A Brighter Web | Grow your business with digital marketing

Why Email is the Most Underrated Marketing Channel

Why is email underrated?

• People take email for granted. It’s kind of boring and reliable.
• It’s been around forever and most people have it.
• There are plenty of people who do email poorly.
• We talked about spammy email in a previous episode.

Why is email so valuable?

• You own your list. Not the platform it’s on.
• Deliverability is high. Assuming you do email the right way.
• Open rates are much higher than social reach rates.
• It’s media rich—meaning you can include links and visuals.
• Automation is much easier to accomplish—also talked about this in another episode.

How does email work with other marketing platforms?

• Everything should point back to your website.
• Use your social, podcast, and blogging content to drive emails.
• People are often willing to give up their emails in exchange for lead generators.
• Email is a way to nurture a lead you got from somewhere else.

What’s changing with email lately?

• Email open rates are less reliable with Apple’s auto-open rates.
• Email newsletters are making a comeback.

The Magic Email

What is the magic email?

• It’s a way to get people’s attention in their inbox, but it’s kind of a last resort.
• I (Mickey) heard about it from Blair Enns (2Bobs podcast).
• The email is simply this: “Since I have not heard from you on this, I have to assume your priorities have changed.”

When do you use it?

• When all else has failed. This is your Hail Mary.
• After you’ve tried connecting with the person multiple times.
• For example, Mickey reached out to a person five times with no response before sending the magic email. He then got a reply 26 minutes later.

When should you NOT use it?

• Use it sparingly because the message is direct and snarky.
• Not on any relationships you don’t mind losing. 
• It often gets people to respond, but not always positively.

Why do you think it works?

• Puts a bit of time pressure on. And some guilt, too.
• There must be some psychology behind what gets people to finally respond.
• “Works” is relative. A response is the main goal, though, and it works for that.

How Do I Identify My Business’ Audience?

Why is it important to know your audience?

• Why waste time communicating with someone else?
• Talk to people who you’re relevant to
• Every business exists to serve people; even if you’re B2B

What are mistakes businesses make with their audience?

• Thinking everyone is their audience; the more focused, the better
• Not fully understanding their audience; don’t make dumb assumptions
• Not staying focused on the audience; it’s not about you, it’s about them

How can we figure out who our audience is?

• Think about the people you serve? Who are your best customers?
• Figure out what they have in common; usually it’s the problem you help them solve
• Talk to some of them; learn about their motivations and preferences
• Look at your website users, social media followers, email subscribers
• List the demographic data; gender, age, location, income, occupation, family, etc.

What are the practical ways of staying focused on your audience?

• Creating audience personas is a helpful shortcut to processing this mass of information
• It focuses your attention on a specific character, rather than on statistics
• It’s OK to have a few different personas based on different audience segments
• Print these out and keep them visible as a reminder for who you’re reaching
• Think about the persona every time you write an email, social post, or blog
• But don’t overly generalize; keep meeting with people to keep it human

Is Twitter Worth My Business’ Time?

Quick—describe Twitter in less than 140 characters. It’s not easy to be succinct, but that brevity is one of the major advantages of Tweeting. Twitter might be great for influencers or debating politics, but does it have a place in business marketing? #GoodQuestion

How is Twitter different from other social platforms?

• It’s more short form, micro posts with limited characters
• It’s more focused on trending news content
• Visual content still performs well, but it’s not entirely focused on that
• Twitter is simpler because it has less of the added features of Facebook

How can Twitter work well for businesses?

• It’s still a large and active social platform
• There are lots of conversations to engage in
• It’s a relatively easy platform to create short-form content for
• Best for newsworthy posts and conversations (especially using hashtags)
• A good way to keep on top of trends

Why might Twitter not be a good fit?

• Many of their users are bots and fake accounts
• Unlike LinkedIn, there’s a lot of political nonsense and anger
• It’s much hard to maintain an active presence— it requires multiple posts per day to stay relevant
• Sees a much lower engagement rate
• Mostly suited for influencers with existing large audiences

How can your business take advantage of Twitter?

• Use it mostly for quick updates and news content
• Leverage visuals— one of the best platforms for GIFs
• Join existing conversations using relevant hashtags
• Connect with industry influencers
• Set your expectations low and try to have some fun with it

What’s the future of Twitter?

