Heather here 🙂

What a week it’s been!

You’ll remember I’ve been managing my first LinkedIn sales campaign (with mixed results). Well, this week persistence paid off – sort of. I actually sent our digital PR deck across to a number of people who are interested (and even schedule some calls – eek)!

We’ll see what happens…

On Friday, we had some AMAZING training from Deepak and Federica about Facebook ads. I literally know nothing about this particular topic, and it was fascinating hearing them break it down into layman’s terms. Here are some of my main takeaways;

FB ads operate via a funnel, just like everything else in sales.

Can I take this moment to say ‘TOFU, MOFU, BOFU’?

Before you ask me what on earth I’m rambling about, I’ll explain:

• TOFU – Top Of FUnnel (yes, the ‘U’ is also capitalized, okay?? It’s just aesthetically the right thing to do!)
• MOFU – Middle Of FUnnel
• BOFU – Bottom Of FUnnel

Each of these represent stages of the customer journey from their first interaction with you or your product, to the closing of a sale.

Essentially, the top of the funnel needs to engage the client in a non-salesy way (yes I know that’s not a word). For example, if you’re trying to get people to sign up to Pilates classes, your FB ad could be a quiz question with multiple choice answers (TOFU). Once they click on this, it can take them to your specific page that you’re trying to promote (MOFU). The ultimate CTA (Call To Action) must lie in wait, sleek and stunning and impossible to resist!

Maybe you’ll offer them a free session, or a discount on their first six months. Maybe you just want them to hop on a call, or subscribe to your YouTube channel…

When you structure your sales funnel for an ad campaign, you want to make sure you’re clear as crystal on your CTA. Ad campaigns cost money, after all (although FB ads do seem to be quite reasonably priced). No point directing your hard-won traffic to your landing page and overwhelming them with all the information there.

Instead, direct them to a page with information specific to your CTA (i.e Pricing plans, a Special Offers column, Newsletter and Sub button…whatever works for you)!

The training was definitely more comprehensive than that – but those were the major points that stuck with me (meaning they’re the ones I am most likely to action in the future)!

What else is new? Oh right…PR!

This week, I’ve also begun training some of the newer team members to manage various aspects of PR. My main tasks, broken down, are as follows:

• Expert Round Ups
• Interviews
• Pitching
• Emails

Most of these are relatively straightforward. Pitching, however, is an art form (and not a Classical one, sadly – think Dali meets Picasso meets Rembrandt)! Here we come to yet another one of my learnings from the past week:

Just because you are able to do something, doesn’t mean you are able to TEACH it.

I’ve spent probably 4 of my 6 months with Pearl Lemon figuring out the whole pitching process – what works, what doesn’t, how to say things, who to say them to etc. Even now, I’d hardly say I’m qualified to speak on the subject at all. Most days, I feel like I’m just winging it with my pitches and am always pleasantly surprised when we land a feature.

Teaching pitching is a million times harder.

Thank goodness Deepak is still around and willing to shed some light on the matter. He gave a very helpful training session on pitching which even I was able to benefit from!

The whole pitching thing is a journey, and one that is continuous. We’re all constantly learning new ways and methods to tackle journalists and convince them that our quote deserves a feature. However, since starting a renewed push on pitching, I’ve seen a definite increase in live links – meaning it really is worth the legwork!

Joe, one of our newest team members, landed his first media mention this week…

One of many to come, I’m sure!