Transcripts
You'll learn strategies and tactics, leadership skills and practical advice from successful women entrepreneurs to help you grow, nurture, and sustain your business.
Hey, Shelley. What's up?
[: [:I am in Boise, Idaho. Tomorrow would have been my father's birthday. So I am in Boise to support my mom. It also means that Teddy, the wonder pup is sitting next to me and we're going to be very hopeful that he doesn't start to cry or need anything during the show. And yeah, that's, what's what's going on over here.
What are you up to Shelley?
[:So we were very excited about that. Let's see tomorrow,
[: [: [: [: [: [:So they sent us a bunch of these things and we're going to be doing a special show on Friday on our Videotero live on Amazon live streaming Friday to show that to everybody. And we got free stuff on.
[:And it's because I'm still recovering from a concussion over here. I was on a group Zoom call with five people. I was able to get through about 45 minutes before I got a little overwhelmed, which is making a lot of progress. But the typical things that I'm like, oh my gosh, so much breaking news, look at all this, like I'm just not engaged in that kind of stuff right now.
So we're not, there's not a lot of tweaks to the week, cause I'm not really testing apps or anything. And that's why there's really not a lot of for me, to really share about what's going on over here. I did a soft launch on my website and it's been very exciting. I had some people who have subscribed before I even told anybody that I turned it on.
So that's pretty exciting. And I would say the other thing that was super exciting, I forwarded this email to Shelley. We got an email from somebody who self identified as a fan and I was super excited about that. I think that's really neat. And so just know that when you like something and you tell the people that you like it's really exciting for us.
We really enjoy that. And so I just want to thank everybody for
[: [:I think the person was also shocked that I repeated. Same day just to say hi and, thank her and stuff. So that was pretty neat. We just really appreciate that. And as we continue to grow and have people just know that we're here for you in a real way, not just a, Hey we're online kind of way.
[: [: [: [: [: [: [: [: [:And they gave away three big prizes. I didn't win one of the big prizes, but they said we had so many people enter and we did a secondary drawing and you won a free ticket to the expo, which is over $900 for the ticket. So I was just very excited about that and I would love to go, I don't know if I'm going to be able to, because my husband is having his last cancer treatment on the second. And I just don't know where we're going to be at that point. But if I get the ticket and can't go at the last minute, then I can still get the videos of all the talks.
[:It'd be cool to see Ann Handley and people like that. So I think it's amazing. That you got a ticket, whether you get to go or not. And then for other people, if you're creating things and you're interested in the creator economy, I think it's also a really good resource for people who maybe don't know,
[:Like it's an article that they share or somebody else's blog posts that they share and I'm like, oh, everybody needs this. So I put it in my email.
[: [: [: l disconnected vacation since:So I'm in the process of looking for that, because I think that would be it's helpful. I think for all of us to unplug. Yes. Not that CEX would help you unplug, but it might, if you like stayed late and hung out with a water slide.
[: [: [: [:So should we launch right into it, into building your first marketing campaign? Is that
[: [: [:That's what I want. I love that word. A system. So that's why I brought it up to Jen. I said, I want to talk about this and I want to learn more about it. So that's why we're diving into it. We've talked a lot about content creation and distribution in the past couple of months. Now I want to dive more deeply into having those campaigns and what that means, what are campaigns? What campaigns are going to work best for my business and how to have a system for those.
[:And really that's where the marketing campaign comes into play. And it's what a lot of people make a mistake. With and that takes me back to the earlier episode. I interviewed somebody named Benjamin Dell and he created software called missing letter. And the entire purpose of missing letter is to create social media campaign.
I read your blog posts or your content. At that time we were talking about blog posts, but you could use it, for other types of content like YouTube or, whatever content you're making. And a lot of it, what he said is he created that software because he found a lot of people would write a blog post posted once or twice.
And then. And the truth is that isn't enough. Especially now, this was like three years ago when I talked to him and especially now it's even more because, what is it only 1% of your followers see what you're doing on Facebook? Like they say up to 9% on Instagram. I think it's much lower than that.
