DLake Create’s main objective is to “own” his audience as much as possible. On most platforms you are renting your audience. He wants to be able to directly communicate with them by signing up for his email newsletter and listening to the podcast.
With the help of Metigy’s Creative Services, Dlake Creates catapulted to a 1086% increase in content engagement. Click through and watch how he was able to do this.
The client
DLake Creates is an endurance sport brand that is headed up by Daren Lake. He focuses his efforts on serious and committed endurance athletes that want to perform better as they age.
Table of Contents
ToggleHis brand has a podcast, social media content (long and short form video, photos, graphic illustrations, etc.) and a newsletter.
His main objective is to “own” his audience as much as possible. On most platforms you are renting your audience. He wants to be able to directly communicate with them.
- Objective 1 – Sign up for his email newsletter
- Objective 2 – Listen to the podcast (then have super fans share it out)
He is focusing a lot of his content on visuals. The best way to promote audio is through visuals like photos, video and design.
This is where Metigy’s Creative Services can help: Click below for the video podcast
The problem
Podcast content is long form meaning there are multiple takeaways (Minimum 3-5 or more in one podcast) that could easily be chopped up into bite sized social media content pieces. This could then create 10-15 (or more) pieces of content. Social media as we all know is a visual medium. It rewards people if they are visually appealing.
Podcasts and email newsletters are audio and word focused. While the quality of his content is there, the core content (audio and words) is hard to market.
Up until now he’s been hacking his way through Photoshop, Canva and whatever other tools and skills he’s acquired throughout the years to make mostly presentable visual content.
One big thing is that he always wanted to create infographics to display some critical ideas and takeaways from the podcast. This unfortunately is easier said than done as most online templates didn’t work and the time involved to figure it all out didn’t have a great return on investment.
The solution
Use Metigy’s Creative Services to create/revise/freshen up:
- Infographic Images: Creating a brand new design that he’s never done.
- Visual Quote Carousel: A refresh on graphics that were already designed by Daren
- Takeaway Carousel: A refresh on graphics that were already designed by Daren
The visuals: Creative assets
Main podcast image
Infographic
“Two Lessons Learned“
Quote carousel
The Results
Overall Daren saw an uptick across the board on all of his content platforms.
- Social media- 2.5x (150%) increase
- Podcast Listens – 1,000% increase
- Website visits – 4,263%
- Email newsletter – 900% increase
See the Instagram metrics breakdown below for the:
DLake Creates Infographic
- 2577 impressions
- Non followers – 470 reach
- Likes – 182
- Comments – 27
- Shares – 2
- Saves – 19
- Profile visits – 13
- Follows – 4
- Website Taps – 0
DLake Creates quote image carousel
- Impressions – 1787
- Non followers – 210
- Likes – 122
- Comments – 6
- Shares – 4
- Saves – 3
- Profile visits – 17
- Follows – 4
- Website Taps – 1
DLake Creates “2 Lessons Learned”
- Impressions – 2394
- Non followers – 380
- LIkes – 173
- Comments – 23
- Saves – 5
- Shares – 0
- Profile visits – 22
- Follows – 0
- Website Taps – 0
Podcast listens
Podcast listens have increased almost 1,000% from the previous month before:
Website visits
Website visits have increased by 4,263%
Email newsletter
Email newsletter signups increased by almost 900% (3.5% overall signups happened in the time period alone)
What have I learned
In a world full of visuals, if you are a visual business or creative you already know how important it is. Since Daren comes from audio, he has to do double the work to make sure that the audio message is displayed visually in the best way to get the most engagement and for him to meet his objectives.
Not having a strong visual and design background also means that not only does he have to create the audio content, he then has to re purpose it for video.
Metigy’s Creative Services helps him get sleek and professional quality design so he doesn’t have to do it. He then can do what he does best which is make audio content, write and do video.
Find out more about how our creative design services can help you and your company do less worrying about design and focus more on what you do best at Metigy.com
Transcript
[00:00:00] 1000%. One and three zeroes. 1000% growth is how much more engagement I got in all of my content last month. From my podcast marketing to newsletter and even social media content. Find out how I did and more by listening to this episode on This Week In Marketing.Hey everyone. I’m Daren Lake and welcome to This Week In Marketing – another podcast by Metigy. In each episode, we answer questions or talk about one specific idea to help you market and operate your small to medium enterprise better. And we do that by making them easy to digest, short and concise because we’ve all got a business to run.
In this episode, we go deep and to a real world use case. Well, I go deep into my 1000% growth strategy by tweaking one thing, my design. So how did I ride the 1000%
[00:01:00] AKA 10 X gain train by using Metigy’s Creative Services, it gives you easy access to a world of on-demand graphic design. Other design tools out there ask you to do the design, not Creative Services. They do it for you.If you listen to this podcast, you’re most likely deficient in time and resources side of things. Get high quality designers at a flexible price that works for you enough for me. Let’s get into how I actually did it.
