Morning Mahi: Marketing Revisited
We hosted an epic lineup of marketing gurus for our latest Morning Mahi. A huge thank you to Carla from Market South, Darren from Fully Charged Media in Queenstown, Conrad from The Custom Bubble, and COIN South's Chief Activator, Lou.
Key takeaways from each of the speakers.
Carla: Why brand is important, pivoting and telling your story.
Why is brand important?The landscape has changed and moving fast, but there are fundamentals that won’t change. You can work on your brand, it’s your story. You need to know your story and your customer’s story.
People do not buy the products and services that you are selling but they buy the emotion that goes with it. Look at Coca-Cola, you don’t buy a brown sugary caffeine drink, you are buying the emotion and story that goes with it.
1. Craft your brand. It’s what people say when you are not in the room. How you answer the phone, turn up to a meeting. Ask yourself, what do I want my business to look like? Because that’s the message they are taking away. Be authentic to your brand and a customer’s experience needs to be consistent right the way through the customer journey. And remember, you don’t need millions of dollars or big advertising campaigns. Consistent messaging, right throughout your team. It all builds trust.
2. Know your audience and know what motivates them. Research and understand your audience. What does their crisis behaviour look like?
3. What are we going to do now? Big part is going to be digital. We are content deprived at the moment. Can you sell online? If at all possible you need to be online and this includes brushing p on your social media skills.
To being at looking at your branding and story write down words for where you see your business and where you want your business to be. Dump words on white board and include values that are important to the business. This will then become a blueprint for the organisation. Its your why.
Remember - don’t be scared to pivot. Your brand won’t change. Look at how you can be nimble and change. Brand stays the same and evolves. Look for opportunities.
Darren: Getting the foundations right from the start so you can grow.
What foundations do startups need to get right at the beginning?
Treat your digital assets like you would an business assets. Like you would a truck. You can spend loads of money on brand but if you don’t get the spend in the right places its not maximising your budget and results. Do or get a digital audit that looks at tracking, analytics and measurements to make sure you are getting good value for your dollars.
What do startups need to consider?
Total cost of ownership. People often just want something done, like a website build. Difficulty is if you do it yourself it can seem to save money and tick the box of having a website but you need to make sure it has good SEO, analytics and tracking. DIY can get expensive to retrofit, so try and get it right from the beginning. Templated websites are available and Wordpress and Shopify are easy to expand. Make sure you know what your templated website can do if you need to expand it down the track.
Future trends?
Darren doesn’t think it will be as different as everyone makes it out to be. People will still want to buy, shop and travel. It can be a good time to advertise at the moment with some online advertising cheaper than normal. But remember to consider your messaging. All the advertising at the moment has the same messaging and same key words and phrases. Same music, same words so think about that.
Remarketing: where the advertisements follow the person round based on their previous searches and web page visits.
Use this time to get your foundations, right tracking and analytics set up to make the most of your advertising spend.
If you need to get online to sell your product, you can integrate Shopify with your existing platform that your website may be sitting on. For example if its a Wix template you can move over the website to Shopify.
Conrad: top tips on startups getting the most out of a designer plus tips for Shopify.
People know they need to get online but need a good brief, know what you are trying to achieve and your goals in the short term and long term.
A good starting point is to look at good reference websites that align with what you are trying to achieve with your website. Clients may not know what they want and by looking at other websites, creating pinterest boards and collecting ideas it can to create a website that fits. A clear brief will help the designer with what the client is wanting, what their needs are what they need to achieve from their website.
Tell us about Shopify?
A popular e-commerce platform you can sell your products online. People are now needing to get online even more so. You can quickly get your products online through shopify.
Other marketing you can do on a limited budget?
A facebook page like Buy New Zealand Made is a good way to promote your business for not costs. Break away from the conventional content to stand out. Like the Fat Bastard Pies rap video (see link below in Lou’s wrap up) is a great example of showing how to do marketing content differently that gets attention.
Louise: Customers and their pain points. Plus what to do without a marketing budget.
Why is it so important to understand your customer and how have their needs changed from 6 months ago?
I see a lot of Businesses getting stuck right now because they only looking at how they are being impacted by COVID-19. And not about their customer. Think about who you were and what you did 8 weeks ago, and how much it has changed. Your customers have changed too. Who are they now? Do you have a whole new set of customers? Maybe a whole new segment is suddenly online? Has lockdown changed their behaviours and do you think these will continue?
What do you need to understand about your customers?
You want to focus on Their problems. And not problems in terms of your product. And see if there is any way you, your brand or your product can alleviate those pains. You need to know the customer journey. When is the first moment your customer knows about your product, and when do they finally purchase it. How many steps are inbetween. Can you remove any of the steps? The key is to make your customer’s lives as easy as possible.
“Carla talked about the emotion of your brand. I’d take this further. During this time, the only thing your customer will remember about you and your product is how you made them feel.”
Talking to customers, and users of your product is key. For some audiences now is a perfect time to do so, people may have more time, are spending hours online, and are ready to support small businesses. For others, it’s the worst time in the world to talk to your customers. They’re anxious about their own businesses and customers. Use tact.
What would you suggest to someone who doesn't think they can afford to advertise or spend money on marketing?
There are loads of ways of advertising without spending a lot of money. Or any money. It will cost you time. But you can’t afford not to advertise right now. Thinking about what Darren said. Look at the assets you have. People, owned media, trucks? Partners and connections?
If you’ve got loads of people, get them to click interested in any of your online events, or like your page so it shows in their friends feeds too. If you’ve got a truck, brand it.
An easy one is sharable content. Right now is the perfect time to go bold. Safe is boring and boring won’t be seen or shared. So I challenge you to make something that scares you. Note: doesn’t go off brand – but challenges people. Be vulnerable, or loud, or more transparent than you have been. Look at what all your competitors are doing? Do the opposite. Be bold. In the moment between shock, and understanding you’ll capture your audience.
Like Conrad said: look at the Fat Bastard Pie video. It was not safe. Not even a little. It put the owner James, way out of his comfort zone. And it connected in a big way.
Opportunities are popping up too for free of charge advertising. Take all these with a grain of salt, knowing Darren’s previous comments. What may be free now could cost you in the long run. But here are a few free things I love:
Swiftly - brand new from #hackthecrisisnz, free, simple, takes 5 minutes, no customisation
The noun project – icons that make for easy illustrations for a website or simple content.
Most museums around the world offer their images in creative commons, which means you can use them on your social media or twist them into interesting content.
COIN South has a digital army – a group of incredible people who are keen to help small businesses for a couple of hours. So if you have a need – audit my SEO or Why do I have a huge bounce rate? Or can you help me with my Facebook pixel? Or even – help I don’t know how to not be safe. You can get some help there.