c+p digital

Conversion driven digital marketing agency, focussed on creative content.

content marketing

Under Pressure – 5 Focussed Trends To Cut Your Digital Overwhelm

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It’s the 4AM Report!

We’re done saying Happy New Year, yes? NO MORE RESOLUTIONS! But wait. HA! Appropriately enough for the 4AM Report, Will has a resolution – trying to get better sleep in 2020!

Here’s how….

  • Weighted Blanket
  • Diffuser
  • Sleeping mask
  • Tempur-Pedic Pillow

Is it working? Well, Will’s anxiety hasn’t vanished yet (as he says, “BABY STEPS!!”), but it is a perfect segue to today’s episode of the 4AM Report – New Year’s Trend Reports for marketers.

Oh man. It’s SO overwhelming – alllll the things you should be using, software to buy, gear you should have as marketers – but a lot of it is geared toward enterprise-level companies with huge budgets! Budgets – and bandwidth – that the scrappier small businesses might not have!

I mean, as a small business, we all want better marketing, but let’s be real!

Boot-Strap Your Way to Better Marketing

So, ever cognizant of people’s 💸 💸 💸 AND ⏰ ⏰ ⏰, let’s look at five digital marketing trends for 2020, that are easily within reach for the small business owner!

Customer experience/User experience: This is what’s going to keep people coming back to you! Step 1, housekeeping. Make sure everything in your bag of marketing tricks is functioning properly -links, forms, technology, ensure you have clear CTAs on all your content – and make them small and bite-sized – it takes ten steps to guide a customer to actually buy – don’t put ANY roadblocks in their way!

Personalization is also important! Your web people can help you with this – using tagging, categorizing, etc. Or think about chatbots and personal retargeting. The big boys like Amazon, etc., are great at personalization – and it doesn’t have to cost and arm and a leg to integrate personalization into your marketing.

Make mobile EASY. We’re all always on our phones, searching and buying, make sure your mobile sites are optimized for purchasing!

Strong creative is key. Your ideas matter, whether images, branding, content, etc. Also, make sure your online experience is really well designed!

Stories and Micro Content: Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook stories, TikTok, there are myriad micro platforms out there you can explore! Trust us, it’s helped us increase our reach from the tens to the thousands (listen to the full podcast to find out how!)

Microcontent leads to the micro-conversion idea! Putting your content into smaller pieces increases the chance potential customers will invest in the steps needed to get to a conversion. People are busy – micro content means less pressure on yourself to create and less pressure on them to commit!

It also allows you to create more content/more regularly. And it reaches a younger audience, allows for a more casual and less-censored view of your brand, and WTH it can even help create a feeling of FOMO around your brand – especially when the stories or content is only online for a short time.

Audio and Voice Search: Voice search today makes up 20 percent of all searches – and it’s projected to go even higher – reaching 50 percent soon! Think voice activated assistants, speakers, etc. So, what does voice search have to do with your marketing? A LOT. Make sure your content is optimized for voice search by using longer, more conversational queries (also known as longtail keywords in SEO speak) – have your web guys help you with this.

Also, create conversational content! Answer questions and think about what Joe Public would be googling/speaking to the speaker.

Channel Disruption!!: We all know it’s harder to stand out these days – so let’s shake things up in 2020! Think about how you can UP your visibility online and stand out from the madding crowd! Consider each platform – examine what content is considered the norm – and then turn it on its head! Don’t be afraid to have fun and start small! Visuals RULE, so use them!!

DIY Video: Yay cell phones! DIY video saves you money and time. Don’t try and be fancy and perfect with your video, and yes, while it’s important to do live video at times, create a mixture of live and pre-recorded stories. And keep ‘em short when you can (see above re: micro content). But don’t forget to always use good light though, peeps! 😂 😂 😂

Look, it’s only January – don’t burn yourself out – if you still find this overwhelming let us help you! Click here to explore what services we can bring to your marketing table this year!

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Still can’t sleep?

We would also love to know what’s keeping you up at night! Email us your problems – your issue might be featured in our next episode!

Any of these problems *speak* to you? Click here to subscribe in iTunes to hear about more things that haunt us or to keep an eye out for any of your problems. We might find a solution for you (or at least share your pain too!) We have more episodes with great tips, jokes and conversations – don’t miss it! 

If you get a chance, leave a review on iTunes so that others can find this podcast too! Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” We’d love to hear what your favourite part of this episode is in the comments below. Thank you!

Finding marketing common ground with Adam McDermot and Griffin Nykor

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In this episode of The 4 am Report, hosts Susan and Will do what they do best – conduct a 19 minute laser coaching session for a business that has their empire built on one social media channel.

If that’s you, listen up. Common Ground 416 is a fitness space focussed on personal coaching that is the answer to the large gym chains

⭐️ They have a strong instagram presence with an engaged following – but they wonder if the model-rich content is forbidding to the average person.

⭐️ They have a base website that they’d like to leverage.

⭐️ They have an instinct that LinkedIn will help reach their downtowner audience but they question of they’ll fit among the charts and graphs.

See what advice and tactics we have for them to quickly fill a few gaps and take things to the next level. Including:

📖 Using DMs for bookings

🔌 E-commerce and calendar plug ins to automate bookings

😂 Entertainment on LinkedIn to ‘stop the corporate scroll’

+ much more.

20 mins. Worth your time if you want more automation digital ROI in your small business.

