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June 23, 2021 - No Comments!

Want to Succeed Faster? Master These 3 Things….

I’ve talked about the accelerators behind the Attract and Convert skills in my previous blogs.

Now, that leaves us with one more skill to cover – Accelerate.

This one’s all about creating stability in your business so that it doesn’t go off the tracks when you start to grow.

1. The first accelerator for it is Make Data-Driven Decisions.

When you’re moving at speed, you can’t make decisions based on hunches. And you can’t go in a certain direction just because the boss thinks it might be a good idea.

You need to know that you’re making the right choice.

And to do that, you’ve got to know how to use analytics platforms and understand what the data they provide means.

If you don’t, you’re bringing guesswork into the equation. And if you guess wrong, the train will come off the tracks.

2. The second accelerator for the Accelerate skill is your Growth Engine.

This is about having a model or a strategy that you can rely on. You know that if you spend a certain amount of money on this strategy you’ll generate a return on your investment. And when you have a Growth Engine, you have rock-solid certainty in your marketing efforts.

3. And finally, we have Installing Viral Loops.

Viral marketing is one of the most powerful tools you have as a marketer. If you can get people to share your content with their friends, you increase exposure. More exposure means you attract more people to your business. And if you’ve mastered the Convert skill, that exposure means that you make more sales.

Having a viral loop means you can increase your referral rate. It also means that you can put content out into the world feeling confident that plenty of people will see it.

Ultimately, the Accelerate skill helps you to build certainty into your growth.

It takes away the guesswork, gives you a reliable strategy to work with, and enables you to reach more people with your message.

Master this skill as it ensures you stay on track even if you grow at a rapid pace.

Speak soon,

Howard ‘Accelerator’ Kingston

P.S. Whenever you are ready, here are 3 ways we can help you become a Digital Marketer:

  1. Follow us on Instagram (@growthvelocityacademy) for daily marketing tips, updates and announcements.
  2. Create the perfect Growth Hacking Strategy by grabbing a free copy of our Marketing Plan Template here
  3. Book in for a Complimentary 1:1 Business Mentor Session here with one of our Marketing Strategists.

June 16, 2021 - No Comments!

What Is Native Advertising?

Sometimes, it feels like new technologies pop up out of nowhere.

When some clever piece of tech comes along, you have to rush to adapt. If you don’t, there are plenty of other marketers out there who will.

But here’s the thing…

No new technology, or idea, comes out of nowhere.

Every single time, there’s always a trend towards that idea before it really takes off. And if you can catch onto the trend before it hits the mainstream, you’re able to get a head start on everybody else.

That’s what a world-class marketer does.

Right now, there’s one trend that I think all marketers need to know about…

Native advertising.

What is that?

Let me explain what it isn’t first.

Imagine that you’re watching a TV show. You enjoy the show for about 15 minutes and then you have to sit through a few minutes of adverts before you can carry on.

You didn’t sit down to watch the ads.

They’re just a thing you have to sit through before the show comes back on.

That’s what we call “interruptive advertising”. It’s marketing that gets in the way of what you want to experience.

We see this on the internet, too.

Whenever a webpage serves a pop-up ad, it’s interrupting what you’re doing. It’s breaking your train of thought to try to get you to pay attention to some new product or service.

Native advertising is the exact opposite of that.

It’s advertising that’s built into the content that you’re consuming.

For example, let’s say you’re reading an article about autonomous cars. You make it through the whole thing without interruption. And at the end, you see a little bio at the bottom that says the electric car company Tesla wrote the article.

That’s not an ad.

At most, it’s a bio or attribution.

But that little footnote, which is part of the piece, puts Tesla in your mind. And that means you’re more likely to look them up if you’re in the market for an autonomous car.

Native advertising is a new trend that will change the way that we talk to customers.

If you can start building your skills in it now, you will benefit from it in the future.

Speak soon,

Howard ‘Going Native’ Kingston

P.S. Whenever you are ready, here are 3 ways we can help you become a Digital Marketer:

  1. Follow us on Instagram (@growthvelocityacademy) for daily marketing tips, updates and announcements.
  2. Create the perfect Growth Hacking Strategy by grabbing a free copy of our Marketing Plan Template here
  3. Book in for a Complimentary 1:1 Business Mentor Session here with one of our Marketing Strategists.

