Monthly Archives: December 2020

The Keys to Good Marketing for Hiring

The Keys to Good Marketing for Hiring written by Jenna Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Nate Guggia

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Nate Guggia, content creator and brand marketer at Job Portraits.

Nate Guggia is also the author of Nate is Learning a newsletter by, about, and for professional people people.

Questions I ask Nate Guggia

  • What are people people?
  • Why are we rebranding HR?
  • You write a lot about employer branding – how does that work for small to medium-size businesses?
  • Where do people get this wrong?
  • Who’s doing it right?
  • What are some good examples?
  • How has the climate changed?
  • Are we talking about good marketing for hiring? Or is it something more than that?

More About Nate Guggia:

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WPBoostThis episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by WPBoost.

Your website is the hub of your business. If your website loads slowly visitors will not tolerate that and neither will Google. How fast your website loads has become increasingly important to your rank. If you want to find out if you have an issue with this or how to fix this check out wpboost.net.

WPBoost has a special offer for the Duct Tape Marketing audience the first 10 companies that fill out the contact form at the bottom of the home page and include #ducttape and their own website address in their message details will get a free speed audit.

 

Build a Game Changing Marketing Action Plan in Just 9 Steps

Build a Game Changing Marketing Action Plan in Just 9 Steps written by Kyndall Ramirez read more at Duct Tape Marketing

In order to do anything meaningful, you have to know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. The saying ”failing to plan is planning to fail” couldn’t be more true. If you want your business to be successful, you have to have a game plan.

But where do you start? And how do you create an action plan that sets you up for success? We’ve mapped out the steps for you. Follow these 9 easy steps to craft a winning marketing plan of your own. 

1. Create a strategy before tactics

Start with strategy.

Steer clear from falling for the hot, new marketing tactic of the week. The key element in making your marketing effective? A strategy-first approach.

You need to build your strategy before you even think about the tactics. Ask yourself these questions:

  • Are you trying to sell to anyone and everyone?
  • Are you struggling to stand out from your competition?
  • Are you unsure of what tactics make sense for you right now? 

These are strategy problems and can only be addressed with strategy solutions. 

You need to know your big picture business goals. Once you have those defined, then you put together the tactics it will take to make that strategy come to life. Use this ultimate marketing strategy plan for small businesses to get you started.

2. Research your current customers

Talk to your people. You can learn SO much from your customers. They shape your business, your core messages, your products or services, the list goes on.

Knowing your customers can uncover the best ways on how to attract, reach, and better serve the right people. Start by asking your customers these 5 questions.

3. Research your entire digital competition

Research is a common theme here.

Conducting competitive research is a way to grow and evolve your business. But it’s not just researching companies you consider to be your direct competitors—you need to take a look at your entire digital competition.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • What terms are my competitors ranking for that I should be?
  • What content are they putting out on their blog?
  • What kind of ads are they creating?
  • Where is my competition showing up that I’m not?

This kind of research gives you insight into:

  • New ways to serve your customers
  • Why other sites are ranking higher than yours
  • The type of content you need to be creating
  • Data you can use to spot new opportunities
  • New opportunities to gain customers

4. Promise to solve a problem

Nobody wants what you sell. People want their problems solved. Solving people’s problems is the golden ticket for your marketing efforts.

People buy better versions of themselves, not things. They want what they believe will help them feel good about themselves, achieve something higher, get relief from some level of pain or discomfort, avoid a sticky situation, or prepare themselves for the future.

It’s your job as a business owner to understand the problems people are trying to solve and match your offers to those very specific problems. Very few people in the world want the things, the services, and the solutions businesses sell.

You need to have an approach that is focused on a very specific type of customer, with a very specific need or problem, and a promise to solve that problem in a very specific way.

5. Map out the customer journey with the Marketing Hourglass

The customer journey isn’t linear. It’s our job to help guide buyers as they travel down the often-crooked path. The way that people buy today has changed so dramatically that instead of creating demand, we need to organize behavior.

A traditional marketing funnel might have the stages such as Awareness, Consideration, and Purchase. But the thing that the traditional marketing funnel neglects to address is that when it comes to lead and referral generation, a happy customer is your most powerful asset.

