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The 4 Irrefutable Laws to Digital Marketing Success

I guarantee you're breaking at least one of them.

Having been in the digital marketing game for over 15 years, both as a client of numerous digital marketing agencies and running my own, we’ve seen everything under the sun that people do or try to do. We’ve seen some amazing things, bizarre things and some downright stupid things.

We’ve studied literally thousands of businesses on how they execute Digital Marketing.

After years of research, experience and learning the hard way, we’ve discovered there are four golden rules that, when followed, produce outstanding digital marketing results for those brave souls that take the path less travelled.

Introducing the Four Irrefutable Laws that will ensure digital marketing success for your business:

  1. The one who adds the most value wins
  2. It’s not about you
  3. The king is home
  4. It’s time for a name change

So, if you’re game, let’s jump right in…

1.

The one who adds the most value wins

Marketing has evolved exponentially over the past 5-10 years and will continue to do so. The tools, techniques, channels etc are changing at breakneck speed. What’s interesting is the rules that underpin success hasn’t, and the old adage of “the one who ads the most value wins at marketing”.

It starts with ‘perceived value’

A customer chooses who they buy from based on how much ‘perceived value’ they are going to receive. This is an exchange of one asset for another. In this case, it’s the exchange of money for some form of value. And I’m going to choose the product or service that is going to add the most value to my life.

Actually, you’re not going to even enter my thought process unless you add value to me before I purchase

Great relationships start by you adding some form of value to me for free. That’s right, I need you to put yourself out there and give me some good stuff before I even think about you in my selection process.

But it doesn’t stop there

So, you are going to start a relationship by giving me free value, you’re going to impress my socks off so much during the marketing and sales process that its clear I’m going to be better off choosing you over your competitors. And then you need to deliver on that promise of value, and that’s the rest of your business’ job.

Marketing writes the cheques, the rest of the business must cash them

Marketing creates the value promise or perceived value. The rest of the business needs to fulfil. Your business won’t last long if marketing is making outstanding claims, that you’re not living up to. The reviews alone will kill you, let alone a lack of repeat business.

Add value, then add some more value, and then take it to the next level

I can’t stress this enough; every single focus of your business needs to ensure it adds more value. Anything that isn’t doing that, get rid of it. It’s called focus for a reason.

2.

It’s not about you

This one is a Perla. Everybody gets too caught up in their own little world and think that what they want is what customers want. And it can’t be further from the truth. This is not about you! I’m really sorry to say, this is about your target audience and what they want. It’s about the value they are looking for.

Add value to others

Flowing on from “the one who adds the most value wins”, this is all about adding value to your target audience and customers. It’s not about what value you think they want, it’s what they want. It’s not about you!

So how do you get clear on what they want?

Spend time with them and ask them! Pretty simple concept, yet something so few of us do.

Sage Words
I remember listening to a podcast with the founders of Airbnb and they were telling their story about how they were trying to raise their first lot of funds and a potential investor asked them: “Where are your customers” and at the time approx. 90% of them were in New York (they were in San Francisco at the time). And then he asked them “What are you doing here?”. And for a minute they didn’t get it: “What do you mean?”, and he replied, “Go to where your customers are, get to know them intimately, find out what they really want, not what we think they want”. This turned out to be one of the best things they did for their business.

But, be careful

What they say they want and what they actually want are two different things. Many people will tell you they want something, but when it comes time to pull their wallet out and pay for it, they won’t. It falls into that category of “nice idea, but I’ll spend my money on something that gives me more value”

Who are you selling what to?

It’s fundamental to get crystal clear on “who you are selling what to”, and by what, I mean a real value. It’s not features and benefits, it’s that emotional connection that’s going to say, yes that is going to provide great value to me and is relative to what I’m going to pay for it.

That’s called ‘Traditional Marketing Strategy’

So, you need to get your marketing strategy right, before you can build a great digital marketing strategy that you can execute. You have to learn to crawl, before you walk, before you run.

3.

The king is home

We’re talking about the Marketing Analytics king that is. Every man and their dog are sprouting how important analytics are to a business, yet very few are implementing it. And in this day and age, it’s so easy, quick and cheap to implement some fundamental marketing analytics.

LTV (Life Time Value) – The most important metric

Only 1 in 10 businesses know what their LTV of a customer is. You can’t do great digital marketing without knowing what this is.

Cost per Acquisition

This needs to be set in stone so you can manage marketing campaigns accordingly

Cost per Lead or ROAS

This is the next step in the funnel that needs to be tracked and measured. And this needs to include complete tracking of all leads into the business by using the dynamic phone tracking system for inbound phone leads.

Here is what you need to set up as a minimum

Weekly and Monthly Dashboards – learn more in this video:

4.

It’s time for a name change

It really is. Digital Marketing leads to all manner of confusion and people focus more on the digital aspect rather than the marketing aspect. It’s time we called it:

“Marketing Digitally”

Because that is exactly what you are doing (or should be doing). You are marketing your business through digital channels. You are not focusing on digital to communicate a message. You are crafting the message and then communicating that digitally.

This brings a very different bent

When you change your thinking a little, you can see how important it is to communicate:

  • The right messages
  • To the right target audience
  • Through the right channels

And that’s why your marketing strategy is so important, it defines those first two criteria above, and then you need a strong digital marketing strategy to choose what channels you are going to use.

It means you can’t short cut the process!

Most people jump straight into a digital marketing strategy, without having a great marketing strategy. That just doesn’t work! It will produce substandard results.

If you stick to these four Irrefutable Laws, then you will have digital marketing success for your business.

My parting words of wisdom for the day:

Build a great marketing strategy and the digital part becomes easy!

Want to see how Due North can help you with Great Marketing?

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