Digital Marketing
Crash Course

Video Script

Hello I'm Adam Blackwell the founder of dependable digital and I help business owners stabilise and increase their cash flow.

I have been working within digital marketing for the last 10 years. I started as an SEO consultant in October 2006 and have since worked with many different clients on a full spectrum of marketing projects.

But whilst working as an employee I could only advise on the range of solutions that my employer could actually provide, and I often felt this limitation when advising clients.

When a business owner receives this type of biased advice it limits their decision making process, as they are not privy to the full range of options. This can result in them receiving a disappointing return on investment and spiky unpredictable cash flow.

The solution to this problem is for business owners to take control and deepen their knowledge of digital marketing or find a marketing strategist who is not incentivised towards any particular action plan.

So I am currently working on a series of short easy to understand videos to help UK business owners increase their knowledge of digital marketing and this is my first video in the series.

In the next 20 minutes I will do my best to explain the basics. So turn off your phone, close your email, get a pen and paper, and do not allow yourself to be disturbed.



-------- Technology creates unfair advantage --------

Just in case you have not yet fully committed yourself to learning about digital marketing...

The history books are full of military & industrial examples of how technology creates unfair advantage over those that do not possess it.

So I strongly urge you to make today's technology work in your favour.

In the words of Charles Darwin:
"It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change"

We are currently living through a technology revolution and things are advancing at such a fast pace that it is not a question of if you are behind the curve, but by how far you are behind.



-------- Let’s Get Started --------

It is my aim to enable you to create a scalable, reliable marketing machine for your business.

So let’s jump straight in and start by setting some realistic expectations of what you can expect to accomplish as a business owner and also just as importantly what you can not.

All of the work that my team and I do can be related back to 4 core activities, which are:
Building our knowledge
Creating strategies through application of our knowledge
Implementing our strategies
Optimising our strategies


Now let’s quickly cover these in a bit more detail


Knowledge Building is a constant activity that my team and I must engage in every single week... And for me this is a daily activity, because within the subject of digital marketing the tools and technology are constantly evolving and changing at speed. As I have already said: it is not a question of if you are behind the curve, but by how much. This is an uncomfortable reality that must be embraced to maintain a high level of effectiveness for strategic planning.

Now I can already hear you saying that you have a business to run and it would be impossible to allocate the required time to keep your knowledge current and I completely agree. So I have solved this problem for you by creating a monthly newsletter that will highlight all the important information that you must know as a business owner and I will filter out all the irrelevant noise and sales talk for you. You will automatically receive my newsletter as part of this crash course, but if this video has been forwarded to you, you can sign up on this page below.

Application of knowledge is about making today's technology work for you. If you think that your business is different and this stuff will not work… then that usually means you have not been able to think of a way to apply the knowledge correctly. Some markets are easier than others to figure out and you may need to fail a few times to learn what does not work before you are able to create a successful marketing machine.

As a business owner you MUST be involved at the application level as the strategies that are most suitable for your business will vary depending on:
Your customer’s demographics
Your customer’s psychology
Your knowledge of the target Market
Your positioning within the target market
Your particular products & services
Your core value proposition
Your average customer value
Your marketing budget


This application level can provide quite a significant challenge and if you do need some help with this please fill out the form below to book a free 30 minute consultation with me personally. The only criteria that I have is that your business does not conflict with any of my existing clients.… I thoroughly enjoy this aspect of digital marketing and I promise that “I will always advise what I consider to be in your best interests”.

Implementation is where many business owners go wrong... It is extremely natural that you will want to keep control and personally implement the strategies that you thoughtfully create. The more you are involved in creating your strategy the greater the temptation will be to roll up your sleeves and start implementing things yourself, but you must resist this urge. The truth is that as a business owner you are most likely to fail if you try and do this yourself. You will either have problems finding the time and/or problems figuring out how to correctly use the technology... The best strategy in the world will still fail if it is badly implemented.

