Revolutionise your marketing in 2024 using the process that has been most effective for our clients in 2023.

By David Roberts
Co-Founder, Yellow Marketing

In the ever-evolving world of marketing, staying ahead of the competition requires embracing innovative strategies and methodologies. We have produced hundreds of marketing projects for our clients and over the last 12 months and we we have collected data from each campaign to determine what is currently the most effective structure for a campaign and what tools are needed in them. We have called this fool-proof approach “The H.A.V.O.C. Method.” This methodology is reshaping the landscape of how we produce results from campaigns, guaranteeing more and more success for clients. 

Lets delve into each element of The H.A.V.O.C. Method along with videos that take you through a variety of ways to improve your marketing in more detail.

So what does H.A.V.O.C. stand for?

H – Hyper Personalisation

A – Adding Consistency To Both Branding and Communication

V – Video First & Foremost in Campaigns

O – Originality in Values & USPs

C – Conversion through Urgency & Data

Let’s go through them individually (along with some clips from a recent Yellow webinar)

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H - HYPER PERSONALISATION - Effective targeting in your campaigns

Marketing to everyone is marketing to no one.

Quite simply, if you do not have a very refined audience with an offering that speaks only to them and their niche requirements, your marketing results will be minimal.

‘General’ marketing is aimed at as many people as possible and isn’t talking about anyone’s specific problems, which just isn’t RELEVANT to the reader. Relevance is what gets people to read something in full instead of ‘scan reading’ it.

For example, I get 2 emails… one subject line says ‘how business owners are bringing in new clients’, it’s easy to skip and delete even though it sounds interesting. There isn’t anything specific to me and I get hundreds of emails saying something similar each day. So they are ignored. However, if I get an email saying ‘How marketing agencies are bringing in new clients’, it’s a lot harder to skip. It’s relevant to me and I’m compelled to at least give it a look. Then if I click it and the email is talking about problems that are specific to agency owners (instead of all businesses), I’m more likely to click the link, and then if I end up on a landing page that talks about nothing but the benefits of a service to agency owners I’m much more likely to give them my contact details ‘just out of interest’.

When we start working with clients, they often have 1 contact list of all customers/leads. This is a huge mistake as it is often very hard to go back and split that list into demographics. You need to split your list into as many smaller lists as possible and give each their own campaigns.

As new leads and customers come in, start new separate spreadsheets. If you talk to them all differently, making each thing relevant to them, your marketing will be much more successful.

Split your list by location, service/produce bought, gender, age, job title, management level, or whatever other demographic is relevant to your service.

That goes the same with all your targeted advertising too – avoid one or two ads that are for ‘everyone’. To have effective advertising you need dozens of ads, each aimed at different target audiences with their own imagery (ideally showing a person that fits that demographic) and their own selling points for that niche audience.

Yes, it takes more time – but anything truly effective does.

In the video below, I explain in a lot more detail how Hyper Personalisation can used in marketing campaigns…

A - ADDING CONSISTENCY - Building a trustworthy brand

Average but consistent marketing will always outperform amazing ideas done sporadically. The trick is to be consistent AND innovative and your campaigns can go stratospheric.

Our campaigns follow something we call ‘the rule of sevens’ – no one really remembers your brand, trusts you or is anywhere near being ready to buy from you before seeing at least 7 points of your marketing. 

For example, they click an ad of yours first, they go on your website, you send them an email, they then get something through the post from you, they later see you on social media, they then get another email from you, they see an article in the newspaper about you – it’s only around here that people remember your brand and start to trust it. 

Most campaigns basically give up too early. They send out or post a few things, don’t hear much back and then give up thinking the campaign didn’t work – when looking at old campaigns, we find this is usually the number 1 reason we can see they failed.

