In short
The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast - Episode Summary: 7 Digital Marketing Strategies and How to Use Them
Episode Overview In this episode of *The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast*, Brad Sugars interviews digital marketing expert Steve Pailthorpe, the founder of Iconic Digital. They discuss essential digital marketing strategies to achieve online success, emphasizing a structured approach to marketing through a seven-step framework.
Key Guests
- Brad Sugars: Founder of ActionCOACH and internationally recognized business coach.
- Steve Pailthorpe: Digital marketing strategist and founder of Iconic Digital.
Key Concepts Discussed
Definition of Success
- Personal Success: Achieving desires while retaining joy and giving back to the community.
- Marketing Success: Delivering quantifiable, actionable results that ensure a steady flow of valuable customers.
Always-On Marketing
- Permanent Over Instant: Emphasizes long-term strategies that ensure ongoing engagement rather than relying solely on temporary campaigns.
- Omni-Channel Approach: Utilizing multiple channels effectively to maintain consistent communication and brand presence.
The Seven-Step Marketing Framework
- Digital Assets: The foundation of digital marketing; primarily the website.
- Importance of SEO: Understanding keywords and ensuring the website answers user queries effectively.
- Introduction of the EAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust) model for SEO optimization.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
- Focus on user experience and creating content that ranks well on search engines.
- Importance of high-quality backlinks and understanding link toxicity.
- Paid Advertising:
- Google Ads: Effective for targeting users actively searching for products.
- Meta Ads: Requires engaging content to capture user attention since users are not actively looking for businesses on social media.
- YouTube Advertising:
- As the second-largest search engine, YouTube can be utilized for both short and long-form content to convey expertise.
- Social Media Content Management:
- Focus on where the target audience is present.
- Aiming for a minimum of 30 pieces of content each month across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
- Content Marketing:
- Regular output of long-form content (1500-2000 words) that is relevant to keywords and user needs.
- Using laddering to interlink content effectively, enhancing SEO and user navigation.
- Email Marketing:
- Shift away from traditional newsletters to a more engaging three-paragraph email format.
- Importance of nurturing leads through compelling subject lines and personalized content.
- Strategies to avoid spam filters and enhance deliverability.
- Digital PR:
- Focuses on building brand awareness through media engagement.
- Important for enhancing credibility and establishing authority in the market.
Key Takeaways
- Consistency is Key: Regular content creation and engagement with the audience are vital for sustaining business growth.
- Technology Integration: Utilize AI tools for content generation and optimization to save time and increase efficiency.
- Focus on User Experience: A well-designed website with excellent user experience is crucial for retaining visitors and improving SEO.
- Engagement Through Emotion: Successful marketing should evoke emotions—education, entertainment, and engagement are critical for capturing attention.
Final Quotes
- "Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." — *Winston Churchill*
- "Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." — *Winston Churchill*
Conclusion This episode of *The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast* provides actionable insights and detailed strategies to improve digital marketing efforts effectively. By implementing the discussed seven-step framework, entrepreneurs can enhance their online presence and achieve sustainable business success.
For more insights, visit [Brad Sugars' website](https://bradsugars.com/) and explore past episodes of *The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast*.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Everything you do doesn't have to be what we call weeing on your customers. We do this, we do that, blah, blah, blah. Don't wee on your customers, guys. Give them something useful. Give them something educational. Give them something entertaining. Steve Pailthorpe, Iconic Digital. Going to blow you away with all of the marketing stuff today. The seven-step chassis of how you build amazing marketing. The more assets we put on our site, the more expertise we're communicating to Google. After today, you are never, ever, ever going to send a newsletter ever again. The strategies that you're going to be able to follow, Steve gives you not only the strategies, but the websites, the tools, the AI tools that you can use.
0:40Steve Peltol. So, Steve, let's start with overall your thoughts on what is success? Well, for me, Brad, success is being able to achieve the things that you want to do and the time frame that you want and still retain the joy in your life that gives you that inner desire to achieve the things you want. See, for me, when I started out, success was wanting to give back to the economy and to the people around me, to charities I work with. It wasn't just about personal growth. And so for me, I set my goals to be not only business goals, but goals that are all about giving back as well. And so for me, that's how I define success.
1:19So then let's look at it from a marketing perspective. How do you define success in marketing? Well, you know, if you would have gone back just two years ago, everyone would have said that the finance department was the most important department in the business. These ways, the marketing function is the most important part of the business. And the reason being is because marketing delivers sales. And if we can't get a quantifiable return on investment from our marketing, then our business is fundamentally not going to be successful. So success for me in marketing is about quantifiable, actionable, achievable results.
1:54That's what gets our business running. That's what keeps it sustainable. And so the way I define marketing is all about a flow of valuable customers that come consistently into a business. You see, you don't just want customers that are just going to go, boom, in one campaign, suddenly we've got thousands of people coming through the doors and we just can't contain them. We need a flow of valuable customers. And that flow has to be consistent, what I call always-on marketing. And that ensures that you get the results that you need to scale up and grow. All right, let's go to that always-on marketing thing.
2:26I'm a big believer in permanent over instant. What's your thoughts on that with the always-on philosophy? Well, you know, with always-on marketing, there are seven different digital marketing strategies or digital marketing channels that are available at our disposal. And most people are really good at one or two, but they forget that there is an omni-channel approach to marketing. And that omni-channel approach means that the message that we communicate to our audience has to be going out across a myriad of different channels, of different strategies. And so when we look at marketing, we've got to make sure that the compelling message that we're putting out is always on.
