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Life behind the Yellow Door – the podcast

Life behind the Yellow Door – the podcast

By Dominique Sandwith

Posted on 5th June 2019

If you look back a few years, no-one was asking about your favourite podcast standing around the braai.

Fast forward to 2019 and it’s quite likely to come up! For a while, Emma and I have been trying to get our clients to set up podcasts for their businesses. We feel that a lot of them would benefit from a series of conversations that aim to inform their current customers or hook potential clients with industry-related news, anecdotes and personal stories. Not many of our clients were willing to try it for various reasons. And then we met The Stellar Effect.

Jason and Carol are very similar to us in that they are co-founders of an amazing small business – theirs producing podcasts! So, as you can imagine there is a lot of synergy (and energy) between us. We soon came to an agreement; we would trade our marketing skills for their production skills and test out our theory that all businesses should share their story through a podcast!

It’s been a fun journey, challenging at times, but an enjoyable experience. We are now two episodes in with an exciting line up of guests to feature in the pipeline.

If you missed the pilot episode, you can listen below (or search ‘Life behind the Yellow Door’ on iTunes or Stitcher). And we’re excited to launch the second episode of our series today! We hope you enjoy it and don’t forget to send us your questions for us to cover in the next episode.

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How measurable is your digital marketing?

How measurable is your digital marketing?

By Dominique Sandwith

Posted on 17th April 2019

In the first week of every month, our team undertakes ‘report week’. It’s stressful for some, but we know it’s important for clients to understand what we’ve been doing for their brands, and what impact this has had on their bottom line.

In our opinion, it’s all very well to set up a website and social media platforms, and start using them to build your brand, but would you know these tools are working without a monthly report?

 

Digital marketing efforts are way more measurable than traditional marketing like newspapers, magazines and billboards. The real problem is figuring out which metrics to focus on and how to keep track of them. Each platform comes with its own analytics or insights tools which you can use to narrow down the information that is important for your brand and business objectives.

 

For each brand we work with, we collate statistics from the following platforms based on what their KPIs are and track their objectives.

Website

Google Analytics is the most well-known and widely-used analytics tool for website statistics. It is cloud-based and as such you can log in from anywhere in the world to track the relevant metrics. It is also simple to set up, any web developer can add the code to your website once the site is up and running. The popular metrics are categorised as follows:

 

  1. Overview: track how many sessions your website has received, pageviews, unique users as well as their average time on site and the bounce rate (how many people landed on the site and left almost immediately).

  2. Audience: insights into the characteristics of your website users (visitors) such as their demographics, geolocation, the device they’re using, the browser and operating system they used to access your site, whether they’ve been to your site before, and more.

  3. Acquisition: how your users (visitors) came to your website, i.e. from Google search (organic), another website (referral), an email newsletter, a paid ad, social media or by directly typing your URL into their browser.

  4. Behaviour: information on what pages your users are visiting, the time they spent on each page, how they got their and what they clicked on.

  5. Conversion: tracks when a user does something that you want them to do, i.e. buy a product, submit an enquiry, etc. This needs to be specifically set up by using a piece of code on your website.

The analytics tool allows you to create your own custom dashboard, so you can just adjust the time period when you log in and immediately see the data that you want to measure. There are also other software applications available for you to collate this information into easily digestible and visual reports – check out Swydo and Databox.

Social media

One of the biggest appeals of social media is the fact that you can track customers and customer relationships in a meaningful way. However, many business owners get bogged down with the idea of tracking vanity metrics, such as the number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers.

While these are nice to haves and definitely necessary to gain reach on these platforms, they shouldn’t be the only things to look at to measure your succeed on these platforms.

Across all platforms, the metrics which matter are the reach of your content, similar to impressions, the amount of engagement that it receives and the number of clicks through to your website (used to calculate your click-through-rate). While these metrics are similar for most platforms, there are some that are worth noting.

  • Facebook: the interesting thing about this platform is the amount of personal information it can gather about your audience. Facebook is the number one social media tool for consumer marketing due to the fact that the targeting of content and advertising is so detailed. The metrics that are available on your page include the age, gender, location and interests of your audience.
  • Instagram: the native dashboard of metrics for Instagram is fairly simple as it is done purely on your phone, however there are plenty of tools available to delve deeper into your statistics such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social. These tools allow you to track your hashtag performance, how many people engaged with the hashtags in your posts and which ones performed the best.
  • Twitter: the use of hashtags is the main differentiating factor of Twitter analytics. From the platform’s analytics dashboard you can find out what the most talked about topics are such as events like Mother’s Day and big sports events. You can then join the conversation by creating a campaign focusing on one of these topics.
  • LinkedIn: as one of the only business-to-business social networks available, the metrics here are a little different. The LinkedIn analytics dashboard shows the demographics of your page by industry and seniority of role allowing you to see who your customer really is and target your content accordingly.

