Four Practical Marketing Tips for Startups to Help Drive Results

Startups have countless challenges they need to overcome, with marketing being one of the more notable. You’ll have more than a few competitors that can outspend you practically anywhere, which makes out-marketing them seem impossible.

But, that doesn’t have to be the case. More than a few marketing tips could help you level the playing field while driving more results for your startup in time. Four of these could be essential.

Have a Clear, Comprehensive Budget

One of the more important areas you’ll have to focus on with any marketing campaign is your budget. While you mightn’t have too much to spend as a startup, you’ll still need to put some money into it so you can start seeing results in time. This doesn’t mean just knowing roughly how much you have to spend.

Instead, you’ll need to break this down into different categories, like highlighting exactly how much is going to each specific marketing channel. Aim to focus on the more profitable areas while improving the areas that aren’t offering as much of a return on investment.

Outsource to Keep Costs Low

Managing full-fledged marketing campaigns can be close to impossible to do by yourself. If you’re keeping everything in-house, you could end up spending quite a bit on payroll and other expenses. Outsourcing is noticeably more cost-effective. In most cases, you’re getting a full agency for the cost of less than one employee.

And, there are plenty of quality options that focus on specific areas, like Hyper Space SEO consultants. If you only need help with one or two marketing areas, going down this route could be the most cost-effective path to take.

Set Key KPIs & Metrics Early

Setting key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics early is essential for any marketing campaign you’re rolling out. They help you figure out whether or not your campaign’s actually being successful. Multiple KPIs could be chosen for a campaign, but you’ll need to pick the right KPIs for each campaign.

If your campaign is focused on rolling out a product, for example, your KPIs should focus on sales, leads, and conversions instead of impressions. While these could change from campaign to campaign, you’ll still need to set them early.

Use the Right Marketing Channels

You’ll have plenty of marketing channels you can use. Even if you limit yourself to social media, you can advertise on Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and more, or even a combination of all of them. Just because you can advertise on all of them doesn’t mean you should advertise on them, though.

Focus on the channels that let you reach your target market. You wouldn’t want to end up in a position where you’re wasting time and marketing resources on a channel that isn’t going to offer any notable results.

With the right marketing tips for startups, you can level the playing field a little bit with your competitors. You should end up seeing better and better results, helping your company grow as time goes on. You’ve no reason not to implement them with your marketing.

Tactics To Get That Foot Traffic In Your Store

When you’re trying to drive more sales in your physical store, it's not enough to bring business to the site; you have to encourage people to come through the door and start looking around as well. If the quality of your products and service isn’t in question, then it’s all about the right mix of tactics, and here, we’re going to look at a few.

Pic - CC0 License

Invest In Quality Signage

Sidewalk signs might be a relatively simple solution, but they can definitely work. A well-placed sign can help you immediately communicate the identity of your brand and help catch the attention of those who might walk by without even realising that you exist. Having updatable sidewalk signs, like those with a chalkboard component, can also allow you to quickly communicate promotions, special offers, or new products that can generate further engagement.

Be Bold With Your Outdoor Decor

Don’t underestimate how effective a little exterior flair can be for your business. Opting for bold and eye-catching visual pieces can draw attention to your store from a distance. For instance, large promotional inflatables, be it product replicas, logo recreations or even just the simple but highly popular air dancers, can make your location a lot more noticeable, especially on busy streets or when you have a sales event on. What’s more, they’re a much more affordable way of advertising your business while still making a big brand impact.

Create Eye-Catching Window Displays

If your products are aesthetically engaging enough, then they can practically sell themselves if you give them the space to. Your window display is one of the first ways customers will engage with your store, so it should tell a story or make an impact. Highlight your best and most visually interesting products first and foremost, and make use of effective lighting as well as props to enhance and draw even more attention to them. Rotating your displays regularly can also keep your store feeling fresh and could give that passerby something new to notice, catching them in a way previous displays might not have.

Host Live Demonstrations Or Experiences

Some of your customers are going to be inherently curious, so it’s just about getting them on the hook. Live demonstrations of your products in action can be a great way to do that, making them more likely to stop, watch, and potentially become more interested in what your business offers. Not every product is going to be a good choice for a demonstration, but they can range from anything like cooking samples in a food store to crafting sessions, mini workshops, or even models performing on a miniature runway outside of your fashion store.

Which tactics work on your target audience depends on a mix of the visibility of your location, the brand that you’re trying to establish, and the demographic you’re aiming at. However, a mix of the strategies above is certain to bring you some attention at the very least. From there, it’s about how well you can capitalise on it.

What Is The State of Marketing in 2025?