Same thing with LinkedIn. So you can't just say I shared it. Should everybody see it? Like you have to do things with a little bit more intentionality so that people can engage with you and know what it is that you're doing. So at the get one of the things you have to know is creating content is great.
It's not enough. You can create content and build some infrastructure around SEO and search, but even SEO and search is complicated because you'd have to have some sort of strategy around like getting back links, meaning other people share your content and posted on their blogs. So a marketing campaign is much simpler.
So I think when most people hear marketing campaign, they think of average. And that is one type. There is also, social media campaigns. It could also be a campaign that you do around. If you're launching something and you do something like a challenge or, and you're sharing your content as a part of a challenge, where you'd five days to, create great blog posts or something like that.
So it can also be like an event. So when we're talking about marketing campaigns, it really is about building a structure around your content for how you're going to get it out into the world. And. You might be thinking I'm already doing that. And the truth is you are already doing that probably in some way or another.
You're already doing marketing campaigns. You just may not be calling it. That does that resonate with you?
For me, as you bring things up and it's oh yeah, The thing is we don't put a lot of planning into things. The Mo we did a panel back in January, which you are part of, but we came up with the idea like three, four weeks ahead of time of doing that, and then sure.
And then we thought maybe we'll do it once per quarter, but we haven't even gone that far with it. We're just very let's see if it works and then we'll do it again if it worked. And then when we put our latest book, We added it to Kindle unlimited, and that gave us the opportunity to offer it for free for a set number of days.
So we decided all of our books are in Kindle unlimited. Why don't we put them all for free on Sunday and Monday? And we did that. And then we, we sent out an email and we told people on our show and we directed people to it, but it was like less than a week. Worth of thinking about it and doing it, and then it's done we don't have the planning in place.
I think, and we learn as we go, of course, we didn't know we were gonna do this. And then we just let's just do it.
And you brought up another type. Yeah, exactly. And you brought up another type of marketing campaign, which is email marketing campaigns, which you guys are both really good at.
You. Hit that out of the park all the time with a lot of consistency. So there are lots of different ways of doing this. I know other people who do audience building around having webinars and. And they go down a whole different rabbit hole with what would be considered marketing campaigns.
So there's any number of things that you can do, but you're a hundred percent right when it comes to the planning piece. And a lot of it, as we start to go into one of the first of the seven things you need to know in order to succeed at this is the first thing that you really have to look at is what is the specific goal?
That you're trying to achieve with this marketing campaign. So what does that mean? If we talk about things in terms of the hang on, I'm trying to get over here where I can see some of my notes. All right. So if we really think about. Having a marketing campaign, like what would be the specific goal around like a blog post or a podcast, certainly you want more eyeballs on the blog.
You want people to watch your videos. If you're creating videos, you want people to share it. So you need to have things that are compelling and. That people are sharing it and it is going out there. But if you have something like a book that's a little bit of a better one to really build around.
So if you have a book, what is the specific goal that a marketing campaign would have? It could be a lot of different things and you need to decide what that is. So in the book example is do I just want to sell. Is that the primary goal. And then you build a marketing campaign around book sales.
Do I want to have it on Kindle unlimited and get a lot of attention, get a lot of reviews, which helps with being an influencer and gaining attention in a different way. Do I want to. Share it out on social and get on more podcasts, for example, like that's a whole different goal. So you, so when we talk about building a marketing campaign, we really talking about what is that specific.
Goal that you have, and it can't be, I have all of the goals. I want all of the things. And you can do that. But we are, the focus of the show is really around small businesses. I think we have a lot of solopreneurs, a lot of freelancers. If you don't have a big budget and you don't have a lot of people have to be very specific and sometimes narrow and have.
One primary goal. That is like the primary reason why you have done something or what it is that you want to accomplish. And so that's really, the first step is to have a really specific or narrow thing that you're trying to achieve with that marketing campaign, because without that specificity and without understanding the primary goal that you have for a marketing campaign, It makes it really hard to reign in a process or come up with those steps that you really want to follow in order to be successful.