Another important way to measure social media results is to test the content on different audiences. Conducting split testing or A/B testing with your content can be hugely beneficial to finding out what works and what doesn’t. Remember to test only one metric at a time and to give it time to get results.

Reporting Blog Post

Email marketing

Newsletters, when done well, are still a very effective way of reaching customers directly and are extremely measurable. Using platforms such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact or Campaign Monitor you can track your subscription rate, number of opens on a certain email campaign, number of clicks and where the user clicked on the newsletter as well as the number of users who unsubscribe after each campaign. You can also compare these statistics to the average in a particular industry. For example, our client Cape Fish has an open rate of 21%, which is 10% above the industry average! This is a great sign that our content is hitting the mark.

 

Once you have a better understanding of the metrics for each platform and how to find this data, it is important to document the information in a format which can be compared over different time periods.

 

Each platform should have objectives and goals in place to gauge whether the platform is bringing in a good return on investment. The goals should be realistic but should also be aligned with your business goals and should push you or your agency to achieve good results to ultimately contribute to business success.

 

If you’re a Yellow Door client and reading this, tell us what you’d like to see in your next report, and we’ll incorporate it for you; and if you’re new to life behind the Yellow Door and want to find out more – pop us an email to hello@theyellowdoor.co.za.

 

Adapted from an article published in Your Business Magazine Mar/ Apr 2018.

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How to choose the best social platform to reach your customers

How to choose the best social platform to reach your customers

By Dominique Sandwith

Posted on 21st February 2019

This post was originally featured in Your Business magazine

Visit article

Are you running a business and wondering how to find time or knowledge to market your business online? According to a study by LeadPages, 47% of small business owners handle their marketing efforts on their own. So, you're not alone; almost half of small business owners have to juggle running their day-to-day business activities whilst ensuring that they are getting the word out about their brand.

Whether you are a retailer, own a dental practice, a tour operator or restauranteur – the options are endless when it comes to digital marketing platforms and how to use them. In order to figure out which ones to use and how often, you need to understand more about them.

Social platforms explained

■ FACEBOOK FOR BUSINESS has the biggest audience on the internet and is where most brands compete for customers’ attention.
■ TWITTER provides a short, succinct way to market to potential customers by sharing news and facts in two sentences or less.
■ INSTAGRAM & STORIES provides a visual way to represent your business and connect with consumers.

■ IGTV is a new kid on the block, with user-generated television for your phone using videos that are up to an hour long.

■ PINTEREST is ideal for a visual representation of your business (most popular with product offerings) or scrapbook style collection of thoughts.

■ LINKEDIN provides a way to connect with other businesses and potential employees.

■ YOUTUBE is the go-to place to keep your video content library.

■ MAILCHIMP is not so much a social network, but a useful tool for email marketing, which is key to a holistic content marketing strategy .

Pick your poison

Equipped with this knowledge, you now need to assess your business and see where your potential content would fit. Think about the type of content you will be able to create easily, and the resources that you have at your disposal. Remember that it needs to add value to your customers. If it seems like a stretch, it’s probably not wise to start down that road.


As an example, if you’re the owner of a dental practice you could realistically use Facebook (for case studies and success stories), Instagram (to show off your clients’ exquisite teeth), LinkedIn (to attract talented new dentists to your practise) and Mailchimp (to market the latest techniques and specials to your database). However, if you’re a ‘one-man-band’ as mentioned earlier, you probably don’t have time for all of that anyway.


Our advice is to stick to two social networks and do them well. According to a recent study by CoSchedule, the most effective strategy is to post once per day on networks such as Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and up to 15 times a day to Twitter. And as you know, creating and scheduling content takes time and effort. Therefore, it’s better to stick to the ‘less is more’ theory. Choose two that you can handle, and post higher quality content less often, but be consistent.

pexels-photo-1092671

Plan ahead for simplicity's sake

With so many scheduling tools at your disposal, there really is no excuse not to post regular content across the platforms that you have chosen. Apps like Hootsuite, Planoly, Tailwind and Facebook for Business have made it easy for small business owners to spend one portion of time per week or month to plan ahead and schedule content all in one go.


That being said, this would mean that all of the content is created and ready to schedule at one time. Our advice would be to keep it simple. Repurpose content into various forms, linking back to the same section of your website, blog post or video. Ask yourself what your customers genuinely want to see or how you can add value to their lives. Have a conversation with them and make sure you don’t bombard them with sales posts that make them think you only care about making money.

