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CMA Kick-Off 2018: Brilliant Tips For A Rewarding Year

Posted: Updated: by Claire Brotherton
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Chris Marr introduces CMA Kick-Off 2018

On Friday 5th January I attended CMA Kick-Off 2018 in Dundee. It was an event for getting off to the best start in business for the new year with friendly Content Marketing Academy members.

I got a lot from Kick-Off 2017. How did 2018 compare?

There were five main speakers at this year’s event.

Chris Marr

Chris Marr introduces CMA Kick-Off 2018

Chris introduced the event and spoke about content marketing in 2018 and what we should consider in the new year.

The Big 5

Marcus Sheridan’s Big 5 is still relevant but we need to get more imaginative and creative with our content to stand out from the crowd. Try to create the best possible version of your content on the Web today.

Content covering price is always popular, and mobile searches for “best” and “reviews” have grown in the last two years.

Improve your existing content

Find your top 5 blog articles – where did the visitors come from? What’s the next question they would have? Add relevant links to help them. Sprinkle subscription boxes in there.

Look at mediocre content too. How could you improve it and push up its Google ranking? For example:

  • Add subheadings
  • Include expert opinions
  • Cover the whole topic

Measure everything

What we measure improves. It’s rare to measure marketing success.

Position + Traffic + Lead Generation + Sales

Focus on the last two after you have mastered the first.

Be consistent

Take on a content challenge. Spend time with others who have put out regular content and got results.

Stop creating content for your peers – they don’t pay the bills!

Denise Cowle

Denise Cowle, CMA Kick-Off 2018

Denise is a physiotherapist turned copy-editor and proofreader. She spoke about the positive impact accountability groups have made on her business.

Denise is a member of a group of editors through the SfEP and part of a CMA accountability group, Action Lab.

What can an accountability group do for you?

  1. Act as a sounding board
  2. Be a safe space to discuss issues
  3. Give encouragement
  4. Bring different perspectives
  5. Give you advice from trusted advisors

What does a group NOT do?

  1. Tell you what to do
  2. Criticise
  3. Know all the answers
  4. Mentoring

Challenges in accountability groups

  1. Time creep (answer: have an agenda)
  2. Lack of action (answer: make action points to follow up on, and fess up if you haven’t done what you said you’d do)
  3. Lack of interest (answer: talk honestly with anyone who’s not engaged)
  4. Distractions (answer: switch off your email and phone when you meet the group)

What works best?

A group of four is optimal. Five can work too.

Try and stick to a regular time.

For online groups, fortnightly is good. Weekly may be too often and monthly not often enough.

A one hour slot works well with each member getting 15 minutes. Or one member can have 30 minutes and the others ten minutes each.

In-person groups could meet monthly for two hours. It needs to be a longer slot to make it worthwhile.

You could do 30 minutes each, or 15 minutes each and 1 hour for an informal chat.

How to start an accountability group

Find others who are interested in forming a group. Talk to them without obligation. Find out what you have in common. Do you share aims or are you at a similar stage in business?

Make sure that your mindset and attitude fit with the others. Could you communicate well with them? Trust is key and while it won’t come immediately, there needs to be space for it to grow.

Colin Gray

Colin’s presentation, When Art is War: How to Lay Siege to your Goal, was based on Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art. (I won a copy later in the day thanks to my frequent tweeting!)

The premise of the book is that there is a force, Resistance, which hinders all creative pursuits. If we want to succeed, we need to recognise Resistance where it lurks and overcome it to prevail.

Colin runs a very successful podcasting business and explained how he has increased his productivity and effectiveness. He now makes five times the turnover he did two years ago.

He plans yearly, monthly, weekly and daily goals. As Colin is a Game of Thrones fan, here’s how they correspond to characters in the show:

  1. The General – Yearly – Daenaerys
  2. The Captain – Monthly – Tyrion
  3. The Sergeant – Weekly – Jon Snow
  4. The Soldier – Daily – Arya

Colin Gray explaining the Soldier

Yearly goals are devised to fit into a theme. If a new idea doesn’t fit with a theme, he won’t use it.

Borrowing from the idea of a Board Pack, Colin creates monthly goals, broken down into tasks. Each month he’ll assess how well he achieved the goals, set strategy for the next month and measure KPIs. He’ll journal his results.

Tasks are organised on a Trello board or a Google Doc.

His weekly calendar is a thing of beauty. Regular tasks need to be scheduled in so they get done. Main tasks go into 2-hour slots reserved for the purpose. Small admin tasks go into a 1-hour slot.

The biggest interruptions are client calls and email. The best strategy for client calls is to agree a time to call the client back, and for email to deal with it at predefined times of day (and stick to them!)

Julie Christie

Julie freely admitted she is the Resistance Queen. Instead of working on her presentation she decided it was very important to help her daughter write The Adventures of Rice Pudding!

As consumers, we often put off buying products or services. So, what’s the secret to getting more customers and making more sales?

We’re looking to target those who want our services but are not buying right now.

The answer is to use the Oversubscribed model. We build a buzz around our product or service so that people can’t wait to buy.

Using this method, she picked up 100 members for her membership site, Togs in Business.

What do you need to be oversubscribed?

  • You must know your ideal client.
  • You must have a clear objective.
  • You need to know your capacity for product or service delivery.

It helps if you have installed the Facebook pixel on your site and created a custom audience from your visitors.

How do you start your sales campaign?

Create a landing page with info about your product or service (video is good), the price and a call to action.

The trick is that the call to action isn’t Buy Now but join a waiting list.

Why?

It makes you seem exclusive, builds anticipation for your prospects and makes them want your product or service now. It can also help you figure if there’s sufficient demand for your offering.

