Part 1

Hi there.

So my name is Keith Griggs and I just wanted to talk a bit about this lockdown caused by the Coronavirus and how I think we should respond to it. In particular, how we should respond to it in terms of our business.

So I mean obviously it's causing incredible suffering to many thousands of people all over the world and it will almost certainly touch our families and friends as well. So it's a horrific thing.

But some people seem to be just, maybe a bit fearful about it or just shutting down and just using this as a time to just rest and relax and watch Netflix and so on.

But this could go on some time. And I think it's crucial for business that we are very proactive and use this time to our very best advantage. So, that's that sort of thing that I want to talk about today in this video.

So, obviously, I think is vital to stay healthy, stay safe, stay isolated, eat healthily, and go for lots of exercise.

That's definitely one thing. But also I think we can just take a step back, just like at Christmas and in August, the whole world seems to just shut down, which is often quite frustrating to me because I tend to want to plough on and carry on usually in that time.

But it forces me to take a step back and have a real think about things, go back to first principles and work out how everything fits together in my business and how I want to go forward. I think it's very valuable to do that.

Also of course you can also massively improve your digital assets.

You can create new sales funnels. Maybe your website doesn't do a very good job in terms of messaging and so on to take people through different stages from visitors to serve them a different message when they've interacted with your site and content a bit and know you better.

And then eventually they contact you or have some interaction and then you can sell them something cheap or give them something free and then maybe upsell them more expensive later.

So you move them up the value ladder, which is a way of maximising your income from each particular prospect, which is a much, much more profitable way of doing it than trying to acquire new customers all the time and just I'm selling them your standard offering.

Another thing that's really important I think to do is produce a lot of content.

This is content. This is a video, I'm also going to get it transcribed and use it as a blog post, and then also go to extract the audio and use it as a podcast. But the video, I'm going to syndicate it and put on many different places all over the internet, social media website and so on.

Part 2

I'd also like to talk about what I call the four pillars. I've sort of split various avenues into four areas that I think are absolutely crucial to any business.

So the first area is the whole thing about websites and messaging, which I have already touched upon and I will touch upon it a bit more in a minute. There's traffic and retargeting, which is absolutely crucial to get people into your website and to bring them back once they've been there.

Social media is becoming more and more important every day as people spend more and more time on there. And reputation is vital, what people are saying about you online and how you use this to your advantage.

So let's go into these four pillars, these four areas in a bit more depth.

Improving your website messaging.

So taking them on a journey through your funnel, which I've already alluded to, people do need a different message at each stage. A lot of people don't realise that, they just have a website. That's why it's much more ... I think it's very useful to just map out your whole presence on the internet as a sort of funnel and have different messages at different points where people first engage with you and then where people know you better. Take them to a different place in your website and give them a different message. Or it could be on your email list or maybe a Facebook group or something like that.

Also, inject the personality of your brand. In my case, a lot of my brand has actually to do with me, my personality, and that's why I like to use videos a lot to help get that across and help build a sort of connection with the people viewing my content.

Setting up email lists is another great way to improve your messaging too. Just like retargeting it's a great way to sort of capture people and then give you the ability to connect with them further and further into the future as you send them more and more content.

So that was the first pillar. The second pillar is to set up tracking and retargeting pixels, though I hope you've already done this. A lot of people have not.

For example, Google Analytics is extremely useful just to see how people find your site, how long they spend on each page, and their journey from where do they go off to each page. It can give you a lot of feedback about what people like about your site and then that can really help you create more pages, create more contents to give them what they like rather than what they find boring.

Adwords is really good. So if they come to your site, you can ... Maybe you're not advertising on Adwords at the moment, but maybe in three or six month's time you want to retarget who's been to your site so that's why it's good to put your pixel up now. Same thing with Facebook. Same thing with LinkedIn. You can target with LinkedIn ads, people who have been to your site.