3:06And the areas that are always on depends on what level of the marketing funnel we're talking about. Now, if we look at the top of the funnel, we're talking about brand awareness. Mid-funnel marketing, we're talking about market engagement. And at the bottom of that funnel, of course, everyone knows that's where lead generation comes in. And most small businesses sit at the bottom of the funnel and they focus all of their activity just on campaigns and they forget the brand awareness and the market engagement strategies. So things like search engine optimization and content marketing, these are always on marketing channels.
3:38They need to just consistently be going out. And of course, when it comes to things like marketing automation and email marketing, those things need to be always on. You know, a message a day going out from your business is fundamentally the best way to reach your audience and create that flow of valuable customers into the business. So we've got to make sure that we understand where those marketing channels sit within that marketing funnel. Got it. So permanent marketing, let's look at that. Your website, your YouTube channel, even Pinterest type thing. These are things that are there and searchable for a hundred years.
4:13I even saw yesterday, I had a video on my YouTube channel from 14 years ago that got like 500 views in the last few weeks. So someone must have shared it somewhere. Why do we focus so much on that permanent stuff rather than just the instant? I know we've got to do the instant, but let's focus on the permanent first. Well, the thing is the instant always feeds into the permanent, doesn't it? And so people who just do instant, they're forgetting the longer term strategy. You see, before we always thought that social media, things that we put up online would then be there forever. And there is a certain amount that if we forget to curate our content, we forget what's up there, you know, stuff is available.
4:53And then you get these horror stories of who's coming back from years in the past. But, you know, it doesn't really matter because if we've got permanence in our marketing strategy, then that means that we've got real quantifiable assets that can be used again and again. Because one of the things I learned from listening to a lot of the stuff you do and you talk about is you do, you know, do something well once and then just do it, roll it out again and again and again. And this is often the case with marketing, particularly things like webinars. And if you're listening to this and you're packed in a B2B business to business context, you're producing webinars and podcasts and all of this content assets.
5:26These elements become permanent content assets that can then be used again and again. And if you're measuring and testing these, you'll find that you'll get one really, really good webinar, one really, really good podcast that you can just churn out again and again and again. Again, about four years ago, I started doing this thing on content marketing and started to find real traction on this whole idea of content marketing, linking it to SEO. You know, we did that one podcast, I think about 25 times. It was the single biggest lead generated for our business. We recorded it. So all we had to do was play it again and again and again.
6:03But that permanence in the strategy ensured that it just became an asset that was a lead magnet that generated quantifiable return on investment. Yeah, I know. of like I look at mine between the quizzes, the surveys, the webinars, podcasts, like we've got so much permanent content that keeps adding value to the market, but it's also people keep finding me. So let's go back then to the seven channels. Let's break them down, go through them one at a time so that we give everyone the understanding of that. Where do you want to start? Right. Well, let's look at this. So we call this the seven steps marketing chassis.
6:38It's a framework ultimately that sits on top of any website, regardless of whether you're business to business, business to consumer, whether you're e-commerce or whether you've got a retail store, this works for everyone. And the seven steps starts with looking at your digital asset. Your digital asset is predominantly your website. Some people say to me, I don't need a website. Guys, you need a website, okay? Because your website is gonna get found in Google, right? And these days, as we're talking about AI and the emergence of always on SEO or what I now call search everywhere optimization rather than just search engine optimization.
7:12The idea being is that things like ChatGBT and SearchGBT, people are finding you across so many different means now. We've got to make sure that our digital asset is optimized. So the very first channel that we're talking about here is search. And that's the process of getting your digital asset, your website found wherever someone is searching for you, regardless of whether that's Bing, Google, any of the others that are out there. You know, we've got to optimize the site. How do we do that? Well, we've fundamentally got to start with what are the keywords or the questions that people are searching for to find us within these platforms?
7:47And, you know, these days, because of these good old mobile phones and other ways that we're now being taught to use Google and other things, one of the ways that we do this is we don't write with keywords. You know, go back five years and we were writing digital marketing consultants in Las Vegas or whatever you were searching for. Now you're asking various different AIs and you're asking Google Gemini, who's the best digital marketing company to work for within the real estate business or whatever. So it's a much longer tail keyword. So we've got to understand what those keywords are that people are searching for.
8:20Now, once we understand them, that's great because we can then start writing content that's going to sit on our website. And that content could be in the form of blogs, could be in the form of landing pages, any content assets that are going to draw people to the site. See, Google's looking at four things. So four parameters that it calls this EAT attributes, not the food we put in our mouths, E-E-A-T. It stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trust. Now, if your website has experience, expertise, authority, and trust, then you're going to have a really high on-page optimization score on Google.
8:55And the way we get authority, of course, is by social footprint. Can you, Steve, just break the EAT formula down for everybody just for a second? because I think it's really important that we break that down and then give them some tools to go and find what's being searched. That'd be great. Yeah, sure. So each user experience, okay, at the fundamental heart of Google search is wanting to make sure that the experience that a prospect or a customer gets from when they've searched for something online on Google, when they get to your site, is your website answering the user's search query. Okay, you see, user experience is fundamentally important.
9:31If you've got a website that makes your eyes bleed it's not going to get ranked, okay? You've got to have a website that is attractive, but it's appealing to the eye. Look, if you've got blue underlined links, why blue, okay? Blue, Google has taught us that if there's something that is blue and underlined, we should click on it. We've been kind of the chimp in our brain has been nurtured to click on anything that's blue. So why the heck are we doing links that are green or red or whatever else? Make your links blue and underlined. That way, you're going to get a higher click-through rate. So user experience, really, really important.
10:07Also, if someone comes to a page and they immediately jump off the page, that's called a bounce. And websites that have high bounce rate have very, very low search engine ranking performance. So we've got to make sure we get a website that has the lowest bounce rate possible, but at the same time is able to take people on a journey. So when someone lands on that page, almost don't give them everything they need, give them the next step so that they click through. Okay. The page that should have the biggest bounce rate on our website should be the contact page or it should be the call to action.
