With throttled organic reach, social media is ineffective for attracting new customers. Instead, use it as a mid-funnel strategy to nurture your existing audience. Become a media destination for them, building trust and engagement beyond simple transactions, which is crucial for retention.
Building a brand is fundamentally about building trust. Early on, since your company has no inherent trust, you must "borrow" it via third-party validation like PR, influencer endorsements, and customer testimonials. Over time, this borrowed trust is replaced by trust earned through consistency.
A 30-second elevator pitch is too long for customers to repeat. Instead, craft a concise 5-7 word statement that is easy to regurgitate, like Hawke Media's "your outsourced CMO and marketing team." This empowers customers to effectively spread the word about your brand.
Judging marketing on a daily spend vs. daily return basis is a major error. Data shows a typical purchase cycle is 3 weeks to 3 months. This time lag, not a drop in ad effectiveness, is why ROAS appears to dip when you ramp up spending. Align your measurement with this reality.
Many marketers wrongly believe iOS 14 tanked Facebook's effectiveness. The reality is consumer behavior didn't change; the platform's default tracking window just shrank from 28 to 7 days. This created a measurement problem for marketers, not a performance problem for the platform.
Simplify complex marketing problems by auditing them against three pillars. Are you attracting new customers (Awareness)? Are you engaging them until they buy (Nurturing)? Are you giving them reasons to believe you (Trust)? Most strategic failures can be traced back to a deficiency in one of these core areas.
While 90% of your budget should go toward scalable, repeatable channels like paid search and social, reserve 10% for experimental, high-risk marketing. This includes stunts and viral campaigns that aren't scalable but can provide a significant, short-term "sugar rush" of attention and growth.
Drawing from 'How I Met Your Mother,' any introduction—even from a stranger—is more effective than a cold approach. In marketing, getting someone else to talk about your brand creates trust, even if the audience doesn't know the person making the recommendation. The validation itself is powerful.