Today guest at “Bannersnack Ad Talk” is a Google+ specialist and a great author of several books including: Developmental Coaching and Peak Performance. Martin Shervington, has spent the past 15 years empowering people as an executive coach, personal development trainer, author and marketing consultant.
He is the founder and community manager of ‘Plus Your Life!’ and ‘Plus Your Business!’ He spends much of his time on Google+
Official Website: www.martinshervington.com
Twitter: @MartinSherv
1. Could you tell us briefly about your background?
I graduated from University almost 20 years ago with a Law and Business Studies degree, then went onto do a post-grad in Organizational Psychology. From there I’ve spent the whole time building and running businesses, writing books, and marketing on the web. My first online training business launched in 1999 and once I saw the power of Google Adwords in 2002/3 it transformed how to reach and connect with people ‘into’ what I was doing.
More recently I took my love of Google into the social space, creating communities on Google+, including Plus Your Business – a 15,000+ member community around how to build your business using the Google ecosystem. This includes an Academy, which, putting it simply, we help people become an authority in their niche, evidenced in Google Search.
2. What do you enjoy most about your career?
I don’t have time to get bored, I have the good fortune to connect with the best people from all over the planet, I get to create content (which I enjoy doing), and I get to push ahead and experiment in a really fast evolving online world. And I do stand-up comedy on tech as a way to promote, and brand myself, too.
3. How would you describe the relationship between display advertising and content marketing in a digital marketing strategy?
I see content marketing as solving people’s problems, as connecting them to your brand through every word, every image; with content you serve people, you entertain them, you educate them. With display you take a small percentage of people paying attention to one thing and ask them to pay attention, and click, something else. Valuable, but very different in their methods and their results.
Content is not about calling to action, it is about generating trust.
4. What’s the role of visuals in a digital marketing strategy, content or display?
Every medium is an artform. Every word matters. Visuals are bait for the mind. They pull us in. When you understand the basic principles of the medium, you get to play. And you find out who wants to play along, to read, to click, to buy.
5. What are the most important 3 tools for you? (anything you use constantly for online advertising, or anything you think others should use)
“As mentioned above, I am a big Adwords fan. I think the system is genius. And remarketing is an artform in its own right.
Even though people know me as a Google fan, I must say that Facebook ads are genius too. The database they have built through the social graph enables the right message to the right people in an unprecedented way.
But the third is the most powerful one of all – Google Search, leveraged by Google+ and Community building.
People don’t necessarily think of Search as a tool, but between Google.com and Youtube you have the opportunity to guide the world’s attention, to serve their needs. Combined with Social SEO through G+ community building methods, you get to influence the world’s information, and to position yourself as the trusted authority on your subject matter. All natural, and all evidenced by Google’s algorithms. And once you have learned the process, all down to creating great content and serving the community around you. Through their engagement, they will deliver you search results.
(Google: Social SEO evidence, What is Google?, Google+ Marketing etc. for some examples of our results).”
Thank you Martin!