10:40That page is acceptable to have bounce rate. Everywhere else shouldn't. So we've got user experience. We've got expertise. Now, expertise is all about authority of the content we're putting on there. So you've got to have copy that is longer form. A lot of people ask me, what length should my blog be? If you went back two years, Brad, we would have said 750 words, right? Nowadays, we're saying 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 words. It's a much longer form read. And how many blogs should we be producing? Well, we would have said one a week a few years ago. Nowadays, we're saying, look, if you can be doing a minimum of three a week, then that's good.
11:17But really, can you do more? Because the more assets we put on our site, the more expertise we're communicating to Google. Is there a point though, Steve, where that becomes negative, where you're putting too many blogs up? Well, let me just say this, that if you've got content going onto the site that is relative and it is hung around a specific key phrase, then no, there's not going to be any negative by having lots of content. The risk factor here is that people use AI solutions to produce and track their copy. Now, websites that use artificially created content that is not humanized will not get highly ranked compared to the content that's out there.
11:58So after today, you will realize that you're writing your blog using ChatGBT. You're never, ever going to do that again. You're going to use the AI to help craft the format of the blog, and you're going to set it up to create your clickbait subject lines. You're going to make sure that you're then humanizing that content. There's a lot of humanizing tools out in the market. One of my favorite ones is phrase.ly, phrase.ly. And there's loads of others out there you can use. We also want to mention right here, Neuron Writer for building your actual blog posts. It's a great one, gives you scores, rates you against your competitors and the keywords.
12:33But I also want to remind people here not to compete with yourself because you mentioned it there. If you've got a keyword, don't have 10 blog articles on one keyword. Why is that important? Well, absolutely, because if you're competing against yourself all the time, all you're going to be doing is you're going to be outbidding yourself. And unless you want to be appearing for so many articles on one page of search, which sometimes there's value in doing that. But the majority of the time is if you're constantly putting copy out that has the same level of authority, Google won't know which piece to rank highly.
13:05So it's very important then through our link building strategy. And this is one element of SEO that most people forget about. You see, I've got my can here, right? Dr. Pepper Zero. I don't know if you have that in the States. Pretty disgusting stuff. But your website's like a container, okay? Your container of domain authority. Domain authority gets passed to you through links from other sources. Now, you don't need websites that are really low quality linking through to you. Because if that happens, you have what's called link toxicity. And Google gives you zero credibility for toxic links. On the other hand, if you've got a handful of really good, high-quality links coming into your site, you're going to get authority, one of the four elements of that EAT framework.
13:48So authority is going to top up your domain and give you link juice or link credibility within Google Search. This is then going to get you found online. So don't compete against yourself. compete against the right people, and do the same audits that you're doing on yourself on your competitors. And that way you're going to know the key praises that you really want to go after. And link toxicity, important to remind people, what do we do there? So link toxicity is easy ways to go determine this. You can go use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs. There's loads of tools out there. You could even go to Neil Patel's website, go and pump in to use some of his stuff there.
14:25And basically what it will do is it will give you a spread of all the links on your website, and it will show you which ones have a really low domain authority score. Now, the ones that have a low domain authority score, Google is going to class those as being toxic. So you take those toxic links and you upload them into the Google Search Console. And there's a place within Google Search Console where it's free to use. You just upload your website, you go claim your property within Google, and then you can go and what's called disavow the links that are toxic in nature. Disavowing links basically doesn't remove them from the internet, but it tells Google that you are aware of them and you don't want those links to affect your school.
15:06So making sure that you're disavowing links is still something that is used even in 2025 today. A lot of people said there's no point in disavowing links anymore. It's not going to be used. And Google themselves has said that in the future, they're going to remove the disavow feature. But one thing we know from all the clients that we're working with right now, including people like IBM, Cleaning Action Co's, you guys as well, everything we find is that when we disavow links, that are toxic in nature, our clients' results go up. Yeah, very important. All right, let's move to the positive side of it then.
15:38Favorite websites to then go and help create blog posts and start looking at that. I know Ahrefs and SEMrush and Google Analytics will help, but you've got another favorite one that you love teaching people about, the people. There are loads of really great ones that you can go and use. One of the best things you can do is you can go and take your website and you can just pump it into different tools out there and you can even just create a totally random research question or random research topic and you can just put it in there and it's going to then give you all of the links of every phrase that people are searching for that's relating to that topic.
16:18You know, this is stuff that Marcus Sheridan has taught for years. It's the you ask, we answer type stuff, which all good stuff that we know and love. But basically, it's going to give you all of the questions that people are searching for right now within Google. And you can then just use this as your framework to then go and write your content. And your favorite site on that one is the public one. What's that called again? There are so many of them that are out there. I really love the public research one that we've used before. It gives you the ability to basically just churn in all of your results and then add the really, really good.
16:51Is it ask the public or answer the public? I always forget that. Answer the public. Answer the public.com. That's probably my favorite. I love the circles on it. It's every time I'm writing a thing or trying to work out a hook for a social media post, I jump in there and play with it. Answer the public.com. Head over it. You don't need to sign up. There's a free version and a paid version. You just dump your keyword in there and away you go. Really, really great talk. All right. So what else have we got to think about then with creating SEO for our site? And then we'll move on to the second of the seven.
17:25Yeah. So we've talked about understanding keywords. And most people come to me, they go, Steve, can you SEO my site? You know, you're never going to get ranked if you do that. You've got to start with the process of understanding the research. Most people don't do the research properly and then they don't fix the issues of their website. Now, your website is like a performance car, right? Think of your Ferrari, your Bentley, your Porsche, whatever you like to drive. It might look beautiful, but unless that engine underneath your website is turning over, it ain't going to move forward. It's just going to remain static.