Shelley Carney: Yeah. And I think first you have to analyze. Y and in the, what is the goal and why is the goal? So they have to go together. Why do I have a goal of, I want, a hundred followers on our a hundred subscribers on YouTube. Because then I can get my my little vanity URL because I have a hundred, so they have a good reason, so that it'll push you to get that, to hit that goal.
Jen McFarland: I think. Absolutely. And one of the things about on the one hand, I'm like, yeah, that's a vanity metric. But I also wanted it myself because I wanted to have that URL, I think gives you a little more cache, like on your website and things like that. It makes you a little more of a serious creator.
And when it comes to things that take a lot of time to create. Like a book. I mean your specific goal probably has something to do with sales and money. And that's why when we go into the second thing, that's super important. Which is your marketing budget. If you are talking about sales, then sometimes you have to spend a little money in order to make money.
You have to define that budget. And if. So if you're spending a lot of money say on YouTube advertising so that you can get a vanity metric is that really helpful? Maybe you know that you maybe don't want to spend a ton of money on advertising just to get attention without any sort of defined goal.
If you want to sell books, you need to have a marketing budget, or if you want to promote your blog, you may need to have a marketing budget.
How you define what that marketing budget is really depends on your size and what it is that you're doing. So I think instantly people are like I'm not going to run ads. So I don't really have a marketing budget. And I say, you do have a marketing budget because your time is money. Yeah. So the amount of time that you spend.
Doing things. If you don't have a social media scheduler, if you don't have a way to plan things out so that you can have that drip content that goes out, you're actually investing a lot of your time and it's taking you away from other things. So that's one way that you can look at your budget. The other way you can look at it is what are the tools that I am using.
And am I getting like that benefit back for whatever it is that I'm spending, whether it's. Tools like stream yard, like you guys use stream yard, that's a marketing tool to get, and it helps you as a linchpin in your business. So I would hope that it's a payoff, like you're getting out of it.
What you're putting into it. I talked to a lot of business owners who get tons of apps that they don't even use. And then they're like, I don't have any money. I don't have a marketing budget. And then we go through and we look at all of the tools that they're using and we help narrow it down because a lot of times people just are tool collectors and then none of the tools are talking to each other.
So there is some streamlining that can happen that can save you some money and help you with that budget. If you have a clear, specific goal. Then you need to also have a clear and specific budget around this campaign that you would like to do.
[: [:Into your workflow. If you're not planning out and scheduling and do social media campaigns, every time you create new content, it might take you awhile to integrate that and get that flow going. But then I think you have to follow a lot of. Shelley really has talked about a lot on this show, which is, systematizing it, coming up with some clear checklists and what day you're doing it, how you're going to do it.
And then that really helps to minimize the time budget and help you with focusing more on the money budget.
[:One more of these, and. It just becomes a system and I'm only doing a blog for the Wednesday show. So it's not, and that's the most part of it is edit and everything. So I only do one of those a week.
[:So you've got a specific goal around what it is that you want to do. You have a specific budget around how much this is going to cost. And some things it's hard to really containerize. If you create a lot of content and you're doing a lot of social media and also a lot of email marketing, like it might just be like, I'm just going to stick this in this slot.
I've created some slots and you do it that way. If it's something like a book, it might be more of this is the box for the book, and this is how this fits in. If you have a new product. So that could be a book, it could be a service, it could be a product like that you're shipping out. Could be anything like that.
Of course. Anything like that? And so the next thing to really think about with your marketing campaign is to define the target audience. Now, if we're talking about a book or a course, a service-based business, you hopefully have defined the target audience before you're delivering. On a marketing campaign, but a lot of people don't do that, and I talked to a lot of people who were like, I want all of the people everywhere. And if you think about something like. Like our latest course on epiphany courses, find the right marketing tools for your small business, who is that for? That is for small business owners who want to have the right software for their business, but don't know how to find it.
