164 – The how and where of marketing

Discussion – The how and where of marketing WP Builds Deals Page - Find Deals on WordPress Plugins So… again we reach into the book “Watertight Marketing” by Bryony Thomas for the topic of our discussion this week. It’s one of a sequence and although you don’t really need to listen in order, should you wish to do that, you can find the previous episodes here: 149 – Marketing funnels don’t exist! 151 – Are we leaking clients? 153 – Losing clients before you even get them 155 – Are we boring? 157 – Honey traps for website clients 159 – My nephew makes websites too 161 – Why don’t you believe in us? 162 – Information Overload This podcast episode is out attempt to dissect the tricky subject of what your actual messaging might look like; what format it might take as well as where it might go. At the start of the discussion I talk about the multiple ways that I push content out concerning this podcast. I have built all of these ideas up slowly over time and never really thought about whether there’s too much, or if the messages were overlapping and therefore deceasing their impact. So every time I schedule a post on WP Builds the following ‘content’ is created automatically: The RSS feed is updated so that podcast players can push that content to subscribers devices An email is sent to the list – you can sign up here by the way The RSS feed is scraped by a SaaS app which then creates a post on the following platforms… The WP Builds Facebook Group, The WP Builds Facebook page, WP Build’s Twitter account, WP Builds Telegram feed, The WP Builds Tumblr feed, as well as some LinkedIn pages too The RSS feed is scraped by another SaaS app which turns the text in the post and the podcast audio into a video which them gets posted to the WP Builds YouTube channel IFTTT scrapes the RSS feed and pushes an update to the WP Builds Slack Channel That’s just the automated stuff! There’s more because the following, more manual things occur too: A SaaS app scrapes the RSS feed and alerts me to log into the platform in which I can create posts for up to a year in advance – I only do 1 reminder at 6 months and a year – these go to Facebook and Twitter I create a post for people who have signed up to receive browser notifications as well as in the WP Builds Facebook Messenger chat Honestly, the list could go on, but I’m sure that you get the idea! It’s a lot. You see I’m working on the principal that you have to be where your audience is, not where you want them to be. As this podcast speaks to a technical audience, that could be anywhere, so I kind of feel that I need to be everywhere too. We all know that with pixels and retargeting, we can be a little more clever about this, but the point is necessary. Where do you put your marketing messages? What format do they take? How do we teach our clients about this new digital age? What amazes me is that even though I post my messages all over the place, I’m not even close to saturating the list. There’s so many platforms popping up all of the time. My kids don’t use Facebook or email at all, because “d’uh, nobody uses those”. They are on Snapchat and Instagram. So if I were selling trendy clothes to teenagers, I might (or need) have to have a complete rethink about where I want my messages to land. There’s also the point about what should the messages look like? Here’s a list that comes of the top of my head: plain text email richly formatted email tweets videos – in so many possible formats push notifications text messages the various ad platforms that you can use (Facebook, Google etc.) letter leaflet telephoning a booth at an event networking meetings posters in public places ads in print media word of mouth podcast viral marketing etc – you get the idea! It’s simply breathtaking the amount of ways that you can message people and get them to be more aware of your brand. So today we discuss all of this. How your message might look / be created, and where they might go. We’re not that experienced in this so bear with us as we chat through from our positions of ignorance! Mentioned in this episode: ‘Watertight Marketing’ by Bryony Thomas