Chasing Simple Marketing for Entrepreneurs

You might have heard this mentioned on a previous episode recently, but I started a YouTube channel! Don’t worry – the podcast isn’t going anywhere. But I wanted a way to connect even further with you, so every Monday at 4:00 pm Pacific Time/7:00 pm Eastern Time, I’ll be LIVE on YouTube.

I kick things off each week with a quick teaching, similar to the podcast. But then, everyone who is there live gets the opportunity to ask further questions and just interact! I’m loving this chance to connect more already, so I wanted to share a peek at what exactly that looks like with you on the podcast this week.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

You might have heard this mentioned on a previous episode recently, but I started a YouTube channel. Don’t worry, the podcast isn’t going anywhere, but I wanted a way to connect even further with you, so every Monday at 4 p. m. Pacific Time, 7 p. m. Eastern Time, I’ll be live on YouTube. Kick things off each week with a quick teaching, similar to the podcast, but then everyone who’s there live gets the opportunity to ask further questions and just interact and hang out together.

I’m loving this chance to connect more already, so I wanted to share a peek at what exactly that looks like with you on the podcast this week. You’re listening to episode 214 of the Chasing Simple podcast and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing, welcome friend, this is chasing simple where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as the Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing, is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming. So that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? There are a lot of different marketing strategies out there.

From content, to networking, to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next. Without seeing results, especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own.

And after hearing from listener after listener, wondering which marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which strategies will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield. com slash quiz to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy and start seeing results from your marketing.

Again, that’s amandawarfield. com slash quiz. Marketing isn’t easy, but it can be simple or at least simpler than you’re making it right now. I’m Amanda Warfield. I am a simplicity focused content marketing strategist and copywriter, and my mission is to help other small business owners simplify their marketing so that they can spend less time marketing and more time doing the things that actually move the needle in their business.

And also. Working less because we all started our business for freedom and flexibility and yet somehow we get caught up in these Work cycles where we’re working constantly because the to do list never ends and that includes the marketing to do list So today I want to cover three important, they’re not necessarily mindset shifts, but they’re not firm tips either.

But three important things that you should know about marketing in order to help simplify what you’re doing with your marketing, I guess is a great way to put that. So first things first, I just want to start by talking about what is marketing and what is content, because as a content marketing strategist, a lot of times we can On one hand, start to think that our content is our business.

And a lot of times we can start our businesses by starting a content platform. There are so many people out there who started a blog and then that started a business for them or who started a podcast channel. And that’s what created their business. That’s how I got started with my business. And for a long time, I thought that running my business meant.

Putting out new content. Turns out that’s not how that works. So that’s on one hand, but on the other hand, we can tend to think that marketing is just content. And that is also not the case. So we can, we can understand that our content is not our business, but we can also at the same time think, well, That’s my marketing and we can think that that’s all we need to do for marketing.

So I just kind of want to give a quick rundown. So marketing is essentially Anything you do to get more eyes on your business to make your business more visible, right? Within marketing we have paid marketing, ads, right? Anything you’re doing to pay to get your name out there. But then we have organic marketing and that is where a lot of us as small business owners we tend to lean further into because it’s free, right?

Or at least low cost, which could still be paid. But a free or super super low cost organic marketing tactic that will help us spread our name, our business, without putting a bunch of money into it, without having a marketing budget. A lot of us start there and a lot of us continue to put the majority of our marketing efforts in that and that’s perfectly okay.

So, within Marketing, we then have Paid Marketing, Organic Marketing. Within Organic Marketing, we have content, which is blogs, YouTube, podcasts, email newsletters, social media, that’s all content, right? It’s something that we’re creating, that we are putting out there. And there are also other types of Organic Marketing, and that can look like, Okay, we’ve got content, we’ve got Connecting with others.

Networking is a great way to organically market your business. Networking, word of mouth, getting out, meeting other people, that’s a really great way to organically market your business. So anything you can do that is going to get your business more visible without putting money behind it. So that’s what marketing is.

It’s simply a way to get your business more visible, right? But what marketing is not Marketing is not sales. These are actually two very different things. So if you think about, you know, a massive company, they’re going to have a marketing department, and they’re also going to have a sales department. But a lot of times, again, a lot of us are solopreneurs.

A lot of times we tend to think, okay, well, my marketing and my sales are all in one. And they’re, they’re close. One leads to the other, but they’re not the same. So, I want you to think of your, you’re marketing your sales like a mountain. And at the top of that mountain, that is where they tag team. So your marketing, it, it does the hard work of leading people to a sale, right?

It, it does the work of moving them and getting them interested in that sale. That, that’s the deep, the steep climb, right? But then you get to the precipice, and your marketing takes it to, or takes your audience to the sales precipice, and you get to that sales precipice, but then your sales, that has to do the rest of the work, and it should be an easier path, right?

Because you’ve already gotten them interested, you’ve already done the work of helping them find you, getting them interested, helping them know that they have the problem that they have, right? So, You’re working them up to that sales precipice, but then once you get to that sales precipice, that’s when sales takes over.

So your marketing is not responsible for your sales. It’s simply responsible for getting your audience to that sales precipice. So your marketing is things like that content that we’re talking about, right? That getting visible, all the things you’re doing to help people know who you are. who you are and what your business does.

That’s all marketing. But your sales, that’s your sales page, your sales call, your sales sequences. Those are all the things that happen after someone’s already interested. And again, sometimes there’s some overlap, a marketing strategist like myself, I will work on both that marketing aspect, but then I also work on sales pages and sales content.

For my clients as well, right? So there can be some overlap, but they are really two very separate things. And so when you’re thinking, why isn’t my marketing working? Your marketing might be working. It might be bringing the audience to the sales precipice. Your sales might not be working. And so those are two different things.

Now, the final shift I want you to make as you’re thinking about your marketing, in order to help simplify your marketing, is that there should be two parts to every marketing strategy. And I alluded to this a little bit earlier when I was talking about what marketing is, but when it comes to a marketing strategy, a lot of times we think, well, I just need to put content out.

And that’s great. But if you’re only putting content out, how are people going to find you? So you need to have both a nurture strategy and a growth strategy within your marketing. So your content tends to be a nurture strategy. It nurtures the audience that you’ve already brought in, the audience that has already found you, right?

And you’re giving, you’re showing up consistently, like we talked about yesterday. You’re showing up consistently. You are giving them what they need. They’re, you’re building that know, like and trust factor. You’re building that relationship with them. That’s what your content is doing. It’s nurturing the audience you already have.

And so your content strategy is part of your nurture strategy. And Other things in your nurture strategy may be, uh, sales funnels you’re creating, nurture sequences you’re creating, your welcome sequence, client onboarding, there’s, there’s a lot that can go into that nurture strategy, right? But content, content marketing goes into that specifically.

Now, the other part of a marketing strategy is a growth strategy, and these are the things that you need to do, the marketing tactics you need to do to bring more people into your audience so that you can then nurture them with that content strategy. So things that go inside of a growth strategy would be Being on a podcast, going and speaking in front of somebody’s membership, or going to a conference, or putting yourself in any position you can to be found by people who have not found you yet.

And by being found, I mean easily being found. So working on your SEO could be a growth strategy. Working on your Pinterest strategy could be a growth strategy. There are so many different ways you can do that. But Those are the kind of things you want to be thinking about. And when it comes to your marketing strategy as a whole, you want to have both that growth strategy and that nurture strategy.

So with that growth strategy, you want to make sure that you have, okay, I have this one strategy that I’m focusing on. I really suggest you take one growth strategy, you focus on it for 90 days at least, because it takes time to see that traction and also, Play around with the strategy. You can go, okay, well, I’m going to work on Pinterest and you can go learn all you need to about Pinterest.

But the reality is whatever you implement first thing right off the bat, it’s not going to be the best strategy for you. And so you have to play around with it and continue to tweak it. So I highly suggest to pick one strategy, focus on that for at least 90 days for a full quarter, and then see where you’re at with it.

Maybe you want to continue playing around with it. Maybe it’s not for you, but that’s your one growth strategy. As you get to understand how some of these growth strategies work, you may be able to put some of them more on autopilot, hand them off to an assistant or whatever, and then you can add on additional growth strategies and start to see growth coming from multiple channels, and that’s great.

But, start with that one. So you’ve got that part of your marketing strategy, and then you’ve also got your nurture strategy, which like I said, that tends to be our content strategy. It tends to be the main part of our nurture strategy. Once we feel really consistent with our content, which if you did not see yesterday’s live, I shared three ways that you can simplify your content creation in order to get consistent.

So I highly recommend that you go check that video out. I will link it below in the comments. So I really encourage you to show up consistently and then once you’re showing up consistently you can then say, okay What’s another way that I can nurture my people? Maybe I want to work up my welcome sequence now Maybe I want to work on a nurture sequence and that way you’re bringing in both the nurture in the growth side into one strategy and you’re able to nurture and market your business and your offers and bring people to that sales precipice, so Those are the three ways that you can start thinking about marketing a little bit differently in order to simplify your marketing strategy for yourself.

If you have any questions and you’re here live, please pop them in the chat right here. I already see some, so I’m going to look at that in just a second. But if you’re here live and you have questions, please ask away. Anything about your marketing strategy, anything about simplifying marketing, I am happy to help and that’s what I’m here for.

And for those watching the replay. Go ahead and pop your questions in the comments, and I’ll come back and answer them. Alright, thank you so much for sharing the information about the different strategies and providing examples. So, I appreciate it. And starting my new business, it’s helpful to see where I should focus some of the marketing at.

Yeah, so when you’re starting a business, my suggestion is always Focus on one thing at a time. So I would focus first and foremost at the very beginning get consistent with that content and Really try to focus it on your messaging when it comes to growth strategy I honestly would suggest probably something like Pinterest where you can just create pins and then pin them on Pinterest and send them back to the content that you’re already creating within your nurture strategy.

It’s a great way to really share more about the content you’re already creating, share more about your business, without having to have your messaging fully nailed down yet. You’re just essentially kind of repurposing the content you already created. So you’re kind of getting a two for one deal slightly with your marketing and so then you can reach the nurture and the growth side of things.

When working with clients who haven’t figured their messaging out yet, it can be difficult to do some of the other growth strategies. When you aren’t quite sure what your messaging is. I have a client right now who is is Incredible at what she does, but she’s having a hard time with the messaging aspect.

And when people ask her, well, what do you do? She goes, I don’t really know. Um, because she does so much and it’s hard to put it into a simple sentence. And so she’s still working on her messaging and that’s something we’re doing together. So a great gross strategy for her right now is Pinterest. So for anyone else that’s starting a business and it’s like, I don’t even know what to do.

How do I do both of these? Parts of a marketing strategy that would be my suggestion for the growth strategy side of things So anyone else have any questions, please pop them in the chat if you’re here live I know i’ve got quite a few friends here watching. Hi. I’m, so glad you’re here. Um, and if you are watching the replay pop them into the Comments and I will be coming back and monitoring the comments and making sure that I can answer questions for you And who knows maybe your question will spark one of the very future videos So, for those of you that have not seen, this is one of my very first videos on my channel.

Welcome. And, I am going live every day this week at 4pm Pacific Time, 7pm Eastern Time, and we’ll be just chatting about all things marketing and simplifying your marketing. But every Monday after that, every single Monday, I will be going live and I will have a short teaching like this and then I’ll be available to answer questions while we have some and once we’re done with questions, we will be done for the evening and I’ll see you back the week after that.

Alright, bye! If you haven’t watched yesterday’s live all about simplifying your content creation, I highly, highly recommend that you go do that. I’ve mentioned that a couple of times here in this video already, but I talk about three ways that you can simplify your content creation. And this is so important because it not only saves you time, but it also can help you be consistent with your content.

And when you’re consistent with your content, you build the know, like and trust factor with your audience, which means you’re building a relationship with your audience, which means they’re more likely to buy from you. We don’t just market ourselves and we don’t just put content out to, Get people to buy from us.

We are truly wanting to build relationships But that is an important part of making sales and running a business So highly recommend that if you’re not consistent with your content yet go watch yesterday’s video I’m going to link it in this end screen and also in the description below And if you have any questions at all, let me know I will see you back here tomorrow and we will have another live chat and I hope you’ll bring your questions and we can, uh, work through whatever it is that you’re struggling with, with your own marketing.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode, and if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 214: A Peek at My New YouTube Channel appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

It’s common in the online space for us to use six-figures as the “made it” goal. AKA, when we’ve hit six-figures in revenue in a calendar year, we’ve officially become a real business owner.

And while I actually think that metric is arbitrary, and the sentiment is a bit garbage, I do know that many people have the goal of six-figures set because that’s what they need to replace their current income and move into business full-time.

So today, I wanted to share with you what I think the fastest path to six figures is so that you can adjust your own strategy accordingly.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

It’s common in the online space for us to use six figures as the made it goal, aka when we’ve hit six figures in revenue within a calendar year, we’ve officially become a real business owner. While I think that metric tends to be arbitrary and the sentiment is a bit, well, garbage. I do know that many people have the goal of six figures set because that’s what they need in order to replace their current income and move into their business full time.

So today I wanted to share with you what I think the fastest path to six figures is so that you can adjust your own strategy accordingly. You’re listening to episode 213 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming. So that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week. I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices, and meet me here each week for love support, practical tips and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together. Shall we want even more help simplifying your marketing and business?

Love the Chasing Simple Podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4pm Pacific Time, 7pm Eastern Time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short five minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, All you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube at Mrs. Amanda Warfield or by heading to amandawarfield. com / YouTube.

I hope to see you Monday. Let’s just start by addressing the irony here. I have been very transparent on many occasions about the fact that I actually have not made six figures in revenue in one calendar year yet with my business. So. You may be wondering, well, what makes you qualified to talk about the fastest path to six figures?

What makes me qualified is experience. I know what I did wrong in my business, if that had been my goal. It wasn’t necessarily my goal, it was to hit six figures right off the bat. But had that been my goal, I know exactly what I should have done differently because I work with multiple six figure, even in some cases seven figure, businesses.

As clients and I see what they’ve done in their business and what worked and how they got to where they are And it’s made it very clear what I did not do right had that been my goal. So no nothing’s changed I have not yet hit six figures in one calendar year in my business but I do have a very good idea of how if I was starting over and my goal was to hit six figures because I needed to for whatever reason if that was my goal.

I know what I would do differently And the first thing is that I would have one service based offer. That’s what I would start with. Why service? Well, because you can make more money off of service based offers more easily. When it comes to making the money, let’s just face it, one service based offer, you’re making multiple hundreds of dollars, sometimes multiple thousands, depending on what your service is and who the client is.

You’re making all of that money Off of one single client. You just have to have one person that wants to invest in you versus if you start with Educational offers like I did. Well, you have to find a lot of people to make the same amount of money a service That’s 500 a month versus a course that’s 300.

Well, I just need one person to decide to work with me for three months to make 1, 500 versus if I want to make 1, 500 with a one time purchase of 300, that’s what I’m

And yes, in theory, and in practice as well, you can make more with those educational offers in the long run, right? Over time, as you grow your audience and you have more and more people willing to buy, you can. Make the offer up front and then you can just sell it. It’s a less time consuming Offer so you can sell way more of those and make more money in the long run However, when you’re starting off you don’t have that option, right?

You don’t have that built an audience unless you’re someone who’s been building an audience for free for years You’re not going to be able to jump into education based offers and make six figures right off the bat However, it is not difficult to jump into a service based offer Well, I don’t want to say it’s not difficult.

It’s not all that outrageous. It’s completely possible. This is, I guess, a good way to say that. It’s completely possible to make six figures in your first year of business with a service based offer, particularly if you’re doing these other things that I’m going to share with you today. So that’s why I would say service based.

When I first started off, I was very adamant that I wanted to be an Educational, an educator, period. I wanted to continue to be able to teach. And so that’s what I was really passionate about and I’m really glad that that’s the route I took. And now I do offer services and I do love working with my clients, but I love getting to educate.

That is my true passion. And so I’m not upset about the way that I went about it, but if I was, you know, really hoping for that six figures, I did not choose the fastest path to that. The other part of that one service based offer is the one. So we’ve talked about why service, but why just one? Why are we only focusing on one specific offer?

And that’s because it’s easiest to iterate and improve and sell an offer when it’s the only thing you’re doing. The more you stretch yourself thin with different offers, the harder it’s going to be to get clients. And that’s strictly because when you were just in one offer and you’re focused on that one offer and you’re working on that one offer day in and day out, you begin to see how you can improve it.

