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The post Episode 232: Don’t Neglect Personal Growth if You Want to See Business Growth with Carol Gavhane appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Choose These Types of Emails to Send to Your ListI get a torrent of questions through my annual survey each and every year asking about what types of emails to send to your list. Today I’m sharing the three types of emails you should be sending to your list, what they each look like, how often you should be sending them, and how to know when to send each of them. Today I will be answering questions like the following…

How many educational emails should I be sending? What about sales emails? Should I send a certain number of educational emails before I send a sales email?

What are the different types of educational emails? How do I know what format to use and what to say in my emails?

Follow along as we get to the bottom of what you should be doing in the emails to send to your list.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives! * Looking for a podcast production team? Check out Gaffin Creative! * This week’s action step: Write out 5 educational topics, 5 market research questions, and 5 promotional emails you could send, and be sure to align them with your marketing calendar when it comes time to plan. If you haven’t already, be sure to snag the 2025 Chasing Simple Marketing Planner! * This week’s book recommendation: I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate How many educational emails should I be sending? What about sales emails? Should I send a certain number of educational emails before I send a sales email? And what are the different types of educational emails? How do I know what format to use and what to say in my emails? These questions, or some version of them, come through my handrail survey each and every year, so I wanted to take some time today to address them.

Today I’m going to be sharing the three types of emails you should be sending to your list. What they each look like how often you should be sending them and how to know when to send each of them You’re listening to episode 231 of the chasing simple podcast and I’m your host Amanda Warfield This episode was brought to you by gaffin creative the absolute best podcast production team out there

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar.

If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan. But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them.

Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when. Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals, and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them.

What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals? How can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner.

The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind. It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas.

In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more. If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple content planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield.

com slash planner. When it comes to the emails that you should be sending to your list, there are three different categories that I want to go over today. The first is educational. Then we’ve got market research and finally promotional. Now educational emails are going to be emails that are informative, how to’s, tutorials, tips, news, anything where you are just simply helping serve, serve, serve your audience.

It’s a direct serve. Which we’ll get to maybe an indirect serve in just a moment, but it’s a direct serve where you are looking at the questions you’re asked, and then you are saying, okay, how do I answer this question? And sometimes we get stuck in this, okay, informative emails, how to’s, tutorials, tips, news.

How many of each ones do I send? How do I format? You don’t have to send a specific number of any of these kind. And you don’t have to send. All of them, even you want to pick the ones that make the most sense for what you’re sharing. So maybe sometimes it does look like a step by step tutorial. Maybe sometimes you’re just sharing quick tips.

Maybe sometimes there’s news in your Your sphere your your niche that you want to share. Maybe sometimes you’re sharing a how to it. It really depends on What you are? Answering what question are you answering a pain point? Are you helping them solve? Let that determine what type of Educational email you’re going to send though I see clients get stuck on, okay, I need this many how to’s and now I need a tutorial.

And that’s just not the case. If you only did how to’s, that’s fine. If you only did news, that’s fine. It depends on what you’re comfortable with and what makes sense for the question that you’re answering. Now, like I said, those are all direct ways of serving. You are sharing news, you are giving them how to’s, you are giving value.

Market research, on the other hand, is going to be an indirect way that you’re serving. And what I mean by that is that in these market research emails, you are collecting feedback in some way, shape, or form from your audience. And then you’re using that feedback to serve them better. And So you’re not directly serving them.

They may not feel like they’re being served in that moment, but in reality, you’re taking that information you’re gathering and you are using that to serve them. So some ways that you can do market research, you can collect feedback. You can ask a question about, Hey, do you like this topic? Do you want to hear more about it?

That’s a really simple market research email where you’re just like, Hey, I’ve been talking a lot about X, Y, Z lately. Are you enjoying that? Do you want more? What questions do you have? Simple. You can also use surveys. I highly, highly, highly recommend using annual surveys. I’ve done at least one podcast episode about annual surveys.

If not more, I will link those in the show notes if you want to check them out. But an annual survey is the number one way I very specifically give you podcast episodes that I know you want to hear. And so annual surveys, highly recommend doing those. You can also just ask simple questions. You can, instead of specific feedback, you can just say, Hey, what is your biggest pain point around X, Y, Z right now?

And just ask questions. So those emails, they’re all serving, but they’re more indirect serving. And again, depending on the type of feedback you are needing to uncover. Will depend on the types you’re sending, or maybe you’re more secure in one over another, but it’s not okay. Send a survey every month and make sure you ask one just plain question email.

It’s not like that. That’s not going to be useful to your strategy and then the final category are those promotional emails. So those are going to be things like sending testimonials and case studies, sales, emails, product announcements, anything where you are very specifically trying to get a sale. And the thing about these three categories is that there’s no right or wrong ratio.

What you don’t want to do is get a brand new lead and then immediately put them into a major sales funnel, which is why welcome sequence is so important, but there’s no, okay, let me send five educational and then one promotion and five educational and promotional. There’s no right or wrong ratio. It’s going to really depend on your people.

And most importantly, it’s going to align with your marketing calendar. The number one thing you can do for yourself if you’re not sure what to send to your email list is to get your marketing calendar Set up for the year set up for the quarter is set up for whatever the next month Having that marketing calendar set up though is going to really dictate what you should be sending to your list Your action step for this week is to write out five educational topics Five market research questions and five promotional emails that you could send.

Then be sure to align them with your marketing calendar when it comes time to plan them out. And if you haven’t already, go ahead and snag the chasings of a marketing planner. That way you’ve got a start of a copy bank that you can then pull from when you look at your marketing calendar and you decide, okay, I need to talk about X, Y, Z thing.

And then it needs to be this type of email for right now. So on and so forth. And you’ve got those emails that you can choose from. And if you haven’t already, be sure to snag the 2025 Chasing Simple Marketing Planner. It is officially on sale now, and I will link to that in the show notes, but you can also go to amandawarfield.

com slash planner to grab your own. Now, this week’s book recommendation is I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue, and in this, the main character is a bit of a loner in her office, and then she gets access to her coworker’s emails and instant messages, and is using them to Improve her relationships or at least attempt to improve her relationships in the office.

And it’s just, it’s a funny, I’m not even sure it’s rom com, but it’s, it’s a comedy for sure. And it’s a fun read. So I highly recommend that. I will link to it in the show notes as always. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 231: 3 Types of Emails to Send to Your List appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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The Essential KPIs to Track For Email MarketingIf you’ve got an email list, you need to be tracking KPIs for your emails so that you can continuously improve what you are sending your people and today I’m covering the essential KPIs to track for email marketing in this episode.

What’s a KPI? A key performance indicator – what exactly it’s indicating depends on what you’re tracking, but lucky for you – in today’s episode I’m not only going to share what KPIs to track for email marketing, but also what those numbers tell you as you track them.

Add these KPIs to your current KPI Tracker – or if you need help getting started, checkout my KPI Tracker Template and my KPIs & Marketing Workshop for a deeper understanding of how these KPIs can work for you.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives! * Looking for a podcast production team? Check out Gaffin Creative! * This week’s action step: Add these KPIs to track for email marketing into your own KPI Tracker, get my KPI Tracker Template for help getting started and look into my KPIs & Marketing Workshop for a more in depth look into this topic. * This week’s book recommendation: The Earl Next Door: A Regency Romance by Ashtyn Newbold * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateIf you’ve got an email list, you need to be tracking KPIs for your emails so that you can continuously improve what you’re sending to your people. What’s a KPI? It’s a key performance indicator. What exactly it’s indicating depends on what you’re tracking, but lucky for you in today’s episode, I’m not only going to share the email KPIs I recommend tracking, but also what those numbers tell you as you track them.

You’re listening to episode 230 of the Chasing Simple podcast. And I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by Gaffin Creative, the best podcast production team out there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar, It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar.

If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan. But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them.

Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when. Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So how do you start with a strategy by starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them?

What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals? How can you translate them into content? Your audience wants to ingest. You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your chasing simple content planner.

The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind. It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas.

In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more. If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield.

com slash planner. When it comes to KPIs for emails, there are two categories that you’re going to want to pay attention to. So first and foremost, we’ve got those that Are not going to be accurate, but you can use them for general information. And then we’ve also got those that are going to be much more accurate and the difference here lies in new data protection laws that have been coming out over the last few years, where.

A lot of times people have to actually opt in to allow you to know some of these. Pieces of information, and so those are going to fall under the not so accurate, but good still for general information usage. The reason they’re still worth looking at is because you can still see trends, even if it’s not 100 percent accurate and trends can still be helpful for comparing our numbers against ourselves.

And it’s not going to be helpful for things like, well, what’s the average? Because. And that’s what you’re seeing is not, it’s not going to be accurate, but it’s good for, okay, here’s where I am. How can I improve this? Those kind of numbers. So just a heads up on that. First of all, let’s go ahead and dive into those ones.

The not so accurate ones. There’s really just two that I truly pay attention to and that I pay attention to for my clients. And that would be one open rates and two click through rates. Now open rates, again, not going to be super accurate. It’s not going to be. Yes, these are my exact numbers, but you can at least look for trends and when you see An email that typically, let’s say, you know, your baseline.

Once you see an email that is higher than your baseline, you know, that’s probably a good subject line. Let me try a similar formatted one and see if it works again. And if you see one that’s lower than average, you know, that’s probably not a great subject line. I wonder how I could improve it. Senior open rates.

Comparing them to each other is going to be helpful for that, but then we’ve also got click through rates and again, not going to be super accurate. You’re not going to know your exact numbers, but you can at least have that general baseline of, okay, how many people are actually clicking through and where in the email are you clicking through some email marketing systems won’t show you that I can’t figure out how to do it in Cartra, but I know mail in a bite that I used before you could see which buttons and which links were the ones that actually got clicks.

And so. For how many, the rate, if it’s higher than normal, you know, okay, this is either something that very much interests people or maybe you did something different with your call to action and then similar to, okay, if it’s not so high, maybe I need to improve my call to action, maybe it’s something they don’t care about, but then where in the email can be really helpful for, okay, did they like the button or did they like the, yeah.

Just plain link. Did they, like, get bolded? Did it work? You know, there’s all kinds of little formatting details that you can play around with with that. Now, we’ve got our much more accurate numbers. First and foremost, email list size. Now, we don’t want to get trapped in vanity numbers. We don’t want to grow our email list just for the sake of growing our email list.

We want to make sure that those on our email list are engaged, that they’re the right fit, all of those things. But tracking your email list size is going to help you know whether or not your growth marketing strategies are working, right? So if your list is growing and they’re coming from those growth marketing strategies, great.

If it’s not growing, you know that maybe you’re spending time on growth marketing strategies that aren’t converting. So can you dive into why they’re not converting and figure that out? And then if you’ve been working on it for a while, maybe it’s just not the right strategy for you. Similarly, you want to track new signups and where those signups came from.

So when you are doing your growth marketing strategies, it’s really helpful to have separate landing pages, separate opt ins, separate links, separate all kinds of things, tags if you can. To really track how many signups came from which growth marketing strategy. So, for example, anytime I’m in a bundle or a summit or something like that, I have landing pages that I recreate that are specific to that bundle.

I just copy paste or duplicate. But then within that, it, it gets, you know, thanks for snagging the whatever bundle, you know, there’s a little bit of copy that’s really specific to where that person’s coming from, but then also my opt in form, I recreate the opt in form so that it’s very specific to that growth marketing strategy and then.

When they opt in through that form, I’m able to set up a tag so that I can see really easily exactly how many people came for which growth marketing strategy opportunity it is that I had. So that is a really important piece of that puzzle. But again, probably something for a different episode in the future.

If you want to hear more about that strategy, send me a DM, send me an email, let me know. But you want to track those things to see whether or not you’re actually getting those leads and whether or not it’s worth your time to follow through. And then you also want to track amount of unsubscribes. Now, this is one that is very accurate, but you’re also going to just simply want to compare it to itself.

I have found newer clients, not always, but typically clients that are newer in the business space, they tend to worry more about unsubscribes. And every unsubscribe feels a lot more personal. The longer you do this, The easier it gets unsubscribes are a good thing, though. Truly, really, really, truly. They are a good thing.

That’s not just a platitude. You do not want to have people on your email list that are dragging down your conversion rates. If they’re not interested, if they’re not opening your emails, they don’t need to be there because if they’re not going to, if they’re not opening them, they’re not going to buy.

Right? So unsubscribes are good, but we don’t. Want to see massive amounts of unsubscribes, or if we do, we want to kind of investigate why were we selling to people who maybe weren’t in a place for that offer? Were we talking about something divisive? You know, I don’t know, but when you see a massive amount of unsubscribes and I mean, massive comparatively, right?

There’s no number. That’s like, this is too many. I went through and cleaned out almost my entire list 1 time and man, it felt good, but when your numbers are higher than normal, right? Why something to look into, but tracking all of those numbers is going to be important. Otherwise, you’re never going to know where those ranges are.

Right? So, your action step for this episode is to go ahead and add those KPIs to your current KPI tracker. Or start a KPI tracker. If you need a KPI tracker and you don’t feel like making your own, I’ve got one in my shop. Head to amandawarfield.com slash shop and check it out and you can snag that for yourself and just add in.

I’ve already got a lot of KPIs added in there for you, but you can add in some more if you would like. Now this week’s book recommendation is The Earl Next Door by Ashton Newbold. I believe this is a Kindle Unlimited book for all my Kindle Unlimited girlies. And this is a enemies to lovers trope that I, I can’t get enough of.

Love that. And it’s a, an, a Regency novel in case you couldn’t tell by the Earl Next Door. But it is, it’s fun. It’s a quick read. I believe it’s also a series. I’ve been really into series lately, but I’ve had so many books downloaded that I’ve only been able to read the first of a lot of them. Um, so I can’t tell you how the rest of the series goes, but I really enjoyed this one and I look forward to reading the other ones.

And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 230: KPIs to Track for Email Marketing appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Growth Marketing Strategies That Will Grow Your Email ListA few episodes back, I put out an episode about the marketing messaging milestones you should be hitting based on your phase of business. Today, I’m back to share a similarly formatted episode, but this time I’m sharing growth marketing strategies that you can use to grow your email list based on your phase of business.

And if you still haven’t taken my quiz yet, head to amandawarfield.com/quiz before we get started so you know exactly which strategies will work best for you!

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives! * Gaffin Creative: https://gaffincreative.com/podcast-production-management/ * This week’s action step: Go take the quiz if you haven’t already, and choose one of the potential growth marketing strategies to focus on growing your email with based on your phase of business. * This week’s book recommendation: Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? by Timothy Keller * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate A few episodes back, I put out an episode about the marketing messaging milestones you should be hitting based on your phase of business. Today, I’m back to share a similarly formatted episode, but this time I’m sharing growth marketing strategies that you can use to grow your email list based on your phase of business.

And if you still haven’t taken my quiz yet, head to amandawarfield. com slash quiz before we get started so that you know, as you listen, exactly which strategies work best for you. You’re listening to episode 229 of the Chasing Symbol podcast. And I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by Gaffin Creative, the absolute best podcast production team out there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Hey, sweet friend. It seems like I attract a lot of introverts with my marketing and if that’s you and you have been throwing around the idea of adding long form content to your marketing plan, you might have been thinking about a podcast. Podcasts are great for introverts and just for those of us who want the easiest possible route for creating long form content because you can do it In your pajamas, you can do it no matter what you look like, and all you need is, honestly, you don’t even really need a microphone.

I suggest you get one, but you just need something you can record on, and if you’re gonna go that route, you need a great editor. Now, whether you are thinking of starting a podcast or you’ve already started a podcast and you know how overwhelming the production side of having a podcast is, I want to introduce you to Gaffin Creative.

Gaffin Creative is a podcast production company dedicated to empowering creatives like you and like me to use your voice and grow your brand. They’re not just another production company, though. They’re your partners in creativity, community, and success. I have been working with Haley Gaffin and her team for, gosh, years now, and it is the best thing I spend money on in my business every single month.

I love that I can hand off what I’ve recorded, and I know it’s in good hands. I know that I can fully trust them. With all of the audio aspects, they are so aware of how to improve your audio, but then they also do things like, Hey, if you make this tweak while you’re recording, it’ll sound even better. And they’re just, they’re really dedicated to quality.

And I knew that, but I really discovered it when I had them edit the audio book for my book, Chasing Simple Marketing. They were just so dedicated to the quality, and they were so committed to that project. Honestly, more than I was. And it was just such a reminder of how amazing they are to work with. I know that when I hand over my content each month, that it’s going to be wonderful, and that you, as a listener, are going to get a great experience because of them.

So, whether you’re launching your first episode or you need some ongoing support, they are on a mission to turn dreamers into doers. The founder of Gaffin Creative, Haley, actually, she joined us on episode 93, where we talk about cheering other women on in life and business, and episode 202 to discuss visibility and podcast guesting.

So if you want to learn more about Haley, those are two great episodes to go check out. And if you’re ready to take your podcast to the next level, visit gaffincreative. com and discover how they can help you bring your podcast to life. If you are in the content creator phase, the main focus that I think you should really focus on is actually SEO.

Search engine optimization. Now that means and should mean your own SEO. So the things that you’re doing on your own website, blogging, podcast, YouTube, making sure your content is making it to your website and that you’re using keywords that you’ve done. But I also want you to focus on things like guest blogging, or if you’re up for it, guest podcasting.

But a lot of times those in this phase are a little overwhelmed by that because they haven’t started pitching themselves yet. And guest blogging is a really, a great entry point for learning how to pitch yourself. So guest blogging is a great one because it’s going to help your own personal SEO as well.

And it’s going to give you practice with working with SEO. But then also Pinterest. Pinterest is not social media like a lot of us think, but it is truly a search engine platform. And so, working with Pinterest is also a great way to really dive into SEO and start driving traffic through a search engine back to your own website and your own offers and lead magnets and things like that.

So, content creator phase. Your, your one focus should be SEO, but in a couple different ways. So your own SEO, guest blogging, Pinterest, if you can focus on those tactics for right now, once you’re comfortable with those, you’ll likely be in the foundation builder phase, which for those in the foundation builder phase, podcasting and YouTube guesting is going to be massive.

That, I think, should be your number one focus. But if you’re a little nervous about that, you can start by pitching joint social media lives. That’s a great way to pull in both your audience and whoever else’s audience as well, and potentially both of you can gain new followers from that joint live. But podcasting YouTube guests, they’re again going to help with your SEO, and it’s just going to give people an even deeper glimpse into, and less distracted, glimpse into who you are, what you do, and how you can help them.

So, If you’re in the foundation builder phase and you’re looking to grow your email list, podcasts, guesting, YouTube guesting, joint social media lives are going to be the top three things that I would say choose one of these and focus on them. And then finally, for those of you in the established entrepreneur phase, we’ve got some Much more advanced strategies for you to dive into.

So there’s speaking, which can be in person or online. We’ve got JV webinars, which is where you create a webinar and you’re pitching an offer at the end. And the hosts that you pair up with, they’re the ones marketing it and they get a cut of whatever is made from it. You’ve got bundle contributions, which is, you know, I’m sure you’ve seen bundles where, oh, some of them are free, some of them are paid, and it’s a bunch of people coming in, and essentially everyone’s pitching this bundle to their own email list in order to then, you know, share audiences, essentially.

And then we’ve got ads and other paid growth marketing. So once you’re feeling comfortable with, okay, I’ve got speaking, I’ve got JV webinars, I’ve got bundle contributions. I know what my offers are and know what my value ladder is. Then you can comfortably move into things like ads and other paid growth marketing, which is going to help you get in front of cold audiences to really see that growth.

And once you can really start seeing that growth, then you can continuously drive people to those offers that you have through that paid marketing. And it’s a matter of finding what works. There’s a lot of strategy behind paid marketing and I, I’m not going to go into it, all of it, but finding what works and then increasing how much you’re spending to essentially increase the audience is the simplest way of explaining it, even though there’s a lot more to it than that.

Your action step for this week is to choose one of these growth marketing strategies to grow your email list based on the phase you’re in. So again, if you haven’t taken that quiz yet, go and do that now. Amanda Warfield dot com slash quiz and then relisten to the section so you can choose one of the ones that makes the most sense for the phase of your business journey that you’re in.

And this week’s book recommendation is Forgive Why I Should and How I Can by Timothy Keller. This is, fair warning, a Christianity book, and I can’t say that I agreed or loved everything he had to say, but it gave me a lot to think about, which is all I can really ask for in a book like that, so. Overall, it was a great read.

Gave me lots to think about and I’m going to leave that there. But, um, I’ll link to that in the show notes. And until next time, my friend, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 229: How to Grow Your Email List appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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A Welcome Sequence Strategy That Will Build RelationshipsIf setting up your welcome sequence has been hanging over your todo list, you’re in luck because today I’m sharing my EXACT welcome sequence strategy with you – exactly how many emails I send, what they each cover, and how it works together with your opt-in sequences.

You’re listening to episode 228 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host – Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by Gaffin Creative – the best podcast production team out there!

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives! * Gaffin Creative: https://gaffincreative.com/podcast-production-management/ * This week’s action step: Outline Your Welcome Sequence, or Snag Mine in My Shop * This week’s book recommendation: Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateIf setting up your welcome sequence has been hanging over your to do list, you’re in luck because today I’m sharing my exact welcome sequence strategy with you. Exactly how many emails I send, what they each cover and how it works together with your opt in sequences. You’re listening to episode 228 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by Gaffin Creative, the best podcast production team out there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Hey, sweet friend. It seems like I attract a lot of introverts with my marketing. And if that’s you, and you have been throwing around the idea of adding long form content to your marketing plan, you might have been thinking about a podcast. Podcasts are great for introverts.

And just for those of us who want the easiest possible route for creating long form content, because you can do it, In your pajamas, you can do it no matter what you look like. And all you need is, honestly, you don’t even really need a microphone. I suggest you get one, but you just need something you can record on.

And if you’re going to go that route, you need a great Editor. Now, whether you are thinking of starting a podcast or you’ve already started a podcast and you know how overwhelming the production side of having a podcast is, I want to introduce you to Gaffin Creative. Gaffin Creative is a podcast production company dedicated to empowering creatives like you and like me to use your voice and grow your brand.

They’re not just another production company, though. They’re your partners in creativity, community, and success. I have been working with Haley Gaffin and her team for, gosh, years now, and it is the best thing I spend money on in my business every single month. I love that I can hand off what I’ve recorded, and I know it’s in good hands.

I know that I can fully trust them With all of the audio aspects, they are so aware of how to improve your audio, but then they also do things like, Hey, if you make this tweak while you’re recording, it’ll sound even better. And they’re just, they’re really dedicated to quality. And I knew that, but I really discovered it when I had them edit the audio book for my book, Chasing Simple Marketing.

They were just so dedicated to the quality, and they were so committed to that project. Honestly, more than I was. And it was just such a reminder of how amazing they are to work with. I know that when I hand over my content each month, that it’s going to be wonderful, and that you, as a listener, are going to get a great experience because of them.

So, whether you’re launching your first episode, or you need some ongoing support, they are on a mission to turn dreamers into doers. The founder of Gaffin Creative, Haley, actually, she joined us on episode 93, where we talk about cheering other women on in life and business and episode 202 to discuss visibility and podcast guesting.

So if you want to learn more about Haley, those are two great episodes to go check out. And if you’re ready to take your podcast to the next level, visit gaffincreative. com and discover how they can help you bring your podcast to life. The way that I teach and that I use a welcome sequence is that there are two parts to every welcome sequence.

First, you’ve got your opt in sequence, and then you’ve got what we traditionally call the welcome sequence. With the opt in sequence, this is where new leads join your list. So whether it’s from freebies, lead magnets, opt ins, whatever you want to call it, or it’s from products they’ve purchased, however it is that they’ve joined your list, giveaways, this is where you want to add them to your opt in sequence.

So they join your list in some way, shape, or form, then they should get added to your opt in sequence. Now for this, I usually, and there are some different strategies depending on exactly how they opted in, but I usually do a three part optin sequence for a lead magnet or freebie. I send a delivery email just confirming like, Hey, you’ve signed up.

Here it is. I do a bonus tip email with a reminder to actually use the freebie, and then I do a final quick sales email. So very short and sweet, not something that’s super heavy, but just a, Hey, you got this freebie, you might also really like this other thing I have, and here are the benefits and all of those fun things.

Then, once someone has gone through your opt in sequence, you want to have your system, whatever it is, run a check to see if they’ve been through your welcome sequence before. And then if they haven’t, have it add them to it. This has been what I have found to be the easiest way to make sure people get welcomed, but they only get welcomed once, even if they buy multiple things or opt in to multiple freebies.

Just because, let’s face it, people will likely if they’d liked one opt in. Or you like the looks of one opt in, they may go through and opt in to a ton of your stuff. And what you don’t want is every single time someone opts in, you don’t want them to end up being welcomed again. And so what I like to do is my opt in sequences are each separate, and then I’ve got one welcome sequence.

And so when someone opts in, they go through the welcome sequence, my system, I use Cartra, My system then checks to see if they have the tag I’ve created for either completion of the welcome sequence or currently active in the welcome sequence. And if they have either of those, it removes them from the opt-in sequence, and that’s it.

However, if it doesn’t have either one of those, it then adds a tag to kickstart the welcome sequence, and then they join the next part of the welcome sequence, which I’ll get to in just a second. So that way you can make sure everyone gets welcomed, but they don’t get welcomed too many times because that’s not something we want.

Even if we want them welcomed and we want them to know who we are, we don’t want them to get welcomed over and over again. So they get added to the welcome sequence. Now, what I’m going to tell you about is a five email welcome sequence. And this is a great goal to have, but you can start with just one and then add the others on later.

Okay. Because The goal of a welcome sequence is to introduce this person to who you are and what your brain is all about, and it’s a lot more beneficial for you to have just one email than none, because you keep putting it off. Throwing that out there before I dive in, but for a five email sequence for what you’re ideally going to do, start by introducing yourself.

Share who you are, what you do, and why, but similar to if you’ve ever heard a web designer or a website copywriter talk about the about page and say like it’s not about you, it’s about you, but it’s not about you, it’s about This is similar. So you want to introduce yourself, you want to share who you are and what you do and why, but you don’t want it to be all about you.

You want it to be through the lens of how your story and who you are can help them. So if you’re only starting with one email, this is the one to start with as well. And if you’re going to do the full five email welcome sequence, this is where you’d want to start. Start by introducing yourself through the lens of what that means for them.

Then in the second email, I like to share a little bit of an unpopular opinion. So for me, I talk about being a marketing strategist that Doesn’t worry about best practices. The goal here is to showcase what makes you and your brand different. And for me, that means I don’t care about best practices. I’m not creating content for best practices, even though most marketing strategies do.

And so right then and there, people will kind of self segment and they’ll either go. No, thanks. That doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t understand why as a marketing strategist you would not Follow best practices and then the ones who get it get it and they’re gonna stick around the third email is all about addressing a common pain point that your audience has.

So if it’s something that you personally experienced at one point, you can share your story. Or if you actually didn’t experience that for whatever reason, but you’ve noticed this common pain point through your audience and through your students and clients, you could share anonymously. Of course, you could more of a case study type email here where you talk about Um, and then the third email should highlight a client that experiences this and how you walk them through it.

Then the fourth email should highlight a common issue that you see with your clients or students. So this is different from the one before because this one typically is going to be a problem that they don’t realize that they’re having. Whereas the other one is one that your audience, your ideal audience, I guess I should say, they know.

They know that that is Something that is a common pain point versus fourth email should be this is a common issue But they probably don’t realize that they’re actually having it and then you can also talk about you know How you’re able to solve that for them. So for example pretty sure mine talks about Trying to create content weekly and then being stuck on the hamster wheel So a lot of times people come to me and they think that batching content means creating a week of contents You a week’s worth of content at one time, and this email kind of shows them like, no, that’s not That’s not actually helpful and by doing that you’re still stuck on the content creation hamster wheel and so I’m kind of Showing that to them gently and then finally the fifth email should provide more value I like to give three tips that lead into another freebie that I have but you could also do Tips that lead into your next offer that you’re getting ready to sell them Or you could send them to blog posts that you’ve got written or, you know, there’s, there’s all kinds of things, but you want to provide more value.

And then once they finish this, you’ll do a similar check of, okay. You finish this welcome sequence. Have you been through the sales sequence? And so similar to the other check, that’s what you’re going to want to do here. And if they haven’t been through the sales sequence of your main offer, you’re going to send them through that, but that is a topic for another episode.

So your action step for this week is to either outline your welcome sequence or head to amandawarfield. com slash shop, you can actually snag my welcome sequence template. I have The opt in sequence and the welcome sequence all in one and exact and a flowchart of exactly how those should work together Already written for you and all you have to do is fill in the blanks to get yours up and running So you can check that out in my shop.

This week’s book recommendation is Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter If you like fake dating tropes, you’ll love this one. It’s so cute and I believe it kicks off a whole series, which I haven’t yet gotten to dive into, but I’m excited to. I will say though, this is a young adult. So for those of you who aren’t fans of young adults, you may not love this one, but it was so stinking cute and I just, devoured it.

So highly recommend Better Than The Movies by Lynn Painter. And I will link to that in the show notes if you want to check it out. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 228 – My Exact Welcome Sequence Strategy appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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The Cornerstone of a Successful Marketing StrategyIf you want to build a loyal audience and boost your sales, you need to focus on email marketing. And while I focus on cohesive marketing as a marketing strategist, if I had to choose one most important area for you to focus on? It would be email. It truly is the cornerstone of a successful marketing strategy.

And today I’m covering:

Why Email Marketing Matters – The Unique Benefits Of Email Marketing Instead of Instagram Marketing

Choosing a Platform – My Top Recommendations for Email Marketing

How to Get People on Your List – Creating a Lead Magnet that Converts

What to Send Your List – What to Do with Your Audience Once They’ve Subscribed

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives! amandawarfield.com/youtube/ * Gaffin Creative: https://gaffincreative.com/podcast-production-management/ * This week’s action step: Start your email list! * This week’s book recommendation: She’s Not Sorry by Mary Kubica * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateEmail marketing was one thing that I started right away because as I did research of how to run an online business, how to market an online business, it was one of those things that everyone said, you gotta do.

So I started one, but I didn’t really understand how important it was until much later on. And so it’s something that I want to really encourage you, as an online course creator, to start now, if you haven’t already started. And, if you have already started, to put more time and energy into it. What I tend to find with my clients is that they put more time and effort and focus and energy in their Instagram marketing.

Then in their email marketing, which last week I talked all about why you shouldn’t be posting daily on Instagram any longer and why that doesn’t work in 2024. So check that one out if you haven’t already, but often I find clients wanting to put all of their time and effort and energy into Instagram marketing and they neglect the email side of things.

But in reality, the cornerstone of your marketing strategy should be your email marketing, even more so than your long form content, your podcast, your blog, your YouTube, your email marketing is that cornerstone that you really want to send everyone to from your different content avenues. And when, whether you’re doing nurture marketing or you’re doing growth marketing, which I’ve got an episode explaining that you can check it out here as well.

The difference between the two and why you need both, whether you’re working on nurture marketing or growth marketing, you should be sending everyone back to your email list, which is why it’s truly the cornerstone of what it is that you are doing with your marketing as a business owner, and especially as a course creator, and here’s the thing.

I was at a conference earlier this year, Lily Amati’s creative educator conference, and Natalie Frank made the comment that. Everyone has equal access in the inbox, and that has stuck with me ever since then. It’s something I think about all the time, and it’s just so true. Because the reality is, is that every post you put out on Instagram, only 10 percent of your following actually sees that post.

So, take whatever your following is, And then multiply that by 10%. If you have a thousand followers, a hundred people, only 10 percent of people see any given posts that you put out there. That’s not many, but when it comes to email marketing, 100 percent of the people on your list, a hundred percent, see the emails you send, it may not all read them, they may not open them, but they’re going to see it in their inbox as they’re cleaning their inbox out.

Right? So definitely to keep in mind, you’ve got equal access in the inbox. Another thing to keep in mind is that there is a three times higher conversion rate for emails than for social media. And so every email you send, if you put that same content on social media, the conversion rate is going to be higher in the inbox than it is on social media.

And I would keep going on and on with these stats, but one more when it comes to return on investment, ROI. For every dollar spent with Instagram, you only get a $5 to $10 ROI return on that investment for each dollar spent. For email marketing, you get a $36 ROI for every dollar. It’s clear, right? Email marketing is where we should be focusing the majority of our marketing efforts.

It should be the cornerstone piece of your marketing and it should be the piece of your marketing that you send all the other aspects of your marketing back to. If you haven’t started your email list, let’s talk about choosing a platform. I have three recommendations that are my top recommendations that I have used.

I’ve used all of these personally. Three different email platforms. If you are just now starting your business and you’re not making any revenue yet, my suggestion would be MailerLite. This is who I started with. They have a free version that will help you get started and get up and running so that you can start an email list without having to put any of your revenue into it yet, especially if you’re not making any money yet.

It’s a great starting place. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles. It’s not the prettiest of all of the different email systems out there, but If you don’t have an offer yet, if you’re not making revenue yet, if you are just trying to figure out this whole system, this whole marketing thing, it is a great place to get started.

If you are making revenue, and you do not need an all in one system, which we’ll get to in a second. So you’ve got, you’re making revenue, you’re making money, you don’t need an all in one system at this point, the Lodesk would be my recommendation. Again, I’ve linked to that in the show notes. They’ve even started checkouts, they’ve got all kinds of new features, they’re constantly rolling out new features, and I’ve used this with clients.

Many times, if I didn’t need an all in one system, I would be using flow desk personally, myself. I cannot recommend them enough. They have all kinds of great features. They also are continuously rolling out new features, which means that they’re continuously listening to their audience and what they need and want, which is huge.

But then also on top of that, they’re beautiful. They are the most beautiful platform for emails, period. And that means that you get to showcase your branding. You get to just make what you’re doing, your touch points with your audience. That much more fun and that much more you. So, that would be my recommendation.

If you do not need an all in one, that’s what I would suggest. Now, if you already have offers, if you have your courses already, and, or, you are getting ready to create your courses, maybe you already have your courses in Kajabi or something like that, and you’re not going to move them, then, I would suggest Flodesk, but if you are planning to create your own courses very, very soon, like within the next like month, you are getting ready to get them set up and running and you don’t have any kind of system yet, I highly recommend Kartra.

Kartra is very similar to Kajabi, um, but it is a totally all in one. I can create quizzes. My quiz opt in, if you go to AmandaWarfield. com slash quiz, you can find out what growth strategies are best for your business. That quiz created totally within Cartra. Uh, my in marketing is all within Cartra. My, my tripwires, my upsells, my checkout system, all of my offers inside of my shop, all of my courses, my membership, all of that is hosted inside Cartra.

It is an all in one system. It is pricier because it’s an all in one system, but I don’t have to pay for a million different pieces. I don’t need to pay for Deadline Funnel, and Flodesk, and Interact, and Vimeo, and it hosts videos, all of that. There are so many pieces of the puzzle for an email marketing strategist.

And for an online course creator that you need for selling your stuff for email marketing and just for marketing in general, that Kartra does it all. So, if that is you and that is something you need, if you need an all in one system, I highly recommend Kartra. So those are my top three, kind of depending on where you’re at with your business, what you’re needing right now.

Either MailerLite, Flodesk, or Kartra would be my recommendations. I’ve been using Kartra since 2021. And from 2018 to 2021, I used MailerLite. And like I said, I have used Flowdesk with numerous of my clients at this point. A lot, a big majority of my clients actually use Flowdesk. And so, I recommend all of those.

They’re all great to work with. Cartra is a bit more of a learning curve for those that have absolutely never done anything like this before. But if you have worked with some systems in the past, it’ll be a piece of cake for you. But Flodesk is an easy drag and drop, beautiful emails. They’re constantly updating and adding to what they’ve got, and so I cannot recommend that enough.

Now, you’ve chosen a platform, how do you get people on your list? You need to create a lead magnet that is going to convert, and for those of you that are in Chase Invisible Marketing, the community, we do have an entire quarter based on creating a lead magnet that converts, because it is such an important piece of this puzzle.

You want to make sure that the lead magnet you’re creating directly links to your offer, but then also directly links to what it is that your people need right now. So I actually had a whole conversation today with a client about, you’ve got great lead magnets already, but the lead magnets you had aren’t hitting on the pain points that business owners, that your audience is needing right this second.

And so if you already have lead magnets. Even if they’re converting well, if it’s converting, you know, crazy bananas, you’re probably good. You don’t need to recreate another one. But if you’re like, I have lead magnet, it doesn’t convert as well as I’d like, and it also doesn’t upsell into my course very well, take some time and think about, okay, if this is my course, what is the step for my course that someone needs?

And then what are the pain points that I’m seeing consistently right now in 2024 of my audience? What is unique right now? What is something that I’m hearing about over and over again, that I’m getting questions about over and over again? What are people struggling with? What are my potential students struggling and create a lead magnet around that you want it to be the step before your course, though, so that way, at the end of the lead magnet, you’re able to say, and if you want to take this a step further, or now you’re ready for the next step, which is my course, and you want to promo your course within lead magnet so that you have a higher chance of converting those people straight from the lead magnet into your course, and if they don’t, you put them in the sales funnel for your course, and then that’s them on their way.

So, different types of lead magnets. Quizzes right now, converting really, really well. Private podcasts, converting really, really well. But, you could also do things like a flow chart, or a decision tree, or a PDF, a challenge, a workshop. There are so many different options for your lead magnet, but the key is to choose your topic and choose what it is that your lead magnet is going to do.

What’s the win that your audience is going to be. Get when they download your lead magnet, choose that first and then decide what kind of container you want to create around that lead magnet. Don’t say, okay, I’m going to create a quiz. What do I need to create? Don’t do that. Create the topic, create the win, know what you’re going to give your people, and then say, okay, how does this work best?

What is the best format for me to deliver this? So once you’ve got your list set up, you’ve got your platform, you’ve got your list set up, you’ve got a lead magnet, what do you do once people are on your list? You want to give them value. Serve them really well. If you have long form content, Blog posts, podcast, YouTube, share about your new content.

Every time you put out a new podcast episode, share about it. Now, the best way to do this is by talking about, like share the big tips, the big, either one tip or sharing or whatever it may look like, give them value and then say, Oh, by the way, I’ve also got a podcast episode about this. You don’t necessarily want to just go Hey, I’m going to podcast episode out like give them the value and then make them go.

Yeah, I want more of this, right? So that’s the best way I think especially if you’re already creating long form content Repurpose what you’re already doing and send it to the people on your list because they’re going to want that value too, right? So that’s one thing you can do but you can also just write up an email if you only email Every other week or once a month.

That’s enough as long as you’re making sure that you’re sending value and you are Talking to your audience and saying I know this is what you’re struggling with and here’s how I can help right now So that’s what I would say to send your list Repurpose your content or let that be your long form content and just really pay attention to what are people struggling with right now?

How can I help how can I help my audience? That’s what you should always be asking yourself now your action step for this week is simply to start your email list if that means that you need to take one of those top recommendations that I mentioned and You know, get started with one of those. That’s your starting step.

If it means that, okay, you’ve got an email list set up, but you’ve done nothing with it. Maybe that means you need to start with creating a lead magnet, right? Whatever it is that you need to do next, let’s get started with it because an email list is truly the the best weapon in your arsenal is the best way I can describe that off the top of my head right now.

It’s the best way to move forward and it’s truly a cornerstone for your marketing. Now, this week’s book recommendation is She’s Not Sorry by Mary Kubica. It is a psychological thriller, but their trigger warning, it is based heavily around suicide. So I’m just going to throw that out there. May not be the book for you, but if.

If you’re not triggered by that and you like psychological thrillers, I highly recommend I’m going to link to it in the show notes for you. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 227: The Corner Stone of a Successful Marketing Strategy appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Marketing Messaging Milestones Based on Your Current Phase of BusinessToday I’m going to dive into the three phases of a business journey and exactly what marketing messaging milestones you should be focused on hitting.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives! amandawarfield.com/youtube/ * Gaffin Creative: https://gaffincreative.com/podcast-production-management/ * Discover Your Phase of Business by Taking My Free Quiz! * Join us Inside of The Community * This week’s action step: Join the Get More On Your Sales Page Challenge * This week’s book recommendatio*n: The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateNow, before I dive too far into this episode and talking about the different marketing messaging milestones for your phase of business, I just want to direct you towards the quiz I have that will tell you which phase you are in if you are unsure.

So if you just go to amandawarfield. com slash quiz. It’ll tell you which one of these you’re in if you’re like, I don’t really know now There are three phases the content creator phase the foundation builder phase and the established entrepreneur phase these are phases that I came up with for the book chasing some marketing and It just is such a an easier way for me to kind of identify My tips and who they’re best for and today I want to use those three phases To discuss What your focus should be when it comes to your marketing messaging because frankly we can get stuck trying to figure out messaging that maybe we just don’t need to understand yet and Aren’t able to truly understand yet, and that’s okay.

And so I just want to encourage you with this You know, the fact that, okay, maybe you’re not too far ahead, or maybe you’re trying to be too far ahead, and it’s okay to slow down and focus on some other things right now, but I also just want to help you understand the messaging aspects you do need, the milestones you should be hitting right now.

So, content creator phase. First things first, you want to understand your audience. Now, this doesn’t mean that you need to fully know and have a really niche audience just yet. I know a lot of times, And really, okay, second milestone is finding your niche, but I know a lot of times finding a niche can be really difficult and having a super narrow audience can be really difficult.

And I can remember being like, Oh, but I don’t, and I see this with clients all the time too. I don’t, I know I want to talk to these people, but I don’t, I don’t know exactly which kind within that yet. For example, I know I want to talk to moms, but I don’t really know if it’s, you know, moms that are. Newly postpartum or if it’s moms that are toddlers or you know, whatever identifying factor within moms It’s okay.

If you don’t fully Know that just yet. You will want to pay attention But at this point you may not know you may be speaking more generally towards your audience and that’s okay but we do want to understand our audience and so you want to be really diving into You What it is that your audience is struggling with right now and it can be more general But you want to know what are moms struggling with?

What are Etsy shop owners struggling with? What are bakeries struggling with? You know, whoever your audience is What are they struggling with right now? And then your niche. Kind of a similar take, right? We have to niche down, and I actually I saw on threads yesterday and oh my gosh, I wish I knew who said it so I could give them credit, but someone said For all the multi passionate entrepreneur, and I’m definitely butchering this, but for all the multi passionate entrepreneurs out there, you have to become known for one thing, find your niche in one thing, and then, once you’ve done that, your people will actually care about all your other passions.

And I just, I wanted to like it a million times. It’s so true. I know that right now it can feel really difficult because you have so many things you want to talk about, but choose one avenue to move forward with and being able to encompass all of your different passions. It will become clearer later, but for now you’ve got to choose one and you’ve got to move forward with it.

And then that being said, you need to double down on what works. If you want to see success right now, only put out things that you’re okay with doubling down on, first and foremost. But secondly, when something works, keep going. Keep going with what works. Don’t just continue to throw spaghetti at the wall.

If something is working, try it again, and then try it again, and then try it again. And if it’s continuing to get response and people are continuing to. You know, respond to that topic to the phrasing of it, whatever it is, you want to keep moving forward that so content creator phase, you want to work on understating your audience, finding your niche and doubling down on what works once it starts working.

Now, for those in the foundation builder phase, now it’s time to narrow down your audience. So you want to look at those you’re serving and you want to really see what the commonalities are. for listening. Here in this phase, again, take the quiz if you haven’t already, but in this phase, you likely have one, at least one strong offer that you are actively serving people with.

And so look at the people that have found you specifically the ones that you enjoy working with most. And what is it that they have in common? What is the overlap between all of those? What is the commonality? And that’s going to help you narrow down your audience. So that’s something you really want to work on right now.

You also want to hone in on the problem that you solve. So not only the niche, not only the overarching topic that you talk about, but specifically what is it that you’re actually solving? So if you know, okay, I’m speaking to bakery owners about bringing in more customers, that was what you decided in the finding your niche section or milestone for the content creator phase, helping bakeries bring in more customers.

But then when you look more closely, you may realize, okay, I’m helping bakeries bring in more customers specifically through print ads or specifically through social media or specifically through, you know, what is How can you take it a step further is kind of where I’m getting at there. So hone in on the problem you’re actually solving and how you’re doing that.

And then I want you to craft your content themes. Now, if you’ve read my book or if you’ve been around for a while, you know, I’m not a fan of the buckets idea when it comes to content themes. I Especially, particularly social media where you’re just like here’s all of my different buckets and I cycle through them But I do think it’s important that you have content themes that you speak to so you may decide That you’ve got let’s let’s go forward with the bakery example.

So let’s say you’ve got maybe your themes are how to create A great bio. Maybe your themes talk about using location within social media. Maybe your themes are how to create reels. Whatever it is that you really want to hone in on, you want to kind of figure out, okay, what are my themes here and what am I going to be continuously talking about?

So, for foundation builder phase, you’re going to narrow down your audience, you’re going to hone in on the problem you solve, and you’re going to craft your content themes. Then for my established entrepreneurs, those of you in this phase, you really have one milestone that has five different pieces to it.

So you want to fully craft and understand your customer journey here. Meaning you need to know problem unaware, problem aware, solution aware, offer aware in. Student or customer or client you need to understand each of those five different pieces What they’re looking for and what they need from you within each of them for the customer journey So, those are the different messaging milestones that you need to understand as you move through the different phases of your business journey.

If you want to really get more specific and understand your messaging a little further, I’m actually hosting a free challenge, it starts next week, called Get More Eyes on Your Sales Page, How to Craft an Irresistible Marketing Message. Get More Eyes on The goal here is to help you craft messaging for your content.

So social media, email marketing, blog, YouTube, podcast, to craft messaging for those pieces of your marketing plan for your content specifically, that will help you drive traffic to your sales page specifically. So if that’s something you’re interested in, like I said, it is a free challenge. I’m going to link to it in the show notes so you can join us.

It’s going to be really fun. Each morning you’re going to get a. A little quick video training from me and a workbook and then we’re going to go live every single day to take it further and to workshop your messaging together. Now, this week’s book recommendation is The Sicilian Inheritance by Joe Piazza and this one It was fun, but also, you know, it was a premise that you’re like, this is such an unreal premise, but it was really, it was fun.

But this girl’s, I believe it’s her great aunt, she was very close to her, she dies, and the great aunt apparently has land that she owns in Italy that no one ever knew about. And she’s like, told her she has to go to Italy and find it and claim it. It’s a whole thing. But, Italy is one of those places that I, I would love to go at some point.

I’m always dreaming of it. So, it was a fun read for me. And, yeah. It was a quick read also, so the Sicilian Inheritance by Joe Piazza, if you want to check it out, I’m going to link to that in the show notes as well. And until next time, my friend, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 226: Marketing Messaging Milestones for Your Phase of Business appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Questions to Ask Yourself to Keep your Marketing Message FreshIf you’re feeling like your marketing is boring and you’re struggling to come up with what to say, you may be tempted to take a left turn and start exploring a new theme in your content. However, this can lead to confusion with your audience, and slow down the Know Like and Trust growth.

Not to mention it may impact your sales.

Instead, if your marketing is feeling stale, I want to encourage you to ask yourself the 4 questions I’m going to share today – they’ll help keep your messaging fresh, without taking you down a rabbit hole.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5-minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time. Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or 1:1 services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays! You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YT – @mrsamandawarfield or by heading to amandawarfield.com/youtube/ – I hope to see you Monday! * Gaffin Creative: https://gaffincreative.com/podcast-production-management/ * This week’s action step: Take some time to sit with these questions and answer them for yourself. * This week’s book recommendation: Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD by Susan Pinsky * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateIf you’re feeling like your marketing is boring and you’re struggling to come up with what to say, you may be tempted to take a left turn and start exploring a new theme in your content. However, This can lead to confusion with your audience and slow down the know, like, and trust growth that you’ve been building.

Not to mention, it could impact your sales. Instead, if your marketing is feeling stale, I want to encourage you to ask yourself the four questions I’m going to share with you today. They’ll help you keep your messaging fresh without taking you down a rabbit hole. You’re listening to episode 225 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by Gaffin Creative Productions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Hey, sweet friend. It seems like I attract a lot of introverts with my marketing and if that’s you and you have been throwing around the idea of adding long form content to your marketing plan, you might have been thinking about a podcast.

Podcasts are great for introverts and just for those of us who want It’s the easiest possible route for creating long form content, because you can do it in your pajamas, you can do it no matter what you look like, and all you need is, honestly you don’t even really need a microphone, I suggest you get one, but you just need something you can record on, and if you’re gonna go that route, you need a great editor.

Now, whether you are thinking of starting a podcast or you’ve already started a podcast and you know how overwhelming the production side of having a podcast is, I want to introduce you to Gaffin Creative. Gaffin Creative is a podcast production company. dedicated to empowering creatives like you and like me to use your voice and grow your brand.

They’re not just another production company though, they’re your partners in creativity, community, and success. I have been working with Hayley Gaffin and her team for Gosh, years now, and it is the best thing I spend money on in my business every single month. I love that I can hand off what I’ve recorded, and I know it’s in good hands.

I know that I can fully trust them with all of the audio aspects. They are so aware of how to improve your audio. But then they also do things like, Hey, if you make this tweak while you’re recording, it’ll sound even better. And they’re just, they’re really dedicated to quality. And I knew that, but I really discovered it when I had them edit the audiobook for my book, Chasin Simple Marketing.

They were just so dedicated to the quality, and they were so committed to that project. Honestly, more than I was. And it was just such a reminder of how amazing they are to work with. I know that when I hand over my content each month, that it’s going to be wonderful and that you, as a listener, are going to get a great experience because of them.

So, whether you’re launching your first episode, or you need some ongoing support, they are on a mission to turn dreamers into doers. Thanks. The founder of Gaffin Creative, Haley, actually, she joined us on episode 93 where we talk about cheering other women on in life and business and episode 202 to discuss visibility and podcast guesting.

So if you want to learn more about Haley, those are two great episodes to go check out. And if you’re ready to take your podcast to the next level, visit gaffincreative. com and discover how they can help you bring your podcast to life. Do you struggle with feeling like your content is getting boring?

Like you’re saying the same thing over and over again. And frankly, you wonder if you’re doing yourself a disservice by not keeping things fresh. I know that I actually hear this all the time from clients and it’s not something that I, well, I struggled with at the very beginning of my business, but once I really started to understand marketing, I didn’t struggle with it all that much, mostly because.

I’m an Enneagram One, and my brain likes repetition, but I know that a lot of people struggle with this. This struggle of, well, I feel like I’m just being really repetitive. I feel like my audience is bored. I feel like I’m bored. And this is something that is really, really common. So if you can relate to this, you are not the only one.

And so I want to talk about keeping your content fresh, because it’s actually really important. A good thing to be a broken record. That’s actually what we want is we want your content to kind of sound like a broken record. We want it to be the same thing over and over and over again. And that’s because when we say the same things over and over again, when we’re broken records, when it comes to our marketing, that is when we connect people with.

their areas of expertise. So if you’re hopping around from topic to topic to topic to topic, people aren’t going to know what it is that you do and how you can help them. But if you’re saying the same thing over and over and over again, they’re going to go, Oh yeah, this person connects to this. Oh yeah.

Amanda Warfield, she helps with marketing strategy. Annie Porterfield, also marketing strategy. Marie Forleo, Motivation, Natalie Frank, community, right? Like there, there are these names that we know, Oh, this person does this and this is what I can connect them with. And then when someone says they need that thing, you go, Oh, you need this person.

Oh, you need this person that does ads. Oh, you need this person that does membership setup or setup or whatever the case may be. Talk about something and the more you’re a broken record the more that you’re gonna be connected in that way You’re gonna be that expert in someone’s mind But, I know that that can feel, it can feel stifling for a lot of entrepreneurs, right?

We can feel like we’re bored with our marketing, and we can feel like, but I know so much, I want to share all the things that I know. And here’s the thing. If you’re bored with your marketing, kind of, kind of just blunt there, but too bad. Your marketing is not for you. It is for your audience. And so if you’re bored, it doesn’t matter.

It matters what they need, not what you need. That being said, all of those great things you have to offer, you pour those into your students, to your clients, those are the things that you Help your clients do that. You pour into your membership, pour into your courses. For example, my clients work with me for content, marketing, stretching, copywriting, but what they really get out of working with me is so much more than that, because yeah, we’re working on strategy for marketing, but that also kind of leads into business strategy and inevitably there are mindset issues.

And there, you know, what we end up doing with our one on one clients is a much bigger reach than. What we’re just saying we’re doing with them. And it’s not that it’s a bait and switch. It just naturally, because all of these different aspects of business. They, they overlap. Naturally, our skills are going to overlap in that way too.

And we can kind of help and guide in those ways as well. If you feel like, but I have so much to offer. I want to be a multi passionate entrepreneur, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s not that you can’t be. It’s just that those skills need to come out in different ways. It’s also a great thing. For, you know, going out in the networking communities and you can share things and talk with others and just getting to build community.

That’s a great way to kind of get to dive into those other things that you love. But when it comes to your marketing, you’ve got to be a broken record and you should be bored. The more you talk about something, the more likely people are to see you as that expert. And this is also really important when it comes to marketing, content marketing in particular, because people see such a small fraction of what you’re posting with your content.

So let’s say. We all know that, like, someone has to see you tell them to take action on something seven to ten times before they do it, right? If we don’t know that, that is just a general kind of marketing thing. I’m not actually sure it’s accurate anymore. It might even be higher than that at this point.

But that’s kind of a general marketing rule of thumb is someone’s got to see it seven to ten times in seven to ten different ways before they’ll take action on it. So you have to talk about your offer seven to ten different times before someone’s going to actually take action. When you talk about one specific thing, you’ve got to ask yourself, have I talked about it seven to 10 different times?

If the answer’s no, that’s a real quick, you’ve not talked about it enough. But even if the answer is yes, you also need to consider the fact that if you’ve talked about it seven to ten different times, no one has seen all seven to ten of those times. They’ve seen a fraction of that. And because we see such a small fraction of what anyone puts out on social media or within their content.

That means you need to talk about it 10 times, that number, so you need to talk about it 70 to 100 times before someone is going to take action on it. And then you’ve got to think about the fact that people find you in different capacities and different ways, and they’re going to, you know, maybe someone found you when you talked about it on the 50th time and there were only 50.

Or 20 to 50 ways that you’ve talked about it in, right? Even if they saw everything. Just because you’ve talked about something a lot, doesn’t mean that people have seen it a lot. And if they haven’t seen it a lot, they can’t connect to you as the expert yet, right? And so when it comes to being bored with your marketing, it’s not for you.

It doesn’t matter if you’re bored, but also you’ve got to think about how many times do I actually talk about this before people are seeing it? And that doesn’t mean send 50 emails or anything like that about one specific thing. That just means you can create 50 to 100 different touch points throughout all of your content and really keep sending people back to that content that you’ve created, those ideas that you’re sharing.

You can be a broken record and you can talk about the same thing over and over again without repeating yourself verbatim. And this is where we can really bring our creativity in and keep it fresh for ourselves and potentially for your clients. It keeps it fresh for them. Or your audience. It keeps it fresh for them, but it also, different ways you say things can connect with people in a different way.

Like, have you ever watched a TV show or a movie and you’ve re watched it and then you see something new or something hits differently that time? It’s the same thing with your content. So even if someone has heard you talk about the same topic, if you just say it in a little different way, they may get it differently.

Or, on the flip side of that, They may not have been in a place where they were ready to get it yet, and now they are, and now I cli So you want to make sure that you’re keeping it fresh while still talking about the same things. And the best way to do that, I actually have these questions inside of the Chasing Simple content planner at the beginning of every single month when you do your prep work inside of the content planner.

There are a few questions that I always encourage my students, my clients to sit down with and anyone who’s bought the planner knows this. This is in the prep work for every single month. So we’ve got within the prep where we’ve got business goals. There’s questions about your business goals. There’s questions about repurposing, but then there’s also a couple questions about messaging.

So I’m actually gonna read those out to you right now. So the first is what is currently affecting your niche? For example, maybe it is November and your audience is feeling really burnt out and they’re just ready for a break. What’s currently affecting them? What is going on in the sphere of your clients?

As I’m recording this right now, it’s summer. So anyone who is a mom right now, or a parent in general, they are Their minds are split, right? They, they’ve kind of got their mind at work, but they’ve also got their mind at home with their kids and they’re figuring out, even if they don’t work in the online space, even if they work a typical 9 to 5, they’re trying to piece together childcare for the summer and camps and conferences and all these things for their kids, right?

And so that’s something that’s currently affecting your niche if you have parents in your niche, right? Then you want to ask, what is happening in current events in pop culture right now? Just a few off the top of my head that I can think of. Justin Timberlake’s arrest, that’s going viral right now. And the fact that the cop, uh, didn’t know who he was because the cop was so young, which hurts my soul, but it’s fine.

Um, that’s something that’s going viral. Taylor Swift having Travis on stage at the Arrows tour, which like, I can’t, can’t right now. Um, but even if you’re not a Swifty, you’ve probably seen people talking about that because it’s a huge pop culture moment. That Swifty fans are like, wait, what’s happening?

This is not a thing that she does, right? Um, so those are just a couple, like, really quick off the top of my head. These are pop culture things that are happening right now. The next thing, what does your audience need to hear from you this month? And so this kind of relates back to that first question, like, What do they need to hear from you?

And what are they struggling with? And then the final question is, how can you serve your audience this month? So, if these are the things they’re struggling with, these are the things they need to hear from you, how can you serve them well? How can you take that and serve them well? And then you want to take all of your answers to this and look at it through the lens of whatever you’re marketing currently.

And so if you are, if, Business goals was again, one of those things that I mentioned a whole bunch of questions about business goals that I walk people with the planner through, but you take those goals and let’s say you’re in the midst of pre launching a certain offer. So, okay, within that offer, what’s your messaging around that offer and how can you take that messaging and.

Look at it and recreate it through those lens, through the lens of those four questions I just asked. So, how can you talk about that thing and maybe use a meme from the Justin Timberlake’s DUI? Or from having Travis on stage? Like, how can you take pop culture moments? and look at that messaging and kind of give them a spin that just is eye catching and funny.

How can you look at it through the things that your audience is struggling with right now? So you can take that general messaging and then really gear it specifically towards what they’re struggling with right now and what they need from you right now. And so that’s just four questions you can ask yourself to take what you’ve always like that broken record aspect of I always talk about this, I always talk about this, I always talk about this and give it just a quick twist to make it feel a little fresh even though it’s something that you’ve talked about a hundred times, two hundred times and you feel bored with it.

This can help your boredom and it can also help it connect with Your audience as well in a different or new way that being said just a quick recap if you feel like a broken record That’s actually a really good thing If you are bored with your content too bad because we want you to be a broken record so that your audience can connect you as an expert with that idea and if you You can keep things a little fresh for yourself by asking yourself those four questions.

What is your audience currently struggling with right now? What’s happening in pop culture and in current events currently in this moment in time? What does your audience need to hear from you right now? And how can you serve your audience well this month? So ask yourself those four questions. Take the messaging that you feel like is just a broken record and so boring.

Mash them together. That’s gonna help you keep your marketing fresh. While still submitting yourself as the expert in whatever it is that you talk about and whatever it is that you’re offering your audience. Now, your action step for this week is to take some time to just sit with these questions and answer them for yourself and for your own messaging.

And your book recommendation is Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD by Susan Pinksey. I really like the way that she laid this book out. It’s kind of, you know, room by room, section by section, and although I didn’t love all of the tips, it did help me understand better the way my husband’s brain works as far as how he thinks organizing should happen, and that was really helpful.

I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to the way things are organized in our home. Despite the fact that I’m pretty sure I have ADHD, but that’s a, that’s another topic for another day. Um, but I highly recommend this book, even though they weren’t all my favorite solutions, it did help me better understand so much more about the ADHD brain by reading it.

So, highly recommend if you were Someone in your household has ADHD, it’s a good rate for sure. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 225: 4 Questions to Ask Yourself to Keep Your Marketing Messaging Fresh appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Title hereIf there is nothing else that you ever learn from me, the most important thing that I hope I can share with you is that your content is part of your business, but it’s not your entire business.

Not sure what I mean? I’ll explain more in just a moment.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5-minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time. Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or 1:1 services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays! You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YT – @mrsamandawarfield or by heading to amandawarfield.com/youtube/ – I hope to see you Monday! * Gaffin Creative: https://gaffincreative.com/podcast-production-management/ * This week’s action step: Start doing an informal tracking of your time and look at how much time you’re spending on marketing compared to other aspects of running your business. * This week’s book recommendation: Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateIf there is nothing else that you ever learned from me, the most important thing that I hope I can share with you is that your content is part of your business. But it’s not your entire business. Not sure what I mean? I’ll explain more in just a moment. You’re listening to episode 224 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by Gaffin Creative.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Hey, sweet friend. It seems like I attract a lot of introverts with my marketing and if that’s you and you have been throwing around the idea of adding long form content to your marketing plan, you might have been thinking about a podcast.

Podcasts are great for introverts and just for those of us who want the easiest possible route for creating long form content because you can do it In your pajamas, you can do it no matter what you look like, and alls you need is, honestly you don’t even really need a microphone. I suggest you get one, but you just need something you can record on.

And, if you’re gonna go that route, you need a great editor. Now, whether you are thinking of starting a podcast or you’ve already started a podcast and you know how overwhelming the production side of having a podcast is, I want to introduce you to Gaffin Creative. Gaffin Creative is a podcast production company dedicated to empowering creatives like you and like me to use your voice and grow your brand.

They’re not just another production company, though. They’re your partners in creativity, community, and success. I have been working with Haley Gaffin and her team for, gosh, years now, and it is the best thing I spend money on in my business every single month. I love that I can hand off what I’ve recorded, and I know it’s in good hands.

I know that I can fully trust them With all of the audio aspects, they are so aware of how to improve your audio, but then they also do things like, hey, if you make this tweak while you’re recording, it’ll sound even better. And they’re just, they’re really dedicated to quality. And I knew that, but I really discovered it when I had them edit the audio book for my book, Chasing Simple Marketing.

They were just so dedicated to the quality, and they were so committed to that project. Honestly, more than I was. And it was just such a reminder of how amazing they are to work with. I know that when I hand over my content each month, that it’s going to be wonderful, and that you, as a listener, are going to get a great experience because of them.

So, whether you’re launching your first episode, or you need some ongoing support, they are on a mission to turn dreamers into doers. The founder of Gaffin Creative, Haley, actually, she joined us on episode 93, where we talk about cheering other women on in life and business and episode 202 to discuss visibility and podcast guesting.

So if you want to learn more about Haley, those are two great episodes to go check out. And if you’re ready to take your podcast to the next level, visit gaffincreative. com and discover how they can help you bring your podcast to life. What is your Largest roadblock when it comes to content marketing. I know that for me for a long time, it was the fact that I could not get ahead.

I would be sitting there on a Sunday night as I was. You know, working part time, trying to get this business up and running, this was my side hustle. And I was working part time, but I was working multiple jobs so that it meshed into a full time job. Or full time hours, I should say. But my main job at the time was teaching preschool.

And so I would sit there on Sunday nights, Because my blog post was supposed to go up the next day, and I would be so frustrated because I had this blog post to write, it wasn’t finished yet, and I didn’t want to do it. It was late, I wanted to go to bed, I knew that, you know, soon enough my alarm was going to go off and I was going to need to Get up and go teach a whole bunch of four year olds how to read and get along and sit for an age appropriate amount of time on our carpet for circle time.

And here I was trying to figure out what in the world to say in this blog that I had come up with a topic with but not written anything else for. And I’d finish the blog, it would not be great, let’s be real, because it’s the middle of the night. And then I’d go to bed and I’d be like, okay. No more. This week I’m gonna get ahead.

I’m not gonna fall behind on my content again. And I would promise myself that on Sunday night. And then you go for the week, and all of a sudden I’d get to Sunday night again, and I’d be in the same position. And I’d be like, what in the world is going on? I swore this was gonna be the week that I did not do this anymore, that I was gonna actually get my ish together and put my content up on time so that All I was doing, it felt like, and I didn’t want this to be the case anymore, all I was doing, it felt like, was creating content.

That’s it. That’s what my whole business was at that point, was just creating piece of content after piece of content after piece of content. But I knew that this couldn’t be it, right? Because all I was doing was creating content, which means I wasn’t seeing growth, I wasn’t seeing sales, I wasn’t seeing clients, I wasn’t seeing growth, right?

Growth in my email newsletter or my Instagram followers or anything like that. And mind you, when I started my business, I knew I wanted it to be an educational based business because teacher. And so when I started my business, I knew that I needed to be creating content in order to educate. And so I didn’t necessarily have, I wasn’t trying to get clients at the time.

I really wanted to focus on passive. We all know things aren’t really passive at this point, right? But I wanted to create more educational based things like workbooks and courses and things like that. That’s what I wanted to do. But all I was doing was creating content and I wasn’t doing anything to grow my business and it took me a really long time to figure that out.

Now the other side of that, if you’re someone who, you know, either started to start freelance, decided to start freelancing because you had skills or you Knew you want to start a business, but you saw right away, like one to one is the most profitable way forward, which it is right, because you can charge more for one on one clients.

If you want to get profitable quick, one on one services is a way to do it. If that is where you landed when you started your business, maybe what ended up happening for you is you were, you were doing all you could to serve clients, right? But then outside of serving clients, you were focusing on content.

And so no matter which way it fell, whether you were starting with clients or not, if you’re spending all of your outside client time or all of your time period just creating content, that’s a big problem. Because here’s the thing, content is part of your business. But it’s not your business and if all you’re doing outside of working with clients is creating content, you’re not doing anything to grow your business.

You have to make sure that you’ve got that nurture side of your content going out there, right? Because when we show up consistently, We are building the know, like and trust factor with our audience. And so that content, it’s so important. Don’t mishear me there. It is really important to be showing up with our content, but we also have to make sure that we are working on growth marketing as well, that we’ve got some sort of growth marketing tactic.

And maybe that means that you are writing guest blog posts for other websites. Maybe that means that you’re really focused on your SEO. Maybe that means that you are focused on getting on podcasts. Maybe that means you’re focused on ads, whatever it is that you’re doing to get in front of a new audience, that’s your growth strategy.

Here’s the thing. A lot of times. When it comes down to our marketing, we either, A, we don’t have time for it, period, or we think we don’t have time for it, period, and it falls to the bottom of our to do list, right? We’ve got clients to worry about, an inbox to check, all those things, and just, who has time for marketing?

That’s one way that that often ends up. But, the other thing that can end up happening is that, When it comes to marketing, we fall back on that nurture marketing because it is free or really low cost, right? It is free to start a YouTube channel and to just start going live on YouTube or putting up YouTube videos.

It’s free to, it’s not fully free to start a blog because in order to start a blog you typically need a website and most places you’ve got at least pay for hosting. But there are some, there are some website hosts that you can do for free, right? So, very low cost to start a blog, very low cost to start a podcast.

I think I pay 17 a month or something for my podcast hosting, and that’s it. Um, and I, I think I have to step up also, I don’t even have the lowest form. And so you can do all of your content marketing for really, really low cost, right? Social media, you can just start up an account and start posting away.

So we love content marketing because it’s free to low cost. I love content marketing because it’s free to low cost. It’s a great way to market your business. But it isn’t going to do a whole lot for you in terms of growth if you’re not actively working on that growth. Right? So YouTube is great for seeing growth, but also nurturing, but you have to actively be working on that SEO.

It’s not going to just happen accidentally. Right. We tend to fall back on that content marketing, right? The inertia marketing, because it’s free, it’s low cost. It is quote unquote easier because of those reasons, because we know, well, it builds my portfolio. It builds my space. It builds all of my things.

It’s free. I don’t have to put a lot of money into it, right? However, it is so important that we have that growth marketing as well, but when we fall back and our go to is always the nurture marketing, the content marketing, when that’s always our go to, we tend to not have time for the growth marketing.

As it is, it’s hard to find time for content marketing, right? Let alone finding time for growth marketing. How are we supposed to do that? The key to doing that is to making sure that you have a strategy and a plan in place. And content strategy and content plan are two very different things, and I can link to a video I’ve already done about that in the comments in the description later, but those are two different things.

But you’ve got to have that strategy or plan to make creating content so much simpler. I’ve got my content planner and within it I’ve got my plan for the whole month written out way ahead of time. It’s, what, it’s June 17th as I’m recording this and this is my July 2024 plan. I already have that written out so I can batch my content.

If you aren’t someone who batches your content you can at least have that plan ready to go and then, okay, well, as You find time in your schedule to work on marketing, you know, okay, this has got to be done next. Here’s the next email that goes out. Here’s the next Instagram post. You’ve already got it written down, having that plan in place.

How many of you have not created a plan for June content yet? And the reason I ask that is because often what we end up doing is we go, I want to create a plan for the month, but I don’t have time to do that right now. Let me just figure out this week and today and here and right now. And then what ends up happening is our content gets scattered all over the place because we end up talking about this topic on this week and then this topic on the next one and this topic on the next one and there’s nothing cohesive.

Now your action step this week is to start doing an informal tracking of your time and look at how much time you’re spending on marketing compared to other aspects of running your business. I think that what you find is going to surprise you. Your book recommendation for this week is Just for the Summer by Abby Jiménez.

If you have heard me talk about any of her books before, you know that I am, they are always five stars, they are so great. And this one is so fun because it starts off with this guy who, every single time he dates a woman, the very next guy she dates is the guy she ends up with forever. It’s a Reddit thread, which I, I don’t know, sometimes the modern elements make me so, it’s so fun.

Um, and this other girl finds it and she has the same problem and they start connecting and they have this whole idea to fake date and yada yada yada. Anyways, it’s so fun. Highly recommend Just for the Summer by Abbey Jimenez. As always, we will link to that in the show notes if you want to check it out.

And until next time, my friend, I hope that you go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 224: The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Marketing appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Growth versus Nurture Marketing: Why You Need BothTired of spending countless hours creating content for your blog, your podcast, your email list, and your social media but not seeing any results?

There’s likely one very specific reason why you aren’t seeing results – When it comes to a full marketing strategy, there should always be two parts to it, your nurture strategy and your growth strategy. and in today’s episode I’m going to share exactly what you need to do to get started with seeing those results.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5-minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time. Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or 1:1 services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays! You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YT – @mrsamandawarfield or by heading to amandawarfield.com/youtube/ – I hope to see you Monday! * Episode 222: How I Would Start An Email List from the Beginning * Get Your First Month Free in The Communty * This week’s action step: Choose either guest blogging or guest podcasting and start creating ideas for what you could write/talk about * This week’s book recommendation: Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateTired of spending countless hours creating content for your blog, your podcast, your email list, and your social media but not seeing any results? There’s likely one very specific reason why you aren’t seeing those results and in today’s episode I’m going to share the why and also exactly what you need to do to get started with seeing those results.

You’re listening to episode 223 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode is brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

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

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

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

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

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

And judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips and advice on uncomplicating, your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together. Shall we?

Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business. Love the Chasing Simple podcast. If so, I wanna invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 PM Pacific time, 7:00 PM Eastern time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5 minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

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

I hope to see you Monday! If you’re frustrated by a lack of results and a lack of reach with your content, the number one thing that you need to know is that content marketing isn’t enough. It’s not enough to only market your business with content. It’s not enough to only grow an audience with content.

And the reason that you see so much emphasis on content marketing from so many people is that content marketing is a free or really, really low cost way to market your business. And so it’s great. It’s such a great tool for solopreneurs and small business owners who don’t have the budget for marketing really.

And it’s an incredible tool for that reason, but we see so much emphasis on it that we can naturally come to think that, well, all I need to do. Is create content in order to market my business and that’s just not the case because yes Your content will give you some reach it will you will see growth in some ways with it but if you’re only Just putting content out there and hoping people are going to show up and find it.

It’s not really gonna be the case because The algorithm is not our friend. We’ve, we know that, we’ve learned that, this is a continuation of an old theme, right? The algorithm isn’t our friend, and it’s not as simple as build it and they will come. You have to do things to get that content in front of new people, and it used to be that you could use hashtags, and you could just simply continue.

Go comment on other people’s stuff and they would look at your profile, but that’s just not the case anymore and Not really how it works any longer. So in addition to our content marketing, which again is so important It’s such a vital part of marketing, especially for solopreneurs and those with really low marketing budgets It’s vital to your marketing But it can’t be the only marketing that you’re doing Now, when it comes to a full marketing strategy, there should always be two parts to it, your nurture strategy and your growth strategy, your nurture strategy or your nurture marketing.

That is your content marketing. It is meant to nurture the audience that you have. It’s meant to put it new marketing in front of audience members that have already said, yes, I’m interested in what this person is saying or doing in their business. On the other hand, your growth marketing. Those are marketing strategies.

Those are different types of strategies that will bring new audience members. Into your little nurture funnel, right? So people who say, Oh, I’m curious. Let me follow them on Instagram or let me follow their podcast or subscribe to their YouTube or join their email list. Growth marketing is getting in front of new people so that they will then come and join your various platforms, your various spaces online, where you can then nurture them with your nurture marketing, right?

And so you really need both. And. If you’re putting out content and you’re really like I’m not seeing any results, it’s likely because you’re not Utilizing growth marketing as well. It could be that you need better messaging or that you aren’t really actually putting as much out as you think you are, or that your marketing is confusing that very well could be the case, but if you’re seeing no results, it’s likely because you’re just not utilizing growth marketing.

So in order to start with growth marketing, where do you begin? That is always such a top question, right? Where do I even begin with getting out there in front of new people? A couple of really easy ways. One is guests blogging or guest podcasting for your own content. The other. Is guest blogging guest podcasting for someone else’s content?