17:57So we've got to start with the keyword resets, then we've got to fix the issues on the site. You haven't got Google Tag Manager, haven't got Analytics set up, you haven't got your conversion rate optimization yet. All of these things have to be fixed. Now, once you've done that, then we get onto the link building stuff. You should be producing 10 to 20 links a month consistently every single month. Now, those links are going to be a combination of directories, blog posts on other sites, press releases, third-party content. And you could use things from social media assets, but the best performing links are the ones that are written and curated with news stories around.
18:34People love reading news. They love video content. They love people's faces. so you can curate anything that has that type of graphics within it. It's going to produce higher authority that's going to get your random performance growing. Second part of the seven chassis. Let's go over step two and three because they're so closely aligned because this is the whole area of paid media. Now, on paid media, there are two areas. We've got the Google search network or the Google ecosystem, and then we've got Meta's ecosystem. Now, how do you determine where you start? Most people say to me, well, you know, Steve, I just want my paid advertising to produce me leads and that's it.
19:09You know, the difference between Meta and Google is this. On Google, people are looking for your brand for your business right now. On Meta, they're looking at their pictures of their friends and their family. They don't give a damn about your business at the point that they're there. So on Meta, the ads that we put out have to be so dynamic, so engaging and targeted in a very niche way to make sure that these people come through to us and they're prepared to leave what they're doing and come through to you. So the ads that you're using on Meta have got to be very visual, video, very high engaging content, have visual hooks that are used all the time, but draw them away and encourage them to click.
19:46The most important thing is that Meta ads have got to be supported by remarketing. Now, remarketing is the idea that when someone comes to your website, you're going to cookie them. And that means that you are taking a snapshot of who that individual is. And then for the next 30 to 90 days, you can show your ads to them, whether it's on Google or Meta or any of the other ecosystems that are out there. And that's really, really important because people coming from Meta are only coming at the point they're checking their social medias, right? And that means that the first click point is not likely to be the point that they then become a lead within your business, okay?
20:22So if you are just starting out on this advertising journey, Google ads every day of the week. Once you've got your Google ads going, or if you've got a really niche audience that you're struggling to target on keywords, that's when you bring in your meta stuff. Okay. So whatever you're doing, you're using the Google search network, expanding it with Google's display network. That's getting your ads onto other websites. Once you've got those two components working, your remarketing is what then keeps pushing them to come back through into your landing pages on your website. One that we've been playing with, I want your thoughts on it, YouTube, because YouTube also gets the whole Google analytics to be able to put your ads in front of people.
20:58Yeah, and absolutely. YouTube is the second biggest search network in the world, right? So, okay, it's owned by Google. It's part of Google's ecosystem, but people spend their time on YouTube watching shorts, watching videos. And so they're constantly searching for things that come in there and it works exactly the same way. It's about the authority of the content that you're putting out. Your videos have got to be liked, they've got to be seen, and they've got to be viewed. So you've got to think about your video strategy to make sure that you've got a short short form and long form. Short form video content is great.
21:30It's got loads of hooks. It's got loads of interaction. So we can go like this and then back to there. Got really quick stuff, fire stuff that's going on. Short form, brilliant. But to convey the expertise of a thought leader, it's got to be slightly longer. So you've got to start with short form content and then work it up to be more long form in the future. So if you're starting out here, you're listening to podcasts, you think I need to be on YouTube. How am I going to do this? Start with your short form, get the shorts going. Then after you've done that, then move it on to more long form thought leadership.
21:59Hey, just a thought we've been playing with, and I want your thoughts on this. YouTube ads have almost got to be half meta, half Google sort of thing. Like, cause there's the, in the reels, you're just, your ads are sort of like, you got to grab their attention type thing. But over in the search side of it, it's a different, are you noticing anything there? What's your thoughts? Yeah, hey, we've been doing this stuff for really big brands across the e-commerce space, and they're seeing exactly the same. Everything they're putting out in platforms like Insta and TikTok, it's super short. You know, it could even just be a five, six second reel that's going out.
22:36It's just like, wow, what is that? You know, it's not got anything of value in it almost. It's just entertainment, really. But ultimately, that's getting someone to play it again and again and again. That feeds the algorithm, get people then really engaged in it. And then as a result of that, they then flip over onto Instagram and they flip over onto YouTube. And the content that then sits within the YouTube search network, that side of things is then much more detailed. It's long form. It's really conveying that thought leadership aspect. So the videos that you're putting up there, a minimum of a minute long, sometimes going much, much longer.
23:08And make sure you've got your captions on there. Now, it doesn't mean that you don't do cool stuff with transitions and you're moving, going from having quick things where you've got visual hooks and things are happening quickly. and you're coming back to the right place. All of that is appropriate, but the content is a lot richer. Yeah. Yeah, those reels right now, I think I was chatting with Marcus Sheridan recently and we're debating is it two seconds or three seconds from one shot to the next sort of thing for the reels. And it's like either way, it's very short right now. It's crazy, isn't it?
Read the full transcript
23:40Because when you're producing content, you think, wow, I've got to produce quick fire content. but how do you say something in a meaningful way but change the background? I saw one lady the other day who was doing this reel on Instagram and she changed her outfit every three seconds and she was in a different location. I thought, man, the amount of investment in time, resources, and energy for that 20, 30 second video must have been absolutely huge. But you guarantee everyone watched it all the way through, right? Yeah, well, this is the thing. People are, I mean, I love Opus Clip for taking a big one and cutting it into short things.