Marketing is digital and digital changes a lot over 12 months. This time last year marketers were bracing for a collapse in ad spend. Analysis from AdWeek predicts that ad spends will increase around 3.8% to 6.5% which is a good sign for people in marketing and communication - though growth in the industry will languish around the 2-3% mark.

So what is the state of marketing in 2025? What should we be focusing on for this year instead of succumbing to shiny-object syndrome? Here’s my analysis:

FTA Television is Boomer Wasteland

Back in ‘68 when Julie was Johnny’s date and strolling down Desolation Boulevard, both of them were likely eighteen. Julie and Johnny, now retired empty nesters with three investment properties are watching old school, free-to-air television. The kids are alright with over-the-top streaming and the internet, and we’ve known this since 2017. In the U.S., 49% of the 54-65 and over demographic still have a cable subscription and most watch over 10 hours per week, constrasted with only 34% of the 18 to 29 demo. The highest rated programs are still live sports, seconded by news and … repeats of Antiques Roadshow.

This has contributed to a global decline in TV advertising by 8%. If you’re trying to get hip and down with the kids, avoid FTA TV and leave it to the oldies.

Social Media Fragmentation

Ahh, the halcyon days of the mid 2010s - where you could set your watch to a healthy return on ad spend coming from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Now, that’s all been turned on its ear. Since the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk and its rebrand to X, many left-leaning netizens have flocked to alternatives such as Mastodon and Blue Sky citing safety and misinformation concerns.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has drawn ire from the political left for doing away with fact checking units and opting for community based notes, much like on X. TikTok’s status in the United States is also under a cloud of uncertainty with a ban likely coming after the U.S. Supreme Court hands down its ruling on the 19th of January.

Couple that with a decrease in ads capturing attention - 31% of people globally claim they pay attention to ads, a 12% slump over last year - and social media seems a less of a “sure thing” for marketers than any time in its short history.

Video and User Generated Content Pushes Buying Decisions

Hands up those of you who have watched a YouTube video of a product unboxing or review to reaffirm your decision to buy? You aren’t alone. According to Hubspot research, approximately 62% of consumers watch videos to learn more about brands, discover how their products or services work, and glean insights into hidden benefits in real-world use cases. (Like how I was sold on buying the Sony Xperia 1 VI due to its superb macro function. Oh, and the headphone jack.) During 2024, 89% of consumers said they want to see more videos from brands - especially if it justifies their purchase decisions.

Newsletters: CERTAINTY IN AN UNCERTAIN TIME

When you put out a newsletter, you not only enjoy a 42:1 average ROI, but you also own the channel and the all the benefits. There aren’t any algorithms to deal with or external advertiser guidelines to adhere to. With politicisation and cybersecurity threats still rampant on social media (e.g., a brand could lose its entire social media platform access overnight) cultivating a contact list and sending newsletters on one’s own terms lends brands and companies greater control over their marketing and communication efforts. It’s also wholly opt-in - first or zero party data collection when third-party data harvesting is starting to get on the nose (see below.)

Hubspot believes there will be a race for subscribers, with larger independents perhaps being acquired by media companies much like tech startups. However, it’s incumbent on us marketers to earn ongoing loyalty by providing value in each newsletter - value that entices non-subscribers to subscribe, too.

AI Driven Campaigns - Perhaps Not Content

AI slop is everywhere and people absolutely hate it. Though the U.S.S. Enterprise-D is run using a computer several magnitudes more intelligent than what we have today, it still has a full crew complement driving them into the Final Frontier. AI will be crucial in programmatic, on-the-fly advertising placement, even when regulation phases out third-party data and new innovative privacy-preserving ad platforms such as Anonym ensure security, transparency, and privacy for end-users.

Personalisation can generate $20 for each $1 spent. Overdo it, and you’re venturing into the creepy, “is this thing stalking me” territory for many - and people are growing even more uncomfortable with the phenomenon. This was highlighted after Apple was forced to pay US$95 million in a class action after their digital assistant Siri was caught eavesdropping on users.

With all that said, I can’t say Generative AI is completely useless - I generated the image at the top of the page using Midjourney - but after a re-evaluation by the marketplace, Generative AI may settle into a place of productivity co-pilot rather than taking over operations wholesale. This may lead to marketers deploying and scaling more simultaneous, continuous campaigns and not just gaining but implementing changes based on real-time data, as Large Language Models replace the need for coding or query language skills.

Digital PR: Continuous vs Discrete Reputation Management

Having a brand mentioned in a magazine simply doesn’t cut through anymore and thus a true innovation was required to supplant it. Instead of assuming influence like before, we can now quantify it and improve upon it. Digital PR isn’t just a simple add-on of the same old SEO mixed with traditional PR methods. It's all about rethinking how we tell stories for brands or people, tapping into the natural flow of information inherent in digital channels.

