Positioning Jujitsu – How to Win Against Powerful Competitors

April Dunford, Author of Obviously Awesome
In this session, April teaches you how smart positioning can ensure you outrun the Hordes, use the strength of the Giants against them, and bust the Ghosts by leveraging the momentum of trends.

It is a well-known fact that each and every market in the world is saturated; yes, even the ones that are not much talked about. It is crucial to know how to implement smart brand strategies to lap your competitors in the market race.
For this reason, we invited April Dunford to talk to us about brand positioning and beating competitors in our recent talk.

April Dunford is the author of her book called, “Obviously Awesome,” which focuses on teaching brands all aspects of brand positioning and why it is important. She is also the CEO of Ambient Strategy. Surprisingly, April does not have a marketing degree. Instead, she majored in designs, systems, and engineering. Her first job was in the marketing sector. Today, she has been successful in launching at least 16 different phenomenal products into the marketplace. She offers her marketing experience and positioning knowledge to diverse companies and brands around the world. Her goal is to not only help tech startups improve their marketing practices, but also help brands of all niches learn more about positioning to improve their marketing strategies as well.

In this talk, she talks about how vital brand positioning is and how a brand can smartly beat its competitors by carefully implementing this concept.

According to April, customers see your product within the context of alternatives or competitors. There is an overwhelming sort of competition in the market, and they have a lot of brands to buy from. At each step, brands are up against a distinctive type of competitive alternative. This is why strategically positioning your brand to beat the competition in the market is so crucial for brands, according to April.

She talks about the entire concept by dividing it into three different parts:

Part-1: The Hordes

The Hordes is a group of competitors in your niche which might not consist of big-name, multimillion companies but are still your competitors because they belong to your specific market niche.

How do I beat the Hordes?

April explains how you, as a brand, can successfully beat the Hordes. The concept is simple: Only fight where you can win.
She quotes a saying by Warren Buffet, which perfectly fits into this concept we’re discussing:

“How do you beat Bobby Fischer? You play him at any game but chess.”-Warren Buffet

The lesson this concept teaches us is simple: Don’t position your brand for a fight it can’t win.
According to April, positioning in a specific category or niche determines how you are evaluated. In simple words, it is important that you, as a brand, learn to introduce innovations while staying in your own specific niche, instead of unknowingly slipping into another industry.

How to find your best market position?

April Dunford defines positioning as:

“It is the concept which defines how your product is best in the world at providing some sort of value to a special set or segment of customers who care about that specific value you provide them with.”

Components of Marketing

Next, April talks about the different components of marketing that make up the actual body of brand marketing. It is vital to ask yourself the following questions as a brand to make sense of these components.

It is important to note that order is essential here:

Competitive Alternative:

  1. a) What are the alternative ways of doing what I already do?
  2. b) If I didn’t exist, what would my customers buy and use?

Unique Attributes:

  1. a) What is truly unique about my brand?
    b) What is that unique feature that isn’t found in my relevant alternatives?

Value

What value do I bring to the table for my customers who genuinely care about it?

4) Customer Segments – customers who care

Who are the customers/target audiences who care about the value my brand provides them with?

5) Market Category – takes your value and puts it into such a context which perfectly fits, so that your customers can understand better what your brand is all about

What context makes the value provided by my brand obvious to my customers?

How to Beat the Hordes?

April emphasizes on the following points which can potentially help a brand beat their Hordes:

  • Teach your customers or prospects on how to buy: A fun fact that April talks about is that most customers have never even purchased a product like the one you’re offering. Be unique in your work niche and teach them all that they need to know about buying.
  • Ask yourself: Is my brand helpful to my target prospects?
  • Should you allow lead generator sites to own the definition of your market?

According to April, the answer to this question is a BIG NO because such sites are designed to promote themselves and cause general prospect confusion.

Fun Fact: Your honest point of view on a certain market, even if it’s biased, can be helpful to prospects. April states that it is important to remain true to yourself and your opinions, even if you feel like you’re passing a biased statement.

Part 2: The Giant

Giants are the big-names in your market niche. They are like the big guys everyone’s afraid of.
According to April, big guys are big…. only when no one talks about their biggest weaknesses.

April mentions the following points to deal with a giant competitor:

  • You can indeed position your competitors in the same way you can position yourself
  • Use their strengths against them. Every competitive brand has a strong point that can be turned into a weakness by other bands (like you!)
  • Let them win. Sometimes, it is okay not to have a head-on-head collision with the big, bad guys. Let them have the bigger patch of the market, but NEVER let them come near your small patch. Keep it YOURS!

Part 3: The Ghost

As the name suggests, The Ghosts are the brands that are often neglected in the market. Many times, they aren’t even considered to be called ‘competitors.’

How to beat the Ghost?

The trick here is simple: Hitch a ride, and align with your buyer’s priorities. Answer the ‘Why Now?’ question.

Understand your buyers’ needs. You’ll be good to go!

Conclusion

To summarize, here’s how one can effectively grasp the concept of brand positioning and win in the competitive market of today:

  • To win against the Hordes, you have to POSITION DELIBERATELY
  • To win against the Giant, you have to TURN THEIR STRENGTHS INTO WEAKNESSES
  • To win against the Ghost, you have to ALIGN WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS’ PRIORITIES

Once a brand learns how to implement these three strategies effectively, there’s nothing in the world that can stop it from succeeding against its competitors in the long run.

Want More?