And then of course, after capturing their information, we target them, set up ads and follow these people around for the next three to six months. So I have heard it said that 96% of visitors to your website never come back, so when you think about it it's an incredible waste of money to spend a lot of money advertising on SEO to get someone to your site and then never see them again. And the vast majority of people will fall into that category. So that's why it's so important to follow them around. It's also said that we need seven touches with a prospect before they like and trust you enough and know enough about your product and understand the benefits. They're not going to get all that on one time so you need some points of contact before they're ready to actually take out their wallet, take out their credit card and hand over their money.

So in the olden days, this used to be by points of contact by sitting in the emails, speaking to them and so on, but now over the internet we can create a lot more points of contact by retargeting using ads that appear on different sides. So Facebook, for example, giving you different aspects of your message, maybe different angles, different hooks, or maybe you show them testimonials from other people or case studies or something like that.

The third pillar is to just be omnipresent, be all over social media. Obviously one way you can do that is retargeting, which is what I said, but make sure you have social media accounts set up on all the major places where your prospects gather. Almost everyone goes to Facebook. That's a great place to go. Even CEOs and B2B customers spend time on Facebook because a lot of them, for example, have children they want to keep in touch with and so on.

The fourth pillar is reputation. People believe what other people say about you much more than what you say about you, because obviously you are biased and you're always trying to present yourself in the best light. Whereas if someone else says something about you, it's much more believable, especially if they seem like a reputable person, you can see the picture and so on.

It's really important to manage your reviews online because you're wasting your money otherwise on advertising. If you have a bad reputation, bad reviews, no one's going to buy from you. You need to fix your reputation first before you invest in anything else. Managing it is very important. Have a system in place so if someone leaves a review, you are immediately notified and can respond to it. You should respond to both good and bad reviews because that just really helps people feel that you're a good company to do business with.

The second part of this is to build your reputation. Proactively approach customers and clients and ask them to leave reviews for you on various platforms. Thirdly, market this. Once someone has left a good review, you should put it on your website, maybe make an image from it, maybe make a video from it, put it on social media, maybe use it in your advertising, just get the word out there.

They're the four pillars. And as well as that, I think it's really good to just take time out just to network with more people because another saying I've heard is that “your net worth is your network” in that although most of the people we network with, it's maybe a waste of time. We might have a pleasant little conversation with people, but now and again we come across someone who has some skill, some idea, maybe they know who can really help us a lot.

And that's just happened time and time again for me. I just think it's a really good thing to just have lots of conversations with people. Maybe they come to nothing, but maybe they could be something that could just totally change the whole way you do business. I think it is great to interact. I think LinkedIn is brilliant for that. I've met so many amazing people on LinkedIn. Reach out, message people, talk to them and hopefully you'll find some people that can really help your business.

Maybe you can find a people, even if they can't provide you a service that your company uses, maybe they're just great people to bounce ideas off because sometimes one little comment from someone can really open up a whole new world of ideas for you. Don't underestimate this, and I think it's a extremely valuable use of our time. That's the end of  this video. Please subscribe to my content, like my pages. Please get in touch with me and hopefully see you soon. That's all for now. Bye.

In this video I talk about the final two Pillars.

These are social media and reputation.

These days it is vital to be all over social media, as almost certainly that is where your customers spend time every day.

Also you need to nurture a first class online reputation. You need to manage your review listings and your reviews, actively build them up, and also use them in your marketing.

I also talk about the importance of increasing your network and just talking to people who may be of benefit in some way to your business. Worst case scenario is that you waste a few minutes having a chat.

In this video I talk about the first two of what I call the Four Pillars.

I believe these should be the backbone of any business that is active on the internet.

To neglect any of these pillars means leaving a lot of money on the table.

The first pillar is website messaging. Your website should take them on a journey through your sales funnel, move them up the value ladder, and familiarize them with the personality of your brand.

