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.
Melanie
Hey, everybody, and welcome Welcome back to the Monday Morning Marketing podcast. It's Melanie here, and I'm here on my own. The last time I did this was, oh gosh, it got to be about a year ago now. And unfortunately, Esther couldn't join me today, and we're not expecting a guest. So it's just me, myself, and I. Today, I'm going to be talking about cluster marketing, and this is something that brings together not just digital marketing, but traditional marketing as well. This is normally done by people who want to try and hit as many different places you can find your customer and induce a faster customer journey. It can be a little bit more expensive as well, though, but it just depends on how you do it. Now, this was a question that was brought up by somebody over in Swansea about two weeks ago now, and they said they'd heard the term but wasn't really sure what it involved. And I've been doing customer marketing, I'd say a good 70% the time I've been running my business. And really, it's the most effective way to speed up your marketing for your business. The downside is, is you do have to find either yourself adept at doing it or trusting others to help you do it. Now, I will be completely honest with you, I've used virtual assistance. I've paid for people to help me. And over the years, I've learnt how to do a lot of it myself. But we all have to start somewhere. So are you considering cluster marketing? Well, if you are, these are the things you need to have in place. Naturally, you do need to have a goal first. And whatever that objective is, you need to think, okay, well, this is where I'm going to find my audience, and this is how I need to reach them. Now, cluster marketing, even though it does suggest that you're doing all of it at once, you're not. You're hitting people one after the other. So one minute they see an ad on Facebook, then they hear you on the radio, then they receive flyers, then they get an email. And so it's literally hitting people along the way, thinking, crikey, they're everywhere.
And that's an awful lot of what the larger corporations and brands do. You'll find that they'll do a huge campaign in papers, then they'll do ads on the telly, and then you'll start seeing... You go to the cinema and there'll be an ad in the cinema showing their brand as well. So it literally is everywhere, just depending on who their audience is. Now, the things I've been suggesting here can be quite expensive, I won't lie. One of the biggest cluster campaign I ever did was I was on the radio That was fun for a month. And then I did, obviously, emails, social media, paid for social media, and newsletters. And that wasn't just my newsletter, but that was also newsletters that I was a member of. There's networks and tribes that I'm a part of who I also hit through my campaign that month as well. And I have to say, it was really successful, but it's very expensive to maintain. But I was doing it for something special, so it was absolutely and totally worth it. So my suggestion to you here is, why do you need to do a cluster campaign? Why do you need to do cluster marketing? Is it a relaunch? Are you adding new products or services? Is it because you built up a new collaboration or partnership? There could be so many different reasons why you want to do a cluster campaign. But you do need to have all these things in place in the first place. You need to know who you're going to be using for each part of your campaign. You've really got to have a very good idea of how much you want to spend, because the last thing you want to do is run out of money halfway through. And you have to have really effective ways to measure these campaigns as well. And over the years, we've suggested numerous platforms. But you know what? Natively, you can also get this information as long as you know where to look. Now, it is going to be a little bit harder when you're using other platforms like maybe the radio. But if you use something like HubSpot, It would be a good one.
That's one of the ones I use, a paid for platform. It's a database, and it tracks what comes through my socials and goes through my website as well. So you can set up API keys that will help you understand how they've come through to your website or through to your socials. There will be a fair bit of expertise that needs to be worked in here, but you can get people who can help you build these campaigns. And myself and Esther, we've got experience in this as well. So if there's something that you've got coming up in the next couple of months or maybe in the next year, and you want to set aside some budget for it, you've got to work out how much time you have to spend doing this, because obviously the last thing you want to do is not monitor and track what's working. But then you've got to be able to deliver something that's going to be useful to your audience once you've got them there. It's all about Customer Experience or CX, as it's also abbreviated, too. And if you can help bolster your customers through the customer journey and give them an end result that they're looking for, then people then do the work for you. They refer you, they recommend you. So how about you think what is going to be compelling to let your audience know about? Then work out all the different touch points that you need to embrace and understand. So you may need to do some research or get some training, specific training in that area.
Then you're going to have to work out your budget. Now, different social media channels will have different ways of posting and promoting. And then if you're using something like maybe the newspapers or you're going to be going, maybe even a TV campaign, or if you're going to be going on the radio, then different channels and different times of day will also, conversely, have different prices. So you'll really need to do some research in this particular field. They will also have different ways to pay it. Some of them want it upfront, some of them want to deposit, some of them want to pay for the end. So again, you're going to have to work out how you're going to manage that as well. If you have any particular end result that you're looking for, maybe you want to get people to an event, a really large event, because I know some corporates do listen to this programme as well. So then you're going to have to find different ways to convert those once they've gone to the event as well. Maybe you want them to buy something, sign up for something as well. So it doesn't really end at that event or that one particular day either. You've gone to an awful lot of time and trouble to capture this information in the first place. The last thing you want to do is lose them at the end. So huge amount of things to think about here.
And I know, unfortunately, I'm not able to answer any questions as we're talking right now. I would love to hear from you if you've got any questions about this. I can definitely put you in contact with people who are in your local. If you're listening to me and I'm overseas from you, there's bound to be somebody nearby who can do something similar for you. But if you are around Ireland or the UK, then I'm absolutely available to help, as is Esther. And we would love to be able to really improve your attraction and your awareness. And there's so many different ways to do it. We just need to find the right ones for you. It can be very personal. Well, this is weird talking to myself. It really is. I hope you found this information useful, and hopefully, I'll be back next week with Esther. So take care, guys. Have a great week, and I'll speak to you next time.
