The future of marketing your business

Hello, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. I'm so happy to be here with Tyler Cook, who's from hypermedia. He is a brilliant email marketer and just marketer extraordinary. He's my go to person whenever I have a question and he's so generous with his knowledge. And he's here tonight to talk to us about some changes that are coming up for anyone who does email in their work. Like, I think that's pretty general. Right. Tyler.

If you're, if you're marketing, it's gonna affect you.

Right? And you know, specifically those of us who handle our own email marketing because we're a small shop and we can't hire a marketing team.

Yep, yep.

So, and just excuse me, I. We have a rainstorm going on here and it may turn into a thunder and lightning storm. So if you see that going on, there's nothing to worry about. Nothing's on fire. It's just Cape Cod in the summer. But anyway, and for those of you in the audience who are watching this, if you have any questions, I always love for this to be interactive and I think it'd be really useful if you do have any questions for Tyler because we're holding him hostage for about 20 to 30 minutes here. If you have any questions, just pop them in the chat and I'll make sure that he sees them. But Tyler, tell us what is going to be changing?

Yeah, so the exciting thing, as a consumer, it's super awesome. Right now Apple is trying to become the platform for privacy. Right. And they've started making a lot of changes to reflect that. So as a consumer, yay. As a marketer, it's not quite as exciting. So there, there are really two big changes actually.

Wait, can we just pause for a second? So as a consumer, I'm just so curious, like, what kinds of things? If you know, like what are they trying to protect us from?

Yeah. So there's always kind of been a bit of a feud between Mr. Tim Cook and in Zuckerberg. They don't like each other very much and I'm not 100% sure why. And so just this year, Apple decided that they're not sharing any more data with Facebook and that is obviously disrupting Facebook's advertising platform. So that's one of the things that Apple is really trying to do is they're trying to protect user data from third party software and social media.

Right. So for those of us who are like trying to hint for our loved ones around Christmas or our Birthdays that, like, we want an Xbox or we really want, like a diamond necklace and we talk about it to their phones. That trick is no longer going to work.

You're saying it's not going to work anymore?

At least if they have an Apple. If they have an Apple. It won't work if they have an Android phone. Okay, cool. So that's what it means for the consumer. What does it mean on the other side?

So for the marketing side, it means less data. And the reason why it's concerning more specifically for smart small businesses is oftentimes you can't afford, you know, 100, 200, $300 acquisition costs. So you can't really pay that much to acquire a customer because you're not.

Charging enough for your Facebook ads. You'd be spending 200, $300 per person who potentially gets on your list at the end.

Yes. Now it's not that bad. Right? Now it's not that bad.

Right.

The overall acquisition cost will get that expensive. Yes. So less data, less targeting that we can use on Facebook and Instagram. And then moving forward, so the iOS update that's going to be happening in September, iOS 15, anybody using the Apple Mail app. So instead of logging into, like, Gmail, you've connected Gmail to the Apple Mail. Right. They are going to be reporting 100% open rates, which is exciting. But that's regardless of whether or not you've actually opened the email.

Right.

Your email marketing stats will kind of get skewed a bit. So just less data, less clear data to work with, which obviously makes marketing a bit harder.

Right, right. And for those of you who aren't tracking these metrics, I highly recommend tracking them. There are a lot of email marketing platforms that you can use. For mailchimp Campaign Monitor, I use Simplero. There's also Keeper infusionsoft. It just helps you get an idea if your messaging is actually working in your emails. Oh, hi, Rick, Welcome. Rick and I have been in this conference together all day and actually we're supposed to be in a clubhouse later this evening together. But hi. So if you're not tracking this stuff, it's super important, but, you know, if you're not tracking it, track it now because as this change happens and it's going to be harder for you to read the data to see, oh, was that subject line right? Or was that email good or whatever.

Yep. Yeah. And honestly, we're kind of seeing the landscape of marketing change specifically for small businesses, where even myself, oftentimes I jumped straight to paid Advertising to prove out offers to prove out messaging and positioning and really see what's working in the, in the marketplace. And that's just not going to be quite as effective moving forward. You're going to have to spend more time creating a lot of content. So blog posts, videos, podcasts. Right. And then sharing that as wide as possible and then getting people to willingly give you their email so you can start building a community.

Yeah, yeah. So when we were talking previously, you were saying SEO is going to be super critical for people to start, start building out on their websites if they haven't already.