The second pillar is setting up tracking and retargeting pixels on your website. This lets you see exactly what is going on with your site, eg how long they spend on each page. You can use this information to guide you to create content and even products that they like the most.

Then with the retargeting pixel you can stay in touch with the prospect.

I talk about what I believe (from a business point of view) is the best way is to respond to this lockdown.

eg taking a step back to really think about things from first principles, and working on improving our digital assets such as sales funnels, messaging, content production and syndication .

As was widely reported a short time ago with much fanfare, Instagram has started hiding likes as a test to see if doing so will make the app more enjoyable for users.

The test started in Canada but has now been rolled out to six additional countries - Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.

We Bet It’s Here To Stay

Our bet is that this change isn’t temporary. There has been so much written about the negative toll that a focus on likes is having on people’s mental health, that we believe that Instagram has pretty much already made up their mind about this move.

The fact that they rolled it out in seven major markets makes us confident in saying so as well.

And we think this is a good thing for everyone, including your business.

Here’s Why Hiding Likes Is Good For Your Business

Here are three reasons why we think Instagram hiding like counts is good for your business:

You’ll start tracking metrics that matter

Likes are a false currency. You can’t take them to the bank, and you can’t pay your bills with them. So there is no great reason to make them the focus of your Instagram strategy.

But that’s exactly what’s happened.

It’s time to start tracking the metrics that actually matter, like reach, engagement, saves,

You’ll start sharing content that’s more authentic

Admit it, at one point or another, you’ve held back on something you wanted to post because you didn’t think the Instagram community would like it enough.

Everyone that markets on Instagram have done that! But at what cost?

The cost is that Instagram has largely become a popularity contest, and that has driven people and companies to post images that fall within certain ‘rules’ that give them a better chance of success...which means authenticity has gone out the window.

Now that likes are hidden, our bet is that everyone will feel more comfortable posting content that’s authentic.

The foundation of a good business brand is an authentic connection with its audience, so we think this is nothing but good for business!

You’ll create content that gets real results

Now that you’ll be tracking the right metrics for your content, your Social Media Marketing Manager will now be held accountable to results beyond just likes and follower growth.

That means your content strategy will shift to maximize those metrics and actually drive real business results.

How many visitors are making it to your website? Opting into email lists? Buying products?

Our best is that real business results like these will become the expectation of businesses using Instagram, and the real value of the platform as a marketing tool will become abundantly clear.

Like It Or Not...

Change is coming to Instagram, and we think it’s a good thing! Expect that likes will be hidden in your market within the next six months, and start preparing your strategy now.

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Meta: Instagram is now hiding likes and it is actually good for your business. Wondering why? Read on to know the reasons why is it such a great change for businesses.

Keywords: instagram, instagram likes, instagram business

If you are doing Facebook ads you need to know about this important change coming soon ….

Facebook has announced that as of September, a relatively new and controversial feature on their advertising platform called Campaign Budget Optimization will become the mandatory default. Not the optional setting that it is now.

You can expect that starting in September when you create your new campaigns, they will use Campaign Budget Optimization as the default whether you like it or not! You can also expect that any existing campaigns will be migrated to Campaign Budget Optimization as well.

What that means for you is that it’s time to prepare!

What is Campaign Budget Optimization?

First, let’s make sure that we know what it is we’re dealing with. Here’s what Facebook has to say on the matter:

“Campaign budget optimization is a way of optimizing the distribution of a campaign budget across your campaign's ad sets. This means we automatically and continuously find the best active opportunities for results across your ad sets and distributes your campaign budget in real time to get those results.”

How Does Campaign Budget Optimization Work?

It’s still very early in this rollout, and the advertising community is still learning exactly how it’s going to work. But here’s the general idea:

“Using campaign budget optimization, advertisers can set one central campaign budget to optimize across ad sets by distributing budget to the top performing ad sets in real time. Campaign budget optimization is available for any campaign objective and is best suited for campaigns with multiple ad sets.”

