👋 Hello Big Ponders!
Every business big or small can learn a lot from zombies. Specifically, the TV show about people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse: The Walking Dead.
Hear me out. It will make sense. I promise.
🤠How We See Ourselves
Successful TV shows will have a hook to draw in the audience.
For a popular series like The Walking Dead, the initial attraction was the adrenaline rush caused by the ever present and highly dangerous… Zombies!
They were omni-present. Everywhere. You couldn’t avoid them. The entire series was framed as a zombie show. I mean c’mon, even the title literally describes itself.
But here’s the thing.
You can’t keep people’s attention for over ten years with just zombies.
You need characters to have a proper story arc. Without heroes, all the zombie antics in the world will become repetitive and boring, no matter how inventive their demise.
TV shows struggle to hold our attention when they fail to put the most interesting hero stories at the centre.
Just look at how vocal people became with Game of Thrones when they didn’t like how their heroes were treated in the ending. We all invest in stories.
This is how local newspapers survive in the digital era. We want to read about people we know and especially when it mentions friends, family or ourselves, as part of our way of feeling like we understand how everything works. That the world makes sense.
Especially the stories we tell ourselves to justify the things we like, and why we choose to engage with certain brands and companies.
And until we have a ready made story to rely on, we look to reviews and other trust symbols as well as peers to influence how we think about things.
🧟 Choose Your Hero (In A Zombie Landscape)
Which brings us to the time and money we spend with a business. That’s often a conscious choice based on our perception of a story.
When it comes to self-promotion, successful companies understand that the customer is at the centre of everything they do.
From your website to your content, from your ad creative to your reviews and testimonials, the hero of the story should be your client or customer.
Self-promotion, especially on social media, needs to be about more than simply talking about yourself.
It needs to be about the people who get value from your products and services regularly. Sounds obvious right? Yet look back through your company’s activity on social media - how often are you telling your customer’s story vs just your own?
Yes, you absolutely need to position yourself as THE expert in your field, but there’s a balance between communicating expertise and putting a face behind a story others can relate to and see themselves replicating. Can they see themselves as your next successful client or customer? What reflects on them right now?
When your client or customer looks good in your latest update, you look good too.
People must be able to imagine themselves as being the next hero in one of your stories. Otherwise, you become just another self-promotional… zombie.
📰 News
SEO: Link building, the least favorite part of SEO - LINK
Analytics: How to meet your business objectives with Google Analytics 4 [VIDEO] - LINK
Google PPC: Messy match types & account structure [PODCAST] - LINK
Facebook: 14 Ways to Benefit From Meta Business Suite - LINK
Time Saver: 7 Google Sheets tips will 10x your marketing productivity and save you hours each week - LINK
And Finally…
Facebook advertising costs continue to be challenging to control.
Here’s a handy list of things that - if you change them - can cause the machine learning to start over. In simple terms, too many changes with too little budget across too many ad sets can hurt your ability to run profitable ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. Avoid ad-hoc changes. Create a plan, be brave with your creative, and hold your nerve long enough to allow a statistical model to learn.
SPOILER: machines don’t care about your gut emotions. Machines follow the math. Training a new customer model doesn’t happen in three weeks. Your data signposts are at weeks 4, 8 and 12. If you can’t afford to do things right, spend your money boosting posts and building followers instead. Focus on building your community.
☎ Need A Digital Expert? Talk To Big Pond.
For a fresh perspective on your digital growth, call us on 01292 844899. If you prefer, email claire@bigponddigital.co.uk to arrange a friendly chat. No hassle, no fuss. We’re here to help.
Until next time - good luck!
The Team @ Big Pond
Enjoyed this newsletter? Feel free to share it.