So for your own content, whether you have a blog or you have a podcast or you have youtube or Your long form content is your email list, right? Whatever that may be having other people come on and And if you’re not able to get in front of your audience, inviting them to get in front of your audience, they then will most likely go back and share that episode, that blog, that YouTube video with their own audience, thus bringing some of their audience into your own audience.

So even just inviting people into your own marketing can be a great way to help start getting in front of new audience members. So if you’re like. I would love to do more. I don’t have the time and I’m really overwhelmed by even thinking about growth marketing. That’s a really, really, really great place to start.

On the other hand, you’ve got the idea of you going and being in other people’s content. So this is huge because then you’re getting in front of an even wider audience. Um, and it’s not just, oh, they shared about this on their Instagram story and a small percentage of their audience clicked through it’s, oh, this is their podcast and everyone who listens regularly is also getting to know you, right?

Or this is their blog and it’s helping with SEO. There’s so many different ways that that works. So let’s say that you think this is in theory great, but you’re like, I have no interest. Like, I’m terrified of. Being on someone’s podcast or being on video. Guest blogging is a really great way to start. If you’re just not sure that you’re comfortable in front of a microphone or a video camera, right?

So come up with some ideas for different blogs that you can write that you can then send off to people whose audiences are similar. And the best part about this is that. It gets you in front of a new audience. It gets you connected with someone in your, your network, right? It grows your network, but it also will give you an SEO backlink back to your own website, which helps your website’s SEO as well.

So guest blogging is an incredible way to get started with just kind of getting used to the idea of pitching yourself and getting used to the idea and the formatting of sharing with other people’s audiences versus your own. Now, if you’re like, I’m ready, I’m ready to jump in, I’m comfortable in front of a mic or a camera, pitch yourself for podcasting or YouTube, because not only are you more likely to get in front of a larger slice of someone’s audience that way, it also will most likely give you SEO backlinks to your own website as well.

So you’re able to do both. You’re able to say, okay, well, they’re hearing my voice or they’re hearing my voice and seeing my mannerisms, which builds that like and trust factor even faster, but also you get the SEO backlink. And the seo juice that a a blog would do as well again That’s not to say blogging isn’t a great start That’s how I started and that helped me get really really comfortable with pitching myself because that was something that was really scary to me was pitching and so I was able to Utilize getting really comfy with pitching.

I was also able to work within my own schedule because At the time, I was honestly doing a lot of my writing late at night and a lot of my work late at night or really early mornings and I just didn’t have the schedule to be a guest on podcasts. And so that was part of that too. Guest blogging is a great place to start.

Guest podcasting, be a guest on a YouTube channel, all of those are really great ways to start dipping your toes into growth marketing. But there are a few things that you need to have in place first. I have an entire podcast episode, last week’s episode, in fact, really does a great job of outlining the exact steps you want to take.

But, essentially, you want to make sure that you’ve got your email list ready. Because if you’re getting in front of these new audiences, you want to make sure you can capture these new audiences. So, Before you jump into trying to do growth marketing, I really, really recommend that at the very least you have a freebie of some sort that you can share when you go to do these guest opportunities, but again, if you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, I would go back and listen to episode 222 because I’m talking about what I would do and the steps I would take in what order if I was starting my email list over again.

And in fact, when I was running my travel agency for a little bit, which was my second business that I had running for about two years, this is the order that I took and it worked so well. And so I really recommend that this is the order you take when you’re starting your email list, go back and listen to that one.

And so you can hear it, but at the very, very least. If you have nothing else, have some way to get people onto your email list with your freebie. But again, that’s actually not the first step I would recommend. And I talk totally in depth about that in last week’s episode. But when you are guest blogging, guest podcasting, being a guest on a YouTube channel, you want to be able to say, Okay, at the end of the episode, here’s my freebie.

I would love for you guys to check it out. In order to get people to actually want your freebie, you need to center your topics that you’re pitching yourself with around the same topic as that freebie, right? So, have that freebie in place so you can give yourself a better idea of where to begin as far as topics go.

That way you’re able to go, okay, here’s my pitch. I’m going to either write or talk about this topic. And then at the end of said thing, also, if you want more about this, you want more help with this thing. I’ve got this freebie that will help you take the next step. Go ahead and check it out. And then people will go, Oh yeah, that sounds great.

I loved this episode or this blog post. I want to learn more about this. I’m going to get on their email list. You want to make sure you have that in place so that you can help people take the next step. Now, a quick rundown again of just. Content marketing is not enough, it’s not enough because you’re only nurturing people that are already in your audience.

So we have to practice growth marketing strategies as well, and the best way to get started, the easiest way to get started is by having people be a guest within your own content, but then also being a guest in other people’s content, guest blogging, guest podcasting. Before you start doing that, though, make sure you’ve got a freebie so that you can then gather more audience members, bring them back into your own nurture marketing, and that way you’re going to be able to see a lot more results with your marketing.

So if you’re just frustrated by how much time you’re spending on marketing, but you’re not seeing reach, you’re not seeing the growth you’re hoping to see, try following this outline for growth marketing as well, and that’ll help you grow your audience. If you’re like, this all sounds great, I’ll never be able to get a freebie set up.

I’ll never be able to get started on this. Pitching myself, I just, I want to do it but I know I’m not going to and you want that extra accountability, I really highly suggest that you come join us inside of Chase Simple Marketing, the community. The community is my membership where we meet every single Tuesday morning.

Well, every single Tuesday morning. Morning here 11 a. m. Eastern time. So still kind of morning, but every single Tuesday morning to Talk about marketing struggles to brainstorm marketing ideas to be held accountable to the marketing projects and practices that we’re working on and to Make sure that we’re showing up both with nurture marketing and growth marketing community members also have access to a private podcast where we have quarterly themes.

Our current quarterly theme right now is all about driving traffic and these growth practices. So, actually right now, if this is something that you’re wanting to see more of, more reach, now is a great time to join. But some of our past quarterly themes that you’ll also have access to are things like, you know, creating your Black Friday strategy, which, you know, It’s July, which means that it’s time to start thinking about that, right?

Creating your Black Friday strategy, setting that up, being really strategic with it. We’ve also got creating opt ins that convert into sales, we’ve got writing sales sequences, and so many more. So, I would love to see you inside, and If you would like to join the community, you can check out the link in the show notes.

It’s a special link that will take you to a special offer where you can get your first month totally free. So if you’d like to join make sure you use that link So you get that first month free and I would love to see you inside now your action step for this week I want you to choose either guest blogging or guest podcasting and I want you to start creating ideas for what you could write or talk about.

Make sure those ideas again are aligned with your freebie so that you can actually convert the listeners or the readers into audience members and just start a running list. That’s all you have to do right now. That is the one step that you want to take to get started and rolling with this. Okay. Now, your book recommendation is Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez, five stars.

Five stars all the way around. This book is so good. Um, all of her stuff is. I mean, she is just one of the greatest authors out there. She truly writes such fun and engaging, but also intelligent books. There’s so much emotional intelligence that goes into these. They’re, I do want to put out a trigger warning for anyone who maybe deals with, you know, neglectful parenting in their past.

Um, there, there is some of that in this book. So just want to throw that out there, but man, such a good book. It just released. You probably have a million month wait list at your library, but it’s definitely worth the wait. So just for the summer by Abby Jimenez. And I’ll link to that in the show notes. If you want to check it out.

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

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 223: Why You Aren’t Seeing the Reach You’re Looking For appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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How I Would Start an Email List from the BeginningI started my email list 7 years ago, and when I did I researched the heck out of how to start one. How to get people to join your list, how to set one up, how to choose your email platform, how to create a freebie, what to send to your list … on and on it goes. I had an entire notebook dedicated just to the notes I was taking from my research.

And I did what all of the research says. I created a freebie, I created a welcome sequence, and I shared about the freebie.

But if I was starting my email list from scratch? I’d do things differently. And i’d do them in a way that I think a lot of marketers would disagree with. So I’m here to maybe ruffle a few feathers, but I’ll share the thought process behind WHY I’d do things differently as well.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5-minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time. Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or 1:1 services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays! You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YT – @mrsamandawarfield or by heading to amandawarfield.com/youtube/ – I hope to see you Monday! * Get Your First Month Free inside The Community * Take the Quiz to Learn How to Best Grow Your Audience * This week’s action step: Work your way down this list – whichever is the first you don’t have in place already, start there. * This week’s book recommendation: Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateI started my email list seven years ago, and when I did, I researched the heck out of how to start one, how to get people to join your list, how to set one up, how to choose your email platform, how to create a freebie, what to send to your list. On and on and on it goes. I had an entire notebook dedicated just to the notes that I was taking from my research.

And I did what all of the research says. I created a freebie, I created a welcome sequence, I shared about the freebie, and it worked. But if I was starting my email list from scratch, I’d do things differently. And I’d do them in a way that I think a lot of marketers would actually disagree with. So I’m here to maybe ruffle a few feathers, but I’ll also share the thought process behind why I do things differently as well.

Bye. You’re listening to episode 222 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope to see you Monday! The first thing that I would focus on if I was to start my email list over and from the beginning would actually be my offer. And I say this because when I did first start, I took all the advice that was out there to just get started, to just create a freebie, get started, start emailing your list, start building your list, so that when you had an offer to sell, that you could then, you know, launch to said list.

Which in theory makes so much sense but my problem was and what I think a lot of us as entrepreneurs end up having our problem is that We have a hard time coming up with a freebie and coming up with things to say and things to send our audience because we don’t Know what to talk about because we’re not sure where we’re sending them.

Eventually. We haven’t figured out what our offer is and so I would actually Spend that time where I was initially researching email lists and researching what to send and researching how to create a freebie I would put all that on pause and just focus on getting my offer set up first and foremost because the reality is Before you even have your first offer What’s the point of having a list?

And I know that the idea is to build it up so that you have people to sell to, but you probably don’t have an audience big enough to really sell to anyways. Most of us, that’s not to say there are some that have an audience, you know, before they start their business, in which case this is a different conversation, but regardless, that would be my suggestion, because I find that it’s so much easier to create an opt in Thank you.

And to create newsletters for an audience when you know what you’re driving them to. So, first and foremost, I would focus on my offer. What is your offer going to be? And if it’s, you know, a one on one offer, that’s still an offer. You don’t need to have a digital product. You don’t need to have a course.

You don’t need to have any of that created yet. You just need to know what your offer is. Now, that being said, if you know, okay, my offer is going to be a course or something like that, and you want to go ahead and get started collecting emails and collecting leads while you’re building out said course, that is a good Is a different story.

You don’t need to have the offer totally complete and finished necessarily in that case As long as you know what the offer is going to be called And you have a general idea of what it’s going to be about and who it’s going to be for you can start a wait list And then as you’re driving people as we’ll talk about in a minute to set offer throughout these other parts of having your email list You’re driving them to the waitlist page.

And so you’re growing that audience for specifically when that course or whatever comes out. So in that case, you don’t need the offer fully figured out. But if it’s something like a one on one service or, you know, a digital offer, that’s not going to take you very long to create. That’s a totally different thing.

And I would say, let’s get the offer set up and let’s get the messaging around that offer created before we start working on some of these other things. The second thing, after you’ve got your offer figured out, whether it’s created or you’re driving to a waitlist page, once you have your offer messaging, then you can focus on your opt in.

And that way, you can make sure that your opt in is leading directly back to that offer. So, you will take whatever your offer is and whatever the goal of your offer is, right? What is that transformation? Well, what does your audience need to do before they can start your offer In order to be ready for your offer, what do they need, right?

How can they prepare themselves for your offer? That’s what your opt in should be about. So, for example, my big opt in for content patching bootcamp is An audio training all about how to get your content created more quickly And so once people have, you know worked through their current systems and they’ve you know Minimized their time spent and they’ve really simplified their current systems as much as possible Then they’re ready to create a system that will actually help them batch But they really need to cut that extra fluff off first.

So that is an opt in that leads directly into an offer So Or, for example, you’ve got my quiz that I’ve mentioned over and over again if you’ve listened to other podcast episodes where you can take the quiz and it’ll tell you what marketing strategies are going to fit your offer and your business best right now.

And so you take the quiz and it says, okay, here are growth strategies that you should focus on. Well, that leads directly into Chase and Simple the Community, my membership, because the membership is awesome. all about growing your audience and growing your business. That’s our focus is, okay, we’ve got our content, but also how do we see growth?

And so you want to make sure that your opt in leads directly into that offer, whether it’s the step before, or if it’s just giving them the knowledge they need, like, you know, The community to determine, or the quiz, I guess I should say, to determine what it is they need to do in order to see that growth.

And then you say, okay, great. The community is how you see that growth, right? So opt in would be next. You figure out what the step before your offer is and you create an opt in around it. Within the opt in, make sure you mention, you’re not hard selling, but you want to mention your offer, right? So that they at least hear about it.

It’s a touch point for your offer. After you’ve created your opt in, then I encourage you to create your sales sequence. This doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be a ton of emails, but just a few emails that talk about your offer and that sell your offer. That way, when people opt in, Then they go through your sales sequence and then hopefully they buy your offer, right?

And so once you have those three things set up and ready to go, then you want to really focus on driving traffic. Now as you’re doing all of this, you’re still, you’re creating your content, right? You’re still nurturing the people that are in your audience already, but doing these three things will really help you focus on that growth so that you can bring new people in and bring in the audience in a new way to your email list.

So offer opt in sales sequence. Then you want to drive traffic. Again, there are so many different ways that you can drive traffic and Honestly, the quiz is the best resource I have for you to figure out which ones work best for where you’re at in business I also have a whole section in my book Chasing Simple Marketing about Different growth marketing strategies and how you can use them.

So That’s a great resource as well if you’re like, I don’t even know how to begin driving traffic, but things like Pinterest, things like SEO, things like guest blogging, guest podcasting, sponsoring, ads. There’s so many different ways that you can really focus on growing your audience and driving traffic to the opt in.

So you drive that traffic to the opt in, then they go through the sales sequence, then hopefully they buy your offer. After you’ve done all that, you’ve started driving that traffic, once you have the rest of that set up and you’re driving the traffic, then I would recommend starting with your welcome sequence.

And I know that that seems a little out of order. A lot of people actually say, start with your opt in, then your welcome sequence, right? And I completely understand why they do, because you want to have something you can drive people to, you want people to get to know you. But frankly, what I see happen over and over again, is is business owners, especially solopreneurs, they start with the opt in, and they create an opt in that they’re not really sure about, that they’re not confident in, one that doesn’t actually drive sales to anything, and then they create the welcome sequence.

And the welcome sequence is great, and it is important to have, but it again doesn’t really drive sales all that much, and so what ends up happening is they’ve Put all this work in and then they’ve still got to find time to create an offer and create a sales sequence and they’re overwhelmed because they’re trying to do all the things with their marketing and all of a sudden they’re like, I’m putting all this time and effort into marketing and I’m not making any sales.

So I recommend setting yourself up for sales from the beginning and then go back and tweaking and improving and adding that welcome sequence in. So your action step for this week is to work your way down this list offer opt in sales sequence drive traffic Welcome sequence and whichever is the first thing that you don’t have in place already start there So if you don’t have an offer or at least an offer You know, outlined and messaging and waitlist page set up, start there.

If you have that, but you don’t have an opt in that leads directly into that offer, start there. If you have that opt in, but you don’t have a sales sequence, start there. So on and so forth. Right? So work your way down that list, whichever is first that you don’t have in place already. Start there with setting that up next as your next big marketing project.

Now I mentioned this briefly, but I also do want to encourage you to Join the community. This membership is built and geared towards accountability and action. We meet every single Tuesday and we have a call every single Tuesday so that you’re held accountable to actually taking steps to complete these Projects that are going to help you make those sales in your business.

You can have questions answered You can have your marketing looked over but the accountability is everyone’s favorite thing and just that Ability to brainstorm and strategize with other business owners If you head to the link in the show notes That link will take you to a special offer where you can get your first month free inside the community And try it out yourself But we have quarterly themes and we’ve already done a quarterly theme all about creating an opt in that’ll convert to sales.

We’ve, as I’m recording this, we’re wrapping up a quarterly theme all about sales sequences and we’re getting ready to start a quarterly theme all about driving traffic to your opt in. So, so many of what we’re talking about here in this episode, we’ve. Already covered or are in the process of covering right now in the community and you get access to all of the Old quote unquote information all of the past private podcast episodes everything so you have the ability to work your way through all of those at the pace that you need while also showing up weekly to Make sure that you’re getting what you need and getting that accountability.

So anyways, i’ll get off my soapbox with that. But if you You Know you need accountability. Know you need that little extra push to actually grow your audience and drive that traffic to your offers. I’d love to see you inside the community. And again, the link in the show notes is a special offer where you can get that first month free.

Now, your book recommendation for this week is Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score. I am pretty sure this is a Kindle Unlimited book, so if you have Kindle Unlimited, There you go. I will say, the premise of this book is so cheesy. Like, ridiculously cheesy. A woman gets a call from her twin that’s like the black sheep of the family.

He’s cut off contact with her family. Like, total opposites, right? You’ve got the perfect perfectionist overachiever and then you’ve got the like, the bad girl that steals and does drugs and like, Total opposite twins. Like, that whole bit of cheesiness. But then, a little bit of a spoiler, the good twin, quote unquote, discovers that the twin has a 13 year old daughter that nobody ever knew about, and then she ends up taking her.

It’s a whole thing. The premise is cheesy. The actual writing is so good, though. I read this one so quickly. Uh, it’s actually a three book series. The first book, incredible. The second book was okay. Again, that’s just like, alright, second books are just never as good as the first and the last. Third one, amazing.

So, I recommend Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Skor. That entire, I don’t know what the like series is called, but that whole series is really, really good. So, I’ll link that in the show notes for you. And until next time, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 222: How I Would Start An Email List from the Beginning appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Marketing Advice NOT To TakeThere is a LOT of marketing advice out there. Some of it is truly incredible. Some of it is incredible for the right people at the right time. And some of it? Is a terrible hunk of garbage.

Today, I wanted to talk about 7 of the worst pieces of content advice that I’ve heard over the last 7 years of being in business. And yes, if you’ve listened to episode 071 this is a refresh of that episode. But it is newly recorded and not exactly the same, so I recommend sticking around anyways.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: There are a LOT of different marketing strategies out there. from content to networking to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next – without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. After hearing from listener after listener wondering WHICH marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield.com/quiz/ to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing! Again, that’s amandawarfield.com/quiz/ * This week’s action step: Take a look at all of your current marketing activities and get intentional about choosing just one or two to focus on. * This week’s book recommendation: Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateThere is a lot of marketing advice out there. Some of it is truly incredible. Some of it is incredible for the right people at the right time. And some of it is, well, a terrible hunk of garbage. And today I wanted to talk about seven of the worst pieces of content advice that I’ve heard over the last seven years of being in business.

And yes, if you’ve listened to episode 71, this is a refresh of that episode, but it is a newly recorded and not exactly the same refresh of that episode. So I recommend sticking around anyways, you’re listening to episode 221 of the chasing simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, chasing simple marketing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope to see you Monday! So today I want to share some of the absolute worst advice that I have heard as a content marketing strategist. Now some of this is stuff that I heard and I believed when I first started my business. When I first started my business, I actually had no idea how to market my business, or so I thought.

I felt like I didn’t understand marketing. It didn’t make sense to me. I really struggled to, to grasp how to use it effectively, which I think is what makes me a great marketing strategist actually is because I don’t have that, that background training. I truly had to dig deep and figure out what works and what doesn’t.

And a lot of this advice is stuff that I did believe because I saw other people doing it. I saw other people talking about it. I believed what’s helpful. And so some of this. Um, and I’m going to be talking about some of the worst pieces of advice that I see. harmful advice in some ways. Some of this is just not really, it’s not harmful, but it’s not really helpful either and it’s kind of a waste of your time.

And so I just want to talk about some of the worst pieces of advice that I see. So one of the first pieces of advice I want to share that’s just not helpful. Again, not harmful, but just kind of a waste of your time and harmful in and of the fact that it is It’s a harmful mindset. I guess it doesn’t harm your business, but it’s a harmful mindset Which i’ll get to is the idea that you need to engage for the first 15 minutes after you put out a post and the belief that the algorithm is going to push your content better if you’re engaging, uh, within the first 15 minutes.

And I think if you are someone who has a massive audience and You immediately are getting comments on that specific post as soon as you’re putting it out. Maybe. It does help the algorithm some. Most of us are not going to have thousands and thousands and thousands of followers, right? We’re not going to have these massive 28, 45, 000 followers where we’re getting comments immediately and we need to sit there and comment as soon as it comes in.

Because if you’re just engaging on your profile, it’s probably not going to help that much. But two, even if you’re someone who has these massive amounts of followers and isn’t engaging right away, in theory, it could push it better for you. But in practice, those 15 minutes Aren’t really just 15 minutes because you have to take the time to either either you’ve scheduled your content out Which I hope you have but maybe you didn’t and even if you did schedule it out You have to stop what you’re doing at a specific time to put the post up Get it up and then stick around for 15 minutes scheduling it and for those of us that have some time blindness, maybe, um, that that could be really, really time consuming because it’s not just the 20 minutes or so where you’re putting the post up and engaging and making sure you’re interacting.

It’s the 10 minutes I need to make sure I don’t miss it. I want to make sure I’m on time. Let me maybe I’ll just scroll for a little bit. Right? And then that’s assuming you don’t get caught up in scrolling after you’re done engaging. It can become such a time consuming thing. And then you have to really ask yourself, is this 15 minutes, 30 minutes, however long that I’m spending each and every day engaging, is it truly moving the needle in my marketing?

Or could I spend that two hours a week doing something else to truly move the needle? Maybe instead you’re spending two hours a week pitching yourself to be on podcasts. Which of those is going to do more to grow your audience and move the needle? It’s definitely going to be being a guest on a podcast.

And so it’s not necessarily, it’s not going to harm your business to spend the first 15 minutes engaging, but it’s also not necessarily helping your business all that much. And there’s so much more you can do with your marketing time. Because again, we want to spend the least amount of time marketing and make the largest impact in those 15 minutes.

Two hours a week, however it ends up adding up, that you’re spending just Engaging right after you post just to push the algorithm a little bit more. You could spend that doing so many more things that are actually more helpful for your marketing and for your business. So that’s the first one, this whole idea that oh, I have to Engage right after I post.

It’s just not, it’s not worth it. The next one also has to do with the algorithm. The second worst piece of advice, and actually this one for some reason frustrates me most. And it’s again, not that it’s necessarily actually, no, this one is harmful to your business. We’ll just, we’ll just put that out there.

This one, I have a little bit of a soapbox for, so hang on tight. It’s the idea that the algorithm is going to punish you for scheduling out your content. It’s just not true It’s not true. Okay, so the idea that you have to schedule out your content in order to Or that you can’t because you’ll be punished by the algorithm It’s garbage.

First and foremost, uh, even if it was true, and similar to the last point, it’s not worth your time. It’s not worth your time to sit there and every single day stop what you’re doing in order to schedule out a piece of content. Especially on social media, where our reach is so low, our engagement is so low.

Instagram right now, engagement is just tanked. And that’s because they want you to pay, right? Like, they, they’ve rolled out these tiers where you have to pay X amount to get Engagement is tanked because they want you to pay. Period. Period. And so, worrying about if it was true, it’s not true, but if it was true that you would get docked by the algorithm for scheduling out your content.

The time you save in the long run and the mental capacity you end up with from scheduling out your content is so worth that dock. Again, it’s not real, but if it was, it’s so worth it because you gain so much more from not sitting there and having to put out your content yourself and instead being able to sit down and schedule it all out.

But, here’s the other thing, Facebook, which owns Instagram, it has a native scheduling tool. They, meaning Facebook, Meta, whatever they want to be called at this point, they did not put All of the manpower, the time, the energy, the money into creating a scheduling tool that they would then in effect punish you for using.

So the fact that they have a native scheduling tool in and of itself just shows us that that’s not true. The algorithm doesn’t dock you for using a scheduling tool. And. Even if it did, it’s really not worth your time to worry about. One of my biggest pet peeves in the marketing sphere is people who train other entrepreneurs to fear the algorithm.

And. To try to please the algorithm, because we’re never gonna please the algorithm. It just, we will not do it, because what the algorithm, what the algorithm wants is for you to pay. And if you’ve done Facebook ads or anything like that, you know that even then, it’s hard to know how to please the algorithm.

They don’t want you to figure it out, right? Because they want you to continue to give them money. So anyways, that’s a bit of a soapbox, but Worrying about the algorithm in general, especially with a scheduling tool, one of the worst pieces of content advice that I have ever heard. It’s just not worth your time.

It’s not worth the effort. And it’s so much better for you to just spend that time and energy doing other marketing things for your business. Now the third piece of just terrible marketing advice that I’m honestly, I’m not sure if there’s still a thing. Um, again, this is one that I can remember very vividly it being a thing for a long time around like 2019, early 2020.

And I’m not sure if I just don’t hang out the spaces where they’re talked about anymore or if they’re truly not a thing anymore. So if this is something that you see, Things like using bots to boost your engagement or boost your, your followers. And by bots, I don’t mean there are some native like AI technologies, which we can call bots that can help.

Increase your engagement so that you’re, I don’t love autoresponders, but you can set things like that up for your social media. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about, and again, these may not exist anymore, but in case they do, and in case they’re still being pushed, the bots where it would be like, you would set it up so that it would comment, you know, you could give it X, Y, Z things, the comment, and it would go find other profiles.

To comment on their stuff in the hopes that they would then go look at your profile and follow you. But the problem was is that you’re having to comment such generic things in order to make these work. That most people probably aren’t going to go look at your profile anyways, because it’s not not doing anything for them.

Right? Like, we’ve gotten to the point where we’re almost desensitized to these, like, really generic comments and we can go, Oh, that’s a bot, right? But along with bots, and again, like, mini chat, you could call a bot. It’s different because you’re not going out and using it to find new followers. You’re using it to connect easier with your followers.

If that makes sense. So like bots or those follow for follow loops, where it’s this whole train of people who are like, all right, go follow all of these people and all these people will follow you. And all you’re doing is increasing your audience size or follow, unfollow that whole thing. That was a really big where you go and you follow a bunch of people.

And as soon as they follow you back, you unfollow them and you just hope that they don’t notice that you’re not following them. And people would do that to make it seem like. They had these big audiences and they weren’t following a lot of people. It was like a authority builder almost, but then when it’s not real, it’s not true authority.

And here’s the thing, all of these, the idea behind them, the premise behind them, the goal behind them is to grow your numbers versus focusing on growing your true audience. And A small but engaged audience is a million times better than having a massive following that isn’t engaged with you. Because at the end of the day, why do you want an audience?

You want an audience so that you can sell to people. Random people that follow you are not going to go, oh yeah, let me buy this thing that they’re launching, uh, because it showed up on my feed when they were talking about it. No, you’re only going to buy someone if you know, like, and trust them. And so for these people to actually buy from you.

They have to build a relationship with you and when you’re doing things like bots and follows for follows and the follow one follow thing, anything that is intended to just grow your, your numbers and not necessarily your audience and your relationships. It’s a terrible piece of advice because it’s not growing your bottom line and once again, you’re wasting time that could be better spent in other marketing areas.

A similar idea to that, the next just terrible piece of content advice number four that’s out there is the idea that you need to create a list of 10, 15, 20, however many people a day and reach out to those many new people each day on social media. That’s a terrible piece of advice, let’s be quite honest.

In a similar vein as the last point, uh, it’s simply just trying to grow your numbers without really trying to grow your audience. And you could argue, but if you’re reaching out to them, then it’s different because you’re actually trying to connect with them. And yes and no. So yes, it is different because in this case, you’re truly doing the research to find people that you want to reach out to.

And you’re trying to start an actual conversation with them. But no, because The goal is still the same. It’s still, how do I grow my network? How do I grow my audience and not, how do I connect with this person that I really want to connect with? And there’s such a difference there. And. The intent truly does shine through and it does make all the difference in the world.

And that’s not to say people that do this can’t be successful with it. But when we’re trying to simply copy someone else doing this because, Oh, I, you know, grew my revenue by XML because I got these new clients because I was doing reach outs. Trying to simply copy that method versus let me actually reach out to people that I really want to discuss and talk with and have questions for and love what they’re doing.

Those are two very different things. This is one of the pieces of advice that like a small tweak I feel like makes all the difference. If you have a list of people that you’re like, I truly want to connect with these people. And maybe once a day you’re making it your mission to actually go and connect with them and comment on their stuff and share their things and just be a cheerleader for them.

That’s totally different. Um, this piece of advice that I’m talking about here is strictly when you’re just simply trying to, I got to find 20 people to interact with today. Let me just search Instagram until I can find 20 different people, you know, there, there is a difference there. And that intent again, means everything.

So the Next, just awful piece of content advice, content marketing advice is getting rid of unengaged followers. Now, when this comes to your email list, I am 100 percent on board and I think you should do this regularly. I go through every single month and I remove unengaged people on my email list, people that aren’t opening my stuff, that aren’t interested in what I’m emailing them, that aren’t paying attention to the emails, that, you know, have.

Unsubscribed. I’m removing cold leads constantly from my email list every single month. That is something you should do for your email list because eventually you get to a point where the bigger your email list is the more you have to pay per month for a lot of these email providers and so you are sending Emails to people that are cold leads, that haven’t, that haven’t opened your emails in months, aren’t gonna open your emails probably, aren’t interested in what you’re sending them, and yet you’re essentially paying to send them these emails.

You want to clean those out. I don’t think, and this is one of those, Piece of advice that it’s honestly not terrible advice. I just personally think as someone whose focus is Simplicity and time management as far as it goes with marketing. I don’t think it’s worth your time to do So a lot of people will say oh I go in and I clean out my unengaged followers for my instagram following And it helps with my engagement on instagram.

And again, it probably does It’s not that that doesn’t work. It probably does help because You Again, a smaller, more engaged audience is going to do a lot more for you than a larger, unengaged audience. But, the amount of time it takes to go through and figure out who’s engaged and who isn’t is really, really time consuming for Instagram versus like your email list.

At least with Kartra, which is what I use, you can really simply go in and go, who hasn’t opened an email in the last three months? Okay, delete. And it’s really quick and simple. I go through and clean out my email list in less than 30 minutes every single month, right? But for Instagram, you’re having to go through and physically remove each and every single individual person, and if you have a lot of people on your list, that’s really, really time consuming.

And so once again, it goes back to the idea of Will it benefit your business? Probably. Will it benefit it enough to be worth the time that it’s going to take you to do it? It’s not going to. And so, that’s one of those where it’s like, You could do it. It could help with your engagement on Instagram. It’s probably not worth it.

That hour or more that you’re going to spend, however often, removing unengaged followers, you could spend it doing so many other things. That’s a whole guest podcast interview you could record where you’re getting in front of a brand new audience. That is however many five maybe podcast pitches that you could send.

That’s whatever it is that you’re doing a whole blog post that you wrote for guest blogging for someone’s blog, right? So it’s, it’s one of those, is it worth it? Is it worth what I could be doing? Because let’s face it, there’s never enough time to do everything. So how do you determine what the best things are for you to spend your time doing marketing wise?

So that is, I believe that was number five, uh, for some of the worst pieces of content marketing advice that I’ve heard as a content marketing strategist. The next one, number six, is that social media is the only type of marketing that you need. I have found it so interesting in the last year or two to see people who, their entire business was focused around a specific piece of social media content, have now started teaching about other types of marketing that have nothing to do with social media.

And that’s not an issue to anyone. Our businesses are always going to grow and evolve as they should, and I know plenty of people who started off, I mean, my business has grown and evolved where I started with this focus, and then this focus, and then this focus. That’s normal and natural for you to go, oh, well, this is the thing I’m really loving right now, and as that becomes no longer necessary, maybe you move into other things.

But it is just a super interesting trend right now, where we are all really sick and tired of social media in so many different ways. But there are still some people who, because it’s what they teach, uh, they are very focused on do XYZ and get these results from social media and it’s gonna expand your business.

Social media cannot be. Your only type of content and it cannot be your main type of content either, which is another thing I don’t think I don’t know if I ever really see anyone say this is the only type of content you should be putting out Sometimes rarely I have seen it a couple times, but for the most part It’s just someone gets so heavily focused on one type of content that they they kind of lose the force for the trees Right, and so they get stuck with Oh social media social media social media And because that’s all they’re seeing is they’re following all these people talking about social media that they end up feeling like that’s all they really need to focus on, or even what they need to spend more time focusing on, when in reality, your social media should kind of be your, your last resort.

Bit of effort when it comes to your marketing, your highest focus should be on your long form content. So whether that’s a blog, YouTube podcast, whatever your biggest focus, your, the time you most spend, the attention you give most to should be your long form content. And then you can take that long form content and repurpose it into your email newsletters and your social media content.

And then that way. You have this, this plethora of content because, you know, long form content gives you this much space to teach someone, and social media gives you this much space, right? You’ve got this plethora of content that you can send people back to, but you also have more time and ability to build that know, like, and trust factor, right?

To be realistic here right now, if you listen to my podcast, that is going to grow your relationship with me way more than just seeing a post on my Instagram feed. Now with doing YouTube, you’ve got my voice and my face and my weird mannerisms and the way I talk with my hands and all of the things, right?

That helps you get to know me a lot faster and a lot better than just a social media post. And so it’s important that social media is not your main focus. And Some people push it probably a little bit more than they should, uh, when they’re teaching other entrepreneurs how to market their business.

Again, we want to make sure my whole focus is to help you simplify your marketing so that you have the biggest impact in the least amount of time. And if you want to do that, social media should not be your focus. And then the final piece that I want to share today, number seven, of just terrible pieces of content marketing advice that I’ve heard is that any content is better than no content.

And this is another one that is a yes and no, because if we’re talking about, and we’re talking to someone who is a perfectionist, who continues to avoid putting content out there. Because they’re being a perfectionist, because they just don’t feel ready, because they are scared or fearful or whatever it may be that’s holding them back from putting content out there, yes.

Any content is better than no content. I have students, I have members in my membership, I have clients even. Stuff come to me and said I want to put content out help me out. I want to start a podcast I want to do X. I want to do why I want to do Z But I’m scared in that case get started get over that fear because once you start doing it It’s gonna feel so much easier any content is better than no content in that context 100 percent however If you are putting content out and it’s, it’s not a perfectionist struggle, any content is not better than no content.

I would rather see you take a step back for a bit, slow down, create a strategy, create quality content, and put less content out moving forward than simply putting content out for the sake of putting content out. You don’t have to be in this. I think often comes from this idea that we need to show up constantly, right?

We think that the more we show up, the better it’s going to be for our business. And that’s just not the case. As long as we’re consistent, those two constant and consistent, not the same thing, right? As long as we’re consistent, putting out quality content less often is going to be so much better for your business and so much better for your audience than constantly putting out mediocre content.

So, if you’re someone who is struggling to get your content out because you’re being a perfectionist, this is, this one’s not for you. You put that content out, any content is better than no content. If you are someone who is trying to constantly show up, who is trying to just put out as much content as they can, put a pause on your content.

Take a step back. Do a batch week, slow down, create strategic content, create quality content, schedule it out, and then moving forward, put out less content that’s better at a less, a lower frequency. So, those were the, the seven different awful pieces of advice I’ve heard as a content strategist. Any content is better than no content.

Social media should be your main focus or you should be spending the majority of your time working on your social media content. Getting rid of unengaged followers from social media specifically. Reaching out to X number of people per day. Any of the bots, the follow for follow loops, the follow unfollow game, those number games, where it’s just all about making sure that you’re just, you know, Just checking a box, really, instead of truly trying to connect with people.

Just having that list of people to check off and say, hey, XYZ, there you go. And then basically anything to do with the algorithm. If you’re worrying about the algorithm, you’re not worrying about the right thing with your marketing. And so any, that final, just, that’s it. Awful piece of advice is to worry about the algorithm.

Don’t worry about the algorithm. It’s not your friend. It’s not for you and it’s not worth your time. So if anything you’re doing, if you have any practices that you’re doing that are taking up time and mental space in your business that have to do with trying to police the algorithm, you can go ahead and just The wrong way.

Work them up, burn them. It’s done. We’re not going to worry about the algorithm anymore around here. Your action step for this week is to take a look at all of your current marketing activities and then get intentional about choosing just one or two to focus on. It’s really easy to take a look at all of the marketing advice out there and try to implement all of it.

But we want to make sure that what we’re actually doing is Taking in the marketing advice that’s out there and being really intentional about what’s going to work best for us right now. And if you need help figuring that out, if you go to amandawarfield. com slash quiz, I’ve got a quiz that’s going to help you determine what the best strategies for your business are right now where you’re at.

So highly recommend that if you have trouble figuring out where you should even begin, go take that quiz. Now, your book recommendation for this week is Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum. I don’t normally love these type of, I’m not even sure how to categorize this book really, but it’s, it’s very much There’s this group of families on an island.

Um, it’s not exactly like the Hamptons, but it’s sim like it’s not high society summer island, but still people who are able to summer somewhere, right? Um, so upper, upper, upper middle class, I guess you could call it, where it’s not like, it feels like these people could be people in your own circle, I guess you could say, where it’s, they’re not super high society, but also at the same time, like, who has a summer home?

I don’t know. Anyways, not the point. But it’s just these normal families, quote unquote, and they’re all living together for the summer on an island, uh, summering together. And it’s just about, you know, the entanglement of relationships, I guess, in as far as how people get along, social circles, things like that.

And you do start the book out with learning that someone has died, basically. And so you’re trying to figure out, you know, what leads up to that and how that happened. But it’s not like a, it’s not a mystery. It’s not a thriller. Someone else who put out a review on it called Domestic Suspense.

You’re like, who died now? But it’s not a whodunit. I don’t know. Anyways, that’s a lot of rambling about it, but it was a great read and I really enjoyed it. And so I wanted to recommend it to you. So I will link to that in the show notes if you’re interested. But again, that is called Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum.

And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 221: Marketing Advice NOT to Take appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Finding Time For MarketingWe all love to see the behind the scenes of how other entrepreneurs spend their time. With so much freedom comes a bit of overwhelm and it’s always nice to hear how others are structuring the vast amount of time and vast amount of to-do lists and still finding time for marketing.

And now that I’ve started working part time as the Youth Director at my church, I thought now was a great time to share an updated routines schedule – especially with how I go about having time for marketing these days.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing – even if you’re a solopreneur. Do you dream of business growth, but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting? Or, do you understand the importance of effective marketing, but simply don’t have the time to get it done? There’s good news! Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back, and say hello to a clear, actionable roadmap for business growth. In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle. You’ll walk away with a clear, concise, and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or a background in business to tackle your marketing head-on thanks to the strategies and techniques in this book that deliver real results. No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain; instead, it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non-existent or inconsistent, to a true tool to grow your business by Chasing Simple Marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for Chasing Simple Marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield.com/book to learn more about buying it for yourself. * This week’s action step: Evaluate how you’re spending your time, and look at what themes you see commonly appear each week in your to-do list. * This week’s book recommendation: The Women by Kristin Hannah * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateWe all love to see the behind the scenes of how other entrepreneurs spend their time. With so much freedom, it becomes a bit of overwhelm and it’s always nice to hear how others are structuring their vast amount of time and vast amount of to do lists. And now that I’ve started working part time as the youth director at my church, I thought now was a great time to share an updated routine schedule, especially with how I go about having time for marketing these days.

You’re listening to episode 220 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope to see you Monday. Today, I want to talk all about how to find time for your marketing, because that is one of the things that I hear over and over and over again from students, from clients, is that they just have a really hard time finding the time. To market their business and to work on their marketing now that may mean that they are so busy with client work that they are focused on other projects that they just don’t like marketing and they prioritize it to the very bottom of their priority list and the time just never happens to come around because as business owners, our plates are always full and those things just never end, right?

And so today I’m going to share the behind the scenes of what. My schedule looks like on a monthly, weekly and daily basis to show you how I find the time to market my business. I have shared this previously on podcast episodes of mine, but due to some life changes, what I’m currently doing is different from what I’ve shared in the past.

So, even if you’ve listened to those, I think it would be super beneficial for you to stick around today. So, first things first. You will never find time for marketing. That’s just the nature of things. We are so busy as business owners. We have so much on our plate that if you are not prioritizing your marketing, you will never find time for it.

It’s just the reality. And, unfortunately, that means that we have to get really intentional about making time and making space for our marketing. Now, depending on where you’re at in your phase of business and your, you know, where your business is at, how much marketing you need to be doing, You may not need as much time, or you may need more time, and it just kind of depends on a few different factors.

But the truth of the matter is, is that we can’t find time to market. We have to make the time intentionally to work on marketing our business. If you’ve listened to any of my other stuff, you’ve read my book, listened to my podcast, whatever, you know that I am a huge proponent of the fact that there are two types of marketing that we need in every marketing strategy.

That’s nurture marketing, which is your content, and your growth marketing, which is all of the ways that you are getting your business name out there and in front of new people. So when it comes to making time and setting aside that time and space for marketing, you’ve got to make sure that you’re intentionally setting aside the time and space for both.

Okay. So on a monthly basis, I have, let’s say each month has four weeks, how many weeks there are. I have two different types of weeks. Currently right now in my business, I have my I guess we can call it A week, and my B week. B week being batch week, A week being non batch week. Now some people do A weeks, B weeks, and they do, A week is when they do all of their meetings, B week is when they’re only doing behind the scenes work.

There’s a lot of different ways you can set that up, but for me, I just have A week, which is anything that’s not batch week, and then I have my batch weeks. My batch week, having a batch week in place every single month allows me to make sure that I am intentionally setting aside that time for my nurture strategy.

Batch week is when I am doing all of the content creation, setting aside that time to do all of the content creation for the next month. I create a month’s worth of content in one week, and then I have all of next month’s nurture strategy ready to go. That is so key to making sure that I’m able to do both parts of this nurture and growth strategy this both parts of a marketing strategy because if I don’t have that we can place, I’m going to spend all of my marketing time only on content, and if I’m only spending time on content and only nurturing the people that are already in my audience, and I’m not spending that time growing my audience and then continuing to nurture them, and we don’t want to have to choose either or.

One week out of every month is my batch week. And what I do when I’m planning out my year is I sit down and I say, okay, this week in every month is going to be my batch week. I put it on my calendar and then I protect that week. I don’t take meetings during those weeks. I don’t work on client work most of the time during those weeks.

I have one exception to that and I’ll explain in a minute, but I’m not working on a ton of client work. I’m not working on other projects. I’m not, I don’t have doctor’s appointments. I don’t, I don’t do anything. Except, again, an exception I’ll talk about in a minute. Batch week is protected. And so when I set up my calendar for the year, I put batch week in every month.

I pay attention to where my vacations are, where my time off is, so that I’m not putting batch week over the top of those. But I put batch week in first and foremost before I put in promotions or anything else like that. For most of us, when we get started, that’s not going to be the case, right? We’re not going to be able to, Oh, well, Batch Week’s got nothing on me.

Or there’s nothing else on Batch Week because, well, I’ve already committed to these things, right? Like, the first few months as you’re getting started, it’s by the nature of getting started with any new rhythm, any new routine, you are going to have to do some conflict resolution in some cases, and that’s okay.

On a monthly basis, 2 weeks. Batch week, non batch week. Now, a little context about some of the changes that have been made. If you’ve listened to some of my past podcast episodes when I’ve shared about my schedule and things like that. Context to those changes if you haven’t already seen me talking about this anywhere.

We moved from South Carolina to Washington to Seattle, which is right now. I am not working only in my business. When we lived in South Carolina, I was working in my business full time. I wasn’t working full time hours, but that’s all I was doing, was working my business. I worked from home and That was that.

So I could really make my schedule however I saw fit. Since moving out here, I actually accepted the position at my own church as their youth director. And I’m working part time for that. I call that my side hustle, though, because this is still my full time income. This is still my I like to say that my business is my main job, my full time job, and that enables me to have this side hustle in ministry.

So I am working 20 hours a week for the church, which means my schedule is not fully my own. And I’ve had to get really intentional about, well, I can’t work 40 hours a week because when we were living in South Carolina, my husband was working 12 hour days and it was a shift schedule. So it was like, you know, three or four days a week, sometimes five days a week, depending on the week.

It was just the whole thing. And so I was able to work a ton because I wasn’t as involved outside of the house and things. I very much, I had a lot of time to work because he was working 12 hours, but it was also a 45 minute drive one way to work. So like he was gone 14 hours out of the day pretty much when he was working 3, 4, 5 different days a week, depending on how many shifts he had that week.

And I worked a ton and I was able to work on a ton of projects. And now I have to be really, really intentional about my time more so. And I’ve had to get back into some of these rhythms. So shared the monthly on a weekly basis now. My batch week schedule. I am just like I said, creating content, but my non batch week schedule.

I work with themed days. Now, my Mondays are always for clients. That’s always been the case. Um, it’s a day. I do the majority of my client work for the week. It’s the day where all of my clients and all of the members in my membership marketing the community, my VIP members have the ability and clients have the ability to submit content for feedback and review each week.

And copy. And that is always due Monday morning, 9 a. m. Eastern time. And so Monday’s the day I, I see, okay, what feedback and reviews do I need to do this week? Any client work that I need to do? Any client calls? Always happen on Mondays. It’s the Not something I like. It’s the only work day of the week that I don’t go into the church and do any work typically.

So, that client, Mondays are client days. That is my main focus. Tuesdays are for my community and for admin stuff. So, I’m doing my community calls on Tuesdays, but I’m also doing community improvements, community work, things like that. Anything community related happens on Tuesdays. As well as any administrative stuff, so that’s when I’m doing, like, file cleanup and spending a little bit extra time in my inbox.

I try to peek in my inbox every single day, but the day I really sit down and work on my inbox is on Tuesday. Moving the business from one state to another, there’s like administrative stuff that needs to get filed, taxes, all of that stuff happens on Tuesdays as well. Wednesdays are for projects. So the way I set up my Click up is I have my weekly plan of action.

I also have my Rocks for the year, which if you’ve ever read the book traction by gino wickman I believe really highly recommend they talk about rocks in your business and so each quarter you have different rocks that are like the big projects that are going to move you towards your overall goals for the year And so I have my rocks, and then I also have my, I have non rock projects as well, which are just like those little tasks and one off things that I need to get done to, you know, whether it’s, oh, I need to upload new testimonials to this page.

I have it broken down by marketing, customer experience, networking, education, and sales. So like, oh, this sales funnel needs to be updated. It’s not a rock. It’s not a moving me towards my major goals kind of thing, but it needs to get done education, all the courses that I have that I’m enrolled in working my way through those networking, different networking things that I want to be part of customer experience or things that I want to update, like there’s some different sales funnels that need to be updated or like, for some reason, there are certain things that aren’t adding people into my welcome sequence.

I need to go in and fix those. So different things like that, that. I would like to do these at some point, but they’re not this massive priority. Whereas my rocks, Q2 rocks, for example, uh, I wanted to take a workation. That was not happening. I wanted to launch this YouTube channel. That was a big rock. I Had a community promo where I Offered a discount for a certain amount of time for people who wanted to join my community I also was doing some retreat planning and a retreat launch.

I ended up scrapping that in the middle of the launch Which I just recorded a podcast episode today on that and it’ll be out shortly about why I did that But yeah things like that. I I don’t have my full like Q3 rocks planned out, but also I have workation on there. Jason’s a content planner, next year’s is going to launch in Q3, right?

And so there are things like that, like my promotions, my different things like that, that have helped that I do in my 2024 rocks. On my project day, on Wednesdays, I am working on first and foremost, my rocks. But also on some of those other projects, which I’ll explain more in how that works in a minute, on a daily basis.

But Wednesdays are for projects. My Thursdays are for marketing. But, this is for marketing that is not related to content marketing. When I end up Not finishing batch week for whatever reason. I will use Thursdays as a catch up, but usually it’s just one Thursday, a month that needs to be that catch up day.

And then the other two that are left, sometimes three, depending on the month, I get to work on those growth marketing strategies. So things like pitching myself to be on podcasts, finding speaking engagements, all of these different things that I can do to grow my audience. That’s what I’m doing on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, I don’t work.

Those are my weekend because. I work in a church now. I work Sundays. So Sunday mornings are dedicated to church stuff, obviously. Sunday afternoons, I typically come home and take a nap, if I’m being real honest. And then Sunday afternoons are like my, my catch all day. I do what I can to get prepared for the week, but I also, I’ll either start working on client work if I have a heavy client load that week, or I’ll start working on a project or something else that I just want to do for my business.

So that’s kind of what my week looks like. Sundays like the catch all day. Are there things that didn’t get finished last week? Can I prepare for the next week? So on and so forth. Mondays are for clients, Tuesdays are for the community and administrative work, Wednesdays are for projects, and Thursdays are for marketing.

So monthly basis, batch week, no batch week. Weekly basis, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I’m off. So on and so forth. On a daily basis, what that looks like. I’ll say this is my goal. It doesn’t always happen, but my goal is outside of client days. Client days are just, it’s just client work.

Period. Like that’s, it just is what it is. But, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, My goal is to spend at least two hours doing deep work and That means working on a rock Basically if possible so on Tuesdays when I’m looking at community stuff or administrative stuff Are there any rocks that I can work on to move the needle on those rocks?

Based on those days, whatever the theme is. So Tuesday would be the community and administrative Wednesday is like, what are those rock projects? There’s, there would be a marketing rock project. So, for example, working on launch things, like creating a new freebie or something like that. That would be a marketing, a Thursday Deep Work project, right?

Working on the behind the scenes of a launch. How do I? So not the actual marketing part of the launch, but the behind the scenes things. The, that would be great for Wednesdays, basically. Or working on, for a long time I was updating my Year in Preview course. So long to do that. But that would be a project, right?

That’s a Wednesday project where I am updating a course. So that would be a Wednesday deep work. And then community stuff, if I’m adding new things to the community, same thing. So anyways, I try to do two hours of deep work each of those days. Then, I try to do an hour of, you know, daily admin slash like inbox stuff.

So checking my DMS, posting the stories, checking Facebook, checking all of those different, like, okay, where am I showing up? Let me check and make sure that I’m communicating with people. Checking comments on YouTube. Those are all like, those are daily administrative things. I have an hour for that. And then I try to have another two hour block where I’m just working on projects.

Small projects and small tasks that fall into those days. It doesn’t always happen like that, but that’s the goal that I have on a daily basis. And so things like working on one of those funnels that I need to work on that isn’t doing what it’s supposed to be doing. That would be a marketing type project, right?

Or pitching myself to podcast would be a Thursday project. Working on website updates could be, it could really fall under project or marketing, just depending on what the priorities are that week, working through education stuff, those different things that would be administrative, right? And so I try to spend two hours like, okay, what else can I do today?

What else is a priority? What else needs to get done that I can fit in? So it’s kind of like a sandwich of two hours of deep work. And then I usually go have some kind of break, come back, do that hour of administrative stuff, and then two hours of, okay, what are the other projects, tasks, et cetera, I need to do within today’s category.

And so that’s how I break out my days. So monthly, weekly, daily, doing that. Make sure all of that works together to make sure that I’m setting aside time and space for my marketing my batch week Ensures that I’m setting aside that time and space to create my nurture content, right? My nurture strategy is getting handled those Thursdays Ensure that I’m holding space for growth marketing and Wednesdays actually those project days ensure that I am Also on top of having the growth in the nurture strategies covered I’m also making sure that I’m working on improving Different marketing things that I’ve been working on different projects like those funnels that need to be improved improving the website things like that So that is how I ensure that I make time for my marketing Your action step for this week is to evaluate how you’re spending your time and look at what themes that you see commonly appear each week in your own to do list.

That way you can kind of make a similar schedule if you’d like where you have themed work days so that you’re able to get more done in less time. Your book recommendation for this week is The Women by Kristen Hanna. She recently, I believe this is a really recent release, so you may or may not have heard other people talking about it already, but it’s based on the, the women who served as nurses in Vietnam, which I didn’t know much about, to be honest, and that’s kind of a lot of the premise of the book is that so many of these women that served as nurses, you know, they came home and they had things like PTSD, and they had seen terrible things, and yet no one knew that they had served?

Like, if they told someone that they had served in Vietnam, they were, they were told, oh, no women were in, you know, so anyways, it’s a very, Can be hard to read at times, but also just a very well written, clearly well researched book, and it was not only a good read, but it was also really eye opening to things that had gone on in that time and over in Vietnam, but then also just like it’s The culture post Vietnam here in America, which, you know, I wasn’t around for, but I’ve heard, like, my grandfather talk about it and things like that, so anyways, I thought it was, it was wonderful, so I highly recommend, I believe I gave it 5 stars, which I never do, so, big, big, great book, big deal for me, um, and I highly recommend it, so I will link to that in the show notes for you.

And until next time, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 220: Finding Time for Marketing [My Latest Weekly Schedule] appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Power Your Business with a Content EngineOne of the best ways to make the most of your marketing time is by building a content engine. You want to power your engine with your content and drive people throughout your various platforms and spaces online (and your offers!). Essentially, you can think of a content engine as repurposing with strategy. Allowing you to make a bigger impact in less time.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing – even if you’re a solopreneur. Do you dream of business growth, but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting? Or, do you understand the importance of effective marketing, but simply don’t have the time to get it done? There’s good news! Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back, and say hello to a clear, actionable roadmap for business growth. In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle. You’ll walk away with a clear, concise, and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or a background in business to tackle your marketing head-on thanks to the strategies and techniques in this book that deliver real results. No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain; instead, it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non-existent or inconsistent, to a true tool to grow your business by Chasing Simple Marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for Chasing Simple Marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield.com/book to learn more about buying it for yourself. * This week’s action step: When creating your next content plan, focus on your long-form content and then use that content to create your full content engine. * This week’s book recommendation: All the Ways We Said Goodbye by Beatriz Williams * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateOne of the best ways to make the most of your marketing time is by building a content engine. You want to power your engine with your content and drive people throughout your various platforms and spaces online and your offers. And essentially, you can think of a content engine as repurposing with strategy, allowing you to make a bigger impact in less time. You’re listening to episode 219 of The Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com / book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope to see you Monday! So today we are going to chat about building a content engine. So when it comes to a marketing strategy, I’ve talked about this in a couple of videos already. When it comes to a marketing strategy, every marketing strategy should have two parts to it. So you have your nurture strategy and you also have your growth strategy.

Now your nurture strategy is what you’re doing It’s typically your content strategy, right? It’s what you’re doing to nurture the people that are already in your audience. And your growth strategy is what you’re doing to bring in new people to your audience. But what can happen a lot of times is we get so caught up in that nurture strategy that we don’t have time for the growth strategy, right?

We don’t have time to go be on Podcast and speak at things and be part of summits and bundles and do what we don’t have time for the growth marketing because we get so caught up in the nurture marketing that content strategy. So what a content engine does is it allows us to cycle through some of that content that we’re creating with our nurture strategy so that we don’t have to constantly be creating new content, new nurture content, right?

We don’t have to constantly be creating that new content and be stuck on that content creation hamster wheel, which no one wants to be on, right? So if you are looking at your nurture strategy, you’re looking at your content strategy, the entirety of your nurture strategy should be your content engine.

And the engine is essentially what makes your nurture strategy run. And realistically, what makes your marketing as a whole run. Because what you’ll do is, as you go out to these different growth strategies that you’re working on, As you go out and perform these different growth marketing strategies, you then send people into that engine, and then they’re being nurtured while you are able to focus more so on the growth marketing and less on the nurture marketing, without ghosting your people, because that’s what we don’t want to do, right?

We want to make sure that we’re, we’re not on that content creation hamster wheel, but we’re also not ghosting our audience at the same time. That’s a basic overview of what the purpose of a content engine is and how it works within the overall marketing strategy of your business, right? It’s part of your nurture strategy and you take that, your growth strategies and you fill them into the nurture strategies so that they can then, psh, into that engine.

Once they’re in the engine, I don’t really know how engines work, I’m going to be really honest with you. This metaphor, analogy, whatever you want to call it, Make sense in my brain? Hopefully it’ll make sense in yours too, because I don’t know anything about engines. So, once they get into the engine, then you’ve got all of this content in different areas that they can find, they may or may not find, but it’s there for them.

So, what I mean by that is, for a content engine, you realistically want three parts of your content strategy. You want your long form content, you want your short form content, and then you want your email newsletters. When it comes to your long form content, that typically is a podcast, YouTube, or blog post.

You may be thinking that sounds great. I’m a solopreneur. I don’t have time to create YouTube every week or to create a podcast every week or to write a blog post every week, to which I want to say, you don’t have to do it every week to be consistent, but also realistically, if you, I’m such a fan of knowing your limits and knowing what you truly can and cannot handle.

So if you know that you truly cannot handle creating a blog or YouTube video or podcast, and you know that once a month is just. Even that’s not realistic. Okay, so realistically let’s focus on your email marketing being your long form content And try to keep up with that if that is going to be your long form content, though I really would suggest at least every other week if not every week Um, you can work your way up to it and start every other week but You want to be able to make sure you’re staying top of mind with your people and social media is just not going to cut It for you for that.

So with that content engine I guess you’ve got that long form, which is probably YouTube blog or podcast, but maybe it’s your email marketing and you’ve got your email marketing, or maybe that’s your long form. And then you’ve also got your short form marketing. This is social media. Basically choose one social media platform.

And if you’re struggling with staying consistent, I would choose. One type of content within that one platform. So for example, with Instagram, you’ve got reels, you’ve got live, you’ve got feed posts, you’ve got stories. You know, you’ve got four different ways that you can show up on Instagram at minimum.

So choose one to start with, and then you can add on later, but maybe you really love creating graphics and carousel posts or how you’re going to show up and you’re just going to do a bunch of carousel posts and reshuffle them to your stories. Maybe you really like stories and you’re just going to have a static grid.

Okay. And it has all the information you need and you just say, okay, great. I’m going to show up on stories, and if you go look at my page, here’s information to know that, yeah, I’m still active. I just don’t post to the feed. There’s all kinds of different ways that you can do that, right? So, you’ll choose one.

Then, you’ve got all the components of your content engine, and you want to put them together. So, by doing that, you want to make sure that you have all the pieces working together cohesively. Because if your engine’s not working together, it’s not working. The car is not going to work, or the tractor, or whatever you want the engine to be in, I don’t know.

Again, we’re not getting too deep with this metaphor. But, you’ve got to have all the pieces, and they’ve got to work cohesively. What I mean by that is that you have to make sure that you are taking your long form content, whether that is blog, podcast, YouTube, or email, you’re taking that and you’re repurposing it into these other pieces.

So you want to take your long form content and you want to then create it and you’re going to take it and you’re going to repurpose it into an email if the email is not your long form content. And then you’re going to repurpose it into live. Social media posts, if you’re going to reverse it into two emails, maybe you’re going to repurpose it into as general.

I rule of thumb is generally 2 emails and then 5 social media posts, but that way you’re not spending hours and hours and hours. Writing all of these blogs and recording all of these podcasts and all of these YouTubes and then also writing all of these emails and then also creating all of these social media posts.

Instead, you’re able to take what you’ve already created once and just tweak it a little bit for each place. And it can literally be as simple as copy paste. For example, for a really long time, what I did with my podcast, that was my main type of long form content. I decided to do YouTube just because I wanted to be able to interact and say hi.

But I took my introduction to every podcast episode, I literally copy and pasted that introduction into an email. I took away the beginning, like I, I took away the like, you’re listening to episode whatever whatever, you know, all of those things. But I made sure that I wrote a great introduction. I wrote one great thing one time.

And then, I was able to copy paste that into an email, and I was able to just tweak it a little bit, maybe add a little more to it, and then add the link to the podcast episode to encourage people to go listen to it. So, someone who maybe hasn’t found my podcast yet, but has joined my email list by some other freebie, well, they’re able to then go, oh, she’s got a podcast as well, let me go listen to it.

And then they may be interested. You know, download the podcast, follow it, subscribe, whatever the new Apple term is, because they change it all the time. They’re able to then say, Oh, I’m going to go listen to this. And so I was able to send people from the email back to the podcast. Also from the podcast, I’m able to say, go download this freebie, go check out this product I have, go whatever.

And that gets people on my email list, whether they’re opting into a freebie, or they buy something from my shop. They’re able to go, oh, well now I’m on her email list and now I’m getting not only the information about the podcast each week and I can decide whether or not I want to listen, I’m also occasionally getting tips and tricks, I’m getting news about sales, all of those things, right?

And so I’m staying in the know by being on the email list. And so the podcast sends people the email list. So you can literally copy paste. When it comes to repurposing, you can take the main points, the main like, hey, here’s what happens in this. piece of content. Go watch, listen, read, or you can take main points.

So let’s say you’ve got, I mean, in this, I’ve got the three parts of a content engine, right? Long form, short form, and email newsletters. I could create a three different emails based off of each of those things and just an email out what long form content is and you know about what email marketing is and how to use it and so on and so forth.

And so you can take chunks of your main points essentially and write. That information up for an email and then the same goes with the social media post and you can take those main points and you can a send them back to the long form content be send them to an opt in to then get them on your email list, right?

Or see, add engagement calls to actions to encourage people to engage with you. So you show up in their feet more. You can take one piece of content, spread it out through all of your different parts of your nurture marketing strategy. And also be sending people back to the different parts of the engine as well.

So they’re not just going straight through it. It’s, it’s a cycle. It, so you’re going from long form content to, Oh, don’t forget to follow me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or wherever, or X or wherever you’re showing up, right? And then they go check out your social media and then they follow you on social media and you share about an opt in and they go to the email list.

Or they start in your email list and they follow you. You’re welcome sequences. Hey, follow me on this place. And so they follow you there. And then they learn about your long form content. You see how it kind of flows and you use all of your platforms to send people to all of the platforms using the same content that you used with the long form content, so your content engine, that’s what it is.

And as you, you create your content, hopefully you’re batching your content once a month. And so you’re able to just. Create that content for the next month, and then you’ve got three weeks to work on your growth marketing strategies Focusing on those things and then as you’re focusing on those and you’re sending people back from the growth into the nurture strategy They’re moving through your content engine And they’re beginning to know I can trust you.

They’re growing how much they trust you. They’re growing how much they, um, listen to what you’re doing, or they decide that you’re not a good fit. And that’s okay, too, because we want people to say, yes, I’m all in, or no, I don’t care what you have to say. We don’t want people to sit on the fence in our marketing and in our audience.

So you use those growth strategies. You work on them for three weeks, and You send them into that content engine and the people flow through the content engine without you having to focus on it for three weeks out of the month. And you just focus on the growth strategy so that you can send people into that content engine.

So that is how you build a content engine. A quick side note, or one last tip, I guess I should say, a great way to move people from whatever your growth strategies are into that nurture. Funnel is a either have a piece of long form content in mind that you’re going to send people to so if you have a piece of long form content that performed really well that you’ve gotten great feedback on that is like a core pillar of your business.

That’s a great piece of content to say, Hey, now that you watch this webinar, you viewed this summit presentation, you downloaded this thing that I put in a bundle, so on and so forth. You know, there are different strategies that work best for different growth strategies and different calls to actions that work best for different growth strategies, but in general, as you’re getting started, especially with those growth marketing strategies, a really great thing that you can do, especially if you’re doing like guest blog posting or something like that, or you’re just doing marketing.

Yeah. Especially if you’re just doing, like, lives on Instagram with people and you’re collaborating that way with growth strategies. A really great thing to have in your back pocket is one or two pieces of core content, pillar content you might say, to drive people back to. So if you have a blog post, or a YouTube video, or a podcast episode that people have loved that you’ve gotten a ton of listens or downloads or watches like, you know, it’s something that people are really interested in.

That’s a great thing to send people to because it gets them inside of that content engine. And the other thing is a freebie as well. Any freebie you have that you’ve created that leads to an offer, because It’s a day we want to make sure that we’re leading people to offers so that we’re eventually leading them to sales, which I talk about in another episode about the purpose of marketing and the sales precipice, but another episode, another podcast, but having a freebie that leads to your sales, having a couple of core pieces of content that you can lead people to, to get them inside of that content engine from those sort of things that that’s a great way to easily move them in.

And it’s a really great low pressure way, especially if you haven’t the ability to link to it. Have That’s just one bonus pro tip. So your action step for this week is that when you’re creating your next content plan, whether it’s this week or next or whenever, I want you to focus on your long form content and then use that content that you have planned and strategized for your long form content.

Use that to create your full content engine so that you’re spending The majority of your time, which is hopefully a lot less, of your marketing time on that really intentional strategic long form content, and you’re able to just simply repurpose that really intentionally throughout your other content.

Now, your book recommendation for this week is All the Ways We Said Goodbye by Beatrice Williams. I think I recently recommended another one of her books. I just am always, just obsessed with everything that she puts out. This one, if you can’t tell by the title, spoiler, doesn’t have a super happy ending.

It’s pretty, uh, honestly like the, not, it’s not, it’s pretty depressing. And I’m normally someone who cannot stand a book that ends. Without being a happy ending like the world is sad enough I want happy endings and everything I read like if I’m gonna be reading fiction give me fiction, you know but even with the sad ending I Adored this book.

I mean it like I even I walked away going man. That’s so sad But also like wow, that was so good. So highly recommend all the ways we said goodbye by Beatrice Williams I’ll link to that in the show notes for you if you want to check it out And until next time, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 219: Power Your Business with a Content Engine appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Content Batching Tips: Stop Waiting For Inspiration To StrikeOne of the top reasons business owners tell me they couldn’t possibly batch is because they prefer to create their content only when they’re feeling inspired.

And while in theory that’s great, in practice, you’re actually doing more harm than good by waiting for creativity to strike in order to create your content.

So today, I’m covering why you should stop waiting for inspiration and instead learn how to bottle that inspiration when it does strike – and still be able to successfully batch your content.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5-minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time. Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or 1:1 services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays! You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YT – @mrsamandawarfield or by heading to amandawarfield.com/youtube/ – I hope to see you Monday! * Chasing Simple Content Planner * Episode 212: Steal My Annual Survey Strategy * This week’s action step: Create your content bank. * This week’s book recommendation: Winter in Paradise by Elin Hilderbrand * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateOne of the top reasons business owners tell me that they couldn’t possibly batch is because they prefer to create their content only when they’re feeling inspired. And while, in theory, that’s great, in practice, you’re actually doing more harm than good by waiting for creativity to strike in order to create your content.

So today, I’m covering why you should stop waiting for inspiration, and instead, how to bottle that inspiration for when it does strike, and still be able to successfully batch your content. You’re listening to episode 218 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope to see you Monday! In theory, waiting for inspiration to strike in order to create your marketing materials sounds great, right? You are able to sit down and make sure what you’re putting out is really high quality content and is really getting your point across, it’s helping your people, it’s, you know, it’s the best of what comes out of your mind.

Sounds great, right? However, the problems So, multiple problems with waiting for that consistency to strike are there many. And ultimately, waiting for inspiration to strike is going to do more harm to your marketing and your business than good. The harm and the cons will outweigh the pros and the benefits.

First and foremost, what happens when you’re feeling inspired and you can’t step away? What if you’re in the middle of volunteering in your child’s classroom, or you’re in the middle of a family walk, or you’re out and about running errands? There’s so many life things that could happen and interrupt that inspiration, or I guess more accurately, the inspiration could interrupt.

But make it impossible for you to actually sit down and create that content, right? And so then the inspiration is lost and that time slot is missed and you don’t know when you’ll get another one. The, I guess, part B of that same issue, that same stance, is that you can’t control your inspiration. You can’t decide when it might happen and not only is this frustrating just on a typical normal day to day week to week basis, but what happens when life What happens when you are so overwhelmed and you’ve got so much on your plate that, well, guess what’s not going to come visit?

Inspiration. That’s going to be the first thing to go. And so not being able to control when you feel inspired, what happens then when you’re not inspired and you’re not inspired for a long period of time? Well, you’re not consistent, right? Even if you’re getting inspired on a decent basis, you’re likely not going to be consistent because, well, your inspiration probably isn’t going to produce often enough and help you create enough content to stay consistent.

And what does it mean when you’re not consistent? Well, it means that you’re ghosting your audience. You are, if you’re ghosting them and they notice, you’re eroding the foundation of know, like, and trust that you’ve built with those that you already have built a foundation with. You erode that foundation, but you’re also not, if you’re not consistent, you’re not building know, like, and trust with new people.

And even within that point, you’ve got, okay, I’m inspired and I’m going to spend 30 minutes creating this amazing Instagram post and it’s going to get me engagement and blah, blah, blah, blah. But then it disappears within a day. And so you waited until you were inspired. You created an amazing post, high quality.

But did it actually really move the needle in your business? Probably not. Because your marketing is not your business. There’s so much more to your business than the marketing aspect of it. And marketing is both an art and a science. And the inspiration, that’s the art side of it, right? But, What often happens with our inspiration is we get inspired about different things and different topics.

And so what ends up happening is we’re inconsistent, both in how often we’re showing up, but also in the topics we’re talking about. Our topics are kind of all over the place when we’re waiting for inspiration, which means that we’re not moving people through the customer journey. We’re not moving people through the buyer’s journey.

We aren’t strategically showcasing our offers in our business. We don’t have that strategy, that science side of the marketing. And without that, you may grow followers, but you’re not going to grow your business, most likely. For all of those reasons, and probably many more, we cannot wait for inspiration to strike in order to create content.

We can utilize and bottle the inspiration that we receive and that comes to us to help improve our batch week and our marketing. What in the world does batch week have to do with this? I’m glad you asked. So when it comes to batching, we want to create a month’s worth of content in one week. Well, that is it.

Not a small amount of content. And so if we can bottle our inspiration, we can help leverage that inspiration during batch week, which makes batch week a whole lot easier. Now you might be thinking, you just said don’t wait for inspiration, you just said you can’t control inspiration, what are you talking about?

What I want you to do, when you feel inspired, instead of sitting down and creating the content itself, go to your content bank, Write down what your ideas are. Write down all the things that are swirling in your head in that moment when you have all of these ideas and you’re super inspired. Write it all down, brain dump it out into your content bank.

And then, wait, don’t create the content. But when your next batch week comes around, what you’ll do is you’ll open up that content bank and you’ll go, okay, here is. What I need to be talking about, here is my pillar topics. Here are, within those pillar topics, the different offers that I’m trying to lead to.

You look at your strategy and what you’re trying to talk about essentially, and then you look at the content bank, the content that you’ve curated when you were inspired And you go, okay, what makes sense for where I’m at in my strategy right now? Take that, that piece of content that you were inspired by, right?

You were inspired to write down and utilize that in your batching. And so that way, batching, you’ve already got ideas and it becomes so much simpler because you have ideas that are great because they came to you when they were inspired. So you’re able to bottle that inspiration and say, okay, here’s what’s next.

Here is this great piece of content, this great idea I have. I’ve bottled it. I’m not losing it, but I’m just not using it right this second. And then when it comes time to batching, you’ve got the art, you just add the art to the science aspect of it. So what should a content bank look like? I like to create mine in Trello.

Any project management tool should work for this realistically. I know some people like to do them on their notes app or in a Google doc. Those can work too. If that works for you, great. I love the user interface of Trello because what I do is I create lists and then cards. And I like the ability to move the cards around.

I like the ability to add images or links or attachments or whatever it may be that I want to add to a specific idea as I’m feeling inspired. And I just love that ability and I find that I can do that easier in Trello versus my Notes app or a Google Doc. So what I do logistically with my content bank is I have my Trello board.

The board is just called Content Bank. Within the board, I have a list for each of my pillar topics in my business. So for me, my pillar topics are simplifying your content creation, simplifying your marketing strategy, and simplifying your launches in your launch runway. So those are my three main pillar topics.

So I have a list for each of those, but then you could even take that a step further and you could go, okay, well, simplifying your content creation, I can talk about batching, right? I can talk about how to save time with creating content. I can talk about the importance of showing up consistently and consistency within those main lists.

I can have other. list as well. Or I could create a new list. I could create three lists or four lists for each of the main lists. But I also will add things like this would be really great to talk about this specific year during the holiday season, right? I also, outside of doing, okay, this specific year I’d like to talk about this thing at some point or during this specific quarter or something like that, I also use my annual survey, which I talk about in a previous episode really recently, I’ll link to it in the show notes if you want to listen to it and snag my annual survey strategy, but I take the results from my annual surveys and I put those.

in my Trello board as well. And so what I do is I have 2024 requests, 2023 requests, so on. It’s like each year I create a new list. And then within that I have a card that says questions about marketing strategy, questions about content creation, questions about launching, questions about offer creation and ask me anything.

I’ve also got just Just random questions that don’t really fit into any of those that I’ve been asked. And I take all of the responses in my annual survey. I Add them into each of these cards, and then anytime I get a question during the year as well on Instagram, or in person, or whatever, I will add it to these too.

And that way, I can always go back and say, okay, what questions are being asked about this specific thing? Okay, I am strategically needing to talk about content creation. So what are the questions that I’ve been asked recently about that? What am I seeing patterns of? So not only do I put all of my ideas as I’m feeling inspired into my content bank, I’m also putting in all of the questions that I’m asked and the bulk of those coming from My annual survey, but if you have the chasing simple content planner, there’s also in the back a place where it’s like questions.

I’ve been asked. You can jot those down as you get them within that and then go into your content bank once a month when you’re doing batching and go. Okay, what questions do I need to move over from my Okay. Content planner into my content bank. So by doing both my My inspiration and what people are asking about I’ve got that art and that science within the content bank itself and then the final thing that I do within my content bank that you can decide if you would like to do is When I repurpose a piece of content and I’m not using All of the repurposed content initially.

So, okay, if I have a blog post or a podcast episode or a YouTube video, typically what I like to do is I like to take one piece of long form content and repurpose it into two emails and at least five social media captions. I’m not going to post five social media captions all at once back to back to back though, about the same piece of content.