And maybe I would say, don't have that trust factor of that they can just go to a software company and make sure that they're getting exactly what they need. So that is a very specific. Market that is a discovery of your business. So we have to talk to people differently in those marketing campaigns, because we don't want certain people to really pay attention to it.
We're looking for a small sliver of the market, even like a small subgroup of small business owners and that's okay. And that's what I mean when it's define Audience like you want to have something quite narrow because it makes it easier for you to craft an affordable goal-based marketing campaign where you can be like talking to that group of people.
[: [:So you have to look at things in a much deeper, and different way sometimes and include things like values. And what it is, who's going to value what you're doing the most. It's not just the standard demographics of how many people are using, how many are you are using this tool?
How many people do this? How many people do that? How old are they at? Sometimes you need to look at things in a much different way to really, and that's where you get into those like sub groups of people, right? Is you look at things a little bit differently. So I really encourage you to get.
Into like your target audience. If you're like me and your brand, I have different avatars for people I've actually named them. And I have a really key idea about who I'm talking to at any specific time, based on who I've worked with in the past who resonates with different types of messages, what they're, but I also talk about what their values are, what they like to read, what they like to watch, all of that kind of thing, because then it helps me.
Pull that stuff in then when I'm sharing content and I think it helps it become more helpful and relatable. And so when we talk about like target audiences, I think it's really key to really talk about those types of things as well and follow David Alison on LinkedIn. He's a. He's a good source for that, and he really developed it.
I think he says there like 34 different dimensions of values that you can talk about and he's done like tons and tons of research around it.
[: [:So it's really important to dive into that, get into the details on that. And I would say before you create the content before you create the product, but definitely before you start promoting it and pushing it out, like you want to really know who you're talking to.
[: [:If you do email marketing, are these people who are already on your list that you can send and they're just going to eat. Is this something that you're sending out to social media, in which case, how does that look? Are you going to send it to multiple channels? And how does that look and what is the workflow around that?
And we talk about marketing channels. It's also, looking at pinpointing, especially. As specific as your target audience is, it's really thinking about where they are. And we've talked a little bit about like marketing, social media trends and things like that. And I would say don't necessarily worry about trends, worry about where they're at today.
And don't try to build a new audience, find out where that audience is today. And that's, I guess the long way of going around and saying, TikTok for the people who are largely listening to this TikTok is probably not for you. I would say 95% of the people who probably watch.
[: [: [: [:and a lot of people are going there. And so it was really great because I did a little deep dive on this cord and sent this back to the person. And so at this point, 70% of people who are on discord are still gamers and there's a certain age group, but it's changing. And so what I told this person was, and I would tell other people is, okay, so set up a business profile on Discord and.
Watch it, but as of today if your audience isn't already on discord and you're not focused on gamers or people who you, who, or your customers are unlikely to be gamers that are already there, it may not be the right channel for breaking in and starting your audience building. So it's really interesting how.
How we pick the most effective channels to really help our business move our business forward. And I would suggest that. You look at all the different channels. If you have existing clients, you go ask them, where are you? Where are you most active? And if your favorite channel is not the channel that everybody's on, then you might have to just bite the bullet and go there and be there.
Like for me, like I love Twitter. I don't know exactly. I know my friend Bridget will tell me you can totally promote your business there. I haven't done that. I just, I go to LinkedIn to promote cause that's where most of my people are and I still love Twitter and I use it for my own stuff.
But I'm not. Promotion, I don't do a lot of marketing campaigns around Twitter. But if Bridget is out there, she's gonna, she's gonna bite on that and talk to me about how I can do Twitter. So there's a channel out there for everybody really consider those channels. Think about where people are and how and how you could focus on that.
But what is it that Jody said. Let's take a look.
[: [:But if you have, I would say. On unbelievably, like absolutely. Jody, that's most important to have those clients and keep them, make sure you keep people happy and do that customer relationship. And then you don't have to worry as much about sales. You don't have to worry as much about promotions.
Everybody's business is different and how you do this is really up to you and what the best way of doing this. And everybody has a different way, but I would say that successful businesses always start with focusing on those customer relationships. Keep people happy and they'll keep coming back. You don't have to do as much promotion if you keep people.