This is why Duct Tape Marketing follows the Marketing Hourglass approach. It consists of seven connected stages: 

  • Know—one of the best ways to become known is through organic search. Start using content to spark interest.
  • Like—once someone knows your business, you need to nurture your leads during this phase by demonstrating your expertise, sharing knowledge, and giving them useful resources.
  • Trust—people buy from organizations they trust. Get your customers involved in content creation. This is where customer generated videos, case studies, stories, and social media are a major playing piece.
  • Try—this stage is where the audition happens. It’s where you need to really deliver more than anyone. Consider doing a free or low-cost version of what you sell.
  • Buy—time to show real results and keep the experience high in this stage. Think about how you orient new customers, exceed their expectations, and surprise them. The complete customer experience is measured by the end result, not what you did to get the sale.
  • Repeat—the best way to get repeat business is to make sure your clients receive and understand the value of doing business with you. 
  • Refer—turn happy customers into referral customers. Create a remarkable experience with your customers that exceeds their expectations so they are compelled to share your business with others.

Every business has these stages, but many aren’t addressing them all. You need to figure out what the journey is like for your ideal customer or people who are looking for the solutions you offer.

Use the Marketing Hourglass framework to map your customer journey. Then, the next step in the marketing action plan is to strategically use different types of content at the various stages of the hourglass.

6. Use content as the voice of strategy

Content creation is the hardest job a marketer has to do, but when you plan your content with your hourglass in mind, it’s the highest payoff work you can do.

Content has grown beyond just being a tactic—it touches all aspects of your marketing and your business. It powers the entire customer journey.

Your audience expects to be able to find information about any product, service, or challenge they face simply by doing a Google search. And if you aren’t showing up, you won’t be found. There’s a pretty good change they won’t move forward with you because you lack credibility in their eyes. People go with solutions they feel they can trust. 

You must use content as your voice of strategy, and the best way to do this is to produce content that focuses on education and building trust at every stage of the customer journey.

7. Develop a list of quarterly priorities and live by the calendar

As a small business owner, you know there’s always plenty to do and never enough time in the day. But marketing needs to be viewed as a habit that’s ingrained in your daily routine. 

Planning for what needs to be done and when—is how you can stay focused on the activities that will give you the highest ROI. Start by creating a list of the highest impact items you need to fix or implement for each quarter. 

Then, live by the calendar. If you don’t schedule it, odds are it won’t happen.

Something that has worked extremely well for many business owners—who have been trained by the Duct Tape Marketing system—is adding monthly themes around your foundational marketing projects, breaking them up, and spreading them out over the course of the year. If you commit to an annual calendar, you’re more likely to follow it on a consistent basis.

8. Measure what matters

There are so many things you can measure: sales metrics, social metrics, content metrics, conversion metrics, growth metrics, the list goes on. And one of the hardest things is determining what you should be measuring. 

But you can’t measure what’s easy—you have to measure what matters. You can start by doing these 4 things:

  1. Create metrics that serve your priority objectives—whether it’s your goal to increase customers by X or grow your audience by X, you need to define what metrics make sense for the goals that you’ve set.
  2. Establish target goals for each objective—figure out how you’re going to gather the data you need to gauge whether or not you are on the right track.
  3. Select the tools you’ll use to track your progress—dashboards are an everyday reality for marketers. As a business owner, you need to be able to see what’s happening day to day.
  4. Use your results to make improvements—when you’re measuring the right things, you’ll start to see trends, why something happened, and what you might be able to do to make improvements.

9. Get a marketing action plan built for you systematically instead

Building a plan and taking control of your marketing can be daunting. But it isn’t that hard with the right system. Especially when you use a proven approach.

With Duct Tape Marketing’s Certified Marketing Manager Program, we take that burden right out of your hands. We’ve taken the very marketing system that has now been installed in thousands of small businesses and turned it into a hybrid coaching and training program designed to help you accomplish two very important things: create a marketing action plan for you AND learn how to implement it. You can schedule a free one-on-one coaching session here.

Running your business without a fully fleshed out marketing plan is like driving without a map. Maybe… just maybe you make it to your destination, but you might find yourself taking quite a few detours along the way. 

Save yourself a lot of trial and error by following these 9 steps.

How to Build Trust in a Digitally Distracted World

How to Build Trust in a Digitally Distracted World written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Stephen Denny

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Stephen Denny, author, speaker and consultant helping emerging and well-established brands define (or re-define) their competitive positioning.

 Stephen Denny is the author of Unfiltered Marketing: 5 Rules to Win Back Trust, Credibility, and Customers in a Digitally Distracted World. 

Questions I ask Stephen Denny:

  • Why do we need unfiltered marketing?
  • Are we pointing out something that happens to every generation?
  • How has 2020 affected rates of trends?
  • What is the book’s concept of raw?
  • Is there a desire to go back to the way things were?
  • How do you separate raw and the raw you want to show?

More About Stephen Denny:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

Zephyr logo

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Zephyr.