Use a Facebook comment plugin on your landing page, and reply to comments left. If visitors can see that others are excited, they’ll get excited too. (Get your friends to comment first if need be to start the ball rolling!)

Filling up your waiting list

Use some of the following tools (not all – you’d exhaust yourself!)

  • Email marketing
  • Facebook ads
  • Blogs and content
  • Social media
  • Competitions
  • Networking
  • Live streaming
  • Live events

Make sure everything goes back to your landing page and signup.

Launching and asking folks to buy

You can launch your product or service when your list is oversubscribed. By how much it’s oversubscribed you’ll need to experiment. It may depend on your industry and the price.

Email your waiting list and tell them:

  • When they can buy
  • The cost
  • How many slots or products are available
  • How long before everyone else can buy (those not on your waiting list)

Be honest! Don’t make out that you are more oversubscribed than you are, or overestimate your capacity to deliver. It’s okay to have people miss out.

You can also use a Facebook custom audience and let them know the launch email is out.

Julie Christie in front of a Christmas tree

What if you don’t sell out?

You might not sell out the first time.

You will still have:

  • An increased email list
  • More evergreen content
  • Your integrity
  • A good foundation for the next time

Start promoting to everyone else and you may yet make your target.

Delivery and evaluation

When you come to deliver, knock their socks off with your amazing service. Collect testimonials, stories and photos to use in your next campaign.

Look back at your campaign and see what worked and what didn’t, so you can prepare for an even better one next time around!

David Thomas

Known as The Memoriser, David is one extraordinary guy. He overcame a difficult start in life to become a firefighter and then a memory champion. He now works as a motivational speaker.

David also has a penchant for loud shirts, but I was more struck by his long shoes!

David Thomas, The Memoriser, on stage at CMA Kick-Off 2018

David’s story

David recounted how he didn’t have the best start in life, being ginger and from Halifax. He was born to an addict mother and was abused as a child. By his teens he was a burglar with no qualifications and a criminal record.

He later became a firefighter but had trouble passing his exams. He tried and failed three times. One day he saw a man on TV performing memory feats with playing cards. David bought a book and decided to teach himself memory skills. 8 months later he was at the World Memory Championships and came 4th!

He’s now written 3 best-selling books. He’s especially proud that he reached #1 with his life story (beating Coleen Rooney!)

David has made over 500 media appearances. He got on the Oprah Winfrey show because he emailed and asked. He heard nothing for 18 months, then they asked for a showreel. After that, he got the call 18 hours later. He had a fantastic 1:1 with Oprah.

One of his best memory demos was reciting pi to 22,500 digits. Kids will ask him “how” and adults “why?”

David gave us a memory challenge with 20 words to remember and recite back.

https://twitter.com/debbieekins8/status/949306230706712576

After we did a less than stellar job, David shared his memory method.

We see 100,000 words in a day, so thinking in pictures is the way to stand out. If we imagine words as a series of linked pictures they’re much easier to recall.

Business lessons

David puts his success in memory down to process and motivation. His first attempt at the pi challenge failed because he didn’t have the right process.

If you don’t get the results you want in business, it’s either you or your process.

We are all capable of amazing crazy stuff. If we don’t have it, it’s because we don’t want it enough.

Most of us never change. If we do it’s due to fear.

He decided he wanted to lose weight 6 years ago because he was 20 stone. He’s progressed from his initial “Fat man sees his balls again” to entering a Masters bodybuilding competition in May (can’t wait for the pics!)

We all have challenges. It’s how you deal with them that counts.

We all won the lottery by being born in the UK.

We can’t blame what happened in the past for our lives now.

Overall thoughts on CMA Kick-Off 2018

I enjoyed it. Chris, Vicky “gold shoes” and Cara did a fantastic job of organising the day.

I love my Geek t-shirt!  (See the tweet below.) Suits me to a tee (if you’ll pardon the pun). If you want to win a Geek t-shirt, enter this competition before January 18th.

Chris gave us plenty to think about in his opening talk. I’m currently doing a content audit on my site to see what’s there and what I can improve.

The food was excellent – I appreciated having healthy fruit to eat after so much Christmas food! I did have to wait a little to get veggie burgers at Tonic at the after-party, but they tasted lovely and the chips were yummy. (And they gave me 2 free drinks!)

The day went really fast. I didn’t feel I had enough time chatting to everyone that I wanted to and missed some folk. I had a good talk with Ahmed on the train to Dundee, as we met on the station platform!

I’d say that Colin and Julie’s talks were the stand-outs for me, with the most actionable points. I’m not sure I believe them when they say they’re not organised! I am looking into forming an accountability group too, so thanks to Denise for her presentation on the pros and cons.

I had a nice wee chat with David Thomas and Richard Tubb. David rounded off the day perfectly with his inspiring and wise words.

Special shout out to Col Gray for his achievement award. I’m looking forward to seeing it in pride of place on his future videos!

Can’t wait for Kick-Off 2019!

Has this post inspired you? What plans do you have for the year ahead? Let me know in the comments.

Category: Blogging & Content Marketing Tags: , , , , , , ,

About Claire Brotherton

Freelance web designer and front end developer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. I love WordPress, code, learning and blogging.

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Comments

  1. Cara says

    I love reading your blogs Claire – no mediocre content here. You always go that extra bit with your detail, makes all the difference. Perfect example of what Chris was talking about. Content Marketing for 2018 – Be better than your best, before creating the rest. xx

    Next year I’ll be able to stay and catch up at the end properly too, missed the chats and fun 🙁

    Reply

  3. Dorothy @sport says

    This is a big event, Claire, content marketing in 2018 will be a topic of great interest. Especially for a blogger. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to participate in this event.

    Reply

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