For more information and pieces of in-depth advice on brand positioning and why it’s so important, go grab April Dunford’s book “Obviously Awesome” to start transforming your business: https://www.aprildunford.com/obviously-awesome

Transcript

Joe Glover 0:54
Sweet Good morning everybody and I hope you’re doing very, very well. So early, it’s so early. So thank you so much for being here. I was just speaking with Anna before we went on, and I could feel my voice being in that like early morning mode. So it’s so lovely to have you here nonetheless. And please do take the time to drop in the chat box, where you’re watching from. And don’t forget to turn it to the messaging to all panellists and attendees so everyone can see your message. Otherwise, just just Hannah and I will be able to set morning grace. It’s lovely to see. So today, our guest is Hannah Anderson. Hannah is absolutely just one of those people who whose achievement speak for themselves really Vokes top 25 most influential women in the UK, the co founder of social chain, and possibly Most importantly, new puppy owner. She has the most beautiful little military sound in the world. come into our life over the weekend. And it’s amazing how that goes into greater depth on all these things minus the puppy in our talks. I won’t steal her Thunder right now. But needless to say, I consider her one of the leaders in our industry. And whether you know it or not, you’ve probably interacted with the work of her or one of her team at some point already, which is pretty amazing. And ever so quickly to the point on the team. If you’re not already familiar with social chain, then you need to get them in your life. Their daily social broadcast by Theo and Eve who work for social chain is incredible, is an amazing resource with some social media updates on the latest social media news, and likewise, their social minds podcast, which I want to give a plug to because I was on at one point, is also a brilliant, brilliant resource and they have it much better people than me on usually. And so not only are they useful, I think Social chain of pic pulled off a trick that only the likes of Ogilvy maybe Saatchi do in the rest of the industry, which is going beyond just being an agency into a brand, which is pretty amazing. Absolutely amazing. I think I’ve just got so much respect for everything that they’ve achieved. So, you know, true, truly amazing. This is actually a second time speaking that emarketing me to prevent the first time was in person in Manchester last year. And without meaning to embarrass her. I remember that night. I was actually on holiday. I couldn’t make that event which was absolutely gutted about but like, I remember it feeling like a little bit of a big moment. You know, the marketing meetup started in a servery in Cambridge, it was a hobby. It was something that I had no idea what I’m doing and I still don’t have any idea what I’m doing. But you know, there we were going from a server in Cambridge right the way through to someone such as Hana speaking Oh events, it felt big then and it feels big now. So, you know, I’m grateful for taking the time. And you know, I’m grateful for everyone being here to today’s session is relevant, because one of the phrases that passes the lips of marketers, so so often is our industry moves so fast. And this is perhaps no more true than with social media. Not only is social media a massive term, but then it’s got several pillars beneath it. And underneath those pillars, there’s shifting sands too. So there is always these nuances and ways to interact and make the most of social media. And by the end of this session, I hope you’ll leave with a better sense of some of the biggest changes that have been going on and how you can adapt to them. But then also have the opportunity to get your questions in. This session will run as a presentation and then the q&a. So as ever, now is the time to get your questions in you Get those in by wiggling the mouse and finding the q&a feature. Get your question in there. And then don’t forget to use the thumbs up feature too. Because I tend to take questions from the top. To that point, it’s always really, really useful if you use do use the q&a feature, rather than the comments to get your questions in. It just makes it easier to, to to, you know, monitor the questions. I just got slightly distracted there, because there’s a question a comment there from James, who says that he’s in Bondi, so we’ve got Australians watching in as well too, which is amazing. Finally, I just want to thank all the sponsors, all of whom have been absolutely unbelievable.

I’d like to think that the maximum is approaching sponsorship slightly different in the way that we actually really value our sponsors and really do take the time to appreciate them because they keep us going. And ultimately, we wouldn’t be able to do sessions like this. If it wasn’t for them. People in in France. So, a big thank you to content cow fibre red gate, Cambridge, marketing college leading brand further third light and human. I feel like I’ve done enough of these webinars to know that those people attended and hopefully know now that my one ask is.dot.is to thank the sponsors, please do take the time to do that. You’ve had a link to them before the session, you’ll have a link to them after the session in the follow up email, their people, they appreciate our thanks. And ultimately they’re supporting our community. So please do take the time. With all that said, that’s my introduction over so I get to hand over to Hannah now. So Hannah, over to you. Thank you for being here.

Hannah Anderson 6:47
Thank you very, very much. That was a very humbling introduction. And thank you. I shall just share my screen. Give me one second.

Unknown Speaker 7:00
Sweet, we’ve got you.

Hannah Anderson 7:05
Fabulous. Are we good?

Unknown Speaker 7:10
Well, good, good.