Here’s the transcript:

Will: So this week we’re talking about a classic situation that growing small businesses face. They have success doing a few marketing activities, they see ROI on those activities, but in order to keep growing, they’re thinking about expanding that marketing function, but don’t know exactly what they should focus on. It’s uncharted territory. You only have so many person-hours in a day and so much budget, so trying to decide what’s best for the business and what to focus on can be a challenge.

Susan: And our two guests joining us this week are facing that exact scenario. So we wanted to invite them here to chat about the marketing successes that they’ve had, look under the hood, talk out a few different things that have been working, and maybe help figure out some parts for the future. So this is something that we really like to do with our small business clients, roll up our sleeves and figure out that solution that works because it’s never one size fits all.

Will: So it’s my pleasure to introduce these two gentlemen. We have Adam McDermot and Griffin Nykor who work for Common Ground 416, a downtown fitness studio, personal trainers, but also they wear the hats of marketers and help promote Common Ground. Adam and Griffin, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, about Common Ground, and most importantly, what’s keeping you up at night.

Adam: Hi, Susan and Will. Thank you for having us on. I’m Adam, and Griffin, we both are from Common Ground, we are trainers, and we also manage and promote the business. So we’re quite a small business. We’ve been open for about 18 months. We had a really good start, so lots of Instagram marketing, lots of buzz. And now that we’ve grown to more trainers, we have more of an issue in getting leads for our business, which has never been so much of a problem before. Most of our marketing comes through Instagram. So it consists of stories, which we post throughout the day, most days and some posts through the actually Common Ground Instagram along with our Instagram posts. So that’s worked really well, to begin with. Now, like I said, as we’re growing, we want to diversify our marketing and figure out a more efficient way to do that.

Susan: So talk to us, does Common Ground have a marketing strategy in place? I know that often small businesses kind of need to hit the ground running, right, and see what works and really lean into the things that are working. So that means sometimes that strategy hasn’t been fully thought out, or that audiences need to be more defined, or somewhere that the brand voice and the messaging can use a little bit of help, or whatever. So talk to us about what’s happening with your strategy.

Griffin: So we don’t actually have a formal marketing plan per se. Like Adam just said, we use a lot of social media, i.e., Instagram, Instagram Stories, Instagram Ads, but we don’t have a specific plan being like, we’re going to post an ad on this day for this many days to try and hit this many people. But rather when we feel like we’re getting a little slow, or we feel like clients are starting to be able to work out on their own, or go away for holidays, or things like that, we try to ramp up our advertising in order to help keep the business growing, keep the business busy, and allowing us to keep training people and keeping people healthy.

Will: Now when we’re talking about, I guess, who’s seen this, and I followed both of you guys on Instagram, I’ve worked out with you guys before, so I find it really impressive that you guys are so committed to that, Instagram Stories, posting workouts, that sort of thing, I’m just wondering if you were to say who your primary audience is, a secondary or even a third, currently who you’re talking to, who you do want to be talking to as you grow.

Adam: So when the business started, the business owner definitely had more of a direction towards models that he worked with. So we had quite a big buzz and that’s where our original marketing strategy actually went to and a lot of our clients came from, was through links that he made through modeling agencies. And we still use that quite a lot. But I feel like we’ve probably got to a point where we saturated that in a way. And recently, we’ve had more people say that they were almost put off by that strategy. So we’re trying to diversify from using young, attractive females as the formal marketing strategy. We’re open to everyone. We want to train everyone. There’s no specific demographic we don’t want to aim at. Obviously, that’s too big for us, so we’re trying to specifically aim more of a say, mothers that have time during the middle of the day, or even financial clients that could come in at any time of the day. They’re short on time, they want to work out, they have the money to do so. We haven’t yet found a way to specifically aim at them efficiently.

Susan: Right. And I guess that’s where that sort of targeting exercise or getting to know who that audience is, not so much necessarily from a who’s the demographic and are they 35 to 45, and do they make X amount of money? That’s one way to do it, obviously. But I mean, since you guys have been having success with Instagram, that it goes a bit deeper than that, right? It’s understanding sort of what are the pain points of these people. So for example, as you chat it through right now, that strategy of putting the perfect body out there might actually have been detrimental. Because, what do you call it? Will and I talk about this often, it’s like imposter syndrome, right?

I mean if you’re not the perfect body, and if you’re out there like, oh, I need to get slightly fitter, and if you see someone who’s perfectly fit, that maybe isn’t doing it for them, which is why I think in most of our work we tend to focus heavily on what we call pain storming, which is that really understanding the pain points of the people. You’re not working out right now, you’re not putting some time, money, and effort into it. Why are you not? What is stopping you right now? And maybe potentially speaking to those pain points.

Will: Yeah, and something else I was going to bring up, I know, again, you guys rule Instagram, it’s awesome. But if it is kind of someone like me or people who are in the downtown core sitting at their desk, you might want to consider a LinkedIn strategy, talking to those people who do have the money to come for that personal one-on-one training or get fit in at lunch or after work. And LinkedIn is the place to find a lot of those people. So that might be something as you evolve to start taking that genius that you do on Instagram and figuring out how to transfer that to the LinkedIn crowd, showing that you do service the people who have those corporate jobs and it’s a welcoming place for those people as well.

Griffin: For sure. Yeah. One thing that actually after having a chat a couple of weeks ago, Adam and I – LinkedIn is actually something that I’ve been trying to start to use more, not only for Common Ground but for my own personal use. I found it very confusing at the beginning, so it was kind of more like understanding the platform, the social media. I don’t even know if you can call LinkedIn social media, but a social media platform and how it works.

