My 3 Favourite Marketing Hacks. In Blackboard Fridays Episode 97, Jacob talks about Marketing. Need this implemented into your business? Talk to the international business advisor who can do exactly that – Contact Jacob, Learn More, or Subscribe for Updates.
Chances are you’ve heard of Facebook, Google, and a recent technological innovation called ‘Television’. Maybe you also saw the recent pictures of my face on a giant Billboard. or the even-more-recent pictures of the Como online business coaching logo on a billboard?
There are amazing marketing strategies to be created using any or all of those… but that’s not what interests me this week.
No, I want to share with you my 3 favourite marketing hacks, underutilised opportunities that I’ve been implementing for years (to great effect) and where I’m finally ready to let you in on the secrets.
Watch this week’s episode to learn more about how to turn:
- Your Profile Photo
- Your Business Card, and
- Your Automated Out-of-Office Email
into engaging marketing channels that push your brand promise further into the world.
Who is Jacob Aldridge, Business Coach?
“The smart and quirky advisor who gets sh!t done in business.”
Since April 2006, I’ve been an international business advisor providing bespoke solutions for privately-owned businesses with 12-96 employees.
At this stage you have proven your business model, but you’re struggling to turn aspirations into day-to-day reality. You are still responsible for all 28 areas of your business, but you don’t have the time or budget to hire 28 different experts.
You need 1 person you can trust who can show you how everything in your business is connected, and which areas to prioritise first.
That’s me.
Learn more here. Or Let’s chat.
Transcript
G’day, Blackboarders. Bit of a content-heavy focus for this week because I wanted to give you something specific. This is something that every business owner will find a way to apply within their business, guaranteed. It’s my three favorite, underutilized, undervalued and unappreciated marketing hacks. I’ve been applying these three for the better part of the last decade to great effect, and I recommend that you do the same. So what are they? And can we make sense of my diagrams?
Hack 1: Pictures That Pop
The first one here is your profile picture. Google another business consultancy, maybe PWC, EY, Deloitte, KPMG, any of the big four. Go and have a look at the photos on their ‘About us’ page. Apart from increasingly still being pale, male, and stale, you will almost certainly see an enormous page of nearly identical boring pictures of people.
There’s nothing there that inspires you to talk to any of them in particular.
Your profile picture is the often the first chance a prospect, even a client has, to get a feel for who you are as an individual. So are you reflecting your unique personality in your profile picture, and in the profile picture of your team?
Now, about 15 years ago I was on track to be the youngest person ever offered partnership in the global coaching firm Shirlaws – and they were pretty good at avoiding the male + stale cliche, but also caught in some corporate ways.
This picture on the left, below, was the second attempt at them choosing my profile picture … in the first one I was wearing a tie (one of the last times I ever did that!).
I kicked and screamed a little, and changed my profile picture to the photo on the right from my wedding day – me pulling a little bit of a face, just looking as happy as you could expect I would on my wedding day.
That was my profile picture for almost a decade! Within the first 12 months, I actually had three different clients who came to me, with the specific things that they looked through my global company’s website, and I was the one who looked like the most interesting person to talk to. I got three clients, just because I had a more engaging and interesting business photo.
You can magnify this across your team, especially in a social media world where “profile picture” isn’t just for your own website any more, but it often replicated across multiple digital channels.
Increasingly technology has made this easier, I’m seeing marketing agencies and it’s slowly bleeding into professional services, where their profile photos are GIFs, they’re moving images, they’re actually cool, and funky and a little bit different. In the video I reference one website … though sadly, they’ve fallen into the trap of being successful, growing, and then copying what other grown up businesses do
Is your profile picture communicating your brand promise? Does it come across as something special? Or pretty bland and it blends in with everybody else?
Hack 2: Business Cards that Start Conversations
I’ll ask the same question in my second marketing hack, which is your business card (yes, these still exist!).
The great advice I got, again more than 10 years ago, was from a marketing and brand strategist called Graham Bills in the UK. He said if your business card doesn’t elicit an immediate response, it hasn’t done its job.
How many business cards have you received where after making sure that the name is the name of the person you’re talking to, you stick it straight into a pocket and forget it? How many times have you given your business card to somebody and that’s exactly what they’ve done?
Well, let me tell you the experience that I’ve had over the years with a number of different business cards, different organizations that I’ve worked for and owned. I give my business card to people and they look at it. They turn it over, and they ask a follow-up question.
I used to have a baby on mine. I used to joke about the fact that it was a very old profile picture. But then I’d go into a conversation about how your business is your baby. They get more out of the conversation as a result of the business card. It wasn’t just giving them my contact details.
At businessDEPOT I had a picture of a robot on my business card. People look at that and I say, “What’s the robot for?” And again, I can joke, well that’s a future profile picture, but no, it’s about one of the businessDEPOT core brand promises, which is ‘No robotic mumbo jumbo’.
You can go and talk to a lot of advisors, coaches, accountants and lawyers, and they’ll rattle jargon off for you that you won’t be able to use. We’re committed to not doing that. So again, you look at my business card, and you walk away knowing more about me and my business.
[2025 Update: Debating the design of the new Como Business Coaching business cards, now that our new websites are about to launch. Styles change, my market position is far more premium today, and yet these fundamentals are steady – I’m keen to exploit the hidden love heart in the Como logo, and also leverage augmented reality business card features to continually tell my story.]
Hack 3: “Out Of Office” Magic
The last very, very underutilised strategy … and let me tell you the amount of comments I get from applying this strategy is extraordinary [2024 Update: Honestly, the Principal at my daughter’s school this year made MULTIPLE comments about this].
This is your out-of-office message. You’ve probably gone away. You’ve probably at some point set up an automatic reply, set that out-of-office to say something like, “I’m away, I’ll be back in two weeks. “Call my PA.” That’s great, that sends functional information, that let’s people know that you’re not around. But it actually doesn’t let people know who you are.
There’s a marketing opportunity here. You’re actually getting a chance to send an email into that person’s inbox, something they’re almost certainly going to read because they’ve just emailed you, and you’re wasting it with a pretty boring, bland corporate message. Why not add a little bit of personality?
Away, But Still Awesome
If you’ve ever emailed me while I’ve been on holidays, you know the extra little bit of effort that I go into to make sure that my out-of-office is exciting, is a little bit funny, is energising. If I’m going on holidays, I’ll tell you something about the destination that I’m going to. If I’m sick, I’ll find a way to link that to current business trends … or at least link some videos of me you can watch so you don’t miss me while I’m ill.
You’re going to get that email from me, and again, just like the business card, just like the profile picture, you’re going to get a better understanding of my personality and the business that I own as a result.
These are my favourite marketing hacks, in part because they are underutilised. And because they are underutilised, they’re so incredibly powerful.
- You have a profile picture on your website.
- You have a business card (even if in 2025 it’s digital).
- You do out-of-office messages when you are on holidays or away from work.
Why not turn those into something more? Why not hack them into a great marketing opportunity that puts the best picture, pardon the pun, of your business adding to the world.
Next Steps
Want to learn more about how this can apply to your business? It costs nothing to chat:
- Email me jacob@jacobaldridge.com (I read them all)
- Call, Text, or WhatsApp me +61 427 151 181
- Or just Subscribe https://jacobaldridge.com/about/subscribe-to-jacob-aldridge-com/ to stay in touch