Transcript for:
TiE XL: Foundations of Digital Marketing Strategy with Jen

and uh I'll turn turn it over to you. All right. So, we're gonna talk about astrology. No, I'm just kidding. We're here to talk about marketing. Um don't worry, I wouldn't I don't know anything about astrology. So, uh here we go. Um we're going to talk about I call it digital marketing foundations. Um, it's really, um, I like to think of it as like giving you all of the things that most business owners or startups wish they knew before they started. Um, and then in the middle of it, and it'll be a challenge for some of you because I know you're early stage, but um, I want you to do the best that you can, um, is throughout the presentation, we're going to take, um, steps toward putting together a our first, um, marketing strategy. or if you've been around for a while, probably not your first, but you know, hopefully not your last either, so that you can start to put the pieces together around, you know, who you want to communicate with. Um, brainstorming some ideas and and getting some content out there. Um, and it's really cool to have, this is the first time I've done TAI where there are so many people, um, creating AI apps. Um, that's really exciting. There's um there's a lot of funding out there if you say those two magical letters AI in startup world. So um there are in here also um let me see five or six maybe more um dynamic AI prompts um that um you'll get this presentation. I've sent the links so that you can download the prompts and use them later. So um just so you know like this presentation changes all the time. It's ch it changed today. Um and so that's that's what we're going to tackle today. Um it's 71 degrees and not raining in Portland. Thank you for being here today. Um I know that uh we don't get these days very often or we haven't until recently. So I just want you to know I appreciate you. Um and I'm here to take your questions and these things are a lot more fun um if you ask questions throughout. So feel free to like unmute or ask for clarification around anything. My name is Jen McFarland. Um I run a boutique digital marketing consultancy in Portland called Women Conquer Business. Um and we do individual consulting engagements. And then I also have um an online membership uh for people who are doing their own marketing to really help them navigate the wild and woolly road of marketing um which is pretty big. Um and you are getting a lot of noise about it. Um and so part of what we're going to do is kind of give you a few priorities to think about um and hopefully take action on. So when we talk about marketing, I really like to to think of it in a little bit of a different a different way. Um because there are a lot of people out there who think of marketing and they get kind of tight and they feel like really nervous about it. Um or you know I don't want to I don't want to do marketing, you know. Um and there are a lot of people actually out there who um they took a poll and people hate marketers more than used car salesmen. So, like, hey, I'm here and probably threequarters of you don't like me just cuz I do marketing. Um, but when we think about what marketing actually is, I like to think about Jay and Dylan. These are the the my neighbors. Um, they got the entrepreneurial spirit a couple of years ago. Um, and they decided to sell lemonade um out Oh, Eric loves marketers. Thank you, Eric. I feel less alone now. Um, but Jay and Dylan got they got the entrepreneurial spirit out there. They decided to sell lemonade. Um, it was one of the days where it was like I don't knowund 10 and some degrees. Um, and their dad Matt, you know, he did some marketing. He's like, "Lemonade on 79th. Get it while it's hot." You know, and he was sending text messages. He was talking about the things that were going on that he really cared about. Um, and he was helping the boys sell some lemonade. And that's really all that marketing is. It's just getting the word out about the things that you care about. And you can do that in a lot of ways. We're going to talk about a few ways tonight, but there's a lot of right ways that you can do marketing. So you can do things like um so I think that Sam, was it Sam? No, Stefano was talking about doing some speaking and doing some training. That's also marketing. Trust me, if you do speaking, other people want you to speak if you do a good job. Um, you can do things like networking and referrals, you know, word of mouth, you can have SEO, you can do all kinds of things. And really, all that you're doing is getting the word out about the things that you care about. You all have a passion, but that passion in marketing is best done, as we're going to talk about a lot, when you're getting the word out at the same time using the words that your customers or your clients are also using. So, it's one thing to talk about it. It's another thing to talk about it in a way that is appealing to the people that um that you want to buy from you. Um so I'm here to tell you not to forget about marketing. Marketing is just as important as all of these other buckets and all these other hats that you have to wear. Um whether you're going for VC funding, that actually complicates marketing because you have a couple of different clients that you're trying to to appeal to. You have to appeal to your customers, but you also have to appeal to funders. Um, and but you can't forget marketing just like you can't can't forget finance, you can't forget your product or your service, operations, any of it. So, it really is about keeping your startup at the center and then making marketing part of the things that you do. A lot of times people fall into one or one of two hats. one is they just don't do any marketing or they're out there and it seems like people are out there all the time. So like it's really about finding that balance. Um and I find that in startups a lot of times people talk a lot about things like features um when really it's about how does it benefit me? You know like AI is like super awesome and does a lot of great things but it's focusing less on AI and more on like what's it going to do for me? like how's it going to make my life better, faster in any sort of way. Um, but it's the same no matter what the service or the app is. Um, we also find that people really want to do the right thing. That's like the biggest dilemma. Like, you know, you have all these hats that you're supposed to wear. Um, and it means that you don't have a lot of time, you don't have a lot of money. So, a lot of what we're going to talk about today is how to um how to get started with your marketing on a limited budget so that you can and you don't need a ton of people, but you can get the most bang for your buck. And that's really what a lot of this is about. Um making sure that you're using established products and integrations wherever you can. Um that means getting all the apps and all the tools to talk to each other. Um, and it just makes things a lot easier when you kind of get a few things sorted and then you can start scaling into other areas in your marketing. I I can't I mean I love this cartoon. I'm probably never going to take it out of my deck ever. Um because es you know there's always a new shiny object out there for marketing. like your marketing priorities um are you can't just be writing writing the latest trend all the time. Um there are some things that you've really got to stick to. Um and um you know you've you've got to stick to it and you got to hang hang on to it. You can't just jump from trend to trend. You're never going to have like a solid strategy. Um and I like to say did somebody say AI because in a lot of ways it is the latest trend. Um, but there are some really great ways that you can use AI to like make your marketing make more sense. It can help you make sense of people um and the people you want to communicate with. Um, the question is, is it necessary to commence marketing efforts while the product is still undergoing construction? So, one of the most powerful pieces of content that you can create is actually like the BTS content or behind the scenes. Um, so you can start your marketing, your first marketing can be like just sharing behind the scenes of like building building the product. Um, and people love that stuff, you know, so you can talk aspirationally around what you're doing, the good days and the bad days and all of that kind of thing. Um, that said, um, find a way to do it that's not going to take too much time because I know you're really busy with like your other priorities. Um, so it's not required. Um, but you are going to have to start at some point generating buzz. So, you know, at least um four to six months before launch, you're going to want to start generating buzz about what it is that you're you're building. Um, a lot of what we're going to do today also is understand that, you know, you're getting contacted all the time um about, you know, all of these things, all of the paid marketing options. Um, the average business, local business is contacted about 25 times a month. I can't tell you how many times I'm contacted about the latest marketing thing. Um, half of it is like bots and not really accurate. Um, and so just to say that all of these are valid options when you're ready. Um, but there is actually a lot of work that you can do that doesn't cost a lot of money. um before um before you get to these. Um we want these paid efforts to be successful. Um but it really works a lot better if you have a few things set up. Things like a website, you know, some some pictures, you know, some testimonials, things like that. Um can really help you go a lot further because you don't want to pay for a bunch of ads that go someplace that really isn't helping put your company in the best light or put your startup in the best light. So again, these are all valid options. Um, but we're going to talk about when Oh, I just realized a link I didn't send. I'll send a link to this, too. So, you'll have to realize that um the kind of the order of operations and there's a workbook that goes with this class that you can go through and kind of realize what that order is. Um, understand also that the tech companies are landlords and they can raise the rent at any time. they have been raising the rent uh a lot and what that means is you're not getting a lot of reach organically anymore. Um it's like you know 10% of all the people who follow you on Instagram are seeing any of your posts. Um LinkedIn I think it's about 10% now as well. Um Twitter which is at least traditionally um or X um traditionally is popular with startups um is like 0.045% Um, and the lifespan of a tweet is like 10 or 15 minutes maybe. Um, and it would be the same on Blue Sky. Um, if any of you are on Blue Sky. Um, so all I'm saying is, um, we're going to also talk about some things that are not social media because the reach is bad. Um, and you know, it's just something to be aware of. Um, so we're going to limit limit your priorities down to like a few things um that will help you get the big results. um because we just want to get you in front of as many people as we can. Um and so let's let's go. Um so let me I'm going to make sure that this let me get this link to um I'm going to make sure that you get this link. So um again this is inside the presentation. Um but there's oh this is the wrong one. So um today this is the worksheet for what we're going to be doing. But if you're going to follow along and start sketching out your strategy, um today I'd just like you to not be distracted by the worksheet and just kind of scribble some things down or type it up in a Google doc. Um but you will have the link if you want to fill this out later um and and work on your objectives um for a for a quarterly strategy. And that's really what we're going to work on together today. Um and the reason we want to have a marketing strategy is that goals really help us focus. um without strategic goals around our marketing, we don't even know if our marketing is successful. So in this model um this is a SAS model of like increase SAS revenue by 25% for the end of Q4. That would be pretty aggressive. Um but you know, so we're saying like sell 25,000 subscriptions to AI app before the end of Q4. Um so if we're talking about people that we don't know, this is divided then your marketing is to people that you know. um these are existing people and then people you don't know. So new people um then you would maybe want to start focusing on people the quarter before um so that they become people that know you. So, you'd be doing marketing awareness campaigns, um, brand awareness campaigns, maybe you'd be doing some ads. Um, you know, you'd be definitely trying to build an email list. Um, so that you have ways to communicate with people that you already know to do some outreach. Um, so this kind of speaks to um, Amdal, I hope I pronounced your name correctly, um, to the idea of starting your marketing efforts before the pro the product is done. Um, and part of it is you just have to create the buzz so that then when you're ready to launch, you have some people that are that are ready um, ready to go when you are. Um, and so you'd want to go through a lot of tactics for like how you would do some follow through on that. If you have a service business or um, a different business model, the goals um, and then down to tactics also are the same. So in this model um it's increasing the consulting revenue. You maybe would sign five retainer clients. Um and you would do some things in the previous quarter to increase lead generation. Um you could do some networking. You could do some other things. Try and get people um on your list or following you on social and then you know do ads and email marketing that's very targeted to people who you think would be an ideal customer. Um both models are very similar. Um but the but the business model is different. Either way, you have to have a way to bring in the people that you don't know. Um and then don't ever forget about the people you've worked with before or who have who have bought your app before um and maybe have turned out. Like you always want to follow up with them um to see if now is maybe the right time to come back. Um, and a lot of times people don't realize how much easier it is to bring somebody back um than it is to find a new person. Um, so a lot of your marketing is about um engaging both. Um, but we still want to talk a little bit about a few different things. And this is the guide. It's really long. We're not going to go through it all right now. Um uh it's like 76 pages and it's a road map that you can use as a checklist um that kind of takes you through like a strategic marketing road map um so that you understand like why things like influencers and PR um and user generated content or UGC um these are the things that get talked about a lot um because as marketers we can charge you a lot of money to do it um but it's not going to work as well if you haven't done some of the other things. So, the workbook um is really helpful. Um it starts at the bottom and works its way up to the top. Um I was at a networking event and somebody stopped me and said that they loved the book and I was I didn't know what they were talking about. They were talking about this book. So, um I'll make sure you get the link to that so that you can work through it. Um but you can use it like a checklist to tell you um you know what you've started, what's in progress, and what's done. Um, and then there are some things that you'll need to revisit a lot. Um, and some things that you just do once. I mean, hopefully your business name, um, is something that you only have to do once because changing your domain and all of that is, um, it's pretty difficult. Um, and then it's divided up into different areas like marketing operations, which is all of the automation that you're going to need, the integrations, things like uh client relationship man manager, um, things that help you with like following up with people, email marketing, that's all considered operations. These are things that hopefully you can you can use enough integrations that you don't have to hire someone for a while. Um, and then there's the presence. So, a marketing presence is really probably what everybody thinks of when they think of marketing. You don't think about all the behind the-scenes stuff that has to happen. Um, but a marketing presence is like how you're showing up on social media, if you're doing blogs or podcasting or guest