Hannah Anderson 7:11
So I’ll just jump, I’ll just jump into it. So yeah, as Joel said, This presentation is going to be about adjusting social and what’s changed how you should adapt. And I think the past couple of months have probably been the most turbulent couple of months in, in this generations lifetime. But the impact that that’s had on social media has been has been phenomenal. And what I’ll go into in this deck is kind of what changed at the start of lockdown how we as a company, were able to adapt to that and then what’s changing now? So we’ll get cracking. So this is me, about two and a half years ago. I brought my back. I was trying to do a backflip on a trampoline when I landed myself quite literally With a broken spine, and I was lying there facedown on this trampoline in the very worst pain of my life, screaming Help me Help me and wiggling my toes to see if my legs was still going to work. And the only thing I could think was, this is gonna make a fantastic tweet. So my name is Hannah and I have been addicted to social media for about 10 years now. And the thing about social media is every like every comment, every retweet, you get sends a hit of dopamine directly Theobroma, it makes you feel good. And this is what I absolutely loved about social media. When I was in them sick form in 2010. While that makes me feel old, I started my first ever page on Facebook. And I made a page about something that I was very passionate about sandwiches, and it was called I could always do with a good sandwich, and I used to post hilarious things like this. And as you can see, I could always do with a good sandwich and well it went incredibly incredibly viral it got six likes and one comment. Well, yeah, one comment and and Morgan here was absolutely loving it with haha. And and I know it didn’t actually go incredibly viral but to me that was still seven people all together liking and commenting on something that I had written and I absolutely loved that feeling but the thing is, as much as I love social media, it wasn’t what I’d planned to do with my life I’d never ever wanted to be in business or anything like that I’d always wanted to be a teacher. So from the age of five here on my very first day at school, this sign this is hip hippuric Hannah start school a day, which me my dad had made I think he was just incredibly happy that he was getting me out of the house and in the school and education for 18 years. He didn’t have to deal with me screaming the place down anymore. And but yeah, from this day, I’d wanted to be a primary school teacher. And that’s kind of what I went into. Well, I finished school and I went to university. And I was trying to become earliest teachers or nursery. Yeah, yeah, too. But as you can see, when I started my teacher training, I still had a passion for social media, and I’ll still post on my personal page, and about things that happened in the classroom. And I was actually quite shocked to find out that the farmer once a wife was now a dating site for lonely farmers, which is genuinely true. And I had to give up this kind of this the sandwich page because it was quite uncouth. For a trainee teacher be building a page about sandwiches in the bedroom. But whilst I was trying to be a teacher, I had a little bit of a secret. In my spare time, I’d built a network of hundreds of thousands of followers in my bedroom in my spare time. And I never wanted any of my lecturers to know that because I thought I would genuinely get kicked off the coals.

And never ever thought anything about these hundreds of hundreds of thousands of followers. I just thought it was a hobby until I met two guys and Steve Bartlett and Doug McGregor, who had just just left their original company wall Park. To start a social media company, they they kind of understood that social was going to be the next big thing and this was around 2014, early 2014. They’ve been building pages similarly similarly me and, and they made me an offer. They made me an offer. So I had at the time, maybe about six 700,000 followers across several different pages. So I had a page about Harry Potter I had a page about the Sims and I had a page about things that happened in primary school. So I was going in, I was going into class every day. And I was seeing things that happened still in primary school that I saw when I was there. So the thing like you falling to fall back on your chair, cracking your head open and dying in the teacher telling you that story. And it was like, apparently about 40,000 people could relate to that. But yeah, they’d left there, they left their business, they wanted to start a social media company, and they reached out to me and they said, we’ll offer you 1500 pounds for all of your pages. And I genuinely considered it I’ve never ever ever seen money like that in my entire life. I was like, wow, 1500 pounds that there was more value in that and looking back now, the definitely was more value in that. And, and I was like what, and we also work with some of the biggest brands in the world on social media because we understand what it takes to grow a brand on social

And then in 2018

this was mental. I was listed in the vol 25 list of the most influential women in the UK, alongside people like JK Rowling julita, Meghan Markel. And you know, I’m not in that list because I’m a famous author and I’m definitely not a princess, as you can see by looking at me. But what I do have is an understanding of how to reach people how to engage people,

and how to make people feel something.

So going on to the topic of this, this presentation now you know a little bit about me and kind of where I’ve come from social media changes every single day. And we’ve been adapting on social for six years, you know, this, if you look at social in 2014 compared to what is now It’s massively different. We’ve gone through ups and downs of platforms, we’ve had entire networks obliterated, and we’ve had no adapt to that. So what’s changed? Now? What’s changed recently? Quite a bloody bit quite a bit. So going in to this, this is a little graph that I made. And I spent far too long on it. I was I was considering like writing it down and like drawing it, but I worked out how to do it. And so you have there, the pink line is corvid, the changes that that impacted so things like us being locked down things like not being able to go out and then you have the impact of social so social, usually changes at quite a constant it changes all the time. So that’s at three this this scale on the left hand side, it’s not. It just the numbers mean nothing. It just means how much has changed and but social changes that constant usually, but when when COVID came along, and we started to lock down, that had an impact on social as well, it was it went up to changing a lot more than it usually would. So, at the point where everything’s on six, that’s when we’re, we were fully locked down, are going on the next slide. So these changes at this time so around March, April, May people spending way more time on social It was difficult to make publishing content at home, you know, we couldn’t go into a studio and that was the same for brands and things like events were cancelled, events were cancelled going out was cancelled. And this might have seen seemed a bit daunting to a lot of people you know, how are we going to adapt our social when you know when things are cancelled and it’s so difficult to make things at home but what we did in this point, and I can remember the day of lockdown the day before lockdown when we were in the office, and I was like As much as it was a horrible situation I was, I was excited. I was like, there’s so many opportunities here. So we looked at each of these points and many more as opportunities. And I’m not going to spend too much time on this part because we’re kind of beyond that now. But what I want to do is show you how we adapted then and then how we’re continuing to do so. So at this point, we kind of took things as an opportunity. So the fact that people were spending more time on social the fact that events were cancelled, sparked opportunities in our mind and we were able to go to clients with that. So this is one of my favourite things that we’ve done in lockdown, and this was at the start started the middle of lockdown. So the Olympics got cancelled, which was not a very nice thing. And when Allah Craven deal what came to us wanting to increase their brand awareness, increasing understanding of them being the milk that lasts longer, we saw an opportunity In the Olympics being cancelled, and we created the marble Olympics, the last marble standing, and I’ll show you the trailer video and I’ll explain a little bit more.

