In Part 1 of our interview with Michael Tasner, the author of Marketing in the Moment: The Digital Marketing Guide to Generating More Sales and Reaching Your Customers, Tasner discussed what's changed in Internet marketing since 2010, when his book's first edition came out. He also gave some suggestions for how to drive traffic to your site, and disclosed the No. 1 mistake marketers make.
Here, Tasner discusses the importance of "amazing content," how to reach customers through Facebook and marketing to mobile customers without annoying them.
When your content becomes more of a reference piece versus simply a blog entry, it can be deemed amazing
Reach 'amazing' status
Schepp: What is your elevator speech about how to do successful Internet marketing today?
Tasner: Focus on being of service by providing epic content by way of your blog, videos, whitepapers, social media and beyond. You normally cannot outspend bigger competitors, but you can surely out market them.
Produce amazing content, use the Google keyword tool to correctly optimize the content for search and spend a few bucks driving paid traffic to give it a boost. If your content is good enough, it will get passed around and your traffic will explode. Education-based content marketing is the key to massive long-term success.
Schepp: What makes content "amazing?"
Tasner: Amazing content is content that someone would want to bookmark because it was just that good, content that people would mention in blogs as a reference. When your content becomes more of a reference piece versus simply a blog entry, it can be deemed amazing.
One of the websites I like is Top Ten Reviews. While I may feel the reviews are a bit biased, the website is full of solid content, often providing 10, 20, or more reviews on a product or service. It's a website I bookmarked and come back to.
Look at integrating different forms of media into a blog post. Have some written content, a video, even an infographic right in the blog post. Have it be 2,000, 3,000, or even more words. Make it so all inclusive that someone would not have to go anywhere else to find more information on the topic because you provided everything they could have ever wanted and more!
If you are just starting out, or you are trying new marketing, you have to plan for mistakes and a margin of error
Focus on this
Schepp: Say I'm trying to build my customer base. What should my Internet marketing plan include?
Tasner: I'd focus on these areas:
- Designing an automated marketing funnel. When someone comes to your website, what is your free hook? Keep it something simple and easily consumed. From there, your funnel should expand into different areas with the goal of converting prospects into customers. There is a totally different mentality between list subscribers and customers, even of small purchases.
- Heavy blogging/content marketing. Be the industry leader in producing more content than anyone. Take Hubspot as an example. They produce amazing content all day long.
- If you want a boost relatively quickly, invest some money into paid traffic. I'm having great success with social advertising (Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter) for example.
Schepp: You've said the biggest mistake marketers make is giving up on a strategy too quickly. What's a better approach?
Tasner: Have both a budget and a plan locked and loaded. For example, I am setting aside $1,000 a month for Facebook ads each month for the next 90 days. For that $3,000 to pay off, I need to generate X amount of leads or sales.
What I often see is people will set that up, but after they have spent $200, they say, "Well, zero leads, zero sales, it's just not working. I'm throwing in the towel."
The other mistake people make is assuming that the marketing they are doing is either going to work quickly or work in general so they budget based on success. While this is logical, if you are just starting out, or you are trying new marketing, you have to plan for mistakes and a margin of error.
To really set yourself up for massive success, you should have a combination of tactics that you know have worked in the past and budget for those. From there, you look at what you can afford to lose and test out new tactics until you get proof of concept for those.
I'm a big fan of using Facebook to test business ideas and getting that proof of concept. If you know your target market well, you can laser target them on Facebook with some content and/or an offer, and see how they respond. But again, if they don't respond instantly, don't get discouraged.
On the flip side, don't keep investing money for months if you are in the red. Either you may not have set up the campaign correctly, the copy is not resonating or something is simply off.
Find out birthday and anniversary days, whether they are men or women. Use those key dates for fun messages, like 'Happy Mother's Day'
Entice, don't spam on mobile
Schepp: You suggest marketers acquire mobile numbers from their prospects, and then stay in touch. How do you stay clear of spamming?
Tasner: If you come from a place of service, that will always win the day. A simple example: Find out birthday and anniversary days, whether they are men or women. Use those key dates for fun messages, like "Happy Mother's Day" to all the mothers out there.
Balance the fun messages with the promotional ones.
Consumers love deals and discounts, so they will respond well to "flash sales," like Cyber Monday deals, half off, and so on.
The key is to give some good content and then go in for "the ask" in another message. If you keep the frequency low to start (one to three messages a month), it's much easier to get a pulse on how your people will respond.
Schepp: What else should Auctiva EDU readers know about your book?
Tasner: I updated almost the entire book. It's jammed packed with practical, actionable tools and tips. I don't speak in theory; I give you step-by-step instructions. This is how to implement mobile marketing, for example.
People can order the book on Amazon.com. Anyone who orders and sends me an email with their receipt will get an extra gift, or a free strategy call with me. They can email the receipt to michael at nojokemarketing.com or also contact me with any other questions.
Schepp: Thanks, Michael