blogs and podcast guesting. Um, if you have, you know, pictures and profiles everywhere. Um, it's like, you know, how are you showing up? How are you communicating? Um, things like your brand voice. these things all are all marketing presence um and they're detailed. Um and then organic marketing which I'm kind of using in a in a different way because it's usually things that look like they're free but they you know they may not be free. Influencers and PR certainly not free. Um but things like product placements and things like that they tend to look like they weren't paid. Although even that's kind of shifting now. I think people really are clued into influencers. Um and it's not they're not fooling anybody anymore. Um but um organic marketing, this is like things that you know if you're doing blogs and SEO and all of that kind of thing, getting referrals and doing word of mouth marketing, these are organic marketing channels. Um and then you don't want to do all of this work without tracking it. So, um it's about setting up things like Google Analytics and Google Search Console and all that. Um all this stuff is covered in the workbook. Um it's a lot of granular detail that like doesn't really um apply to everybody. So, um so we just put it all in a book so that you can um you can go through it um at a later later time. Um, so before we even get started, like I'm just I always start with this because I talk to a lot of business owners every week. Um, and I I I can get rid of the slide when somebody when I never hear again, um, well, I really need to update my website, but I really hate it or I don't know how to do it. Um, these are indications of who you need to hire. You know, um, if you hate marketing, well, you probably have to hire someone to do it. Um, so understand what you like or dislike about marketing and then if you hate it, like just, you know, um, find somebody else to help you with it. Um, because you're not going to get in front of the right people at the right time, um, if you're not just taking some steps. Um, so digital marketing readiness is really about developing revenue and big picture goals and then understanding that the marketing actions that you take are geared to directly support that goal. Um, so you should never have a question about why am I marketing, why am I on social media, why am I doing this thing? Um, because it should always support a business goal. Um, and that's really what a lot of today's marketing strategy that you're going to create is really all about. Um, so here's your first exercise. Um, do we have any questions so far? No questions. All right. So, I'm going to give you um a few minutes to um answer these questions. Um just brainstorm about who your ideal customers are. Um you may have more than one ideal customer. That's okay. You can just scribble down. These are a few prompting questions to help you. Um and I'll just give you a few minutes to work on that. Um and if you have any questions, you can put them in the chat. Um and then when you're done, also put that in the chat. Jen, sorry if you said this already, but is this uh is this your book? Is this what you use with clients internally or did did you get it from a a resource? Just curious. This is mine. This is all mine. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. This digital marketing strategy is because um somebody said, "I don't understand why how marketing works or how it works for my business." And I was like, "Oh, I can make a framework for this." Um the book, the 76 page workbook, um there's a local marketer, David Mim, and I wrote it together. Um and it was originally done for Prosper Portland. Um and then that was several years ago, and I've gone on to revise it a few times since then. So, yeah. Awesome. Yeah. You're not getting this anywhere else. Yeah. Appreciate you sharing it. Sure. All right. I'll give you a few minutes. All right. So, how did that go for everybody? Still writing. Sure. Yeah. I'm not quite done yet. Okay. Hey, Jen. I have a question. Sure. Um, you mentioned that small businesses are reached out to about 25 times a month, which was a pretty staggering thought. I feel like there's a lot of spam like um ton of spam. And so how are do you have any good suggestions as to like how to differentiate yourself from spam? Like uh is there value today in tailoring uh cold calls or even going doortodoor going for like older marketing approaches? Yeah. Um more personal. Yeah, I mean I think that's a really good question. Um, I've been um giving talks up and down the coast um and in the gorge and lately they've been saying that they've had a lot of success with radio um which kind of was like really okay you know um and so it so don't sleep on some of and that's maybe not as personalized as what we're talking about here but don't sleep on the traditional marketing tactics because so many people rely only on digital now um that you can do that um and and be successful because it's like depending on who your market is and you know what you're doing, some of those traditional marketing strategies can really work. Um that said, um you differentiate yourself from the spam by um personalizing as much as you can. like we did um we did some cold emails um in the fall, but I like researched every single person and like we weren't just sending out like thousands of emails because I didn't that's not aligned with my brand. Um so we researched and found the right people. Um and then we you know did some cold emailing but it wasn't just like every you know it wasn't the same standard thing. Does it take longer? Yeah. Um, but it was converting pretty well, you know, and so like it is if it if it's about conversions, um, you know, and I I think it is, then yeah, I mean, you want to take the time to personalize things and really, um, dive in and really get to know your customers as much as possible. Um, because then you can be really personal um, in your marketing um, and that makes it a lot more successful. Understood. Thanks, Jen. Sure. Um, how did this go for everyone? You feel pretty good about it. Like you're probably going to have to work on some of this stuff later. Um, but you got a good start on it. And um Oh, wow. See, got a couple here in the chat. I've had some wild dreams. I got to tell you, I would love to journal about those and figure out what does it mean if you think you have a giant horse in your bedroom and you've pet your husband because you thought he had a dog on his shoulder. So, that means good luck. Both of those were this week. So, um anyway, I know more than you dated. No, that's great. But uh um so the these are great, you know, so understand that like all of your marketing efforts start with your customers or clients or people who buy your app, however you define it. Um and so whenever you're like, I don't know what I should do. Um you know, go back to who you're trying to sell to. Um and learn as much as you can about them. Um and that's that's really where a lot of this starts. Um and uh and and then it makes the goals a lot easier. So um so you start with who the customer is, you know, who is it that we want? Um and some of sometimes this I really the reason I really like this question here. Um I like to ask people like is your ideal customer buying from you? Because if they're not, you know, then you have to think about maybe you're focusing on the wrong group, you know, or are there characteristics of the people who are buying from you now that you that make them not ideal? Like so then you have to go back and change something. Um so it is a constant refinement. Um and so as much as we can put something together and put some goals together now, um understand that it's going to be something that shifts um over time. Um, so the next thing I want you to do, I don't know if you've done it, um, yet or before. Um, and I purposefully chose a goal that I didn't think would apply to anybody in here of selling nachos. Um, but, um, I want you to have like a smart goal. Um, or like sometimes it's a smarter goal. So, it's like you've done some refle reflection. That's what the is, you know, and you've come back and like refined your goal. Um, so what this means is I just want it to be specific, um, actionable, something you can measure. Um, and the thing that's really important here because I know we're talking about marketing. So you might be thinking, oh, I'm just going to say how many social media followers I'm going to have. And here, and that's not what this is that's not what this is for. Um, this is actually a business goal. Um, because we're going to take this business goal and then we're going to apply marketing to it. So, it's really important that it be something and generally that has something to do with revenue or the number of people, you know, the number of clients, the number of app sales, something like that. Um, it's not a marketing goal. Um, mostly because, um, I can't go to the grocery store and buy milk with my 500 social media followers or whatever. So, um, so let's take a little time to come up with a goal. And it might be somewhat artificial if you're early in development. Um, but it's a good exercise to like have a little aspirational goal setting. Um, does anybody have any questions about this? All right, let's take take a couple minutes. Keep reading what everybody wrote in the chat. Yeah. What's the question? Uh what do you mean by actionables? Actionable. Oh, so that would be like um it's usually like more or less like so you understand what you're what's the change? what are you going to take action to do? So, this is like I'm going to sell 1,500 and it's more than I sold before. Does that make sense? So, that's what the actionable part is. And the relevant piece um like for the for you the relevant should always be like the thing that you're trying to it should always be related to the business or to the startup. Does that does that help? All right. Uh so, we put it in one sentence that That's what it means. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Just kind of distill it down to like one goal. The reason we're only doing uh one is because often times um smaller businesses tend to take on too many goals at a time. So, we're going to start with one goal and then work our way. You can do more. You can do more without me, but I'm confident that addressing one goal at a time is the best is the best thing to do. Okay. Uh Nicole. Okay. I have a question. Um well, of course I do because I raised my hand. So when we're working on these things and this is about language and the climate has changed and and in that language has to change with marketing because it has to be more strategic. How do you work around that and putting your goals together and in marketing? It's it's it's a very big question and because nowadays apparently cuz they've taken the NIH down and woman is a swear word apparently. I don't know why diversity has become a swear word. Um disability is a bad word too. How do you navigate that? And how do you navigate that in your goals and in marketing and all those kinds of things? And this may not be the time for this question, but as you were talking about this, I'm thinking about my website as my goal and how to reformat things and wording. And I'm going to be quiet now and let your mouth talk. Yeah. I mean, I think that I mean, it's an interest. It's Yeah, there's just so much um going on in the world. I will say that like um for me, I mean, women conquer business like definitely doesn't appeal to everybody, okay? like and I haven't taken down the language about who I help and why, you know, cuz basically do you help men? Yes. Like, but you just have to be cool with the business name, you know? I mean, so like part of marketing is carving out the the space on the internet and in the business community or in the startup community that you want to you want to hold. Um, and so a lot of what you're talking about, Nicole, are like these are like brand questions, you know. Um, and my brand is my brand like and it's aligned with how I talk and about the people I help and you know, I'm committed to the small business community, you know, um, committed to women and bipac owners and the LGBTQIA plus community. I mean, so like I can't take all of that down because it's just part of what I do. um you know, and just like somebody who does something else shouldn't take all of that down. Um and a lot of that is these are like brand decisions um that that are really critical and important for each of you to make about what is our voice, who are we speaking to, and who does that appeal to like and um and sometimes it takes time for you to like um decide. You know, I can tell by reading many of these customer um you know, profiles that over time these are going to get far more specific. Like I mean my customer profiles, they have names. They like you know they have you know job titles um the amounts of money that they're making. I know what they like to read um or what I think they like to read, you know. And so the more specific you get, the more it becomes like um you're having a conversation with somebody. And that's when all of these things get a lot easier. Um, and so that's that's the essence of marketing is like when you reach a point that you're just conversing with your people and very comfortable with it, um, then you start to it it starts to get a lot easier to do your marketing. So I just encourage everybody to do that. Um, so you might not have to change if it's in integral to the brand or you may feel like you have to um based on who your client profile is and who you're helping. Um, those are like brand decisions um that you're you're going to want to have you're going to want to make along the way. Um hopefully that I don't know if that helps or not. Um, but sometimes being a brand and having a business is about being um it's about being brave and about standing like in the place. You all have big problems that you're wanting to solve. Um, how you solve it and who you solve them for will have a lot to do then with how you speak to them and what language you use. Uh, Stefano. Hi um Jen, thank you for your tips and advices. Um my big struggle I mean to me like if I want to answer this slide here um actionable like yeah I would love to sell one team building and one keynote presentation per month. Um but but the whole thing is like and then in the previous slide you know I didn't put in the in the chat but you know it's like oh is my client I'm believe it's people that deal with a high level of stress such as like tech people or like people that work in a lot in healthcare and lawyer but this is all in my head you know I mean because practically it's like how do I sell it you know how do I reach them you know I mean I mean in my head I know, okay, what I do, I know what I sell, but it's just like, uh, okay, how do I make it actionable? Well, for you, it would be like you're pretty specific. You know, I want, you know, one of each of these services. Um, and it's probably more because you're not Are you getting that many now? I'm getting none. Yeah. So, this would be more. Um, you know, and then you want to have a timeline for like when when you would start picking things up monthly. Um, that would probably start, you know, you probably need a a month to like ramp up, you know, at least to start building lists of the people that you want to do outreach to and then thinking about like how you can be in the spaces where your ideal people are, you know. Yeah. But I to me, sorry to interact, but it's really like even if I know in my head, oh, I would love to speak with the executive of this company or I would love to speak with the CEO of this company. How do I reach them? You know what I mean? I can't just do I don't I don't just look on their phone book. You I mean it's like how do I talk with this person? Do I reach them on LinkedIn? They never respond. Do I send them an email? They never pay attention. So that's kind of my struggle and my frustration, you know? Let me know when you find the answer. Well, I know, right? So I love this. This is great. But you know what? How do I make the first step? Just how do I sell the very first one? Then eventually if I sell the this is what I'm thinking, right? Eventually if I sell one, then if they enjoyed it, then they might I might say, "Oh, can you, you know, share my contact with somebody else? Can you refer me to a couple of other compan?" Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think that there's some interesting approaches that you could look into like so you said lawyers well where do they you know do they have associations I think they do my husband belongs to a few um associations do they have places where they go networking do they have opportunities to you know have a sponsorship of their newsletter or you know different ways that you can like get in front of them um or commune with them and talk about what you do. These are the ways that you can do it. I mean, you're right. You know, we're all getting LinkedIn, you know, requests all the time of people trying to sell us, but what if you went in instead and had something useful for them to help them reduce their stress? So, it is about going in and being different. Um, and it is about getting in front of people. I mean, I know some people that have high-end products that help people, you know, they they do things like sponsor things for the opera and stuff like that and they pick up clients. So it is about being a little bit creative and about being where your customers are. Um and that's how you get the first one, you know. So your your goal is to get one of each of those people for a certain like how am I going to get in front of them because I don't think cold emails and um LinkedIn connections are going to do it and then the work is like strategizing around how you're going to make that happen through marketing. Does that does that make sense? So yeah, it does. But I don't know. Um I'm just like even if I go to a meeting with a bunch of lawyers and I approach your husband and I say, "Hey, I I got this thing, man. Um you know, here here's my card. Here's your card." And then hey, can I come in and like do a like a presentation at 20 I don't want to take everybody else's time, but like you know, I know like a 20 minutes presentation, I would do it for free. And then if I say for free, then they don't take me serious because I say, "Oh, this guy's cheap. He's doing it for Then I say, "Oh, you know, what is your budget?" You know, but they don't the really like how do you really do the first thing, you know, how do I convince this person, hey, can I come in and do a presentation that you might like it and then you might want to know more, but anyway, it's okay. Yeah. I mean, I've given Well, I've given you a lot of tactics to like explore like um you know, so that you can start getting to know people. Um because a lot of it starts with I mean, Portland is like the biggest small town ever. So, a lot of this is about getting to know people if you're starting here, you know, like getting to know people and and starting to widen the circle so that people start to talk about what it is that you're doing, you know, um and then, you know, doing, you know, starting a meetup to help people reduce stress, you know, and then that might bring in lawyers, you know, and talking about it and showing some of your skills in that way. I mean, there's like a hundred different ways of doing it, but it's really about what um what you can consistently do. um to try and get people in the room with you. Um and that go that spreads out to everybody like you know there's there's a lot of right ways to do this. Um it's just how are you gonna what is it that you're going to be willing to commit to for long enough um to know whether or not it's going to be effective. Um so um hopefully that helps. I mean it's it's a long it's a long haul, right? Like it's the hardest part is getting the first one. I just, you know, and then after that, you know, it starts to get a lot easier. Um, no joke. Um, okay, George. Hey, Jen. Uh, your your second point here is like not a marketing goal. And for someone who doesn't find marketing very intuitive, I feel almost compelled to create marketing goals such as, but we do that later. We're going to do that later. So, the reason this is a business goal is because I want to know what it is that we're going to because how do I how do I know what marketing tactics I'm going to do if I don't know what the business goal is? Yeah. Yeah. Then I I'll wait till till later. Perfect. No, but yeah, it's a great it's a great question. So, yeah, we start with a business goal so we know what marketing to apply to it. Um, so like for example, some of the things I was just sharing with Stfano, they don't apply to you like other people on the call, you know. Um, it's all very um, specific um, in terms of getting in front of people. Um, but yeah, we start with the business goal so we know which marketing goals to do. Um, but a lot of people because I'm a marketer, they jump to like, oh, I'm going to get this many followers. Um, and to an extent having, you know, 10,000 followers, yeah, it could help you make more money, but if you're not really zeroing in on your client, if you don't have any strategy around social, the numbers aren't going to help you. So, um, so that's why we start with a business school so we know what we're what we're driving toward. These are all great they're all great questions. Um, so here are the five things we're going to start with. Um, and the Google business profile is actually bigger than that as you will see. Um, we're going to talk about the website content and SEO. Um, content actually is everywhere. Um, email marketing and social media. Um, if anyone wants to talk about ads, we can talk about that too. Um, it's just most of the time people in here are not far enough along um, to really talk about ads yet. Um, and some of the more advanced tactics. Um, but we're going to continue through our um continue going through our smart marketing strategy. Um, my smart goal is to get my website to answer the question, what problem do I solve better? So, for that it would be um, so Nicole, I would love to see like when the website's going to be done. um you know, something something like that. That's really close to a marketing goal, too, by the way. Um but yeah, you want to have a date on it. Um because these are intended to be really specific. Um okay, so um within the next month by the end of June at the latest. Okay. Can't believe we're already talking about June and May. That's crazy to me. Um, so a Google business profile can increase leads by 5%. By optimizing it and doing it, that one thing, um, which is completely organic, um, can help you. Now, that said, Google business profiles have been very volatile over the last six months in particular. Um, but there's still a pretty good case for even if you have software, as the example I'm going to show you shows, um, there's still the good case for doing it. Um, and I'm going to show you why. Um, the thing about a Google business profile is the content or the words need to be authentic and focused on customers. Um, you need to listen to how your customers describe something. This is why like testimonials and reviews are so critical because you're letting the customer describe what it is that you do and why it's helping them. And then you can take that and use that in your marketing. It's like the most powerful thing ever. Not only like showing the testimonial itself, um, but I have I have like review software. It's called Senia and I have all my reviews in there. And then through AI, I can say, "Okay, well, what what do people say about me? And I can then take that and like because I want more people like the people I work with and it'll tell me all the patterns you know you can do it without send you can use AI to tell you but it's really helpful to get the words that people use to describe you so that you can like use it so that you'll get more of the same people understand why your customers should choose you. I'm going to show you and there's an AI prompt in here for you know how to get started with some FAQs. Um, you might be surprised at the frequently asked questions um that your your customers have um that you hadn't even thought of. Um, and then it's a chance to add like your product, your service descriptions and links um and then collect reviews through there as well. Um, 90 well so 40 about half of all searches are looking for something local. That's why even if your product or service is geared for world domination, um starting in the local community is always good because that's how a lot of people search. It's about 50/50. Um and then if you are a service business or if you have a location, about 95% of c customers or consumers are reading for reviews. They just want to know. And all the reviews don't have to be good, you know, like um it's actually better if you have a few that aren't good. Um and this is true if we're talking about a Google business profile. The same thing is true if you're putting an app out on the app store. Um if everybody is like giving you, you know, five stars, awesome. Like people start to think that maybe they're fake. Um so they found that actually more people respond if it's at like a 3.5, which is crazy. That's like getting pretty close to 50%. Um, but it also helps drive search. Um, you'll see here that like it's becoming sortable up here in the in the search bar. Um, Google really wants people to find what it is they're looking for. Um, particularly local. Um, the same thing is true on Instagram. Um, less so on Tik Tok. People are just searching for all kinds of stuff on Tik Tok without location in mind. Um, that's the crazy thing is like search now carries over into like all these other spaces that it didn't used to. Um, but it does start really well. Google is still the most trafficked. Um, you know, and and Tik Tok, Tik Tok has been very volatile. Um, so if we look at this is an example of software company in Portland. Um, they don't have a ton of reviews. Um, but it gives them visibility and I'll show you why. Um, but this is an example of what you want. So, um, what's going on on the left hand side will be different depending on whatever business company type of business you have. Um, sometimes you'll have a lot of pictures here. Sometimes you'll have a lot of different social media profiles. Um unless you're a larger company or have something um really specific, you might not have this people also ask um you might have you know I think it like for me I think it's like social media videos to you know YouTube videos things like that um but this is what happens when somebody searches for your business name. Um and this panel on the right hand side is your Google business profile. Um it drives a lot of search and can drive a lot of phone calls. It can drive a lot of web traffic as well. Um, it's also a place for people to share and get more information. If you do have a location, it can also drive visitors to your location. Um, so it's really important to set all of the set a Google business profile up. You'll start to get calls and traffic. Um, I actually set one of these up for someone who has an app because um, it's about it's a local it's a travel app. Um, so we thought we could pick up some local traffic um, and get some people to download the app too. So um, it does apply in multiple contexts. Um, it is generally for businesses that have a location, but you don't have to have one in order to make it work. Um, one of the things about it is, um, it also can show up in maps. It can show up in search. Um, if you do a topic search, that's how you can get it to show up. Um, if they had they don't have very many, the the reviews that they have here are not searchable. Um, but if they had more reviews, you could use the text from the review will also get people to find you. Um and that's part of why um you know focusing on search engines is still a valid point. Also understand that um if you're showing up in Google and putting connecting the dots for Google, you will also show up in AI search. Um so one of the reasons that we start here is because they make it much easier for you to start connecting the dots. Um, you know, we don't usually sit around and talk about schemas um during these classes, but there's a lot you can also do behind the scenes to help show up. Um, I get a fair amount of traffic from Chad GPT. Um, but part of it is because I also have all of this set up in Google Maps um and and Apple Maps. Um, this is the first Yeah, sorry. So curious about that last point, the chat GPT thing. You've managed to get people like I get traffic from chat GPT. Like I don't know. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Like they come to my website. It's not just like zero click. They're coming. They're clicking to me. Yeah. Um I get it from chat GPT perplexity. I There was another one and I can't remember which one. Um I haven't looked lately, but yeah. Um I feel like that's such a big deal. It's a pretty big deal. Yeah. Um and it's because of the fundamentals. So like understand that everything I'm showing you here is the starting point. Um and then yeah, like I said, there's um you know, I go to SEO conferences and like that's that's yeah, cracking the code to get it. Everyone's probably worried about that. Yeah, it's very Yeah, it's very concerning and um that would be a whole separate class like how how I made that happen. So, um, yeah, but there's a lot in SEO world that that has to happen in order to show up and get clicks from from AI. I'd love to talk about this at some point. Um, just I feel like people probably search like, "Hey, can you fill out my PowerPoint and if I could find a way in?" Anyways, yeah. No, it would be huge for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Can I can we can talk about that. Um, so this is the first prompt. Um this is like a little snippet from it. Um you'll get it's a Google doc. Um you go in, I highlight the fields and I say put your details in here. Um and it will generate um it'll generate the uh the FAQ the questions and the answers. I highly suggest you read the answers. This is not something that you can just, you know, use um because it's going to make up some answers that might not apply. But you can take this this FAQ. Um, I would put it on the Google business profile. There's a section that's like ask and answer. You can ask and answer them yourself as the business owner. Um, but you can also use this customer FAQ um on your website. In fact, I highly recommend that you use that. Um, and I mentioned something called schemas. It's like a piece of code that you put um on your website that kind of is like I'm answering questions. Um, I'm an organization and like all these little building blocks. um are what like help you um establish yourself as an organization. Um and the more you do that, then the more likely you are to be picked up by things like Perplexity and ChatgPT um in search and shown as like a source that someone may or may not click on. So um anyway, so this is a prompt that you have um like I said, you put this in your Google business profile. Um, like I said, you can ask and answer it. They don't see that you did it yourself. Um, and it can really drive things forward. After you do your Google business profile, the next thing to do is to go to Bing Places. Um, for business, um, Bing is disproportionately used in the Pacific Northwest compared to other places. Um, it's really strange. It's the Pacific Northwest and the South. Um, but it's really cool. you finish this um and then it says, "Do you have a Google business profile?" And you say yes, and it will copy and paste it all into your Bing Places for Business um and take care of it. Um and finally, because you don't have enough to do, Apple now has the Apple business connect um in my opinion uh the branded email um is important. Um and then if you have a location, signing up for the business card um is important. Uh, the branded email is important because I think it will help you get into inboxes on Apple, which is getting harder and harder to do. Um, so you go through a little song and dance through Apple um to prove that you're a real business. Um, and then it will show like uh your logo and a little icon um so that when the reader knows, they know that you're legitimately the company. Um, so here's the link for that. Um, I found this process to be very maddening and there's like no customer service. So, um, just bear in mind, uh, even though it's been around for a while, it's not super well supported. Um, but it's important, um, because what we're trying to do here is like build out your digital profile, uh, your digital road map so that you're starting to get, um, put your stake in the ground as somebody who exists, um, and can get found. Uh, many of you probably don't even have one. Does anyone have a Google business profile already? Probably not. No. Yeah. Um, when you set it up, make sure that you update it um, a couple times a year. Um, a lot of people