Hey 👋

Welcome to Neighbourhood Post issue #059 - easy to implement digital marketing ideas straight through your metaphorical letterbox.

How are you doing?

No, really - how are you doing? Would love to hear what your marketing struggles and challenges are at the moment. Perhaps it’s something we can help with?

Anyway - on with today’s newsletter, Have you heard of a zero-click strategy? You’re about to…

Let’s Go Linkless 🔗

This week I posted about links on LinkedIn.

(If you saw that post, don’t worry - we’ll go way deeper here.)

You might not know it, but links are significantly limiting your social media success.

It’s the one thing I try and tell everyone we work with:

If you’re asking people to click a link in bio, you’ve already lost.

For two reasons:

Firstly, algorithms hate it.

Social media organisations don’t want you to leave their app.

Less time in app = less ad revenue for the platforms.

So their algorithms deprioritises any content that tries.

Secondly, users hate it.

Despite what we think, very few people want to leave the app either.

They’re on social media for escapism, entertainment and inspiration.

They don’t want to navigate your averagely-optimised mobile website.

(More on that another time.)

But even those two explanations aren’t the main reason why you should stop littering your social media schedule with links. There’s a much more noble, inspiring reason to stop:

It forces you to do proper marketing.

Anyone can shout demands at their audience day in, day out. “Come to this event”, “Buy this thing”, “Support our cause”, “Read this blog”, “Download this resource”, “Sign up to this newsletter”. It’s easy and, to be really honest with you, weak marketing.

If you stop shouting, you have to make them feel something.

You have to delight them, value them, connect on a level beyond demands.

But it’s really hard.

So brands often default to the easy path - ask, ask, ask.

And audiences feel less valued, more exploited and they switch off.

The answer? Adopt a zero click strategy.

That means sharing full value in the social media post itself.

No need to click away to benefit.

Everything stays in platform, on app - happy algorithm and happy users.

What you lose in traffic you gain in trust and attention, and when people get value first, they remember you.

It’s a scary tactic, I know.

And you might face resistance from leadership and stakeholders who depend on you driving conversions.

If you want to do it effectively, here’s some tips:

#1 - Check your data - Use Google Analytics to work out how many website conversions are actually coming from social media. I’ll bet it’s close to zero. Use this data to help convince leadership of your shift to zero-click

#2 - Know your value - Spend time thinking about the unique value you offer. Bring the value of your product/service directly onto social media and help people where they’re at. Don’t gate keep - share all of your gold on socials.

#3 - Divert your asks - I’m not crazy. I know you have to do the hard sales somewhere. Ask away on email, digital ads, podcasts, etc. If you REALLY have to sell on social media, use Instagram/Facebook stories.

#4 - Connect your channels - This is the hard bit. Map your channels into a journey and work out how to grab new audiences on social media and connect them to your other spaces that can be more salesy.

#5 - Value your content - Get a social media strategist and listen to their advice. Invest in your graphic design and video creation ability. High-performance on social media requires expertise and investment.

We’re bullish on this.

The team works across dozens of social media accounts, and we see the pattern.

Brands who go zero-click win, those that don’t lose.

That’s all for today.

I’m not around next week, I’m having a week off in Lisbon 🇵🇹

See you when I’m back

✌️

Before you go - we’ll never use these newsletters to directly sell you our services, but we’re always here if you need any expertise or support 👍