Sure, it’s awesome to see your brand in a newspaper, but let’s be real—it doesn’t really do much for your attention and reach in the long run. A link on your web page can boost your trust and authority for the long haul. Back in the day, PR was all about adding one bit of good news on top of another bit and hoping for the best. In the Digital PR era, it’s non-stop and endlessly measurable – and that’s what makes this new approach so appealing to marketers and brands.

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What's In A Name? (ABC Radio Melbourne)

Many brand names are instantly recognisable, like Coca-Cola, Apple, Nintendo, Mercedes and more. But what's in a name? And how do companies actually go about naming things?

I talked to Lisa Leong on ABC Radio Melbourne about car names, branding, and the attachment we have to our cars - bombs and all!

Listen here.

What is the State of Marketing in 2024?

For many marketers and creatives, 2023 was a bit of a “lost year” in terms of growth and productivity.

Speaking anecdotally, many friends and colleagues lamented that the year was leaner than expected, thanks to inflation and the cost of living crisis contributing to lower advertising budgets.

Like Marshall McLuhan says, we speed into the future looking at the rearview mirror. After reviewing Hubspot and Salesforce State of Marketing 2024 reports, here is an overview of what marketing firms are doing in the face of new opportunities - and threats - from artificial intelligence and regulatory sharks circling around third-party data collection and social media such as TikTok.

What is the state of marketing in 2024?

PERSONALISATION IS KING

Sure, content is king - but personalisation is even better. According to Hubspot, “87% of marketers plan to continue or increase their investment in mobile messaging through channels like SMS, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp.” That means constant engagement with customers using these channels, powered by Generative AI chatbots. 96% of marketers say personalization leads to repeat business, and 94% say it increases sales.

Their research also shows that it has an over 120x return on investment, on average. Hubspot also found that 55% of businesses predict that by 2024, most people will turn to chatbots over search engines for answers.

According to a Kibo survey, personalising the entire customer experience led to 3x ROI than forgoing personalisation. Salesforce says that 73% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations. Of course, this will need an end-to-end strategy at the top and bottom of funnels to implement with any measure of success.

Imperator Email INVICTUS

If personalised messaging through various channels is the king, then email is the Imperator Romanum, the God-Emperor to rule over them all. Salesforce says that 84% of marketers send commercial or engagement messages over email, and Hubspot says that it’s tied for second place in terms of greatest ROI overall ($36 for each $1 spent). It accounts for 80% of all outbound marketing messaging, Salesforce says.

One in three marketers reports using email and 87% plan to maintain or increase their investment in 2024 though email marketers will need to adapt to emerging technologies and trends such as including targeted personalisation, personalised images, directions to the nearest retail outlet, social feeds, and social media links.

Scrollable Video - the seo killer?

We live in the age of the short-form video - Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok. According to Hubspot, “marketers are doubling down on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram to address younger audiences going right to social video platforms to search and engage with brands, even more so than search engines.” 50% say they will be using TikTok this year - and hopefully the US Government doesn’t set a dangerous precedent by banning it outright.

Aja Frost, Director of Global Growth at HubSpot says, “use social listening tools to understand which low, medium-, and high-intent questions prospects and customers are asking, then work with the Social Media team to create content answering those questions — or, even more powerfully, enabling brand advocates to answer it for them.”

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want to make $50? Click here! 〰️

C is Not for Cookie - Third-Party Data

As Google seeks to phase-out third-party cookies and data collection, marketers need to walk the privacy versus personalisation tightrope ever more carefully. First-party data collected via opt-in (such as an email list) is the most powerful kind of data - as it directly captures and fuels the personalisation mentioned earlier. That’s not to say a complete view of a customer is a given either: 2021 Gartner® Cross-Functional Customer Data Survey, 14% of organisations achieve a 360-degree view of their customer, and of those 14%, 44% said it’s in a customer data platform.

75% of marketers are still investing in third-party data, 68% say they have managed to fully define their strategy to shift away from gathering this information.

AI is a co-pilot, not autopilot

AI hasn’t led to marketing being automated completely - but it has shown its usefulness in reducing administrative tasks through automation for marketers. Hubspot says marketers are saving three hours per piece of content and two and a half hours per day overall. Interestingly, only 6% say they use Generative AI to write their content for them; 45% says it helps with idea generation and inspiration, and 31% they use it to create outlines. 81% of marketers say that leveraging generative AI enhances their roles.