forget it. Um, but it's a lot like there are other profiles like so people who are therapists, they use Psychology Today. Um, you can get leads from all of these like places like this, like a Google business profile or Yelp or, you know, Psychology Today, if you keep it up to date. So, if you just start adding photos and posts and things like that, um, periodically, it can really help. Um, okay. I think we can still do this. Yeah. For a break. Okay. Um, so we've set up like who our customers are. We've talked about that. We've got our business goal or like an idea of what our business goal is. Um, and so now it's like I want you to really think about how it is that you want to conduct outreach or get in front of people. And I want you to think about um the people that you know and the people that you don't know. So, like if you're if you haven't had any clients yet, then it's like, well, you probably know people, you might know people who know the people that you're trying to get in front of, you know, like Stfano and I were just talking and I, you know, and I was saying, "Oh, my husband's a lawyer." Like, you know, like there are other people like that in your circle that maybe you could, you know, start to to get some word of mouth, right? Um, so if you haven't delivered your product yet, um, then then you can start to think about just the people that you do know that you can do some outreach to. Um, and then there's like but if you have worked with people, then also think about people that you've sold to in the past um, that you can put on that list um, to do some outreach or maybe they're already following you on social media, for example, or they're already on your email list. Um, and then the new folks. So, how are you going to do how are you going to attract new people who don't know you? And this might take some time and for some people like it might feel a little vague because I know some some of you are on early stage early stage. Um, so we're just going to think about the things that we like to do if you're really early stage. Um, because everybody in marketing there's some things you're never going to do. Um, so maybe you like to do guest speaking, maybe you like to do guest posts or podcast guesting or things like that. So just take a little bit of time um to write out a few um marketing tactics that you'd be willing to do. Um it's really important to focus on what you're actually going to follow through on, not the things that you feel like you should do. Um because the best laid plans, I mean, it has to be something you'll take action on. So, I'll give you a few minutes to think about it. And if you have any questions, you can unmute or put things in the chat. newsletters in general for um not saying writing my own but or maybe that's what you mean, but like trying to advertise on one. Um, I like both. Okay. I mean, if I would only do a like be a newsletter sponsor if you're sure that most of their readers are your ideal um ideal people, you know? I mean, that's that's the key. Um, but there are some newsletters, it's crazy. It's not that expensive to get on some of these newsletters um as a sponsor. So, and they have a big following. Yeah. Yeah. I had this thought because like I've done a lot on LinkedIn, some good engagement, and I'll see a bunch of traffic to my site or my app, but it's meant to be a desktop app, right? And so, it like makes sense that if it's an app where everyone's checking it on, maybe I'm overthinking this, but everyone's checking it on their phone, right? which is what most people are probably going through LinkedIn on. That's kind of not a great fit. And then I was like, well, how do you reach people when they're on their computer? Maybe through a newsletter would be a good one. So, that's where the question comes from. But, you know, everybody uh downplays the importance of email marketing. It's still like the best bang for your buck. Yeah. Email. I mean, you know, if you're if you're putting out something really good, like that's why I'm like, you could write a newsletter, you know, if you're putting out something that's good and valuable, like you don't even have to do it all the time. Like, um, and then people will open it when they see it. They'll be excited, you know. Um, so you can do either. Um, and you know, on average, like you get $40 back for every dollar you spend on email marketing. Some people get more, some people get less. Um, but it's a pretty good return on investment. Um, if you can get some of those people that are following you on so social media to follow you on email because it's a more captive audience, um, they're more likely to open that and see it than like organic social. Um, so ask people to subscribe once a month, you know, twice a month, you know, it can make a big difference. Um, but yeah, I love I love newsletters, um, sponsorships. I love um running ads that are like super targeted um to your group. Um and that's really what those newsletter sponsorships are. Yeah. Uh Ben, uh yeah. Hi Jim. Um I was wondering with the Google business profile, if my app is not related to Portland or the Pacific Northwest specifically, is it still helpful for me to have a location? like does that legitimize the business or anything? No. Um, so your your people aren't here at all. It's kind ofly dispersed going for global domination initially. So yeah, if at all possible, you know, I mean, yeah, if they're not here at all, then then there's no it it doesn't have as as much um applicability, but um typically there are a few people here. Um but that's interesting. Remind me like, let me look. I have story decks. Oh, so yeah, you're doing Yeah, walking tours um for places around the world. Around the world. Yeah. But it if it I'm sure if you know people I know could hear about it in Portland and look it up. And I guess I'm wondering if it's it's helpful that Yeah, it's interesting. So, the client I was mentioning that had the app that we put them on a Google business profile. It's actually walking tours of um Catalina Island. Um and we on and it's a totally an app. Um and so, you know, we your your clients your customers for the app are kind of interesting like you may not have walking tours in Portland, but there you probably have people in Portland who travel, you know. Um, but yeah, I mean it's it's a little different because you're doing you're doing it everywhere. So what you would be looking to do is something a little bit different. So Google also has something called a knowledge panel. Um, and that's actually like so there's the Google business profile and then there's like a knowledge panel which is like kind of for people who are more national businesses. Um, and there's some ways that you can do that, but you don't get to set up your own knowledge panel. Um, you have to earn a knowledge panel by creating a lot of good content. Um, and being in the market for a while. Um, so like if you looked up like I'm trying to remember, there's some really big players in like, you know, walking tours and things like that. You know, if you look up some of them, they have a panel on the right hand side that's like, you know, this is who they are. this is their website. You know, here's here's how you can get to them through social media. You know, once Google sets it up, you can edit it to make it sound more like you or whatever. Um, but yeah, I mean, your path would be more of a, you know, you know, getting you can hire marketers to like set up a Wikipedia page for you and, you know, get some really good SEO and stuff and and those are the ways that you can get like a knowledge panel that's like for a national company that could be really helpful. Okay. Yeah, thanks. That makes a lot of sense. So, it's just a little bit different. Um, okay. Anybody else? Anybody have any tactics? What are you all going to do? Anybody not sure what to do for their goal? There's that, too. I think um I'm in Stfano's boat where it's like zero to one and it's like it can be frustrating. Um my personality also doesn't like I try not to be burdensome. So which I think lends itself to the opposite of marketing where you've got like good sales people who get their elbows out, you know. So, I'm I'm really trying to be thoughtful beforehand to to ensure I'm not spam, like to ensure I'm not just going into the bottom of someone's LinkedIn mailbox. And um yeah, this is really hard. I Yeah, it is. And um and I appreciate you mentioning that cuz it's um it's a skill and it is it is something that takes some practice. And there are some things that and that's why I said like focus on what you will do and not what you should do because you're right. Right. I mean, everybody has a different personality and there are some things that just don't even for me, I'm like, I'm not doing that, you know? Or like I did cold email, but it was like well researched because I don't want to be spam, you know, we're not just sending out stuff to everybody. Um, so so then it becomes about like, you know, where do you feel comfortable? What spaces do you feel comfortable in? And how can you do it? because I can tell you the problem you solve is really important, which is to say um we've all been frustrated when we can't find a place to park, right? So, like you're you're helping people with something that they need. You know, you're making connections in the business like for people who have parking but only a few days a week um and connecting them with people who maybe don't go downtown a lot or maybe don't go to um like I was in I think inner southeast um and I found this random parking lot and I was so grateful. You know what I mean? So like um so what you're doing is useful. So once you realize like that you are doing something useful and helpful then it's like okay well how can I talk to people in a way that feels good like maybe it's small groups you know maybe it's one-on-one um and then finding those ways of doing it um remember at the beginning I said there are a lot of right ways to do marketing so um it really is about like finding finding your way of doing it um and not just doing the like, you know, the bros. There's a lot of bros out there who like you just need to cold call like a hundred thousand people every day, you know, like that might not be for you, you know, like I mean I talked to somebody who's like, "Do I have to do all this social media stuff?" I love to just sell to people one-on-one and I'm like, "Hey, do it." Like if that's what you like to do, then do it, you know? Um because that's that's marketing, you know, and it's really ineffective. So, um, so yeah, I appreciate that that feedback. I feel like I've been told like, uh, talk to 20 times the number of people that you expected to talk to. That's usually like the the feedback we're given, which which I think is important to to a point, right? I mean, it is important because you you have to um you have to be somewhat willing to be rejected. No, of course, of course. Of course. I'm not saying not put myself out there, but yeah, but at the same time, like focusing on the things that um that you enjoy. Um those are the things you'll follow through on and continue to do. And that's really what we're trying to get you to is like a place of um a a habit, like making marketing a habit instead of something that you're like, "Oh, well, I'm not going to do this, so I might as well just not do anything at all." Understood. Yeah. And trust me, there are so many people who are probably not going to like they're probably nodding like right now and we can't see them. Like you're definitely not alone um in feeling this way. Um and in fact there are things I'm not willing to do too. Um so yeah, anybody else? One thing I just wanted to add to that point um because I really relate to you George on this and um so I'm just a team of one right now but I'm I have a potential co-founder who's a marketing professional in my MBA program and I am hoping she wants to work with me because I am so kind of uncomfortable in this role. So that's one thing to think about too is you can find someone else who's more comfortable with it. Yeah, that's true. Um, and I will say that if you have passion for what it is that you do, like people say, "Oh, Jen, you're such a natural salesperson." I'm like, I am. What? You know, and it's because I have passion for what I do. Like, and so passion will get you a long way. Um, and you might not realize that you're selling you're selling yourself by like just talking about the things that you care about. like so. Um, so it is it is you might need some support um and and a either a partner or a marketer or somebody um but at the same time you might be able to do it too um at your own pace and in your own way. Anybody else you ready for a break? We're like at break time. How uh how are we doing so far? How's everybody feeling? Pretty good. Feeling good. Okay. Well, let's um I guess I'm I guess I'm I'm going to do I'll do the break. How long are your breaks? Usually like 10 minutes, five minutes. We don't usually do breaks. Come on. We're doing a break. We're doing a break. You know, we totally should do a break. This is too much content not to do a break. So, let's do at least 10 minutes and then we'll get it. Yeah. 710. Cool. Taking a break. Everybody. Honey. Hey everyone. Hey. Hey. Just the three of us. Yeah. What should we talk about? Oh, I don't know. What do you want to talk about? I'm loving the presentation. Oh, I'm glad. Glad. It's a very very challenging subject. Um, and it's hard to teach because everybody's in a different place. Um, and that's part of it, you know, so it's like making it applicable to everybody in one way or another. Um, totally. Yeah. But it's fun. I like it because I like to kind of um I like how everybody like puts me on the spot. I like all the questions. So, do you think it's like I'm trying to ask the question in like a smart way. Do you think it's something that can't be taught and it's almost like you have to I don't mean that like obviously you're teaching us but is it one of those things where it's like try a bunch of stuff and see what works for you kind of or is there more of a like do you know what's going to work for a company well when you see it? I mean, sometimes I know. Um, yeah. I mean, sometimes it's sometimes it's pretty easy to te to tell somebody like this is the strategy you need to follow. Yeah. And here's how we're going to do it. And then other times it's um you know it's just not you know like I can tell you like for apps there are certain things you have to have like you have to have comparison posts on your website so that when people are making the decision it's like between you know if there's anybody else doing anything close you know you have to differentiate yourself you know um so there are like table stakes for certain things. Yeah. Yeah. There are certain things that Yeah. the musthaves, you know, and you get those done. Um, and then then the rest is um, yeah, I mean, it's the flavor, you know, it's like it, you know, a lot if you're working with small companies, like it's it's really is about like what what are you willing to do? What are you not willing to do? Um, because a lot of things are going to work. Um, the the biggest mistake that a lot of people make is they don't give marketing enough time. you know, like I mean I've been writing my blog for a long time, you know, so that's longevity is part of why I'm showing up in AI search, you know, what where do we subscribe to your blog? Women conquerbiz.com. Um, I'm doing it. But, uh, yeah, I mean, there's just a lot, you know. Oh, it's my dog. My dogs are locked downstairs because they would be in here bugging me. Um, so yeah, I hope that answers it. I mean, there are there are certain things that you kind of got to do. Um, and then there's other things that it just depends. I have one question. How do we tackle uh marketing for software for the B2B space? How do we tackle that challenge? because definitely a company won't just subscribe to your uh software online after watching few ads on YouTube or LinkedIn. And is there any process you've been using in the past that can be helpful for us? Yeah. You mean for like B2B? um you know a lot of a lot of B2B it's like who is it within the the business that you're really trying to reach and secondarily um if you have an expensive product who's the gatekeeper that you have to get through. So like do you have to do you have to appeal to that finance person and then to the person that you're selling to? Um, and so you have to kind of find the inroads into both, you