Yeah. So, and kind of where that comes from is if you're using an iOS device and you're opting out of essentially third party tracking, you're essentially a ghost online. Right. And so all of a sudden.

It's my ghost impression, it's pretty good.

That's my best. And so really you gotta think about, Apple is trying to give the choice back to the consumer. And so you need to make it as easy as possible to find you and then to choose you. And so SEO is gonna be really important on websites moving forward because you're not gonna be able to retarget people where you used to say, hey, Katie visited my website. I now want to show her this ad. You're not gonna be able to do that. So you're gonna have to optimize for being full findable.

Right?

Yep.

Okay, so everyone on here should be, if they don't have a blog, they need to be starting that with SEO optimization. If they don't have a podcast, that's another way to do it. What was the other thing that you mentioned?

Yeah, well, so my, my recommendation for content is get really comfortable with video. Mostly repurpose video into basically every other piece of content out there. Right. So, so you do your video, you've got your video and transcriptions, you can pull just the audio out, then you have your podcast, you can cut the video into smaller segments, and now you have your video that you can post on social media. And then you can even expand on those little social media video posts with an additional text, like on LinkedIn and Twitter and things like that. I really recommend getting good at video. If you don't want to get started on video, maybe you're a little bit shy, maybe you don't like it, then the next best thing is to start a podcast.

Right. Okay, awesome. And then David Fryman here, how do you recommend tracking these data points? And David Tyler, do you know what data points he's speaking to specifically or do we need more information from him?

More information would be awesome. For those data points, I can make a couple of recommendations right off of the bat though, and then I'll get more specific as David repeated applies. So the first thing is you're going to want to actually make sure that Google Analytics is installed on your website. It's actually fairly easy to install wix Squarespace. There's actually step by step instructions on how to do it. They've made it like super, super easy. WordPress, it's still super easy, but that will give you some insights into who's visiting your website, what words did they use to search out your website, what PA are they going to and things like that. So that's like number one. The next thing that you're going to need to do is start using what's called a UTM parameter. I don't know if tell us what.

A UTM parameter is because I'm not even sure what that is.

It's kind of a nebulous concept, to be honest. So my first question that I want everybody to think about, has anybody here ever cleaned clicked on a link and when you look at the URL, it's like forever long?

Oh, yeah, yeah, I've definitely seen that.

And you're like, something's up with this URL. If you see the letters utm. It's how advertisers pass information directly through a URL. So for example, Katie, you're using Simplero. You can use parameters inside of email inside of your emails, and there's three core parts of your UTM parameter. So let's say that we wanted to track how many people are visiting your website from any email you're sending out in Simplero. Right. What we would do is we would append the UTM parameter so the URL would end up looking like, you know. Www.katimcmanus.com? utm source is that tells you, that tells Google Analytics that this link came from a Simplero email. Then you have UTM medium and typically I'll do email there. That way you can track how many are from emails. And then the last piece that's critical is what's called your campaign. And really I just say this is like the purpose of the email. So that could be your subject line. If it's a specific offer, you could have it be the offer.

So can I just, Can I play with a metaphor and see if I'm getting this? So it's like if I wanted to call President Biden all I know because I watch West Wing. It's my favorite show. All calls in and out of the White House are recorded. So if I call President Biden and I'm like, hey Joe, what's up? Like, how's it going? And I'm going to pass through a few secretaries first and those secretaries are going to document what I've done and how long the phone call is and all that stuff.

Yep, pretty much the UTM frame are.

Both Google Analytics and they're also my email marketing.

Correct. Okay, awesome. You're just passing information and Google Analytics can track it. So that's, that's one thing that you'll want to do. And then David, it looks like asks.

I was referring to your comments about email marketing, but really I don't know what I'm talking about. So all of this is all. I love the honesty, David. What I mean about email marketing is like if you do have a newsletter and you're sent sending people a regular email, it's really good to know, like does 20% of them open? Do 30% of them open? How many people are actually clicking the link that you share with them? And if you have an email marketing system that tracks that stuff, it's just great for you to know to see what copy is working well. But yeah, great question. I'm glad this is helpful and this is valuable to everyone.

One point to be clear with is this update is only affecting the Apple Mail app. Right. So if somebody's still using Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and they're logging directly into those things, you're still going to see the open rates for those email providers.

Yeah. So like if you're using, I don't know if everyone can see my screen. If you're using this app right here, it's a no go. But if you're using this app and it's all mirrored so I can't see using this app right there, then it's fine.

