If you’re a business owner who doesn’t love traditional marketing approaches yet wants to reach larger audiences so you can help more people, then this episode is for you. We’re talking about how to choose the right marketing approaches for you and what to do when it feels like marketing goes against your values. I share the most common mistakes I see solopreneurs making when it comes to marketing. We’ll explore how to preserve your bandwidth so you don’t spend so much time on marketing that you run out of steam with no time leftover for the other aspects of your business. I also reveal the one critical question to ask yourself as you create your new marketing plan for 2020.
In today’s episode we explore:
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[00:00:00] Good day and welcome to the show. Episode number seven, this is Allison Scammell. Today is all about choosing marketing approaches that are successful but don't feel sales he or forced. Instead, they feel like coffee with an old friend. We'll be exploring why you should never have more than three primary marketing approaches. If you're a solo Perner, how to choose the right marketing approaches for you and your business. And a proven marketing technique that I call hot coffee marketing. I'll end the episode with a cool challenge that will transform your relationship to marketing for good. So stick with me until the end.
[00:00:46] Welcome to She Grows, a podcast for soul guided women entrepreneurs ready to grow their income, impact and inspiration. Each week we're going to explore how to align to the soul of your business and grow it from there. I'm your host, Allison Scammell. Let's get growing.
[00:01:13] Hey, there she grows nation. That's what I call this sisterhood of soul guided women entrepreneurs. I am super excited to dive into this topic. I think I love talking marketing because my own relationship to it has transformed so much since I first launched my business. I'm going to be honest here. I used to really hate marketing. It was the most unfun part of my business. But then I realized if I wanted to grow a business that helped more people by reaching larger audiences, and if I wanted to be able to pay my mortgage, that I had to make some changes. The first thing I did was change my relationship to marketing. Marketing is traditionally defined as the action or business of promoting and selling products or services. If you're a sole guided entrepreneur in service to the planet, that may not feel too motivating. In fact, it might even feel like it goes against your values. But what if you saw marketing as a way to connect to your ideal audience and bring transformational shifts to their lives? What if marketing allowed you to express your authentic voice in full expression of your core gifts to the people you feel most called to serve? Doesn't that sound so much better? So let's unpack this. The most common mistake I see with clients, especially those who are new to business, is that they have too many marketing approaches happening at once. I define a marketing approach as something you do that drives your ideal audience to an opportunity to connect deeper to you or the products or services you offer.
[00:03:15] These opportunities to connect come in many forms. But the most common ones are connecting people to your content, such as a blog post or podcast episode, a marketing event such as an in-person workshop or webinar or a sales page. When you're a solo printer without a full time marketing employee or staff, it's nearly impossible to get momentum behind a lot of marketing approaches at once. You'll simply run out of bandwidth, focusing on only three marketing approaches at a time. You can really get to know and learn how to be successful and gain momentum in each approach with out running out of steam. Before we explore how you can choose the right marketing approaches for you and your business, let's first return to what a marketing approach is an opportunity to connect. There is something in advertising called the Seven Rule, which states that a prospective client needs to hear the advertiser's message at least seven times before they'll take action to buy that product or service. Many say, however, that the seven rule is now closer to 14 or even twenty one. The average consumer has so many offers flooding their news feeds in a given moment that it takes more touches to gain their trust. And that's what these touches do. Gain trust. Establish your credibility offers some shift to the potential buyer that makes their life a little better in some way.
[00:05:11] So when choosing the marketing approaches that work best for you, you want to consider first how you can connect or touch your ideal audience repeatedly in a way that gives them the opportunity to get to know you as well as offer little snippets of transformation. And that transformation can be in the form of learning, inspiration, beauty, humor, relief, health, weight loss, connection, whatever problem your product or service solves. You want to give potential clients and customers little snippets of that transformation in your marketing, in your content. The other super important thing to consider that it always surprises me. Even my clients with years of experience and business neglect to do, and that is simply asking the question what has worked in the past? How have my current clients found me? And of those approaches that have successfully brought people to me, my business, my products and services. What approaches have I enjoyed doing? So if you don't have a habit of tracking how people find you. Then I recommend starting immediately. And if you've never done this before, it's absolutely worth your time and effort to look back over the past year or two and identify the primary ways your ideal clients and customers have found your business and have eventually come to buy from you. Once you've identified what has worked in the past, it's time to move on to what feels like fun.
