Each December our SocialB quarterly meetings take on a “challenge” theme. In the last couple of years, we’ve bowled against each other and zapped one another with laser guns. As you can imagine guesses of what the 2018 activity would be were coming in thick and fast as we headed out of Norwich, destination unknown.
Coincidently in a week which saw the remaining six Apprentices being slated by Lord Sugar for their chocolate making skills, we were about to undergo a similar ordeal, apart from the pitches to well-known brands and board-room firings.
Actually, it wasn’t an ordeal at all, but great fun and for me an opportunity to do something both completely new and out of my comfort zone. I was thrilled that what I produced looked ok and tasted not too bad.
Also, there were some amazing parallels with successful digital marketing:
1. Get Trained
After our experience, we were all pretty confident that we could now make chocolates at home. However, that wouldn’t have been the case unless we’d had the expert tuition from Angela and the team at Saffire during our session. It would have been complete carnage if our team had been let loose in the chocolate kitchen without any guidance or instruction.
If you’re looking to up-your-game and avoid carnage with your digital marketing in 2019, we’d love to help.
2. Know Your Ingredients and Your Audience
Getting insight into what (and how much of each) ingredients was invaluable and resulted in a “yum” rather than a “yuck”.
In making a bar of chocolate, I went for dark chocolate with two drops of orange flavouring and a teaspoonful of ginger. I was tempted to put in more of each, but with her years of expertise, Angela advised that the flavours get stronger as the chocolate sets.
Likewise, ingredients within your content strategy need the correct elements to appeal to your target audience. My ingredients for the chocolate bar had been chosen by asking “what would my family like?”. With my content strategy, I would be asking “what ingredients will capture the attention and interest of my audience and lead them to a point of action?”
On this, check out these guides from the SocialB blog:
8 Ways To Create User-Friendly Content
6 Tips To Create Compelling Calls-To-Action That Work
3. Measure What Matters
In the kitchen, there was a real urge just to get on with making things and ignore the instructions. However, Angela and her team encouraged us to be diligent around measuring, especially when making truffles. One part of this was about getting the weights of the ingredients right, the other part was around knowing how many chocolates we would be able to produce as a result.
Peter Drucker once said “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it” and he’s completely right. Sadly, lots of digital marketing is still like throwing ingredients together without any strategy or thinking about measuring the success of content and campaigns.
Often, we see the “how many chocolates?” question being ignored in digital marketing. Measuring not only reveals success but also allows you to improve your strategy and its implementation.
If this is an area you’re interested in, there are lots of helpful resources on the SocialB blog including:
Social Media Strategy: Is It Really Necessary?
How To Set Digital Marketing Objectives
Top 7 Reasons Why You Need To Use Google Analytics
How To Measure ROI Using Google Analytics
We had lots of fun together making chocolate and thankfully it tasted good too. We wish you a successful 2019 with all your digital marketing!