Jeff Bullas

Thinking strategically about collaborations is a huge step up from just creating in a silo.

Quick Answer: Send a short, personalised DM that proposes one specific, easy-to-execute video or image idea and clearly explains why it’s a win-win for both of your audiences.

The goal of your initial text-based pitch isn’t to finalise the details, but to make it incredibly easy for the other creator to say ‘yes’ to a conversation.

The best approach is a ‘warm’ DM; interact with their content for a week or so before you reach out. Your first message should be concise and lead with value. Start the text with a genuine compliment about a specific recent post, then state why you think your audiences align. The most critical part is to propose a simple, concrete idea for a piece of content, like a specific Reel concept, rather than a vague ‘want to collab?’. This shows you’re professional and respect their time. For a fair, unpaid collaboration, the work and exposure should be symmetrical; this could mean creating one video for each of your accounts or co-hosting an Instagram Live session together.

Cheers,
Jeff

Getting your location targeting right is the most important step for a local business ad.

The Best Method: Yes, the ‘drop pin’ feature is the most precise tool for this. You should place a pin on your shop’s address and then adjust the radius to its smallest size, like one or two kilometres.

This level of precise targeting ensures your ad’s image and text content is only shown to the most relevant local audience.

In the Ads Manager, go to the audience section and find the locations map. Instead of typing in a city, you can click to drop a pin directly onto your business address or the centre of the CBD. A slider will then appear that lets you shrink the targeting radius right down, which is exactly what you need to do to avoid budget wastage. It is also critical to choose the right audience type within that radius; you can select to target ‘people living in this location’ for residents or ‘people recently in this location’ to reach the office worker crowd in an area like the CBD. This pin-drop method is far more accurate for a custom zone than targeting by a broad city name.

Cheers,

Jeff

A fantastic question. A consistent voice is what turns a brand into a personality people trust.

Short Answer: To integrate your brand voice into email, you must first define it with a clear set of text-based guidelines (a style guide). Then, you apply this guide consistently across every piece of copy, from the subject line to the footer, ensuring your word choice, sentence structure, and even image captions reflect your brand’s specific personality.

The goal is for a subscriber to be able to know an email is from you just by the way it’s written, even if they couldn’t see your logo.

The most critical first step is to create a simple, text-based brand voice style guide. This document is your source of truth. It should clearly define your voice with a list of adjectives, for example, “We are playful, witty, and bold” and “We are not childish, sarcastic, or arrogant”. It should also include a list of specific words and phrases you do and do not use, and provide clear before-and-after examples of your brand voice in action.

Once you have this guide, you must apply it to every single text element of your emails. This includes your subject lines and preview text, which set the initial tone. It applies to your main body copy, where not just the words but the rhythm and length of your sentences should reflect your personality; a formal brand might use longer, complex sentences, while an energetic brand uses short, punchy ones. This voice must extend all the way to the call-to-action button text. Instead of a generic “Submit”, a fun brand might use “Let’s Do This”.

Don’t forget to apply this to your transactional emails as well. Your order confirmations and shipping notices are a huge opportunity to reinforce your brand’s personality at a moment of high engagement.

Finally, your brand voice is not just about text. The images you choose must match the tone you’re trying to set. A sophisticated, high-end brand should use polished, professional photography, while a friendly, down-to-earth brand might be better served by authentic, user-generated images. The visual tone must always support the written word.

Cheers,
Jeff

That’s the fundamental question for anyone starting out with paid promotion on Instagram.

The Simple Rule: Use the ‘Boost Post’ button for quick visibility and engagement on your existing content, but use Ads Manager when you have a specific business goal like generating sales or leads.

The choice depends entirely on what you want your audience to do after seeing your image or video content.

Boosting a post is essentially paying to show one of your existing image posts or video Reels to more people. It is the perfect tool when your only goal is simple engagement, like getting more likes and followers, or sending some basic traffic to your website. Think of it as a megaphone for your existing content. Ads Manager, on the other hand, is the professional control panel. You must use it when you need to achieve a specific business outcome, such as running a video ad campaign to sell a product, tracking conversions, or creating a lead generation form. It also gives you far more powerful targeting options, like showing your ads to people who have already visited your website, which is something boosting cannot do.

Cheers,

Jeff

A very smart strategy to consider. A clean list is a much more effective list.

Short Answer: A ‘sunset policy’ is an automated email strategy for systematically identifying and removing long-term inactive subscribers from your list. It involves sending a final re-engagement campaign to give them a last chance to stay, before ‘sunsetting’ (deleting) those who don’t respond.