And so what I’ll do is I might use one or two of them. And if I create extra, I will put. Those already written captions in my content bank as well. And so then when I come to a batch week where I’m like, I don’t have the time or the space right now to do a full batch week, I can copy and paste content that I’ve already written fully out and use it in that batch week.

Those are the three big ways that I use my content bank to help simplify my batch week. Your action step this week is to start your content bank if you haven’t already. Go ahead. And even if it’s just as simple as you’ve opened up your project management system, you’ve created a board for it, and you’ve started a couple lists, it can be that simple.

And your book recommendation for this week is Winter in Paradise by Elin Hildebrand. I did not expect to love this one as much as I did. I read a lot of her books, and more often than not, they fall around the three star range for me. Sometimes she has a really great one that I really, really love, and I, I know I’ve recommended more of her stuff before, but often I’m like, yeah, it was good.

It was worth the read, for sure, but didn’t blow me out of the water. This one I found so intriguing. It’s about a wife whose husband all of a sudden dies in an accident, and she realizes after his death that he’s been leading a double life, and it’s this whole thing. Um, and I won’t do any spoilers, but I’ll link to it in the show notes if you’re interested.

Again, that’s Winter in Paradise by Helen Hildebrand. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 218: Stop Waiting for Creativity to Strike: Use This Content Batching Tip appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Tools That Help Keep Up With Marketing DemandsThere’s nothing I love more than a great business tool that will help me simplify a process. And when it comes to marketing, I obviously love all of the tools.

Right now, everyone is talking about AI and ChatGPT – for good reason. But I wanted to go back to basics with you a bit and discuss 5 other tools that are helpful for simplifying your marketing outside of ChatGPT.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5-minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time. Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or 1:1 services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays! You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YT – @mrsamandawarfield or by heading to amandawarfield.com/youtube/ – I hope to see you Monday! * Save $10 on Your Plann Account * Canva * Descript * My Podcast Production Team * My Incredible VA * This week’s action step: Send me a DM and tell me what your biggest struggle with keeping up with marketing is, and I’ll tell you my favorite tools that will help! * This week’s book recommendation: Beyond the Wand by Tom Felton* * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield**

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateThere’s nothing I love more than a great business tool that will help me simplify a process. And when it comes to marketing, I obviously love all of the tools. Right now, everyone is talking about AI and ChatGPT, and for good reason. But I wanted to go back to basics with you a bit and discuss five other tools that are helpful for simplifying your marketing outside of chat GPT.

You’re listening to episode 217 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4pm Pacific Time, 7pm Eastern Time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short five minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

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

I hope to see you Monday. So when it comes to keeping up with all of the marketing demands that are out there, and honestly, just, Staying afloat, it feels like. We want to try to make our content marketing especially as simple as possible. We want to be able to hit that easy button, right? So that we can then focus our marketing efforts on the things that are going to bring in new audience members.

Because our content is part of our nurture strategy. And the purpose of that is to nurture the people that are already in our audience. And sometimes, yes. It helps us grow, but it’s not a growth strategy. And so we want to make our nurture strategy as simple as possible so that we can show up consistently for our audience and we can say, Hey, let me pour into you without spending all of our time on our nurture strategy.

So that we can then focus on growth strategies to bring more people to our audience to nurture them, right? How do we do that? Well, we want to make sure that we use tools that are going to help us make our nurture marketing as simple as possible. So the first tool that I highly recommend everyone have is a content bank and you can create this however you please.

I currently have mine set up in Trello. I’m playing around with ClickUp. Trello seems to be. My favorite at this point for this right now, but you could use any project management tool. You could use a Google Doc I mean it can be really really simple to create this. So basically a content bank is Just a whole a place where you can organize your ideas for potential future content Now the reason I like Trello is because I can Create a new card for each topic, and I can add notes, I can add attachments, I can add links to go, Oh, I could link to this episode with this, or I could link to this blog post with this.

And I can just give myself a more full idea and really jot down everything I’m thinking as I’m brain dumping this. It makes it really easy that once you’ve used an idea, you can get rid of it quickly and easily. You also can organize it and categorize it with lists, which is why I like the way the user interface in Trello is, but any project management tool you can do this with.

That is why I don’t like using my notes app though. I know a lot of people like to use their notes app in their phone, but what ultimately ends up happening is you have this huge list of content ideas and it gets really overwhelming. So I like to actually, I’ve got my. Pillar topics, right in my business, simplifying your marketing strategy, simplifying your launches and simplifying your content creation.

Those are kind of my three big pillars, my overarching pillars of topics in my business. And so I can then have a list based on each of those. And it just makes it easier. You can definitely do that in your notes app too, but I don’t know. I just like a project management tool for that, but you want to use your content bank for anytime you’ve got an idea, write it down in there.

This is also for those of you that are like, oh, and we’ll talk more about this next week But if you’re like, oh, I can only batch when I’m inspired No, just when you’re inspired put things in your content bank, right? So your content bank is super useful so that when it comes time to sit down and create your content You have all of these ideas and you’re not starting from scratch It makes that first planning day and even the writing days and the recording days So much simpler because you’ve already written down a ton of stuff, right?

You So, highly recommend creating a content make for yourself. The second tool that I really recommend is a scheduling tool of some sort. Now, I know a lot of people are like, oh, I’ve heard scheduling tools will dock you in the algorithm, blah, blah, blah. It’s not true. Facebook has its own native scheduling tool.

You can use the native Facebook scheduling tool for Facebook and Instagram, if you’d like, they would have put all of that time and money into creating their own scheduling tool. If they were going to dock you for using scheduling tools, but also let’s be real, the algorithm. And it’s not there to help us, so it’s not worth worrying about.

I won’t get on that soapbox. But basically, use a scheduling tool. That way, you don’t have to sit there and make reminders every day to, oh yeah, I gotta go in and post this story, or oh yeah, I gotta go in and post this post, or whatever. Instead, you sit down, you create it, you schedule it, you don’t have to think about it again, and it naturally goes out and nurtures your audience, right?

I personally use Plan, P L A N N, uh, I believe they’re planthat. com, and I’ll put an affiliate link below in the show notes if you want to check that out, but I like Plan because I can do all of my scheduling there, including Pinterest. So, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, I can do all of those in there, which is really nice to just have one convenient tool that does all of them, but what I also like about Plan is that it allows for easy repurposing.

You can literally create an Instagram post and then click on it and say, okay, repurpose for LinkedIn, repurpose for this. And so you can still go in and tweak it and all of that, but it makes it really like, what, two, three clicks. And then you’ve got that really simply repurposed. Repurposed for other platforms as well, which is really nice.

Now, the third tool that I highly recommend is using Canva and Canva templates. This one seems obvious, but if you don’t have set branded templates for yourself for the content that you’re constantly putting out, like your blog posts, right? Those images should all look fairly similar and you can just quickly move Around the picture or change out the picture or change out what the font says Or your pinterest graphics.

There are so many different templates that you can create for yourself that makes creating graphics So simple and so you want to make sure you really utilize those campa also has a The ability to make reels and things. Now, I haven’t done too much with that, but there’s so much you can do with Canva that you can then use to quickly and simply create that nurture marketing for yourself.

And the fourth tool I have for you is Descript. We use Descript a ton in my business. It’s really great because you can take audio and video and transcribe it. And then once you have that transcription, you You can use it for a true transcript, you can also use it for closed captioning. You can export, I think it’s the VTT, I don’t remember exactly, but you can export the closed caption, which makes it so easy for creating course videos or any other videos you put up on your website and you want to make sure that you have that closed captioning on there.

It does the transcripts, it does that, but you can also edit your audio and video within Descript, which is so cool. I know that my virtual assistant does a ton of that for me in Descript for my private podcast and for other audio things and video things that I create for my business. She uses that a ton, and it’s so nice and simple to be able to edit it, transcribe it, and get the closed captions all in one spot.

And then the fifth tool, quote unquote, that I have for you is getting hired help. Like I just mentioned, I have my VA. She helps me a ton with my marketing. I do a lot of the creation aspect, and then she does a lot of the repurpose. Repurposing and scheduling for me and that cuts down on how much time I have to spend you doing a content creation each month I help so many of my clients with their marketing.

I’m writing for them. I’m doing the strategy for them Having hired help can help take so much time and also mental effort off of what you’re doing with your marketing So those are the five goals. I’ve got for you that can help make your marketing simple and help it easy And help you more easily keep up with those marketing demands.

So again, those are a content bank, a scheduling tool, templates, Descript, and then help, hired help. So your action step for this week is to send me a DM and tell me what your biggest struggle with keeping up with marketing is. And I’ll tell you my favorite tools that will help with that struggle. So send me a DM.

I’m at Mrs. Amanda Warfield over on Instagram. Now, this week’s book recommendation is Beyond the Wand by Tom Felton. I was shocked at how well written this was. I’m pretty sure he actually wrote this himself based on the Ford that Emma Watson wrote. It seems like he wrote it himself, like there wasn’t a ghostwriter.

But, it’s so well written, it’s such a, a quick read, it’s, he’s funny, I mean it just, it was really cool to get to see behind Draco Malfoy, quote unquote, um, and what his life looked like. And what I found so interesting was he talked about how life obviously changed for Rupert and Daniel and Emma. Because they couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized, but he said that that didn’t necessarily happen for him, which really surprised me.

Because part of me feels like he’s such a main character, and yet at the same time, I actually have probably, like, I’ve probably passed celebrities in real life and never noticed because I just live in my own little bubble, so maybe it’s not that surprising, but Anyways, total tangent, but it was such a great read.

I actually read it while we were in Japan and I don’t, unless we’re like at the beach, I don’t typically get through books quickly when we’re on vacation because we’re, we’re kind of like go, go, go vacationers. But because it was such an easy and fun read, I, I read the whole book while we were in Japan, which just also surprised me.

So anyways, Beyond the Wand by Tom Felton. If you haven’t read it and you’re a Harry Potter fan, I highly recommend it and I will link to that in the show notes. And until next time, my friend, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 217: Tools that Help Keep Up with Marketing Demands appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Finding My Content Creation GrooveEver since July, I have found myself stuck on the content creation hamster wheel.

Yes, the queen of batching has been inconsistent and all over the place with her own content. Why? Because I haven’t been following my own system.

Or, more correctly, because life has been life-ing and I didn’t take the time to re-evaluate my own system.

In today’s episode I’m sharing all of the things I finally figured out and wish I had done sooner to get myself back off the content creation hamster wheel and back into the content creation groove. Plus, a few extra tips that would help as well that you could try if you’ve found yourself in the same place.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5-minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time. Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or 1:1 services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays! You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YT – @mrsamandawarfield or by heading to amandawarfield.com/youtube/ – I hope to see you Monday! * This week’s action step: Put Batch Week on Your Calendar for the Rest of the Year * This week’s book recommendation: The Lost Summers of Newport by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateEver since July, I have found myself stuck on the content creation hamster wheel. Yes, the queen of batching has been inconsistent and all over the place with her own content. Why? Because I haven’t been following my own system. Or, more correctly, because life has been lifing and I didn’t take the time to reevaluate my own system.

So in today’s episode, I’m sharing all of the things I finally figured out and wish I had done sooner to get myself back off that content creation hamster wheel. Plus, a few extra tips that would help as well, that you could try if you’ve found yourself in the same place. You’re listening to episode 216 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope to see you Monday! When I teach my students how to create their own batch week routines, and set up their own batch week, and then go through their own batch week, one of the things that I emphasize Batchweek doesn’t have to go perfectly in order to be successful because Life happens, life throws us curveballs, and so very rarely does our week ever go exactly how we plan for it to.

Meaning that often, our batch weeks don’t get as complete as we hope they would, right? And that’s okay. That’s normal, and what we end up doing is enough to keep us off of that content creation hamster wheel. However, What happens when life throws you curveballs? major major curveballs back to back to back and You find yourself essentially, you know treading water or possibly even drowning a bit and you just are able to do anything but the very bare minimum for life and business.

Well, that is where we end up in this place of being stuck back on that content creation hamster wheel, right? I, like I mentioned in the introduction, had this happen in the last year, and I am finally back in a place where I am no longer feeling like I’m on the content creation hamster wheel. And I wanted to share with you how I got back off of it so that maybe it doesn’t last quite so long for you.

So this started for me technically at the end of July, but because I had batched content August of last year, and it’s, Me, as I’m recording this, and I have been on the content creation hamster wheel for that long. If you’ve been around, you know my book launched in July of last year. And I launched on my birthday and I had, you know, everything prepped out for all of July, all of August, all of that content was scheduled, ready to go, right?

I was on my usual batching game. So for my birthday and for the book launch, we did this massive birthday, you know, thing where we spent time in Seattle and then we spent like with our friends, cause at the time we were living in South Carolina still, and then we flew down to Disneyland and it was.

Absolutely incredible. And because I had patched, it was no big deal, right? Taking time off, great, exciting, wonderful. Well then, day of my birthday, our final day of the trip, I came down with COVID. Now this was also the day of the book launch, where I was supposed to be showing up and going live and all of this stuff.

Didn’t happen. Five days later, my grandfather passes. So that was very end of, like, last day of July. He passes. Then, in August, Russell’s mother passes. And then, in September, we decide to move across the country. October, we’re dealing with buying a house that we’ve never seen. You know, it, all the stuff.

November, I moved, started a part time job. And December, there was flying back for Christmas, getting the other cat. So unfort like, every month was something. January, I had multiple conferences to attend. February, I don’t even know what happened in February. Oh, we had camp for my second job. My side hustle, I guess you can call it.

And, and then in March, we spent three weeks in Japan. Russell finally moved out here. April, we finally got our stuff and have spent the last month unpacking. I mean, it has literally been a month. major curveballs, even though some were planned, non stop since July of last year. And I have spent this entire time off of the content creation hamster, er, on the content creation hamster wheel off of my batch week schedule, and I have been desperately trying to get back.

The first thing that I wish I had done, and that I highly encourage you to do, is to acknowledge that life is difficult. extra full right now. It’s extra full right now. Give yourself grace that you don’t need to have it all figured out, that you don’t need to have your perfect batch week. This was something I really struggled with.

I kept thinking I needed to put out the exact same amount of content that I’ve always put out and if I could just, if I could just sit down and do a batch week it would be fine. But of course, wasn’t able to just sit down and do a batch week. That’s not how life works. When you have other things that are taking precedence and you’re, you’re treading water, you can’t just sit down and do a batch week, right?

It’s got to be something that you’ve intentionally planned for. And in this case, I needed to intentionally plan for a lot less than I was trying to fit in. And I wasn’t giving myself that grace and I wasn’t really acknowledging that life was extra full. Like I was. But then I would brush it off and say well life is really full, but man gotta get this batch week done You know, so that was something that I wish I had done.

I wish I just said you know what life is really full What can I do to get back on the schedule and get back to putting at least some content out consistently, right? the next thing that I needed to do is to schedule out batch week for the rest of the year. Now, putting batch week on the calendar for every single month is one of the things that I do when I plan out my year.

And so I did have batch week on the calendar, but what I really needed to do was go back in and re schedule batch week for the rest of the year. Because I, again, wasn’t giving myself the appropriate amount of grace, I wasn’t being realistic with myself, and There were new things that have been added to my calendar since I originally set up the calendar that made some of these batch weeks not really possible.

When you put your batch weeks on the calendar, it is important to know that the next few months, they may be chaotic, because realistically, when you put batch week on the calendar, ideally, the only thing you’re doing that week is batch week, right? But, realistically, We all put things in our calendar months out at a time and in advance.

And so when you put batch week on the calendar, it may conflict with some things. And so this is another moment of giving yourself grace and saying for the next few months, I may just do less during batch week. I may put out less content than I normally do as long as I’m showing up consistently and then after a few months go by because Once you have Batch Week on your calendar, you’re going to protect it, you’ll get to a point where Batch Week will just be Batch Week because you don’t have previous commitments already on that calendar.

And so I wish I had gone back and done that and given myself that grace to finish out. Okay, here’s what Batch Week is going to look like. These few are going to be a little chaotic. I need to cut back, right? That’s really what I needed to do. I needed to cut back on how much I was trying to do, I needed to give myself grace, and I needed to schedule out batch week, or reschedule, in my case, for the rest of the year.

The final thing that I wish I had done is I wish I had cut my losses. And by that I mean, so what I was essentially trying to do for every batch week is I was trying to finish up the content for the current month that never got created and also batch out the next month’s content. And I wish what I had done and said instead was just cut my losses for the current month, been inconsistent, just let it go, and then only focused on creating content for the next month.

That way I was able. Once I did this I was able to finally go, okay, I’ve created all the content for the next month I’m just not gonna be consistent for the rest of this month. That’s okay. It is what it is I’m gonna cut my losses and now I’m back on my batch week schedule instead of essentially trying to fit in two batch weeks into one or even less than one batch week because of the way that life was going so Those are the things that I wish I had done sooner than I finally did in order to get back off of the content creation hamster wheel and back onto my batch week schedule, but I wish I’d done them sooner, so I wanted to share that with you.

The other two options, if you just really cannot get off of that content creation hamster wheel, again, cutting back, cutting back permanently on how much you’re doing, is something you can do and then you can also hire help. You can hire people who are going to help take some of it off your plate and then be able to do less moving forward.

So those are two other options if you’re like, I really just cannot get off of this hamster wheel. I, I wasn’t on it and now I’m back on it and I just can’t find my way back off. Those are two things that you can also do. So here’s your action step. Put batch week on your calendar. for the rest of the year.

And if it’s already on there, reschedule it. Go in and give yourself grace to move things around. Maybe you need to make a change. If you’re in content batching bootcamp, I highly recommend that you go back in and watch the lessons about creating your own batch week schedule. And redo it. Re evaluate where you are in your life and business so that you can reschedule that batch week.

I had to change mine completely. I used to do Monday to Thursday for batch week and I’ve had to now start my batch week on Thursdays instead because of my new schedule and so I wouldn’t have known to do that if I hadn’t taken the step back to re evaluate, is what I’m currently doing working? Obviously it’s not, so what do I need to change?

So that’s your action step for this week, and then your book recommendation is The Lost Summers of Newport by Beatrice Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White. I can’t get enough of what these women write. If you like historical fiction, you will love this book. This one is set in a couple different time periods, which is really fun, and they overlap and I just highly recommend I will link to it in the show notes so you can check it out if you’d like.

And until next time, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 216: Finding a Content Creation Groove when Life is Throwing Curveballs appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Why I Scrapped My Retreat LaunchI scrapped my retreat launch last month. In fact, I scrapped the entire retreat (for 2024 at least).

This is something I always always advise clients to never do, and yet here I am breaking my own rules. So, I thought I’d pull back the curtain and share the two reasons I ultimately scrapped the retreat halfway through the launch.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5-minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time. Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or 1:1 services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays! You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YT – @mrsamandawarfield or by heading to amandawarfield.com/youtube/ – I hope to see you Monday! * Retreat Waitlist * This week’s action step: Evaluate what’s on your plate – especially what is self-induced – and see where you can cut back in order to simplify for what matters. * This week’s book recommendation: Bride by Ali Hazelwood * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateI scrapped my retreat launch last month. In fact, I scrapped the entire retreat for 2024 at least. This is something that I always advise clients to never do. I feel like that’s not correct grammar, but you know what I’m saying. And yet, here I am, breaking my own rules, so I thought I’d pull back the curtain and share the two reasons that I ultimately scrapped the retreat halfway through the launch.

You’re listening to episode 215 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope to see you Monday. I am a huge proponent of seeing a launch through. I. I always, always, always recommend to my clients that even when things are feeling like it’s not going as well as you’d hoped, which often happens at the midway point of a launch, that you keep pushing through. You continue consistently showing up, talking about the thing you’re launching, talking about your offer, talking about the doors open, doors closed, or end of bonus, or whatever it is that your, your scarcity piece is, right?

Never let clients stop a launch halfway through. And yet that’s exactly what I did with my own retreat launch this last month. So, it essentially came down to two things. two reasons that I decided about halfway through the launch that I was just gonna cut my losses and be done. The first of those was lack of interest.

Now, this honestly is usually never an excuse, and it’s one I don’t let my clients take, but here we are. So I had a waitlist for the retreat, and I had people I had talked to who had said they were going to purchase, who were going to come, and What ended up happening is I opened the doors to the waitlist, they got early access, so they got to save their spot first, which in this case there were only, I think, seven spots, and so that, that’s a big deal for this kind of launch.

They only, they were able to grab their seat first, and then they also got a bigger discount on that first day. And doors opened to the waitlist, doors closed to the waitlist, nobody from the waitlist purchased. Then I opened it to the rest of my list, and honestly, I had a ton of clicks. So when I say lack of interest, there truly was interest.

And do 100 percent plan to do a retreat at some point, I really do. But there was Lots of clicks, but no conversations were being started with me. No one was asking questions. No one was, no one was purchasing their ticket or putting down a deposit. And this lack of interest, quote unquote, really showed me that I had.

not prepared my audience well for this launch. And this lack of prep led to no tickets being sold, and no conversations being started, and questions not being asked. That, to me, made me realize that I really had done both my audience and myself a disservice. And I had done that lack of prep, A, because I personally have been stuck on the content creation hamster wheel myself.

As I’ve taken on more clients and as we’ve gone through this whole move and major life change, I have really struggled to find the balance between working in my business and working on my business. And so I have spent since October. Gosh, honestly, probably since last August, it feels like I have been working in my business.

I’ve been working for clients and that’s it. I haven’t been doing what I need to do for my own business. That has been a big struggle. And due to that, I, I have not been as consistent, the podcast has been consistent thankfully, but I haven’t been as consistent as I’d like on social media. I haven’t been consistent as I’d like through my emails and due to that it, I wasn’t able to truly prepare my audience well for this upcoming launch.

I also have been trying to talk about too many things at once, and that’s been an issue too. I really should have solely talked about this retreat for about three months ahead of time, and I just didn’t. So I didn’t prepare my audience well for this launch, and that was very, very, very clear with The the lack of quote unquote again interest that was happening and once we got a few days into the launch and No one had bought a ticket.

Even those that had said I’m definitely coming. I thought you know what I need to reevaluate and because this type of launch isn’t as simple as a you know a course launch or something like that where If one person buys the course, that’s all you need, right? That’s not really the case with retreats because I had already put down the deposit for our house.

Once I have someone’s money, it’s like, okay, well, then I have to do a refund if we end up cancelling. And so I started thinking about all of these things, and I started thinking about what would it look like to cancel this retreat. And, the more I thought about it, the more that felt like the right move.

Because of the lack of interest, which, let’s be clear, that is only part A of this, again, I normally would not let a client pull out of a launch like this, especially because with retreats, the initial launch period isn’t the end all be all. You still have up until the retreat to sell those tickets, right?

I started thinking about what that would look like for the next few months the retreat this launch happened in May The retreat was happening in September, which I honestly probably should have launched tickets sooner And I had waited because I told myself I was gonna do a good job of prepping that runway and then I didn’t so The other thing that I was thinking about as I’m thinking about, okay, well, I’m gonna have to really push for these tickets over the next few months and do all the prep work to prepare for it and all these other things that I have going on and I really just went, you know what?

I’m feeling so overwhelmed and this is the second reason that I ultimately truly decided to scrap the launch combined with the lack of interest of I am in May, feeling like I’m finally coming out of a hole that I have felt like I’ve been in since the beginning. August. Since July 26th when I came down with COVID and my grandfather died a few days later and the whole move process started.

Like, our life has been chaos since my birthday last year, the day I launched the book. And I was like, I feel like I’m finally coming up for air. I’m not spending Every spare second working on client work. I’m ahead on client work and the last couple of weeks. I’ve actually been able to take a step back and I’ve been able to do my client work and then have free space and I want to get to a place where I’m not feeling so overwhelmed and I’m able to, okay, I’m doing my client work and I’m also doing my other work, which as I’m recording this, it’s a Monday and this week is going to be that week.

I’m super pumped, but I’m just finally getting here. And at the time of Scrappy the launch, I wasn’t here yet. And I was like, man, like, I don’t want to go back into a state of overwhelm. And the idea of adding this major project to my plate and continuing to have to really push and not be able to push any of my other offers.

Which, I guess that’s a third reason, but I didn’t want to be stuck in that overwhelm, and I didn’t want to put myself back in that place, and frankly, the reason that I ended up deciding to go for the, there were a couple reasons I decided to go for the retreat this year, and none of them were truly smart business moves.

First, my friend Haley Gavin is hosting her retreat this year in June, and by the time this comes out. I think her retreat will like be happening, but she really inspired me to do it. I was like, man, you’re doing it. I can finally do it. I’ve been saying I wanted to do this in 2019 I said, I’m gonna host a retreat in 2020 and then we all know what happened, right?

So I’ve been wanting to do this for years. I’m so excited interested in doing a small retreat with just a small group of people and working on our content and having like a get it done weekend together. And Haley really inspired me. I was like, man, I really want to do this. Another reason was that frankly, I really wanted to have a good reason to go back to South Carolina.

We aren’t going to be able to make it back until Christmas this year. And I was like, man, it’d be so cool if we could do the retreat and I could make it back. Um, not a great business move, right? Just not smart. And because we were going to do it so far from where we are now. We wouldn’t really have profits from the retreat, which was reason number three, I guess, we can add in here, because paying for our airfare out there and all of the things needed for the retreat, we, we might’ve made a little bit of money, but really we wouldn’t have made much money for the business as far as profit goes.

Revenue, yes, but not profit. And so it would be like, I’m putting all this work in and hosting this retreat to break even essentially. Which is fine, and at some point, I will do it because, again, I want that community aspect. But, realistically, if I’m spending the next 5 6 months only focused on this event that’s gonna break even, I’m not bringing in the revenue I need to bring in.

I’m not able to talk about my other offers. And so, ultimately, the lack of interest. The lack of interest in putting myself back in overwhelm and the realization that I was going to be holding my own business back by hosting the retreat made me realize, okay, I need to go ahead and scrap this before anyone signs up because I’m ultimately probably going to end up cancelling.

And, uh, Because of that, I ended up scrapping the retreat launch, which didn’t feel great. I’m really sad about it, but I know that ultimately it’s the best thing to do. So, I just wanted to share those insights with you because I am such a proponent, like I’ve said over and over again, of not scrapping a launch, but There’s an exception for every rule.

So I wanted to talk through that with you and just really open the the curtains and pull ’em back and kind of show you what’s going on in the back end of my business. So your action step for this week is to evaluate what’s on your own plate, especially what is self-induced, and see where you can cut back in order to simplify for what matters.

Where are you working on things that aren’t actually moving your business forward? That are taking up a lot of time and essentially keeping your business in place. Now your book recommendation for this week is Pride by Allie Hazelwood. If you’ve read any of Allie’s books, you have probably heard people say she writes the same book in different fonts over and over again, which I love.

I’m here for it. I love the format of her books, but Pride is very, very, very different than anything she has ever written. I really hope she does more of this. It’s like fantasy, Sci fi fantasy, kind of, but still the romance that she’s known for and I highly enjoyed it. So, if you have read one or two of her books, if you put her stuff down because you’re like, eh, it’s always the same, this one is different and I highly recommend that you check that out.

I will link to it in the show notes below and you can also find it wherever you find your books. All right, my friends, until next time, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 215: Why I Scrapped my Retreat Launch appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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

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

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: There are a LOT of different marketing strategies out there. from content to networking to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next – without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. After hearing from listener after listener wondering WHICH marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield.com/quiz/ to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing! Again, that’s amandawarfield.com/quiz/ * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateYou might have heard this mentioned on a previous episode recently, but I started a YouTube channel. Don’t worry, the podcast isn’t going anywhere, but I wanted a way to connect even further with you, so every Monday at 4 p. m. Pacific Time, 7 p. m. Eastern Time, I’ll be live on YouTube. Kick things off each week with a quick teaching, similar to the podcast, but then everyone who’s there live gets the opportunity to ask further questions and just interact and hang out together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 214: A Peek at My New YouTube Channel appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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

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

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

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5-minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time. Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or 1:1 services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays! You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YT – @mrsamandawarfield or by heading to amandawarfield.com/youtube/ – I hope to see you Monday! * This week’s action step: Either sit down and determine that initial service-based offer, OR your free opt-in that will lead to that service-based offer. * This week’s book recommendation: None of This is True by Lisa Jewell * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateIt’s common in the online space for us to use six figures as the made it goal, aka when we’ve hit six figures in revenue within a calendar year, we’ve officially become a real business owner. While I think that metric tends to be arbitrary and the sentiment is a bit, well, garbage. I do know that many people have the goal of six figures set because that’s what they need in order to replace their current income and move into their business full time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 213: Your Fastest Path to Six Figures appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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

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

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5-minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time. Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or 1:1 services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays! You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YT – @mrsamandawarfield or by heading to amandawarfield.com/youtube/ – I hope to see you Monday! * This week’s action step: Put a date on the calendar for your own Annual Survey * This week’s book recommendation: Chasing Simple Marketing by Amanda Warfield * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateIf you’ve never sent an annual survey before, this episode is for you. Annual surveys are one of my favorite ways to improve my marketing each year because they’re incredibly helpful and easy to do. In today’s episode, you’ll hear more about how I use annual surveys. How do you get people to actually take your survey?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 212: Steal My Annual Survey Strategy appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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How to DIY Your Website with Kate HejdeWhen I’m looking for a service, the website truly makes or breaks whether or not I’ll take the next step with a company.

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

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

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

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5-minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time. Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or 1:1 services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays! You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YT – @mrsamandawarfield or by heading to amandawarfield.com/youtube/ – I hope to see you Monday! * HotJar * Get a Month of ShowIt Free * Kate’s Website Launch Accelerator * Listen to Episode 40 of the How You Pictured It Podcast – The Choose Your Own Adventure Guide to Building a Strategic Website * This week’s action step if you don’t have a website yet: Choose a platform (we both recommend ShowIt) and Snag Kate’s Website that Sells Workbook * This week’s action step if you do have a website: Add a quarterly review to your calendar and snag Kate’s Website Report Card * This week’s book recommendation: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and Made to Stick Chip and Dan Heath * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Social Links:

Instagram.com/dearkatebrandstrategy

dearkatebrandstrategy.com

howyoupicturedit.com

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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAmanda Warfield:* When I’m looking for a service, the website of a company truly makes or breaks whether or not I’m going to take the next step with them. However, when we’re busy with the day to day of our business, it can be difficult to find the time to work on our website and keep it up to date. Because we aren’t searching for our own services, our websites can tend to be, well, Out of sight, out of mind.

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

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

Amanda Warfield: com / planner.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amanda Warfield: What are your thoughts on that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kate Hejde: And I think like

Amanda Warfield: chat

Kate Hejde: GPT.

Amanda Warfield: Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amanda Warfield: to the more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kate Hejde: I am on Instagram at DearKateBranchStrategy.

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

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

Amanda Warfield: Thank you, Amanda.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 211: How to DIY Your Website So It Sells Your Services with Kate Hejde appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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

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

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing – even if you’re a solopreneur. Do you dream of business growth, but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting? Or, do you understand the importance of effective marketing, but simply don’t have the time to get it done? There’s good news! Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back, and say hello to a clear, actionable roadmap for business growth. In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle. You’ll walk away with a clear, concise, and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or a background in business to tackle your marketing head-on thanks to the strategies and techniques in this book that deliver real results. No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain; instead, it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non-existent or inconsistent, to a true tool to grow your business by Chasing Simple Marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for Chasing Simple Marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield.com/book to learn more about buying it for yourself. * This week’s action step: Sit down with your goals this week and think through where you have gaps that need to be filled and who you could outsource to help fill them. * This week’s book recommendation: Percy Jackson Series * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateWhen it comes to marketing, there are about a million different people that can help you improve what you’re doing. And we all sort of overlap and we all have different skills and it can get kind of confusing. One of the most common questions that I get is if I focus on social media. And the answer to that is definitely not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 210: Marketing Strategist vs Social Media Manager appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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An Exact Breakdown of Using Sales Funnels to Set GoalsIf I told myself in year 1 that in year 7 I had 3500 IG followers … well, I would be appalled and probably give up on my business before it ever really got started.

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

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

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing – even if you’re a solopreneur. Do you dream of business growth, but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting? Or, do you understand the importance of effective marketing, but simply don’t have the time to get it done? There’s good news! Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back, and say hello to a clear, actionable roadmap for business growth. In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle. You’ll walk away with a clear, concise, and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or a background in business to tackle your marketing head-on thanks to the strategies and techniques in this book that deliver real results. No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain; instead, it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non-existent or inconsistent, to a true tool to grow your business by Chasing Simple Marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for Chasing Simple Marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield.com/book to learn more about buying it for yourself. * The Community (use code LISTENER for your first month free!) * Episode 200: A Look Back at 6 Years in Business * Episode 208: Here’s Exactly What I Track in My KPI Spreadsheet * Content Batching Bootcamp * This week’s action step: If you have any arbitrary numbers-based goals on your 2024 goals list – cross them out. * This week’s book recommendation: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateIf I told myself in year one that in year seven of business I had 3, 500 Instagram followers, well, I would be appalled and probably give up on my business before it ever really got started. And now I know that those numbers I was so focused on back then, they don’t really matter. And today I’m going to share more about the numbers that actually matter and how you can set goals based on that number.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 209: An Exact Breakdown of Using Sales Funnels to Set Goals appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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

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

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

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing – even if you’re a solopreneur. Do you dream of business growth, but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting? Or, do you understand the importance of effective marketing, but simply don’t have the time to get it done? There’s good news! Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back, and say hello to a clear, actionable roadmap for business growth. In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle. You’ll walk away with a clear, concise, and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or a background in business to tackle your marketing head-on thanks to the strategies and techniques in this book that deliver real results. No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain; instead, it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non-existent or inconsistent, to a true tool to grow your business by Chasing Simple Marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for Chasing Simple Marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield.com/book to learn more about buying it for yourself. * KPI Tracker * This week’s action step: Set up your KPI tracker this week and add it to your todo list on the first of each month to fill out. Or, steal my KPI tracker for $47. * This week’s book recommendation: Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateWhat is a KPI? What are you supposed to be tracking? How can you use them? Is it really all that important to track them? These questions are some of my most commonly asked ones that I get around KPIs, and I figured that if I’m hearing the same questions over and over again, well, you’re probably wondering them as well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 208: Here’s Exactly What I Track in My KPI Spreadsheet appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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

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

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing – even if you’re a solopreneur. Do you dream of business growth, but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting? Or, do you understand the importance of effective marketing, but simply don’t have the time to get it done? There’s good news! Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back, and say hello to a clear, actionable roadmap for business growth. In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle. You’ll walk away with a clear, concise, and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or a background in business to tackle your marketing head-on thanks to the strategies and techniques in this book that deliver real results. No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain; instead, it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non-existent or inconsistent, to a true tool to grow your business by Chasing Simple Marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for Chasing Simple Marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield.com/book to learn more about buying it for yourself. * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateIs the content creation process overwhelming to you? Do you get through creating one piece of content and feel drained? Well, today I’m going to share a guest interview I did for Colie James’ podcast, Business First Creatives, where I share the proper way to create your content through batching. Listen in as we explore how to find inspiration, create content your audience will resonate with, and set up your own plan for batching.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 207: Content Planning + Disneyland from the Business First Creatives Podcast appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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

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

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing – even if you’re a solopreneur. Do you dream of business growth, but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting? Or, do you understand the importance of effective marketing, but simply don’t have the time to get it done? There’s good news! Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back, and say hello to a clear, actionable roadmap for business growth. In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle. You’ll walk away with a clear, concise, and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or a background in business to tackle your marketing head-on thanks to the strategies and techniques in this book that deliver real results. No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain; instead, it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non-existent or inconsistent, to a true tool to grow your business by Chasing Simple Marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for Chasing Simple Marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield.com/book to learn more about buying it for yourself. * The Community (use code LISTENER for your first month free!) * Save 50% Off Your First Year of Flodesk and Try it Free for 30 Days * Kartra 14 Day Free Trial * Try MailerLite * This week’s action step: DM me and tell me what YOUR favorite email platform is if you already use one, and if not – DM me and tell me which you picked! * This week’s book recommendation: The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty (The Daevabad Trilogy – The City of Brass #1) * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateIf you haven’t started your email lists, it’s past time my friend. If I had to say there was one type of content marketing that was more important than all of the rest, It would be email marketing, but the very first step choosing which email platform to use, it can be overwhelming enough to keep you from getting started, which is why today I want to share three different platforms that I think are worth considering and help you make the best decision for yourself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 206: Choosing an Email Provider {Private Podcast Sneak Peak!} appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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

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

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

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: There are a LOT of different marketing strategies out there. from content to networking to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next – without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. After hearing from listener after listener wondering WHICH marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield.com/quiz/ to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing! Again, that’s amandawarfield.com/quiz/ * Welcome Sequence Email Template * Content Batching Bootcamp * The Community (Use code LISTENER for your first month free!) * This week’s action step: Start with your welcome sequence (grab my template!) * This week’s book recommendation: Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateWhen I onboard a new client, there are always standard questions that I ask. One of those being what their current marketing strategy looks like. And over the years, I’ve discovered that there are some very common holes that most of my clients have when they come to me. Now, I help my clients fill these gaps for themselves, but you can also fill these gaps on your own.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 205: 4 Common Marketing Holes I See with Clients appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Steal This Social Media StrategyIf social media feels overwhelming right now, you aren’t alone. The constant refrain that I’m hearing is that business owners just don’t know what to do about social media. It’s become overwhelming, it’s harder to see results … it’s just one more thing on top of a lot of other things.

So today I wanted to take you behind the scenes of a social media strategy that you can steal and use for your own business. One that will hopefully make your social media efforts a little more clear.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: There are a LOT of different marketing strategies out there. from content to networking to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next – without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. After hearing from listener after listener wondering WHICH marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield.com/quiz/ to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing! Again, that’s amandawarfield.com/quiz/ * Plann * ManyChat * Mailerlite ($20 Off First Payment) * Save 50% Off Your First Year of Flodesk with https://flodesk.com/c/CHASINGSIMPLE and try it free for 30 days * Kartra (Save 20% off) * The Community (Use Code Listener) * Repurposing VIP Day * This week’s action step: Choose an email list platform if you don’t have one yet. * This week’s book recommendation: The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

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

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateIf social media feels overwhelming right now, you aren’t alone. Constant reframe that I’m hearing is that business owners just don’t know what to do about social media. It’s become overwhelming. It’s harder to see results. It’s just one more thing on top of a lot of other things. So today I wanted to take you behind the scenes of a social media strategy that you can steal and use for your own business.

One that will hopefully make your social media efforts a little more clear. You’re listening to episode 204 of the Chase In Simple podcast, and I’m your host. Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again, that’s amandawarfield. com / quiz. I want to start this episode off by just giving the reminder that your social media is marketing. But marketing is not social media. I was at a conference recently, and I noticed that a lot of the attendees referred to their social media as their marketing.

And when asked about their marketing strategy, all they talked about was social media. And when asked about their social media, they referred to it as marketing. And It’s kind of like the square and the rectangle, right? We learned that a rectangle is not a square. But a square is a rectangle. I might have that backwards, but you get the analogy, you know what I mean?

So I just want to throw that out there that yes, social media is a part of your marketing It should be a part of your marketing strategy in some way most likely depending on your ideal client and all of that, but This should not be the end all be all of your marketing and if it is I really really really encourage you To go take the quiz on my website If you just go to amandawarfield.

com slash quiz That’ll give you some ideas on some other ways that you can market your business outside of social media And this is because we don’t want social media to be our end all be all focus when it comes to our marketing It is a great tool But it’s not the best use of your marketing time and your marketing energy.

So, if you are spending all of your marketing time and energy on social media, you’re doing yourself a massive disservice. And this is because only 10 percent of your audience sees any given post that you put out there on social media. Right? Only 10%. So, if you have a thousand followers, only a hundred of them are going to see any given post.

And this is because the algorithm, well, it wasn’t made to help you. The platform is there to make money for itself. That is it. They really don’t care whether or not your content gets shown to your audience. They want you to pay them to show it to more people. And so we want to make sure that we’re spending our marketing time and efforts primarily on efforts that are actually going to be worth the time and the effort.

But how do we do that? Where are the efforts that are worth that time? Instead of spending our time and effort on a platform that is going to give us so little return, where, where should we be focusing? Honestly, I think your biggest focus, the best use of your marketing time is your email list. Because every single person that you email, they’re going to see that email.

That doesn’t mean they’ll open it. They may simply just hit delete, but they’re at least seeing your name in their inbox, which is bringing you top of mind. Plus emails convert three times higher than social media. So when you have a post that says click here and you have an email that says click here, three times more people are going to click the link in the email versus the one on social media.

So, if you only have 100 people on your email list, and you have 1000 people on social media, you may think, okay, well, more people on social media, it’s worth more of my time, but if only 10 percent of your audience is seeing any given post, so 100, that’s 100 versus 100, and then you’ve got the statistic of, okay, but email actually converged three times higher.

Well, it makes it pretty clear that email is much more worth your time. More people are going to see what you send them, there are better conversions, which means more money. The math just maths, right? However, that doesn’t mean that I think you should completely ignore social media, unless you just truly don’t have the capacity because, listen, I’m here to encourage simplicity, not best practices, right?

But I think that utilizing social media Can be a really strategic part of your marketing strategy as a whole. I think that it is a great place to show up consistently. That doesn’t mean show up to best practices, but show up so people see your face, right? I think it’s great to try to build engagement there.

I think it’s a great place for building Relationships because you do see people’s faces. I just don’t think it should be where you’re spending the majority of your time So what’s the strategy your strategy for social media should be to drive to your email list? Now if you’ve listened to other episodes of mine, you know that a content strategy and a content plan are two very different things So the strategy itself is to drive to the email list, but what’s the plan?

How do you do that? Well, the plan that I would suggest that you steal from this episode is to post once a week talking about your opt in, talking about your freebie, talking about a really low ticket offer, whatever your opt in is. And then, if you’ve got long form content, post once a week talking about your long form content.

And then, if you’re only posting twice a week, That’s enough. If you are consistently posting twice a week and you’ve got one that’s Sending people to your long form content and one that’s sending them to an opt in you are driving people To the places that you can most strategically drive them So that would be my recommendation for a strategy and a plan and if you’re like that sounds great I don’t even have the capacity to do social media you could book one of my repurposing VIP days where I take your long form content and I turn it into emails and social media captions for you So then you can just copy paste and you know That that content is driving strategically to the long form content you’re putting out and if you’re talking about opt ins in your long form content It’s gonna drive to those as well So if you’d like to check that out, I’ll link in the show notes but that’s a great way if you’re like, I just don’t have the capacity to Handle this myself, but I like the idea of posting twice a week once to long form content once to an opt in Then I can help you out with that.

But if you’re like, yeah, I’ve got the capacity I can do this. What are the tools? So I personally use mini chat and plan for my social media tools So mini chat is an automation tool and this actually makes it so much easier to get conversions Right now on social media and you’ve probably seen this in action where someone says, Hey Here’s this thing I have or here’s this podcast episode or this YouTube video comment this thing below and I’ll send you the link Mini chat is the automation tool that makes that possible so if you’re using this plan and this strategy to drive to your email list and You’re posting once a week about long form content and then you’re saying hey comment this specific word or phrase below, and I’ll send you the link to this episode, and then someone comments it, and then automatically in their DMs, Minichat is sending them from you a, Hey, I’m so glad you were ready to listen to this episode.

Here’s the link to it. They’re more likely to click it, and it’s a timely thing, it helps them get that content faster, and it makes them more likely to click through versus, hey, go to the link in my bio, right? Same thing with your opt ins. If you say, hey, here’s this freebie I have, comment this thing below and, um, I’ll send you the link to it.

Same thing, it shows up in their DMs. It is such a great tool. I use this with clients, I use this myself. It’s not a free tool, but it’s something that you can play around with and see if it’s something that you would like to check out. And I’ll link to that in the show notes. The other social media tool is Plan.

P L A N N. I like to use this for all of my social media scheduling because it’s got everything it’s got. You can link to your LinkedIn, you can link to your Pinterest, you can link to your Instagram, your Facebook, all of it. And I was already paying for something for Pinterest specifically, so I transitioned over to this so that I could do Pinterest and all of the other things in one place.

If you just do not have the funds, which I’ll link a plan in the show notes as well, and you can check it out if you want, but if you truly just don’t have the funds and you’re not worried about Pinterest at this point, Meta Business Suite is free. I cannot recommend it enough. I used it for. So long for Instagram content for scheduling it out.

And all you have to do is set it up with your Facebook page and connect your Facebook page to your Instagram. So Meta business suite is a really amazing free tool for getting things scheduled, cannot recommend it enough. Now, the other tools that you’re going to need for this strategy is some kind of.

Email list platform. I personally use Cartra. I Really really really love Cartra, but if you do not sell digital products, and you don’t sell Courses you don’t have a membership. It may be a little too powerful for you at this time I’ll link to it down below just so you can check it out if you’d like if you are someone that’s like oh and all In one would be really great but for A lot of listeners and maybe too powerful, in which case I would recommend either mailer light or flow desk, which I’ll link again.

All of these will be linked in the show notes, but mailer light is where I started out. They have a free version, which is a great way to start out as you’re just very beginning to build your email list. Obviously it’s very basic, but Hey, it’ll get your emails out there for you. However, if you have the budget for something.

You know, a little nicer. I would actually suggest Flowdesk. I wish Flowdesk had been a thing when I first started, honestly, the emails are beautiful. They’re always adding new things and I, I use it with many clients and I love the backend. It’s great to work with their analytics. Aren’t my favorite, but again, for just starting out and not needing an all in one tool, it is absolutely amazing.

So. You need some way to schedule your content, your social media, and you need some way to send emails. So those are the two big categories of tools that you want to look for, and then some examples of what I use for myself, what I’ve used in the past, what I use for clients, that I would actually really recommend.

Now, if you’re like, okay, this sounds great, but like, oh my gosh, an email list, that just sounds like so much. If you need help focusing on your email list, come join us inside of Chase and Simple Marketing in the community. We have a quarter’s worth of content on creating a lead magnet that converts to sales.

So if you don’t have a freebie yet, I can help walk you through exactly what you need to do to create a lead magnet that’s actually going to convert to sales for your offer. Plus we have a quarter’s worth of content about setting up your email list and getting started. And the best part, you can use code listener to get your first month free.

So if you had to amandawarfield. com slash community, or you click the link in the show notes, you will be able to sign up and get that first month free. Now your action step for this week choose an email list platform if you don’t have one yet You don’t have to do anything else. Just choose one again I would recommend card draw flow desk or mail or light you can check out all three of those in the show notes but choose one and then go ahead and You know, get yourself set up on there so that you can start building a list.

Now this week’s book recommendation is The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth. I gotta be totally honest, I, I think I may need to just skip, skip ahead because I don’t remember anything about this book, but I rated it really highly, so I really liked it at the time. Um, this is what happens when you read 150 books a year.

It’s a problem. But, The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth, if you’re looking for a book that you just want to add to your, um, to be read list, it’s a great one. I believe it is, um, like a psycho thriller. I don’t know if thriller is the right word. Um, I don’t know if that’s how they really classify the genre, but that’s how I would classify it.

It’s like a psychothriller. Like, it’s twisty. You’re always like, what’s actually going on? Um, unreliable narrator, maybe, but that’s all I really remember about it. So if you like that type of book. This is a great one for you, and I’ll link to that in the show notes. All right, friends, and until next time, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 204: Steal This Social Media Strategy appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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The Power of Starting a YouTube ChannelI’m going to be really honest with you. For the last year or so, I’ve had thoughts about potentially starting a YouTube channel, but each time I began to truly think about it I pushed the idea away, because frankly? YouTube is a LOT of work. And I want to keep things as simple as possible for myself.

However, I know it’s a deeply powerful marketing platform, so even though I wasn’t convinced it was for me, I wanted YOU to hear more about how to leverage it for yourself. Which is why I brought on today’s guest – LaShonda.

LaShonda Brown is an award-winning Tech Educator, YouTube Coach and Speaker based in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of VA. Through her YouTube channel, Bootstrap Biz Advice, her membership, and her virtual workshops, LaShonda teaches service providers how to leverage tech and YouTube to increase traffic to their offers, generate passive income and partner with brands.

However. As you’ll see in today’s episode … the way LaShonda teaches about YouTube and how it can be done simply? Well, she might just have changed my mind about starting my own channel.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: There are a LOT of different marketing strategies out there. from content to networking to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next – without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. After hearing from listener after listener wondering WHICH marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield.com/quiz/ to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing! Again, that’s amandawarfield.com/quiz/ * LaShonda Brown’s membership * Streamyard * Workshop for preparing your first YouTube video * This week’s action step: Sit down and think about what your free, low, mid, and high ticket offers are. * This week’s book recommendation: Unmet Expectations by Lisa Hughes * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

LaShonda Brown is an award-winning Tech Educator, YouTube Coach and Speaker based in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of VA. Through her YouTube channel, Bootstrap Biz Advice, her membership, and her virtual workshops, LaShonda teaches service providers how to leverage tech and YouTube to increase traffic to their offers, generate passive income and partner with brands. LaShonda believes there is no shame in bootstrapping and her content will help you keep your expenses low and your profit margin high while you DIY. LaShonda heavily advocates for sustainable, healthy rhythms in business and is most well known for her 20-Hour Work Week practice that’s built on the foundation of deep focus work and a mindful morning routine. In 2022, LaShonda became one of the first 25 Canva Verified Experts in the world. In addition to training organizations of all sizes about Canva, LaShonda serves as an instructor for the email service provider, Flodesk inside of Flodesk University.

Social Links:

http://www.lashondabrown.com

http://www.youtube.com/lashondambrown

www.instagram.com/lashondambrown

www.linkedin.com/in/lashondabrown/

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

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAmanda Warfield:* I’m going to be really honest with you. For the last year or so, I’ve had thoughts about potentially starting a YouTube channel, but each time I began to truly think about it, I just pushed the idea away because, frankly, YouTube is a lot of work, and I want to keep things as simple as possible for myself.

Amanda Warfield: However, I know it’s a deeply powerful marketing platform. So even though I wasn’t convinced that it was for me, I wanted you to hear more about how to leverage it for yourself. If you so chose to, which is why I brought on today’s guest, LaShonda. LaShonda Brown is an award winning tech educator, YouTube coach and speaker based in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia through her YouTube channel, Bootstrap Biz Advice, her membership and her virtual workshops.

Amanda Warfield: Lashonda teaches service providers how to leverage tech and YouTube to increase traffic to their offers, generate passive income, and partner with brands. However, as you’ll see in today’s episode, the way Lashonda teaches about YouTube and how it can be done simply Well, she just might have changed my mind about starting my own channel.

Amanda Warfield: You’re listening to episode 203 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

LaShonda Brown: How

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

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

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

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

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

Amanda Warfield: Each week offer you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Amanda Warfield: Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? There are a lot of different marketing strategies out there, from content to networking to speaking to ads and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next. Without seeing results, especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies when you aren’t seeing any from your own.

Amanda Warfield: And after hearing from listener after listener, wondering which marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which strategies will be best for you. based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield. com slash quiz to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing.

Amanda Warfield: Again, that’s amandawarfield. com slash quiz. Lashonda, I’m so excited to finally have you on. It’s funny, we had talked before we hit record where last year I was supposed to have you on and we just weren’t able to make schedules connect and, um, it just kind of feels Serendipitous that it didn’t happen until this year, but man, I’m so excited to have you on.

Amanda Warfield: Can you please tell everyone a little bit about who you are and what you do and who you serve?

LaShonda Brown: So my name is LaShonda and I am a tech educator, a YouTube coach, and a speaker. And if you had asked me that last year, I probably would have had a completely different intro. So I’m really excited to kind of double down on the fact that not only do I use YouTube for my business, but I have a means to coach people on how to do it in the way that I’m doing it.

LaShonda Brown: And so in this season, I find myself really helping service providers. Who are burnt out actively promoting their business and teaching them passive ways to do it. You know, when I think of active marketing, I think of constant posting on platforms like Instagram or tick tock. And so I’m trying to show people how to create a passive income engine by leveraging technology and YouTube.

LaShonda Brown: And so I am kind of my own case. I’ve been doing it for myself, and now I’ve tested things and done it enough that I can duplicate that process for other people. And so it’s a really exciting season to see who I get to help and what challenges they have. But ultimately, I am probably one of the biggest hype girls for YouTube because it truthfully has changed my life.

LaShonda Brown: Okay, so let’s talk

Amanda Warfield: about what it is that you’re current. overall content strategy is. So you mentioned Instagram, TikTok, outside of YouTube, what are you doing to market your business?

LaShonda Brown: Yeah, so honestly, I had this conversation with my husband the other night and it was like, I feel like What you do can’t really be called marketing because it doesn’t look like what other people do and I think ultimately I’m such a community builder That it’s almost like I lean more into Relationship building and then people buy what I’m selling.

LaShonda Brown: I am NOT someone that is constantly nickel and diming people or pushing products because ultimately I My primary customer is the tech company trying to connect with entrepreneurs. So if entrepreneurs didn’t buy anything from me, I would be completely fine. And the first year I did YouTube, I didn’t sell anything.

LaShonda Brown: I needed a break from it. I didn’t want to launch anything. So for one full calendar year. I was a full time YouTuber, not selling to my students. And so once I did my research and kind of learned what they needed and how they wanted to learn, then I could start testing out different strategies and say, okay, well, are workshops a good fit or do we need to do one on one?

LaShonda Brown: Is a group setting better? And so ultimately this year I’ve really settled on a really solid business model. And so my community. They can be mobilized to do pretty much anything. So I communicate primarily to them through email, um, but then sometimes, you know, they’ll message me in the DMs on Instagram, but it’s hysterical because I archive so much content on Instagram.

LaShonda Brown: I have, like, 15 posts and it’s, it’s so funny because I just remember when, like, I was wanting, oh, I should have over a thousand posts. Like, I really should be creating and creating and creating. And so ultimately at this point. I try to park as much content as possible on YouTube because when I post there I get paid to post versus platforms like Instagram, you know, it’s a hope and a prayer, but there’s no guarantee to being paid.

Amanda Warfield: Okay. So interesting. So you’ve archived a ton of your stuff on Instagram. What made you decide to do that? What was the decision factor around that?

LaShonda Brown: So my Instagram profile is more of a portfolio of sponsored content at this point. There’s a couple posts on there that weren’t paid. But ultimately, when a brand goes to my Instagram, what I want them to see is past activations.

LaShonda Brown: Because I’m not really trying to Reach my target market through my feed content. I’m reaching them through live streaming on YouTube through Instagram stories through ads. And so my primary feed isn’t actually for them, but it’s also a really good example of. How I can help my students to partner with brands, because clearly I am partnered with them and you can see it in plain sight.

LaShonda Brown: And so I just switched my focus. Like, the feed is not really for communication with my audience. It’s a showcase of the past partnerships that I’ve done and different strategies that I’ve implemented. So I can refer back to it and say, hey, guys. Here’s a strategy that you can do versus, you know, hoping that every single post will convert for me.

LaShonda Brown: That’s not really the point. So it takes a lot of pressure off Instagram. I tried to delete the platform and, uh, within a month of saying that I gained like a thousand followers and I’m like, this. This is so ironic, like, I just, I tell Instagram, I’m breaking up with you and then here you go growing. So at the end of the day, it’s, it’s a community platform.

LaShonda Brown: It’s how I engage with my audience because YouTube doesn’t have a direct message feature. And it’s also something that I will bundle with a YouTube video as a way to make additional revenue when I do sponsor content. Oh,

Amanda Warfield: man. Okay. I feel like we need to have you back on again later this year to talk about sponsored content because that’s a whole other topic that I would

LaShonda Brown: love to get into.

LaShonda Brown: Oh, that’s a whole thing. Yes. And I, and I think too, I, I think there’s so much bad press. For brands, not, you know, compensating creators fairly. And I think it’s less about the brands giving the correct amount of money to the creators as it is. The creators don’t know what to negotiate for, and they don’t know that you can negotiate.

LaShonda Brown: Um, and so I think that ultimately. Having those negotiation skills from my past career as a corporate film producer, like I go into these meetings, knowing what to look for, knowing what to ask for, knowing that I’m the one with the leverage because they reached out to me. And so I put a lot of effort into those emails and those calls.

LaShonda Brown: And so when I show up for my audience, it’s like, this is just fun. Let’s just have a good time. And so it takes so much of that pressure off because the people with. Money, you know, at the tech companies are the people that I’m putting, you know, the bulk of my brain power into. And then when I look over at my students, I can just serve.

LaShonda Brown: I can be responsive to where they are in the moment. And I don’t have to worry about, you know, is there a trip wire attached to that? You know, how am I funneling them into anything? It’s just, what do you need? Am I a good fit? Great. Awesome. If not, here’s somebody you should reach out to. I love how simple that makes

Amanda Warfield: your whole business strategy.

Amanda Warfield: Yeah. Well, definitely after we finish recording, we’ll talk about having you back on because I think this would be a great conversation, but I don’t want to get too far down a rabbit hole with that. Circling back to your Instagram strategy. DMs and Instagram stories. You said that most of your content lives on YouTube, that you’re not really, you’re only doing sponsored content on the feed.

Amanda Warfield: So what is your Instagram strategy currently?

LaShonda Brown: Yeah. So, I mean, I just have a very simple strategy when it comes to deciding what to post and when to show up. You know, I kind of made this decision for myself that it’s either I’m talking about You know, the Lord, or I’m talking about tech. It’s like God or tech.

LaShonda Brown: And I just think the reason why I wanted to lean into that more is because, you know, it’s such a huge part of my success in business that I think in the past, I really didn’t know how to incorporate it. And so really sharing my faith and encouraging people with that during a time where so many people are.

LaShonda Brown: You know, discourage and dejected is really important to me. But at the same time, you know, I want to provide people with practical solutions. You know, what can you actively do to help propel your business forward? And so, you know, when I do these sponsored posts, it’s not just an ad. I have managed to figure out how to do a 60 second vertical testimonial.

LaShonda Brown: And so the reason why these brands are paying for it is they’re like, okay, you’re not just using B roll with text on it. Like you are literally teaching in 60 seconds and you’re funneling people to the long form content to say, Hey, if you enjoyed this, let’s dig in deeper on YouTube. And so I think. My approach to always leaning into how can I provide value with this piece of content?

LaShonda Brown: If even if you didn’t leave the platform, I want it to be beneficial to you. I have done some very simple, you know, what did the calm low lift or low effort reels. For the purpose of funneling people into my free workshops, because I know that I convert a lot of free workshop attendees into members and my membership.

LaShonda Brown: And so again, it’s that mindset of like, okay, fine. I’ll play the game. I’ll do the little 7 second reel that loops with the trending audio just to get you. To opt into my email list to sign up for the free workshop and to get into my ecosystem where I can talk to you directly. And so, you know, I have done that periodically for workshop promotions.

LaShonda Brown: That’s probably the only time that you’re going to see me just creating content from scratch that I wasn’t paid to create. Um, but ultimately I will be paid to create it by getting them on the list and getting them in the workshop and signing up for affiliates and all of that. And so I just think that.

LaShonda Brown: What I have managed to create after a decade in business is a business model that is built on a foundation of ease. You know, I don’t like friction in business. If I ever run into something that is like, things aren’t working, or it just feels like I’m putting so much effort into it with low return. I just let it go because I only work 20 hours a week.

LaShonda Brown: So it’s really easy for me to decide, like, is this worth it? Because if it literally takes up too much of my time. I have to cut it in order to make room for things that will make the money. So having those boundaries and having those guardrails has been awesome. And ironically enough, only working four days allows me to do other things that stimulates me creatively.

LaShonda Brown: And so I have time to kind of recharge. Because it’s four days on, three days off, and that works really well for me. So

Amanda Warfield: everything that, you know, that I teach, all of the premises of my entire business is also that simplicity, that how do we make it so that our business strategy, our marketing strategy, everything is as simple as possible.

Amanda Warfield: So I really love what you’re doing. I know that there are two things that I think the listeners are going to bump up against as far as things not feeling simple. And I’d love your take on them. The first being that transition from I’m spending all of my time marketing on Instagram, I’m over it, there’s no reach, but I don’t know how to get out of that.

Amanda Warfield: So what is, how do we make that transition from social media focus to YouTube, longer form content? How do we do that in the simplest way possible? But then also, YouTube is the most time consuming and most intensive form of long form content. How do we keep that as simple as possible?

LaShonda Brown: So the simple answer is StreamYard.

LaShonda Brown: And I’m like, StreamYard just sponsored me already the amount of times that I dropped their name. Oh, my, but here’s the thing. StreamYard is a tool that allows you to live stream to YouTube. And even when you think about the concept of live streaming for some people, that feels super overwhelming. But you have to think of it as you’re able to edit your content as you create it.

LaShonda Brown: And what’s wonderful is it has three features. You can go live. And you can multistream it to LinkedIn, to Instagram, to YouTube, Facebook, what have you. But you can also just use the recording studio. So the same tools that you have if you go live, you could just use the tool and record the video file on your computer.

LaShonda Brown: And then the third feature of StreamRite that I love is the webinar feature. And so For me personally, having a single tool that I can use if I need to record a video file, if I want to go live, and if I want to teach in a workshop helps me to get super comfortable with that tool where I can learn, you know, okay, I can create little video clips in Canva to kind of break up the content, or I can add pop up graphics directly in the editor.

LaShonda Brown: I can add music while I’m speaking directly in the tool. And so, so many of the Editing issues that people have, it completely goes away with that particular tool, because it’s kind of like an all in one solution. The reason why I suggest live streaming is because for so many people, even if it’s one other person, there’s so much more engaging when they know they’re talking to someone versus just talking to the camera.

LaShonda Brown: I’ve gotten so desensitized to it at this point. I’m like, I’m used to talking to myself. I do it every day. But for the vast majority of people, they’re used to, at least, if they’re on a Zoom call, they’re talking to at least one other person. And so if that helps you to appear more natural on camera, then invite your community.

LaShonda Brown: That’s why, that’s one of the reasons why I live stream every Monday at 10. Because if I’m really busy, that one live stream can be my weekly upload to YouTube for the week. It gives me a chance to engage with my email list, engage with my community. And create for the platform, and I can go back and optimize it just like I would a feed video.

LaShonda Brown: So I think that so many people have this perception that YouTube is such a time suck, and they don’t think about how much time they’re actually spending on Instagram. Like, I’m willing to bet, track yourself. If you have an iPhone, go in and see how many hours, because I know it’s plural. How many hours are you spending on Instagram every single week?

LaShonda Brown: When I go live at this point, I probably prepped 10 to 15 minutes before. 945. I’m in there. Okay. What are my points? Let me load those in. I can literally get my content created in an hour and a half every week. Are you spending more than an hour and a half on Instagram? And so it’s really just you have to, you have to get over your preconceived notions and find educators that are willing to teach you different approaches.

LaShonda Brown: To what you’ve always ruled out as an option. Okay,

Amanda Warfield: so interesting. So you’re going live on Instagram

LaShonda Brown: each week, each Monday? Is that right? So I’m going live on YouTube. So if I have a, if I have a sponsored live stream, which I do a sponsored live stream at least once a month, then I’ll go live on LinkedIn and on YouTube at the same time.

LaShonda Brown: I will say I have gone live on Instagram and It’s okay, but the better experience is if you’re on YouTube watching it. That’s the primary platform that I suggest people watch the lives on. Okay, so you’re going

Amanda Warfield: live on YouTube once a week and that is sometimes, maybe often, you’re, you then take that and turn that into an evergreen video.

Amanda Warfield: Correct.

LaShonda Brown: Yeah. As soon as it ends, it becomes a video on my page and the same views that I got while it was streaming live apply to that video and they continue to grow.

Amanda Warfield: So, let me ask you this. Do you find that. Do you do any, like, producted videos? Let me ask you that

LaShonda Brown: 1st. Oh, yeah. So a lot a lot of the pre recorded videos that I do are sponsored at this point.

LaShonda Brown: If I do a pre recorded video, that isn’t sponsored. It’s because someone in my membership has had a question. And I’m like, okay, if you had that question, five other people have that question and it’ll probably be well on YouTube. So let me spend the time, film the content and have our team edit it. But yeah, I mean, you can, I have a friend of mine who I convinced to start posting on YouTube, who was a huge TikTok, um, influencer and she just posts vertical content.

LaShonda Brown: Like you don’t have to even, long form is an option of YouTube. It’s not the only function of it. So you could literally do 30 to 60 seconds. Vertical content. You could be reposting what you post on Instagram. So there’s just a lot of different options available. And at the end of the day. It’s the platform that compensates creators the most fairly of all of the different social media options.

LaShonda Brown: So if you want to be paid to post and paid to market your business, it’s the way to go.

Amanda Warfield: Okay, so you’re doing both live and kind of productive quote unquote videos. Do you find that there’s a difference analytics wise in the, the views, how long someone watches between the two different

LaShonda Brown: types? So the live streams definitely have a longer watch time, which is very interesting because the production value is a lot lower.

LaShonda Brown: So I do see longer watch time with the live streams. The CPM is lower on live streams, but it’s not that different. It’s about 5 off for me. Um, so in terms of AdSense revenue, not that different. Um, YouTube does promote live streams differently than feed content. So. I’m way more likely to get thousands of views on a feed video than a live stream.

LaShonda Brown: But at the same time, you can go back in and you can optimize your content with your tags and keywords and whatnot. So after it’s over, you can still treat it like a feed video. So I, I think in a lot of ways, The live streams are kind of this untapped territory as well, because there’s still so few people doing it.

LaShonda Brown: Right. And so to be able to say, you know, once a week, if you have questions for me, just hop on my life and you can ask me live. There’s something about being able to engage with your audience in real time that just shortens the sales cycle. You know, because people are like, Oh, like I can trust her. Like there’s no editing.

LaShonda Brown: There’s, you know, if I have a question in the moment, she can answer it. And it’s just so much more authentic and genuine. And so I think. What’s really happening in online marketing across the board is people are just so tired of the smokescreens like they want real, they want honest, they want ethical and so those are the types of values that are communicated when you’re willing to be vulnerable and just show up live, and I’ve noticed as a speaker.

LaShonda Brown: I’ve become a better speaker live streaming more because it’s, I’m basically, I’ve got a stage every week, you know, and so I’m able to really refine my messaging and I learn how to think on the spot. I learned how to handle, you know, things going wrong because inevitably things happen. And so I just think it’s a good training ground for anybody who’s an online educator because.

LaShonda Brown: If you’re just waiting around for a summit or a conference to have an opportunity to speak, you know, you’re not going to hone those skills as fast as if you’re showing up on a regular basis on YouTube.

Amanda Warfield: Absolutely. Okay, so Lynn, you mentioned that you prep your content about like 10 to 15 minutes before.

Amanda Warfield: Yeah. Do you, Have set topics each week or is it kind of a free for all people come and ask questions? Is it a mix? What does that look like? How do you decide what

LaShonda Brown: you’re talking about? I did a lot of experimenting last year and I think the sweet spot for me is to have a general topic, you know, create that thumbnail, create a title, a very brief description about, hey, we’re going to be going over this.

LaShonda Brown: Um, I’ve heard someone call it a listicle, which I’m like, I never heard of that before, but like, you know, five things, three things, four things. So I usually have at least three points on the given topic at that time. And so I’ll get on, you know, say hello to people, do a little housekeeping, kind of an update on what’s happening with my brand.

LaShonda Brown: Then I transitioned to a time of education and then I go to the comments. And so the live stream can be anywhere 30 minutes to an hour, but no longer than an hour. Um, and so I just kind of block out 10 to 1, uh, 10 to 11. And it’s interesting because sometimes people will just ask you questions and like the Q and a becomes like a whole nother session in and of itself.

LaShonda Brown: And what I love about that is my editor can go in and, you know, she can take out, you know, me saying the question, the answering the question, and then that’s really good LinkedIn content. It can be repurposed as a clip, you know, in an Instagram story. So in my mind, You know, YouTube, especially my YouTube live streams, that’s like top of funnel for content creation for me.

LaShonda Brown: You know, here’s a bunch of content. Here’s me talking for 30 minutes to an hour. Hopefully you can, you know, glean two or three clips from this, and then we can utilize that to market various things throughout the week. Man, this,

Amanda Warfield: I gotta be honest. I have been very, I would never do YouTube and I am. You’re changing my

LaShonda Brown: mind.

LaShonda Brown: It sounds a lot. Well, and here’s the thing. It’s funny because I, I may have shot myself in the foot because I say all day long that courses are dead. And yet in the back of my mind, I’m like, dang, I need to make a course about how I left straight. Like, you know what I mean? It’s like, I say they’re dying.

LaShonda Brown: But so maybe I could come up with a different approach. Maybe it’s a challenge. Maybe it’s a boot camp. But to be honest with you, I, I think that’s what’s been leveling the playing field for my membership. Like, they do not have time to be editing this content, you know, and so I think the idea. Of being able to use a tool that’s very similar, a very similar vibe to zoom.

LaShonda Brown: You know, if you can teach a workshop on zoom, you can use StreamYard. A tool that is not so overwhelming that they can create that content. They can get it out on a regular basis. Time block it out. Batch their content. It’s just a dream, right? And so, yes, you can hire editors and, and you can edit yourself.

LaShonda Brown: But I think. When it comes down to it, you have to just get started because everybody, I think some people say it takes up to like a hundred videos to hit your stride. I think that’s a lie. I’ll be honest with you. I think if you have help, if you have a coach, I would hope to think you’re not just doing a shotgun approach for a hundred videos before things take off.

LaShonda Brown: Um, but at the same time, you just have to do it. You know, you have to build up that muscle. It gets easier over time. You get better and better. I look at live streams from four months ago and I’m like, ugh, you know, I’ve gotten so much better. And so you just have to be open to saying every video I’m going to show up a little bit better than the last one.

LaShonda Brown: And just keep posting. Nobody’s going to be digging in the depths forever. So just keep going.

Amanda Warfield: Okay, so that brings up a really interesting point, though, that I want to make sure we hit, is the, the idea of starting over, I think, is what is keeping people attached to Instagram for so long. I think they’re like, but I have an audience here, but I have a community

LaShonda Brown: here.

LaShonda Brown: But do you? Are they engaged?

Amanda Warfield: That. But then also, we all know how hard it is to get people off of Instagram. So. What would you say, how do you handle the starting fresh? You’re like, okay, I’m gonna start posting on YouTube, I’m gonna go live, but I don’t have an audience there. What do you say to that? How do you

LaShonda Brown: start building that audience?

LaShonda Brown: So this is a really good question. I’m actually working on, uh, formulating a workshop 1k subscribers. Because I feel like, once you get over that hump of having at least a thousand, obviously you would, if you have 4, 000 watch hours, you would qualify for monetization. But I think it’s a mental thing. We only have a few hundred followers on any platform, it’s kind of like Uh, it’s just not where I wanted to be, but if you can get at least a thousand, you know, then it’s like, okay, not so bad.

LaShonda Brown: And so I think When it comes down to it, a lot of people don’t like the idea of starting from zero, but many of us have an audience somewhere, right? You either have an email list, you have an Instagram following, like, if you’re in business in 2024, I’m sure you have an audience on some platform. And so ultimately.

LaShonda Brown: The most important thing I can communicate is you can entice people to leave whatever platform they’re on and go where you want them to go. Just like you would, if you were launching a product when you launch a course, you’re driving traffic from Instagram to teachable or Instagram to Kajabi or whatever you’re using.

LaShonda Brown: So we understand the concept. A funneling traffic to a location, but we don’t make it enticing enough for people to leave where they are to go to YouTube. We just go like, oh, new YouTube video. Oh, starting a YouTube channel and you have to think about starting your YouTube channel like a launch. There has to be some type of excitement.

LaShonda Brown: Some type of incentive because you’re asking people to use one more app and subscribe to one more thing. And so, again, just like you would launch a digital product or, you know, a course, you need to launch your YouTube channel and you need to continue. To update people about your milestones, about your wins.

LaShonda Brown: About comments, people are leaving on your content that’s performing well. And so I just think ultimately it comes down to just having a launch mindset with your channel and not just treating it as yet another profile because, you know, I had a linkedin profile for years that was freaking dormant because I thought as an entrepreneur, I.

LaShonda Brown: What do I need LinkedIn for? I’m my own boss, but I made one when I was in college because that’s what you did to find jobs. And so now that I realize that LinkedIn is like the new business Facebook, I circled back and for months I’ve had to post engaging content to tell the algorithm that I’m actually posting and that page isn’t dead.

LaShonda Brown: And so it’s just important to just think about how can I encourage people, not just. Oh, hey, go consume more content somewhere. Why should they, you know, position it in such a way where it’s like, Hey, you know, I’m doing a, a five day video course on X, Y, Z. And it’s hosted on YouTube. You know what I mean?

LaShonda Brown: Like it’s all about positioning. It’s all about having a launch mindset, but I think the biggest problem why people start YouTube channels that never grow is they think, Oh, well, if I just start one, people will come and that’s just not how it works. Okay,

Amanda Warfield: ma’am. This is good. I love this. I’m all about a launch.

LaShonda Brown: So, yeah, I mean, you make it fun to you could do a giveaway, you could do collabs like you could do a scap. I’ve even done a scavenger hunt and videos before. It’s like, find the hidden word and all these videos for a chance to win a free website. Like, I mean, get creative. I think, I mean, that’s my own little soapbox, but it’s like, you know, we are called to be creative.

LaShonda Brown: And I just think so many of us. have stopped using our imagination and all we’re doing is just duplicating what we see other people doing. It’s like, my word, be unique. It’s easier when you’re unique because you’re no, you’re not competing with anybody else. So what’s something crazy you could do? Maybe you could cook your favorite meal live on your YouTube channel and just chat.