24:16But if you really want Reels, TikToks to work today, YouTube Shorts, you've got to film something that is just for that. And that's where I think people are, well, yeah, I just film a 20 minute one and have Opus Clip turn it into 10 segments. Yeah, that works. It gets stuff up there and it gets you volume. It doesn't get you viral, I guess. Volume versus viral is an interesting thing as to how much energy. You think about it, Steve. How much energy did Tom Cruise's movie studio put into the 30-second trailer for Top Gun Maverick? Well, come on. It must have been billions of pounds and a huge amount of time.
24:58You know, to just think about it. Yeah, shorts is the thing. I know even for our podcast, Ben works for more than half a day creating just the 30-second trailer for the podcast. Dang, it's a lot of work to get high quality that people want to watch and want to see. Okay, so we got to make sure we've got the SEO done. We've got that website because no matter where they are, they're still going there. Media advertising, specifically Google because that's where they're searching. It's like not having a Yellow Pages ads 20 years ago. To not have Google ads when they're searching for your actual product seems insane or to not allocate some sort of budget towards that.
25:39of course meta the interrupt site pads fantastic where do we go next we've touched a little bit on this you mentioned opus clip for social media so let's just finish off the social aspect because a lot of businesses always asking me how often should i be posting online what channels should i be using ultimately guys you've got to look at where your audience are you know should you be going on some of these emerging channels you've got things like house and you've got pinterest which are very niche architectural business areas. You know, if that's where your clients are, then great. Should you still be using X, formerly Twitter?
26:12Well, I'm still using it because, you know, there's a group of people on there that are constantly looking for information and I've got an audience there. So why wouldn't I continue to post where my audience are and where my audience are active? So you've got to think of the strategy for your business. And if your business is unknown, you've got a brand that's just young, it's fresh, it's new, then people don't know who you are. So people buy from people. The whole strategic approach from social is not business to business or business to consumer. It's person to person. So think about this as your brand ambassador, your brand evangelist, right?
26:47A person who is communicating the values of your business. You've then got to make sure that you get your assets in front of them. And one of the ways that I will do that is I'll look to set myself a challenge to produce a minimum of 30 pieces of content every single month. And those are shorts. Those are videos. And those will then go out across Insta, YouTube, and they'll go out on TikTok. They even go onto the traditional platforms like Facebook. And I'll use some of those to go across LinkedIn. The format needs to change a bit, but I'll always outsource that video production side of things, but make sure that you can record everything and constantly be adding value.
27:24And once you've done that, you want there to be a proportion of your posts that are branded posts that are communicating the brand values of the company, telling people actually what you do. The ratio needs to be something around 70 % of the individual who's the advocate, the brand ambassador, the one that people buy for, and 30 % that are more based around the sort of brand values of the company. Now, one of the things we do as well is we give inspirational quotes because that's a great thing that people love to share. So, you know, think about the things that are not only adding entertainment value, but things that people just love to share because it's a great shareable thing.
28:01Everything you do doesn't have to be what we call weeing on your customers. We do this. We do that. Blah, blah, blah. We, we, we. And it just does absolutely nothing. Don't we on your customers, guys. Give them something useful. Give them something educational. Give them something entertaining. And that's going to get your social media buzzing as well. Yeah, the three E's, education, entertainment, emotion. If you're not hitting one of those, you're losing. If you can hit all three, that's a viral post. If you can hit all three. But otherwise, you're just not getting there. Now, I want to help people understand how social media has changed.
28:37It used to be just about your followers. But TikTok changed the algorithm where you don't go on TikTok and it shows you all your friends. It shows you things you're interested in. Facebook's moving that way. YouTube's moving that way. Insta's moving that way. you could have a hundred followers and a video will go get a million views because it's a great video type thing and it's based on watch time if someone watches it the whole way through that's massively important how has that changed social media in your mind was fundamentally changed the landscape of social media because before everyone was focused and building followers because if you got followers you can communicate them to them these if you're posting something, the likelihood of every one of your followers seeing it is so slim, it's so low.
29:29So the production quality of what you're putting out has to have that entertainment value and it has to have the emotions around it, the educational value to the people who really want to see it. Now, this is all down to your For You page, right? So what you're watching. So if you give me your phone and let me see your For You page, I can tell your life story very quickly because you're going to tell me through your BYU page what you are interested in. I often say this to my mates. I say, hey guys, give me your phone. Let me see what's on your BYU page. And suddenly you'll see the difference between different types of people and what they're looking at.
30:02So the great thing about this from a big data perspective is that we can determine, or the algorithms can determine exactly what you are interested in based on what you look at. And so once they understand that, and they do. There's no way of you hiding from that, guys. Don't throw the privacy thing at us. Google already knows everything there is to know about us. So does matter. So they've already got that information. So they know what you're looking at. They know what you're interested in. And because they know that, when you post content online, they're going to serve that content to people with similar interest groups to you.
30:35And this has fundamentally shifted the way social media worked. It's no longer something that is just getting your brand out there. But this is about getting huge reach to new audiences and it's potentially free of charge. All you're doing is utilizing those algorithms to get the extent of the reach that you made. Yeah, it's interesting. I was even watching the other day about how even the song choice that I use, if someone's watched five or 10 videos with a particular song in it, they're going to get served more videos with that song. That's why trending songs, trending audio is really important in this stuff.
31:09That's why a lot lot of the time and and we've gone away from creating and doing an external to even using inside the app for a percentage of our posts like your your instagram post creating it in instagram or your facebook post creating it in facebook for a percentage of them because it gets better hits what are your team finding and how are you finding that well certainly we're seeing that across Instagram and TikTok. So the production of using video content within the apps often can perform at a much better level than if you are uploading a reel fully formatted. Now that for professional creators like us, that presents a huge nightmare because we want to go into a studio or we want to go into a set and record all of our stuff and then just pass it over, get it done.