Yep. And so the big three that I typically will look at are your open rates, your click rate and then your click through rate. Right. Moving forward, since we won't have as clear of data around open rates, you're really going to have to optimize around that click through rate. And so you're going to be measuring, okay, out of all of the opens, how many people actually click through and how many people saw the page or the link that I wanted them to see.

Right.

So still, still, still ab test your, your subject lines and things like that because you could see that one of those has a Higher click through rate because more people opened it. But like I said, it's just, it's, it's just a little bit less data that you have to work with and then make educated decisions around, you know.

Okay, awesome. Okay, so back to URL or not. UBM.

UTM.

UTM. UTM. An acronym, A new acronym. Yeah, it's not like there aren't too many of those or anything.

Not enough of them. And to be honest, I don't even know what UTM stands for.

So I know at some point I'm gonna mix it up and say uti. What? That's too much information.

I want to make sure we're passing UTIs through the Internet because we get better talking. That's how it works, right?

Totally. Yeah, absolutely. It's just gonna hurt when you pee, that's all. I was like potentially gonna like use this video and download it, maybe use it for my clients. I don't know if I'm gonna do that anymore. Although they're pretty used to me making jokes like that, so who knows? But anyway.

Yeah, bleep it out so that nobody knows what we're actually talking about.

Okay, so utms.

Yep.

Okay.

Yeah. And again, so, so going back to why you'll want to use UTMS is if you're thinking, if you're thinking about your marketing strategy, think about like a bike wheel. Your website is going to be the central hub. So all of your social media posts go back to your website. Your blog posts, obviously they're on your website, but they link back to your website videos. All of your outside marketing stuff, the partnerships that you develop, things like that, you should always include that link back to your website. And so that's why it's important to have Google Analytics installed on there so you can track what the majority of people are doing, how long they're staying on your website, what pages are they viewing, and then having your website optimized for conversions. And so one of the other things that I've been encouraging all my clients to do is optimize your website for two things. One, to capture the email. So have, you know, like your lead magnet type thing, your valuable offer, ethical bribe, whatever you want to call it, right? And have that be the secondary call to action. And then your primary call to action everywhere on your website is what I like to call a buying intent call to action. So that means, you know, for coaches and stuff, it's schedule a consultation, get an audit, you know, those types of things. Chat with me here because those people that are taking action on that are clearly showing higher buying intent than somebody just downloading the. The ebook or the lead magnet happens. So make sure that you have that buying intent. Call to action everywhere. Super bold, kind of in your face, if you will, because you're really trying to get as many people to that, that call to action as possible. Possible.

Right, right. Awesome. So, okay, so if email marketing isn't going to be as effective going forward, what are some other things that people can do? I. I've heard you and I are talking about different platforms we can move to, to have people be more engaged. What, what things are you hearing are effective?

Yeah, great, Great question. So there's a couple of places that I can recommend. So the first thing that should, well, I guess should be Easy is kind of a relative term. Right? Easy. There's a couple of other communication channels that you can, that you can go to. So the first is you can check out things like you and I chatted about discord, we've got Patreon, we've got mighty networks. All of those things allow you to build basically your own community within the platform. Platform. Right. And your reach is going to be better than Facebook groups. Facebook groups organic reach has started to plummet and so you kind of just move them off and you move them to that other platform where you have a bit more control. The other options that you have is you can use a tool that I am absolutely loving. It's called manychat. It allows for Facebook messenger automation. It's almost like email marketing automation, but it's for like Facebook messengers messages and Instagram dms.

Okay.

And so as people opt in for your stuff and as they ask for more information, just send them a simple request to connect with you on Facebook Messenger. All they have to do is send a message to your business on Facebook and then you're connected and that way you have that avenue. And the open rates there are insanely high. It's like 80 to 90% pretty, pretty typical open rate. So. And then the last thing too is grab people's phone numbers. Right. So then you can, there's a, there's a couple of SMS marketing tools out there that you can use and start grabbing people's phone numbers. Just be careful with the sms. It's more of a intimate channel, if you will.

Right, right. And, and I know, I know a lot of people who are my friends and are connected with me know I am like anti, anti anything cold messaging. But if someone has just downloaded your thing and you just send them a quick message like, hey, I Saw you downloaded my thing. What? You know, what do you think? Was it helpful? You know, here's a little bonus. I don't. I haven't seen anyone be pissed off at that.

Right, Right.

You've just entered into a relationship with me in some way, shape, or form. It's kind of cool that I'm following up.