Can I get a thumbs up that we can hear that?

So that was the marble Olympics. And just to kind of explain that a little bit more. What we did was we found this YouTube channel called gels, marble, marble ruins and what she does is mobile events so it’s the marbles going down and I don’t know how to describe them like spinny things didn’t like a long jump. And we had six teams, six teams of marbles all branded in different and different Milky Ways. So half for one of the better word. And so it was things like I can’t remember the names exactly, but they all had different different milking names for each team. And, and this was hosted on her YouTube channel, we had six different events that was then amplified on spa. So we had a famous commentator, commentating on sport, which is our large Sports Network. We also had depiction here on the left influences who had children creating their own marble rooms with milk bottles. And what you’ll see here is a combination of all of those things with The branding that Allah Craven deal lasts the longest and actually increased aided brand awareness from third to first and every other every of the brand didn’t move. And it was that kind of that creative thinking and also the the, the help of the client who were keen for us to just go wild with something like this that allowed us to do that. And, for example, we went to them saying we want to make action figures and they were like, yes, but the action figures were just marbles. So it was it was such an amazing like collaboration where they were open to crazy ideas because they trusted us with that. And that’s what led to to excellent campaign. And this is another example. This is more kind of in the difficult to make publishing slash branded content at home. So this is for Purdue. And again we recruited people at home influences to make this video which are short you know.

Unknown Speaker 20:17
Talking every day some background guys, my outfits my virtual day suit super nervous. Are they a little bit nervous?

Unknown Speaker 20:38
I think it’s time I choose to someone special.

Hannah Anderson 20:43
Smile. Filming

Unknown Speaker 20:48
to send to

Unknown Speaker 20:57
make french toast again.

Hannah Anderson 21:05
Definitely not

what that video did alongside and other aspects of the campaign. And this was amplified on Purdue’s channel and also on a lot of our channels. And it actually drove a massive increase in downloads because we were being reactive to the situation and it’s authentic. And, and we were able to create something out of out of a very tough situation. So that is two examples of how we adapted at that point in time. And now we’ll go on to the nitty gritty, which is where we’re at the moment, which is social continuing to change rapidly, and as it would with lessening impact from COVID book, my man Got there’s been a lot of changes recently, I feel like social is changing on the hour every hour. And I’ll go into a couple of points. So this one here, the Facebook identity crisis. You if you speak to me about Facebook at the moment, it’s definitely a feeling of exasperation. Facebook is definitely going through a bit of an identity crisis. And there’s a couple of examples here. And it feels like they don’t know what they want from publishers. They don’t know what they want from brands, and they’re kind of putting themselves above their audience. So for example, in 2017, Facebook announced that they wanted long form video from publishers from brands, and they’ve been pushing that message so superduper hard, and I have calls with Facebook and they still push that message with me with me today. But then they start testing things like short videos. And it’s very very confusing when you have Facebook in your ear saying we want long form content. Don’t do not poor short form you’ll be D ranked for that. And, and then they come out with with with things like this It really feels like they don’t know what they want from people. This is another example of what the audience wants on Facebook is very different from what Facebook thinks they are and thinks that their audience want. Something that’s cropped up recently, is that the newsfeed algorithm will reward creators who publish video that sees longer average watch times and is fully original. So any unoriginal content is meant to be penalised, which is which is the case we’ve seen a lot of people get demonetised on Facebook But almost the algorithm hasn’t caught up in multiple ways. So one algorithm hasn’t caught up in the fact that original videos are getting flagged, there’s there’s there’s something not quite right in the back end. And also if you look at what people are sharing on on Facebook and what’s doing well, and what the algorithm is rewarding, it’s on original videos. So it’s just such a mishmash confusion at the moment from Facebook. So Facebook says they want long form original storyline content, but apparently short format to but also not who knows. But what the audience wants when you scroll down your Facebook is means a short form content. It’s It’s such a confusing place to grow at the moment and it’s kind of how do you how do you work with that? One good thing about Facebook at the moment is paid so Paid is still great on Facebook, the back end of Facebook paid, you can target someone based on what they ate for breakfast. Whereas other platforms haven’t caught up yet. This is an example of something that we did at the start of lockdown with rats. And we actually saw through paid 1100 tickets to an online rum tasting class where you got sent rum package, and then that was a class, which was really, really good. So that’s what Facebook is good for at the moment. But what my question is, is, if you’re trying to build an audience on Facebook, at the moment, is that really right? When there’s such mixed messages from the platform itself, it’s so difficult to build a strategy about building an audience on that platform. Paid is fantastic. So, you know, direct and direct actions and things like that through paid funtastic building an audience not so much and also, we all know that

A lot of the time on Facebook, you have to pay to reach your audience. Whereas there’s a lot of platforms where you don’t have to do that. So in my personal opinion, if you’re building a brand and building an audience, I would diversify away from Facebook at the moment and I’ll go into a couple of places where that makes sense. Instagram also having a bit of an identity crisis, but kind of in a bit more of a positive way. So Instagram, obviously owned by Facebook so that they like having their identity crisis, crises, crisis’s, whatever the word is, and they like, they like trying a lot of different things. But the thing is with Instagram is it’s almost like how Facebook was a couple of years ago, whereas they’ll release a shiny new toy and they will reward you for using it. So reels, which is the new tik tok style feature and we’ve got igtv and how we can soon monetize with ads on there. And then recommended content. There’s all of these different things have cropped up very, very recently. And it does feel almost a little bit like the app is getting quite Facebook ish. So I think in a couple of years time Instagram might not be the place to be because it’s very busy at the moment. But as someone who wants to build an audience and someone who wants to build a brand, you can capitalise on these at the moment because Instagram is rewarding people who use their shiny new toy. So reels if you haven’t had a real launched about a week and a half, two weeks ago, it’s a it’s very techjockey short form, quick content that looks like some trashy stuff about one direction. very rocky content

Unknown Speaker 28:02
Goodness me

Hannah Anderson 28:05
things like that.