"Our advice is to stick to two social networks and do them well. Stick to the ‘less is more’ theory. Post higher quality content less often, but be consistent."

Once your content is scheduled, you only need to focus on monitoring the platforms and answering any queries or leads that come your way. This is another reason why you don’t want to spread yourself too thin.


It’s also important to value your time and skill. If creating content and interacting with your customers online is not something you’re comfortable doing and it’s going to take you away from building up your business, invest in a good digital marketing team to ensure you have your bases covered. The cost is far outweighed by the peace of mind that your marketing is being done while you can focus on what you do best, whatever that is.

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Black Friday: what’s all the fuss about?

Black Friday: what’s all the fuss about?

By Dominique Sandwith

Posted on 14th November 2018

The tradition of ‘Black Friday’ came about in the USA in the1950s, when customers took to the shops to start their festive shopping the day after Thanksgiving – celebrated yearly on the fourth Thursday in November. Although this expression is now world-renowned, this was not the case until the early 2000s when the rise of globalisation spread the tradition around the world.

A little history lesson

It’s not confirmed as to where the name came from. There are a few different stories, such as that in Philadelphia it was used to describe the disruptive number of pedestrians on the streets or more recently to describe retailers moving from being ‘in the red’ to being ‘in the black’ – therefore turning a profit.

 

Conventionally ‘Black Friday’ is a day of extreme sales with retailers trying to clear stock by discounting it by 50% or even more. However, despite the benefits for customers, the day is starting to get a bad name as customers go to the extreme to get the best deals – inciting violence and bad behavior to get what they want (a far cry from the positivity of Thanksgiving and all it stands for).

How to get involved

That being said, if executed in a professional way, jumping on to the Black Friday trend can be a good move for businesses – even down here in South Africa. Here are five tips to ensure that you take advantage of interested customers and make as much out of the day as possible.

 

1.    Start early. If you’re reading this in November 2018 and thinking maybe you’ll do a Black Friday sale this year – don’t! This should get you to start thinking about 2019 and planning this sale into your strategy for the year. Plan your offer as early as July so that you have three months to start teasing your customers and a whole month or more to really market the deal that you have decided to offer.

 

2.    Be prepared. Whether you’re going to do this sale in-store or online, you need to prepare for the worst. If you’ve done all this marketing and customers have a bad experience then you’ve lost out on an opportunity to convert new customers to loyal ones, and will have a hard time convincing customers to come back again.

 

Prepare your stock for the deal, ensure that you’ll have delivery way in advance or stock up for a few months before you pack it out on the big day.

 

For online sales, make sure your site is running fast, there are no broken links or technical issues and that the site server is prepared for a massive increase in users.

 

3.    Offer something once off. Make this promotion the biggest and greatest one you’ll offer this year. Since you’re planning so far in advance, you should have an idea of what sales you’ll be running for the whole year so make sure you build up to something that will catch your customer’s attention and stand out from your competitors. Whether it’s 30% off everything or 50% off certain items or a free X with every Y – it needs to be big. It goes without saying that you don’t want to bankrupt yourself though, so make it the biggest deal you can afford and market it as well as possible.  

 

4.    Communicate. It goes without saying that you need to communicate this deal as much as possible to every potential customer on every touch point. Be strategic with your message and consistent across all platforms.

 

This should include a good social media campaign (a bit of humour or satire will go a long way to stand out here), a few newsletters reminding them of the deal as well as one on the day which provides the relevant promotion code (if there is one), in-store marketing material if relevant or even some flyers in your area to get the word out. You can’t communicate enough here as this is your only chance to make your offer known.

5.    Deliver what’s promised. Once you get your customers to your store – be it physically or online – make sure you deliver what you promised. Many of these customers are brand new and may never have interacted with your brand before.

 

You want them to have the best possible experience with your brand. This means that they get what they were looking for, and if not because of stock availability then they are able to buy a lesser deal or ‘consolation prize’ if possible.

 

It also means they should receive excellent customer service and that you make your returns policy as clear and easy to follow as possible – in case there are a few that have buyers’ remorse after the rush of Black Friday chaos settles. If it means refunding one or two people, but gaining loyalty for future purchases – it’s worth it!

 

6.    Learn from it. Once the dust has settled and you’ve recovered from this very busy campaign, it’s time to look at what worked and what to fix or avoid next time. Go over your website analytics, look at the customer data and see who bought your products, report back to staff or management on how you felt the campaign went, and write it all down. The following year when you start your Black Friday planning you’ll be thankful for the notes and you won’t make the same mistakes again.

