By Irina Ianculescu
The podcast currently has 13 episodes available.
We need a mindset shift when it comes to social media.
Social media platforms, just like any other marketing channel, need a strategy.
You need to understand the channel specifics, how it works, whether it works for you or not, how to position yourself, and what to communicate as a brand.
Unfortunately, brands spend too much time on tactical and ineffective things like when to post and what tools to use to schedule posts and too little time on figuring out why they want to use social media in the first place and making sure they have a plan that goes hand in hand with their goals.
In this episode, we discuss:
Show notes: https://www.marketingasahabit.com/podcast-episodes/get-your-social-media-house-in-order-part1
It’s critical to understand the difference between tactical and strategic, and, in marketing, you can find both worlds.
There’s a tactical side and there’s a strategic side of marketing and, similarly, there are tactical, pure executional founders and marketers and there are strategic thinkers.
You want to be playing in the strategic field. The difference between a tactical, pure executional entrepreneur or marketer, and a strategic one lies in asking the right questions.
In marketing, some examples of purely tactical questions might be:
Tactical founders and marketers are the implementers who need instructions on setting a Facebook ads account or writing email subject lines.
Conversely, there are also more difficult and strategic marketing questions that Google can’t answer for you. Questions like:
Google and the best practices you find on the internet can’t answer these questions for you.
These are fundamental questions whose answers are specific to your industry, business model, audience, offering, competition.
You can’t find tactical and actionable content on the internet that gives you the answers to your specific situation.
You’ll find these answers by being a strategic thinker and learning how to use different frameworks, models, and principles to guide your thinking.
In this episode, we discuss:
Show notes: https://www.marketingasahabit.com/podcast-episodes/tactical-vs-strategic-entrepreneurs-and-marketers
What to focus on at each stage of your startup? Usually, startup founders get overwhelmed by the multitude of marketing tactics and think they should have a very complex marketing plan from the get-go.
While it’s very important to have a strategy in place, it will very much differ depending on your stage.
So today, I wanted to tackle this topic a bit and share my opinion about where startups should concentrate their efforts at each stage.
The marketing actions you’ll take in each of these two stages will be so different, like night and day.
In this episode, we discuss:
Go here for the show notes!
We continue the acquisition channel series with the last episode on this topic. I enjoyed this series very much. I could talk about channels all day long :).
In the first two episodes of this series, we talked about different channel specifics so you can adapt your product or service to the way they work.
Then, we covered a simple process to find channels that match your skills, budgets, and resources; Channels that are also an excellent fit for your type of product and business model. In the previous episode, we went through my system of discovering niche, less-competitive channels where you can find your audience and stand out.
Now that you have your list of different channels you’d like to test out, how do you know which ones you should start with, how do you prioritize them, and, essentially, how do you determine whether they’ll work for you or not?
The answer lies in organizing all your channels into a spreadsheet.
You’ll use this model to organize them, provide estimates, and compare them based on the same attributes.
This framework helps you select the most appropriate channels and tactics to reach your audience in the places they pay attention to, with the messages that resonate with them.
Listen to the full episode where I walk you through this framework step-by-step.
You can find the show notes here: https://www.marketingasahabit.com/podcast-episodes/acquisition-channels-part-3
We continue the series on customer acquisition channels.
In part 1, we discussed what makes customer acquisition effective and what you need to have in place to get results in certain types of channels.
In this second part of this series, we’ll go through some tactical steps you can replicate quickly to find interesting, less competitive channels where you can reach your target audience and expose them to your product.
When you have limited resources you need to be strategic and leverage existing communities where you can find the audience you want to attract, and start making yourself known there. And, since you don’t have a large following, the easiest, most productive thing you can do is to tap into existing platforms’ built-in audiences of who you want to reach.
Those are the places where they meet and congregate, and where they spend time with peers who have similar interests, needs, and problems.
Those are the channels where they learn about their topics of interest. Channels that influence their decision to buy certain products. That’s where you want to be.
By going after niche channels and communities, you don’t have to fight an algorithm to be seen, to attract traffic or pay to play - you go directly to targeted people who would be perfect for what you’re offering.
In this episode, we cover:
Here you can find the show notes for tools and resources mentioned in the podcast: https://www.marketingasahabit.com/podcast-episodes/acquisition-channels-part-2
Picking your customer acquisition channels is the most important step in your marketing strategy. It could make or break your whole strategy if you focus on the wrong ones or don’t know how to take advantage of their specific levers.
