Meet
David Johnson
Pride Road’s Digital Marketing and Social Media Manager
David Johnson is Pride Road’s digital marketing and social media manager, who has been with the franchise for over 3 years. His role is mostly around social media, paid ad campaigns, SEO, managing the website, and email marketing- such as follow up emails and newsletters. He works with the franchisees to help them get the most out of social media and the website. In the background he runs paid ad campaigns of Facebook and Instagram, to constantly generate a flow of leads.
If someone were starting to think about marketing their business, where should they start?
This depends on the niche and size of the business, but if you are just starting out, then you should start with a Facebook and Instagram account, especially since architectural clients tend to be on
Facebook and Instagram. This helps you to show the kind of work you do, to educate them on the way you work, and to show them design hints and tips. This all helps you to be seen as an authority
within architecture and builds trust with the clients. Having a website, although important, is secondary to having a social media presence.
What do you say to those who are afraid to go on social media as they view it as very personal?
It can be scary to use social media for your business to begin with, especially if you aren’t sure what you should be posting, when you should be posting it, whether it should be quite personal or business facing. There isn’t really one set answer for that- it depends on you brand, and whether it’s based around your face and your personality, or the name of the business.
But it is difficult to go wrong with personal posts on social media. Keeping in personal works as Facebook is moving away from showing business that don’t seem to have any face or personality. At the end of the day, people buy people, so you need to educate them about who you are, how you work and how you can help them.
Why is it important to talk about the benefits we bring to clients in campaigns?
The vast majority of clients don’t want to know about how your service works, or what you are doing technically; they are very valuable and results-focused- they want to know what they can get out of it.
Therefore, we always talk about the benefits and Value Stack; we sell them the pie, not the ingredients.
Social media sounds like a lot of work; how much time and money should you be spending if you are starting a business?
If you are just starting on your own then I would recommend that you schedule your posts, and you can do that yourself using Facebook and Instagram creator studio, so there’s no cost. Also, you should post in Facebook groups- that’s where you’ll get a lot of traction and engagement from your local community. You will then get to a point where you are too busy to manage your social media on your own, so you should draft in someone to help, so you can run your business while they get you leads and traction.
As you can tell, getting your social media sorted while you are setting up your own business can be quite daunting, and hiring help for social media, blogs, SEO, and content can be very expensive. The advantage of joining the franchise is that we have everything set up for you, and David on-hand to guide you through and to create content. At the end of the day, we will want you to post as an individual and it does take time, but we are here to help with graphics, images, posts, testimonials, and advice on how to post, how often, and in what format. So, we just take all the pain out of it, so you can focus on running a successful business!