for it like a friend that did them an unexpected favor.

Marketing tools, such as CRM systems can help with this if you teach those systems how to guide the process that keeps people happy during their journey with your business.

Planning to make customers happier doesn t have to be complicated.

• Make some lists.
• Prioritize everything.
• Get a few easy wins.
• Stay in there to get your share of the big fish.

I know you'll get the job done.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

Now, how about a call to action?

Set up some time for us to chat after the holidays.

If you are a green industry professional in the United States or Canada, I m offering a limited number of free 30-minute telephone consultations. You can use this link to schedule that call.

You'll get a lot of ideas and maybe we'll decide to work together or not. There's no risk – only upside potential.

Thanks for being here.

The post How To Create Marketing That Gets The Job Done appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 83 of Landscape Digital Show reveals why communities love brave marketing that takes the risk of standing out to be known for something bigger.

This is the time of year when you should be wrapping up the planning of your editorial calendar for the coming year.

How exactly is that happen? Do you essentially use same monthly categories as this year and freshen up the content a bit?

That s what I ve observed at several companies with whom I ve consulted. January is focused on trends and new services, February is for landscape design, March is when you make special offers to load up the sales pipeline, and so on.

That's alright if you are happy with business as usual, but if you are planning to grow you have to your content has to be best in class because that is the only way it will inspire people to take action.

You Have to Take Marketing Risks

Let be clear about one thing.

The most powerful marketing you can have is word of mouth. That's how it has always been. Long before anyone talked about going viral with digital media there was word of mouth.

Word of mouth should be a top marketing priority. As the business owner or leader of its marketing, your job is giving people a reason to talk up your company.

The trick is to create media that gets your business inserted into the conversations that are happening right now. In other words, your job is to be newsworthy.

The question is simple: If you were one of your customers would you publish your content? That is, would you share it with a spouse, friend or colleague? If not then you need to take bigger risks.

There is a hotbed of young innovators and risk takers making their presence known on YouTube, and they are being handsomely rewarded for it. This week I read about a 6-year-old boy whose YouTube channel netted 11 million US dollars during a 12 month period. What does he do?

He shows everyone how he uses toys – better known as unboxing. This is entertaining for other kids and that obviously attracts sponsors that want him to unbox their toy.

The truth is we tend to notice and talk about risk takers because we secretly admire them and want to be like them, at least a little. Or we may dislike or fear what they do or represent. Either way, they get our attention.

Brave Marketing Takes a Stand

If you were free to publish a message on a billboard for your entire community to see, what would it say?

You probably have to think about that for a while. That's one of the problems with marketing.

People want to be known but they are not always sure what they want to be known for because that requires taking a stand.

This is how marketing gets watered down to a lifeless message that hopes to appeal to the widest market segment possible, such as, and we ve all heard this: Anyone that has money to spend.

Ask yourself if you would take that approach if you were marketing to attract a spouse or business partner. No way. You would speak to the ideal customer or person that you have in mind, and that should be written down in detail if you truly want to get it right.

Have the intention to be brave enough to truly stand out this coming year. Even if you back off of that ideal you ll still push your marketing ahead of a few of your competitors.

According to marketing icon Seth Godin, you have to learn to see the world for what it is. You can t expect a little effort to attract a lot of business, so give up your dreams of going viral and get to work.

Learn to tell a story that's true, one that resonates with other people and that helps them to make good decisions. That s what people are scouring the Internet for and when they find it they ll know it instantly.

To make that happen I suggest mining three areas of your business for ideas, its culture, collaboration, and community.

• What is it about your culture that will get people interested in your business?
• How does your business collaboratively work with customers to help them make life-changing discoveries?
• What can your business do in the community that is truly meaningful, that solves relevant problems that are important to people right now?

Become Known for Something Bigger

Here is one idea for how this can work that you can adapt to your business.

Make a list of what people are talking about in the community. Then discuss with your team how your company can help.

For example, what if your crews were trained to pick up debris in the neighborhoods where they work and those random acts were caught on camera and shared on your social media?

That's notable because landscaping companies are expected to beautify the environment, and there isn't a community out there that couldn't use a little extra tidying. This is the kind of positive, can-do behavior that the mainstream media wants to share with their audiences.

Recruit friends to share those photos from your Facebook page that document your culture of caring about the community. With a little coaching to craft a compelling story, you will have something worthy of putting advertising dollars behind to really get it moving, possible earning the attention of the mainstream media.

You get the idea.

Instead of just one annual "giving back" project that is forgotten days later, try to be known for something people will talk about every time they see it happening.

This is very much like Nordstrom being known for accepting returns of products that have been seriously used, or that Nordstrom has never sold.

Going viral lasts a short period of time but brave marketing can build word of mouth that last forever.

