Are you Ready for a Digital Transformation?

Despina Karatzias 0:20
Hey, welcome.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to this week’s episode Episode 25.

Liz Ward 0:29
Wow,

Despina Karatzias 0:29
25

Liz Ward 0:31
or 50.

Yay.

Despina Karatzias 0:34
And as you can see, normally we are in different parts of the country. I have Liz Ward, our co-founder of Tourism Tribe and Navii. In the flesh here in our Melbourne HQ, coming to you live for the digital discovery show brought to you by Navii digital and our wonderful team at Tourism Tribe. Now, today’s a bit special, because we got leads in the house. So we are almost obsessive, well, not almost we are about digital transformation, and digital discovery as this show is called. And today I thought it was fitting since we’re both in the same state in the same room and suburb that we couldn’t talk to you more with leaves in the House about that very topic, because it’s fresh in our mind, because we do have our first intake of the Year for the digital Bizkeeper 01. That kicks off next week. So thank you to all of you who have joined us on information sessions, thank you to all of you who have already registered to go through this live transformative program that starts on the 20/20 over a six week period. And as the co founder, and as the facilitator of the program, it will be great to have you leads to talk to us a little bit more about the digital beast keeper. And also just your transformation. I know we’ve had if you go back in the archives we have we did do our first show with you in 30. But just really even how you’ve been able to personally see what digital has been able to do to your startup business.

Liz Ward 2:21
Absolutely. And I, you know, you say that we’re obsessive about it says then we have to be like somebody has to be you have to be champions out there who are leading by example, at doing their level best of taking advantage of what it is that technology can do for them in their business. You know, we start our businesses with incredible passion and vision about what we’re going to do. And yeah, sure, it can be very much lifestyle driven, that you don’t want to go work for somebody else, but you want you’ve got this, this vision for your lifestyle and your family. It can be just you just love the idea. And you can see the worth of it. Whatever it is that vision is where you sit, if you can imagine in 15 years time and look back, it’ll be what was the legacy that you left. And so that, to me is what business vision is, you know, you’d look back and be 15 years time, you’re sitting in a nice chair, and you’re going well, you know, I had that vision. And we made this happen and what was the good stuff that came out of it. So we started our businesses with all of that, what and but what happens is that the environment just keeps changing so rapidly. So the technology opportunities are so massive, and they keep coming down the line at us. And what we were talking about is important for business, even two years ago, is different than what the opportunities are now there’s new opportunities that we need to start grasping. So some there, there needs to be champions in our different business sectors, and in our local business communities and in our networks of trusted people. We’ve got to have those champions in there that are obsessive and 100% are showing the

way

and experimenting and try, you know seeing what works.

So we see ourselves is one of those, we’re not the only one because if anybody

ever

tells you that they are an expert on everything about digital run because they are likely to be a psychopath. It’s not possible. It is not possible because it’s digital. Now you know what is digital even you know, small business people will be going well What What is she talking about? What is digital? What does she mean? Is she talking about why phi is she talking about Facebook page? Is she talking about having a website is she talking about being on my ob or zero as a digital accounting tool? digital is so pervasive now it’s across all aspects of business. Yes, the things we tend to think of when we think about digital, we think about it Digital Marketing. So we do think about our customers going onto Google and searching for services and products like ours, if you’re in the tourism sector, it’s dreaming about where I’m going to protect family or my loved one for a beautiful breakaway. You know, and going into Google and doing that searching, so a lot of people immediately think that I think about social media, I think about their websites. And yes, digital marketing is a very big component of digital. But there are many other aspects across all of our businesses, it’s certainly in our communications. So how we’re using email now to communicate how we communicate and serve our customers, through things like online chat on our websites, how those things can be connected in a marketing

sense.

So all the components in our business, on our marketing, and you know, visitors to our Facebook page, Facebook ads, visitors to our website, how that all can connect to our email marketing, and our customer databases, to be able to communicate at scale and really efficiently with our existing customers or prospective customers. How we connect our sales, our e commerce systems into that journey for our customers and make it more efficient for them. And for us to once again, do things at scale and communicate at scale and serve our customers. Well, how we move data around between systems so that we are removing manual jobs. Yes. So instead of paying your admin person to go and load data in here, on your customer relationship management system about what people have purchased, that can be automatically happy, yes, with every purchase every invoice that’s raised, whatever on that. So and then in distribution, you know, how you’re shipping things, you know, how do you connect that so there is opportunity everywhere, in business? When so I just like to make those comments first for, for people to understand, when we’re talking about digital, we’re talking about internet-connected systems that make life easier for your customers and for you and give you scale in your marketing and your operations. So that for me.

