Melanie
Welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing podcast for all decision-makers and action-takers. Take it away, Esther.
Esther
And welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today, we're talking about One Size Fits All. Or does it? Why this strategy doesn't work for marketing? So, Melanie. Well, not Melanie, because I know Melanie would never do this. But, audience, have you ever copied another brand strategy thinking it would work and it didn't? Do you ever wonder why it didn't? What do you think? Do you think our audience have fallen for these? Do these 10 things to to gain a million followers in 10 days?
Melanie
You see, we're told this thing all the time by these big experts who've made a million in three months from-.
Esther
Inverted commas experts.
Melanie
And maybe it does work at that particular time for that particular person in that particular set of circumstances. But we try to emulate what other people do. I I certainly did, and I probably still do to some extent.
Esther
To a degree, but not copy-paste.
Melanie
You can't be somebody else, and you can't be in the same everything as them unless you're literally in the same area, in the same niche, and nobody is.
Esther
Call the same, speak the same, act the same, do everything exactly the same. Yeah, because you see this all the time, and I don't know what it is, but on certain dates of the year, it comes back more like, oh, having a quiet summer, do this. Here's my Black Friday deal for only $10. You can do these. And if you follow it all, you can get, but never guaranteed, right? So it's one of those things that you're always looking for the best way or the easiest way, not even the best way. People are always looking for the easy way out. And the, oh, that person's got a million followers and they post a video five times a day. So if I post a video five times a day, then I'll get a million followers.
Melanie
If you post a video five times a day, it's a flipping miracle.
Esther
If I post a video five times a day, I'm doing nothing else. That's the thing. You need to have a team behind you to be able to do that one thing five times a day, right? So it's like we were in an event two, three years ago now at this point, Joe Wicks, who is a local celebrity here in the United Kingdom. He's a fitness instructor, and he became everyone's PE instructor, physical education, for those who don't understand PE, over COVID. And he was on stage saying that how he became an overnight success after 10 years because he had put in the hard work and the effort, and it takes that hard work and effort and graft and doing stuff that doesn't work and changing it rather than sticking with what doesn't work in order to become an overnight success after 10 years.
Melanie
Ten years, yeah.
Esther
So what worked for Joe might not work for the next fitness instructor. It certainly won't work for me because I'm not a fitness instructor. But you have all these people. And Joe didn't say, definitely do this, do this, and do the other thing, and you will get... No, he didn't say that. What he was saying was, it takes time and effort and trial and error and learning to become that overnight success.
Melanie
So it's like a small local cafe trying to use exactly the same strategy as Starbucks. It's just not realistic.
Esther
It's not. You don't have the budget. You don't have the staffing. You don't have the visibility. I mean, Starbucks started as a small local business. Mcdonald's started as a small enterprise. All these things that are now global all started small, but they didn't all follow the same model for expansion.
Melanie
I mean, the algorithms that are associated with Starbucks will be vastly different to the algorithms that you have access to on your social media platforms. Your audience behaviour will be very different. Obviously, you will likely have a much smaller audience. And the way that they are positioned in the market will also be very different to the way you are positioned. So what is one marketing trend that you've seen that people can jump on without thinking if it's actually right for them, Esther?
Esther
Recently, there's the whole one of Gen Z wrote the script for me.
Melanie
Oh, that was brilliant.
Esther
It was hilarious, but a lot of people didn't understand. It didn't understand don't understand the assignment to speak Gen Z. Or their audience were looking at it going, What is going on? Why are they slay every third word? I don't understand it. And so they might have lost a few of their regulars or a few of their more traditional customers. They might have gained a couple of Gen Z customers. But who is your audience? And why are you trying to jump on a trend that has nothing to do with your audience? So there's one that I saw that did it and they were a boutique hotel. And I'm sorry, but Gen Z do not have the money to be staying in a boutique hotel. And if they do, then good for them.
Melanie
But the audience that they should have been talking to that has the money, the golden oldies, I'm not even going to say Gen X because we don't have money.
Esther
But the ones older than us, the boomers, have the money and the time and the desire to go to these boutique hotels. Gen Z don't. So they might have gained followers, but those followers don't see them anymore now that they're not speaking because of what you said, the algorithm and the tone that they're using. I saw that video and I haven't seen a single video since or before from that brand. So there's a lot of ones that just jump on trends without actually thinking, is it the right thing for me? It's, you know What have you seen?
Melanie
There's been no particular standout ones for me. It's been more... I found a lot of these things can be overdone as well. Sometimes if you don't hop on it quickly, it stops being relevant because they move so fast. I think it's down to moving this conversation forward. It's It's tailoring your marketing using a strategy rather than tactics. I think we tend to get too involved with the tactics, with the latest trend. As you said, by understanding the importance of who our best and most ideal customers are, the target audience, who they are, what they need, and where they're going to be spending time, I think that's honestly more vital than trying to hop onto the latest trend. I mean, sometimes it's nice to do for a laugh, to change things up. Absolutely, I completely get that. But there has to be a strategy behind it. Customising all of your content, for instance, and making it relevant. Using the right action words, calls to action, is more important than doing the latest TikTok dance. Have you ever helped a client find their own version by tweaking how would approach doing it by actually building their own best strategy? I know you don't normally do it for other people, but have you tried to do that with another client?
