Flex Marketing

07/01/2025

Have you had an in-depth look at your audiences recently?

I often find that businesses haven’t re-visited the question of who their audience is as often as they should.

Things change. New audiences appear. One audience may split into multiple. Some audiences’ needs evolve. Some audiences shrink and if you don’t keep your eye on the ball, it could be costing you big time as revenue also shrinks.
The benefit of regular audience analysis is the chance to spot weaknesses, threats and opportunities. You can then create strategies to address any of these observations and take action.

Action could include talking to your audience(s). It could involve finding “look-alikes” for more of the same people you identify as being the easiest to serve/work with or the most profitable or the most enjoyable.
What about indirect (or secondary) audiences? Overlooked by some, these are the audiences that enable you to connect with your end customer.

For example, if you are a videographer, these would be all your connections that are in adjacent industries or jobs…that could be marketing professionals who organise videos for their employer or clients, it could be photographers who are only working with still images, it could be a wedding venue that is often asked for service provider recommendations by their customers or even a website developer who regularly tells their clients that videos would help to bring their story to life.

Then there are also the more obvious indirect audiences like resellers/distributors.

The one thing indirect audiences have in common is that YOUR role is often to help them ‘look good’. Whilst some indirect audiences may not be gaining any financial reward from the business you gain from the end customer, if they share the same end customer, they have effectively helped them by giving an introduction to you. This helps foster their own customer relationships, which greatly benefits them.

Brand alignment is an important consideration with indirect audiences too. It really pays to explore which indirect audiences your business has and how you can help them solve their problems and ‘look better’ to their own customers. Brand affinity and loyalty can often be hatched and nurtured through these sorts of interactions that create an emotional connection and effortless customer journeys.

Once audiences have been identified, then there’s questions of how you find them, how you prioritise them etc. etc. These are the types of things I help clients work through as part of Flex’s marketing strategy services. Reach out if you need some help navigating what can often be a messy puzzle of direct and indirect audiences to sort through!
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07/01/2025

Wondering how you can better leverage social media? Check out this article written by Flex Marketing’s marketing executive, Claudia. She is passionate about helping businesses get organised with their socials…let us know if you are keen for a chat about how we can help.
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https://flexmarketing.co.nz/2024/03/5-ways-to-leverage-your-social-media-in-2024-that-wont-cost-you-a-thing/
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Maximise your social media impact with these cost-effective tactics shared by our freelance marketing executive.

07/01/2025

What am I doing on the floor? As well as my standing desk, another variation in work postures is sitting on the floor!

I listened to a podcast by the authors of ‘Built to move’ – a book about moving more freely, helping people to live fully, and this was one of their suggestions. It helps you get more practice in of getting up and down off the floor. I recommend giving it a go…cat joining in is optional!

I did pretty well in the sit stand test – after initially needing one hand to get up, I can now do no hands!

Anyone sit or stand in interesting places to work?
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02/01/2025

Do you want to know what one of the most overlooked reasons for not getting the desired results in marketing is?

Poor ex*****on.

When so much work gets poured into creating campaigns, events and projects it’s sad to see it all come unstuck through simple things that fall through the net.

No matter how much planning, communication and effort is put into something, it can all fall apart when a simple task isn’t done as it should be.

For example, it is very common for humans to be a bit slack at follow up. They breathe a sigh of relief when an email is ‘out the door’ or an event has been held. They may get an overwhelming response; be it positive feedback or leads generated. BUT, if they don’t bother to follow up, then the lead goes cold and fails to convert or the customer doesn’t take the next step to re-book.

A very simple example that everyone can relate to…the act of a hairdresser offering to book a follow up appointment when you go to pay. It amazes me how many business people fail to take these very simple, very effective steps. The “marketing” that got the client into the salon – e.g. a well targeted social media post – is not what is going to turn them from a one-time customer into a repeat customer. It relies on the hair salon staff being well trained and managed to follow the process that ensures that customers re-book. It involves having a process in the first place.

Turning customers into on-going clients involves lots of good process and I see those finer details as all part of marketing. Where everyone plays a part, whether they have “marketing” in their job title or not. I help facilitate this process of awareness and communication with my clients, ensuring the finer details are not overlooked and ex*****on is a practice of continuous improvement.