Despina Karatzias 7:30
And that’s a great summation because it is it’s it’s external, how we are communicating our messages, our products and services. And then there’s the internal efficiencies that digital can give your business which we do we live and breathe it every day, because we know it’s making a difference in our business. And we are championing and obsessing about celebrating what our clients and our students and their participants have programs, when the when it all comes together and makes a difference. And you can see that it saves time, it saves money and being able to grow without the level of resources that may normally be required to achieve that same growth.

Liz Ward 8:18
Yes. And I think there’s something in there that and I’ll talk I’d like to share with people like we do in the digital bookkeeper, info sessions, what are sort of the challenges and how you overcome those challenges? Because the immediate thing that people can think when they hear about all the opportunities in digital is where do I start in that sense of overwhelm? So when we you talk about celebrating clients, when they do programs or coaching or when it however, we’re helping them? It’s that one step? Yes. Celebrate

every step

of them, it might be one thing that they do, whether it is incorporating video into the way that they communicate about your

Despina Karatzias 8:59
products

Liz Ward 9:00
and services. And they haven’t done that before. And they didn’t really know, the creative and technicalities of it and how to approach it. Yeah, I do that one thing. And we celebrate that with them is each step is built on the foundation of built on their confidence. Yes, and they keep moving forward, then

Despina Karatzias 9:18
that’s a good way to end the week. What’s your one thing today? Because we do focus, sometimes you visit everything that we haven’t done. So we do are in that one thing, that one step that that took you closer, I loved also yesterday, we were having a conversation and that it really there’s no better time to be in small business. Because suddenly through digital, we can really there’s no real

Liz Ward 9:46
it’s a level, a level playing field. Whether you’re a big corporate or a small business, you’ve now got access to the same scaling technology to grow your business and the same communication And marketing tools that a big corporate has. And there are a whole lot of products software as a service and web based products that are priced for small business. And if we as a business,

didn’t do those things and didn’t adopt those things, we would not be growing, we would have got stuck where we were

at, but it puts you on a level playing field and in the world of the web and social media, you can look just as big as those big corporates in your brand. Yes, and you can grow. And so it’s an amazing time to be in small business.

Despina Karatzias 10:40
1,000%. Thank you, Nicole, we’ve got Nicole, elder elders, grateful for Liz and Fabie. And anyone. Anyone else that is joining us live, please feel free to drop in a comment. Or ask any questions of Lee’s while we have on the show. Or if you’re watching the replay, and dropping the comment. We’re always here to help and serve.

Liz Ward 11:06
Speaking of which, Nicole’s great, cool. That’s really sweet. And thank you, Nicole, for listening very Liz is really grateful for Fabie has amazing brain for solutions. Yeah. So when she when we strategize. And this is so important for businesses as well is to so hard, which is a busy operation with a growing business. But to take the time to sit back and really go well what do I want to achieve in the next 12 months. So because the opportunities are changing so rapidly, you have to do it at least every 12 months. And when you start a small business, you often don’t have much of a business plan. But after a couple of years, you get this little sense of what have I got that’s really valued by my customers, what’s profitable, what’s working for me, you know, and then you can really start to get some nice, clear some clarity into your plans.

So you do

that, what am I going to achieve, then to go? Or what are the what’s the technology that’s available to me to help me get there. And this is where pepper is amazing, because she’s an example to keep evolving our use of platforms, so that we could grow whilst not increasing proportionately our fixed costs or people costs Yes, and we look at our profit and loss. And we can see that our profitability has done this. And ourselves. It’s done this, whilst our human resource cost has not grown anywhere near proportionately. So that to me, there’s no clear indication that that we are using, we have scaling, you know, technology that has allowed us to do that. So maybe if I just share a little bit about that journey,

Despina Karatzias 12:54
that will be amazing. Because that’s what you have firsthand experience. That is the true essence of scale. If you hear you hear that word often, and scaling and digital can help you scale. That’s a perfect

