How to Plan 12 Months of Online Marketing in 45 Minutes | Fiona Allman-Treen

Well, hello and welcome to the e-commerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmondson. Now, this is a podcast all about helping you deliver e-commerce, wow. And to help us do just that, today I'm chatting with Fiona Olmentrine,with a hyphen, oh yes, from Fat Promotions about how to plan 12 months of online marketing in 45 minutes, that's a bit of a bold promise, isn't it? But we are gonna get into all of that, yes we are. So let's do a few housekeeping things before we jump into it. Number one, if you have not done so already, head to the website at ecommercepodcast.net, sign up to the newsletter, because all of the good stuff comes direct to your inbox totally for free. So just go sign up for it, you may as well. It's a good thing to do. And whilst I'm doing this, I am just gonna find on my screen the music and just turn it down ever so slightly.

There we go, look at that, it's a wonderful thing. Okay, so let's jump into today's show sponsor, which of course is the legendary, the awesome, the fantastic e-commerce cohort. Oh yes, come join us in e-commerce cohort. It is a monthly mastermind group where we go through all kinds of workshops from expert people who have got a whole bunch of amazing things to teach us about e-commerce. It is a membership group. Prices start at just $14.99 a month, and you can come join in. One of the benefits is, Fiona, we were talking about this before we hit the record button, is if you're in cohort, you can watch the live recordings of the podcast. Something that we have just started doing, this is our second week of doing it, yes it is. You can come and join us on the live stream as we do the recording. You can post your comments. You can post your questions to our legendary guests and just have a bit of fun. Why not? So that's part of the benefits of signing up to Cohort. Do check out ecommercecohort.com. Now, let's talk about Fiona. Fiona is the web wizard and growth guru, the creative force behind the globally recognized Hastings-based agency Fat Promotions Limited, which is such a cool, cool brand name. I'm not gonna lie. Famous for fusing strategic website design and software systems to fuel businesses and charities worldwide, she is a champion for young entrepreneurship. And when she's not crafting the internet, she's strumming the ukulele just for fun. Now, that's fascinating in its own right. And it's also worth saying, Fiona, as we read the bio, that you're also a fairly new author for a few months of a book called

Website Mastery for Business Owners Who Don't Speak Tech. There you go, you put it on screen.

(laughing) The shameless plug. - This is how I feel. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is now, you were saying this is a best-selling book in nine categories. - Yeah, yeah, including ecommerce design, which is, I thought might be relevant to some of your listeners today. So I'm gonna hopefully share something useful for them from that. - Fantastic. Now, before we jump into it, Fiona, I guess my question is, why on earth would you wanna write a book?

(laughing) I mean, I do the podcast, which is, you know, it's great in its own right. And it's a lot of work. And don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, it's good fun.

But everyone I've spoken to who's written a book, they just sort of shake their heads and quiver. You know, like PTSD has said it through, I guess there is all of it. Is that what you found, or was it actually quite an enjoyable process for you? - I've gotta say, I really enjoyed it. I resisted it for many, many years. Every business coach I've ever worked with, the first thing they seem to say is write a book. And I just think, ah, you've got no new ideas. But I've actually found where it became interesting for me was it's all about our unique process that we go through. Because, you know, a website's a website's a website. Except it's not, because we're all different and how we do what we do is what sets us apart. And writing that out, getting the chance to actually think about it rather than just doing things on autopilot, you know, like a control C, control V, I couldn't tell you where to find copy and paste on a menu. It's just something you automatically do. And it's the same with building great websites. I just found that we just automatically following our own process. When you have to stop and write it out, you actually think, do you know what, actually it's kind of self-validating. It's a little bit reassuring to think, yeah, no, we know what we're talking about. So it's pretty cool.- Fantastic. Well, it's one of those things. I'm not gonna lie Fiona, it comes up a fair bit with me.

And people like they've suggested to you, go write a book, Matthew, you know, just write the book. And I've been putting it off and putting it off. And maybe this year is the year that I actually start the thing. I know exactly what it needs to say, but it's one of those things, isn't it? You're just like, oh. I was talking to Daniela Werner, who she runs the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast. Daniela's awesome. And I was talking to her on a different podcast that we run called Pod Junction, which if you're into podcast, go check out Pod Junction, ladies and gentlemen. Quick shameless plug. And I said to Daniela, why did you start the podcast? And she said to me, simply because I hate writing.

(laughing)

- Yeah, I can relate, yeah. - And I was like, that's me right there. I can do the podcast thing. I'm not sure I wanna do the writing thing, but you know, all I can say is congratulations on doing it. It's a labor of love. And I appreciate there's an awful lot involved in that. So well done. And I was talking to another lady earlier on, she's written a book and she's gonna come on to a different podcast to talk about it. And she said to me, she said, you know what? Writing the book was a lot easier than marketing the book. And that's a bit they don't tell you is all the whole marketing side of things. But you know, we're gonna give you a way to do that in 45 minutes today. Oh yes, we are. So we're gonna get into that. But before we do, right, I have to ask the ukulele. What's that all about?