June 9, 2021 - No Comments!

Landing Opportunities in a Pandemic?

The world is changing.

That may seem like an obvious thing to say given what’s happening right now.

But to be clear, the world was changing before all of this happened. It’s just that the pandemic feels like somebody put their foot on the gas.

Things went crazy really fast. And I know that it’s possible that the change was so quick that some people still haven’t gotten their heads around it.

They’ve felt the impact.

Perhaps they’ve lost their jobs…

Or they’ve seen the number of clients coming through their business dry up…

Whatever the case may be, they’re struggling a little.

Maybe you’re one of them. And maybe, you know that it’s time for you to change along with the world.

That’s the keyword I want to focus on in this blog – change.

Despite all of the craziness that’s going on, there are people out there who’ve managed to thrive. They’ve pivoted to the point where they’ve turned the challenges they face into something amazing.

What does that show us?

Opportunity is still out there!

I’ve had students come up to me with a common complaint:

“Nobody in my local town’s hiring. Everybody’s shut down.”

But the simple fact is that this isn’t true.

Yes, businesses in your local area may have shuttered their doors. And if you stay local, you may well find yourself struggling to find work.

However, that simply means that it’s time for you to expand your scope.

As marketers, we’re now getting used to the concept of working remotely. We’re figuring out what it takes to deliver great things, even though we’re not working in offices.

Remember, you’re a remote marketer now.

And that means you have more opportunities than ever before!

If you head to LinkedIn and search for “remote marketers”, you’ll see what I mean. The demand skyrocketed as people come to grips with what’s happening in the world.

Everybody who runs a business still needs people who can help them to market and sell online.

So, perhaps the opportunity isn’t in your local town anymore.

But it’s still out there.

Only now…it’s global!

And that means there are more opportunities than you thought possible.

But only if you know how to market yourself or your business globally.

Speak soon,

Howard ‘Opportunity Finder’ Kingston

P.S. Whenever you are ready, here are 3 ways we can help you become a Digital Marketer:

  1. Follow us on Instagram (@growthvelocityacademy) for daily marketing tips, updates and announcements.
  2. Create the perfect Growth Hacking Strategy by grabbing a free copy of our Marketing Plan Template here
  3. Book in for a Complimentary 1:1 Business Mentor Session here with one of our Marketing Strategists.

June 1, 2021 - No Comments!

5 Handy Tools for Bloggers and Digital Marketers

Here are five handy tools with a ‘digital marketing’ slant. Add these to your arsenal and become an absolute marketing whirlwind when it comes to proofing, formatting and optimizing for mobile.

They’re written primarily for Chrome and Mac users, but they’ll work on a PC too. For 5 handy visual marketing tools, to help with colours, fonts and file sizes, head to part 1 of this blog over at The STANCE Method.

 

1. Capitalise My Title

Capitalise my title is a website. Different countries, publications and websites have different rules pertaining to the capitalization of titles. There’s even nuance between what you might consider as the two options: Sentence case and Title Case.

If you have decided on an option where multiple letters in your title will be capitalized, but get tripped up on words like, the, an, on, a, the, my, your and so on, paste your title into Capitalise My Title, select a publication style and use that as your centralised, de facto method for checking capitalisation without slacking everyone on your team for grammar checks. 

2. HTML Cleaner

HTML Cleaner is a website. You can paste in a word or Google doc and receive a formatted and cleaned version in HTML. This is useful for blogging, where your editor might not be that user-friendly when it comes to styling H1s and H2s.. 

Most blog editors allow you to switch between a WYSIWYG editor and an HTML editor. So here’s how it goes:

  1. Paste your original doc into HTML Cleaner
  2. Click the ‘Clean HTML’ button
  3. Get your formatted HTML with all your H1s and H2s
  4. Paste that into your blog editor, and ‘hey presto', you have a perfectly formatted blog.

3. Inspect Element

Staying on a code theme, you can use ‘inspect element’ to understand the code from which a website is created. Now, I’m no developer, but I do sometimes like to fiddle with some code to explore how a change of headline might look.