So unless you actually want to be a digital marketing professional I strongly suggest that you find someone to implement your strategies for you, but beware of rigid inflexible solutions and short term relationships.

Optimisation is often derailed by time constraints and budget… Depending on your budget, growth aspirations and the current cost to buy a new customer this stage may or may not make sense.

Optimisation provides increased efficiency and stability, but the cost of this process must be balanced against your budget.

If you decide to enter an optimisation phase I suggest actively seeking fresh ideas and new perspectives through external auditing. Find people that specialise in the various platforms, tools and disciplines that you have chosen to use and ask them to audit your current activity and report on how they believe you could improve.

It is also important to get your implementation team on board with this processes as they will need to follow up with a testing and evaluation phase.



-------- Background Essentials --------

Ok so that should cover what is and is not realistic for you as a business owner to accomplish yourself, so now it’s time to start building your foundation knowledge

#1. There should be no divide between online & offline marketing. These two activities actually reinforce and strengthen each other through diversifying your communication channels… A comprehensive online & offline system becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

#2. Google reported some time ago that over half of the people using Google search are now on mobile devices instead of desktop PC’s. This means that most of the visitors to your website are using their smartphone, which is likely to have a diagonal screen size of about 120mm. This also has attention implications resulting from your visitors surroundings as they are quite likely to be walking down the street with high levels of distractions as opposed to if they were sitting at home on their laptop.

#3. People's attention spans are getting shorter and the levels of distractions that they are bombarded with are increasing. Even when at home relaxing many people now use their laptop and mobile phone whilst watching the television all at the same time. When somebody's attention is being divided in this way it is extremely difficult to compete.

#4. Customers can now enter your sales process at any stage of their buying cycle. Most companies only only target people who are ready to make a purchase. This completely neglects people that are at an earlier stage of their buying cycle conducting some initial research, which actually presents an opportunity to build a relationship with them.

#5. Clicks to your website are a commodity that are easily purchased from search engines, social media platforms and other websites. The challenge that we actually face is converting those clicks to customers.

When we solve this conversion problem then scalability and reliability become trivial… we just buy more clicks to buy more customers.



-------- Buying new Customers --------

Back in 2009 when I was freelancing as an internet marketing consultant it was relatively easy to deliver good results at quite a low cost through search engine optimisation or SEO for short. The return on investment was high in most cases and for this reason it was the obvious strategy.

But it was and still is practically impossible to calculate the exact cost per sale resulting from this investment so it has been widely sold as ‘free advertising once you are listed’.

I still maintain that SEO is a good strategy, but I now treat this investment very differently. It is certainly not scalable or reliable and these two factors are essential for building and maintaining a stable cash flow.

Any business relying purely on SEO is potentially very unstable and it is a question of when rather than if problems will occur.

It is far more reliable and scalable to ‘buy new customers’, so the challenge now becomes how much can you afford to pay when buying new customers, which is inherently set by your average customer value.



-------- Average Customer Value --------

Average customer value can be calculated in a number of different ways, but it is essential the amount of profit that you receive on average from each customer.

Average Customer Value = Profit Generated/ Number Of Customers

It is usually best to calculate this figure over the customer's entire lifetime.

The higher this is the more you can afford to spend on your marketing, which in turn will give you an advantage over your competition by out spending and dominating your industry's advertising space.

Just image the advantage that you would have if your average customer lifetime value was twice that of your competition.



-------- Increasing Your Average Customer Value --------

There are various ways to Increase your average customer value. We won’t go into any details on this now as it involves in-depth business strategy, but these are some of the things that you should consider:

Increase your prices
Decrease your costs
Improve customer retention
Up sell and cross sell

Increasing your average customer value often requires that you step back and take time to completely reevaluate and clarify your whole business philosophy and strategy. This is not for the feint hearted, but if you do make the effort to go through this process to increase your average customer value I guarantee that you and your business will benefit in many ways.