Because obviously, it’s very, I don’t want to say suit and tie, but it is very suit and tie, right? Like, you don’t see anyone ever posting about any Buzzfeed videos, right? It’s more like ads about how the stocks are doing and how the banks are doing. So I’m trying to figure out a way to implement a strategy, actually currently, on how we could kind of get exposure through that and kind of wiggle our way through the, this stock crashed and this today, and stuff like that so that people can see us.

Susan: Yeah, that makes sense. But I guess my point to that would be there’s some power to decluttering a little bit. So when you find a whole bunch of those standard blue graph-filled stock market-based posts, I think if you take it back to sort of the basics of content marketing, which is that you want to be informing people about what it is that you’re able to do for them. And the second part, which is often overlooked, is that you want to be able to entertain them. So if you are able to provide content, if you’re able to sort of riff off the various aspects of your brand’s personality, you’ve got a fun name, you can already start making a few puns about having Common Ground with people.

We’re certainly going to do that in the naming of this episode, right, Will? I don’t know, I’m just going to make stuff up right now, like you could make jokes around coffee or whatever, but you see the point we’re trying to make about disrupting in a certain space or other de-cluttering in a certain space by entertaining a little bit, right? Obviously, there’s a space to sell but there’s a space to show up and let people see who you are.

Will: And also too, I would say, there’s a lot of people who promote themselves, a lot of coaches, like business coaches, life coaches on LinkedIn who promote themselves very well. And it’s almost like I would look at your services in that same vein, providing this kind of mind/body/holistic approach that I think people who are that LinkedIn crowd into their 40s would really appreciate it. I know, Adam, I’ve told you and I’ve worked at with you before, that I feel like coming to Common Ground working out with you really does kind of do that, not just work out my body but also it’s like a good therapy session as well. So I think there’s a lot you could do to speak to that LinkedIn crowd without having to conform and fit to what you think that crowd is, like still being yourself and standing out that way.

Susan: Yeah, we certainly talk about that therapy often. It’s like some people go see a therapist, some people go see the physical version of that. But yeah, to go to a couple of tactics that could work for you guys, particularly in your case where there’s an option to have videos, and you have good content on something like a video medium. LinkedIn video is a really good way to cut clutter, like post directly to LinkedIn. And you know how social media works, they prioritize the things that are on their platform because they want you to stay on their platform. So if you were to, let’s say, have a short snippet of a video that you’re already using on Instagram, give that a shot, like a low maintenance sort of version of testing the media if you will.

Will: Now, do you have a website? Are there any other things like that that you’re working on at the moment?

Adam: So we do currently have a website, but we’re looking to relaunch and rebrand the website a little bit for 2020. It’s not efficient enough for us at the moment. It has a little bit about the gym. It has a few Instagram gallery pictures on there. It explains a little bit about what we do, but it doesn’t really have any use for us outside of that, so we can’t track anything. We don’t really have a good email list from there. There’s no blog on there, per se. There’s no way where you can go and buy anything, we don’t have e-commerce. And I know that I’ve had conversations in the past specifically, obviously, with you when you’ve been in, Will, about how we can then use the website to build a platform to get out what we’re doing to our clients regularly. We don’t have any sort of email strategy as it were, so that’s something we really want to work on for the next year, and just make everything more coherent and easy to understand, I guess.

Susan: I think as far as a website is concerned, you pretty much hit on most of those points right there, which is that for your particular business, I think the first thing you want to do is make sure that people can actually pay and schedule and book in sessions with you guys online, right? Because if you’ve already got a following, and you’re just making it extra convenient for them, and taking out that piece from the manual dealings of things. So even if someone’s actually paying you a different way right now, you could point them towards that. So I’d say for someone like you, e-commerce and just even basically setting up a Shopify plugin on your existing website is like a quick win, right? You’ve already got something like that and then you plug it into a calendar and you’ve got bookings coming in. So that’s one thing to think about.

The other thing as you said, is that all of this stuff that you’re doing at social, there’ll be multiple people who will tell you don’t do things on social, so it on your own. But sometimes you just get better traction on social. So you’re building your awareness there and there’s nothing wrong with that, but why not sort of admitted it on your website? So it’s good that you have a gallery there, but just sort of think about what you’re going to be putting on your website, how you can make people give you their email. Because like you said, email lists, people will tell you that they’re not the greatest thing and the people don’t read email anymore. But if you have interesting email, people would read it. So it’s worth exploring what that can do for you and integrating with email and stuff. So two things, just figure out a way in which you can get that payment system sorted so people can book online. And the second is figuring out how you can make email work for you.

Will: Yeah. And the other thing I would add too is like what she’s saying, the email, again, if you look at your Instagram as you’re anchoring social promotional property, right? If you could take what you’re doing already really well on Instagram and turn that into an e-book, a video series that you host on your site, something that people would want to download, like a 10-day challenge. You guys put up such great workouts and stuff like that, so maybe using that as the inspiration to build out something like a downloadable e-book, or a video series, or a fitness checklist that people would want to give your email, opt-in, and then you’ve got them there in your email list.