Liz Ward 13:05
example. Yeah, yeah. And so when we think in most small businesses cases, where are the most applicable examples of

that? Yeah, we have you Yes,

that’s probably a good place to focus because then everyone can kind of relate to it and understand it. And this is also a great demonstration of what we weren’t teaching people two years ago, because the technology wasn’t as user friendly or priced appropriately, it wasn’t as well developed that the software that you could use, but you will start to hear more and more and you certainly hearing in our programs like digital bisquit, or one on one, this concept of email marketing automation, and you might think as a small business and all that sounds like it’s bit out of my realm, that’s not for me, but the reality is that now we are hand holding businesses to do that because as a small business if you want to grow this is the area so and what I’m talking about here, is that for every person you come into contact with who let’s think of them as as leads coming into your sales funnel. Yes, at various stages of that journey, whether it is seeing a post that you do on your on your Instagram feed and and following and they go No, I yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna follow this fee. They said they keep looking at you. You run a campaign on Facebook and Instagram a pay campaign, offering them to come in and look at one of your products learn more about that. say they click on that they come through, they they are looking at what you’re offering, but they decide not to buy. Think of the investment you’ve made at that point through all of that organic social Media work investing in your website and getting the foundations right developing that nice landing page, you don’t want to just let them go at that point, that’s a warm lead for you. So this is this, we’re starting to now I’m just trying to just break down what does email marketing automation with. Imagine if you offered them something they couldn’t refuse at that point that was going to cost them nothing, which was a really nice, great piece of contact content that will really appeal to them that they’d be prepared to give you their email address for so you can start a conversation with them over email. Now, you see that all the time on websites, any pop ups that come up, now, you might have subscribed to some of those. So if you were to get a 5% conversion on that ad, which would be pretty good coming over and clicking that you then might get maybe 50% of those people might not buy but might be prepared to sign up for that use get think of the numbers on that there could be you know, a few 100 people off about off a campaign that you could then invite into your emails into your email subscriber database to start communicating with them. And you wouldn’t want to do that manually, would you that would be a nightmare. However, what email marketing automation does for you is the ability to send them relevant emails in an automated way. And to each you’re using tags and sequences. And this might sound highly technical, but the systems that are available to small business to do this are quite easy to follow now. And so when we train people on this and help them set up that pop up that lovely piece of content, and include this in our Digital Bizkeeper 202 program exactly how to do this. It’s doable ways customers can do it. And it takes them to that next level in scalable marketing, because they would not be able to achieve that communication with these warm leads. Yes, unless I had that automation. And

Despina Karatzias 17:02
that was one thing as well.

Liz Ward 17:04
I don’t know how to explain that. Yeah, waving my hands around too much or having pictures in front of me. But I just think it’s the it is the current way. It’s a great

Despina Karatzias 17:13
example. And it says before

Liz Ward 17:15
we get there, we have to get the foundations, right.

Despina Karatzias 17:20
And speaking of foundations, that is the course that is starting. It’s a foundational transformative digital transformation program that runs for six weeks. It is something that I would love for you to take us we would have bought on, you know, again, I’ve just kind of pulled in least five minutes before the show. Would you like to share the information session on a live video and she’s such a great show. Let’s do it. So anyway, I’m

Liz Ward 17:48
back. And I’ve been doing live presentations on this just explaining what are the sort of key areas that small businesses focus on to get that digital transformation started. So I’ve got the story down pat. So I’m happy to do that to talk to that. And then also just what’s covered in that DBK digital peacekeeper, one on one on digital transformation course. So that people you know, we’ve got these people got access

to look at that at any time. Well, we’ll go through that. We’ll go through

Despina Karatzias 18:21
that. And Nicole, thank you this is this is definitely resonating with Nicole. She said it’s all very true. So much can go with wages, and then the text for employing people. And you know, this is also and that’s not to say that going digital may not require the video, it’s not replacing people. It’s just having the right people that will help you also get there, too, whether it is employing or using resources around you to support

Liz Ward 18:49
Oh, yeah, and then it’s about when you think about you’re obviously still going to have to grow your team as you grow. that’s unlikely unless you’re really very much solo business who’s maybe doing some outsourcing or something, you know, what it means though, for your own staff is they need to go through digital transformation. It’s continual take the dice,

Despina Karatzias 19:14
yes. Green and growing is Yeah, is what we live and breathe them in that like Liz rightly pointed out. working smarter. Absolutely. Nicole is, is saying working smarter. This is all about working, working, working smarter and more efficiently.

Liz Ward 19:34
So I will I’m gonna get you there’s a couple of pictures I just want to use to talk about this. I want to talk about what are the goals that we’re here again and again, again, for small business because I end in the challenges and I’ve got that on a slide or sorry, your

screen behind me.

