The Strategy Path To Digital Tactics.
Creating business growth using digital tactics is about knowing what to do, when to do it, and being able to identify the right path forward.
Writing weekly business and marketing advice involves navigating a series of contradictions. The more you know, the more you can debunk your own ideas with better ones!
Social media misinformation is the latest example of how the lens we choose changes what we see and believe. Brands and local firms have to position and promote themselves in the middle of the latest social media noise.
Much of which is nonsense… amusing nonsense but nonsense nevertheless.
For example, there is a fearlessness that comes from not knowing what you don’t know.
On the one hand it can help you overcome fear of failure. Being brave enough to try something new. Innovation and new ideas are born from a place of vulnerability. After all, everyone else in the room might say it’s a crap idea. You have to trust your colleagues to respect you and the ideas process.
On the other, you can waste time, energy and money doing the wrong things at the wrong time. Or even the right things at the wrong time (e.g. paying for PPC ads before you build up your local fame with PR mentions).
Positive Mindset & Energy
With fearlessness, you see it in digital marketing graduates who bring their positive mindset and energy to any challenge. That’s an asset to any business looking to create growth.
From a learning and sharing ideas perspective, we can talk ourselves down without being consciously aware that it’s only one lens we look through, to see our personal view of the world.
If you’ve ever gone for an eye exam at the opticians, you’re familiar with what happens.
You sit down, look at letters on a wall in front of you, and the optician changes and adjusts the various lens settings - which changes what you can, and cannot, see.
Social media platforms do exactly the same to maximise engagement. We accept the selected slices chosen for us as our entire reality.
Influence Of Work Environment
Having an uninterrupted quick daily recap of objectives, targets and priorities BEFORE you get pulled in all directions by email, co-workers, productivity tools, and social media noise, can have tremendous benefits for senior staff and other decision makers.
Every single person within a small or regional business has an effect on the wider group whether we see it or not.
New ideas are the product of the people and work environment we create, whether passively or proactively. For more on this idea along with actionable insights, visit issue one’s audiobook recommendation, ‘Willpower doesn’t work’.
Digital Education Is Profoundly Exciting.
No matter your business or life situation, you can always change the lens. From web dev to comms, to math based ad models to creative across media and yes, even writing - digital education is open to all ages. And on YouTube, it’s free.
In 1997 I was living out my digital dream. At university for the first time I had access to a PC with internet access that wasn’t a pay by the hour cafe. The dot-com bubble was reaching its peak.
This all-things-tech enthusiast had started studying for a law degree. Why? The kind of course I wanted didn’t exist.
I vividly remember an interview between Irish DJ Dave Fanning and R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills on TV where he said, “Kids have the internet now. They can learn anything they want.” I’m paraphrasing but the point struck me right to my core.
In between lectures I would teach myself how to build websites, create Adobe Flash graphics (hey, it was the 90s!), publishing content both in newspapers and blogging online, and even the kind of digital outreach and networking by email which today you’d call CRM and PR comms activities. I was looking at website log files before Google Analytics even existed.
Knowing which popular website pages attracted visitors helped a lot. Even to this day there are global brands making entire content sections, adding links to the main navigation, and then not bothering to check if anyone clicks on the nav link.
Again, there is a fearlessness that comes from not knowing what you don’t know. I had no idea how many different areas in digital I would find. If I had known, perhaps it would have felt overwhelming. Maybe I’d have talked myself out of learning all these new skills. I only ever saw Tomorrow’s World. The possibilities of the future.
Digital Courses For Young & Old
Going full circle, recently Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University invited me to become one of their external examiners for their digital marketing degree courses. The very types of courses I could have only dreamed about back in the 90s. To help them in any small way gives me another reason to be grateful.
A career in digital once seemed like a dream. Not everyone fits into the cookie cutter nine to five, traditional industrial system. We have to forge our own path.
No matter your business or life situation, you can always change the lens.
And a kick-ass music playlist helps.
Frame Control, Pricing & Sales.
Every business can learn from frame control and pricing. Marketing is about more than promotion.
Creating sales can be tough. In a digital marketing context, even if you’re not specifically in sales, there’s a lot to be gained from understanding basic human psychology. People want to feel good about their buying decisions.
Classic example is Domino’s buy one get one free offer, and then pricing the first pizza to achieve the margin of both.
You feel like you’re getting a deal. You’d feel differently if you paid the exact same money for the exact same two pizzas but the cost was split across each.
Or the outdoor clothing brand that sets prices so that their real intended price and expected margin is what they get when they regularly promote their 30-50% off deals.
All of that is frame control around price.
Two of the best experts I’ve come across on this topic is Oren Klaff and Tim Williams.
In the world of professional services, Tim is a leader when it comes to pricing innovation and thought leadership. His blog posts are constantly eye-opening with examples of firms who have experienced strong growth after actioning his methods.
Pitch Anything
In Oren’s book Pitch Anything, he explains the concept of frame control, and how the way we present our ideas can dramatically influence whether they are even heard, let alone taken onboard and considered.
Frame control is another way of saying lens. We’re all aware of how a cropped photo can change our perception. Frame control is like being able to take a 3D model of any given situation and being able to rotate it in real-time to align it with your goals and objectives.
Any pitch for any kind of product or service is about understanding how people will react to the type of frame you’re presenting. For certain people, price is much less of a factor. For others, it means everything.
Every business can learn from frame control and pricing.
News
Ayrshire: South Ayrshire village becomes first Biosphere Community in area - LINK
Glasgow: Scottish legal cases funded by £2.3 million of public donations - LINK
Dundee: Free 1-to-1 advice from a leading practitioner in the creative industries - LINK
Aberdeen: Funded training in a new digital qualification is being offered - LINK
Edinburgh: Free tech career event to talk to exciting startups and scaleups - LINK
5 lessons I learned in my first year as a programmer - LINK
How to Report SEO to Your CEO with Tom Critchlow and Jason Barnard [Video] - LINK
SEO: Do We Have the Math to Truly Decode Google’s Algorithms? - LINK
SEO Thought Leader Ian Lurie on Teaching Non-SEOs - LINK
PPC: New book by ex-Googler Frederick Vallaeys [£1.46 kindle deal]- LINK
PPC: Google abandons FLoC, introduces Topics API to replace tracking cookies - LINK
Is Google Maps "Updates from customers" section a good thing? - LINK
Amazon: New software tool to automate product listings for sellers - LINK
Ecommerce Lessons learned and the technology helping to drive that growth [Podcast] - LINK
The Future of Medicine Podcast (Stanford) [Video] - LINK
Why Small Businesses Should Use Facebook Live (Streamyard) [Video] - LINK
And Finally…
When it comes to local marketing insights, few sites cover the topic as well as BrightLocal. The latest content in their ‘bright ideas’ section includes the State of Local Search webinar 2022, as well as a new review insights report.
Click on the tweet above to discover what people really think and what makes your next potential client or customer come to that conclusion.
If improving your local and regional marketing is on your to-do list, feel free to give us a call on 01292 844899. Or if you’re in a hurry, ping us an email (claire@bigponddigital.co.uk) and tell us what digital challenges you’re experiencing.
Until next time - good luck!
Andrew @ Big Pond
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