Marketing Builder Podcast

Marketing budgets are always a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, right? So often we need to sell some more products or services, so we can invest in marketing, but investing in marketing will help us more easily sell more products and services!

There’s a lot of advice out there where people will tell you, depending on whether you are an old business or a new business, and whether you want to grow or you want to maintain, what percentage of your annual turnover you should spend on your marketing.

It feels so impersonal and not tailored. There’s no consideration of so many of the factors that impact a business’ marketing or the wider business goals, including the internal skills you have and time you can commit to marketing.

Instead of blindly trying to spend a predetermined percentage of turnover, and trying to figure out what tactics to spend it all on, you should be working from the other end and reverse engineering a budget from the tactics you think will best help you achieve your goals.

In this episode, we take a look at how you can easily do that and then have confidence that the budget will support the best tactics you’ve chosen to achieve your goals.

Enjoy.

 

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I asked Mel to come on the show because she was a guest on another show I host, The Pharmacy Guild of Australia’s podcast, and in my research I was struck by how much content marketing Mel creates around her business and figured she would have some great insights to share with us.

Mel describes her work as “helping people be better at doing business with people by strengthening relationships”. Mel says she helps people identify who they need to have relationships with, who their stakeholders are, what the messages are they need to get out to those stakeholders, and then craft and deliver those messages.

In a past life, Mel worked in a government department but was frustrated by the work and not enjoying it; in some part due to the highly political environment. Mel figured a move to part-time would help but her request was rejected - the head of HR couldn’t understand why a woman with no children would want to work part-time!

That was in 2006 and, so, she resigned and she hasn’t looked back.

Mel largely delivers strategy facilitation, workshops, and does lots of speaking. Mel works with CEO’s, and other senior leaders, and leadership teams, mostly in large non-profit and member-based organisations as well as organisations in the financial sector.

You can find out more about Mel at www.melkettle.com or connect with her on LinkedIn here.

Enjoy.

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The Content Pyramid is a concept that allows you to organise and map your content and engagement in a way that moves your target audience from free content consumption and engagement through to core customers and beyond.

The concept revolves around recognising that we can't always easily and quickly move people from initial awareness through to customer. 

Further, there is the option for products or services that can be positioned which offer the opportunity of low turnover, high-profit margin; which would be in addition to your core products and services.

In this episode, after I outline how the Content Pyramid works, I walk through an example of a business and map their content against the pyramid.

It’s not all theory though. To help, there is a downloadable worksheet that maps the example against the pyramid and provides space for you to complete the exercise on your business.

This resource is available to Patrons of the show and available at the Marketing Builder Patreon Page.

Enjoy.

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Emma is a graphic designer and owner at HOLA! and a few years she made a decision that completely changed her career.

After years of relying on web developers to service her clients, she followed the advice of a fellow designer and set out to build websites for clients herself.

Creating websites is something she now loves doing because it blends perfectly her love for design and tech—her inner artist and inner geek!

Emma has a passion for creating beautiful, functional WordPress websites that help take businesses to the next level. And, she’s on a mission to help other graphic designers learn the skills to become beautiful website creators and build the business of their dreams in the process.

Part of that mission is a Facebook group for graphic designers wanting to follow Emma’s path and build WordPress websites. The Facebook group is an online community that helps support people on that path and she offers her courses through the group.

The group has helped grow her business by feeding members into a previously non-existent revenue stream.

You can find out more at hola.net.au/ as well as check out the Facebook Group.

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Not all marketing tactics and content are equally as effective at each stage of the Buyer Decision Process. For example, while some tactics are great for building awareness, they aren’t great for converting a highly engaged potential customer.

In this episode, we revisit the Buyer Decision Process and I align the broad goals of awareness, engagement, conversion, and loyalty that you are trying to achieve as a business.

I also give some examples of tactics and explain how they are well placed at some stages but wouldn’t be very helpful at other stages.

All of this helps you pick the most suited tactics for the areas of your pipeline you wish to focus on.

It’s not all theory though. At the end of the episode, I outline how you can use the Buyer Decision process, and your broad objectives, to choose the most effective tactics for your unique situation.

