Start Marketing

For a podcast called "Start Marketing" you might wonder why I actually stopped marketing my business.

Spoiler alert: I started a rebrand process and determined there was much more strategy work to be done behind the scenes in order to make it meaningful.

This week I use my monthly marketing update to pull back the curtain and explain:

• Why a logo change should never just be a logo change
• How I reframed my positioning in the marketplace
• The framework I used to create more powerful messaging
• How I'm re-strategizing
• How I'm re-branding

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

How should you execute digital ads? According to today's guest, you shouldn't. Yes, you should be doing them because they're a great, trackable way to generate leads for your business, but if you're not a digital ad expert, you should be hiring someone to run campaigns for you.

Key Takeaways:

• Your budget needs to be large enough to generate enough leads that it will be meaningful to your business
• Identifying your goals before you begin running ads helps create successful campaigns
• Hire a professional to do your ads to maximize your spend and ROI

Today's guest is David McBee. David started working with business owners back in the days of the original search engine: the yellow pages. When the Internet was born and he showed an aptitude for how it would impact his clients, he embraced the technology, becoming an Internet Trainer, traveling the country and teaching hundreds of sales reps and business owners about Internet Marketing. In 2008, David had the opportunity to be trained at Google’s Mountain View Googleplex, becoming one of the first Google AdWords Certified Trainers.

Having worked for a handful of Internet Marketing agencies and as an independent consultant, David was recruited to be the National Director of Training for a targeted advertising company. In this role, he works directly with business owners to help them understand the inner workings for targeted advertising, programmatic display and connected TV to increase brand value and grow revenue.

Connect with David by Googling him. If he isn't the top search result, he isn't doing his job correctly.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

If you don't have money to invest in advertising, don't start a business.

It's a bold claim made by today's guest, David McBee. But, it's not an incorrect statement. You have to have two things to grow a business: income or influence. It can take years to grow organic influence. Most small businesses believe they're going to generate leads and sales from digital marketing or targeted advertising.

But in order to make money, you have to understand the strategy behind targeted advertising.

Key Takeaways:

• Targeted advertising uses data to display digital ads to your target audience (what you probably think of as stalker ads)
• Your budget needs to be large enough to generate leads at scale so the profit is noticeable for your business
• Targeted advertising is advantageous for small businesses because it's trackable

Today's guest:

David McBee started working with business owners back in the days of the original search engine: the yellow pages. When the Internet was born and he showed an aptitude for how it would impact his clients, he embraced the technology, becoming an Internet Trainer, traveling the country and teaching hundreds of sales reps and business owners about Internet Marketing. In 2008, David had the opportunity to be trained at Google’s Mountain View Googleplex, becoming one of the first Google AdWords Certified Trainers.

Having worked for a handful of Internet Marketing agencies and as an independent consultant, David was recruited to be the National Director of Training for a targeted advertising company. In this role, he works directly with business owners to help them understand the inner workings for targeted advertising, programmatic display and connected TV to increase brand value and grow revenue.

Connect with David by Googling him. If he isn't the top result, he isn't doing his job correctly.

Music: Tuesday, by Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week's episode is a hot seat coaching session with Jenna Reich of Jenna Reich Photography. I had so much fun and I am so invested in what Jenna's doing because it resonates with me as a mom. I tried to keep this to 30 minutes, but just couldn't!

Jenna is a documentary photographer; instead of meeting your family in a meadow at golden hour, she comes to your home and spends the day with you. She captures what day to day life is like for kids and their parents--documenting all the little moments that families want to remember, like the way your toddler holds your hand when you walk to the kitchen or scoots onto your lap for story time. The way your teens laugh when they tell you a good joke. Equally as Instagram-able as the family photos we've all grown accustomed to, she helps you create a time capsule that you can look back on that brings you joy.