Salesforce says 68%% of marketers have a fully defined AI strategy, up from 60% in 2021 and 57% in 2020. The top three ways marketing organisations use AI is to automate customer interactions (90%), automate data integration (89%), and personalise the customer journey across channels (88%).

Most marketers say it’s the number one tool for research, with apps like Albus assisting with in-depth and tangential research into various topics. Of course, as AI isn’t perfect, we must always trust but verify.

What’s Next?

With AI speeding up the cycle between marketing and sales, it’s likely that further automation will further blur the distinctions between the two, especially with targeted and opt-in personalisation. Can you argue with an AI generated image of you wearing a dashing pair of sunglasses and is 40% off for your birthday? Only time will tell.

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To get the right strategy for 2024 as well as great content that’s guaranteed to sell more - click below to contact me!

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Being bilingual – developing a soft skill for a growth mindset (Flying Solo)

Imagine you’re at the top of your craft (of course you are, you wouldn’t be a soloist if you weren’t!) You’ve poured thousands of hours into honing your expertise and making a name for yourself as one of the best practitioners of that skill in the country – perhaps the world.

Then, you decide to start from scratch, like a five-year-old entering school for the first time. You fall from the very top of the tree to somewhere among the roots.

That’s what it’s like learning a new language.

Yet it opens – quite literally – a whole entire world of opportunity.

Read the rest at Flying Solo.

How To Use Email Marketing To Increase Black Friday Sales

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, retail sales in November 2022 increased 7.7% year on year, with a total retail trade turnover of $35.9 billion. Whether a sale was at a till or on a checkout page, email marketing is still a strong force to pushing people to buying gifts for themselves - and perhaps for others!

If you have a healthy email marketing list, how can you leverage it to increase your Black Friday or Christmas sales?

Create a Content Calendar

The first step toward a successful holiday sales campaign is creating a content calendar. This doesn’t just have to encompass your potential email marketing offers or newsletters, but tie into your social media and content marketing as a whole.

If you’re focusing on a certain product for a week, your strategy should be to push it through all your channels. Make sure you leave some flexibility for flash sales, opportunities that come your way (discounted lines, for example), and of course, crisis communications if things go wrong.

It’s never too early to push holiday sales - commercial media platform Criteo says that first time buyers will check out an online store 41 days before making a potential purchase on Black Friday.

Segment, Personalise, Repeat

Segmentation and personalisation is the “secret ingredient” to encourage open rate and sales. CampaignMonitor says that personalising subject lines can lead to an 8x improvement in click-throughs and 6x improvement in transaction rates.

Segmenting your email list into active users, lapsed users, etc. can also mean targeting campaigns at these demographics. You can lure lapsed users who have signed up and never purchased with a special discount offer; your most enthusiastic shoppers could be incentivised with buy one, get one free offers.

As I’ve mentioned previously, email marketing should feel as if that email is written just for them and no one else.

Add Value With Every Email

You don’t have to offer a discount with every email you send out. There are plenty of ways to add value to someone’s inbox without sacrificing your bottom line. One great way to add value is offering a “holiday gift guide” - based on the segmentation and personalisation discussed earlier - and hit points that you know will resonate with that audience.

Earn $50 For Every Referral!

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Earn $50 For Every Referral! 〰️

• Gifts for him/her (directed at the opposite)

• Gifts on a budget - using language like “Gifts under $50”

• Gifts for people with certain hobbies or interests

• Gifts for kids or gifts for mum and dad

• Gifts for those looking to splurge

You can also build your email list by offering instant discounts, access to early sales coupons or free shipping just for signing up.

Don’t simply bombard your audience with calls to buy something - planting seeds can prove just as valuable!

Get In The Festive Spirit

As I was writing this blog post, I got an email from MOO, an online business stationery and card shop, that was advertising “Fresh Festive Ideas.” I don’t even own a Christmas tree (much to the chagrin of any woman I know) but I do know many people love Christmas and the holiday season. Using Christmas emojis (in fact, using emojis can dramatically increase open rates) Incorporating that into your messaging can increase engagement and rapport with your brand. You may cringe at a Christmas pun as a subject line, but some people find it charming! (I don’t know who. Don’t ask.)

Use Automation and SMS

If you have a robust email marketing system, you should set up emails for different user scenarios such as abandoned carts, missed emails, and flash sales. Many people (myself included) will sign up for an email list, purposely abandon a cart and see if the store sends me a discount to entice me back! You should have email and copy ready to go for every eventuality, including flash sales, buy one, get one free offers, limited time offers, and so on. Since most of us will be reading these offers on our smartphones, using SMS marketing can also help drive engagement and traffic to your site.