In Chrome, head to the website you’re looking to adapt. Left click on the headline, select ‘inspect’ and see the code get pulled up. Find the headline, double click and see the portion of the code highlighted. Enter the text you’d like to see, hit return and you have a live demo of your change.

Don’t worry, this makes no lasting change to your site!

4. Mobile view 

Staying on the web browser theme, when you’re looking to test how a new design or code change looks on mobile vs. desktop, you can quickly do this in Chrome.

To achieve a screen that looks like the image above, press:

Option + Command + J (on a Mac). 

From there, you can fiddle with the dropdown menu to select the phone you’d like to see your site on.

If I were bug checking the mobile view of a site, I’d still load it up on my phone, but for a quick layout or copy check, this mobile view is FAB.

 

5. Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader

Available here in the Chrome store. I use this tool for proofreading. Start by downloading the Chrome ‘Read Aloud’ plug in—you’ll see it appear in the top right corner of your browser.

When you’re done with your chrome-based text (Google Doc, Mailchimp email, Hubspot landing page), simply click on the little megaphone and listen to the robotised version of your copy.

I personally opt for one self-proofread, followed by one Read Aloud proofread. I always catch a few mistakes the second time through.

About the author

Simon Dean is a brand consultant and storytelling expert. This is part two of a two blog series. You can find part 1—5 handy tools for digital marketers and branding experts—over at STANCE, Simon’s brand storytelling agency.

P.S. Whenever you are ready, here are 3 ways we can help you become a Digital Marketer:

  1. Follow us on Instagram (@growthvelocityacademy) for daily marketing tips, updates and announcements.
  2. Create the perfect Growth Hacking Strategy by grabbing a free copy of our Marketing Plan Template here
  3. Book in for a Complimentary 1:1 Business Mentor Session here with one of our Marketing Strategists.

May 26, 2021 - No Comments!

The 3 Ways to Convert Interested Customers

In my last blog, we looked at the three accelerators that lie behind the core marketing skill of Attract.

However, there’s no point in attracting customers if you can’t get them to buy or sign up for your thing. And that brings us to the second core skill – Convert.

Just like with the Attract skill, three accelerators sit behind the Convert skill.

1. The first is Conversion Confidence.

This is exactly what it says on the tin…

How confident are you that somebody will convert after hitting your website?

You can put a percentage number on this based on your own feelings. But the best way to figure this out is to look at your conversion numbers.

How many people buy or sign up compared to the number of people who land on your website?

If it’s a low number, that suggests you need to change how you’re making your offer.

2. That brings me to the second accelerator – Scientific Sales.

Do you have an intentional process for taking somebody from prospect to customer? In other words, how do you help somebody that you attract understand the value of your product so they’re ready to make a purchase?

For an e-commerce company, your website needs to do this job. And for a SaaS provider, you may have a demo that highlights the benefits of your product.

The key is that you’re not relying on the prospect to find their way to buying from you. Instead, you have a set process for them to follow that leads them to a purchase.

3. And our final accelerator is Repeatable Retention.

It’s one thing getting people to come to your website or to buy your product once. And it’s another to have them coming back again and again because they love what you have to offer.

Your goal is to maintain a high retention rate. After all, it’s always less costly to sell to existing customers than it is to find new ones.

So, how do you rate your ‘Convert’ skills? Grade yourself like a Traffic Light: Green means you’ve got it all working. Amber means you could use a little help and Red means you’re struggling.

If you have any Ambers or Reds, you know what you need to work on next when it comes to converting customers.

Speak soon,

Howard ‘Customer Converter’ Kingston

P.S. Whenever you are ready, here are 3 ways we can help you become a Digital Marketer:

  1. Follow us on Instagram (@growthvelocityacademy) for daily marketing tips, updates and announcements.
  2. Create the perfect Growth Hacking Strategy by grabbing a free copy of our Marketing Plan Template here
  3. Book in for a Complimentary 1:1 Business Mentor Session here with one of our Marketing Strategists.

May 19, 2021 - No Comments!