(laughing) - Yeah, that was one of those things. You know when your kid says to you, "If you just buy me this one gift, "I'll never ask for anything else." Well, I'd already fallen for that with the French bulldog and the ukulele.

And then she suddenly falls in love with this tiny pink guitar that she's seen in the shop.

Home comes the ukulele and I'm thinking like, I can see it after a couple of days, the enthusiasm's waning. So I thought I will join her. I've read the parenting books. They all say that this is what you do. Join your kids in their hobbies and they'll keep going. And she dropped it after a week. And I just found it was the easiest possible instrument to play. I'm not even kidding. It's easier to play than a recorder and we all had to go through that pain in school. So yeah, it just sticks. Once you start playing it, and there's like a whole underground thing going on with ukulele groups. I mean, I'm in Hastings on the South Coast and we've got something like 12 different ukulele community music groups that you can just - Goodness me. - play at. It's crazy.

- That's awesome. - You ask anybody, they'll say to you, "Oh, I've got a ukulele." I think it's in the loft, but I've got one. - Yeah, yeah. - It's really weird. - Yeah, my son has a ukulele. He plays it, well, he plays the guitar and he's a very good guitarist actually. And he also plays a cello and ukulele. You know, sort of once brings into another and he got the ukulele and he's played it a little bit. I've had a go. I can play the guitar.

I've had a bit of a go on the ukulele, but in my head, who's the guy that sang that song "When I'm Cleaning Winders?" Was it George? - George Formby. - George Formby. So whenever I hear the word ukulele, I've just got "When I'm Cleaning Winders" in my head. Anybody under a certain age threshold is just going, "You what?" - Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, I can tell you, the ukulele group that I run in my spare time is a community music group. And the last time we did ACDC on the ukulele, that is the thing to be heard. - ACDC.

(laughing) - Seriously. - Right, I'm gonna call my lad and I'm gonna say, "Josh, I wanna hear ACDC on the ukulele. That's what I want." - She shook me all night long. It's a really good one on the uke. - Okay.

Well, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah, I just, you know, I'm in awe of people that play musical instruments and that can play ACDC on a musical instrument as well. And again, anyone under a certain age has just gone, "Are you seeing who?"

(laughing) That's okay, that's okay. I've kind of got my head around that.

So let's talk about content production then. So the claim of the podcast is, and this is something, this is a title that you and Sadaf, the show's producer sort of came up with.

Let's talk about that. Let's talk about the premise for that. So you've obviously, you've written your book, you've got some kind of strategies up your sleeve,some insights which I dare say you have learned over the years.

So how do we, let's start at the beginning. What do we need to think about when creating a 12 month content calendar in just 45 minutes? If I had to stop watch, we'd click go, but we haven't. So let's just go.

- The key thing is everybody thinks of marketing as something you have to do. And a lot of people have got a boot in their back, as you said with the book that the lady wrote, it's the marketing that's the pain. And everyone says like, do big tasks in little chunks. And I say, no, do what's a little task, do it in one big chunk and it's done. And I've been helping clients do this for over two decades. When they say to me, and it was originally their blog post, and now they're saying to me, oh, social posts, and I've got to do LinkedIn articles, and I've got to do da da da da da da da da. And I'm like, you know what, use that wet January day. - Yeah. - You've got zero, what is it, blue Monday or something? It's like the third Monday in January. You've got no motivation. You're still from Christmas, it didn't fall off your foot. You know, nobody's come back in the new year going, yes, we're ready to spend money with you. You know, it just hasn't happened. There's that big slump in January. Fantastic, use that as your marketing time. - Yeah. - Look one afternoon out, and that's when you go, all of my content for the year ahead, coming up, bang. And you can do it. And it's all about planning.

So it's all about planning, and the easy way to do that, do you want me to go straight into it right now? - Yeah, let's do it. I'm diligently writing notes. - Grab your calendar, that's all you gotta do, grab your calendar and think, what are those really annoying public holidays I get reminded about throughout the year, all right? So you're starting with Valentine's Day, right? We're in January, it's wet, grotty January. Valentine's Day is February. Then you've got March is Mother's Day. Then Easter is somewhere that moves around every year. And I can never remember why, and it's really annoying, kind of just for you. But then you've got Easter. And this is all you're gonna do, is go through it and write all of these out. And you can put as many as you like, especially with e-commerce, it's all about everything we say is strategy first. Who's your target client? Who are they? Because you get these key public holidays that are gonna get advertised and promoted and marketed by everybody else anyway. So all you're gonna do is piggyback the part of those that appeals to your clients.

So, as I say, Mother's Day, Father's Day, you move it, then you've got off to school, then you've got school holidays, then you've got back to school. So anybody's dealing with parents and that kind of thing, these times are the times when you wanna be marketing your stuff in front of them. Obviously you've got summer holidays, you've got September, October, Halloween.

