My Journey to Essentialist Marketing on the Rainmaker Platform – Month 2 (June) Results

In April I began a journey towards simpler, more focused digital marketing. And hopefully as a welcome bonus: less stress – and more success:)

I’ve given myself a 12-month digital marketing challenge:

How much can I grow my business by using ONLY the digital marketing tools available on the Rainmaker Platform?

Essentially reducing my digital marketing to the max ?

For the next 10 months I’m doing everything I can to simplify my marketing – striving to use only the content marketing tools of the Rainmaker Platform. Truly use what Rainmaker offers.

3 vital questions will be answered:

1. Will I need to supplement Rainmaker with other digital marketing tools?
2. Can I muster the courage and willpower to execute this mission?
3. Can I part with all the digital marketing tools I’m currently using?

At the start of each month, I gather and share my key metrics and results with you – in a blog post like this one!

KPI Report – June 2016

Without further ado:

See the Rainmaker Marketing Journey scorecard for month 02 (June) here »

Let it be said that I don’t feel particularly proud of those numbers. However, I can feel this is a healthy exercise in realism. A good wake-up call. More on that later in this post! I’m getting closer to approaching marketing differently than what all 97% of the marketing gurus and experts are preaching. Read on.

My current digital marketing tools list

I began this challenge in April with 24 marketing tools on the list. In May I reduced it to 19. Did I succeed in reducing that number? See below.

♥  = amount of love for current tool/service.  ♥ heart = a little.  ♥ ♥ hearts = some.  ♥ ♥ ♥ hearts = a whole lotta luv.

Number of crosses indicate ferocity of execution.  ✝ cross = a reluctant goodbye.  ✝✝ crosses = “jolly good fella – he just ‘adda go”.  ✝✝✝ crosses = executed at dawn, with no last breakfast.

1. ♥ ♥  Advanced Marketing Institute’s Headline Analyzer – Still gathering data to determine whether this or CoSchedule’s headline analyzer best predicts / correlates with you.
2. ✝  Buffer – Last month I quit Hootsuite. This month I’m quitting Buffer too. I’m well aware that 99% of internet marketing gurus think “content curation” is essential to online marketing success. I just don’t agree and will get back to that in a minute.
3. ♥ ♥  CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer – See notes above for Advanced Marketing Institute’s Headline Analyzer.
4. ♥ ♥  Crazy Egg – Excellent for heatmaps (seeing where on pages users click and scroll to).
5. ♥ ♥  Followerwonk – Great for audience research! Which words does your target audience use to describe themselves? Neat eh?
6. ✝  Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner – See #16 (Moz Pro) below.
7. ♥ ♥  Google Analytics – Rainmaker gets its stats from it, making it a keeper. I’m digging Google Analytics so much I’m digging more and more into it (pun intended).
8. ♥ ♥ ♥  Google Search Console (f.k.a. Webmaster Tools) – Essential. It’s how Google perceives your website.
9. ♥ ♥ ♥  Google Trends – I simply love Google Trends. I’m almost addicted to it.
10. ✝  Heap Analytics – Heap is a great Mixpanel alternative, but for my needs Google Analytics’ new Cohort Analysis and User Explorer features have now replaced Heap for me.
11. ♥ ♥ ♥  Hello Bar – I love it! Simple, elegant and effective. The world’s easiest A/B split-testing tool.
12. ✝  KeywordTool.io – See #16 (Moz Pro) below.
13. ✝ ♥ ✝  Mailchimp – I’m shamelessly dating Rainmaker’s hot new email service RainMail. Not yet done moving in though.
14. ♥ ♥ ♥  Mixpanel’s A/B Split Testing Calculator – Wonderful lil’ tool as described last month.
15. ✝ ✝  Moz Content – Moz’ new BuzzSumo alternative still feels like a “buggy beta” so I’m leavin’ it behind.
16. ♥ ♥  Moz Pro – I really enjoy Moz’ new Keyword Explorer! Its index is fresh and it has a wonderful Potential score, based on an algorithm that takes into account how important the keyword is to you – in addition to the usual suspects of volume and difficulty (see screenshot below).
17. ✝  Perry Marshall’s marketing tools – Occasionally useful. I don’t use ’em very often, hence taken off the list.
18. ✝  SEO Book’s tools – See #16 (Moz Pro) above.
19. ♥ ♥  Vimeo – still intend to check whether Rainmaker’s built-in video hosting is good enough to replace Vimeo.