Griffin: Yeah, so again, we’re talking about 2020 here as we’re coming to the end of 2019. We’re working on our company’s 2020 goals. And one of those is definitely to be able to have some sort of online marketing/cashflow aspect to it. You can only fit so many people into a gym at one time, right? But when you take away requiring the space, we can have hundreds of people working out all at the exact same time, right? If we sell a video package going over, this is a workout, you have these videos explaining what each exercise is.

Griffin: Two things that I find in fitness nowadays that people hate is, learning, so a lot of people like to just have it in front of their face and just get it done. Hence, why lots of people train because we program workouts for them and they can kind of come in blind-eyed and just kind of work out. And two, I don’t have a two. We’re going to have to reset.

Will: The hating learning was a good one though, Griffin.

Griffin: I lost it. I had it, then I lost it.

Will: We are so not editing that out, by the way.

Griffin: That was fun. Thanks, please keep that!

Will: That’s cool though. What I like what you’re saying is that’s so true. People who don’t want to come out to the gym, like you said, it’s a small space, you can only have so many at a time, but figuring out maybe someone wants to come in and see you guys once a month. Then you give them a workout to continue doing on their own as part of a program, and then they come back in and check in on you, or you do online counseling, like through what we’re doing now, where we can see you on the computer. I think that’s a really neat thing to explore.

Susan: It’s kind of like taking the selling one-to-one process, and there’s many complicated frameworks for this, but it’s basically instead of selling to one person at a time, you’re trying to sell to multiple people at a time, exactly as you said. And there’s obviously advantages there, but there’s obviously advantages to that one-on-one contact and that personalized attention. And part of your marketing plan is going to have to focus in one of those areas. And obviously, for the moment, if your face to face ones are your primary product, then you want to make as much of your marketing sort of funnel into that as possible, right? So yeah, I think exploring a couple of other channels and really showing some personality and letting people be entertained, it’s the reason the cat video rules, because people just want a break and they want to look at something that amuses them.

But just one more quick thing that I was thinking about. We were talking about Instagram and potentially taking Instagram to the next level, and the fact that you can only book-in one person at a time or a certain number of people at a time. One thing worth exploring is the FOMO factor. Use Instagram DMs, potentially, to send out to people being like, be the first five to book this and potentially maybe you get a better price or whatever. We live in a generation where people are constantly afraid they’re missing out, right? So there’s an option to leverage that in a good way. You know that the downtowners need their workouts and they need that mental chill and physical chill, so send out a couple of DMs to pull them in with that.

Will: Do you guys want to talk about anything else?

Griffin: Like Adam was explaining earlier, we do post a lot of models on our Instagram, and either me, Adam, Sopearin, or Kati, or even just on our Common Ground page. I don’t want to change our demographic because we love training the models. We love the relationship we have with the modeling agencies, but I want to add to it. I want to be able to make Common Ground look like a space that is welcoming towards everybody. You don’t have to be the ideal fitness level, like you don’t have to come in and look like that immediately. That’s not what we want to portray. We want to make it the most welcoming space possible so that if somebody looks on our Instagram, so let’s say someone goes and looks at Adam’s Instagram and he has stories, he has client A, client B, client C, they can be like, “Oh, Adam trains a bunch of different people, I want to train with Adam.” I want us to try and start diversifying what we post on our Instagram, right?

Will: Yeah. And you know what, Griffin, because I’ve been there to the studio, I know it’s not just all beautiful models, right? It is a nice diverse mix that you have there. But I mean in addition to showing people doing the working out, you could also be showing someone walks in and how they’re greeted, little behind the scenes stuff to add to it, right, to make it seem like that welcoming space. The reason I don’t like going to a gym is I do feel a bit intimidated. There’s lots of people, it’s crowded. I don’t really know what I’m doing. But when I come to see you guys, it’s more than just the workouts, right? It’s the personalities. It’s the comradery.

Susan: It’s the experience.

Will: Yeah. It’s an experience beyond just the workout. So figuring out a way to communicate that I think too, would help attract other people like me who’ve just been turned off by the big gyms of the world that we thought were the only option.

Susan: And maybe the journey as well. It’s not a one and done. You didn’t show up to the gym one time and get all of your fitness goals achieved, right? So a little bit of the journey of what motivates people to keep doing it and what motivates people to come back, and that kind of thing could be storytelling.

Adam: So we actually have a couple of ideas of that. And one thing we were looking to do, and it’s me and Griffin specifically, was some sort of Instagram TV, vlog, or YouTube Channel, or something that documents our day. So like you say, people coming in and coming out, how we treat our clients so you can see that we treat all our clients the same, how we engage with each other throughout the day, and just shows that fun atmosphere of the gym. You can then follow it over time so you’ll see the progress of the clients in real-time rather than just when we post a picture every now and then. And I think it’ll just get all of that hopefully, in one easy kind of way, which we haven’t done as of yet and we’re kind of scared to start doing.

Will: You guys got to do it. That was like us with this podcast. We didn’t want to do it, we didn’t want to do it, then we just did it, and we leaned in and really did give it a go, give it our all. And we’ve seen great results. I mean we go to events, people comment on it. We’ve got great traction. We’ve jumped to number 27 in the Canadian marketing charts, which is amazing. So I think all it takes is you guys seem to want to do it, so you just got to make the time. And I think it’s a great idea what you’re saying, Adam. That sounds like an awesome idea.

