Start Marketing

Hey Start Marketing listeners and welcome to today’s episode where we’re going to do a deep dive into how to use podcast guest spots as a way to promote your brand and business with our returning guest, Elaine Appleton Grant. 

Elaine Appleton Grant runs Podcast Allies, LLC, a training, consulting and podcast production company. She's passionate about teaching solopreneurs and mission-driven leaders how to produce and grow high-quality podcasts. A lifelong journalist, she reported, produced and hosted shows for three different NPR affiliate stations — WBUR (Boston), NHPR (New Hampshire) and CPR (Colorado). Today her work revolves around strategic storytelling: the most purposeful ways individuals and organizations can use well-crafted stories to reach their objectives. She has written and produced audio stories or podcasts for organizations ranging from NPR and Wondery to the University of Colorado, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Learn how to:

• Pitch yourself as a guest
• Find podcasts to be a guest on
• Be a good guest and get the most out of your episode
• What to do if I get nervous
• What to do once your episode goes live

Key Takeaways:

• Create a good one sheet
• Make it easy for the host to say yes to you by providing questions/topic ideas
• Listen to one or two episodes to ensure you're a good fit
• Have a unique perspective to give to their audience

Katlynn's one sheet

Connect with Elaine

Podcast Liftoff: From Creation to Promotion, Get Your Podcast Off the Ground

https://podcastallies.com/podcast-liftoff-overview

Save $50 with discount code TRUSTYOURSELF

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Hey! Start Marketers, don’t forget, this season we’re shaking things up and trying to really live up to our mission to make marketing more accessible and actionable for you. In the spirit of breaking things down, we’re splitting our episodes into two segments. You’ll get to hear from each guest two times. The first, just like today, to hear about the strategic power of their marketing strategy and the second, the following week to hear about the bite-size tactics to implementing the strategy. I’m really pumped for this format because it’s going to keep my shows shorter, but also because it really does make marketing more accessible and actionable for you.

Today’s guest is a fantastic storyteller with a journalist’s mind and a friend of mine from the Total Life Freedom Mastermind, Elaine Appleton Grant. 

Elaine Appleton Grant runs Podcast Allies, LLC, a training and podcast production company. She's passionate about teaching solopreneurs and mission-driven leaders how to launchg and grow high-quality podcasts. A lifelong journalist, she worked for three different NPR affiliate stations, from the east coast to the mountain west. She has written and produced audio stories or podcasts for organizations ranging from NPR and Wondery to the University of Colorado, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Today her work revolves around strategic storytelling: the most purposeful ways to use well-crafted stories to reach your objectives. 

Obviously, I’m a podcaster, so I really believe in the power of podcasts to help tell your story and market your business, but I always think hearing about a powerful marketing strategy from not just myself, but another industry expert lends it more credibility. So, today Elaine and I are going to walk you through why guesting on a podcast is a great marketing strategy for your business. Note, I didn’t say starting a podcast, because that's a whole different ball game (but also one Elaine can help you with!).

Key Takeaways:

• Guesting on podcasts is a free marketing strategy
• Tools to help you streamline the guest booking process
• Why podcasting is an effective marketing strategy for small businesses

Connect with Elaine

Podcast Liftoff: From Creation to Promotion, Get Your Podcast Off the Ground

https://podcastallies.com/podcast-liftoff-overview

Save $50 with discount code TRUSTYOURSELF

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

I'm so excited to announce Marketing Mondays presented by Grow Nebraska in partnership with the Start Marketing podcast.

Every Monday beginning February 7th from 12-12:15, I will host an Instagram live Q&A session with marketing tips for small business owners. Follow Grow Nebraska on Instagram.

Anyone can join; you don't have to be local! Grow Nebraska members will receive additional benefits such as monthly newsletters and opportunities to be in the hot seat for my monthly coaching sessions.

Non local listeners can get the newsletter updates by subscribing to my email list and get their chance at the hot seat by joining the Start Marketing Community.

Music: Tuesday, By Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week it's my first hot seat episode! The hot seat is when I offer a small business the opportunity to be on the podcast, go through their biggest branding or marketing challenge and I coach them live on the air.

This week, in the hot seat, is my friend Jeremy Allen of No B.S. Branding. I was surprised that Jeremy asked to be on the show; he's actually helping me work on my graphic identity.