Make Sales Seamless

If you have a special sale targeting a segment of your email list, the sales page should be as seamless as possible. That means links should open to the gifts below $50; or have their subscriber discount already applied in a cart; whatever it takes to make the sale as easy as possible for the buyer.

There’s nothing worse than coming across a vague landing page that’s trying to appeal to everyone yet functions for almost no one.

By following some simple steps, you too can rake in a sales bonanza this Black Friday and Christmas!

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Want help with crafting great copy that’ll cut through all the robotic cookie cutter nonsense? Get your Black Friday sales pumping with I Sell Words!

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Freelancers, do you feel guilty asking for overdue payments? (Flying Solo)

One of the bestselling self-help books of all time is When I Say No, I Feel Guilty by Manuel J. Smith. It helps soothe anxieties around “people pleasing” and encourages healthy boundary setting.

Above all, it teaches people who feel bad saying “no” to people in fear of being disliked.

However, as freelancers, we hear “no” a lot. We pitch clients, call up leads, and all but get ready to pounce on new work until we hear a “thanks but no thanks”, a “not right now”, or the good ol’ “we’ll keep you in mind for future projects.”

How do we feel when we ask for what we’re entitled to, though?

I’m talking of course, about that all-too-persistent dread: overdue invoices.

I know many of us – me included – feel a gut punch of nervousness insisting that delinquent clients make me whole. I am definitely not alone.

Read the rest at Flying Solo.

Should You Cut Back On Marketing During a Recession?

Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and General Motors. Huge companies that have been around for a long time - in the case of GM, over 120 years - but what do they have in common?

They all sprung into life during a recession or depression. They were so successful, the chances of you using at least one of the products those companies make while reading this is almost even money.

With inflation still rampant, interest rates rising, and electricity bills set to soar by at least 25% after the 1st of July, Australia is staring down the barrel of a recession - the standard definition being two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. So what does that mean for us as business owners?

Our first impulse is to cut costs across the board. Where the axe lands, that’s for the almighty to know.

However, planning to cut back needs to be a surgical strike on certain wasteful expenses, not an all out war on your profit and loss statement. Many businesses think that cutting their marketing - usually an outsourced “expense” - is a good idea during a recession. Is it, though?

With SEO copywriting being a vital plank of digital marketing, can we copywriters not only survive, but thrive in unfavourable business cycles thanks to keeping our marketing up too?

Cutting Back on Expenses During a Recession

40% of American businesses surveyed here said they would cut back on their expenses during a recession.

This makes sense from a household budget perspective - but a household is not a business. If you cut a Netflix subscription, it means no more binge watching Stranger Things. If a business excises its Zapier subscription, it means previously automated tasks need someone to complete them manually.

Value in a business isn’t always measured in profit and loss statements to begin with - but it will come back to haunt you eventually in terms of slower cash flow, which can often lead to a death spiral where more cash goes out than comes in. According to ASIC, about 20% of businesses that went insolvent during 2018-2019 was down to poor cash flow management or high cash use.

Though many companies see marketing and communication as a third prosthetic limb they can take on and off at will, it’s essential to maintain that “third arm” for keeping your current customers on side and potentially reaching new clients. According to WordStream, repeat customers are a 65% chance of conversion, while new customers are a 13% chance.

Besides, how cool would it be to have a third arm?

Case Studies in Recession Marketing

Almost every study conducted into marketing during a recession shows one outcome - businesses that maintained or increased their marketing usually did way better than their counterparts who cut back.

Buchen Advertising discovered that companies that cut advertising during the 1949, 1954, 1958 and 1961 recessions fared poorly compared to businesses that did the opposite.

The International Journal of Research in Marketing paper ‘Turning adversity into advantage: Does proactive marketing during a recession pay off?’ noted that “firms that have a proactive marketing response in a recession achieve superior business performance even during the recession.” Companies can shore up their position with some strategic, entrepreneurial marketing.

For example, during the 1990–1991 recession to improve their position, microprocessor giant Intel launched its “Intel Inside” brand-building program, aggressively promoting the brand when there was little advertising competition.

During the 2008 financial crisis, analysis by Kantar Millward Brown found that 60% of the brands that stopped all TV ad spend for six months saw their brand use decrease 24%, and brand image decrease 28%.

McGraw-Hill’s oft-cited study into the marketing habits of 600 B2B companies during the early 1980s recession showed that brands who invested in better marketing and advertising grew 275% more than those that didn’t.