Zephyr is a modern, cloud-based CMS that’s licensed only to agencies. The system is lightweight, easy to use, and incredibly fast. And with an array of beautiful themes to choose from, you can get your clients’ websites up-and-running quickly and with less effort. Or, if you’d rather build a custom site, Zephyr includes agency services to be your plug-and-play dev shop.

Zephyr is passionate about helping agencies create great websites for their clients. To learn more, go to Zephyrcms.com.

 

6 Step Guide to Keyword Research that Turns Your Content into a Lead Machine

6 Step Guide to Keyword Research that Turns Your Content into a Lead Machine written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

A whopping 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. Making sure your business ranks well is imperative to being found online. 

Keyword research is the first critical step in developing your SEO strategy. But the way that you undertake keyword research for your homepage will be different from how you settle on the right search terms for your content like blog posts and podcasts. Plus, keyword research and content creation should have a symbiotic relationship. 

As you research your keywords and begin to understand how prospects are searching, you can plan and create content that speaks directly to searchers’ intent and needs. 

Here’s a quick, 6-step guide to help you get your content research off the ground and drive the right kind of traffic — traffic that is more likely to convert.

We’ll start by talking about what keyword research is.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing popular search terms that people enter into search engines like Google, and include them strategically in your content so that your content appears higher on a search engine results page. 

Keyword research can help you find ideas for your next blog post, learn more about the needs of your audience, and keep up to date with the lingo of the ever-changing search landscape. Researching what people type into search engines and using this data to create targeted content will ultimately help you drive the right traffic to your site.

Here are 6 quick, easy steps to help you get started. 

Step 1: Start with Your Own List of Keywords

Start by brainstorming on your own. You know your business and what you offer to your customers, so you probably have a solid sense of the terms they’re searching for to find you.

It’s important to note that in recent years there’s been a shift in the way that Google handles search queries. Google is now more invested in ranking results based on intent. The person who searches for “home remodeling ideas” is probably looking for something different than the person who searches for “best home remodeler in Kansas City,” right? The latter searcher is probably ready to start knocking down walls and ripping out tile, whereas the former might be daydreaming about redoing their kitchen someday in the next couple of years. Therefore, the results are going to vary.

Google acknowledges that the intent behind those searches is radically different, and so they’re now displaying results differently for those search queries. Because of this trend towards semantic search, it’s now important for businesses to consider long-tail keywords.

While your homepage might have keywords that are broader and more likely to cast a wider net, snatching up searchers at various stages of the customer journey, you want the keywords associated with your individual product pages and informative content to be more targeted.

If a home remodeler has various pages for the types of services they offer—kitchen, bathroom, home additions, basement finishing, and so on—they should have long-tail keywords for each of those pages that speak to that subset of the broader audience.

Step 2: Turn to Auto-Suggest

Another great starting point for your content keyword research is to start searching in Google yourself. Autocomplete is a great to use early and often when developing content calendars and general organic search strategies. You can uncover quality long-tail phrases that are commonly searched across the web by your audience.

Take some of the broader keywords you’ve identified for your business and see what comes up in auto-suggest.

Let’s return to the home remodeling example. When you type in home remodel, you get some auto-suggestions that indicate a few trends. One is about technology; the fifth and sixth suggestion have to do with apps and software. The other is about financing; people often search about loans or government incentives associated with remodeling.

This tells you something important about what prospects are thinking about when considering remodeling for themselves. They’re worried about the financial aspect (we all know renovations aren’t cheap!), and they like the idea of being able to have a hand in the design process, accessing technology that can help them plan out and visualize their dream kitchen or bathroom.

If you don’t already have content on your website that speaks to those major areas of interest or concern, maybe it’s time to consider adding some! It’s also helpful to go through and click on those auto-suggestions to see what content does appear when you Google “home remodel incentive,” for example. Who is already ranking in those results? Are they direct competitors? Is there a gap in the type of information you can find in that search—one that you could fill with original content on your site?

Step 3: Check out the Competition and See How They’re Ranking For Your Keywords

While it’s important to think about your own strategy, it’s also a smart idea to consider what your competitors are up to. There are plenty of tools out there that can help you do some opposition research into the keywords your competitors are using.

A site like SEMrush can help you see your known competitor’s keywords, identify other potential competitors that you hadn’t previously considered, and monitor shifts in where your domain is ranking (you can access a free 14-day trial of SEMrush Pro using this link).

You can also spend some time on your competitors’ website. Take a look at how they organize their content. Is there a way for you to differentiate your site and content from theirs—a unique approach that you can take to sharing what you do?