The 3 Secrets to Attracting Customers

In my last blog, I introduced the three core skills that a world-class marketer must master:

  1. Attract
  2. Convert
  3. Accelerate

Each of these core skills has three key accelerators. These are the three things that you’ve got to do to master the skill.

Now, let’s dig deeper into the Attract skill.

1. The first thing you need to do for this is to Build Authority.

To create a powerful brand, you need to get people to know, like, and trust you.

Why?

People, particularly on the internet, will not buy from you if they don’t trust you. If they don’t believe what you’re putting out there, they’re not going to part with their cash and say yes to your offer.

2. The second accelerator is Unleash Organic.

This is all about your organic marketing. In other words, it’s the unpaid marketing that you use to attract customers.

Content marketing falls into this category, as does search engine optimisation.

These are things that you can do without spending a penny. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t come with a cost.

If you’re not spending money, you need to spend time.

And that’s something you always need to understand, whether you’re a marketer or you’re speaking to a business partner. There’s no such thing as “free” marketing. If it doesn’t cost any money, that means it’s going to cost some time.

You have to prepare to spend that time to build up this accelerator.

Of course, the reverse of this is also true. If you’re not spending time, you’re probably spending money.

  1. That brings me to the third accelerator – Paid Precision.

This is all about utilising paid marketing efficiently and it all comes down to generating a return on ad spend.

If you can do that, you can go into any business with the confidence that you can create ad campaigns for them. Whether that business is your own or somebody else’s, you can make a profit with ads.

Build Authority, Unleash Organic, and Paid Precision.

If you get those three things right, you’ll attract more customers than you ever thought possible!

Speak soon,

Howard ‘Customer Attractor’ Kingston

P.S. Whenever you are ready, here are 3 ways we can help you become a Digital Marketer:

  1. Follow us on Instagram (@growthvelocityacademy) for daily marketing tips, updates and announcements.
  2. Create the perfect Growth Hacking Strategy by grabbing a free copy of our Marketing Plan Template here
  3. Book in for a Complimentary 1:1 Business Mentor Session here with one of our Marketing Strategists.

May 12, 2021 - No Comments!

The 3 Core Skills of Marketing

Have you ever felt that the marketing world can be a little overwhelming?

It feels like it’s saturated with ideas, strategies, and techniques. And that you have to spend all of your time learning every skill in the world to be a great marketer.

But that isn’t the case.

Ultimately, becoming a world-class marketer requires you to develop three core skills:

  1. Attract
  2. Convert
  3. Accelerate

These are your foundation from which you can build your marketing empire. Everything else that you do builds from these three skills. So, let’s get clear on them now.

1. Attract

You need to know how to attract customers to your business. That means understanding all of the different channels available today and how you can use them. It also means learning how to use Facebook, Instagram, search engines, and any other channel you can think of to attract people to you.

But here’s the thing…

Attracting people to your website or app isn’t enough.

You could have thousands of people interested in your business and it won’t mean a thing if you don’t master the second core skill...

2. Convert

This is all about getting the people you attract to take action. There’s no use in having people on a website if they’re confused about what they need to do next. The goal here is to help people understand what you do and provide them with a clear next action to take.

Ultimately, this skill is about turning prospects into clients.

And finally, we have…

3. Accelerate

Once you figure out how to Attract and Convert, you will start moving at speed. And it’s here where so many marketers struggle.

Imagine your business is a little train. If you fling that train onto a high-speed track, it’s going to start falling apart - it can’t take the speed because it isn’t built for it.

That’s what happens to a lot of businesses when they’re not ready for rapid growth.

Accelerate is all about making good, data-driven decisions so you build a stronger business. It’s about having the right infrastructure and a good growth engine in place to maintain the business as it scales.

You must master these core skills.

If you don’t, your business will come off the rails.

Speak soon,

Howard ‘Skilled Marketer’ Kingston

P.S. Whenever you are ready, here are 3 ways we can help you become a Digital Marketer:

  1. Follow us on Instagram (@growthvelocityacademy) for daily marketing tips, updates and announcements.
  2. Create the perfect Growth Hacking Strategy by grabbing a free copy of our Marketing Plan Template here
  3. Book in for a Complimentary 1:1 Business Mentor Session here with one of our Marketing Strategists.