31:58And then someone else can upload it another time. But TikTok is really wanting to prefer the small individuals who are just going ahead, crafting their copy and filming what's going on, you know, that sort of stuff TikTok loves. And it favors that within the algorithm. So it's worthwhile giving at least 30 % of your posts towards that strategy and dedicating maybe one, one, two, three, every single week using that strategy to just make sure you're getting the amplification that the algorithms give. Yeah, love it. Where do we go next then? What's our next play? Right, we've done SEO. We've done paid advertising on Google.
32:34We've done paid advertising on Meta. We've talked about social. We've touched on content, right? Content is one of those things that fuels social. Content fuels your SEO strategy. Don't think we need to say a huge amount more on content, but the more content you can be producing and sharing consistently, the better your website's gonna perform. So I almost don't care whether you do one blog a week or whether you do four a week. For me, the important thing is the consistency of your output and making sure that the copy that you're putting out there is no longer 750 words, but it's much longer in length.
33:08So if you could get more content that's hung around those key phrases, the areas from onto the public, right, we spoke about making sure you're getting the right keywords, that's then going to result in more stuff happening. I do want to just touch on one thing, which is something called laddering. Okay. Laddering is a concept, which essentially is when you've got a piece of content, and that content could be about any subject within your niche, you've got to make sure that there is one single link to another page on your website. Okay. So what I mean by that, you're trying to get ranked online on the best digital marketing consultants to work with the legal sector, right?
33:48You're going to have a piece of content on your blog, and that blog's going to be talking about digital marketing best practice for the law, or for attorneys or solicitors, whatever. So you've written this lovely blog piece and halfway through, you're going to say, for more information about the keywords, go here. And it links directly. The hyperlink is on the link itself. You're not going to right click here. You're going to actually have that hyperlink on the nested keyword. And that then links back or ladders to the right page on your site. Now, laddering makes sure that your website gets disseminated across Google and other search engines.
34:24This is just the best way to ensure that your learning center, your blog, your digital asset is performing to the optimal level. Okay, so that's your content. Haven't really got anything more to say on that. And for the sake of time, we should probably look at email, right? Hang on. Let's just stay in content just for a minute. Because blog should be number one, in my opinion. Similar thoughts? Where do you think? 100%. Use your blog every day of the week. Number two, you've got to create assets that people will want to give you their email for. When I wrote Raise Your Hand Marketing, it was all about what are the pieces of content, e-books, videos, free training, surveys, even price lists.
35:05Like for Action Coach, we operate in 83 countries. If you want the price list for your country or your state, you have to enter your details and download the price list. I mean, it's not a complex thing, but you've got to create a lot of assets that people want. And I love the idea of no matter what the asset, I call it Disneyfication. You know how Disney sells the mouse a million ways? Well, if we have an e-book, we'll also turn that into a blog, into an infographic, into a video, into reels, into memes, into like it's every dang thing. You know what I mean? Absolutely love that. That's brilliant.
35:49So you're taking one asset and you're multi-purposing that onto every other available thing. And this is where AI comes in, right? AI is going to save you hours and hours of time for this because it will help you. You know, you can be using image processing tools. You can be using ChatGBT. You can be using any of the different suites that are out there and writing your own custom automations. Dude, going on 11 Labs, creating my own voice, going on, hey, Jen. like I love the version of me on Hey Jen where I speak French I actually sound very sexy in French not that good with my half Australian half American accent but dude me in Spanish but the German one oh my god I sound so bad on the German and the Turkish one almost killed me when I heard myself in Turkish but those are the sorts of things where you've got to I think most websites fail because they don't have at least a dozen ways for someone to give me their email address Give me a dozen ways to volunteer.
36:47And I know you hate newsletters, but even if that's all it is, or get my rate weekly tip email. You don't have to call it a newsletter anymore. You can do it. But you've got to give people more ways to respond. Anything you're seeing working that's getting great responses these days. Well, after today, you are never, ever, ever going to send a newsletter ever again. Okay, because newsletters just do not get ranked. No one likes them. Everyone bins them. They end up landing in the junk filter. All of your email clients just suppress them anyway. So, okay, I get the premise, right? We need to be communicating more frequently with our customers and with our prospects.
37:32But there is a better way to do it than a bloody old newsletter. We just don't need to do that. So how do we go about this, right? We've got to be engaging with stories based on needs, desires, and wants. And I follow a formula which I call the three-paragraph plain text approach to email marketing. Paragraph one is what are you engaging them for? Why is it that you're trying to contact them? Paragraph two, okay, is who you are. A reminder of why you are the person that can solve their problem. And paragraph three is the call to action. And friends, remember the call to action doesn't need to be a click.
38:07It usually is because we want them to land on a landing page. But more often than not, it could be a response call to action. So draw me an email back. I'd love to hear from you. Because if it appears that it's genuine and it's from an individual, more people are likely to respond to that. So three things from email acting, trust, interest, and action. Trust comes from the sender alias, from a person. Doesn't need to come from your business name that knows it needs to come from you. Info at action. Yeah, yeah, no. No, it's got to come from red sugars. Okay, interest comes from, so trust, interest comes from your subject line.
38:42The subject line needs to be short, sweet. The worst subject that performed in 2024 was newsletter. Any wonder why Christmas newsletter was my worst one for December. I don't want to hear your Christmas newsletter. I just want to know why you're contacting me. So make sure it's short, make sure it's sweet and use emojis. You know, emojis will get an output of around 36 % to 37%. Okay? Just be careful. Remember, the peach emoji must not be used, and nor should the aubergine emoji. Eggplant is out. Eggplant is out. Hey, two other things about the email subject line. We do a lot of testing on those before we do it.