-------- Marketing Investment Cycles --------

The amount of time taken for you to recoup the money invested into your advertising should be as short as possible and this becomes more important the smaller your budget is. Let us imagine that your marketing budget is £5000 and it takes 2 weeks for you to break even from the return. This would mean that during the year you are able to run a maximum of 26 investment cycles and your total marketing spend for the year would be:

£5000 x 26 = £130,000

So if we can shorten the investment cycle length we automatically increase the yearly spend, without actually increasing your budget.



-------- Separating Consumer Psychology From The Digital Marketing Toolkit --------

A big problem that I see very often is that business owners get overwhelmed from the massive range of choice of digital marketing tools all competing for revenue and it is very easy to become distracted by their sales noise.

Initially you must forget about these tools and concentrate purely on creating a strategy that fits your customer's psychology, your businesses psychology and your customer’s demographics. Only then is it appropriate to select the tools required to implement your strategy.

Do not get bogged down with the details of a particular marketing tool without first taking the time to to know exactly what you want to accomplish with that tool and how those results fit into your overall strategy.



-------- Customer Psychology --------

Evolution is a slow process and we as human beings still make decisions based on what kept us alive thousands of years ago. The digital age began with the invention of the transistor in 1947, which then became the building block for computer processors. So there has not yet been even four generations living in the digital age, which means that the psychology of your customers has not changed. Your customers are still making purchasing decisions using the same set of evolutionary instincts, which can be summed up with the following statement:

People buy from people and they buy from people that they know, like, and trust.

There are three types of strategy that I recommend you learn to leverage this basic human psychology.

Buy Now Strategy
Lock In Strategy
Direct Strategy

As technology advances the only thing that actually changes are the tools and methods used to implement these strategies. Thinking in this way will help you to select the correct tools and methods to support your chosen strategies.

The digital age has simply created more interest points for customers and hence more tools for marketers, but human nature and the core strategies available for business owners to connect with customers remains exactly the same.

So let’s now look at these three strategies in more depth.

Buy Now Strategy

This is a foundation level strategy targeting people that are in the final stages of making a purchasing decision and are ready to buy now.

The effectiveness of this strategy depends on two things.
Visibility - Getting your ad in front of people at the right time.
Conversion Rate - How convincing is your advert to create a purchase or enquiry.


The best method for getting your advert in front of people at the time when they are ready to buy is to ask this question: Where are potential customers looking to find my services and buy my products?

At the present time here in the UK the most common answer to that question is Google Search, but if we wound the clock back 30 years this question would have had a different answer. Back then it was a printed catalogue called ‘The Yellow Pages’, which was reprinted yearly and delivered to every house across the UK.

So the answer to this question has changed and will continue to change as technology advances. But by answering the question: Where are potential customers looking to find my services and buy my products? You will ensure that your buy now strategy remains focussed in the right places.

A Buy Now Strategy will in most cases create a solid foundation and quickly generate revenue. However it does completely rely on customers actually looking for what you do and there are some industries and geographical areas where the volume of people searching to buy now is too low for this is be scalable or reliable. In this situation a ‘Lock In Strategy’ and possibly a ‘Direct Strategy’ are required right from the start.



Lock In Strategy

This is a second level strategy and it is more advanced than the Buy Now strategy. It still targets buy now customers, but also locks in future customers that are not yet ready to make an immediate purchase.

Buy now ads will always have a certain amount of leakage resulting from people that are information gathering. Asking someone who is gathering information to buy now is just simply to too much too soon, it is like asking someone to marry you on the first date.

The opportunity here is to provide them with the information that they seek and use this opportunity to start a relationship with them. You lead with value and ask for nothing in return. The key is to give away as much value as you possibly can. The more you give the more that person will know you, like you, and trust you.

If your content is created correctly it is also possible to lock in customers who have not yet even considered your particular types of products and services, but this requires a deep understanding of your market, your customers psychology, and your customers demographics. This is achieved by addressing a particular need or pain point that you know exists. It stimulates a person's interest towards fixing a problem, and then attempts to lock them into your solution and create a situation of buying convenience. Or putting this another way we create desire for your type of services and products in a way that makes it much more effort for them to buy from someone else.

