Our Process
We like to think of our service progression in the same way you'd approach a new fitness coaching client........you take a few simple steps to start with to ensure they are starting from a solid foundation, and then get to the interesting bit.
Step 1- The Assessment
Starting someone on an exercise program without first addressing any muscle imbalances or joint instability that they may have is likely to hinder progress at some point, or prevent progress entirely. Equally, writing an exercise program for someone without first finding out what they would like to achieve is unlikely to yield the results they were looking for. That's why it's always advisable to start with an assessment of where the person is coming from on the fitness journey, and where they want to go.
We think about similar points when starting out with a new marketing client...........
Starting a marketing campaign without first addressing any inadequacies in the client's online presence is likely to hinder progress, or prevent it entirely. The result of any marketing campaign will likely be that potential customers visit their website, Google Business Profile and/or social media pages to do their own research into the business. If those pages are inappropriate, missing entirely, or at least not optimised for conversion, then the potential results of the campaign will be limited. As an example, it's no use paying good money for marketing campaigns to direct people to a terrible, outdated website. The website will put people off no matter how good the marketing campaign is. We make sure that our clients have a suitable online presence to capitalise on their marketing campaigns, not jeopardise them.
This step can sometimes be a little delicate as people get attached to things like their website, or are proud of the website that they themselves built, and they don't like being told it's not really suitable. We promise we'll try to break it to you gently, but we also promise to tell you the truth no matter what!
Following on from that, there are then many different types of marketing campaigns we can look at. Many of these can seem similar, outwardly at least, but often they yield results in different ways, or yield different results entirely. It's important to find out what our clients would like to achieve, both short term and longer term, so that we can ensure that the campaigns we create will do what they want.
Step 2 - The Warm Up
Many people want to get started on their new training program as quickly as possible. That's understandable as it's new and exciting. Once they get started the immediately gains seen can often be significant, and this boosts their motivation further, but doing too much too soon can damage long term progress, or halt it completely. Go at it too hard and at some point your strength will outmatch your skill and that's when injuries occur. Healing from the injury then derails progress, motivation drops, and we all know where that leads.
It is best to consider a similar process with your marketing. We all know people want results from their marketing as quickly as possible but marketing should be considered as a marathon rather than a sprint. Going hard out of the gate can sometimes mean that longer term results are sacrificed.
For example, from a technical stand point if you start out sending hundreds (or thousands) of messages a day, regardless of the medium you are using, the systems will likely see your bulk messages as spam and treat them as such. If your messages get blocked, or sent to spam folders, then people won't read them and you then have a very low open rate. This compounds the algorithms idea that your messages are spam, and also means nobody is seeing your messages so your campaigns will fail. If you are using social media to send messages then there can be relatively low limits on the number of messages you can send in a short period of time and going over this could result in getting your account suspended.
It's best to start slow to avoid getting your messages marked as spam. Starting with a smaller number, and initially sending to people you think are likely to open your messages (so the algorithms see a good open rate) will help the systems see that your messages are not spam. This means they are far more likely to go into inboxes instead of junk folders. Build from there and you should be good to go.
From a customer stand point, it's also best to start slow. Inundating your customers message folders with information from the outset can result in many just getting sick of your messages and reporting them as spam. That's not good (see above) and is clearly detrimental to achieving the goals you had for the marketing campaigns. Start slow to maintain their interest and you can increase the volume of messages later if needed.
In summary, it's best to start with smaller campaigns and build from there. Think of this as your warm up period.
Step 3 - The Workout
AMRAP, EMOM or HIIT. Weight lifting, cardio or Cross Fit. Yoga, pilates or functional body training. The number of different training methods available are endless.
To the "untrained" (pun intended!), all arguably do a similar thing, at least from a top level perspective ie they get you "fit". Clearly they all get results in very different ways though and have varying specific results. Picking which one is most suitable for your coaching client (or more importantly which combination of them) is key to achieving the results that they are looking for.
We have a similar variety of options when it comes to marketing. As with training, all marketing campaign types have a similar aim (ie to bring in more business), but each will bring results in different ways. This is why Step 1 - The Assessment is vital. This allows us understand our clients needs.............
- Do they want to focus on short term or long term targets?
- Are they trying to get more customers, or build repeat business?
- Are they a more service based business or a product based business?
- Are they in a competitive marketplace so they need to focus on building brand awareness/confidence, or are they pioneering a new service/product so they need to focus on education and building product awareness?
- Is the business better known for their products/services, or their staff/people?
- Is there a prominent personality in the business?
Once we understand this we can then tailor a specific set of campaigns to suit our clients needs.