​Funny and Furry Sells

Ok, this blog isn’t as dodgy as the title makes it sound and I promise it’ll make sense soon! I launched my newsletter this week after months of it being shuffled round my planner like an awkward wedding guest. Client work has been wonderfully busy recently and I’m loving it all but it has meant that my own business admin has taken a back seat. So, I planned a whole day to work on my own marketing and a newsletter was top of the list, because as this Forbes article proclaimed… “Email marketing is still the most powerful tool to take your business to the next level”. Plus, it’s a great way of creating content for your social media channels by sharing each newsletter segment as a separate post.
 
By the end of the planning day I had my newsletter set up and a welcome email ready for new subscribers. Which I then realised I’d need to find! I’m great at marketing other people but cringe when I have to do it for myself. So, I quietly shared a sign up link on LinkedIn, hoping that a few people would notice it. The next day I checked and there had been no engagement with my post. I felt momentarily deflated until I realised that I’d committed one of the cardinal sins of digital marketing. Not only had I asked my followers to do something for me but I had also given them nothing in return. The post didn’t educate or engage and was basically, flat out boring. So, I shared the exact same link and basically the same text with one difference… A cute photo of my dog Noah sat at a desk like he was working. Yes, it was a shameless use of an unsuspecting animal but it’s a tried and tested method of grabbing people’s attention. A method I actually learnt many years ago whilst running The Horsfall crowdfunding campaign for 42nd Street.

​Nothing is harder to market than straight up asking people for money. No matter how worthy the cause and it definitely taught me a few tricks in how to generate varied and engaging content. I spent so much time at the start of the campaign drafting beautifully written and heartfelt posts, only to reach the midway point of the campaign and find myself struggling for fresh content ideas. So, in a fit of slightly off-brand silliness I shared a photo of a horse sticking his tongue out alongside a horse-related pun (Quit foaling around and back our creative project today). Annoying and rewarding in equal measure it became the most liked and shared post of the entire campaign and brought in hundreds of pounds worth of funding. Probably from people who had a giggle and thought ‘yeah, that’s worth a few quid’.
 
And while my second newsletter post didn’t get quite the same hit rate as the silly horse promoting a worthy cause, it did get a lot more engagement that the first post and I did get some new subscribers. So, as I said… funny and furry sells and remember, if you’re asking your followers to do something for you, whether that’s buy, share, donate or subscribe, make sure to give them something in return. Even if it’s just making them smile at a cute photo of a dog.

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​Whether you’re just starting out or you’d like a refresh, I’m here to work with you every step of the way to make sure that the whole process is as easy and stress-free as possible.

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