Yeah. And honestly, that's when you're most excited too. Right. Like, you checked out somebody's website, you were interested enough because you saw their lead magnet, you're interested in what it has to offer. And so typically, people don't mind that sort of transactional message. Hey, let me check in. What'd you think?

Yes. And. Hi, Kimberly. Welcome. Awesome. So there's. So basically, it's not hopeless. Things are changing, but things always change.

Yep.

And, yeah, the cool thing about you marketing people is that you're super adaptable.

Yeah. Well, I hope so.

I mean, I know you are. Well, there's always a way. There's always a way to work around things. There's always a way to, like, you know, continue the conversation. And let's just look at how many new social media platforms have come out and become popular in this last year alone. I mean, TikTok and Clubhouse.

Right, Right. And. And, you know, when you think about marketing, like, marketing has been around forever. Right. We used it like, if you think about Mad Men. Right. Like, they didn't have all of the data now. And, like, marketers have been speaking spoon fed for the last, you know, 10 years, and then everybody's freaking out because, you know, all of a sudden that's taken away. It's not going anywhere. It's just figuring out how to adjust so the impact is as minimal as possible. Right, Right.

And I want to say hi to Sean. Good evening to you and Mad Men. What a great call out. I mean, I remember that one episode where they have a dinner party at the Drapers.

Yep.

And, like, the groundbreaking thing they did that that week was they had the beer company put beer on the. On the. On the end of the aisle.

Yep.

Betty Draper bought it, and they thought it was a joke. And she's like, no, I. It was presented really well.

Yep, yep. Mind's blown.

It's like, we may be going back to the day. We're like, you just set up shop as a coach, like, at the end of the aisle at Whole Foods, please. No, I don't want to do that.

Have your cooler ready.

Have a beer, and we'll chat. And. Hi, Steve Foley. Welcome. Any final words of wisdom? I know this has been jam packed full of information for our audience. Thank you so much for all of it. Anything else that can really move the needle for someone who's growing their business?

Yeah, you know, I, I have recently gone on a crusade, if you will, against avatars or ideal customer Personas because I've recently onboarded a few clients that are super proud of theirs. And as a, as a marketer, I look at it and I'm like, man, that has zero useful information on there for me. Okay, Now I understand a little bit more about demographic information. So my parting word of wisdom for you is when you're thinking about your ideal customer Persona and how to attract more of them to you, one of the most important places that you should spend time figuring out is where are they giving their attention? It will make your job in attracting the right people to you. Now, one caveat, I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't know your dream buyer intimately. Know them, know what they look like. Right. Know what they sound like, definitely do that. But also focus on where, where are their eyeballs? Where, what do they think about? Where do they spend time? Online forums, social media? Do they spend a lot of time on Hulu? Hulu just came out with a self serve ad advertising option. Could you run an advertising fairly cheap on Hulu because you know, your audience spends an hour at night decompressing watching shows on Hulu.

Right. And I love, I love where you're pointing because this is so easy. You could go to your existing clients and just ask them, like, what do you give your attention to? What books do you read, what podcasts do you listen to, what shows do you watch? And it just helps me, you know, grow my business. Every client I know, every client of mine I know would be more than willing to help with that 100%.

And then how that ties into our existing conversation is, yes, avatar marketing. I don't like it either. Very effective. But as we move forward and as the advertising game becomes less effective for small businesses, you need to get your content in front of the right people. And the easiest way to do that is put it in front of their eyes where they're already spending time. So if they're already spending time at the end of aisles looking at beer, go stand there.

My clients are personally a little more wine, but yeah, sure. Anyway, Tyler, this has been amazing and so helpful to me and I know to the audience, so thank you so much for joining me. If people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way the.

Best way is you can kind of two ways actually. So my email, go ahead and go to my website. It's hypermediamarketing.net I know it's super long. I should should have gotten a shorter URL marketing.net and send me a message there. I've got my phone number. Feel free to text me there or send me an email if you have any questions. I also have a unique Marco Polo link on my website too. So if you're on Marco Polo you can send me a Marco Polo and I will definitely engage with you that way. It's an awesome to communicate with. So send me a Marco if you like that option.

Okay. Awesome. Everyone, you heard it here first. Best wishes in your email marketing features and if you have any questions, Tyler is my go to guy and he can be yours too. Anyway, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. This is Tyler Cook from Hypermedia. Thank you for joining us this evening. I'm going to be going live every other day this week so so I hope to see you there. All right, have a good night everyone.

Bye.