Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
Esther
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowers business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. Welcome back to another episode of The Monday Morning Marketing podcast. Today we're joined by Hanna McDonnell, Marketing Expert of Hanna McDonnell Marketing, and we're talking about the importance of having a marketing strategy. Welcome, Hanna.
Hanna
Thank you. I can't believe I'm here. It feels like I'm among famous people being on the Monday Morning Marketing podcast.
Esther
Well, I have to say, we finally got a time that we can all sit down together because this woman is in high demand, people, high demand. So for those that don't know who Hanna McDonnell is of Hanna McDonnell marketing, give them a little short, brief background.
Hanna
Okay, so Hanna McDonnell Marketing, I work as an outsource marketing expert with small and medium-sized businesses. I'm originally from Finland. I have a background of multiple different industries and sectors working in big corporates to family-run businesses to small businesses, and my passion is marketing. I look at all the social media channels, try to figure out how they all work, try to figure out how people work, and looking at the psychology of it all.
Melanie
Strategy, what made you go into this particular field? I have to ask, Hanna.
Hanna
Of course, you do. I'm so glad you asked that. I find that when I started my business and I was talking to a lot of the small companies and business owners, they wanted me to look at social media or they wanted me to look at their websites and things like that. But the red thread, why customers are coming to buy from them was missing. They had nothing to pinpoint me on who the ideal customer was, what's driving their marketing, and how their marketing fits in with their current business goals. That's why I started looking more and more into the whole strategy area. I do have that business strategy mindset anyway, so it was an easy, natural progression to get into the strategy.
Esther
Is it a case of which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Or is it a case of strategy, strategy, strategy before you do anything else?
Hanna
Okay. Preferably you would start with the marketing strategy, and I am well aware that not all businesses are created equal. When you're looking at your small business marketing, it genuinely does come down to you're starting where it's easier for you to cross the barrier to go in to start your marketing journey. But once you've started that journey, you do have to start thinking about being strategic about your steps. If you want to scale and if you want to grow, that's where that strategy process kicks in. Because, yes, you could be highly active on social media. Yes, you could be highly active on your website. You could start with those pieces of the puzzle, but eventually you're going to have to put the customer at the centre of all of it and make sure that your strategy is built with it.
Melanie
As you know, Hanna, as an avid listener every single week, and I'm not even being-.
Esther
Don't put her on the spot here.
Melanie
We know she does. But as an avid listener, you know that our target audience would be small to medium-sized businesses with a few brands who are actually starting to embrace our podcast. We noticed we're getting more follows on relevant platforms now from brands. So tell us, Hannah, where do we start with a marketing strategy? And what resources do we need to pull from in order to create one?
Hanna
Excellent question. What I tend to start with when I talk to my clients is I ask, do they actually know who their ideal customer is? I start with the customer. Part of the journey for all companies, yes, you can start with the why and why the business is in existence. You can start with the positioning, things like that. But if you don't know who your business is serving, you're not going to be able to build your marketing for that business either. I always start with the customer, and then it's easier to go on from there to look at the pain-points that that business is solving for the customer. It's easier to look at where that customer is hanging out, be it digitally or offline. It's easier to start that journey, especially for a small business. Larger organisations and corporates, they tend to have this whole positioning mindset. Where do we want to be against our competitors? But I still believe everything starts with the customer. All journeys should start with the customer.
Esther
Okay, but I'm going to throw in the little devil's advocate here. You said not even five minutes ago because the podcast is not five minutes long yet, that strategy should be first. But if you're just starting your business, how do you know who your customers are?
Hanna
Well, excellent question. I'm working with a total start-up at the moment. What we started with them is that we were looking at what product they're launching, what is it that they're aiming to get out there. We're trying to work with them through that conversation to see who the ideal customer is, using benchmarking, using who they've looked at their customers or their competitors and who those are, and looked at their customers and trying to map it out that way. No, they don't necessarily have a thought process around their ideal customer yet, but they do have a thought process around who they would want their ideal customer to be with. When you're a more established business and you've thought about that process, you're going to start taking in who you've worked with, who you didn't like working with more to the point, and you're going to take into consideration some of the metrics that are built around, say, your social media or in your CRM system, and you're going to be able to get a more holistic approach to building that persona. But if you don't have any of that detail, who do you want to ideally work with? And how are your competitors that you've been able to establish? What customer are they dealing with? And it's going to be easier to start that personal journey with that.
Esther
Good answer.
Melanie
We've talked about the customer avatar being first as part and parcel of the marketing strategy. But now can you tell us what other areas that need to be investigated? And like I said earlier on, what resources? Are we looking at Google Analytics? Do we need to get through surveys? What resources do our listeners need to access to build their own marketing strategy?
Hanna
To me, all of those that you just mentioned there, are the tactics. How is your marketing going to work for you? When it comes to strategy, some of the things that I would first be looking at before I go into any of that level of detail is I would take a look at the competitor analysis. How do you stand out against your competitors? What's your unique selling point? How are you going to get that key messaging across? What are the pain-points that you're solving? Because that's going to be key when you're going to go into looking at your social media, looking into your Google Analytics, looking into any of that building that marketing that's going to work in getting that person to become your customer. From a resourcing point of view, yes, you can put budget towards it, but it's sometimes something simple as post-it notes can work really, really well. Take a couple of post-it notes, look at what questions you're going to be asked or have been asked by your clients. Is that something you're solving for them? That becomes the unique selling point because you're solving that problem. Then you're thinking about, Well, I've got customer X, they're always talking about my Instagram account. So that's something that maybe you want to put more into your advertising spend onto Instagram because you already know that your messaging and your clients are coming through Instagram. So beef that up a bit. You don't have to be everywhere. Just focus on the things that are working for you and build it up from there. When you talk about resourcing, don't forget your own time has to be accounted for that as well.