To help, there is a downloadable spreadsheet which maps all of the marketing tactics against their best area of focus. This resource is available to Patrons of the show and available at the Marketing Builder Patreon Page.

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Louise is the owner of Lollypotz, a hamper business offering a wide range of gifts for all manner of occasion and type of person.

Louise has been in business since 1999, so, at time of recording, that’s 20 years. The interesting thing about that is that, when you look at a hamper business, it doesn’t have low barriers to entry and it is very easy for competitors to browse other’s sites and copy product offerings and even price them lower.

That’s an important point and really does go to underline the abilities of Louise and her success in growing her business including being either a finalist or winner in various categories of the Telstra Business Awards, over numerous years, including being named as the winner in the Business Owner category of the 2013 Telstra ACT Business Women's Awards.

You can find out more at www.lollypotz.com.au or on Facebook

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No matter what you buy, whether it is complex, simple, business to consumer, or business to business, every purchase follows six steps and it is known as the Buyer Decision Process.

The 6 steps of the Buyer Decision Process are:

1. Awareness;
2. Research;
3. Evaluation;
4. Decision;
5. Purchase; and
6. Post-purchase Evaluation.

A lot of businesses simply focus at the top of the process (or sales funnel) with awareness and initial engagement tactics. That’s usually pretty naïve, however, because there is a whole bunch of stuff after awareness and initial engagement where your potential customer can be influenced to continue to move towards a purchase from you, or you can lose them.

Understanding the Buyer Decision Process helps you determine the information needs of your audience and craft marketing that can meet those needs.

It’s not all theory though. At the end of the episode, I outline how you can use the Buyer Decision process to list the information needs of your audience, at each stage, and then identify the content you’ll create and the tactics to deliver them.

The Buyer Decision placemat for the exercise is available to Patrons of the show and available at the Marketing Builder Patreon Page.

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Anthony Ferraro is a local legend in my area. He moved to Canberra, Australia, in 2009. As a local passionate business owner, however, it feels like he grew up here. He is well and truly part of the community.

Anthony set about reviving a legendary take-away shop which used to be called Theo’s; in a suburb his wife grew up in. A few takeaway businesses have come and gone from the space, over the years, yet none have been very successful. Now, with Anthony at the helm, it is once again a thriving business known as Little Theo’s.

When you listen to Anthony speak, it becomes very clear, very quickly, as to why he has been so successful. In fact, he’s done such a good job that Little Theo’s is the only takeaway in Australia to be listed in the Good Food Guide, the number one destination for credible, independent restaurant, bar, and cafe reviews.

Enjoy!

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A couple of years ago, I got into this weird argument with my Dad. My Dad is a really smart man. He’s a radio engineer by trade, then studied IT as a mature -age student, and now owns a data centre consulting and training business. He’s the sort of guy that has every tool you’ll ever need and once built a double brick garage and most places our families have lived, he’s built decks. Plus, he’s really financially smart and often bores me with talk about shares and the next big thing on the stock market.

The weird argument started when he asked me what the difference is between marketing and advertising. Seeing I have bucket loads of marketing experience, teach it at university, and have a master of marketing, I was confident I had it covered.

So, I confidently said something like, “Advertising is just one element of the promotion activities a business undertakes. It’s an element that works in combination, and is a result of, a bunch of other stuff like market research, the product, pricing, and stuff like that.”

“Right, but what is the difference?” he countered.

We started to go round and round in a weird conversation where the more I tried to explain it, the less he understood. I couldn’t even explain what marketing actually was in a way that made sense to a non-marketer.

In the end, I kind of just gave up.

In this episode, I'll give you a really easy to follow the definition of marketing and talk to you about how you can use the age-old Marketing Mix to find people with a need and get them to trust you.

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Kate started a nutrition blog, and it was pretty popular. So popular, in fact, it made her think about whether, after her son reached Kindergarten age, if she should return to her government job or press on and see if she could build a nutrition business.

That was in 2012, and now, in 2019, the Healthy Eating Hub boasts two locations in Canberra, Australia, a team of 10 and a strong social media following with their Facebook page having 15,000 followers.

As you’ll hear, the Healthy Eating Hub isn’t into fads and diets. In fact, you very quickly come to realise that Kate and the team are all about keeping it real, for real people.

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