Thanksgiving if you're selling stateside, coming up.

Guy Fawkes, Christmas. - Yeah, try explaining Guy Fawkes to anybody outside the UK. (laughing) - Yeah, exactly. - This is the weirdest holiday in the world. - That's why they have Thanksgiving. So they've got something to talk about between like September and December.

(laughing) - It's a much better concept than Bonfire Night, as we'd like to call it, but yeah, yeah, no, it's fair play. Sorry, I interrupted you. - No, it's cool. And then of course, then you're coming back round to January, because the only people who don't have time to do this in January is accountants. So they need to move their calendar back a month. They need to be pushing this stuff in October, ready for January. So get those dates in, they're your key starting point. And then get that super clear mental picture of who it is that you're selling to.

And think when do these matter to them? And some of them might not.

Some of them might not matter to them at all.

- Yeah, it's interesting because if I think about say one of our e-com companies, Vegetology, right? Now we sell on the website, you won't know this, some of the listeners will know this, we sell vitamins and minerals on the site. Now, Vege is an interesting company because it's predominantly, our marketing is predominantly aimed at vegans, vegetarians. The supplements are vegan and vegetarian certified.

And so there's all kinds of reasons why this is a good thing.

But it doesn't preclude meat eaters at all.

But it obviously gives us a bigger pool of people to market to and some more interesting niches. Now, one of the things that's always intrigued me when it comes to choosing holidays, for example,

I'm a big fan of holidays, right? I love things like Mother's Day and Father's Day and Valentine's Day.I don't know why, I just do Christmas, I go nuts. And I'm a sucker for it, right? I'm all in.

But there are certain holidays, for example, and maybe you can talk to this, Fiona, I'd love your opinion.Take something like Mother's Day. No, no, no, let's take Father's Day because Father's Day is even more contentious because not everybody has had a good relationship with their dad or dad has passed away, right?

And so I found in the past when we've done something, say on Father's Day, we get a number of emails from clients going, I didn't really like that because my dad passed away or I didn't really know my dad or whatever.

It's a small, very, very, very small percentage of people.

But it kinda puts the marketing department on edge a little bit when they get these emails.

I don't know if it's a complaint, I don't know if I'd call it a complaint, but it's just an email just kind of observing how some of our clients feel around those holidays.

How do you deal with that, do you think? I don't know if you've got any experience with that, I just thought I'd throw it out there. - It's a really good point. And I think what's interesting is culturally as a society in the UK, we've all a bit peeved about what's gone on the last three years and the years since BC before COVID. And so there's a lot of people who are like, they're ready for a fight. I mean, I'm not kidding, a lot of my clients, people are so grumpy right now. So you will get those people who complain. The thing I always say to my clients when they get something like that is you've got two different things to look at. You've got two sides of this coin. Number one is you probably have, you might have half a dozen, you might have six to 10 people who say, actually that really upset me because I haven't got a dad. I'm an orphan myself, Annie, I can relate. It's not a problem. At the end of the day, I don't expect other people to know that. But right now people are super sensitive and they're ready to put finger to keyboard and let you know exactly what they think. The thing to remember is on the one side of the coin, remember how many people have seen that ad or that post and not complained. Now we can all get access to this data, we can all see these stats. You can see like you've got 44,000 people looked at an advert and you've got six people complained.

It's not the end of the world. So that's the first thing is get it in proportion. The other side of that coin is to have some sensitivity to it but you can't be all things to all people because if you try and be all things to all people, you're a scatter gun. And in marketing scatter gun does not pay off online. Scatter gun does not pay off. Otherwise Facebook ads wouldn't make the money they make. You need laser focus. So you're focusing for that moment on people who've got and it can be as loosely based as family values. I don't wanna get an email saying, don't forget I get one from Moon Pig every 10 minutes but particularly around, don't let dad feel unloved. And I'm like, okay, I doubt he's feeling much of anything right now so it doesn't really bother me but some people might, if they just lost their dad that might be sensitive. Make it less direct, go general. - Yeah. - Let's have, you know, thinking of family this weekend, who do you know who's a great dad?

Doesn't have to be yours.Doesn't even have to be yours.

- Yeah, no, it's very good. - Who do you think is a great dad? - Yeah very good point. I like that, I like this, again, this whole idea of, and we'll come back to the calendar in a second but just to emphasize the point that you mentioned about being over sensitive. Over sensitive, you said that you end up becoming a scattergun which is not great for marketing which I love that phrase. And also I think you become, you just become quiet, you become beige. It's not like you stand out. You don't stand for something. And a lot of what I'm seeing at the moment, Fiona, around marketing is marketing around standing for something. You know, this is who we are, this is what we stand for. These are our values.