LaShonda Brown: You could do a wine tasting. You could do a knitting party. I mean like at a certain point it’s like you have to think of marketing like I’m doing something crazy enough that someone would want to do a story on me. If, if, if someone hears the concept and they go, oh my gosh, that’s insane, like I need to contact, you know, New York Times or Washington Post or whoever, then you’ve got a good strategy.

LaShonda Brown: But if it’s like, Oh, womp, womp, I’ve heard that before. It’s going to fall flat because you’ve got to cut through the noise. So I just encourage people, like so many people are so afraid of being disruptive. And it’s like, it’s the noisy people that are winning right now. It’s the people that are, you know, doing something so different that it’s causing you to notice.

LaShonda Brown: That are really growing and really thriving. And so what is it that you can do to put your own unique spin on whatever it is that you offer and use that to get people to leave the platform they’re on? Um,

Amanda Warfield: absolutely. You probably have many people convinced, like you’ve convinced me that maybe this is something that we should start doing.

LaShonda Brown: Maybe you should consider it. Here’s the thing, it’s making me money. I’m not, I’m just not going to lie to people. Like, yeah, I know it works. It’s what I did. It is making me money. I am making six figure income, working 20 hours a week. I’m the healthiest and happiest I’ve ever been. You decide for yourself.

LaShonda Brown: Right. You know, it’s a very simple pitch.

Amanda Warfield: What would your suggestions be for equipment? Because I think that’s another thing that holds a lot of us back, is it’s like, I don’t even know, like, do I need a camera? Do I need, I have a mic, obviously, as a podcaster, but like, what do you need? I know you recommend StreamYard, but, which we’ll link to in the show notes for everyone, but, Yeah.

Amanda Warfield: What, where do you start with

LaShonda Brown: equipment? Yeah. So, you know, that is a common question. So we did a whole workshop about preparing for your first YouTube video. And we did a setup on a desktop, a setup on a laptop and a setup on a cell phone. And ultimately, when it comes down to it, you need to utilize the tools that you’re the most comfortable with.

LaShonda Brown: And you can always upgrade from there. I’m, to be completely honest with you, a lot of YouTubers are telling people to film YouTube content on their cell phone. And I think that’s stupid. And the only reason why I say that. Is because when it comes down to it, once you film it, then what? You know what I mean?

LaShonda Brown: Like, most people are not going to manage a YouTube channel on their cell phone. So you’re going to have to transfer the data. Now you have this giant video file. Like, are you plugging in an external microphone to your, to your phone? And so for the vast majority of people, I just recommend that they use their webcam and they use.

LaShonda Brown: Their microphone, like you would on a zoom call, like truthfully start out with what you would utilize to just talk to someone virtually, whether you use Google meet or zoom or what have you start there. And again, you can always increase production value because, like, you know, if you were looking at the clip right now, like, I’m using an actual camera right now.

LaShonda Brown: That’s why I have a 1080 feed and it looks like my normal YouTube content. Um, because I’ve invested in that setup. And so over time, as you get better and better, you could buy a higher quality webcam. Then maybe you can use an actual DSLR camera as your webcam. And so I think that’s actually the easier way to do it because any other way, then you’re having to transfer that data and then you’re getting into a data nightmare.

LaShonda Brown: And so I just think, you know, yes, yeah. You can use your cell phone if you want to make shorts, but practically speaking, I probably would not record a long form YouTube video on my cell phone because editing it, transferring it, uploading it, it just feels like a nightmare to me. Man,

Amanda Warfield: so true. I bought a Mac this year specifically because I wanted my phone to link up with my computer

LaShonda Brown: easily.

LaShonda Brown: Yeah, with AirDrop. AirDrop

Amanda Warfield: is great. It is, but there are some things that I still struggle with. I had um, camp with my youth group this past weekend, and I’m trying to get the photos and the videos off of my phone, onto the computer, onto the program to be able to show them off on Sunday, and it’s just, it’s a nightmare.

Amanda Warfield: I can’t get things to sync up correctly, and I’m just like, you know what? This is such a pain, even with stuff that talks nicely to each other. So definitely a good point.

LaShonda Brown: Yeah, the Dropbox app is helpful. I use that a lot on my cell phone. Um, but even still, even still, I mean, it’s all about reducing friction because I think ultimately the best tools are the ones you actually use.

LaShonda Brown: So it’s like, just what are you going to actually use? I literally have some members in my membership who will open up zoom and do a zoom call with themselves and record there and then put it on YouTube. So it’s, it’s just really not nearly as complicated. You’ve got to focus more on the quality of the content.

LaShonda Brown: You’re saying then the production value as long as the audio is decent and the lighting is decent. People will watch it. So I just wouldn’t stress too much about that.

Amanda Warfield: Speaking of your membership, tell us a little bit about that for those of us that are like, okay, I want to get started, but I still

LaShonda Brown: need help.

LaShonda Brown: Yeah, I, I’m not gonna lie to you. I am so freaking proud of my membership because I think after seeing them engaging in the comments on our workshop this week, I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m actually building a real community and not just a bunch of people that pay for the same thing. So that’s really exciting.

LaShonda Brown: Um, so basically the YouTube membership is the only way to get ongoing YouTube coaching support from me. So the, the keystone aspect of it is leveraging the app async, which is kind of like Voxer on steroids. And essentially every member in my membership has their own thread with me, where whenever you have a YouTube question, you can just send me a voice note and within 48 hours, I’m going to respond to you.

LaShonda Brown: You can send texts, you can send audio, you can send a photo. And so that is a very simple way for you to get, you know, questions. Questions answered about YouTube. Then I give people my YouTube content calendar template, which will show people how to actually create content that generates traffic to your offers, because a lot of people don’t formulate their channel correctly.

LaShonda Brown: So they’re not seeing a benefit from posting fairly early in the process. So I give them that. Then we do monthly workshops where I bring in subject matter experts. And so you get a ticket to all of those plus the replays. So this week we were talking about, um, four different AI tools other than chat GPT that are going to help save you time and that was absolutely incredible.

LaShonda Brown: And so the last thing I would say about the membership that’s really cool is you get me for accountability, which I think is hysterical because I love kicking people in the butt. So people tell me what they intend on doing and I’m like, okay, if you tell me. Understand, I will check in on you. Now, I will help support you in that.

LaShonda Brown: I will encourage you in that. But at the same time, I’m going to ask you, and I think for so many people, they simply need someone else to care about their dream. They need someone else to care about what they’re trying to accomplish to actually show up and do the thing. You know, and that’s why personal trainers work and that’s why group fitness classes work because people need to know that other people are aware of what you’re striving to do.

LaShonda Brown: And so, um, you know, I thought about different pricing structures and, uh, what makes sense and I just settled on 50 a month and at least for this year, that’s what I want to keep it at. I want to make it super accessible. I’m not trying to break the bank that’ll help cover the software costs and, and my VA who helps me out.

LaShonda Brown: Um, but it’s just wonderful. I think it’s just an awesome outlet for people to be in network with other people that are trying to make YouTube work for them. And everybody’s coming at it from different angles. I have a lot of people who are podcasters wanting to leverage YouTube, which is a fun dynamic.

LaShonda Brown: So I hope we kind of do some type of collaboration with all of them at some point. But yeah, it’s just a genuine community. There’s laughter in the chat. There’s celebration in the chats on our calls. And we just have a really good time. And for that, I’m really grateful. Well,

Amanda Warfield: listeners, if this is something you think is.

Amanda Warfield: Right up your alley. We’re going to link to this in the show notes. You can easily check it out and Go join that great community that Lashonda’s created. So before we end, I’ve got two final questions for you The first is if you could give everyone just one action step to take this week,

LaShonda Brown: what would it be?

LaShonda Brown: I would say sit down and think about what your free, low, mid, and high ticket offers are. And I know that’s like a really weird piece of advice, but the amount of people that start a YouTube channel that don’t have those four categories covered. blows my mind. YouTube is an incredible way for you to draw traffic to your email list with free offers.

LaShonda Brown: So like, that’s great. Right. But then we also want to make money. We don’t want to just be spending money on the channel and not getting a return. And so, you know, the low ticket offers help a lot to get buying customers on your email list. And then hopefully, you know, they benefit from that low ticket offer and then you can upsell them.

LaShonda Brown: You know, that mid ticket offer and then that high ticket offer for some people, they may go straight to it. They may just go. You know what? No, I want one on one time with you. I want to book a strategy session, or I want a VIP day or whatever that looks like for you. But once you have those offers defined.

LaShonda Brown: Then you can create content that’s specifically geared to addressing problems for people and those 4 buckets. If you don’t have that before you start posting, what you’re going to get is a bunch of people who are just. They never, you know, subscribe to your email list. They never buy anything you’re trying to sell.

LaShonda Brown: And so if you have those offers defined for yourself, it’s going to impact what you create. So that’s what I would encourage people to do. And honestly, that thought process could help you on any marketing platform. But specifically, if you’re trying to make money with YouTube, you need to have those offers defined before you start posting.

LaShonda Brown: Yeah, being

Amanda Warfield: strategic is so important when it comes to your content marketing. Absolutely. So if you could give everyone a book recommendation, and it can be a business book, but it doesn’t have to be, what would it be?

LaShonda Brown: This is going to sound like super moody and overdramatic, but right now I am walking through the book unmet expectations.

LaShonda Brown: And I think, you know, in a post COVID world, I think we’re all kind of like, okay, we had some expectations, you know, 2020, the year of clear vision, going to do all the things. And let’s be honest, that did not, that did not happen. That did not happen. And so I think we all had expectations of how things were going to go.

LaShonda Brown: And how you deal with things not panning out is a big deal. And so I, I’ve really enjoyed walking through it. I’m not quite done with it yet, but it’s been a really good read. And so I would recommend that one. All right,

Amanda Warfield: we will link to that in the show notes, everyone. LaShonda, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your expertise.

Amanda Warfield: I look forward to having you on again soon to chat more about sponsorships.

LaShonda Brown: Well, I would love to come back and thank you again for having me.

LaShonda Brown: Thank

Amanda Warfield: you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Amanda Warfield: Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 203: The Power of Youtube with LaShonda Brown appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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The Many Benefits of Podcast Guest Tours with Haylee GaffinOne of my favorite ways to grow my audience is through being a guest on other podcasts. I started doing this during my first year in business, and it’s become the only growth strategy that I’ve used every single year in business.

Don’t get me wrong. At first, it was terrifying. I can remember the first interview I did so vividly. I pulled all of my shoes out of my closet, because I’d seen podcasters say their sound was best in there. Then, I wrote up pages and pages of notes and printed them out.

And so, I sat in my closet with my laptop and mic in front of me, constantly referring to my notes, and shaking like a leaf the entire time. I had so much adrenaline rushing through my body.

And now I barely have to prepare before an interview because it’s become so second-nature. Plus, the results I’ve seen for guest episodes is unmatched. They help my email list grow, they helped my book launch become such a success, and the backlinks to my own website are great for my own SEO.

Which is why I brought on a podcasting expert to share more about a Podcast Tour and how you can use one in your own marketing this year. My own podcast producer, and my dear friend – Haylee Gaffin.

Haylee is a podcast producer, strategist, and owner at Gaffin Creative, where she helps podcast hosts plan their podcast launch and create strategic content that serves their brand and audience. As the founder of Mic Check Society, a community for podcasters, and host of Clocking In Podcast, a podcast for professionals making their way in the working world, Haylee is on a mission to help hopeful podcast hosts grow their brand.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: There are a LOT of different marketing strategies out there. from content to networking to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next – without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. After hearing from listener after listener wondering WHICH marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield.com/quiz/ to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing! Again, that’s amandawarfield.com/quiz/ * Podcast budget worksheet * Rephonic.graph * Haylee’s Resources Page * Episode 107: Back to the Basics of Podcast Planning * Episode 103: Should You Start a Podcast for your Blog? * Episode 109: The Power of Podcasting as an Entrepreneur * Join Mic Check Society – use code CHASINGSIMPLE * This week’s action step: Start thinking about topics, key takeaways, and questions to provide the host for your interviews. * This week’s book recommendation: It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Haylee Gaffin is a podcast producer, strategist, and owner at Gaffin Creative, where she helps podcast hosts plan their podcast launch and create strategic content that serves their brand and audience. As the founder of Mic Check Society, a community for podcasters, and host of Clocking In Podcast, a podcast for professionals making their way in the working world, Haylee is on a mission to help hopeful podcast hosts grow their brand.

Social Links:

gaffincreative.com

https://www.instagram.com/hayleegaffin/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayleegaffin/

http://clockinginpodcast.com/

http://micchecksociety.com/

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateEpisode 202 – Podcast Tours and the Benefits of Being a Podcast Guest with Haylee Gaffin*

Amanda Warfield: One of my favorite ways to grow my audience is through being a guest on other podcasts. I started doing this during my first year in business and it’s become the only growth strategy that I’ve used every single year in business. Don’t get me wrong, at first it was terrifying. I can remember the first interview I did so vividly.

Amanda Warfield: I pulled all of my shoes out of my closet because I’d seen other podcasters saying that their sound was best in, in their closet. And then I wrote up pages and pages of notes and printed them out. I’m talking like five pages of notes. And so, I sat in my closet with my laptop and my mic in front of me, constantly referring to my notes and trying to turn them so quietly so the microphone didn’t pick up the sound of the paper, and shaking like a leaf the entire time.

Amanda Warfield: I had so much adrenaline running through my body. And now, I barely have to prepare before an interview because it’s become so second nature. Plus, the results that I’ve seen for guest episodes is unmatched. They helped my email list grow, they helped my book launch become such a success, and the backlinks to my own website are great for my own SEO.

Amanda Warfield: Which is why I brought on a podcasting expert to share more about a podcast tour and how you can use one in your own marketing this year. My own podcast producer and my dear friend, Haley Gaffin. Haley is a podcast producer, strategist, and owner of Gaffin Creative, where she helps podcast hosts plan their podcast launch and create strategic content that serves their brand and audience.

Amanda Warfield: As the founder of Mic Check Society, a community for podcasters, and host of The Clocking In Podcast, a podcast for professionals making their way in the working world, Haley is on a mission to help hopeful podcast hosts grow their brand. You’re listening to episode 202 of The Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

Amanda Warfield: This episode was brought to you by the Chasing and Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your own at amanda warfield.com/planner.

Amanda Warfield: How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Amanda Warfield: Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

Amanda Warfield: I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

Amanda Warfield: When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Amanda Warfield: Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Amanda Warfield: Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming. So that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

Amanda Warfield: So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? There are a lot of different marketing strategies out there.

Amanda Warfield: From content, to networking, to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies. When you aren’t seeing any from your own and after hearing from listener after listener wondering which marketing strategy They should focus on I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down Which strategies will be best for you based on your current phase of business?

Amanda Warfield: Head to amandawarfield. com / quiz to take it. Learn where you should focus your marketing energy and start seeing results from your marketing. Again, that’s amandawarfield. com / quiz. Haley, I’m so excited to have you back on Chasing Simple. And, um, last time, which I’ll link to this episode in the show notes, everyone, but last time we talked about really deciding what our success looks like for ourselves.

Amanda Warfield: And I think that was such an important topic. Especially at the time that, um, we recorded that, but you are such a knowledgeable expert. I can’t believe I haven’t had you back on the podcast before now. So, why don’t you go ahead and just introduce yourself really quickly, tell everyone who you are, what you do,

Haylee Gaffin: who you serve.

Haylee Gaffin: Absolutely. Thank you for having me back. Um, my name is Haley Gaffin and I own Gaffin Creative, which is a podcast production company for creative entrepreneurs. And we have really kind of niched into the podcast launch and production space to take all the heavy lifting of. Running a podcast off of the creative who does not really like to do that, but then we also run a podcast community called my check society where we provide educational content, a Facebook community, and we have, um, monthly calls as well.

Haylee Gaffin: And then I’m also the host of clocking in, which is a podcast for podcasters. And if

Amanda Warfield: you guys love the way the Jason Sibyl podcast sounds, Haley and her team are the ones that actually produce my podcast. It literally would not exist without them. Just straight up wouldn’t because I hate editing with every fiber of my being.

Amanda Warfield: They, they do it and they do it so well and it, they just make it sound so great. Could not say enough good things about Haley and her team, so just a little plug for them there. If you are looking for editing help because you also hate editing, they are my go to for sure.

Haylee Gaffin: I appreciate that.

Amanda Warfield: Okay, so today we’re going to talk about a podcasting tour and I wanted to talk about this specifically because I know that a lot of my listeners

Haylee Gaffin: are

Amanda Warfield: intrigued by the idea Of having their own podcast, but have maybe paid attention to things I’ve said and realized that it’s not no work.

Amanda Warfield: And there may be holding off on starting their own podcast. And so they want to just dip their toes in by guesting on other people’s podcasts. And I think this conversation about a podcast tour is going to be really beneficial to those that already have podcasts, those who maybe don’t even want podcasts, but want to grow their audience.

Amanda Warfield: in bigger ways and for those who are interested in a podcast, but maybe just not yet. So why don’t you go ahead and tell us what is a

Haylee Gaffin: podcasting tour? Absolutely. I think, like you said, a lot of creatives don’t know if a podcast is right for them. And that’s one of the first things I talk to potential clients with, uh, is if you don’t have the time to pitch yourself to be on podcast to go and record those interviews and to promote.

Haylee Gaffin: The podcast that you have been a guest on, then you probably don’t have time for a podcast because that is the easier side of things. Um, and when I say easier, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get every yes. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to, you know, magically be on 100 podcasts a year. That takes a lot of work, but if you can like.

Haylee Gaffin: Spend the time finding the podcast that you want to be on, pitching those podcasts. You can get a sense of, is podcasting right for me? Do I enjoy interviews? Would I rather be talking by myself? So I learned very early on that I prefer solo episodes. Like I enjoy creating exactly what I want to say. But as time went on.

Haylee Gaffin: That got harder and harder and I started realizing I need interviews. I need to talk to other people. I need to find ways to repurpose. But that’s not going to be the case for everyone. So figuring out what you like. by interviewing on other people’s podcasts, and that’s where a podcast tour comes in. So, a podcast tour, you can kind of make it what you want it to be, whether you’re going all in, in Q1 or Q2 of whatever year, and you’re pitching every single podcast you possibly could for a specific reason.

Haylee Gaffin: So, there are two main reasons that you would want to be on a podcast. One is to get visibility, and Share your expertise with a new audience, and then the other is to sell something. For the most part, those are your two main reasons. And when you go on a podcast tour, you can either spread it out through the whole year to get visibility, or you can go all in at one time and that be your main goal and focus.

Haylee Gaffin: And you’re pitching a ton of podcasts to be on them within a certain time range. And you’re telling them, hey, I have this thing launching, I would love for it to go out by this date if that’s possible. And depending on how much they have going on, they can usually make that happen if it aligns with what they need.

Haylee Gaffin: So,

Amanda Warfield: I know that this varies for everyone and everyone’s goals. But when you’re helping a client kind of come up with a podcast tour and decide if that’s right for them, what kind of numbers? Are you typically encouraging them to aim towards how many pitches do you encourage them to send versus and maybe you don’t even focus on this number versus how many you actually get on?

Amanda Warfield: What does

Haylee Gaffin: that look like? Yeah, so for most of my clients are not trying to hit a ton of podcasts in a certain time frame, they’re looking to. Like, oh, I want to be on two podcasts a month. And what I like to lean into is unless you have a personal relationship with the podcast hosts, you have a 50, 50 chance of getting on their show.

Haylee Gaffin: So if that’s the case, you want to pitch at least double. Or more of what you’re actually wanting to be on. So say your goal is to podcast a month. You should be pitching this month for next month because it’s likely they’re not going to be able to book you in this month. If they can, that’s awesome. If not, it’s okay, you know, just plan ahead.

Haylee Gaffin: But if you’re trying to get on to a month, four to six a month at least. Um, and sometimes if you’re shooting for like really big podcasts, It’s going to, you’re probably going to want to shoot for 10 pitches every single month in order to land your two.

Amanda Warfield: Okay, so then knowing that you want to pitch a certain number, how do you find podcasts to pitch to?

Haylee Gaffin: Yes, so there’s a few ways you can go about it. The one that most people are going to tell you is to go into Apple and find a podcast you love, scroll to the bottom and see the similar podcasts. But there’s a much easier tool that takes a lot less Work of you like going in and searching, and it’s called raf, it’s raf.com/graph, like G-R-A-P-H, and you can type in the name of any podcast.

Haylee Gaffin: So I’m gonna go in right now and I’m gonna type in chasing Simple and I’m gonna pull up exactly what it tells me similar podcasts are or, and this is podcasts that listeners will go in and. Like, if they listen to your podcast, they also listen to these other ones. So it basically creates a web. So I can see there are probably a hundred podcasts that I’m looking at right now.

Haylee Gaffin: And you could just kind of scan through all of them and see different podcasts that you could go in and pitch. And that’s based on one podcast that you enjoyed listening to. That may also be something your audience would want to listen to as well. Wait, how did

Amanda Warfield: I not know this existed? So, okay, does this tool, does it only show active podcasts or does it, is that

Haylee Gaffin: something you still need to research?

Haylee Gaffin: Oh, you know what? I’m actually not sure. I, I believe it’s only showing active because there was a time when my podcast was on a break. And I went in and searched, and I had six podcasts related to mine. And now that I’m active again, I have a hundred podcasts related to mine as, like, actively.

Amanda Warfield: Interesting.

Amanda Warfield: Okay, so that cuts out a whole extra step,

Haylee Gaffin: too. Yes. I would probably still make sure, like, because you’re going to go in and look at that podcast anyway to see what topics they’ve covered, I would still look and see that they’re active so you’re not wasting your time creating. A specific pitch for them.

Amanda Warfield: Okay, so going off of that, they find potential podcasts, how do they decide if it’s worth sending a pitch to?

Haylee Gaffin: Yes. So, this is where your judgment kind of has to come into play. There are people that are going to say, like, don’t pitch to the smaller podcasts. Well, I disagree with that because even if a podcast only has 10 active listeners, those 10 active listeners are listening.

Haylee Gaffin: And so if you are jumping on to sell a service, those are 10 potential people that could work for you. Um, so don’t let the number and like, we can’t see those numbers, but don’t let a number that someone says, Oh, I only have 10 listeners a month. Don’t let that deter you, um, because there’s so much more you can do with it.

Haylee Gaffin: That particular interview, which we can get to in a minute when we talk about repurposing, but when it comes to actually pitching and deciding, oh, should I pitch this podcast, make sure it aligns with your audience. Make sure that the topic makes sense. The number of times that my clients have gotten pitches and all of my clients are in the creative entrepreneur space.

Haylee Gaffin: The number of real estate. Pitches they’ve gotten the number of garbage truck pitches. I have personally seen where it’s like Oh, I run a trucking company that art we specialize in garbage truck Management that does not make any sense for any of my clients. So don’t be the person that pitches that if you’re creative Don’t go and pitch a garbage truck podcast.

Haylee Gaffin: It’s not going to make any sense unless you specifically want to serve that niche in whatever it is that you do. And it’s a waste of your

Amanda Warfield: own time, right? We’re all about keeping things simple, keeping things in the most efficient way we can. And if you’re sending pitches to things that aren’t going to do anything for your business, What’s the point?

Amanda Warfield: Which leads me to my next question. How do you get the most out of doing a podcast tour and guesting on podcasts?

Haylee Gaffin: Yes. So there are three main benefits that I see podcasters looking to grow and gain from doing a podcast tour. The first is building authority and credibility. The second is. Increasing their visibility and brand awareness.

Haylee Gaffin: So the difference between those two is you’re building authority for longevity versus. creating brand awareness kind of in the moment. And maybe you’ll get some Instagram followers, or maybe you’ll have a few new people explore your website. Um, but then the third is repurposing content. And then there’s one more that is actually selling.

Haylee Gaffin: So to get the most out of it, I personally think that if you’re going to go on a podcast, selling should not be your priority. But you can offer like an incentive of, Hey, here’s a freebie. If you want a free, if you want to come learn more about whatever I talked about in today’s episode, or if you’re trying to sell something like a service or a new offering that you have mentioning it, but you should be specifically focused on that brand authority and credibility and visibility and brand awareness, because it will create more opportunity for you longterm versus.

Haylee Gaffin: Oh, I want to sell this 19 product, like. That’s not necessarily going to be the thing that drives your business in the long run. As far as actually like taking advantage of those opportunities, grow your email list while you’re on them. Offer that freebie. Instead of saying like, oh, come work with me, which obviously you can also say that, but get them in there with a freebie as well.

Haylee Gaffin: Say, you know, oh, I have a podcast budget worksheet. You can head to Gaffincreative. com forward slash podcast budget, and there’s a little plug for you. But if you do that, they can get on your email list. Then you can nurture them in the longterm, but they have likely just met you as a guest on a podcast.

Haylee Gaffin: They don’t know you well enough to purchase from you. So keep that in mind as you are going on a podcast tour and getting yourself in front of new audiences. It’s so

Amanda Warfield: smart and I know that I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but the reality of podcast listeners is that. They, there’s no easy way to click over, so if you’re just selling the likelihood of them being like, oh, yeah, let me go out of my way to buy this thing is so slim, but if you’re giving them a really great freebie, they’re much more likely to go out of their way to grab something for free.

Amanda Warfield: That sounds really, really helpful to them. So would you say that your call to action for all three types? For all three goals is a freebie or would you, for any of them, would you do a different

Haylee Gaffin: call to action? You could definitely do a different call to action. I think the freebie is a great opportunity if you have one.

Haylee Gaffin: So for example, on this particular topic, I, as a podcast producer, work with podcast hosts. What we’re talking about today is very much Focused on the podcast guest. I personally don’t have an offering for you. Like I don’t have anything to drive you to me, but in the off chance that you are someone who wants to start a podcast, you now have my name, you now have my brand and you’re aware that people like me exist and that’s really all that I need.

Haylee Gaffin: When the time comes, they’re going to think, Oh, Amanda had that person on the podcast. What was her name? I’ll go look or I’ll DM Amanda. I’ll find out what it is. And that’s plenty for me. That’s plenty for most podcast guests. Now you can be very strategic and be like, Oh, I’m going to incentivize you to come follow me on Instagram, shoot me a DM.

Haylee Gaffin: That would be great if y’all want to do that. But like the purpose of brand. Visibility and awareness is to get my name out there. So, I don’t think a freebie is absolutely necessary. It doesn’t always make sense because I personally can’t serve guests in a way that a pitching agency could. You know? Yeah.

Haylee Gaffin: Okay.

Amanda Warfield: So, going off of that, if you don’t need a freebie, necessarily in order to be a guest on a podcast. What, how do you know if you’re ready to be on a podcast tour and ready to start really guesting on

Haylee Gaffin: podcasts? I think going in knowing what your goal is. So for a lot of business owners, I feel like they are afraid to start because they don’t know they’re speaking topics.

Haylee Gaffin: They don’t know what their long term offering is going to be. And I do think that’s a good flag for you to know whether or not you’re ready because Podcasts have a lot of longevity, they have a very long life, and if you are a brand designer going onto a podcast to pitch your web design services and in six months you realize I hate web design and I’m not going to do it anymore, you have a podcast out there.

Haylee Gaffin: That’s all about web design, and it doesn’t necessarily make sense, so I would definitely consider like, how long do I think I’m going to be in this role? How long am I going to offer these services? Am I happy with these services? And am I ready to speak on a topic? Without knowing where the conversation is going to go and can I do that?

Haylee Gaffin: Um, I’ll give you 1 example of where I had created an offering and I’m so excited. I pitched a client to put it on their podcast. We even talk about it in the show. I, it was a flop, the, the offering, it was like a group coaching program type of thing for podcasters and that still lives out there to this day.

Haylee Gaffin: It doesn’t exist. I never brought it back. Like, so just be very intentional about, okay, if I’m going to talk about something, is it something that’s going to live for at least a year on my website? Um, I think a

Amanda Warfield: good rule of thumb for any growth marketing strategy, not just podcast tours, is to first launch it to your audience.

Amanda Warfield: With any offering and test it with your current audience, you’ve already nurtured because they’re going to be more likely to go for some kind of offer like that or some freebie if they already trust you right versus a growth marketing strategy. You haven’t built that no, like, and trust factor yet. And so going to someone else’s podcast or doing a newsletter swap or whatever growth strategy you’re working on, you haven’t proved.

Amanda Warfield: With an audience you’ve already nurtured that it’s a success. It might not be something that’s ready for a podcast or

Haylee Gaffin: absolutely I completely agree with that and I think to Understanding that when you’re going on these podcasts Episodes and interviews, you don’t necessarily have to sell your services.

Haylee Gaffin: Um, it’s great too, but especially if you’re going on a podcast tour in order to learn whether or not your podcast or whether or not you actually want to launch a podcast. You have all the time in the world to craft exactly how you’re going to utilize your podcast. And you can learn from the experiences within each show.

Haylee Gaffin: So say you go on your first three or four episodes and you’re like, you know, I really would have rather talked about this thing. I didn’t feel as comfortable on this particular topic. You can shift that as you’re pitching in order to align it with what you want to do. Same goes for when you actually start your podcast.

Haylee Gaffin: You can go a few episodes in and realize I don’t like interviews or I don’t like solos and you have the opportunity to shift that and move it along to exactly what you want it to be. That’s such good

Amanda Warfield: advice. Yeah, everything’s just an experiment, right, when it comes to marketing. Let’s get into the logistics of this.

Amanda Warfield: And I’m kind of thinking that we break this up into before, during, and after. How do, what are the steps, how do they prepare to pitch slash be a great guest? What’s the before process

Haylee Gaffin: look like? Yes, so the before would start with doing your research. Um, using that chart that I mentioned, finding the podcast that fit you, but then when you are actually prepping to pitch, you need to be doing research on each individual podcast.

Haylee Gaffin: So step number one is do your research. Number two is crafting that actual pitch and customizing it. So if you’re offering. I’m going to be talking about two to three speaking topics of Hey, I would love to come out on your podcast and talk about, actually, this is what I, I like to see is I want to come on your podcast and talk about this, and this is why, but if that topic doesn’t align with your content calendar, here are two other topics that I could talk about the other thing with your pitch, it needs to be very custom to the person you’re pitching and their audience.

Haylee Gaffin: Here’s why. That it’s going to be a good fit for your audience. I know that you speak to XYZ because I actually listen to your podcast. There are times I’ve seen people like take the exact title of an episode and say, I loved your episode about and not even changing the title. They’re just copying and pasting.

Haylee Gaffin: Which, fine, like, I get you want to highlight exactly which episode, but I very rarely see someone who actually took the time to listen. And you don’t have to listen to a full episode, you can skim it, you can listen on 2x, you can fast forward, but make sure that The host knows that you know who their audience is, you know what their podcast is actually about, and you know the format of it.

Haylee Gaffin: So that would be step two, crafting relevant topics and your pitch. Can

Amanda Warfield: I just say that podcast hosts can tell if your pitch is genuine and if it’s not. It’s so obvious between the people who did their research and who just did a quick Google search. When you’re pitching someone that’s unknown to you, or you’re unknown to them, maybe I should say, the fact that they may not know who you are, I think, isn’t really what matters.

Amanda Warfield: What matters is how genuine and how custom your pitch is. The amount of people that I’ve been like, I don’t have a clue who you are, but your pitch was incredible, and I know that you took the time to do the research. Absolutely. Come on as a guest. I’m all here for it because I know if you put that time into a pitch, you’re going to put that effort into the episode as well.

Haylee Gaffin: Absolutely. I actually got a pitch that wasn’t for a podcast guest, but it was rather a, someone who wanted to help create additional content for my podcast. And they actually went through my whole website, pulled out phrases that I use and used it in the pitch. And I was like, This actually makes me want to hire you.

Haylee Gaffin: Like, I don’t like cold pitches for services, but it makes me want to hire you. So yeah, definitely keep that in mind. Um, and then additionally, when you’re crafting these pitches, make sure that you are providing more benefit to the host and their audience than you’re taking from the host and their audience.

Haylee Gaffin: There are a lot of benefits for podcasts. guests to go on a show. But in return, the really, the only benefit for a podcast host is they’re not having to create the content that they normally would have to do for a solo. And they might get your audience if you share, but that’s a huge problem in any pod, like any niche of the podcast industry is guests don’t necessarily always share.

Haylee Gaffin: So if you can highlight That you’re going to share that you’re going to be around to answer questions of their audience. Those are things that the podcast host will see and like, like that just sets you apart from other pitches. So those are all of my, like, befores. There’s two other things that you could consider doing.

Haylee Gaffin: Um, one is highlighting your credibility. So if you have a speaking page or you have an about page, highlight where you’ve been a guest on other podcasts if you have. If not, that’s okay too. We’re in the process of building that. Um, if you’ve spoken at other conferences, events, retreats, anything, summits, online summits are my favorite.

Haylee Gaffin: Place to get speaking experience because I personally struggle this on a stage and speak But I am fine doing it behind a camera, you know, like very different experiences for me And you can highlight that so make sure you highlight that if you have That to back you up and you can even link to that in your pitch as well and then during the actual pitching process my biggest recommendation is to Uh, be professional and responsive.

Haylee Gaffin: It is really hard for a host to get a pitch, respond immediately, and then not get anything back. So like, be aware of your inbox in the days after. Follow up. I wouldn’t necessarily say annoy them, but following up once, maybe twice, if they responded, uh, at one point and then just kind of stopped. Because they are busy.

Haylee Gaffin: Most of the time, especially in our industry, podcasting is not their full time job. They have an actual job that they’re using to market their podcast, or using the podcast to market their job. So just be aware of that as well. The last piece of this is always be networking and building relationships.

Haylee Gaffin: This happens before, during, and after the pitch. So if you are a long term person and you’re like, you know, I really want to start doing this next quarter. This is the quarter you should start engaging with their accounts, following them on social media, making sure they kind of have an idea of who you are.

Haylee Gaffin: If you have friends that have been on the podcast, ask them for an introduction. Like it’s very, it’s very easy to build relationships and networking. When you actually plan for it, and, um, I think the final thing I’ll say is. Be aware of if you decide to have someone else pitch you, there are going to be podcast hosts that don’t like that.

Haylee Gaffin: I think Amanda is one of them. I think they’ve heard me rant about this before. Yes. I personally don’t love being pitched by other people. I. I do understand the reasoning, and here’s my, here’s my thought process around it. If you’re someone who is too busy to pitch yourself, you have two approaches that are easy, easy opportunities for you.

Haylee Gaffin: Have them pitch as you. Like, it is so easy to just give someone either access to your email, or You just copy and paste their pitches into your email. It’s that simple. Or, if they are pitching you, have them copy you and give you a heads up. Hey, I’m going to start sending these at 8 a. m. if you’ll go through and respond to every single one of them and say, Hey, I just wanted to reach out and say I love your podcast.

Haylee Gaffin: I would love to be a guest. I think that virtual assistant name has added all the information above, looking forward to chatting. That way it’s not just like, I’ve never spoken to this person, they don’t have time to talk to me, they had someone else pitch me. That’s, that’s how I feel about it is like at least have some sort of communication with me if you want to be on my podcast 100%.

Amanda Warfield: Yeah. And it’s even like you said, it can be, they did all the work and you copy and pasted it and it at least makes me feel like you cared enough to do anyways. You’ve heard me rant about this. They’ve heard me rant about this. I won’t spend a lot of time on it. But yeah,

Haylee Gaffin: 100%. I will say too, there are podcast hosts that like, won’t take pitches of people who pitch themselves.

Haylee Gaffin: Because they think like, oh, they’re not qualified enough to have someone else pitch them, so. It’s, there’s like a, I don’t, it’s, it’s very interesting. It’s a weird industry. A great divide between the two

Amanda Warfield: camps. Okay, so we’ve done the pitch. We have gotten accepted on the podcast. I know that you edit a lot of interviews.

Amanda Warfield: What separates the good guests from the great guests?

Haylee Gaffin: Ooh, this is a I love this question. I hate when people say I love this question, but I really do. After editing so many podcast interviews, you’re like, I hear this phrase over and over and over again. Yes. So I actually do have quite a few tips. For the guest to be a good guest one is to, if you’re going to go on a podcast tour, or even just be on one, two, three podcasts, invest in a microphone, just do it and then understand how your microphone works because I have gotten plenty of podcasts that they use their computer microphone, which is awful, or they’ve used air pods, don’t use air pods, uh, you can use them to listen, but don’t use them As your microphone, it sounds really, really rough, worse than your actual computer.

Haylee Gaffin: Interesting. So if you take nothing else away, take that away. Do you have,

Amanda Warfield: sorry, do you have a page on your website that lists like different, like mics and stuff?

Haylee Gaffin: I do. I have, I can, we can link to it in the show notes. I’ll link to that. It has three, um, microphone options that I recommend. I don’t have the Blue Yeti on there.

Haylee Gaffin: That is a very popular one. And I do think, as I do this with the Blue Yeti. I, so here’s, here’s my thoughts around a blue Yeti. It is very popular. Most of my clients have them or started with them. And I think you can get a better quality sound for the same price. It’s just not as cute. Like my microphone was cheaper than a blue Yeti and it’s not very cute.

Haylee Gaffin: It’s just a black microphone. But, um, I do think that’s a good podcast guest microphone. If you’re like. Oh, I just want to use something easy. The other problem with Blue Yeti is most people don’t know how to use them properly, which is another reason I don’t. Necessarily recommend it does take a lot of research to understand the settings what side to actually speak into on your you’re doing it correctly already checked.

Haylee Gaffin: Yes. Yeah. But yeah, because you got on to me.

Haylee Gaffin: Once I started

Amanda Warfield: working with Haley, she was like, um, you need to change the setting and the setting. And I was like, how do you know that you haven’t even seen it? But yeah. It’s fine.

Haylee Gaffin: It’s fine. Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s my main reason for not doing a blue yeti, but if you have one, use it. Like I don’t, if my clients come to me and they have one, I’ve never tried getting you to switch microphones.

Haylee Gaffin: I don’t think it’s necessary. I think if you just know how to use it, it works great. So that’s my first tip for being a good guest. It’s just having solid client. Microphone, quality and audio quality. My second one is, and this is something that has come up a lot recently, is not, there’s a phrase we use in the podcast industry called Stepping on Lines, and it’s where, so I’m gonna have you tell me some, tell me about a cat right now.

Haylee Gaffin: Like one of your cats. Oh, cat. Oh.

Amanda Warfield: Um, well, pad may just left

Haylee Gaffin: me. Yeah. . Oh yeah. Mm-Hmm. . That’s stepping on people’s lines where you’re like constantly agreeing with them, or if you’re finishing their sentences. So like, if you and I are on the same page, but I’m taking a little longer to get it out, oftentimes a guest or a host will try to like help by finishing the sentence, but it interrupts the flow of conversation.

Haylee Gaffin: So that’s a, that’s the second tip for being a good guest is just learning not to step on lines. I think I’m actually pretty bad about that. That’s good to know. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I mean, I know I’ve done it to you a few times already today. No, I would say, like, a yes every now and then is totally fine.

Haylee Gaffin: And then the other thing is, like, internets. You know, the there’s a delay sometimes. So, yeah, this is good to know. This is something that I need to improve. Okay. Okay. So what’s the next step? Um, okay. The next step is knowing how you want to end your podcast episode. So this goes for both the host and the guest.

Haylee Gaffin: If the host is like, okay, and where can people find you? And you start sharing a hundred places, people can find you. They’re not going to go look them all up. So my recommendation is to actually just look up or just say your website, if you’re a business owner and your primary social media presence, and then if you have an offering, don’t go and list every single thing out.

Haylee Gaffin: Um, yeah, it’s people turn off. The podcast episode,

Amanda Warfield: I’ve got to be honest as a host, I would even say choose one, choose one thing. And if you do have your own podcast, that should be your one thing because you know you’re talking to podcast listeners, but I know that’s like my pet peeve when I’m interviewing people and they start listing off five things and it’s just like, all of these are linked in the show notes.

Amanda Warfield: Give them one action step. Cause they’re going to have all of

Haylee Gaffin: these in the show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if like you felt filled out an intake form. And, you know, like, oh, they’re going to link to all of these. Um, I wouldn’t even, yeah, I wouldn’t worry about all of them. If you don’t have a podcast, because if we’re talking to, like, people who are looking to get on podcasts instead of driving traffic to theirs, I would do your social media.

Haylee Gaffin: They can connect with you and stick to you, um, instead of, like, oh, you can head over to my website. I mean, you could, they could find you, but if you want them to connect with you on Instagram or TikTok or wherever.

Amanda Warfield: But yeah, if we’re building the know, like, and trust factor, where do you show up most? It’s probably going to be social media.

Amanda Warfield: Yes, absolutely. Okay, so any other tips for being a good guest?

Haylee Gaffin: Uh, I think the last one is just share. Share because they have shared their audience with you. Make sure you share the podcast episode with your audience as well.

Amanda Warfield: Which leads us into the What do we do after? So kind of share for us what we can do after the interview, after the episode airs to make sure that we’re getting the most out of the interview

Haylee Gaffin: that we just did.

Haylee Gaffin: So the number one thing is, like I just said, share, highlight it to other people on your email list, whatever social media platforms you’re on. Do the work to actually highlight, Oh, I know what I’m talking about enough to be on a podcast. Yeah. And if you are someone who you’ve been on 30 podcasts, make sure that you’re finding ways to still share and it’d be big because if you’re here’s a problem I’ve seen in the industry and it’s not that it’s really, it’s a problem for.

Haylee Gaffin: The host or the guest, it’s more on the host’s end of like asking great questions because say I pitch this topic to you, this podcast tour and the benefits of being a podcast guest. If I go and pitch it to 10 other people and they all have asked me exactly what you asked me, I’m likely not going to share their episodes.

Haylee Gaffin: But if they’ve done a little. pre research to figure out, okay, Haley has talked about this on this podcast. What can I do to separate myself from that interview? Then I’m likely going to share it because one of my favorite podcast interviews I’ve ever been on, we steered so far away from podcast production and like got into deeper personal connection.

Haylee Gaffin: And I was like, that was a, that was probably my favorite interview. And I barely shared about podcasting and it was. Really great for me to be able to share it and like, say, you’ve never heard a podcast interview like this before, but on the other end of things. You could also consider how you can repurpose the content.

Haylee Gaffin: So, if you are someone who has your own podcast, you can do a feed drop or a repurposed episode where you’re highlighting, I was interviewed on Amanda’s podcast, I really, I actually did this with Amanda’s, and, or making a blog post out of it. So highlighting exact conversations you had linking to the blog posts that Amanda puts out, that would be another way to repurpose your content

Amanda Warfield: for everyone listening.

Amanda Warfield: If you’re someone who’s like, I think I might want to start my own podcast. I might be interested in starting my own podcast. I’m actually going to link a couple different clocking in episodes. In the show notes, so you can listen to those that Haley already has this content that she’s created about starting a podcast and one of those that I’ve picked out to share is actually one of these episodes that Haley has repurposed from someone else’s podcast.

Amanda Warfield: And so if you want to see a little bit of how she actually does that, you’ll, you could check out the show notes and those different episodes and see that in the show notes. Yay,

Haylee Gaffin: I do. I really have been leaning into repurposing interviews lately. Um, and I wouldn’t say like repurpose them every like back to back, spread them out over time, especially if you’re in a busy season and you’re like, I just don’t know if I have the capacity to record another episode this month.

Haylee Gaffin: There you go. You have an episode already recorded. But as far as. Sharing or like, what to do right after an interview is there is no better place to show up than on the post of the person who hosted the episode. So go to their post. If they drop episode, like, in the feed, you can ask them if they’ll add you as a collaborator on the post.

Haylee Gaffin: You can ask them. Hey, do you mind if I drop in and comment? Actually, they don’t even care. As long as you’re engaging on their post, go in and get and engage with their audience. Who’s asking questions, commenting, whatever it is, um, show up on their social media posts when it goes live. Okay,

Amanda Warfield: so I’m curious if you have any tips, and you may not, but for repurposing episodes that maybe feel like five other episodes you’ve done.

Amanda Warfield: Do you have any tips on how we can repurpose those without feeling like we’re just repeating ourself over and over

Haylee Gaffin: again? Um, okay, I’ll push back a little bit because how many times does someone have to hear something for it to stick? And then You’re using my

Amanda Warfield: own words against me, Hayley.

Haylee Gaffin: I knew I would be.

Haylee Gaffin: And then the other thing is In every single podcast interview that you are a part of, that host is going to bring something new to the conversation that a different host didn’t or that you didn’t. The other benefit of repurposing content like that is that you’re more likely to sell to another audience than you are your own.

Haylee Gaffin: Like it’s so much easier to get What you do, what you offer out there. And I don’t think I realized it until I was working on client podcasts. And one of my clients never talked about her offerings on her podcast. But the second one of my other clients interviewed her, she like spouted off everything that they would need.

Haylee Gaffin: And I was like, you did so well in selling yourself. Why do you not do that on your podcast? And she’s like. I was just thinking that when I got off the interview with her. So it is so much easier to sell to a different audience that’s not yours. Um, because you’re trying to get into their audience versus your audience already has.

Haylee Gaffin: an idea of what you do, or at least you think they do. And sometimes they don’t like the number of times someone has come to me after they’ve launched a podcast and said, gosh, it was so hard. And I’m like, Oh, well I could have helped you. And they’re like, you are, apparently I don’t talk about launches enough.

Haylee Gaffin: So yeah, it’s always

Amanda Warfield: so humbling when your audience lets you know, like you’re not doing a great job at selling yourself.

Haylee Gaffin: Oh yeah, yeah, all the time I feel like that. Okay, so,

Amanda Warfield: wow, you’ve given us a lot to think about and to take from this. If you could give everyone just one action step to take this week, what would it be to kind of get started on this whole journey?

Haylee Gaffin: Absolutely. One action step I would say is to start thinking about the topics that you want to talk about, the key takeaways, and potential questions. To provide to the interviewer. That way you are setting them up for success, but also setting yourself up for success because you may give a topic to a podcast host and they may not go in the direction that you want them to, that would guide them into whatever offering you have for that particular topic.

Haylee Gaffin: So whatever resource you want to guide someone to, make sure that you highlight, Hey, I have this. Would you please ask me this question?

Amanda Warfield: Yeah, and even if you don’t have an offer, if you’re someone who’s just building visibility, there’s nothing more jarring than someone taking what they think your topic is about and taking you down this direction that it’s not about at all.

Amanda Warfield: And then you’re trying to figure out how to reel things back in to what you’re actually trying to teach. That’s, yeah, I learned that the hard way, so take Haley’s advice. That’s a great action. So, you have a membership for podcasters that I’m a part of, but I, and it’s geared mostly towards podcasters and that’s kind of how you market it, but I also think it could be really great for those that are just guesting on podcasts.

Amanda Warfield: So could you share that with everyone and just kind of tell them a little bit about what it is and how they might find it

Haylee Gaffin: helpful? Yeah, so Mic Check Society is our community for podcasters where we offer educational content and, um, a podcast. Facebook group. Uh, so it’s all of our members are inside of a Facebook group.

Haylee Gaffin: We do two lives a month and then we have a call every month that everyone can join and ask questions. And as far as like non podcast hosts, we do have a lot of resources for audio quality, making sure that you have a good sound. And we are always coming up with new topics based on the The requests of our members as well.

Haylee Gaffin: Um, it’s also a great place. If you’re looking to get started in podcasting, we do have a lot of podcasters who are still in the planning process. They’re not quite ready to launch a podcast, but they’re exploring the idea of it. And, um, yeah, it’s, it’s been a fun, exciting community to, to host and be a part of over the last year and a half.

Haylee Gaffin: And we have made some really fun changes. over time. So yeah. And I also have a discount code for your community. Um, if you use the code chasing simple, you will get 10 off per month, making it 9 a month for your membership.

Amanda Warfield: Oh, that’s amazing. Yeah. I would love to see you guys in there alongside me. The best way to get on someone’s podcast, I think, is to By having a relationship with them and this is a membership full of your ideal people if you’re trying to pitch to podcasts and that’s a great way to get your foot in the door and a really great way to be able to add a little we’re both in Hayley Gaffin’s Mic Check Society together kind of thing inside of your pitch.

Amanda Warfield: Just a little pro tip there for some of the ways that I like to um, position my pitches and how I often find people to pitch to is through memberships that I’m a part

Haylee Gaffin: of. Yeah, and we even have the members that want to, uh, contribute, we have a directory inside of the dashboard. So it has, if you want to pitch them to be on your podcast, if you have one, or if you want to pitch to be on theirs, um, they can say like, yes, I would love to accept pitches, um, or.

Haylee Gaffin: No, I don’t want to accept pictures. So you can go through that and kind of explore. Should I even say I got your information from Mic Check Society? That type of thing. Love that.

Amanda Warfield: Okay. One final question for you. And because you edit my podcast, you know what’s coming. If you could give everyone one book recommendation, doesn’t have to be business, can just be fiction, can be whatever you want.

Amanda Warfield: What would it be?

Haylee Gaffin: This is interesting because I just got back into reading, um, like for fun. I was a business all the time kind of book reader and I realized I hated reading because that’s what I was doing. So, I, I’m, I’m sure at some point in the last year this has ended up. On your podcast, but I was introduced through Tick Tock, but it ends with us.

Haylee Gaffin: I do not know what about that two book series. I loved so much, but I finished it in four days, the two, both books. It was for me, that was mind boggling. I don’t read like that. So that would be my recommendation. If you’re trying to get back into reading, I really thought you were going to go with this is the hurt of the traveling pants.

Haylee Gaffin: I’ve been burned. I’ve been burned in case y’all are not aware. There’s a. I don’t know. Is that a fifth book? Fourth? Fifth? I don’t know. There’s a final book to the Sisterhood series. Like ten years later or whatever. Yeah, ten years later it came out. I think I was out of high school or graduating. I don’t know.

Haylee Gaffin: But it’s very depressing. It’s not good. So if you a depressing, sad end to a wonderful series. Read it. Otherwise don’t. I’m gonna pretend that book doesn’t exist for all of time. I still have four chapters left and I can’t finish it. It’s really not worth finishing. I don’t think it is. It’s literally sitting up there since.

Haylee Gaffin: Yeah. No. Oh, thank you so much

Amanda Warfield: for being on again, Haley. And we’ll have to have you again at some point to talk about, you know, actually starting a podcast and what that looks like, because I know that’s going to be such a helpful topic as well, but I appreciate you

Haylee Gaffin: for being here today. Thank you so much.

Haylee Gaffin: And if anyone wants to connect, I’d love to connect over on Instagram. It’s just at Haley Gavin.

Amanda Warfield: Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Amanda Warfield: Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 202: Podcast Tours and the Benefits of Being a Podcast Guest with Haylee Gaffin appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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5 Business Lessons from Walt DisneyA few months back, I did an episode on the marketing lessons I’d learned from Taylor Swift. And I had a BLAST creating that episode, and based on the DMs I got, you had a blast listening to it.

So, today I wanted to come back with a similar episode. One where I take a passion of mine, and extract lessons on business. Today – I’m sharing 5 business lessons I’ve learned from Walt Disney himself.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: There are a LOT of different marketing strategies out there. from content to networking to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next – without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. After hearing from listener after listener wondering WHICH marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield.com/quiz/ to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing! Again, that’s amandawarfield.com/quiz/ * This episode was brought to you by my book Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/book/ * Find your Rising Tide Chapter * Episode 196: Marketing Secrets – What You Don’t See in Someone’s Marketing * Episode 184: 5 Marketing Lessons from Taylor Swift * This week’s action step: Find your nearest Rising Tide Society chapter and get plugged in! * This week’s book recommendation: The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateA few months back, I did an episode on the marketing lessons I learned from Taylor Swift, and I had a blast creating that episode. And based on the DMs that I got, you had a blast listening to it. So, today I wanted to come back with a similar episode, one where I take a passion of mine and extract lessons on business.

Today, I’m sharing five business lessons that I’ve learned from Walt Disney himself. You’re listening to episode 201 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And, when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? There are a lot of different marketing strategies out there, from content to networking to speaking to ads and so many more.

And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next. Without seeing results, especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. And after hearing from listener after listener, wondering which marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which strategies will be best for you based on your current phase of business.

Head to amandawarfield. com slash quiz to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy and start seeing results from your marketing. Again, that’s amandawarfield. com slash quiz. You can dream, create, design, and build the most beautiful place in the world. But it requires people to make the dream a reality.

Walt Disney once said this when asked about Disneyland, and he’s 100 percent correct. Disneyland is one of the most magical places in the world, right up there with, you know, Disney World, and probably the other Disneys, though I haven’t been to them just yet, and a few other special places to me. But it truly is magical, and without the thousands of people that go into these parks each day, It would be nothing without those people.

Disneyland, Disney World, Disney as a company would mean nothing. And yes, of course, financially, right? You’ve got this massive organization. You have to pay salaries. So you need people to come and spend money But even before that they never would have gotten to the park phase of this business if people hadn’t bought in to the earlier eras of Disney into the animation into the movies right by building a community around this magical animated cartoon kind of experience There would be no Disneyland.

There would be no Disney World. There would be no theme parks. So in order to make a dream a reality, you’ve got to have people. And as business owners, that means, yes, audience members, right? We need sales. We need people who want to buy what we’re offering. But we also need people in our corner. We need people who are there to support us.

And cheer us on in both the good times and the bad. We need business friends and business besties and even business acquaintances. We need to fill those circles that we have with people that we know and know of and that no one know of us. So I encourage you to really focus in on community this year. If that’s not already a goal that you have, I really, really encourage you to do that.

That’s the first lesson that I’ve learned from Walt Disney. The second lesson is a really fun one, I think. I nerded out over this when I discovered it last year. But, the Mickey that we have all come to know and love isn’t Walt Disney’s Mickey. When you walk through, I cannot think of the name of this attraction, but there’s an attraction at Hollywood Studios in Disney World, maybe One Man’s Dream might be what it’s called.

I cannot think of it off the top of my head right now, but there’s an attraction at Disney World in Hollywood Studios where you go through and it just showcases all of this, you know, Disney history and Those of us Disney nerds, of course, take our time and walk through it. It’s not a big exciting ride or anything like that, but I find it so fun.

And when my husband and I were walking through it, I guess this was A year and a half ago at this point, we were walking through and reading things and I came across this section that I either glanced over previous times of walking through or it just didn’t click for me, but it talked about the fact that the Mickey we know and love today was not actually drawn by Walt.

His Mickey was what kind of started Mickey Mouse, right? Obviously, he’s the creator of Mickey Mouse, but After Mickey had become successful, Walt knew that he needed to rebrand Mickey, and he actually hired someone else to do it. And so the Mickey we know and love today was, yes, created by Walt, because Mickey is his brainchild.

But another animator actually drew Mickey and created and rebranded Mickey into what he is today. So I thought that was really exciting just because I’m such a nerd but really interesting and it’s a great lesson and a great reminder to us as business owners that it is good. to outsource. It is good to focus on our zone of genius and then bring others in who can do the things that aren’t our zone of genius and make them even better.

Now, I know that outsourcing requires money and it requires profit, right? And that’s not always something that we can do right away, but it’s something to start thinking about, even if you can’t afford it yet. What would you like to outsource? The first thing I’ve shared this before, the first thing I ever outsourced was my podcast editing and it is the best money I spend every month because Without a doubt one this podcast would not continue on if I was having to edit I mean we are over 200 episodes in there would not be 200 episodes if I was the one that had had to edit all Of this time because not only is it not my zone of genius.

It is a nightmare for me and Had I somehow Mustard up the energy to actually edit 200 episodes. It wouldn’t be as good as what the amazing team at Gaffin Creative does for me. So. That’s something that I outsourced and it was the first thing I outsourced, cannot recommend it enough because it was something that I truly dreaded doing.

On the other hand, something that I don’t dread doing, but I know isn’t my zone of genius is design work, right? Now the Chasing Simple Content Planner. If you bought the 2023 version. That version is great for content as far as the planning and walking you through what you need to do and giving you the meat and potatoes, right, of what you need for planning out your content.

If you had that one and you thought, wow, this is ugly. There’s no judgment because I think that too I designed that one and I got what I needed into that planner to test it out To see is this what people want for me to see? Hey, is this a viable offer? I wasn’t going to hire someone for that first one if I didn’t even know it was gonna sell but for 2024 I knew that I wanted to hire a designer to actually make it beautiful as well as functional.

So instead of a hearty meal of meat and potatoes, you get this gourmet meal that could be served in a five star restaurant. It is beautiful. The designer did such a great job. Essentially the planner is my Mickey, right? The original one worked. It was a, a great test. It was proof of concept. And then I said, okay, time to hire someone else to rebrand this.

So it actually looks just as great as the work itself. And it is, it, it highlights And really showcases how great the planner is because it’s so beautiful and fun to look at. Those are things that, yeah, five years ago, I would have never been able to outsource. But as I’ve grown and as I’ve gotten proof of concept of different parts of my business and different offers, I’ve been able to go, okay, I know this is going to sell so I can afford to hire someone to outsource this for me.

Or I know this is going to do something for my business. So I know that I can outsource this, whether it’s something I dreaded or something that I didn’t mind, but knew wasn’t quite my zone of genius. The third lesson from Walt Disney is that all of our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.

And that’s the thing about a small business owner. You have to be courageous. This is not what’s considered quote unquote normal. This lifestyle, this instability that we sign up for. I mean, it’s all up to us, right? And especially for those of us in the online space, people that aren’t in the online space don’t get it.

So you have to be courageous. You have to be brave. You have to really believe in yourself enough to go, yes, I can do this, to go, okay. I believe in myself, I believe that I can make this work, it’s not going to be easy, but I’m going to do it. And I’m going to do something that other people aren’t brave enough to do.

And that quote is, it actually was on the journal of the very first notebook I used when I was first starting my business and I was terrified. And that reminder was a reminder to me that keep going. This is something you feel like you’re being called to do. Keep going, be courageous. You have to be courageous.

No one else can be brave for you here. Even with the most supportive husband. I mean, if you’ve read my book, you know that Russell was super supportive right off the bat, but You have to have that courage for yourself, and no one can have enough courage for you if you’re not courageous. And that doesn’t end once your business has started.

It is a daily drawing into this well of courage that you have to have in order to be a business owner. Now, the fourth lesson that I have learned from Walt Disney is that your launches are not What the end result of an offer is gonna be. So if you listened to episode 196, you heard me talking a lot about timing and creating offers and reiterating offers and all of this fun stuff.

Highly recommend that you go back and listen to that one if you haven’t already. But, let me give you a little timeline of Walt Disney’s story to showcase this. So, he began his career in animation in 1920. And then, three years later, he filed for bankruptcy and left Kansas City to move out to California.

So in 1923, just three years later, he begins his career, and then he has to file for bankruptcy and move away. Five years after that, Mickey comes about. Mickey was created in 1928, eight years after he began his career in animation. His first feature length animated cartoon, Snow White, came out in 1937, 17 years after starting his career in animation.

So for 17 years, he wasn’t even creating Disney movies, which is what we all have come to know and love, right? For those of us that are 90s babies, 80s babies, that’s what we grew up on was those great Disney movies. It took Disney 17 years to even get the first one out there. And actually move into that offer.

That wasn’t an offer he had. Sixteen years after that, so sixteen years of creating animated cartoons, Disneyland construction begins in 1954. Thirty four years after he began his career in animation. And then it opened in 1955. So again, when we think Disney, we think incredible movies, we think theme parks.

That’s, those are the two big things, and it took thirty four, thirty five years to get to that place of having the theme parks. And, here’s a little fun fact. Opening day for Disneyland was a complete disaster. There were attractions that weren’t ready and weren’t opened yet. It was so hot that the asphalt on Main Street was literally melting.

Drinking fountains weren’t working, which again, it was very, very hot. Bathrooms had crazy lines because they didn’t have enough bathrooms, they ran out of food and drinks. It was a unqualified disaster. And yet, you look at the Disney world, the Disneyland, the Disney brand of today, and it’s a well oiled machine.

I Nerd out over the little details of operations for Disney, especially, which I’m not going to go into here, but if you also want to nerd out about that kind of thing, head to the Pixie Dust and Profits podcast and listen to some of their episodes, because they really take a deep dive into things like that in every episode, and it’s incredible.

But in 1955. Disneyland opened and was a total disaster and yet look at it now and it’s been almost 70 years That’s a long time. I mean Walt Disney wasn’t even alive to see Disney World opened but all of this has come about over time and through trials and failures and reiterations and improvements and so when I hit this wall of feeling like my business Always has to be changed and I’m always tweaking things and like I’m just never getting it right This is always a great reminder for me that hey Disney never quite got it right either.

There were always improvements right and He had ups and downs as well So if Walt Disney can accept that or you know if he this amazing visionary could go through that and then build this amazing company that’s here today, I can also handle that. And then the final lesson kind of goes off of that, and it’s that Walt Disney once said that Disneyland will never be completed.

It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world. And that is just a reminder to me that my business will never be done. I will never reach this place of feeling like I quote unquote made it. That I have it all figured out and that I’m not going to make changes. It’s just simply always going to be continuing.

It’s just simply always going to be growing and always going to be changing. And as long as I can continue to create a vision and continue to be imaginative, it’ll never be complete. Now, your action step this week goes back to that very first lesson from Walt Disney, and that is to find your people. I have been talking about this a lot recently, for good reason, because in 2023, one of my goals was to find more community, and I cannot tell you how great it was 2023.

I had a really hard year personally, but I had my best year in business. Because, and I know it was very specifically because I had community, and not just financially my best year in business, but mentally my best year in business. So, find your community, and if you need help doing that, I really recommend, here’s your action step, to find your nearest Rising Tides Society chapter and get plugged in.

I absolutely adore the Rising Tide Society. I love what their mission is. I help with their marketing. It is a non profit that is really passionate about helping connect entrepreneurs and creative entrepreneurs in the online space to Build community over competition. And so so you can find your nearest chapter for free I will link in the show notes where you can do that And I just cannot recommend it enough go try it out again.

It’s free You can go get plugged in with other people in your community Which is so nice to be able to meet up in person with other entrepreneurs And that’s your action step for this week Now, your book recommendation is The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth. And I have to be honest, I don’t remember anything about this book.

Um, I read a lot faster than I record podcast episodes, and so I am still recommending 4 and 5 star books from 2022. And this was at the tail end of 2022 when I read this, and so I don’t remember what it’s about, and looking up the description didn’t help jog my memory, so I don’t remember what it’s about.

I’m, it’s a thriller of some sort, um, kind of a mystery thriller, so if you like those types of books, I did rate it very highly, I just don’t remember what it’s about. So I will link to it in the show notes and you can check it out yourself, but The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth. And now, my friend, until next time, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing abyss.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode’s show notes, as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing, over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 201: 5 Business Lessons from Walt Disney appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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A Look Back at 6 Years in BusinessIt’s more than a little surreal to be recording my 200th episode of the Chasing Simple podcast.

200 Episodes. 54 incredible guests. And a wonderful team who helps make this happen each and every week.

To Haylee and Megan of Gaffin Creative – thank you. This podcast would not and could not still exist if I had to edit each episode myself. You two are the real MVPs.

To Jennifer Gregson my wonderful VA. I would be completely drowned by this business without you as my right hand lady. Thank you thank you thank you for always being so top of things and forcing me to ask for help.

And to you, my listeners. Without you, there would be no podcast. Thank you to each of you that DMs me and shares your takeaways and your action steps each week. Thank you to each of you that shares about the podcast on your Instagram and tags me. And thank you to each of you that silently tune in week after week. I am beyond grateful for you most of all.

I wanted to come up with a fun and cool episode for 200, but after thinking it over for quite some time, I realized that I should just do what I do best here on Chasing Simple and get really transparent with you about my business journey to date.

So, buckle up and get ready to hear about my business journey over the last six years – the ups and downs, the false beliefs, and just how full circle everything has come.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: There are a LOT of different marketing strategies out there. from content to networking to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next – without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. After hearing from listener after listener wondering WHICH marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield.com/quiz/ to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing! Again, that’s amandawarfield.com/quiz/ * This episode was brought to you by my book Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/book/ * Episode 093: Defining Your Own Success with Haylee Gaffin * This week’s action step: Write out your own business journey. Celebrate how far you’ve come. * This week’s book recommendation: The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateIt’s more than a little surreal to be recording my 200th episode of the Chasing Symbol podcast. 200 episodes, 54 incredible guests, and a wonderful team who helps make this happen each and every week. To Hayley and Megan of Gaffin Creative, Thank you. This podcast would not and could not still exist if I had to edit each episode myself.

You two are the real MVPs. To Jennifer, my incredible, wonderful VA, I would be completely drowned by this business without you as my right hand lady. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for always being so on top of things and for forcing me to ask for help. And to you, my listeners, Without you, there would be no podcast.

Thank you to each of you that DMs me and shares your takeaways and your action steps each week. Thank you to each of you that shares about the podcast on your Instagram and tags me. Thank you to each of you that has left a review of the podcast in Apple Podcasts or wherever it is that you listen. And thank you to each of you that silently tune in week after week.

I am beyond grateful for all of you, most of all. I wanted to come up with a fun and cool episode for 200 because it’s a big deal, but after thinking it over for quite some time, I realized that I should just do what I do best here on Chasing Simple and get really transparent with you about my business journey to date.

So, buckle up and get ready to hear about my business journey over the last six years. The ups, the downs, the false beliefs, and just how full circle everything has come. You’re listening to episode 200 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by you.

Thank you for being here today, my friend.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And, when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee, or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? There are a lot of different marketing strategies out there, from content, to networking, to speaking, to ads, and so many more.

And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next. Without seeing results, especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. And after hearing from listener after listener, wondering which marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which strategies will be best for you based on your current phase of business.

Head to amandawarfield. com slash quiz to take it. Learn where you should focus your marketing energy and start seeing results from your marketing. Again, that’s amandawarfield. com slash quiz. February 2018, which was. Six years ago was when I conceptualized starting a business. It’s when I, if you’ve heard my story, I went to Russell and said, I want to start a blog and turn it into a business.

And I don’t know how, but I really feel like this is something I need to do right now. And that was six years ago. I’m starting my seventh year. of Dreaming Up My Business Now, and it’s really fun that my 200th episode of the podcast coincides with that. And man, there’s just so much to look back on, but going all the way back to February 2018, it’s, it’s such a fun full circle moment.

Um, we were living in Washington, and I was yearning for more freedom and flexibility. In finances, but also just More importantly, in life, it felt like my schedule and Russell’s schedule was constantly conflicting. I just wanted to be able to spend more time with him, and When I started thinking about starting a blog in a business, I didn’t really know what to expect.

I didn’t have a clear picture of what that would encompass or what things would look like and I knew I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. But the more I learned as I prepared to launch in May of that year, The more I was really convinced that I was going to have this six figure success in if not year one, definitely year two.

And I’d have thousands and thousands of followers. And I just was convinced that I would be making tons of money with my business. And that success looked like that, that that’s what success was. And I think that’s really what the root of it was, is that I was very confident in the fact that this would be a success.

One, because I’m stubborn, but two, because this was something so out of left field that I Was really feeling called to and Something so unexpected. I had never Necessarily thought I would start a business which we can go back even further and I can see the threads of the fact that really I Was an entrepreneur from a very young age But I I didn’t have that logical thought in my mind.

And so this felt so out of left field I felt so called to it and I was convinced it would be a success But you know What I realize success is now, and what I thought success was then, very different things. I was very much fed and believed the idea that six figures and working on your laptop at the beach or at the pool meant success.

And now I realize that making enough to have freedom and to not have to take my laptop to the pool or to the beach is really what success means to me. But, regardless, that’s where I thought I would be, and so I thought it’d be fun to just Let’s, let’s explore the journey of what each year looked like and where things have gone and how I ended up to where I am now.

So 2018, like I said, that’s, that’s where I started with the idea and this all came to me in February and I tried to push it away and it kept coming back up and so I talked to Russell and he was, you know, all for it and super supportive and um, I spent February, March and April learning. All I could about everything, everything I needed to do to start a blog and to Start a blog that would become a business and setting up my website and doing this and doing that and I was just doing all Of the things and I officially launched on May 1st of 2018 And then I spent the rest of the year really focusing on things like routines and time management I created my first educational offer because I always knew right off the bat that I wanted to use my skills and my love of education within this business.

And so my first offer was a workbook on routines. And I’ve shared this before. I thought it was going to be this huge launch. And I thought, you know, if I build it, they’ll come. I did all the things that everyone said. I, you know, I created it. I beta tested it. I, I got people to help with the launch, you know, did all of these things.

And When you look at the numbers, it was a huge success as far as conversion rates go, but of course my audience was teeny tiny Um, and so I felt like it was a huge failure. And so then that was, you know, end of 2018, then I started thinking Okay, well, what else can I do? Because of course my mindset was if that didn’t earn me a ton of money Then it must be the offer Right.

That was that was definitely where my mindset was. It’s got to be the offer if you build it They’ll come if it’s a great thing so 2019 I spent the basically the entire year focusing on capsule wardrobes and I built out my first course and Again, when I launched it that summer, it was a great success by the conversion rates But again, my audience was small And, so even though I felt good about that launch, I also didn’t at the same time.

Like, I was excited because I had pulled off what I felt like was a major launch, and I was excited because I You know, I sold like courses and people went through the course and told me like I had great feedback from it So that felt good. But what didn’t feel good was that I only made like two thousand three thousand dollars that year total Which you know again in hindsight, obviously it makes so much sense But now I know a lot more than I did then and so I was like, well Maybe what I should actually focus on is time management.

And so 2019 was the year that we left Washington, Russell got out of the military, and we moved back to South Carolina at the very end of 2019. And at that time, at the very, very end of 2019, in December, I decided I was going to start offering. One on one time management coaching and so that was when I very first started offering that and I was specifically talking to other business owners with this whereas before my audience had been Basically anyone it wasn’t specific to business.

It wasn’t specific to I didn’t have an audience necessarily It was just literally anyone who wanted to get a little bit more organized and feel less overwhelmed and wanted to simplify and then This time management. I was like, you know what I’m gonna focus specifically on business owners. I have spent the last two summers being full time in my business and in between during the school year running this as a side hustle and As of the move I was officially full time with the business again, not because I was making money was not at all but because Of the timing of the move, we didn’t move until the very end of August, so we got to South Carolina like mid September because we took our time and drove across the country and explored and all of that.

And at that point, the school year had started. As a teacher, I wasn’t finding. a lead teacher position at that point, and we had decided that it was a good opportunity for me to give the blog a chance, to give the business a chance, and try to see if I could grow it full time, because Frankly, if you’re not a lead teacher at a preschool, um, you’re making minimum wage.

And minimum wage in South Carolina is and was 7. 25 an hour and we just kind of thought, you know what, that’s not, it’s not that much money and we can get by on Russell’s income. So we took the chance and we took that dive. And so I started focusing more on time management for business owners. Then 2020 rolls around and in January, again, this is four or five months later, I and Russell are stressing about the fact that I’m not seeing movement and growth in the business.

And, you know, in hindsight, of course I was seeing it, but we didn’t feel like it was moving fast enough. And so I got a job. I became a floater for a preschool and I also signed up to be on their substitute list and that was end of January, early February of 2020. And then we all know what happened very shortly after that.

So, um, with the pandemic, I was forced back into full time entrepreneurship essentially. And yeah, it It really forced me to keep going with what I was doing to not give up, and by accident, things took off in 2020, so two years after I had started. So by accident, things took off. I posted on Instagram. You know, just a random post that I threw out there about how I batched out a month’s worth of content in just one week, and it got a ton of traction.

And then I thought, huh, I’ve never had anything get this much attention, so let me post about it again. And so I did, and it once again got a ton of attention. And I thought, hmm. This, this could be something and so I continued to talk about batching and I created a course on content batching, content batching bootcamp.

I still have it today. It’s my best selling course by far. And that’s it. At the time, I was really insistent that I was simply focusing on time management and systems when it came to batching, which is essentially what batching is. It’s, it’s a system that you create and a way to manage your time and your resources and your mental capacity for content creation.

But as I taught it, because I taught it live the first three times as I taught it, and I launched it one after another, after another, I kept getting questions about content strategy. And I realized, oh, I, I know this stuff. This is, this is something that I know. And I, I do understand it. And so the more I got asked about it, the more I talked about it and throughout the end of 2020 and into the beginning of 2021, I realized, huh.

Um, I can’t help people with their marketing strategy. And so I started taking on strategy clients at the end of 2021 for 2022. And I spent 2022 really serving those clients well and really fine tuning and perfecting how it is that I create my own strategies and how I create those strategies for clients.

Learning what my process was and what I believed about marketing. And I also, in 2022, was the first time I spoke on stages. I spoke at a handful of conferences and events that year. Focused on building funnels on the back end of my business, so that I could have not just launch launches, but also evergreen promotions.

So I had the launch promotion and evergreen promotions together. But, I spent a lot of time in 2022. Wondering what I was doing wrong. I still was not making all that much money. So, 2022 was the year that I was finally bringing home what I made as a preschool teacher. But, that was what, 1, 2, 3, 4 years into my business.

I was finally bringing home what I made as a preschool teacher. Not much, not a lot, not a lot at all. So, I spent a lot of time wondering what I was doing wrong. I felt like I have the knowledge, I know what I’m doing, I understand business strategy, I’ve got funnels, I’ve got launches, I’ve got this, I’ve got that.

Why am I not farther ahead? Why do I feel like Something’s missing. Spoiler alert! What I was missing was relationships, and early in 2022, I did a lot better job of building those relationships, and I spent 2022 spending a lot of time building relationships, and I cannot tell you the difference that it ended up making in my business.

In 2023, I launched my book, which, you know, most of you probably know, if you listened to the introduction of this episode, you know, I launched my book. I started writing it in 2022. And when I launched the book in 2023, it had all, like, there was so much success. And I’m still just honored beyond words for that.