know. Um, and you have to really think about that. So when you're doing like your customer profiles, sometimes you have to really zero in on like um, in B2B, it's not just the enterprise, you know, it's like who within the enterprise um, is really going to need it. Um, and what are the characteristics of that person? Um, and then I know of of apps. Um, you know, I wrote a newsletter for a a client at one point that has this they still have their social media app, you know, and they were doing enterprise and they were doing a lot of personal outreach on social like people would like or comment and then they would do like social selling in the in the chat in the DMs. um if it was the right person in a company, you know, um that would get them into the sales pipeline. Um so it's like paying attention to who's commenting on social media and then going in and talking to people and doing outreach that way. Um, but they had a very clear avatar. Like they were, you know, it was a social media app, so they were really trying to appeal to like marketers inside enterprise businesses, you know. So then then all of their marketing was geared toward marketers, you know, and and so that's really what a lot of this is about is like who's who's the customer? And that's why the more specific you can get, the better. Um, and that said, you can't overlook the finance person who might be like, "No, you can't buy this." you know, so then it's like what do what do you do if you have something that's expensive enough, you know, that it's going to require some sort of approval? Well, then you have to appeal to them at least on some level in terms of like what's the return that on the investment? So, why is it a good investment? So, why should the finance person sign off on it if that makes sense? So, like um marketing is really about being strategic and understanding all the people that are in the room. Um, I have a prompt somewhere for like how to like analyze a sales call if you've got all kinds of people in the room so that you can figure out what everybody's objections are and then address them, you know. Um, so these are things that you can handle sometimes with AI. Um, if you're on calls with a lot of different folks, um, social media, it's a little bit harder. Um, yeah, hopefully that helps a little bit. Yeah. Um, so all right. Um, the next one is your website. Um, the reason why we focus on your website is because it's a space that you own. Um, even if you have an app, um, and you're leveraging like the traffic that goes to, you know, Google Play and Apple, you know, and all of that. um you know you're doing a lot on social media, you still want to have a space that is not subject to any algorithms besides your own, which is to say you get to control the narrative there. You get to control the message. Um this place where you get to tell your best story. Um so there's a few musthaves that like a small business or a you know a startup needs to have. One of them is the founder story. Um, you know, you're not, none of you are a huge corporation. You know, you're not, you know, you're not the gap. You don't get to say like two sentences of like big big dreams and stuff like you want to talk about why you're doing it, you know? Um, why you care about what it is that you're doing. Um, most of the time you want to have a picture of yourself on the about page. Um, because you're trying to make connection. Like at a small business level, it really is about relationships and connections. um that will help you get into the places and the spaces and the rooms that you want to be in. Um so you want to communicate all of that on the website. Um you want to have one page per service or if you have an app, you want to have a page that's dedicated to the app so people understand and like that's that's the spot. Um the reason we also talk about things like one page per service or one page per product um is then you're setting yourself up for things like ads. So, if you want to run ads, um, having a website or a landing page, a place where the ads can go that clearly communicate what's going on is going to be very important. And it really starts with like having a few of these things in place. Um, so that you're communicating well. Um, a website is never perfect. Um, but putting your best foot forward and then sending an ad to it is a lot better than like sending an ad to weird places. um that that actually diminish your credibility. Um if you're in the press, in the media, or if you've won any awards, make sure that those are all showcased. Your website's a place where you get to brag about how great you are. So, do it. Um don't be shy about it. Talk about the upcoming events. Talk about your community involvement. Um showcase any testimonials and reviews. If you're collecting reviews from a third party, understand that now you can port those in automatically. A lot of times, um, there's there's a lot of different ways that you can do it so that you're not copying and pasting testimonials from everywhere. They'll just show up on your website as they come in. Um, and then I think it's some crazy number like 36% of websites don't have any contact information on them. Um, you don't have to put your email address and a phone number, but it'd be good if you had something so people can do some outreach to you. Um, you'll get some spam. Um, but then you'll also get um you could get some really good stuff, too. Um, it's also a good place for some aspirational stuff. So, um, on this you'll see like there's a wholesale on here. A lot of times people have things like wholesale that they want to do or they have, um, other creative spaces or things that they want to do. Um, it's, you know, it's good to put those things on there so people know that that's what you're that's one of the things that you want to do and to to to reach out to you if if they're interested in that. Um, so understand that each web page has one purpose. Um, and that every business is different. It's really helpful to look at other people in your space and figure out what it is that you like um, and start to apply that. Um, but understand that like the words may be different if your ideal client is different, if your ideal customer is different. You're really speaking to them. It's not about having like a fancy website that's really slow because it's got all this great on animation in it. Um, you really want something that um is fast um communicates well and is really helpful. Um, and that's what this little graphic over here on the side says. you know, pretty is nice, but I'll take performance to the bank. Um, this is, uh, Google Page Speed Insights. Um, the link is in the presentation. Um, I work with a lot of people. They have terribly slow websites. Um, this is a website that I built that, um, does a pretty good job of showcasing a lot of the key points. this is a service business. But um you know if you have a product, you know, you showcase the product to to the extent that you can have real people smiling like it's so good. It's so important. Um like that's why this is a money shot because it's showing there this business is like a nonprofit consulting agency. This is a group that they worked with. Um it's a lot better than stock photography, you know. Um, if you're doing an app, like a person holding a phone with your app on it is way better because we connect with people. Um, because we're people. Um, making sure that you have a call to action above the fold. Um, and a clear description of what it is that you're doing. So, a clear headline, a clear description. This is like the place where you can say who you are and who you and who you help. Um uh and a lot of people kind of squander this. Um this is the most important thing. And then you really want to have some simple navigation like we don't have, you know, you don't want to have like 10 tabs at the top, you know. Um and make it really clear like what the next step is. So here it's like get started. Um here it's like how we help. Um you know, we're giving people an invitation to continue um continue working with us or buying from us. Um, and that's really important on a website. Um, does anybody have any questions about this? Okay. Um, if you want to start doing some SEO research, um, I have a prompt for that. Um, this is really important. like the more you know about who it is you're trying to communicate with, you know, you can put as many details, about the the business type, the startup type, um, and who you're trying to reach, um, including I think in this one I have some geographic uh, information in here. Um, and this will this will help you with doing some research um, for search engine optimization or getting found um, on Google, on social, on some of the different platforms. Um, but you can also use Google as your uh trusty friend because they're really trying to connect you uh with um what it is you're looking for. So, um I always recommend that people have you can use like an incognito browser. Like if you use Chrome all the time, um you might think about doing your SEO research on like a browser you don't use very often unless you have SEO software like me. Um, so you'd want to do something where you're like doing some searches. Um, and then you can get like the questions that people ask or the discussions in the forums and the images that have like, you know, howto's so you can see what people are searching for like all of the different things because Google is really telling you um if you're on the right track. So if I do, so in this example, if I'm like an ear system installer, um you know, these questions are things that I can put on my website. Um these other things that people are searching for may or may not apply, but it's telling me what else I can be talking about on my website, on social media, in different places. If I look up what I do and there's nothing relevant, um then I may have to choose some different words. Does that make sense? Um it um yeah. Oh, thanks. Yeah, using another using another browser. Yeah, because your browser so you may not realize this. Your browser is really skewed towards um what you're searching for um what your research you're doing. So don't use your primary browser. Um and even an incognito window is skewed somewhat. It's not completely incognito. So um so yeah, you want to do that. Um, there's a few other things on here that you can do. Um, you can survey people that you've worked with. Um, you know, predictive text is also helpful. Um, and then you can run some lowcost ads on like Google or social media to test language. Um, so you know, we talked about, you know, Nicole asked a question about language. Um, ads are great for this. Like you can just have different keywords and phrases that are intriguing that describe what you do and you can pay not a lot of money to do some search ads to test out some of the different terms that you're curious about and see what really resonates with your people. Okay. Um it's really important to see how Google um sees your website. So you can do this for yourself and you can do it for all of your competitors. You can do it for my website. You can do it for anybody's website. Um, if you go to Google and you type in site colon um and then the domain for who who you're looking at, it can be your own website. It can be anybody. Um, then you'll get a list of the search engine results pages or SERs. Um, and that's what all of this is. Um, and you'll get everything that they're writing about on their website. So, what that means is if I look at a competitor, I can see um you know what it is that they're talking about and usually what terms they're trying to rank for. Um the most important things when you're getting started um is the URL and the title and the description. And most um most website providers um if it's WordPress, you need to get a plugin like Yoast or RankMath. Um I'm on Ghost. Um it has something built in. Um there's Squarespace. Um they have something built in. Wix. All of those different platforms um have SEO spaces. And so you want to fill it out with a title and a description. The description isn't as relevant for search um viability. It's really the title that matters. So you want to make sure that the terms you're trying to rank for are in the title. The description is where you get it can be a little more um clickworthy. like that's where it's like how can I describe in a relevant way what's on the page in a way that people are going to want to click on it um and go visit it and that's really how it all begins. So every title needs to be different um the description needs to be related to what's on the page. Um and it really is helpful if the URL, the title, and the description all have the keyword in it. So in this example, it would be nonprofit fundraising. You can see fundraising in the URL and it's also in the description. Does that help? You'll find that some of your competitors if they've been around for a long time um their SEO like it might kind of stink. Um but it could be that they've just been around for a long time and they can get away with a lot because longevity goes a long way. um for SEO if you buy like so you like your domain is like 12 bucks a year or something like that buy several years in advance um it just signals to Google that you're going to be around so I think that like my domain is always bought for like five years out you know because it's about longevity you know um and a lot of people don't talk about that when it comes to search you also want to claim um local and industry profiles so if you're getting like, you know, a free profile on like your, you know, chambers of commerce, associations, directories. Um, that's why we do a Google business profile. Um, you can do Yelp. I don't know if you've seen it a few times. I keep saying don't buy ads on Yelp. Um, they really are a scam. So, if that's something that's in your um it's like on your radar or something, um, you're just Yeah, at least burn your money to keep you warm. you're getting more out of it than a Yelp ad. So, um, so take advantage of the free real estate. If anybody wants to give you a free profile, definitely do it. Um, does anyone want to look at their website? I guess we only have Yeah, we still have an hour. Yeah. Does anyone have a website you want to look at? Okay, Eric, we we can do mine if you want to. I talked a lot, but Oh, Eric's. Sorry. I didn't see Eric. Yeah. Yeah, I just dropped it in the chat if that's all right. Yeah, let's see. Oh, what a cute graphic. I love that. Um, okay. Turn warm emails into booked meetings. Create AI agents that automatically handle your email responses and schedule meetings. Positive reply to booked appointment autopilot. Everything you need to automate email responses. Custom AI agents. Those are stock images, but they really need to be changed. Is it a one pager? It is. Okay. Yeah. I think this is a really great um a really great start. I love that you have a demo on here. Um because I think a lot of people are, you know, they they like it's one thing to show how it works. It's another thing to like really show how it works. Um demo video is not uploaded yet. That's going to open up a little modal with the video, but uh when that time comes. