Nick Brogden, the founder of Earned Media, chats with TV presenter David Koch about the importance of buyer personas and commercial keywords. In this segment, Kochie and I cover the topic of how to get the most out of your marketing budget.

Hiring an agency is a daunting task for most business owners and choosing the wrong one can be very damaging to your business. We discuss tips on how to ensure you hire someone who will fit your needs and provide some information on questions you should be asking.

Video transcript

David Koch:
And finally this week for us Kochie, Max Kalis from The Last Coach asks a curly question on the subject of digital marketing.

Max Kalis:
Hello, I’m Max from Melbourne. My company is called The Last Coach. I provide career coaching, working together with clients to improve the direction, performance, and well-being of their working lives.

More people than ever want to change what they do and how they do it. However, there are some distinct client groups.

Execs who want to rise faster, or find a new direction entirely, start-up founders in need of some objective support, school leaders looking to set off on the right foot, return to work parents wanting a better work-life balance, and retiring athletes looking to establish a working life after sport.

My question for you, David, is how can I decide whether to do digital marketing?

And if so, how do I know which of the many options is the best for my business at The Last Coach? Thank you.

David Koch:
To help me answer this question. I’m joined by digital marketing guru, Nick Brogden, the founder of Earned Media.

Nick, digital marketing is so important for every small business these days.

A lot of owners don’t have much expertise in it. How do you know if you’re going to get bang for your buck if you’re outsourcing?

Nick Brogden:
Well, if you’re outsourcing the best way to know is to really make sure that the people you’re working with really understand who your buyers are, because if they don’t know the exact buyer that they’re targeting, then they can spend a lot of your money acquiring people, leads, that isn’t really going to close.

So a good idea is initially before you go and hire somebody, is to make sure that you’ve really fleshed out your buyer personas so as you can let people know who specifically to target.

David Koch:
Okay. And then go to experts who specialize in those sorts of customers?

Nick Brogden:
Absolutely. And you want to speak to people and sort of getting their idea of what they think is the best way to go after those customers.

David Koch:
Right.

Nick Brogden:
And what are the best aspects of your product to do so? And that way they can then advise you on what channels you should use. And you can sort of getting a better understanding of if that’s the right person to work with you.

David Koch:
What about if you’re a business owner that decides to do it yourself?

Nick Brogden:
There’s a lot of information that’s available on the web. So you can research what to do, but you really want to work out what channel you’re going to be focused on.

So you might decide to use, say Google ads, again, just using that example. It’s always a good place to start. You want to really understand what’s your commercial keywords.

So what are the terms that if someone’s searching that term, they actually want to buy something? A lot of people trip up because they search for terms that are more research-based, and spend all their money on research terms that are not on the pointy end of the deal.

David Koch:
Okay. That’s interesting. So you really got to think that through.

Nick Brogden:
That’s right. It’s extremely important without targeting commercial keywords, you’re very unlikely to have success. You’re better off paying more for the traffic and converting than paying less and not converting.

David Koch:
Okay. Nick, some great advice there. Thank you for that. Good to see you.

Nick Brogden:
No problem.