But it all is because. I’ve built relationships and I spent so much time intentionally building relationships and people were happy to spend 20 ordering a book and to share about it on Instagram and say, Hey, I know her and she wrote a book. And so all of that happened, you know, leading up to July, 20, 23, things were.

A huge success, 2023, every year in business has gotten just better and better. And so, 2023 felt very successful for me as a business owner. In 2022, I launched My shop and so in 2023, I spent a lot of time Doing even more with the funnels on the back end of my business so that things sell evergreen a whole lot easier So that when people come in at one point, there’s you know This entire ladder for them and there’s three different ladders and I could share about all that another episode But basically I was really Flexing out the foundations of my business and then in July, which if you’ve listened to my episode from beginning this year about my 2024 goals, you know, that things took a drastic turn in the year and life has just been constant since then.

And now that full circle moment, um, I ended 2023. back in Washington, living in Washington again, and working part time, which it’s such a nice full circle moment because when I was working part time before I felt like I had to and I so desperately wanted to build this six figure business because I wanted to be successful and I wanted this freedom and now I’ve come to realize I don’t, I still, to this day, we’re in year seven of business now.

I have not hit six figures. I could hit it this year, but I’m not even counting on it, honestly. Yet, I feel so successful. I’m going to be the breadwinner for our family for a large chunk of this year. I’m working part time not because I have to, but because I I really want to because I enjoy that part time job and because it’s something that I feel really passionate about and that is such a difference maker and that is the exact freedom and flexibility that I really wanted when I started my business.

And so man, it’s been such a journey and it’s, it’s made me emotional, um, to sit here and think about how full circle it has become in the last six years. So. What I want to encourage you to do this week, your action step, write out your own business journey. Celebrate how far you’ve come. If you feel like sharing about how far you’ve come, please send me a DM.

I’d love to celebrate you and I also just want to really encourage you to To think about what success means to you, there’s another podcast episode I will link to it in the show notes where Hayley Gaffin came on and we talked about this previously So you can listen to that if you haven’t already.

It’s been a while since it came out So maybe you should free listen, but yeah, write out what your journey looks like take the time to celebrate it and really sit down and think about what success means to you because Often the reason we started our businesses What we envision success being isn’t what it actually is, but the heart and the root of what we think success is.

Was there from the beginning, if that makes sense? I don’t know, maybe that’s really convoluted, but basically it’s just kind of amazing to sit back and think about. So, okay, I’m gonna stop rambling. Thank you for letting me share that with you and just enjoy this full circle moment for episode 200 of the Chasing Civil Podcast.

I am so grateful that you’re here. Whether you, this is the first episode you’ve listened to, or if this is the 200th episode that you’ve listened to, I am beyond grateful for you. I wouldn’t be able to keep. running this podcast without the listeners. So thank you. for tuning in as often as you do. And I’m just incredibly grateful for you.

Your book recommendation for this week is The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hildebrand. Uh, she is often recommended by me. I love her work. I will link this one in the show notes as well. But basically it’s got, it’s got some historical drama kind of. Sort of mixed into it, which is a fun twist on what she normally does, but it’s, it’s about a hotel, and this hotel is, has rumors to be haunted, and there’s some things, you know, some, some drama and some mysteries that you’re trying to figure out, and yet it still has her typical flair, so.

It was a really fun, I don’t want to say deviation of what she normally writes because it was still similar, but she, she added some extra things this time around that I thought was really fun. So, The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hildebrand. And until next time, my friend, thank you for being here. I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 200: A Look Back at 6 Years in Business appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Increasing Sales By Getting To Know Your AudienceOne of the most frequently asked questions in my annual survey is – how do I find and get to know my audience? Which, is valid, because understanding your audience is one of – if not THE- most important part of marketing.

If you don’t understand your audience, consistency won’t matter. Exciting launches won’t matter. Basically, nothing will matter. So, I brought in an expert on messaging and market research to help us dive into who our audience is and what they need from us.

Nadine Nethery is the Founder of CAN DO! Content and a strategic website and email copywriter for female founders who want to intentionally attract, delight and retain their dream customers. Her strategic take on audience research and copy turns every brand touchpoint into genuine connections that drive sales, celebrate loyalty and surround you with keen brand advocates who happily do the word-spreading for you. Over the past 7 years, Nadine has given global e-commerce success stories, game-changing startups and industry-disrupting service providers the words to shine and the strategies to build a sustainable business long-term.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: There are a LOT of different marketing strategies out there. from content to networking to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next – without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. After hearing from listener after listener wondering WHICH marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield.com/quiz/ to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing! Again, that’s amandawarfield.com/quiz/ * This week’s action step: Send your first survey (Grab Nadine’s freebie with survey questions HERE) * This week’s book recommendation: Do Less by Kate Northrup * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Nadine Nethery is the Founder of CAN DO! Content and a strategic website and email copywriter for female founders who want to intentionally attract, delight and retain their dream customers. Her strategic take on audience research and copy turns every brand touchpoint into genuine connections that drive sales, celebrate loyalty and surround you with keen brand advocates who happily do the word-spreading for you. Over the past 7 years, Nadine has given global e-commerce success stories, game-changing startups and industry-disrupting service providers the words to shine and the strategies to build a sustainable business long-term.

Social Links:

https://www.candocontent.com

Freebie: https://www.candocontent.com/survey-questions

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/candocontent

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAmanda Warfield:* One of the most frequently asked questions in my annual survey is how do I find and get to know my audience? Which is valid because understanding your audience is one of, if not the, most important part of marketing. If you don’t understand your audience, consistency won’t matter. Exciting launches won’t matter.

Amanda Warfield: So basically, nothing will matter. So I brought in an expert on messaging and marketing research to help us dive into who our audience is and what it is that they need from us. Nadine Nethery is the founder of CanDo Content and a strategic website and email copywriter for female founders who want to intentionally attract, delight and retain their dream customers.

Amanda Warfield: Her strategic take on audience research and copy turns every brand touchpoint into genuine connections that drive sales, celebrate loyalty, and surround you with keen brand advocates who happily do the word spreading for you. Over the past seven years, Nadine has given global e commerce success stories, game changing startups, and industry disrupting service providers the words to shine and strategies to build a sustainable business long term.

Amanda Warfield: You’re listening to episode 199 of the Chasing Simple podcast. And I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own copy at amandawarfield.com/book.

Amanda Warfield: How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly.

Amanda Warfield: How do I put it all together to market my business strategically? Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity.

Amanda Warfield: I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing. I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

Amanda Warfield: When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And, when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

Amanda Warfield: If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Amanda Warfield: Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

Amanda Warfield: So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall

Nadine Nethery: we?

Amanda Warfield: There are a lot of different marketing strategies out there.

Amanda Warfield: From content, to networking, to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next. without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own.

Amanda Warfield: And after hearing from listener after listener wondering which marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down Which strategies will be best for you based on your current phase of business? Head to AmandaWarfield. com slash quiz to take it. Learn where you should focus your marketing energy and start seeing results from your marketing.

Amanda Warfield: Again, that’s AmandaWarfield. com slash quiz. Hi, Nadine. I am. So excited about this conversation. Like I just mentioned before we hit record, I know that this is something that my audience has heard me talk about more than once, but I’m really excited to hear an expert’s take on the how of it, the why of it, just more in depth conversation about.

Amanda Warfield: Really getting to know your own audience, but before we get into all of that good stuff, tell us a little bit about who you

Nadine Nethery: are and what you do. Yeah, certainly. Thanks so much for having me, Amanda. Um, can’t wait for this chat. One of my favorite topics. Um, so I’m Nadine, I am a strategic website and email copywriter for women led brands, and I’m based in Sydney, Australia, um, where I am on the outskirts, on five stunning acres and chase my three kids when I’m not.

Nadine Nethery: Busy in my copywriting cave, um, working for, for client projects. I came into copywriting like so many of us on a bit of a detour. I’ve got a background in marketing and corporate communications. So I’ve always had to find that special angle to sell a product or, um, You know, um, come up with that unique point of difference to, to really get people to, to fall in love with the brand.

Nadine Nethery: Um, and then, yeah, redundancy came along, you know, several pregnancies, as I said, and, um, that sent me on a bit of a soul searching journey to work out what I want to do, how I can have the biggest impact, um, and also find the biggest fulfillment. So yeah, it took a few years, but, um, eventually. Came into copywriting via content marketing, um, because back then, you know, social media had organic reach and actually, um, was somewhat more, um, yeah, more easy to tackle than it seems today.

Nadine Nethery: So it came into. My own business that way, and then fell in love with copywriting, went, um, and trained with some of the best copywriters because I love learning and, um, yeah, it took the full time plunge into, um, yeah, quitting my, my corporate geek in late 2020, and I’ve never looked back and nowadays I get to support amazing women.

Nadine Nethery: Um, both e commerce and service based businesses on their copywriting journey and, um, yeah, finding their voice, getting their point of difference across, and most importantly, writing copy that really speaks to the core of their dream audience. What

Amanda Warfield: happens when we don’t truly know and understand our audience?

Amanda Warfield: How does that affect our

Nadine Nethery: marketing? Yeah. Um, basically it means you are basing everything in your business on assumptions, because let’s face it, we are all super close to our business. We are very passionate about with what we do. We think we know our zone of genius and why people are actually trusting us with, um, their brand and.

Nadine Nethery: inviting us into their business to help them. But, um, yeah, when it comes down to it, um, that can be a huge problem for your marketing because your messaging is going to fall flat. Um, your copy actually is not going to speak to the problems, the desires, the transformation that your audience is hoping. And ultimately you can send as many emails and, um, You know, send out as many social media posts as you want, but it’s not going to get you the result that the audience actually is going to be primed and ready to, um, see you as that perfect fit and the perfect solution to help them out of their, um, yeah, out of their funk.

Nadine Nethery: That’s so

Amanda Warfield: good. And just the idea of your copywriting falls flat. I know that I’ve experienced this. I’m sure my audience has when you think like, Oh, I’ve got everything set up and prepped and ready to go for this launch or this new offer or whatever it may be. And you put the content out there and it just crickets.

Amanda Warfield: And you’re like, man, I thought, I thought I had it figured out. And so that’s a sign of actually, you didn’t dig deep enough quite for your audience and, and they don’t feel like, you know, them, they feel like you just kind of have a general idea of them. So on the flip side of that. What do you see happen when you have clients that you’re working with and you guys are able to really ensure that you do understand their audience?

Nadine Nethery: Yeah, so every client, um, project that I take on always starts with audience research and actually taking that step back and, um, yeah, having a conversation with either their existing audience, if they established and they’ve been around, around for a while. Or if they are trying to change a niche, you know, launching new offers that speak to a different audience, um, we’re going to actually speak to them, their ideal new audience to make sure that we have that messaging down pat.

Nadine Nethery: So, um, yeah, that process often comes with so many aha moments. Um, along the way as well, not only when it comes to the way they’re showing up online, but also, um, when it comes to their services, how they deliver them, the products, um, in themselves, the, you know, online course, et cetera. So it really, um. Yeah.

Nadine Nethery: Helps them, helps them understand themselves more, their business more. And, um, yeah, it, it means ultimately their website copy, the email copy is doing the selling for them with them without having to push that hard sell. So they can just be authentic. They can show up with empathy because they have that clear understanding.

Nadine Nethery: And it makes everything so much easier. Um, and ultimately even your website becomes a, an organic sales machine where people who resonate with your messaging are going to reach out, book that discovery call, book, you know, your one on one session. If you can book online. Um, and those people who aren’t your perfect fit audience, they’re not going to waste your time or their time, and they’re going to click away.

Nadine Nethery: And ultimately that is what your website should be doing. It shouldn’t be vanilla speak to everyone. Um, it really needs to do that pre selection for you. Um, and it is, it just means you run a much more streamlined business that organically attracts, um, who is perfectly positioned to buy from you. So how do you go

Amanda Warfield: about getting to know your audience?

Amanda Warfield: What do you do?

Nadine Nethery: Yeah. So, um, as I said before, you can either tap into your existing audience or into, um, that potential audience that hasn’t worked with you before, and they are both really valid, um, really amazing perspectives and, um, you can. Begin with a customer survey. So that’s how we usually begin.

Nadine Nethery: It’s a very strategic set of questions that takes your customers or that perspective audience on, um, a journey to relive that experience with your brand. So it starts with looking at what happened before they decided that they need help with X, Y, Z problem. And you know, those mindset hurdles that were going on, how they potentially consider.

Nadine Nethery: Solving that problem and then also what made you that perfect fit. Um, then we’re shifting to, um, during the process. So those first aha moments that came with it, um, the immediate transformation, immediate wins. And ultimately down the track, you want to, um, work out the tangible results. So hard hitting wins that you can turn into amazing.

Nadine Nethery: Really relatable copy bits and pieces. So that can be numbers that can be, um, you know, increase in retention. It just makes it super relatable rather than sticking with, um, words like, you know, uplifting, empowering, like I empowered my customers, my customers felt more confident, all those things are great, but, um.

Nadine Nethery: You know, no one can really relate to it. Whereas if you can put hard numbers to it and actual results like, you know, I doubled, um, the number of inquiries and I even landed 90 percent of those customers. Um, so everything feels much more relatable, um, and much more real, um, and people can picture themselves.

Nadine Nethery: In your customer’s shoes. So that’s the first step. So surveying your audience and then if you have responses, um, that where you go, oh my God, that’s something I never considered. It’s an angle that’s really interesting. They are super generous and, and share really generously in, in their answers. Then I would recommend inviting them for a quick chat.

Nadine Nethery: So, you know, 15 minutes of your time, you can even return the favor and let them pick your brain for 15 minutes just to get them across the line and actually, you know, commit to that, that appointment. Um, and that’s where you have the opportunity to dig even deeper. So you can, um, let them elaborate on, um, their answers, um, and have those follow up questions that really allow you to, to go even deeper.

Nadine Nethery: And the good thing about conversations is you can transcribe them. Which means you don’t have to frantically take notes along the way. You can listen with intent after if you revisit that transcript, it allows you to pick up the actual words and the actual language that your audience is using that you can then literally plug straight into your copy.

Nadine Nethery: Um, in, in many instances.

Amanda Warfield: I love that you pointed out that using the surveys helps you to make your copy and your content so much more real, because over and over again with my clients, I see, you know, I’ll, I’ll say, okay, well, what’s the transformation or what is their win or, you know, I’ll ask a question when we’re trying to really dive into their offer, their offer messaging.

Amanda Warfield: And. They’ll come back with something like empowering or whatever, and it’s like, that’s great, but that’s really fluffy and it means nothing to anybody. Unless you’re feeling empowered in any given moment, it’s hard to encourage someone to feel that,

Nadine Nethery: you know? Yeah, and um. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s, um, it’s so much more relatable.

Nadine Nethery: Um, and you get people to, to nod along. So you want that, um, you know, that instant scrolling people can’t get enough of your sales page because they just feel so heard and seen and understood. And that’s only going to happen if you take the time to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and actually go on that journey with them and work out.

Nadine Nethery: How you can support them, who is that perfect fit, and that means ultimately you get, get customers working with you that are going to get the outcomes that you want, and that’s the win win for everyone. You don’t want to attract customers who were never the first and the perfect fit in the first place.

Nadine Nethery: It’s true. Such a good

Amanda Warfield: point. So how often. Should we be going about doing that market research and sending out those surveys?

Nadine Nethery: Yeah, so I would start if you’ve never taken the time to actually survey your audience and take that step back, then I would send one out today, this week, you know, actually put it on your to do list because it Doesn’t take very long and, um, the aha moments that come from it are so powerful, but if you already have done it, um, I would see and investigate how you can incorporate, um, automated surveys into your onboarding process, um, and.

Nadine Nethery: Offboarding process along the way within your client project. So it feels more organic and you don’t have to actually remember to check in with customers down the track because we’re all busy. There’s so much to do. And, um, you know, with CRM systems, it’s so easy to ask a set of very strategic questions as you welcome people on board.

Nadine Nethery: Um, and then as you deliver. Let’s say your website copy, you know, that email flow, whatever you deliver, um, for those immediate wins. And then again, you know, a few weeks or a few months, depending on what, um, how long it takes for your, your deliverables to, to do their job, um, you again, just. Touch base with them, check in, see how they’re going, which you should be doing anyway.

Nadine Nethery: Um, and then throw in a few, a few strategic questions that get you those tangible wins. So you can then add them to testimonials and, and also use them on your website, on your sales page, wherever you might need them. So the key is to automate it where you can to not add to your already long to do list, but make it super streamlined and, and something that you can, um, yeah.

Nadine Nethery: You can tap into on an ongoing basis. So

Amanda Warfield: when you’re working with one on one clients, you recommend towards the beginning at the end, and then a few months later as well.

Nadine Nethery: Absolutely. Yeah. What about

Amanda Warfield: for those that are listening that have more digital based products or even physical products or courses, things like that, how can they.

Amanda Warfield: Automate

Nadine Nethery: surveys. Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve got a few, um, digital products myself. So, um, I have, again, strategically placed a few, um, strategic questions along the way. So I do have an intake survey. Again, very, very strategic, very short because people are very excited, they want to get stuck in. So again, capturing that initial thought pattern, why they were looking for the cause, what made them buy, um, you know, what convinced them to, to hand over their credit card details.

Nadine Nethery: Um, and then as they go through my course content, I also have one question, surveys after, um, particular modules where I expect, you know, big transformations, big aha moments, the penny drops. And, um, they are super powerful as well because they are in the moment live feedback as people have watched your content, they, you know, have engaged with that new piece of information that’s going to get them to their win.

Nadine Nethery: Um. So they have been super, super practical to even dig deeper into the actual course itself and work out how I can improve it and how I can, um, yeah, add to it to have even more impact. And then I also survey them after the course. So once I’ve completed it, um, get that feedback. So, you know, whether the course aligned with their expectations, um, how I can improve it, as I said, I’m a big fan of, um, using those insights to actually improve your business.

Nadine Nethery: The way you do business, et cetera, as well. So yeah, and that is super simple. You just embed those surveys in your course portal in your platform. Um, something that is just sitting there waiting, waiting for your audience and your, your students to, um, to tap into.

Amanda Warfield: That’s so great. And I love that. Okay. So beforehand, you’re like, what, what made you buy and where are you now?

Amanda Warfield: And then at the end, okay, where are you now after you’ve done the work? But when you’re asking questions throughout. After a particular part of our module, what kind of questions are you asking there?

Nadine Nethery: Yeah, it’s literally just, for example, in my audience success formula. So part of it is actually tapping into your audience without knowing where your audience hangs out.

Nadine Nethery: You don’t have existing clients. So it’s something a lot of. My students have never considered before because there’s that assumption that you have to have existing clients. You can’t do audience research without actually serving people already. Um, and so after that particular survey where, um, I explore online snooping as I like to call it in a non creepy way.

Nadine Nethery: Um, a lot of people are just, yeah, so. So, um, surprised that there was so much goodness at their fingertips and, um, they never considered tapping into it. So, um, there are so many gems that have come from that, that I now use in my sales emails as, you know, screenshots, screen grabs to, to even just highlight that the first module in, in that particular program is already setting you up with so many, um, you know, successes, even before you send your first customer survey.

Nadine Nethery: Yes, that’s all about the instant aha moment, that penny drop situation to, to really get the excitement and, um, again, the language that they’re using to describe that to, um, use it in the copy.

Amanda Warfield: Okay. So once you’ve done the market research. Then what do you do with that information? How do you, how do you kind of go through and disseminate through it?

Amanda Warfield: Yeah,

Nadine Nethery: yeah, that’s the key because, um, you know, you can send out all the surveys, have all the responses, and if you don’t actually systemize them, um, you have spent a whole lot of Time looking through it and otherwise. All right. So I love to organize them into buckets, which, um, you can absolutely add to as you go along, you can also update them because let’s face it.

Nadine Nethery: Um, with recessions and pandemics, all the things that are popping up around us, not no one’s will coming. You nimble and adjust your messaging to go with the times because things that were applicable three years ago, pre COVID. probably have shifted somewhat since then. So it’s important to keep that up to date, gather new intel, um, and then update those buckets as you go along.

Nadine Nethery: The actual buckets themselves, um, are tapping into that customer journey. So that experience from pre purchase through to, um, transformation. Um, and we’re looking at objections. So those things that We’re holding people back potentially, uh, from purchasing, um, around, you know, it could be cost, it could be time, it could be mindset.

Nadine Nethery: So all those, um, juicy details, then the pain points. So what tangible problem is keeping them up at night that they’re trying to solve? Um, on the flip side, we’ve got the transformation. So what are they hoping to achieve by taking your calls by working with you one on one? And we’re also looking at false beliefs.

Nadine Nethery: These are super handy as well, because we need to acknowledge them and, um. You know, because we’re all surrounded by family, friends, society that try to tell us certain things are true and applicable. Um, so we’ve got those voices surrounding us, um, that impact our purchasing decision as well. So finding out those misconceptions that, um, were floating around, around, you know, audience research, great, great example.

Nadine Nethery: You know, people don’t think they need. Audience research, because they know their audience. So it’s around, you know, addressing those, um, false beliefs and, um, validating, you know, the actual, the actual truth. Um, we’re also looking at sticky words, um, my favorite. So these are part of the response, um, the survey responses that are so good that you can literally copy and paste them often into headlines, subheadings.

Nadine Nethery: Um, into bullet point lists of, you know, tangible outcomes. They are amazing. And basically your audience is doing half your copywriting. For you, um, as an example here, I’ve recently worked with a, um, membership or, um, empty nest midlife women. So women transitioning from being all absorbed into, you know, in being a mom, their kids are moving to college and all of a sudden they’re left with that big void.

Nadine Nethery: And, um, we also surveyed, you know, her audience and, and, um, got to know them to actually work out. What is what the problems are, the objections, you know, the transformation and, um, someone responded that they are looking for the 50 year old version of their favorite play group mom. And that is something I could never have come up with.

Nadine Nethery: And, um, it is so relatable and tangible and, um, real that we literally use that in, um, in her sales copy left, right and center, because it’s just. Yeah. Too good to pass by. So things like that, often you read it and you go, Oh my God, it’s a completely different perspective. Something I could never, never make up in my wildest dreams.

Nadine Nethery: Yes. A sticky words and sticky terms. They are amazing. And often as well, um, you can have a bucket around, um, things about you. So testimonials, um, when you survey your existing customers, um, And if you design your survey strategically, you can actually piece together really powerful testimonials. Away along the way as well for your website, because you are taking them on that journey, you know, what was going on in their lives before they worked with you.

Nadine Nethery: So that addresses the pain points, the transformation they’ve experienced, and then those tangible results and those testimonials really do the selling for you. Um, and are so much better than those that say, you know, Amanda was amazing to work with because that does no good for anyone. Sorry. Yeah, the nice side benefit from, um, yeah, getting all those buckets is to actually be able to have fresh testimonials, um, that you can use obviously with permission.

Nadine Nethery: So, you know, make sure you include a question in your survey as well that, um, that addresses that and just, you know, says, can I use your insights on my website? And you’d be surprised, a lot of people actually are more than happy to share. That’s so powerful. Okay.

Amanda Warfield: So you take the answers, the survey responses, and you kind of sort them out into all these different categories.

Amanda Warfield: When you sit down to write and create that copy and that content, how do you use what you’ve sorted to craft something that is actually going to

Nadine Nethery: help increase those sales? Yeah. So when I then approach, um, my client’s website copy, for example, I have a very Um, you know, thought out structure for each of the web pages, um, that takes the reader on the journey.

Nadine Nethery: So depending on which section I’m working on, I will visit, um, certain buckets in my spreadsheet, um, and see how I can incorporate them, um, in the copy. So basically, um, the audience is doing the, the basic structure for me, you know, the content, and then what all it comes down to is for me to actually, uh, put it together in a way that.

Nadine Nethery: Sounds good and presentable. It actually leads the reader to that next, next logical step, but it just takes out the guesswork, um, that so often happens when, when you’re trying to write anything for your business, be it an email, your website, you’re staring at that blank page and you have no idea where to start.

Nadine Nethery: So this way you can actually go to pre You know, pre sorted, pre curated ideas, um, and then turn them into bullet point lists, um, and yeah, really have relatable structure for your copy, um, before you even start writing. And then the sticky terms, um, as I said, I look through those all the time and see how I can, how I can even use, you know, fractions, um, of that.

Nadine Nethery: Of those expressions in a copy because it just takes, um, your copy game to that next level. This

Amanda Warfield: is so helpful. And this has been such a great dive into how exactly to get to know your audience and then how to use what you’ve learned about them. In your content, your copy and your messaging so that you can increase those sales.

Amanda Warfield: But if you could give everyone just one action step for

Nadine Nethery: this interview, what would it be? I would actually just send that first survey literally. Um, it takes 10 minutes of your time. Um, I personally use. Google, um, Google forms. There are so many other, you know, free platforms out there. It’s not complex and, um, it can gather data in the background as you keep working.

Nadine Nethery: And then when you have the time, you come back to it and sift through it, but commit to those 10 minutes today to put together a survey that takes your reader, um, your audience on, on that journey to actually, um, start collecting. Data for your copy and, um, get into the habit of, of making it a regular, um, a regular process in your business.

Nadine Nethery: Yeah.

Amanda Warfield: I love that. Get started. Send that first survey today, friends. So if you give everyone one book recommendation, what would it be? What’s a must read or must

Nadine Nethery: listen to? Yeah. So I, um, I love Kate Northrop’s book, Do Less. Um, as it’s quite shocking, actually, as women, I think we’re so, um. Yeah, so, so removed from our bodies and our blog sometimes that, um, yeah, reading it just really opened my eyes to, um, the way I reacted to, you know, client projects, even like my timeline, my calendar.

Nadine Nethery: So for those of you who haven’t heard of the book, it’s all about, um, yeah, understanding your cycle as a woman and then trying to. Book appointments and you know, your client work around your cycle rather than having to, uh, keep writing on against, um, you know, your natural, um, the natural way your body wants to, wants to behave in certain weeks.

Nadine Nethery: And, um, yeah, obviously it’s not always possible to keep weak, clear, um, of client work. But when I can. I try to, um, yeah, work out which appointments naturally would flow into this week. Um, and which ones I should put off for another week if possible. So, um, yeah, for those of you who want to understand how your body as a woman impacts not only your life, but your business and everything that comes with it, highly recommend.

Nadine Nethery: I need to

Amanda Warfield: reread that one. I read it when I was like first beginning my journey to understanding my cycle and how all of that works. And now that I’ve been doing this for a while and really have been working on Cycle Syncing, I should go back and reread that. It’s sitting on my bookshelf.

Nadine Nethery: So that’s a great recommendation.

Nadine Nethery: Yeah. Same. Peace from Rwanda.

Amanda Warfield: Nadine, thank you so, so much for being here today. I really appreciate you taking the time to just Pour into everyone that’s listening and help them get to know their audience a little

Nadine Nethery: bit better. Thanks so much for having me, Amanda.

Amanda Warfield: Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes, as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Amanda Warfield: Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 199: Increase Sales by Getting to Know Your Audience with Nadine Nethery appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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January Recap of the Creative Educator ConferenceLast month I had the incredible privilege to be able to attend two very different conferences – one as an attendee (the Creative Educator Conference), and the other as an educator (Conquer Live). Both of these experiences were nothing short of amazing, and I am still on cloud 9 a few weeks later because of them.

So, today I wanted to share a bit about each one of them and get them on YOUR radar. Because as I’ll share in this episode – there’s nothing more powerful for your business than an in-person event.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: There are a LOT of different marketing strategies out there. from content to networking to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next – without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. After hearing from listener after listener wondering WHICH marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield.com/quiz/ to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing! Again, that’s amandawarfield.com/quiz/ * This episode was brought to you by my book Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/book/ * Creative Educator Conference * Conquer Live * This week’s action step: Choose a conference and make it your goal to get there for the next one. * This week’s book recommendation: The It Girl by Ruth Ware * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateLast month, I had the incredible privilege to be able to attend two very different conferences, one as an attendee and the other as an educator. Both of these experiences were nothing short of amazing and I am still on cloud nine a few weeks later because of them. So today, I wanted to share a bit about each one of them and get them on your radar.

Because, as I’ll share in this episode, there’s nothing more powerful for your business than an in person event. You’re listening to episode 198 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com slash book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, Simplicity Focus content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming. So that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love support There are a lot of different marketing strategies out there in business from content to networking to speaking to ads and So many more, and with so many different marking strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next, without seeing results.

Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies when you aren’t seeing any from your own. And after hearing from listener after listener wondering which marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which strategies will be best for you based on your current phase of business.

Head to amandawarfield. com slash quiz to take it. Learn where you should focus your marketing energy and start seeing results from your marketing. Again, that’s amandawarfield. com slash quiz. I want to start with the biggest lesson that I learned between going to these two different conferences, and that is to get in the room, get in the room.

I’ve shared this before on the podcast, but I spent years isolating myself as a business owner and I had this misconception that doing business online meant doing it alone. And it’s just not true and your business cannot and will not grow. If you’re not building relationships, if you’re not making connections and over the last several years, you know I’ve been meeting all of these really incredible people virtually and online and just with timing of things I haven’t had the opportunity to go to a ton of conferences And the ones that I have been to, either I wasn’t meeting people there that I had already connected with online, or I was there for a very short amount of time.

And these conferences were the first time that I really got to enjoy being in the room with people that I had connected with, and that I had talked to virtually, and over Zoom calls, and that I’ve interviewed for the podcast, or I’ve been on their podcast, and man, it was amazing. And And not only did it lead to new leads, I booked a new client at one of the conferences, I mean some really incredible things happened business wise, but it just felt so good.

Good. It just felt so good to be surrounded by people who get it and I can’t emphasize it enough I feel like there aren’t truly words to describe the way it feels and how incredible it is. But I Truly would really encourage you to find a conference. That’s your action step. Spoiler. I’m just gonna go ahead and share it Your action step is to find a conference and make it your goal to get there for the next one Whether that’s this year or next year, whether you have to start saving or you can go ahead and afford it, it truly is worth every penny.

It’s an incredible investment in your business and in yourself, and it really will fill your cup. And it’s going to help you grow your business. Period. You’re gonna learn new things, you’re gonna get new ideas, you’re going to make connections, get in the room with people who are your ideal audience, and who are people just doing this with you, side by side, in the same industry, in similar industries.

I, I cannot. share how much of a difference that it makes, and frankly, if there was only one thing you ever did to run a successful business, it would be that. So, that’s the biggest lesson that I learned. But I did want to share more about each of these conferences, because they were so different, and the experiences were so different, and yet they were both truly incredible.

And I know that when I’ve been researching different conferences or retreats in the past, I’ve always Googled, you know, this, the name of said conference reviews, and I’ve looked to see what other people have said about it. So, I wanted to kind of pass that on and do that for someone else who may be interested.

So the first conference I went to was Lili Amati’s Creative Educator Conference. It was in Dallas, Texas. And this was the one that I was an attendee for. So I was not speaking. I was just there as an attendee to learn. And there were roughly, I think, around a hundred attendees. And, um, I don’t remember how many speakers, quite a few, but it was absolutely incredible.

This conference is for creative educators. So whether you are creating courses or you’re simply putting out content that educates your audience in order to help them decide whether or not they need to work with you, whatever that may be, if you’re educating in some way, shape, or form. This conference is probably for you.

In fact, most of my audience, most of my listeners, if you’re listening, this conference is probably for you. Leili brings in incredible educators, but outside of that, she has a true gift for creating conferences. I mean, again, I haven’t been to a ton of conferences, but I’ve been to enough to know that when I walked into this conference, I knew it was different, and I knew immediately that Leili had a really, really special gift for this, from the way things were set up, to the intentional details, to the actual speaker topic, the speakers and the speaker topics themselves.

Every little thing had been thought of and there was just so much intention and so much detail and so much planning that you can tell that Laylee did and she really brings together just Incredible people so that’s kind of my rough overview of what that conference was. I learned so much I have Pages and pages and pages of notes that I will be going through over honestly probably the next year because I’m gonna implement things slow and steady, but if you are someone who educates and You want to improve How you’re educating and how your education is growing your business This is a conference you’re definitely going to want to add to your list.

I’ve already, I’ve already signed up for my ticket for 2025, right? So, um, I truly mean it when I say that this one is absolutely amazing and well worth every single penny. The second conference I attended was Conquer Live, and this is hosted by Jamie Fisher and Heather Lacey. And this is a conference specifically for photographers, so if you’re a photographer, Add this one to your list.

And I was one of the educators for this one. So I wasn’t attending as an attendee, but as an educator. And what makes Conquer so different and why, if you’re a photographer, you should definitely add it to your list for 2025, is the The way that things are set up so with the creative educator conference again, it’s a hundred people at that one I don’t know how many 20 25 will be but a hundred people a hundred attendees and then all the speakers and everyone else and you You have to pay for your ticket to the event, which does like, there’s breakfast and there’s lunch and all of that, but you have to pay for your transportation, you have to do your own dinners, and you have to pay for your hotel.

Again, worth every penny. I’m not, that’s not. This isn’t a, this one’s good, this is bad. They’re just different. Um, there are a lot of really great pros to that, which, you know, I’m an introvert. I love having my own space. So for me, I love those kind of conferences. Conquer Live is different. And again, this isn’t saying one is better than the other.

They’re just different. But Conquer Live is different because it’s a much smaller group. There are only 15 attendees and I believe there were like 12 educators, something like that. 15 attendees, 12 educators. roughly 30 people in the house, give or take, and you’re all in one house together. People are definitely sharing rooms, you know, I had a roommate, everyone had roommates, some people had multiple roommates, um, but you’re all in the one house together.

You pay for your ticket, and once, you just have to get there. All of your meals are covered, and in fact, they They do catering, so you plan ahead of time. Okay, what meal do I want from this place for each meal? And honestly, the Google form was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. It must have taken them hours and hours and hours to put that together.

But you tell them ahead of time what you want. They order the catering. Some of the volunteers that they have go and pick it up and deliver it to the house for you. You don’t have to leave the house once you get there. Food is covered. Everything’s taken care of. It’s really incredible. But outside of that, because you’re all in one house together and you’re so, you’re just, you’re doing life together for a few days, right?

Um, The educators and the attendees got so much time together. As an educator, this was really, really incredible and I can only imagine the impact it made as an attendee. But as an educator, it was so nice to, you know, you, you go up and you speak and you share your presentation and at most conferences when you’re doing that you, you, You go up there and you really hope that you’re changing someone’s viewpoint, and you’re making, for me, like, making their marketing a little bit simpler for them.

And you hope that someone will come up and ask you questions, but otherwise, that’s just kind of it. You know, you’re there, and you mingle with the attendees, and you do what you can, but at Conquer, they take that to a whole other level. Where, as an educator, you’re truly there to serve. We quite literally, one morning, the educators Make breakfast for everyone and we serve the attendees and it just the heart behind that is so evident And you know, we each had a buddy where we were Connected with someone one of the attendees and it was kind of our job to make sure that they went home with an action plan and one that wasn’t going to overwhelm them.

And we got, you know, 10 minutes specified with each and every person, every single attendee, which I just thought was so incredible, where they could ask you as many questions as they could fit into those 10 minutes. And there’s so much other time and other things you’re doing with each other. We’re playing games, we’re doing karaoke, it’s all There’s all of these activities for bonding and all of that makes it so that the attendees are comfortable coming up to the educators and asking questions and whipping out their laptop and saying hey can you show me this thing real quick and can you help me work through this and it just it’s really powerful.

So if you’re a photographer put that one at the top of your list. Both of these experiences were so different, in fact, almost complete opposites, and yet they were both so incredible. I will 100 percent be going back to Creative Educator Conference as an attendee. I would be thrilled and honored to attend Conquer Live as an educator again.

I mean, these Our conferences that I, I, I fully endorse and I just can’t say enough good things about them. And so, yeah, like I said, I just kind of wanted to pass that on. I know that many, many, many of you that listen are educators and I also know that I have quite a few photographers in my audience and I just.

Wanted to share these incredible opportunities. I didn’t want to gatekeep them. Um, and if you have any questions about them, please DM me. I am, I would love to chat further about them. So again, like I said, your action step for this week is to choose a conference and whether it’s one of these or not, That doesn’t matter, but choose a conference and make it your goal to get to the next one.

Because like I said at the beginning, best thing you can do for your business is to get in the room. Now, your book recommendation for this week is The It Girl by Ruth Ware. This is a bit of a psychological thriller and I don’t want to give anything away, so I’m going to say very little, but as I always do, I feel like, but this one is about two girls that are roommates and one of them ends up being murdered and the book is kind of essentially solving for who did it.

So if you like psychological thrillers, if you’ve read any of Ruth Brer’s other stuff, I love all of her books that I’ve read. So highly recommend. And if you want the link to that, it will be in the show notes. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 198: January Conferences Recap: Creative Educator Conference and Conquer Live appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Bookkeeping and Business Finances with Madison BrownI have a confession: business finances have been a sorely neglected topic here on Chasing Simple. And for that, I apologize. Frankly, it ironically mimics how our finances are treated in our businesses as well.

But we’re working on correcting that (both on the podcast, and within our businesses) and today we’re going to hear from my dear friend Madison who is passionate about financial literacy for female entrepreneurs.

Madison Dearly is a bookkeeping team serving brand and website designers and female business owners in the online space with friendly, hands-on financial tracking and analysis. With a ton of experience in small business accounting, Madison clearly understands how confidence in your business’s financial health fuels the growth you deserve. (And it also supports the lifestyle you work so hard to afford!) In short, these gals are not your dad’s stodgy bookkeeper, okay? For more information (and to make new friends), visit http://www.madisondearly.com.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content (because you’re batching it, right? ), the first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan. But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when. Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals, and working backwards to ensure you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals? And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan? Grab your Chasing Simple Content Planner. The planner is my number one bestseller – And for good reason too, because this massive 130+ page planner was designed with strategy in mind. It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post, and when. Yes, that’s part of it. But first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find: Yearly planning pages Monthly prep work Monthly reflection questions Repurposing worksheets and so much more! If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chasing Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just $27 at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Maternity leave spreadsheet * Madison’s budgeting spreadsheet * Business software, Xero * This week’s action step: Set up a business bank account * This week’s book recommendation: Atomic Habits by James Clear * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Madison Dearly is a bookkeeping team serving brand and website designers and female business owners in the online space with friendly, hands-on financial tracking and analysis. With a ton of experience in small business accounting, Madison Dearly understands how confidence in your business’s financial health fuels the growth you deserve. (And it also supports the lifestyle you work so hard to afford!) In short, these gals are not your dad’s stodgy bookkeeper, okay? For more information (and to make new friends), visit http://www.madisondearly.com

Social Links:

Website: https://madisondearly.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madisondearly/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@madisondearlybookkeeping

Paid Maternity Leave spreadsheet: https://madisondearly.com/maternity-leave

Online Business Budget spreadsheet: https://madisondearly.com/online-business-budget

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAmanda Warfield:* I have a confession. Business finances have been a sorely neglected topic here on Chasing Simple, and for that, I apologize. Frankly, it ironically mimics how our finances are often treated in our businesses as well. They’re often the last thing that we think about, and you know, we may do the bare minimum to balance, but At the end of the day, it’s not what we spend most of our time thinking about, right?

Amanda Warfield: We’re working on correcting that, both on the podcast and within our businesses. So today we’re going to hear from my dear friend Madison, who is passionate about financial literacy for female entrepreneurs. Madison Deerly is a bookkeeping team serving brand and website designers and female business owners in the online space with friendly, hands on financial tracking and analysis.

Amanda Warfield: With a ton of experience in small business accounting, Madison Deerly understands how confidence in your business’s financial health fuels the growth you deserve, and it also supports the lifestyle you work so hard to afford. In short, these gals are stodgy bookkeeper, okay? For more information and to make new friends, visit madisondeerly.

Amanda Warfield: com. Padme says hello, everyone. You’re listening to episode 197 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple content planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com slash planner.

Amanda Warfield: How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Amanda Warfield: Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

Amanda Warfield: I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

Amanda Warfield: When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Amanda Warfield: Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love.

Amanda Warfield: Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Amanda Warfield: Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content, because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar.

Amanda Warfield: If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan, but what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them.

Amanda Warfield: Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when. Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals, and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them.

Amanda Warfield: What are your yearly goals? Quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals. How can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner.

Amanda Warfield: The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind. It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas.

Amanda Warfield: In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more. If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple content planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield.

Amanda Warfield: com slash planner. Madison, I’m so excited to have you on today. You’re actually, I had one other guest, I think in this batch of interviews that I’ve actually been lucky enough to meet in person. And so it’s so nice to like, I’ve gotten to see you in person. We’ve had dinner together and learn together and now we get to choose, which is really, really fun.

Amanda Warfield: But for those that haven’t been that lucky, can you tell everyone who you are and a little bit about what you do?

Madison Brown: Yes, and it almost stinks that we’ve met in person because now I’m just like kind of sad that I can’t hug you. I know. Because I really just enjoy spending time with you. But hi everyone, I am Madison Brown.

Madison Brown: I am the owner of Madison Dearly Bookkeeping. We are a top notch bookkeeping agency for branded web designers, creative online business owners who think big. I am a wife. I am a mama of two, uh, little ones. They are four and two, so if you know, you know. And, uh, life is grand. So yeah, that’s a little bit about me.

Amanda Warfield: One of our very first interactions together, which you reminded me of when we were at the conference together in September, I was very rude. And I, I don’t even know,

Madison Brown: I

Amanda Warfield: probably just messaged you out of the blue, which makes it a hundred times worse. But I messaged you on Instagram and I was like, so why would I need a bookkeeper?

Amanda Warfield: Because I do all of this myself. Like, I don’t understand. And genuinely, I was trying to understand because I felt like there must be something I’m missing, but I’m sure that came off as incredibly rude. And I’m sure that everyone else who has a similar thought process is probably wondering the same thing in a much nicer way.

Amanda Warfield: So can you tell us? What it is that you and your team do for your clients exactly and why it is so important that we as business owners have a

Madison Brown: bookkeeper. Yes. And I said it to you then and I’m going to say it to you again. And for everyone listening, it was not rude. It was not rude at all. It was honestly, as you know, when you’re, when you start following that person on Instagram and you’re like, this seems like something that I might need, but do I?

Madison Brown: Actually really need it. Um, and especially when it comes to finances, when you have the IRS, like hovering over your shoulder, you’re like, do I actually really need a bookkeeper? It’s a genuine question. But I remember I was pretty new in my business and I probably was trying to sell you honestly, because I needed clients.

Madison Brown: I, I, I just needed that’s where I was in my business. So what we do for our clients is really just putting together a set of reports that tells you exactly how much money that you brought in in the previous month or the previous however many months that were, you know, contracted to do your bookkeeping for and how much money that you spent.

Madison Brown: So what did you bring in and what did you spend and what’s left over? Um, it’s really important that this is done in your business, whether it’s by a bookkeeper or you’re doing it yourself, because if you just don’t know what these numbers are, you don’t know how much you can pay yourself, how much you can.

Madison Brown: Save to invest in something that you really want for your business. It’s crucial to know these numbers. So whether you’re doing it yourself or hiring someone, you have to be doing it. And you’re kind of a rare egg too. I think there, I don’t even know if that’s the right term, rare egg. But I think there are a lot of people that just know that they hate bookkeeping.

Madison Brown: They’re like, I don’t want to do this at all. So they will outsource it. Then there are some people that are like you, where you’re like, well, kind of don’t hate this. And I do it every month. And it’s not that complicated for me. So the learning curve for you is pretty short is what it sounds like. And if you, if that’s something that like your brain works that way, you have a good process for it by all means, save the money, do it yourself.

Madison Brown: As long as you know that you’re getting it done accurately and you’re actually getting it done.

Amanda Warfield: And I do really enjoy, like I reconcile every month. Like I’m, I’m on top of it, but I’m going to tell you, Madison tax time came around. And as I was preparing things for my CPA, Because I finally outsourced that this year, I was having issues with QuickBooks where I would go to a category and it wasn’t showing me every single transaction in that category for some reason.

Amanda Warfield: And I, I think I messaged you and I was like, do you do this for your people? Because I never want to do this again. I need to hire a bookkeeper this year simply to avoid that at tax time again, because I had all the numbers there and for some reason I was like, why, wait, that’s the total. And this is what it’s showing me.

Amanda Warfield: And these two are not adding up. So what is happening? And it took my husband and I like 30 minutes to figure out that for some reason it wasn’t showing every, even though everything was categorized in the right category. It wasn’t showing all of them. And I was like, forget this. I’m hiring a bookkeeper this year.

Amanda Warfield: It’s going on the goals.

Madison Brown: Oh, I hate that so much. And especially because most people know that the QuickBooks name, everybody knows QuickBooks. So I think a lot of people, when they think of bookkeeping, they automatically think of QuickBooks, but I use Xero, X E R O. That’s what we use, um, in my agency. And it is so much more.

Madison Brown: simple. They are very intentional about taking out all the accounting jargon. And QuickBooks also has just kind of functionality issues that pop up like that for people who even do understand what they’re doing. Even for me, I’m an accountant, a bookkeeper. I have a long history of being in the finance industry.

Madison Brown: Don’t get annoyed being in QuickBooks. That’s because of the functionality issues and, um, because of all the accounting jargon. No one wants to see that.

Amanda Warfield: No, it’s so confusing. I’m constantly like, how do I categorize this thing? Because I don’t know how it works within how they’ve categorized things. And then I send it to my CPA who wants to categorize it a different.

Amanda Warfield: Oh, Lord. All different things. Okay. So. When should someone hire a bookkeeper? How

Madison Brown: do you know it’s the right time? Yeah. Um, so kind of going back to what we said, there are really two types of people. You either know that you absolutely hate bookkeeping and you don’t want to touch it at all. Um, but you know that you need to get it done.

Madison Brown: It’s something that is a non negotiable. If you have a business, there is no IRS saying like, did you post on Instagram today? Like, no, there is an IRS asking. Did you do your bookkeeping? Um, so you have to get, have to get it done, but if you hate it, you might want to just outsource it from the very beginning, so that you know that it’s getting done on a monthly basis, and you know that it’s accurate.

Madison Brown: Um, but there are some people who are totally fine doing it themselves, whether that’s with a spreadsheet, um, or in a software, if they decide to do a software themselves, um, and you can do it yourself for A good two to three years, especially at the beginning of your business, where you might not have a high volume of transactions and it might not take you very long, whether you do it like a finance Friday and, you know, carve out a little bit of time every Friday or once a month, um, it might not take you very long, but if you’re doing it yourself.

Madison Brown: And you actually like doing it, or you have a short learning curve, then it might be time to outsource if it’s just taking you too long, if you start selling, uh, from one to one to one to many, and you now have a higher volume of transactions, it might just be taking up too much of your time. And it might make more sense and just be more efficient for you to hire a bookkeeper at that point.

Madison Brown: So

Amanda Warfield: hiring pros, efficiency, not having to do it at all, having it totally off your plate and having someone who is able to say, here’s what you made. Here’s what you spent. Profit loss. You also help with budgeting.

Madison Brown: Is that correct? Yes. Yes, we do. I do this actually, uh, like once a year and I’ve only done it with, um, clients, like current clients, but I thought about opening it up to other people who would want help with like putting together an annual budget because we, when we think of budgets, what do you think of when you think of budgets?

Amanda Warfield: I mean, I think of the envelope system, but again, I feel like maybe I’m just like a weird person that’s weirdly into finance and I ended up in it as a career.

Madison Brown: No, I think a lot of people think of that. A lot of people think of Dave Ramsey or they think of, Oh, I need to not go to Starbucks for the next three months.

Madison Brown: Cause I’m trying to. pay off whatever XYZ debt. But sometimes people forget that you need a business budget. You actually need to know what types of expenses are you going to have over the next three to six months to a year. Um, are you going to give your team member a promotion and how are you going to pay for all of this?

Madison Brown: What are your, what do your sales goals need to be? So I have done like VIP budget days with my current clients where we put together an entire like annual budget and they are So fun clarity is like not doesn’t even begin to touch like how people feel when they come away from this, but I also have a business budget spreadsheet template that I launched a couple months ago, which is like under 100.

Madison Brown: And it’s for someone who just needs like a templated version of a VIP day, and they can actually put like an entire budget together so. Yeah, that’s the thing that I do. I go, I have definitely been looking at that. You would love it. You would love it. Uh, it’s definitely,

Amanda Warfield: yep. It’s a need for sure, because I’m great at budgeting.

Amanda Warfield: And I I’ve talked about this in another episode with a different financial guest, but I’m great at personal finance budgeting. I am not great at it with the business because cashflow is a thing that I just can’t wrap my mind around. So what tips do you have for someone who. Maybe they would like to outsource, but they don’t have the funds yet to outsource their bookkeeping.

Amanda Warfield: What tips do you have for someone while they’re working to get to that place of being able to outsource to someone like

Madison Brown: you? Sure, just really getting everything organized. Act as if you already have a bookkeeper, which means Keep your receipts. Make sure that they’re in a nice Google Drive. Um, sort it by year and by month.

Madison Brown: Um, so make sure that you have, you’re keeping your receipts documented, but then also make sure that you have separate bank accounts. Keep your, your personal bank account separate from your business bank account. That is going to, whether you’re doing it or a bookkeeper is doing it, that is going to help tremendously to cut down on the time that it takes to do your bookkeeping.

Madison Brown: Because as your bookkeeper, I do not need to know how many times you went to Target and Nordstrom and Sephora and like, I do not need to know any of that stuff. So separating that out, keeping your receipts. Just overall being more organized with your money. If you have a PayPal, make sure that it’s a business PayPal so you can add team members to it in the future.

Madison Brown: And if it’s a PayPal, only have your business payment on there, not like your personal card. Things like that that make it a little bit more streamlined and organized so that once you do have a bookkeeper jump in, they are ready to go and it’s easier for them to turn around reports faster for you. I

Amanda Warfield: will never forget sitting at dinner and we all got our receipts and the rest of us are just like shoving it in our bag.

Amanda Warfield: Right? We’re like, whatever. We’ll deal with this later. And Madison is just like quickly taking a picture and immediately uploaded it to her drive. And I was like, Oh, dang it. I don’t do that ever. And I’m ashamed to say that I still don’t do that. And it’s been six months. I’m going to start this week. I’m going to go set that Google Drive up right after we get off of this call.

Madison Brown: Yes, I love it. I love to hear it. It’s kind of habit for me now. And maybe because it doesn’t happen very often, we really, I don’t travel that much. I love to go to in person conferences, which is where I usually have to snap a picture of a receipt for a meal. I think the ones. like a meal or Amazon or Target, those in the moment have to be saved because those are the ones that are always that an auditor is going to ask questions about if you ever do get audited and you have to have the backup of like, this was lunch with Amanda in Charleston or whatever, you know?

Madison Brown: Yeah, I do.

Amanda Warfield: In the receipt, there are some that have gone missing. I’m just going to be real honest, but the, for the most part, I save them. And the ones that I do have saved by right, what the conference was and whatever, like this date on there, just, just say a case, but, um, let’s talk about auditing actually, because that’s something you’ve been talking about on your YouTube channel and on your Instagram over this last week, you were an auditor

Madison Brown: at one point, correct?

Madison Brown: I was, yes. For a top 10 public accounting firm back in my day.

Amanda Warfield: So what, what kind of things do we need to be aware of? And I know I saw your Instagram post earlier because I stalk you, um, where you were talking about, you know, our biggest fear is always, I’m going to go to jail, which it totally is. That is always my big, that was why I was like, I got to get a CPA cause I’m going to go to jail.

Amanda Warfield: I don’t know what I’m doing. Um, What do we actually need to worry, quote unquote, worry about versus what do we not?

Madison Brown: Um, number one, you’re not going to jail unless you do something illegal. I will say it one time, I will say it a thousand times. You are not going to jail unless you do something illegal. You are not going to jail if you expense something that you shouldn’t expense.

Madison Brown: What will happen? Let’s just say you expensed, um, Gosh, what’s something like clothes. Let’s say you went to Nordstrom, you spent 500 on a bunch of clothes and the IRS came and audited you and said, Hey, you actually can’t spend money on clothes unless they are branded or there’s some kind of uniform that you wear every day to work.

Madison Brown: They can’t just be everyday clothes that you would wear to work. A party. Then they come in and they say, Hey, you actually can’t expense that. They take it off of your books, which basically increases your taxable income. You basically just have to pay back, pay and probably some fees. You are not going to jail for it.

Madison Brown: Uh, they will just basically have to make adjustments for that. But, um, I think people. Also just need to overall, like we’re talking about how good receipt documentation really, truly, because those are the things that they are going to ask questions about, or the things that you really can buy whatever you want from Amazon.

Madison Brown: So that receipt does need to be saved to show. Actually, I bought a tripod and a camera for my YouTube and a microphone for my YouTube so that you clearly have that piece of paper. That is your defense to an auditor that shows this really was a hundred percent business deductible. That’s so helpful and

Amanda Warfield: actually really calming for my warrior perfectionist heart because so often when I bring up that concern of like, I’m going to get in trouble.

Amanda Warfield: I’m going to go to jail. It’s always, you’re not going to be audited. You’re not big enough. And that’s always it, which is, you know, a fair, like, Objection buster to that, but I, I like you’re so much better where it’s like, okay, but even if you get audited, you’ll be fine. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just money.

Madison Brown: Really? It’s really not. Yeah. And they honestly auditors. Like, I was the jokester. I was the jokester of the audit team. I was the one that came in and was like, Hey, everybody. I know none of us want to be here, but like, let’s make it fun. Okay. So we, like, Okay. Gave our people the list. You already know what you’re going to need.

Madison Brown: They show you everything. We ask questions. If there’s any kind of like, oops, then we go back and fix it. And it’s not a big deal. So hopefully that continues to calm you. Although I feel like

Amanda Warfield: you’re probably very few auditors that are as incredible as you. Thank you.

Madison Brown: Okay. There’s

Amanda Warfield: more. I mean, you just. So special in so many ways that you’re all very lucky to, to have you on as a guest right now.

Amanda Warfield: Thanks. You also have, in addition to your budget spreadsheet, you also have another DIY. offer. Tell us a little bit about that because I think there are going to be some people that are going to

Madison Brown: want this. Yes. This one is very near and dear to my heart. This is the paid maternity leave plan spreadsheet.

Madison Brown: Um, this is for anyone who is planning on taking a maternity leave. Uh, it can honestly be used by anyone who wants to take time off in their business. So it doesn’t have to be just for women who are Pregnant. Um, but I made it that because I know that there are so many business owners who are afraid to get pregnant or think that they’re not able to get a maternity leave.

Madison Brown: And that’s just not the case if you have proper planning. So I made this spreadsheet ridiculously affordable, honestly, and very simple and easy to use. All you have to input is the amount of months that you have until the baby is here. The amount of months that you want to take off. all of the expenses that you need to pay while you’re away, whether that’s team members or your software subscriptions, whatever that might be.

Madison Brown: And then it calculates everything of what you need to save monthly until the baby is here, all of your goals. It’s just a really simple and easy to use and effective spreadsheet that almost instantly creates a plan for you so that you are prepared to take off as much time as you really want to. For maternity leave.

Madison Brown: If you’re a

Amanda Warfield: business owner of that, I get questions about batching for maternity leave all the time. So I know there are people that are going to definitely going to be interested in that. If you could give everyone an action step to take after listening to this episode, what

Madison Brown: would it be? That is a great question.

Madison Brown: Well, if you don’t already have a business account, that’s separate from your personal, that’s always, always voice. My number one, um, that is a really easy. Thing to do, but extremely impactful. And the second thing would really be making sure that you’re covered with your bookkeeping, whether that’s hiring someone or doing it yourself.

Madison Brown: Put a recurring calendar invite to yourself on the calendar to make sure that you get it done or co work with somebody else who’s like a business bestie that also needs to get their bookkeeping done so you can hold each other accountable or just hire the bookkeeper. I was talking to a client actually a couple days ago and she was saying, So many people just don’t think about what it feels like after you have hired the bookkeeper, or actually done the bookkeeping, and you’re on top of that system in your business.

Madison Brown: There is such an indescribable amount of peace and freedom and confidence. Knowing what your numbers are. So you can clearly say, how much can I pay myself? Can I be paying myself more than what I’m paying myself? That is like one of the biggest, most beautiful things about bookkeeping is if you know your numbers.

Madison Brown: You can bring more money home if that’s the case, if you’re, you know, profitable and in a good way. But yeah, I would say that that is the number one thing. Like as soon as you are finished listening to this podcast, make a date with yourself to do your own bookkeeping, whether that’s in a spreadsheet or a software or go just hire the bookkeeper because every single one of my clients will tell you that they wish they hired me earlier.

Madison Brown: And if someone did

Amanda Warfield: want to work with you. Where can they learn more?

Madison Brown: Yes, I am Madison Deerley everywhere. So at Madison Deerley on Instagram, I love, love hanging out in the DM. So please just like come say hi to me and you won’t have a choice. We’ll be best friends. Um, I’m also madisondeerley. com, madisondeerley on TikTok.

Madison Brown: If you want to watch, it’s pretty, it’s pretty lame over there right now. I’m dabbling in it, but I’m still over there. So. Yeah. That’s nearly everywhere to channel.

Amanda Warfield: Gosh. Yeah. I have a YouTube.

Madison Brown: I don’t normally like, that’s not like the first thing that comes to my, to the forefront when people ask that, but yeah, I just launched a YouTube a couple of months ago, you know, one month out one month, almost to the day.

Madison Brown: And it is going swimmingly. I love it. I love to talk clearly. Um, but I feel like there’s also so much that business owners need to know and need to have. Accessible to them. I really, really genuinely want financial literacy to be higher for business owners and for women. Uh, so yeah, YouTube is where we hang out and we educate and yeah,

Amanda Warfield: come find me there.

Amanda Warfield: Absolutely. And we will link to all that in the show notes. But before I let you go, what would be one book recommendation that you would give to everyone that they need to read? And it, it can be business, it can be finances, it can be fiction, whatever.

Madison Brown: Well, the number one that comes to my head, and you’ve probably talked about this a hundred times, I would be shocked if you hadn’t.

Madison Brown: Atomic Habits is just so good, and I know everyone raves about it, but it really is that good. I feel like I’ve read the book physically once, and then I listened to it on audio again, just To really let it sink in. And one of the most impactful things that I remember from that book is never miss twice.

Madison Brown: Um, so it’s okay to have your day. It’s okay to, um, miss out on a, on a habit that you’re trying to create, but don’t let it happen twice. So like really, really striving. Cause I’m the person that will give myself grace all day. I’m like, you know what? It was a bad day. I need to give myself grace. I need to sit back.

Madison Brown: I need to watch trash TV today. But I’m going to give myself this one day and the next day I know because this is a habit that I’ve said is really important to me to come back and completely knock it out of the park.

Amanda Warfield: I love it. You know, it’s funny. I think probably at least half the time guests do say atomic habits as their recommendation, but it’s always really interesting to hear what their biggest takeaway was because that is always different.

Madison Brown: So that’s interesting. I was going to say A Court of Thorns and Roses because I’m currently reading that right now and it’s so good, but I’m not finished yet. So don’t give me any spoilers. I see you waving your hands. It’s

Amanda Warfield: so good. It’s also good. We’ll talk about that

Madison Brown: later when you’re done. I

Amanda Warfield: love it.

Amanda Warfield: Madison. Thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate it.

Madison Brown: Of course. Thank you.

Madison Brown: Thank you

Amanda Warfield: so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Amanda Warfield: Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 197: Bookkeeping and Business Finances with Madison Brown appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Marketing Secrets | What You Don’t See in Someone’s MarketingWhen it comes to entrepreneurship, it’s very easy to get swept away in how successful everyone else is… the successful launches, new offers, client wins…. and miss out on the struggles happening behind the scenes…. the missed client payments, the refund requests, and missed deadlines, working when sick, feeling like it’s time to find a “real job”.

So, today, I wanted to bring you behind the scenes and point out 4 things that most, if not all, entrepreneurs are experiencing that you WON’T see them talking about in their marketing.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content (because you’re batching it, right? ), the first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan. But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when. Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals, and working backwards to ensure you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals? And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan? Grab your Chasing Simple Content Planner. The planner is my number one bestseller – And for good reason too, because this massive 130+ page planner was designed with strategy in mind. It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post, and when. Yes, that’s part of it. But first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find: Yearly planning pages Monthly prep work Monthly reflection questions Repurposing worksheets and so much more! If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chasing Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just $27 at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * This week’s action step: DM either me, or someone else you’d like to make a connection with and say hi! * This week’s book recommendation: Maggie Moves on by Lucy Score * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateWhen it comes to entrepreneurship, it’s very easy to get swept away in how successful everyone else is. The successful launches, new offers, client wins, and miss out on the struggles happening behind the scenes. The missed client payments, the refund requests, the missed deadlines, working when sick, and feeling like it’s time to find a real job.

So today, I wanted to bring you behind the scenes and point out four things that most, if not all, entrepreneurs are experiencing that you won’t see them talking about in their marketing. You’re listening to episode 196 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

com slash planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming. So that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right?

The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan. But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor.

A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when. Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy?

By starting with your goals, and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals? How can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about.

And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind. It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when.

Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, etc.

And so much more. If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner. So the first thing that you’re not going to see inside of someone’s marketing is timing. And I’ve shared the story before about how I realized.

that some of these alleged overnight successes had actually been marketing themselves as a personal brand long before they ever started selling something, so that then when they started selling something they were a quote unquote overnight success and they built a six figure business in the first year.

So they’d been building that audience, right? That’s part of what I’m talking about as far as timing, but the other side of things that isn’t just, oh, I, I Made it or I became successful or I hit the six figure mark in however much time There’s also the idea of timing as far as creating offers specifically so When you go to create an offer Most of the time it’s not This major, giant success right off the bat, right?

It isn’t making you thousands of dollars right away. It’s not selling to hundreds of people immediately. Most of the time, you have to really carefully construct your offers. And it takes, it takes shifting through as if it was an onion, right? So you’ve got this offer, you’ve got this onion, and you know what you want to do with it.

But you have to somehow peel back enough layers to make sure that what your offer is doing is also what your audience needs from you. And so, 90 percent of the time, I would say, we have this offer in mind and it’s got all of this cool stuff and we have all of these goals with it and we want to teach all of these things and do all of these things for people.

And it’s a big, massive thing. thing, an onion, right? A big old onion. And then we put the offer out there and we get some bites. And over time we slowly peel back what it is that our clients and our audience members and our students want. And eventually we get to that core, that core of the onion, that core of the offer.

And that’s what becomes successful. But that’s not going to happen the first time you launch something and it’s probably not going to happen the second or maybe even the third time. It’s going to take multiple iterations and you’re going to reiterate and reiterate and reiterate. We can find ourselves feeling like, Oh, my offer wasn’t successful, so I’m just going to throw it away instead of reiterating it.

Now it’s one thing if you put an offer out there and you get no sales and you had people on the sales page and you talk to those. People or at least some of the people and they just say yeah, it’s just not for me because of XYZ But there are a lot of different things that you can look into to decide what it is that went wrong.

Even if there were no sales, it might not be the offer, right? It might be that you didn’t get enough people on the sales page. It might be that the marketing, the copy on the sales page, isn’t great. It might be that the marketing to get people to the sales page wasn’t what it needed to be. There’s so many different pieces to Any sale and any marketing effort that it could be any number of those things and so that’s a totally different episode that I could do but When it comes to is it the offer?

It’s probably not even if you didn’t make any sales It’s probably just it needs some peeling back. So What does that look like in practicality? Well When you put an offer out there, what you want to make sure you do is you want to do all you can to get sales, obviously, right? Whether that’s reaching out individually to people who have shown interest, whether it’s just asking market research questions, whether it’s, you know, offering extra bonuses for beta clients, beta students, right?

You, you want to make sure that you’re doing all you can to get people in there and you’re not just saying, Hey, this thing’s available. And then. Leaving it at that. Once you get people in there, what we tend to want to do is we tend to think, okay, well the launch is over so I’m going to move on to my next big project.

No. What we want to do is we want to make sure that we are really pouring into the clients or the students that have purchased this offer. That means holding their hand through the entire thing. That means really diving into what it is that they’re doing and helping them finish it. So if it’s a course, even if you’ve pre recorded everything, You want to make sure that you are following up with those students, encouraging them to finish it, encouraging them to get through it, seeing what their problem points are.

And if it’s clients, you want to make sure you’re touching base regularly with what it is you’re doing and what it is that they need from you. You want to make sure you are with them 100 percent of the way of this. Then once the time is over, once the work with the client is done, once they have completed the course, or if you have a And I don’t mean they lose access, but I mean, 90 days until this thing at the end of those 90 days, even if they didn’t finish, follow up and say, Hey, what did you like about this offer?

What would you like to see done better? Where can I improve? Where’d you get stuck? And ask those questions because you have been holding their hand along the way they’re more likely to answer. And then you have to take those responses. You have to figure out what the true needs are, because again, sometimes they’ll say, oh, I just didn’t have time.

Well, that’s not actually a way that you can improve the offer, right? But maybe it’s okay, they didn’t feel like they had time. Maybe they were either overwhelmed or maybe they needed to, you know, have things broken down a little bit more. Maybe there’s too much, you know, you can brainstorm a bunch of different ways.

So you take that feedback and you brainstorm what it actually means for your offer. And then. What you want to do from there is you want to improve this offer. So again, we haven’t moved on to our next project, right? We haven’t said, okay, well, launch is over. I’m doing the next thing on my list. No, we are still in it with this launch, with this offer.

So then you improve and you plan your next launch and you launch it again. And you do the same thing until you know that people are getting through this course or this. People are seeing results, people are telling you what you need to hear, and you’re able to take that and improve your marketing. You want to, if at all possible, relaunch the same offer two or three times and improve it each time before you send it to Evergreen.

And that’s what I mean by timing. You have to really put in the time for each offer to Make it successful. And that’s not something that we see necessarily what we see is we see someone pumping out new offer after new offer or new offer, seemingly, but most likely what’s happened is they have spent the time reiterating these offers.

And so they have a launch cycle that they can move through because they have done that work to improve these offers. But we don’t see that we just see them. Oh, well, yeah. This quarter they’re launching this thing. Next quarter they’re launching that thing. Then they’re going to launch this thing. And then every December that, you know, we’re seeing their launch cycle because they’ve done the work with their offers and they’ve put in the time to make their offers what they are today.

The next thing that we won’t see in someone’s marketing kind of goes along with the first point, but There, there’s another side of it that I’d like to point out is offers that don’t sell. So when we see a launch, the job of the business owner of the marketer is to make it as appealing as possible for their audience to buy.

And so you’re not going to see someone tell you that their launch flopped or that an offer isn’t selling, especially during the launch week. There may be times where, I know I’ve done this, where I’ve said oh, this was a total flop and I kind of showed you the behind the scenes of that so you could get a realistic glimpse of, hey, sometimes this happens, but for the most part, you’re not going to see someone say, yeah, this offer didn’t sell at all.

You’re not going to see that, right? Why would they tell that in their marketing? Unless it’s part of their platform, right? That transparency like it is part of mine Like my goal is to make marketing really transparent and to make business itself really transparent But that’s not gonna be everyone’s platform It’s not gonna be most people’s platforms or maybe they do but in a different way, right?

So that’s something you’re not gonna see you’re not gonna see someone say hey this offer didn’t sell and so it’s really easy to look at someone’s marketing and go hmm Man, they’ve had a lot of launches this year. They must be doing really well. A launch doesn’t mean the launch was successful. So just something to keep in mind with that.

The third thing that you’re not gonna see in someone’s marketing is the late nights to meet deadlines. I personally have fallen into a bad habit of this lately as I’ve gone through some personal things over the last, gosh, six months and There are a lot of times late nights to meet deadlines and that’s just something you’re not gonna see you’re gonna see people showing you Hey, look, I’m working on this this this and this today and I’m accomplishing so much and sometimes that’s true Right like as women We tend to have one week out of every month in our cycle where we’re like, yeah, I am on it and I am crossing things off the list and I’m killing it.

But that’s not the norm. And so when we see someone post something like that every now and then of how much they got done, we think that that’s normal. When in reality, there are days when they just don’t feel like it. And there are days when They have to stay up late to meet deadlines and force themselves to stay up to get things done And they’re not proud of their work there are days when they have to choose between doing something fun and meeting a deadline and there are Entirely too many business owners out there that want to paint this image of if you’re working hard You’re not doing business, right?

And that is just not the case being a business owner even if you’ve got quote unquote passive income and even if you are able to travel and do all of this stuff. It’s hard work and it means hard decisions sometimes. And you know what? Sometimes it means late nights to meet deadlines. So if you’re looking at other business owners and you’re saying, man, they don’t seem like they’re doing any work and I am busting my hump and getting nowhere.

It’s because you’re only seeing the highlight reel. And the final thing that I want to point out that you’re not going to see in someone’s marketing. It’s kind of a three for one. You’re not going to see the uncertainty. You’re not going to see the failure. Then you’re not going to see the mistakes.

Because we all make them. We all have moments where we go, I don’t know if this is the right decision. Or, you make a decision, and in hindsight, you go, well, that was terrible. I wish I’d never done that. I feel like a failure now. You’re not going to see those moments where someone wants to throw in the towel.

Again, there’s always going to be the exception to the rule. Sometimes people are going to say, Yeah, hey, here’s, you know, here’s what I’ve got going on. And this really sucks right now. But you’re going to see that far less often than you would see the reality of how often it happens. So, those are just four things that I wanted to point out.

as far as the behind the scenes of what it looks like to be a business owner. Because I don’t want you to go into this year with expectations of yourself that aren’t realistic. Entrepreneurship is hard. It’s a lot of work. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not full of joy and that it’s not exciting and fun and full of freedom.

But in order to appreciate the freedom, it’s best if we have a realistic look at what some of those hard parts are so that we know, yes, to expect them, but also so that we know we’re not alone, and that when we’re dealing with these things that It’s normal and that it’s not what it’s not that you’re doing anything wrong or that you’re not meant to be a business owner So I hope that you take this and you feel some relief your action step this week is Just to send me a DM on Instagram and say hi Or if you don’t want to DM me DM someone that you would like it to make a connection with and just say hi because the best way to combat The hard parts of entrepreneurship is connections and community.

So that’s your action step. DM me or someone else that you want to make a connection with and say hi. Now your book recommendation for this week is Maggie Moves On by Lucy Scor. This is a, it’s a total rom com, total quick read kind of book and it’s about this I don’t know if she’s a general contractor or a designer, kind of a little bit of both.

And she is restoring this old Victorian mansion and is flipping it essentially. And she ends up, you know, getting involved with the landscaper that’s doing the work and she’s really resistant to it and he’s, you know, all of that fun stuff. So if you like those types of books, Maggie moves on by Lucy Score and I will link to that in the show notes.

And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes, as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 196: Marketing Secrets – What You Don’t See in Someone’s Marketing appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Making $100k+ a Year, working part time, with Cailen AscherWe all started our businesses so that we could make more and work less, right? That’s essentially what every business origin story boils down to. And I’m right there with you. I recognized that as a 3rd year teacher, I wasn’t ever going to make much more than I was already making. And I had too many missed chances to spend time with my husband due to conflicting schedules. So I started out on my own path.

And early on into my entrepreneurial journey, I came across today’s guest, Cailen Ascher. She was sharing all about the fact that she worked full time, but only in 3 days a week and I was FLOORED. Although I’d started my business for time freedom, I hadn’t known that time freedom like that was even possible.

Cailen Ascher is an award-winning Business Coach with a 3-day workweek, a mom of two little girls and the creator of Scale-Up Accelerator — a program that helps coaches create and launch a highly profitable Premium Group Program that can bring in $100K+ per year with ONE Zoom call a week. Cailen has been featured in Business Insider, Huffington Post and Inspired Coach Magazine and has been interviewed on top podcasts like Entrepreneurs on Fire and She Means Business Podcast among many others. She is also host of The Soulful Business Show which airs weekly. Her programs have helped 1000s of coaches & service providers transform their lives and businesses with her proven strategies for working less, making more and living better. Cailen lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with her husband, two young daughters and a spunky dog named Olive.

Today, you’ll hear Cailen and I discuss what the shift to working so much less looks like, and how she did it. Spoiler: she leverages group coaching to serve more people in less time, and she’s going to also share some tips on how to do that yourself if that’s a business model that seems like a good fit for you.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content (because you’re batching it, right? ), the first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan. But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when. Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals, and working backwards to ensure you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals? And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan? Grab your Chasing Simple Content Planner. The planner is my number one bestseller – And for good reason too, because this massive 130+ page planner was designed with strategy in mind. It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post, and when. Yes, that’s part of it. But first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find: Yearly planning pages Monthly prep work Monthly reflection questions Repurposing worksheets and so much more! If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chasing Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just $27 at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Get Cailen’s free training which reveals How Coaches Are Earning Over $100,000 Per Year With Just ONE Zoom Call A Week. Grab that over at http://www.CailenAscher.com/free * This week’s action step: Ask yourself “What do I want to be known for?” * This week’s book recommendation: The Complete Works of Florence Shovel Shinn * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Cailen Ascher is an award-winning Business Coach with a 3-day workweek, a mom of two little girls and the creator of Scale-Up Accelerator — a program that helps coaches create and launch a highly profitable Premium Group Program that can bring in $100K+ per year with ONE Zoom call a week. Cailen has been featured in Business Insider, Huffington Post and Inspired Coach Magazine and has been interviewed on top podcasts like Entrepreneurs on Fire and She Means Business Podcast among many others. She is also host of The Soulful Business Show which airs weekly. Her programs have helped 1000s of coaches & service providers transform their lives and businesses with her proven strategies for working less, making more and living better. Cailen lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with her husband, two young daughters and a spunky dog named Olive. Get her free training which reveals How Coaches Are Earning Over $100,000 Per Year With Just ONE Zoom Call A Week. Grab that over at http://www.CailenAscher.com/free .