You begin to see why people want it and need it. You begin to see what you Who is your ideal client and who isn’t and when you’re just totally immersed in that It makes it so much easier for you to actually market that one offer Which allows you to bring in more clients that are a better fit who will love what you do and then help you market and do that yourself and say, Hey, I worked with this person.

They did XYZ for me. They’re incredible. You need them. That’s much more likely to happen if you’re focused on truly one specific offer, which speaking of marketing, you also want to have one marketing strategy in place. That’s it. Now. Within that one marketing strategy, you’ll probably remember from past podcast episodes where I’ve talked about growth and nurture strategies being part of one marketing strategy.

Every marketing strategy has two parts. You’ve got your growth strategy and your nurture strategy. My suggestion would be your nurture strategy is your content. And that means that you want to have one website, one social media platform, an email newsletter, one free opt in that will lead to that one service.

One welcome sequence and one sales sequence, both of which lead to that one service. And so that way with your nurture strategy and with your content, it’s really easy to create that content and to make sure that you’re nurturing well through your nurture strategy and through your marketing because you only have one specific offer.

And so it makes that side of your marketing strategy. And then when it comes to your growth strategy, my suggestion would be to focus on connections. There’s a lot of different growth strategies out there. You could host a summit, be in a bundle, host a private podcast, do this, do that. But I would suggest as you’re getting started and if you want the fastest path to six figures is to get out there and connect, find networking groups, both online, virtually and in your local area.

Connect, connect, connect and let that be your focus for growth. And if you can sit there and focus on, I’ve got my one growth strategy, which is connecting with others. I’ve got my one nurture strategy, which is my content strategy that feeds people from my social media to my opt in to my, uh, One service and I’ve got that one service that is going to be your fastest path to six figures and it’s not glamorous It’s not necessarily fun and exciting but if you can focus on just one Service based offer and stick with that one offer and not get shiny object syndrome until you fit those six figures That’s going to be your fastest path to six figures.

Now, your action step for this week, I would love to see you, if you don’t already have that offer, brainstorm what that offer would be. But if you do already have that offer, brainstorm what a great opt in would be for that. Because that’s going to be the next thing you want to have set up. Once you’ve got your offer in place, what is a great freebie that will lead really naturally into your offer?

So that would be my action step for you. Make sure you’ve got that in place. And then this week’s book recommendation is None of This is True by Lisa Jewell. This book was, it’s a, it’s a psychological thriller. If you haven’t read any of Lisa Jewell’s other books, they’re all great. But this one was a lot of fun because it was about a podcaster and it definitely made my It made me think.

I’ll leave it at that, but I highly recommend that book and I will link to that in the show notes. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast, and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 213: Your Fastest Path to Six Figures appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

If you’ve never sent an annual survey before, this episode is for you. Annual surveys are one of my FAVORITE ways to improve my marketing each year – because they’re incredibly helpful and easy to do.

In today’s episode, you’ll hear more about how I use annual surveys, how to get people to actually take your survey, what to ask, the emails to send, and how you can potentially make money from your survey.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

If you’ve never sent an annual survey before, this episode is for you. Annual surveys are one of my favorite ways to improve my marketing each year because they’re incredibly helpful and easy to do. In today’s episode, you’ll hear more about how I use annual surveys. How do you get people to actually take your survey?

What to ask, the emails to send, and how you can potentially make money from your annual survey? You’re listening to episode 212 of The Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your [email protected] / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients such as the Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business?

Love the Chasing Simple Podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4pm Pacific Time, 7pm Eastern Time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5 minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube, at Mrs. Amanda Warfield, or by heading to amandawarfield. com / YouTube.

I hope to see you Monday! So an annual survey is one of my favorite ways to improve my marketing each and every year. And this is because not only do you have really simple ways to pull out content ideas, right? Because the people taking the survey, your audience, they’re telling you exactly what questions you have.

So it’s really easy to go, okay, here’s the question. Here’s my answer. I’m going to turn that answer into content. You’ve got tons of content ideas. It also will give you really great ideas for offers that your people actually want and need. There’s no more let me pull an offer out of thin air. It’s, oh, this is something I saw over and over again.

I’ve got a really easy offer that can help with that. And then it also helps with your messaging. So you can pull directly from responses and the way that things are phrased and the problems that they’re saying they have. And use that in your messaging, in your sales pages, in your emails. And this makes it so much more likely to resonate when someone’s looking at that sales page because you know exactly how they’re thinking about the problem and the different Objections you need to overcome and different things like that So this is one of my favorite things to do every year to improve my marketing I make sure all of my clients have one in their own marketing calendar as well because it’s so helpful So what does it look like first you create?

The form, I use a Google form. It’s really simple. And I just duplicate it every year. You create the form. I’m going to share the questions in a moment. You create the form and then you market it, which we’ll talk about the emails I send in a minute as well. Once you’ve got your dates done, you set a couple of days and you say, okay, by the end of this day, if you haven’t submitted.

You can’t be entered to win, you draw the winner, you email the winner, you email the people that didn’t win, and then you analyze the results, or send your results to a marketing strategist, and they can analyze them for you. So, how does it work? How do you make people take the time to do this? One, you keep it short and sweet, but two, You give them something that is actually enticing.

So I’ve tried so many different things. Some things have worked, some haven’t. One year I gave away some of my favorite candles because I personally loved them. They weren’t as exciting for people. This year I did an Amazon gift card. People loved that. I also often will suggest for clients who are wanting to fill their client roster, suggest that they give away.

Give away a mini offer that will lead into their client roster. Or if you have digital products, you can give away a seat in your digital products or give away a coupon or something like that. So there’s a lot of different things that you can do depending on what your overall goals are. But let’s say for the sake of this example, that you’re going to do a mini offer.

So maybe there’s a small part of your one on one that you can pull out and create a mini offer for. And it’s something that once they get a taste, they’re going to say, Oh, yes, I want to take the next step. Now, the goal for the annual survey is not to upsell people, but it doesn’t hurt to attempt to upsell people.

The goal is to get as many people to take the survey as possible. That’s what you really want to focus on. But as you’re creating this offering, you’re trying to get people into it, It’s always worth having that upsell in your back pocket. So for example, you may have a mini offer and one person can win it.

You draw the winner after you’ve closed the survey and you’ve gotten all the names, you draw the winner, you email the winner and you say, Hey, you won this mini offer. Here’s how you get it. You do the mini offer for them. And then at the end of the mini offer, you say, I’d love to keep working with you. If they’re a good, ideal client, right?

I’d love to keep working with you. Here’s how we can continue working together. They may decide to work with you. But, that’s only one person. What about all the other people? Well, there’s two things you can do. You could do an upsell or a downsell, essentially. So you could, that’s not really what a downsell is, but for the sake of this example, you could say, hey, I want to work with you.

You didn’t win this thing that I was giving away, but here’s how you could get it at a discount. And so you say, okay, my mini offer is normally 147. You can get it for 97 for the next couple of days. Or you could say, hey, you didn’t win. I wish I could do this for everyone. Here’s X amount off of a lower ticket offer that I have.

Maybe it’s a digital product instead of a one on one service. You know, there, there are a couple of different options you can use there. And then same thing though, if you upsell them into that mini service, You can then upsell them potentially into your one on one service. So again, that’s not really the point of the annual survey, but it’s worth doing and having in mind as you’re going about creating it.

Now, what do we ask? What questions do we ask? I like to keep my annual survey so short and sweet because frankly that’s really one of the only ways to get people to do it. So everyone has to put in their email address and their first name because otherwise you’ll have no way to actually contact them, but email address and first name and then I do five questions.

The first one is always, which of the following best describes you? Check all that apply, and this one depends on how well you know your audience. You may be using it to try to get to know your audience. You may be trying to determine what phase of business they’re in. You may be trying to determine how many kids they have, what phase of life.

That’s gonna vary so much by who you are and who you cater to, but let’s say that you You teach parents how to potty train. Well, you’re gonna be trying to figure out are you a parent yet? Are you wanting to be a parent? Are you a first time mom? Are you a You know, you have six kids. You’re trying to figure out where in parenthood they are.

For someone that is business to business, they be They may be trying to figure out whether their audience mostly sells one on one services, if they have digital products, if they’re an influencer, so on and so forth. Then, the second question I like to ask is, when you aren’t in the room, what do you hope your friends are saying about you and your business or your parenting or whatever?

This is actually a question that I got from Christina Scalera. I was working with her at one point and she was helping me really Tweak my annual surveys and this was one of the questions that I took away from what she was teaching me that I really liked This year I asked when you aren’t in the room What do you hope your friends are saying about you and that was helpful to an extent But I’ve tweaked it even further for clients and taking it to you and whatever Just so that it gets a little more specific to whatever it is that you’re talking about because I got a lot of I hope They say that I’m hopeful.

I hope they say this and I feel like those were all answers that I already knew, but maybe you’ll get things that you don’t, but that’s why I added and your business or you and your parenting or you and whatever it is that you focus on. The third question. Now, this one again, I’ll have like a blank in here.

What is your biggest struggle right now when it comes to blank, please be as specific and detailed as possible. This is going to depend on, On one, what you do, but also specifically what you’re trying to create more content around. So this year I just said, what’s your biggest struggle when it comes to marketing?

But in the past I’ve asked, what’s your biggest struggle when it comes to launching? What’s your biggest role when it comes to creating content? And I’ve asked specifically so I could help create content around a specific offer. So I could help with my sales pages. This year I just went more general. The next question I ask is if you could get one blank question answered without paying 200 an hour for it, what would you ask?

You can change this up depending on how much you charge an hour, and then you can also, again, you can get specific or not specific based on what it is that you’re needing this year. I just said if you were to get one marketing strategy or launch question asked, what would it be? But you may want to get really, really specific about a certain thing, and you may not.

And then the final question I ask is, is there anything else you think that I should know or that you’d like to see more of in the future? And that’s it. So it’s five questions plus name and email, so really seven, less than 10 questions. It should take less than five minutes to answer. None of these are really long answers.

They’re one sentence type answers or they’re multiple choice or check all that apply. So it, it helps to actually get people to finish it that way. So those are the questions that I ask, the questions that I give clients when they need help with theirs. And it’s been very helpful over the last few years to get what I actually need.

I’ve tried a ton of different questions. If you’ve taken my surveys in the past, I’ve had long ones, I’ve had short ones. These are the five that I’ve really nailed down as far as what tends to be the most helpful for me as a marketing strategist, both for myself and for my clients. Now, how do I get people to take it?

Here are the emails I send. So, the, uh, I tend to have it open for about four to five days. The day that the annual survey opens, quote unquote, I send my typical newsletter that I would that day. I always open it on a Tuesday with the day that I normally send my newsletter. And then I have a little PS at the bottom.

Then, the next day, I will send an email that talks about the survey. If I’m offering one of my own offers, I’ll talk about the offer itself and really get them excited about that offer. Then two days later I’ll send one that just says, Hey, in case you missed it, would you please fill out this survey?

Enter to win, blah, blah, blah. And then on the last day, it’s a, Hey, last call. I would really love for you to be entered to win this thing. This one’s short and sweet. Here’s the annual survey. If you fill it out, you’re in it to win. And so I only send, I send three emails specifically about it, and then I also have that first one with the PS.

But that’s it. And that tends to get plenty of traction, and I don’t have to send tons of emails or really long emails, and I’m able to focus more on what they get out of it versus What it is that I need them to do. So that is my entire Annual survey strategy. If you still have questions, come join me on YouTube next Monday for one of my lives.

I go live on Mondays at 4 p. m. Pacific Time or 7 p. m. Eastern Time and That’s a great opportunity for you to be able to ask questions So I highly encourage if you still have questions about your annual survey strategy or anything marketing related Come join me and I would love to chat Your action step for this week is to put a date on the calendar For your annual survey because if it’s not on the calendar, you’re not gonna get to it And then your book recommendation i’m gonna do a selfish plug this week and share about my own book chasing simple marketing A crash course in content marketing for showing up saving time and growing your business If you have not read the book yet, make sure you go do so.

You can head to amandawarfield. com slash book to learn more about how you can snag it for yourself or just head to Amazon. Search my name, search Chasing Symbol Marketing. You can get it in all of the different formats. There’s paperback, hardback, Kindle. By the time you listen to this, the audio book may be out, which also if you buy a hardcover or a paperback or the Kindle version, You can get the audio book for free right now, just saying.

But that is your book recommendation for this week. Selfish plug and until next time, I hope the you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing [email protected]. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 212: Steal My Annual Survey Strategy appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

When I’m looking for a service, the website truly makes or breaks whether or not I’ll take the next step with a company.

However, when we’re busy with the day to day of our business, it can be difficult to find the time to work on our website and keep it up to date. Because we aren’t searching for our own services, our websites can tend to be well .. out of sight, out of mind.

So today, I brought on my friend Kate to chat about what’s important when you’re DIYing your website, and how to know if your website is actually selling your services for you.

Kate Hejde of Dear Kate Brand Strategy, is on a mission to help you launch a website that not only sells your services effortlessly but also is a site you’re proud to show off! She empowers service providers to build the thriving business they imagined, through website coaching, showit templates, and her podcast How You Pictured It.

Kate Hejde (hide) of Dear Kate Brand Strategy, is on a mission to help you launch a website that not only sells your services effortlessly but also is a site you’re proud to show off! She empowers service providers to build the thriving business they imagined, through website coaching, showit templates, and her podcast How You Pictured It.

Social Links:

Instagram.com/dearkatebrandstrategy

dearkatebrandstrategy.com

howyoupicturedit.com

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic

Amanda Warfield: When I’m looking for a service, the website of a company truly makes or breaks whether or not I’m going to take the next step with them. However, when we’re busy with the day to day of our business, it can be difficult to find the time to work on our website and keep it up to date. Because we aren’t searching for our own services, our websites can tend to be, well, Out of sight, out of mind.

Amanda Warfield: So today I brought on my friend Kate to chat about what’s important when you’re DIYing your website and how to know if your website is actually selling your services for you. Kate Hyde of Dear Kate Brand Strategy is on a mission to help you launch a website that not only sells your services effortlessly, but also is a site you’re proud to show off.

Amanda Warfield: She empowers service providers to build the thriving business they imagined through website coaching, show it templates, and her podcast, How You Pictured It. You’re listening to episode 211 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

Amanda Warfield: com / planner.

Amanda Warfield: How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Amanda Warfield: Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

Amanda Warfield: I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

Amanda Warfield: When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as the Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Amanda Warfield: Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing isn’t there.

Amanda Warfield: is the thing that they started their business to do. Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming. So that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

Amanda Warfield: So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business?

Amanda Warfield: Love the Chasing Simple Podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4pm Pacific time, 7pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5 minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

Amanda Warfield: Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, All you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube at Mrs. Amanda Warfield or by heading to amandawarfield. com slash YouTube.

Amanda Warfield: I hope to see you Monday. Kate, I’m so excited to have you on finally. I feel like When we initially started talking about having you on, I was like, how is it possible that I haven’t had Kate on yet at this point? And so now that it’s been, I think, a year since we started talking about having you on, um, I really can’t believe I haven’t had you on yet.

Amanda Warfield: So for everyone that’s listening, just introduce yourself and what it is that you do. 

Kate Hejde: Yeah, I’m Kate of Dear Kate Brand Strategy. I’m excited to be here. I am a brand strategist, a website coach, and a copywriter. I help people DIY their websites so that they can start selling their services without the social media hustle and get back to like the life that they really pictured when they started their business.

Amanda Warfield: I love that so much. Obviously, you know that I’m all about keeping it simple and I had a community call this morning with my membership and we were talking about the fact that social media is just not getting engagement and that it feels like you put so much work in right now and you’re not seeing the return and it just, it aligns so well with this because it is so important that you have a website.

Amanda Warfield: So, can you kind of tell the listeners why it is important that they have a website though? That actually is a conversation that came up with a potential client yesterday of just do I actually need a website? Can I just have a landing page or can I just get word of mouth? So why is it that a website is so important?

Kate Hejde: So if nothing else, a landing page is something. But having a piece of the internet that you own, that you can send everyone back to, is so valuable. It creates a place that Builds credibility and authority for you as a business. It’s a place where you can put all of your content, um, like your long form content, your blog posts.

Kate Hejde: If you’re a YouTuber, you can put your YouTube videos on your own website and that brings traffic to you. A website is a way that we can get traffic without having to like constantly put something out. It’s a long form or like not long form, long game way to get people into your business. So having like that SEO, that search engine optimization drives Google to your site and brings people in without, um, that constant like hustle.