I’ve got that on a slide when we have asked 1000s of small businesses. So we’ll go to this one here. We’ve asked 1000s of small businesses, what is it that they want to do in their business, and this was just a few months ago. And they showed up with questions and stated their goals. These were the three common things that we saw in the goals. And I just wonder if people relevant how you relate to these. One is about growing, how many customers you acquire. So customer acquisition, improved digital marketing, to acquire more customers to make that grow. That’s, that was a big one. That’s the tough one. The second one is about my own knowledge and skills. So learning how to sell online because I feel like I’m falling behind a bit. And not just how to get an e commerce solution onto my website in terms of I want people to be able to purchase and pay online, but also how to actually sell online, what what are the techniques? What are the tactics and strategies that you use to actually get people through that sales funnel? And the third one is better social media. So social media keeps changing all the time. I keep, you know, having having a go I’m doing in an ad hoc way. But how do I actually get bid benefit for my business? So these are the three areas that people talk about with goals for their business in 2021, we hear again and again, now what is holding people back? So what are the challenges and I wonder if you can relate to these. So if we have a look at that next slide. There’s a in terms of the challenges, and you’ll see in the ball and chain here attached to a very cute

fluff ball.

In the ball, when we have done the word cloud, on how people have responded to the challenges that they’re having. The big one that comes through is a sense of overwhelm, like we talked about beginning, it feels like there is so much that I need to do in digital. I feel like I’m falling behind. And I just don’t know where to start. So that’s a that’s a big one. Another big one. And this, this isn’t only from our own customers. Also, where we see this reflected is in the federal government research, we’ve got access. Yes, it’s it’s the consistent is no trust, or lack of trust, and this. So this is not getting trusted advice. I don’t know where I can turn for trusted advice. I feel like everybody’s trying to sell me something. So where do I go for trusted advice. And we see this particularly on my web, my web developer relationship is broken. That’s a big one behind this no trust, I can’t make any changes on my website, I can’t improve it. Because my web developer and I just were on different URLs, not working relationship. Another one is just not tech savvy. Like I’m just not tech savvy, this is not for me, you know, I don’t know how to navigate this stuff. And feeling that I’m lacking a plan. I’m feeling disorganized, within I’m working at hoc. And I reckon if I could get a plan in place, I might be able to move forward and be more consistent. They’re the really top level themes. And so that’s been really great for us. Because it means that every program that we run, we aim to deliver the program in a way that breaks down those barriers. So it’s not just about the content in the program, but it’s how it’s delivered. Yes, you know, so plenty of opportunity for interaction, not just online learning, you know, courses that you go and help yourself, but opportunities to show up for live coaching sessions and ask questions in a live environment with a coach who’s skilled opportunities to be prompted to get into the Facebook group with others who are doing the program, and will prompt you to, you know, post in the Facebook group, what it is you’ve learned today, or what you’ve done, what you’ve done this week, that was different. Add on opportunities for one on one coaching. So you can have that one on one experience, live delivery of presentations, you know, having all that recorded, so not leaving you to your own devices, but getting in there to support you through the learning experience. And that you know, that comes that motivating you frequently in a program and giving you the opportunity for support, access to a coach access to your peers who are going through it as well. This is the new methods of learning new skills that we have to deliver for us to stay current as a business and reflect on beginning of last year in signing up for the new app to lose some weight from that Christmas. And two Christmases before, I think. And I, we’ve really modeled off that, that you know, you go sign up for the new map, and then your daily, you’re getting motivation and content that’s relevant and taking you through a paced learning program. And also having access to a group where you’re sharing your challenges and what you’re achieving. And you’ve got access to a coach as well. So all these elements help to break down those barriers of feeling overwhelmed and feeling you know, that you can’t trust and you know, and it just you feel

supported.

Despina Karatzias 25:40
Yeah, a main theme that is supported and with other like-minded. Yeah, small businesses and growing businesses, that is always we have, that’s another very rewarding thing for us to be connecting people through programs like the digital Basecamp, a two,

Liz Ward 25:58
I’ll get you to go on, just clicked into that next slide, which What does a digital transformation journey look like sort of, I’ve talked about a couple things about how we deliver. But just to show what many of our customers go through, we have a thing called next best steps, which is really a very much a taster program. So you kind of you know, me talking to you about it is, you know, sort of moves that on. But it’s very much a taster program to inspire you or make you aware of the opportunities. The digital best key part, then is the real transformational program. So a six lesson program with topics within it with all of that support and interactivity that I just spoke about. And next very good piece of the journey that our members take. And customers have group programs that we run is a digital health check. which is fantastic, because, you know, we’ve done 1400 of those are in our current data set. So dating back to October 2019. So I sort of archive the previous so that we’ve got a current benchmark data set, where we our assessors using our our health check system, have gone through your website, your social media accounts, your Google My Business account, looked at your online reputation and giving you very specific tips and scores against these areas, giving you immediate actions that you can focus on in that report. So that is a really powerful now use

Despina Karatzias 27:40
house check. And so many businesses that do it, they have this report. And I just it’s you know, going through a highlighter rule visual and having a human that’s another very important element Lee’s mentioned, we have assessors that are trained in digital by us that go through with a fine-tooth peak of all your digital footprint. And you come away really having a clear sense of where the gaps lies, which works really well.