Okay, so this is a case study. So we’ll frame this up into multiple parts.
So we’ll start off with the story, which is the client and that client who happens to be me. And it’s my fitness endurance sport brand. It’s called DLake Creates That’s part two is the problem that the client has part three will be the solution, how it all works.
Part four is the actual visual, creative assets. Obviously this is a podcast, what’s a video podcast.
[00:02:00] So if you’re watching it on video, you’ll see some stuff. But from audio, I’ll do a quick sort of recap on, um, describing the images and then. The actual insights of this is kind of what happened. And again, this is probably a bit more deeper into the insights of what actually happened.So versus the last part that was just a description and explanation of the images. And then I’ll just kind of have final thoughts that I have on creative design services and you know, how it’s impacted, and what I’ve learned and it all, so here we go.
[Part 1: The client]So Dlake Creates is an endurance sport brand, right? That’s who I am. And it’s headed up by me, Daren Lake. He slash I focused my efforts on serious and committed endurance athletes that want to perform better as they age. So it’s very, it’s, it’s more a specific crowd people that take themselves a bit more seriously, not just the
[00:03:00] amateur group and my brand also has a podcast. It has social media content long and short form video, which is comprised of long and short form video photos, graphic illustrations, etc, and a newsletter. So there’s a lot of components and pieces that make up the DLake Creates brand. My main objective is to own.My audience, quote, unquote, air quotes as much as possible on most platforms I Instagram and Facebook I’m renting my audience, which is perfectly fine to do, but I have a long-term exit strategy and I want to also be able to directly communicate to my audience.
You can’t do that on Instagram. So first objective with using Creative Services is to get people to sign up for my email newsletter. That means the power users and the second objective is for them to listen to the podcast. It seems like super fans are the ones that are into this, and then they’ll share it out.
Obviously, everyone doesn’t read newsletters. Everyone doesn’t listen to the podcast. People are perfectly fine with being on Instagram. You’ll get your value from me in whatever way possible.
[00:04:00] I try to be in a lot of different places as much as I can in the best way. I focus a lot of my. On visuals, because the best way to promote audio is ironically through visuals like photos, videos, and design. And this is where Metigy Creative Services comes in to help me.We’ll find out more about the next part after this Ad break.
This series grows by the support hustle and grit from entrepreneurs and business owners like you to help spread the word. We’d really appreciate it if you could make sure to follow and rate us with a five star review on whatever app you listen to, this will help all the podcasts algorithms make sure it gets into the ears of other like-minded businesses.
Let’s get back to the show
[Part 2: The problem] Podcast content is long form. Therefore there’s a lot of multiple takeaways. [00:05:00] Minimum three to five or more in a podcast that can easily be chopped up into bite-sized social media content pieces. This could then create 10 to 15 or more pieces of content. Social media, as we know is a visual medium.Awards people, if they are visually appealing, it doesn’t mean you just have to be good looking. It just means you have to have good design and things that catch people’s eyes when they’re scrolling through and waiting for the next meme model or puck whore back flipper off a 10 story. Building podcasting, email newsletters are audio and word focused.
So again, the two places where I want them to land need to be visual while the quality of my content. I know. You know, humblebrag, but at the same time, I know my stuff is good. I’ve gotten validation, external validation from that. Uh, the core content audio works. It’s just hard to market. So up until now, I’ve been hacking my way through Photoshop, Canva and whatever other tools and skills I’ve acquired through the years of being a creative, a general creative to make mostly presentable visuals content.
[00:06:00] And one big thing that I’ve always wanted to create with infographics to display some critical ideas and takeaways from podcasts and just, you know, big out there ideas. This unfortunately is easier said than done as most online templates don’t work for what I was trying to do. I couldn’t find any and the time involved to figure it out, just didn’t make a good return on the investment, the investment being time cards. [Part 3: The solution]I’m going to now use Creative Services to create, revise and freshen up one, the infographic images, which were brand new. I never did those before, too visual quote carousel, which was a refresh on something that I tried doing. And three, the takeaway carousel. So takeaways are every podcast – I have like key takeaways. It was a refresh I did my own little design on them. It was very average.
So. Again, number one is something I’ve never done before. Number two and three were already done and designed, so that big refreshes
[Part 4: The visual creative assets] [00:07:00] Again, this is a video podcast, so I’ll show these on the screen right now. And, it’s basically the podcast, the main pockets images.So the main podcast is called Dlake Creates Running For Masters Of Some very long title. There’s a reason for that. Let’s get into it another day and then it will be delayed. So I’ve got like a sub series, uh, think of it as like a TV show. The channel is called Trees and DLake. He likes that, which I’m focusing on right now.
I’ve got a 10 part series, and there’s an infographic image. Um, I guess a little bit of an explanation. So it’s me. It’s a cool photo of me with, uh, two. Sydney bridges, the Anzac bridge and the Harbor bridge, but I’ve got like my headphones on and I’ve got a recorder and I’ve gotten my workout gear with my Macbook.