Let s be honest, bravery could result in an embarrassing failure, but not really because most marketing barely gets noticed anyway.

Isn t the extra effort worth the risk?

Communities love brave marketing.

Give them some that's worth talking about.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

Are you ready to get serious about content marketing? Excellent.

If you are a green industry professional in the United States or Canada, I m offering a limited number of free 15-minute telephone consultations. You can use this link to schedule that call.

The post Why Communities Love Brave Marketing appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 82 of Landscape Digital Show reveals how to do content marketing right by making it a standard business practice.

If you are not hearing about content marketing, you should be.

If you are, much of it is probably wrong because just like social media, it s effective use is determined by one's understanding of it.

The difference between social media and content marketing is that content marketing is a practice, just as accounting is a practice. That is, there are conventions that dictate how it should be consistently practiced.

Accounting happens to be a regulated business practice, and that gets most businesses doing it right. This is not true with content marketing, and that is why people are free to use it as they wish.

There s nothing wrong with that, but it does get confusing when people represent what they are doing as content marketing when it isn t because doing anything wrong compromises the expected results.

In this episode of Landscape Digital Show, we ll fix that by showing you how content marketing really works, and how to do it right.

You will discover that a better understanding of how it works will greatly improve your results while also streamlining your workflow and saving time.

Content Marketing Starts with The Audience

Most sporting events are games of strategy and tactics. And most of us get that use it to get more wins.

Why then do some people invest more time planning their weekend golf outing than the marketing that determines their business future? At least when it comes to content marketing, I believe it is because they do not know how it truly works.

So, let s start by defining content marketing. Here s how the Content Marketing Institute currently puts it.

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

If there is a phrase in that definition that should jump out at you it is this: Attract and retain a clearly defined audience.

The attention of a clearly defined audience is everything because content is pointless without an audience to receive and consume it. It s like the proverbial tree falling in the woods and whether or not it makes a sound if nobody is around to hear it. It doesn t matter.

On the other hand, if you understand your audience and consistently give them what they tune in for you will be heard. They will honor you with their attention.

Now you can sell your products, rent that attention to sponsors, or do practically anything you wish that is appropriate for that audience. This is the magic of content marketing.

Once you ve earned the trust of an audience the possibilities are limitless.

Your Content Must Be The Best

ESPN doesn t broadcast the same football games as the national networks because to do that would be a dumb, me-too strategy. That s what makes the games they do broadcast the best content for their fans you can t get that content anywhere else.

By selectively serving segments of their audience, ESPN is the best content for a targeted audience on any given day. This is a key reason why you want to segment your audience too by tagging your subscribers interests with your CRM systems and marketing automation.

What makes content marketing so interesting is that it combines aspects of sales and marketing to get results. That is, you can go big or small, depending on the audience and your business objectives.

It s your choice, but to make it happen you need a strategy that is carefully planned and implemented.

How to Make Content Marketing a Practice

Let s take a step back to clarify what content really is because I ve come to learn that many people think it s exclusively social media and websites, when in fact it is far more than that.

Content is media that can be consumed in many different formats, including text, audio, and visual, such as podcasts, videos, and images. And content does not have to be digital. It can include hardcover books, postcards, the wrapper or graphics on a truck or landscaping trailer, or a business card with a message scribbled on it.

The only rule is that the content should be created with the audience of potential buyers in mind. That s the starting point.

Step #1. Start with the audience

• Why does your business exist?
• Who are you trying to help?
• You have to define "them" in detail or you will fail to attract them.
• What services do they need and why?
• What problems does your business solve for them?
• Why should they choose your business over another?
• And my favorite, what makes you the ONLY choice?

The answers to these questions will give you your strategy, but more important is they will create clarity for the content and the products or services that your business should focus on creating.

When you get to where content and product solutions start to become one and the same, at least in your mind, you are on the right track because they are.

Content is usually free, although it can command a price if it s really good. And that makes it a product.

This is why you can and should think of content adding value to your products. If content helps the buyer to get more value from a product it adds value to it, plain and simple.

Step #2. Write out your content plan

This is your reality check. If your plan is not written down you do not have a plan. And that s why most people fail with content marketing and social media because to write it out you have to understand it.

How are going to create content while taking care of day-to-day, revenue-producing activities? Start by identifying and listing the content that is working for you now to attract, engage, and close customers.

Now repurpose that content to other channels to extend it or make it more powerful. One of the secrets of content marketing is not putting all of your eggs in one basket. When you update your website you should also be updating your social media profiles to be consistent with it.

Make a list of all of your online profiles so that it s easy to update them when you have moments of inspiration that can make your content better for its targeted audience.

And content repurposing applies equally to all of your content.