And as much as it is a blatant copy of Tick Tock and a lot of the content you see on there is just lifted and shifted from Tick tock, what we’re seeing on our, on our platforms and on our pages, so spa for example here, which is our sport and football brand, we’re getting 20 times more average views than feed videos. So if we were post on these on the feed, they’d get 20 times less views. And what we’ve seen is a huge spike in followers. So as much as it almost feels a bit a bit dirty because it’s, it’s just a tick tock clone. You might as well take advantage of it build up your following by using reels whilst you can because in time you won’t be able to get the advantage from from that GTV is similar. And it was almost where realz was now maybe a couple of months ago, but it’s still performing really, really well. So what I GTV is, is where you can post longer form Instagram videos, and this is where you might be able to monetize in the future and might be able to put ads in the future you can in America at the moment. And it sees now still sees about two times average of the fee views on Instagram. And also we’re seeing larger engagement and retention and Facebook. So if you’ve got a long form video, when I say long form, I mean, you know, over one minute, post it through igtv and you’ll, you’ll reap the rewards. We’re seeing really strong retention on there. So people are watching for longer that we’ve kind of Instagrams kind of trained people to be to be holding their attention more and, and my guess is with igtv ads on their way and they’re going to be pushing people To to that platform more because Instagram will be able to make money there. So take advantage of this as much as you do have reels carousels so carousels on Instagram are where you can upload multiple photos or multiple videos in one post. Now, this is an example of Steve using carousels to to boost his his following boost his engagement. Now this got 603,000 likes, and what the great thing about carousels is it offers several points of engagement. So if a person doesn’t relate to one part of your post, they can relate to another part. So and john might relate to the first picture and and share that to his story. And Stacey might relate to the second picture and share that to her story. And Joe might relate to the third picture and share that to her So, in this one because there’s eight uncomfortable truths, you’ve got eight points of interaction for people to be sharing, and that’s what has led to this humongous spike in Steve’s following. So, in the start of July, Steve was just over 800,000 on Instagram. In August, he hit a million followers. So if you’re not jumping on carousels, and kind of giving that reason for people to share, then you massively missing out and we’ve seen this across the board as well. I actually told my friends who run a like a wellness business, and they sell t shirts and things to jump on carousels. And they messaged me the next day like oh my god, Hannah, we’ve tried to carousel and it’s it’s spiked our engagement massively. We’ve gotten this many followers. And so all of these opportunities are just fantastic for growth and for interaction on Instagram. This is a new feature. This is kind of slowly rolling out. I saw it once on my feed and then it went on The all caught up feature. So when you’re scrolling through Instagram, why use to see if you’ve seen all of all of the posts on your timeline? It used to say like your roll call. And it was I’m positive when it was first released, I think it was maybe 2017 at it was kind of pitched is great for mental health great for switching off to stop endless scrolling. And now Instagrams done a bit of a background and thought, Oh, you know what, we could probably make a bit more money from this. We can have people dwell on the app more if we start feeding them suggested content under that. And so this was this was initially at the core of the top was like the initial. Yeah, yeah. So it kind of shows that they want people to continue on the app to increase their dwell time. So my guess from this is and it’s rolling out very, very slowly from from what I can gather, I think a few people have on their phones. A few people don’t want

discoverability will increase. So

Instagram is kind of initially when it started out, the main thing that it was hard to come by was was people liking and discovering your content who didn’t already follow you all the time that’s increased as you’re able to share your story. And you’re able to tag people in things etc. But there’s never really been a place where you just get served content that you might be interested in. Now how to get on to that, to that suggested feed, my guess would be hashtagging interests. So hashtag appropriately and you will be served to people who are potentially interested in the content that that you’re posting. Man, that lesson for Instagram is iterating in ways that can reward you so capitalise on them whilst you can and that’s the same That’s the same for every platform when this is shiny new feature or a shiny new toy. If you jump on that straight away, you’ll likely get rewarded. Tick Tock seems to be the platform of the moment. And now I think before before 2020 tic Tock was kind of the, the ugly little brother of the platforms and people didn’t really take it very seriously. And in a lockdown the amount of people who give in and download the TIC Tock is phenomenal. I’ve got I’ve got friends who are my age, so 28 that is who are like, Oh my god, I’m addicted to tik tok. What have I become? And, and, you know, I believe it should have been taken seriously before them.

It’s

Hoping in the in the amount of daily active users, it’s got over 2 billion downloads. It’s got 800 million daily active users, which is just phenomenal and it’s definitely kind of put it stable in, in the social media world and it’s a place where similar to Instagram at the moment where you can really capitalise on kind of free reach. And the lovely thing about Tick Tock is growing is easy when you know what you’re doing. You can I’ve seen people go from zero followers to 100,000 followers in two days on tik tok, and that’s what Facebook was like, five, six years ago. And that’s where the people like that’s why you lad Bibles were born. And that’s where these massive you know, publishers and massive companies were born out of this was jumping on free, rich and free broth. And that’s not to say that Tick Tock Mike start charging you for rich later down the line. But take advantage now when they’re not. So the the count on the left are two of our own publishers. So we have seen more there, which has 2 million followers. We only started this last year, which is phenomenal growth 2 million followers in a year is just unbelievable. And similarly with student problems, almost 750,000 followers on Tiktok. And that’s just the understanding of the platform understanding of how to create that native content, the content that feels right for that audience. Now this example on the right hand side is a client’s tic Tock account. I’m not allowed to say which client it is which is why the red marks over that but we’ve grown them to 100,000 followers and using some of their content and again, putting it in native, organic tik tok styles. So, Here’s some examples of brands who are doing Tick Tock right and taking taking advantage of this free, easy reach.