If you're like us, great. If you're not, here's a company over here we think can help you, right?- Absolutely, I'm just not that real. - Yeah, exactly. So stand for something rather than stand for nothing. Kind of a thing.

And I think when you get these emails and these complaints the fear is that you just switch it off. Sorry, my phone just went off. That's very unprofessional, isn't it? - I'm so, that wasn't mine. I can't even feel your hand glad. That was not my phone. I was like looking down and thinking, oh no.

- Please don't be mine. No, it was mine. Sorry, I always put my phone on, do not disturb him this time I forgot. I totally lost my train of thought as well now. But this lady German, this is what it's like to be a professional podcast attentioner.

- You were talking about standing for something helps you stand out. And you're absolutely right. - It is, and I think the culture in which we have at the moment where, like you say, everyone's a bit grumpy. I love that word, very British. Everyone's just a bit grumpy. And feel the need to share their grumpiness with the world and they send emails. And some of those emails are maybe deserved and quite a few of them probably aren't. And so we get these and we do overreact and we do feel like actually, I therefore I'm gonna shrink in to myself. Whereas I like what you have said, do I actually find a way to make this work? So maybe it's not your dad. Can you think of a great dad? That, you know, if you're a moon pig or something, like send them a card. Which ironically, I always send out several Father's Day cards on Father's Day.

But it's great things too, ladies and gentlemen. Top tip. So yeah, I think it's one of those things, isn't it? Where when we've done marketing, or you start doing marketing, don't shy away.

Do you know what I mean? - It'd be so important. When people say to me, oh, but we're really busy at the minute. A guy said to me at an exhibition I was at on Friday during the day, he said to me, I'm not actually, I shouldn't even be here. I'm not looking for more business. And I'm like, you know, why are you here? Why are you here? But it's like, you always be marketing. A mentor, a really good mentor of mine said that to me years ago. And I always be marketing. Because you might think, yeah, we're busy at the minute. So great. So build a waiting list, put your prices up,
be more selective about who you choose to work with, but never stop marketing. Because you just, you're going backwards. You really are going backwards. But what you said about values is true. It's something that particularly we're seeing people recruiting on values now. They're not afraid to put on the website. This is who we are and what we stand for. And if you look at something, oh, that's not for me, great. Just keep walking. That's fine, squirt a line. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, totally. We did that a while ago. We started probably about 10, 11 years ago, we started recruiting around values first.So changed our whole recruitment process. It really did.

Quick story, just because I like the story. In our sort of Joe application process, we have this thing where you fill out a sort of a form. And we're like, if you were going to be a superhero, who would you be? And there's no right or wrong answer. I just want to see what kind of, if you can't answer this question, then you're probably not going to fit in with our crazy people, right? It's just, and so we have people, you know, we fill it out. How would your arch nemesis defeat you? Draw your costume here. And we've had everything from simple stick men to full on like Picasso quality art going on. And I remember I was in Jersey and Rach, who was working for me at the time, called me and said, "Matt, the job application "for a new marketing role closes today. "And I just want you to know Batman has just turned up "with a job application and cupcakes. "So somebody applied for the role, "sent their friend down, got them to dress up as Batman, "bought in a tray of cupcakes "and delivered their job application, "the most memorable job delivery, "job application delivery I've ever, ever had." So yeah, we put around values. It's awesome. You get free cupcakes and Batman brings them to you.
(laughing) Anyway, let's talk about marketing. So we're gonna do, we've got our diary, right? We're going through, we're going through the holidays. We've jotted down the ones that are gonna make sense for us, which you could probably make most of them make sense for you actually, if you put some creative thought around it.
So I've jotted down the holidays. I'm gonna start planning, what sort of things do I need to think about at this point? - The first thing to do, and it's a really weird one, is where you've got like here are the months of the year and you've got here, when I can market to those people, move it back a month because it's no good advertising, putting out your social posts about Valentine's on the 12th of February. Move it back a month, right? Everybody makes this mistake and they suddenly put, "Oh, special offer this week." We get it all the time. Wonderful, scatty clients who's gonna go, oh my gosh, we've just realized it's Black Friday tomorrow. Can you bang this on my website? And I'm like, we can do that all you like, but it's too late. You need to keep drip feeding it to people. So firstly, stagger it. Move it back a month to make sense of it, or further if you need it. And if you can offer an incentive, terrific. We work with a plumbing and heating company and they were doing specials on boiler servicing in August. - Good idea.- Genius. - Because no one wants a boiler service in August. - They've got nothing to do in August. They've got nothing to do in August. And suddenly they're going, "Oh, but you get 50% off it. "You're gonna pay it in November anyway. "You may as well have it done now." - Yeah, yeah, no, I'd totally sign up for that. If they're around Liverpool, give me their details. Because everybody else would just come around and just do that.
So move the dates back a month. This gives you space and capacity to start the marketing effort, which is, I mean, Black Friday is probably the most obvious one. The amount of people that do Black Friday promotion thinking in mid-October, early November is scary.