Do you have any stories of anything simple that let your marketing event or campaign down?
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02/01/2025

Which do you think I should do? Given the choice of spending time on client work OR time updating my own website/compiling my email newsletters…which should it be?

Your answer may be client work because that is chargeable.

Or it may be both, because they are both part of running a small business.

Regardless of your answer, the important factor here is time. How we value it, how we spend it…society is generally more concerned about property and money than caring about the precious and valuable commodity of time.

I provide outsourcing services to other businesses who need marketing help…however I also use an outsourcing service for my own business. I am very selective about how I use these services, but I know that it makes more business sense for me to spend time adding value to my clients rather than doing administrative tasks in my own business. I enjoy thinking and being challenged; repetitive, mundane tasks don’t light my fire!

Anything that I can create a clear set of instructions for, such as running reports on my website performance, adding articles to my website etc. is a no brainer to give to a VA service to do. Anything that needs my own personal touch, such as writing Linkedin posts and articles, remains with me.

What I love about using a VA to do some of Flex Marketing’s own marketing and admin tasks is that I get to experience what it is like to be a customer of an outsourced service provider. This gives me great insight about what is important for my own outsource marketing clients.

Do you think about time being a precious commodity?

Are you spending your time doing the things that you love most and that contribute the most value to your business?

What tasks do you know you should be handing over to others to make better use of your time?

31/12/2024

Here’s why relying ONLY on email as a marketing channel isn’t a great idea and what you need to be doing instead.

The image attached to this post shares the increase in the emails in my personal inbox over the last 10 years. Practically tripled!

Why do I have this insight on a graph? Well, I have a peculiar routine for email handling that goes like this:

> Check sender name, subject line and preview when lands in inbox

> Decide to delete immediately without opening OR open immediately OR leave unopened with the intention of reading it “some time” or at least have peace of mind it is there to fish out when I need it

> Opened emails either get dealt with straight away (reply or delete) OR are left to remain with those to get back to “some time”

> At the end of each year I create a folder with the year label for all the emails from that year and archive them. I am usually horrified by how many emails I had the best intentions of getting back to reading and never did.

> At the start of each year while I am on holiday I try and make an extra effort to unsubscribe to all the ones that are no longer relevant or have snuck into my inbox from prize draws I have entered!

The numbers on the graph represent how many emails are sitting in each of those yearly email archives. As you can see, they have grown substantially...now over 3.5k per year and that’s not even counting all the deleted ones!

I don’t think it is because I have got worse at dealing with emails, I think it is an increase in emails being sent to me. It is a lot of noise for a marketer to cut through.

What does this tell us?

The importance of your subject lines and previews to grab attention. The finely tuned balance of whether you send someone too many emails you lose them vs enough to justify space in their inbox. Even making sure that the sender name itself is recognisable. For example, if the sender name is a parent company but the recipient doesn’t recognise it, it could get deleted. If the sender name relates to the person you have a relationship with, it is more likely to get opened (e.g. John from Computer World).

And it tells us the importance of omni-channel marketing. Multiple ways of engaging with your customers and attempting to make that customer journey as consistent and customer-centric as possible.

So, where do your customers and prospective customers hang out online and in person? Are you present in MORE THAN ONE of those relevant places?

Does anyone have any unusual quirks with how they handle their emails?

31/12/2024

Visibility is often just as simple as showing up!

Even if you think what you have to say isn’t interesting enough 😀.

Over the years people have commented to me that they don’t know what to post online or they expect their emails are just going to be deleted or they don’t want to share pictures of what they did on the weekend on a business platform…so they get stuck and do nothing or procrastinate.

They say they don’t like marketing or they are confused by it, but often it comes down to familiarity and practice to get comfortable and confident with it.

Marketing professionals become familiar with what is normal through trial and error. We know when it is okay to celebrate a 1% response rate. Others see such low figures as a failure and it puts them off trying again or discovering that it was actually the opposite of a failure.

The more you jump in and get on with it, the more awareness and comfort you gain. Some things work, some things don’t.

Just like anything else, you do the best you can with the resources available to you at the time, even if that is just sharing a picture of yourself to help people put your name to your face.

An email dropping into someone’s inbox, even if it is never opened serves the purpose of reminding the recipient of you or your brand. A post on social media reminds people of you and keeps you top of mind the next time they need a service you provide, even if they don’t read every word.