Kate Hejde: It’s also bringing in people that are looking for you and your services. So they’re already like. I’m looking for a photographer. I’m looking for a coach. I’m looking for a copywriter. Whoever they’re looking for, they’re searching Google for you and they’re finding your website and they’re coming in as worm leads ready to buy.

Kate Hejde: You don’t have to convince them that they’re, that you’re something that they need. They already know that they need your service. So they’re coming in like ready to go and you just have to show them that you’re the right person with your website. Also, we know that like social media crashes constantly.

Kate Hejde: We’ve had a couple of Instagram crashes recently where it’s just gone down for hours during the day and your website is a place that you can drive people back to. I know that a lot of people find business through Instagram or through referrals, but you still have to have that website to back up those other sources.

Kate Hejde: If somebody goes to your Instagram and sees these beautiful photos or, you know, this great content and then goes to your website and your website doesn’t match, it Like really pulls back that like trust factor and makes people question if you’re a legitimate business. So having that, um, credibility in a website is huge.

Kate Hejde: And then the same thing with a referral. If I refer somebody to you and they go look you up and you have a horrible website, my My, like, friend that I referred to is going to be like, what were you thinking? Like, you know, like we want, we want to have a website that creates that authority and credibility.

Amanda Warfield: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you think about anytime a friend tells you about anything, you automatically Google it, right? Like, it’s never just a, okay, let me buy it immediately or let me book this person immediately. You. Always go look at a website, whether it’s a book that they’re talking about or a service like this.

Amanda Warfield: And so it is so important to have a website and one that actually works for your business and feels professional, because we have Um, tried to work with service providers in our area, particularly around like lawn care or home services, construction, things like that a lot in the last few years. And every single time, the one we book with is the one with the better website.

Amanda Warfield: It just is the way it is. And it’s not a conscious decision. It’s just, it really builds more know, like interest, which I feel like maybe isn’t talked about all that often as far as like, here’s why a good website is so important because In this day and age, it’s 2024. If your website looks like it was built on HTML, people are going to wonder, are you still in business?

Amanda Warfield: Are you legitimate? Are you just running a business outside of your truck? Which maybe they are, but you don’t necessarily want to look at it, right? You want to look like you have some kind of professionalism. Are you going to show up on time? Are you going to get the job done on time? All of those things.

Amanda Warfield: Subconsciously, if your website isn’t Looking nice, if it’s not professional, those are the thoughts that are going to be going through someone’s head. 

Kate Hejde: Right, and it’s more than just how it appears to, it’s the words on the site and how you drive people through it, how you like lead them from like interested to buying and like create that connection before they even ever contact you.

Amanda Warfield: So how do you do that? That is something that I think we get wrong a lot in the creative industry. I know I struggle with this too with my website where. I’ve bought into the idea that it needs to look beautiful. I’ve got the shop website. It looks great, but every time I’ve gone through and done a major rebranding of my website, or just.

Amanda Warfield: You know, starting from scratch, I always struggle with the pathways and how to know what do I post on each page and what, how do I create a pathway and does that mean I can only put, you know, I, there are just so many questions that it feels so overwhelming. So when it comes to deciding how to lead people through your website, where do you even begin?

Kate Hejde: Well, there are really great like frameworks that exist in copywriting. So there are ways that we work people through each page and from page to page, like what kind of flow we want them to go through. But we also don’t have control over where someone lands on our website. Google might show them a blog post first or, you know, your services page or your homepage.

Kate Hejde: We don’t know. They could land on your about page. So we have to kind of have that in mind and make sure that we make all of our navigation really clear. And like easy for people to understand and a lot of it is testing and seeing like once you’ve built the site, great, but let’s also like look at the data and make sure that people are following the path that we think that they’re going to follow and then tweak from there.

Kate Hejde: But again, back to like the frameworks, there’s ways that you walk people through, like you start with getting their attention and then like making them understand that you understand them and then move into how, um, they can start to work with you or what driving them towards the paths that of information that they might need to know to make a buying decision.

Kate Hejde: And always having a lot of calls to action throughout to make it easy for them to click to the next thing. Now, not too many. We don’t want to give them overwhelm. We don’t want to be that cheesecake factory menu. We want to be like the nice like boutique restaurant with that prefix menu, you know, like that you’re going in and the meal is already like planned and you don’t have to worry about like, which, um, 17.

Kate Hejde: entries I’m going to choose from, there’s two options. Like we want to make it really clear and easy for people with our navigation and our calls to action throughout our site. That’s another big thing. Um, and then just thinking about how people talk. We talked about having a professional website, but we also want to make sure that we’re reaching them on their level and not using like jargon and words that they don’t understand.

Kate Hejde: We want to use conversational language and connect through that language. And that really does help drive that path forward as well through your site. 

Amanda Warfield: So, if we, we want to drive people, the ultimate end goal is to our services page and we want to book more clients. What does that pathway look like if we’re trying to set up a pathway through our website to actually get people onto the services page?

Amanda Warfield: And what navigation, you mentioned that specifically, what navigation should we make sure that we have on our website? 

Kate Hejde: Yeah, so I think it’s going to depend a little bit on what you do. Um, I recommend either having individual services pages if you have services that may target to different audiences. Um, like for a photographer, you might have newborn photography, wedding photography, and boudoir photography.

Kate Hejde: Those are three very different clients, but they can exist all on the same website. So in that instance, in my navigation, I would have newborn. boudoir wedding so people could find what they were looking for. The other option is if you have multiple services but that all kind of cater to the same person.

Kate Hejde: I would do like a work together page where you’re talking about the problem that you solve and then the three ways that you solve it as your service is all on the same page. Basically, with a services page, you’re talking specifically about one offer, how you’re going to help somebody with it. You’re going to put, uh, testimonials there.

Kate Hejde: You’re going to build credibility. You’re going to build that kind of like, no, I can trust factor. Tell them who you are, but that’s further down the page. So you’re just kind of like thinking through like, okay, if somebody lands on this page, what do they need to know first? First, they need to know that I know what their problem is.

Kate Hejde: Second, they need to know that I understand their problem and that there’s a different way to look at it or a way to solve it. There’s a different way that life could be. And then I can throw in some testimonials, throw in a little bit more about the offer, and you just kind of build upon that. You like go emotional, logical, emotional, logical, back and forth down the page and make sure that you’re putting those calls to action.

Kate Hejde: So once something triggers them, that they’re ready to click that contact button, it’s there for them to get to that contact page and start booking you. 

Amanda Warfield: So if you have essentially one type of audience, and you’ve got multiple services, do you have the one page that’s like, here’s what I solve and all the ways I solve it, and then when they click on that, it takes them to another service page, or is it just that one service page?

Kate Hejde: It kind of depends on the offer and how complex it is. Um, in some instances, it’s just like one work together page. Here’s what I do and contact me to get more information. In other instances, you might have a sales page for a specific offer, um, that you lead them to from that, uh, services page. You could also even have like a button that says contact me or Learn more so they can either go straight to booking with you or get more information on a sales page depending on the person.

Kate Hejde: Some people want a lot of information, some people don’t. So you kind of have to think through like all of the different people that are visiting your site and how they might want to interact with it. 

Amanda Warfield: And this is kind of going sideways a bit from what we’re talking about, but with CRM tools, how do you recommend that those work with your services page on your website as far as, well, HoneyBook has lead forums and brochures and, you know, is it something that Should your services page on your website be shorter so you can get them to those brochures or vice versa or yeah?

Amanda Warfield: What are your thoughts on that? 

Kate Hejde: Yeah, and again, it kind of just depends on what you offer and who you’re offering it to. I always find that having at least like a starting price on your website is important in giving people an idea of like what you’re offering. You know, are, are we looking at something at a menu that says market price and I have no idea how much that steak’s going to cost me or am I looking at it and knowing like, okay, I’m in this range and it’s affordable for me.

Kate Hejde: I find when you don’t have pricing at all, it either makes people think they can’t afford you and so they don’t contact you or the opposite, like they have the budget, but. They don’t want to be bothered with asking. So going back to the CRM thing, I like to duplicate information a lot. So everything that’s on my site is kind of in my CRM proposals as well.

Kate Hejde: I want to make sure that I’m like talking about it in a different way a little bit. It’s more personal when I send it through the CRM, um, than when they’re landing on my website. My website has more general information for everybody. And then that contact form, like proposal stuff that I sent through Dubsado.

Kate Hejde: Has more like tailored information and I always tweak my like response emails to be a little bit personal Get to know them a little bit But I have like a form letter or form email that I send candy mail That I go in and tweak and like, you know Taylor to what they’ve sent me so that I I’m Making sure that I hit all of the points that I know that I want to hit In my email, but also adding a little bit of customization and personalization to it.

Amanda Warfield: I cool. So basically you’re using the same information on both and really just making sure they have all of that information. Okay. 

Kate Hejde: Because we don’t know that they’re going to see the pricing information on our website or, you know, like all of those details of like our three step process or whatever. We want to make sure that we’re hitting them with it twice.

Kate Hejde: And the other thing is like they are probably looking at multiple pieces of people’s websites So they don’t remember which one you were when they contacted you and you contact them back. They don’t have like the full picture when they’re getting that email. So you want to make sure that you’re like driving it home again and reinforcing it.

Kate Hejde: People need to see things multiple times to get the, get the message. 

Amanda Warfield: You know, I’ve heard that part of it before where, Oh, they’re looking at multiple people, this and that. I’ve never heard anyone say the fact that they may not get to that place on your services page. I’ve never thought about it from that perspective, because as I go through and I create my services page, I’m like, well, I’ve got this on here and this on here and this on here.

Amanda Warfield: But realistically, hopefully, fingers crossed, they’re using one of those calls to actions towards the top of the page and not even getting there, and I’ve never thought about that before. 

Kate Hejde: Yeah, and it happens a lot. I like, I’ve had people contact me even for websites and they’re like, Oh, I had no idea what you did.

Kate Hejde: I just like liked your homepage and then clicked to contact you. And that was where, where we met. And so making sure that you’re like filling in the gaps for them, regardless of if they already have the information, it’s not going to hurt them to read it again. 

Amanda Warfield: That’s such a good reminder. Okay. And so often I feel like, Oh, I don’t want to bother them.

Amanda Warfield: I don’t want to, you know, be annoying. I don’t want to over communicate. But I do think you’re right. It’s totally important to make sure that no, this is what you’re getting because I have had clients who’ve been like, I booked with you because I like you. I don’t even, I don’t know what you’re giving me.

Kate Hejde: Yes. And it’s creating ease for them by giving it. all the information in one place. So any way we can like reduce that friction, make it easier for the client and give them everything that they need, uh, super helpful. 

Amanda Warfield: That’s so great. So you also mentioned data and looking at the data to know what it is that’s happening on your website.

Amanda Warfield: How do you even go about finding that data? 

Kate Hejde: I think the easiest way, especially for like creative brands, is a tool called Hotjar. It’s, there’s a free option, it’s something that you install a little piece of code on the back end of your website and then you can watch videos of how people interact with your website.

Kate Hejde: Which sounds a little creepy, but it’s, like, There’s no personal data showing, you don’t know who it is on your website, but it’s like literally a video of someone scrolling, someone clicking, you can see how long they spent on each section, and that helps my mind see like how people are interacting. It also helps me catch mistakes, like sometimes I’ll publish a page and not realize that I didn’t fix.

Kate Hejde: The thing on the mobile or, you know, like I, I’m not like thinking through how someone else is reading it until I see them interact with it. And I realized like, oh, I should put the contact form or like the opt in form after this piece of text or whatever. Like, just seeing how they’re scrolling through it and interacting is huge.

Kate Hejde: The other thing is just. old school Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Those help us see like what terms people are searching to get to our site, which pages are growing and getting better, um, interaction. But that Hotjar one really is just like a visual, easy to understand way to look at things.

Amanda Warfield: So when you’re looking at Hotjar, which we’ll link to in the show notes, guys, but when you’re looking at Hotjar, you look specifically at the actual videos. That 

Kate Hejde: it sends you? I do look at the videos, um, and especially if I’m like in the middle of a launch or like trying to promote something in particular, um, I make sure that I’m looking at those specific pages.

Kate Hejde: I also look at the heat maps, which show like how far people scroll down the page because like sometimes you’re like, why is no one buying this? And then you realize that they’re not even getting to like the pitch. part of the page. And so it’s like, Oh, you need to make my sales page shorter or like get to the point faster.

Kate Hejde: Um, or you see that they’re scrolling all the way to the bottom and they’re still not buying. And you’re like, okay, what is missing? What’s not connecting with people? So that’s a really good way to like, kind of interpret that data. I also like to use AI and say, like, like you could put in a screenshot of the page and say, or even the heat map and say like, what could I do to improve this page and make sure more people are clicking the call to action.

Kate Hejde: And I think like 

Amanda Warfield: chat 

Kate Hejde: GPT. 

Amanda Warfield: Okay. 

Kate Hejde: Yeah. If you have chat GPT plus you can upload a photo, um, and it will help you analyze kind of the data on the page and figure out what’s going on. 

Amanda Warfield: That is so fascinating. I had no idea that you could do that. 

Kate Hejde: Yeah. There’s so many cool uses for AI that we are not using yet.

Amanda Warfield: Yeah. That’s amazing. Okay. So you’ve got the heat maps. You’ve got the videos. So in the videos. What do you see often, and how do you interpret that data? 

Kate Hejde: Yeah, I think mostly it’s seeing, like, I like to see where people came from. That’s a huge piece of it. Like, you can see if they came from Google, if they came from a Facebook ad, or Instagram.

Kate Hejde: And then seeing, just, I like to see how they’re interacting with the pages. I’ve got somebody coming to a landing page that’s an opt in page, and then they’re clicking something in my menu, I’m like, oh, I just need to take the menu off this page, I’m distracting them. Like, that’s helpful. Or, you know, if they’re landing on a page, reading it, and still not opting in, And then clicking out of it completely, I know that, like, my messaging’s not connecting at all.

Kate Hejde: Like, they’re not interested. So either there’s a disconnect between the ad copy and the landing page, um, or it’s, I’m not targeting the right person. The other thing would be if they land on that landing page, the opt in form, and then they click to something else, I’m not giving them enough data in the landing page for them to trust me.

Kate Hejde: So just different ways to, like, think through what is it, what is it that they’re doing and what does that mean. 

Amanda Warfield: So essentially you have to know what your goals are for each page of your website. Absolutely. In order to really understand and interpret that data. 

Kate Hejde: Yeah, yeah. And I think you need to know what the goals are for that page before you build it too.

Amanda Warfield: How does knowing what the goal is for that page help you build it? 

Kate Hejde: So, you have to kind of think through like, is the person landing on this page a worm? Yeah. audience member, like somebody that’s already knows my offer. Are they coming in cold? Do I, how much information do I need to give them to build that trust?

Kate Hejde: Do I need to give them more logical information? Do I need to give them more of the emotional information? So thinking through like where they’re coming from and then what you want them to do at the end of it. And thinking through what information needs to happen to get them from point A to point B is really where that strategy comes in with building the page.

Amanda Warfield: So, when it comes to services, do you have two different types of services, Paige? One that’s for warmer, yeah? Yeah, I will. I 

Kate Hejde: don’t know not for not for warm audience versus cold audience. I do want like all of the same information to be there. Um, I think that the way that you lay it out helps, um, people track through it.

Kate Hejde: So like if they land there and they know that they’re interested, they’re going to scroll past that first part. That’s like warming them up 

Amanda Warfield: to the more 

Kate Hejde: like logical informative parts. And I think Thinking through like how you lay out like those logical informative parts and make it clear like, like, here’s the data come right here, you know, like it’s, it’s easy for people to see that signal as they scroll down a page to get to the data if they’ve already kind of like been warmed up and opted in.

Amanda Warfield: Is there anything you do that kind of signals like, hey, this is the, the data, the information, the step by step, the price? Yeah, a lot of that is just using numbers. 

Kate Hejde: So, like, if I have, like, here’s how it works, and like, clear headlines, here’s how it works, step one, step two, step three, um, and then having, like, headlines that say, like, well, how much does it cost?

Kate Hejde: And, like, breaking it down, what’s included, like, making sure that you’re signaling in big text and, like, with numbers or logos or, like, symbols throughout to make it easy for people to find that information as they skim and scan, because people do not read it. A whole web page like they’re going to skim and scan.

Kate Hejde: So finding ways to make your copy more skimmable, um, and using headlines, bolds, things like that to break it up and make it easier for them to do that is huge. So 

Amanda Warfield: simpler, more effective copy. Yes. Yes. Okay. Are there any other tips that you have for helping create a website? 

