A Brighter Web | Grow your business with digital marketing

Content Marketing with Adam Walker

Is your small business struggling with content marketing? In this episode, we invited on our friend Adam Walker to talk about repurposing content for different platforms. These simple tips will help you scale your marketing strategy to reach a wider audience and save time.

Links

• Adam’s Website: https://adamjwalker.com/ 
• Tech Talk Ya’ll on Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/techtalkyall/ 
• Together Letters: https://www.togetherletters.com/ 
• Edgewise Media: https://edgewise.media/ 
• Adam’s Newsletter on Substack: https://adamjwalker.substack.com/
• Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjwalker/

Special Announcement: A New Podcast Format

After 60 episodes of the Brighter Web podcast, we're changing things up. Starting in 2024, we're bringing guests to the show and talk about digital marketing topics. We'll be back in a few months with some new, slightly different-sounding episodes.

Optimizing Website Conversions to Grow Your Business

There’s no shortage of digital metrics to measure, but conversions are perhaps the most important. These are the actions that actually help your business to grow. But how do you measure and improve your conversions online?

What are website conversions?

• Form fill
• Download a file
• Watch a video
• Purchase
• Donate

What is conversion optimization?

• Making adjustments to your website to get people to take a desired action
• It’s an ongoing process that you must test and adjust
• Rand Fishkin (Sparktoro) - Precise attribution is hard to measure. Share our Blumer story.
• Less attribution, more refinement of optimization

Why does conversion matter?

• Because these are the actions to help your business grow
• Without a desired action, what are you aiming for?
• This is where the true value of marketing comes in

How do you get people to convert more?

• Pick a single call to action
• Make it clear how to take action
• Focus the content on the page around the action
• Give people multiple opportunities to click a call to action
• Make small changes and test to see how people react — A/B testing

How do you measure conversion rates?

• Count the number of conversions
• Count the number of website users
• Divide the former by the later
• You can also divide up the specific types of conversions
• This can be done directly in Google Analytics 4 (with help from Google Tag Manager)

Do platforms outside of your website influence conversions?

• Yes! It matters how people view your brand before seeing your website.
• It matters what landing page they come to
• It matters how many times & ways they’ve encountered your brand

10 Ways to Monetize Your Digital Marketing Content

The internet is about far more than just making money—but that’s certainly something you can do. Content creators have found plenty of ways to earn income from the digital stuff they make.

This list is far from comprehensive, but here are 10 big buckets of ways to make money from the content you create online.

1. Selling a service (like GreenMellen)
   1. Website development
   2. Coaching or consulting
   3. Graphic design
   4. Freelance writing
2. Selling a physical product online
   1. E-commerce
   2. Swag
   3. Books
3. Selling a digital product
   1. Ebooks and resources
   2. WordPress themes
   3. WordPress plugins
   4. Document templates
4. Selling an online course
   1. Teachable
   2. Skillshare
   3. Kajabi
5. Create a private membership forum
   1. Post Status
   2. Mighty Networks
   3. Private newsletter
6. Accept donations
   1. Patreon
   2. Through Facebook
   3. Kickstarter
7. Sponsorships
   1. Mostly for podcasts
   2. Directly on Anchor
8. Website ads
   1. Google AdSense (and similar)
   2. Direct sponsorships
9. Affiliate marketing
   1. Promoting products
   2. Getting a cut of the sales
   3. Amazon Affiliate links
10. Publishing videos
    1. YouTube monetization
    2. Not just with ads, but to help promote other content

Creating an Effective Marketing Budget

Effecitve marketing requires an investment. For a business, this means creating and spending a marketing budget. But how much should you spend on marketing, and what return should you expect? There’s no one answer, so let’s examine the right approach.

Where do I start with my marketing budget?

• Figure out what you’ve spent to this point.
• Create a document to track everything and work with your accounting team.
• Develop an ideal budget for what you’d like to spend.
• Think big and work backward to what is realistic.

How much should I be spending on marketing?

• There’s no one right answer.
• It’s all about what’s most valuable to your business.
• This is much more than just advertising.

What categories should I consider?

• Marketing software/tech stack
• Content creation
• Advertising
• Networking events
• Sponsorships

How do I expand my marketing budget?

• Measure the ROI for what you’re seeing in return.
• Determine your most effective channels and increase there first.
• Look at the spend as an experiment—try something new and see if it works.
• Get your leadership’s buy-in so they understand the value.

Capitalizing on Networking Events for Marketing Growth

Digital marketing is useless without personal connections and word-of-mouth referrals. But is networking played out or ripe for you to take advantage of? It all depends on your approach. 

How does networking help my marketing?

• Get to know people in a more casual setting.
• Face and name recognition can be as important as brand recognition.
• Build a relationship with people before you begin selling.
• You might also meet people who can help your business.

What kind of events can I network at?

