Digital Overload: Jeremy Miller shares How to Stand Out in an Oversaturated Digital Market

How can your organization stand out, attract customers, and grow your brand to become something remarkable? In recent years, the market has seen exponential growth in the amount of content being pushed out by brands, making it harder than ever to be seen. Marketing speaker Jeremy Miller helps audiences in making their brand stand out. He provides organizations with insights that will have their customers thinking of them first, and coming back again and again.

In this guest blog, Jeremy looks at a big challenge many organizations are currently facing: how can you cut through the noise to grow your brand?

The old marketing adage was “content is king.” Not anymore! There’s just too much content.

The stats are shocking. According to Moz, 50% of articles being published have no likes, shares, comments, and probably no views. Organic reach on Facebook is near zero, and a brand’s reach on Instagram and LinkedIn is rapidly deteriorating.

When all of our media channels are oversaturated, is pumping out one more article or posting one more video going to make a difference? The stats suggest no.

We are at a crazy turning point in marketing. Consumers are experiencing digital marketing fatigue, and they’re tuning out!

It’s incredibly frustrating. It is taking 10x the marketing budget to generate diminishing sales returns. 🤢

At Sticky Branding, we compared organic content marketing campaigns over a five year period. These were long term campaigns like podcasting, blogging, email newsletters, and other related campaigns. The measure of success, or how we evaluated ROI, was the campaign’s ability to generate sales-ready leads or inquiries.

Yes, blogging and email newsletters still work, but anticipate you will have to produce ten times or more content to generate the same number of leads!

This is a depressing story. In the good ol’ days of content marketing, I used to be able to track lead attribution to articles. Between 2005 to 2008, I generated at least one new customer for every article I published. That translated into $15,000 in revenue for four hours of work! Plus, the lifetime value of each of those new customers.

Today, content marketing is starting to feel like your throwing money and resources into the abyss.

So what do you do about it?

Ironically, the answer is old school: focus on relationships and grow your brand. Keep doing digital marketing, but emphasize brand building.

In an oversaturated market there are three principles from my book, Sticky Branding, that rise to the top:

• Simple Clarity: Get your brand messaging razor sharp so that everyone gets it, fast. Strong core messaging is the foundation of your brand, and how you will cut through the clutter in a noisy market.
• Be Everywhere: Instead of “publish and pray,” choose a few key markets to focus your marketing on so that you create the impression your brand is everywhere. That way you can focus your marketing dollars and generate clear, tangible ROI from your efforts.
• First Call Advantage: Focus on relationships. Get your prospects, customers, and centers of influence to know your brand, like it, and trust it so they choose it first. That doesn’t mean post more, it means being strategic. Use your marketing to spark engagement and create conversations. Create exclusive content for your biggest fans, and get them to add your brand to “Close Friends” on their Instagram accounts.

The most effective way to cut through the noise is to grow your brand. Create a brand strategy that clearly articulates where you play, how you win, and how you want to be known. And then you can choose the tactics and tools that will help you do the right marketing.

—Read Jeremy’s blog on how to name your brand, product, or service —

My mantra for 2020 is “fewer followers, more engagement!” This is key to making the Be Everywhere and First Call Advantage principles work for you. Focus on a smaller, more focused audience and really work to engage them.

Here’s a simple question to ask: What’s the minimum number of people you need to engage to achieve your sales objectives?

A good place to start is with a simple formula:

1,000 True Fans

100 Prospects

10 Opportunities

Let’s break it down a bit further:

• What would it take to engage 1,000 people who truly care about your company and your products and services (1,000 true fans)?
• Of that group, can you generate 100 prospects (people who want and need your products and services)?
• If 10% of those prospects are buying in the next 90 days, can you generate 10 sales opportunities?

In a small business, that might be all you need to achieve your sales objectives this year. In a larger business, multiply the numbers (fans, prospects and opportunities) by the number of salespeople on your team.

1,000 true fans per salesperson is not only an achievable number, it’s practical. It sets you up to ask better questions:

• How do we engage 1,000 true fans?

• How do we delight and build relationships with our true fans so they call us first when they’re ready to buy?

• How do we convert our fans into customers?

Better yet, forcing your brand to engage only a few people makes you far more choosy about who you actually engage.

Seth Godin writes, “If you were limited in scale, you’d focus your energy on the makeup of the market instead…. The smallest viable market is the focus that, ironically and delightfully, leads to your growth.”

He’s absolutely right! The myth of “followers” and pumping at ever more content in the hope to get Likes has led brands to waste countless hours and resources pursuing people that will never, ever become customers. Doesn’t that infuriate you? 🤬

In a world of fractions and diminishing returns, be contrarian. Go old school and build brand. This is the kind of thinking that will truly make your brand stand out in an oversaturated market.

For even more of Jeremy Miller’s insights on standing out in an oversaturated world, you can re-watch a recent webinar he did on this topic here.