Griffin: Yeah, that idea kind of started as a joke in all honesty, but then we kind of realized it could actually be used as a really good marketing tool. We don’t want it to become the David Dobriks of YouTube, right? We just wanted to shine light on how welcoming, and easy-going and laid back we all are at Common Ground. Yes, our branding is all black and white and looks big and tough and scary. I love our branding. I’m not bashing it whatsoever. But as soon as you walk in, you realize we’re all super happy. No one is ever really screaming at anyone. No one is ever getting mad at anyone, and that it’s a place where people can come get a really good workout in, and become fitter, become mentally, emotionally and physically fitter.

Will: Okay guys, thank you very much. That was a good conversation. I’m excited to see what you guys do for 2020 because you’ve done a great job so far, so it’s only up from here guys. Susan, I think that’s a wrap on another episode of The 4am Report. Adam and Griffin, thank you very much for taking the time to phone in and chat with us today.

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About Adam, Griffin and Common Ground

 

Adam and Griffin run Common Ground, a boutique fitness studio with minimal distractions. It provides a comfortable workout environment for exclusive personal training, quad training and small intimate group classes.  Common Ground is a fully collapsible space that is versatile – everything from small intimate yoga & pilates classes, to health/wellness events & workshops.

For more information visit http://www.commonground416.com/.

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Still can’t sleep?

We would also love to know what’s keeping you up at night! Email us your problems – your issue might be featured in our next episode!

Any of these problems *speak* to you? Click here to subscribe in iTunes to hear about more things that haunt us or to keep an eye out for any of your problems. We might find a solution for you (or at least share your pain too!) We have more episodes with great tips, jokes and conversations – don’t miss it! 

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Fostering an online community and doing business on Facebook with Lara Wellman

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⚡New episode alert ⚡ The 4 am Report is back with another episode  📣  

Facebook…🤔 Despite everything you’ve heard, for certain audiences, this is still the place that matters most.  In this episode of our wonderfully concise and informative micro podcast, The 4 am Report, we talk to someone who runs her successful business entirely through Facebook Groups.

Learn how Lara Wellman, certified business coach and owner of  the coaching practice, The Biz Studio, rules the Facebook algorithms.

Season 3 of the The 4 am Report is diving deep into the marketing things that keep business owners and communications departments wide awake at night.  We’re calling the season ‘The Dark Webbing of Marketing.’ Think Black Mirror meets Years and Years meets our middle-of-the-night insomnia.

Here’s an excerpt from the transcript:

Will: Lara, for small business owners looking to make Facebook great again for them, tell us why a group and not just a page. Maybe run down some of the benefits you’ve experienced from using Facebook groups.

Lara: Facebook in general is a really great tool. I like to use Facebook because most people, not all people, but most people are hanging out there in some capacity. Facebook pages are a great tool. I think most businesses should have one, but a group is the place where I get to connect with people. It’s where, as me, a person, I get to know other people. I get to engage with them. I get to build community. I get to feel like I’m having real connection, not just sort of blasting at them. I think that that’s the primary difference with a group is the people in the community have just as much of an opportunity to reach out and share, connect, offer value as I do. Whereas the page is always just me pushing forward. I think that’s the big difference, and that’s why it works so well.

Susan: Yeah, it’s that two way conversation. And beyond two way. It’s not just two dimensional anymore. It’s multidimensional, like you were saying, with people. It’s not just you opening a conversation, it’s other people coming in and asking questions. It’s a crowd sourcing of ideas. I think that community aspect of it is a big part. It’s certainly one of the reasons that I participate in groups is obviously the first layer of perhaps being a member of a group from someone’s perspective is the fact that there’s an insight scoop kind of idea. You do get some special content when you’re a part of groups and that’s certainly worthwhile. 

Then there’s the community aspect of it. But also market research, like often if a group is in some way part of your customer set, it’s useful to see what their pain points are, what people are talking about, what is taking their attention, who are they buying from? That kind of thing is good information that you can get out of these. Talk to us a little bit about what you’re seeing in terms of how people are using groups.

Lara: Well I think lots of people are using it in different ways, and it’s about making sure that you know why you’re using it. You have to have a sense for what it is that you’re trying to create and where you’re trying to take people. For me, my Facebook group is my first place to take them beyond they’ve heard of me to really getting to know me. Then just like you said, there’s like the VIP experience, the extras they get, the way that I get to get information from them is also the market research. They get to help me figure out what videos I’m going to do, what my next training’s going to be, what workshops I’m going to do, all of that kind of stuff. But that also makes them feel like they’re getting a VIP thing because they’re getting to have input in all of this stuff. But at the same time I’m like, “What do you guys actually want to know about?”

Susan: Exactly. I think going back to that two way where you’re benefiting in both ways. As well, you know from a user’s perspective, I often wonder how do you fit all of this in? I know we wanted to talk about that with you a little bit is that when people are using social media, we get asked a lot. It’s like, so how do I do this? How do I fit it all in, and how do I get the conversations and no one’s saying anything to the stuff I posted? We’re like, what are you saying to other people, is often our question. Are you hopping on there and having conversations? Are you only just popping one comment in and then not acknowledging any of the responses or not really even seeing what other people had to say? That’s not a conversation. That’s just a drop. So let’s talk through that a little bit. How do we engage? I mean obviously we’re talking about it from the perspective of a group, but whether group or otherwise, what can engagement bring to the Facebook algorithm?