Esther
Yeah, we have worked with a number of clients on finding their voice and finding their, like you said, their strategy. So there's one client that we have at the minute over in America, and he is a medical exercise expert. So it's mainly post-surgery and helping you get back on your feet. So his thing is see the method, which is sleep, eating, exercise. And that's the order. So every week something goes out from him in that order. So it'll be first a sleep, then an eat, then an exercise for each and every different time of life. So even from babies all the way up to the elderly and pregnant woman.
Melanie
It's very clever.
Esther
New father's, new grandparents, all these things. So it's C, the process, so that you can S, sleep is the most important. It makes people think that getting back in your feet, it's all about getting to the exercise and the personal trainer or the physical therapist. And it's not. It's these things. And that's what we worked on him with to see what he could do to get finding something that would work for him and work for his audience. And now people expecting those in that order. And if he misses one, for example, he does occasional videos because his audience isn't on TikTok. There's no point in even opening a TikTok platform because everybody has started saying, oh, if you're not on TikTok, then you're not being seen by who? Yes, there's billions of people, or I don't know what the exact number of people on TikTok are, but they're not all your audience.
Melanie
And even if they were, they're not in the mindset to act on TikTok.
Esther
No.
Melanie
They're viewing what they're doing.
Esther
Yeah. And I've heard people say, oh, Facebook is dead, or Meta is dead, and Instagram is dead, and X is dead. But if that's where your audience is and that's where you're seeing the uptick and you're seeing people interact and you're seeing them take action, then keep doing that. There's no point in jumping from platform to platform. Oh, there's this new platform. I must go over there. Oh, let's go to this other platform. Because you'll lose traction. You'll lose the people that always see you. And you'll lose that momentum that you had going. And the algorithm will just go, oh, well, they're not here anymore. So even when they come back, we'll not push their stuff to their audience anymore because they left or they went quiet for a while. So it keeps coming back to knowing who your audience is. And to use a phrase that I've heard many times, you can't sell to everyone. You're not everyone's cup of tea, otherwise you'd be a mug. Right. And even then-.
Melanie
That could be the title of this episode.
Esther
And even then, everybody has a favourite mug. So even though people use mugs all day, every day they use mugs, everyone has their favourite And if you make one that's too big or too heavy or the handle is too small, then you can't sell to every... Even though everybody has mugs in their houses, they'd all have different expectations of that mug as well. I have two favourite mugs, and they go on rotation every day. One goes in the dishwasher.
Melanie
Yeah, whilst one's in the wash. Yeah.
Esther
Yeah. So they're on rotation, but they're the ones that hold the heat. They're the ones that keep the tea warm. Whereas if I use another one, it's too small. There's not enough tea in the mug. It's too big. It goes cold too quick. I'm Goldilocks when it comes to my cups of tea.
Melanie
Do you know, I'm the same with dark cups because I like coffee. I don't like using a dark cup when I pour the water in because then I can't see the water level.
Esther
Yeah. Whereas some people don't like using a light cup because they don't like how it stains.
Melanie
That's for teas.
Esther
Well, anyway, what we're saying is, even though people may use your product or service on a daily basis, still does not make them your customer. They have to be in the right mindset to buy. They have to be at the moment that they need it. It has to be at a price point that they can afford because there's... I was in the supermarket the other day and there are bottles of water all the way from like 35p or cents or whatever you want to charge it for, all the way up to 6.50.
Melanie
For water?
Esther
Yeah, because apparently it's protein water or one of these crazy health kicks. And obviously there's a market for it because people are buying them and they're That's why they're in the supermarket. But not everyone can look at that price point and go, oh, that's good value for money. But don't mark your value down either thinking, I will get more customers if I charge less. That's a whole other episode. We're going to have to do another episode on pricing again. But what I want to say, just to finish off my little rant here, is that your tone of voice matters, your visual matters, your messaging consistency matters, your key differentiators matter, your USP. We talked about this a few episodes ago. Your unique selling point, your unique selling proposition, you matter. Okay. What you have, what you sell, how you sell it, where you sell it, how much you sell it for, how often you sell it. All of these things matter. And it's like one of the guys that we are one of the guys because it's two guys that we follow, Andrew and Pete, check them out, AtomaCon. They say that even though they've heard email marketing is dead, that's still where they get the most sales.
So even if...
Melanie
It's true, isn't it?
Esther
Yeah, even if everybody else is saying, this is dead, that's dead, the other thing is dead, what works for you? What is working for you? Keep doing more of that.