For example, if you do a printed postcard campaign you should considering also budgeting for Facebook ads to support it. And if you have a pop-up box on your website that too can be temporarily adjusted to match the campaign.

The idea is that everything should be integrated to achieve the desired result that is bigger than just attracting leads. While leads are the lifeblood of every business, content will convert only a fraction of them into revenue.

This is why most companies give up on content marketing. The truth is that fraction is enough if you are in this for the long haul because unlike traditional advertising content marketing is cumulative.

Legendary marketer Seth Godin has been building his audience with a daily blog for almost 15 years and he admits that not one of those posts has ever gone viral. But oh how his audience has grown during that time, both in size and in loyalty

That s how this works.

Content marketing is a long game, but it can be broken down into repeatable actions that can be simplified and automated.

You just have to make it a practice.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

Are you ready to get serious about content marketing? Excellent.

If you are a green industry professional in the United States or Canada, I m offering a limited number of free 15-minute telephone consultations. You can use this link to schedule that call.

The post How To Do Content Marketing Right appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 81 of Landscape Digital Show reveals why business leaders are teachers at heart and how that mindset empowers their organizations.

Business leaders bring diverse experiences and a variety of talents to their company, but there is often one talent in particular that drives its success.

You may be good with numbers and understand how to make budgeting work. Or you may have a knack for creating workflow systems that create amazing efficiencies.

Yet it's likely that you share an attribute with many great leaders, and that is the ability to teach your business building philosophies to others.

It s possible to have incredibly innovative ideas or the most brilliant vision but none of it will amount to anything if you cannot teach people how to put it to good use.

When I launched my landscaping business I was able to sell my big ideas to our first customers because that s what I had been doing for the previous ten years. Making the leap from enterprise sales and marketing to take my shot as an entrepreneur was scary and exciting, but the need to grow beyond sales and marketing to build a business helped me discover my true talent.

It was and to this day is teaching.

Make Teaching Your Superpower

Making the shift from whatever you consider your superpower to that of a teacher of it is empowering because the act of teaching demands that you acquire a deeper understanding of it.

Starting a business or taking it to the next level requires educating and inspiring people, including partners, employees, suppliers, and customers. Depending on the relationship, you may normally think of that responsibility as training, selling or hiring, but at its core its all teaching.

Think back to your days in the classroom. What were the qualities that made certain teachers your favorites? They cared about you, were patient, forgiving, smart and probably made you smile every now and then.

Most important is that those teachers somehow inspired you to think bigger, and that s what all of us should be doing. Bigger can be translated to business growth, greater community involvement, or more meaningful working relationships.

In other words, it can be anything you want it to be.

Teaching Adults is A Collaboration

If you have ever taken the stage before an audience and bombed you have discovered that adult learning is different from what many of us may have experienced in the classroom. In fact, I m told that nowadays college students will walk out of a lecture if the teacher does not engage them from the start.

It turns out the key to effectively teaching any group of people is backing up whatever you are teaching with why.

This is what sparked my interest in using storytelling throughout the customer experience. Real stories are transformative because they demonstrate not just how our solutions have changed people s lives, but also why.

It s a fact that getting and holding the attention of an audience is challenging, but a compelling story can make that happen. This is why experienced business leaders are known to answer questions with a story.

Let s take buyers as an example, though the same is true in hiring situations. Impactful stories are about the changes people want to make, that is, getting from here to there, from where they are to a better place.

Our goal with our landscape design process was to take buyers further than they even thought was possible. And the secret to doing so was really pretty simple involve them in a collaborative process that gives them a feeling of being in control.

Note that I didn t say control but the feeling of control. There s a difference.

Teachers do this well. They guide students to learn at their own pace so they are not overwhelmed or bored stiff. Of course, before that can happen they have to first design a curriculum that adapts to the respective needs of each and every student.

Organize Your Teaching Curriculum

All business challenges can be fixed by shifting your approach to a teaching model. That may be teaching customers how to buy from you or teaching talented people why your organization is the one that will have the greatest impact on their career.

To make this happen you have to get organized by taking your current approach and examining it for improvements. This should start with listening to the audience for which it is designed. Talk to your customers, employees and business partners. You can also and should talk to complete strangers because the insights can be enlightening.

Then take what you have learned and test it. Like stand-up comedians, I m always testing new ideas and stories with live audiences. It s the only way to discover real improvements that will make what I m teaching better for the next audience.

The same is true for your business.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to take one of your systems, the one where you may be experiencing the most pain, and start rebuilding it into a teachable system that promises to produce bigger outcomes.

Leave a comment to let me know how this is working for you. Or send me a personal note. I d love to hear from you.

The post Why Business Leaders are Teachers at Heart appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.