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things that you could do is like, you know, you can have the modal with the video here. Um, and then you could have a video here somewhere too. Um, because sometimes people scroll past it, you know, but you could have like how it works. Um, the preview is going to get people more interested, do you think? Yeah. Rather than having a button. Yeah. But you have both. Like the the the button can like open a modal or it can even take people down, you know, scroll it down to like a video. Yeah, I think this is really good. I like it. It's a really good start. Um, has you gone to market? Like, is this all working? Oh, I can sign up. Look at that. Would you like to maybe um I have a And it integrates it integrates with instantly, so that's good. Um, do you use Instantly? No. I've heard a lot of good things about it, though. It's It's amazing. Yes. Um, yeah. And like are you show are you going to show up on their website as an integration because you can probably get some traffic from that. That's an amazing idea. Also, I'm a little scared they might copy my idea, but um maybe I am just being paranoid. Um well, there's something to that. Um, yeah, for a while. In the beginning, I'm not going to have a lot of technology. It's going to be a pretty like light app when I launch, at least for a while. Okay. Um, no, I think this is a really great this is a really great start. It's a really great price. Um, I like that everything's really transparent. Um, I would like because it's AI like I would address like how you're h handling things like AI hallucinating or you know is it going to give me the wrong information or um you know like kind of some of the some of the concerns that people have about AI being in their email. So just kind of you know privacy concerns, things like that. Um, so that's why like a an FAQ at the bottom for some of that stuff would be great, you know. Um, because I can just anticipate I'm thinking about what other people have said, like some of the concerns that people generally have about AI. Um, you know, and then you can just, um, address them and then it takes care of it. Um, but yeah, this is great. Like um, you've managed to create a graphic that makes email look a little sexy again. So um, so that's great. So yeah, this is a good one. It's very clear. Very clear. Thanks. Let's see. Oh, everybody. Oh, look at this. Everybody Everybody's in. Okay. See, we'll do the best we can. We'll have to go a little quick. Empower your career with AI powered training. Unlock your potential with personalized a AIdriven coaching. So, I would make this this headline about empower your career with AI powered training. It needs to be a little bit more specific. Um, like are are these people who've never had a job before? Are these people who are trying to advance their career and go into another position? Um, you know, what kind of coaching is it? Is it for executives? is it not? Um, you know, and then I see here that it's like for recruiters as well. So, um, the more specific you can get about, um, who the product is for up here would be better. Um, all right. headline pioneering. Sorry, I'm trying to read uh personaliz training a power skill enhancement. Yeah, I think that that's the main thing is making sure that you're more specific um about about how it can help me if I'm you know who the ideal person is. Um and then like for recruiters that's a little bit different than empowering my career like so does that mean it's like a job a place where I can find people? Are you matching people anyway? So that's But yeah, I like I do like some of these images that you have down here. Um, and this one's hard because I don't know if you're going to be able to find real people. Um, you know, you might have to have like some stock. Oh, that's weird. My computer is Okay, here we go. AI presentation builder works with your templates. This is great positioning the featured on anytime you can do that. I'm a little concerned. This is going to sound funny, but let me explain. A little concerned about the business name because elemental It it has a unique spelling. Um and like I'm sure Elemental Yeah, it's a AWS company. Yeah. Um just so that so it could cause some confusion. So um but you're aware of it. So we have the problem when you Google us, it tries to correct you. Yeah. did not anticipate that. Yep. But when you click it, we kind of own that piece of the internet already, which is good. You know, this is all us. Um, but yeah, it shows like this Disney movie. Yeah. And AWS. Yeah, that's a challenge. That's something you're going to want to Yeah, you're going to want to think about that. So, like when we talk to people about like their business names, sometimes it's like, well, you don't want to go up against Fortune 500. Um, and you kind of got two Fortune 500, well, Fortune 100 or Fortune50 companies here, you know, in Disney and AWS. Um, is it true that Google would eventually, I know not anytime soon, but recognize the spelling and not try and do that did you mean thing? No, I don't think so. Um, it No, probably not. I mean, it might, but man, that's an uphill. It's a uphill battle. Um, oh, this is interesting. Huh. That's that's a another business that Yeah, I know. It's cool. Yeah. No, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's good coverage. Yeah. I mean, it is some it's gonna it's going to be an ongoing. The other thing about it is like I mean at least it's easy to spell you know like when you're on like podcast interviews or something like that. Um but yeah it's just something to think about like the business name might it might be a challenge to get people Yeah. And we totally did not we did not realize that. Yeah. That Yeah. I mean most people don't. So, um, AI presentation builder that works with your templates. I get that it works with the templates, but it seems like it would be like that works with what you use or something like that or what you have. I don't know. There's something like um something to think about there. But yeah, this is this is cool. Choose a design. And then this is different from gamma because it uses what I've already made. Right. Right. Yeah. So something like gamma, you type a prompt and you get a PowerPoint, which is cool. But if you now I'm not trying to slip into sales mode here, but the way we differentiate ourselves is that a we're not just slides, but B, if you want to set the structure, right, if you want it to be template based instead of prompt based, um, you know, if you always follow the same set of 10 slides for a specific use case, right, that's we help with that. So, we're kind of like the Mad Libs use case as opposed to the, you know, write a an essay from scratch use case. Okay. That needs to be clear on here. Yeah. Um cuz like something like this is better for somebody like me. Gamma made me crazy honestly. Um great. It looks cool, but it's not it's not that great in practice. It's not as useful. So, you need to address that. Okay. That'll help a lot. Um because people a lot of people know about that product. So then it's about like showing, oh no, it can be better. Yeah, we're totally better than them. Totally better. We're totally better. Is it? But sorry, I not to take Should you call out a competitor specifically on your site or is that bad practice? Oh yeah. Um let's see. Let me find um pretty sure Buffer does it. [Music] Um, usually, um, if you look in the footers of a lot of apps, they'll have things down here that are like, um, you know, um, like Hootsweet could have buffer alternative or Hootsweet versus Buffer. you know, these are like social media schedulers, you know. Um, so you could have one down here that's like elemental versus gamma, you know, and then you're listing like how they compare. Um, and it's really powerful to do that. Um, cool. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So, this is mine. I've been using it to uh focus more on like the quality of stories and tours I'm trying to share. And I think I need to focus it more on the actual app now that I'm producing that. So, needs a little bit of [Music] work. This is like a trying to get feedback at the end on the the quality of what's happening here. Yeah. Um, oh, Sevilla. Uh, I really liked it there. Um, yeah. I mean, it seems like, you know, I mean, I get what's going on. I would say that it's a lot of clicks before I get to pretty pictures. Um, Mhm. But um and the information. So um but yeah. Yeah, you got to showcase the app and like what people are getting. Um, you know, make sure that people understand um cuz as funny as it sounds like walking tours are really popular and known like um in Europe and stuff, but it's not as well known domestic like in the United States. It's kind of weird. So like there is a little bit of an education um for this to a degree. Um, even though people have done it maybe at a museum or something. Um, but yeah, this is a good start. Um, but yeah. Um, yeah, you could think about making it a little more a little more engaging. um for the here's the self-guided tour company that I worked with. Um we got people with phones walking around everywhere like you know app app pictures but we have an advantage that it's only one place. Katalina Island is small and one of the owners is a photographer. It's kind of like a dream, you know, um to have all these great images and like, you know, information. So, um but yeah, having like guides and stuff, those those are the things that can help drive traffic. Um you know, getting people getting people to download the app and then like pay for the tours is I'm assuming that's how it works. Like I pay for my tour. Is that right? Uh, you would pay for the app access and then you can just and then I can take any any tour or explore any location. Okay. But cool. Yeah, I see how having and people and content on the homepage that really describes what's going on would help a lot. It's kind of both. I mean, and you might not your website might not even be your biggest priority, if that makes sense. like it might be like um getting listed on all of the travel sites um and having a powerful listing on like the app sites as well. Um it's really searchable. My strategy right now is to have each tour page be very SEO optimized. So if I'm looking for a a walking tour in Sevilla or something, it like it comes up and then there's certain locations on the tour, but then you see all these hundreds of other locations that you want to click on. And the only way to click on those and get to them is by downloading the app. So that's like a right a funnel to bring you in. Great. I like it. It's cool. It's a great start. It's cool. What platform is this on? Uh I'm building it on Flutter. So work for Apple and Android. Okay. Oh, I mean like your website. What's that on? Uh, this is a web flow right now. Okay. But it's mostly um AI generated codes. So I'm probably just going to move off of Okay. Um, let's see. Yeah, that helped a little bit. Um, yeah, definitely. with mine is I did something and if you scroll down I've got to fix this and I don't know how to quite fix it yet and I've been working on it. Scroll down. Yeah, I'm going to fix that part. I'm just working on it. Okay. Oh, that's a nice picture. I liked it cuz it was an open door. I want to be welcoming and have people have an open door to me. You scroll down a little bit more. There's a contact page. Like I said, that page did something weird recently and I have to fix it. Um, you're taking the whites space thing really literally. Yeah. Yeah, it uploaded something weird and I haven't figured out how to fix it yet. Yeah, you might have to talk to a developer, but yeah. No, this is um it's coming along. Um and then there's a So yeah, I've got to fix a couple of things on it, but yeah. watching and training. Okay. So, for something like this where you have this list, it' be really broken up. Yeah. Like a lot of times you see these in like boxes or something to break it up to make it easier for people to consume um and pick. Um, and then ideally there would be a page that's like coaching and training and then it would like so like this would be like a teaser. Um, and then they could click into that and then get more detail about what the coaching and training options are and what it's like to work with you. Um, that those kinds of things. Does that make sense? Like Yeah. I don't know if that's in the next that should that should have been there should have been one with boxes. I thought that that had boxes on it. Yep. There it went down there. So, I don't know what, like I said, yeah, it's some wonky things have just happened recently to it and so like the training just all went there and so I've got to go back in. I've got my Yeah, it's not organized well and so I'm revamping it. It's a it's a process. So, yeah. Um because this is this is WordPress, right? Is that right? No, I I went on Wix. So, I actually had someone who helped me transfer everything over to Wix because I was going to put my um trainings on there and then and then some things happened and now it's a mess again. I actually just added that to it. I'm probably going to take it off and do a whole another site because this does not fit this t-shirt that says I'm a walking vibrator only vibrate light. It's great t-shirt. Um but I put it on there just temporarily because someone's advertising it like this next week. Okay, cool. Yeah. I mean, it may not fit, but it, you know, it's all good. Yeah. So, um, yeah, bunch of trainings right now, books, all that kind of stuff. It's just I'm really trying to figure out how to reorganize everything. Anyways, yeah, I mean, that's the thing. So, like, and this this applies to everybody, like you want to like sometimes the best websites start by like writing all all out on a piece of paper, like mapping it out um what each page is going to be and how to do how to how to make the flow happen. Um and then like translating it onto like a web page. Um but a lot of times and almost everybody does this, they like just I'm just making this thing. I'm just doing it, you know? Um and then we wonder like how how did we get here? like you know um and trust me I I used to build websites for people all the time and like I had to put my own website on Ghost because it just didn't it doesn't give me as many options and I needed that. It turned out like sometimes you need to not have as many choices um cuz it you can get really confused with too many choices. So um yeah, let's see. Um, did I miss anybody? Are we I just wanted to tell you thank you, Jen. I appreciate what you said and appreciate your opinion and looking at everything. I appreciate you. Thank you. Um, did we get did we get everybody for the most part or let's see academy? Okay. Find flight instructors and flight schools. take your pilot training to new heights with instruction tailored. Um, I tend to think that this subhead, this happens a lot too. I tend to think this subhead is actually the headline. Uh, that's a good suggestion, but for our SEO research, then seems like people just want to search shutter five schools. That's why they will put it under H1 and I one. Okay, that's what I needed to hear. Thank you. Uh because I haven't obviously I have obviously haven't done SEO research on Skyfare Academy. Um but yes, if you can tell me that these decisions are SEO driven then then then the feedback is okay. Well, how can you make this more engaging, right? so that I so that I stay here like how can you use these words um so that so that I want to keep clicking or what button can you put here to like start exploring that's all um navigate communicate oh that's nice I like that I like the alliteration you have here um okay I like This I might move this up. Um, this is good positioning where you were featured. Um, how long have you been around? 