Liz Ward 28:09
And then a lot of people combine or within a group program that may have access to one on one coaching, coaching. And that’s really you know, that the combination that digital best keeping program, the health check the coaching, and yeah, I don’t think you can be in a better situation to shift your mindset growth skills, apply your learnings and get support in that application of those changes that you’re making in your digital programs and platforms like your website, content and digital marketing and, and efficiency as well as digital efficiency. So that’s a bit of an example of what our transformation journey can look like. And then if we go to the next slide, I’ve just got a bit of a run-through in terms of what each of the lessons includes. So I’ll just quickly go through that. So a bit of an under the hood, we start the digital Bizkeeper program with a lesson called working smartly. Now this is all about getting it because we’re still in this COVID year, right and it’s going to be like this in terms of travel restrictions and effects on businesses. And you could be a very fortunate business that you’re not impacted, but most businesses are by what’s going on. So we look at what you can do in in COVID marketing specifically what you need to have in place then we get into the really important and you may think not very sexy topic of smart tools and smart safe word password management cybersecurity is has unfortunately increased a lot in COVID, the risks of a sabotage etc and fraud. So we take you through the basics there. We look at smart tools for better working from home. Communication with remote teams moving data around. So there’s some fantastic tips in there, and I know one of Bobby’s favourite tips, when we talk about this, is the movement of data using Zapier. It’s just so powerful to move data between systems and available to everybody and free, we advocate a lot of free tested tools that we have used ourselves, or very well priced software in and each one of these lessons has a little quiz at the end to help cement the learnings. Usually in every lesson, in most lessons, there is a downloadable tool or template, those sorts of things, links to other resources. So it’s all packaged in there and topics. And a little motivation for you to go into the Facebook group and share. We go on to the second lesson. Now, this is all about using your online reputation. Because at the you know, if we think about the assets in your business, for digital, this is the absolute foundation because and I am super passionate about this, that you cannot grow your business if you have a tarnished reputation. And the online space means that your reputation is amplified beyond anything it could have been five years ago. So we have to get strategic with this. And we have to follow the processes which we’ll share with you for great online reputation management and how to encourage more reviews we get through all of that. But my favorite tip in this is doing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, the SWOT to go through your feedback and online reputation reviews, your reviews and comments, to find the little golden nuggets in there that we can then utilize in future lessons to be able to expand on what it is that people are loving about what you deliver in your marketing in your website through social media content themes, or maybe to tweak some service delivery, or give you ideas for new products or packages. So this is such a powerful exercise that we go through here,

Despina Karatzias 32:21
prices clear. And it’s not about your own thoughts on what your strengths and weaknesses to go and apply what others are saying what that is and pulling that out. powerful, powerful stuff. Yep.

Liz Ward 32:34
On we move into some really good solid theory about marketing in the digital age, then in lesson three. So we go through the foundations that every small business needs to be working towards having in place, and where are those sort of critical foundations like online reputation management, your website, looking at opportunities for partnership for innovation, and even distribution through technology. So don’t say that you have to do everything you’re aligned, you need a balanced distribution strategy and look for opportunities in working with others, then we really, we get into your customer database as an absolute key asset you need to put in place. And if there’s one takeout, from our conversation today, I would love for everyone to look at their existing customer list and see if they can get that at the minimum into a tiny spreadsheet. Yes, because that is a key asset in your business that you’re going to have to utilize. And then we talked about social as the icing on the cake, because you probably don’t have the foundations that great online shop front of your website need to get that that really solid, before you start really, you know, trying to drive people to it through social. Yeah, so we go through the foundations there. And within here, we do a really powerful exercise. And this is probably my favorite piece of this is encouraging you to develop a definition of your ideal customer. So whether you’ve been in whether it’s a new business, you’ve been in business for a while you have a picture in your mind of that persona of that person. And we need to get all of our website experience, content, social media activity to that ideal. You could have two or three of them, that’s fine. But we need that as the basis moving forward in this course and

Despina Karatzias 34:32
putting in the time to do this will help so many other aspects of the journey when you have that clarity of who it is that you’re mainly going to serve. Yeah, moving forward. Then let’s

Liz Ward 34:48
I thought, well, this is where you get the Master Fabienne. Who will take their I don’t think now I know. I know because I’ve worked in this space for so long. I would not interact My future website strategy as a small business app to anyone other than Fabie, because she loves, she is able to consider your business objectives and what you’re selling and say this is going to be the best way forward, and she can look at your website at a glance, and go, you’ve either got to start again, you don’t need to start again, you just don’t have this set up properly. But what she does in this course, is what she structured in this content for you is to explain because we know that 99.9% of us in families world I hear and she’s here. So what she does is she brings her knowledge down into understandable language and descriptions so you can understand what is it in today’s world? That that is a good website solution, whether I do it myself, do it yourself, or whether you’ve got the money to invest with a web developer?

what’s reasonable?