Lara: There’s a few things there. One is a Facebook group is a lot of work, but the question is, is that worth it for you? So just like a podcast for example, it’s also a fair amount of work. But if that’s the thing that you want to do, if that’s the thing that’s fun for you to create, then maybe that’s the good use of your time. When people ask me about Facebook groups, I’m not like, everybody needs one. Because especially in the beginning – I’ve had mine for over four years now – In the very beginning, I spent so much time in there. I would do weekly group chats. I would be in there every day multiple times a day. I would answer every single comment and question. I was in there full on. I don’t need to be there at the same capacity anymore, but I really did need to nurture the group in a strong way in the beginning so that people felt like it was a place that conversation happened.

I’m not saying that this doesn’t ever work, but you’ll see groups and they just have the same weekly prompts every day all the time. That’s good, but you also need to make sure that people feel like it’s a real place where people are actively connecting.

About Lara

Lara Wellman

Lara is a Certified Business Coach who believes small business owners can make more money, love the work they do, and still have time to enjoy their lives!

Through coaching, group programs, workshops and events, she helps business owners get the clarity they need to take the right action for them and their business. 

Connect:

Website

Facebook

Twitter: @larawellman

Instagram

How to leverage multilingual communication with Vatché Iskedjian

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Google the term ‘translation blunders’, and you’ll dig up tons of times brands messed up their attempts at multilingual comms. Some are funny. Some are just sad. 😔

In this episode of ✨The 4 am Report✨ we discuss how marketing strategies need to be tweaked or sometimes completely changed for consumption by different speaking cultures.

Our guest? Vatché Iskedjian, a translator and a specialist in multilingual communications and founder of VI Communications.

With all the potential for global growth, brands need to ensure they use experts who can consult and help tailor strategy and tactics so it works in different regions. 

Here are some excerpts from the discussion: 

Susan: …To me it sort of comes back to a very basic component of developing strategy, right? It’s knowing and understanding your audience and who you’re talking to, and obviously knowing that they know their culture deeply. And like you said, they can immediately see it when it’s not authentic. So be clear about who you’re talking to and sort of connect with them at a basic level instead of as an afterthought or a forced fit, right?

We started at the top of the episode, Vatché, and we mentioned funny translation blunders, and that’s always something that amuses us. So are there any examples that you’re able to share? Our goal with this is not to shame anyone, but just to show audiences how rampant this problem is, right? Any that stand out to you?

Vatché: Yes, of course the one that really comes to mind is the social media campaign blunder by Telus. The English campaign contains such feel good phrases like “take a deep breath, ground yourself, go kill it.” But unfortunately the French was translated by Google Translate and it was really hilarious, and depending on your point of view embarrassing results.

The French translation, for example, invited consumers to literally grind themselves and go kill someone or something. The president of the company had to apologize for the Telus consumers in Quebec and it just made the headlines everywhere. Today you make a blunder like that, it goes all over the world within seconds, as you know.

Another one is always the classic Chevrolet Nova that really sold poorly in Spanish speaking countries because its name literally translates as “doesn’t go” in Spanish, “no va.” How do you want people to buy cars if you’re telling them that the car will not go, doesn’t go, “no va?”

There are so many other examples for the time we have. Just because you’re not a big multi-national, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pay closer attention to create communication in other languages. That’s where people such as translators and language experts such as myself are here to help you, so you make the right choices, so that you don’t spend money where you don’t need to, or you spend it wisely to get the results that you’re expecting in that type of market.

Susan: 100 percent. Just bringing that whole conversation proactively in the communication discussion is something that I think the big players do really well, but in today’s world you really need to be sort of thinking about language, right?

Which kind of reminds me, we were at Connex last month and we heard Neil Patel speaking. One of the things that he was talking about was how he’s used language as part of his growth. Obviously Neil Patel has a whole bunch of digital content, content marketing, SEO, much more of that, and all of that was in English, right?

So he obviously saw a market opportunity and there was need for his content in Spanish, in Chinese, and, you know, a few other languages he was talking about, and they invested in it. They actually did put money behind translating that content on multiple levels, whether it was voiceovers or in some cases captions and things like that.

But I thought that was a really interesting point that he was making about the times we live in. Global growth is possible in today’s world. It’s a multi-cultural space, and in general opportunities for growth as well exist. Obviously we all have opportunities to become better in the way that we do it, but are we really thinking about things from the perspective of growth?

Are you seeing any of that attitude in your clients, Vatché? Are they proactively exploring language opportunities?

Vatché: We do have some clients who are doing their campaigns in multiple languages. The biggest key is for them to understand that when they say “translate into Spanish,” for example they need to specify the Spanish market. Spanish is not the same if it’s spoken in Europe versus Mexico versus Latin America or Southern America.

I think this is one thing that the companies need to clarify. Yes, you’re targeting an international audience, an international group of consumers, but again depending on who you’re targeting, just make sure that you specify it, you use it properly.

Even French – I mean yes, there is for example – We can use international French for companies and that can be understood throughout the globe, but if you’re targeting only Quebec, then you need to be slightly different versus Europe, et cetera. So these are important factors to discuss, and as language experts we would be able to help you achieve them.

Will: Those are some really good points you just made about how Spanish isn’t the same everywhere. That’s actually an insight that I hadn’t even thought about it until you just mentioned that.

If we were to give our listeners any other key takeaways, or even like a basic checklist when you’re about to approach communications in a second or different language, can you share any more of things that people should be thinking about?

Vatché: These are really basic things. When people sit down, especially where a creative group comes together, thinks of a campaign or a concept, it’s important that if that campaign is going to involve different languages that a language specialist is present. We need to be involved from the start, because once the concept and the creative look of the campaign is decided in English, that doesn’t mean that it’s going to work in the other languages.