Social Links:

http://www.CailenAscher.com

https://www.instagram.com/cailen.ascher/?hl=en

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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAmanda Warfield:* We all started our businesses so that we could make more and work less, right? That’s essentially what every business origin story boils down to. And I’m right there with you. I recognized that as a third year teacher, I wasn’t ever going to make much more than I was already making. And I had too many missed chances to spend time with my husband due to conflicting schedules.

Amanda Warfield: So, I started out on my own path. And early on into my entrepreneurial journey, I came across today’s guest, Kaylin Asher. She was sharing all about the fact that she worked full time, but only in three days a week, and I was floored. Although I’d started my business for time freedom, I hadn’t known that Time freedom like that was even possible.

Amanda Warfield: Kaylin Asher is an award winning business coach with a three day work week, a mom of two little girls and the creator of scale up accelerator, a program that helps coaches create and launch a highly profitable premium group program that can bring in six figures each year with one zoom call a week.

Amanda Warfield: Katelyn has been featured in Business Insider, Huffington Post, and Inspired Coach Magazine, and has been interviewed on top podcasts like Entrepreneurs on Fire and She Means Business Podcasts, among many others. She is also the host of the Soulful Business Show, which airs weekly. Her programs have helped thousands of coaches and service providers transform their lives and businesses with her proven strategies for working less, making more, and living better.

Amanda Warfield: Katelyn lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with her husband, two young daughters, and a spunky dog named Olive. Today you’ll hear Katelyn and I discuss what the shift to working so much less looks like and how she did it. Spoiler, she leverages group coaching to serve more people in less time and she’s going to share some tips on how to do that yourself if that’s a business model that seems like a good fit for you.

Amanda Warfield: You’re listening to episode 195 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com slash planner.

Amanda Warfield: How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Amanda Warfield: Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

Amanda Warfield: I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

Amanda Warfield: When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

Amanda Warfield: If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Amanda Warfield: Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming. So that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

Amanda Warfield: So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content, because you’re batching it, right?

Amanda Warfield: The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan, but what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor.

Amanda Warfield: A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when. Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy?

Amanda Warfield: By starting with your goals, and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals? Quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals. How can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about.

Amanda Warfield: And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind. It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when.

Amanda Warfield: Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

Amanda Warfield: If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner. Hi, Galen. I am so, so, so excited to have you on. I feel like I’ve been saying this with everyone, but I’m just really excited about this batch of interviews.

Amanda Warfield: You are someone that I have been following since. 2018, 2019, way back in the beginning of my business. So it’s, it’s a real nice like full circle moment for me to have you on as a guest for chasing simple. So can you just real quick tell everyone who you are and what it

Cailen Ascher: is that you do? Yeah, absolutely.

Cailen Ascher: Thanks so much for having me on Amanda. So I’m Kaylin Asher. I’m a business coach. I specialize in helping coaches and aspiring coaches create high ticket group programs so that they have a more spacious schedule and are able to have a scalable offer instead of kind of getting. Trapped in creating another job for themselves with back to back one on one calls.

Cailen Ascher: And, you know, I kind of went down that path for a while and I realized it was not a good fit for me, my energy, my, you know, my lifestyle. I’ve got two young kids and my husband and all of that. So I really love helping women create programs that You know, really help other people, but also support them in the process so they can serve from that place of overflow and not feeling depleted by, by doing our good work in the world.

Cailen Ascher: So you’re pretty

Amanda Warfield: well known for having a three day work week and then also teaching others how to have a three day work week. Can you kind of. Back us up and tell us how that all began and how that came about for you.

Cailen Ascher: Yeah, absolutely. It’s such a good question and one that I talk about a lot on podcasts because I feel like that schedule is like the magical unicorn of schedule, the three day work week.

Cailen Ascher: So what happened for me was I, I started my coaching business when it was just me and my husband. We didn’t have any kids, you know, as we were kind of chatting beforehand, I definitely have workaholic tendencies. I love my business. I love the work that I do, so I can just fill all my hours all the time with it.

Cailen Ascher: But that wasn’t actually translating into clients and money. I was spending lots and lots of hours. But what I’m realizing now is not on high revenue generating activities. And then I found out I was pregnant with our first daughter. And so it was this weird moment where I was like, what I’m doing isn’t sustainable at all.

Cailen Ascher: We have this new little baby arriving who I want to have time with. And I want to be a really present and hands on mom, but I don’t want to let my business go. And it really felt like this. insolvable problem for a while. I took some months off right after she was born, which was wonderful. And I, this idea landed for me one day, I was like, what if I had a three day work week?

Cailen Ascher: Instead of working five days, I’d have three days of work and four day weekends. It like, it just felt like the balance was really there. And then, The clincher was, well, can I make money doing this? Can I, can I actually make my business, you know, you know, at the time, I think I was making like 20, 30, 000 a year.

Cailen Ascher: It was not, you know, where it is today at all. And I was like, I don’t know if I could even sustain that if I’m only working three days. And what happened in that 1st year of stepping into my 3 day work week was that I made that and then some and within a year or so, I was at the 6 figure level and I realized now it came because that transition came because I, I put my values 1st, my time, my energy, my family.

Cailen Ascher: And allowed my business to support that instead of thinking, I had to put all of my time and my energy into my business in order to be successful. And so, I mean, that translated into a lot of a lot of other actions and mindset shifts and all of that. But the basis of it was, is that I was really defining what success looked like for me and and owning that and and not feeling like I had to go above and beyond that in order to create the business that I wanted.

Cailen Ascher: So, it started because I stepped into motherhood and, you know, since then. It’s really impacted a lot of the work I’ve done over the years with my clients because I’ve, you know, I realized a lot of people step into their coaching businesses because they want, they want freedom, they want flexibility. And then they kind of just default to their habits and patterns that they learned from society or from their nine to five job.

Cailen Ascher: And it’s not really the business they want once they get it going. And how can we repackage that, redesign that into something that really feels good and makes them a lot of money in the process. The

Amanda Warfield: idea that, you know, you’re working all the time and yet you’re not actually generating that revenue that you wanted in the, the time you’re spending, isn’t connected to revenue generating activities.

Amanda Warfield: It’s such a gut punch because it can feel like, no, I need to do all of these things. Everything I’m doing is important, but then you hear about all of these people like yourself who do scale back and they spend way less time working and then their business grows and it’s always kind of mind blowing.

Amanda Warfield: And I feel like we could spend. Honestly, multiple episodes, just talking about why that is and, and the mindset shifts that occur when you do take that step back and are forced to work well are forcing yourself to work less. But I think my biggest question is how do you overcome those mental blocks?

Amanda Warfield: Because so often in theory, and again, we were talking about this before we hit record, but. Yeah. I’m spending this year really focusing on working less. My husband’s working a shift schedule. And so his schedule is always changing and I’m matching my schedule to match his so that we can spend more time together, which is incredible.

Amanda Warfield: But it means that I’m working significantly less than I ever have. And those mindset mental blocks are they’re hard. And it’s just, I want to work. I love working. I love what I do. It’s fun to problem solve and to, to do all the things and to run a business. But I know those workaholic tendencies aren’t actually helpful and in the long run are probably harming my business more than they’re helping it, but it’s the, the mental blocks that make it so difficult.

Amanda Warfield: So how did you overcome all of those when you decided to take those steps back? Yeah,

Cailen Ascher: I think, and you know, I still have mental blocks coming up, right? I’m not at this place where I’m like, I have no blocks in front of me. We all, we all deal with them. And so I think the first step, and it seems like you’re there for sure with what you just shared, is self awareness of being aware.

Cailen Ascher: That these thoughts aren’t serving you, that these habits aren’t serving you, that the things you’re doing aren’t for your highest evolution and that just that the awareness breathes some space between you and that thought, or you and that action. And you’re not, you’re not the thought. You know, you’re not a workaholic.

Cailen Ascher: You’re someone who has workaholic tendencies at this moment in time, or someone who used to have workaholic tendencies. Like, we want to do that. Like, always put it in the past. So I think that awareness is really key. And then something that I’ve been asking myself that is really useful is. When I come up to something and like there’s a thought or a decision, I ask myself, like, am I approaching this decision from a place of lack and fear or from a place of clarity and expansion?

Cailen Ascher: And you can use whatever words feel good for you, from fear or from faith, like, but where is this action coming from? Where is this decision coming from? And that gives me such instant clarity. Because this happened the other day, there was. You know, people, you know, we, I have a woman who’s taking all the sales calls for us.

Cailen Ascher: And there were people, a lot of people booking calls with her. And there were some that I was like, should I cancel these calls? Like, they don’t seem like a great fit, but I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. And my husband was just like, where is this thought coming from? Is this coming from like your highest successful self, or is it coming from a place of lack?

Cailen Ascher: And I was like, Oh, you’re right. It’s coming from that place of, you know, back in the day when, like, you don’t want to cancel calls because that means you’re saying no to clients where now we’re, we’re at a point where we’re scaling and like, we have to kind of make those tougher decisions. And it was, it’s so helpful.

Cailen Ascher: To have something that can kind of just call you out on your own behavior. And so I would recommend if that resonates, like, having a question or having something that kind of pulls you back from that quandary of, like, should I do this? Or should I do that? Or, you know, you’re engaging in a habit that you don’t want to be engaging in and just be like, where is this coming from?

Cailen Ascher: Is this coming from my highest self? Or is this coming from, like, My old self, my residual self, the self that, you know, got me to where I am, but isn’t necessarily the person who’s going to take me where I want to go. That’s

Amanda Warfield: so good. It’s such a, such a important question to ask ourselves that I know I struggle.

Amanda Warfield: I struggle with that slowing down and becoming self aware. I’m really good at being self aware in, you know, retrospect. Like, oh, that, that was this, but it’s really hard to notice in the So it’s a very important question to be thinking on. I’m curious what roadblocks either mental or physical you butted up against when you first decided, okay, I’m going to work three days a week.

Cailen Ascher: Yeah. I mean, the first roadblock was just like, oh my gosh, will this even work? Like, will I make enough money? Will there be enough time in those three days to get all the work done? And I proved to myself pretty quickly that when I put. Structure around my work hours. I was much more efficient and effective and how I was using my time.

Cailen Ascher: I kind of equate this to, you know, when we started out, my husband and I were living in like this, like, 600 square foot cottage. It was adorable. You know, we just have stuff for that space. And then, you know, we found out we were pregnant. We moved to our house now, which is like a 5 bedroom house. And there’s so much more space.

Cailen Ascher: And I was like, Oh, my gosh, it’s going to take us forever to like, get all the furniture and the things we need and it’s like, all of a sudden, now this house is packed. It’s like, it just happens so quickly. And so I think whatever container you’re giving yourself, and especially if you don’t have a container for just like, I will work whenever to max capacity.

Cailen Ascher: The time is going to fill. You’re going to find ways to fill the time and a lot of it is going to be like redoing stuff, rehashing stuff, like pulling apart things that don’t really need to be pulled. You know, like, we just get into bad habits where if you know, oh, I only have like 3 hours today to work.

Cailen Ascher: You’re going to make highest and best use of that time. And so it really pulls into focus. What are the most important activities and what is, like I said, like, revenue generating business growth, you know, planting the seeds for clients and money. Like, those are the activities we want to spend our time on.

Cailen Ascher: Not like. Playing in Canva or tweaking our website or, you know, all those things that might seem fun and enjoyable and they can be, but really, if you have three hours, those shouldn’t be the activities you’re doing. It should be doing the stuff that’s going to grow the business, make money, patron clients.

Amanda Warfield: It’s funny because I’ve seen this happen myself this week in particular. So as we’re recording this, it’s obviously batch week for everyone’s listening. You know, I do batch week every single month and every single month I batch the whole next month. Or every single month I set aside a week where I batch the whole next month’s worth of content in that one week, get it scheduled so that I’m not sitting there and marketing every single day during the month.

Amanda Warfield: And I have more flexibility with my time because my marketing is working for me. But this week in particular, and once or maybe twice a year, depending on how many guests episodes I end up doing, I also do a guest interview batch week where I batch all of the guest interviews for the entire year. I’m doing those together this month, which has been a fun experiment.

Amanda Warfield: And I realized that I’m completing my typical batch week work in just an hour or two every morning. And I have finished that work faster than I ever have yesterday morning. I messaged my friend and I was like, I’m already, I’m already pretty much done with my, all of my April content right now. And normally this takes me a full work week to do that much content.

Amanda Warfield: And it’s really amazing the way that it really just expands to whatever space you give it. And I posted on my Instagram stories about that. And I had so many DMS of people being like, I do the same thing when I give myself more time for whatever it is, but in particular batch week. It takes all of that time.

Amanda Warfield: And so it’s been very interesting to see that for myself, and it will certainly be a challenge. I give myself moving forward to see if I can even further simplify and shorten what my match week looks like. But you’ve mentioned the revenue generating activities a few times now. Can you kind of walk us through what those look like for you?

Amanda Warfield: And How you determined what you were going to spend your three days a week on and what you weren’t, because I, that’s definitely going to be the biggest thing for everyone is how do I cut back on what I’m doing? I feel like everything is vital. So how do you know?

Cailen Ascher: Yeah, I mean, for, for all of us, and depending on the role that you have in your business, I mean, right now I do have teams.

Cailen Ascher: So that has shifted what I spend my time on. But if you’re pretty solo in the business doing all of the things, obviously, there’s going to be some administrative stuff you need to do each day. Like, you need to check your inbox. You need to make sure that, you know, if there’s little things that need responding to timely stuff, absolutely.

Cailen Ascher: Like, it’s not about ignoring those things, because those are important. And if someone needs to hear back from you, it’s important they hear back. But generally, when we’re talking about revenue generating activities, These would be marketing activities. These would be, um, outreach activities, you know, reaching out to people who might be, um, that you’ve been in correspondence with, or if you do any kind of advertising, like checking your Facebook ads, updating those, those types of things, or, um, one of my favorite, which is happening right now is, is visibility, you know, getting out there in front of other people’s audiences, speaking on podcasts, online summits, um, Conferences in person, if you can, now that the world’s open back up, um, you know, those types of things like leveraging your time in a higher capacity, and then also some of the, the revenue generating activities can look kind of mundane, but depending on you need to be consistent with stuff, right?

Cailen Ascher: Like sending emails. I send emails every week to my list at least once a week. And if they didn’t hear from me every week, Okay. The right people wouldn’t show up as buyers for my programs and so it might not look like this, like, like, super, like, sexy, exciting thing that you’re doing, but some of that background nurturing on through your email through your social media content.

Cailen Ascher: If you have a podcast, like, you don’t have to do all the things, but pick. Like, 1 or 2 places where you’re going to show up consistently and let that be enough, but be consistent because if people are never hearing from you on email, or if they check your social media, it hasn’t been updated in 4 months, or if you had a podcast for a hot minute, and now there’s no new episodes, and there’s no reason why people aren’t going to check it.

Cailen Ascher: There’s not that social proof that you are, like, out there doing the work and that’s what builds know, like, and trust over time. You know, people have signed up for your email list, getting those regular emails. And so that’s always been really important for me. I still, you know, I don’t have a copywriter.

Cailen Ascher: I write all of my emails. I do my own podcasting, like. This most of the social media content, I create myself because I really want people hearing from me so that if they’re interested in working with me, they have a sense of what I sound like, and what I act like, and all of those things. And it’s not just me behind the scenes, like, playing in my business.

Cailen Ascher: And so, and another key piece of it for a lot of us is business development. And so that can look like. New projects that you’re working on new things you’re rolling out or also like learning be working with a coach or working inside a program to develop new skills or to, you know, step into that next level of your business, whatever that looks like.

Cailen Ascher: But. I would say a lot of times when we’re coaching, especially when we’re 1 to 1 coaching, it’s like 70, 80, 5, 80 percent of our time is spent serving our current clients. And then that little remainder of like, 15, 20%. Is what we use to try to make, get more clients and make more money. And really, we want to almost have the inverse of that, like 70, 80 percent of the time we’re planting seeds for clients.

Cailen Ascher: We’re planting seeds for money. We’re planting seeds for growth and then in that little bit of time, that remainder of time is where we’re serving our current clients and not in a way we’re like. You know, once they pay us, I don’t care anymore, but just we need to start thinking of switching how we’re spending our energy.

Cailen Ascher: If we want a business that’s sustainable and growth oriented. And that’s why I love the group model, because you can make highest and best use of that 15, 20 percent remainder, however much, you know, like that little bit of time you can coach in such a powerful, impactful way when you have a group model.

Cailen Ascher: Rather than trying to like cram all your one on one clients or limit the number of one on one clients you have, you can still make a really big impact with that less time. So that’s been a big upgrade that I’ve made that’s opened up my three day work week even more was making that transition from one to one to group coaching.

Cailen Ascher: I love that you

Amanda Warfield: talked so much about spending a large chunk of your time on your marketing and your visibility because So often, that’s one of the first things we’re told to outsource and don’t get me wrong. I am a content strategist. I do that. I am the person that people outsource to is so often it’s made to seem as if it’s just something you can brush under the rug and you so you can focus all your time on your clients and on the back end of your business.

Amanda Warfield: And it’s all important. But if people don’t know you exist, they won’t work with you. And so I love that that was your perspective shift of, I need to spend more time marketing and less time serving clients on a one to one basis. And so you moved into group coaching and I know that you have just been wildly successful with that.

Amanda Warfield: I’m curious what you’ve done to make that switch so effectively, because I already know that there are people listening, going, I can’t even get enough one to one clients to feel like I could make a group coaching program. So how do you make that shift effectively?

Cailen Ascher: I think a lot of us are introduced to good group coaching as a downsell cheaper option to one on one.

Cailen Ascher: So we’re told, okay, first you create your one on one offer and then you create your group offer, which is cheaper. And then you make that into a course. And then you have a tripwire, you know, like we have that whole Ascension model. But what I love doing is. Making the program, the group program, the signature high ticket offer of the business.

Cailen Ascher: And it’s not to say you never coach one on one again, but it’s just lifted to such a VIP premium level that you really get to cherry pick your very best clients. If you even want to do it at all. So if you’re charging currently 3, 500 for one on one, you know, like three months of one on one coaching that group program.

Cailen Ascher: Should be 3500 like we want to come in and replace it or even create a program. That’s maybe a little pricier. Like, can we make it even better and higher value somehow? And so we’re not taking a step back where it’s like, oh, now I need to get 3 clients in my group just to replace that 1, 1 on 1 client.

Cailen Ascher: We want to make sure it’s an even switch out. And another thing is that because of that, I mean, the programs we help our clients create are, you know, on the least expensive side, like 3000, all the way up to 10 So these aren’t programs that we then need to go get 50 clients for. You can get five, eight, 10 people.

Cailen Ascher: And that can be like, You know, you’re almost making six figures from one enrollment, depending on your price point. And so what we really focus on is like intimate high ticket group coaching that you don’t need to have these massive enrollments for, but you can still have that massive, like that massive launch number, you know, like a 50, 75 K launch.

Cailen Ascher: By making sure you’re putting this program together in a way that’s really high value, because ultimately people don’t really care if you’re getting most of the time coached 1 on 1 or in a group, or they don’t that’s not what’s important to them. What’s important to them is a solution that’s going to work.

Cailen Ascher: And if you have a proven process that can help them that we can. Package up into a repeatable model for group coaching with maybe some, you know, specialization like we give our clients a couple one on one calls to make sure they’re feeling really that high touch aspect. But if you’re able to do that and get them the results, they don’t, they benefit more almost from the group because they’re with a little cohort of individuals who are doing the work alongside of them and they have accountability partners and they have this like mastermind energy on this path of change, rather than it just being you and them every week on a call and you’re like their only reference point.

Cailen Ascher: There’s no other, no other perspectives. And so what I found is a lot of my My clients like the group model a lot better than one on one once they’re introduced to it. And I know from my own experience, I exclusively invest in group coaching at this point. Like I want to work with, yes, a very educated mentor, but I like the idea of being surrounded by people doing the work together.

Cailen Ascher: It brings me confidence and faith that we’re like all on the rise together.

Amanda Warfield: Absolutely. I’m, I’m the same way at this point. I will almost never invest in one on one coaching just because. The relationships that you build within these other people that you’re being coached with. It is truly priceless, really.

Amanda Warfield: I mean, some of my greatest business friends come from a mastermind that I invested in years ago. And gosh, I have a client from that. I’ve got an incredible business friend and it’s it’s not that you go into those hoping for those things, but well, maybe the friends, but when it comes out of it, it’s always like, oh, this is all because I.

Amanda Warfield: Invested in something and invested in a program. And I invested in my situation for this first one I invested because I really loved the educator that was teaching it. And I wanted to learn from her and then I got out of it and I was like, Oh, that was great, but even better is the relationships that I’m building.

Amanda Warfield: And so that’s always something I consider when investing now in group coaching programs is what am I going to get out of it from the educator? What am I also going to get out of it from the people that are going to be doing it with me?

Cailen Ascher: Yeah, it’s so true because. Being an entrepreneur can be such an isolating journey.

Cailen Ascher: You know, you’re I’m in my office alone, you know, on a computer screen and it’s It can feel really solo. And so, if you are in a group program, you’re instantly tapped into a network of people who share similar values, have similar vision, are ambitious, are successful, um, it just immediately surrounds you with, with peers and a support group.

Cailen Ascher: And I mean, I feel very fortunate on the home front that I’m super supported, but I know that everyone feels that way. And so I think. You know, getting into a community, a small intimate space like that can be so, so beneficial

Amanda Warfield: for someone who is thinking, okay, maybe this is something I want to move more towards.

Amanda Warfield: What are some tips for getting started in creating a successful group coaching offer right off the bat? And what are some common mistakes that you see?

Cailen Ascher: Yeah. So I think what’s really important is that you pick a specialty for your program and kind of Opposite of that is when you go to general, that’s a mistake where it’s like, this program could help all people on the planet or all women are all mothers.

Cailen Ascher: And it’s like, okay, maybe that feels like you’re getting narrow by saying mothers, but how can we make it more specialty? Like, are these working mothers? Are these stay at home mothers? Are these mothers of women? Yeah. Babies and toddlers, or these mothers of school age children, or these mothers whose children have left the nest, and they’re looking to reclaim a sense of identity.

Cailen Ascher: There’s so much nuance in there, and we really want you to be a specialist when we partner with you to create a group program, because that is what is going to make it a no brainer investment for your right clients. If it’s really kind of general and wishy washy of like, oh yeah, we’re going to up level together, and it’s going to be amazing.

Cailen Ascher: It’s just like these big, like, open ended blanket statements. That doesn’t really get people excited. You want to be kind of polarizing and share, like, the, the specific methodology that you have for this specific person and the transformation they most desire because that’s That’s what people are going to pay for.

Cailen Ascher: You know, that’s when they’re like on the call, like, how can I give you money now? Because I’m so excited to work with you inside this special container you’ve created just for me, because it feels, it feels like the one on one aspect where, you know, we can kind of customize for our clients. You know, we have to we can’t do that with a group program.

Cailen Ascher: So instead we have to pick a specialty so that the right people feel that level of customization, even though we’ve created a program that can help multiple people at a time. And so I think that’s, that’s a really powerful shift. In general, in our business, because I think when we start in one on one coaching, we have the opportunity and sometimes it’s important to explore.

Cailen Ascher: It’s like, when I first started coaching, it was like, some people needed more mindset stuff and people needed more marketing stuff and some people needed more sales stuff or a mix or, and they wanted to be coached differently. Some people wanted, you know, lots of plans. Other people wanted to talk just in big general ideas.

Cailen Ascher: But when you make a group program, you get to decide, like, what do I stand for? What’s my mission? What’s my message? How do I want to show up as a leader? How do I want to curate this group and this energy and this environment? And it really takes you to that next level in your business because you, you really are forced to not let your clients take the lead, but you take the lead and you decide what it’s all about.

Cailen Ascher: And that’s really exciting and powerful. And Instantly, like makes your marketing better, makes your sales better. Like it improves everything across the board because you’ve gotten focused and specific. You know, it’s funny. My next

Amanda Warfield: question was going to be, how do you market this? How do you actually get people into your coaching program?

Amanda Warfield: But you just, I feel like you hit the nail on the head. It’s all about being specific because if you’re shouting into the void about, Oh, I help. Writers get their book published. Well, it’s kind of niche, but it doesn’t tell me what my pain point is yet. If you go and you say, I help entrepreneurial writers get their book published, that’s a whole different story.

Amanda Warfield: And I mean, that’s, I found my book editor specifically because she markets very specifically to entrepreneurs turned writers, entrepreneurs turned authors is what she calls them. And I was like, Oh, that is, that’s me. You know, how to. And it books that are just like what I’m doing. And so that very specific getting really niched down is how you market the people.

Cailen Ascher: It’s so true. And it feels good. I mean, it feels good to have that level of clarity and specialization because the coaching industry is crowded and, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think there’s also a higher demand for coaching than ever before, but it’s a lot different to be a social media strategist versus an.

Cailen Ascher: Instagram reels strategist, right? Like, if you’re going to create a program, if you’re like, oh, I can help you with all things, social media. Okay, yes, maybe some people would be interested if they want, like, really broad social media strategy, but if you can give them, like. A deep dive into a specific area, rather than just kind of a blanket version over lots of areas.

Cailen Ascher: That’s so much more valuable to people and they really associate you with that thing and see you as an expert. And that’s a lot more valuable for so many reasons, you know, just, you know, people really are going to gravitate towards you and you’re going to be referable, you know, it’s like, okay, if someone wants Transcribed Social media.

Cailen Ascher: It’s like, oh, yeah, maybe your name will come up. But if someone’s talking specifically about, oh, my gosh, like, I know I should be doing Instagram reels. And I know there’s like, best practices and I feel like they’re changing all the time. I don’t know what to do. They’re like, oh, you should absolutely talk to so and so, because that’s what she does.

Cailen Ascher: Her program’s all about that. And it does. It makes you so much more referable. And I’ve noticed that in my own journey as I started focusing more and more on high ticket group coaching. It becomes so much more referrable because not all business coaches focus on that. There’s lots of different approaches to building a successful business, but if people align with my approach, then I’m the person that whose name they’re sharing.

Cailen Ascher: So

Amanda Warfield: we know we need to be niched out. We need to know what our niche is and who we’re helping and how we’re helping them. Is there anything else that we need to have in place before creating a group coaching

Cailen Ascher: program? Yeah. You need to know that. The journey that you’re taking them on, like, where are they starting from?

Cailen Ascher: And where do they want to go? And that’s going to help you. We call that your framework, but that’s going to help you build out your curriculum because. If you aren’t quite sure where they want to end up, it’s going to be really hard to create a cohesive curriculum to get them there. So you have to figure out what is the shiny destination that they’re.

Cailen Ascher: Aiming for that. They really desire that they want to have at the end of it. And then you can reverse engineer the steps, the milestones along the way, and also the obstacles that they might meet along the way as well. Because then you can anticipate those obstacles and create content in your program to help them.

Cailen Ascher: Remove them or eliminate them all together.

Amanda Warfield: So important that transformation is key. And that’s when I’m working with clients, that’s the one thing that we always end up having to go all the way back to, because you can’t have a content strategy without knowing exactly what it is that you’re giving your people.

Amanda Warfield: So super important. If you could give everyone just one action step to take after listening to this episode, what would it be?

Cailen Ascher: I would say this is what landed for me. So I’ll share it. Um, ask yourself what you want to be known for. And don’t worry if what you start, I would get a pen and paper, get your journal or whatever and ask right at the top.

Cailen Ascher: What do I want to be known for? And don’t worry if what comes pouring out of you doesn’t immediately seem related to your business. Don’t force it to seem related to your business. Just let it flow, but I guarantee there’s going to be some golden nuggets that come out. Flow onto that paper. If you’re not self censoring that are going to inform your business in some way, shape or another, right?

Cailen Ascher: Like who you want to be working with or how you want to be working with them or shifts you need to make to your schedule or where you want to be visible or how you want to be visible. There’s going to be something that flows out of you that gives you additional clarity. So I would, I would ask that and and see what arrives and then go from there.

Cailen Ascher: And then if you

Amanda Warfield: could give everyone 1 book recommendation,

Cailen Ascher: what would it be? Oh gosh, I have so many books. I have piles of books on my nightstand. Gosh, there’s two that are coming up. The one I’ll recommend is one that I’ve tried to read several times over the years and it just wasn’t landing for me. So if you pick this book up and you’re like, this is not for me, put it down for three years and then go back.

Cailen Ascher: But it was, um, it was actually the complete works of Florence Goldschinn. Her most Famous book is called the game of life and how to play it. And she was an author back in the thirties, um, thirties, forties, and she. Totally was tapped into something beyond herself, definitely like channeling information about how to align with your desires and create them.

Cailen Ascher: And I just found it so interesting that after all these years of trying to read this book, just in like the last six months, I finally. Picked it up again and everything was clicking. So I’ll offer that in case it’s going to click for somewhere, someone else, because it’s been around for a long time.

Cailen Ascher: There’s a lot of wisdom in there. Okay, perfect.

Amanda Warfield: We will link to that in the show notes. Now, if anyone’s listening and they’re like, I need to learn more about group coaching and how I could potentially implement this in my own business, where can they find

Cailen Ascher: you? Yeah. Over at kaitlynasher. com, my main website, um, got lots of information about how to make group coaching work for your business.

Cailen Ascher: Got an awesome freebie. It’s called how to make over 100, 000 a year with one zoom call a week. Um, it’s a quick like 20 minute training. It takes you deeper into my, um, my model for group coaching and how it can work for your business. If it’s something that’s of interest to you. Awesome.

Amanda Warfield: And we will link to all of that in the show notes friends.

Amanda Warfield: Caitlin, thank you so much for being here today. I really

Cailen Ascher: appreciate it. My pleasure, Amanda. Good to see you. Good to see you.

Amanda Warfield: Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes, as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode, and if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Amanda Warfield: Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 195: Making $100k+ a Year, Working Part Time with Cailen Ascher appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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My 2024 GoalsLast year, I didn’t set very many goals. I’ll get into more of why and what that looked like in this episode, but for 2024 I’m back to setting goals. So, as we ease into this new year together, I thought it would be fun to take you behind the scenes of my goals for this new year and how I plan to accomplish them.

But, before we begin – I just wanted to let you know that the quality in this week’s episode is not the quality you’re used to from the Chasing Simple podcast. In order to ensure my goals were as accurate as possible and really nailed down, I waited as long as possible to record, which means that my editing team is out of office for the holidays. I also had to record this on my phone instead of my typical mic (thanks to traveling for the holidays), so the quality just isn’t the same.

However, if you’d like to hear about my 2024 goals and some major life changes – I hope you’ll stick around anyways!

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content (because you’re batching it, right? ), the first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan. But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when. Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals, and working backwards to ensure you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals? And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan? Grab your Chasing Simple Content Planner. The planner is my number one bestseller – And for good reason too, because this massive 130+ page planner was designed with strategy in mind. It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post, and when. Yes, that’s part of it. But first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find: Yearly planning pages Monthly prep work Monthly reflection questions Repurposing worksheets and so much more! If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chasing Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just $27 at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Determine Your Best Growth Strategies * Learn More about Chasing Simple Marketing * Goals with Laken Planner * The Community * Episode 193: My 2023 Income Report * This week’s action step: Send me an email (hello@amandawarfield.com) and let me know what your 2024 goals are for your business! * This week’s book recommendation: Mad Honey by Jodi Piccoult * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateLast year, I didn’t set very many goals. I’ll get into more of why and what that looked like in this episode, but for 2024, I’m back to setting goals. So, as we ease into this new year together, I thought it would be fun to take you behind the scenes of my goals for this new year and how I plan to accomplish them.

But, before we begin, I just wanted to let you know that the quality in this week’s episode is not the quality you’re used to from the Chasing Simple podcast. In order to ensure that my goals were as accurate as possible and really nailed down, I wanted to wait as long as possible to record, which means that my editing team is out of office for the holidays.

I also had to record this on my phone instead of my typical mic due to traveling for the holidays, so the quality just isn’t the same. However, if you’d like to hear about my 2020 goals and some major life changes that are happening to us right now, I hope that you’ll stick around anyways. You’re listening to episode 194 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com slash book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week. I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content, because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals, and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

How can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner. So, like I mentioned in the introduction, I didn’t really do goals for 2023. Um, I ended, if you’ve been listening for a while you may remember me talking about this on the podcast last year, but I ended 2022 in severe burnout.

Very, very severe burnout and I knew that for my mental health, I just needed to not try to improve myself or I spend a lot of time focused on goals in 2023, so I didn’t even purchase a goal planner for 2023, which I’ve been buying goal planners since 2018 now and have been very goal focused since 2018 and I didn’t buy one, I took a year off and I just didn’t set goals, I set zero personal goals for 2023 and then I had I had a revenue goal for the business and I had some projects that I wanted to work on.

And that was really it, which turned out to be the best thing I could have done for myself because 2023 was a whirlwind. Um, the The first five months of the year were great, I, nothing really even stands out in my mind. I was very much just recovering from burnout, trying to relax, you know, um, working on my book, things like that, but, it was simple.

Um, and then June came around, and I I started having some pretty severe health issues, um, including, I was at a conference with my youth group and I ended up collapsing due to my heart rate being so high. It was in the 170s, um, resting. And that was a whole thing which led to weeks and weeks of recovery in June and July, um, and just kind of.

I mean, just bare minimum, everything, for a long time. Um, and then, I got put on anxiety medicine, and that was life changing, honestly. Um, but it didn’t solve the heart issues, so there was a lot of back and forth with the heart doctor and things like that. And, um, then in July, we, traveled. We did a whole massive trip for my 30th birthday and we flew out to Washington to see friends and see Taylor Swift in concert which was incredible and then we went to Disneyland and the last day of our trip was my actual birthday and I woke up with COVID so that was fun so I’m You know, barely recovered from this hard stuff, and then I have COVID.

And the first time I had COVID, I was like asymptomatic. I had almost no symptoms, and this time it hit me really, really hard. And I was down for a while, and five days after my birthday, we lost my grandfather. Um, whom I was very close to, and that was hard because I didn’t get to say goodbye because I had COVID.

Um, and we just didn’t It was one of those things where it, it happened. It was surprising, but it wasn’t. Um, Anyways, so didn’t get to say goodbye. That was a whole emotional thing that rocked our world. And then in August, my husband lost his mother. And it, it was a lot. It was June, July, August were a lot, and in August I finally got diagnosed with, um, SVT, which is super, super ventricle tachycardia, um, or basically the, an upper chamber, and my heart beats too fast sometimes, um.

Not really anything that can be done at this point. But anyway, so there there was a lot going on and Around this time since we had gone back to Washington to visit in July Russell and I had been having talks about moving back and End of August early September. We finally decided. Okay, we’re gonna move back.

We’re gonna move back in June 2024 Because we wanted to, you know, save money and all of that stuff and just give ourselves time to transition. So, it’s a cross country move. It’s not a small thing. So in the midst of all of this life, uh, people, we’re making this decision and we, our plan was we’ll move back in June.

We will We’ll keep our house in South Carolina, we’ll rent it out, and then we will rent in Washington. Because we wanted flexibility, we wanted freedom, we wanted the ability to go, okay, this isn’t working, let’s move back. Um, well. One morning in September, my husband comes home and he goes, you know, I don’t think we should rent.

I think we need to buy. And I was like, what? Okay. Alright. So I hop on Zillow just to like, look. And. And. Immediately, first house I look at is the perfect house for us. It’s very, it’s in the exact area we want to be in. It’s very close to our friends out there. It’s a great layout for what we need and want.

And, um, yeah, we just, I immediately was like, oh my gosh, this is incredible. And then when I showed him, he was all about it too, which surprised me because he’s not normally excited about things like that. And so then we start going, well, is it wild, is it crazy to buy a house in September if we’re not moving until June?

That seems weird. Um, and so then we’re going back and forth, and we decide, let’s go ahead and start the process. As we start the process, interest rates are spiking, so it’s a whole thing. And I was sitting there, and I was like, man, I wonder if I should reach out to the church. Uh, meaning the church that I went to and was planning to go back to, uh, when we lived there previously.

Which I guess, maybe, you may or may not know that we lived there, now that I’m saying all of this out loud. Um, from 2016 to 2019, we lived in Washington, and I started my business in 2018. While we were in Washington, but my business didn’t actually really take off until 2020. So Many of you many that are listening may not know that we actually lived in Washington previously So throwing that in there just to add to the confusion

So South Carolina is home it’s where we both grew up that’s where we moved back to at the end of 2019 But we’ve missed Washington ever since so we’re going back to the exact same place Well, I guess I should say we are back in the exact same place, surprise, that we were before. Um, so I had this thought of, maybe I should reach out to the church and just be like, Hey, if anything part time comes up, I might be interested.

Just because, again, interest rates were high and it was just, it’s a lot, um, a lot mentally as far as like, Is this the right move? This is a big decision. Moving across country again is not exactly cheap. Washington’s a more expensive area. Um, and minimum wage out there is like ten dollars higher an hour than in South Carolina.

So, um, I had had this thought and I was like, you know what? Maybe later. I’m not gonna do that right now, but As we get closer to June, maybe I’ll reach out and just see, depending on how things are going. The very next day, I got a text message asking if I wanted a job at the church. Um, and turns out the associate pastor and youth director that was there at the time had gotten an offer to be a head pastor at another church, and so he was leaving.

And they offered me a position for Youth Director and Community Outreach Director, which is a lot of marketing. Um, so it’s this part time job where I get to like blend two of my passions. Um, which is really cool because when Russ and I were talking about it, I was like, I mean, I’m, I was going to help with a youth group for free, so I might as well get paid to do it if they’re offering, you know.

Um, But, the current youth leader was leaving in November, and the church was perfectly willing to like hold the position for me until June, but I, the church I was going to, um, currently in South Carolina, the church I was going to, we were in the midst of that kind of transition, and it’s just, it’s hard for the kids, it’s hard for the church, and I was like, you know what?

Maybe I should go out now and start this job, we have, we’re getting, we’re in the midst of buying a house anyways, um. Maybe I’m supposed to be going out now. So, all of that being said, currently, I am living in Washington, again. I am now working part time at the church, and I’m also running my business still.

And um, yeah, we’re making that transition out there slowly and it’s Not something we’ve announced yet because we had to wait for everyone to be in the know, my husband to tell his job, all that fun stuff. So, this is the first time I’ve actually announced this out loud to the business world, which is kind of wild.

Anyways, all of that being said, that’s what our 2023 ended up looking like, where from June on, it was just a lot of chaos. And a lot of survival mode, um, because I moved in November and then spent November and the first few weeks of December getting acclimated. And then I went back to South Carolina for Christmas and so, it’s been non stop.

Life has been non stop since June. So, I am, all of that being said, that’s kind of our life update. And also, I’m really glad that I didn’t set goals for 2023. Bye! The goals ish that I did set, again, I had a revenue goal of 70, 000, and if you didn’t listen to last week’s episode about my income report, I got very close to it, which was thrilling.

Um, I never meet my revenue goal, I always set it too high, and that’s just the kind of person I am. So, getting close is It makes me plenty happy, um, which you can hear all about my 2023 numbers in last week’s episode if you didn’t already. But that was really the only goal I had, um, and then I had projects.

I had marketing projects and just regular projects. So marketing projects, I really wanted to try out JV Webinars as a marketing strategy. And then obviously the book was a massive marketing project that I worked on throughout the year. Which, if you haven’t grabbed a copy, go to Amazon, search for Chase and Simple Marketing, grab your copy.

But, JV webinars did not go as well as I hoped. I started kicking them off in June and that’s when life kind of got crazy and so I didn’t really get much, um, traction with that. I had some wonderful people willing to part with me, partner with me, and I did a couple of them and then life got crazy and I just had to back out.

for my mental health and for my actual health as well. So that marketing project didn’t go like I’d hoped. The book, however, went better than I hoped, so all’s fair in love and war and whatever. Happy with that. The other big projects I had on my plate were shop and funnel updates and then the membership switch up, which I talked about a lot in last week’s episode, but I did a complete overhaul of my membership to make it more affordable and just more of what people needed.

More accountability, more action time, um, and less education. It’s still education based, but it’s like quarterly education versus monthly education. And then we spend the quarter action on what we’ve learned versus just throwing education at people. So that was a massive overhaul that I did in order to make it more affordable and more feasible for people.

And that was a big project I had for the year. And then the other projects were just updating different items in my shop, different offers that I have updating funnels and testing out funnels behind the scenes. So those were. Again, I don’t want to call them goals, because they were more projects, so I really had a project based year versus a goal based year.

So, that’s what 2023 looked like, now that I’m however long into this episode. But, and that’s our life update, is just, everything is chaos, and it’s great, but in the best possible way. We’re thrilled to be back in Washington, um. I already miss the warm weather. We’ve gotten snow already, which I just, but it’s been really nice to be back.

So, um, that being said, my 2024 goals, let’s talk about them. Because I did set goals again this year. I snagged a goals with Lakin planner from, uh, Lakin strum. I think she might still go by Lakin Edwards professionally, but regardless plan with Lakin. If you know her. You know, if you don’t you should know.

Um, she has this incredible goal planner. It’s the best goal planner I have ever used. I am so thrilled. She’s been talking about doing this for a while and I’m thrilled that it’s finally out here because it just, man, the prep work is good. I was talking to her about it and, you know, I, I thought I had goals and then I did the prep work and I was like, whoa, now I actually have goals.

So that being said, I’m excited to share this with you. My first goal for this year is consistent 8, 000 revenue months. So instead of doing a yearly revenue goal. I am doing a monthly revenue goal because I, my husband is going to be in school, um, he’s getting another masters this time in cyber security, and um, I’m going to be the main provider while he’s in school this year.

And so instead of an overall yearly goal, I really need to hit monthly revenue numbers. So, what this goal means to me, though, is right now I’m hitting around 6, 000 revenue months and that’s plenty for what we need, but I would like a little wiggle room. I would like a little bit just more space, um, in what I actually have coming in.

And so I want to work my way up to 8, 000 a month. Revenue wise and I fully recognize that that means I may not hit that until the last quarter of the year But I’m gonna spend the year working towards that and the way I’m gonna do that is by really focusing in on my Um, repurposing content VIP days and promoting those and also increasing my shop sales and increasing my membership.

So those are the three ways that I hope to bring that number about and what I’m going to focus on to bring that about. But that number is the actual goal. So the goal and how I hope to do it. Now the second goal is similar and it is to have consistent 2, 000 months. Specifically from the community with a max of 15 VIP members and I got really specific with that because it would be easy to just accept a ton of VIP members and make that 2, 000 a month, but my VIP members are Get a lot of one on one attention the VIP members of the membership.

They get a quarterly one to one call They get the ability to submit content and copy every single week for feedback and review and it just takes more time And so I really wanted to put a max limit on that And so I came up with that what that number was Which is why that’s included because I just want to be able to always offer the best to those VIP members and I didn’t want to just be like well I can easily make that with Taking on 20 or 30 or whatever, VIP members, I wanted to be really strategic with that.

So, um, and that basically, as far as how I get there, that just looks like marketing, it promotions, improving my funnels, running ads, things like that so that I can hopefully increase my numbers so that I can increase how much I’m making from that each month. Which would also help with, like I said, increasing my membership as part of hitting that $8,000 overall revenue goal for the month.

Another part of increasing that revenue goal is my repurposing content VIP days where, again, I get sent long form content and I turn that into other content and so right now those are 500 total. That’s what the VIP day is. I want to raise that up to 750 by the end of the year and you might be thinking, Amanda, why don’t you just raise it then?

Just tweak the numbers. But I want to be really strategic about it because I would rather. And this is something where I’ve had to make, um, short term decisions versus long term decisions now as the main breadwinner. Um, I would rather, if I was making long term decisions, I would say, I’ll just raise it and I’d rather take less at 7.

1. And spend less time, but short term decision wise, I’d rather be able to book up at 500 because I know that’s a steal. And for the amount of content that you can, it’s basically a quarter’s worth of content. So, I know it’s a steal, and so I’d rather book up and spend the time to get the money at this point.

Just, like, again. Making short term decisions for now being the breadwinner. So I want to do it really strategically So my hope is to increase those bookings that I’m getting Eventually book out to be a quarter ahead booked out. That’s where I’d like to be before I raise the prices So that’s kind of the goal there and we’ll see I need to be booked out before I raise them.

So That’s how I plan to achieve that. I kind of got to step my way to it. Now, my other goals are less Actually, I have one more that’s really strategic as far as Getting to that 8, 000 a month and that is 815 new leads through my Community sales funnel throughout the year. I was able to take the funnel I created last year for the community that sales funnel and look at what it converts at and know that if I Want to hit X amount of people in the community and the funnel converts at X or Y I guess then I need 850 people to go through the funnel to convert that number to get that number.

So that was really fun to be able to get to do that. Um, I’m such a numbers nerd. I love. Getting to do the math on funnels and things like that to, to get to that. But anyways, all that being said, I knew, okay, I’ve got to get 815 new leads through that funnel. How do I do that? Um, podcasts is always a great one that always brings in new leads.

So doing more podcast pitching, I also want to play with ads this year and sponsoring as well. I’ve done a little tinkering with ads, but I haven’t actually really done a bunch with them. I don’t. I don’t feel confident in them. So that’s something I really want to set money aside for this year and be able to to do But then sponsoring that’s something I haven’t done before either, but i’ve seen so many people Doing that or at least offering it particularly for like summits or conferences and things like that podcast I would like to try dabbling in that this year at some point to see Whether or not that will bring in enough leads to that funnel.

So Anyways, all of that being said, um That is another goal I have. Now, two of my other goals for the business. I have a very business focused year this year, um, Are to one, become an S Corp or elect as an S Corp, I guess I should say, for tax purposes. I don’t know if I’m there yet. First step for that is finding a CPA, honestly.

because I want someone to be like, yes, that’s a good idea. Or no, it’s not. But I’m hoping by the end of the year to be able to do that. And then I also want to create an operating expenses budget. So up till this point, I’ve just used the profit first system, which I love. It’s great. Highly recommend that book if you haven’t read it, but the way it kind of works is you have these buckets and, or bank accounts and your operating expenses budget.

If the money’s there, You can afford to buy something, which works, but I want to get even more strategic with how I’m spending my money. I want to set up, you know, this much per year on marketing, this much per year on office supplies, this much per year on education. You know, I want to set it up so that I have a yearly budget for Um, so I’m going to be doing a lot of research for each of these different categories, so that, um, especially as I’m playing around with ads and sponsorships and things, I’m able to get strategic with it, and it’s not just if it’s there, it’s there, because that doesn’t mean it’ll always be there, with just You know, some months you make more, some months you make less, so I want to get even more strategic with that, but within the profit first system still, but just even more budgeted, and that’s the last business goal I have.

I have two personal goals, um, and they’re really more about just getting back to Routines I’ve had previously. So one is having a date night every week. We were really really really good about having date nights every single week up until the pandemic and the pandemic really just broke. Broke all of that and we haven’t gotten back into it since and so that’s something I want to get back into this year is Weekly date nights where we are just connected, phones are away, and we are spending time together.

And then the other thing I want to get back to is consistently working out five days a week. I had a great routine going until I started having the heart issues this year and that really just knocked it all out. So, those are my two personal goals. Um, I’m, I’m still trying to I want to minimize how much pressure I’m putting on myself this year as far as personal goals and improvements I’m trying to make in my life.

And I really just want to, I want to spend less time working and more, and get more strategic with it, which is what I feel like I’ve done with these goals for this year. Um, I know exactly what I need to do and it’s more so a focus on marketing this year versus new projects. I don’t have any I’m not creating new offers this year.

I’m not, I don’t have anything big on my plate. It’s just improving what I have and marketing what I have. So, I’m excited for 2024. That is it. A really deep dive into my goals for this year. If you’re still listening, thanks for sticking around. Um, your action step for this week is to send me an email. My email is hello at amandawarfield.

com and let me know what your 2024 goals are for your business. And this week’s book recommendation is Mad Honey by Jodi Pica. Man, I saw a TikTok where she was on TikTok saying how to say her last name and it was Not what I expected it to be at all. I was definitely, I’ve been saying Picolt and that’s not right and I can’t, is it Picole?

I don’t remember. I should have gone and watched the TikTok before I recorded this. Um, But Madhoney by Jodie Picole, she, I just love the way she makes you see other people’s point of view so well. I mean, it’s truly, her books are astounding, um, and she takes hard issues and tackles them head on and just kind of, she makes you think.

So I read that one in the 2022 maybe, beginning of 2023, so it’s been a while, I don’t fully remember what it was, but I remember ending it and being like, wow, that was a good one. So. That is your recommendation for this week. I will link to it in the show notes if you want to check it out. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you go out and uncomplicate your marketing a business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode’s show notes, as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 194: Conversations Over Coffee – My 2024 Goals (And a Life Update!) appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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My 2023 Income ReportAs we’re all easing into the new year, I wanted to share a behind the scenes look of how I’m planning for 2024 – beginning with taking you behind the scenes to a part of my year end wrap up that I’ve never shared before.

My 2023 Income Report!!

I’ll be frank – I’m nosy, and you probably are too. So, I thought I would share a deep dive into my numbers from 2023 and how they changed from 2022. Then, I’ll share a look at how I use those numbers to make decisions for my business in 2024.

But, before we begin – I just wanted to let you know that the quality in this week’s episode is not the quality you’re used to from the Chasing Simple podcast. In order to ensure my numbers were as accurate as possible, I waited as long as possible to record, which means that my editing team is out of office. I also had to record this on my phone instead of my typical mic (more on that next week), so the quality just isn’t the same.

But the information is incredible, so I hope you’ll stick around regardless!

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content (because you’re batching it, right? ), the first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan. But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when. Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals, and working backwards to ensure you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals? And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan? Grab your Chasing Simple Content Planner. The planner is my number one bestseller – And for good reason too, because this massive 130+ page planner was designed with strategy in mind. It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post, and when. Yes, that’s part of it. But first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find: Yearly planning pages Monthly prep work Monthly reflection questions Repurposing worksheets and so much more! If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chasing Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just $27 at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Learn More about Chasing Simple Marketing * This week’s action step: Take a look at your own largest streams of income, and your largest expenses. * This week’s book recommendation: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAs we’re all easing into the new year, I wanted to share a behind the scenes look of how I’m planning for 2024, beginning with taking you behind the scenes to a part of my year end wrap up that I’ve never shared before. My income report. I’ll be frank, I’m nosy, and you probably are too, so I thought I would share a deep dive into my numbers from 2023 and how they changed from 2022.

Then, I’ll share a look at how I use those numbers to make decisions for my business in 2024. But, before we begin, I just wanted to let you know that the quality in this week’s episode is not the quality you’re used to from the Chasing a Temple podcast. In order to ensure my numbers were as accurate as possible, I waited as long as possible to record, which means that my editing team is already out of office for the holidays.

I also had to record this on my phone instead of my typical mic due to traveling, so the quality just isn’t the same. But the information is incredible, so I hope you’ll stick around regardless. You’re listening to episode 193 of the Chasing Symbol podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Symbol Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

com slash book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals, and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

How can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple content planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner. I love a good income report. I love when other people share theirs and I just so firmly believe in transparency in the business space, especially financial transparency, that this was something I really wanted to share with everyone this year, particularly because So often, and this is something I’ve talked about before, it’s something I think we all recognize on some level, even if Sometimes our brains like to tell us otherwise.

Um, so often we’re told this lie that we haven’t made it in our business until we’re making six figures. And I know I fall into this trap even sometimes still, where I start to think, I really need to hit that six figure mark if I want to be successful. And then I have this realization of, No, I don’t. I’m successful now.

I can support us. I can be the main breadwinner with what I’m making and more on that to come next week, but I am making what we need and I’m happy and I have balance and that’s what success is. But it’s really easy to fall into that trap of I’ve got to make six figures. So I wanted to I wanted to just keep really transparent with you and share exactly what I made this year, or last year, I guess I should say, as this comes out January 2nd, but I wanted to share exactly what I made in 2023 so that you could, you know, Just see a picture of what success can look like and it doesn’t have to be six figures.

It doesn’t have to be hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s great when someone else makes that for sure, like that’s a huge milestone, but um, Yeah, I just wanted to create this episode to encourage financial transparency, financial literacy, um, and just More balance and more simplicity in this online space instead of the constant rush, the constant push, the constant just dogging ourselves to try to make this fake picture of six figures.

Anyways, it’s a whole tangent that I could go down but That’s why I wanted to create this episode for this week and something I’m really excited to share with you. So we’re just going to, we’ll dive into the numbers. So first things first, my total revenue for 2023 and mind you, this is running the numbers.

There’s still a little bit of time left. I waited as long as I could to record, but this number could change, but I don’t foresee it changing drastically. But total revenue. As of recording this for 2023 is roughly 61, 000 and again, nowhere close to six figures, but plenty for what my husband and I need.

And I’m really happy with that number. I didn’t really set goals for 2023, which again, I’ll get into more next week, but um, I did. I was trying to achieve 70, 000 for the year, so I’m pretty darn happy with 61, 000. Uh, that is a, well, let’s just talk about 2022 revenue. 2022 revenue was about 45, 000, so from 45, 000 that’s about a 36 percent increase.

And I’m very happy with that number, especially considering how hard this year was in the business space, um, and how just everyone’s tightening their belts. So I’m thrilled with those numbers and really just, honestly, if I make the same next year in 2024 or this year in 2024, I will, I will feel good. So I’m really happy with that.

Now, my total expenses for 2023, because revenue only means so much, right? You can make a million dollars and still not have a successful business because your expenses are too high. My total expenses for the year were around 30, 000. I, well, 2022 expenses were 22, 000, so I had a 35 percent increase in expenses this year.

Now, That I don’t love. Not thrilled with that number. I did go into 2023 knowing it was going to be a high expense year between launching the book and getting, you know, I had to hire a lot of help for that. Um, or I chose to hire a lot of help for that so I could make it the best possible book that I could put out there.

I Rebranded that was another big goal for this year was finally getting real branding done from an actual designer and I also Had to invest in a MacBook. So there were a lot more expenses that This year than I would have liked but I also knew going into this year that it was going to be higher I definitely hope to see That number could go down next year for sure in 2024.

I definitely want to be a lot more mindful about my expenses especially with some recent life changes that we’ve had which I’ll get into in next week’s episode, but that’s something that Not terrible, but not great and that left my owner’s comp, which, let me just back up, because of the way my business is taxed as a single member LLC, my owner’s comp, my, my personal paycheck is considered profit.

So that’s not included in that expense number. Just because for tax purposes it’s not an expense for the business, it’s profit. So, my owner’s pay was about 27, 000 this year, and that’s roughly all the profit. I basically paid myself all the profit from the business this year, whereas 2022’s owner’s pay was about 15, 000, so I had an 83 percent increase in my paycheck from last year to this year, which is great.

Phenomenal. But, last year, in 2022, my Profit, even though I only paid myself 15, 000, my profit was 21, 000, so I only had an increase of about 27 percent in profit from 2022 to 2023 because I I had more expenses, so my profit percentage increase was dropped, but also my owner’s comp increased so much because I took basically all of the profit this year versus last year.

I save a lot more money because I knew 2023 was going to be a big year expense wise. So I would definitely like to see my profit increase next year, for sure. As those expenses go down, I want to build back up my savings for the business. Uh, I don’t have plans for any major projects currently. So, that, that’s my hope.

We’ll see. Um, but, yeah, I’m, I’m pretty happy with those numbers. The one I’m least happy about is definitely the expenses, but again, it was a calculated decision that I knew going into the year was going to happen. So all things considered, I’m pretty happy with how 2023 worked out. And now that I know my numbers, I now go into looking at my income streams and my expenses.

And so my largest income streams were my one to one services, which are my Monthly copywriting clients, where I do the content marketing strategy and copywriting. My quarterly strategy clients, where I just do the marketing strategy and then they create their own content. And then my VIP day repurposing, my repurposing content VIP days, where Business owners give me their long form content and I turn that into email newsletters and Social media captions and short form video outlines so that they don’t have to create content So those are my three main one on one services.

That was definitely the largest income stream, which is not surprising in any way shape or form because when you’re doing one to one work for someone, it’s more of an investment for them than say, a membership, which is my second largest income stream. I am honestly a little surprised that the membership was my second largest income stream just because I had a major transition with the membership this year, where it got a complete overhaul.

And I’m thrilled with where it’s at, because it was specifically batching focused, and I took my content batching bootcamp course and just put it on its own. It used to be only included in the membership. It’s on its own, you can buy it separately now, and the membership instead of being batching focused is now just marketing focused.

And we have quarterly themes now, which are just, I’m, I’m thrilled to be able to dive into one marketing topic, one marketing strategy each quarter and really dive deep into it throughout the quarter with my members and help them improve one thing at a time. And really just simplify their marketing. So for example, Q4 of 2023, we created new lead magnets and we got really intentional with creating lead magnets that would lead to sales.

Well, Q1, our theme is all about setting up our email list and getting an email newsletter going so that those people that were bringing in from those lead magnets will now they have somewhere to go and be nurtured. And so I’m just. I’m really glad that it is as high in my income streams as it is because it just is something I’m really passionate about and it’s such a, it’s a great way for me to be able to help business owners in an affordable way because that was something this year that I was really passionate about.

I wanted to make the membership more, um, More affordable, so you can join for just 27 a month Versus previously it was a lot more than that and I just really wanted something that was affordable And still saw results. It’s much more action focused and community focused than Education focused, there’s definitely education, but it’s it’s more action focused.

Anyways, I’m just going off on a tangent but all of that being said I’m surprised but thrilled to see that it was number two in my income streams. And then the third and fourth largest income streams were Content Batching Bootcamp, The Course, and The Planner, The Content Planner, respectively. Um, again, Content Batching Bootcamp.

It only became available as just a course in August and so it just goes to show how like a testament to how much people love that course that it rose to number three of my income streams in just that short amount of time. And then the planner, it’s no surprise to me that that’s on here. That is definitely one of my best sellers all year long.

So the 2024 and 2023 content I included them both. Um, just Because, for the sake of, it doesn’t matter which one is which, um, but both of those combined grabbed the number four spot for my income streams. So, what does all of that mean? Well, I like to look at my income streams and decide, okay. What does this, what does this tell me?

What do I do with this? What does this mean for 2024? And for me, well, it just showcases exactly what I should be digging into and putting my marketing energy into because I have so many different revenue streams with all of the different items in my shop. I know that these four things are ones that I should really be focused on marketing to.

So really focused on marketing my one to one services. Particularly those VIP days because currently I am full for ongoing clients, but those repurposing VIP days, that’s something that I will be continuing to really market in 2024. The membership is something that I’m going to continue to market.

Content Batching Bootcamp, the Content Planner, those are all things that I know if I put energy into marketing them, they are going to bring in sales. They’ve proven themselves, right? So that’s one thing it tells me. It also tells me where to not put my energy in. I have other courses that I love, but clearly right now they need work.

They need I’m tweaking with either the sales page, or the object itself, or how I’m marketing it. There’s so many different things I need to look into. So that indicates, okay, I know that these are great courses. I’ve got my A Year In Preview course, which is all about how to plan your marketing content.

In planning your year in business, I’ve got my launch strategy course, which gives all of my secrets away for how I create launch strategies for myself and my clients. I know the content’s good, I’m not marketing it well, clearly. So that tells me that I need to work on those funnels and those sales pages and those offers throughout the year.

It also can tell you if you look at the income streams that didn’t make any money, it can tell you. Um, whether or not you need to work on improving that offer and that marketing, or it may tell you, Hey, time to shut this one down. I shut down a service or an offer earlier this year that I was like, you know what?

It’s not selling and I don’t feel passionate about it and I’m not, it’s fine, but it’s not one of my favorite offers. And so I shut one down earlier this year, took it out of my shop and there’s just, there’s different things that can tell you and you. You kind of have to make those decisions based on your gut because sometimes things aren’t selling because you’re not Marketing it and sometimes it’s not selling because it’s not what your people need and you kind of have to make that decision for yourself But looking at your largest and smallest income streams can help you make those decisions for the new year The next thing I look at are my expenses.

So my largest expenses for 2023 or my one to one services my Podcast editing team. Shout out to Gaffin Creative, my amazing VA, who if you need a VA, let me know. I will hook you up if she has room, but she’s incredible. Um, and then I also had some one off services. One on one services. So I had my book editors.

I hired two different editors to help me with the book. I hired a book designer to design the cover. I hired, um, I hired a brand designer this year who not only I hired her for my total rebrand, but I also hired her to design the 2024 content planner because 2023 was the first year I launched it and it was functional, but it wasn’t pretty.

And now the 2024 one is functional and pretty. And so, Like I said, some of these were just known expenses that I was going to have throughout the year, but without a doubt, one to one services were my largest expenses. Again, makes sense, right? We all know that that’s going to be the largest expense typically, um, if we are hiring one to one services and that’s something that, well, I’ll get to that in a minute.

My second largest expense was my Macbook, um, that was an unexpected expense this year. Like I said, I had planned for expenses, um, and then in January, my laptop, unexpectedly, not really unexpectedly, let’s be real, I kind of knew it was dying, but it bit the dust, um, I borrowed my husband’s laptop for months until I was comfortable enough and then he finally was like you need to buy your own laptop.

I want mine back. So that was an unexpected expense. Thank goodness for all of my savings last year because Yeah, Macs are not cheap, but I wanted something that was quality so that I, it would last another five to ten years. So that’s my hope with this. We’ll see. But that was my second largest expense. My third was a membership I’m part of and then my fourth is Cartra which is the software I use to run my business.

Um, all of my one to one stuff goes through HoneyBook but my shop, my email list, my funnel, everything else is in Cartra and I could not run my business without it. So, when I look at my expenses, I look at, okay, which of these can I cut in the new year? And particularly going into 2024, I’m having to be a little bit choosier, again, just based on some life circumstances that are happening that I’ll get into more next week.

But Karcher will definitely stick around. It makes it’s worth back tenfold, um, if not more, and I obviously will not be getting rid of my podcast editor or my VA, that’s for sure. But I probably won’t hire as many one off services in the new year. There are a couple projects or a couple investments I would like to make if I save the funds, but they’re not fully necessary.

Like. My wish list, I guess you could say. I want to get new brand photos done. I haven’t had brand photos done since June or July of 2021. It’s been a while. Uh, my business has evolved. It’s past time. That’s a wishlist item for sure. We’ll see what happens. And another wishlist item for one off projects would be hiring that brand designer again to maybe create some sub brands for my shop and some of the different courses I have.

But again, those are wishlists and not Needs so we’ll see but if I have to keep expenses low probably won’t happen this year I obviously do not plan to spend a ton of money on equipment this year I Again a wish list item, but not necessary. I may upgrade my iPad when I bought it 2019 I think is when I bought my iPad.

I originally got it so that I could use it for social media. And so I got a mini, and because I wanted to be able to like hold it in my hand easily so I could record stories and things on it, and that worked really well for a time, but then as my phone got better and better and better and the camera got better and better, I don’t like using it for that any longer.

And so, um. The, the purpose of it being mini isn’t necessary any longer and now it gets used more so as a second screen For me particularly when I am like at the library or at a coffee shop working and I’d rather it be larger But it’s again, not necessary. The old iPad works So Wishlist item for sure.

But other than that, I don’t plan to purchase equipment for this year So that’s an expense I’m definitely cutting, and then the membership I’m part of I will be cutting as well. It has been incredible. I love being part of memberships, particularly for networking purposes, like it’s just the best way to network virtually, but this one, it’s one of my top expenses for the year, and it’s just not something that for this year is going to be feasible, but I hope to go back to it in the future when it is more feasible and I have a little bit more, um, wiggle room with my expenses.

So, when I look at expenses, that’s what I look at and I kind of go, okay, will I continue this one this year? What does my budget look like? How much wiggle room do I have with expenses? So on and so forth. So what I want you to do, your action step for this week, is to take a look at your own streams of income and expenses and kind of do that same mental process that I just did out loud for you.

Do that for your own and see what you come up with as far as where are you putting your marketing Time and efforts. Where are you going to cut expenses? What are your wishlist items? What are your must have items for 2024? And just kind of see where that leads you. And it’s a really great way to wrap up 2023 and start to.

Think about and make lists or just mental nodes of what you might be hoping for in 2024 with your business. Now, your book recommendation for this week is Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. And this one, man, I’m not even sure how to describe it. It,

it kind of fantastical, but it’s not fantasy, but it’s I’m not really sure. She has a really great way of writing books that are real life, but not at the same time. Um, with just like a little hint of, I don’t even want to say magic because it’s, it’s not necessarily magic, but it’s just a little hint of the unreal.

Um, but regardless, I’m, I’m just going to leave it at that. But It’s an incredible book. I will link to it in the show notes if you want to check it out. And again, that Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. And now my friends, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes, as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 193: My 2023 Income Report appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Consistency in Marketing from the Shoot It Straight PodcastThis week’s episode is something extra fun and special. We are going to be airing an episode, a guest episode that I actually did on another podcast, the Shoot It Straight podcast with Sabrina Gebhardt, which if you’re a photographer, you need to be listening to her podcast. But even if you’re not a photographer, you should still give it a listen because Sabrina is It’s all about sustainability in business and if you’re here, I assume that you also are always looking for better sustainability in your business because that is a core value that she and I share and it’s just a podcast you need in your life if that’s something that you’re really passionate about as well.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Determine Your Best Growth Strategies * Learn More about Chasing Simple Marketing * Work with Me*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAmanda Warfield:* This week’s episode is something extra fun and special. We are going to be airing an episode, a guest episode that I actually did on another podcast, the Shoot It Straight podcast with Sabrina Gebhardt, which if you’re a photographer, you need to be listening to her podcast. But even if you’re not a photographer, you should still give it a listen because Sabrina is It’s all about sustainability in business and if you’re here, I assume that you also are always looking for better sustainability in your business because that is a core value that she and I share and it’s just a podcast you need in your life if that’s something that you’re really passionate about as well.

But I am sharing a episode with you that I actually did on her podcast. So what you’ll hear is Sabrina interviewing me for her podcast in this episode. So what we’re talking about is consistency in marketing and I’m sharing You know, why consistency in marketing is so important, but also why it is that so many entrepreneurs find consistency so difficult and what you can do to implement better strategy in your marketing so that you can see more consistency.

So this is a canvas episode. Like I said, after you listen to this one, be sure to head over to shoot it straight and give it a follow so you can hear more. Great interviews and solo episodes with Sabrina, because you’re definitely going to want to check that one out. You’re listening to the Chasing Simple podcast, episode 192, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode is brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your copy at amandawarfield. com slash book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee, or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Hey there friend, I’m popping in really quickly to ask for your help.

If you haven’t already, would you mind leaving a rating and review for the Chasing Simple podcast? You see, ratings and reviews are really important in the life of a podcast because it tells the podcast player that people are listening and enjoying the show. which means that this show is more likely to get suggested to a wider audience.

Not only that, but honestly, I love to read the encouraging words from listeners, especially on those hard days of entrepreneurship. So if you’ve felt encouraged by this show or you’ve learned something that you’ve been able to implement to improve your business, I would love to hear about it. So please go leave a rating review if you haven’t already.

It would truly mean the world to me.

Sabrina Gebhardt: Welcome back to the shoot it straight podcast. Today we’ve got my friend Amanda Warfield and I’m really, really excited because Amanda and I got connected on the Instagram, I don’t know, maybe a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago. I don’t know. Time flies. And, um, she has taught in my group and I have been on her podcast and now it’s her turn to be on mine.

And so this is one of those situations where we followed each other online and now we’ve gotten to kind of know each other. And it’s really fun because it’s going to make the conversation just like friends, right? We’re like old friends at this point. So Amanda Warfield is in charge of Chasing Simple, the podcast, the business.

She’s got a content planner. She’s got a book coming out. I hope it’s okay that I say that. Um, she does so many cool things and she also has another hustle where she is a Disney travel agent, which is like so rad. Um, anyways, that is just a little bit about her, but I’m going to let you introduce yourself.

Amanda Warfield: First of all, I’m so excited and it’s funny because I have zero like placement in time of when we got, but the last like. three years have just been this time warp where everything happened all at the same time. Basically,

Sabrina Gebhardt: it feels like, yeah, yeah, it’s really hard. I feel like now that I’m not like a student in school, I’m like, when was that exactly?

You know, it’s really hard.

Amanda Warfield: And if there isn’t some, like, Anchor in time, some big thing that happened. I have no clue when anything happened.

Sabrina Gebhardt: Totally, totally.

Amanda Warfield: But for those that haven’t met me yet, I’m Amanda Warfield. I’m a simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist. And like Sabrina said, I’m the host of the chasing simple podcast, my book, which will also be titled chasing simple because I’m not creative and naming things.

Is also coming out this summer, which I’m really, really excited about. And I know Sabrina actually has gotten to read a very early draft of it, which is really fun. Um, so yeah,

Sabrina Gebhardt: we, we’ve done a lot together. We have. I’m just realizing this now. Yeah, we’ve done a lot together and just however long it’s been, I don’t know.

Um, okay. So today we are chatting about something really fun that Amanda knows all about. And I. I like to think I know a little bit about, but she’s the, she’s the mastermind here. So it’s going to be a great conversation, but before we dive into today’s topic, back up and tell me how you got started in business and like what your trajectory has been.

Yeah, absolutely.

Amanda Warfield: So when I started my business back in 2018, which is crazy that it’s almost been five years, but back in 2018 started my business, I was actually teaching on. capsule wardrobes and simple living. And that was what I was really passionate about at the time. I was super excited to be able to like, Oh, I can create courses online.

I was also a teacher. So it was like, Oh, I can take my educational background and do that online with something I’m super passionate about. How cool is that? And so I started a blog, started a business and was talking about Caps Wardrobes and Simple Living and things like that. And at some point kind of veered more into time management.

And then I started noticing that other entrepreneurs really struggle with time management because they lack that structure, right? We, we can do whatever we want at any given time. And so I started teaching on that more and that turned into this topic of Consistency with your content marketing, which is what we’re going to talk about today.

And I had created this system for myself for creating a month’s worth of content at one time. In one week, I was able to batch out a whole month’s worth of content. And then I could spend three weeks not worrying about marketing myself, which was really, really nice. And I happened to share about that on Instagram one day and people lost their minds.

I had never gotten so many messages before, and it made me sit back and go, Okay. This is actually a problem that other people have too. It’s not just me. And so I started talking more and more about content batching and that just kind of evolved into this full love of marketing. So it’s really funny that really the core of my business as it is today started with this topic of consistency.

Sabrina Gebhardt: Yeah, that’s so cool. I love how you were so in tune with your audience and you picked up that little nugget of, Oh, this is where things are going to go. Right. I love that you were super aware.

Amanda Warfield: I want to say, I want to pat myself on the back for that, but honestly, it was so obvious because I had significantly more messages than I had ever gotten before.

I mean, I, people left and right were DMing me about this and I was like, oh, okay, let me try it again. And so then I posted about it again and the same thing happened. And I posted about again, the same thing happened. And that was when I was like, all right, they’re hitting me over the head with this.

Sabrina Gebhardt: I should, I should move towards this.

Yeah, no, I love that. I love it. So before we get really deep into this conversation, we’re talking about consistency in marketing, but why don’t you define for me? Like what you’re going to, what you’re calling marketing for this female, creative, small business entrepreneur. So good.

Amanda Warfield: Because I, this is what I struggled with when I first started my business.

Originally, I was like, I’m terrible at marketing. I suck at it. And now it’s what I do for a living. Yeah. Marketing is such a vague term. We hear the word marketing and we’re like, yeah, I mean, I kind of know what that is, but like, what is it really? All’s it is, is using, and if we’re talking specifically content marketing, using content that we’re creating to get the word out about our businesses.

So marketing is just whatever it is that you’re doing to let other people know that your business exists. And it’s really as simple as that, but there are so many different facets of marketing that we can get really overwhelmed

Sabrina Gebhardt: by it. Yeah. And that overwhelm is a really big part of the problem. And I’m sure we’re going to talk about it today.

So when we start talking about consistency in marketing, right? Consistency in selling ourselves, consistency in putting ourselves in our business out there. Like, what does that even look like? Right? Like, what does that mean?

Amanda Warfield: Yeah, so good. A lot of times we look at marketing experts and those, those bigger business owners that we look up to and we see them talking about best practices for any individual content platform.

Oh, well, if you post to Instagram stories five times a day, you’re going to continue to show up best in people’s feeds. And if you post it this time, yada, yada, yada, we look and we hear people talk about these best practices and we think, okay, well, I, as a solopreneur, you know, a very small business owner.

Maybe I have a small team. I need to work to those best practices. I’ve got to show up all the time, create a ton of content, and that’s how I’m going to grow my business. But in reality, that’s great for those businesses that have large teams. I have a couple clients that have massive teams, like 10, 20 people.

There are the kinds of people that can put out YouTube and podcasts and blog and TikTok and Instagram. Because they have other people on their team doing that for them. They’re creating the bare minimum of that actual process. They’re not doing the entire full from concept to scheduled, right? They’re just doing the littlest bit.

And so they’re able to put on a ton of content, but most of us.

Yeah. And it’s not realistic. And that’s how we end up in even more overwhelm. We end up burning ourselves out on our content, which just consistency is gone at that point, right? We’re done. We’re ghosting. And so what consistency actually means is setting a schedule that you can stick to and it’s realistic for you, whether that’s showing up daily on Instagram stories or whether that’s showing up once a week.

whether that’s putting out a new podcast episode every week or whether it’s putting one out once a month. It doesn’t really matter the rate that you’re showing up as long as you’re showing up when you say you’re going to. Yeah.

Sabrina Gebhardt: Yeah. I love that. And I mean, I think it’s so important to set realistic expectations for yourself.