People like me and Chloe and all the, James and all the guys who do e-commerce podcasts.

We start harping on about it around summer. (laughs) It's like, you gotta think, you start thinking about it now, guys.

And so I think, like you say, push it back at least a month makes a lot of sense to me. At least a month and start promoting around that. That's very, very clever. How do you deal with, I'm just trying to think actually, Fiona, if there is such a thing.

I don't think there is a crossover. So if I start my marketing for Valentine's Day in January, am I confusing it by bringing it back early because of another holiday that's going on at the time in January? I don't think, I can't think of anything where that would be a problem. I was gonna say, the only place you might get that is with religious holidays. Right. Because there's a lot of religious holidays. I believe Yom Kippur overlaps with a couple of other American holidays. So there's a difference. Again, it's knowing that target market, who am I aiming at?

That's the key thing. Because yes, it would be great to reach all those people. But as I said years ago, we were dealing with this really fantastic company who were doing these mid-range designer handbags.And they were getting like 4,000 visitors every single week coming to the website. And 4% were buying. Only 4% out this massive traffic. And we worked out that it was actually, they were paying to advertise on a blog that was all about like, what we jokingly refer to as knit your own yoga mat. And they were like, grow your own baby food and do all your own stuff. And they were very much down to earth kind of thing. They're not the people who are gonna spend 500 quid on a handbag. That Harrison's gonna yak that super grown baby food straight into. So it's getting the right traffic. And as I pointed out to them, I said to them at the time, if I could bring you a thousand people who look or a hundred people who buy, what would you rather have? And he did pause to think, which disturbed me on a lot of them. Not the old mat, that was not the response I was expecting. But it's easy to get caught up in those sort of, we want the big numbers, you don't want the right people. It's not about numbers, it's about people. - So, so important. So, so important.Just circling back if I can, feeling something that you sort of nonchalantly mentioned.

International holidays. So back to vegitology, we distribute all over the world. So I'm obviously very aware of the British holidays being a Brit myself. I am semi-aware of the US holidays, just because they're marketed over here quite a lot.

Irrespective of whether we celebrate them or whether we don't. Thanksgiving would be an obvious one.

So am I,(...) if I have an international client base, am I doing this for all of the key nations that I'm shipping to?

- Yeah, what I tend to do is say for your targets, who are your main targets? Because you might say, okay, we've got, I mean, we've got clients in the States, we've got clients all over Europe, got clients in the UK. We've got clients in the Falkland Islands, which I love because they're so cute and teeny on a map and they're so important to us. It just, you know, historically takes me back. But I don't say, okay, I will do a whole marketing plan for the, just for those handful of clients in the South Pacific, because they're not my main audience.

80% of your marketing needs to hit that 20% who really give you the results, who really give you the payoff to be crass about it. But that's what it comes down to. If your tail's not bringing in e-commerce, you're just another website.

- Yeah, it's interesting. So I mean, again, I'm just gonna pull it up here on my screen if I can find my mouse, but there it is. I just had an email from the company who deals with the paid media on one of our e-commerce companies.And this is what they said. Overall, week on week, we saw a 1.9% increase in impressions and a 7% increase in traffic, thanks to an improved click-through rate. And they were talking about all the great things they've done.

When I looked at all the other stats, like the conversion. - Yeah.

- That had fallen as well. So we've got more people coming to the website, but less people are buying. So my click-through rate has fallen, therefore my cost per click has fallen, if that makes sense. But we're seeing more people. And there's been a 7% increase in, and it's just understanding the right numbers, isn't it? You're looking at that and going, well, well done for bringing the click-through rates up and the cost down,but my conversion rate has fallen. So we're not getting the quality of traffic that we need, are we, really? - Yeah. - And understanding that's critical. - It really is. I mean, everything on a website, I did a talk last week, I gave a talk for a whole room full of techies, which was great fun for me.
I've done this great fun for anybody. But I gave a talk to them about how your website success is not about the technology, it's about the people.

Because a website that's just a shop window isn't doing the three things it needs to do. It needs to always be attracting, connecting and engaging. So attracting means getting the right people there in the first place, which means having that super clear target audience, making sure every message you have speaks to that person, not a company if you're B2B. That's something I do see people fall down and go, oh yeah, well, I deal with manufacturers. No, you don't.