Jenna's restarting her successful photography business after living overseas for several years. Her questions include:

• How to position her business to her target audience
• How to learn more about her target audience
• How to create messages that will teach people what she does and lead to booked sessions
• What to include in a nurture sequence
• Creative ways to get her name out in a new community

We cover a lot of ground in this episode! Key takeaways for Jenna are:

• Interview past clients about why they worked with her
• Interview parents in her current network that can tell her why they'd consider documentary photography
• Create messages that are simple and precise to describe the experience she provides using the StoryBrand script of identifying and speaking to potential clients' external struggles (traditional photo sessions are stressful and nobody wants to remember the day), internal struggles (as moms we want to remember all the little moments we know make up our daily life with our kids and see ourselves on our motherhood journey) and philosophical struggles (families ought to be able to recall good memories when they see photos)
• Create a nurture sequence that introduces documentary family photography and overcomes objections clients may have
• Partner with local non-profits that support families to give a mini session away that the non-profit can promote on her behalf thus increasing awareness of her services

I genuinely enjoyed unpacking all of this with Jenna! What she does speaks to my soul and I hope you enjoy today's episode!

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

In this week's episode, my guest Derek and I discuss how to build your own credible website. As a small business owner, you may not have the money to pay someone to build a website for you. The good news, is that you can build a credible website on your own.

Key Takeaways:

• Start by reverse engineering a path to "yes" for your customers to purchase
• Make sure you have clear call to action buttons
• Use free tools like SEM Rush or Uber Suggest to help you identify keywords
• Understand the story you want to tell by using the Story Brand framework
• Keep your design simple

Derek Jensen has a passion for building systems and processes for people that scale and create the capacity to do what they do best every day. His experience has included working with large brands down to small startups in industries ranging from Powersports, management consulting, finance, legal, hospitality, software as a service, and manufacturing. Understanding each situation, the individual and company needs, allows Derek to assess and provide solutions that best support product sales and improve efficiencies and performance.

Derek’s experience building and launching products have helped the companies he works with to add new revenue, develop a more extensive more engaged customer base, increase internal and external communication, and create increased capacity. His work has directly resulted in leaders reaching their next level goals.

Derek and his wife, Grace enjoy spending time with their four children, Cora, Asher, Micah and Declan, and their dog. In their spare time, they support their children in their passion for becoming playground connoisseurs. As a family, they also enjoy traveling together.

Purchase Derek's course for expert guidance to build your own website.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Having a website for your small business is critical - even if you design it yourself. Why? It creates confidence in your consumer that you are a legitimate business. How? By allowing you to tell your story, showcase your expertise and provide a direct call to action that you lack on social media.

It's tempting for small businesses to rely on social media as their "website", but it's a risky move because you don't own the space. If your favorite social media platform suddenly closes shop (as they sometimes do), you don't want to be left high and dry without a website to help you reach customers.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

• Websites create confidence in your customers
• Websites build authority for your business
• Websites help you convert more leads into sales

This week's guest is Derek Jensen. Derek has a passion for building systems and processes for people that scale and create the capacity to do what they do best every day. His experience has included working with large brands down to small startups in industries ranging from Powersports, management consulting, finance, legal, hospitality, software as a service, and manufacturing. Understanding each situation, the individual and company needs, allows Derek to assess and provide solutions that best support product sales and improve efficiencies and performance.

Derek’s experience building and launching products have helped the companies he works with to add new revenue, develop a more extensive more engaged customer base, increase internal and external communication, and create increased capacity. His work has directly resulted in leaders reaching their next level goals.

Derek and his wife, Grace enjoy spending time with their four children, Cora, Asher, Micah and Declan, and their dog. In their spare time, they support their children in their passion for becoming playground connoisseurs. As a family, they also enjoy traveling together.

Connect with Derek.

This week's episode is a hot seat coaching session with Clarissa from Setting D Ranch. Her and her husband Dan are third generation ranchers selling whole hogs and cows. They recently added individual cuts and shipping to their business.

Clarissa's challenge is how to create awareness about the new part of their business and generate new customers.