“With campaign budget optimization, advertisers allow Facebook to distribute their budget across ad sets to get the best results for their campaign.”

Translation: If you have multiple ad sets running in a campaign, Facebook is going to spend your money the way they see fit!

Here’s what it will look like:

That sounds scary, doesn’t it?

Keep reading...it’s not all bad:

“In addition to setting a daily or lifetime campaign budget, businesses can set bid caps and spend limits for each ad set.”

Translation: You still actually have quite a bit of control over how Facebook spends your money, but you have to be a little more thoughtful about how you set things up.

The Benefits of Campaign Budget Optimization

So...why are they doing it then?

Here’s what Facebook as to say.

“By distributing more of a budget to the highest performing ad sets, advertisers can maximize the total value of their campaign. Budget optimization works in real time to determine the most effective use of a business' ad dollars to help lower cost per result and increase return on ad spend.”

“Campaign budget optimization also saves advertisers time by eliminating the need to manually shift budgets between ad sets.”

Translation: We have much better data about our ad system than you do...so let us do the heavy lifting using Artificial Intelligence!

It’s Coming...Here’s What To Do.

This change is happening whether you like it or not, so the best thing you can do at this point is to accept it and get prepared. Here are our tips to help:

Tip #1: Test

You can start using Campaign Budget Optimization on your campaigns right now, so you might as well get some experience with it before it becomes mandatory. Set aside a small test budget and start running experiments.

Tip #2: Use the ‘minimum budget per ad set’ setting

This is an optional setting that allows you to ensure that a particular Ad Set gets at least a certain amount of dollars spent on it. This is your way of making sure that Facebook doesn’t completely turn off traffic to a particular Ad Set.

It’s Time!

Campaign Budget Optimization will be a requirement very soon - it’s time to start preparing and testing so you’re ready!

Tip #3: More budget per campaign

Since your budget is now being split across all Ad Sets in your campaign, you need to make sure you are upping your budget.

Tip #4: Adapt and overcome!

Campaign Budget Optimization is new for everyone. The strategies for the optimization of this new setting are still theoretical, and you will make mistakes. That’s ok! Adapt and overcome! Continue to monitor your campaigns, learn, and make adjustments.

Here’s what it means for your business

You no doubt heard over the years that you should build your list and that usually refers to building an email list.

This is, of course, an incredibly effective way of advertising because you are advertising to people that you know you. You already have some sort of relationship with the people you are advertising to.

That's very similar to being able to send an email to somebody that is already subscribed to your list because they have some sort of relationship with you.

How to build an Audience

Here's how to build audiences.

Every ad network, or social media platform, comes with what's called a pixel. A PIXEL is a small piece of code that you can put on your website that will then track any time a visitor comes to your website and notify the advertising networks that that's somebody that you can advertise to again.

What you want to do is get pixels from all the various social platforms and ad networks, add them to every page of your site, start collecting people and building those audiences by their interest in topics, products, and actions taken.

Pixels give you the ability to get enough information about where that person has visited on your site to know things like whether or not they're interested in a particular topic of a blog post, or if they viewed a particular category of product on your site, or they've watched a certain video.

You can get good detail from that pixel to give you more targeted advertising audiences.

Finally, you can promote your content and your offers to those audiences based on the audiences that they're in.

Final Thoughts

Again to recap, audiences are the new list.

You, of course, still want to build your email list. That's a very powerful marketing tool, but audiences are starting to prove to be just as effective, if not more effective.

Because you are not reaching somebody in their very, very crowded in box. You can instead reach them with a variety of content formats in the environments that they're already spending time on, namely the social media platforms and websites that they visit.

Build your audiences, get started today.

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Meta Description: Building your audience is just as important as building your business. In fact, it is one of the main pillars of your business. Read on and learn the importance of audience listing.

Keywords: audience, list, building your audience, building your business, audience listing