What are the components of what we call them? That that website stack that digital stack? What are the different pieces that make it up? Like, you know, what is the page builder? What are plugins? What’s the theme, you know? So she explains that and then she also in this the content here, once again, bring it down into very much laypersons terms. Forget the Tech Talk is what are the basics of search engine optimization? So and how do you design your website around that target market that you’ve designed, defined in lesson three, what does a good user journey look like? And shares in here a must-have. So it’s a really powerful lesson, most of these lessons are going to take you about an hour to read through, allow them some time to do some exercises. This one’s probably a bit bigger than that because it is such a critical area.

Despina Karatzias 36:56
And it’s almost it’s almost the empowerment phase of the program, because you’ll be empowered. Rather than always use the bus analogy might be sitting in the back of the bus of your website strategy, because it’s something you’re busy, you’re running your business, this is not your jam, like it is for someone like February or your web developer. But this kind of brings you to the driver’s seat where you can go back to your trusted web developer or maybe when you’re looking at a redevelopment project with a really well defined and clear way forward that you are setting up for yourself and your business have been empowered with that knowledge, which is always a great, great place to be as a business owner or market or being in charge of your online. Everything. You know, so just your reputation. It’s not just your website. It’s really all of your digital footprint and your assets and how they connect back to the mothership. Or the website is is the mothership. It’s the nucleus centre of everything digital that we talk about.

Liz Ward 38:11
yeah, whether whether you’re doing yesterday, yeah, till lesson five with you’re doing the live course it’s week five. And this is where because this is a foundational pause it and because Facebook and Instagram are changing all the time, we take it back to the basics on Facebook, what does it look like now? And I apologize that actually, I need to update that. That’s 2021 strategy. Yes. Is what does it look like now in 2021, in terms of a basic plan for you on Facebook to be able to get benefit from your business, the algorithm has changed. So significantly, the big change was to just over two years ago. So every business has experienced a reduction in reach and engagement on their business page. And it’s much harder to get growth in your followers now. In organic working in organic and organic, we just mean free posting. So we have to go to a strategy that the key foundation on this is how you get engagement on your post, what is engaging content look like? So we step that’s a big focus of this. But we also give you this nice little pyramid here where we work through each one of these strategic parts engaging content, how to be consistent in your you know, what, what is the minimum amount of times I need to be posting on these platforms? How do I have consistent content themes? How’s my storytelling consistent? Because all marketing is more effective when it’s consistent. collaboration. That’s one thing about Facebook is great for collaboration and the power of groups. And working within your industry or your local business area. You’re like pure tourism, your local destination, how do we work together on Facebook to support each other to have greater reach and engagement? customer service saying what am I doing with my messaging? Have I got that optimized? So this is live chat and Facebook messaging adjust have grown exponentially over the last couple years. So we have to see that as a mandatory customer servicing channel now. And then sales is the tip of the iceberg. So got to get the foundation’s right, in an organic sense, then look at how do I use these Facebook channels? How do I use Facebook for sales? Same applies the same pyramid and strategy applies for Instagram. What am I going to do, I can do promotional posts that are 10% of my posts, in organic, but I can run campaigns as well, to drive at getting people to know more about my business to become followers. And in most cases, for small businesses, it’s going to be to a particular campaign that you’re running something that you’re wanting to sell and attract them onto your website

Despina Karatzias 41:13
100%. Because it’s those two experiences that you’re delivering isn’t at least there’s the customer experience, then there is the user experience very different sets of strategies that you’d really need to think about and apply when we’re working in this space. What does that look like when I put my self in my customer shoes of the service I’m providing as a customer to a customer. But then as a user that’s coming through that journey with me and my business, we kind of taking back and pulled all of this together through your website, your content and communications, your reputation, but then also tying that into your social media and how that translates. Yep, in that uniform way. And then we finish strong Wow.