[: [:You don't want to overburden yourself with too many marketing channels and because you will find that then when we go into. How would I find the producers for Google talks? Just got a question. I'm not sure I understand the question. Do you understand the question, Shelley?
[:Jen McFarland: Or are you talking about the producers of this show? Cause you're talking to them right now. We produce our own show. So if you could clarify, that would be awesome. So as we move into the next phase. So after you've decided the channels, and again, more channels means more complexity.
Then you really want to like content, do a content calendar. So if you're already doing a content calendar and I think Shelley is, and to an extent I'm doing it as well, you also want a content calendar for how you are promoting the content that you're creating and you need to have that planned in advance.
Ideally more than a week ahead of a book launch, for example, I think we all do that. So I think you want to have a content calendar. If you're doing like social media, then I would suggest using something like a missing letter or something like that helps you like missing letter that you can do like a one-year campaign for every blog post or every podcast.
And then you just go through and you make the content once and it'll share it out for a year. Yeah. And that's really nice. Then you don't really have to think about it too much if if you think about, how many times what's your content calendar for email mark. How many times are you sharing this new product with people?
How many different ways are you talking about it? Calendar that out, so that you have a way to systematize, you know what, you're going to talk about the different pieces that you're going to be calling out that really generate excitement around what it is that you're talking about. If you have a course, it's the same thing.
If you have, every different product, you want to make sure that you are. Calendaring out the content and figuring out what it is that you're going to say. And then following through on that.
Shelley Carney: Yes. And yeah and the more you can calendar the more you can stick with it and be consistent the better off you're going to be. And the more you'll continue to grow in increments That is definitely a thing that everybody needs. And sometimes it's just start with something small, every week on Mondays, I'm going to do my LinkedIn newsletter.
And then just stick with it for a while and then add something else in every Tuesday, I'm going to send out an email newsletter. Okay. And then every Wednesday I'm going to do a live show. Every Thursday, I'm going to do this every Friday. I'm going to do this. And then I take the weekends off and that's my schedule.
[:That's where we have the apps, but that's why if you are like someone like me, who's always onto the next thing onto the next thing. It's really important that you pause and really plan some of this stuff out. So in order let's swing back to this question that we got about finding the producers for Google talks.
I would say that one of the ways that you could do this would be to make sure you're following some of the creators on Twitter. That seems to be a good way to really connect sometimes with people and ask questions. Make sure you go to the talks and add value and things like that.
With Ted Talks and things you want to get to know the people who were creating those events and it helps you understand what's coming up and try to get on the calendar. Ted Talks, at least in Portland are incredibly competitive and they have specific themes, so you need to really fit like the theme is probably a similar thing.
With Google talks, I bet they're very competitive. And I bet that there's just a lot of people who want to be on there. So it is a little bit about getting attention.
[: [:Now they're looking more for that, that I don't know, like white glove gold standard customer service experience and a website may not always do that. People are looking at multiple channels. They want to engage with you in a customer service way. In all of the different, all the different ways. A lot of people look at social media as a customer service channel to a degree.
That's what I was just suggesting is go on social media, get to know the people doing Google talks. It's the same thing for a small business. It makes sure that everything is up to date. I can't remember the exact statistics, but people look to see if the information is accurate, if you have a phone number and it's wrong, then you've lost that person. So you really have to keep things fresh, a hundred percent.
[:You can see a trend and you can jump on it. You can, if you have a live stream studio set up in your home, you can put out a live stream the minute you get new information. I just want to share this with my audience. Being agile is an opportunity and an advantage that we have as a small business owner or a solopreneur.
[:So that's really what we're trying to do. So look at ways that you can generate engagement, that's like comments and shares. And if everybody's reading your email newsletter, then make sure that you have the important things in that email news. So that's what we mean by industry trends.
Understand that for many people, social media, isn't a sales channel that is different. When it comes to YouTube, it's different when it comes to Pinterest, believe it or not. But many people don't go out on Facebook or even go into a Facebook group and to buy things. They're just checking things out or learning information.