Who's Peter in the operations department, who runs it, who is your person? What does he want to feel when he lands on your site? That's what's really important. Getting the right people there is attracting them. Connecting is where your conversion rate comes in. The connection they make, they come to the other site and it's all about them, it's not about you. When I say to people, people are going like, we do this, we do this, we sell that, we sell the other, we do the other. You're we'ing all over people, nobody wants that. That's a whole other website. So we want to make it all about them. You got this problem, we have the solution, this is what it looks like. You got this challenge, this is how so and so dealt with it using our product. You need to be constantly, it's about them, it's about them and they go, oh, that's me and that's what then leads to that third critical piece is engagement. That's when they hit add to order, that's when they add to cart, add to basket, whatever you're calling it. That's where you get that real, the till starts ringing, is when you get to that. And that's when you can use them as well, because people then go, okay, well, it's obvious what to do.You need to make it, especially with e-commerce, so easy. We've all got spoiled to death by Amazon. We've all got spoiled by how easy it is. I want that click, send it, one click, check out, bang done. That's what we want and we don't care if you're a one man band or whether you're an orchestra. That's the experience. I want to feel that easy on that website. - Yeah, very good. - Attract, connect and engage. - Yes. - I've got it down here.

So,we've, I'm going to keep going back to the day. We've got our holiday dates. We've moved them back a month. We've thought about, we've straddled, straddled.

Oh, kind of a good word. - I don't think it's traddled. (laughing) - We've thought about the internationals. We've thought about religious holidays.

What's next on our little list of things to think about here in this 45 minutes? - Well, there's the content is obviously going to be the big meat in the sandwich. This is the really important part is your content. And this is where it can be overwhelming. And particularly if you're a business owner creating your own content, it's really hard. It's really, it's because you think, as I said earlier with, you know, copy paste, copy paste, it's automatic to me. I don't, you think about it. I might not know the right marketing speak as a business owner. It doesn't matter. Think about what is really working for your business. What are the products that really sell? What is the problem that you solve? And I don't like pain points. When I say, what's the problem we solve? And people say, you say, what's the pain point? Do you suffer with this? Does it keep you up all night? How can you not do X, Y, Z anymore? That's depressing. Nobody wants that right now, less than ever. Is that something people want to hear? They want to feel that emotion. We choose, when it comes down to what we, we decide what we're going to buy.We decide what we're going to buy. Okay, I'm feeling lethargic. I'm going to use your supplements now. So I'm feeling lethargic. I've got brain fog. I know I need something. I do my research. And with logic, I decide, I think I need supplements. I think I've heard that this one's good. Bible birds, all head stuff.So we decide with logic, but we choose with emotion. It's the oldest story in the world. It's head over heart with emotion. So when I come to your site, I want to really feel heard, understood, and served. So it's okay to talk about the problems that I'm facing,but then make it a pain point that you can push. I don't know which marketeer came up with that about five years ago, but I would love to get rid of that whole thing about pain points, because it's horrible. Don't poke my pain points. Get your fingers to yourself. I want to hear how you solve my problem, soon make me feel heard. And so that's all you need to do. Write a list is the next thing you've got is write it. And it doesn't need to be, oh, on this date, I could say that on this date. Put your calendar to one side, blank piece of paper. Let's go old school pen, red row and write down. - And listen to ACDC, right? - No, no, listen to ACDC on the UCLO.

And write down, I like fives. So I choose multiples of five. So 15 key things that you solve or your product solves for somebody. And it's not we sell books, we sell records, we sell this, we sell that. It's what's the problem that you solve?

Okay, so if you're feeling, what can we help with? Brain fog, lack of energy. I'm going to your supplements.

My kid needs to study. So that one wants to be around exam time.

Granddad's getting a bit old. That wants to be around Father's Day, Mother's Day, whoever they are. So get those problems that you solve and have those written out now.

Those are just your topics.

Great expression I was told years ago, "Cook once and eat often."

So this is where your content comes in. This is where your phone is your friend.Get your phone out and start recording. And it doesn't have to be perfect. And there's a lot of people go, "I hate these talking head videos "that I keep seeing all the time." Just get your phone out and pick one of those topics and talk about it for two minutes.

Literally two minutes. No more, no less. Just talk about it. Then you can either do it yourself or if you've got a VA or somebody like that you can hand it off to, then say, "Right, get that transcribed."

And from that, write it nicely or you can play with good old AI, get chat GPT dusted off. Please learn how to use it properly and make it talk in your voice first, which is a whole lot of topic.

Do not. - You've seen those as well. - Oh my gosh, do not show me another social post that looks like it was written by somebody who's never met you and there were 5,000 emojis in it, okay? Don't do that. But have that transcription rewritten nicely, tidied up, take out your ums and your r's and your ums and all those sort of bits. There's your social post.

And then you've also got, if you want to, if you're brave enough to use the video, you've got the video to go out on YouTube, you've got the written post to go out on your social. If you want, you can expand on that point, add a story of somebody you've helped in that way or a customer testimonial and there you've got a blog post or you've got an article for LinkedIn(...) and then put a snippet of that into your newsletter and you've got content. You did a two minute video, you've got five pieces of content.

- Very good.

Yeah, I love that. It's the reason I talk about this a lot actually.

The reason I love doing the podcast, Fiona.

I'm quite happy actually to sit there with my phone and talk.

I like the sound of my own voice. I'm a podcaster for crying out loud.

But I get that and I can do that and we have done that. And I love this strategy because it's so, what you're doing is you're making it easy.