Liz Ward 42:03
Yeah, this is where we enlist the help of our absolute Insta guru, Emily, and Hannah’s fantastic and insert as well. And she’ll come in and help at these sessions to where you’ve already, the strategy that we’ve gone through with Facebook, you can apply pretty much they’re all the same principles to develop a little plan around engaging content and consistency. It’s customer servicing, etc. However, in an instance, we’ve got beautiful opportunities for engaging content and new opportunities around, we’re using video in reels, for example, how to make the most of stories, we’ve mentioned in the program up to this point a few times the tool canva.com Have any of you use Canva. Anyone using Canva, a great tool for small business, I see that their worth in the marketplace. Yeah, I saw it recently has gone but not as popular. Because it’s such a great tool. Yeah. And so how what Emily or Han will demonstrate is developing an instantly beautiful Canva template for your business. And then taking it through onto Instagram for posting using some of the lightest new features and stories. And also talk to you about the new opportunities in Instagram to create engaging content, both Facebook and Instagram, the concept of just posting, you know, to your page, oh, gee, I think you’re gonna get tired during that one where the benefits are, you have to start to explore these new features. Because when Facebook who owns Instagram, and WhatsApp and other platforms, release these new features, they want you to use them, and you get better rich. And yeah, there’s

Despina Karatzias 43:56
a lot of benefits to the

Liz Ward 44:00
look, the end. And at the end of the day, if we see you producing more video, and we encourage you to do that, and you share that back in the course Facebook group and show us what you’ve done, we’re going to really, you know, hear out wherever you are, because this is where it’s at. We have to as businesses start to use video across all of our channels. It’s a two-step.

Despina Karatzias 44:26
And a great example if you go back into the archives with Matt and Kaylene from a KC a caravan park, who worked with our fabulous coach Claire, who, who really supported and champion them to do video and you’ll see just how they’re they’re really leading in their region and just taken a real key role by doing more videos, to the point where he’s becoming a bit of a superstar. Thank you, you’ll be teaching videos. And yeah,

Liz Ward 44:58
they say wow, that’s like how Do we also cover because it’s always a sought after topic and questions around strategic tagging? You know what? Yeah. How do we use hashtags on Instagram, which is the main place for most businesses using hashtags? And in both of those Facebook and Instagram, we give you some tips on efficiency and pre scheduling using creative studio within this

Despina Karatzias 45:22
lightweight, I said earlier, working smarter with these two Yes,

Liz Ward 45:25
yeah, yeah, because we know, we don’t want to add more a sense of more tasks. As a result of this, we actually want to take away some of the effort and time because we know that time is such an incredibly important currency in a small business. So we don’t want to add more tasks to your list. If we do add more tasks to your list, it needs to be that you’re saving time elsewhere.

Despina Karatzias 45:52
Yes, to be able to do it for your growth. Absolutely. Yeah.

Liz Ward 45:56
So that’s, that’s what’s covered. Yeah.

Despina Karatzias 45:59
How do we give me more? So how do you how do we, yeah, if you’d like it’s really important? We’ve got the intake starting on the 20th of April that’s live, you will be hanging out with leaves and the fabulous fabby for six weeks, an hour every week that you will get more access and unpacking all of these in the dedicated lessons. But it’s important to note that this is available freely available. If you just go to Tourism Tribe comm or nav V with a double i.com donate you also can do the self-paced have access immediately and go through the

Liz Ward 46:35
program. So they Yeah, yeah. So that’s it like we will continue to keep evolving this program. And you can see it’s the option there. If your insurance and hospitality travel, then Tourism Tribe calm is the place to subscribe. If you’re any other business type, then Navii is the place to do it. And but we’ve evolved this program from the start of COVID. And we overnight came up with the idea about our skill Jared walked lockdown program was everybody, all businesses were like, Okay, I’m gonna have to take a step back here for a bit and work out what’s going on. And this is my business for 12 weeks, potentially. And so we put this program together and it was really well subscribed, people really appreciated having something very productive to do in that 12 week period. And the opportunity to mix with others as well are in the same situation. Then when we came out of those lockdowns, we’re like, well, it’s a bit long now people are back trying to, you know, working in their businesses. So we’ve broken it down into two, six-week programs or six lesson programs as it’s self-paced, which is basically for one on one and 202. And the 101 is very much that, let’s get our foundations right. Yes, before we move forward with some more about marketing topics, like email marketing, automation, and Facebook advertising that are covered in BizKeeper. To our to

