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. And welcome back to another episode of The Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today we're talking about things marketers must stop doing. This could be quite an extensive list if you really think about it, but we're going to break it down and just give you a few today because these are things that we see more frequently than we would like to see. I'm not saying that Melanie and I are perfect.
Melanie
No.
Esther
Far from it, but they are things that we have tried to do in the past and have found that they are working. So kick us off there, Melanie.
Melanie
Well, there's also stuff that we've also found that hasn't worked necessarily not just our mistakes, but other mistakes we've heard other people make as well. And one of the ones that impacts me as a journalist is I've had people contacting me with blogs that are basically press releases to share, which just isn't relevant.
Esther
Yeah
Melanie
You're more selling yourself than how you're helping people. So rather than promote your expertise, than your company, because your expertise hopefully is an answer to a solution. So yeah, stop creating blogs that are just press releases, basically.
Esther
Yeah, and that leads us to the point where you should always be providing value for your readers, your listeners, wherever you're going to have your things published. So if you're only using sales jargon and only talking about, Me, me, me, me, me, me, and this product is great because this, this, this. Instead of talking about the pain-points and the problems that it solves, then it's going to fall on deaf ears. So that is a very important one. I would say, now, I do love email marketing, but stop sending emails for the sake of sending emails. If you have nothing useful to say, your audience won't mind if you're not clogging up their inbox.
Melanie
Agreed. That's really true. The amount of spammy crap that I get rid of in my email list is nuts.
Esther
Yeah. And if I see that it's maybe the same email or the same type of email, or even some people don't even change the title, then without even reading it, it goes in the delete. And if they're frequent offenders, then it gets unsubscribed. Whereas if you, and I was listening to, I think it was Anne Conlin, said that she only said, Anne Conlin, for those who don't know her, she's all about sales. And she says she only sends out an email once a month, one time a month and that's it. And I would say even that is perfectly fine, because then people know that to expect your email from you, they will recognise your name, and it doesn't become visual junk or visual spam by going, it's that person again. So we want people to be happy to see your name pop up in their inbox.
Melanie
No, that's definitely something I would agree with as well. Also, stop creating budgets that are only limited to certain things like just Facebook ads or just marketing materials like flyers and that stuff. Marketing encompasses a huge area, includes stands, networking, even the time that it takes to create messages that go through other networks, for instance, like the Local Chamber. I'm going to be doing a follow-up email to send to the Chamber because I attended a Chamber event recently, and that's still marketing. So if you are going to be creating a fixed budget, bear in mind that fixed budget will really only last you for probably a quarter of the year, and you then need to revise it and do it again. And the things change. You get access to opportunities you didn't expect. And if you go and blow your budgets in the first half of the year because you've got this fixed mindset, then you're not going to make space for anything that amazing happens in the latter half of the year.
Esther
And I would also add to that and say, don't wait to spend all your marketing budget in the last quarter.
Melanie
No.
Esther
Because we were talking about this before coming on air and saying that it's funny how in the last two months before year end here in the UK, it's April. So February, March is frantic, busy because people are spending up their marketing budget. In the Republic of Ireland and in America, it's December. So October, November is usually hectic, isn't it, Melanie?
Melanie
I've lost my voice before because of the insanity of the amount of work that I got just because of all the in-person training I was doing.
Esther
Yeah and the weird thing is, if you were to break that down into quarterly spends for those training events and things, then that would serve you and your audience better by learning throughout the year. Whereas if you just cram it all in to the last couple of months of the year and then take Christmas off, you're going to forget it all anyway. Or it all changes as it does in especially digital marketing. So many things change that you do need to be constantly on top of this. And that leads me on to another point. Stop doing things the way you did them 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Some people haven't changed. It's all the same. Oh it has always worked for us, so we're always going to do this. We're always going to advertise in this place. We're always going to-.
Melanie
But whilst it does work, I think you should. But I also think you should look at embracing new technologies, especially right now, the explosion of AI. There's so many new tools, and we are going to be going through some amazing tools in the coming weeks that we certainly been trying out and using. But I agree that some things shouldn't change in that if it does work for you, if you found out where your niche, where your audience is and the problems that you're solving, it shouldn't stop there.
Esther
No.
Melanie
Because everything has an evolution and things do move on.
Esther
Yes, definitely. And in the same space as that moving on.
Melanie
Personally, I think one of the toughest things that I've come across, certainly with people who come into my office, is that they are putting up their posts on a regular basis, which is great. They're keeping it all changed up, but they're not measuring. They're not focusing on the analytics. They're not doing key performance indicators. And unless you do those, you're not really measuring them accurately. You're thinking something's going well when it actually isn't or not consistently. So stop marketing without having a goal set and analytics to monitor, because otherwise you're not going to see if it's successful or not.
Esther
Yes. I'm going to throw one in here. Stop trying to outdo your competition.
Melanie
Oh, yeah.
Esther
Sometimes it's just better to embrace the competition and realise that anyone can copy your product, but they can't copy you. You are your USP, your unique selling point. So, start doing things differently to your competitions. Start writing blogs, start adding value to the community. Start using a different platform if you realise that your audience is moving to a different location and are spending maybe more time online rather than in traditional media locations. It was actually this morning I was talking to a guy who sells advertising for newspapers, and he says, print is not dead. And I agree with him, print is not dead. But then he also said that under 35s are less likely to buy a newspaper than over 35s. Now I am over 35, and I don't know when the last time I bought a newspaper was, maybe when my kids were in it.
Melanie
That's the last time I bought a newspaper, and I'm a lot over 35 than you are.
Esther
Yeah. So I think knowing where your audience is and hangs out and what they work in as well can be a major factor in these things too. I guess it's not a blanket statement either, because I've seen other I've seen 20 year olds buying a newspaper. It's not exclusively, under 35s don't buy newspapers.
Melanie
They were wrapping furniture.
Esther
Probably were, or lighting the fire. That was the other thing that we decided today.
Melanie
Chips.
Esther
Yeah, you can't do that anymore. Health and safety. Anyway, but if you're living in a bubble thinking that maybe those statistics were right 10 years ago when I was under 35, but they're not the same now. They will constantly change year after year, and you might have to do market research every single year, depending on your product or service, to be able to determine things like that. I know that I was looking at some of my client analytics the other day, and I was very surprised when one of them came out that the majority of their audience was female under 35, because the things that they talk about would be for more of the older generation and more about menopause, just going to say it. So more about women's health in the older years. So I was very surprised that under 35s were looking and researching this, and they were the majority of her audience. So you just never know until you check your analytics.
Melanie
Actually, apparently, menopause is coming earlier and earlier in each generation as well, which isn't helpful.
Esther
Oh, Wonderful.
Melanie
Yeah, moving on. So there's an awful lot of things that we're all doing right, but there are some things we just need to stop. And if you have listened to this today and gone, Actually, that could well be me, and you've actually ticked off a few things here, then this is your cue to stop doing it. Stop wasting time, stop wasting money, stop wasting resources. We're coming up to a new year fairly soon, looming on us. And this is the time we've given you permission to stop doing it.
Esther
Yes, amen to that. And on that note, we will leave you for this week and we'll be back next week with more Monday Morning Marketing until then. Bye-bye.
Melanie
Ttfn.
Esther
How many people do you actually think realise what TTFN stands for?
Melanie
Oh, come on we're not that old.
Esther
Well, our audience isn't as old as us in some cases. Or maybe we weren't going to clear fans.
Melanie
No, they'll know. Goodness me.
