Over the years of working with clients of all sizes (from your mom & pop local store to $2mil revenue/mo e-comm clients), I noticed a consistency in the framework of our process.
Instead of keeping it all in my head, which I am prone to do, I thought I’d share the technique that we use when working with each client.
First and foremost, we are a data-first agency. We will never assume that X will perform better than Y, just because it looks prettier or sounds more cohesive. Best-selling author Dan Heath once said, “Data are just summaries of thousands of people – tell a few of those stories to help make the data meaningful”.
We base our work off of data, not data off of our work. Every ad, every piece of copy, every email sent – is currently being tested or has already been tested.
A sleek transition to our next principle: ABT.
We like to think of testing as the golden rule of marketing. If you’re posting, you better be testing. If you’re sending (emails, texts) you better be testing. Or, for the Swifties out there, here is a visual example of our much we love testing here at SDM:
Not sure what we test? Here’s a few examples
If there’s one thing we love here at SDM (besides dreams), it’s hearing your story & sharing it to the world. We believe that behind each brand is an amazing owner, with an inspiration to push their movement with new people via their products + services.
One of our favorite parts about working with our clients is that we get to put into words what they have had brewing in their mind for years, often decades. Our team of expertly crafted strategists help refine your story & craft the perfect brand messaging to accurately piece together your brand and mission.
Just as Disney taught me that storytelling isn’t just with words (thanks, Pluto!), we believe that every piece of content reflects your brand. Your videos, imagery, IG stories, events you attend – all play a part in shaping your business into the brand you want to be known for.
We are all about the data, insights, & diving into the numbers. However, one of the things that makes us different from the rest of the data-driven marketing agencies out there is that we also prioritize visuals when partnering our clients. We put heavy emphasis not only on what your content/site actually says but how it will look and how the copy + design will function together to create an even stronger result.
You know that trend of “there’s two types of marketing girlies“? Well, here at SDM you have the
Coming back to that balance of story and data, we apply industry research, voice-of-customer data, and proven persuasion techniques—but not at the expense of genuine empathy & humanity.
As much as possible, we like to affirm the reader and leave them feeling encouraged and excited after coming across your brand.
With that in mind, we also pay attention to principles of human psychology including things like the reciprocity principle, storytelling, the priming effect, the balance of emotion & logic, the open loop effect, framing, navigating risk, and so many others. When employing human psychology, we do so with care, not manipulation.
Given all of those tests we mentioned earlier, we are going to get a lot of insights. We’re going to learn exactly what type of copy converts, which type of content resonates the most with your audience, if your email list prefers morning or afternoon sends, the list could go on & on.
With all of that data, we’ll be able to optimize. What does this mean? It means lean into the insights we’ve learned, and use that going forward. For example, say a founder video is doing really really well on paid social. How do we lean into that insight for future campaigns? Here’s a few ideas:
Now, even with all of that in mind, we simply want our clients to walk away feeling obsessed with your own brand so on some level it does just have to resonate and sit well with you, too. (If it doesn’t, you won’t be as confident promoting it all!)
It can’t stop there, of course, which is why we again try to find the intersection between what the brand founder likes and what’s going to actually attract their ideal audience.
For some brands, we write way wordier website copy. For others, we try to scale it way back. It all comes back to whatever data or info we can get our hands on, and what makes the most sense for the target client profile that’s been developed.
I’ll likely continue to update this post as I see fit but I wanted to be able to provide at least an initial overview of the style and approach – or should I say way – that’s served us & our clients well!