Step 4: Ask Your Customers

By this point, you’ve done a lot of digging into keyword research on your own. Now it’s time to ask your customers what they think. Sometimes the people who know and love your business will have a unique take on what’s so special about you, and it will help you to hit on a vein of content to mine that you wouldn’t have found on your own.

Don’t think of this as a daunting task. Asking for feedback can be as simple as sending a quick survey or simply asking people as part of your conversation with them while you’re on the phone.

There are a few helpful questions to ask, like:

“What search terms did you use when you were researching how to fix your problem?”
“What search terms ultimately led you to our business?”

Plus, it’s helpful to ask what it is that they think sets you apart from the competition; writing about what makes you different is a way to help your content stand out.

Step 5: Look at Google’s Keyword Planner (and Google Trends)

Once you’ve gathered up this bundle of keyword suggestions, it’s time to head to Google’s Keyword Planner tool. While it’s designed to work with paid search, it can also help direct your organic search efforts. Keyword Planner can help you get an idea of the right keywords you want to target by considering monthly search frequency, competition, and even cost-per-click (CPC) pricing.

 You do need a Google Ads account to access it, but once you’re in, you can begin to get information about the size of the audience you’ll be able to reach with each keyword, and more. 

Google Trends can help you determine which terms are trending upward, and are thus worth more of your focus. (This can be accessed without an ads account.)

For local businesses, it’s best to hone in on keywords that are not overly competitive and have a manageable reach. If you go for broad keywords that are highly competitive and can reach millions of people, it doesn’t do you much good. You’ll then find yourself coming up against giant brands, and you’ll never be able to rank well in that arena. Plus, you don’t need to reach tens of millions of people; you’re serving your specific community, so those are the people you want to see your name in SERPs.

Step 6: Create Hub Pages

Once you’ve settled on the keywords for your content, it’s important to mold the content itself to speak to the intent behind these keywords. You understand now what your audience wants, it’s time to create content that gives them just that.

I’ve talked a lot about building hub pages recently, and that’s because they’re an incredibly powerful tool when it comes to establishing trust and authority plus dominating in search results. Hub pages allow you to build what’s essentially a mini-Wikipedia for your area of expertise. You put all of your content related to a given topic on a hub page and tie it together in a way that addresses the questions a prospect might have.

Let’s return to the home remodeler example. One of their hub pages could be “The Ultimate Guide to Kitchen Remodeling.” On that page, they’ll link out to content (blog posts, video, podcasts) that cover all the ins and outs of a kitchen remodel, from initial research to picking finishes to project management once the renovation is underway.

Through keyword research, you learned that financing the project and using tech in the design stages were important issues for a lot of homeowners, so you want to include content that addresses those issues.

With this hub page, you become the comprehensive source of information on the entire kitchen renovation process. Not only does this allow you to become an authority early on in prospects’ research (making them all the more likely to turn to you when they’re ready to hire someone!), it also does great things for your SEO. Prospects stay on this hub page for a while—there’s a lot of information to soak in! They click on a couple of articles, navigating back to the hub page in between. They may even share an article with their spouse about the renovation process, or send a video to their friend who’s helping them pick new appliances.

When visitors spend a lot of time on one page, search engines get the message that it’s a well of great content. They want to provide their searchers with the best results, so they bump your hub page up in SERPs to ensure that it gets found by a broader audience.

Great keyword research for content is about using that research to guide your content creation process. You can learn a lot about search intent and what prospects are looking for by undertaking effective keyword research. Armed with that knowledge, you can then create content that speaks to those prospects’ wants and needs, ensuring that you stand out from the competition.

How to Pivot for Exponential Growth

How to Pivot for Exponential Growth written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Tate Stock

Chirp WheelIn this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Tate Stock who is the founder and CEO of Chirp and Ship Stud. Tate Stock was just named to Forbes 30 under 30 and is fresh off an episode of shark tank.

Questions I ask Tate Stock:

  • What is Chirp?
  • How did you scale up and get to a million wheels?
  • How did you get to 4 million in sales?
  • When did you do the kickstarter?
  • When did you decide this was going to be a success?
  • How did you cope with growth?
  • What started Ship Stud?
  • What was it like on Shark Tank?

More About Tate Stock:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

 

Zephyr logoThis episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Zephyr.

Zephyr is a modern, cloud-based CMS that’s licensed only to agencies. The system is lightweight, easy to use, and incredibly fast. And with an array of beautiful themes to choose from, you can get your clients’ websites up-and-running quickly and with less effort. Or, if you’d rather build a custom site, Zephyr includes agency services to be your plug-and-play dev shop.

Zephyr is passionate about helping agencies create great websites for their clients. To learn more, go to Zephyrcms.com.