This one, he is the Washington Post.

So what the Washington Post have done is before lockdown, they were basically just creating content in that office. Again, you know that that’s a tick tock video when you see it. I think where people are messing up on Tick Tock is putting stuff out that looks, overproduced that looks like it’s being pulled directly off Facebook or YouTube. And that’s not what you have to do. You have to create it with wiki form and very kind of scattered he almost and that’s what I’ll do well to Portland. Another example of just a phenomenal phenomenal Tick Tock account, they’re really reaping the rewards.

So,

as you can see, the most ridiculous video with the most ridiculous voiceover but that actually got 7 million views on tik tok for a brand and so many brands small businesses are taking advantage of tik tok there’s been. There’s been ecommerce business born out of Tiktok because it is simple content with a simple answer. them were stupid stuff will fly. And that’s, that’s beautiful in my opinion. And again with influencer campaigns is a massive opportunity on tik tok. When you want to get your message out, it sometimes easier to go to an influencer, who knows the audience who knows the platform, and who knows how to make something that is very native to that platform. This is a fantastic example

of a package I send in my front door, and I got really excited because no one ever

discovered, no way. It’s commerce. Now I’ve never had a brand at this size. Show me the intention before so I was really happy. As you can tell. They don’t fit. And apparently this is a partnership and the deadline is tomorrow. So I don’t see why Congress has to put this pressure on me when it’s okay because I like pressure feed off. So I decided to get in my car driving Venice Beach and ask strangers to put on the shoes. So what’s shoe size? The reason is they sent me these shoes to make an ad on Tick Tock and I’ll take like five minutes.

Yeah, let’s go.

Here’s that.

Also don’t want to sponsor the colonoscopy again. Thanks.

So as you can see super duper authentic advert. And the comments kind of show that this got, I think, over 1.5 million views. And people seeing this ad was amazing. Suddenly, I want a new pair of Converse. And there’s there’s plenty of influences on tik tok, who are creative, who have a very engaged audience who love them for what they create. So tap into Tick Tock because it’s It can do absolute wonders. Like I mentioned before, it’s it’s similar to Facebook five years ago. Grow on there now utilise, utilise influences on there and you’ll capitalise in the future. You capitalise now but you probably is capitalised more in the future I’m putting a bet on Tick Tock the same way that I put about six years ago on Twitter, then I put a bell on Facebook, and then I put about Instagram, everything, not every single one. But a lot of a lot of these bets paid off. When you know that the platform is giving out free reaches giving out you know, giving out free interaction, a free audience and you put a bet on it. You probably is going to make money off site in the future. And the final slide is change happens on social every single day regardless of the situation regardless of COVID regardless of Anything that happens, change is going to happen on social. What you need to do is just look for that opportunity in the adversity. And you’ll win every time.

Thank you very much.

Joe Glover 42:13
Awesome stuff, huh? Thank you so, so much. Well, it’s really, really interesting because I think there’s, there’s a couple of things going on here. The first is that, like, it’s fascinating to hear how the different features interacts, and how you can sort of take advantage, like, as an example, like, when you’re speaking through Instagram, I was like, okay, everything that I’m doing on Instagram, like, I’m the old guy posting to the feed all the time and stuff like that, and you know, but I haven’t taken advantage of reels or HGTV. So like, there you are, that’s the great advantage. But then it’s also really interesting just to hear all your intro, how you’re considering these things, as someone that’s built all these audiences. You know, it’s just really, really interesting. So so that insight at the end there, which is like You know, invest in tip top, that’s the bet you can make. That’s that’s, that’s fascinating to me, you know, and just to hear that, and I hope you can see the comments coming in, you may have to stop sharing your screen to be able to see the comments coming in. But there’s so many like, amazing, guys, I like it’s really interesting, just as for everyone in the audience’s perspective that like, usually what happens on the webinar is you start with x amount of people. And then you know, over the course of the session, people drop out and stuff like that, over the course of this session, the audience has actually grown. I don’t really know what’s happened there. So that’s, that’s amazing. So I want to get into some questions. We’ve got about 15 minutes for questions. There are a bunch of them. So like, if everyone can do me a favour and open up the q&a feature right now, use the thumbs up feature on questions that you like, go through the list and find the ones that you like, and likewise Get your questions in, then I can, I can start asking the right questions to make sure that we get those to Hannah. So there is one that is going crazy at the moment. So we’ll start with that. One is from Dan, who says What advice would you give to b2b marketers with very small markets, save less than 1500 people when using social media, the general level? And I guess, you know, it might be useful for the benefit of the question to sort of break it down into the different types of goals as well, perhaps.

Hannah Anderson 44:33
So b2b markets,

Joe Glover 44:35
yeah. b2b b2b marketers with relatively small audiences,

Hannah Anderson 44:41
I suppose.