Key Marketing Strategies we discuss:

• Identifying a target audience
• Creating partnerships with other local vendors to cross promote each other
• Adding long form content such as recipes, shopping lists, or videos to Setting D Ranch's content schedule
• Creating seasonal content for Pinterest that links back to the website where they can cross-sell accompanying cuts and boxes.
• Using email to capture more repeat business

Deep dive into strategies:

• Target Audience: while food seems like it's for everyone (because it is), identifying who's making the decision to purchase and following through on the purchase can help you identify people like them. Once you've identified who has the purchase power, you can create content for the channels where they can find you. We determined that women, and moms specifically, might be a good target audience. Another target audience might be meat eaters who are looking for healthier or more eco-friendly purchasing options.
• Setting D Ranch already has existing partnerships with a local farmer's market and many of the vendors. One way to capture more business is to cross-promote the other vendors she partners with by creating a guide about how to shop for all of your weekly meals at the farmer's market complete with a grocery list and recipes to make it easy. This content translates easily over to Pinterest where recipes are one of the top types of content.
• Because we could be targeting moms, creating recipes and content that explains how purchasing whole hogs and cows can make meal prep easier would be a great starting point. Creating recipes or videos showing how to prepare the meat could also be valuable content to attract new customers.
• Following up on Pinterest, my favorite platform for small businesses because it can drive traffic back to your website and doesn't require you to have a lot of followers to have good reach, creating seasonal content for summer BBQ's or winter months that refers people to the pre-cut shipped boxes on the website could bring in additional customers.
• Finally, using email to encourage repeat customers is a smart, cost effective use of that data you already have. It's easier to create repeat spenders than it is to create new customers. Just make sure that you have them properly opting in to your promotional emails so you don't accidentally get marked as spammed or put on Google's blacklist, rendering your emails useless.

Interested in purchasing from Setting D. Ranch? Check them out.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week, I'm pulling back the curtain and telling you the marketing strategies that are working well for me and the ones that aren't working so great for me. Plus, I analyze why I think certain strategies are underperforming.

Spoiler alert: I'm not being consistent.

Strategies that are going well:

• Pinterest marketing
• Networking
• Relationship building

Strategies that aren't going well:

• email marketing
• guesting on podcasts

Your marketing plan should play to your strengths and your capacity. While mine plays to my strengths, it doesn't fit in with my capacity. So how do you create consistency in your marketing strategy and see success? Give this episode a listen!

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Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Are you a small business that wants to be a big business?

Branding is the key to attracting your ideal clients and making your marketing more effective and efficient. But how do you build a resilient brand?

Key Takeaways:

• You do not have to outsource branding to an agency in the early days of your business
• Build a brand by identifying:
• Who you are
• What you stand for
• Your Target Audience
• and Your voice
• Use design as a silent ambassador of your brand

There is so much strategy that goes in to building a brand and it's not just for big businesses. Help your business grow and scale by making sure every part of your brand, from your decisions to your culture is aligned and sending the right message.

Today's guest is Kristen Graham Brown. Kristen is the owner and chief creative officer at Hoot Design Company. After working in advertising in Chicago, Kristen started Hoot as a custom paper and design shop.

11 years later, it's a boutique branding agency with 14 employees and a home in a newly renovated building Kristen and her husband purchased at the end of 2020.

Hoot specializes in full scope branding which starts from the inside out, it includes culture and every touchpoint someone has with the brand. They specialize in the hospitality industry where customer service and brand experience are essential to success.

Connect with Kristen

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Do you want to be in charge of creating the narrative around your brand or would you rather leave it to chance?

Every big business started as a small business. If you want to be resilient, you need to focus on your brand early.

Key Takeaways:

• You can tell your own brand story or you can let others tell it for you
• Having a brand helps your small business survive
• A brand is the heart and spirit of your business
• A brand will attract your target audience
• Branding is not just the designs you use in your advertising
• Having a brand will make your marketing more effective
• Having a brand will make creating your marketing more efficient
• Your brand will guide every decision you make in your business from purchasing to culture to marketing

Today's guest is Kristen Graham Brown. Kristen is the owner and chief creative officer at Hoot Design Company. After working in advertising in Chicago, Kristen started Hoot as a custom paper and design shop.

11 years later, it's a boutique branding agency with 14 employees and a home in a newly renovated building Kristen and her husband purchased at the end of 2020.

Hoot specializes in full scope branding which starts from the inside out, it includes culture and every touchpoint someone has with the brand. They specialize in the hospitality industry where customer service and brand experience are essential to success.

Connect with Kristen

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io