As you may have seen, we recently exposed ourselves at the South West Expo in Swindon, talking about marketing strategy.
By exposing ourselves we obviously mean with a lovely stand, fully clothed henchpeople and some visitor participation fun!
We asked people to draw a self-portrait, and at the same time tell us about their biggest marketing ‘evil’. The result: a rogues’ gallery full of useful commentary on what people struggle with in a marketing sense, both as consumers and as businesses.
We had a lot of themes to consider, and some quite frankly haunting pictures that have made more appearances in our nightmares than betting ads during a football match.
Let’s have a little look at a few of the most common themes…
Social Media
The dictionary defines social media as those addictive places online where everyone tries to show off a bit, often filled with pictures of dinner and cats.
Social media was overwhelmingly the biggest evil on the list. From ideas and content generation to extending reach and navigating ‘influencers’, it can be a real headache without a strategy in place.
The brands that perform best on social media are the ones that show up, have a consistent tone and style, and have a plan (both reactive and proactive). Finding capacity for all this can be tricky, but it is a necessary evil.
Evil Empire’s Good Advice: Start with benchmarking, and then devise a quarterly plan for content and engagement. If it makes it easier, come up with three themes and take them month by month. Aim for two posts per week (minimum) and make sure you allocate time each week for engagement (liking and commenting). At the end of the first quarter, check out your analytics and review your engagement before refining your approach for the next three months.
Moving from timelines to inboxes, another common complaint in our rogues’ gallery was…
Email Marketing
We’re all on a list of some sort. Whether we’re active subscribers or past or present customers, you can guarantee that at least once a day, a marketing email is going to land in our inboxes.
With both sender and receiver in mind, there are three crucial points to address:
- The frequency of emails
- Quality of content
- The unsubscribe button
Getting the frequency of emails right is going to be your first consideration. Start low – you can always test increasing the frequency, but you don’t want to inundate your audience with too much.
Consider your content strategy and align this with your social media posts (what are the themes you’re talking about this month?) Get some good quality content in that email and it will be well received.
Evil Empire’s Good Advice: That unsubscribe button is actually your ally. If your audience genuinely aren’t interested in your emails, set them free. The last thing you want to be doing is annoying potential customers. Give them the chance to walk away – but with the right frequency and the right content, they’re more likely to stick around.
And if they stick around, they may click through to your…
Websites
We spoke to lots of people about website evils, from adding new and original content to those getting annoyed by pop-ups.
Your website needs to have a good, nay a great, UX. Out-of-date content and pop-ups popping up like Iggy Pop on Top of the Pops (yes, that did actually happen) will turn prospective customers off.
As with your emails and your socials, think about those themes and your strategy – if you work with all three in synchronicity, it will be easier, more logical and your messaging will be uniform across your platforms.
Evil Empire’s Good Advice: In terms of your UX it is always worth seeking external opinions. Whether you do your own research or pay for expert advice, it will help guide you objectively.
Tip of the iceberg
We’ve looked a little bit at the key themes, but let’s face it, it’s really just scratching the surface. Every business, every organisation has its own objectives and needs its own bespoke strategy…
And strategy is where it all begins.
That marketing headache dissipates with a strategy aspirin – a clear plan that gives you a framework for content for your social media, email marketing and websites. Take a little time to work out that strategy for the next three months and you’ll be heading in the right direction.
Who would have thought that asking people about marketing evils would have opened such a can of worms? There’s a lot more we haven’t discussed, so make sure you follow us on social media where we’ll be sharing some of the best (worst?) pics and offering more tips from the rogues’ gallery.
Let’s meet IRL
If you want to meet us for real, we do exist. We are proper humans and to prove it we will be at the 2025 TBE Show at the University of Bath on Thursday 11th September. Come and find us and have some fun!
Get ready for the CTA…
Here it is.
When you work with Evil Empire, we take your evils, sort them out and fit them into an actionable marketing strategy based on your business aims.
Our team are here and ready to tackle those horrible bits for you.
Want to get started? Get in contact.
