Don’t have time to read the full article, here’s a quick summary.

• We are so bombarded with information that it now takes up to 56 touch points for a new customer to make a purchase.
• Without the right digital marketing strategy, less than 10% of your desired customers will ever take action with you.
• Running a smash and grab big budget campaign can be great, but will it sustain your business for the entire year?
• Don’t waste your time and resources on the shiny objects, focus on the big picture, long term growth of your business.
• Be systematic and sustainably driven in your marketing approach.
• Understand your marketing/advertising platforms so you can credibly discuss what is best for your business when you are ready to work with an agency.

You know, I used to love watching that series on HBO called Deadliest Catch, it always fascinated me the different tactics that each captain would deploy in their hunt for Crab Gold! One Captain in particular that always impressed me, was Sig Hansen on the Northwestern, I loved his strategy and thought process, which consequently made him the most consistently successful and top earning fishing boat within the Bering Sea, year after year.

Sig wouldn’t panic react, even when his pots only got a 15% yield in an area that he had chosen to fish. Fish is probably the wrong word, Sig would farm. While all the other captains would be ripping around the Bering Sea in search of different locations to get the “mega pots” full to the brim with crabs, spending copious amounts of time traveling when they could have been filling their storage hulls, he would systematically target a location and not waste time looking for the next big thing.

He was about efficiency of his resources, in this case it was the ship, the running costs of the ship, his crew and of course, time. Time is money no matter what industry you are in. To put it into perspective it would take on average a few days to get to your destination, another couple of days to lay your pots, the pots would have to stay down for at least 24 hours and then it would take another couple of days to bring them up, sort the crab and reset the pots back for the next take.

If the first take wasn’t as great as they expected, but there were crabs there, he would stay and farm that location. He would choose to not lose days repositioning, not waste fuel, food, and water by chasing a potential mega load, instead taking the actual good load. By staying the course, focusing his resources, and taking solid consistent results over the potential for a massive win; his ship, his business and his crew were always in the black with reliable profits and earning a reputation for being one of the best crews in the business for over 30 years.

Isn’t this the position we all want for our business? To be well known and respected in our industry, financially successful and in the black with steady profits year on year for a long period of time. To be able to support the people that rely on us, our staff, our clients, our suppliers and our families. I know that’s what I want for my business, what about you?

So, let’s talk about your business, let’s put this in the perspective of your social media activities, by far on the most important digital strategies available to businesses today.

Did you know that on average, it now takes up to 56 touch points for a customer to make a purchase! Without the right strategy, less than 10% of your desired customers will ever act.

Consistency truly is the key, you can throw bad money after good at massive social media advertising campaigns, blowing your budget in 3 months and possibly get some results? Not the regular conversation we have with a lot of new clients though, because what happens when the money runs out? You are back to no leads, no sales, and a struggling business that is desperately searching for a way to stay relevant in a fast moving and very saturated market.

Chasing the big wins and the shiny objects, aka, the latest fad/trend in social media or the big all or nothing budget blowing advertising campaign isn’t going to be the best strategy for every business. Sure, if you have budgets like Coca Cola, go for it. But for the rest of us, we need to be like Sig.

We need to be thinking about efficiencies in our resources. What assets do we have, what budget can we afford, how will we get the best yield with what we have. Spending that same budget over 12 months on a multi-tiered strategy based on consistency, regular touchpoints, and targeted sales, seems a far greater use of your resources than blowing it all on a big “shiny object chasing” campaign that ends after three months, leaving you scrambling for sales.

Sustainability in your business is everything, that three-month campaign might offer some serious short-term gains, however…

• Will it sustain the business for the rest of the financial year?
• Will it keep your brand and your products top of mind now and into the future to reach those clients that were still deciding?
• Will it touch your potential clients up to 56 times before they make that purchase decision?
• Will you be able to afford to keep the leads rolling in, well after the campaign has finished?

The good news is you can literally do this yourself; you may not even need an agency to do this for you initially. With a little research, some quick tweaks of your website and social media integrations, you can set up cost effective branding campaigns that run each month to keep your brand showing up. You can write an article a week or share some user generated content and boost it out to bring in new enquiry, you can have conversations through your messenger with people interested in your business products or services.

You may think this is a strange thing for an agency to say, but honestly, we’re just a bit sick and tired of meeting amazing, hardworking business owners after the emotional and financial damage has been done. When they have blown their yearly budgets and have nothing to show for it because some cowboy charged them an arm and a leg + advertising budget to achieve little to nothing for them over a short period of time.

We want you to understand that a little can go a long way and when you decide that maybe someone should do this for me as I need to focus on the business, or want to step up your campaigning to the next level, or you simply run out of time because you are too busy wearing multiple hats, that’s when we would love the opportunity to talk to you. The start out advertising really can be all you – it can seem daunting, but even just understanding how it all works, will make it easier for you to choose the right agency for when you are ready to step up to the next level for your business marketing.

Being able to speak credibly about the different platforms you use and advertise on, and understanding the basics about how it all works gives you a great grounding to ask the right questions when deciding on the agency you want to trust your hard-earned money with. Not only do you understand, but you also respect the work that goes into the campaigning, and can genuinely partner with your agency towards the right path forward with confidence.

To get you started, here are some great free learning tools from 4 of the biggest platforms about how to advertise for success, so if you even just want to gain a better understanding, you can, without any expense incurred:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/business

Instagram: https://business.instagram.com/

LinkedIn: https://training.marketing.linkedin.com/

Twitter: https://business.twitter.com/en/basics.html

If, however, you would like to talk to an agency that focuses on transparency and partnering with you for a long term, sustainable business success, we’d love the opportunity.

Simply follow this link and we can set up a time for a discovery session to see if we are a match!