What you probably want to do is if you’ve got a relatively small audience, it depends on what you define is your purpose for social media. So if that was me, looking at that my purpose for social media wouldn’t necessarily be to reach that audience. But to be an example for when people do find you, so, and LinkedIn, for example, fantastic for b2b b2b, what you want to do is have a representation of your brand on LinkedIn. And you’re probably going to be a lot of all the spill. But what it does mean is that when, when you’re in contact with a business, and they come and look at your social media, they know that you’re like talking about the right things, and that you know what you’re talking about. There’s no point in in creating a Facebook page because you’re never going to reach reach those people. There’s no point in creating a Twitter page because you can, you can have your clients follow you they can recommend and you can post interesting articles, things like that, but there’s this. Yeah, what I would do is really clearly define what you want your social media to be. And like I said, For me, it wouldn’t be to go viral at all. It would just be a representation of your brand to know for people to find that and know that you know exactly what you’re talking about.

Joe Glover 46:04
That makes perfect sense. That’s, that’s a really excellent, so this is the perfect answer. So, so thank you. Okay, so next on to Doug, who says, Do you have any examples of Tick Tock? Again, there’s a b2b question. Do you have any examples of Tiktok working in a b2b environment? He says, especially professional services, but you know, let’s broaden the outfit through everyone else in the audience

Hannah Anderson 46:27
off the top of my head. I don’t have any specific examples, but I have seen I have seen like b2b people using Tick Tock. So, for example, for example, a life coaching business is is b2b, it might be someone who is giving life coaching or like training sessions to businesses. That’s a b2b business. I’ve seen examples of people do that where they will go on Tick tock, and they will give that advice on Tick Tock videos and do it in in a cool way. So it’ll be like, if you’ve been on Tick Tock you might have seen where there’s music over the top, and it’ll have a word come over. And it’s like, if you’re struggling with your presentation skills, and then they’ll be like, do this, do this, do this. And it’s, it’s adapting what you would usually see in maybe a piece of content on LinkedIn and putting in into that form. And the likelihood is you’ll find you’ll find your niche audience, you’ll definitely find a niche audience. There’s an attractive thing off the top of my head, I’m positive. I’ve seen loads but

there’s like,

econ businesses, which I know isn’t b2b, but he’ll just kind of show that process things that are interesting, you know, even things like, like math skills, etc. Skills very, very niche things do well on Tick tock, if you’ve ever asked that question wants to drop to drop me an email, feel free and I’ll have a I’ll have a scour through and I’ll try and get some examples across to

Joe Glover 48:14
you. And maybe we’ll include that in the writer as well so so folks can see some of those examples but and it’s something that likewise I’ve been seeing a lot more I’m wasting three hours of my day now on Tick Tock. But like, I started to see that sort of level of content come in, you know, in their algorithm is ridiculous, but like, you get those folks who, you know, there are marketers or wherever and it’s like, I think there’s one that’s called like app marketing guys or something. Yes,

Hannah Anderson 48:42
they’re fantastic.

Joe Glover 48:44
Yeah. And it’s just like quick marketing tips. It’s like little case studies or away

Hannah Anderson 48:48
Yeah. You know, they did one about about a paint company. It was just it was just an example of how a pink company capitalised off Apple iPod Nanos. Yes. And that went mad. Yeah, absolutely. It’s it’s just it’s just about being creative. You’ve got regardless of what you work and you’ve got a you’ve got

Joe Glover 49:10
a story to tell 100% find that story, but that’s a talk in itself, but finding those stories is, is amazing. Okay, so we got a question from Sophie, who says, How did you manage brand awareness pre and post the armour campaign? So it so you provide those stats on?

Hannah Anderson 49:31
So how did we track them? So we did a what we do is a survey beforehand with a large group of people through through social saw, I’m not exactly 100% on the numbers, but in the thousands, and they’ll track like have you heard of this brand before? Have you which brands have you have heard of which brands do you like which brands don’t you and then after the campaign We’ll survey that I think it’s seven, the same control group, and then we survey outside of the control group as well. And you’re able to track the shifting mindsets.

Joe Glover 50:12
Yes, that makes perfect sense. But that’s a really smart way. You know, it’s one of these things that brand awareness is such a theory or concept as later to do that, you know, seems as good as any other. With this in mind actually, is there, you know, we are speaking about the detoxing the world, but you said, a comment there, which was like, if you make a bet on these platforms, I’m pretty sure that there’s money out there, which you can add into your talk with the tick tock example, you know, it strikes me that it’s sort of very top of top of funnel, you know, so like the marketing guys as an example. I discovered them yesterday. I think it was probably one of your tweets, actually. So that makes me feel a bit creepy. But nonetheless, I discovered them to get yesterday but I don’t actually know what they do yet. And so when you’re measuring the success of These campaigns and using Tick tock, as an example, what’s your attitude when you go into it in terms of expectation of revenue or sales or whatever versus, you know the following that you’re building.

Hannah Anderson 51:13
So, for us, it’s kind of two separate purposes. So we have, obviously the publishing side. So those are the two own pages that are short. So see more student problems, where we make money from those now and where we will make money from them in the future is probably quite different. So at the moment, there’ll be like amplification campaigns on there, and will amplify brand content in the future. Potentially you look at Facebook, you look at Instagram, there’s going to be ad revenue opportunities there potentially. Similarly with Twitter actually, as well now, where we might have pre made like roll adverts, but then you’ve got obviously the branded stuff that we do is is top of the funnel. So that client that we that we grew an audience for on there it’s top of the funnel brand awareness stuff and and then you look at to portly you look at the Washington Post, and yeah, it is it is top of the funnel stuff, but I can guarantee that your portly sales have gone up since they started since they started to take off, they’re getting millions and millions of views and then not get they would never get that on Facebook, they would never get that on YouTube. And that’s where that’s where they’re they’re seeing the value. And there’s also value in obviously like things will start to come out features wise in terms of like driving link traffic. And you can you can do that at the moment on Tick Tock with Lincoln bio. But I would assume that we would be able to post links in copy soon.

