Hi
My friend and mentor Nigel Botterill frequently cites Bananarma syndrome - It's not what you do it's the way that you do it - as the secret of small business success.
Any business owner looking for the truth in this statement need look no further than the general election result.
Despite gaining tens of millions more views for its videos on Facebook and You Tube than the Tories, and spending £1.25m compared with the Tories £0.75m on Facebook ads, views and likes on social media can be, and were, misleading.
It isn't enough just to know your numbers, you need to know what they are telling you. This applies as much in business as in politics.
Labour was lulled into a false sense of security by it's high engagement on social media, while the Tories did much better in reaching the voters who mattered. While it appeared that Labour was doing very well most of their views and shares came from people who were already going to vote Labour.
Using sophisticated digital targeting, the Tories Facebook ads were tailored to voters postcodes and demographics. Images of Boris Johnson featured heavily in Leave areas, where he is popular, but not in Remain areas where their ads focused on Jeremy Corbyn's weaknesses. The Tories campaign focused more than Labour on ads in target constituencies such as Wrexham and Wakefield with ads predicted to
provoke a response.
Small businesses can learn a lot from the Tories marketing strategy. I often hear that 'Facebook ads don't work.' Well maybe not.....but are you targeting the right audience with the right message? If you spend a lot of money targeting people who are never going to buy your product then they aren't going to buy from you. And even if you target the right people, you must ensure you send them the right
message.
But this isn't an email to extol the virtues of just Facebook advertising; it applies to all your marketing pillars. Remember Market > Message and then Media.
It is also a reminder to measure what matters; this can sometimes be difficult particularly when different metrics are telling you different things. Which do you believe? The answer can only be found by diving deeply into an analysis of the data and then performing a thorough and detailed interpretation of what it means.
Fortunately the technology and analytical tools to do this are available to even small businesses these days, although in my experience too few business owners dig deep enough to find the nuggets hidden in their data.
As information becomes more to the fore as a competitive advantage and online advertising become more expensive, knowing how and where to spend your marketing pound will separate the winners from the losers.
Just like in the general election.
To your success
Noel Guilford