If you offer complex services, consider making a shadow brand to use as a lead magnet
We commonly work with organisations that offer complex products and services that find it hard to concisely articulate the benefits without overdoing it. So sometimes, we advise a strategy of creating a shadow brand to use as a lead magnet for people that might have an interest and need for the service or product, so that there is space to detail more about what it actually is.
Stop neglecting your website to focus on social media marketing
A common problem we see in businesses that are starting to grow past the point of being a start-up (referred to as the scale-up phase), is the same marketing tactics that helped them grow from just an idea into an actual business, is using the same growth tactics.
Recently released data suggests global internet users are now numbered at 4.95 billion, compared to the 4.74 billion social media users. Google alone serves more than 40,000 search queries every second on an average day, that’s over 3.5 billion searches per day – something that social media cannot measure up against.
Tighter internet privacy will force marketers into exploring new outreach ideas, whether your culture is ready to or not.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and the Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) in the UK, have limited the customer data available to companies to understand who might be interested in their products or services. As consumers, we’re reclaiming our right to explore silently, without being bothered by irrelevant noise from loud, rubbish advertisers.
When you combine these changes in law with Apple positioning itself as ‘privacy brand’ in its recent updates and changes to further strengthen its privacy protections, the success of marketing campaigns is getting harder and harder for brands to measure. And will only continue to do so.
How are you attracting leads to your business in 2023?
The pandemic has shown us that focussing your profile-raising activities purely on physical and word-of-mouth interactions is a critical vulnerability for businesses.
It limits you to people in your geographical area of the ad placement, but also that your target customer happens to see it and takes a positive perspective of your organisation afterwards. It doesn’t allow for engagement outside of the local area, and we suspect, that it won’t lead to organic marketing (that is people talking about it) unless it really is remarkable.