Just for example, a French sequence of words could be totally different than English, so whatever you’re putting the emphasis on within your creative design, et cetera, on a specific word, that doesn’t mean that in French this is going to be the same sequence. What kind of impact will that have on your campaign?

These are small things, but at the end if translators or language specialists are just simply given the final concept and told “Reproduce this in the other language,” it might not work 100% all the time. So that’s where the involvement at the beginning, the key messages… Will that message fly in that other language? Will it have a totally different meaning?

The use of images – Again, I come back to some of the campaigns being too Toronto-centric. I mean Toronto, as we know, is 55% immigrant based – different cultures, different communities, and we can introduce different images and no one will even notice that it doesn’t correspond to your local market.

But if you try and use that same image let’s say beyond Quebec City, where there’s hardly any visible minority or visible groups, will it have the same impact? So I mean these are small things, the images, the culture sensitivities, and the way you manage social media. It shouldn’t be an afterthought. It should be as part of what are you trying to achieve, and that’s the key important message that needs to be communicated to translators, to people working and trying to create something in a different language.

Once they know the strategy, then they’ll make sure that it’s properly executed. Otherwise, it’s words put together. If you don’t show them the visual, if you don’t talk to them about what is the goal, then you’re going to get words and then complain the translator put in something poorly.

Or the other thing is – The important thing is that translation shouldn’t be an afterthought. It shouldn’t happen at the last minute before the launch of a campaign, or someone is going to say, “Oops, we forgot about translation. Let’s Google Translate it.” Then you get the results that Telus got, and do you want that? I assume not.

About Vatché


Vatché Iskedjian has worked as a translator and a specialist in multilingual communications for over 30 years. He’s founder and principal of VI Communications.

Website 

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Still can’t sleep?

We would also love to know what’s keeping you up at night! Email us your problems – your issue might be featured in our next episode!

Any of these problems *speak* to you? Click here to subscribe in iTunes to hear about more things that haunt us or to keep an eye out for any of your problems. We might find a solution for you (or at least share your pain too!) We have more episodes with great tips, jokes and conversations – don’t miss it! 

If you get a chance, leave a review on iTunes so that others can find this podcast too! Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” We’d love to hear what your favourite part of this episode is in the comments below. Thank you!

The role of digital media in the 2019 Canadian Elections with Andrew Jenkins

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Susan and Will interrupt regularly scheduled programming for a special Canadian federal election episode of The 4am Report.  

This week they invite one of their favourite guests, Andrew Jenkins, back to the table to talk about the role of digital media when it comes to the election cycle.

People get their news on social media. We know this. We read headlines and have the attention span of about 150 characters. We keep up on pop culture via memes and gifs. So what does this mean for political parties?

Let’s dig in, shall we?

Andrew kicks things off with a 101 on the rise of rich media and its impact on how we consume messaging.

He talks about how we’re image and video obsessed. And how everyone with a smartphone is a creator of content.  

Will explains a simple formula that illustrates how social media is king when it comes to getting your message out. People aren’t watching the evening news. But they are sitting on their couch on their phone scrolling through Tweets and Insta stories.

Of course political parties are stepping up. But social media is beast and it won’t be tamed.

Case in point – Will refers to how Elections Canada royally messed up an influencer campaign that had a price tag of 650K.  Basically they didn’t properly vet the influencers they chose to work with.

Andrew talks some of the benefits of social media when it comes to the election. Politicians can’t get away with bending the truth as easily. (Well, at least that’s true here in Canada. We won’t mention another country where misinformation via Twitter seems to be working quite well for someone). Andrew points to how people are literally fact checked by social media in real time as they speak.

Will wonders if politics needs to whole-heartedly embrace memes as a way of communicating with their audience. It seems the only things getting shared these days are memes. Susan states that memes are the 2019 version of the political cartoon. So true!

Andrew warns politicians to be careful with trying to create and control memes involving themselves. According to him, just keep your fingers crossed that you end up on the good side of the meme. Trying to control memes could blow up in your face.

Susan and Andrew bring it back to some takeaways for our listeners. If we are getting our news about politics via social media, how can we do this responsibly? According to Andrew, it’s up to us to make sure we’re fact checking and following a diverse group of authorities.  

The episode ends with Andrew highlighting what he feels is a great benefit of social media when it comes to politics. Back in the day, you’d have to write a letter to your local MP’s constituency office. Today, you add the right level of sass to a tweet, and hit post. You have a very direct line of communication to them.

About Andrew

Andrew Jenkins

Andrew Jenkins has provided social media strategy and social selling services to numerous mid to large enterprises such as CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, BMO Nesbitt Burns, National Bank, Sirius XM Canada, the Globe and Mail, World Vision Canada, and the Aga Khan Foundation. He has spent the last twenty years working in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) spanning social media, wireless, and e-business. He holds a BA in Economics from Laurentian University, a BFA in Film Production from York University, and an MBA from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He also taught entrepreneurship at OCAD University and currently teaches Digital Strategy at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. Andrew speaks internationally about the social and digital landscape. His entrepreneurial efforts have been featured in the Toronto Star and by LinkedIn Canada as one of their success stories.

***

Still can’t sleep?

We would also love to know what’s keeping you up at night! Email us your problems – your issue might be featured in our next episode!