So it kind of looks, um, it looks like I’m trying to, you know, combine all of the things that I do. Then the other one’s Trees and DLake. So it’s just a traditional kind of a photo of me and some workout gear and Mike tree, who is someone I partnered up with?
[00:08:00] He’s a Instagram influencer, very large account.He’s got almost a hundred, almost 200,000 followers. Um, and it’s both of us. So then it’s an infographic infographic, you know, example. The first one they did was six tips to ratio, fastest 5k, and it’s got the six in kind of this perfect circle with a runner in the middle and then a little, uh, emojis, you know, uh, indicating what the six tips.
A lot of pink happened and then the two lessons learned. So it’s a photo of me for one. Then it’s less than one with a kind of a quote summary in lesson two with again, a quote summary and little brown fingers. Cause I’m brown, then there’s a quote carousel. So the quote carousel. A really nice, uh, that was a really nice design to just make the quotes.
Look better. Um, and then actually I did redo, I should’ve put that in there. I did redo the, uh, the photo quotes. That was, that was done really well. I liked the way they did that.
[Part 5: The results] Overall, I saw an uptake across the board. [00:09:00] Crazy uptick across the board. So social media, 2.5 X, 150% increase. Podcasts listens- A thousand percent increase per episode per 30 days. That is crazy. That’s 10 X.Website visits, 4263% increase. That is bananas. That’s 42 X, um, and then email newsletter 900% month on month. So just to preface all of this, there was a shift in the content and a shift in the boost that I got via doing this podcast with Mike Trees. I’m sure that helped in the numbers.
Who’s to say that the design didn’t help, you know, it all, all kind of came at once. What’s the, you know, we don’t know the straw that broke the camel’s back, but obviously we’re not breaking the camel’s back. We’re raising up the tide. So, uh, all boats raised the tide. So, you know, we don’t know which one, but the tie got raised, so let’s just move with it. Um, the infographic on Instagram. So just quick performance metrics.
[00:10:00] Numbers are really hard to understand, so I’ll just kind of shift through them and put up little graphics, but … There’s one post in the infographic, it got 2000 accounts reached, that’s two X more. I was usually sorry, uh, that actually got 2,500 impressions.So that’s the 150% increase. So I was usually getting around a thousand impressions. That’s phenomenal. Let some notable things that happened from the hashtags, it was about 15% from the hashtags, which is really, really good. Non follow accounts reached a drought. 25%, which is really high. That got 19 saves.
That’s huge. 27 comments, 182 likes and 2 shares. Now all that’s relative. If you have a really big account, those numbers are low. If you have a really small account, that’s now numbers high, but what’s cool is that I’ve compared them to the last month. And that’s literally, everything is 150%, if not more the saves and the shares are really high.
[00:11:00] Profile visits with 13 follows from there were were all across the board. So we can go into other stuff later. This is just a trial and I’ll go into the details because this can get a bit nuanced. So there was, you know, there were the two lessons learned that performed really well at yet almost 2,400. So again, 150%.And then we went through the podcast listens just a quick, you know after 14 days, I was almost at a thousand downloads. After 14 days. So I haven’t even done the 30 days yet. I’m just waiting for the 30 days to come around, which by the time you air should have that number and website visits were up, everything was up, up, up, bounce rate went down, which is really good.
So that means people stayed on the site and did other things. And, email newsletter, like I said, there was,40 subscribers in the month, which usual months are for subscribers.
[00:12:00] So I’m still new on the newsletter promotion thing, but everything is new as it always is. [Part 6: What have I learned?]In a world full of visuals, If you’re a visual person or creative, you know how important it is since I have to double do the work to make sure the audio message is displayed visually in the best way to get the most engagement for me to meet my two objectives again, or, you know, the first objective is to get them sign up for the newsletter.
And second is to get them to listen to the podcast. Vanity metrics like Instagram followers, it just doesn’t convert to real-world value. And If you’re trying to monetize a brand, just having followers, you have to do a lot more than that. I mean, you can pay for followers these days. So it doesn’t mean that you’re, you know, you could have a lot of followers and you can pay for an account.
It doesn’t mean you have engaged in followers that love you for you. So, you know, a thousand true fans is right. And you don’t, you don’t have to have hundreds of thousands, millions of followers to really be effective. All you need is a thousand hardcore fans and we’ll talk about that another day.
[00:13:00] Another thing about having a strong visual and design background for me, it means that not only do I have to create the audio, but I also have to repurpose it for video.So Metigy’s Creative Services helps me get sleek and professional quality design. And also, so I don’t have to do it. It’s not in a skill set already. I have a million skillsets. I don’t need to learn another one. Kind of knew how to do it just to get around, but I want it to really get to the next level.
I wanted to go from a seven out of 10 to a nine and a half out of 10, and I can do this. I can do what I do best, which is audio content, right. And perform for video. And I can let the graphic design services be done by a professional. So find out more about how Creative Design services can help you and your company do less worrying about design and focus more on what you do best at