The Power of Fame

You'd have to be hiding under a rock or live in the deepest darkest woods in the Scottish highlands to have missed the news about Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney buying Wrexham football club. After all, two of the most famous names in the movie world buying a non-league club in Wales isn't something you read every day is it? Why would Deadpool drop his spandex to run a football team? Well, whatever the reason it has certainly elevated the town of Wrexham and the football team into a global news story overnight. Turns out that people from all over the world are now buying Wrexham merchandise, I bet the girls and boys in the shop are busy packing thousands of shirts and mugs as we speak.

In a brilliant piece of viral marketing the chaps decided to create a 'free' advert for the clubs sponsor Ifor Willams trailers, propelling the brand around the world. I don't know the sales uplift, but I'll bet my house that its not inconsequential... I bet the boss of the company that turned down the offer of sponsorship is feeling a little grumpy this morning.

This is clearly a dramatic and very unique example of how fame can elevate a brand into the minds of consumers. Becoming famous for what you do is the beating heart of marketing. That's what we do, we take the story of the business we're working with, find the nuggets that will engage and excite, package them up into campaigns and propel the business into the world.

Far too often, businesses misunderstand the remit of marketing, relying on buying 'bags of sweets' and we all know bags of sweets don't fill you up, by this I mean that we focus on marketing channels such as social media, PPC, SEO as 'things' we need to do, rather than seeing them as simply a vehicle for the story and the messages we create. As someone who has run digital agencies for over two decades, who has come through the transformation and guarded reluctance to embrace 'digital', worked with hundreds of companies to help them steer through the choppy waters of the new world, I think I'm fairly clear on what actually goes to create the fame all brands desire.

I use the word 'fame' passionately, because it is fame that you are looking for, not just large scale visibility. They sound the same, but they aren't. It's really easy to create an advert for your business, pay an agency to run the advert and then sit back and wait for the leads to flow in. You will definitely get some leads and some sales, and it's because of this, agencies retain clients, as long as you deliver some leads everything's rosy.

What I have seen, experienced and implemented is by using a much deeper, insightful strategy not only helps deliver leads, it makes the leads more fruitful, it highers the ROI as you get inbound 'free' leads and most importantly it makes you famous in the sector you're in. I use the phrase 'be the guys that do the thing', and that's the idea, by utilising this strategy you become known for your work and your products, meaning that you're less reliant on spending money on advertising.

The agency I built over the last 17 years never relied on advertising, never employed a salesperson, never had a sales strategy, never made a single outbound sales call. never did any targetted emails or paid media. Yet we have a never ending supply of new business. How did we do this? It was simply by becoming 'famous' for what we did. People knew about Motionlab, people knew me, I'm fairly vocal, I post a lot, I write a lot, I do events, mentoring, consultancy and speak at large scale marketing events. I make myself known and the by-product of this is that Motionlab reaps the rewards. Of course it's not just me, Motionlab does really good things for clients, we make our clients hugely successful, in return they say nice things about us and recommend us to other companies. We're 'famous' and because of that we get asked to do work for lovely businesses across the country.

In effect, I'm talking about what is known as an inbound marketing strategy, utilising content marketing, creating content that shows your skills, your expertise and gives comfort to the reader that you are capable of doing the job theyre expecting. If you're continully putting out content that shows how great you are at what you do, client case studies or product reviews, happy customer testimonials, opinion pieces, whitepapers etc etc then you become a destination for what you do for your customers. And it doesnt matter if you sell products or provide services, you can create a wealth of valuable content for your customers no matter what you do.

In my other life I play guitar, I play lots of gigs and have albums out, so I'd say I'm not just a hobby guitarist. I frequently buy equipment for myself and for years I have been following Andertons music, which started out as just a small music shop in Guildford in Surrey, it's YouTube channel has grown to be one of the most popular music channels in the world. It features the biggest names in guitar playing, the heads of the biggest music brands, all coming to feature on the channel. It has over 688,000 subscribers, has over 230,000,000 views and is a destination for music lovers around the world. Andertons are FAMOUS. I suspect, given the right management, they'll have a very strong and succesful business for as long as they want it. They commit to delivering amazing, valuable, relevant content. I enjoy their videos, but most importantly I know they are 'the guys that do the thing'. They know their stuff so I'm comfortable and happy to buy from them.

Creating a content strategy for your business should be built around several key areas, including:

• Your values
• Your products
• Your services
• Your expertise
• Your opinion
• Your work

This pretty much covers everything you can promote about your wonderful business, articles, tweets, infographics, Instagram posts, videos, imagery... full of relevant information for the reader, content that proves you can do the job you're looking for, content that makes the reader excited to pick up the phone and get your help. After all, why would't they? they want a job doing and you're clearly the company that is the most experienced, has the happiest clients, has incredible stats to back up your brilliance and in your hands their investment will be safe and secure.

I'm not discounting paid media or any other channel, far from it, PPC has helped us build companies into the biggest brands in the UK. But, utilising a strong, coherent content marketing strategy, linked to a fully connected, fully automated CRM with full digital tracking and analysis, proving that your efforts are working or at least need tweaking is the solid foundation to building any business in the digital world, and one that will certainly give you the fame your business deserves.