And because it’s such a comprehensive topic, we’re going to split it into 3 parts.
So, I’ll do a short series of 3 episodes where we’ll talk channels and channels alone.
In this episode, we discuss:
Show notes: https://www.marketingasahabit.com/podcast-episodes/acquisition-channels-part-1
There are some questions I wish I had asked myself several years ago when I started running ads. In those early years, I could never really say I got the gist of it. If it worked, it worked - and most of the time, it didn’t. But we weren’t asking the right questions back then.
The majority of startup founders often start with paid ads (search or social) as their first acquisition channels.
And this is mostly due to the lack of expertise to market in other channels.
They think that paid advertising is the most effortless way of attracting customers because it implies not thinking too much about copy, content, SEO, and stuff like that. You just write a quick ad, set up your targeting and that’s it. Quick and easy.
It seems the simplest form of marketing, but in reality, it’s much more complicated than that.
What usually happens is they deplete their funding, or waste a considerable part of their already restricted marketing budget because they can’t manage to make their ads profitable. So then they don’t have the funds to do anything for customer acquisition, and unfortunately, most of them die.
Running ads is the startup’s approach to customer acquisition, but is it the best and most profitable one?
And I think it’s a great idea to dedicate this week’s episode to answer all these questions one by one and demystify ads for startups or companies just starting out with marketing.
In this episode, we discuss:
This is an actual conversation I had with a startup founder:
Client: So yeah, we need to do better targeting to reach the right customers.
Irina: Do you know who these customers are? Can you be more specific?
Client: What, do you think I’m stupid? Of course, I know who my target customers are!
Irina: Who are they then?
Client: Well, I think our product is great for everybody!
Irina: Ughhhh, everybody everybody? 'Cause you just said you wanted to reach the right ones (??)
Client: Oh, yeah, we just have to choose better marketing channels ‘cause our message doesn’t seem to resonate with people...
Irina: So how do you know which channels to focus on if you’re targeting every living thing?
Client: Well, that’s your job!
And while I really enjoy working with startups and product creators, this type of conversation puts my patience and tolerance to the test.
But, you know, as always, there’s also a good side to all this - this conversation gave me the topic for this episode - 3 steps to framing a marketing strategy for a product from the ground up.
Most founders are overwhelmed by the tons of advice and conflicting content on the internets, so I wanted to take a stab at this and give it a little bit of structure.
Let’s do this!
I want to start with a quote that will open your eyes about the importance of uniqueness:
"When you write like everyone else, you're just saying 'Our products are like everyone else's.' Would you go to a dinner party and repeat what the person to the right of you is saying all night long? Would that be interesting to anybody? Why are so many businesses saying the same things at the biggest party on the planet - the marketplace?" Jason Fried, Basecamp
I think this quote says it all. Our brains don't respond to sameness very well. It treats it as boring and safe and puts it in that drawer where the junk goes and labels it as "Yeah, I've heard that before. What's new?"
The questions that pop into your prospects' minds are: Why should I choose you? Do you have something different to offer? Can I trust you? That's what clients are really buying into—a better answer to these questions.
And this is what we’ll tackle in today’s episode. We’re going to answer the question - How can I differentiate my product and my business from potential competitors in the eyes of my customers?”
We’ll cover what I’ve seen are the two most effective playbooks that you can use to stand out in your niche. Let’s jump right to it!
Every marketing program is built around your hypothesis in terms of the who, the what, and the why.
These are your customers or prospective customers we’re talking about.
It’s all about their behaviors and motivations to use or not use our products or services.
With the arrival of COVID-19, everything we knew about their habits has changed dramatically.
The habits of your audience have changed and adapted to this new reality.
Which in turn affects the way your marketing messages and product positioning come across.
The fundamental principles of marketing and customer acquisition haven’t changed, but the underlying factors that drive your audience’s decision whether to invest in your product or not have shifted completely.
And yes, your initial actions to protect your business against these changes were crucial to keeping you afloat, but the habits and behaviors of your audience are constantly changing, and so there’s still a lot of work ahead for us.
This all leads to the question - How do I go about my customer acquisition strategy going forward? And how do I ensure that I retain my clients and I don’t lose them by running around after new shiny objects?
And this is the topic we’ll cover in today’s episode. We’ll go through a 3-step plan that will help you evaluate your business and prioritize your acquisition strategy going forward.
Show notes: https://www.marketingasahabit.com/podcast-episodes/how-to-revamp-your-marketing-during-covid-times
The podcast currently has 13 episodes available.