And for me, podcasting, we've just done this whole teaching series, teaching series is a wrong phrase. We've just done an expert workshop on cohort, quick shameless plug, on how to do podcasts for, if you need commerce business. One of the key reasons you want to do it, one of the things I love about this, we're talking, we started recording, I'll tell you when we started recording because it will tell me, 39 minutes and 26 seconds ago, right? We're gonna go for another 20 minutes, I guess, finish top of the hour, maybe in the next 10 minutes.

Really, it's the first time we've met. We've had a great conversation about content creation.

I, like you, we've just turned up, I've got an expert chattered. The amount of content I can create from that one podcast episode is obscene. You can create 30 to 40 shorts, quite the short form videos, fairly straightforward, loads of captions, quotes for social media. You've got your blog posts, the audios, your podcasts, the videos, YouTube. You can create like a little two, three minute segment and put it on LinkedIn. I mean, what I like about what you're saying is you're starting with video, which I think is where everybody should stop because that gives you so many options as you tumble down the con, which is why I think Daniela, when she was talking about, she hates writing. She discovered actually that if I write, I've just got the blog post. If I talk, not only is it much more of an interesting experience for her, but she's got the video, the audio, and she's got the blog post. And that's the key thing, I think, to what you're saying, isn't it? - Yeah, absolutely. And then just makes it easy for you. And I do get that it can be tricky.

I never listened to myself back. When I record it, I never listened to that. No, it would never see the light of day. - I did listen to the light of day, I did that. - My wife's exactly the same, I'm not gonna lie. - Just couldn't do it, just could not do it. But one of the things that I do is I run a master mining group for local business women in my area. And they all say the same thing, you keep saying about doing video, I can't do video. So no, you can't watch a video of yourself. That's a different thing. You can record a video, you can't watch it back. So don't watch it back, who cares? Just don't watch it back. But I know that one chat, I had a chat with Daniel Priestley who wrote oversubscribed all about how to build a massive weight in this business.

And he said, you need to go out and look online and see how much of you and what you stand for and what you sell can I absorb? Can I sit and binge a day of content about your company?

And there were very few people in the room who could say yes.Very few. And he said, because that's what they do. Because it used to be very linear. People would decide what they wanted, they'd want to buy a widget. They would search online for it. They would find your website and a few others and look at them. They might look at reviews and things like that. And then they would just go to buy. And it was very linear. It was very much in one straight line. Now it's all over the place. Now the first thing they do is ask their mates. So they might do that on social, they might do that in real life. They might go out and then look at the reviews and then they look at something else and they look at something else and they bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce. And then they come to your website. So by the time they come to your website, they should already be pre-qualified. As much as you can saturate that bounce, bounce, pre,before they get to your website stuff, the more you can saturate that with the good stuff that you can tell the narrative of, the more likely they are to buy as soon as they get to you. - Yeah, now a very, very powerful point.

Love that. So we've got our calendar, we've got the holidays, we've set them aside, we know what we're doing and we've jotted down our ideas and we've started to record the Talkin' Heads videos.(...) What else should we be thinking about?

- To be fair, once you've done that and you've got all of those topics,
calendar is your best friend. Put that regular day in your diary. And it's not once a month, it is every week. Put in two-hour slot. It can be two one-hour slots, don't do half an hour slots, you won't get anything done.

I have two one-hour slots, I used to have just a big two-hour slot and it just always got pushed back. And that's the day, that's my article day, that's my blog day. And all I do is I go to that list of topics, I go, oh yeah, there was that, I already recorded the video, right, now transcribe it and this week let's make it a blog. And then on Thursday when the next slot pops up, okay, I've already done it as a blog, I've already done it as social and do track these because you will forget what you've already done with it and you don't want to put out the same stuff twice.I have made that mistake and that was embarrassing.

And then just keep adding to it, okay? Now it's an article, now it's a blog, now it's something else and one day it might end up as a chapter in your book, you don't know.