The most recent example is home short-stay rental’s darling AirBnB and how they fared during the pandemic. They cut almost all their ad spend during the COVID-19 pandemic, where many jurisdictions were locked down by their governments in response. Competitor VRBO outspent AirBnB ten to one during that initial 2020 global lockdown period and saw their bookings recover by 61%, while AirBnB’s slumped by 15%.

Though we may want to tighten the belt during a recession, we really ought to be grabbing a megaphone.

Why keeping professional marketing and copywriting is important

If you use an amateur you’ll get an amateur result. Keeping on your professional digital marketing or copywriting specialists means a consistent tone of voice, branding, and audience engagement.

As information analysts and resources, they can help you identify strategies that will return on your investment more than simply “pouring more money” into PPC or social media ads. They’ll be at the forefront of new channels, techniques, and messages that cut through to people during a recession. They can explore new keywords to target or niches to penetrate. Their creativity is a value-add that you can leverage at almost every level of your business.

Outsourcing your marketing - or bookkeeping, or administration - means concentrating more on your core business and delivering more value to your customers, whether you’re a B2B or B2C business. Everyone needs their dollar to stretch further. Figuring out how to do that with what you have is a big boon for business once the recession passes.

Further, copywriters and marketers are natural networkers. They have their ear to the ground when it comes to new trends, grants, and other opportunities that could come your way.

working with your marketing or copywriting team

Though you may be fretting that dreaded phone call to tell your faithful marketing or copywriting firm “your services are no longer required” it’s better you work with us rather than cutting us off altogether.

Though you may have ordered a blog post every week, it’s unwise to just “stop.” Tapering that back to once a fortnight or month means your SEO won’t stand still compared with the competition who is still investing in their digital marketing - if you stop, they can and will overtake you.

You may want to invest in content at scale using AI while your copywriter edits it using their skills in Artificial Intelligence Optimisation. Even if copywriters become “obsolete”, there are still some opportunities left out there for us!

If you stop advertising or content marketing until you “ride out the storm,” playing catch up may end up costing far more.

Oh, and you know we’re a GST deduction, right?

So, should you cut back on marketing during a recession? I think the evidence speaks for itself.

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Get ahead of your competition and invest in award-winning, cut-through copywriting and marketing with I Sell Words!

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Volunteering your expertise: Good for the soul, great for business (Flying Solo)

If you’ve been around the soloist traps long enough to forget the dark times of working for (shudder) an employer!!! – it’s even odds you’ve heard the phrase “givers gain”. That is, doing right by your customers, going the extra mile, and giving away your time to good causes means you gain something far greater in return.

I don’t have to tell you we’re soloists because we know our worth and we’re good – damn good – at what we do. That self-belief and determination to strike out on our own leads to better and brighter things. It’s also the same reason why some of us, when witnessing an injustice, something broken, or someone who needs a lift up, do something about it.

Though we may have heard about the big corporate charities and organisations such as Oxfam, World Vision, or Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), smaller charities and not-for-profits that labour on part-time and run on the ‘smell of an oily rag’ don’t just need money to survive – they need skilled people to help.

That’s where soloists can shine.

Read the article at Flying Solo.

The State of Digital Marketing in 2023

AI, TikTok…what’s next? Digital marketing seems to be so evolved it barely resembles this time last year. In a new report by Hubspot has taken a snapshot of the state of digital marketing in 2023. We all know about the advent of artificial intelligence - but is it all its cracked up to be? Is short-form video still effective? Will budgets increase or decrease in 2023 and 2024?

Drawing on other trends and sources on digital marketing, let’s have a deep dive into the State of Digital Marketing in 2023.

Artificial Intelligence and Automation

According to Hubspot’s report, the average marketer works on five campaigns at a time, and a total of seven campaigns per quarter. Using AI to automate certain processes makes business sense to gain more productivity with less time spent on admin and busywork. Tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and DALL-E are proving to be useful in generating ideas, creating templates, and churning out content at scale. However, the time savings may be offset by the limitations of GPTs which are prone to repetition, “hallucination”, and limited in scope.

First Party Data

Notice how “big data” died suddenly and without warning? With Apple and Google both tackling the problem of terrible user privacy with new features that restrict the tracking of data from third-parties via cookies - and users taking matters into their own hands with AdBlockers and the like - gathering first-party data will be the boon for marketers wishing to personalise and target content to their audiences. 86% of marketers told Hubspot that that data privacy changes have impacted their overall marketing strategy over 2022. Giving users control over their data by opting in to newsletters, shopping accounts, and other data capture methods such as surveys, yields a sense of trust and an opportunity to create value in the often hidden transaction of harvesting user data.