In this episode, we talk through his challenge of being the cobbler with no shoes when it comes to branding and how to create awareness for his new business.

We cover:

• brand strategy
• Pinterest marketing
• Google Business Profiles
• workshops
• niches

Join the Start Marketing community for your chance to be in the hot seat.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

On to today’s show. I’ve been looking forward to this interview for a while because it’s with a guest that I know well because I belong to his community, Vincent Pugliese. Vincent is, first and foremost, a husband and a father. He and his wife Elizabeth homeschool their three sons in Bredenton, Florida. Vincent is the host of the Total Life Freedom Podcast, a daily, short form show teaching you something new about every day about business and living a life of freedom. He recently launched The Wealth of Connection, a podcast studying the super connectors of the world through deep conversations. Vincent’s new book, The Wealth of Connection will be published in the spring of 2022, and he is the leader and founder of the Total Life Freedom Mastermind, connecting and helping entrepreneurs live a life of time, money and location freedom. 

You can check out what he has going on at totallifefreedom.com and connect with Vincent on Instagram at totallifefreedom1.

Key Takeaways:

• How to build a network to promote your business
• How to use your network to grow and scale your business
• How to approach networking authentically so it doesn't feel like a sales pitch
• How to talk about your business with your network so it feels relevant
• Take an actionable step every day to build your network: use one hour to connect and talk with your network

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

On to today’s show. I’ve been looking forward to this interview for a while because it’s with a guest that I know well because I belong to his community, Vincent Pugliese. Vincent is, first and foremost, a husband and a father. He and his wife Elizabeth homeschool their three sons in Bredenton, Florida. Vincent is the host of the Total Life Freedom Podcast, a daily, short form show teaching you something new about every day about business and living a life of freedom. He recently launched The Wealth of Connection, a podcast studying the super connectors of the world through deep conversations. Vincent’s new book, The Wealth of Connection will be published in the spring of 2022, and he is the leader and founder of the Total Life Freedom Mastermind, connecting and helping entrepreneurs live a life of time, money and location freedom. 

You can check out what he has going on at totallifefreedom.com and connect with Vincent on Instagram at totallifefreedom1.

Key Takeaways:

• Why building a network is critical to your success as an entrepreneur
• Why networking is a powerful marketing strategy
• When to start building your network
• The best way to use your network to grow and scale your business

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week I'm talking about how I'm changing my marketing plan for 2022. Instead of trying to build the entire marketing engine, I'm focusing on one strategy each quarter so I can do a deep dive and learn how to be great at each one.

My strategies are all tied to growing this podcast into the top 25% of marketing podcasts. They include:

• Being a guest on podcasts
• Utilizing Pinterest
• Growing my email list

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende at Music.io

This week, I recap the marketing strategies that worked well and the ones that didn't as I close out 2021.

Hey Start Marketing listeners, welcome to the final episode of 2021. It's hard to believe that this year is already done and over with. Today, it's just me and as a way to wrap things up and set up next year's season, I wanted to do this solo episode. It's been almost two years since I started my business and this podcast. So i think this is probably long overdue, but I want to review what's been working well when it comes to my marketing strategy and what hasn't. This will become a regular segment for Start Marketing.

So, let's dive in. 

Let's start with something that's had some ups and downs when it comes to marketing: my website. Now, you all know that I'm strong proponent of having a website for your small business. It's where you can tell a more complete brand story and sell your products and services better than when you rely on social media for your business. Plus, you own it, which means it can suddenly up and disappear like a social channel can. 

what went well about my website? I've been able to update my story as my brand and target audience has changed. I feel like it's a really great representation for me and it can house my podcast recaps which helps give me an SEO boost. 

What hasn't worked well for me? it's not so much about what hasn't been working as what I wish I would've put off investing in. Here's some context: when i started my business, I had a target audience identified and doubled down on them. I paid someone to write awesome, SEO optimized content for me. And then a several months later, I changed my target audience. And I hired someone to write brand spanking new copy for me and do a bunch of on-site SEO work. And then, a few months later, I found myself back at my original target audience. I think. Maybe. The thing is, I didn't know what I didn't know. I thought I was being smart about getting ahead of the SEO game; starting early with content and a keyword optimized site. But, what I didn't know was that in your first few years of business, you can (and probably will) change your target audience as you learn what works for you and what doesn't. So it's not so much that this marketing strategy didn't work, it's just that I wish I had waited to invest in SEO text until I was super sure of the direction I was headed. I can easily roll back my website to an earlier version, that has my original text on it, but that would also mean that I spent almost $3k on something I'm not going to use. Ouch. Omg, it hurts to say. My advice when it comes to this marketing strategy is to DIY the text on your site until you're absolutely sure you know your target audience. Give it a couple of years of business to let things settle so you don't get marketing strategy whiplash. And spend unnecessary dollars. 