You get that, see, that's how to write your book. You can just write some right-sized chunks. - Love that, love the cheeky plug. That was very clever. - Very well, as an expert, as professional looking at that. That was great. One of the things you said is don't put out the same stuff twice and I'm gonna take a slight exception to this, and the exception's a wrong phrase, maybe bring us a different way of looking at it because I'm aware that when I used to blog, I mean I still technically blog, but the blogs come out of the podcast and stuff. - Yeah. - I would sit and look at my computer like a lunatic, and I'm just waiting for that inspiration to strike. And I'd have a list of things that I'd already blogged about thinking I can't go anywhere near those because I've already blogged it. And the reality of it was, I could totally go near those again because the topic will have evolved, there'll be some more updates, not everyone's gonna read that last one. It's why on the e-commerce podcast at first, we're like, well we've already had some talk about email marketing, we don't need another email marketing person. You're like, well no, that's not entirely true, is it? Because everything moves forward, and you can talk about this from a slightly different angle and a slightly different way, but the same topic over and over again, right? - Yeah, no, so it's a really good point. And the thing is, especially in technology in my world, things move so quickly. So it's really important that you do come up with the latest, this, that, and the other. And that's why this was 12 months of marketing, not your whole life of marketing. This is your 12th next month, you're gonna come back, next year, sorry, you're gonna come back in the same month, you're gonna come back in that wet January afternoon, and you're gonna think, but they're still the same topics. Yeah, but how's it changed? How has it changed? What, you know, immune system, suddenly, we did a website for a company who they sell a particular supplement for, which is for immunity. You can only imagine what happened to their sales over the last three years, because they stopped talking about general health, it's a general health supplement, and they talked about immunity, immunity, immunity, because that's all people were talking about. Whoosh, up went the sales, straight up the sales. So always make it relevant. You can still use that same list next year, but how is it relevant now? And that's looking at what's happening current and culturally, it's not just what's happening in the news, it's as a culture. Do people still want to take tablets from a supplement? Would they now prefer liquid or whatever?

Very, very important. Very good, love that.

So, I've got a lot of notes here, Fiona. Is there anything else that,in the closing minutes of the show here, any last piece of advice you want to throw in?(Oh, there is a great fun one, and that is hidden holidays. I've talked about these key holiday dates all through the year. If you've got a time of year when you know your clients or disappear, like August traditionally was a good one, not so much the last few years, August is dead as a doornail for us because everybody goes on holiday, nobody wants to do anything. So we know, we ramp up our marketing in June to existing clients. So it's not just the social and the blogs and the articles, we then start repargeting our existing clients and saying to them, we know you're probably already planning your holiday in August, we hope you are, it's going to be a great one, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Get your orders in now and we can save you a slot in the schedule, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it fills up those quiet times. So look for your quiet times, when are the flat spots in your year and start planning to market to your existing clients on top of that? - Great, love that.

Love that. Fiona, listen, I'm aware of time and I feel like, you know, we could carry on talking about this for quite a while, it's quite nice talking to you. Very easy person to talk to, Fiona. - Awesome, thank you. - If people want to reach out to you, if they want to connect, if they want to find out more about Fat Promotions, they want to get ahold of your book, what's the best way to do that? - Best way to do it, you can go to my website, if you go to fatpromotions.co.uk, you can find me there, but you should be able to Google me, look, and you should find at least seven hours of content, or I'm not living by my own rules. (laughing)

You can download a free chapter of my book, which is all about, that particular chapter is all about getting your target client crystal clear. So if you go to website, masterybook.com, that will get you a free copy of the first chapter of the book, all about crystallizing your marketing message for the right target audience.- Fantastic,website, Mark 3, no, website, masterybook.com. - Oh, masterybook.com.- Website, masterybook.com. We will of course put that in the show notes as well, and if you're subscribed to the newsletter, ladies and gentlemen, that will also be winging its way to your inbox, it'll be in the show notes, so we put all the links and stuff in there on the website as well, e-commerce podcast on there. It's all there, just go check it out, download a free chapter, get in touch with your owner, I'm sure she'd love to hear it. And it's actually only just now, and this shows you how fast my brain is, Fiona, it's only just now I've finally understood why you called it fat promotions. - Yeah, the fun I have naming my kids. Peter Robert will never forgive me.

- It's, yeah, at first I was like, fat, and it was capitalized, and now I've realized, now I'm looking at your name, okay, I get it, fantastic. - I used to get people say, "But you shouldn't do that, because you're not fat." And I thought, well, A, that's a good diet incentive, and B, you know, my phone's not actually orange, and I don't think Richard Branson's a virgin, so it doesn't really.

(laughing) - Yeah, and I'm not sure he drinks Coke anymore. So no, that's, that's very, very true. Very, very true indeed, love that, love that. Well, Fiona, thank you so much for joining me on today's podcast, loved the conversation, and-- - Thank you, Matt, I really enjoyed it, really appreciate it, thank you. - No, it's been great, absolute legend. Also, big shout out to today's show sponsor, the eCommerce cohort, remember to check out the eCommerce cohort, eCommercecohort.com. Come join us, come join the membership, it'd be great to see you in there. Now, be sure to follow the eCommerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from, because we've got yet more great conversations lined up, and I don't want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first person to tell you, you are awesome, yes you are, credit awesome, it's just a burden you have to bear. I've gotta bear it, Fiona has to bear it, you've gotta bear it as well. Now, the eCommerce podcast is produced by Aurea Media, you can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The team that makes this show possible is Sadaf Baynon, Tanya Hutsuliak, and a whole bunch of other amazing people. The theme music was written by Josh Edmundson, and as I mentioned, if you'd like to read the transcript or show notes, head over to the website, eCommercePodcast.net, it's all there, it's all there. So that's it from me, that's it from Fiona, thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week, wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time, bye for now.