Remember our evolutionary instincts dictate that:

People buy from people and they buy from people that they know, like, and trust.

Distribution of your knowledge and expertise through creating content is a very powerful way to lock in future customers, so that when they decide to buy what you do it does not even enter their thoughts to look at your competitors. Customers that have been locked in are often happy to pay more money and are easier to transact with, because they are better informed about what they will receive and their is an existing relationship.



Direct Strategy

This is a third level strategy that is similar to the lock in strategy except that it is focused purely on carefully selected people that you have identified as being an ideal customer and each of these key people are approached directly.

The rule to this strategy is again that:
People buy from people and they buy from people that they know, like, and trust.

So this strategy is all about the approach, which should be designed to minimise the amount of friction involved to get that person to know you, like you and trust you.



-------- Types of Engagement --------

Relationships are built through engagement and technology has of course increased the different ways in which we can engage with customers, but the most significant engagement with customers can be classified as:

Passive Engagement
Active Engagement

Passive Engagement is extremely scalable and delivers your messages through a monologue in a non-disruptive way.

Examples of passive engagement methods are: email, recorded video, direct mail, and recorded audio.

It is non-disruptive because it gives the recipient complete control over when and if they actually listen to your message.

It is highly scalable because it takes a similar amount of effort for you to email just one person as it does to email a few thousand people and if your message resonates strongly with someone it is also very easily for them to forward or share it with like minded friends and colleagues.



Active Engagement is defined by actually speaking with a customer either face to face or on the telephone. This of course requires time, effort and resource making active engagement considerably more costly.

But many people find comfort in actually speaking with someone and a conversation with a real person is often required to establish a threshold level of trust before placing their order.

So your aim should be to passively engage customers to maximise how much they know you, like you, and trust you, which will in turn minimise the amount of time that you need to spend actively talking with them.



-------- The digital marketing toolkit --------

Once you have chosen your strategy it is then time to start selecting the methods and tools that will serve you best in implementing your strategies and I will cover tool selection in future videos.



-------- Marketing Amplifiers Your Business Strategy --------

I would like to finish up this first video by now changing our perspective and considering business strategy. At this level digital marketing now becomes a tool that is used to amplify your business strategy, philosophy and positioning. So be careful what you amplifying… If your business philosophy does not resonate with your customers then amplifying that message to more people will not help you.

If you want to work on your business strategy then I recommend the work of Daniel Priestley. I have put my affiliate link below for you to click on, which will earn me a small commission. But I want to be very clear that I am recommending him based on the massive value that I personally have received from his books.



-------- I Hope You Have Enjoyed my first video --------

I hope that you have enjoyed this first video in my Digital Marketing Crash Course series and that it has enable you to start seeing the digital marketing puzzle with better clarity and fresh perspective.

If you have not yet signed up to receive the rest of the videos in my Digital Marketing Crash Course please use the form on this page below.

Help me improve this crash course
I believe that there is always room for improvement and I need your help to improve this crash course so that it is perfect. If you think something is missing or that I could explain it better please use the form below to send me your feedback and suggestions.
Send me your questions
If you have a specific question or their is a particular subject that you would like me to cover please use the feedback form to send it in and I will do my best to answer in subsequent videos.



-------- Work With Me --------

For those that want a more complete solution I am personally taking on two new clients every month, who will work with me directly to devise a marketing strategy and also have full access to my implementation team… It’s like having an in house marketing department at a fraction of the cost.

My promise to clients is that “I will always advise what I consider to be in your best interests”.

The only thing that I ask in return is that your business does not conflict with other existing clients.

I am Adam Blackwell and I look forward to hopefully seeing you on my next video, where I will continue to help build your knowledge of digital marketing to stabilise your cashflow.

In the next video I will explain the various components required for a comprehensive buy now strategy.

Im off to put the kettle on
Bye for now!