I mean, Just from the sole fact that like we are all in different seasons of life, right? Like I have three kids, you have no kids, you know, some of us are single. Some of us are married. Some of us are, um, divorced. Some people have health issues or, I mean, it’s, it’s all. Plays a part in what you can manage and trying to run your business the same way, like you said, as people who have this massive team, it’s like not fair.

It’s not fair to yourself. You

Amanda Warfield: know, it’s like the, the same where people are like, Oh, Beyonce has the same 24 hours in a day as you. No, she doesn’t. Nope.

Sabrina Gebhardt: She absolutely does not. She’s got like 10 other people’s 24 hours. Yeah.

Amanda Warfield: Right. Like she’s got a whole team that are helping her. And you know, it’s in theory.

It’s a great sentiment, but realistically. No, it’s not the same. It’s definitely not the same. And not only does showing up consistently and when you say you will, it’s good for your mental health. One, it’s good for your own overwhelm, but it also builds the know, like, and trust factor. With your audience when they know, Hey, Sabrina is going to show up every Tuesday with a new podcast episode.

I don’t know if that’s when your podcast actually goes live, but when I know that every Tuesday, when her new podcast episode goes out, when I go on my morning walk, that’s what I’m listening to on Tuesday mornings. And it sets up this rhythm where they know, Oh. I’m going to have her in my earbuds every Tuesday morning.

And I trust that that new episode is going to come out. But if you say I’m going to show up every Wednesday and then you skip a week, well, your people are going, where’s your episode? And if you think they’re not paying attention, they are, because I can guarantee you the times where my, I’ve had a tech issue and an episode hasn’t gone out, it’s all these DMS.

Hey, um, this week’s episode is not out. Uh, what’s going on. And even, and I’m over here like no one listens to my podcast. Why would they listen? I get those DMS, even if this is a little small time creator. And so it’s so important that you show up when you say you’re going to be, because your people really do pay attention to that.

And they really do say, Hey, this is when I’m listening to this podcast and I’ve got a routine around it.

Sabrina Gebhardt: Totally. And here’s the thing about consistency and like, what is realistic for you? I know I’m going to get asked. How do we decide what’s realistic for us? Like, how do we learn? How do we figure that out?

Is there a starting point that you recommend? And then like, what’s the process?

Amanda Warfield: The starting point that I typically recommend is. Do your best to lay out what you feel like is a realistic plan for you. Look at the amount of content you have been putting out. So maybe your goal has been every other week for your podcast and you’ve sometimes been meeting it and sometimes not.

Okay. So every other week’s not realistic. What are we going to do? We’re going to take that back to once a month, but I tend to say, okay, lay out your plan, what you think is realistic. And then cut it in half. And that’s always every time I run club content batching live, that’s where I get these like shot faces.

Like, Oh my gosh, what? Yeah. We get cut it in half. You can always add bonus content in. You can always increase once you’re in a rhythm, but it’s so much better to put out less content on a consistent basis than to aim for more content and end up inconsistent because people are going to stop paying attention if they don’t feel like they can trust you.

Sabrina Gebhardt: Okay. That is. Such gold. Um, another reason why I love that is I am constantly telling people like we underestimate how long everything takes, right? Like, we’re like, Oh, I can bang out a whole month’s worth of posts in a couple of hours. And I’m like, no, you can’t, you know, or we think just writing a really solid blog post will take, you know, one morning and I’m like, well, you know, it.

Everything takes longer and whether it’s because we’re not in a rhythm or we’re not doing it in a bad, in a bad schedule, and that’s a whole other conversation, but things take longer. And we totally underestimate how long it takes us to do things well.

Amanda Warfield: Well, and we, what we, we think is we’re like, Oh, in the best, most ideal scenario, it’s going to take this time, but you don’t account for the fact that you didn’t sleep well last night or that you ran out of coffee and you didn’t have your typical cup this morning, or that your kids are homesick from school.

There’s so many. Actors that go into play. When you sit down to do any given task, your pet is driving you crazy and wants attention. You know, like you never know what’s going to be happening and so to say, oh, I’m going to be able to knock out this in this many hours, it’s always better to. underestimate

Sabrina Gebhardt: than it is to overestimate.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So if I’m going to start, like, if I’m going to commit to consistency in my marketing, okay. And you’ve already said, like, make your dream schedule and then cut it in half. So then what, like, what am I starting with? What does that look like? Like, how am I creating that rhythm where I can actually be consistent?

Yeah. I

Amanda Warfield: always recommend to set aside a dedicated amount of time ahead of time. So Again, for some, it’s a week, some it’s a couple of days, whatever that looks like, but set aside a rhythm where the third week of every month is going to be a week. Where you’re working, working strictly on marketing. Maybe the first weekend of a month is where you’re gonna be working on your marketing, but set that aside and then mark it off on your calendar for the entire year, protect that time because what ends up happening is.

Over and over again with my students. Oh, I set up my batch weeks, but then I scheduled a dentist appointment that morning, or I, I had a meeting that I needed to really attend and I ended up doing a bunch of meetings that day. And then I just didn’t have time for matching, protect that time and make it a priority so that you have the time to sit down and focus and.

Knock some work out without having to go, okay, well, I’ve got an hour before this thing and 30 minutes here and this little bit of time here. Stop trying to squeeze it in and make it a priority because your business needs marketing. It just, it’s got to be a priority in some level and it doesn’t mean you need to spend all your time marketing, but you need to do some marketing.

Sabrina Gebhardt: I love the protecting the time because, I mean, we will protect our schedule when it comes to client meetings or working with other people. But when it comes to just when we’re working with ourself, quote unquote, you know, when we’re the ones that have to sit down and do it, we don’t protect that time.

And it’s really kind of sad because just like you said, like our business needs some sort of marketing. Okay. Whether you’re going to be on social media or an email list or blogging for SEO, like you have to do something, you have to do something for people to find you. And when we are not committing to doing that consistently and allowing us to have that time.

To do it. It’s, it’s like, we’re not giving our business our best, right? Like we’re not putting, we’re not going all in. We’re just kind of like, oh, nobody’s finding me. I’m not getting leads. I’m not getting the kind of leads I want. I’m not getting, well, what have you been doing lately? You know,

Amanda Warfield: the number one complaint people have is I’m not getting leads and I’m not seeing sales.

Okay. Well, when was the last time you showed up in your content? And talked about that service. When was the last time you showed up on Instagram stories and told people about your course? If you’re not talking about it, they don’t know about it.

Sabrina Gebhardt: So most shoot it straight listeners know at this point that I love to really get to the why behind the thing we’re talking about.

That’s just, that’s what this, that’s what this podcast is all about. The why, like I like to get to the underlying issue because I think a lot of it is the same. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about pricing or marketing or imposter syndrome or whatever it is, fill in the blank. A lot of the struggles, their internal struggles that we have, right?

The thing about it is with entrepreneurs, like we are our business. And so if we’re having mindset struggles or battles with things, right? It carries over. It carries over from personal to business. So why do you think creative entrepreneurs struggle so dang much with consistency? I think there are

Amanda Warfield: three main reasons.

One is the overwhelm and just the mental aspect of well, I haven’t set aside the time to prioritize this and it’s on my to do list. But you look at your to do list and you go, gosh, there’s so much to do. Marketing. That means I got to figure out what I’m going to say, where I’m going to say it. I’m going to actually say it.

I’m going to, you know, there’s so many tasks that go into post to my stories today. That’s not a simple task. And so we overwhelm ourselves by not protecting that time and being intentional with our marketing. I think another thing is that imposter syndrome of, Oh, who am I to talk about this thing? Even if we’re.

Doing the thing with our clients. Like our clients are happy. They love what we’re doing. We still feel, uh, why no one wants to hear from me. So we’ve got that imposter syndrome. And then I think the third thing that can hold a lot of us back is that we feel bored with talking about the same thing over and over and over again.

Yeah, that’s

Sabrina Gebhardt: huge. And it’s. It’s something that like, I know you teach your students and I teach my students, but yet I still struggle with, and I’m sure you still struggle with too. Like you’re aware of it, but it’s still a problem. We do. We feel like we’re talking about the same dang thing all the time to all the places.

And there is that level of boredom. So I love the overwhelm, the imposter syndrome and the boredom. Do you have any tips for combating any of those things when it comes to pushing through and marketing your business anyways?

Well,

Amanda Warfield: we’ve talked a lot about combating the overwhelm. So I feel like, you know, set aside that time, be intentional with it.

As far as imposter syndrome, I wish I had other than just do it. Um, that’s just one of those things where you just, you show up even when you don’t want to. And that’s not to say I show up all the time, but even when you’re like, why would they listen to me? You show up and you do it anyways. Writing a book.

If you want to learn about imposter syndrome, I it’s rough. Um, and so I don’t have any answers for that one other than just, it is a thing that we all struggle with and you’re not alone, but boredom. I actually recorded a podcast episode about this today. So the biggest and easiest thing you can do. Is to really pay attention to messaging when you sit down to prepare to play in your content.

So before you even decide what you’re talking about and when you’re talking about it and what your strategy is for the next. month of content. Ask yourself, one, what’s happening in my niche right now? What is happening that’s affecting my people that I could talk about? So for example, let’s say it’s November and you know, okay, well in November, if I see If I’m business to business, I know that I, all of my audience members are in full on sprint right now.

All of us in the business space, November is a sprint. So based on whatever I talk about, how can I mix that idea of this is going to be a sprint month where everyone’s really busy, how do I mix that into my messaging this month? If you are. A family photographer, maybe you are in November. You probably have already done Christmas minis, but let’s pretend you haven’t.

Maybe that’s, you know, like, oh, Christmas minis are coming up November. People are gonna really want to make sure that they’re thinking ahead for Christmas cards. That’s going to, you’re going to mix in your messaging based on what’s happening during whatever month it is. And then there’s so many other ways you can take that to, if it’s like.

You know, AI chat, GBT, that’s all a big thing right now. For those of us that are copywriters and content creators, there’s the whole, Oh, they’re going to take your job. That’s a whole conversation that’s happening in my niche right now that I can take and mix into my messaging of how do we use this to keep it simple in our marketing, right?

So pay attention to what’s happening in your niche and in the world around us. That’s a great way to mix some new, fresh ideas into a consistent message that you’re already talking about. And then the other thing to pay attention to is pop culture. So what’s happening in pop culture right now that you can just slip in as a reference, not to change your messaging, but just to reference.

So recently the Prince Harry book that has been a big thing that’s been all over everyone’s feed. How can you make a reference to. something being the spare or I don’t know, you know, just a little, a little sentence inside your content and copy to, to make it feel fresh and new, even though it’s the same thing you’ve always said, you’ve just got a new reference

Sabrina Gebhardt: in it.

Yeah. I love that. And. Number one, like we’re all creatives. So this should be like a fun twist on how can I talk about this in a new way? But also even if, even if you do have those super loyal listeners and followers that do hear you talking about it over and over again, the new reference, the new twist, the new way you word it could hit them in a way that it’s never hit them before.

And maybe all of a sudden they’re like, Oh my gosh, I do want to work with her. Oh my gosh, I want that experience, right? Like it, it can land differently too. I love that.

Amanda Warfield: Well, you think about we go back and we will rewatch TV shows and we rewatch movies and those don’t change. They don’t get any new updates and yet we still go.

Oh, I’ve never noticed that. Yeah, totally. So just imagine a different example or a different reference and what that can do for someone who’s listening or watching.

Sabrina Gebhardt: Yeah, that’s such a great point. I mean, that happens every single time you rewatch a movie or you read a book, a book again, right? Anytime you’re revisiting the same thing, you pick up on different stuff.

So that’s so smart. Um, I love it. So if anybody is listening right now and they are just struggling because of all the things and the overwhelm and the to do list and the running the business and wearing all the hats, right? What is something they can take away today, this week to start to implement consistency in their marketing without making the overwhelm worse?

Mark

Amanda Warfield: the calendar. I want everyone, if you don’t already set aside time for your marketing, go to your calendar and for the rest of the year, set aside a little bit of time each month that is strictly for marketing and put washi tape over it, put a sticky note, whatever, so that you can’t add new things to the calendar for those days.

So that is strictly for your marketing. If you do nothing else after this interview,

Sabrina Gebhardt: go do that. Girl. Same. That is like my favorite. That is my favorite thing. Whether it’s. marketing or goals or white space or anything. I’m like, if you don’t put that stuff on your calendar, you, it’s a daydream. It is a daydream that is never going to come to fruition, you know?

So that is such a great tip. That’s such a great tip. Okay. Um, I’ve got four kind of rapid fire questions that I love to end with. So what is your current favorite coffee shop order?

Amanda Warfield: I am so basic. Cinnamon Dolce Latte from Starbucks. Every

Sabrina Gebhardt: time. Okay. Love it. Basic is good. You know what you want. It’s available all the time.

Love it. Um, okay. Dream vacation. You cannot say Disney. You cannot say anything Disney related. Okay. Well, um, no Disney Paris or Disney Hong Kong. Okay. Cause I know that’s where you’re going.

Amanda Warfield: Um, Oh, that makes it so hard. Honestly,

Sabrina Gebhardt: probably the beach again. I’m just any great beach. Yeah. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a great beach ocean in my ear.

Amanda Warfield: No, no, I don’t want to get in the ocean, but like I want to sit there with the book and the sun and be a lizard

Sabrina Gebhardt: and yeah, yeah. Well, and it like literally forces you to relax because there’s like only so much to see and do, which is really great. Which is really great. Okay, have you been to Disneyland Paris before?

Amanda Warfield: No, I haven’t done

Sabrina Gebhardt: any of the international ones. Oh my god, it’s so cute. Like, literally, when you go on It’s a Small World and it’s in French, you’re like, This is the most charming thing I’ve ever been on. It’s so cute. It’s so cute. We went there, um, When I was pregnant with my first, we went on our baby moon to Paris and we had originally, so it wasn’t supposed to be a baby moon.

It was supposed to just be a vacation and it was supposed to be 10 days to Paris and then a couple of places in Italy. And we were going to bounce around. And, um, then I got pregnant and I was in, it was the tail end of my first trimester or the very beginning of the second trimester. And I was still like, felt just gross and sick and did not feel good.

And so I, um, we were like, okay, we’re still going. Cause we’ve like set aside time for this amazing vacation, but let’s just cut all of Italy out. And we’re going to do 10 days just in Paris. We’re not going to go anywhere highly recommend because if you’re the kind of person that likes to like see all the historic sites and like, why wouldn’t you?

We did one site a day. We took an afternoon nap every day and then we like wandered around like a local. And so it was like the slowest, most magical vacation. Anyway, the last day we were like, we’ve seen everything. Let’s go to Paris Disney. So we hopped on the train and did it just on a whim. And it was so fun.

See, we’re planning a trip

Amanda Warfield: to Japan right now. Amazing. I, of course, was like, well, we’re going to Tokyo Disney and my husband and I, you know, I had to argue for two days because there’s two parks I have to go to, but when are we going back to Japan? Right. Right.

Sabrina Gebhardt: So hopefully you totally should. Oh, I bet Tokyo Disney is so cute with all the anime stuff.

Best one. Yeah. I bet it’s awesome. Oh my gosh. I bet it’s awesome. Okay. Um, okay. When you think back over the course of your business, what was the decision or the investment that was the biggest game changer for you? The first

Amanda Warfield: group coaching program I invested in. And not because the program itself was I mean, it was incredible, but not because of that, but because it was the one, the first time that I had ever like invested in myself.

And two, it’s when I really started to create friendships within this online business space. And that for me was something that I was missing for a good. Two and a half years of being a business owner was I was doing it all in a bubble and that did nothing for me mentally for the business, like starting to figure out, Oh, like, it’s really cool to have people in my corner so that I think that for me was the biggest game changer was just realizing like how important relationships

Sabrina Gebhardt: were.

Totally. And that’s such a good point. I mean, I will always say that like the big education investment is always the game changer in my opinion, but when you look at it from the. side of like community and friendship. I think so many new entrepreneurs are in that space of loneliness, even if they wouldn’t say they were right.

Like, I don’t think they may, I don’t think they necessarily identify that like, Oh, I’m all by myself. And I’m sad until they’re on the other side. And they’re like, Oh my gosh, what was I missing? Right. Yeah. It’s

Amanda Warfield: just something about having people that get what you do and you don’t have to. Explain. I don’t know if you listen to, um, Haley Gaffin and Brie Pair’s new podcast.

They’re the episode this week, they were sharing about how their husbands just like, don’t even tell people what they do because no one would get it. Right. This is why I have 100 percent friends in the business space. is so important because my people ask my husband what I do and he’s like, I don’t know.

Sabrina Gebhardt: Totally. Totally. Totally. Um, I get it so much. Okay. If you were not in content marketing and coaching and now an author, what do you think you’d be doing? I’d probably still be teaching. I mean,

Amanda Warfield: that’s what I was doing before. Um, I, I very much am passionate about education. And so I, in some capacity, I would be teaching.

I don’t know if I’d still be in the classroom. Um, but maybe. Teaching somehow within my church or something. I don’t know, but something education, which I know is you really outside of education, but

Sabrina Gebhardt: that’s okay. That’s okay. You know what I meant? Outside of like business education. Yeah, no, I love that.

Okay. I love it. So why don’t you go ahead and share how everybody can connect with you in the future and reach out to you?

Amanda Warfield: Yeah. Probably best places, Instagram. Um, I’m, I’m pretty consistently showing up in stories there and you’ll see lots of cute cat stuff. So that’s always good. But I’m at Mrs. Amanda Warfield.

Sabrina Gebhardt: Love it. And we’re going to have all the links and everything in the show notes. So thank you so much for being here today. It was so fun chatting. Um, I love all of our little tangents we went off on. I knew we would, I knew it was going to be a great conversation. So Thank you for being here and, uh, we’ll see you next time.

Okay. Thank you for having

Amanda Warfield: me so much.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 192: Consistency in Marketing from the Shoot It Straight Podcast appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Lessons Learned in Entrepreneurship This YearOne of the things I love most about being an entrepreneur is that you never stop learning. I’m a perpetual student – I love taking courses, attending conferences, listening to podcasts, and reading books. Gathering knowledge for improving my life and business fills me with joy, although sometimes you learn things the hard way and they aren’t so fun.

This year, there were 5 lessons that really stood out to me – some good and some not so fun ones. And today I’m letting you peek behind the curtain and sharing what it is I learned this year. And hey, maybe that means you won’t have to go through the hard lessons to learn the not so fun ones yourself!

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Content Batching Bootcamp * Chasing Simple Marketing: The Community * Work with Me * This week’s action step: Are any of these lessons familiar? DM me! * This week’s book recommendation: Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateOne of the things I love most about being an entrepreneur is that you never stop learning. I’m a perpetual student. I love taking courses, attending conferences, listening to podcasts, and reading books. Gathering knowledge for improving my life and business fills me with joy. Although, sometimes you learn things the hard way and they aren’t so fun.

This year, there were five lessons in particular that really stood out to me. Some good and some not so fun ones. And today, I’m letting you peek behind the curtain and sharing what it is that I learned this year. And hey, maybe that means you won’t have to go through the hard lessons to learn the not so fun ones yourself.

You’re listening to episode 191 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com. book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming. So that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week. I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices and meet me here each week for love support, practical tips and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together. Shall we? Hey there friend. I’m popping in really quickly to ask for your help.

If you haven’t already, would you mind leaving a rating and review for the Chasing Simple podcast? You see, ratings and reviews are really important in the life of a podcast because it tells the podcast player that people are listening and enjoying the show, which means that this show is more likely to get Suggested to a wider audience.

Not only that, but honestly, I love to read the encouraging words from listeners, especially on those hard days of entrepreneurship. So if you felt encouraged by this show, or you’ve learned something that you’ve been able to implement to improve your business. I would love to hear about it. So please, go leave a rating and review if you haven’t already.

It would truly mean the world to me. The first lesson that I learned this year in entrepreneurship is that it is okay to change your mind and undo something that you’ve done. So, for a backstory, you might have heard this previously, but maybe you’ve only heard bits and pieces, or maybe you’ve never heard this.

But, Back in 2020, I launched my course, Content Batching Bootcamp, and it did incredibly well as a course. It’s truly what launched my business and is the foundation for my entire business. And without a doubt, it’s my best selling course ever. It just did so well. It honestly surprised me. Both myself and my husband with how well it did and then I ran it live three times and each time I Asked for feedback and put out a form and every single time.

I got the same feedback. Love the course so helpful I wish that it came with ongoing accountability Because it’s great to know how to set up a batch week that works for me But now I have to do it month after month and I thought you know what? That’s a great point I’m going to turn this into a membership Because I wanted to be able to give that ongoing accountability.

And so I did, I turned it into club content batching, which was a year long membership commitment. And the idea behind that was, okay, you’re going to commit to batching your content every single month for a year, and you’re going to be accountable to doing it together with us as a group over time, it became clear that.

While, in theory, that was something people wanted, it didn’t sell well, and I knew it wasn’t the course because the course had sold itself really, really well previously. And so, I sat with that for a long time. You know, 2021 was when I turned it from a course to a membership, and I sat with that feeling of, this isn’t right for, um, a year, year and a half.

I would say before I finally figured out what I wanted to do and there were a lot of feelings of Imposter syndrome and scarcity and just failure that I had associated with this because, you know, I really thought I was doing what my students wanted me to do and it didn’t work. It didn’t sell and there was this frustration of, man, this course sold so well and I thought I was doing the right thing by transitioning it.

to a membership and then no one wanted it. Maybe no one wants the course anymore. Maybe it’s not, you know, there’s all these thoughts that cycle through your head in these moments. And, um, it was really hard for me. Again, I sat with this for a year, year and a half. Trying to figure out what to do next and just not really being sure and it was really hard for me to decide to make that change and then to decide what to do with it and what I ultimately ended up doing was I Took the course material for content batching bootcamp and I turned it back into a course And then I got rid of the current membership that I had club content batching and I created an entirely new membership that was more aligned with my book and my business overall because The membership for Club Content Batching was really just focused on batching your content.

And I wanted a membership that was a bit more broad and that covered simplifying your marketing and your business as a whole, more aligned with this podcast and more aligned with my book, Chasing Simple Marketing. And so I created Chasing Simple Marketing, the membership. And so now instead of having a year long commitment that’s all about batching.

I have a membership that has a month to month commitment. You can cancel at any time, but also has quarterly themes where we deep dive into one specific area of improving your marketing. And so it’s still meant to help hold you accountable and to be really actionable and not overwhelm you with education, but it’s much more aligned with my business as a whole.

And so That was a really, really scary change to make because it was a big change and in a way it felt like going backwards. But immediately I started seeing sales of Content Batching Bootcamp, the course, again. And immediately I started seeing new members joining Chasing Simple Marketing, the community.

And so both turned out to be a success where together they were not. And if I had not pushed past those feelings of. If I have to undo something, I’m a failure. If I have to go back on what I’ve done, I don’t know what I’m doing as a business owner. If I have to undo what I’ve done, others will see me as a failure.

If I hadn’t pushed past those feelings… Which it took me longer than I wish it would have to do so, but if I hadn’t pushed past those, I would be feeling really unfulfilled in that area of my business. So that was a long story. I think that’s probably the longest of all of these different lessons that I learned.

But the first lesson that I learned this year is that it is okay to change your mind and undo something that you’ve already done. The second lesson that I learned this year is that things can change drastically over a year. So one of the things I do in my KPIs each month is at the very bottom I have a space for my biggest wins of the month and my biggest lessons learned of the month which If you are interested in having a kpi tracker template I do have one in my shop that you can check out and i’ll link to that in the show notes But that is something I do every month is first day of the month I do my kpis and I go through and I fill out that whole tracker And the very two last things in that tracker are what were my wins and what were my biggest lessons.

And I was looking back over that as I prepared for this episode. And it’s really funny because in February, I believe I had made a note in the biggest lessons of this is just going to be a slow year. And I just have to accept that that is what it’s going to be. And. And now I’m ending the year with, you know, exceeding records that I set for myself, exceeding goals that I set for myself.

And one in particular was I had a certain number of shop sales I wanted to hit by the end of the year on a monthly basis. I wanted to be hitting that. In February, I was like, I’m not gonna, it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to be hitting that number. And then all of a sudden I started hitting it and I’ve been hitting it consistently.

And I really started this year feeling like I wasn’t going to see much growth. But I’m ending the year feeling really good despite the fact that there is, you know, some economic issues happening right now. Feeling really good about where things are at. I’m not hitting all of my goals. I’m not hitting my big revenue goal for the year, but over the last eight months or so, I’ve really seen things change drastically and you know, sometimes it’s really easy to be in a moment and think well this year is just done.

I’ve just not hit my goals. It’s not what I want it to be and Looking back through my lessons learned this year was a great reminder that a year is a long time and things can change drastically, and that it’s okay to set big goals for yourself, even if you think they may not be reachable. The third lesson I learned this year is that crafting a strong offer takes longer than we think, and that they need to be reiterated over and over again.

This You know is a lesson that I sort of learned through that first lesson right of okay Well, I had content batching bootcamp and I turned it into club content batching now It’s back to content batching bootcamp. And so that was a great Lesson there, but I’ve also seen this happen with other offers that I’ve had man my content planner Got an incredible facelift this year and I’m amazed at how different it is and how much better the 2024 version is than the 2023 version and You know when I put it out last year and it sold so well I was like, I got a great offer here.

And now I’m like wait It’s so much better now than it was this is incredible And so it needs to be reiterated over and over even if you think your offer is great But on the other side of things i’ve seen offers take off a lot slower not because they weren’t a great offer, but just because I needed to Um, I don’t really dive further into the messaging, you know, maybe I had a really great idea, but it wasn’t honed in enough yet and it wasn’t clear yet and I put it out, but the audience needed more from me that I wasn’t quite giving them or, you know, there’s a lot of different reasons why an offer can’t quite hit the nail on the head just yet, but it’s not as simple as coming up with an offer.

And then, okay, your first launch is the end all be all. No, it, it really does take time to craft a strong offer, and a lot of times we want to put an offer out and have it immediately be successful, and that’s just not the case. And that is something that I’ve run into multiple times. This year, both with myself and with clients, actually, and it’s just a good reminder that it’s okay to reiterate things and it’s okay to take it slow and to really spend time diving into that offer as your people go through it and go alongside them and ask them, you know, what What could be made better about this?

I just got off a call with a Community member from Chasin’s of a marketing the community and I asked, you know, how are things going? Is there anything confusing and she said well, you know, I haven’t really gotten far into it and I get started And then I get distracted or whatever and I was like, well, you know, I intentionally created this material As audio trainings instead of video training so that you could take it on the go, have you been able to do that?

And she pointed out that with the way it’s set up in Cardstroke currently, that’s not actually feasible because when she closes that tab or closes her phone, all of a sudden it’s gone and it stops talking. And so that was a huge realization for me that, okay, well, I need to find a different way to set that up because that’s not going to work for the intended purpose.

And had I not gone alongside her and asked those questions, I never would have known that. So. Creating a strong offer does take longer than we think and that’s okay. The fourth lesson that I learned is that funnels really do make such a difference. A large part of the reason that my shop has taken off this year is yes, because people are more interested in DIY offers right now and lower ticket offers, but also because I’ve set up funnels that are leading people to different offers in my shop.

And We could, there’s a lot that we could talk about with funnels and I’m not going to go into a ton of teaching on them right now, but setting up funnel offers for people so that once they join your email list, they’re hearing about specific offers. Is huge because if they don’t hear about it, how are they going to know it’s there?

And so you have to set up those offers if you’re going to have an email list And listen if you’re just getting started and you’re like amanda, it’s enough to like send a newsletter Don’t worry about this right now, but start thinking about what could I send people to what could my funnels be about?

What could my funnels be because it really can make a huge difference And my final lesson in entrepreneurship that I learned this year is that my business is not more important than my health. At the beginning of the year, I shared on the podcast that I was really going to be focusing on myself, that I I wasn’t going to set goals this year.

I wasn’t going to have a goal planner. I mean, I set some business goals, but I wasn’t setting personal goals. I was really trying to take care of myself. And there have been a lot of lessons this year around my health, um, which I won’t go into a ton of detail about because you would sit here and listen to me talk about my health for a long time, but.

There were quite a few different points about this year where I really had to take steps back for my health For different reasons and I’m so glad that I gave myself the space to do that and in years past I’ve been so focused on growing my business that I’ve run myself into the ground and I’ve damaged my body in a lot of ways by not taking care of it and I’m very glad to say that that is a mindset that I’m changing and that has really changed this year for me, is that my health needs to come first and that everything else doesn’t really matter.

But it’s not always easy to live out either, and so it’s a constant reminder as well that, hey, this doesn’t matter more than my health. My health comes first. If I need a break, I need to take a break. If I need to disappoint some people in order to care for myself, that’s just what’s gonna have to happen.

So, alright, those are my, my big lessons that I learned this year, uh, I hope that you found this fun, maybe you can relate to some of these. If you can relate to any of these, if these, if any of these were also a lesson that you learned this year, send me a DM, I’d love to hear about it. And that’s your action step for this week actually, is to let me know, did you relate to any of these lessons that I learned this year?

And your book recommendation for this week is Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. I love the series. The series I enjoyed so much that I actually convinced my husband to read it as well because it is less, I don’t really want to use the word girly because I don’t, I don’t think that’s a fair word, but it’s less, um, it’s more fantasy, less romantic than Akatar or, um, I guess Crescent City isn’t super romantic either, but it’s easier to read than Crescent City.

Um, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, these are all series by Sarah J Maas, which I’m sure you do. Because they’re everywhere right now. But the Throne of Glass series was incredible. I actually want to go back and reread it. I also want to reread Crescent City. And Agatar. They’re all so good. I just want to own all of them.

But, um, yeah. That is your book recommendation for this week is Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. And… With that, I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over@amandawarfield.com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you’ve never missed an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 191: Lessons Learned in Entrepreneurship This Year appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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My 2024 Marketing PredictionsYou’ve heard last year’s predictions, you’ve heard my evaluation of my 2023 predictions; now it’s time to give you my 2024 marketing predictions.

I’ve got 6 predictions for you this year, and one really important action step to help take your marketing and your business to the next level in 2024.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Work with Me * Rising Tide Facebook Group * Many Chat * This week’s action step: Get connected with the Rising Tide Society * This week’s book recommendation: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateYou’ve heard last year’s predictions. You’ve heard my evaluation of my 2023 predictions. Now it’s time to give you my 2024 marketing predictions. I’ve got six predictions for you this year and one really important action step to help take your marketing and your business to the next level in 2024.

You’re listening to episode 190 of the Chasing Simple podcast. And I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com slash book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming. So that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week offer you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices and meet me here each week for love support, practical tips and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together. Shall we? Hey there friend. I’m popping in really quickly to ask for your help.

If you haven’t already, would you mind leaving a rating and review for the Chasing Simple podcast? You see, ratings and reviews are really important in the life of a podcast because it tells the podcast player that people are listening and enjoying the show, which means that this show is more likely to get

So, if you’ve felt encouraged by this show or you’ve learned something that you’ve been able to implement to improve your business, I would love to hear about it. So please, go leave a rating and review if you haven’t already, it would truly mean the world to me. Last year, I only had four predictions for 2023, but today I have six for you.

So, we’re gonna go ahead and dive right on in. The first one I feel like is a no brainer, and that is that there’s going to be a continued emphasis on video content. So, whether that means you are showing up on YouTube, Or TikTok, or Reels, or Stories, whatever the case may be, video content is going to continue to be king.

It just really builds those relationships with people, especially for content that’s going to be the foundation. I guess you could say it’s that first entry point, whether they find you on YouTube, or they find you on TikTok, or they find you on social media, and it’s going to be, you know, the, the thing that gets them into your world, whatever it may be.

Video is going to be such a big part of that, a big part of bringing in those foundational relationships and just letting people into your world and into your personality. So, I encourage you to really lean into video marketing. You don’t have to use video in every platform, but I would choose at least one platform where you’re using video.

And again, it can be as simple as stories. And you just… Put your face on stories a couple times a week and talk to the camera. That can be it. It doesn’t have to be this huge coordinated thing, but. If you’re not already using video in some capacity, I really, really suggest that you do. The second prediction I have is possibly wishful thinking on my part, but I think that there’s going to be more emphasis on email marketing versus social media marketing.

Now, I do think this is going to be happening because I’ve already been noticing this year, in 2023, that there has become a lot of apathy. Towards social media. We kind of talked about that in the last episode, but there’s just been a lot of apathy towards social media where people Instagram engagement particularly has really died off and People are not interested in pouring a ton of time into a platform That’s just going to do that to them again, which honestly I’m here for I have I’ve always said that worrying about the algorithm is not worth our time, and it’s not worth our mental health to pour all of our time and energy and efforts into social media.

Do I still think social media has its place? Yes. But, I’m hopeful that people will start doing more with their email marketing. Instead of their social media marketing. And when I say instead, I mean, strategy wise, focusing their strategy on their email marketing, not only doing email marketing and not using social media, because social media can be a great way to get your leads into your email marketing, which we’ll talk about one of those ways and when I predictions later, but that’s kind of what I’m thinking is going to happen is people will be more interested in email marketing strategy and less interested in social media strategy.

because of the apathy that we’re seeing with social media, but I’m hopeful that we won’t give up social media totally as business owners just because it is such a great way to build community and be connected. My third prediction is one that I don’t love to say, but I really do think is going to be true, and that is that even more small businesses are going to close.

We have seen many small business owners closing their doors this year. We’ve seen a lot of small business owners quitting their business and going back to working a corporate job. That has just been the case this year. And, you know, if it has to happen, it has to happen. And that’s just the unfortunate reality of a recession and economic downturn, but I hate to see it.

And so my hope is that I can continue to Give resources and give education that will keep business owners from having to do that. But I do worry that that will be the case. On a happier note, let’s talk about some things that can help you avoid that. So my fourth prediction is that there’s going to be a bigger focus on tiny offers in 2024.

There was already a clear uptick in this in 2023. So again, this is kind of a no brainer one, but I think that that will absolutely be continuing into this new year. As long as we are in this economic downturn that we will be seeing tiny offers being a bigger focus, it has certainly been a bigger focus for Purchasers, and I think in 2024, we’re going to see a lot more focus from the business owner side of things where they’re really trying to take what they have and turn it into smaller offers, uh, whether it’s a course and they take that course and they split it into multiple mini courses that are cheaper, or whether it’s adding on payment plans to turn a bigger offer into something that’s more affordable.

Or whether they’re creating totally new tiny offers, whatever the case may be. I think we’re going to see a lot more business owners really leaning into that this year because even though that means they need more sales, right? If you sell a product for 10 versus a product for 100 and you’re trying to make 200, well, it’s two sales versus 20 sales, right?

Which a lot of business owners, when the economy was doing really well, kind of Decided they would rather just find two people to pay a larger sum and yeah, in theory, that is easier when the economy is doing well. When we are focusing on trying to keep things afloat, well, finding 20 people sounds a lot easier to pay 10 a piece versus two at a hundred each.

So while 2023 was full of purchasers focusing on those tiny offers, I think we’re going to see a lot more business owners. Focusing on creating and repurposing tiny offers. My fifth prediction is that Minichat will become inundated and stop working as well as it is now. However I say this, and if you have not already taken advantage of Minichat, I want you to do so.

Hop on before it gets inundated, um, because it will as does any new tactic, right? But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing in the meantime, especially because it’s free So if you haven’t heard of mini chat You’ve probably noticed it happening on your social media feed where someone puts up a reel or post and says Comment these specific words in the comments and I will send you the link to this specific thing.

It could be a podcast episode. It could be a freebie. It could be a course. I mean, it could be a link to anything really. I’ve, I’ve been using it. Um, many, many of my clients have been using it this year. This has been a very well used thing already. And what it is, is that you can set up automations. And again, this is free.

You just have to connect your Instagram account to it, or your Facebook account. When someone comments those specific words, there are also other triggers, but this seems to be the one that most people use. When someone comments those specific words, then it automatically has this automation where It will DM them a specific message or link and it also you can set it up so that you have a variety of comments that it will leave for people that do respond so you’re not just saying the same thing over and over so it’s a really cool automation tool again it’s free and I’m sure that they will come up with new ways to be used as it does become inundated but I think the way that it’s being used now with the comment this and I’ll send you the link will probably get overused but It’s still early enough that you should get on it still and start using it until that case comes, until that day comes where you see it’s not working as well.

And again, because many chat wants to make money, they will most likely find new ways to automate and, uh, people will find new ways and it’ll be continuing to reinvent itself. I am sure. So I do think the current way will become inundated at some point in 2024, but I don’t know when that will be. And I think it’s worth hopping on.

Now, my final prediction. I kind of alluded to this one in last week’s episode. Well, I didn’t allude to it. I straight up said it in last week’s episode, but relationships will be even more important than ever. And this is something that I predicted in 2023. And I think that it will go even deeper in 2024 because without relationships, if you’re trying to do business alone, you will not survive.

You will not survive this economic downturn. The way we’re going to survive is by doing it together. There’s that quote, right? A rising tide lifts all boats and when you link up together and you Build that tide together and we all rise together. That is when We all succeed. So your action step for this week is to come hang out with us in the rising tide society.

Rising tide society is a nonprofit that I volunteer with that I am really passionate about. If you’ve read my book, you have heard me talk about it multiple times at this point, but their mission is to help lift each other up through community over competition. And. They, you know, have tons of resources for business owners.

It is a really, really great way to get connected with other business owners and Also continue to learn and be educated and improve your business So I’m going to link to the Rising Tide Facebook group in the show notes If you haven’t already become part of it, I really, really recommend that you do.

And so that’s your action step for this week is to go join that Facebook group. There are over 75, 000 small business owners inside, and this is a global community. Be sure to go do that. Now, your book recommendation is Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmas. This one was really, really popular last year, so you’ve likely heard of it.

The cover gives off rom com vibes. It’s not, um, it, it is a more serious type of book. Uh, it really touches on a lot of issues that women face in the workplace and especially that women in STEM face in the workplace, especially previously, but it’s not, um, who is it, Allie Hazelwood? It’s not that type of women in STEM book.

It is a much more serious There, there are some trigger warning, warnings associated with it that I won’t go into here. But, um, it, despite the fact that it’s not what it looks like, you know, don’t judge a book by its cover, but despite the fact that it’s not what the cover really kind of showcases it to be, it really was an incredible read.

So I will link that into the show notes as well. And now my friend, I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your marketing and biz.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes, as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 190: My 2024 Marketing Predictions appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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What I Got Wrong in My 2023 PredictionsLast week on the show, I re-aired my 2023 marketing predictions. And today, I want to share more about how those predictions worked out. Because I believe it’s important to evaluate what truly happened this year in marketing before we can predict what’s to come in the new year (which is next week’s episode – stay tuned!)

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Work with Me * Words on Location * This week’s action step: What was one thing you expected to happen this year that didn’t? Send me a DM – I’d love to hear about it! * This week’s book recommendation: One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateLast week on the show, I re aired my 2023 marketing predictions, and today, I want to share more about how those predictions actually played out. Because I believe it’s important to evaluate what truly happened this year in marketing before we can predict what’s to come in the new year, which is next week’s episode, so stay tuned for that.

You’re listening to episode 189 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, Simplicity Focus content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing…

Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week. I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Hey there, friend. I’m popping in really quickly to ask for your help.

If you haven’t already, would you mind leaving a rating and review for the Chasing Simple podcast? You see, ratings and reviews are really important in the life of a podcast because it tells the podcast player that people are listening and enjoying the show. which means that this show is more likely to get suggested to a wider audience.

Not only that, but honestly, I love to read the encouraging words from listeners, especially on those hard days of entrepreneurship. So if you’ve felt encouraged by this show or you’ve learned something that you’ve been able to implement to improve your business, I would love to hear about it. So please, go leave a rating and review if you haven’t already.

It would truly mean the world to me. Alright, so last week you listened, or re listened, to my episode from last year, the end of last year, where I shared what my marketing predictions were for 2023. Now, I want to do something that I don’t often see done with these prediction episodes. I think prediction episodes are really fun, but they kind of get forgotten about, and…

I want to follow up with, okay, what did I get wrong? And what did I get right? So we’re going to cover, you know, what I predicted that happened this year and what that didn’t, or that maybe happened in a way that I didn’t anticipate. And I just thought this would be a really fun way to. And the year, the first prediction, again, if you listened to last week’s episode, you already know this.

And I went into detail about my prediction, but the first prediction was that everyone is going to do what they should not do, which is cut their marketing. Because at the end of last year, we were kind of in this weird, will there or won’t there be a recession place. And so I predicted that most people are going to cut their marketing because that’s what people tend to do when times are tough.

And sure enough, that is exactly what happened this year. Um, without a doubt, marketing budgets got cut. In the past, it has been… Um, a piece of cake to get new clients for the next year for my marketing services. And even throughout the year for, you know, one off offers like a VIP day, that was not the case at all this year.

In fact, moving into 2023, which this was. You know, directly not in line with what I predicted, so I’m not really sure what I was thinking at the end of last year. But one of my big goals for 2023 was to focus on VIP days and pretty early on in the year I realized that that was not a realistic goal and I needed to switch things up with my plan for the year and I did.

And it all worked out, but… I did notice, oh, people are not interested in really pouring money into marketing right now. There’s a lot more DIY things happening. So that one was correct. For sure. People cut marketing budgets. And I get it. I really do. You look at expenses and you go, what is absolutely 100 percent necessary?

Um, Yeah. Yeah. And for a lot of us, if it isn’t something that, you know, I’m not going to cut my P. O. box, right, or I’m not going to cut Kartra, I literally cannot make money without Kartra, and it’s illegal to not have some kind of, um, address for my business, and I’m not going to use my Real personal address, right?

So those are things that you just can’t cut. And marketing seems to be one that is easier to cut, even though when you cut marketing, you cut your leads and it just creates a self fulfilling prophecy. But I get it all that to say. So that prediction was unfortunately correct, unfortunately for me, but that is what it is, and that’s something that as.

a marketing strategist, I have to be prepared for, right? Uh, you may have similar things in your business that during different points in your business journey, you’re just going to have to be prepared that you’re going to see a dip in sales. And that is what it is. But My second prediction was that shops and smaller items are going to be easier for people to commit to.

And that has by far been the case this year. Like I said, people are much more interested in DIY options. They’re much more interested in options that they can do themselves, right? And that they can, because they’re doing it themselves, not pay as much for. So, that has been something. Um, for sure that has, that was a correct prediction on my part.

And, uh, like I said, in hindsight, I look back and go, what was I thinking with my own strategy at the end of the year? Why did I not pour into my shop from the beginning last year? Which it was one of my goals, but it wasn’t one of my main focuses, um, moving into this year. And so. Why? Knowing that this was one of my predictions, why did I not focus on that over VIP days?

I don’t know. Hindsight, right? But that is something that I have seen rapid growth of is my shop over this last year and I’ve certainly made improvements and changes, but my shop sales have grown exponentially while my one to one sales and bookings have dropped drastically throughout this year. And that’s not because they’re not good offers, right?

Like, I, I can realistically look at, okay, well, every single client that was a 2023 client, except for one, rebooked for 2024. So, I know it’s not the offer, it’s just… People aren’t as interested in booking new services right now as they would have been in previous years when the economy was maybe doing a little bit better.

So prediction number three, I did not, this is one that I most definitely got wrong. My prediction was that you were going to move to TikTok and I stand by the fact that TikTok Can do incredible things for business owners But what i’ve noticed instead I really thought that more people were going to move to tiktok this year As their social media platform and instead what i’ve seen is that people have just become more apathetic to social media in general So they’re not as interested in Really creating social media content.

They’re not interested in really having a strategy to it. It’s just something that they do because they feel like they have to. And it’s much more off the cuff, which I think is great. To not feel so indebted to the algorithm, but Yeah, I definitely thought I thought tick tock was going to see more movement of the small business owners on to tick tock that being said I personally have stopped using TikTok, um, for my business for one personal reasons.

Um, I, I ended up needing to lock down all of my social media accounts for a time this year just for some personal things that were going on, but also because man, people are mean. So, yeah, I, I think it can do great things for your business, but I also do think it is a time consuming social media platform and your time could be better spent.

So I’ve changed my mind about tech doc. Actually, I think your time would be better spent working on your email list. Prediction number four, relationships are going to be more important than ever. That one is Absolutely. 100 percent true. And in fact, uh, next week when you hear my 2024 predictions, you will hear that that is something that I think will be even more important in 2024 than it is now.

Relationships, relationships, relationships between other business owners who could potentially send you referrals and with your clients and with people who buy from your shop. People who invest in you, even in those smaller products, it’s going to be so important to continue to build relationships. So three out of four, I’m feeling pretty good about the fact that three out of four were a success for this year, but I definitely got the TikTok prediction wrong.

So your action step for this week, what was one thing that you expected to happen this year? I would love to hear what you maybe thought was going to happen this year and you just did not see it happen. Send me a DM and we can commiserate together over our failed predictions. And then next week, be sure to tune in because I’ll be sharing my 2024 predictions with you.

And once again, it’ll just be a nice little fun, relaxing end of year episode to kind of get you thinking about your 2024 plans, but nothing super serious that’s going to make you go, Oh, I feel like I have so much I need to walk away from this and do. So your book recommendation for this week is One Italian Summer by Rebecca S E R L E.

I’m gonna be really honest. I didn’t love this book. The storyline I felt like could have been a lot better. It was a little strange to me. But I loved, loved, loved the scenery in this setting. And it really, before reading this book, I had Never really thought about Italy much at all. Like I hadn’t really had this desire to visit and after reading this book This book just made Italy come alive for me.

And now it is moved to the top of my travel bucket list So for me, it was worth the read for that reason alone Um, I I love a book that can just make me fall in love with a setting that I’ve never been to So One Italian Summer by Rebecca Searle I’m probably butchering that, but S E R L E, as always, we’ll link to that in the show notes if you want to check it out yourself.

But I also just wanted to share, so one of the members inside of Chasing Simple Marketing, the community, her business is all about bringing books to life for people and she has a free book club kit for One Italian Summer. So I’m going to link to that in the show notes as well because it’s really fun because she not only like.

You know, has book club discussion questions and things like that, but she has different activities that you can do to make the book come to life, which I think is so unique and just really fun. So I’m going to link down the show notes as well. If you have already read one Italian summer and if you really loved it, or if you haven’t read it yet, but you want to.

So be sure to check out Words On Location and just see kind of what their book club kit has to offer. All right, my friend, until next time, I hope that you go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 189: What I Got Wrong in My 2023 Predictions appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Replay of Episode 136: My Marketing Predictions for 2023Today we’re doing something a little bit different here on Chasing Simple. For this episode, I’m going to be giving you a replay of an episode I released a year ago. Episode 136: My Marketing Predictions for 2023. This episode aired originally on November 29, 2022. And the reason I’m replaying it for you is so that we can discuss it next week.

Often, you’ll see podcasters put out these types of episodes about their predictions, but you don’t usually see them go back and talk about them later. But I thought that would be fun, so today you’ll hear my 2023 predictions again, and then next week I’ll go over where I was wrong and where I got things right.

My hope is that this series is informative for you as you move into planning for 2024, but also that it’s a fun break from all of the end of year hustle that we’ve been doing lately between Black Friday and the Christmas season coming up.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateToday we’re doing something a little bit different here on Chasing Simple. For this episode, I’m going to be giving you a replay of an episode I released a year ago. Episode 136, my marketing predictions for 2023. This episode aired originally on November 29th, 2022. And the reason I’m replaying it for you is so that we can discuss it next week.

Often, you’ll see podcasters put out these types of episodes about their predictions, but you don’t usually see them go back and talk about those predictions later. But I thought it would be fun, so today you’ll hear my 2023 predictions again, and then next week I’ll go over where I was wrong and where I got things right.

My hope is that this series is informative for you as you move into planning for 2024, but also that it’s a fun break from all of the year end hustle that we’ve been doing lately between Black Friday and the Christmas season coming up and the end of the year is just a lot, so I hope that this is a nice little fun break to just enjoy some content without feeling a lot of pressure to do something about it.

You’re listening to episode 188 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your own for 2024 planning at amandawarfield. com / planner.

How do I find time to create content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically? Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing.

Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist. speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing. I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or

Helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation.

They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing… Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week, offering you transparent conversations, actionable steps.

And judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips and advice on uncomplicating, your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship together. Really quickly before we dive into this episode, I just.

Have to share something that I’m really excited about with you. My book, chasing simple marketing is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that masters of business administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing.

Overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages. I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing, and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business.

To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amandawarfeld. com book. I’ll see you there. My first prediction is that everyone is going to do exactly what they should not do. And by that, I mean that typically in a recession, the first thing people want to cut is marketing.

Which, I get it, marketing typically is a large part of your operating expenses, right? But, it is the last thing that you should be cutting. And I know, you’re like, Amanda, Great. You’re a marketing person. Like, obviously this is what you’re going to say, but this is not just me. Okay. Think about it when you cut your marketing and you no longer are marketing as much as you were before.

What’s going to happen to your leads? That pool is going to get smaller. And what’s going to happen to your sales if your leads pool gets smaller? Well, your sales are also going to get smaller, right? It’s just the nature of it. Marketing is simply the attracting people to your space and nurturing them once they’re there so that they become leads that turn into sales.

If you aren’t marketing, you are not bringing those leads in like you were previously. And frankly, if we move into a recession, they’re going to cut back naturally anyways, and so you’re really extra cutting back on that. I don’t want to say doubling because I would just be pulling that number out of thin air, but not only is it going to get cut back because people aren’t going to be buying as much if we move into a recession, but then also you’re minimizing those leads that you had anyways.

So it would be a double whammy for you to cut back on your marketing. And here’s the thing. There may be ways that you can tighten up your marketing. budget. I’m not going to give examples of that because it just wouldn’t feel fair, but there are ways you could tighten up your budget. I just want you to do it strategically.

Pour into a strong marketing strategy and plan and cut back on other costs where you can for the upcoming year. Do not cut yourself off doubly from potential sales and leads because marketing’s your largest expense. That is just natural and that’s just the way businesses run a lot of times. Now, my second prediction, and this is one that I am absolutely already seeing happening, is that shops and smaller items are going to be easier for people to commit to.

And this is a two fold issue, okay? So first, obviously money is going to be an issue. If we move into a recession, people are going to be buying less, and they’re only going to be buying what they feel like is absolutely necessary. And so money is going to be an issue. Not only are people only going to be buying what they feel like is absolutely necessary, but they’re also going to be more likely to DIY things.

They’re going to be more likely to say, Okay, well, I know that they’re an expert, but I just can’t put the money down for that right now. But, I could do a smaller offer that they have. So, having digital products, if you don’t have them already, I highly urge you to start thinking about how you can turn some of your bigger offers into digital products, or parts of your bigger offers into digital products, so that people who are really concerned about money and really have to tighten things down, as a lot of us probably will be, will be able to DIY.

What they need to DIY for the next year or however long and then when things get better and feel better They’re gonna come back to you as the expert. Okay, the other issue I said this issue was twofold So there’s the money I guess you could count the DIY thing as a second So maybe let’s say threefold the other issue that kind of plays into this is The fact that time is going to be a large component of this.

So I’m not saying that no high ticket items are gonna sell. That’s just not true. They will. It may be harder to sell them, but they will. But I predict that we are going to See people more willing to commit to a high ticket VIP day than a high ticket ongoing group coaching program or membership or One to one offering if it’s something that has a time commitment.

I I think that we’re going to see people less and less likely to commit to those. Again, that doesn’t mean you need to shut down all of your offers like this. I’m definitely not saying that. I’m just saying to prepare for that, and a good way to prepare for that, is to start thinking about, okay, could you offer and implement a VIP day?

Could you offer and implement digital products? What are some ways that you can diversify your different revenue streams and give people other options because people are going to be very hesitant to commit to any ongoing type of commitment where they’re like, well, I’m committed to paying X amount every single month for six months.

They’re just not going to because we’re, we’re afraid because we don’t know. What the next six months are going to hold. So, I guess you could call that threefold. There’s a time issue, there’s the money issue, and there’s also the issue where people are just going to be wanting to DIY things. So, shops, smaller items, VIP days, other revenue streams, start thinking about those.

Don’t cut back on what you’ve already got. But start thinking about other ways that you could have different revenue streams to serve people in different ways. Now my third prediction. Is that you’re going to move to TikTok. I really hope you will move to TikTok. Here’s the deal. I see every day. I’ve been talking about TikTok for months and months and months and months and months now.

Months. You can go all the way back to episodes 111 and 112 where I debrief a lot of what I was doing on TikTok way back at the beginning of the year. Okay, I’ve been talking about TikTok since February. This is airing in November. Almost every single inquiry I’m getting at this point for my Disney business is coming from TikTok.

I went viral once on my cat account over a month ago at this point. And I am daily getting just 8, 10, 12, 20 followers still a day on that account because of that one video. And I’m not doing anything with that account, it’s literally just for fun, but it showcases the power of growth that TikTok has right now.

And I’ve talked about this in the past, but every social media channel has A life cycle, and a lot of us right now are really resistant to moving over to TikTok because Instagram feels like our place, but I need to remind you that change is inevitable as a business owner, and we have to adapt. We have to adapt, and if you think that your people are not on TikTok and that you’re too old, you’re wrong.

I promise you, you’re wrong. One of the men that’s running for governor of South Carolina right now, he’s gotta be in his 40s, 50s maybe. He is racing up the polls because he’s using TikTok. Racing. And let’s just say no one ever thought that he would be anywhere close. Racing the polls because he’s using TikTok because he recognizes that that is the place to grow your platform right now.

I know that it’s uncomfortable. I know that we’re overwhelmed and we don’t want to learn new things, but you’re not too old. Your audience is there. I tend to see millennials, especially lurking. They’re not so much the ones making a ton of videos, although it’s becoming more and more common, but they’re lurking and they’re there.

I promise you. And they’re sending TikToks to each other. They are sharing like crazy in their various DMS behind the scenes. As business owners, we have to change with the times. Especially if we’re running online businesses, and especially if content marketing is a large portion of how we get our leads, and it’s a large portion of how we market.

And if you want to talk about TikTok, I’m happy to do that with you. I get it. It’s, it’s a lot, okay? And we all felt so comfortable on Instagram, but Instagram… At this point, it’s a great place to nurture the people you already have. It’s a great place to nurture your superfans. It is not a great place to grow.

And frankly, it’s not a great place to nurture people that aren’t superfans. Because if they’re not actively looking for your stuff, they’re going to have a hard time seeing it. It’s not going to show up as often, or hardly at all. So, number three, TikTok. You’re going to move over there. I’m going to see a lot more business owners over there.

I promise, I know it’s overwhelming. Just get on there and make your own account. Okay, and just spend some time on it. Check out the culture, play around on it, see what’s getting posted, see what you enjoy, and just, just check it out. That’s all you need to do, okay? Now, the fourth prediction I have is that relationships are going to be more important than ever.

And I feel like this is probably a no brainer, you know, if we’re thinking about business Um, even outside of a recession, obviously relationships are incredibly important. The people in your network, the people that you lean on, all of that, always so important. But it’s going to be more important than ever during a recession, if that’s what we’re moving into because we trust referrals that someone gives us more than we will ever trust any other kind of marketing.

Do I buy from people that I randomly find on TikTok and Instagram? Absolutely. Am I 100 percent more likely to buy if I’m already following someone and then someone I know says, oh my gosh, yeah, I love their stuff. Absolutely. Relationships are going to be more important than ever. Lean into the people in your circle.

Lean into the people in your network. And lean into the people… That are already purchasers from you serve them so, so well, that relationship marketing is going to be more important than ever moving into the new year. So to recap those 4 predictions, first and foremost. The first thing that everyone cuts, it’s going to be marketing, but it should be the last thing you’re cutting.

So I really encourage you to really focus on your marketing strategy and plan and cut back in other ways throughout your operating expenses. Two, shops and smaller items and easily consumable, digestible items, like a VIP day, are going to be a lot easier for people to commit to. Three, TikTok is going to continue to be the place where people are going to grow as far as content marketing and social media goes.

And four, relationships are going to be more important than ever. So your action step for this week is to make your TikTok account. Don’t worry about posting on it. Don’t worry about coming up with your strategy. Don’t worry about doing anything except create your TikTok account. And just see what’s on there.

It’s going to take some time. If you give it one hour and you’re like, this is stupid. You did not give it enough time. Okay. The for you page will get scarily accurate, but you have to give it time to see what it is that you’re interacting with. Okay. So get on Tik TOK and just interact with it. Get on there for 20 minutes a day or 10 minutes a day.

Whatever feels good for you. So that timer and get on there and then just. Let it evolve so you can get into the culture and see what happens. But I want you to start your TikTok account. That’s your action step. And your book recommendation for this week is The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis. And Fiona Davis does such a good job weaving two very different and separate storylines together.

And I, I’m pretty sure I’ve shared about another one of her books previously as one of the, like, book recommendations of the week. But this one is so good. It parallels… two different models in two very different time periods that are struggling financially, and the models themselves aren’t related at all, but they both somehow end up involved.

With the same family and mansion decades apart. And it’s just, it’s very intriguing. She does a really good job of weaving those two different parallel storylines together. So, The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis, I highly recommend and I will link to that in the show notes. Alright my friend, don’t forget.

Send me a DM, send me an email. I would love to hear your thoughts on your predictions for marketing in 2023. And until next time, I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your life in biz.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast, and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 188: Replay of Episode 136: My Marketing Predictions for 2023 appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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The Best Marketing Strategies To UseAs this airs, Black Friday promotions have already happened for some of us, and are just gearing up for others but either way – the end of the year is near and we’re all beginning to think about 2024.

One of the things you’re probably wondering is how to choose the best marketing strategy to use in the new year.

Usually, when we choose our marketing strategy we look around at what others are doing, and decide that looks like something exciting and decide that we’re going to try that too. And while there’s nothing wrong with a little inspiration, the issue with this method is that we are most often not doing this strategically. We are starting with what we see front-facing instead of looking inward at our own business and starting with the end in mind.

Today, we’re going to discuss how you can choose a marketing strategy based on your own business, as well as the two parts your marketing strategy must contain. By the end, you’ll have a strong foundation for a Q1 marketing strategy that will actually move the needle in your business.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Determine Your Best Growth Strategies * Learn More about Chasing Simple Marketing * Work with Me * This week’s action step: One nurture strategy and one growth strategy to attempt in Q1 of 2024. * This intentionality is why I created Chasing Simple Marketing: The Community. * This week’s book recommendation: I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAs this airs, Black Friday promotions have already happened for some of us and are just gearing up this week for others, but either way, the end of the year is near and we’re all beginning to think about 2024. One of the things you’re probably wondering is how to choose the best marketing strategy to use in the new year.

Usually, when we choose our marketing strategy, we look around at what others are doing and decide that that looks like something exciting and we decide that we’re going to try that too. And while there’s nothing wrong with a little inspiration, the issue with this method is that we are most often not doing this strategically.

We’re starting with what we see front facing instead of looking inward at our own business and starting with the end in mind. Today, we’re going to discuss how you can choose a marketing strategy based on your own business, as well as the two parts that your marketing strategy must contain. And by the end, you’ll have a strong foundation for a Q1 marketing strategy that will actually move the needle in your business.

You’re listening to episode 187 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing…

Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week offer you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just Have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.

My book chasing simple marketing is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that masters of business administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing. Overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages.

I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing, and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amandawarfield.

com slash book. I’ll see you there. So you want to know what the best marketing strategy to use is? Well, it’s probably going to come as no surprise to you that this is going to be unique for everyone. The best marketing strategy to use. Well, it depends on a variety of inputs and that’s why it’s not simple.

It’s not black and white. That’s why we see marketing as so difficult because it’s not an intuitively simple process. to decide what the best marketing strategy is. If it was, everyone would be super successful with their marketing and you know, there would be no need for my job. There would be no need for me to be here coming to you with this podcast week after week with marketing tips and tricks and strategies.

So it’s not shocking that it’s going to be unique for everyone, but That does lead to the question of what do you consider? What are those inputs? How do you know what the best marketing strategy to use is for you? And before we dive into that, I will just say that this isn’t a set it and forget it type method.

You can’t decide right now after listening to this episode what the best strategy is going to be and all of a sudden. Everything’s going to be super simple and you’re going to sell like crazy. And you know, you, you won’t need any more help with marketing. It’s not going to be that simple because the best marketing strategy also has to do with your current season and where you’re at in your business.

And if you’re interested in learning more about. You know what marketing strategies work well for the phase of business you’re in you can go to my quiz amandawarfield. com quiz And take that quiz and it’ll tell you but you’re constantly growing and learning and changing things as a business owner and so I just want to highlight the fact that right here right now You’re going to make a decision at the end of this episode, but this is your decision for Q1 of 2024, and you’re going to try it, and you’re going to give it the whole quarter, and you’re going to see what happens, and then at the end of that quarter, you’re going to decide what changes you want to make, and whether or not you want to continue to tweak this current strategy and continue to move forward with it because it’s working or you’re going to decide this isn’t what I feel like is best and I’m going to change it up.

And maybe I’ll come back to this episode, episode 187 and determine again the next best strategy. But regardless, this is a what’s the best strategy for me right now type of episode. So as you probably know if you’ve read my book or if you’ve listened to other episodes of this podcast There are two parts to every marketing strategy You’ve got your nurture strategy and your growth strategy when you are choosing your marketing strategy for the upcoming quarter You have to consider both of these and how they’re going to work get there.

So your nurture strategy is there to Nurture, and to build relationships with the audience that you already have. And the growth strategy is there to bring in new members to that audience. And so they work together and you have to have both. You can’t just have one. You have to bring in new audience members in order to continue to have people to sell to.

And to market to, and once you bring them into your audience, you have to build those relationships in order to get them ready to buy from you, because you have to build that know, like, and trust factor before someone’s going to buy from you. And so you’ve got to have both parts and they’ve got to be working together.

So that’s something to be considering as we move forward. You also need to consider what your goal is and what it is that you’re going to be driving to. I highly recommend having one main offer each quarter that you are focusing on. And sometimes it works out, you know, you, you’re selling one offer at the beginning of a quarter and another at the end.

And it really depends on your offers and sometimes they work best during different months and things like that. But the goal at the most basic level is to be driving. To one main offer for that quarter and having one main focus, you can have smaller promotions and things like that. But what is that one main focus you’re going to have for the quarter?

You have to know that before you can decide your marketing strategy because different offers. Are going to need different strategies, and we’ll get to that in a little bit as one of the inputs you’ll need to think about. But consider what that end goal is. You have to know that end goal in order to really decide what strategy is going to be best.

Now that we know we’ve got to have two parts, now that we know we’ve got to keep that end goal in mind, we’ve got to know what that end goal is, and now that we know that this is a for now strategy that we’re coming up with, what are those inputs that we need to consider? I have three different inputs that I want you to consider.

So the first thing you have to think about is the one that, you know, is most common. It is the most common one we hear and it is think about your ideal customers and your ideal clients. Where are they and how do you reach them? Where are they showing up? Are they spending their time watching YouTube videos or do they prefer to listen to podcasts?

Are they shopping at markets? Where are they and what’s the best place that you can reach them? So, for example, maybe you have a planner shop and you know that your customers love to watch people on YouTube or even people on TikTok. They love video formats of watching different planner videos. They love to see people set up their planner.

They love to see people… You know, talking through the different stickers they have and the different planner sets that they have and, you know, their favorite way to spend a Friday night is with a glass of wine and all of their planner materials on the couch with YouTube going in the background. Well, if that’s where they are, you need to be considering video content, right?

But maybe that’s not what your people are at all. Maybe you have busy moms as your ideal audience. Maybe you’re selling a course on baby led weaning. And they’re busy, they’re tired. They’ve got young kids at home and you know, the only way that they’re going to take in any kind of content, any kind of marketing is through something that’s going to be, you know, ease of use.

So a podcast audio content is a great way because they can. Take the baby for a walk to get them to take a nap and listen in their AirPods. They can be unloading the dishwasher and listening on their AirPods. And so they’re able to, I don’t want to use the word multitask because I don’t believe that that’s a thing, but for the sake of all of us knowing what I’m talking about, they can do two things at once.

They can listen and take in that content and that marketing. Along with doing whatever it is they need to do as a busy mom. And so you have to think about where are your people and how do you reach them in the best way possible? YouTube videos are probably not going to work for busy moms. You’re probably not going to get a ton of your clients there.

And that’s not to say it’ll never work, but if we’re thinking about what’s the best strategy, what is the easiest way to reach them? So, gotta think about that, that’s the first thing. The second thing that you want to think about is yourself, because we want to make sure that you can show up consistently with your marketing.

If the best way to reach your clients and customers is going to be YouTube, but you know for a fact that you’re going to dread every second of YouTube and you’re not going to put out quality content, well, probably not the place to start. Maybe one day you can build up to that and maybe that’s the ultimate goal is, you know, you’ll need to get there at some point, but maybe right now you just need to keep it simple to start showing up at marketing.

You’ve got to get started somehow. And so you have to think about yourself. What type of marketing is going to be most natural to you? What do you feel like you can easily handle? And what’s going to be the least intimidating? So start there and then see what it is that you can handle and where you can go from there.

So again, going back to the whole for this season, start where you can. If it’s matches up with where your ideal customers and clients are great, but if it doesn’t just get out there and start something. And for right now, your best strategy might lean more towards just getting started and thinking about where you can realistically show up.

And then you also have to think about your offers. That’s the third input here. Think about your offers. What is a natural lead in and where do certain offers sell best? So if we look at my own business, for example, we can take my book as one offer and my one to one strategy services as another. Okay.

Well, the book I have found really sells well on podcasts. It’s a really natural, easy offer because it’s something tangible. that they can purchase. A book is a known quantity. You know what you’re getting with, with a book, right? You’re getting, you know what you’re getting into with a book, right? And it’s an inexpensive option.

So that sells really well through a podcast. My one to one services does not sell well through a podcast. I cannot show up as a guest on a podcast and have someone learn about me for the. First time ever and say, Hey, I have this one to one strategy option and I’m booking clients currently. And if you like help with your content marketing strategy, I’d love to plan that out for you.

I’m not going to get any new clients from that. Maybe. You know, one in a hundred interviews if I led to that every time I would, but realistically, that’s not the best use of my time. It’s not the best marketing plan for my one to one offers. What makes more sense for my one to one offers is talking to people on my email list that have already purchased other offers from me that already know, like, and trust me and have already said, yes, I believe in you and what you do.

That’s a way more natural lead in for that specific offer. So you’ve also got to think about your offers. What is a natural lead in and where do certain things sell best? So those three inputs again are thinking about your ideal customers and clients, thinking about yourself and thinking about your offers.

What do you do from there? You’ve got all of these thoughts in your head. What do you do next? You know what your end goal is. You know what that main offer is going to be. You know, those three inputs. Now we’ve got to go back to the two parts of the marketing strategy, and you need to determine your nurture and your growth strategy.

You’ve got to determine with your nurture strategy, how you’re going to take those three inputs. Yourself, your offer and your ideal customers and clients. Take those three inputs and decide how you’re going to show up to nurture your audience and to build relationships with your audience. For most of us, the best way to build relationships with our audience is going to be through content because content marketing is a low cost way to get in front of your people and to build that.

No like and trust. And so it comes down to determining where you’re putting your efforts with content. If you already have your full content engine set up, great, you get to really dig into the strategy. And truly, if you are interested in help with your strategy, Let’s chat because I am booking for 2024 right now for new clients.

So I have two different packages. You can work with me on a quarterly basis, and I will give you the strategy for your marketing and tell you what to talk about and when, or if you want to totally hand it off, if you’ve got the content engine rolling, and you want to be able to focus more on your growth marketing and building.

New audience members, and you want someone else to build those relationships for you with your content. I can do the strategy and the copywriting for you. So I’ve got those two packages. If you are someone that has your content engine nailed down, or at least mostly nailed down. However, if you’re like, I have no content engine.

I’m not showing up anywhere. Okay, where can you start? Choose one place to start showing up. I personally would say start with the email marketing. Because that is the way that you are going to build relationships really easily and also be able to build a subscriber base. Again, you’ve got to think about yourself and what’s going to be least intimidating, but that is something to think about.

Where are you going to show up? Which type of content are you going to start with first? So that’s the nurture side. You’ve got to start getting that content engine built up, but then you’ve also got the growth side and you still have to think about your offers, your ideal customers and clients and yourself for the growth strategy side as well, growth strategies are things that are going to get you in front of new audiences.

So I mentioned being a guest on podcasts, you can run ads, you can. Be a vendor at a market, you can do speaking engagements, the list goes on and on and on. And again, if you’re like, I need help figuring out what type of growth strategy works best for where I am in business, go take my quiz and I’m, I will send you a ton of resources on the best growth strategies for your phase of business.

Amanda Warfield. com slash quiz, go take that. And that’ll help you out, but choose a growth strategy. That’s going to fit your phase of business that is the least intimidating to you. Is a place where you can find those ideal customers and clients and is going to naturally lead into your offers. Now, one final piece of advice, keep it simple.

It is really easy to look around at what other people are doing and feel like you need to do it all. And it’s really easy to get shiny object syndrome when it comes to your marketing. Choose one marketing strategy for each quarter, really focus on that one marketing strategy. Because if you’re not focused in on that one marketing strategy, and again, when I say one marketing strategy, I mean, there’s two parts to it.

You’ve got your nurture and your growth side, but you’ve got both of those for that one marketing strategy. When it comes to focusing on one strategy at a time, you have to be really focused because if you’re not, You are not going to be able to learn how to best fit that strategy for your business.

When you start with any new strategy, you’re going to learn how to do it from other people and you’re going to implement it. And then you’re going to have to change it to fit your business because everyone’s business is different. I can use the same exact strategy for two different clients and have two totally different results.

And so you have to really focus on, okay, I’m implementing it. It seems like it’s working in this way, but it’s not in this way. How can I tweak it for my business? Which is why you have to keep it simple. So final piece of advice, choose one marketing strategy for Q1. That being said, your action step is to choose that marketing strategy.

Choose what you’re going to do for your nurture, your nurture marketing, and then choose what you’re going to do for your growth marketing for Q1 of 2024. And if you want to be held accountable to those. Send me a DM on Instagram. Let’s chat about it. Let’s see how you feel about it. And if you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them.

Now, this week’s book recommendation is I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy. And the title is dark, but the book is also dark. And it, I knew that child actors were. Not treated well, to put it mildly, but I didn’t know the depth of it and it just was a very, it was an enlightening book. It was an incredibly well written book.

Uh, there is a lot of,

There is some eating disorder content, so trigger warnings for things like that. But I would read everything that Jeannette McCurdy writes because it’s so well written and I just flew through it. So if you like memoirs, if that’s something that sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend that book. All right, my friends, I mentioned quite a few different things to go check out outside of this podcast.

So just a quick rundown. We’ve got the Quiz the three phases of business quiz that’s going to help direct you to a growth strategy That’s going to make sense for your phase of business. You can find that at Amanda Warfield comm slash quiz I also mentioned my book chasing simple marketing if you have not checked that out You can head to Amazon and go search for it.

You can find it in all the formats I also mentioned my one on one services. At this point, at the end of November, I am probably very close to filling up for the new year if I haven’t already, but I encourage you to go check it out. You can just head to my website and look for how to work with me. I have two different packages, like I mentioned, and I’ve got the quarterly package and the monthly package.

The quarterly package is where we get together, we chat, I help give you your marketing strategy. And I give you the full content plan for the quarter with that strategy. And that includes, you know, topic, the hook, the call to action and where you’re posting and when. And then I’ve also got the monthly package, which is the strategy and copywriting for that content plan.

So if you’re someone that wants to really focus on your growth marketing and hand off the nurture marketing to someone else, I’ve got you. All right, my friends, until next time, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and biz.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 187: The Best Marketing Strategy to Use appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Creating an Audio-Only Course with Sara WhittakerIt’s no secret that most of us buy online courses only to have them collect virtual dust. Even if we start them, it’s not often they actually get finished. And that’s not because the course isn’t great – it’s simply due to lack of time and accessibility.

For most courses, you’ve got to find the time to sit down at your computer, log in to the course, and watch the videos. Usually, even if you want to listen and not watch, you’ve got to drag your laptop around with you while you do other things. It’s a pain that means you’re not likely to do it.

And if you aren’t doing it – you know your students aren’t either.

But, what if I told you that you could create a course that your students were nearly guaranteed to not only listen to, but complete?

I’m joined this week by Sara Whittaker who has created a course that does just that.

Sara Whittaker is a teacher turned podcast strategist. She helps educators leverage the power of podcasting in order to build brand awareness, scale their business, and connect with their audience. Sara is also the host of the podcast, Podcasting for Educators, where she shares weekly tips on how to start, manage, and grow a podcast.

Thanks to her audio-only course, Sara has been able to ensure that her students finish the course – leading to better relationships and more referrals (and sales!) of her course. Today, she’s sharing not only her course strategy, but also her launch strategy for her course, as well as a way to make lead magnets that eventually convert. For my members instead The Community, you’ll get some really great tips as you’re creating your own lead magnets this quarter!

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Episode 095 on Sara’s podcast * This week’s action step: Take 15 minutes and write out what problem you can solve, and all of the teaching points you can share to help get your students to that solution. * This week’s book recommendation: Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Sara Whittaker is a teacher turned podcast strategist. She helps educators leverage the power of podcasting in order to build brand awareness, scale their business, and connect with their audience. Sara is also the host of the podcast, Podcasting for Educators, where she shares weekly tips on how to start, manage, and grow a podcast.