Kate Hejde: It’s I think really about connecting with the person on the other end, and a lot of that is doing some market research, um, figuring out who you’re talking to and how they’re speaking, using their language, and then figuring out, like, what, What it is about you and how you offer your services that’s special, that’s unique, and that will tie to that person.

Kate Hejde: So, uh, for example, I have a lot of photographers in my audience. I do a lot of photographer websites, but one particular photographer that I worked with is a speech pathologist also. So we, uh, In her previous website, she hadn’t really talked about that part of her life, and it’s her full time job. Like she has a full time job as a speech pathologist and is also a photographer, and she works with kids in that job.

Kate Hejde: It’s like, well, that is the perfect opportunity to tie in talking about like how important communication is to you and how like communication is more than verbal and how we connect with each other physically and communicate physically. and tying that all in. So that was the way that like throughout her website we used that kind of thread to tie her to her ideal client and show that she was different than the other photographers that they were maybe looking at.

Amanda Warfield: Okay, when it comes to a website, I think a lot of times we can think, okay, I got my website created and now I, I’m going to wipe my hands and I’m done with it. But as with everything in business, it’s just another iteration on top of another iteration on top of another iteration. How often do you suggest that creative entrepreneurs review and adjust their websites?

Amanda Warfield: Do you have a timeline for that? Do you have any suggestions for that? 

Kate Hejde: Yeah, I think a quarterly review is probably plenty for most people. I do suggest having content that you add to your website fairly regularly in the form of a blog, um, because Google loves that. Google loves fresh content and talking to your people and answering their questions through blog content will definitely increase your rankings on Google and drive more traffic.

Kate Hejde: It’s also a great way, like, I don’t know about you, but I always see posts in. Um, Facebook groups or whatever, where someone’s asking a question, it’s like, I have a blog post for that and I can share the link to that and get people to my website again. And then maybe later they’re like, Oh yeah, I remember that girl that’s shared that article and she can help me with this.

Kate Hejde: So having those articles that you’ve written is another way to build credibility, authority, uh, and trust. More traffic. But so having that like regular content that you create is great. Either way, at least like quarterly going in and checking and make sure your links aren’t broken, update your pricing, whatever needs to be like touched.

Kate Hejde: Um, swap out some photos just to make it a little bit fresh for Google to crawl again and see like that you’re still active and that you’re still going. Um, I will say my photography business website has not been touched in quite a while and I still get. traffic to it and get inquiries from that website.

Kate Hejde: So it’s, you know, best practices. Every quarter. Sometimes it falls behind. 

Amanda Warfield: Oh, I’m so embarrassed to admit this, but yesterday I was looking at the back end of my website on ShowIt, and I realized that one of my services page was not published. It was turned off. I have been promoting this service, For six months now, I’ve been booking it.

Amanda Warfield: I now I’m like, how in the world was I actually booking it? Because where were they finding it? I must’ve been linking right to the lead form on Instagram, but this whole time I’ve been promoting this service and I created this service page and I never. Published it. It still had the little closed eye and I was like, oh my gosh.

Kate Hejde: Well, now it’ll promote even better, right? It will, 

Amanda Warfield: but a good reason to go and look at the back end of your show more often because that’s embarrassing. 

Kate Hejde: Yeah. And I think like we forget what’s on our website. So like. It’s a good idea to check like once a quarter and go through and like read everything because we change stuff so frequently in our businesses without even like realizing it.

Kate Hejde: So go back and just check once a quarter, read every page, have a friend look through it. And like, it’s a good idea to have a friend look through it once a quarter too anyway, just to like, make sure they click all the buttons and test it for you and just, Does this make sense? So 

Amanda Warfield: I’ve also had, I know a lot of web designers will use the whole, don’t be embarrassed about your website any longer.

Amanda Warfield: And I’ve had those moments of, I have a beautiful website. Like I said, I’m embarrassed because I haven’t updated my services page. And that’s not even what I do. You know, like I’ve had those moments. So don’t be me guys go in quarterly. 

Kate Hejde: And like, if it’s not something that’s like, a zone of genius for you, or even like a zone of competence, hire somebody, like have somebody that you can just reach out to and be like, Hey, um, can you update this and send them a voice note of what needs to be done?

Amanda Warfield: My strategy, like my plan. Yep, 

Kate Hejde: yep. Add it to your, add it to your calendar. Like once every few months to check in on your website. 

Amanda Warfield: Yep, that’s gonna be, that’s my action plan for this week. Yes. But if you could tell the listeners what action step to take after listening to this this week, what would it be?

Kate Hejde: I think the easiest thing to do is to go look at your website. If, okay. If you don’t have a website yet, that needs to start happening. Like, start thinking about what, um, what platform you want to use. I recommend ShowIt, and you, Amanda, use ShowIt as well. It’s very user friendly, um, and very customizable.

Kate Hejde: But, like, start thinking through, like, how you’re going to get a website. I have a podcast episode on my podcast, How You Pictured It, that’s all about the different ways that you can get a website. If you have a website, I have a website report card you can run through, but the easiest thing is going to be look at your menus and make sure that you have it simple.

Kate Hejde: Six things at the most on your main navigation and make sure that you’re using words that people are searching for. So please don’t use investment. Um, no one is searching for the investment for a coach. They’re searching for the price. So, simple things like that are first steps, making sure that it’s clear who you are, what you do, and how to get to the different pages on your website.

Amanda Warfield: I will say, just for all of those that don’t have a website in our immediate, like, no show it’s expensive, that was my first thought for a very long time. It is worth its weight in gold. I spent years on a not user friendly platform, and my website always looked terrible. It cost me money in sales. I know for a fact it did.

Amanda Warfield: And it was so hard to update that I never updated it. Now I don’t update it because I don’t have it in a routine. But it’s really easy when I do go in and update it, not show it’s fault. Um, but I will just say, I know that was my biggest hurdle was show it. And in reality, it’s not actually that much more expensive.

Amanda Warfield: I just, when I was starting out was like, Oh, any extra money isn’t. Yeah. 

Kate Hejde: Yeah. It feels like a lot, but, um, it’s definitely worth it to be able to access the tool. Um, but I have a pet peeve of like, WordPress is the best website platform for SEO, right? But if I can’t use WordPress, my SEO is going to suck because I’m not going to go in and update my stuff.

Kate Hejde: And overall, like the layout, everything is going to be rough. So therefore, WordPress is not the best platform for SEO for me if I can’t use it. So that is like using a tool that That you can actually function with and use and understand is huge for having a website that works for you. 

Amanda Warfield: Yeah, absolutely. I just want to put that plug out there because I, I was that like, Ah, this one’s this much and show it’s this much, show it’s not the cheapest, so I can’t do that yet.

Amanda Warfield: Just do show it. Yeah, just do 

Kate Hejde: show it. You’ll, You’ll save so much time and energy by having a platform that you can actually use and understand, um, versus like investing in building a website on something else. And then having to do it over again. Yep. I mean, I’ve built so many websites for my, in my photography business, I, um, have probably had seven or eight over my 12 years in photography.

Kate Hejde: So, and I’ve had the show at websites since 2019. So that tells you how often I was changing platforms before that. It was a lot. You also mentioned your website report card. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So it is a, um, way for you to audit your own website and it’s like beyond the basic like SEO audit.

Kate Hejde: It’s more talking about how like how your website is connecting with people, um, making sure like you have calls to action throughout. It’s making sure that your menu is user friendly. And it’s a It’s a, it’s built in like a Google Sheet and you just go through and put it side by side with your website, click through each page, answer the questions, and it spits out a grade at the end and gives you like the information of like where you can improve.

Kate Hejde: That’s really cool. Yeah. So it will help you. I’m going to 

Amanda Warfield: go download that. Yeah. It’s really, it’s 

Kate Hejde: a handy tool to like see like, maybe I just need to start over or, you know, like I just need to fix this, this and this. 

Amanda Warfield: Okay, so if you already have a website, that’s your action step for this week is to go grab Kate’s website report card.

Amanda Warfield: I will link to it in the show notes. If you don’t have a website yet, you also have a freebie that helps you get started with creating a strategic website. Tell us about that. 

Kate Hejde: Yeah. So it is a, um, checklist. It’s a workbook style checklist fillable, um, document that you. That walks you through the three phases of building a website.

Kate Hejde: The first is strategy. So figuring out, again, who you’re talking to, um, how to talk to them and writing the copy for it and how to lay out your pages. Then the second step is the site design. So actually like building the pages, it walks you through each step of that. And then finally, it’s getting seen or showing up.

Kate Hejde: And that’s with SEO and launch strategies, walking you through those basics. It’s a. Like hefty freebie. I’m not very good at having like simple freebies. I always want to give you everything. So it is what I walk my students in the website launch accelerator through, um, with website launch accelerator.

Kate Hejde: You get a lot more handholding, you get my AI copywriting tool, my copywriting workbook and a show it template as well as twice a week office hours and live zoom calls to help you through the process. Um, so. That is just like a part of the, the launch list is just a part of my larger program, but I do offer that as a freebie, uh, to help people out if they’re really DIYers and don’t need any more assistance.

Amanda Warfield: Okay. We will link to all of that in the show notes as well, but I cannot let you get out of here without giving everyone a book recommendation first. 

Kate Hejde: Ooh. Um, okay. My very favorite book is not really business y, but is, and that’s Big Magic. It’s by Elizabeth Gilbert. It’s about inspiration and creativity and living with inspiration and living in that like big magic inspired life.

Kate Hejde: That is a book that I love as an audiobook and will listen to over and over again. More business related, um, people always recommend StoryBrand as an alternate, a better option, in my opinion, um, is Made to Stick by, uh, Dan and Chip Heath. It is about, uh, writing and using marketing in a sticky way. uh, draws people to you.

Amanda Warfield: Okay, I have not read that one yet, so I’m gonna go add that to my libby 

Kate Hejde: right now. Yeah, it’s a good one. It, like, it’s way more actionable, I feel like, than StoryBrand. Like, StoryBrand is, like, kind of, like, big ideas wanting you to buy into their program. I feel like, like, my opinion of StoryBrand is not great because I feel like it’s, like, like, an MLM.

Kate Hejde: Like, I feel like it’s, like, here’s a teaser, buy our 3, 000 program. Whereas Made to Stick is an actionable usable system and tool. 

Amanda Warfield: Yeah. Okay. Cool. I’m going to check that out. Well, Kate, thank you for being here. Finally. Finally, I got you on here. Um, where can everyone find you? 

Kate Hejde: I am on Instagram at DearKateBranchStrategy.

Kate Hejde: Same as TikTok. Um, I prefer to be on TikTok, but I am trying really hard to be an Instagram girly. And then my website, of course, at, uh, is DearKateBranchStrategy. com. 

Amanda Warfield: Perfect. Thank you again for being here and for sharing how we can, you know, focus our website so that we’re making sure our services page is selling for us.

Amanda Warfield: Thank you, Amanda.

Amanda Warfield: Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode’s show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Amanda Warfield: Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 211: How to DIY Your Website So It Sells Your Services with Kate Hejde appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

When it comes to marketing, there are about a million different people that can help you improve what you’re doing. And we all sort of overlap, and we all have different skills and it can get pretty confusing.

One of the most common questions I get is if I focus on social media, and the answer to that is definitely not. As a marketing strategist, what I do is commonly confused with a social media manager. So today I wanted to share a bit more about what each of those are and how they differ and be utilized in your own business.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

When it comes to marketing, there are about a million different people that can help you improve what you’re doing. And we all sort of overlap and we all have different skills and it can get kind of confusing. One of the most common questions that I get is if I focus on social media. And the answer to that is definitely not.

As a marketing strategist, what I do is commonly confused with a social media manager, They are very, very different. So today I wanted to share a bit more about what each of those are and how they differ and how they can each be utilized in your own business. You’re listening to episode 210 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

You’re Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial.

But, that doesn’t mean that you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing, even if you’re a solopreneur. Do you dream of business growth but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting? Or do you understand the importance of effective marketing but simply don’t have the time to get it done?

There’s good news. Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back and say hello to a clear actionable roadmap for business growth. In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle.

You’ll walk away with a clear, concise, and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need an MBA or a background in business to tackle your marketing head on thanks to the strategies and techniques inside of this book that deliver real results.

No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain, instead it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non existent or inconsistent to a true tool to grow your business by chasing simple marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for Jason Simple Marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield. com/ book to learn more about how you can grab a copy for yourself. I have found that I very often get asked, but what exactly did you do? Or I will be sharing about what I do and someone will ask if I create the content or if I just simply work with social media. So today I want to talk about social media managers versus strategists.

A social media manager is social media specific. Often they do it all with social media, right? They conceptualize, they create, they post, they engage, and they focus on best practices for social media. A strategist, on the other hand, I can’t say what other people who call them strategists do, but for me, it is an entire comprehensive marketing strategy.

Not just social media, but all marketing. In fact, social media is the least of what I focus on. So, I come up with a strategy for my clients based on their goals. And then, I create a plan for them. They are given the topic. of every piece of content. They’re given the hook, the initial sentence or so for every piece of content, and they’re given the call to action for each piece of content.

So they know exactly what to talk about, exactly how to start, and exactly how to end it. But I don’t create the content itself, unless you opt in for my copywriting package, and even then I only write the copy. I also don’t focus on best practices. Because I firmly believe that instead of focusing on best practices, we should focus on what makes sense for our individual businesses.

And so I take the realistic capacities of my clients and I take the ultimate best practices and I find that middle ground for them. So I’m not focused on, okay, but how do we make sure the algorithm I’m focused on how do I make sure the people that see this convert best? So, when should you hire which?

Because there are different times for different people, right? A social media manager is great if you feel like that you’ve got a really great grip on your other content, your long form and your email content, and you just want someone else to focus on using your social media to move people into those other pieces of content for you.

That’s a great time to hire someone for social media to hire a social media manager because you can create the content that you’re already creating. Focus on your long form content, focus on your email marketing, and then let the social media manager take your plans for those and turn them into social media content for you and try to hit those best practices.

That’s awesome. I think that is a great time to hire a social media manager. On the other hand, If you’re looking for someone to help with your entire content marketing sphere as a whole, you probably want to hire a strategist. And this is especially great for someone who goes, I have offers, I have a great business, I just don’t know how to market it well.

And I need someone to tell me what to post about and when. I need someone to give me marching orders. This is also great for you if you have a great business, you’ve got great foundations for your business, you’ve got offers that sell, you’re serving your clients really well, and you just don’t have the time or the capacity to both do the strategy in the creation of your content, and you want to pass it off.

You want someone to help you stay consistent by giving you that running head start. And here’s the other thing about all of this, is that all of these different puzzle pieces, or work really well together. So I actually work with clients that have social media managers, and I create the overall strategy, and then the social media manager takes that strategy and runs with it so that they can focus on the best practices and the engagement, and they know Okay.

Well, here’s what we’re talking about. Here’s the topics and the hook and the call to action. How do I turn this into a reel or to a carousel? Or how do I, you know, they get to really focus deep on the social media side of things. I also, other people that I work with within the realm of my clients, I work with VAs where I create the strategy and they hand it off to a VA to create the copy and the content for them.

I work with OBMs and business managers and integrators. And launch operations strategist is a whole other thing where they take the marketing strategy that I create and they then Turn it into steps for a launch and they create the whole workflow for a launch or they create the workflow for a sales funnel Or they integrate it into the other parts of the business or an integrator will say hey, we want to launch This specific offer, what’s the lead up?

How do we launch it? And I create the strategy and then they give it to the other team members and say, Hey, this is how we put this into place. So there’s a lot of different ways that all of these pieces work together. And there’s a lot of names and people use a lot of these names interchangeably, and it can be pretty confusing.

So when it comes time to hire, the advice is often to write out a list of what you want someone else to do for you, which is great. If you’re hiring a VA. But instead of hiring based on what you don’t like doing, I really encourage you to outsource based on your goals. And sometimes there is overlap with that.

For example, for me, one of my goals was to make sure that I kept this podcast going, but I also absolutely hated editing and I didn’t want to do that. And so that overlap was, well, I need to hire a podcast editor, right? And so sometimes those overlap, but. Instead, focus on what your goals are, and that’s going to make it a lot easier to determine what type of person or what type of role you want to hire for versus just a general, here are the things I hate doing, where do I start?

So if you’re someone that just wants to pass off social media, maybe you want to hire a social media manager. If you’re someone that Wants to step out of the day to day of your business. Maybe you hire an OPM or an integrator. If you’re someone who wants to do more launches, but you have no idea how to run a launch and all of the steps that go into a launch, maybe you want to hire a launch operations strategist.