• Conferences
• Tradeshows
• Panel discussions
• Volunteer opportunities
• Business happy hours
• Lunch & learns

What are some networking best practices?

• Attend events where you know who the audience will be.
• Focus on in-depth conversations with a few people.
• Are business cards still worth bringing? Yes, if you have them.
  • Digital business cards are cool, but they break my process.
  • I like receiving cards more than giving them.
• Follow up with people after you meet them—connect on LinkedIn.

Is it worth sponsoring networking events?

• Take a look at the cost and see if it fits into your budget.
• Determine the why behind your reason for being a sponsor.
• The reason might be exposure or trying to get more leads.
• It’s also good to get visibility in your local community.

What about speaking at events?

• Are you comfortable with public speaking?
• Do you feel like you have something of value to provide?
• What topic do people care about that you can help them with?
• Reach out to a few events that are actively looking for speakers.

Should I plan my own networking event?

• We do quarterly micro-networking events.
• This is with people we already know and want to introduce to each other.
• It’s fun for us and fun for them—that’s the point.
• This helps us to deeper our relationships and say thank you to our fans.

Our 6 Least Favorite Marketing Channels

There are plenty of great and effective digital marketing channels, but there are just as many bad ones. Or at least good channels that tend to be used poorly by lazy marketers. These are our six least favorite marketing channels.

Robert’s 3 least favorite

• Direct mail: because it’s usually useless and hard to track.
• Billboards: because no one looks at them while they’re driving.
• Twitter: because it’s been officially run into the ground.

Mickey’s 3 least favorite

• Spam email: Email marketing can be great, but it too often isn’t.

• Bogus LinkedIn connections: Don’t connect with me if I don’t know who you are.
• Unsolicited text messages: Texting should be personal, so stop bothering me.

Building Your Business Marketing Stack

Technology can make marketing easier for your business. The various software tools your company uses for marketing combine to make a marketing stack. But what tools should you use and how do you build the right marketing stack?

What is a marketing stack?

The set of tools and technologies that you use to plan, execute, and measure your marketing efforts.

What are the different categories to consider?

• Website content management system (CMS)
• Domain name registrar, DNS, and Website host
• Customer relationship manager (CRM) database
• Email marketing platform
• Social media management
• Survey & feedback tool
• Graphic design software

How do you choose the right marketing software?

It’s the classic battle of “all in one” (like Zoho) or the best of each different piece.

I lean toward the best of each piece but certainly combine when I can.

How do you set a budget for your software?

In most cases, for a small business, time is a bigger issue than cost.

The cost for most of these tools doesn’t exceed perhaps $30/user/mo, but it can add up.

Do you need digital tools for everything?

YES! At least that’s our opinion.

The 7 Top Skills Every Marketer Must Have

We’ve talked about several skills marketers need in previous podcast episodes. Now, let’s bring it all together and give an overview of the seven most important skills we all need to hone. Which ones do you need to work on?

1. Planning: Just going out and “doing it” will likely end poorly. Get a strategy.
2. Writing: It’s the key to great communication and creating great content.
3. Consistency: Pushing hard on social media for a week won’t do much. Keep it up.
4. Learning: Marketing is always changing, so you must stay infinitely curious.
5. Testing: Some things work well, and some don’t. It’s vital to know the difference.
6. Analyzing data: Scale your marketing by uncovering the patterns in the data.
7. Acceptance: GA4 and AI are coming, like it or not. Know they’re coming and get to work, because hiding is fruitless. Be adaptable.

Related Podcast Episodes

• Why Writing is the Most Important Marketing Skill 
• Professional Development Made Simple For Digital Marketers 
• 10 Books Every Marketer Should Read 
• Preparing to Migrate to Google Analytics 4
• The Future of AI and Digital Marketing  

How Guest Contributions Can Extend Your Marketing Reach

Creating your own marketing channels is a valuable practice. However, you can reach new audiences and gain extra credibility by sharing your content on other people’s platforms. These guest contributions have their own pros and cons, which we’ll discuss here.

What do we mean by guest contributions?

• Sharing content on a platform that you don’t own.
• It’s like public relations (earned media), but it’s with other content creators.

What kind of content or platforms can you contribute to?

• Blogs
• Podcasts
• YouTube channels
• Social accounts

What are the benefits to contributing as a guest?

• You don’t have to build your own platform.
• You don’t have to promote the content.
• You can focus on creating great content.
• You gain credibility
• You reach a new audience

What are the downsides?

• There are ton of spammers reaching out to platforms
• Many of them are protective of their platforms
• It takes legwork to do right

How do you get started with guest contributing?

• Find the right platforms (hint: it’s where your ideal audience is)
• Make a list based on types of platforms (blog vs podcast, etc.) and PRIORITIZE
• Consume their content: read their blog or listen to the podcast
• Reach out to a FEW platforms to ask about contributing—especially those looking for contributors Search for sites with the keywords “write for” or “guests”
• Learn what kind of content they’re looking for