Melanie
And I think one of the ways to do this is to monitor your analytics. So Esther mentioned a lot of areas just now where you can pull data from. And obviously there's native data that's available through social media, but you can also get analytics from your email list. Every provider has analytics and what what the open rate is and what clicks have been clicked on and that stuff. So it's not something you just have to imagine. I mean, I suppose if any of you are just starting out, maybe you have to speculate a little bit at the beginning. But over time, you'll have this evidence-based information available to you. And it's all down to adapting and changing and updating and understanding what is triggering the next move from your customers. Over time, you will build up a policy or best practices that is most suited for your business and for you in particular. If you've got a small team, you'll also work out who would be the best person to respond to each of these areas and who's best equipped to manage or monitor these particular areas. As Esther said, it doesn't stop there. It's tone of voice, it's visuals, it's consistency, and it's all down to strategy.
Everything we've just mentioned in the last few minutes, there was not one mention of tactics. It was all down to strategy. Yeah.
Esther
Absolutely. And you can refine it. You can hone it. You can, like I said, see what works, what doesn't, do more of what works, but keep testing what hasn't worked by tweaking it and modifying it because it might end up working at some point. But 99% of your efforts should be on what works. But in the background, just keep looking through and going, okay, how could we improve that? How could we get to the next step, the next level? How can we get our viewing from 300 to 400 to 900 to 1500? Always be thinking of ways to increase your viewers or the eyes that are on your things. And obviously, just because more people see it doesn't mean more people's going to buy it. But there's more likelihood People will buy it. Just because your numbers are going up and up and up does not mean that your sales are going up and up. The sales numbers are still the ones that you need to be definitely focusing on. And like we've said before as well, it's always easier to retain a customer than it is to get a new one. So think of ways to do that. But can you think of a brand, Melanie, that's learned to repurpose content their way rather than using trends and by focusing on their audience needs?
Melanie
I can think of viral marketing, katya.com. They literally do as they say. And they have recently become the masters of creating video through AI, and they repurpose literally everything, from blogs, from shorts, even webinars. They repurpose literally everything, and they are tough to emulate. But in fairness, they have a large team of people behind them.
Esther
Exactly. So you couldn't do that sitting there in your own?
Melanie
No, I couldn't. I wouldn't have the time.
Esther
No.
Melanie
I genuinely wouldn't have the time.
Esther
And there's I mean, there are people who can invest in hiring more staff and, speculate to be able to accumulate, as they say, by hiring in more people with the possible ability of getting more work and more things to do. But do you really want... It's one of those, that would keep me up late at night if I hired people and then wasn't able to...
Melanie
And I think it's less authentic, honestly.
Esther
Yeah.
Melanie
I do social media management because it makes sense for me, okay? But I still advocate for people to do it for themselves because you can do it faster, more passionately, more authentically, and more affordably, frankly.
Esther
And more individualistic as well. I mean, you show your own personality.
Melanie
Yeah. And as we said before, you do not need to be personal in your strategy. You just need to be personable, which is quite different. So you just need to identify with your customers without giving away all your personal home life secrets.
Esther
Yes, we don't need any of those. So next steps for our listeners. I'm going to go with review what's working. Ask, is this really right for the audience that I have or the audience that I want If you're just starting out or if you're changing plans, is it what they will be looking for? And go back and listen to last week's episode on what's in it for me. See what you can deliver them. That'd be what it's in it for them.
Melanie
And as I mentioned already, please look at your analytics. They're not there just for fun. They're actually an extremely valuable and free resource for you. It tells you what posts people are opening or clicking on or responding to. It tells you the time of day and day that they're responding to them. And certain platforms like Meta, which apparently a lot of people think is dead, will even tell you the best and most active times. And it does change. Now, I was a bit of a naysayer at the beginning, and honestly, it was true. At the beginning, everybody's best time of day was 08:00 PM, literally every day.
Esther
Mine's not.
Melanie
Well, it was at the beginning, I but now that I'm managing several clients, I can see it's not the case at all. It's completely up to date. It's relevant all the time, and it seems to allow for the changing weather and when our audience is going to be there. I mean, it's not perfect, but it gives you a damn good guide. Certainly a very good start. So use the tools that are available to you, especially ones like these that are completely free.
Esther
Yeah. And make content that feels authentic, not forced. Because if you're not showing up as you, then you're not going to want to show up. So this is us. This is Melanie. This is me. Don't go back and listen to the first few episodes, because that definitely wasn't us. We were petrified and we didn't know what to do.
Melanie
We sound terrible as well.
Esther
Yeah, the quality wasn't great. But now that we're into the rhythm of it, this is us. This is what we do. This is how we show up. This is, Melanie's office, my office, backgrounds change. It doesn't matter because the content is always great. If I do say so myself.
Melanie
Hey, we're award-winning.
Esther
Of course. It's right there. And remember, in marketing, the only size that fits all is the one that's tailored to you. You like what I did there? Like it? I know. It's very punny.
Melanie
Very punny. On that note, I will close off by saying thank you for listening. We hope you enjoy our episodes each week. And thank you for downloading and sharing. And we've had a good few new people follow us recently. So obviously, some of you are spreading the word around. So very, very appreciative of that. We'll be back next week with another episode. In the meantime, have a great week. Bye for now.
Esther
Bye.
