Top 5 tips to provide helpful marketing your customers will value
QLD Small Business Week Gold Coast invited guest speaker Timbo Reid to present to about 70 small business owners.
“With confidence comes investment and job growth. Without Marketing, you can’t get your message out there.” – Mayor Tom Tate
Tim started his presentation with the question “Who is absolutely nailing their marketing?”
Only 4 people out of the 70+ put their hands up. The majority of the people are holding back on taking the next steps in their marketing efforts as they believe it should either be ‘amazing marketing’ or nothing – does it really have to be that perfect?
“Less perfection, more production.” –Timbo Reed
Tim motivated us to pick up your phones and start recording! He gave is helpful tips on how to approach marketing ideas without having to spend a fortune.
More tips are in his book The Boomerang Effect that he handed out after the presentation, thanks Tim!
Tim’s top 5 tips:
1) Develop a helpful mindset
How can you help your customers or other people in general? Give and you shall receive. You want to sell more by selling less. Instead of trying to push your products/services you want to assist people in making informed decisions. The more people appreciate what you do for them, the more they will like/comment/share online which can quickly increase your brand awareness and credibility in terms of being an authority in your field.
2) Create the ultimate Knowledge Centre
Come up with 50 questions your potential customers may have. Answer them and put them online as in a FAQ section, but then better. It is all about educating, entertaining and informing. Google loves this content online for SEO purposes. Tim calls it “Word of Mouse” as Google ranks their search results on: relevance, uniqueness and how often you post. We all know that people only read the first page of the search results – make sure you are on there! Another way to boost search results is with posting videos on YouTube as it is the second biggest search engine in the world.
3) Market your helpful marketing
As Mayor Tom Tate mentioned: “Without Marketing, you won’t get your message out there.” Keep promoting it. You get sick of your marketing before your customer does. Consider your opportunities to post. Can you post a blog on your website? Can you post the link to your blog on your Social Media? Can you send your customer database an eNewsletter?
4) Lean in – go with the flow
Commit to this, at least 6 months. Post one piece of helpful marketing per week. Don’t look at the scoreboard. Results won’t be instant. Be consistent and don’t give up. According to Tim you should not look at the scoreboard before you committed for at least 6 months to see a return on your time invested.
5) Get started!
People love storytelling as it makes it easier for someone to understand or relate. How many stories do you have. Stop thinking about limiting beliefs (takes too much time, too costly, too complicated, my ideas are not ‘amazing enough’.) and simply commit to posting at least once a week for the coming 6 months.
Gold Coast City Council, the second biggest council of Australia, is very committed to assisting business growth. See their website for the Competitive Business Toolkit: www.businessgoldcoast.com.au
The difficulty they see is that people are often inspired on the day, but do not seem to action too many of their great ideas afterwards.
What plans will you action in the coming 6 months?
First thing we did when we came back in the office is organise a question brainstorm meeting with our team. We came up with >50 questions (67 and counting to be precise) questions that our potential customers may have. We will set a day apart to choose 12 blog topics and shoot the videos. That should produce 3 months of helpful and valuable content!
We also committed to start with our ChangeMakers Interview Series in which we will ask influential business people about their view on success. Our first interviews will be with Mayor Tom Tate and Bartercard Co-Founder Andrew Federowsky. We will also include a video and podcast in our series. Stay tuned!
Additional resources
Podcast: Here is the thing – Alec Baldwin
Podcast: Beautiful/anonymous – Chris Gethard’s
Podcast: Small business, Big marketing – Timbo Reid
Funny example of Viral Video – Squatty Potty (Investment: $2.5k – Views = 22.9mil and counting)
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Example of the progression of Nick Logan giving wedding tips
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Written by our Business Improvement Specialist: Marlie van Doorn
Date published: 18/05/2016
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