Maybe you know that your marketing needs help and you don’t even know where to begin and you hire an integrator. A marketing strategist. It really depends on what your goals. Maybe you really just want to focus on your podcast and you want to do everything you can. You hire a podcast coach that will help you specifically with just your podcast.

Maybe you want to hire someone just to help with, you know, again, it really all depends on your goal and what you want to grow and why. So your action step for this week is to sit down with your goals and think through where you have gaps that need to be filled and who you could outsource to help fill them.

And if you need help with this, if you’re like, well, I figured out what my goal is and what kind of help I want, but I don’t know anyone who does those things. I have. So many contacts for people that do all these different things that I’ve talked about today. Reach out and let me know. I can help you, I can help connect you with someone so that you can hire someone that will do the things that you’re looking for.

Now, this week’s book recommendation is the Percy Jackson series and these are children’s books, but I didn’t read them as a kid. I was a little too old once they started coming out and got really popular. It was more like, Um, my younger brother’s age group and my, my brother’s 12 years younger than me.

So he read them and was into them and I never read them. And then I had a, a kid in my youth group last year who was really into them. I actually had a couple of kids in my youth group who were really into them. And so I read them so I could, you know, talk about them with them and connect with them. And I actually really ended up loving them.

I think they’re a great series. They, again, they’re a kid’s book, right? Like they’re, they’re a kid series. But. They’re really great, and I’m actually, a new one just came out, or it’s getting ready to come out. I need to look into that and see if it’s come out yet, but I’m excited for that too. It’s a great series.

So if you are like me and you missed out on that series, but you want a light and fun read, I highly recommend the Percy Jackson series. And with that, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 210: Marketing Strategist vs Social Media Manager appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

If I told myself in year 1 that in year 7 I had 3500 IG followers … well, I would be appalled and probably give up on my business before it ever really got started.

Now, I know that those numbers I was so focused on back then? They don’t really matter. And today I’m going to share more about the numbers that actually matter – and how you can set goals based on that number.

In fact, I’m sharing one of my personal 2024 Goals with you and walking you through exactly how I set the goal based on my KPIs and data.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

If I told myself in year one that in year seven of business I had 3, 500 Instagram followers, well, I would be appalled and probably give up on my business before it ever really got started. And now I know that those numbers I was so focused on back then, they don’t really matter. And today I’m going to share more about the numbers that actually matter and how you can set goals based on that number.

In fact, I’m sharing one of my personal 2024 goals with you and walking you through exactly how I set the goal based on my KPIs and my data. You’re listening to episode 209 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming. So that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial.

But that doesn’t mean that you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing, even if you’re a solo preneur. Do you dream of business growth but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting? Or do you understand the importance of effective marketing but simply don’t have the time to get it done?

There’s good news. Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back and say hello to a clear actionable roadmap for business growth. In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle.

You’ll walk away with a clear, concise, and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need an MBA or a background in business to tackle your marketing head on thanks to the strategies and techniques inside of this book that deliver real results.

No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain. Instead, it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non existent or inconsistent to a true tool to grow your business by chasing simple marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for Chasing Simple Marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield. com / book to learn more about how you can grab a copy for yourself. It’s hard for me to believe that I’m actually starting my seventh year of business. In episode 200, I kind of go back and I look at the first six years of business and where that led me and, you know, how we got to where we are today, which is It’s me being the breadwinner for our family.

My husband actually is in school right now. He’s not even working. We own two homes. I’m able to work in ministry and do it because I love it and not because I need the paycheck because frankly, ministry doesn’t pay. And I’m able, I’m able to do that. Of course the paycheck, like, an extra paycheck is always great, right, but, um, I’m able to work part time at my church and do something that I really love while also doing this thing that I really love part time and serving clients and getting to teach and, man, it just, looking back on my life, it feels so, it’s just so surreal, it’s so surreal in, in so many different ways, um, and this isn’t a reflection episode, so I’m not gonna go down that rabbit hole, even though, man, every time I start thinking about Business in life, and I’m just so grateful and reflective for where we are and of course Let’s be very clear.

There’s so much privilege that my husband and I have both had to help get to where we are today like that’s 100 percent involved in all of this. So just throwing out that out there I 100 percent recognize that but as grateful as I am for all of this I need it to be so very clear that I do not make six figures in revenue.

There’s a small chance that I could this year in, you know, 2024, but that’s not even for sure, it’s not guaranteed, it’s a small chance, and I still to this day don’t make six figures in revenue on a yearly basis. I have 1, 500 people on my email list and I have 3, 500 followers on Instagram. If I went back and told year one Amanda, she would be shocked, she would be disappointed, and she would be really confused because in her mind, in order to have the things and be where my business is now and to be at the place in life where my husband and I are now, I would need much larger numbers.

I would need to be making six figures. That’s what I thought a successful business was. But here’s the thing. When you’re ready to scale your business, and by scale I mean offer digital products in some way, shape, or form, create courses, um, have one to many offers versus just one on one offers, when you’re ready to scale and have those type of offers, the number of followers, your email list, that’s gonna matter a whole lot more.

But when you’re just building those foundations for your business, when you are solely working one-on-one with clients, when you are just starting to create the different digital products and you’re not ready to maybe run ads to them and all of that, while you’re building those foundations, those numbers, they don’t matter quite as much because your relationships with your audience matter a whole lot more.

Which is why consistency is so important because if you’re not showing up consistently, you are undermining that relationship with your audience and making it harder for you to sell. So if you struggle with showing up consistently, make sure you check out Content Batching Bootcamp. It’s my course all about how to create consistent content to have a batch schedule and one that works for you and your business, not simply one that is.

What some cookie cutter recipe of what mine is it’s a Course that teaches you how to create your own. So check that out if you’re still struggling with consistency because Here’s the thing. Your numbers matter, but only the strategic ones. Your number of followers? Not so much. The number of people needed to get through a funnel?

Yes. If you’ve done the math. So what you want to make sure that you are really focusing on is to focus on it. You’re marketing strategy and where you’re trying to lead people and the importance of that comes in when you’re building these funnels for these digital products, and you’re focusing solely on your current audience for those funnels, or you’re doing things like getting in front of other people’s audiences, which is going to bring in a small number of new leads, right?

What you want to be doing as you’re building sales funnels is to make sure that you are creating a sales funnel that converts where you want it to convert so that when you decide to do major campaigns like running ads, you know that the funnel you’ve created works. And so. You’re not wasting your money running ads to a funnel that’s not going to convert.

So I’m going to share about one of my own sales funnels and kind of give you a breakdown of what it is that I’m doing behind the scenes with it. So one of my 2024 goals is to get 815 people through my sales funnel. for the community, which is my membership. Now, when I was setting goals and deciding on that number, I didn’t pull 815 out of thin air, right?

I started with knowing with where I am, which is that I’m currently making around 650 a month from the community and knowing where I want to be by the end of the year, which is about 2, 000 a month from this revenue stream. So I want to go from 650 a month to 2, 000 a month. Because I have two different tiers to this membership, my VIP or my fast pass tier and my standard or my pixie dust tier, I had to determine what my max ability to serve VIP members was.

And I decided that number was 15. My VIP members get a lot more one on one attention from me And so I knew that more than 15 a month was going to make it really really difficult to serve them Well, so 15 is my max which left me to figure out how many pixie dust members I need to reach With what’s left of that two thousand dollar goal, which is 33 So that left me with a goal of consistently making 2, 000 a month from the community with a max of 15 FastPass members and hopefully 33 Standard members.

Then, I had to look at what I needed to do to actually hit those numbers because without a plan and a strategy, a goal means nothing. So I came up with quite a few ways that I could work towards that goal, but ultimately decided to focus on one, which was focusing on my business. Sales funnel. After my welcome sequence, everyone goes through the sales funnel for the community.

I set that up last year and I’ve been letting it run so I know that it works, it does, and so that I have enough data to work with. When I set my goals in December, the funnel was converting at 0. 59%. Yes, that would be a number that I would love to see be higher, but that’s a project for another time. It’s not what I’m focused on right now.

So I don’t have enough data to know the different conversion rates for pixie dust versus fast pass tiers. So I just use the number 48 for my ultimate conversion goal. So to get 48 new members in that 48 comes from 33 plus 15, by the way. To get those 48 new members that I want to have by the end of the year at a 0.

59 percent conversion rate, I need roughly 815 new leads to go through the community sales funnel. And yes, if you’re wondering, this is a bit of an oversimplification because you can get really deep into data with memberships. You can look at, okay, but how long does someone actually stay a member and where exactly are they coming from?

And, you know, I could try to look at, well, how many convert At this rate to this one and how many converted this rate to this one and how many people start here and upgrade. There’s a lot that you can do with data, but this is a good starting point, especially for this example. So then I’m left to focus on how to get people into that funnel.

I know that I need X amount of members. I know that my sales funnel converts at this rate, which means I know that I need this number of people to go through that sales funnel for the sales funnel itself to give me that number of new members. So now how do I get people into that funnel? And there’s so many different ways you can do that.

That’s all part of growth marketing. If you want to know the best ways that you can grow your own business through growth marketing, take the quiz on my website, Amanda Warfield. com slash quiz. And it’ll give you examples of some great growth marketing strategies to focus on for right now. But. It’s things like being on podcasts, being part of bundles, so on and so forth.

Basically, what can I do to get people through my welcome sequence and through my sales funnel, even better if I can focus on, and I mentioned this in last week’s episode, I believe I’m going to create a freebie specifically for the community. That’s going to strategically lead into that offer, making it much more likely that someone is going to actually opt in through that sales funnel.

So there are different ways that you can focus on getting people into the funnel, improving those conversions and things like that. But that’s a walkthrough of the kind of numbers that actually matter and how you can find them instead of Arbitrarily plucking numbers out of thin air. And so while year one Amanda might have been really upset with the fact that I only had 1, 500 people on my email list and 3, 500 people on my Instagram following I’ve come to realize that those numbers are aren’t what matters so much as the strategic numbers, like how many people have gone through a funnel, how that funnel converts, and what I need to do to get more people through that funnel.

So, your action step for this week is that if you have any arbitrary numbers based goals on your 2024 goals list, I want you to cross them out. I want you to give yourself permission to focus on creating the systems that you need, To gather intentional data like last year, I set up the sales funnel and then I just let it run naturally so I could see what that conversion rate was instead of trying to force some arbitrary number.

I just let it do what it needed to do in order to give me the numbers I needed to give me. Now, your book recommendation for this week is Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I said this last week, but this book is also a heavy one. I was reading a lot of heavy books back to back, I guess, last year.

Um, this is a heavy book. And, um, It, it deals with topics like gun violence and mental health and, yeah, just trigger warning for, for that. It is a dark book. It’s a heavy book. But man, it was a can’t put down kind of book. Um, I read it super quickly and cried a lot of tears, but, yeah. Yeah, I’m trying to think.

I don’t even know what kind of genre I would give this. It is definitely one of those books that I think will stand the test of time. It is its own thing in and of itself. It’s actually especially nostalgic if you’re someone who is a millennial. It has to do with a gaming company and gaming and there’s a lot of like, I believe like 90s stuff.

It’s Great on a lot of levels. So anyways, I will link to that in the show notes. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes, as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast, and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 209: An Exact Breakdown of Using Sales Funnels to Set Goals appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

What’s a KPI? What are you supposed to be tracking? How can you use them? Is it really all that important to track them?

These questions are some of the most commonly asked ones I get around KPIs, and I figured that if I’m hearing the same questions over and over again – well, you’re probably wondering them as well.

So, today I’m taking you behind the scenes through my own personal KPI Tracker and outlining what exactly I track and what kinds of choices those numbers help me make.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

What is a KPI? What are you supposed to be tracking? How can you use them? Is it really all that important to track them? These questions are some of my most commonly asked ones that I get around KPIs, and I figured that if I’m hearing the same questions over and over again, well, you’re probably wondering them as well.

So today I’m taking you behind the scenes through my own personal KPI tracker and outlining what exactly I track and what kinds of choices those numbers help me make. You’re listening to episode 208 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing.

And you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing, welcome friend, this is chasing simple where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing, Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love.

Each week offer you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial. But that doesn’t mean that you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing, even if you’re a solopreneur. Do you dream of business growth but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting?

Or do you understand the importance of effective marketing but simply don’t have the time to get it done? There’s good news. Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back and say hello to a clear actionable roadmap for business growth.

In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle. You’ll walk away with a clear, concise and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need an MBA or a background in business to tackle your marketing head on thanks to the strategies and techniques inside of this book that deliver real results.

No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain, instead it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non existent or inconsistent to a true tool to grow your business by chasing simple marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for Chasing Simple Marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield. com / book to learn more about how you can grab a copy for yourself. Before we dive too deeply into the content of this episode, I just want to make sure that we’re all on the same page about what KPIs are. So KPI stands for a Key Performance Indicator. And in layman’s terms, that just means these are numbers that you’re tracking to help make decisions about your business and about your strategies.

So there are typically two types of numbers that you want to track. You’ve got maintenance numbers and strategic numbers. Maintenance numbers are things like how many Instagram followers you have, your email list size, etc. These are the ones that we like to know and can often think should be where we focus a lot of our KPI and goal attention.

They are helpful indicators in a lot of ways for whether or not a strategy is working. But they’re probably not actually the most important numbers for you to be tracking. What you really want to pay attention to are strategic numbers. These are where we should actually be focusing our goals and our attention.

They’re things like conversion rates, average length of membership, revenue, sales, etc. And so within my KPI tracker, I have six categories, revenue, membership, one on one coaching courses, shop offer, and marketing. And I’m going to go through and just share a little bit about each of those. So under my Revenue category, my revenue section, I track the revenue that comes in for every single offer that I have.

At this point in time, I’m only tracking my shop items as one offer. But, if you’re someone that has shop items and digital products, you might want to track them all separately. It just kind of depends on what your strategy is and what your goals are. For me, personally, this year, I just have a goal of a total shop number, revenue number, not an individual one for each offer.

So, for me it didn’t make sense to track each and every one. But, you can change that according to what makes the most sense for you and your goals. Then I have my one on one clients category, and I actually split this into two different categories within my own tracker spreadsheet. I have my quarterly clients, which are my ongoing clients, and then I also have my VIP days for my repurposing VIP day offer, because I just want to make sure that I’m tracking each of those.

Those were a big focus for me this year, and so this year I wanted to make sure that I am intentionally tracking all of those numbers. In past years, I haven’t tracked my quarterly client numbers because I filled all my spots the year before and didn’t need to track them throughout the year. However, this year I wanted to take on more clients than I typically do, and so I’m still tracking those numbers throughout the year.

Within my quarterly clients, I track how many clients I have, Any new clients I’ve signed, but I’m also tracking things and those are maintenance numbers But I’m also tracking things like how many inquiries I’ve gotten during the month and what that conversion rate was From inquiry to signed. I’m also tracking whether or not I didn’t need discovery calls I’m tracking how many people view the sales page and i’m tracking the conversion numbers for all of those And the purpose for that is so that I know okay My sales page conversion rate, my service page conversion rate, my goal is 2 percent for an inquiry and I’m only getting 0. 5%. I wonder if there’s anything I can do, any updates I can make. And so then I can test out updates to see if I can improve that conversion rate. I also can look at that and go, well, So, my conversion rate’s fine, but my views are low. I need to drive more traffic, and so it just kind of lets me know what the problem is.

If I’m not seeing the amount of inquiries I want to see, okay, well how do I fix that? Is it a views problem, or is it a conversion rate problem? And same thing with my VIP days, I track all the same things, I just track them separately from each other. Then I’ve got my membership numbers for the community, and I’m tracking how many members I have, how many new members I got during the month, how many cancelled during the month.

I track my VIP members and my standard members, how many I have of each. I track my scholarship members, my sales page views, my conversion rate, all different things. And I also track my opt in. Which I haven’t created yet, but I know what I’m going to create and will be creating, and I’ll be tracking that under this as well.

So I know, okay, how many people actually signed up for this opt in that is specific to the community, and what did it convert at. Then I’ve got my shop category, and this is the largest chunk of my KPI spreadsheet, actually. Where I take every single shop offer I have, and for each of them, I look at total sales.

The sales page views and the conversion rates. I also have broken it down into categories because I have three different categories within my business. I’ve got content creation, I’ve got content strategy, and then I have a launch strategy. And so I have it broken up into three smaller categories within the big shop category.

And so under content creation, I not only have all of the different offers in my shop for content creation, but I also have all of the freebies under that subheading under that topic. And so how many people actually signed up for these? And again, this tells me, okay, I’m not getting many signups. I need to drive more traffic to this thing.