The Rise of the Short Video

Instagram Reels is just YouTube Shorts for people who don’t like TikTok. Whatever the platform may be, short form videos are reigning supreme for marketing in 2023. (Especially the tarted up AliExpress tat hawked by people in sweatpants - but that’s a discussion for another time.) 21% of marketers are going to be investing in short form video, and ad revenue from the format is set to surpass $10 billion (USD) according to Woosuite. Research by Wyzowl shows that 91% of businesses are using video and 73% of consumers prefer to watch a short-form video to learn about a potential purchase. 90% of those businesses that are using video has helped them generate leads.

Mobile Friendly Design

According to SimilarWeb, 57.36% of Australian web traffic is consumed on mobile; the present and the future of the web will be mobile optimised. That means optimised designs, user experiences, and even instant apps will be in-demand among users - and businesses. Though desktop designs may look great, the chances are your customers are scrolling with their thumb, not their index finger.

Sliding into DMs

“Sliding into DMs” or direct messages over social media was once describing a slick romantic gesture - and businesses want the romance between customers to blossom as they use social media to directly interact with customers by answering questions, handling complaints, and general interaction. Hubspot says 30% of younger (Gen Y and Z) have bought products on social media over the past three months, thanks in part to direct message customer service. Using AI chatbots and other automation can help start the conversation with humans taking over when things get too complicated for the machine to handle.

Authentic, Organic SEO

When downturns occur, people look for authentic, organic content. Not paid advertorial but something they can connect with and feel good about reading. Hubspot says that 7% of businesses will cut their ad spend during recessions and bottom-out business cycles - but that doesn’t mean you should skimp on your organic content that improves your SEO. Though marketers may do this as a business-building exercise, B2B and B2C companies should be thinking of investing in SEO content that isn’t engineered to hard sell, but connect with customers while taking home the added benefit of improved Search Engine Results Pages. That means providing real value for their reader - not so much top of mind, but strong of heart.

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Ready to leverage the top marketing methods that will keep your business thriving during 2023? Want the best marketing copy to fuel your videos or SEO? Contact me!

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How To Write A Content Strategy For 2022

In business, you have to have a plan. Because in business, we all have goals to hit. Writing content for your website should also have plan – and a goal. When it comes to content, you should be strategic about it. Having a long-term plan informed by real intelligence which exists to achieve a chosen objective doesn’t just work for armies and business, it works for your marketing. Though some people feel that marketing and content writing is a creative endeavour, the framework that your content sits on must have some kind of strategic direction.

So how do you write a content strategy, even if you’ve never written one before in 2022?

Start With The Broad View – Why Are We Making Content?

A strategy needs a broad goal: do I want to increase page views? Do I want to expand my social media following? Do I want to sell more products? What is the point of my content, and how – in an ideal sense – will my content get me to where my business going?

What Your Content Needs to Achieve

Your content should be linked to a goal – a SMART goal, or a Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Limited goal. This could be summed up in a sentence or a statement: “To become the premier resource on novelty straws within five years.” Then the objectives sit underneath that – “To gain 100,000 page views for my novelty straw content within three months,” or “Rank on the first page of Google for ‘novelty straws’ by the end of 2023.” If you need help setting marketing goals, Neil Patel has some great quotes about goal setting by some leading marketing experts on his site.

Knowing Your Audience

Your content in part will be informed by your audience. Your audience is almost like a persona or character you’re pitching to – 25–34-year-old women who enjoy socialising – and naming that persona “Social Butterfly Jane.” You can determine where they are hanging out online and what other content they consume through analytics.

Using that data, you can establish a voice or tone that is authentically matched to that persona. To that end, you can read similar websites, looking for affinities with similar products or services, or doing boots-on-the-ground market research: your content has to engage your audience specifically lest you risk turning them off. When making content, just like in fiction when fleshing out character, you need to ask: “Would Jane actually enjoy this?”

Creating a Style Guide

A style guide is a must, especially if many hands are involved in the content writing project. This ensures brand consistency across all your media. This includes style such as whether you spell out numbers from one to ten; but also tone and certain words that your brand will use (or never use) as part of meeting the expectations of your audience.

Choosing Your Content Channels

This is the next part you need to weigh up – which apps is your persona or audience spending most of their attention? If you are a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, a visual medium such as Instagram or Facebook works best. If you are a B2B rope company (my favourite analogy ever) then LinkedIn and EDMs would probably make more sense. Don’t just create content and shoehorn it into media and expect people to love it – tailor it for the personas you are trying to target.

Whilst the online/digital world being a dominant force in marketing and advertising, it’s good to be aware of how important print media still is too. A printing service is a good option to oursource when it comes to driving the effectiveness of your print media campaigns. Whether it’s flyering on the street or posting literature through the mail, the right supplier is key to have working with your business.