• They already went from 140 → 280, next is “articles”?
• Open up API some more? Elon was planning to.
• Cluttering themselves with too many different features (eg. Spaces)
• Twitter Blue for $2.99/mo (ad-free, editing tweet feature)

Using Sitemaps and Wireframes For Better Websites

If you’ve ever built a website before, you’ve probably heard about sitemaps and wireframes. But perhaps you’re not familiar with either, or why they’re important for custom website development. Let’s unpack the role sitemaps and wireframes play in creating websites and why to consider using both.

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap is a flowchart depicting the pages that need to be created for your site. Essentially like mapping out the chapters of your book before you start outlining the content.

Can you start building pages with a sitemap?

Like a book or school research paper, you need to create a content outline for each page. What topics need to be highlighted on each page? What is the main action a user should take on each page? A content outline gives you a good framework to start writing.

Which comes first: writing or wireframes?

Great question—many UX designers debate this very thing. Having a first draft of content is always ideal when starting your wireframes, but referencing the content outline is adequate.

What is a wireframe?

Think of a wireframe as a page blueprint before you add design elements. The black and white drawing (sometimes a hand sketch) of the page layout before you start thinking about the visual brand elements. More complex websites (and apps) require more complex wireframes.

How does this make a website stronger?

You remove the guessing game from your website strategy. You have a strong outline on to base the content on. This forces you to think about the purpose behind each page and slows you down enough to consider all of the details.

How to Tell Stories in Your Business

Storytelling is a term plenty of business leaders use—but are they actually prepared to tell stories? Finding the right stories in your company is one of the biggest challenges. In this episode, we’ll discuss what business storytelling looks like and where you can begin.

Why is storytelling worth it for businesses?

• Stories are far more captivating than data or information
• They create an emotionally-charged experience that people remember
• Effective businesses invite their audience to imagine themselves as part of the story

What are the 4 things that every story has?

• Context: setting and platform
• Character: the perspective of the audience
• Conflict: a problem that drives the narrative forward
• Change: transformation because of the conflict

Where is the first place to start with business storytelling?

• You’ve got to start listening to tell the stories of your audience
• If you have people, then you have stories to tell
• But you must earn their trust in order to hear their story
• Always be ready to capture a story by writing down notes or capturing images
• Share these stories with your team in a Story Library and have a set team of people who help you out

What’s a good example of business storytelling?

• Humans of New York blew up when they started adding stories to their photos
• The lesson is that you can listen either actively or passively for organizational stories

What are some storytelling resources?

• Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller
• Story or Die by Lisa Cron
• Story of Business podcast
• The Story Cycle by Robert Carnes

Using Personality Assessments at Your Business

Personality tests are more than just Buzzfeed time-wasters. They can be tools for understanding coworkers, building better teams, and becoming more self-aware. So which personality assessments are the most helpful and how do they apply to marketing?

Show Notes

What are some of the personality assessments out there?

• Myers Briggs: 16 personalities with 4 different categories
• Enneagram: 9 personalities
• DISC profile: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness
• Right Path: 16 blended profiles
• Strengths Finder: several different strengths ranked

How does GreenMellen get into using personality assessments?

• We have always been a team of do-ers. We get things done, we are task-oriented. This was great for projects, but when it was time to grow our services, we hit a wall.
• After one of our business coaches suggested a team personality assessment, we learned we how best to work with one another.
• Just “being nice” isn’t the right approach.

Are personality tests perfect? What are the pros and cons?

• Pros: Quick shorthand to understanding how people think and operate, fun to do as a team, gives you language around types of people and behaviors
• Cons: can be overly generalized, overused to make big decisions, hard to know which one to use, not obvious how to put the results into practice. 
• People can “own” them a bit too much and try to become what the test said they should be, which is certainly problematic.

What does this mean for marketing and your business?

• Make sure you have the right people on your team.
• Know what roles and tasks motivate people
• How to communicate properly with people
• Think about what personality each of your audience personas has

Balancing Remote Work with In-Office Work

Remote work has been around for decades, but a global pandemic and booming technology have allowed for working from home to become more commonplace. But is this practice a fad or the future of work? How do businesses handle this changing landscape of work?

Is this the desirable benefit some people think it is? Is it the future or a fad?

• Depends largely on the industry.
• Some businesses are able to get away with it more than others.
• It can also be individual. Some people are more productive at home than the office.