The goal is to improve your overall email deliverability and engagement metrics by focusing your efforts only on the people who actually want to hear from you.

The reason a sunset policy is so important is that your sender reputation is critical. When email providers like Gmail see that a large percentage of your recipients never open your emails, they start to think your content isn’t wanted, which increases the chance that your emails will be sent to the spam folder for everyone, including your most engaged fans.

Implementing a sunset policy is a straightforward three-step process. First, you need to identify your inactive segment. Using your email platform’s tools, create a group of subscribers who have not opened or clicked any of your emails in a specific timeframe, for example, the last 90 or 120 days.

Second, you launch a re-engagement campaign targeted only at this inactive segment. This is usually a sequence of two or three emails with very direct text and subject lines like “Is this goodbye?” or “We miss you”. The content of the email explains that you are cleaning your list and asks them to click a single, prominent link or button if they wish to remain a subscriber.

Third, after the campaign ends, you must be disciplined. You take every subscriber in that inactive segment who did not click the confirmation link, and you permanently remove them from your active mailing list. While it can feel difficult to delete subscribers, the result is a healthier, more engaged list, which leads to better deliverability, higher open rates, and a more accurate understanding of your marketing performance.

Cheers,
Jeff

Building a live audience from scratch is a marathon, not a sprint, and you’re asking the right questions.

The Core Strategy: The secret is to treat your live session as a main event and promote it for several days beforehand using a mix of image posts, Stories, and a dedicated Facebook Event.

A successful live video stream is rarely a standalone piece of content; it’s supported by a strategic campaign of other content formats.

Your work should start at least three days before you go live. Create dedicated image posts that act as ‘Coming Soon’ teasers, showing off a few of your best clothing items. Accompany these image formats with compelling text content that clearly states the date and time of your sale. You should also create an official Facebook Event page for the sale, as this allows interested people to register and get an automatic reminder. During the live video itself, focus on high energy and engagement to keep people watching and encourage them to share the stream to their own networks. Afterwards, post a ‘thank you’ message and consider editing your full live video down into shorter video clips or Reels showcasing the best moments to attract new followers for your next session.

Cheers,

Jeff

A crucial question. A well-crafted abandoned cart sequence is often the highest ROI automation a business can implement.

Short Answer: An effective abandoned cart sequence typically consists of 2-3 emails sent over several days. The key components are a timely reminder with dynamic images of the cart items, compelling text that overcomes purchase objections, and a clear, single call-to-action to complete the checkout.

The goal of the sequence is to move from a simple ‘You forgot this’ reminder to a persuasive and helpful nudge that makes it easy for the customer to return.

The first email should be sent between one and four hours after the cart is abandoned. This is the simple reminder. The text should be light and helpful, with a subject line like “Still thinking it over?”. It is critical that this email dynamically pulls in images of the actual products the user left in their cart. The only call-to-action should be a large, clear button with text like “Return to Your Cart”.

The second email, sent about 24 hours later, should aim to handle objections. The customer didn’t forget; there’s a reason they didn’t buy. Your text should build trust by highlighting things like your return policy, positive customer testimonials, or answers to frequently asked questions. You should still feature the product images. Many brands will introduce an incentive at this stage, like a 10% discount or a free shipping offer, to nudge the customer over the line.

The third and final email, sent around three to five days later, should create a sense of urgency. The text should clearly state that this is the last reminder. If you offered a discount in the previous email, the main text should be focused on the fact that the offer is expiring soon. If not, you can use scarcity as a trigger, with text like “Items in your cart are selling fast”. This email serves as the final push to recover the sale before letting the lead go.

Cheers,
Jeff

This is a brilliant question as it covers one of the most fundamental and often overlooked elements of a well-optimised website.

Short Answer: Alt text is a written description of an image that makes your visual content accessible to screen readers and provides crucial context for search engines, which helps your images rank.

Think of it as the official text equivalent of your image for any person or machine that cannot physically see the image file.

The importance of alt text is twofold, and you are right to go back and fix it. First and foremost, it is a matter of accessibility; for users with visual impairments who use screen reader software, the alt text is read aloud, allowing them to understand the content of your images. Second, it’s a significant factor for SEO because search engine crawlers cannot “see” an image, so they rely on this descriptive text to understand what the image is about, helping it to rank in image search results and adding topical relevance to the page. Finally, if an image file ever breaks or fails to load, the alt text is displayed in its place, maintaining a good user experience. The key is to write descriptive, natural language, and not just a string of keywords; for instance, instead of “dog puppy pet canine SEO”, you would write “A golden retriever puppy playing with a red ball in the grass.”

Cheers,
Jeff