I’m not seeing a lot of page views. I need to drive more traffic to this thing. Um, my conversion rate’s not awesome. I should probably go into that sales page and give it a tweak and give it some updates. Like I said, this is the largest trunk of my KPI tracker and this is what takes me the most time to fill out, but it is such invaluable information and it’s so important that I do that every single month.

Then I have a section for affiliate income and I list out the main places that I’m an affiliate for, like a honey book. Okay. How many people. How much income did I make from HoneyBook this month, and how many people signed up for the HoneyBook training that I have? And what’s that percent conversion rate?

And then I have, you know, just Amazon in general income, but then I also have just other affiliate income, other event income, because if I’m part of a bundle or part of a summit, that’s affiliate income, and it’s a one time thing, so I have that in there as well. And then finally, I’ve got my Marketing category and I’ve broken it into speaking and networking and Content marketing so the speaking and networking portion I cover things like how many speaking pitches did I send?

How many speaking gigs did I book? Did I do any guest trainings? Was I part of any summits? Did I do any podcast interviews so on and so forth was I? Attending a marketing event, or was I a vendor for anything? And just kind of keeping track of how many places that I actually show up this month to grow my audience.

Then I’ve got my content marketing and that’s things like my podcast downloads. How many reviews I have? Did I get new reviews? What was my most popular episode? How many email subscribers, my newsletter size, Instagram followers, all of those fun things that Again, our maintenance numbers, but are good to know, especially if you’re doing a specific marketing campaign where you’re driving to one of these.

And then my very final part, my very final category is my website category. And that’s where I’m looking at things like how many page views did I have? How many unique visitors did I have? What was the most popular page on my website this month? What was the second most, third most popular? And so that gives me an idea of what people are looking at.

Each and every month and then the cool thing with this one is that you can Look at it for this year, and then you can also go back to the year before and say okay in january What were the three most popular pages? And in the year before that, and you can see if there’s any patterns there, and that can also help, you know, what to create more content around to continue to push people to that specific page.

If that’s going to be your most popular page anyways, well, why don’t you really focus on it and give it even more oomph. So that is what my KPI tracker looks like. And that is something every single month on the first of the month or around the first of the month, I go in and I fill out this entire form.

And it helps inform me when I’m doing my batching and creating my own content strategy, what kind of things to be focused on. So. Your action step for this week is to set up your own KPI tracker. If you don’t have one already, go ahead and set it up, add it to your to do list for the first of every single month to go fill it out.

And if you’re like, that sounds great, but you don’t want to set it up yourself, you can steal my KPI tracker. I have a template in my shop for 47. I will link to it in the show notes. And then you can just automatically start filling in your numbers. Now, this week’s book recommendation is our Missing Hearts by Celeste by Celeste.

I don’t know how to say her last name. NG. And this book is heavy. I’ll say that. But man, it is such a good read and such an important read. It, it follows this boy whose mom I believe was the Chinese descent, and his father was not, and so he is mixed, and America has decided that all Chinese people are terrible people, blah blah blah, you know, they’ve done what America tends to do best, and, um, severely oppressed.

Chinese people and this mother disappeared to save her son essentially. Um, and anyways, it’s just, it’s a really great book. It’s really well written. I will link to in the show notes, but um, just, just a warning that it is, it’s such a good read, but it is a heavy read. So just keep that in the back of your mind before you pick it up.

Alright my friend, and with that, I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode’s show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 208: Here’s Exactly What I Track in My KPI Spreadsheet appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

Is the content creation process overwhelming to you? Do you get through creating one piece of content and feel drained? Today I’m going to share a guest interview I did for Colie James’ podcast – Business First Creatives – where I share the proper way to create your content through batching! Listen in as we explore the how to find inspiration, create content your audience will resonate with, and set up your own plan for batching—plus we’re even diving into our mutual love for Disney!

Be sure to search for the Business First Creatives Podcast with Colie James and give it a follow so you don’t miss out on the greatness she has to share.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

Is the content creation process overwhelming to you? Do you get through creating one piece of content and feel drained? Well, today I’m going to share a guest interview I did for Colie James’ podcast, Business First Creatives, where I share the proper way to create your content through batching. Listen in as we explore how to find inspiration, create content your audience will resonate with, and set up your own plan for batching.

Plus, we’re even diving into our mutual love for Disney. Be sure to search for the Business First Creatives podcast with Colie James and give it a follow so that you don’t miss out on any of the greatness she has to share. You’re listening to episode 207 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist.

Speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing. I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week.

I’ll bring you transparent conversations. Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial. But that doesn’t mean that you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing, even if you’re a solopreneur. Do you dream of business growth but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting?

Or do you understand the importance of effective marketing but simply don’t have the time to get it done? There’s good news. Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back and say hello to a clear, actionable roadmap for business growth.

In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle. You’ll walk away with a clear, concise, and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need an MBA or a background in business to tackle your marketing head on thanks to the strategies and techniques inside of this book that deliver real results.

No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain, instead it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non existent or inconsistent to a true tool to grow your business by chasing simple marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for chasing simple marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield. com / book to learn more about how you can grab a copy for yourself. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the business first creatives podcast. 

Today. I have Amanda Warfield, a fellow Disneyland lover. Well, actually not Disneyland. She loves world, but I still talk to her anyways. I love all of it. I love all of it.

There’s no, I don’t think one’s better than the other. Oh, but I do definitely better. Let’s just start the conversation out like that. Amanda, welcome to my podcast. How are you this morning? I am so great. Thank you for having me on today. I’m really excited about this. I mean, I feel like you solve a problem that I have struggled with forever.

So we’re just going to, you know, dive right in. Let’s talk about content planning. Everyone knows. That I have a love hate relationship with planning my content. I have tried to be better. I have had people that helps me organize it. And I finally hired a VA who is actually now basically running my Instagram account, which is amazing.

But then I still have to make the content. So Amanda, what you talk about most is batching content. So why don’t you tell the listening audience what that is and why you think everyone should content plan and perhaps consider batching. Yeah. So batching is simply setting aside time on your calendar each and every month to sit down and create the entire month of content for the next month.

And so a lot of times when we think of batching, we think, Oh, I’m going to sit down and I’m going to write, let’s take blog posts. For instance, I’m going to write. The first blog post of the month and I’m going to write it and I’m going to edit it and then I’m going to get it all scheduled. And then I’m going to do the second one and the third one, the fourth one.

What ends up happening is that you write that first blog post and you get to having it scheduled. You’re like, I just spent three hours on this thing and I’m mentally exhausted. And there’s three more. No, I’m done and it’s exhausting and it doesn’t work well. And so no one ever ends up batching their content, but we actually want to think of batching as if we’re making a batch of cookies, right?

So when you’re making a batch of cookies, you’re not mixing all the ingredients for one cookie and then forming the one cookie and cooking the one cookie, right? No, that’s, that’s like a huge waste of time. That’s 15 minutes in the oven per cookie versus 15 minutes in the oven for 12 cookies. You’re taking it step by step.

And so you want to do the same thing with your content. You want to plan the entire month of content, then you want to outline each of those blog posts. Then you want to rough draft and I mean rough draft, don’t edit yourself at all. Rough draft each of those blog posts and then you go and edit and then schedule each of them.

And so you’re doing all of the outlining. 4. All of the writing. 1, 2, 3, 4. All of the editing. So on and so forth. And you’re not doing them all in the same day either, which I think a lot of people think, Oh, I’m going to batch four blog posts in one day and have them totally written and scheduled.

Absolutely not. Your brain is going to hate you and you’re going to hate yourself. Yeah. So, and I think that’s where people, you know, get tripped up. And in a previous episode of the podcast, I had Ashley Kang on and she was talking about the value of having weekly CEO days. And I think that, you know, doing your content planning is an important part of your business.

And if you do what you said, plan one week. Outline one week, rough draft one week, actually edit and publish on the fourth week. That is something that instead of it taking you three hours or four hours to write a single blog post, if you use those chunks of time every week, by the end of the month, you have all of next month’s content done, which I think is where I was kind of.

You know, in the weeds on what batching was, because I incorrectly thought that you had to like sit down and that that meant that, okay, so for Instagram, I’m going to plan out three posts per week. I’m going to make the graphics. I’m going to write the captions. I’m going to choose hashtags. I’m going to choose the visuals, and I’m going to put it all together inside of metrical, which is where I’m currently planning all of my social media content.

But like doing all of that in a single day, guys, it’s not realistic doing all of that in a single day, even for one week is just really not realistic. Well, and if you think about the way our brains work, right? I’m getting deep into the psychology of the brain here, but each of those pieces, each of those steps of creating content takes a vastly different part of your brain.

So the strategic, the planning that takes one side of your brain, right? The actual creation process takes another part of the brain. The just administrative work takes another part of the brain, always take different parts of the brain. And if you’re like going max all in on every single part of your brain in one day.

Your brain is, it’s not going to continue to function. You’re going to get to the creative part and be like, I’m zapped. I used all of my mental energy in the planning portion, in the strategic portion. I don’t have the capability to continue on like this. And then you just don’t create content. And all of a sudden you’re stuck on the hamster wheel where, Oh, I need to put something out today.

I’ve got a million other things to handle. How am I supposed to do this? So let me ask you, where does repurposing come in in terms of setting yourself up for success in content? Um, and content planning related to batching, like, is there a place for you to do the repurposing? Where should that happen in like your schedule of events?

If you are doing what you’re supposed to do and actually scheduling time on your calendar each and every week to do a portion of the batching. This is such a good question because this is one of those things that everyone says, yes, I should repurpose. And then they sit down to plan and they don’t ever, they repurpose nothing and they just create all new content.

And I am just as guilty as anyone else of this, but the time to. Plan to repurpose is during the planning phase so much so that in the content planner that I created, there is a whole section in the planning phase for each month where I’m like, what can you repurpose this month? Tell me the specific dates and what it is.

And so it forces you to go back and look at content you created this time last year or a few months ago and say, okay, this is a similar theme that’s happening. You know, it’s January, new year, new year, whatever. This is going to have a similar theme that we’re going to talk about. That seems to not be the case at all this year.

Um, I think we’re all, as we’re recording this in January, I don’t know when it’s going to air, but we’re all like, man, this year’s rough already, we’re a month in and things are not moving like we want it to. But you look back, there’s sometimes no way to predict those things. So you look back when you’re planning January and you say, okay, this is probably going to be a similar theme.

What content did I create last year? How can I tweak it and repurpose it? How can I take that long form content and break it into newer pieces of short form content so that I’m not creating my Instagram captions from scratch. So that all happens really during the planning phase. Can we talk about organization?

So you just mentioned your content planner, which we are totally going to talk about, but outside of the planner, like I just realized the other part of the conversation that I don’t hear being discussed nearly enough. When it comes to content planning, is that repurposing phase and how organization sets you up for success in order to do that in a timely manner and it not take twice as much effort to do that.

So recently I was going through, like you said, all my posts from last year and I actually had someone that was creating the content for me last year. And the one thing that I did that they didn’t tell me to do, but I did by myself, I organized everything in Airtable. And then I went to every single post and I tagged it with like an idea.

Now, if you know of content pillars, guys, I mean, maybe you tag it with your content pillars, but maybe it’s just much simpler than that. Like I’m going to tag this with Dubsado. I’m going to tag this with email communication, something really basic for myself. So that if I know in February, I’m going to be talking all about email.

Consistent email communication. If I go to where all of my content is organized and I’m filtering it by email communication, I can look at all the things that I posted previously and decide what could be repurposed quickly. Do you have an organization? Like system that you use for yourself, you know, that’s on my list of things to create this year actually is some kind of spreadsheet where I categorize like you’re saying and go, okay, this is all about content batching.

This is all about content strategy. This is all about launch strategy. And that way when I’m repurposing, I can go back and go, Oh yeah, this is us right now. All of my. Big, my long form content lives inside of Trello and I just have every single episode listed out, but now that I’m 150 plus episodes into my podcast, that is not efficient, but yeah, what you’re saying about the organization side of things, I think so often we, as.

Creative entrepreneurs in this sphere, we get wrapped up in the fact that, Oh, I’m creating content. It’s a creative process. I like to be in my flow. I can’t, I hear all the time. Oh, I can’t post. I can’t schedule out my content because I need to post in the moment so that it feels inspired. I’m like, listen, you’re going to not get, you’re going to be on that content creation wheel forever because.

It takes so much time to create a single piece of content. It’s not a quick 15 minute thing. I don’t care what you think it is. Even an Instagram caption is going to take you longer than that. And then, Oh, where could that 15 minutes have gone today? Whereas if you batched it, it’s going to take less time because you’re in the flow.

Anyways, the organizational side of things, creating content is a system, which I know you love content. Creation is just a. A system with a bunch of mini systems inside of it. And that I think is the key piece that’s missing so often is that it’s not just this creative endeavor. It’s a system inside of your business.

And it’s one of many systems and it cannot take up all of your time. Because I think until recently, I don’t know how anybody else. Organizes just their ideas like I’ll be driving in my car and I’ll have an idea for a podcast episode and I literally pull over and write it down, guys, because at my age in 10 minutes, I have forgotten it.

So I do a lot of pulling over and Chloe’s like, mom, why are we stopping? But one thing that I realized recently was that. I’m putting them all down in notes, and while you can search in notes again, you can’t categorize in notes. You can’t tag in notes. So I think what I have to be more diligent about in 2023 in terms of content planning and organization is making sure that at least weekly.

I’m going into those notes where I just put down just random thoughts, random word phrases. And if I put that into my air table where I am currently categorizing all of my content, it makes content creation even faster when I sit down and I’m like, Oh yeah. I’m going to plan out all of Q3 podcast episodes, because I’m cool, Amanda, and I’m currently editing and scheduling for Q3.

I’m so excited. But like, you know, when I get ideas, I’m just popping an air table and just listing everything. I mean, it doesn’t have to be concrete. And I think that’s where other people get, you know, Lost in the weeds to is that sometimes with the planning, it doesn’t mean that you have to get everything like a to Z written down.

I mean, if you have good ideas, get them down. If they’re not fleshed out now, there’s always time for you to flesh those out. In another month or, you know, later in the year. Well, and so often we’ll get these fragments of thoughts and then with a few sleeps, we’re like, Oh, I’ve got all kinds of ideas for this that I didn’t have before.

And so, yeah, get them down. And it’s as simple as, Oh, here’s a pain point I have, right? I have all these notes of ideas and then I never use them. Okay. How can I add a step to my content planning routine on my content planning day? Okay. Make a little in your workflow, a little checkmark of go look at your notes and make sure you move everything over to your content bank, wherever you keep that.

And it’s just, it’s just a matter of keeping that content bank, which I think a lot of people don’t do. I think they’ll write things down and then they never actually transfer it over to a place where they can refer back to, to actually playing your content. But it makes a Planning content so easy because you’re like, man, Amanda of a week ago had a lot of great ideas.

This is really helpful now because I feel not inspired at all. I mean, and inspiration comes and goes guys. And I’m one of those people that I have realized now at my age with my forgetfulness that no, when I am feeling inspired, if I have to shift what I’m doing that day to just give myself 15 minutes to get all of it down on paper or to get it into my computer, that is what I have to do.

And so let’s talk about the content bank. Because I think that when people are really struggling to find ideas from their content, it’s because number one, they do not have a content bank. And number two, they don’t really know where to get the ideas for the content bank if they themselves are feeling depleted of inspiration.

So Amanda, where are some of the places That everyone can find good content for their business, regardless of what their service or their offer is inspiration, like you said, but if you’re not feeling that one of the other questions, one of the other places inside of the content planner is actually what questions have I been asked lately when people send you a random dm.

Write down that question when someone sends you an email and ask you a question, anything like that. But that also is very dependent on someone coming to you or inspiration coming to you. So not always super helpful. The most important thing you can do if you are needing ideas for your content is to send out an annual survey.

I do this every single year and it is just a plethora of ideas. And the best part is that it’s from people who actually listen to my podcast and I know, okay. They. These are the people that are already tuning in here, so I can serve them really, really well. Amanda attached to this podcast episode will be an annual survey.

I am going to put that on my list. I’m definitely going to do it. It’s been one of my things that I’ve been wanting to do. And the funny thing is, until I heard you say that, I don’t think I would have considered asking my podcast listeners to do it. I would have naturally gone to let me send it to my email list.

Let me put it on Instagram, but podcast listeners, I really do want to hear from you too. So no, that’s amazing and brilliant. And then just writing down the questions that people send you. I get inspired by what people ask me personally in the DMS. I also get inspired by being in like Facebook groups and seeing what someone’s asking about.

