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DOM MCGREGOR: GO BACK TO FUNDAMENTALS
4 priceless marketing lessons I learned from the co-founder of SocialChain...
Niall Ratcliffe
August 04, 2024
In partnership with
Morning!
The sun is beaming through the window, the Olympics is playing in the background, and a full cup of water is by my side.
It sounds like the perfect day to write a cracking breakdown.
Today’s lessons are going to be close to home and they come from a man who built the fastest-growing marketing agency in Europe - Dom McGregor.
(These lessons completely changed our perspective on how to run the agency.)
Should take under 4 mins to read :)
P.S. You can listen to the audio version of this breakdown HERE.
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION
BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY
At 19 years old, Dom McGregor was a bored university student dragging himself through his degree.
So in his spare time, he started spending more and more time on social media.
At first, that meant just posting on his personal Facebook, then his personal Twitter account, and then one night he took a step that would change his life forever.
He created a Twitter account called “Student problems” and posted that he’d run out of toilet paper.
I’m sure it didn’t feel that significant at the time, but that moment changed the complete trajectory of his life.
Because over the next few years Dom would:
Grow that page to 10 million followers.
Drop out of his university degree.
Meet Steven Bartlett.
And build Europe’s fastest-growing social media agency - SocialChain.
Over the next 6 years, he and Steven grew SocialChain to a team of 750+ across 24 global offices, signed clients like Spotify, Microsoft, Puma, and sold the business for millions.
It’s safe to say, Dom knows his stuff when it comes to marketing.
And last Friday I got the chance to spend the afternoon with Dom while he advised us on our agency.
But while I went into it hoping for advice on operating and scaling the agency, Dom taught me a stupid amount about marketing.
(Including pointing out a few blaring errors we were making.)
So today, I wanted to share the key marketing lessons I learned from one of Europe’s best marketers:
Lesson 1: Your Value Comes From How You’re Viewed
There are a lot of marketers nowadays who spout out a bunch of advice when it comes to perception.
“Position yourself as an authority.”
“You need to be professional.”
“Be a thought leader.”
But while all of this advice sounds really clever, none of it is concrete.
(How do you “look” like an authority anyway?)
If you want to get a handle on your perception, you have to get to grips with how you are viewed in the simplest way possible.
For us, we’re been viewed as two brothers who are building an agency together.
The perception that gives off: Trustworthy, fun to work with, fresh ideas.
That’s been priceless in getting us to where we are today (and the main reason we have the packed roster that we do). But do you know who the likes of Hubspot, Salesforce, and Sage don’t want to work with?
2 young lads building an agency.
Who do they want to work with:
An established marketing firm.
With tried & tested methods.
A team of people with a plethora of experience.
The perception that got us here is holding us back from working with the biggest B2B brands.
It’s kind of obvious when you break it down like that, but it’s safe to say I hadn’t clocked it.
Your perception is your price. I’m glad I realise that now.
Lesson 2: Make Things Sexy
Sometimes we all fall into the trap of making marketing too simple.
We simplify things to their easiest form in an attempt to communicate them better. It’s short, sharp, punchy and as a side effect - boring.
We don’t mean to make it boring, but it is.
The prime example of this in our case → Lead magnets.
No one wants to talk about lead magnets.
No one wants to hear about lead magnets.
No one really cares about lead magnets.
Yet at the same time, they’re an effective addition to any B2B marketing strategy.
This is where Dom reminded me that you have to “make things sexy”.
85% of marketing is just getting people to listen and the sexier you can make things, the more chance you have of getting people to pay attention to you.
For us, our back-end funnel is such a boring concept right now.
Everyone cares about our storytelling techniques → that’s sexy.
No one wants to hear a technical breakdown of how you get attention and use a system to get people to take action.
It’s simply not sexy enough and Dom was the first person to point that out to us.
So, make your marketing sexy and more people will listen.
Lesson 3: Marketing Is Just Communication
We’re all humans, so naturally, we love to overcomplicate things.
We come up with fancy campaigns, different content ideas, and push things across various channels.
How most marketers approach marketing
But in the midst of all of the chaos, we forget that marketing is simply communicating.
In most cases, you’re communicating that you have the solution to a specific problem that a specific type of business has.
Don’t get me wrong, communicating in a way that makes people want to buy isn’t easy - but that’s what you should be focused on.
I spend so much of my time focusing on writing content that:
Shows our credibility.
Positions us in the right way.
Gets attention on our company.
But one thing Dom reminded me (that I overlook) is that you need to be communicating what you do, the problem you solve, and who you do it for.
Again, this seems like really basic marketing when I break it down like that.
Yet if I had to make a guess, I’d say less than 5% of marketers sit down at the start of the week and ask themselves, “How can I clearly communicate what we do this week?”
This is something I’m now asking myself every day.
Lesson 4: Be Differently The Same
One of my favourite concepts in marketing is Seth Godin’s ‘Purple Cow’.
The concept is simple: Be different.
Godin pushes companies to be the “Purple Cow” in their industry and differentiate themselves from the crowd.
And it’s fantastic advice.
But what I didn’t realise is sometimes you can be too different.
Dom explained to us that when they first started SocialChain it was nearly impossible to sign clients because no one wanted to use any of their marketing budget on new platforms like Instagram.
(Quite hard to believe now, but back then social media was not a channel companies marketed on.)
The infamous SocialChain office slide
So no matter how great Dom & Steven knew they were at their service, they were simply too different to sign clients.
Thankfully for them, the tide quickly shifted and brands started pouring boatloads of cash into social media marketing.
But what if they wouldn’t have, what if social media hadn’t had the rise that it did?
SocialChain would have had to adapt its service to align better with what companies were used to.
It’s all well and good being different, but you need to be similar enough to what they’re already spending money on for it to not feel like an obscure decision to come and work with you.
Be different, but don’t forget to feel familiar too.
Lesson 5: If It Works Organically, Try Paid
If you had asked me a month ago about paid marketing I would have proudly said I’d never touched it.
(Bar putting £15 behind an Instagram post once - don’t ask.)
Today, it’s safe to say I’m glad I never shouted from the rooftops about that opinion.
Because one thing Dom reminded me of was that paid marketing does work - even though a lot of agencies in the space get a bad rap.
The issue is, most people jump right to it.
They go create an ad campaign.
Never actually test the ad.
Then put £10k behind it.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise when those ads come back with 0 ROI.
Instead, Dom asked us, “Those lead magnets that you successfully launched organically… why not scale them with paid?”
“Well… well…” I stumbled over my words when he said it.
“Why haven’t we?” I thought.
Answer: We probably should have.
It’s so easy to get stuck in one lane when you’re seeing some success.
That mentality has been a huge asset in getting to this point and avoiding shiny objects, but sometimes you just need a kick up the arse to realise there is another step on the ladder.
I probably won’t be dabbling in paid ads in the next few months, but at least this opened my eyes to it.
🌱 THE GREENHOUSE
Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:
TL;DR
1/ Your Value Comes From How You’re Viewed
2/ Make Things Sexy
3/ Marketing Is Just Communication
4/ Be Differently The Same
5/ If It Works Organically, Try Paid
More than anything, these lessons just reminded me that the best marketers simply understand the fundamentals better than anyone else.
None of these lessons were complicated or impossible to wrap your head around.
Instead, they were just reminders of the very basics of marketing.
Honestly, it reminds me of that bell curve meme people post…
I’m not a huge meme guy, in fact, this was the first one I’ve ever created. Yet it perfectly sums up the macro lesson from this breakdown.
Hopefully, you learned something. If you did, why not forward this to a friend?
Until next Sunday.
— Niall
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