Yes, there are people on Linkedin who over-share or post things that you might not choose to share yourself...but don't let that put you off – at least they are visible.

You can be you and stick to your style…participating doesn’t mean you need to do the same as someone else. What you share, when and how often you share – best practice is just a guideline and there are many different schools of thought on that! Ultimately it is your choice.

Think about who you see popping up in your Linkedin feed all the time.

Those people have done a good job of showing up to become cemented in your mind.

If you want to be the service provider who pops into the head of your network, you know what to do!

Just stay in your lane of expertise and you can’t go too far wrong by showing up regularly!
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13/11/2023

High bounce rates on your website?...or, now that we are all using GA4 for Google Analytics, that will be showing up as low engagement scores.

One reason could be your meta description displayed in your search results is full of words that are not relevant enough to the web page people click through into…so they bounce straight off your website when they realise it’s not what they were looking for or expecting to see. Keep the searchers’ intention in mind when you choose words for descriptions.

For example, if your goal is to attract people looking for a service provider, prioritise using the job title relating to that service over the subject matter. For example “gas fitter” is likely to generate more relevant traffic than “gas fitting”. The latter could pull in people searching for information on the topic such as those studying plumbing or adjacent trades wanting to learn more about it.

Ideally you want to attract people who have a current need for a person to do a job. Not saying that people doing general research on a topic aren’t good leads…eventually…they are likely to be further away from making a decision. If you want to focus on more immediate sales, you want the people READY to take action. Use online keyphrase research tools to identify the most commonly used job titles in your service based industry. For example, “gas specialists” or “gas installers” are a couple of alternatives to “gas fitter” where search volume and competition information are worth uncovering and comparing.

For more on SEO jargon busting and tips, take a look at this article.
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https://flexmarketing.co.nz/2023/05/digital-marketing-consultants-seo-jargon-buster/

13/11/2023

It was a pleasure helping Active Building Management sort out their marketing strategy, systems, planning and brand cohesion over the past year. Ever wondered what sort of things that involves? Take a look at this client story.

A big shout out and thanks to Brady Williams, Kylee Williams and Jay Huggett for trusting the process…I know you guys are on the path to even greater success!
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https://flexmarketing.co.nz/2023/08/client-story-active-building-management-getting-marketing-sorted/

13/11/2023

Ever wondered what the difference is between a brand refresh and a rebrand? This article covers that topic, as well as provides top tips for a successful brand refresh. Enjoy!

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https://flexmarketing.co.nz/2023/06/brand-refresh-what-is-it-and-how-can-an-outsource-marketing-professional-help/

13/11/2023

Ever thought about the benefits of having your marketer and graphic designer all in one?

There are definitely some advantages for businesses that use a person who is both a qualified marketer and graphic designer to help their business. It’s probably something you haven’t spent time thinking about, but as I fit into this ‘combo’ category, let me explain what I see are 3 main benefits of this dynamic duo:

1. Being able to see the bigger picture of how marketing and design fits together means that things can be planned up front to be seamless…there is no awkward clash of opinions or time wasting misunderstandings

2. Time is saved all over the place – from explanations between people who don’t understand each other’s standpoint or language, to less communication exchange and misinterpretation. Usually fewer rounds of amends.

3. Design output is usually closer to meeting business objectives because the marketing trained designer understands that collateral is more than just looking pretty – it has a job to do

There are probably loads more, but those were the ones that sprung to mind when thinking about what I’ve noticed and experienced first-hand.

I used to be a marketing person that briefed designers because I was purely a marketer with no formal design training. Then after many years in marketing I trained as a graphic designer and blended the two.

Now I sometimes brief other people because of working alongside other graphic designers (now speaking the same language and getting positive feedback about how great it is to work with someone that understands graphic design). And sometimes I work directly on my clients creative work by myself and it flows so well too.

You can learn more about my graphic design training and experience on the landing page linked here. And if this sounds like the type of help you need in your business, please get in touch.

https://flexmarketing.co.nz/content/graphic-design/
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13/11/2023

Are you using 'second person' in your marketing copy as much as you should?

If you are curious about why it is my most frequently used writing style in writing for clients, take a look at my recent post on Flex Marketing company page. And if you are not already following the page, click the follow button while you are there!
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When to use which in marketing copy? The answer may surprise you…try to use second person as much as possible because you are probably not using it…