So yeah, this

The opportunities will come book with me I’m I suppose I’m quite like optimistic with with platforms like Tiktok in terms of like our revenue at the moment isn’t not there yet. But when we started if if we started out thinking like, all what, what money are we going to make from Twitter in five years time? Or what money are we going to make from Facebook? We would net like, we wouldn’t have started because the opportunity wasn’t there, then what we started with was like, we know that this platform is damn powerful. We know we can reach a lot of people on their we know that TV makes money because they reach people with content. So the likelihood is, if we built an audience on here, the revenue will follow after

Joe Glover 53:51
that makes perfect sense. I think there’s a this is a very strong argument and to be honest, it’s one that you’ve proven as well. You know, and actually, you know, you’ve made this bet enough now, and it has proven itself enough that you can kind of argue that with logic, so so that makes a lot of sense and evidence, actually. So there’s a question here from Dan, who says that he has observed that social media can provide the opportunity for, you know, toxic, toxic environments to develop. And his question is, first, it was just on Facebook now, Twitter seems to be going the same way. How can b2c businesses adapt to this toxicity, toxicity and minimise its impact on their audience or community?

Hannah Anderson 54:45
Big question. I think the issue of toxicity on social is a is a larger issue. Ultimately, if there’s toxicity within your community My advice is to just block and ignore it. But the I actually did when I did my TED Talk, it was kind of around like the negative impact of social media. And I just started kind of stray away from the point but I think it’s a much bigger issue than like, than any than anything else. It had like to solve it’s like it’s like a complete in order society shift, and a shift in what we teach in schools and a shift in how we how we treat social media. It’s such a it’s such a new it’s such a new thing. It’s such a new invention and like it’s completely and utterly changed the world and with every invention that comes along with every massive change in history like this, there’s negativity that comes with it. And I think just spread positivity is as much as possible. Ignore the negativity And that’s that’s all that like, all you can really do. And then on a personal level, like teach your children that, you know, Instagram isn’t reality, teach your children to be nice. And that’s, that’s, that’s the best we can do is not like shy away from it not shy away from social media, it’s here to stay here, like, kids aren’t going to stop using it like toxic people aren’t going to stop using it. And but if we start at the root and start, you know, teaching people what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s, that’s ultimately the best we can do.

Joe Glover 56:38
Thank you for that. This is a, you know, perfectly, perfectly well, it’s I think he feels like that’s really powerful. So, appreciate that. So we got a question from di we’ve got about two minutes left, folks, so we’re not able to get through all the questions, but I’ve just copied and pasted them all. So well. We’ll find a way even if it’s through our own content to make sure We get as much as we can answer. And so di says, There’s no there was no mention of LinkedIn, in your in your presentation. So I’d be interested, you know, how are you viewing LinkedIn? presently? And do you count that as a social media? Today’s question

Hannah Anderson 57:19
100% 100% and I suppose if I had all day I would have included LinkedIn, I would have included YouTube, I would have included Twitter. And but yeah, LinkedIn is so so powerful, so powerful, especially for for b2b. So as a business we use LinkedIn a lot. And video on LinkedIn is massive, but not just not. It’s kind of the same, the same as on anything. Like if you want to advertise on any social media, like the route is not just making the route is add value. That’s, that’s where we’re seeing huge, you know, optics on LinkedIn. And we get a lot of our, like briefs through LinkedIn, and a lot of inquiries through LinkedIn by offering true value. So for example, for me, if I was doing this, and I did this the last time at the marketing meetup, if I was doing this presentation in real life, I would have a cameraman there, camera person there. And, and I’d have a microphone on and then afterwards, I’d clip this down, because this is probably the most valuable thing that I like that I’ll say. And then people on LinkedIn want this value as much as everyone else. So my one true advice on LinkedIn is don’t just like don’t just shout about yourself, don’t just shout about your business and what you do, because that’s never going to engage people. What you want to do is like give people genuine value on how to improve themselves within your field or something like cool an interest in that Other people can take value from and that’s like, the easiest thing on LinkedIn that’ll get you views, followers and inquiries.

Joe Glover 59:08
That’s awesome. And actually that that’s wonderful because that sort of sets up the the top question there from David as well, who wanted to find a way to increase their their relevant followers. So sorry, it is 930. And I’ve got to respect Hannah’s time I got to spend time with the audience, although I wish we could go on all day. So Hannah, like thank you so so much, as you’ll be able to see from all the chat messages coming in late, just absolutely unreal. It seems like so many people have just like really, really gained so much from this session. So

Hannah Anderson 59:39
thank you so much for having me. It’s been a wonderful

Joe Glover 59:43
glide. And I’m glad that George is hopefully not been chewing your toes. Yeah, he’s

Hannah Anderson 59:47
been all right. He’s just asleep on the floor. Now. It’s like Tick Tock. By the way, if anyone does want to follow two minutes, you’re dashing George.

Joe Glover 59:58
I’ll include that in the writer too. So sweet. Thank you all so much for coming on today, as ever, we have another webinar next Tuesday. We’ll be relaunching compensation club quite soon. And please do take the opportunity to thank the sponsors. Otherwise, I just hope you all have the most wonderful day. Really, really grateful for your being here. And thank you once again, Hannah. So well. Thank you

Hannah Anderson 1:00:24
so much.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:25
All right. Take care of one

Transcribed by https://otter.ai