39:26Like, we've got a massive database. We'll test a whole bunch of subject lines to maybe 10 % of the database, probably pick a dozen subject lines, send it to 10%, see what the open rate is. And the one that got the highest open rate, that'll be the one that goes to the whole database. Or we also test using Insta ads. So we'll just color block, few words, Insta ads, 30 bucks, let it run. Whichever one gets through the highest click-through rate, we can use that. And even for other ads, like that testing is really important there. but also i know you're a big proponent in problem solving like this is the problem you have in the thing or benefit orientation give us a little bit more on the problem and benefit thing especially for the subject and the first power well you know often the subject line is just to generate the interest so don't make it a long sentence you know long sentence automatically communicates spam we're talking about spam builders in the moment because spam builders are the biggest nemesis of any email marketing professional.
40:28But when we're talking about the value proposition or the problem and the value that you're going to bring in here, you've really got to just mention the problem in the subject line. If it's a very short problem, I don't know, time management, great way to open up an email because time management or problems with whatever it is, you know, that is going to get someone to just open it and look at it straight away. The best thing you could do also is to include the word RE with a colon and or FW with a colon. That means when you've got RE, it means someone's... Yeah, but don't do that all the time though, because if you do that all the time, people know.
41:06They do. Yeah, you've got to do that on the follow-up emails that you send to that individual. The originating source doesn't have that in. The second, the third one, RE and then FW. And that way you get a much better engagement and open rate from those emails. So when you get into the context of the email, we talked about trust, interest, and action. Action comes from the preview pane. Now, do you know that the majority of people open their emails on a mobile device? Almost 70 to 80%. So that means that we actually have two bites of the cherry to get in front of our customer or our prospect. The reason being is because they're going to open it here and then they're going to open it on their laptop or their desktop later in the day.
41:46Okay, so we've got two bites of the cherry. What do they look at when they're looking on their mobile device? Well, they get presented the preview pane. And that preview pane is normally where you guys put this statement. And it's something like this. If you can't see this email, then click here to view it in browser. You ever had one of those? The view in browser comment. That goes in the preview pane. That immediately says to me that this email is spam. Do you know what I do? I don't even bother deleting it. I just leave it there. A lot of people won't even bother unsubscribing. They just won't engage with it.
42:20What should be in your preview page? It should say, hi, Brad. Hi, Steve. And it should include the problem solution in one sentence. If you've got problems with time management, then here's a great solution to solve this issue, whatever it is. And it's a snippet that just hooks them in to say, okay, I'm going to read the rest of this email. Yeah. Yeah. It's the headline for the email. It's the headline for the whole thing. Like a hook in a social media post is the headline for the next 30 seconds of video. You know, I love the, I mean, I've written books all on writing ads back in the day, but the headline writing stuff is still so important today.
43:02Your headline for the thing, your headline for that. All right, actually, spam, let's dive into that because there's a lot of things that get us killed. We could talk for a whole hour on spam filters, but let's go quick. So spam builders are the nemesis of the email marketer because half of your emails that you're sending out right now are not getting delivered. And deliverability is the single biggest factor that you should be focusing on when it comes to email marketing. Here's how. What you need to be aware of is that every email client works on a three-point spam scoring system. Okay, so what does that mean?
43:40It means we've got three points that we've got to get through to get our email to land into the inbox. Okay, here are some of the things that give us points. Stylization, wait a minute, the email newsletter. That's gonna give you a point because of the stylization. Get rid of the stylization, we don't need it. It's a plain text email going to that. So we don't need it, but it's gonna give you one point. The next thing is any bold italicis or anything that you're going to add to that email that is going to make things stand out. You know, so if you're bolding certain words or if you're using exclamation marks all the time, if you're adding quote marks to things that don't need to be there, those type of things are going to get you an extra spam score.
44:23The next thing is if you use the word click here or if you use the word free offer, those things are going to give you one point. If you use the word unsubscribing your email, you're going to get one point, guys. So what does that mean? Most of you have said, click here if you can't view it in browser. That's two points already. And at the bottom of your email, you said, click here if you want to unsubscribe. Well, your email has already gone over three point threshold. So your email just isn't getting delivered. So what do you need to do? And by the way, if you start your email with dear, one point for using the word dear, okay?
44:59So these are just things that will affect your email. Happy Christmas, Merry Christmas, Christmas. That's one point. Happy New Year, one point. All of these things, right? There's so many of them that will affect whether your email that gets delivered. So here's how we do it. Hi, grad. Okay, no points. Hi is good. The next thing is remove the word click here. We're going to use the full hyperlink. For more information about Digital Martin, go visit our agency at www.iconovigital.co.uk. Why? Because our full link is more trusted, okay? If you just put click here, you're going to get a spam click, a spam point, and someone's not going to be really sure should they visit that link.
45:39Always include the full URL. The unsubscribe link, how do we deal with that? Well, rather than saying unsubscribe and click here, you would say something like, you don't want to receive emails from us anymore. That's fine. Just visit our website here at www.yourwebsite.com. Simple ways to get around this three-point system, it is going to ensure that your email actually gets delivered. So you get the opportunity to be able to send. Now, here's one little tip. If you want to get a hold of business owners, do you know what time business owners check their devices on the weekends? The biggest time that people check their devices on the weekends is Sunday evening, just before bed.
