Marketing Consultation and Planning on the Digital Spectrum
Now listen very carefully, I shall say this only once:
You are not better than anyone else. Your business is not better. Your product is not better. Your service is not better. The quality isn’t better. The knowledge isn’t better. It’s just not better.
And you know what! It doesn’t matter!!!
See, business and marketing is not about being better. [Read more…]
Have you ever considered webinars to sell your products online? Maybe you’ve had a go and nothing came of it? Well…
Recently I had an open enrolment period for my Marketing Untangled Training program. I don’t have that big a list. I’ve only just started building it outside my native Iceland, and in a country of 330 thousand people, building a huge list of people interested in marketing and branding for entrepreneurs and small business is, well … :) Add to that a cultural difference between us Europeans and USA, which means that I have found that many marketing strategies and tactics that work like a charm State side need to be, let’s say, adjusted and softened somewhat on this side of the pond. Webinars are something I have done before on a number of occasions, and they’ve done well for me, all things considered. Well, ok, but I knew I could be doing much better. I have seen people out there increasing their revenue dramatically in that one hour during a webinar, sometimes by 5 and 6 figures and I wanted to do the same.
So, a little over a month ago, I decided it was time to do this webinar thing properly. And the best way to do that? [Read more…]
So, this marketing thing is kinda my thing. I love it! But you know, even though it’s my thing, and even though I love it, there are still days when I feel like this:
Well, actually, more like this:
STOP TELLING ME I HAVE TO DO THIS AND THAT AND EVERYTHING! Stop telling me I have to be on Facebook, and on Twitter, and on Instagram and LinkedIn, and Google+ and have a LinkedIn Group, and have lead magnets and do webinars, and Pinterest and do Periscope and do Google Hangouts and have an email list, and blog, and vlog and grrrroooog or whatever, and do infographics and video series and funnel optimisation and keyword analysis and SEO, and use Google Analytics, and buy more analytics and use Google Search Console, and master copywriting and … just stop!
Because at the end of the day, none of this matters. None of all these shiny objects, with their fiddly things and click here and click that and click this are not going to do anything for me on their own! They’re just not! And there is no way I – or you – or anyone – can be on all of these and do all this stuff well. Not unless we have an army of experts – which, I’m guessing, if you are reading this blog, you don’t have ;)
Yes, they can help. Yes they can be great tools. But just like a carpenter does not need 453 different types of hammers, or 967 different types of nail to build a good wood shed, we don’t need all the tools under the sun to do our marketing. We just need to find the right ones for us.
But how on earth do we do that? [Read more…]
Hey there,
As you may be aware of (or not ;) the second book in my Marketing Untangled series, Target Groups Untangled: The Small Business & Entrepreneur’s Guide to Finding and Knowing Your Ideal Target Groups, is in the works and will be out later this year.
I was hoping that you would help me out a little bit. When it does come out, I will be giving away a free chapter of the book, and I was wondering which one you would find most interesting. If you would mark the three chapters in the list below that you would like to see, I would be most grateful.
If you would like to make sure you are notified when the book is out – to receive your free chapter and perhaps something more for your marketing ;) – please go to thoranna.is/targetgroupsuntangled and sign up for notifications.
Many thanks in advance for your help!
xo
Thoranna
SWOT analysis has been used for decades and gives you a systematic way of analysing the market, and when combined with other analysis tools such as PESTLE (see below), can be a great way to reduce the risk of missing something important. There are just so many things out there that it’s easy to miss crucial things if you are not careful. So what the heck is SWOT Analysis? Why should you do it? And how on earth do you do it? Let me tell you how – it’s actually quite fun ;)
SWOT analysis is an evaluation tool. It can be used to evaluate a business venture or other kind of project, and lately SWOT is being applied in various other situations, such as personal development. For our intents and purposes, we can use it to evaluate our business, our products and/or services and the marketing of our business, products or services.
The analysis has four parts (S – W – O – T) which examine internal and external factors and their potential influence on the project in question. Let’s look at them in turn:
S = Strengths
W = Weaknesses
This refers to strengths and weaknesses within the business or project team. These are internal things – the sort of things that are up to us. If the project is marketing, we may have strengths such as a good knowledge of SEO or a great graphic designer on board, but we can also have weaknesses, such as a limited budget or lack of knowledge of Facebook advertising (if that is something that matters to our marketing). These need to be things that don’t apply to other players in our market. If all of them are great at SEO and can afford to hire a great graphic designer, then it’s not a strength of ours. If the other players in the market also have a limited budget and don’t know how to do Facebook advertising, then it is not a particular weakness of ours – it’s actually a potential opportunity to get ahead of them.
O = Opportunities
T = Threats
Opportunities and Threats refer to things in the outside environment that may impact our project and we can essentially not do anything about as such. We can only react and adapt, but not change the facts. These can be things like the weather, the economy, demographic developments and such and they can be good for us (hence providing opportunities) or bad (hence threats).
It’s really quite simple. You want to be aware of your strengths, so that you can best use them in your business; your weaknesses, so that you can find a way to improve upon them and neutralise their impact; the opportunities in the marketplace so that you can take advantage of them and the threats out there, so that you can be prepared and minimise their negative impact on your business.
Go through [Read more…]