Marketing Optimisation with Seb Brantigan

Could you tell me a bit more about your Background?

Seb: Yeah, sure. So my background used to work in local government, but I’ve always had an interest in the online world and social media. And so when I first started my journey in business, I was a social media consultant, and I still do that a little bit, but that’s how I built my business, through building my own social media profile, such as branding yourself, creating content, doing all the things that we all told to do on social media to build up our own profile and to attract potential clients.

Something, as I say, I’ve always had an interest in, and I then had people approaching me, asking me how I could do it for their business. And ever since then it’s just sort of grown and grown and grown. And that process started about eight or so years ago. And fast forward to now. Myself, my business partner, have had our agency for a couple of years, but our total combined experience is close to 20 years myself, almost ten years in digital marketing. And yeah, it’s just been a crazy ride and I got into it probably more by accident than anything else, but it’s been something I really enjoy. And we’re very passionate about helping others achieve better results as well through online marketing.

Dawn: That sounds really good, and obviously, if you stumbled into it, but it’s definitely your calling. So you’re still going, you’re very successful, and I’m guessing obviously your clients are successful because of you and what you get up to.

Seb: Yeah, definitely. So as I mentioned, we help business owners generate more leads and sales opportunities. And one of the clients we’ve recently started working with, we’ve generated up to ten times the amount of leads that they used to have. And these are all very targeted leads, leads that are actually interested in what’s being offered and also very qualified leads as well.

So that’s a big part of what we do. We mostly focus on paid advertising through social media, whereas when I first started, it was more what we call organic marketing. So that’s where you’re not paying for advertising. But I mean, all of these methods work, and they all have a time and place. So, as a result of something, we’ve been doing a lot of testing on paid marketing, free for marketing, and it’s been very interesting along the way.

Dawn: That sounds amazing. So I’d love to pick your brains a bit more about your experience with marketing and stuff. And I know previously we spoke about how we could, I guess, make this episode really great for any freelancers or self-employed people out there because they’re a marketing department there, their own business owner, finance, like the entire work. So a little helping hand, I think, always goes a long way.

Why is it important to Optimise your Marketing?

Seb: So, in terms of optimizing your marketing, if we’re looking at a paid marketing standpoint, you want to get the best return for every ad dollar or ad pound that you’re spending. It’s the same thing as well. If you’re not investing money, you’re obviously investing time. So whether you’re doing one or the other or both, it’s all about getting the best return possible on your time or your money invested, it’s harder, obviously, to get a better return on your time of kind of tracking the results from that. But in terms of the money you’re investing, it’s definitely worth being able to maximize all of the money that you’re spending.

You don’t want to be leaving any money on the table. You don’t want to be running advertising. The problem with not doing that is, especially if you’re paying to advertise, if you’re not optimizing your marketing correctly, then you could be breaking even or even losing money when you don’t necessarily need to be.

One way that we combat that is with every client we work with, we do a marketing for them where we look at the digital assets they have or they want to have, and we look at how can we make some little changes. And oftentimes it’s making those small changes that can make the biggest results, biggest impact. So we always do an audit of everything that they’re currently doing. We also look at sometimes it goes a bit deeper than that, and we look at not just the marketing but their offerings and their products and services.

The marketing side is great, and it’s something we always want to improve. But if the marketing is right, you drive them to an offer that isn’t as compelling as it could be.

Or maybe the pricing isn’t right, so the offer is not that profitable, then that’s an issue as well. So it actually goes deeper than the marketing sometimes. And we look at every aspect of the business in some cases, especially when the marketing isn’t working well or the business isn’t profitable. So there are actually a lot of different angles we can look at. We could be sending all the leads in the world, the best leads in the world to a business. But of course, if it’s missing some aspects further down the line, then it’s not going to work well. So that’s why we have a look at everything in a very holistic way and try to improve each step of the journey, not just for our clients, but also for who they bring on through their customer journey as well.

