Transcript
I’m all for big long term thinking. Strategies so stratospheric in their ambitions that the market can’t help but pay attention.
The trouble is this stuff takes time. An aggressive content strategy could take 12-18 months before it delivers a return, and for most companies that’s a problem, This exciting long term cannot exist without a financially viable short term, so they need something else. A quick win. This quarter.
Now of course not every business has a quick win dangling in front of it, but those that will most likely find it in one of the following 3 places:
- Unused email list – if you have a large unused list (and of course what constitutes large all depends on the value of your customers), that needs to your #1 priority. Within 6-8 weeks, at almost no additional expense, you could well be generating those leads you need to keep the long term dream alive. Yes there are of course lots of variables that will determine the quality of the list, but if it exists and it’s GDPR compliant – which if you’re B2B then it probably can be – then you simply have to be making use of it.
- The second quick win relates to high traffic websites that aren’t engaging that traffic effectively. We have one client that generated tonnes of traffic but the vast majority was to blog and resource pages that were unlikely to follow the primary user journey. For years they had considered it just noise, but by inserting a range of targeted hooks we began turning that noise into data that could be monetised. To date we’ve added over 50,000 new sign ups. It hasn’t cost a penny and it’s become a transformative asset for the organisation. If you have lots of traffic that isn’t adding value, that’s something you need to fix.
- The final quick win relates to domains with high authority but that have done a lousy job of channeling that authority, either because no on-page optimisation exists or because the site’s just too small. This is perhaps my favourite of all. We worked with one large law firm recently where we tripled their traffic in 2 weeks, and at no ongoing cost. We can’t really take that much credit. The authority was all there. We just helped release it.Now you’ve probably noticed something about these quick wins – they all relate to established businesses that are not fully leveraging their assets – and that’s most established businesses by the way.
For new companies, I’m afraid they probably don’t apply. But if you’re one of those then before you start feeling sorry for yourself just remember that you have one big advantage that these other companies don’t – zero baggage. You have absolute data integrity, complete clarity of brand and the opportunity to build your customer journey through every touch point without being hidebound by flawed systems and convention.
And in marketing, the possibilities of a blank canvas are the biggest win of all.
See you next time,
Dan