7 months. Wow, this is really good. Okay. Yeah, this is pretty tight. Um, how do you make money? Do people have to pay to get listed here? Uh, that's a good question. So, right now is a transactional uh fee. Uh we taking from the provider provider side which is fin school. Okay, got it. Subscribe to my mailing list. I like it. You might want to get a name so then you can personalize who you're emailing to. Um comedy infused keynote speaker. Oh, I like that. This is a really nice photo of you, by the way. It's very engaging. I might uh flip the headline so side um because then it looks like you're looking at the headline. Keep keeps the the eye on the page um a little bit. Um this is great. The Yep. Yep. This is good positioning because it's putting you in front of people. Yeah. I think it might just be that you need to get more people to to this page. I know eventually. Yeah. No, today, man. We can do it. We can do it now, right? The format connection kind of This is a little hard to read the image. Um, but yeah, it's fun. It it really goes into like a lot of the um you know what what it would feel like to like work with you and to hang out with you. Um you can take these testimonials and spread them out throughout the whole website and also keep keep it here. Yeah. Um because that just positions you throughout. Um, and then you might have a thing about like it might be kind of in inside of these services and speaking pages, but you might have something in here about like how to get started on the on the on the homepage, you know, like Oh, okay. Um, and make sure that everybody understands what it's like to work with you. Um, and that kind of thing. I see. Cool. Thanks. Sure. Okay, cool. Hopefully that's helpful. Um, okay. So, um, yeah, we'll spend about three minutes working on this. So, I know we just looked at websites and stuff, but now you have all like kind of like got jazzed about what it is that you're selling, what it is that you're doing. Um, and then I want you to brainstorm topics that are related to or will support your business goal that you set at the beginning. So, like for example, um, in this example, it's like, you know, thinking about um, if there's another business that pairs well with what it is that you offer um, so you can collaborate. you know what, you know, somebody was asking earlier about um you know, promoting before you launch. Well, can you do some behind the-scenes content to like get some people excited? Um you know, what is it that you offer? You know, why should people try? Are there any events that you can go to or lean into? Um you know, and this is an example related to like nachos, but you kind of get the point of like there's there's always there's always something you can do. So, why don't you brainstorm um just for a couple of minutes of of topics or the things that you could be talking about um that would help you reach your goal. And these are things that could be like for a newsletter or blog post, social media, anything. Hey, did everybody have a chance to come up with a few things? You should never be without things to talk about because you're you can like you can always address the the common problem that your people have over and over and over again and it'll find a new audience. Like there are some things that I've talked about for so long and there's always somebody new who doesn't know. Um so but always brainstorm things out. It'll just give you a chance to really think about like how can I bring more people in? How can I talk about things in a way that's appealing to um the people that I want to attract. Um so don't sleep on email marketing. Um it has a three times higher return on investment than social media. Um this is organic of course when we're talking about it um than or three times higher ROI than organic social media. Um, you want to collect names and emails. Um, and you want to, you know, use it because it could help you to conduct outreach, um, and to send a great newsletter out. Uh, newsletters and promotional emails get more visibility. Obviously, um, if people don't if people opt in, meaning like, you know, like we were looking at Stfano's page. I think just about everybody had a way for people to subscribe. If people opt in, meaning they signed up, don't be afraid to reach out. I work with a lot of people who start an email list and then they don't want to bother someone. Um, and I, you know, I feel it. I totally understand. Um, and if somebody said that they wanted to hear from you, that means I want to hear from you. Um, so don't forget that. Um, make sure that you use an email service provider. Um, even like in the last couple of weeks, I had somebody add me to like a mass email. Um, don't do that. Like people need to be able to opt in and opt out. um you know make sure that you're using something like Mailor Light or um you know Active Campaign um if you're using if you have a SAS product um you know and it's actually what I'm using now I use something called Bento um and it works really well if you have like some complexity on your back end which I do so it's like you know if you're if you have a SAS product it's kind of the same thing you want something like an email service provider that inte integrates with Stripe and stuff like that. Um, you know, you can look at Bento. Um, just make sure that you use someone. Um, and then you set expectations and stick with them. Um, and then make sure your emails look good on mobile. Uh, most people are on their phones. Um, and then it's a great place to ask for reviews. So, um, and everybody should have a newsletter, but who you have as your people that you address in your newsletter might be unique. Um, Solless was Solless Cremation was a client for a brief time. Um, and trust me when I tell you that like they are not emailing their customers. They're actually that because most people when you go to a funeral home, you really don't want to talk to them after the afterwards. Like it's like you're done with that. Um, but what they did was they had a newsletter and I think they still do, but during the pandemic they were writing a lot to nurses and supporting them during the pandemic because it was a really hard time for to be a nurse. Um, why would they email nurses? Oh, because nurses are the ones who make the recommendations um when somebody passes away. So by sending a newsletter out to nurses, um they were staying top of mind among a community that is a good referral partner for them. So everybody has a newsletter, everybody has somebody they can be messaging. Um even if it's a referral partner. Um and so don't forget that like sometimes the the client or the audience for a newsletter might not be who you think it is. Um, so just make sure that you're collecting email addresses, um, and that you're sending messages. Um, what I tell people is, um, you know, you can start off at quarterly and then you can go to monthly. Um, you know, but at least send it out, you know, and then you might be able to do it more often than than that depending on what your industry is. Um, but definitely look into like um the industry averages to make sure that you're not emailing too much or too little. Um, okay. So, do you remember earlier it's like a long time ago? It almost feels like yesterday. I know. Um, when I said you're going to set marketing goals. Well, this is where you set the marketing goals. So, we've talked about our customers. We've figured out like what our business goal is. um we've talked about, you know, we've we've brainstormed how we're going to do our marketing and we've brainstormed um you know what we're going to talk about. So now this is when the rubber meets the road, right? So this is when you say like how many emails you're going to send out um and by what date. You know, this is you know how many um how much personal outreach are you going to do to get in front of people? How many Facebook ads are you are you going to run? you know, are you going to do social media? Um, you know, how many social media campaigns are you going to run? Um, and then you start calendaring it out. Um, and making it valuable to your organization. So, what that means is, um, it's not enough to just say, I'm going to do the marketing the marketing. Um, it's really important to operationalize this in whatever way makes sense within your organization. So, if you are an organization of one, um, what is it that you know, it could be that you need post-it notes on your monitor that's like reminding you of the marketing tasks that you need to do. It could be that you're like me and you live and die by your calendar, so you need to have all of those tasks in your calendar. Whatever it is, um, you know, you need to make a commitment um to your marketing to your marketing goals. Um, and then make sure that it's in a place um that you're gonna take action on it. Um, and actually do the things that you say that you're going to do. Um, does anybody have any questions about this part? Okay. Why don't you take a couple of minutes to think about um how you would map it out? How many times you would do any of these tasks that you've committed to got really quiet, huh? Because we're committing to stuff. Scary. How important is it to uh warm up an email domain for email? Um for email marketing um you know it's interesting because my like Bento does the warm-up. Um, I h I've used a warm-up service um before to try and get myself out of the promotions tab. Um, and it works to do that. Um, but most of the time people use warm-up services. Um, if they're going to do cold email, um, it's really good for that. Um, so yeah, if you're doing cold email, that's probably something you're going to need. Um, yeah. Can you recommend it? What was that, Sam? Oh, I was just going to say we're like, it's not Mailor Light, but it's something like that. Um, paying to war and obviously we own a separate domain and it's cuz we're under the suspicion that we sent too many cold emails and then we're ending up in junk folders. So, I don't know how much truth there is. Yeah. So, like for cold emails, you don't want to use your primary domain um most of the time, you know? So, like you that's one of the reasons why you usually need like a warm-up service. Um because for your email marketing, you're probably using your primary domain and you're sending out plenty of emails um that are flagged as important and not spam, you know. Um and that's why like cold email, you do want to do a warm-up service because it's typically a brand new domain. Um, but if you sent cold emails from your like business, you know, your elemental.com site address, you may need to use a warm-up email to start getting out of the spam folder and then just pinky swear never to use cold email on your primary domain again. Yeah. Um, can you recommend a tool to get emails? What what's Can you explain the question? Are you talking about an email marketing tool or um because I don't really recommend buying a list if that's what the question is doll the question oh sorry you're on mute yes my question is how do we get emails cuz we can't just start sending emails to our people our friends and family cuz most of the time they um they don't care about what we're doing. They'll be like, "Oh, good for you." And they aren't our audience. So, when you recommend email marketing, how do we get emails uh to start sending those content about our product or the service we're running? Yeah. So, most of the time, um you know, there's a lot of ways to get emails. Um, so, um, most of the time, you know, you you could run an ad that asks for subscribers. You could, um, have, you know, a guide or a download, um, that people can get, um, for subscribing. Um, you can promote it on social media. Um, you can do like, you know, any number of things to to build the list. Um the key is to create something valuable or offer something valuable to your ideal customer. Um because you're right to an extent you don't you know I mean I think everybody's email list starts off with like their friends and family to an extent you know and then we just grow from there. Um but they may not be like our ideal people that are going to be paying us in the future. Um it's just people who um care about us and are willing to be on the list for a while, you know. Um, so yeah, I mean you just need to have a strategy behind how you're going to get people on the list um to start emailing them. So it a lot of it starts with like like I said having something to offer people. Um sometimes it could be like um you know like I think I'm going to start running like a an on demand webinar and hosting like monthly events um to try and get people into some of my services. So, like you just want to like think about all the different ways you can do some list building. Um, why not buy a list? So, what I mean by buying a list is like going out and like you can just I don't know, people offer them to me on email all the time like, "Hey, do you want to buy a list of like 500 real estate brokers?" I'm like, I don't even help real estate brokers, but okay, cool. Um, thanks for emailing me. Um, but a lot of times those lists aren't um, they could be really old and they're not really warm, you know. Um, earlier we were talking like there's there are services that are a little they do a better job of like connecting you with good leads. Um, those are places like Clay and Instantly. Um, those are like um, they help with like cold emails and cold outreach. Um, and they have a little bit more sophistication behind them. Um, and a lot of people use them to send out total junk, too. So, um, it all depends on like, you know, what what it is. But, yeah, buying a list and adding them to your email marketing is just not good practice. Um, you could buy a list and, you know, or use and use cold email tactics to like cold email people. Um but but adding him to your newsletter um uh that'll probably just make people mad. So what you mean is so email marketing is not the same thing. Okay. Yeah. No, email marketing is when people opt in to like hear from you. Like so when you're like I'm going to subscribe to your blog. Like that's that's like email marketing. Um, cold email is when you go out and you find a list of people um and you just you use a service like instantly or um uh I can't remember I'm sorry Hello Robot like you use that to help you schedule appointments and things like that. Um but like yeah that's different and you use like a whole different platform for that. Um, so like um yeah, so like you would use like Instantly or Clay or Hello Robot to do cold email. Um, and then you would use Baylor, Mailchimp, um, Bento, Constant Contact, all of that kind of stuff to do email marketing. Um, and it's a different and that's where the newsletters come from and things like that. That's really helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry about that. But yeah, there's there's a differentiation there. Um, and so when you're sending out things from like your email marketing, that would go from your business domain, but cold email doesn't usually. Um, unless you're doing like really small batch outreach because you don't want it your main domain to get put in spam. Does anybody have any questions about how to map out their goals? Some of these tasks take longer than we actually have time for in here, which is just like philosophically this is what happens next in your planning. Um, it took us almost three hours to get to social media, but here we are. Um, social media is great for ding brand awareness. Um, it's great for customer service. Um, if you're doing behind the scenes builds, um, getting email subscribers, all of that kind of a thing, building community, that's what social media is great for. Um, it's not really great for like sell sell. I mean, it's just people tune you out. Um, but it's really good to get to know your customers, be where they hang out, ask and listen to where people are. Um, sometimes, um, and that's where your analytics can come in on your website where you can like see where people are coming from, you know, and like, um, and lean into some of those spaces, um, and then disregard some of the places where people aren't finding you. Um, and just understand that social media is really an extension of your customer service efforts. Um, you want to claim all of the major profiles and you're claiming the space because it's a place to say your business name, put your logo, your website. Um, and usually there's a little blurb um that you can put on there, too. Um, but then you only want to pick like one or two active platforms because you're not really going to have time to get good at like all of the platforms. Um, and what I love to do is all the places where you're not active, um, you just pin a post at the top that says, "Hey, thanks for finding me on X. I'm most active on LinkedIn or whatever, you know." Um, and then you can just you you've claimed the space. If at some point you want to get into TikTok, you can do it. Um, otherwise, you can just kind of leave it there. Um, and people can find you and still get to your website from there. Um, make sure that you plan your content. Um, that's part of like why we've gone through all of these exercises. Um, so that you know like the topics you're going to cover and then beyond that you can plan your plan your content a little bit further. Um, I think there's a slide in here later about how like different types of content map to different parts of the customer journey. Um, and so one of the reasons that you want to plan your content is you always want to be hitting like people at different places. So you want to have some content that's for people who don't know about you at all. some content for people that are making a decision about whether or not to work with you and then some content for people who are like your biggest fans to keep them engaged. Um, and that's one of the reasons why you want to plan things out a little bit. Um, and make sure that you schedule your posts. Um, I have a couple um, platforms that I recommend because they're on a lot of different places. Um, if you're just getting started, Buffer can be really great. They have good analytics. They have a good pretty generous like free plan. Um, but you don't have time to like try and remember when you need to post. So, um, make sure you schedule your posts. Um, and people don't believe me that you can spend less than 30 minutes a day responding. Um, most of you will be able to. Um, make sure that you're collecting emails, um, not followers. Um, because it's a lot easier to get money from an email list than it is from social media. Um, and again, Buffer