How have we made this work at GreenMellen?

In-person work:

• Collaboration time
• Social time

Remote work:

• Block your lunch hour
• Stay on communication channels

What are some of the benefits or disadvantages as we see it?

• Pros: more flexibility, no commute, happier employees, save $$ on offices
• Cons: less face time, abuse of company time, less collaboration, more isolation

How can other businesses prepare for more remote or hybrid work?

• Find the right communication channels—Slack, Zoom, Loom, etc.
• Help people set boundaries (reference our episode on mental health)
• Find ways to maintain a culture and keep people plugged in
• Keep an open mind and listen to what your team expects

How does this impact marketing?

• Online presence matters even more than ever—both for customers and the team
• Collaboration and communication become a challenge, but still achievable
• Save money in office space and put it back into marketing that has direct results?

 

What’s the Difference Between Inbound vs Outbound Marketing?

There are two basic approaches to business marketing: inbound and outbound. Outbound means going to your audience, while inbound refers to attracting your audience to your brand. There are pros and cons to each approach, but the best marketers use a blend of both.

What’s the Difference Between Inbound vs Outbound Marketing?

Outbound is essentially pushing marketing messages out to an audience. This means going to the channels where they are and broadcasting to a broad group.

Inbound flips that by trying to attract people back to your marketing channels. It’s usually about creating content that people find and willingly enter your marketing funnel.

What are some examples of each?

Outbound looks like advertising, sponsoring conferences and trade shows, sending direct mail pieces, or cold calling. It’s pushing your brand to people. 

Inbound can include blogging, lead generators with email automation, or free educational webinars. It’s pulling people to your brand.

What are the big differences between the two?

Outbound is more traditional. Jumping on someone else’s platform used to be the only way to do marketing. It can reach a broader audience that doesn’t already know you so you get better brand awareness and have an immediate impact. But it’s more invasive and can have a higher cost with a lesser return on that investment.

Inbound marketing is newer and more built around the digital space. The goal is to provide value to a smaller, targeted audience and then nurture them to make a purchase. However, this can also take more time to build content, and it can take more time before you see results.

Is one approach better than the other?

Inbound is becoming more popular because it’s not as invasive, it’s more focused, and has lower direct costs. However, it’s usually best for businesses to take a balanced approach. There are pros and cons to both, especially depending on your industry. 

Try a mix of both to see what works for you. Especially if your industry is dominated by one or the other, taking the alternative approach can help you to stand out.

Are thee the only two marketing approaches?

These are two of the most recognized approaches to marketing, but I wrote an article a few years back about a theoretical third approach: what I call outlandish marketing.

The idea is to do something different that helps you to stand out even if it doesn’t obviously or immediately improve your bottom line. Some examples of this are the Guinness Book of World Records, the Michelin Restaurant Stars, and Domino’s Paving for Pizza.

Preparing to Migrate to Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics is among the most useful free tools in digital marketing. But as of 2022, businesses must transition to the newest update—Google Analytics 4. Here’s how you can handle this change and make the most of it for your marketing.

What is Google Analytics 4 and why do we need to move to it?

• 1995 - Urchin created
• 2005 - Purchased by Google, becoming Google Analytics.
• 2011 - New version
• 2012 - UA unveiled
• 2020 - GA4

How is it different from Universal Analytics—aka GA 3?

It's hard to explain over audio, but there are two main things:

• Instead of Pageviews, events, transactions, etc, it’s all just “Events”.
• This makes it much more complex out of the gate, but much more powerful.

What does this mean for the future of digital marketing?

• GA4 is trying to do more without cookies, which will help.
• As your audience goes into more separate channels (website + app, for example), this can do a better job of pulling all of that data into one place.

How can businesses make this transition?

• Run both sets of code for the time being.
• Start collecting data ASAP so you'll have historic data.
• Use tools to make sense of the data (like “scorecards” for some of our clients)

Why is data and analytics vital to marketing?

• You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
• Know what’s working and what’s not, and make changes accordingly.
• Allows you to run experiments and objectively see what works better.

Resources

• Preparing Your Business for the Big Transition to Google Analytics 4
• Google Analytics 4: What We Know and Think So Far
• Google Announces Transition to New Google Analytics 4 - Lever Interactive
• Google Analytics 4 transition - How to manage migration