Despina Karatzias 48:02
Yes, which is, look by way of the feedback that we receive from our program participants or one on one, one on one clients. If this if you feel you’re not quite ready for the six-week program, you might want to work with one of our resident coaches on a specific area of your business that you’d like to really put the spotlight and focus on or you might like to even just start with an audit, like do an overview a digital health engagement report health check to start with so you’ll have access to any one of those types of, I guess services to support you in wherever you are your journey. Because I know we’re all we know that we all have different, different stages of our digital transformation. But making a decision or getting that clarity to start with is a really good place to start. But we’d love to see you we’d love to have you as part of this tribe on the 20th of April. For more information, if you’ve got any more questions we call have loved having you on the live show today. Really, really awesome to see you engaged and I just I’ve just got a yes here. I’m not sure what that yes was full but uh, but we loved yeses, which is fantastic. Thank you. Was there anything else you’d like to finish up on? Liz?

Liz Ward 49:37
I think you know, celebrate your success. Yeah. every step you take builds your confidence. I know that personally. Try new thing. I go Yep. Okay, got that. And it just builds your confidence with digital. Yes. So important to stay on top of that. And, you know, I think about so many small businesses. started up by women, and of all ages. And we see that there is a demographic and age group, sort of the over 50s females who tend to think I just, I can’t keep up with this stuff. But it is so important to stay

on top of

technology and to keep your confidence up. Because we’re moving to the stages in our society, where we might be able to operate a business without electronic invoicing, single touch payroll, a good website, digital advertising, you’re just going to be invisible, so we have to stay on top of this stuff. So that’s just a female perspective, from my age group that I’m speaking from experience here, that I’m forced every day to move out of my comfort zone to do something, can’t it’s constant, and it’s about trusting that you can do it, they’re celebrating each time that you do and taking small steps. And I think you’ve got to do it all at once. Yes. You know, that’s that’s

Despina Karatzias 51:12
very important.

Liz Ward 51:13
Yeah, yeah.

Despina Karatzias 51:14
Yeah, that is, because look overwhelmed. It’s, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not so we you know, we can be overwhelmed in the play in and reframing in the place you’re, you’re also in a good place, when you’re overwhelmed, you’ve put yourself out of your comfort zone to a level of your taking one new thing, but then yeah, we are here to help you break that down. And, and really create that overwhelm trend in a transformative way that it will produce growth, your personal and your business growth because I think this is also a personal journey. rightly said, I think that’s another thing that we say a lot of people are transforming their, you know, through the knowledge you are, you know, you cannot also transform your own personal growth, your career, you know, your career in your business to that point in God.

Liz Ward 52:09
It’s about you and your people. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we see that our customers, their digital savviness just happens organically, oh, so they don’t have to know the backend workings or how these things are set up, they’re just gonna use it on the front end. And that’s what we’ve just, we’ve got to get in the driving seat to be

Despina Karatzias 52:30
on that 100%. And which brings me over to you saying that all in all different age groups, I remember in my very first coaching environment with Tourism Tribe, and Annalise, if she’s looking at listening, I just saw a real thirst for knowledge. She was, you know, in her early 20s, at the time, very green. And just to see her journey over the years, she’s always showing that she’s always signing up and just to see her now, flourishing and leading in her community. It’s, it’s also very rewarding. Yeah.

Liz Ward 53:04
And I guess that’s the other key thing to what we know about small businesses is that you’re often operating in quite a silo, you don’t have the people around you to spin around and go, I’m gonna go talk to the digital tech guy down the hallway. So by being part of these programs, you’re surrounding yourself, as you said, like-minded people and others who are going through the same Yes, and access to experts and coaches that you don’t have access to. So that’s, that’s a real benefit. And the thing with young people like Eloise and I see this when we’re running workshops and programs with young people, they’re digital natives, right? So they’re like our, like our hand around and who are just in there. And you know, they’re not, like flick like crazy. Scared of breaking anything. However, what the younger people get from it because they don’t have the business or strategic experience. It’s I love the strategy behind it. These things are what does a good process look like? Or, you know, so I can see their lightbulb moments when they come on, in terms of the strategy before

Despina Karatzias 54:12
we go into the tools and the strategy must go hand in hand. Yeah. All right. We’ll wrap it up there. We could keep going and going, we should just leave it live in our conversation in here. Today, you’ll be inspired. Let me tell you. So thank you. Thank you again, the call. Thank you. For everyone that joined us live, please reach out to us, head over to websites. And until next week in another digital transformative story that we will be sharing. Same time, same place Fridays at 10 o’clock we’ll have another episode. Live and ready to go on on Friday. Have a wonderful day and have a even better weekend and a restful one with that sent to you.

Thank you

run by goodbye. Thanks Nicole.

Liz Ward 55:02
Bye