Like, for example, for my services, if someone’s asking about. Dubsado or choosing a CRM or how to automate this in a workflow or, you know, what you should include in a proposal. Like all of those kinds of things. When I see a question that I’m like, Oh, I could answer that. I have a little notebook sitting on my desk guys.

I scribble that question down and yes, I’m old school. Sometimes I write it and then I type it. I feel like if I do both, it sticks in my head a little better, but there’s inspiration guys for content everywhere. So don’t just aimlessly scroll on Instagram. Make it purposeful. If you see something that sparks inspiration for something that you could create content for, please take the time to write it down.

Make your Instagram scrolls, scrolls have purpose. Yeah. And I, the Facebook idea is so great, especially for those that are listening and are like, I don’t even have an audience. I don’t have anyone I can send a survey to go on to Facebook. What is it that you talk about? Is it Dove Sato? Just be honest. Go into a Facebook group that has your ideal client, whether it’s other business owners or moms or photographers, whatever it may be, go into a Facebook group that you’re already a part of and search in the search bar, Dubsado.

It’s that simple. And then you’ll get all these questions of, Oh, this person wants to know this thing about Dubsado. This person wants to know this thing about Dubsado. And that’ll give you content ideas for it. You can talk about until you really find your place and you start bringing in your people. So coming back to the, the entire, what I would call your, your content planning circle, like, cause we’ve already said there’s different bits.

There’s also the organization bit. If someone has never planned their content. What is the first thing that you recommend that they do? Amanda, if you’ve never planned content before, the first thing is to find those inspirations, those ideas, and just have a random list of here’s some things I could talk about.

Once you’ve got that done, then you want to sit down and you want to say, okay, what is my content Plan and the plan is simply where am I creating content for where am I posting and how often am I posting for each of those? You don’t need to know what your topics are yet. You don’t even know your call to actions.

Just when are you posting and where? Then you map all of that out in a big overview. I like to just use a simple, you know, month overview and say, okay, podcast, podcast, podcast, emails are going to go out these days, so on and so forth. Once you have that down, then you’ll say, okay, what is my goal? For this month.

What, where am I trying to lead people to? Is there a specific freebie that you’re really wanting to push people to? So you build that email list. Is there a certain topic you mentioned earlier? Some months you’re talking about Dubsado, some months you’re talking about email marketing. Is there a specific topic that you’re really talking about?

Once you know what you’re leading people to, then you’re going to put in your calls to actions. And that’s where you start. Every single piece of content, where are you leading them to? Don’t start with the topic, start with where you want them to go and then find topics that will help lead them to that place.

Because when you just talk about things all the time on Instagram and in your email and you never give them somewhere to go next, you are definitely missing an opportunity. Whether that’s to join your email list. To download this freebie to think about scheduling a call with you to discuss your services.

And I will admit, guys, I am 100 percent not the person to really chastise other people for not doing this because I will write entire emails. And then after I’ve sent it, I’m like, you know what? I probably should put a link to my course in that. And I totally didn’t do it. I’m much podcast because my podcast template.

Has the buttons already in there that say, you know, listen to the podcast on Apple, leave me a review. Here are the show notes. So there’s way more call to actions in my podcast emails than there are anything else. But on Instagram, I am definitely guilty of writing a fabulous piece of content. Like I thought about the, the information, the hashtags, the graphic is great.

And there is no damn call to action. So guys, when you guys see me doing that, please chastise me. Please be like, Hey, Coley, what’s your call to action? But even outside of that, even if you have calls to action, maybe you’re like, Oh, I know that that’s no brainer cause to action and everything. Is it a cohesive call to action?

Are you just like throwing spaghetti at the wall and saying, Oh, go to my freebie over here. That’s on this one subject. And then go to this. Podcast episode over here. And that’s not to say that everything has to be, you know, every single thing needs about the exact same thing, but you do want to have some sort of cohesive flow.

If you’re leading up to a launch of an offer, or you’re leading up to filling spots in your VIP days, you want to be leading people into your funnel. So that they’re ready to purchase the VIP day. When you’re actually talking about it, if you’re just randomly throwing out calls to action with no strategy in mind, it’s not going to do a whole lot for you.

No, you’re going to give your listeners and your readers whiplash. They’re not going to know what is more important. And I was actually listening to someone talking about auditing your website recently. And one of the things, one of the big tips that she gave was make sure that your call to actions make sense.

Make sure that your call to actions are leading somewhere, someone somewhere, and also make sure that you’ve kind of highlighted what is most important, because if you’re giving every single one of your call to actions, equal weight, people are going to have decision fatigue. They are not going to know where to go next.

And so, you know, really great content is going to lead them where you think it is most important for them to go. In the scheme of where your business goals are. Yes. We’re going to flip the script, Amanda, because when you were talking, I had to stop myself from interrupting you to be like, and how does this relate to Disney planning girl?

Cause like, like, I don’t think that I’ve ever heard you talk about your content planning services, like in relation to Disneyland. Disney world land, whichever one, but planning your Disney vacation, because I was thinking about it and like, think of your content pieces as like how to get on rides, how to plan your meals.

Like, if we think about it, this is going to be a blog post girl. If we think about how these things are related, planning your content is a lot like planning your Disney vacation. And so if you think about all the different pieces, you got to plan your transportation, your lodging, where you’re going to go for your rides.

I mean, all of this is how you should be planning the content for your business. Absolutely. And it’s really as simple as starting with the end in mind. Again, that’s the first thing I ask all of my clients for those that don’t know. I also second business as a Disney travel agent, Disney specialized travel agent.

Thank you. But the first thing I ask all of those clients is. What are your hopes for this vacation? So that I know when I’m planning how to make sure I’m putting all of the different pieces together, because there’s a lot of pieces, just like there’s a lot of content pieces, making sure I’m putting them all together so that we’re creating the best possible vacation for them, for their strategic vacation.

You could say, and a lot of times I’ll create a proposal of, you should go to this park on this day and this park on this day. And I’ll have clients come back and say, well, we really want to do this park on the 1st day, because it’s our favorite. And I have to go back and say, that’s fine. We can do that.

But remember what you told me that your ideal vacation was, and this is going to help make sure we’ve got that ideal vacation. It’s up to you to choose whichever you want to do, whichever means more to you. But we, we started with the end in mind so that we could put these pieces together in this way.

And now we need to gut check which one matters more. Let’s talk about that content planner. Tell me about your content planning services and tell me about your content planner. Yeah, so right now, as of recording, my one to one ongoing content planning services are actually full, but I do have a VIP day.

Thank you, thank you. I have a VIP day where if you’re looking for launch specific content strategy, I am your girl. I will help you plan out every single piece of content that you need in the 12 weeks. Of that launch runway. And we’ll map out exactly what you need and need to do for all of the different launch pieces, your visibility booster, which would be your, your big challenge that you’re putting on, or you’re right now, the limited time podcasts are the big thing, whatever it is that you’re going to do to really get visible beforehand, the freebie that you’re going to make sure you have that connects directly to that offer, all that stuff, we’ll make sure we map out all the pieces of the launch strategy in addition to the content as well.

So that’s that service, the content planner really got created last year because I needed something. I was at that point where it was like, okay, I’ve been printing out random, just monthly calendars for the last five years in business. And I have just, Written out, okay, this is what I’m talking about this day.

This is what I’m talking about this day. And I really wanted something that was going to go deeper because again, we’ve got to start with the end in mind. And I wanted something that was going to help me make sure that I was aligning my content, my strategy, my messaging to my actual goals. And so I created this planner that.

Every single month, it asks you all these questions related to what are your goals? Let’s let’s check in. What are your goals right now? How are we going to make sure we’re aligning our content with that messaging? There’s all these questions about things to think about for messaging because that’s always a struggle for me.

I can put basic content down, but then the, the cutesy little references like pop culture and things like that. It’s just a space for me to. Pause and think, okay, what’s happening right now? The spare book, the Megan and Harry documentary. How can I put those things into my content right now? Because it’s everywhere.

Miley Cyrus flowers, you know, like little things like that in pop culture. Okay. How can I put that in? What does my audience need to hear this month? What is an ongoing theme that happened? You know, just messaging things. And then there’s also the repurposing piece. And then you’ve got all the planning pages for the actual month itself.

And then there’s also reflection pages. So you can actually pause and say, did that work? This is what I did. Did it, did, did it actually do anything? Should I maybe so that you’re not just blindly putting out a new plan each month, which is the path that I had fallen into personally. And I’m probably still on.

Yeah. Well, yeah, it’s definitely. A work in progress where it’s like, okay, I created a plan and I executed it and now it’s gone. And I’m going to create the next one without even thinking about the last one that I created. So the whole planner is just full of things like that, where it’s how do I make sure that I’m being strategic with my content?

And aligning it with those goals and moving people towards those goals. And it really was just created because I needed it. And then I was like, well, We’ll put it out here and see if anyone else wants it. And I mean, you know, I never think of my podcast as like, come on here and just sell your products.

But I really did want Amanda to talk about it because guys, she just gave you like all the pieces that you should be thinking about, regardless if you’re doing it inside of a planner like that, or if you’re planning it in your project management, task management tools, like Asana, Trello, ClickUp. Wherever you are doing it, I think that the message that we’re getting from Amanda is that you have to be strategic and you have to be organized.

And that is what is going to lead to the most success in your content planning. I will say I have gotten really good at setting a goal, or at least. Centralizing my messaging for the month as a result of this podcast. So for example, Amanda is here and she’s talking about content planning. I already know two or three other guests that are going to talk about very similar topics that I am going to group together for one month of this podcast.

This podcast, this podcast is recording in January and I just did a month of like money episodes. Somebody talked about the recession. Somebody talked about money mindset. Someone talked about bookkeeping. As a result of putting this podcast together, I was like, okay, if I take the expertise of all of my guests, cause you guys know, I love having guest episodes and I group them together.

How can I give you guys maximum ability to take actions on what is airing on this podcast? Because I’m a guest. In the end, I want you guys to listen to the podcast. I want you guys to get all of the great tips that my, my guests are giving you, but I also want you to take action. And so if you take nothing else from Amanda today, it is that before you sit down to plan this content, you should have a goal in mind for your business.

And anytime you think and get inspiration, you should organize that somewhere that you can go back and reference for yourself. It will make your content planning just so much easier. And because Amanda’s here, I’m going to ask her, let’s talk about Disney. When are you going? I’m so excited. I go next week.

Oh my gosh. I’m so jealous. You know, I don’t think my next trip is until. July actually, which was, I know we were going to be going to Tokyo in March. And so that was going to be the next trip. We’re going to Tokyo Disney for two days while we were there. And we had to move that trip because of some work stuff for my husband.

So kind of a bummer. I don’t know if I’ll get down to Disney world again. I don’t know when I’m going to Disney world again, which is terrible because I really need to use my annual pass, but we’re going to Disneyland in July for my wife. So that’s my next trip. I’m so excited. So guys. Amanda is number one, an amazing content planner.

Number two, she is a Disney vacation planner. And number three, she is just an awesome human. So if they want to find you on the internet, Amanda, where should they go? Yeah, I’m Mrs. Amanda Warfield on Instagram and TikTok. And then the Disney business is magical escape vacations. Also both of those on Instagram and TikTok, probably the best way to connect with me.

I’m very active in my DM. Yeah. Amanda, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. This was so inspirational for myself. I hope that all my listening audience feels the same and guys, that’s it for this episode. See you next time. Bye. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 207: Content Planning + Disneyland from the Business First Creatives Podcast appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

If you haven’t started your email list – it’s past time my friend. If I had to say there was one type of content marketing that was more important than all of the rest? It would be email marketing.

But, the very first step – choosing which email platform to use? It can be overwhelming enough to keep you from getting started. Which is why today I want to share 3 different platforms that I think are worth considering, and help you make the best decision for yourself.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

If you haven’t started your email lists, it’s past time my friend. If I had to say there was one type of content marketing that was more important than all of the rest, It would be email marketing, but the very first step choosing which email platform to use, it can be overwhelming enough to keep you from getting started, which is why today I want to share three different platforms that I think are worth considering and help you make the best decision for yourself.

You’re listening to episode 206 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week.

I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial. But that doesn’t mean that you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing, even if you’re a solopreneur. Do you dream of business growth but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting?

Or do you understand the importance of effective marketing but simply don’t have the time to get it done? There’s good news. Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back and say hello to a clear actionable roadmap for business growth.

In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle. You’ll walk away with a clear, concise, and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need an MBA or a background in business to tackle your marketing head on thanks to the strategies and techniques inside of this book that deliver real results.

No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain. Instead, it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non existent or inconsistent to a true tool to grow your business by chasing simple marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for chasing simple marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield. com / book to learn more about how you can grab a copy for yourself. Welcome back to another episode of the private podcast for chasing simple marketing, the community. I am so glad you’re here and today We are going to be sharing all about how to choose your email platform now there are So many different email marketing platforms out there and you may already have one You may already be hooked in if you are and it’s working if you are and it’s working stick with it I am such a huge proponent of If it’s not broke, don’t fix it when it comes to platforms.

For example, last year, Thrivecart was the big thing. Everyone was moving to Thrivecart with their products, and it was really tempting. But I stuck with what I had because it wasn’t broken, there wasn’t any issues. I don’t have anything wrong with it. There wasn’t anything that I felt like I was missing.

And so, I didn’t move to Thrivecart. And now they’re having a ton of issues. Which is a whole other thing. But, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. The same thing, I started out in Trello for organizing my business. And, you know, now there’s Irritable and ClickUp. And there’s all these really great new ways to organize your business.

And if I move, I’d be happy. But also, I There’s nothing about Trello that I’m like, man, I wish it did this, if there comes a time where that’s true. That’s a different story. But for now, I don’t need a new platform so I’m not moving. So that’s just my, my soapbox. If you have a platform and you’re happy with it and there’s not a major red flag for your business, stick with where you’re at.

You probably don’t need this episode. But for those that have not yet chosen, I have three different email platforms that I can personally recommend that I’ve personally used and personally recommend. That’s not to say that there aren’t other amazing ones out there. I just haven’t used those, so I can’t personally give, you know, a recommendation in good conscience.

So the first one I want to share about is the first one that I used in my business, and that is MailerLite. Here’s the thing, MailerLite is a great starting platform. The biggest pro of MailerLite is that they have a free version. It is very simple. There are no bells and whistles. But as far as email marketing goes, you can get your emails out, you can grow your list.

It is a great platform to start with if you have no list. You are still figuring out your offers. You’re not really making money in your business yet. MailerLite is a great option because of that free version. Like I said, I used it for a really long time and I did switch to something else, which I’ll share about in a moment, but I switched because I had an active need that MailerLite wasn’t filling.

But, I didn’t make enough money in my business to switch for three years. So I, I used Manalite for three years in my business before I felt comfortable moving to another platform with my email marketing. Next is Flodesk. I personally use Flodesk when I work with email. The Rising Tide Society. The, there are two huge perks of Flodesk.

One, if you want really beautiful emails and you want to be able to put images in your emails that aren’t going to affect the bounce rate and how many people it gets sent to their main inbox versus spam, Flodesk is a really, really, really great option because it is designed to You have just these really be like the things you can do to make these emails pretty is Amazing.

I hope other marketing platforms will catch up with them eventually, but man flow desk emails are gorgeous They’re so pretty another huge perk to flow desk. Is that they have You don’t pay by the subscriber. I should say they have a couple different tiers that you can you know opt in at but You Even with their lowest tier, you get unlimited email list subscribers.

That is not the norm. Most, if not every other email platform that I have seen, yes, every other email platform I’ve personally seen. There could be another one out there. If you know of another one, drop it in the Slack channel. But every other one that I have seen, if you, as you grow, you have to increase your payment plan.

Which is why it’s so important to cull your email list. And even if you use Flowdesk and you have unlimited subscribers, I really recommend that you cull your email list frequently. But every other platform you have to pay more for more subscribers. It’s not something that we typically have to worry about until you have like thousands and thousands of subscribers.

But still, it is something to think about if you want to grow with it long term. And, um, yeah, it’s just, it’s a great platform for quite a few different reasons. Now, the third recommendation I have is Cartra. Now, Cartra is what I use currently. I switched to it in 2021 and I absolutely adore it. I switched from MailerLite to Cartra because I did not like having to set up Zaps for my email marketing.

I wanted an all in one platform and that is the biggest pro of Cartra. It is enough. all in one. I run almost my entire business out of Cartra. My one to one clients are run out of HoneyBook, but almost everything else is run out of Cartra. My courses, my, the membership, um, the, every shop item that I sell is out of Cartra.

