Zero to One Marketing

Hi there. My name is Spyros and I am a business and marketing consultant for small businesses and organizations in Sociality, a digital marketing cooperative based in Athens, Greece.

Over the last four years, we had the chance to work with a significant number of teams and people looking to begin or grow their activities in the digital area, whether that is setting up an e-commerce business, looking to expand their volunteers’ database or build a brand communication platform.

Moreover, we have participated as digital marketing instructors for a wide range of groups and companies in open workshops and seminars. As time went by, there was a pattern emerging amongst them, an alarming observation that made us tremendously interested in finding a way to break it.

Those teams and companies weren’t just doing little or fragmented moves in their marketing — they weren’t doing any marketing at all.

The More, The Better?

As an economics and business graduate, it really feels that I should bring in the table what it’s called “the law of diminishing returns”. It is a very useful general rule that magically works both in theory AND in practice. It briefly says that the more resources you allocate to achieve a goal, the less effect each new addition brings to the total. In a real-life example, when you’re hungry, having a burger would really help calm your stomach but a second one wouldn’t do much difference after that.

However, I am challenging you to see the rule from its positive side: if it’s something that really helps and adds to the equation the most, it’s that important first step. To complete the analogy, a small business or an organization should not be intimidated by the enterprise-level black-magic marketing tools and tactics that exist in the wild, but rather begin with something close to its resources and needs.

Our content editor had me put a stock photo here.

So here are some easy and effective starting points for Lvl 1 Marketing that could add on the digital presence of a business or an organization:

a) Claim your assets, they’re yours anyway

Spend some time adding info and taking care of your Facebook Page. You normally shouldn’t spend less than half an hour setting up the page but definitely not more than two.

To begin with, go to your About section and fill any field you can find there. Take notice that the available options are a little different depending on the category your Page belongs to. Don’t forget to put a username in your page to remove this annoying number code on your FB page URL.

In addition, find your business in Google Maps and verify it. People use Maps all the time to find their way around, so it will be very helpful for them to show them your exact location, your business hours and a few photos of the place they’re gonna find once they get at your place.

During the verification process, you will bump into something called Google MyBusiness. This is your friend regarding the display of your business in Google Maps and partially on Google Search. It can also give you insights regarding how many people look for your business on Google Maps, how many see your photos there or ask for directions. Cool, ha?

b) Build a website, even a (proper) coming soon page

When a customer is looking for you, they’re going to search for you in a bunch of places. First, she’s going to Google you, then search on Facebook and Instagram, then whatever works best in your field (Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.).

I think that it’s easy to think your website as your digital presence headquarters.

1. Put all your contact details and social media links there, like a digital business card.
2. Set up a contact form or a newsletter signup form for future communications.
3. Make sure your website design is responsive, meaning that it displays properly in smartphones and tablets.
4. Τake care of your SEO title and description so that they appear normally in Google Search. This can be taken care of either hard-coded or by using a plugin on your website system.
5. Have your people install Google Analytics and the Facebook Pixel on your website in order to start collecting useful data that you’re going to use in the future for review and ad targeting.

c) Reuse and recycle your posts and content in social media

Please mind that this doesn’t mean that you have to be everywhere all the time. There are a dozen places you can go but you’re actually going to live only in a few of them So pick what suits you best and where you’ll be working effortlessly.

Let’s take the case that you’ve got something important or compelling happening and you want to put it out there. It is OK not to completely rewrite your message five times for five different posts. Use your own way of speaking online and slightly tailor your message using similar or complementary materials, like hashtags and photos. In that way, one important moment is multiplied by five while the effort remains almost the same.

d) Find what you need and look for the tools that do it

There’s an office joke that goes around every time one of our developers is thinking aloud to build a super-custom solution for one of our marketing objectives and that’s “have you checked if there’s already something out there?”. Nine out of 10 times the answer is yes, of course, there is.

Do you want to schedule all your social media posts for the next weeks? Use Buffer. Thinking about setting up an awesome email marketing campaign but you don’t know how? Let MailChimp guide you. Do you want to find a way to collaborate with your team? How about Trello? Maybe looking for something more formal? You should try Podio or Asana. Do you want to connect anything with anything (really)? Take a look in IFTTT and Zapier.

e) Ask. Just that.

Don’t be embarrased to ask even the simplest of questions. Google your way through whatever isn’t clear to you, but also go ahead and knock on people’s inboxes and posts. Comment your questions and let them help you.

For example, go ahead and ask us anything you don’t understand regarding digital marketing, either here or in Sociality’s Facebook Page. You’re welcome :-)

Thanks for reading! Did we miss anything? Would you like to add something yourselves? Please give us a heart 💖, leave a comment below and I will update the post as soon as possible with your input.