Happy new year! Mitch here from Mastered marketing. After some time off to relax (my first holiday of the entire year!), I had some exciting new ideas for 2019. We're always innovating here at MM, and I've put together a quick list of things we’re going to focus on that you can try too. Let’s go!

More Video Content

In 2019, the internet will be 80% video and it’s our #1 priority. The great thing about video is you can cut full videos into bite-sized snippets, like this. We’ve also recently stumbled across Animoto which we’re using to turn blog articles into fun video. We wrote an article for a client called ‘The Most Popular Cafes in Holland Park’ which we turned into this video. Perfect for people who are camera shy!

Animated Videos & GIFs

Arguably my favourite social media account of all time is Starbucks. It’s just so god damn attention grabbing you can’t not look at it, and one of the ways they do this is with bright colours, and animated video. To make our videos POP right out of the feed, we’ll be working with our video editor to create bright, colorful, engaging videos and GIFs like this and this.

More Instagram Story Posts & Ads

Instagram and Facebook Stories are where it’s at for 2019. We’ll be sharing more stories and recycling content into a story-friendly format, along with some story advertising. We tested feeds vs stories for a blog traffic campaign and the story placements were 50% cheaper!

Use Canva to create the appropriate dimensions, and try to make them as attention grabbing as possible. Here are a few examples we created for our blog articles.

Lead Magnets & Offers

If you’re not doing this already, try running running some form of special offer or super-attractive resource to give away in exchange for contact information. The goal is not to get an instant sale, but a potential lead to show a stronger sense of interest to follow up with, or add to a database for future communication. I don’t recommend this to anyone who doesn’t have a strong follow up system.

For example, with our client Yummy Mummy Fitness we offer a free 7 day trial. For our chiropractor clients we give away a consult, examination and adjustment for $29. Think about an attractive offer you can run to get prospects raising their hand.

Quizzes

With all the content available in seconds on Google, getting people to give away their contact info for a generic eBook is tough. Quizzes are an exciting idea we’re going to try out as a fun, non-invasive way to attract leads. This will be a short, interactive quiz they fill out, add their info to receive the results and get sent an attractive offer for the next step in the buying journey.Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you work in real estate. Some quiz examples could include:

• How well do you know your suburb?

• How much has your home increased?

• Which upgrades should you make?

• Should you rent or buy a home?

• Should you move or renovate?

• Is your home ready for sale?

• Do you know how to attract buyers?

• How fast will your home sell?

• How much is your home worth?

• Which ______ is right for you?

Updated Facebook & Instagram Ads

Social media advertising is becoming more expensive but it’s still incredibly valuable. To maximize our advertising efficiency we’re making some tweaks to our ads. Depending on the budget these will vary, although we are looking to incorporate the following:

• Engagement ads promoting useful content, targeting cold traffic to build brand awareness.
  

• Lead generation ads promoting offers and quizzes to generate prospects and subscribers.
  

• Call to action ads retargeting people who visited your site, asking them to contact you.
  

• Traffic ads promoting blog content to generate website traffic.

World-Class Graphic Design

I’m a design nut and I go a bit OCD when it comes to this. I probably spend way longer than I should on tiny details, but I want to have literally world-class design for our clients. We are constantly creating new layouts, and after researching a long list of accounts I have more ideas to make artwork even cleaner, more vibrant and more engaging.

If you aren’t already creating custom artwork for your business, take a look at Canva’s pre-made layouts to get you started. Or, research your favourite companies and then re-create them on Canva. After that you have some basic layouts for you to put your spin on!

Facebook’s “Pages to Watch” Feature

This is nothing new, we just haven’t used it properly! Facebook allows you to add 5 pages to “watch” which is a great way to spy on competition, keep up with trends and draw inspiration from the world’s best accounts. We’ll review weekly what the competition and inspo pages are doing, and what got the most engagement in the last 7 days to pull new ideas.

Content Curation

On top of creating our own content for our clients, curating useful content from around the web is a great way to provide value, establish authority and create goodwill amongst publishers.  To save links all in the one place for later, check out Pocket which is a free tool to make life easier.

Re-sharing Our Best Content

With our social media scheduling tool Buffer, we can see which posts got the most likes, comments and engagement. To make the most out of our content, we’ll re-share or ‘rebuffer’ some of the top posts from each account. You can do this too, and use Buffer for free if you have less than 3 accounts.

Quarterly Micro-Campaigns

To keep campaigns fresh, we are looking into running a “micro-campaign” each quarter. This might be a theme, an idea, a hashtag, lead magnet, prize giveaway or something else to keep things innovative. To figure out what these micro-campaigns could be, we’ll use the ‘ICE’ score below…

Use the ICE Score for New Ideas

ICE stands for Impact (the possible impact of a “win”), Confidence (how confident you are that it will be a win) and Ease (how difficult it is to pull off). This is a handy tool for determining, out of all the ideas in your head which one should you focus on?

Be Human & Transparent

Marketing these days is all about authenticity, transparency and human connection. People listen to other people, so when creating content be very casual, human and community-driven.

Also, whilst business owners freak out that it’s not ‘perfect’, casual and ‘real’ looking photos / videos actually work better because it doesn’t look like an ad. People want to keep up with other people. They don’t want to watch an Audi commercial. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect!

Digging Deeper Into Data

We review the basic metrics every week, but we’re going to look deeper into the data and see how we can:

1. See what patterns we can find and why they exist.

2. Optimise our marketing efforts based off the data

3. Gather more information about leads, what they’re like and where they come from.

Need a Hand?

If you’re a business owner and you want to step up your marketing, we’d be happy to help and see if we are a good fit. Just click the button to chat with us!

Love Mitch & the Mastered Marketing Team 😄