Never take silence as no – just because they didn’t get in touch doesn’t mean they are not interested, they are just not ready to buy yet! They are waiting for payday, for the new financial year, until their policy runs out, to get some new clients to pay for it first etc. However, they will be easily distracted by competitors in the meantime. So you need to stay at the forefront of their minds until they buy – this is why consistency is SO important.

Having consistency in the design and look of your marketing is the cornerstone of brand building too. It involves maintaining a uniformed brand identity across all touchpoints, from your website to social media and beyond. This helps build trust and reinforces your brand’s credibility. Brands that work best are the ones where you don’t even have to read any of the text and you know who the marketing piece is by.

So if they feel your brand is a professional and innovative one, you stand out from your competitors who are not taking their marketing as seriously straight away.

In the video below, I give examples of adding consistency to your campaigns…

For example, they click an ad of yours first, they go on your website, you later them an email, they then get something through the post form you, they later see you on social media, they then get another email from you, they see an article in the newspaper about you – its only around here that people remember your brand and start to trust it. 

Most campaigns basically give up to early. They send out or post a few things, don’t hear much back and then give up thinking the campaign didn’t work – when looking at old campaigns, we find this is usually the number 1 reason we can see they failed.

Never take silence as no – just because the didnt get in touch doesn’t mean they are not interested, they are just not ready to buy yet! They are waiting for payday, for the new financial year, until their policy runs out, to get some new clients to pay for it first etc. However, they will be easily distracted by competitors in the meantime. So you need to stay at the forefront of their minds until they buy – this is why consistency is SO important.

Having consistency in the design and look of your marketing is the cornerstone of brand building too. It involves maintaining a uniformed brand identity across all touchpoints, from your website to social media and beyond. This helps builds trust and reinforces your brand’s credibility. Brands that work best are the ones where you dont even have to read any of the text and you know who the marketing piece is by.

So if they feel your brand is a professional and innovative one, you stand out from your competitors who are not taking their marketing as seriously straight away.

In the video below, I give examples of adding consistency in your campaigns…

V- VIDEO FIRST & FOREMOST IN YOUR CAMPAIGNS

Video content is king in today’s digital landscape. It captures attention and conveys messages quickly and effectively while driving engagement. To succeed, marketers should prioritise video content in their strategies.

Gone are the days that you need a 10-minute promotional video, instead 10-20s clips are what now deliver huge engagement.

With the rise of reels and shorts on social media, attention spans grow smaller and the desire for short-form content that delivers maximum impact has become more needed in campaigns. 

This is often called ‘micro content’.

Don’t want to be on camera? Well, unfortunately, we have now come to a point where being camera-shy can actually COST YOU SALES. If you are too scared to be on camera or hear your voice in videos, but your competitor is fine with it and thrives on camera, your customers will start to flock to them.

They are showing the quality of their services, and they are introducing themselves in a way that people prefer, but you’re not? are you hiding something? Are you not proud of what you do? That is the mind frame people will have, causing them to go with the easier decision. Its easier to trust the person you know that you have grown a relationship with through video. If you are just a faceless company you can’t PROVE just how good you are. 

Look, you don’t need to be a presenter in all your videos but you and your team need to be comfortable with a camera being around, because once you produce videos following the previous ‘letters’ above (making videos for a specific niche audience and uploading them consistently) it makes the decision on picking you over the competition SO much easier. 

Conversion rates in modern marketing are all about trust building and there is no faster way than video to build trust with an audience. People still want to work with people, not a faceless company (no matter how big you are) that will never change no matter the marketing landscape.

In the video below, I explain how to use video in your campaigns…

O - ORIGINALITY OF VALUES AND USP'S - Standing out with authenticity

To cut through the noise, your brand needs to highlight what sets you apart and be authentic in your messaging.

This sounds obvious, but 90% of companies are not doing it.

They just bang on about what they do without realising if what they are saying is actually unique – Without true originality in what you do you will never stand out from the crowd and you will always find resistance to your marketing.