Melanie
Because we know each other's time is amazingly short and my Wi-Fi is awful, I'm going to have to step out and leave you guys to continue because my signal is just crap. But Hanna will be catching up very soon.
Esther
And I'm still here, so don't go anywhere, guys.
Melanie
Yeah, you stay there, guys. They're going to continue.
Esther
We're going to continue for another couple of minutes because this is such a fascinating topic that we could talk for hours about this, and we have previously, Hannah and I have talked for a long time about marketing strategy and about the do's and don'ts and the whys and wherefores. Marketing strategy costs money, right Hanna?
Hanna
Yes. If you want to get an expert to do it, yes, it does cost money, and you're going to put an investment into it. However, all marketing strategies that you either, whether you build it yourself, which the cost is going to be time and time is money, or if you get an expert to do it for you, there is going to be a trade off and you're going to get money back because that marketing should then start working for you, and it should be allowing you to focus your time in actually making money out of the business and allowing that marketing expert to highlight where your low hanging fruit, for example, are in your marketing. So how do you get those tactics to work for you in the easiest way possible and taking the hassle out of your marketing, making it simple for you?
Esther
Yeah, because that's one thing that we've talked about many, many times in the podcast is don't spread yourself too thin, and you mentioned it yourself, you don't have to be everywhere. But having the strategy done before you start can save you the time and effort of spending maybe on ads, maybe time itself on these different platforms that your audience isn't actually on. So at the end of the day, yes, like you say, more than an expense, it's an investment. And it's something that obviously I'm going to throw this out here too, it will change over time, just like your audience might change overtime, your strategy should grow with your audience, right?
Hanna
Absolutely. I'll use myself as an example here. When I started my business, I was looking for a lot of social media customers, and I was managing social media accounts. And as my company has grown and as I've developed more in my business, I've realised that an actual fact, the social media customers gave me a certain type of an experience, and they're no longer part of necessarily of that main customer persona. They might be somebody that I upsell my services to, but they're not the main person that I want. Therefore, my marketing strategy for my business has grown and has changed. As your business goals change and develop, your marketing strategy and your marketing goals should change and develop with that business goal that you set up and business strategy that you set up for your business.
Esther
Yeah. Like I said, your audience can also not even change, but they grow your audience, depending on what you're selling, obviously, but say you're selling baby grows, your audience will be different each and every year. They'll be a different age, they'll be a different location, they'll be in a different stage of their lives. So you might not get the same return customers, obviously trends change over the years as well. So should people thinking of marketing trends, should people be trying to keep up with marketing trends or jump on them straight away or wait and hold back and strategize it like for months before? What's a happy medium is what I'm getting at.
Hanna
How long is a piece of string? And the reason why I'm saying that obviously is it totally depends in the business that you're at. Yes, there are fantastic hashtags like, TikTok made me buy it. If there's a service or product out there that is at the top of people's minds or the front of people's right now, you do need to jump on that trend so that they come and buy it off you. But if it's something like a business or service that it will take people a long time to think whether they're going to purchase that particular product or service, then it may not be that you jump on the trends because the trend isn't going to convert. At the end of the day, you have to think about the lifetime value of the client. You mentioned baby grows. Well, in actual fact, the baby is not your customer. It's either the parent or the grandparent buying that baby grow. In actual fact, you might have the best, say, bamboo baby grows. You may not want to go and evolve out of those baby grows to something else. It might be that then you're just constantly targeting maybe that previous customer has a sister that might want to have it or is going through the process of a baby and things like that. You need to think about... I guess what I'm trying to say is it's all about the customer journey, the original customer that you've looked at, and seeing how you can get that lifetime value out of that, retain that customer, and how do you develop that customer journey so that if that person no longer buys, who else is out there? Which is why you have multiple personas that you can look for with that product or service.
Esther
Brilliant. We're going to leave it there for today, guys, because I'm pretty sure you have so much swirling around your head right now, and you'll have to listen back to this at least another few times before you get all of that information, let alone anything else that Hanna might possibly come back some other day if she still likes us and talk to us more about. So I'm just going to let us sign off for now. How can people find you, Hanna?
Hanna
There's different ways. I am very active on LinkedIn, so you can find me both with my personal, but with my company, so Hanna McDonnell or Hanna Lathia McDonnell as well for the personal side. Hanna McDonnell marketing on the company side, but there's also hannamcdonnellmarketing.ie. So you can find me on the website as well and contact me through there. Or if you prefer email marketing info@hannamcdonnellmarketing.ie. There's all different ways you'll find me.
Esther
There's different ways. We will put all that into the show notes. You guys can find it on our website as well. Thank you again for joining us today, Hanna. You've been an absolute star and we'll be back next week with more Monday Morning Marketing week. Until then, bye-bye.
Hanna
Bye.
Esther
I'm glad you said goodbye because not all our audience said goodbye. Not all our guests, I mean, say goodbye.
Hanna
Really? I wasn't sure if I was meant to and then I thought it was better.
Esther
Yeah, don't leave our audience hanging.
Hanna
I got so tongue tied.