Any of these problems *speak* to you? Click here to subscribe in iTunes to hear about more things that haunt us or to keep an eye out for any of your problems. We might find a solution for you (or at least share your pain too!) We have more episodes with great tips, jokes and conversations – don’t miss it! 

If you get a chance, leave a review on iTunes so that others can find this podcast too! Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” We’d love to hear what your favourite part of this episode is in the comments below. Thank you!

 

How to measure marketing ROI like an investor with Tracey Bissett

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Just in time for National Small Business Month, here’s a very relevant episode of our micro podcast, The 4 am Report.

We’re tackling the unsexy side of marketing: how small businesses can best measure ROI on their various marketing activities.

Numbers, data, analytics. It’s easy for small business owners to get bogged down in all this. It’s difficult to know where to start.  

This is definitely the case for this week’s guest, Tracey Bissett, president and chief financial fitness trainer at Bissett Financial Fitness. In fact, Tracey points out an interesting paradox about herself:

“I know how to help my clients think about return on investment, but how do I do this for my own marketing?”

This led to an interesting discussion. What if you were to approach establishing your marketing ROI as if you were establishing the ROI on financial investments?

Susan, Will and Tracey bring some cool hypotheses to life and discuss what an investor lens might look like when you assess your marketing investment. They also talk about what ROI looks like beyond just vanity metrics and data.

Set your marketing goals

Susan talks about how it’s important to set overall goals. 

Is it sales? In that case, is there a certain number of dollars that need to come in the door? Then that becomes a measurement factor. If it’s a question of increasing lists, then again quantifying the goal from something vague to increase the list by 20%. Get into that discipline of numbers at the goal stage. 

Awareness is a big goal for many people. That as well needs to be quantified. Does awareness mean you want more people to come to your page? Does it mean you want more people to be calling you? So quantify what the end result of those things are. 

The importance of doing a full content audit (regularly)

Will and Susan talk about why doing content audits is essential to fully understanding how your content is performing.

Cataloguing content and measuring it against the 2 – 3 metrics you’ve already chosen is the only way to see what’s working and what’s not.  

If you’re looking for a guide on how to do a small business content audit, get it here.  

Can we approach establishing marketing ROI in the same way we’d approach it with financial investments?

This is where Tracey and the hosts have a little fun.

They look at three factors that Tracey says help her establish ROI for her clients:

  • What’s the risk profile of the investment
  • What fees are involved?
  • And are we comparing apples to apples?

Susan and Will talk about how low risk marketing is doing what you’ve been doing. You know your audience consumes it. But it’s not getting you a jump in numbers/engagement.  

Enter the higher risk marketing. Everyone wants to be a disrupter and get that 5X results. But it’s not easy to predict what’s going to gel with your audience.

Some areas of marketing that are higher risk but are proving to be rewarding for some brands?

Taking a stand on an issue. Newsjacking. And mindset marketing.

The two tiers of measurement

To keep you from the overwhelm, Will explains there are two simple tiers of measurement.

The first tier is vanity metrics. Obviously that’s the likes, the shares, all those things that make you feel good right away. 

The second tier is engagement or behaviour related. Things like where on social is the traffic coming to your web from? Or is it coming from emails? And looking at how long people have spent on a page gives you some indication of what they’re reading, watching or listening to.

Are they clicking to go elsewhere on your site, staying within your site? Are they putting something in the cart? All of this helps with tweaks to your UX.  

How using The Anchor Theory of content creation can help ease the volatility of your marketing portfolio

(Look, another investing analogy)

Susan explains that if you’re investing time and planning a 2500-word lead magnet or a 45-minute podcast, you’re putting a significant amount of effort into creating that content. 

So you wouldn’t just throw some money in an investment and pull it out after a month. We need to look at our content creation that way. 

The c+p digital team call this ‘anchoring’ your content and then spinning it off into bite size pieces, giving it as much exposure as possible. It’s not the idea of duplicating content necessarily, it’s just creating it in multiple formats. 

For a great visual on what The Anchor Theory is all about, check it out here. 

How do we measure the success of The 4 am Report

Susan talks through how c+p digital measures the ROI on this podcast. It’s a mix of traditional metrics but then she explains how going beyond the data can give you the true picture of overall worth.

One key thing is the value of the relationships that are being built with podcast guests. This means and expanding network and new business opportunities.

Will and Susan have also seen an actual impact on the industry (i.e. micro is where it seems to be at).

If you want to read a case study on how The 4 am Report has been one of c+p digital’s best marketing investments, check it out here. 

Tracey then shares some of that same ROI she’s encountered from her podcast Young Money, including reaching an international audience and being asked to appear on a popular podcast in Australia.

We end with a plug from our guest

To help entrepreneurs who have cash flow concerns, Tracey has created a master class called, Can I Afford It? How to be certain of what you can and can’t afford in your business in five minutes or less every time. To check out the details for the master class, go to bissettfinancialfitness.com/afford

About Tracey

Tracey Bissett is the President and Chief Financial Fitness Trainer at Bissett Financial Fitness. She is on a mission to redefine the economic future of the world by addressing financial literacy of young adults and entrepreneurs. She does this through her weekly podcast, Young Money – the advice show for millionaires in the making, teaching and delivery of courses, coaching and consulting.

Connect

https://twitter.com/bissettfinfit

https://www.instagram.com/bissettfinfit/

https://www.facebook.com/bissettfinfit/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/traceybissett/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/10570745/