So I would say that those are that's one way that you could do this when it comes to getting your marketing campaigns is find out where people are, be there, find out where they're engaging, go there, do that. It makes this whole process much. So then the last step, which is certainly I think is actually the most important is the planning phase of this whole thing.
So we have to recap, we have done, define a specific goal, create a marketing. Find your target audience and then be there on the right social mark on the right marketing channels create a content calendar to help you plan out the content and where you're going to put it out for how long, where it's going to be, make sure that you're targeting the trends and the methods to be around the channels that lead to engagement for.
And then the last piece is planning. So you're putting all of those pieces together in a way, and this is where the systematizing part comes. Shelley, this is the exciting part.
[:And then sometimes you have to try it several times to really get a feel of is this working for me? Live streaming. Is that working for me? Are people going to show up? You can't do it one or two times and then say yes or no, it didn't work. You have to stick with that one for awhile. Podcasting, same thing. You have to stick with it for a while. But then there's bigger campaigns like launches and challenges. And you have to say did I get enough? Did I get close to my goal? Did I get enough ROI on this activity that I would do it again, that I would invest my time and energy so much into something like that.
So there's that. Once you do find those things that really work well for you, then you can systemize and put them into your schedule and every June I'm going to do this and every December I'm going to do this and, yeah,
[:You have to give yourself some time and that's really the thing is. Give yourself the time to tip, to go through all of these steps, do it when you're talking about something with no pressure and then think about it, then you've got some things in mind for them when it is higher pressure or a bigger deal or more important.
[: [: [: [:Oh, there it is. There it is. So definitely go there and you'll get a little bit more in depth around some of these things and it's very helpful. Yeah. And a coupon for Epiphany courses also, but you can tell that people are really digging this cause it's gotten like 110 shares, so people are really into it. So definitely make sure that you look at that. And then Shelley, what is it that you've got today?
[: [: [: [: [:So Toby and I were talking about maybe changing the time of our show from one o'clock on Wednesdays to seven o'clock on Wednesdays. And I said we need to look at the analytics. Make some decisions and let our audience know what we're thinking about, see what we get for feedback and blah di blah.
But anyway, so the first step was looking at our analytics and we discovered that there's this new feature in the analytics. That's just popped up this week and they're still actually adding to it. But YouTube launched a new search insights for all creators. That includes information on what people are searching for in the app, both in relation to your channel and content specifically and for more general search queries. And there's an article that we're going to put the link to in the description box. So look for that article to learn more about that, but basically you're going into your YouTube analytics and you can search this one area. They'll show you. Here's what your viewers are searching for on Google.
Dang! Then we can make content about that because that's what they're looking for. Exactly. Yeah. That into our show. So it's a really helpful little piece of information that you can use to make your shows better.
[: [: [: [:There has to be a balance in life's tasks. Between doing the business must do work. And the inner work that we need to do for ourselves, must feel peaceful and must feel happy. You must feel, Inspired. I wanna, I want to be happy my mind and that work on the inside has to happen first before we can manifest anything out in the outer world.
So things like you're journaling, you're meditating, you're getting your exercise and your sleep and really taking care of yourself. In other words, filling up your cup before you're trying to pour it out to help other people. And that's. The first thing that we let go of a lot of times oh, I'm really busy with work.
I don't have time for my journaling. I don't have time for exercise. I don't have time for that, so that just gets shoved aside. And then we hooked on getting our work done and then we feel stressed. It's because we're not taking care of that inner work first. We're letting it go. And that is our foundation in life.
We got to hold onto building that foundation a little bit every day and keeping ourselves strong so that our cup is full.
[: [: [: [: [: [:Thank you for joining the Women Conquer Business podcast posted by Shelley Carney and Jen McFarland. Please subscribe and leave a comment or question regarding your most challenging content creation or business problem. Then share this podcast with family and friends so they can find the support they need to expand their brand and share their message with the world.
Check the show notes for links to valuable resources and come back again next week.