46:22Believe it, we've tested it over 100 ,000 emails. And the biggest time that we get the most engagement on the weekend from a managing director or president of the business is around 9 p.m. on a Sunday night. So here's the thing. You send the email Sunday night to that business owner. They look at it on their mobile device. They go, oh, Steve, why are you emailing me on Sunday night? And they either do one of the two things. They delete it or they just save it and look at it on Monday morning. That's what most people do. So we then do a follow-up email Monday morning at 8.45. Hey, Steve, did you get my email yesterday?
46:57Just wanted to flag it up to the top of your inbox. would love to have a chat with you today. Simple, short, sweet. It's the biggest lead generator that we've ever had out of any of our campaigns. It's a two-part email series. Well, hey there, and thanks for listening. I've noticed that 78 % of you are brand new, which means you haven't hit the subscribe button yet. By subscribing, you help us bring on even better guests, better quality content, and serve you better with even more podcasts. So please hit that subscribe button. It only takes a second. It makes a huge difference. If you support us, we're going to support your success and help you achieve big success together.
47:36Call to action, part of your email. Call to action could be two things, could be visit a website. Now, remember, websites, landing pages have a proven conversion. It's between 3 % and 13 % of the up range. That's the range, okay? Thanks for paid ads. Anytime we're driving traffic to a landing page, 3 % to 13 % conversion. The most common that we optimize for is a 6.5 % to 7 % conversion. Okay? So the call to action in email could be to either click the link or, and by the way, don't use the word click here. We've already said that. But it could also be to respond to the email. Now, if we're using a marketing automation system, we're going to be sending scheduled emails and triggered emails.
48:19Two different types. Scheduled email goes out at the set time, the Sunday evening at 9 p.m. email. Right? Scheduled. Triggered emails are the ones that are sat there in a live status within your multi-automation platform that are waiting for someone to do something when they fulfill a journey. So if you come through to my website, you click on this page, you build up a lead school because I'm tracking you. This is amazing, guys. You can then get triggered emails that go out. Okay, a couple of days ago, we're working for this leading group of insurance companies in the UK, some of the best insurance in the world by Hiscox.
48:51We've got a campaign set up for those guys where a business owner clicks on something, they go to a landing page, and if they don't fulfill their insurance premium renewal, they then get a campaign series over the next six days that has a 44 % conversion rate off the back of it. Absolutely amazing. Yeah, yeah, the nurture sequence. All right, so let's round out the seven. So seven, we've got SEO, search engine optimization, paid ads on Google, paid ads on Meta. We've got social media. We've got content marketing. We've got email marketing. And the final one is digital PR. Digital PR, top of the funnel.
49:27That's the stuff that gives you that brand awareness. It's not going to lead generate for you guys, but it is going to give you that top level promotion and it links into your search strategy too. So platforms to use, PR5, okay? Go write your content, pay to play, get yourself into Apple News, get yourself into Forbes, get yourself into all the leading publication. It's pay to play, but you too can be the next Forbes guy if you pay the money at the top of the funnel by using that digital PR. Remember, PR is all that story. And the PR also helps with your conversion later on when you share that in some of your socials, you share it in some of your other things, the credibility builders, authority builders, all that stuff.
50:08Steve, final question I always ask everybody is this. What's the best quote or the best advice you ever got on how to be successful? Oh, wow. There's so many quotes, but hey guys, I'm British. So let me go with my favorite from Great Britain, Mr. Winston Churchill, former prime minister. He said these two quotes, right? Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. I love that because if you retain your joy, if you can retain your enthusiasm about the thing that you're passionate about, you're going to be successful. He also said this. He said, success is not final. Okay, it's a journey, right?
50:49he said failure is not fatal it's the courage to continue that counts i love that brilliant stuff big success podcast we'll be back next week with more of your success hit the show notes steve palethop iconic digital follow learn study do all the things so you build your success you've been listening to the big success podcast with the number one business coach in the world brad sugars to learn more about how to achieve business and personal success as well as how to level up or listen to past episodes, visit www.bradsugars.com.
From the publisher
In this episode of The Big Success Podcast, Brad Sugars sits down with digital marketing expert Steve Pailthorpe, founder of Iconic Digital, to explore cutting-edge strategies for online success. Steve breaks down his seven-step marketing framework, emphasizing the power of always-on marketing, the role of SEO and content creation, and the importance of building digital assets that generate long-term results. They dive into social media trends, paid advertising strategies, and how to leverage AI tools for effective content marketing.
About Steve Pailthorpe:
Steve Pailthorpe is a renowned digital marketing strategist, author, and the founder of Iconic Digital, a leading UK-based digital agency. With a passion for helping businesses grow through data-driven marketing, Steve specializes in SEO, content marketing, and paid media strategies. His innovative approach to "always-on marketing" has helped brands scale sustainably in an ever-evolving digital landscape. A sought-after speaker and industry thought leader, Steve is dedicated to sharing insights on marketing automation, AI-powered tools, and omnichannel growth strategies.
Learn more: https://www.crownglobal.com/leadership
About Brad Sugars
Internationally known as one of the most influential entrepreneurs, Brad Sugars is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and the #1 business coach in the world. Over the course of his 30-year career as an entrepreneur, Brad has become the CEO of 9+ companies and is the owner of the multimillion-dollar franchise ActionCOACH®. As a husband and father of five, Brad is equally as passionate about his family as he is about business. That’s why, Brad is a strong advocate for building a business that works without you – so you can spend more time doing what really matters to you. Over the years of starting, scaling and selling many businesses, Brad has earned his fair share of scars. Being an entrepreneur is not an easy road. But if you can learn from those who have gone before you, it becomes a lot easier than going at it alone.
Please click here to learn more about Brad Sugars: https://bradsugars.com/
Learn the Fundamentals of Success for free:
The Big Success Starter: https://results.bradsugars.com/thebigsuccess-starter