People always say their USP is one of the following without realising THESE ARE NOT UNIQUE:

  • Amazing customer services
  • Quality products/services
  • Lower/competitive prices
  • Lots of experience/qualifications/awards
  • Fast turnaround times

These are simply facts that mean you CAN do what you say you do but it’s what everyone says – but if you can’t do these things you shouldn’t be in business!

The fact is, if you don’t find something original or unique about your product or the way you deliver your service, you will always be competing on price.

Innovators choose their own pricing because no one else can do what they do so customers understand that comes at a price.

We understand it can be hard to work out what it is that you do that is original – it takes time and feedback from the public – but it is essential that you start talking about what makes you different to everyone else and you start doing it now.

You also need to talk about WHAT YOU STAND FOR AS A BUSINESS. This has become hugely important when choosing a supplier in today’s market. People want to work with companies ‘in their tribe’, people who have the same values and care about the same issues in the world.

For example, the retailer who refuses to use products tested on animals, the construction company dedicated to helping support mental health in young men, and the agency that is passionate about offering underprivileged young people opportunities that everyone else is refusing to offer – they are the people customers want to work with. If your competitor has marketing full of social responsibility and you don’t, you might look like ‘the evil corporation just out for people’s money’! We know that’s not the case in reality but in marketing appearances are everything.

In fact, modern customers will actually go with a sub-standard service if they know that the company is actively trying to make the world a better place.

So explaining what you stand for as a business is something that needs to be in all your campaigns because this creates a fierce, long-term, loyal client who stands with you in that passion.

In the video below, I explain how to add originality to your campaigns…

C - CONVERSION THROUGH URGENCY & DATA - Drive action with analytics and deadlines.

You need to do everything you can to guarantee success with your campaigns rather than just ‘hoping’ your marketing works (which we have found even huge global corporations do sometimes!)

Tracking analytics and split testing is the best way to guarantee better results as campaigns go on.

Split testing is having multiple versions of the same piece of marketing, splitting them up between audiences (or rotating the marketing for periods of time) and recording which got the better results. split testing is a time-consuming but HUGELY beneficial technique that can save you a lot of time and money on sub-par marketing.

For example, how can you possibly know how well an email to your contact list is going to do? But you can improve your chances of success if you have 2 versions for your email and then split your contact list into 3 sections,

  • List 1 – 10% of your original list
  • List 2 – 10% of your original list
  • List 3 – 80% of your original list

Send the 2 versions of the email to the two 10% lists, with each getting a separate email. After it has been sent, record which email got the most clicks (making it the ‘winning’ email) and then send the winning email to the remaining 80% of the original list.

You can use split testing over all your marketing… landing pages, adverts, social posts etc – to improve results using analytics and KEEP split testing. The trick is to keep trying to beat the winning piece of marketing until eventually, you have the perfect piece of marketing that gets consistently high conversions.

Finally, you need to add URGENCY to your marketing. 

Urgency is the only thing that stops people from waiting for payday and makes them decide to buy today.

The worst marketing in the world is ‘we are here when you need us’ –  urgency is what makes people act fast.

So all promotions and campaigns need a deadline. The simplest urgency tactic is the end date of an offer but not every company can provide discounts. So there are a variety of other ways to add urgency:

  • Time limits – ‘Ends on this date’ (Never ‘soon’)
  • Place limits – ‘We can only do this for 8 companies…’
  • Stock limits – ‘We only have 180 products left…’
  • Hour limits – Only 4 hours left for Tuesday (e.g. eye tests an optician can do in a day)
  • Location limits – Only 4 rooms left.
  • Staff limits – Our experts can only meet 5 people a day

If you don’t give people a reason to get in touch TODAY, they won’t.

Add a believable and genuine urgency tactic to your marketing (ends soon/limited time only is too vague, people know that can last for months. Be specific).

In the video below, I explain how to improve conversions in your campaigns…

Check out Yellow Marketing's work from previous campaigns...