[00:06:59] Yes, marketing should be fun. Does video feel fun? Does podcasting feel fun? I think podcasting is fun. Does organizing a workshop feel fun? Or what about a happy hour or a girls night out? Marketing events can look like absolutely anything. Remember, you're just offering people the opportunity to connect. More deeply to you and your offerings, another question to ask is what have you been curious about? Follow that curiosity. Has a YouTube channel piqued your curiosity? Have you heard your clients saying to you, Gosh, you're so good on video, you need to do more Facebook lives again? Follow the hunches, the nudges, and see where it leads. Lastly, and you know that I have to mention this in about every episode. Check in with your heart. What is the voice of your heart saying when you drop in to that area in the center of your chest, your heart chakra that is connected to your inner voice? Voice of intuition. Higher self, soul, heart, however you call it, and simply ask what are the best marketing approaches for me to pursue right now? See what answers come back. A few years ago, when I was transforming my relationship to marketing, I decided that the three marketing approaches that I enjoyed the most that allowed me to be in full expression of my core gifts and that had been working for me were first Facebook engagements. So that include interaction on Facebook, Facebook lives, starting a Facebook closed group.
[00:08:54] Number two was live events and that included in-person events and webinars. And lastly, a podcast. And I put all of my eggs in those three baskets. So today I'm not on any other social media, but Facebook. I don't write blog posts. I don't have a YouTube channel. I only have a podcast to share my content and my teachings. And I still rely on live events such as webinars or live workshops. These are the only three approaches I focus on. And the more I work with them, the better I get and the faster they convert. Now, let's chat a bit about what you can do when you're completely new to business or the marketing approaches you've tried aren't converting the way you'd like them to, and things are feeling a bit stagnant. It's something I call hot coffee marketing. Hot coffee marketing is when you scan your network and identify the people that light you up at the thought of offering them your products or services or working with them in some way. This can be people in your inner circle. Outer Circle, the checkout lady at the grocery store. Anyone in your sphere. Then you make a list. A long list. Make a list of a hundred people. If you can, any one you think could fall into the category of potential buyer or just potential person that you would like in your audience, then you reach out to every single one of the people on your list and you ask them if they want to get a cup of coffee.
[00:10:49] The coffee can be in the form of a 20 minute face time and you need not be drinking anything at the time or an actual in-person meeting. But the point is your connecting and communicating verbally in some way and in the coffees or the conversations you have your doing most of the listening. If you don't know the person very well, it can be just a chat. You are genuinely interested in their life and it can be a little bit of market research. Hey, what are your current struggles? Where do you need help with things? And that can inform your products and services, right? If they've expressed interest at any point in what you offer, then you want to ask them about their current struggles as it pertains to your offering. So if you are a weight loss coach, for example, you want to ask them about their struggles to lose weight. Then you want to ask them where they'd ideally like to be at some point in the future. And then you move into explaining how your product or services can help. This works best for selling your premium higher priced offerings. If your offerings are lower priced, then you'd ideally reach out to people who you think would want to buy from you in bulk. And another thing I recommend that you do in these coffee conversations is invite them to sign up to your mailing list.
[00:12:29] You can ask them for a year. Ask them for their email address and then you can add them to your list manually. So at least in this way, they are becoming part of your audience. So to recap, no more than three marketing approaches at any one time you want to find and experiment around with until you find the approaches that feel fun, authentic and work. And if you're new or feeling stagnant in your marketing, try out hot coffee marketing and see how it works for you. My challenge for you this week is to craft your authentic, connected coffee with an old friend marketing plan that feels fun and allows you to share your authentic voice and embody your core gifts in the plan. Consider how consistent you want to be when you want to produce things, how often, and really formulate a picture of how you're going to connect you and your products or services to your ideal audience and eventually grow that audience. And if you give yourself time and permission to learn how to do this and to get better at it, it is going to transform your business and your relationship to marketing an amazing and magical and mysterious ways. And in no time you'll have a love relationship to marketing that will feel like having coffee with an old friend.
[00:14:08] Thanks so much for listening. If you're liking this content that I kindly ask you to hit, subscribe wherever you're listening. We have lots and lots of amazing episodes ahead that you won't want to miss. And if you're curious about how to connect to the soul of your business to grow it from there, then head on over to my Web site, Allison Scammell dot com, where you can sign up to my newsletter and get three free soul guided meditations that will help you get a picture of where your soul wants to grow your business in six months and where to place your focus on today to get there.
[00:14:45] Again, that's Allison Scammell that com. And you can find a link in the show notes. And until next time, let's grow there together.