 

It’s not imperative to get involved in the Black Friday experience but one thing you have to keep in mind is that it’s all or nothing. This is one day that customers won’t just buy for a 10% discount, the competition is strong out there and customers will go where the product offering is the best for the greatest discount.

 

Whether you’re offering something in store or only online, make sure you’ve ticked all the boxes and your customers will reward your efforts with lots of sales this holiday season. 

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How to effectively measure your digital marketing efforts

Recently published in the April/ May edition of Your Business Magazine.

If you’re a small business owner, you’ve been told many times by now that social media and digital marketing are non-negotiables when it comes to your marketing efforts. It’s all very well to set up a website and social media platforms, and start using them to build your brand, but how do you know they’re working?

You will probably have figured out that digital marketing efforts are more measurable than traditional marketing like newspapers, magazines and billboards. The problem is figuring out which metrics to focus on and how to keep track of them. We have put together a list of tools and metrics to help you navigate this minefield.

Website

Google Analytics is the most well-known and widely-used analytics tool for website statistics. It is cloud-based and as such you can log in from anywhere in the world to track the relevant metrics. It is also simple to set up, any web developer can add the code to your website once the site is up and running.

Besides the most obvious metric – how many people have visited your website in a certain time-period – the other popular metrics are categorised as follows:

1.     Audience: insights into the characteristics of your website users (visitors) such as their demographics, geolocation, the device they’re using, the browser and operating system they used to access your site, whether they’ve been to your site before, and more.

2.     Acquisition: how your users (visitors) came to your website, i.e. from Google search (organic), another website (referral), an email newsletter, a paid ad, social media or by directly typing your URL into their browser.

3.     Behaviour: information on what pages your users are visiting, the time they spent on each page and what they clicked on.

4.     Conversion: tracks when a user does something that you want them to do, i.e. buy a product, submit an enquiry, etc. This needs to be specifically set up by using a piece of code on your website.

The tool allows you to create your own custom dashboard, so you can just adjust the time period when you log in and immediately see the data that you want to measure. There are also other software applications available for you to collate this information into easily digestible and visual reports – check out Swydo and Supermetrics.

Social media

One of the biggest appeals of social media is the fact that you can track customers and customer relationships in a meaningful way. However, many business owners get bogged down with the idea of tracking vanity metrics, such as the number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers.

While these are nice to haves and definitely necessary to gain reach on these platforms, they shouldn’t be the only things to look at to see if you are succeeding on these platforms.

Across all platforms, the metrics which matter are the reach of your content (sometimes called impressions), the engagement that it receives and the number of clicks through to your website (click through rate). While the metrics are similar for most platforms, there are some that are worth noting.

  • Facebook: the interesting thing about this platform is the amount of personal information it can gather about your audience. Facebook is the number one social media tool for consumer marketing due to the fact that the targeting of content and advertising is so detailed. The metrics that are available on your page include the age, gender, location and interests of your audience.
  • Twitter: the use of hashtags is the main differentiating factor of Twitter analytics. From the platform’s analytics dashboard you can find out what the most talked about topics are such as events like International Women’s Day and big sports events. You can then join the conversation by creating a campaign focusing on one of these topics.
  • Instagram: the native dashboard of metrics for Instagram is fairly simple as it is done purely on your phone, however there are plenty of tools available to delve deeper into your statistics such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social. These tools allow you to track your hashtag performance, how many people engaged with the hashtags in your posts and which ones performed the best.
  • LinkedIn: as one of the only business-to-business social networks available, the metrics here are a little different. The LinkedIn analytics dashboard shows the demographics of your page by industry and seniority of role allowing you to see you your customer really is and targeting your content accordingly.

Another important way to measure social media results is to test the content on different audiences. Conducting split testing or A/B testing with your content can be hugely beneficial to finding out what works and what doesn’t. Remember to test only one metric at a time and to give it time to get results.

Email marketing

Newsletters, when done well, are still a very effective way of reaching customers directly and are extremely measurable. Using platforms such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact or Campaign Monitor you can track your subscription rate, number of opens on a certain email campaign, number of clicks and where the user clicked on the newsletter as well as the number of users who unsubscribe after each campaign.

The important step, and one that business owners often forget, is to study the data to change behaviour and get better results in future.

A study by the SMB Group found that the biggest technological challenge facing small businesses is getting better insights using the data they already have access to.

Once you have a better understanding of the metrics and how to find this data it is important to document the information in a format which can be compared over different date periods.

Each platform should have objectives and goals in place to gauge whether the platform is bringing in a good return on investment. The goals should be realistic but should be aligned with your business goals and should push you or your agency to achieve good results to ultimately contribute to business success.