Dawn: Definitely. And it’s something that I think is really key. A lot of people forget about that. Like you were saying, you might be able to grab them in, and they go a couple of steps into the customer journey. But if one step swap makes them drop, then obviously you’ve lost potential business or a purchaser. And if you’ve got, for example, really cruddy looking like email marketing, obviously then they’re going to be a bit turned off by it’s like, well, they looked professional until I got to this point and they’re not giving me what I thought it was. So maybe their actual services themselves would actually not be as good. So it’s making that good impression from start to finish, I think is something that people forget. It’s not just getting followers and like, oh, okay, someone’s inquired about my business, it’s from start to the very end and hopefully they come back as a repeat customer as well.

Seb: Yeah, exactly. One thing that I would say to people, that it’s easier to get an existing client to spend more with you than it is to find a new client. And of course, that’s not to say you shouldn’t be looking for new clients, of course you should. But the clients that already have a relationship with you have already spent money with you and they know, like and trust you. It’s going to be a lot easier to get them to buy an additional product and that’s why we talk about the concept of a product ladder, which effectively, if anyone who’s not aware of what product ladder is, it’s just a series of all of your products.

So think of an actual ladder and think of each of the steps on that ladder and think of the bottom step as your lowest price offer. For me, I have a book on social media marketing, so that would be my lower level of the ladder, which is buy my book for five pounds. I think it is. The price changes a lot, but it’s a very, very low something that’s under 50 pounds in most cases. The next step would be if someone buys that book, the next step up that value ladder would be a strategy session with me for 97 pounds. And the next step up, that would be a training course and so on and so on. So that’s something we always look at, is what’s the next thing you can offer to your existing customers.

Seb: And, of course, again, you also want to have your strategy enticing new clients and customers to join you. Because eventually your existing clients, they’ll move on and do something else. At some point in the future, obviously some of them will stay with you. But of course, you need to bring in new customers all the time. And a lot of business owners struggle with that because they don’t always have the right messaging. The messaging is not clear enough. The call to action might not be clear enough. And just having that clear enough offering for your new clients, just make it very obvious what the value is in what you’re promoting, I think is always very key as well.

How could any of those who are Self-Employed optimise their Business?

Seb: So if you’re self-employed and you’re looking to optimize your marketing, the first thing I’d say is the most important thing is looking at your audience. If you know your audience that’s going to help you a lot in terms of creating your marketing, such as your content, your copy, any images you need to create, and possibly any videos.

If you understand your audience and what are their pain points, what are they struggling with what keeps them up at night and what do they worry about? Those are all things you need to be very clear on before you get going with your marketing. Otherwise, you fall into the trap of trying to sell steak to vegetarians, which is what a lot of business owners do, a lot of self-employed people. So if your marketing right now is not really converting.

Seb: Then go back to the basics of who is your audience? Do you understand them fully? Or maybe you do understand them fully, but are you getting enough of those pain points and problems into your marketing? My audience is service-based business owners, and the number one struggle they have is that they don’t generate enough leads and sales opportunities. And you need to go a bit deeper into that. If someone’s not generating enough leads or sales opportunities, what problems are they having because of that? Are they not generating enough revenue?

Are they struggling to keep the lights on? Are they struggling to invest more money in their marketing to grow their business? So it’s definitely about explaining those problems in depth and then also how your product or service benefits those people. So that would be my biggest tip. My biggest focus is look at your audience and again, consider what they’re struggling with or what’s their almost bleeding neck issue, if you want to call it that, the biggest, most painful issue that you believe you can help with.

Dawn: No, that’s definitely key. And I think stemming from that, if you’re not quite sure on your audience, you’re kind of looking at the wrong people. All the messages on all the different things you do on social media is just not going to work. And then you’re wondering why you’ve got like 20 followers and you’ve got all these great things, but you’re obviously coming off peace. You’re not actually going the right direction. You need to be going. So I definitely agree with that aspect.

Do you have any advice for anyone listening today?

Seb: Yeah, definitely. So when it comes to choosing a specific marketing strategy, I would say have a maximum of two at any given time, unless obviously, you are really successful with those two, then you could add additional ones. But one thing that’s worked very well for me is really focusing on a maximum of two strategies rather than trying to be on ten different social media channels. Obviously, if you’re self-employed and you’re a one-month band, your time is probably limited, and you’re only able to do certain things anyway if it’s just you.