My email list, my opt ins, my quiz. I mean, the list goes on and on. It is truly an all in one platform and that is why I switched to it. However, If you do not have an extensive shop like I do I have I think close to 15 different products If you don’t have an extensive shop, you probably don’t need an all in one.

I will say It is really nice. It has a leg up on flow desk with funnels and analytics That being said flow desk is a newer. It’s It may be the newest to the email marketing game and they are always growing. They just added checkouts, which is a new thing. So if you only have a handful of products, Flodesk is a good bet.

But I ultimately switched from MailerLite to Cartrub because I didn’t want to set up Zaps. I did a, I had my courses hosted in Teachable, which I also loved, but I was running a sale. This was probably my second time selling content batching bootcamp, I think. And I had about 30 sales and 10%, 10 people, which is, I don’t even know what percent, whatever.

There were about 10 people where the zap just didn’t run and so they didn’t get added to, they purchased the course but they didn’t get added to MailerLite. And so they didn’t get the welcome emails for the course. And that was a huge problem for me. I was like, If 10 out of 30, that’s a huge number where that ZAP failed, as I scale, that’s going to be even more of a headache.

Which is when I switched to Cardra. So, I had that need and I switched. Here’s the deal, to make this really simple, if you are just getting started with your email list in your business, and you are not making any money really at this point, go with MailerLite. I, in Slack, I will, post my affiliate links. Um, with MailerLite, if you decide to not do the free one, I do have an affiliate link that will get you 20 off your first payment.

For Flowdesk, if you are someone who does not have an extensive shop or an extensive catalog, and you’re someone that wants really beautiful emails, and you don’t really have a need for an all in one, I will put my link in Slack again, and it’ll get you 50 percent off your first year. And it’ll let you try it free for 30 days.

So, you can try it free, I think it’s a free trial with no credit card required, so then you try it and if you decide you like it, that link should also get you 50 percent off your first year. And then, if you need an all in one, if you know, I have a couple courses, or I’m going to have a couple courses, um, and you just want all of the capabilities of an all in one, I can help you save 20 percent on Cartra with the link that’s going to be in Slack.

But that’s how I would decide. Whichever category you feel like you fit there, that’s how I would choose. Um, And that’s your activity for this week. If you do not already have a platform, choose your platform. Again, my affiliate links will be in Slack to help you save some money on those. And for my VIP tiers, if you haven’t sent me your opt in confirmation email, do that this week.

That’s your goal for this week is to submit that for feedback and review. And that, my friend, was a sneak peek of my private podcast for Chasing Symbol Marketing, The Community. The Community is meant to be a place where small business owners simplify their marketing, get strategic. And also take action While I I know that education is important.

I mean That’s what I got my degree in right? I’m, so passionate about education I wanted this membership to be something that wasn’t just education. I want it to be all about action. And so we spend A single quarter on one specific topic and Q1, 2024, we spent the entire quarter working on getting set up and getting started with email list.

Q4, 2023 was all about creating our strategic lead magnets, and so they flowed together so nicely because everyone created their strategic lead magnet. One that led to an offer of theirs and then we worked on setting up the email list so that we can then share about those strategic lead magnets and put it out there into the world and know that we are growing our email list strategically.

So that’s what the behind the scenes looks like. We have weekly calls, there’s a weekly episode in the private podcast and everyone gets a ton of access to me for help and for feedback and I just absolutely adore the community. So some other episodes. for the private podcast in Q1 were legal considerations of email marketing, how to nurture your email list, making your email writing easier, how often should you email your list, how to encourage engagement in your emails, and just so many more.

Like I said, there’s an episode every single week. And if you want access to the private podcast, weekly calls, and more, you Use code LISTENER for your first month free. I will link to the community in the show notes, but if you just go to amandawarfield. com slash community, you can also find the page there where you can sign up and again, that first month totally free with the code LISTENER.

Now, your action step for this week is to DM me on Instagram and tell me what your favorite email platform is, if you already use one. And if not, DM me and tell me which one you picked. The book recommendation for this week is The Kingdom of Copper by, who I’m going to, I’m going to butcher this and I’m so sorry, S.

A. Chakraborty, I’m sorry, C H A K R A B O R T Y. This is actually the second book in a trilogy, uh, when I was looking through my Goodreads from last year and I was looking at the different, you know, what I had ranked different things, I actually gave the first book three stars, and then the second one four, which is very not normal for me.

Normally the second book is my least favorite in every trilogy, so, uh, The second book is one that I’m really recommending, but I’m recommending the entire trilogy, and the first one is called The City of Brass, and it’s the Dave Abad trilogy. Man, it is so good. If you like fantasy, but this is, it’s fantasy, but it’s also, um, kind of, it’s not really sci fi.

I’m not sure how to explain it, but it is incredible. If you are a fantasy reader, you will like this one, but it’s not your typical fantasy. Just a heads up, but man, it’s a great series I was really surprised that I hadn’t ranked the first one higher But there you go, and I will link to that in the show notes for you and until next time my friend I hope that you’ll go out uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today friend You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 206: Choosing an Email Provider {Private Podcast Sneak Peak!} appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

When I onboard a new client, there are always standard questions that I ask. One of those being what their current marketing strategy looks like. And over the years, I’ve discovered that there are some very common holes that MOST of my clients have when they come to me.

Now, I help my clients fill these gaps for themselves, but you can also fill these gaps on your own. (Chasing Simple Marketing: The Community is a great way to both DIY it and get my help for just $27 a month by the way).

So today I wanted to share the 4 most common holes that I see clients come to me with, and a little insight into how to get started.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

When I onboard a new client, there are always standard questions that I ask. One of those being what their current marketing strategy looks like. And over the years, I’ve discovered that there are some very common holes that most of my clients have when they come to me. Now, I help my clients fill these gaps for themselves, but you can also fill these gaps on your own.

Chasing Simple Marketing the Community is a great way to both DIY it and get my help for just $27 a month, by the way. But today I wanted to share the four most common holes that I see clients come to me with and a little insight in how to get started with each of them. You’re listening to episode 205 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Symbol Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week.

I’ll bring you transparent conversations. Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? There are a lot of different marketing strategies out there. From content, to networking, to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next. without seeing results.

Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies when you aren’t seeing any from your own. And after hearing from listener after listener wondering which marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which strategies will be best for you.

Based on your current phase of business, head to amandawarfield. com slash quiz to take it. Learn where you should focus your marketing energy and start seeing results from your marketing. Again, that’s amandawarfield. com / quiz. As always, this is your reminder that before you can really start filling a lot of these holes, you have to get consistent first.

If you’re not consistently showing up with your content, some of these things won’t matter. If possible, get consistent and then start working on these, especially because people are going to be more likely to do these things. You’ll see what I mean here in a second, but they’ll be more likely to actually follow through on some of these requests that you have, these asks, if you’re consistent, because that builds the know, like, and trust.

So. If you’re still struggling to get consistent, check out my content batching bootcamp course, it is my most purchased course period. And it has just gotten just such rave reviews since I launched it in 2020. People love it. It makes such a difference in their business and it teaches you how to batch your content, but also how to set up a batching system that works for you and your business uniquely.

So. That’s there. If you want to check it out, I’ll link to it in the show notes. You can also go to amandawarfield. com slash bootcamp to check it out. But if you’re not consistent, start showing up consistently with your content. Now, the first very common marketing hole that I see with clients is that they don’t have a welcome sequence.

And if your welcome sequence is even just one email long, that’s enough. That’s a great start. But so many of my clients, they get stuck in this mindset of. Well, I don’t have time to create an entire sequence, so I haven’t created one at all. But what ends up happening if you don’t have a welcome sequence is that someone opts into your list, and especially if you’re not being consistent, right, with your content and you’re not showing up consistently in their inbox, they opt into your list, they’re not welcomed, they don’t know anything about you, right?

Because the purpose of a welcome sequence is to say, hey, this is who I am. This is what my brand is. This is who I serve. And this is how I can help you. And you want it to be something that gives them the choice to stick around or not. And of course, even if they don’t take action, they stick around.

Because until someone unsubscribes, they stick around. But you want to say, hey, I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you downloaded my freebie or bought my Low ticket offer, but this is who I am and what I do and if you don’t align with this Please hit unsubscribe like ask them to do that. You want your welcome sequence to let them know who you are Start building that relationship with you if they haven’t already and if you don’t have that and you’re not consistently showing up in Their inbox because you’re not consistently emailing your list Then you end up as this random person that they go.

Oh, who is this emailing me? When did I sign up for their stuff? I don’t understand. Like, what is going on? Immediate unsubscribe or report spam because they don’t remember signing up for your email list. So, you want to make sure you have a welcome sequence of some sort so that you can say, Hey, this is who I am.

I’m really glad you’re here. If you’d like to stick around, please stick around. If you don’t, that’s totally fine. Take the freebie and run. So, getting started with the welcome sequence, I have a welcome sequence template. If you just want to snag a template, fill in some holes and pop it into your system, you can totally do that.

I’ve got that in my shop, but if you want to build yours from scratch and you don’t have the capacity to build a full welcome sequence, just start with one email, send an opt in delivery email, and then send an email that says, Hey, welcome. This is who I am. I’m so glad you’re here. This is who I serve, and this is how I serve them.

This is what I do. I firmly believe this thing, and I would love it if you would stick around. But if this isn’t your vibe, if this isn’t the kind of help that you’re needing, there’s an unsubscribe button below. Please unsubscribe. And that’s all you have to say. So, start with that, or Snagged my welcome sequence templates.

I have inside of the templates You’ll find a flowchart for what the welcome sequence should look like and then also opt in delivery emails There’s three different opt in sequence emails and then a welcome sequence emails as well which I’ll link to in the show notes if you want to check out that template now the Second very common hole that I see in my clients marketing strategies is that they don’t have a strategic lead magnet and what I mean by that is that they have an opt in and And it is something they probably created just to like slap an opt in out there to have a freebie that they could send people to.

But the problem is, is that it doesn’t actually connect with their offers. It doesn’t do anything to send people to their offers. So what you want to make sure that you do when you’re creating a lead magnet is you want to actually start with your offer. And you want to go, okay. What does someone need to have done, or have understood, or have completed before they’re ready for this offer?

What’s the step before it? And then you want to take that topic and create your lead magnet around that topic. And then, Within your lead magnet, you want to make sure that you’re mentioning your offer. Maybe you give a discount. Maybe you give a free trial. Maybe, I don’t know what that would be, but you want to make sure you say, Hey, you’ve done this thing.

You’ve completed this step. What’s the next step? Well, it’s this thing. And Hey, I can help you with that too, with this offer. You want to make sure that you are strategically leading people into your offer because a free opt in is, yes, about growing your email list but it’s also about growing your list with people who need help solving the problem that you solve.

It’s about building a list of people that are good for your offer. An email list that has a ton of people in it but aren’t interested in your actual offers, it’s not worth your time. It’s not a good list because you’re going to be Sending emails to a lot of people, but you’re not going to be seeing a return on that time investment.

You’re not going to be seeing sales. So you want to make sure that your lead magnet is really really strategic and if you don’t have strategic lead magnets for each of your main offers, now’s a great time to create them. And if you are a member of the community and you missed out on Q4 of last year of 2023.

Go back to the Q4 section because that entire quarter we focused on building a strategic lead magnet. So I’m giving you everything you need to do that. All of the content you need to walk you through it. There’s a checklist. So go back and check that out if you are inside of the community and you joined after or you were in there but you just didn’t have time.

Remember that that is there and you can Get guidance through building that strategic lead magnet and then, you know, message me in the Slack channel for the community, ask questions, show up to office hours. All of that is there to help you create that strategic lead magnet and I would love to help guide you through it.

And if you’re not a member of the community yet, you can find the link in the show notes or go to amandawarfield. com slash community and use code listener for your first month free and you can start building your strategic lead magnet in there. Now, the third hole that I see with clients so commonly is that they don’t put out an annual survey.

An annual survey is so important for your marketing. This is how you know what the people on your list The people in your audience the people that you know, listen or watch or read your long form content What they need from you what they want what their struggles are So often I have people come to me and go well, I just don’t know what my audience needs Well, this is the best way to find out put out an annual survey I do this once a year for my entire audience and I also do it once a year for my membership for the community So that I know very specifically, okay This is what my audience as a whole is struggling with.

And then also, okay, here’s how I can improve this membership, how I can continue to serve the people inside of it. Here’s what they want to learn from me in the coming year. So an annual survey is so simple to put together. You create a Google form. That’s all you need. Mine are always less than 10 questions.

It’s So, so simple. And honestly, the shorter, the better, because the more likely someone will actually go through and answer if you have less questions. And that’s also less work for you on the front end, but also coming through all of that information. And this literally will tell you, Hey, This is what they’re struggling with.

And then you can take that information, those struggles they’ve given you, and create offers around them. Or maybe it’s a great, oh, I could create a lead magnet for this. This is so helpful, right? It tells you exactly what they need. So you can create offers, create lead magnets that they want and they will purchase, that they will download.

But, it’s also a great way to get copy for your content and for your sales pages. Because the way they talk about these struggles is likely different than how you would talk about them when you’re teaching about them. And so, they’re selling, they’re telling you exactly how to share with them, to pull them in.

Also, this is a really great way to get content ideas. Because listen, we all get to the point with our content where we go, I just don’t know what to say anymore. I literally messaged my podcast producer this week and said, man, I have One more episode I need to create and fill for this next batch week, and I just am burned out.

I don’t know what to say. And this happens to all of us. And our annual surveys are a great place to get content ideas. So, I cannot recommend an annual survey enough. If you have one marketing project on your plate each year, I would say this should be the one, quite frankly. All right, and then the fourth and final, well, not really final, but the fourth most common.

Marketing hole that I see with my clients is that they don’t have at least one sales funnel. Now, a sales funnel is an email funnel that sells on Evergreen. One of your offers, and these are so important for a number of reasons, first and foremost, because.

So if nothing else, a sales funnel for a specific offer is that first touch point and maybe multiple touch points if they read all the emails, right? But it’s that first set of touch points for an offer that you have. Secondly, it’s so important because frankly, It really cements in people’s minds what it is that you do.

And third, it’s going to convert if it’s done well. And honestly, even if it’s not done well, it’ll probably still convert some. And so you are, from the start of people coming into your email list. They are then being sold something. So as soon as they get on your list, you have the chance to make money. So what this tends to look like when I set it up for myself and for my clients is we start with the freebie.

They have their opt in sequence, then they have their welcome sequence, and then from the welcome sequence, they get put into this initial sales sequence. There are also other types of sales sequences you can set up. I’m not going to go into those today. That’s a great way to have that initial sales sequence is just by right after the welcome sequence, check to see if they’ve gone through this sales sequence before.

And then send them through it if they haven’t. And that way they’re getting those touch points, they may purchase, or they may just be primed for the next time you share about it. The next time you launch, they may just go, Hmm, I really like that. Now’s not the time, but next time you share about it, they may be ready.

So have at least one sales funnel set up. And again, if you’re like, that sounds great. I don’t have the capacity for this. Well, I can help you let’s do a VIP day and I will write a sales funnel for you. Or just start with one email, just start with one, one sales email that shares about an offer. Don’t worry about a full funnel.

If you don’t have the money to hire it out and you don’t have the time to do it yourself, write one sales email for your main offer and stick it into a welcome sequence. Okay? Your action step out of all of these. Because that was a lot, I know, and there’s a reason that they’re common holes, right?

Because they are marketing projects. Your goal, your action step is to start with your welcome sequence. And again, I have a welcome sequence template if you want to snag that. It’s in my shop. I’ll link to it in the show notes. But start with that welcome sequence or that welcome email. That way you are letting people know from the beginning who you are and people are staying on your list because they want to be there Versus I signed up for a freebie and never heard from you again and didn’t realize I was still on your list Now, your book recommendation for this week is Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert.

Let me tell you, I could read her books all day long. She is such a great author, and typically the other books of hers I’ve read have been a little more mature. This one was about a couple in high school actually, and they’re on like a school trip I believe, in the woods. I don’t know. It’s It’s so cute and it’s just so well written and I cannot recommend it enough.

I’m gonna link to it in the show notes. But if you like meet cute type books, um, I think this one was like enemies to lovers, but like high school enemies to lovers, not really lovers. And not really full out enemies either, but so such a good book. So I’ll link to that in the show notes. And until next time, my friend, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to survive marketing over at amandaworthfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 205: 4 Common Marketing Holes I See with Clients appeared first on Amanda Warfield.