In June I got the list of tools reduced to 12. That’s half the amount of digital marketing tools I began with, just a few months ago.

Marketing Lessons Learned in June

I’ve been thinking! Since this experiment is about using the Rainmaker Platform fully and wholeheartedly, it should be more about choosing what to keep, rather than what to cut.

Choosing the Rainmaker Platform

For the rest of the journey, I’ll focus my efforts on putting the Rainmaker Platform’s many great features to use, like:

• Email marketing (RainMail)
• Marketing automation
• Forms & quizzes
• Content optimization tools
• Simple affiliate management
• Powerful podcasting features
• And much more (plenty to have fun with!)

Marketing less like an idiot

My biggest insight in June came from asking myself one of the greatest coaching questions I’ve ever come across:

What has worked (for me/you) in the past?

I realized that what has NEVER worked for me, is to market mechanically, following formulas proposed by marketing gurus.

I can just feel how downright DONE I am, dancing to their sad song of Bringing Noise to the World. I personally find content curating marketers shallow and short-sighted in their approach to marketing – so why would I do that to you? I’d rather bring JOY to the world ;o)

What HAS – and has ALWAYS (yes: always) worked for me in the past, is to create something meaningful that the world really needs, and that I feel that I MUST create and share with the world.

Think of the above as the difference between two upcoming bands promoting their music on Facebook. Band A believes in hype. They hype their mediocre music to their Facebook friends every day, asking them to share share share and like like like their music. And of course, some of their friends inevitably will. And perhaps Band A will get famous at some point.

Band B approaches things differently. They don’t “cry wolf” day after day. They only post something when they have something real and meaningful to say or share. And when they do: their friends and fans listen. And share it. Automatically. No clever c2a’s needed. And yes, Band B have fans. True fans. Believers. Because there’s something to believe. Something real and TRUE to believe in. There’s substance. Essence. Meaning. Not just meaningless, maddening drivel.

You see?

Big idea here: stop marketing like you don’t wanna be marketed to, yourself.

Market unto others as you want to be marketed to. Period.

It’s like… Golden Rule Marketing 🙂

Goal for July

One Goal – Not 3

3 goals per month has proven to be 2 goals too many:

1. I didn’t “publish at least 4 new blog posts” in June.
2. I didn’t “Update and optimize old content” either.
3. I’ve almost switched from Mailchimp to Rainmaker’s own new email service, RainMail (integrated in Rainmaker).

Going forward, I’ll set one simple, single goal each month.

In resonance with my realization that I should focus on creating something meaningful, rather than be dancing to the sad songs of internet marketing gurus and their overflow of advice to do everything and use every social media platform under the sun, curate content relentlessly and mindlessly – and overall make as much noise as possible… I will instead:

Spend some time aligning my website with the new direction I’ve wanted to take it, for well over a year now. I strongly believe this re-alignment, will make my vision a lot clearer to you and everyone else visiting my website. There’ll be something of substance to agree with. Or disagree with. Not merely a blog of blah blah about tech, when what I’m almost BURSTING from not sharing the new stuff I’ve been hard at work on, for around two years now.

So yeah, my goal for July, and onwards, will be to: align my site with my vision, so it’s crystal-clear and understandable for you and everyone else what you get from being here and part of this.

I have so much to share man!

I believe that creating something that truly IS worth sharing/buying/recommending: gets shared, bought and recommended. No mindless “content curation” needed:)

In conclusion

Yup: It’s time to make it RAIN!

Your questions and ideas/suggestions are very welcome! Write a comment below!

Any tips or comments? Am I the only one who’s been suffering from marketing overwhelm? Are you?