is a good place to schedule your posts. Um, it also includes scheduling to your Google business profile, which can be really helpful, um, to get some traffic. Um, remember that you don't own your social media followers. Um, like so few of them are seeing what you're posting anyway. Having a big following doesn't always translate into a lot of money. Um, and a lot of that is because social media is traditionally not a transactional channel. Um, the more transactional channels actually are um, YouTube and Pinterest of all the places. Um, and now Tik Tok has a shop um, and Instagram has a shop, but those are like really small slices. It just depends on your industry. Um, and then just prioritize your time based on where your customers are. Um, it's really important with social media. It's really easy to get lost in there. It's like a casino. You never know how long you've been there. Um, here is a prompt for you um to help you research um where your ideal clients or customers are hanging out, the type of content that they like to consume. Um, and it's all geared because people ask all the time, how do I know where my people are? Um, Pew Research has done longitudinal studies on where people are. Um, and so you could do you could go to Pew Research and look up social media report and they will tell you and you can also ask your customers and you can also use this prompt. This prompt will kick back for you like if they prefer blogs or podcasts and things like that. Um then I have for you a campaign generator. It generates a mix of social media formats, captions, etc. based on the type of content that you want to make. Um and your product or service details. Um I like this prompt a lot because it kind of shows people what it what a social media campaign really looks like. Um and then a caption generator. So, if you're doing a lot of videos or images, um, this is good for like Instagram, Tik Tok, maybe even some LinkedIn stuff. Um, this will give you a caption. Um, don't think it does emojis. I think I told it not to do emojis, but either way, you can tell it to do emojis or not. Um, that's all I have on social media. Does anyone have any questions about social media? Yes, you're getting this on a doc with all the links. Okay, so the last piece of what like braids all of this together um is content. Um so that means that what we're really going for here is consistency, you know? So everywhere that you're marketing, everywhere that you're talking about what you do, um it needs to be consistent. Um, and that's how you're really going to make sure that people know, like it's not just about the logo, it's not just about the brand colors, it's about how people feel when they engage with the content. Um, so you really want to make sure that you've got you've got some consistency um so that people know that they're in the right place. Um, here's a a high level of the customer journey. Um, where you're taking people who don't know you so that they're becoming aware all the way down to advocacy. A lot of times people start at retention and it's actually like how do you turn your customers into your biggest fans. Um, that's how you get things like user generated content which is like where people basically are making ads for you on social media about how great you are and how they're using your product. Um, so, um, see, nope, I don't have it in here. Um, so what that looks like is at the awareness phase, you're doing a lot of how-to content. Um, it's more general because you're just bringing people in. Um, when we get into like consideration um, and purchase, that's when we start talking about like comparisons. If you compare to other apps, um, they're going to be looking at different things. Um, they're looking at testimonials, case studies. um stories where they can see themselves and that's what happens in these consideration and purchase places. Um and then it's also about how easy it is for people to get excited and buy. So um make sure that your purchase purchasing should be so insanely easy. Like people shouldn't have to hunt for it. They shouldn't have to click a lot. Um it should it should be really easy to get excited and buy. Um and then how do I encourage people to stay? So once you've got them, you know, in the circle as a customer, how do you keep them? Um, and sometimes that's through loyalty programs or bonuses or different things like that. Um, I like to say that your content is in a rule. I like to call it the rule of thirds. So you're not promoting all the time, but you're pro promoting sometimes. Um, you know, you want to have some personal interaction with people. That's why it's so important to comment on other people's posts, follow new people. Um, reply to comments. Um, I I'm a fine purveyor of dad jokes. So, I like to have those as my light uh fun seasonal content. Um, it's also because I'm a total dork and that's what I do in real life. So, it's just easier that way. Um, and then the rest of the time you should be talking about the industry. Um, what's happening that's affecting the people that you're helping? um you know what is it that's that's important that's going on. Um you know it could be your own thought leadership. It could also be other people um that you're speaking to. Um and to support your content strategy. Um I have a 30-day promo challenge. Um so this is like 30 days of content ideas um in this prompt. Um, understand that if you're like, it seems really aggressive, you can always spread it out longer. I just needed a I just needed a day time frame. It's 30 days of content. You can do it in 60. Um, it doesn't matter. Um, and then as you continue to go through like planning your marketing strategy, um, sometimes it can be really helpful to look at your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. Um, and it'll tell you if you're being way too aggressive. Like this is why we start with one goal. Um, because that one goal, achieving that one goal could require a lot of work every day, every week, every month, um, for a longer period of time. So, if you start stacking those goals on top of each other, then you start to see that like if you have a small team, um, you might not be able to achieve it all. So, in order to stay engaged, um, you know, it's good to map out like what what it's going to take for you to do it. Um, this is an example of my board that had like daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. Um, I decided it was too aggressive, so this was an example of it being too aggressive, but you can um you can kind of do it for yourself. Um, and then the last task in the in the smart marketing strategy, um, is to make sure that you measure it. Um, and when you're measuring out like the effectiveness or the efficacy of the strategy that you've chosen, um, I really want to encourage you to think of it in terms of revenues, um, clients, customers, app downloads, you know, whatever, more so than like the number of likes and followers and comments and re-shares. Um those are marketing metrics like that might be what I'm sharing with people um as at the end of an engagement. Um but for you as the business owner, it really comes down to like you know how many people how many people were we able to convert um and how much money did I make? And some of that isn't necessarily marketing. Like marketing is what brings people to the door. Um you have to have a strong sales process that will kick them over into conversion. Um, but really like it a lot of times also it could be about the follow-through that you have um in your marketing efforts. So um I just want you to really think about that. I just don't want you to start focusing on the the vanity metrics for marketing um that really aren't necessarily going to serve you as the business owner because you're not, you know, that's that's really what you need to be focusing on. Um, and that's that's it. Like that's all I have for you. Sorry it was really light. So there's just so little that we talked about tonight. Um, and uh, but we have a little bit of time. Um, if anybody has any questions. Um, how do we do? Does are we all good? Are you all overwhelmed or you still feel pretty good about it? That was so incredibly helpful. Thank you so much. Sure. Cool. Yeah, super helpful, Jen. I think my brain's fried. Otherwise, I would have good good questions for you. But me, too. Don't worry. My brain's fried, too. Yeah. Yeah. Really helpful. I feel um a bit overwhelmed, but I think just breaking it out into like one thing at a time and just, you know, figuring out one thing, moving on to the next figuring out good enough. I learned a lot and see the value of having BTS content, the behind the scene content, uh to prepare my audience on what we're doing. and hope like lucky me I've been having a lot of short video but never thought it can be helpful and I might be using it for for the next stage before we launch our product. Cool. Jen, you said that you was going to share a uh the link to the book that you mentioned at the beginning, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah, let me um I I've got it in the email to go out tomorrow with the video, but if you want to drop it in the chat right now, folks might want to Do you have the Did you get the workbook? Um I think I didn't email that to you. I forgot. So that's Okay, let me find that really quick. Yeah, but I'll make sure we can keep talking and I'll look for it and then I'll get it to Carrie so that you can all um you'll all get it. Thank you for reminding me. Um Jen, I've got a question. Oh, no. Looks like George has a question. No, no, go. You You go first, Nick. Okay. No, your hand was up. It's all good. Um my my question was just Jen, do we have um are there any emerging trends in marketing that are happening right now? Is there anything like uh like is YouTube more dominant? is uh I'm sure it depends a lot on which industry you're in, but I was curious based off of your work with several different customers, are there any platforms that are doing better than others? I mean, better than others is relative, but I will say um the like it's so crazy. The most stable platforms right now because really in social media there's it's just been a lot of instability. Um, so I would say the most stable platforms right now are LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest. Um, and certainly Pinterest isn't for everybody. Um, but just in terms of like there's just been a lot of disruption in the other, um, in the other platforms, the other major platforms. Um, and a lot of splintering, you know. Um, and so a lot of people ask me about Blue Sky. I'm like, well, if you know, I mean, if you want to, it's it's kind of a lot like X, you know, it's such a time commitment, you know, for such little reach, you know, and then with the the some of the new platforms, um, you know, how long is it going to be around, you know, so a lot of times when we're talking about social media, it is about like, you know, investing in the platforms that are aligned with your values, that are aligned with your customers values. Um, I tend to lean into the ones that are more stable, you know, um, but I'm in the B2B space, so like, you know, LinkedIn has always been a good one for me anyway. So, um, so yeah. Um, in terms of the other emerging stuff, um, I mean, there's the shopping trends like shoppable posts. Um, there's a lot going on with AI obviously. um like AI has has actually I think made marketing much more accessible. Um a lot of times it's about knowing what to ask. Um and so that's why I gave you so many prompts is so that um it kind of helps you with understanding like what to ask. like you can take different pieces of like some of these prompts I've given you and like adapt them for your needs um and use them in several different ways um to get to get to like um what it is that you're looking for. I think inside the membership I have even more prompts about like doing like market research and stuff. So don't sleep on the fact that like you can use these tools to kind of get access to information that um in terms of marketing but in terms of anything wasn't previously available to you, you know. Um that can be really helpful. Um we've even used AI to help with like researching ads, you know, coming up with copy for ads, you know, it's kind of crazy like how it how it can help. Um and it's gotten a lot better. So yeah, those are some of the big things. Yeah, Jen, you mentioned that you are a big user of LinkedIn for marketing. Um, I was wondering if you had any specific resources, uh, maybe like an online course or anything like that for, um, uh, how to create content for LinkedIn. Um, I have a class coming up in the membership about that. Um, I haven't created anything yet about LinkedIn. Um, and there are just some people to follow um, also that are that that do a really good job. So like if you're not following Justin Welsh, um, he's a good one for content writing. Um, Caitlyn Borggo, that's B O G O I N is another good one. Um, because they do a lot of good writing. Um, and you can learn about things like hooks. Um, so on LinkedIn, like that first sentence is really the most important thing like because a lot of times things get cut off. So you want to write an engaging first sentence that then brings people into the rest of the content. Okay. Um, yeah. Following some of these folks right now, Justin Walsh, we're going cool. Um, I'm uh uh trying to uh find the willingness to become a LinkedIn influencer. Yeah. I mean, and and there's some I mean, there's some good resources out there for that, you know. Um, but yeah, it just takes a lot of discipline to do it like every day. Post once a day, something long and piffy. Yeah. All right. Well, um, thank you so much, Jen. Uh, we really appreciate it. I know you've been talking now non-stop for three hours, so that gets a little uh a little tiring. So, we really appreciate you being here and sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sharing all your knowledge and honest you guys like she's giving away so much really really good stuff. So, um if you have marketing needs, please reach out to Jen. Um her I think it's a monthly package, right, Jen? Do you want to just briefly talk about that? I mean, about the membership? Yeah, the membership. Yeah. Um so, the membership is it's we're going to end up raising the price here pretty soon. Um right now it's about 50 bucks a month. Um, and we do things every week. So, we have um marketing Q&As's with me. We have um at least one training a month and then um a community for, you know, networking and helping each other. Um, and it's it's pretty fun. And we've got about 50 classes in there now. Um, everything from SEO to Google business profiles to websites and tons more AI prompts in there. So, yeah, amazing stuff. uh just such a wealth of um information and a network that you're building. So um you guys take advantage for sure. Um and if the price goes up, it probably should. $50 is nothing really. Really, you know what I'm saying? So anyways, okay. Thank you so much, Jen. We'll be in touch and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Yep. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, folks. Um, on Monday we have Heather Samarind coming in and we're going to um, uh, tick off some other things within that lean canvas. She's going to be talking about customer foundation, problem statements, customer personas, and customer needs versus features. Um, take some time to look at Heather's uh, LinkedIn profile. It's on the schedule. She is just whisbang. I mean, she has been doing research and development for a really long time. Um, she's got a ton of content, so um, come early. We'll start right at 5:30. Um, your homework is to start getting your go to market slide, um, done. Uh, I know that there was a question along the lines of as, you know, do we work on our marketing while we're developing our product? You know, and again, it's kind of the whole kind of everything moving at the same time, right? So yeah, it's going to change, but just try to get your head around it all at the same time and realizing that, you know, this is again all on assumptions based off of what you heard today. These are the things that I think that I could I could go to market with. Um, but that's it for tonight. I will have all the information that Jen shared tonight in an email tomorrow along with the video. And if you have any questions before Monday, just uh shoot me a text, email, or give me a ring. Okay. All right. Thanks everybody. We'll talk to you later. Bye bye.