So that’s my biggest recommendation. Focus on two strategies. Some strategies can go hand in hand as well. For example, when I first started building my business, my social media consultancy, I focused on Facebook and Instagram. And because Facebook owns Instagram, you’re able to create content on Facebook and cross promote it to Instagram and vice versa. So the idea would be pick two strategies that can work together and you create almost like a spider web of different platforms that connect with each other and keep it simple.

Seb: Again, it’s all about your messaging. So, when it comes to creating the content, you’re better off. And this is something I can recommend as well, following a structure. So, the structure that I recommend to people is the AdA principle. This is not something that I’ve come up with, by the way, but this is something I have implemented and told others to implement. I don’t know who came up with it, but as I say, it wasn’t me, so I can’t take credit for it. But that principle is the AdA principle. So Ada stands for attention, interest, desire, action. And this is a formula I recommend following with all of your marketing. So to give you an idea, attention is you’re asking someone a question.

It could be, are you a service based business owner that is not generating enough leads? That’s an example of the attention aspect. The next step is interest. So that’s where you talk about what you’re offering and why they should be interested. The next step is desire. So this is where you’re creating almost a bit of emotion within your content and copy.If you don’t do this, then a lot of your content will be very factual.

Seb: People make decisions emotionally and they justify it with logic. So it’s always good to add some emotional information or copy, such as like a story, and using that within your content. Whether it’s email, social media, doesn’t matter. So that desire aspect is very important. And of course, you’re talking about what are the emotionally, why should they take action and why should they do that? Again, you could talk about the pain points I mentioned earlier, and then the final step is action. So this is just telling them where to go next. Your call to action could be send me a message if you’d like to learn more, or click this link to book a call, you just make it very clear on what the next step is.

That’s a mistake people make as well, is they do all the other steps correctly, but they either don’t give a call to action at all, or they don’t make it clear enough on what to do next. Or they might give like multiple calls to action and confuse minds. Don’t buy. So again, keep it very simple, one call to action and follow that Ada principle and you’ll see a lot better results. Definitely.

Dawn: That sounds really amazing. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up the episode?

Seb: Yes, and one other thing I’d definitely like to do, if that’s okay, is I’ve put together a free marketing bundle and within that marketing bundle, as a thank you for everyone listening, is my top converting email marketing templates and funnels. And to get access to that, if you go to www.marketwithseb.com, you can download both of those for free.

The reason why I’d like to give away that specifically, and by the way, I do charge for creating funnels and email templates, but I’ve given away my best ones. The reason why I’ve given these away specifically is I thought about giving away ebooks and video trainings, but I did find that people are just getting overwhelmed with information and really struggling. So this is why I’ve actually put together something that you guys can take and apply and use in your own business, like real actual templates. So if you go to Marketseb.com, you’ll be able to access those immediately and use them within your business as well.

Seb: I know so many people struggle with marketing and so that’s why I want to give away some of my best stuff that I do normally charge for and upset results in marketing. And it’s been a great industry for me, so I generally want to give back and help others. And I know it sounds a bit woo-woo and cheesy, but I do get a good kick out of doing that as well. So yeah, hopefully that’s a great gift to everyone who’s listening and definitely enjoy that. My blessing as well. And I hope that helps you guys in your business. And hopefully from following what I’ve shared today and following those templates, you can avoid reinventing the wheel and see what’s actually working as well and apply it to your business too.

Dawn: No, that’s amazing. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the effort. I think one of the things I found, although this is an insurance company, obviously I do the marketing, is that unless you know it back to front and it’s what you do, it can seem very confusing from an outside perspective. And then you’re expected to do all these different marketing tricks and techniques and you’re just like, oh my goodness, my brain is going to implode. So that is like a really great way and a great segue for them to start looking into their marketing in more depth without getting overloaded like you said.

Seb: Something I always do in marketing as well, is I always look at what’s worked in the past and how can I replicate what’s worked rather than creating something new every time? Takes too much time and effort anyway, so I always follow the data and what works and what is working now as well.

Dawn: That’s brilliant. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. It’s been really informative and I hope as well it’s been really great for you.

Seb: Yeah, definitely. I love being here. So yeah, thanks once again for having me on the opportunity and thanks everyone for listening as well. I appreciate all of you.