Setting Up Data Collection

At this stage, you need to set up data collection and analytics. This may be Facebook Business Suite, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other data gathering tools. This will enable you to do keyword research, find when your most traffic is active, and other drilldowns such as already popular content. This will help you re-evaluate your strategy later on.

Intent and Creative Planning

Strategy is a byword for planning in advance to achieve a goal later. At this stage, you should have an overall plan of “attack” for your content strategy – how often you will post, where, and at what time. You should also have themes for your content – brand awareness, product highlights, community stories, insights & tips, “hard sales,” etc. This is dependent on your personas, message, and brand voice. Splitting your posts up into themes help you determine what kind of posts work best.

Generating Ideas

Staring at a blank piece of paper is far more daunting than having a topic to write about. Creativity happens within limitation – and idea generation should have the same sort of parameters. The strategy you’ve created for yourself so far should inform your ideas. What do people need to know? What will be high impact and high performance? If you’re really stuck, you can use idea generation software such as Blog About by Impact – it spits out ideas which you can run with or modify as you see fit.

Set Up a Workflow

If you’re a small business and tight on time, you need to set up a workflow from start to finish – who will come up with the creative? Who will write the copy? Who’s responsibility is it to program or schedule the posts? Make sure you delineate each task and give clear direction over who does what – it prevents “too many cooks” and also saves a lot of time and angst. Using a workflow tracking tool like Teams, Monday, or Asana can also help smooth out any potential hang-ups.

Re-Evaluate Your Content Strategy

After about three months, you need to reconvene your team and look at the data you’ve collected. What’s working? What isn’t? Are the people looking at the content still in the persona we created, or do we need to pivot? Are they clamouring for longer form content, or are they enjoying videos more? A content strategy should be a living, breathing document and process – and continuous improvement means a better return on investment!

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If you need a killer content strategy created by someone who’s done it all before and can do it all again, contact me!

Top Five Copywriting Trends in 2022

The great fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent once remarked that “fashions fade, but style is eternal.” There are certain trends in copywriting and digital marketing that come and go - in the 2010s, it was stuffing as many keywords into a document, the human reader be damned.

Now with refinements in PageRank, Google’s search engine results page algorithm, that’s frowned upon (and rightly so.)

As technology shifts, demand changes with it.

With that in mind, what are the top five copywriting trends that will emerge in 2022?

What are you doing, hovering? You’re ruining my flow.

Voice Search

According to SERPwatch, there are 4.2 billion digital assistants such as Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa in use around the world - and copywriters have to learn to write how they talk (which is how it should be, according to Joel Saltzman.) Tailoring content to natural spoken language search instead of simple keyword search will become more common as voice becomes the dominant way of searching for content. That means “best bakery Melbourne” will be spoken as “OK Google, what’s the best rated bakery in Melbourne?”

AI Assisted Copywriting

Yes, the robots are taking over. AI is assisting us with pretty much everything, copywriting included. TechRadar’s roundup of the best AI copywriting assistants doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll go the way of the Dodo - AI is only as good as the algorithms it contains, the data it’s fed, and the “awareness” it has. AI writers have been used to hilarious effect to write the “perfect” Hallmark Christmas film, The Christmas on Christmas.. AI can prove useful in automating certain tasks (we’ve been using AI spell-checking since WordPerfect) but as for replacing the humble scribe? I think we’re a way off.

Podcast Scriptwriting

Podcasts are everywhere. The Joe Rogan Experience podcast is so popular, it dwarfs the viewership of major news networks. Writing scripts for podcasts, especially story driven podcasts, will increase in demand throughout 2022 and beyond. Also in demand will be researchers and editors - so it might pay to learn how to write clearly and succinctly for broadcast - and warm up those vocal cords!

Online Course Copywriting

Online courses will be how we skill up from now on. The corporate e-learning industry will be worth $50 billion USD by 2026, according to Business Wire. Online sites like Coursera, Brilliant, and Skillshare (hey, I have a course on Skillshare! Get one month free by joining here) make it easy to publish your own courses - though using ClickFunnels and software such as Kajabi, an entrepreneur can keep 100% of the profits and potentially reach millions more people. Knowing how to write for education - and in an easy to understand style - will be a boon.

Long Form Content

400 words? 800 words? 1,000 words? What’s the sweet-spot for the best SEO score? With Google implementing Passage Ranking, which assigns PageRank to sections of a page as well as the entire page, long-form content rich in information will find itself in a renaissance once again - known in the biz as the “skyscraper.” Great for readers like me!

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