Also in the bucket of things that didn't go well in the SEO game: signing up for YEXT. this was at the suggestion of someone I worked with early on, who has done great work for me in the past. Even she admitted that in hindsight it wasn't what she would recommend today. Yext, for those who don't know, is a service that will update your search engine listing for every known search engine out there (google included) at once. In theory, for SEO purposes, you're supposed to have the equivalent of Google My Business on every site that offers a directory listing. There's hundreds of them. But, it's expensive (about $600/year) and it's not really necessary. Focusing on Google My Business is a good first place to start. Save yourself the money. That's pretty much my advice when it comes to SEO. Focus on creating good content and learn how to publish it with solid SEO keywords and phrases, but save yourself the dollars and invest in SEO later down the road. You don't need to be rank #1 in google to get...

I’m pumped for todays episode because it covers one of my favorite topics: branding. And you all know how much I enjoy a good brand conversation. Todays guest brings out the marketing nerd in me and makes me feel like I’ve just had a brush with branding celebrity. 

This week's guest is Megan Kent. Megan Kent is one of America’s premier brand strategists, with over three decades of experience coaching brands on how to find and maximize their inherent strengths. She’s held leadership positions at some of the world’s premier ad agencies and shaped brand strategy for some of the world’s most important brands—Clinique, BMW, Coca Cola, the New York Times, Microsoft, and Brand USA. Having witnessed both success as well as failures in the advertising industry, she began to reassess industry practices and seek out more predictable solutions. With the aim of understanding more deeply the consumer decision-making process, Megan spent over a decade immersed in the science of the mind. By combining her real-world experience with the latest findings in cognitive science, she developed a new branding model called Brain Friendly Branding®. She has identified 7 easily deployable “Brain Friendly” behaviors that brands can use to more powerfully connect with deep-seated human instincts, and begin building neural pathways to YES for their brand.

Today Megan is founder and CEO of Megan Kent Branding Group.

Key Takeaways:

• people are naturally inclined to avoid what makes them feel weird
• big brands start as consistent small brands
• telling stories is critical to brand building

Connect with Megan

Buy Megan's Book

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

We've talked about building funnels in the past, which is essentially mapping out the journey you want your potential buyers to take and intentionally leading them through a small series of 'yes's" to get them to purchase. But, have you built a funnel only to find you've got kinda ho-hum results? You can see the leads start, but you never see them close? Well, if you're wondering where you're losing your potential customers along the way, but you're not sure how to fix it, then I'm excited for you to meet our guest today, Dan McGaw.

Dan McGaw is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker and the CEO of McGaw.io, an analytics and marketing technology consultancy and SaaS platform, UTM.io.

In addition, Dan also finds time to be a 500 Startups Mentor, and has previously started the first business accelerator in Orlando.

He’s also a thought leader in the MarTech world and CXL instructor on the topic. Having spoken at the leading Marketing conferences and online events, including Traction Conf and Forget The Funnel, his expertise lies in helping businesses extract and interpret the right data to grow their revenue exponentially.

Dan previously served as the Head of Marketing at Kissmetrics and in the past he’s worked as a CMO consultant for a number of high-growth companies, implementing tools, offering support, and analyzing data.

In 2015, Dan was selected to be a United States Ambassador of Entrepreneurship by the United States Department of State, where he had the privilege to advise the government, universities, and private corporations on how to build entrepreneur ecosystems. He even flew out to Mexico to be an entrepreneur ambassador for Tijuana and Mexicali!

Key Takeaways:

• What makes a successful sales funnel
• How to keep your sales funnel simple
• How to identify weak spots in your sales funnel
• How to create a sales funnel that resonates with your target audience
• Why you need to understand your target audience before you build your funnel

Connect with Dan

Music: Tuesday by Sacha Ende, Music.io