Customized experiences, chatbots, and relationship marketing were all themes during conference sessions
NOW Founder and President Jessika Phillips and team member Mike DeCook attended Social Media Marketing World 2018 in sunny San Diego California last week. Here’s what they learned!
Find your tribe and produce content for them
One of the major themes in this year’s keynote sessions was the idea of personalized and valuable content. Relationship marketing was certainly at the forefront of the message! Every part of social media marketing world focused on creating conversational content that engages your audience.
In his session, Mike Stelzner talked a lot about the death of Facebook organic reach, which many people bemoaned after the algorithm change was announced earlier this year. But, organic reach isn’t dead. Instead, Mike said to focus on doing live, episodic content and to incorporate consistent Live video into your Facebook marketing. He said to focus on quality, conversational content that engages your audience. This will still get you good reach.
Pat Flynn talked about relationship marketing and how to use it to create raving fans. Create quick, small wins for your customer, he said, and that personalized messages and content show that you genuinely care about your audience.
From Brian Fanzo we learned the 4-T’s:
- Trust
- Transparency
- Training
- Technology
Brian said you get people to follow you by showing up and being you. He posed the question, “how can you be relatable to your audience and who can you bring in who your audience will trust?” You need to be relatable to them. Create trust and transparency by going live on Facebook or Youtube. Brain said, “Just hit the damn button. Don’t be afraid of it!”
However, if you are going to start something, you need be consistent. No hit and miss live schedules! It’s episode and has regular airtime.
You also have to meet your clients where they are at and build for the future. Blogging is an excellent option to build your content. It also helps bring them into your story so they feel connected and a part of it. But, you have to be a better storyteller.
“Push the damn button” – @BrianFanzo
Relatability is the future of marketing. Not only do we buy from people we like, we buy from people we relate to. - Brian Fanzo
If you want to have a customer for life, start by changing their day first.” – @PatFlynn
From Ann Handley, we learned these writing secrets:
- Be a writer first. Be a marketer second.
- Become an idea hoarder. Create a system for to do, doing, done.
- Observe: What you see, hear, smell and touch
A lot of business owners struggle with telling their stories, even fearing and assuming they have no story to tell. But, you do have stories. People have used your product; it has been a solution for them. There are stories within that. These are things salespeople listen to, account managers hear, and it’s a matter of learning what these are and telling them. And, regardless if you’re B2B there is still a consumer on the other end with a story you can tell.
All blogging should help the reader. A term we learned this year is pillar content. Pillar content provides real value to your reader while creating content that ranks for the keywords you want.
To create pillar content, you first determine the keywords you want to rank for. Next, create in-depth content to support the keywords. If you really want to rank, you need to do a lot more than the 400 to 600 word-count normal. Instead, work on quality-driven, expansive content at anywhere from 1,200 to 1,500-word value-packed blogs. Once you have your long-form content for the keyword you want to rank for, create several shorter blogs that dive deeper into the same topic.
Relationship Marketing
“Relationships will always be more powerful than marketing” @JessikaPhillips
We were honored to present a workshop at #SMMW18 on our favorite topic, Relationship Marketing, and how to create ROI in your business by focusing on growing repeat and referral relationships in business.
Jessika Phillips walked her session through her C.A.R.E. concept to truly connect with your clients to build long-term meaningful relationships.
C- Capture attention through deliberate creative, collaborative and constant conversations with your ideal audience. You only need to focus your attention on the audience you serve. Be laser focused on their needs and have a conversation with them.
A- Articulate your message of who you are and what you offer through Action-Based Answering of questions. Tell stories and include your customer in your stories. Answer all the questions your audience could be searching for online and out-serve the competition. Make it super simple for others to know what you do and how you can help them.
R- Relationship focused business mindset. Stop focusing just on new business and focus on keeping the customers you have right now. Ask yourself how can I create a relationship where this client would feel confident enough to refer me to their closest friends.
E- Exceptional Experiences should always be in your business process. Ask yourself- how can I create meaningful, personalized experiences so that my customers know that I am paying attention and truly care about their needs.
This Relationship ROI workshop walked through the 6-steps to achieving maximum C.A.R.E. for your brand. Planning-Attracting-Converting-Engaging-Delighting and Measuring. Jessika even created a workbook handout that can be found here: hubs.ly/H0b7zMM0
“Stop Counting Likes and Start Counting Conversations” - @JessikaPhillips
Facebook Ads with Amanda Bond
Amanda Bond lead a fantastic session on Facebook Ads. It completely changed how we viewed them, and invigorated us to created a better ad funnel in the future.
It used to be we were so used to building organic relationships, that ads felt like a different thing entirely. But, what Amanda taught us is that setting up ads should be just like a typical relationship marketing workflow, with building a relationship the ultimate goal.
First in this method, is that there is no marketing to new audiences with a selling approach or a pitch. In other words, no buy now! Instead, break up ads in a three-phase workflow: the introduction, the commit, and the close.
- Connect– new people
- Commit– people who have engaged with you,
- Close– retargeting people who have engaged with you
Just like any other relationship marketing technique, they have to know you and like you before they will buy from you. Amanda said to build the ad campaign backward, with the end in mind. Consider what three big objections do people have. Then make three ads based on that. She also said to test multiple versions of the same ad, different types of ads, and make sure you’re maximizing with the best performing ad that you’ve created.
“When creating Ads start with the end in mind” - @TheAdStrategist
Chatbots
While we still think you have to be careful when it comes to chatbots, the conference did talk a lot about them, and we learned some good takeaways, especially when it comes to opting into things directly on Facebook. For instance, opting into a download directly on Facebook as opposed to having to go redirected to your website.
Here are two we tried at the conference:
https://manychat.com/
https://dashboard.chatfuel.com/
If you consider trying these out, you still have to think about what kind of problem you are trying to solve. Then use chatbots to make that process simpler.
These are just a few of the things we learned about and just a few of the topics that the conference had presentations on. We split up and attended as many sessions as we could, but it still wasn’t enough! We’re looking forward to gaining access to the videos and rewatching our favorite sessions and learning from ones we missed. If you have had the chance to attend, we highly recommend you do so. There is a lot to learn from the amazing speakers!
Bonus Tweetable moments:
“Tweet others like you want to be tweeted.” – @briansolis
"Think about your brand in a visual way (on Instagram). If you don’t have a physical product to show or unsure what to show - ask yourself, what is the most visual part of your brand?" - @Brian_G_Peters
If you want to have a customer for life, start by changing their day first. - @PatFlynn #SMMW18
“We are all famous to a few people.” @joewilsontv
Influence is not only popularity. Influence is the ability to affect action. http://sumo.ly/4F32 via @toprank
If you did attend, what were some of the things you learned? Let us know in the comments!
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