The Digital Marketing Agency Secret You Can Implement Today

Ever feel like it takes forever to get your marketing campaigns completely launched? 

That’s because your digital marketing agency, or internal marketing teams employ the typical “waterfall” project approach – that is, where they fulfill every deliverable in a campaign. 

Then, once all deliverables are completed, approved, and loaded – the big guns finally say “yes, let’s go live”. The issue with this approach is that from start to end, it can take 3-6 months! 

So much can change in 3 months. 

And the big benefit of a digital marketing agency and digital and internet marketing in general is the ability to move faster than traditional “hard” marketing. 

The other massive benefit is the quickness for which you can get results and pivot. In fact, the word “pivot” is one of my favorites because you have to understand that good marketing means you may have to pivot your approach when the data comes in.

Now imagine your current situation with running a 6 month campaign and finally launching it. 

First of all, that’s a ton of work that has to get done in that amount of time, it crosses over many different hands, and now with 6 months under your belt, it HAS to work. Otherwise what was all that hard work for?

Unfortunately, this is where most campaigns go to die. 

But your campaigns shouldn’t end this way. They should be given a chance to prove themselves to you. You can turn around a campaign through continuous split testing and optimization – but that’s a topic for another day. Today, I want to discuss with you how important it is to be able to move fast and implement quickly in digital marketing.

Introducing… Iterative Digital Marketing

I come from a development background where we work within the “agile methodology”. I won’t bore you with all the ins and outs of agile (yes, we use it internally and it rocks), but I will touch on how it can change your marketing forever. Agile works on this idea of “bite sized” work delivered on a specific short schedule – typically 1 week but some timelines are 2 weeks up to 4 weeks. I’d never do the 4 week one. We call these “sprints”. Our team works on 1 week sprints but most development companies work on 2 week sprints. 

Split test everything.

We literally tested the productivity of our team working on four 1 week sprints for a month versus two 2 week sprints. We were astronomically more productive on 1 week sprints because our team could pivot (yup, there’s that word again) more quickly for our client workload. And inevitably it forced us to drill down our workload into smaller pieces.

Okay, so what does this have to do with digital marketing?

You may have an initiative to “build a funnel that I can run paid ads to”. But that’s a massive workload and undertaking. There’s a lot of smaller tasks within that. Here’s a few:

• Build the lead magnet (free offer PDF)
• Build the optin page
• Build the thank you page
• Write some content emails
• Write some sales emails
• Load them into your email system and set up the timing in the automation
• Test it
• Launch it

But even looking at that list, we can break that down further – let’s look at the Lead Magnet:

• Strategize lead magnet subjects based on your target personas
• Write lead magnet copy
• Create the lead magnet deliverable

And let’s look at the optin page:

• Write the optin page copy based on the lead magnet
• Design the optin page
• Develop the optin page
• Mobile optimize the optin page

See – there’s a lot that you have to implement when it comes to a funnel. So, now that you have the full picture of a funnel and how to break down one piece of the funnel, let’s get back to the subject of iterative marketing.

Building this funnel right would take between 2-3 months to complete and launch initially in conventional marketing and project management. But not for you, not once you implement iterative digital marketing. You can be launched within 2 weeks!

Perfectionism is the new Procrastination

Iterative marketing stems from releasing early and releasing often. 

Let’s apply this to a digital marketing agency – the moment we have some deliverables ready to go, we launch them! That means the moment we have a Lead Magnet designed, an optin page built, and the delivery email loaded into your email system – you should absolutely start running paid ads to that optin page!

“But… the funnel isn’t complete!”

Nope. It’s not. It doesn’t have to be. 

Start running traffic, building your list is so valuable that you shouldn’t delay. The moment you have ANYTHING, start running traffic to it. There’s a few reasons why:

1. You can start testing and optimizing your landing page for the highest conversion
2. You will optimize your ads copy for the best conversion
3. You will start growing your list

Here’s the greatest thing of all time – a bit of a secret. In your automation, throw in a “time delay” of 100 years (or whatever the highest value is you can set). This way, the moment someone enters your automation from your optin page, they are “stuck” in your automation for basically forever!

You now have an ads campaign live after 2 weeks. 

Now you can focus on writing those content emails. The moment you finish one content email – add it to the automation after that 100 year delay, then add another 100 year delay after it. 

Then, change the first 100 year delay to a 1 or 2 day delay. BOOM! Everyone waiting 100 years will now receive that content email and be stuck in the 2nd 100 year delay.

Some analytical stuff right there but it works. And allows you to launch whatever you have whenever you have it.

Keep writing, keep iterating, keep launching. Content email 2, then content email 3, then some sales email pushing people to sign up for your services, purchase your product, or get on the phone with you. Change that final delay every time and you’ll ensure people are stuck in your funnel until you are ready to let them out!

Now you can move fast, send out content when you have it AND the best part of all – it’s fully automated moving forward. Because you continuously running ads to the top of the funnel, customers are entering it all the time and receiving whatever content was loaded up when they entered.

You know what else I love about this approach? 

It means you can’t procrastinate any longer. It’s far too easy to say “Meh, I don’t need to work on this right now, we aren’t launching for another 60 days”. Nope, that crappy excuse won’t be able to come out of your mouth any longer. 

Release Early, Release Often.

And by implementing a strong optimization strategy after you launch, you ensure that all content is continuously improved after you launch it! But that’s a whole another can of worms to dive into.

Experience Iterative Marketing, Done For You!

Are you ready to accelerate your business and make a bigger impact in the world?

At Mintun Media, we are a full-stack digital marketing agency that offers comprehensive in-house marketing, web development, and design services tailored to your business needs.

Schedule a meeting with our team today to discover how we can help you achieve your marketing goals and drive growth for your business.