Social Links:

Website: https://podcastingforeducators.com/

Podcast: https://podcastingforeducators.com/podcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastingforeducators

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAmanda Warfield:* It’s no secret that most of us buy online courses only to have them collect virtual dust. Even if we start them, it’s not often they actually get finished. And that’s not because the course isn’t great, it’s simply due to a lack of time and accessibility. For most courses, you’ve got to find the time to sit down at your computer, log into the course, and watch the videos.

Usually, even if you want to listen and not watch, you’ve got to drag your laptop around with you while you do other things. It’s a pain, and you’re not likely to do it. And if you aren’t doing it, you know your students aren’t either. But what if I told you that you could create a course that your students were nearly guaranteed to not only listen to, but complete?

I’m joined this week by Sarah Whittaker, who has created a course that does just that. Sarah Whittaker is a teacher turned podcast strategist. She helps educators leverage the power of podcasting in order to build brand awareness, scale their business, and connect with their audience. Sarah is also the host of the podcast, Podcasting for Educators, where she shares weekly tips on how to start, manage, and grow a podcast.

Thanks to her audio only course, Sarah has been able to ensure that her students finish the course, leading to better relationships and more referrals and sales of her course. Today, she’s sharing not only her core strategy, but also her launch strategy for her course, as well as a way to make lead manics that eventually convert.

For my members inside of the community, you’ll get some really manics this quarter. You’re listening to episode 186 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple content planner, and you can grab your 2024 version at amandawarfield. com / planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist.

Speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing. I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing…

Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week. I’ll bring you transparent, conversations, actionable steps.

And judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips and advice on uncomplicating, your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just.

Have to share something that I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that masters of business administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing.

Overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages. I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing. And you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business.

To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amandawarfield. com slash book. I’ll see you there. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today. I’m really excited for this episode, mostly selfishly because I’m really excited to hear about what you’ve done with your course and how we can simplify our own course creation and launching process.

But I know everyone else is going to really love this too. So thank you so much for being here. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and who you

Sara Whittaker: serve? Well, thank you so much for having me, Amanda. You were just over on my podcast and now I get to be on yours. So I’m super grateful that I am here today.

I am Sara Whitaker. I’m a former elementary school teacher, and now I have a business that’s called podcasting for educators where we kind of have like two different sides to my business. On one side, we have a boutique podcasting agency where we do podcast production for online educators. If you’re familiar with TPT, teachers pay teachers, a lot of TPT sellers, we do their podcast production.

And then on the other side of things, I am a course creator and a podcast host of a podcast called podcasting for educators, where we focus on helping business owners use podcasting as a way to market their business. And

Amanda Warfield: you mentioned your podcast, why don’t you go ahead and share a little bit about that?

Sara Whittaker: Yeah, so I have a public free podcast, new episodes come out on Wednesday. And it’s really, I do have some episodes on, you know, starting a podcast, but most of it is focused on strategies for current podcasters, how they can grow their podcast audience, how you can really use your podcast to reach the goals that you have in your business and how you can really align your podcast content with your business.

I love it so much. And it’s

Amanda Warfield: such an important thing because I think so many of us, we get stuck on that content creation hamster wheel that we were just talking about for your podcast, right? And we forget that it’s not enough just to throw a podcast out there. There’s more that we need to do with it. So I think it’s so important what you’re doing, just continuing to educate and helping those of us that are podcasting, take things.

Further and take them to the next step. I know that even though you are an educator, uh, you also happen to fall into the same trap that I think most of us do in this online education space where we buy courses because we’re interested in a topic and maybe it’s on sale. Maybe they’re having a launch.

There’s some great bonuses and we’re ready to dive in. And then, Work happens and our days to day to day gets busy. We end up having way too much to do and it just kind of sits there and collects dust a little bit. You know, we, we have it in the back of our mind. Oh, we, we really need to get to work on that.

Or maybe we even take, you know, we watched the 1st lesson or 2, but we never get past it. We never actually implement and then. Nothing happens and things don’t change. But yet, you’re still such an advocate for online courses. So, can you tell us a little bit about why that is?

Sara Whittaker: Yeah, absolutely. And yes, I am super guilty of, uh, purchasing many courses that are collecting dust, and I have not made it all the way through.

But I consider myself a lifelong learner. I’m sure that so many of you do. There’s so… Many things for us to learn about this online business space. And there’s so many great courses out there. That’s why I love courses. I think that we can learn so much from them. I think sometimes they can also be a great way to connect with other people, if there’s a community component to it.

And so while I love courses, I just have trouble getting, getting all the way through them. And I’m sure that I’m not the only one that has that problem.

Amanda Warfield: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think. The vast majority of us do have that problem, but what have you found working with educators? What have you found that works to help improve

Sara Whittaker: that completion rate?

Yeah, so I was introduced to this idea of what’s essentially a private podcast. A few years ago through when I had I actually interviewed the creator of a platform called Hello Audio. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it, but it basically lets you create a private podcast feed and they originally created it for.

With the intention of people who have a traditional course, you’re able to actually take all of the lessons in your course and turn it into just an audio format, and it becomes basically a podcast for your course and so then. In that example, your students in your course have the option of, okay, sitting down watching traditional slides that are usually found in a course videos, or they can listen to the audio version on the podcast.

And some people like to do both. Some people like to maybe listen first, front load the information while they’re driving in their car or on a walk. And then if it’s something that. Is visual that, that you need to sit down at the computer and look at, they could then log into the course and look at it that way.

And they found that it did really, really well. And it really increased the consumption rate of people who were taking these courses and people were getting, were actually getting through the content and not just stopping at lesson one. And so when I created my first course, I have a traditional. Online course with slides and videos that helps people learn how to start a podcast.

And about the time that I created that course, I had learned about Hello Audio. And so from the get go with that course, I signed up for Hello Audio and I put all of my lessons on there as a private podcast. And I get such great feedback about that component. And so I think it’s something that all course creators should look at.

I think that there’s a piece, at least one piece of your course that you could probably turn into audio format to just better that experience for your students that are in your course. So I did that. And then there’s so many different ways that you can use this. idea of a private podcast. You can create an audio lead magnet where maybe you have a freebie that’s just a PDF guide.

Well, instead of a PDF, you could turn it into an audio series. And again, with the idea that people are going to actually get through the content and consume it more. So I tried that, and that did really well, and it was a great strategy for increasing my email list. So then, this year, in 2023, I decided to try creating an audio only course, where there wasn’t a video or slides component, it was audio only.

I have

Amanda Warfield: so many questions just based off of all of that. I’m just over here like taking notes like crazy. Um, where do I want to begin? Let’s talk about completion rates because you mentioned those a couple times. Yeah. What have you seen, both with your more traditional course and your audio only course, as far as completion rates?

How do they

Sara Whittaker: differ? So, my audio only course that I just did, Almost every single person that purchased the course is listening to the content and getting through the content, which is a really cool thing to be able to see. Like you can see how many, like the individual person, are they listening to this episode and how far it, how far, how much of the episode are they actually consuming?

Like what’s the consumption rate? Um, and I would say it’s 95 percent of my students. Um, yeah, and then same thing with my traditional course, looking at the, like the numbers of people. I don’t have like the exact stats in front of me right now, but looking at the actual numbers of people who have like completed the module versus listening to the module, the private podcast is actually higher than the traditional module with slides.

Do

Amanda Warfield: you know how much higher is there? Is it a large difference or? Um,

Sara Whittaker: I wish I had my numbers, but, um, I would say probably like 20 percent more. And a lot of people do both. A lot of people do both and they’ll come back. That’s another good thing about the audio component is. Maybe they purchased the course a year ago, they went through it, but then they need a refresher.

And so, I’ll constantly see like those numbers on the audio going up because people go back and they give themselves that refresher via audio. Yeah,

Amanda Warfield: because

Sara Whittaker: it’s so easy to. Exactly, yeah. Okay,

Amanda Warfield: so what happens What is the benefit of someone actually completing an entire

Sara Whittaker: course? Well, I think, you know, we have to have that mindset of if we’re creating this content, we believe in this content, we believe in the transformation that we want our customers to have.

We don’t want to just have this mindset of, oh, well, they bought the course. That’s all I wanted. I just, you know, wanted them to give me their money and, and I’m done. No, like we want people to actually get that transformation that we are promising them and that we believe in so that we can then. A, build that relationship with them, build that trust with them, and often then later they’ll also become not only return customers, but they also tend to become referrals.

If they are able to reach that goal that you promised them on your sales page, then they’re way more likely to then turn around and, and see, and maybe they have a friend who they know wants to achieve the same thing. They’re going to recommend you because they saw results with your course. Yeah, I’m so glad you led with

Amanda Warfield: the actual, you know, the whole purpose isn’t just to make money.

Because I think that gets lost in this sometimes in the business space of just, no, we’re here for real people with real problems that we can actually solve because we have the skills and the giftings to be able to do that.

Sara Whittaker: Yeah. I mean, I think we’ve all bought courses and digital products that you are promised so many things and then you buy it and you’re like, Oh, my gosh, this is not what I expected.

And there’s nowhere to go from here. Like, there’s nobody to ask questions to. I always include a community aspect to my courses so that people do feel like they have a place to come with questions or to celebrate their wins or to vent about a challenge that they’ve got because you don’t just want it.

people to buy and then feel like they’re kind of alone in the rest of the process. Yeah,

Amanda Warfield: absolutely. So you dropped this little nugget earlier where you said there’s probably at least one piece of your course that you could turn to audio. Explain a little bit more about that and what you meant.

Sara Whittaker: Yeah, so I, you know, of course there are Lots of courses out there where you need a visual component.

You need a video. You need slides. Like if I were to do a course all about how to edit a podcast, that’s not something that I’m going to create a private podcast or an audio course for. That’s something that I want you to see. I want to be able to share my screen. I want to show you what I’m doing. But Often, even with these courses, there are certain lessons in your course that you could turn into audio or, you know, a lot of courses or memberships have coaching calls or community calls or Q& A calls.

Those can be turned into a private podcast or an audio component of your course. Also, I know people who like I have a client who has a membership and a perk of joining the membership is that you get added to her private podcast where she does like quarterly podcast episodes. It’s not every week. It’s just once a quarter, but it’s just that bonus content that only her members.

So it’s just kind of another bonus piece that you can give people either for bonus content or just to make their learning that much more accessible.

Amanda Warfield: Okay, and so you mentioned that Not all courses would be great for audio only. So what types of courses do well in an audio format?

Sara Whittaker: Yeah, so I think courses that do well in an audio format are obviously things that aren’t going to need a ton of visuals like editing a podcast or maybe you’re a pantry organizer.

You’re going to want visuals for that. But if you have like a clear process that you can take people through in your course that You could, anything that you could create like a podcast episode for makes or a podcast series for makes a great audio course. I think that probably all of us have, maybe you don’t know it yet, but you could probably think of kind of like a series that you could create that you could turn into an audio course.

Many courses are great for audio courses that might just be like. Three to five lessons, 27 offer that would make for a great audio course, something that has like a clear end goal and a clear action item that people can take after listening.

Amanda Warfield: Okay. So since you brought up pricing, my first thought when I hear audio only private podcast feed is, does it take away from the value or the.

Not take away from the value, but take away from the perceived value of the course. And do you have to price your courses lower if you’re going to be an audio

Sara Whittaker: only format? Yeah, that’s a great question. And that’s definitely like a limiting belief that came up for me and that I know comes up for a lot of people when they’re considering an audio course.

And it really comes down to what you’re going to include in your audio course. Like, if it’s going to be a mini course, then I think Staying around that, you know, anywhere from like 27 to 47 is a great offer. But I, like, I can tell you from, for me, I, my audio course was 10 lessons. It included some resources in there that were linked in the, um, in the lessons.

And it also included a private Facebook group and I priced it at one 27. And my wait listers had a coupon code and I didn’t have any. Price objections. I think it’s all about the messaging. And as long as you can give and show what kind of result people are going to get, it doesn’t lessen the value at all.

I’ve seen people price audio courses way higher than 127 up to like that 500 range.

Amanda Warfield: I love that. Okay, just something because I know that if I thought it. Everyone else was probably thinking it too. Oh, for sure. I wanted to address that because pricing is something that’s so difficult and it’s so personal and like you said, there are a lot of limiting beliefs around it.

Now you mentioned kind of how you package your up with the face, yours up with the Facebook group and everything. What, when it comes to putting together that package for the audio only course, what does that delivery look like? Because I’m assuming you don’t have. You know, Kajabi or Kartra or any other platform teachable like that.

You don’t have a platform because hello audio is your platform. So what does that kind of packaging look like? Is there any kind of video component at all that. Maybe, let’s say for example, you have a welcome video within an e I, I don’t know, I’m just wondering like what does that packaging look like when you wrap it all up with a bow?

Sara Whittaker: Yeah, this is such a great question and this is something I really kind of tussled with for a while because there are, and this is also what’s really cool about an audio course because you can package it in so many different ways and it can look however you want it to look. What it looks like when I can kind of take you like on the journey that a customer would take.

So I had a full sales page for this. I had my checkout page in Thrivecart. Once they purchased in Thrivecart, they get an automatic email. That has their individual link for the audio course, which is like, just to be clear, essentially just like a podcast is just private. So it’s not searchable within Apple podcasts or Spotify or anything like that, but you can still listen within like your Apple podcast app.

So they get this email, they get their link. They get to choose which app they want to listen in on. And so now they have, I dripped out my content when I first launched it. So I did like one lesson per week. And so they get instant access to the feed and then instant access and lifetime access to the Facebook community.

There was no. Platform, like you mentioned, like no kajabi or anything like that, that they’re logging into. It’s just this private Facebook group and within that private Facebook group, any resources that I am providing them in the lessons. I also I created little guides in the if you know, like the guides tab in the Facebook groups.

I created those where they were linked there for them. And then they were also linked. In the lesson description within their listening app as well. So in a way it’s great for them too, because they don’t have to log into anything. Everything was provided right there with one click, and it was all things that they could just organize into their Google drive, if it was any kind of.

Resource that went with the lesson.

Amanda Warfield: What I love so much about this whole idea is by utilizing the hello audio feed, You mentioned this, but I want to reiterate it because I think it’s such an important part of this. But utilizing the Hello Audio feed, your course automatically ends up in the podcast player of their choice, just like any other podcast they listen to.

So it’s a known entity, and there’s not, how do I use Kajabi? How do I use Kartra? Where do I click? It’s just this automatic, oh, I use Apple Podcasts every day to listen to podcasts that I already listen to. This is the same thing. I just. I couldn’t access this until I had that private link, right? And so I love that not only does it make creating the course so much simpler for you, but it also makes accessing and using the course so much simpler for the students.

And so it’s simplified in multiple ways here, which I just, chef’s kiss, so good. What I’m most curious about. Is how does this actually differ? How does an audio only course differ from a

Sara Whittaker: private podcast? Well, it, it doesn’t really, I mean, I think the differentiating factor here is that when we think of private podcasts, we usually think of free, like I mentioned how I’ve created a private podcast before as an, as an audio lead magnet.

So. In that scenario, it’s free content and all they have to give me their email address in order to access that content because it’s still gated. It’s still private, but with the audio course, I’m putting a price tag on it. Instead of giving me their email, they’re giving me money. So I would

Amanda Warfield: say, and almost push back to that, I would say they’re different just in the way that they’re.

What they’re teaching and how they’re teaching, whereas I feel like and correct me if I’m wrong because I haven’t done this personally, but I feel like a lead magnet is going to solve one small problem for sure, yes, versus a course is going to give you all the steps you need to solve a particular problem and.

A lead magnet and a private podcast is going to deep dive into one particular thing versus a deep dive into multiple

Sara Whittaker: particular things. Yes, definitely. And I think we all probably know now as business owners, if you’re signing up for somebody’s lead magnet, you’re going to be sold to you’re going to, they are trying to funnel you into a paid offer, whereas with an audio course.

You are, like you said, getting all of those steps inside of this course and you’ve already purchased it. So you’re not like being sold to throughout that content.

Amanda Warfield: Right. Yeah. That’s so true too. It’s, it’s private podcasts are always going to be used. Up front to sell something to lead into a launch, most likely, which funnily enough, you had mentioned that you lazy launch this, how do you put it?

I would, I would love to hear more about that because I’m always interested in learning new launch strategies. So what exactly do you mean by lazy launch and how did you go about, you mentioned a wait list, but what else went into this launch for

Sara Whittaker: you? Yeah. So I definitely call it a lazy launch, meaning that I just, I feel like when I think about Live launch, you’re thinking of the live webinars and maybe a ton of Facebook ads, like really going all out for this.

I really wanted to experiment and see what I could do without doing those things. And so my main strategies were, um, using my public podcast in the months leading up to. This audio course launch and so what I mean by that is really creating podcast episodes that really poked at the pain points that this audio course was going to solve so, um, and that that went on for, you know, three months or so creating this really intentional content.

So that by the time it came to the live launch, people were very problem aware. And now they know that there’s a solution. If they join this audio course, I created a waitlist. I had my waitlist open probably like two months before I opened doors. And I always, this, I always use a waitlist anytime I launch anything.

And I always tell my waitlist that. If they’re on the wait list, they will get a coupon code that only wait listers will get, and that’s always been super effective for me. I know I’ve heard mixed feelings about the wait list situation. I personally. Love a waitlist. It has worked for me and I will continue using it.

But yeah, really just being like intentional with the pre launch content and utilizing that waitlist. And then I had doors open for, I let them know what coming, what was coming. Like I really built that buzz. People knew what I had created. When doors were going to be open, I ran dynamic ads on my podcast for inviting people to join the wait list.

I ran a dynamic ad one week before doors open, letting people know doors are opening in a week. And then I ran another ad saying, Hey, doors are open this week. They close on this date. And so I used my podcast. I sent out. Daily emails that week. And then I created maybe three Instagram reels and went on my stories and that’s it.

So I use podcast email. and Instagram, which are the three things that I usually focus on. I just want to,

Amanda Warfield: for everyone listening, I just want to point out some of the things that Sarah said that you’ve heard me say over and over again, and I hope that if it hasn’t already stuck, maybe hearing someone else say it will, but she prelaunched for three months, for 12 weeks, which every time I say that, I think people think, you know, I’ve got horns growing out of my head.

12 weeks of prelaunch, of really leaning into what those pain points were. She created the waitlist, which, I’m with you, the waitlist strategy works every single time, but it only works if you prelaunch. Yes. And that’s, I think, where some people, they put a waitlist out, but they’re not actually pre launching, they’re not addressing pain points, and they’re like, well, no one wants it.

Well, you haven’t given them a reason to want to be on the waitlist. Right. Um, and yes, I love the coupon code. Every time I do a waitlist, and I teach this in my launch strategy course, is give them, I open the doors for the waitlist a day early, they get a special coupon code, only good for that first day.

Oh, I like that. And then. And then you get the majority of your sales at the beginning of the launch instead of the end, which just creates a ton of momentum and leads to more sales because you’re able to say, look, all of these people have already signed up this week.

Sara Whittaker: Exactly. That’s what, that’s, what’s always the case for me.

My biggest sales day is always the first day because it’s people on the wait list.

Amanda Warfield: They’re ready. You have prepped them. They’ve heard about this for ages. They’re ready to go and they’re ready to buy in and it doesn’t take much to do that. It just it takes pre launching. But you also mentioned that you were able to launch.

Without this whole entire webinar strategy and all of this extra fluff. And I don’t even think we need to call that lazy launching. That should just be launching. We don’t need these major hype pieces that I feel like so many of the gurus are like, you’ve got to have a webinar or you’ve got to have a challenge or you’ve got to have this, those things are great additions.

But when you’re launching for the first time, they’re not necessary and they’re not always necessary. It’s one of those, if you can fit it in great, but if not, you can have a really successful launch without them. And they’re often just one more thing that you have to coordinate and handle and do. And then there’s all the emails and it’s a lot, but you’re gonna have a super successful launch just with your content and your current audience.

So thank you so much for sharing all the details and just letting everyone kind of have a peek behind the scenes of. What that looked like for you and yeah, just what works for you with your launches in a way that isn’t overwhelming and exhausting and taking up all of your mental time and capacity.

Sara Whittaker: Yes, of course. I love talking about this stuff and I, the other thing that popped into my head when you were asking about pricing and messaging for this, if you are somebody who’s listening and you’re like, I don’t know if my, like what I could price an audio corset. One thing that I really focused on for messaging is thinking about who my audience was, which is probably very similar for a lot of our audiences because everybody’s busy.

People know That they want the transformation that courses offer, but they like a lot of people know that they’re not actually going to complete it. And so sometimes that’s a hesitation when people buy a course. And so I really had that in my mind with my messaging and making it clear that these lessons are going to be bite sized.

They’re going to be tight. They’re going to have action items at the end of them. They’re going to be, you know, short so you can really get through this content. And that was a big piece of my messaging that I think helped with selling the course. Yeah,

Amanda Warfield: absolutely. We, we are all exhausted and burnt out and it’s a lot that, I mean, that’s the entire premise of my membership is, hey, I’m not going to give you a new education every month, you’re going to get new education once a quarter and the rest of the quarter, we’re just focusing on taking action one small step at a time because, you know, we had the whole heyday, what, four years ago with online courses and, yeah, Everyone wanted one.

And now they’re great in theory, but no one gets through them. And we’ve come to realize that. And so it’s, it’s definitely, you know, we have to shift into this mindset of, okay, how do I make things as simple and as easily digestible as possible?

Sara Whittaker: Yes, absolutely. Okay. So you

Amanda Warfield: mentioned that all of your, your course modules end with an action step and we always end chasing simple with an action step.

So I would love to know if you could just give the listeners one action step to take this week to start moving towards being able to create their own audio only course, what would it be?

Sara Whittaker: I think that I would recommend just getting out a piece of paper, or if you prefer, you know, doing things on a Google doc or in your project management tool, and really give yourself 15 minutes and think about if you want to create an audio course, start with the problem that you want to solve for people, and then start listing out the teaching points that will get them that solution.

So you can really start to think about how you can break This course down into bite sized lessons that would be appropriate for an audio course, sometimes just giving yourself those few minutes to do this and doing kind of like a brain dump on paper will help you organize your thoughts and help you really see, Oh, this is something that I could do.

Amanda Warfield: Yes, that moment of, Oh, I actually do know enough to do this. That’s how I felt when I started outlining for the book, because for the longest time it was, I don’t know, do I have enough to say? Like that seems like a big deal. And I know people feel that same way about the course. And the second you start just drafting things out, it’s this light bulb moment of, oh, I do know what I’m talking about.

Yes. I do actually have things to say and I can share this and help other people with it. So I love that as an action step. Thank you, Sarah. Of course. One last thing. I don’t let anyone leave without giving is a book recommendation. So if you could share one book that everyone should read, it can be business, but it can also be fiction or whatever.

Literally anything. What would it be?

Sara Whittaker: Okay. This is one that I can actually answer it. If you had asked me this a year ago, I don’t know that I would have been able to answer it, but I finally joined a book club and we. And it’s gotten me reading again, which has been awesome. So I have lots of books I could recommend.

I think one of my favorites that I’ve read recently is called local woman missing. If you like thrillers, I’m blanking on who the author is. Um, it’s so, so good. And I don’t even want to give anything away, but if you like thrillers, you will love this. Have you read it? I think

Amanda Warfield: so. I’m looking up the local missing, local woman missing.

I’m looking it

Sara Whittaker: up right now, guys, because I know, I have it on my Audible, if I can pull it. Mary Cubica?

Amanda Warfield: Yes, that’s it. We’ll link to it in the show notes, guys.

Sara Whittaker: So good. It had me on the edge of my seat the whole time and I did not predict how it ended. I love

Amanda Warfield: those. Those are, I just love a good twist. And I don’t, my husband’s the kind of person that like has to figure it out before it happens.

And I’m just like blinders on. I don’t want to know. I want the surprise Yes.

Sara Whittaker: So good. Highly recommend. Perfect.

Amanda Warfield: Wonderful. Okay. Well, Sarah, I know that everyone is like, okay. This has been just one of the most informational educational podcast episodes we’ve ever listened to. I need more from Sarah. Where

Sara Whittaker: can they find you?

Yeah, so I make it really easy. I am podcasting for educators everywhere. That’s the name of my podcast. I actually episode 95 on my podcast. I do like a full debrief of this audio course launch with specific numbers and things like that. So if this is something that you’re. Interested in hearing more about check out that episode.

Um, but yeah, that’s my podcast. I’m podcasting for educators on Instagram. That’s my website. My email is Sarah at podcasting for educators. If you have any questions. ,

Amanda Warfield: we will make sure to link to all of that, including that episode in the show notes, guys. So go ahead and head there so you can learn more and connect with Sarah further.

Sarah, thank you so much for being here today.

Sara Whittaker: Thank you. This was so fun.

Amanda Warfield: Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over@amandawarfield.com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 186: Simplifying Your Course Creation with an Audio-Only Podcast with Sara Whittaker appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Creating a Quiz Lead Magnet with Linda SidhuLooking for a way to get new leads onto your email list and use your lead magnet to build a relationship with them? Look no farther, because what you’re going to want to create is a quiz. And my friend, Linda is here to tell you all about how to get started crafting your own.

Linda Sidhu is a list-building expert who helps entrepreneurs create irresistible personality quizzes that attract hundreds of new subscribers on autopilot. As a former top ten pharmaceutical sales representative, she had extensive training in personality types. She took the same methods that worked for selling products face-to-face and turned them into a personality quiz framework that converts views to leads at 70% and helps craft personalized marketing for her customers. Linda has been featured in Forbes and on multiple podcasts, including The Art of Online Business with Rick Mulready, the Go-to-Gal with Jaclyn Mellone, and the Cubicle to CEO podcast with Ellen Yin.

In today’s episode, Linda walks us through where to begin when creating a quiz, how to ensure your audience wants to take the quiz, tips for helping quiz takers finish the full quiz, what to do post quiz, and so much more! This episode is jam-packed with incredible tips for creating your next lead magnet. And for those of you that are inside Chasing Simple Marketing: The Community and currently working on your lead magnets – this is a must listen to!

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Quiz to Cash Strategy Quiz * This week’s action step: Start by creating a survey for your audience and beginning to do some market research. * This week’s book recommendation: Tough Titties by Laura Belgray * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Linda Sidhu is a list-building expert who helps entrepreneurs create irresistible personality quizzes that attract hundreds of new subscribers on autopilot. As a former top ten pharmaceutical sales representative, she had extensive training in personality types. She took the same methods that worked for selling products face-to-face and turned them into a personality quiz framework that converts views to leads at 70% and helps craft personalized marketing for her customers. Linda has been featured in Forbes and on multiple podcasts, including The Art of Online Business with Rick Mulready, the Go-to-Gal with Jaclyn Mellone, and the Cubicle to CEO podcast with Ellen Yin.

Social Links:

Instagram: Linda Sidhu- The Quiz (@linda_sidhu_quizzes )

Facebook Group (Quiz Creators): https://www.facebook.com/groups/813848232379718

Facebook Business Link: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063847641127

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAmanda Warfield:* Looking for a way to get new leads onto your email list and use your lead magnet to build a relationship with them? Look no farther because what you’re going to want to create is a quiz. And my friend Linda is here to tell you all about how to get started crafting your own. Linda Sidhu is a list building expert who helps entrepreneurs create irresistible personality quizzes that attract hundreds of new subscribers on autopilot.

As a former top 10 pharmaceutical sales rep, she had extensive training and personality types. She took the same methods that worked for selling products face to face and turned them into a personality quiz framework that converts views to leads at 70 percent and helps craft personalized marketing for her customers.

Linda has been featured in Forbes and on multiple podcasts, including the art of online business with Mick Mulready and the go to gal with Jacqueline Malone and the cubicle to CEO podcast with Ellen Yin. In today’s episode, Linda walks us through where to begin when creating a quiz, how to ensure your audience wants to take the quiz, tips for helping quiz takers finish the full quiz, what to do post quiz, and so much more.

This episode is jam packed with incredible tips for creating your next lead magnet. And for those of you that are inside Chasing Simple Marketing, the community, and currently working on your lead magnets, this is a must listen to. You’re listening to episode 185 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your 2024 version at amandawarfield. com slash planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.

My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but… Without that masters of business administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages.

I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing, and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amandawarfield.

com book. I’ll see you there. All right, Linda. I am so, so excited to have you on. I’ve really been looking forward to this episode and we just. Chatted for like five minutes, 10 minutes before we even hit record. So sorry that all of you missed out on that, but can you tell everyone a little bit about who you are and what you

Linda Sidhu: do?

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me here, Amanda. I love talking about how to attract leads for your business. Specifically with personality quizzes. So if you don’t know me, I’m Linda Studio. I am a personality expert and quiz creator and how I got here. What I would just have to tell you a backstory of, you know, 15 years ago, I was in pharmaceutical sales.

And I worked with dermatologists. It was like a specialty. And at the time, I really was nervous about talking to these doctors about my products because I felt like they knew way more about them than I did. And there was no way I was going to be able to sell them something. Right. So luckily, My company really helped me understand different personalities and so how to communicate to different people.

And so I really relied on that. And I actually became certified in DISC. So DISC is the model I used. It’s Dominant Influencer Study or Conscientious. And for over 10 years, I would sit in my car and I’d be like, okay, Dr. Amanda, I’m going to go see her. What type of personality does she have? And if you were a dominant personality, I would go in, I’d get to the point, I’d give them options, I’d let them dictate how they were going to use my product, and then I’d get out of there.

I was efficient with their time. However, if you were a little bit more heart centered, like the opposite personality, maybe I’d ask how your weekend was, maybe I’d bring lunch instead so I could give you more time with me. I would show data on my products, I would talk about the testimonials and show before and after pictures with the acne patients, you know what I mean?

And, um, I would recognize that that type of person, sometimes it takes almost two years for you to build your know, like and trust factor before they would ever use your product on their patients. Right. So what happened was I, um, retired pharmaceutical sales when my son went, was born, had the opportunity to stay home.

However, when he went to school and he started kindergarten, I launched my business. And I was doing email marketing at the time. And so I thought, you know what? I’m going to do a personality quiz because in my head, understanding people’s personalities was the key to having a better communication. And then you could sell your offers in an effortless way, right?

So I’ve launched a personality quiz and what happened was Interact, the quiz platform, thought my quiz was doing better than quizzes they’ve had before. The conversion rates were higher. Not only that, but I had friends sharing it left and right. They were sharing it in their Facebook group. Like this is the result I got.

What did you get? Like, and it just went bananas. And so at that point I followed the breadcrumbs and I said, well, maybe I should really just focus on the top of funnel. Personality quizzes versus just email marketing. You know what I mean? And so that’s what I did. I actually focused, it led me to the decision to start focusing on personality quizzes for business

Amanda Warfield: owners.

Okay. I love this so much. One, because I love personality tests, but two, I love that it forces you to think about your audience. As individual people, because I think we can, you know, before we hopped on and hit record, we had this whole conversation about how the art of relationship building is kind of lost, right?

And I think that that’s something that’s so great within what you’re doing with these personality quizzes for businesses is that it forces you to think about the different people that are in your audience. And it’s not just one collective body of people, and it’s not one collective. One, it’s there are a lot of people in my audience, and how can I figure out what their personalities are and group them together in order to serve them really

Linda Sidhu: well?

Well, what quizzes do is in a fun way, they solicit information and feedback from your audience as well. So you’re also doing ongoing research. One of the first quest questions I have in my quiz. What do you identify with? Are you a coach, a course creator, a copywriter or something other? And I realized that almost 50 percent of my audience were coaches and I didn’t know that at the time.

So that dictates, okay, where am I going to show up now? Well, look at podcasts. You know, that have coaches as an audience, for example, Dallas Travers comes to mind. She’s got that podcast coaches on a mission, right? So it’s like, okay, now all of a sudden I know that being a little bit more intentional, it probably is wise for me to pitch Dallas to be on her podcast.

I can get in front of other coaches who tend to be on my email list as well. Those are also people who are creating quizzes and having success with them, right? Of course, creators are another one. So thinking outside the box on this, I’m like, okay, Kajabi, they are a platform that have post courses, like I’d love to somehow build a relationship with that company, right?

Or if you think like Amy Porterfield, she has digital courses. So that really just kind of dictates you and allows you to be more intentional. But going back to the clients, when people are taking your quiz, you’re engaging with them right off the bat. Uh, they’re going to their email box and they’re looking to see what result they got, possibly sharing it with friends, but they are a more engaged lead and they’re going to stay on your email list longer because you’re making extra effort to connect with them.

What do you think it is about

Amanda Warfield: your quizzes that it, it makes it so attractive that people want to take it? How do you make it so that people see the quiz and are like, yes, that’s what I want to spend my time taking?

Linda Sidhu: So you really need to have a really good title for your quiz. I actually just wrapped up a three day Nail Your Quiz Idea Challenge last week.

I run them once or twice a year. So if you missed this one, don’t worry. I’ll probably run another one because they are so successful. Really, you want your title to be something that people beg to click on. Now, titles are really good for two reasons. One, because they’re going to attract your right audience.

You need someone to look at that title and say, yes, that’s me. And it’s got to be compelling enough to, you know, click quit, you know, start quiz. The other thing it does is it repels your audience. So by having a good title, people are going to look at it and say, that’s not me. And they’re not going to take it and they won’t become a lead.

So when you have a good quiz title. What happens is you’re going to get not only not only quality leads, but I’m sorry, not only quality quantity leads, but quality leads, right? So I’ll give you a great example of this. Um, I had a coach create a quiz and she really honed a niche down into I want to help people with ADHD.

She has ADHD. She realized a lot of people that’s in our audience has ADHD. And so when we were working on her quiz, she said, I’m going to focus on this. And so her title of her quiz is what’s your ADHD superpower. And you better believe when people look at that quiz, they have ADHD, right? Same thing goes for a coach who might be helping people with their midlife crisis.

I had somebody come to me who wanted to create a quiz and, you know, her audience really was that person who was heading into the second chapter of their life. We didn’t want to say the word crisis. We wanted it to be positive, but she was really focusing on an age group. Right? So women over 40. So that was part of her quiz title, women over 40.

What’s your midlife advantage. So now people, women over 40 were saying, that’s me people in their twenties weren’t taking it and she was getting quality leads. So I really think it boils down to having a, like nailing your quiz title and idea. That’s so

Amanda Warfield: interesting. And I, I look at people’s titles for everything.

I’m like, wow, that’s so good. And then I struggle with coming up with. My own so often right now as I’m writing my book, that’s what I’m stuck on is the tagline for the book because I just struggle with that. Do you have any tips on the best ways to figure out

Linda Sidhu: what to name things? Yeah, it’s pretty simple.

First of all, you got to think about your offer. So after people take your quiz, what do you want them to do? Cause you’re going to need to communicate with them and get them down the funnel to actually become a new lead, right? Particularly purchasing something from you. So, for example, I have the Quiz Lab, and so that is my offer, or I create quizzes for people, right?

So, I work backwards from my offer, quizzes, and then from there, I try to figure out, well, what’s my expertise? Like, what can I do to serve them? So, really, when I think about people who want to create a quiz, they, they know they want a quiz. They just don’t know what their strategy or what they should do.

There’s a lot of moving parts. And so I kind of combine that with, um, some of the things I hear from my audience when I do research. And typically what I hear is people don’t know what their title should be. They don’t know what their idea should be. They also, when they do have a quiz, don’t know how to promote it.

Like, there’s so many things that they don’t know. But the first basic thing when I was thinking of my own title was, well, I know people are coming to me because they want a quiz, but they don’t actually know what to do after that. Like, they know what they want to quiz. So I named my quiz title, What’s Your Quiz to Cash Strategy?

And then it, um, the results actually show you which strategy you’re leaning into your strengths. You know what I mean? What are you, what are your strengths? Who are you? Let’s stroke your ego for a while and like celebrate who you are. And then I also give a strategy on like, okay, here’s how you, here’s, you want to create a quiz.

You’ll want to have a welcome series. You have your own strategy that works with your personality, right? So that’s what I decided to go with, you know, book titles are probably different, so maybe they are, maybe they’re not, but at the end of the day, you want something good that people are going to pick up again.

And they’re going to identify with it and say, I want to read this book. So, okay, we’ve got

Amanda Warfield: people they’re in, they’re taking the quiz. Maybe they’ve gotten all the way through the quiz. What tips

Linda Sidhu: do you have for helping ensure

Amanda Warfield: that people actually complete the quiz? They don’t just start it and then end up bored

Linda Sidhu: halfway through.

So I always, I think it boils down to the questions you’re asking them in the quiz. And this is a good question. Uh, so I’m excited to answer this actually, because a lot of people. Actually skip over this part. Um, but what happens is there’s three questions. I like to ask one is personality questions so we can ensure that they get the right personality result.

Typically, I have five of those in there just to try to dictate. Okay. Let’s see if we can get the right personality. So when she sees, when he or she sees the results, they say, Oh my gosh, that’s totally me, right? The personality questions. Second is research questions. Research question was the one I gave a little bit ago.

An example of that is like, what do you identify with? Are you a coach, course creator, copywriter, or other? The research questions help you as an entrepreneur. Try not to make them really heavy, like, you know, what’s holding you back, or what’s the biggest obstacle, like, and then tons of words, right? Like, ask the question, get to the point, try to be super tight with the question and the answers too.

And then the last question I like to ask is engaging questions. These are just kind of on theme with the quiz. They’re there to have fun. They really don’t mean anything except for trying to… They I kind of layer them in between two harder questions and the harder questions are the personality of the research questions, right?

They make you think a little longer. So if there’s 2 personality questions in a row, I might throw in an engagement question. Just it’s like a softball question just to get them to answer it and move on. I typically don’t have more than 10 questions because anything more than 10, you’re probably looking at the bottom.

Like, how long? How many questions do I have to get through this? You don’t want your new leads to feel that way. Okay. And then the good thing with quizzes is you can actually go back to your data and see the percentages of where people are falling off. In my particular quiz, people fall off the highest percent at question number two.

I actually leave that there for teaching purposes for people who are in my quiz lab. And the reason why I do that is because it’s about a 10 percent drop off, but it’s a hard question and I’m making people think too hard. And so I’m showing people, okay, this is a live example of what you don’t want to do.

Um, I mean, if it was like. 20 30%. I would totally change it. 10 percent is not bad, but you don’t want anything like higher than 6 percent for drop off rates. All my other questions are less than like 1 percent drop off. So I don’t know if that answered your question, but you really want to have good engaging questions.

You want them tight with getting to the point as quick as possible because people only have seconds to look at that. They’re distracted. If you’ve lost them, they’re going to click out of it.

Amanda Warfield: Yeah, no, that’s super helpful in so many ways. I feel like I should be taking those right now. Yeah. You mentioned earlier, you’ve got to have a strategy like an end game involved that you’re leading them to what about the quiz sets them up for potential sale later, later, a potential conversion to whatever it is that you’re, you’re trying to move them towards.

What about a quiz sets them up for

Linda Sidhu: that? Yeah. So when people take your quiz, the most important thing you’re trying to do is get them. To become a new lead. So it’s really about attracting them. Then there’s another step called the welcome series. And so this is a mistake I see entrepreneurs make is they might create a quiz, but then they don’t have a welcome series attached to it.

And that’s a missed opportunity because the welcome series has a lot of magic. In the welcome series, you’re validating your new leads. You’re sending an email to build your know, like and trust factor. You’re also, um, sharing ways and micro commitments to, uh, get to know you better. I know when I was on Ellen Yen’s podcast, Cubicle to CEO.

I’ve been wanting to actually use that podcast interview and repurpose it into my welcome series because again, that was a really good episode. I was on. It’s great to repurpose those things, but that episode alone is going to get them in, you know, listening to you. Right and so think about podcast interviews that you want to share.

I was able to be featured in Forbes, so I definitely put that in there. And 1 of my emails where I was sharing more about who I am. And the Forbes article was talking about failed partnership that I had and how I overcame that. And so that’s part of my story. So I have that in one of my emails, but it’s also a credibility marker, right?

So repurpose those things is really important. And when people click on a podcast interview or a Forbes feature, you’re getting micro commitments. You’re getting them to click. You’re getting them more into your world. And what quizzes and the welcome series can potentially do is get people to binge your content.

And when people start binging your content, they’re getting really excited to purchase from you. And then so the last couple emails, you could utilize a couple strategies. I like to utilize the nine word email. So right before my last email in my welcome series, I will say, Amanda, are you still interested in creating a quiz?

If so, click here and you know it whether it’s like a calendar link at the time to book a one on one call. Or maybe quiz lab is open. It’ll be a link to join the quiz lab. You know what I mean? But it’s a very short to the point, usually nine words. Um, and people view that email, uh, it’s almost like a pattern interruption.

Uh, but not only that. It looks like a personal email was sent to them because it’s how you would talk to a friend, and typically they’ll click on it. And I have actually had people book calls that way. No problem. And then potentially become a client. Right. And then the very last email you send to them in your welcome series for your quiz typically is on next steps if you haven’t already talked about it sooner.

Right. So if I’m running my three day nail your quiz idea challenge, that’s what I’m asking people to join. Um, things like that. And then maybe the last email is all about joining my three day nail your quiz idea challenge. And then when they join your challenge. You take them further. We help them come up with their quiz title.

They get an instant win. You’ve got the open, you know, doors open for QuizLab. And now you’re asking them to become a client. And that’s kind of how it all works. Just depends on what you have available to offer. I know some clients who create quizzes don’t have a course that they’re offering booking a call.

Like why don’t you book a call and we’ll talk about one on one support. There are people who use it to sell out group coaching programs. There’s people who use it. Um, you know, for a different reasons. I am actually I was hired recently. Where I’m doing a quiz right now where she just really wants people to bench her podcast episodes.

So now it’s like a personalized podcast for each personality, and we’ve really had some fun repurposing all that amazing content and what the people are going to do is it’s just going to bend all these amazing. Episodes and the way we tailored the quiz was based on their personality. So it was, we’re serving up what they need based on who they are.

So do you essentially create

Amanda Warfield: three different welcome sequences or however many personalities come out of the quiz and then you send people down, whichever one they fall into?

Linda Sidhu: I try to keep it simple personally, but I did have a client in the quiz lab that personalized, she did a private podcast for each personality.

And so she personalized everybody’s welcome series. So that was 20 different episodes that she created, but I will tell you, she went from 13 K to over six figures in a year by doing that. So the more you personalize your content and the more effort you put into place. And by the way, all of this is on automation at this point, right?

So it’s not like, you know, after you put the time and the commitment to do it, you build a foundation. It’s all there. She was able to see how she attracted the right lead. She was able to see the micro commitments, people booking a call and then booking the actual service. Right. So she had an awesome story, but no, I usually keep it simple.

I usually recreate four email ones. So they’re unique. And then I put the rest of the emails in each sequence for each personality to keep it simple.

Amanda Warfield: No, I love that. That’s great. So, okay, you mentioned that common mistake you see is that people don’t have a welcome sequence afterwards. Are there any other common mistakes

Linda Sidhu: that we should avoid?

Yeah. A lot of times people, um, will write the questions first. You actually want to come up with the theme and then you want to write, write the results first and then the questions. Cause then you know what questions are going to get the right result. You almost have to reverse engineer the entire thing.

So you have to work backwards from your offer. Same thing with the quiz. You have to work backwards with what you, how you put the quiz together. So really just kicking it off properly and like not starting with the questions is another mistake. The second mistake besides the welcome series, because there’s three big mistakes.

One is starting it off improperly. Number two is not having a welcome series. And number three is not knowing how to promote it. A lot of times people work really hard on putting this amazing quiz together and then they don’t know how to promote it. Um, and so I really try to work with individuals based on their personalities, like what feels good to you.

Um, you know, encouraging people to get on podcasts so they can share it. Um, having friends do partner like email swap so they can share it like partnering networking with other people. You can put it, you can run Facebook ads, you can put it on Instagram. I mean, there’s so many ways, but a lot of times I feel pretty bad, um, they fall short because they don’t know what to do.

It’s almost like you build a website. They’re supposed to come. Same thing with a quiz. They think I’ve got a quiz. Everybody’s going to take it. It’s not the case. You almost have to treat it like it’s It’s own launch, believe it or not, and really put the focus and energy there. Yeah,

Amanda Warfield: no, I think that’s such a great point because really with any project that you have, you’ve got to have a marketing plan for it because otherwise it’s just going to sit there and then you’re going to think, well, that didn’t work.

And it’s not that it didn’t work. It’s that you didn’t

Linda Sidhu: let anyone know that it existed. Exactly.

Amanda Warfield: Oh man, this has been so good. And I know that I have so much to think of and I’ve created a quiz before. So I know that all the listeners are definitely just like. Probably a little overwhelmed with all the things that they want to do.

So what would you say that the, the number one action step to

Linda Sidhu: take from all of this would be? Yeah. So this is another great question. I think before you do anything, what’s really going to serve your audience is for them to do some research. So I want to give your audience three questions to ask their audience and I want to encourage them to send out a survey.

And if they can, I would love for them to do an interview with like six different people to really get this information. One of the best questions I like to ask is what are you struggling with in regards to your expertise? So for me, I would say, what are you struggling with when it comes to, you know, attracting leads or growing your email list, right?

And that information alone is going to really tell you what your ideal client is having trouble with. And it’s going to allow you to get into their head. And you can actually take this information and use it in emails. You can use it on your quiz results. You can use it on your, um, sales pages. That alone is just an incredible question to ask.

Another great question to ask your audience is what’s holding you back from working with me. That’ll tell you why they’re not buying from you. Um, and then the third question is imagine if they received what they really wanted, right? In regards to your expertise. So for me, I would say imagine if you grew your email list by 500 people in seven days, because people were coming to me because they want to grow their email list.

I did have a client grow their email list. By 500 people in seven days. So I felt like I could say that because it was achieved by somebody versus like throwing out a silly number, right? So imagine if you achieved their desired result in regards to how you can help them, right? That is also going to give you some really good information.

I would also ask people what podcasts they listen to because it’s really important for you to start pitching yourself on podcasts and getting in front of borrowed audiences. So people who’ve already built the know, like, and trust factor, if they put you on your podcast, they’re exposing, you know, the audience to you.

And that kind of takes the lead already to be warm to hot, right? And you know this, um, but I always like to ask people. So in, I actually have a survey in my quiz. Welcome series on automation and it has all these questions in there. So if you take my quiz, you’re going to see my welcome series and an email too, is where I have my survey.

And now I have almost 200 people that have taken my survey with those questions and it’s all on automation, which I’m sure you’re going to love that. Right. And so you can go back and look at the, all the answers. And if I’m looking to pitch podcasts, I’ll be like, Hey, Amanda’s on that list. I should picture.

That’s

Amanda Warfield: genius. I’m gonna have to go into my welcome sequence and add that. That’s so smart. Okay, so if you could give everyone one book recommendation,

Linda Sidhu: what would it be? And actually, when I was thinking about this yesterday, it’s not a book that is out yet, but it’s one I’m very excited that’s coming out June 13th.

Okay. But Laura Belgray, she’s a mentor of mine. She has written and she’s releasing her first book and it’s called Tough Titties. Love it. And she is actually, if you don’t know Laura, she’s incredible. She’s an award winning copywriter. She was partners with Marie Forleo and uh, they have a joint course together called CopyCure.

Uh, she’s incredible. She’s worked for Bravo, Nick at Night, you name it. She’s an incredible writer and she’s a good friend of mine now. And I’ve already pre ordered it and I’m also going to be part of her launch team because I’m so excited. But yeah, I’m thrilled. It comes out I think June, June 13th. It’s called tough titties.

And I’m actually ordering probably 40 plus books to give to friends and families and clients. And I cannot wait to get my hands on it.

Amanda Warfield: That’s so exciting. I will definitely have to check that out and I will make sure that we add that link to the show notes. Everyone else can check it out too. Okay. So I know everyone has just probably had a million more questions for you about quizzes and how to set them up and use them in their business.

Where can they find you and learn

Linda Sidhu: more from you? Yeah. If you can share the link to my quiz, what’s your quiz to cash strategy. I love my quiz because I basically built it for my audience so we can personalize what strategy is right for you and your personality. So it’s what’s your quiz to cash strategy.

If you get on my email list, that’s my best way of, um, showing up. And actually I’m doing a fun thing for my community with Laura’s book. Um, if you order the book, you can get a workshop with me and her exclusively. So I always like to serve my community, um, you know, give away different surprises and different things.

Um, when I can last year, I was hosting a lot of virtual mixers, uh, where I was getting entrepreneurs together. And, you know, it’s just so much fun when you can serve people and just really get to know them. I wish I could do more of it, but there’s only so much I can do, but the best way to get on my, in my community is on my email list.

And then you’ll hear of all these incredible things to do. Great.

Amanda Warfield: We will link to that in the show notes as well, so everyone can get inside. Thank you so much for being here, Linda. This has just been incredible.

Linda Sidhu: Absolutely. It was such a pleasure for me.

Amanda Warfield: Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 185: The Next Lead Magnet You Need to Create with Linda Sidhu appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Marketing Lessons I’ve Learned From Taylor SwiftIt’s probably surprising to no one that I’m a huge Swifty. I have been since I played debut on repeat for months in my dad’s truck as he took me to and picked me up from school each day in 8th and 9th grade.

I saw Taylor live when she OPENED for Rascal Flatts. I went to the Speak Now Tour and the Red Tour. And just last month, I finally got to see her live again on the Eras tour. Every single one of her CDs is inside my car right now.

Bottom line – I’m obsessed. Not only with how incredibly talented she is, but also with what an amazing business woman she is. It fascinates me to watch her run her business, and I’ve picked up quite a few marketing lessons along the way.

Since I just went to the Eras tour last month at the time of this recording, and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) will be live the same week this episode airs, I thought it was the perfect time to talk about some of the marketing lessons I’ve learned from Taylor Swift.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * This week’s action step: Choose just ONE way to improve your marketing. * This intentionality is why I created Chasing Simple Marketing: The Community. * This week’s book recommendation: This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateIt’s probably surprising to no one that I’m a huge Swiftie. I have been since I played debut on repeat for months and my dad struck as he took me to and picked me up from school each day in 8th and 9th grade. I saw Taylor live when she opened for Rascal Flatts. I went to the Speak Now Tour and the Red Tour and just last month, I finally got to see her live again on the Eras tour.

Every single one of her CDs is inside of my car right now. Bottom line, I’m obsessed. Not only with how incredibly talented she is, but also with what an amazing businesswoman she is. It fascinates me to watch her run her business, and I’ve picked up quite a few lessons along the way. Since I just went to the Ayers tour last month at the time of this recording, and 1989 Taylor’s version will be live the same week this episode airs, I thought it was the perfect time to talk about some of the marketing lessons I’ve learned from Taylor Swift.

You’re listening to episode 184 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple content planner, and you can grab your 2024 version at amandawarfield. com / planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week. I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.

My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but… Without that masters of business administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages.

I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing, and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amandawarfield.

com book. I’ll see you there. The first marketing lesson from Taylor Swift is to repurpose your content. Now, I could honestly probably give a hundred examples of how Taylor has done this, but I’ll just give you three. First and foremost, there’s of course the Taylor’s version of her albums. you’re not a Swiftie, which You’re probably not listening to this if you’re not a Swifty, for being honest, but if you’re not a Swifty and you’re not in on all that’s been going on, she has been re recording all of her albums that she does not own.

So, a few years back, between her Reputation album and her Lover album, her masters were sold and she was not given the opportunity to buy them herself. So what she decided to do was she decided to re record all of them so that now if anyone listens to or purchases the Taylor’s version, they’re all called, you know, 1989 Taylor’s version, which just came out this week and Speak Now Taylor’s version and Red Taylor’s version and Fearless, you know, all of them have Taylor’s version on them.

Anyone who listens to or purchases. A Taylor’s version. It benefits Taylor. Anyone who listens to, and when I say listens to, I mean streams or purchases the non Taylor’s versions of the older albums, well, it doesn’t benefit Taylor because she was not able to purchase her own masters. So she’s re recorded all of his content.

It’s the exact same content and she’s You know, added some things to it, as you do when you repurpose content, right? Like, some of the songs are a little, the lyrics are the same for the most part, but, you know, sometimes the way she says a word is different. She’s also added some bonus tracks to all the Taylor’s Versions albums, but she’s taken exactly what she’s already created, and she’s recreating it and repurposing it for her own benefit.

There’s also the tour documentaries that she’s created. They record her on tour. She’s already putting on the show, and so they’re just recording her, putting on the show that she’s already doing, and taking it, and instead of only being able to see the tour live, you can also watch it at home. So there’s another way to view the tour.

Now, Even outside of the Taylor’s version of it all, she also creates multiple versions of each album. Now so more than ever, but she’s always done this. Way back before, you know, the internet was quite so big, and internet shopping was quite so big. I can remember specifically, every time a new CD launched, I would go to Target, because the Target version always had at least one extra song on it.

And so there were the targeted version, but there was also the regular version. And now, of course, she puts out many different versions of every album, so much so that I can’t keep up. But with the Midnight’s album, there were so many different versions, you could turn them into a clock if you purchased all of them.

She’s got at least four versions of 1989 coming out, and probably more than that. And so she’s taking the same album, it’s the exact same content, and she’s just Making it look a little different and so taylor is constantly repurposing her content and she’s repurposing content that she’s selling even And you can do the same take content that you have already created And repurpose it reuse it in different ways in different places Take your long form content your blog your podcast your youtube videos turn them into email newsletters Turn them into five six seven different social media posts Reuse that same content that you’ve already created so that you don’t have to spend a bunch of time creating more content and work smarter, not harder when it comes to your content and reuse it as much as you can.

The second marketing lesson from Ms. Swift is creating hype before a launch. It is very rare for Taylor to completely surprise us with anything. Folklore was a huge surprise when it dropped, but for the most part, theories are rampant leading up to a launch because of easter eggs. So if you follow TikTok and SwiftTok, as they call it, You’ll see these theories popping up on your free page, and people have all kinds of little connection points because Taylor herself has said, Oh yeah, I leave tons of easter eggs for my fans so that they can figure things out.

And people come up with some wild theories. I’ve gotta be honest, I’ve stopped paying attention to them because they’re, they’re so out there, and honestly, it just spins me up and gets me excited and then I get disappointed. But, I do notice, That, when something is going to drop, when something is for real about to happen, I start getting way more of those on my For You page because so many more people are connecting dots and it’s not just random theories being thrown out there.

And so, it’s pretty obvious when something new is about to happen, not to mention her Easter eggs become more and more and more obvious. For example, on the heiress tour. The night before Speak Now Taylor’s version was announced, all of the light up bracelets that everyone gets, at the end of the show, they all turned purple.

Whereas for most of our shows, they just kind of flash some rainbow colors at the end of the show. The night before 1989, Taylor’s version was announced. Everyone’s at the end of the show lit up blue. And so, those were very, very obvious Easter eggs that, hey, something is coming, and we’re pretty sure we know what it is because Taylor links her eras with specific colors, right?

And so, it’s very rare for her to surprise us with anything. We all have a pretty good idea that something is coming, and usually what it is that’s coming as well. Because she creates hype before lunch. These Easter eggs, they’re not an accident. It’s to get people talking and to get them ready so that when, hey, I announce 1989 Taylor’s version, you’re ready and you’re ready to purchase right now.

Hey, 1989 Taylor’s version is available and there are four different CDs that you can go grab on the website right this second. And boom, things sell out like crazy. And so how do you create hype before lunch? Well, you want to talk about what you’re creating ahead of time. You probably should not be as subtle with your easter eggs as Taylor Swift is.

We don’t have that luxury, right? But back in episode 180, I talked about the launch of my book and why it was so successful despite having an awful launch week. One of the worst launch weeks. No, definitely the worst launch week of my entire career and yet the book launch was such a success anyways, and that all came down to creating hype.

And I talk about that in that episode, but basically make sure you talk about what it is that you’re creating from the time you start creating it. Because what you do is you create hype and you plant those seeds so that when it comes time to purchase, people have already thought about it and they’re ready to go.

That is one of the biggest mistakes I see with launching is people who don’t share about the offer and the launch until it’s time for the launch and no one’s ready for the actual purchase. So, plant those seeds ahead of time and create hype before your launch, just like Taylor Swift. The third marketing lesson from Taylor is all about storytelling and authenticity.

Way back when, at the very first album she put out, she used to leave these Codes in the lyrics. And so the lyrics in the lyric book, they would all be lowercase, but random letters would be uppercase. And what I ended up figuring out and what you know, again, this is long before TikTok and people could tell you about these things.

What I ended up figuring out is that the words that were uppercase, they were uppercase in a specific order. And when you wrote them all down, there was a code, and she would say something about that song in those lyrics. And so, The songs themselves, it’s all storytelling, right? But then within those codes that she left us, she gave us an even deeper peek into what the song was about or who the song was about.

And We love trying to decode who a song is about. People are constantly, Oh, but it could be about this person. It could be about this person. And we love it because it builds that connection. It builds that relationship and that, that emotional relationship web, even though we don’t know these people. But we love the storytelling aspect and the, Oh, this is what happened from her point of view.

And we love storytelling. It’s also so authentic because she writes about, you know, times where she was hurt, but also where she’s hurt others. It also builds an emotional connection, actually hearing her stories. It’s not just, oh, I’ve also been in this place, but it’s also, wow, she’s being really vulnerable and sharing about something that went down for her.

And even if I didn’t experience that, although a lot of what she writes about are things that we’ve all experienced, but even if you haven’t, it’s really easy to connect with it because you know, it’s her actual viewpoint of what happened. And then of course we’ve got the documentaries that she puts out where that that is a whole storytelling behind the scenes peek at her life and what she’s thinking outside of music and what’s going on and so she embeds storytelling into everything that she does from her easter eggs to her songs to the documentaries that she’s been putting out.

There’s storytelling throughout all of that and that storytelling builds that connection and makes us feel like we And the same is true for your content. You want your content to tell stories. Share bits and pieces of who you are. You don’t have to share everything. Taylor Swift has not shared everything with us, right?

She’s given us specific peeks into her life. Share bits and pieces of your life, though. Tell stories. Tell people what’s going on in your life. I mean, this whole episode right here, the fact that I’m talking about. Marketing listens from Taylor Swift and how much I love Taylor Swift. If you’re listening to this, you probably also love Taylor Swift, and that builds a connection between the two of us.

There’s storytelling, there’s connection, there’s relationship building here, right? So add storytelling, things that you love, things that are happening to you that you’re willing to share about. Add all of that in to your content and it makes it so much easier for people to connect. Another example of this is, um, My sales page for content batching bootcamp that whole page and honestly all of the marketing around that course is about the fact that I used to stay up so late trying to get blog posts written when I didn’t feel like it, but I don’t just say, hey, I used to stay up late.

It’s I was staring at a blinking cursor on a blank page trying to figure out what to write. Knowing that it was late and that I was losing time to sleep and I had to get up in the morning to go teach preschoolers and I was exhausted, but I knew I needed to get this out there and I had this conflict of do I just go to sleep and give up or do I sit here and try to put something out even though I know it’s not going to be good.

You know, it’s not as simple as just I didn’t know what to say and I stayed up really late trying to figure it out and then I didn’t get content out. It’s this whole story that I’ve told and it just adds so much dimension to what it is that my marketing is about and what it is that I’m, you know, helping to offer someone.

Hey, I can help you get out of this place and I’ve been there. This is authentic. I have a whole story and I can tell you about it and it builds that connection. So make sure you’re adding storytelling and authenticity into your own marketing as well. The fourth marketing lesson from Taylor Swift is relationships are so important.

Taylor Swift builds relationships with her fans through the storytelling and the authenticity, right? But also she’s done things like secret sessions in the past where she’s invited a select handful of fans to her home to hear an album before it gets released. And she’s built relationships that way.

She also does things like commenting on people’s TikToks. Earlier this year, there was a issue where she was supposed to be lowered to the bottom of the stage, and for whatever reason, the trapdoor didn’t go down. And once she realized that something had malfunctioned, she ran up the stage to get behind the stage itself, so she could do her change and all of that for the show.

And so she’s running to the back of the stage, which is clearly like a malfunction, and everyone who watches the live streams every week realized that, so someone put up a TikTok about it. And on that person’s TikTok, she commented, Still Swift AF, boy. B O I. And people thought that was hilarious. And so, she comments on TikToks, she likes TikToks, she interacts with her fans in that way, and she builds relationships with them.

She engages with them. And I want you to make sure that you’re also engaging with your audience. And you’re not Taylor Swift, so you have to do a whole lot more engagement to make a difference. But, make sure that when someone responds to you, you respond back. When they share, acknowledge it. When they…

I mean, whatever it is, make sure that you’re engaging with people because engaging with others builds relationships. When you build relationships, well, we buy from people we know, like and trust and have a relationship with. So make sure that you are building relationships with your audience by actually engaging with them also by showing up consistently.

Don’t ghost them. We’ve talked about this a number of times, but show up consistently for your people so that you build relationships with them and build that know, like, and trust factor. And the final marketing lesson from Taylor Swift, for now. If you want a part two of this episode, let me know because I’d love to do another one.

But for now, the final marketing lesson from Taylor Swift number five is that change is necessary. Here’s my theory on why Taylor is so successful. So, you know how When we listen to an artist that we used to listen to, let’s say, you know, Drake, for example, someone I listened to a ton in college and loved his music, when he puts out albums now, I still like the music, but there’s a part of me that’s like, man.

I miss the old Drake, right? Like, I think he even has a lyric about that where people say that to him. And this isn’t just a Drake thing, this is literally every artist out there ever. It’s so easy to compare the music they put out now to the music they put out in the past. And I don’t think it’s a fair comparison, honestly.

I think that, you know, we’re at different places in life and if they’re writing the same type of music and putting out the same stuff, it may not connect with us as much. And I think we’ll always compare what they put out now to what they put out in the past, and yet what they put out in the past is so connected to where we were in life when we listened to that music, and it’s different now, and so it’s just not a fair comparison.

Their music probably is just as good now, we’re just not the same place in life. But, what Taylor Swift has done differently, Whether on purpose or on accident, what she’s done differently is that every single album she has put out has been different. And that’s why there are these clear eras, right?

There’s why, you know, there’s country, there’s pop, there’s, there’s folklorist folksy, there’s all of these different types of music that she’s put out. She’s played around with so many different styles of music and every single album is different. And so while we may have favorites it’s also really really hard to compare the two and say oh well her stuff’s not as good as it used to be Because it’s not the same and we don’t expect it to be the same And we don’t expect you know, we can think back and go Okay, like for me the red air came out when I was a sophomore in college And so that always takes me back to that place.

But if she put out that That same type of album again, would I compare the two and be like, Oh, well, you know, it’s not the same. Well, of course it’s not the same because my season of life is different. All that being said, that is my theory on why Taylor is so successful. Obviously, there’s a lot more to her success than that.

She’s a brilliant business woman and she’s so creative and incredibly talented. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to undermine any of that, but I think that lasting power. comes from the fact that every, every single album, every single era is different and we expect it to be different. And she’s constantly changing and evolving what she does.

How does that play into our marketing? Change is necessary. Not only in your messaging, And how you put out your offers in what you talk about when you can’t just use the same content over and over and over again, right? Yes, we want to repurpose it, but as you learn more about your customers and your students and your clients and their wants and their needs, you do have to freshen up your sales content, right?

Your sales pages. It’s not set it and forget it with. Your evergreen funnels. It’s you’re always evolving and tweaking these things and that’s necessary. But on top of that It’s also necessary to change how you’re showing up as tools evolve The your marketing strategy has to also evolve. You can’t say well, here’s my strategy and this is what I’m doing forever I’m gonna put out podcast episodes about XYZ for the rest of time and I’m gonna show up on Instagram stories for the rest of time at some point stories may die We already see a lack of engagement on the feed stuff and story engagement is down as well.

And so change is necessary and we have to be willing to change our marketing strategy and our marketing plans along with it. So to recap the five marketing lessons from Taylor Swift, which again, if you want more, let me know, send me an email, shoot me a DM. Tell me you want more marketing lessons from Taylor Swift, but five marketing lessons from Taylor Swift, one repurpose your content to create hype before launch.

Three, use storytelling and authenticity in your marketing. Four, build relationships with your audience. And five, change is necessary. Your action step for this week is to choose just one way to improve your marketing. Just one. We can often get caught up on this cycle of, okay, well, I’m going to fix my marketing and I’m going to fix it in all the ways, all at once.

And then what ends up happening is we get overwhelmed and nothing changes. Instead, I want you to make sure that you are choosing just one thing and making a difference in that one way. And this intentionality is exactly why I created Shapes in Simple Marketing, the community. This is my membership community where if you want to learn more, go to AmandaWarfield.

com slash community. But our goal is each quarter, we’re just choosing one simple thing to improve in our marketing and we are spending that quarter working on it. We’ve got a theme. I give a resource that will allow you to take action. You get a quick 10 15 minute audio training on how to improve that one thing.

We have a guest interview where you get to come and ask your own questions. You’re invited to that interview. But then we also have calls where we’re networking. We have a networking call each quarter. We have a silent co working call each quarter where you get to dig into taking that action. from all the actionable steps you’ve got.

We’ve also got a mini mind each quarter where we hop on and we go, okay, what have you been working on? How do we make it even better? And so we spend a full quarter each quarter on one specific thing. So if you want to get really intentional with improving your marketing and making sure that you’re doing it in an actionable way where you’re held accountable and you are just improving one thing at a time because one improvement can make such a big difference, come join us inside Chasing Civil Marketing in the Community.

Go to amandawarfield. com slash community to learn more. This week’s book recommendation is This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub. This one is interesting because it’s got time travel, but it’s not, it’s not sci fi, but it’s basically there’s this 40 year old woman. Her dad, I believe, is dying. He’s very sick regardless.

And she ends up traveling back in time to her 16th birthday. And she can go back and forth between the two. And when she gets back to her 40th birthday, you know, she has to live with like what she did that changed things. And it’s a, it’s a lot of it is centered around that relationship with her father though.

And the changes that she makes when she goes back to that 16 year old, to the 40 year old and back and forth. Um, But it’s really, really well done and regardless, I highly recommend it. So this time tomorrow by Emma Straub. And until next time, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and biz.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 184: 5 Marketing Lessons from Taylor Swift appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Convert Leads Into Customers With Destini CoppTripwires, Order Bumps, Upsells, One Time Offers, Downsells …. oh my.

What are they? Words that are used interchangeably but mean the same thing? Do they have different meanings? How do we use them? When do we use them? What is the purpose of each …

If your head it spinning, it’s okay. These are questions that I’ve been trying to find concrete answers to for years. And I finally got the chance in today’s interview with my friend Destini, who is an expert on evergreen funnels.

Dr. Destini Copp helps business owners increase their passive income revenue with digital products and evergreen sales funnels. She is a college marketing professor turned online entrepreneur and a wanna-be, Serena Williams-like, tennis player. She is the host of The Course Creator’s MBA Podcast and author of the best-selling book, Launch Your Online Course Business in 90 Days or Less.

As you’ll hear in this episode, I ask a lot of really nitty-gritty and specific questions so that you and I can figure out the big picture of all of these pieces of an evergreen funnel. This episode is VERY practical, and I think you’re going to love it.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Summit * This week’s action step: Start slow with just one step. * This week’s book recommendation: Atomic Habits by James Clear and The Housemaid by Freida McFaden * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Dr. Destini Copp helps business owners increase their passive income revenue with digital products and evergreen sales funnels. She is a college marketing professor turned online entrepreneur and a wanna-be, Serena Williams-like, tennis player. She is the host of The Course Creator’s MBA Podcast and author of the best-selling book, Launch Your Online Course Business in 90 Days or Less.

Social Links:

https://www.destinicopp.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/destinicopp/

https://www.instagram.com/destinicopp/

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAmanda Warfield:* Tripwires, order bumps, upsells, one time offers, downsells, oh my. What are they? Words that are used interchangeably but mean the same thing? Do they have different meanings? How do we use them? When do we use them? What is the purpose of each? If your head is spinning, it’s okay. These are questions that I’ve been trying to find concrete answers to for years, and I’ve finally got the chance in today’s interview with my friend Destiny, who is an expert on evergreen funnels.

Dr. Destiny Kopp helps business owners increase their passive income revenue with digital products and evergreen sales funnels. She’s a college marketing professor turned online entrepreneur and a wannabe Serena Williams like tennis player. She’s the host of the Course Creators MBA podcast and author of the bestselling book, Launch Your Online Course Business in 90 Days or Less.

As you’ll hear in this episode, I ask a lot of really nitty gritty and specific questions so that you and I can figure out the big picture of all of these pieces of an evergreen funnel. This episode is very practical, and I think you’re going to love it. You’re listening to episode 183 of The Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by The Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your 2024 version at amandawarfield. com / planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing…

is the thing that they started their business to do. Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.

My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that master’s of business administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing… Overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages.

I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing. And you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business. Without it taking over your business to learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to Amanda warfield.

com slash book. I’ll see you there. Destiny. I am so excited to have you on for this episode for everyone who has been through the chasing simple summit. They will recognize destiny’s name and her voice for sure. But if you haven’t yet, this is destiny. She is going to be teaching us so many incredible things today.

But before we dive into all of that, why don’t you go ahead and just introduce yourself and tell everyone who you are and

Dr. Destini Copp: what you do. So, I mean, I’m super excited to be here and to chat with you. I feel like I’ve known you forever. I haven’t really had a chance. To, um, to chat with you on an intimate level like this.

So I’m super excited to do this today. And, uh, my name is Dr. Destiny Copps. So I’m a college marketing professor turned online entrepreneur. And I do a lot of different things in my business as a lot of us do. We have like multiple, you know, multiple things that we’re interested in that we’re working to talk about today is.

You know, where I help people and that is creating digital products, but more importantly, selling them and how to turn people who are just getting to know you and getting exposed to you and what you do. Into an immediate customer. So that’s what we’re going to chat about today. And I am super excited to delve into this with you, Amanda.

Me too. And

Amanda Warfield: Destiny will probably be the only Clemson. Are you a Clemson grad

Dr. Destini Copp: or just? So for my undergraduate degree, I’m a Clemson grad. So we are definitely enemies. If you’re talking about the Carolina Gamecocks, but that is our mortal mortal enemy, but yes, a Clemson grad. Way back yonder. Um, yeah. Love Clemson.

We’re huge Clemson fans here. Clemson and Georgia Tech here because we’re kind of a split family, but yes. Well, I don’t

Amanda Warfield: love it, but I’m really glad you’re here. You will probably be the only Clemson fan I ever interview on the podcast, but I just adore you so much that I just don’t even care. Oh, there you go.

Okay. So I love something that you said in your intro. You mentioned not only to create digital products, but to sell them and that right there, I feel like is the bane of my existence all in one place. The amount of times I have students or clients come to me and say, well, I created this digital product because that’s what everyone says to do.

And now it’s not selling like, well, you’re not, you’re not doing anything to sell it. You’re not marketing it. You’re not setting up anything on the backend. And I get it. It’s really hard when you have multiple offers too. Sell and market all of those things. There’s a lot going on. I struggle with it myself.

We all do, but you are an expert in something that’s going to help us set things up on the back end so that we don’t have to focus all of our front facing marketing on some of our offers so that we can. Take a little bit of that pressure off of ourselves. So we’re still selling our stuff without constantly feeling like we’re selling our stuff.

Can you tell us a little bit about

Dr. Destini Copp: that? And I think you touched upon an important point there, Amanda, that we all struggle with, I struggle with it. And that is, you know, we always feel like we’re constantly selling in, in reality, in our business. We need to be almost constantly selling. Right. And I can almost promise you that your audience doesn’t think that you are right.

And, and reality is they probably don’t even know about half the offers that you have in your business. I know if you talk to people that are, maybe even on my email list or like you do that, I didn’t even know you did that. Well, I haven’t been talking about it enough and that’s just, you know, shame on me for doing that.

But one of my. Favorite ways to promote an offer where I’m not really being salesy. I’m actually getting, getting, giving somebody something for free is to do a tripwire offer. And really what that looks like is, and if you go to my website, I have a lot of different examples there because I think almost all of them, and I’d have to go back and look, but I think almost all of them have a tripwire offer on the back end of it, all of our free offers.

So you have some type of free offer, whether it’s like a training that you’re doing or a planner or journal or, you know, some of mine are just Google Sheets where people can go and just, you know, download a Google Sheet. But basically, they go to your landing page, wherever that is. I have mine only pages you can use.

ConvertKit landing page if you have ConvertKit or whatever. I mean, there’s tons of different options out there, but you go to that landing page and somebody signs up for your free offer, which you can post on social media. You’re not being salesy, right? Or you can have it in your link tree. You know, I have them in my link tree.

Go, go grab this free gift, or you can even send out an email. Go here and sign up. I have this brand new, you know, free gift for you. They can sign up for it. And then on the next page, instead of like a generic thank you page, you have this, you know, wait, before you go, I have this. special offer that you may be interested in.

And it’s just really a no brainer type offer that they look at and say, Oh my gosh, you know, I really got to have this Amanda. So they’ll, they’ll, you know, scroll down, you know, learn a little bit more about it, but it’s really a way to promote your offers where you’re just not. Being salesy. And in addition to that, another thing that I have set up that is really kind of been, it’s really been a game changer for my business, quite frankly.

Um, and I’ll just go ahead and tell you that I’m using what tool I’m using for this and I’m using Thrivecart. So when they go to checkout on that next, on that cart, you have an order bump. So that’s another way, another place that you can sell one of your low cost digital offers. Like I’ll typically have like a 9 order bump there, and I can’t even, I was just going through my numbers today.

So many people take me up on those, those really low cost 9 order bumps. And then even after that, you can have a couple of upsells. If you have other products in your business, maybe it’s, um, maybe it’s a membership trial. Right. So just a free seven day, 14 day membership trial. So that’s another way you can keep going, you know, in that one sales funnel that you have.

Amanda Warfield: Okay. So many good things within there that I want to dive into. But first something that I want to touch on is the, you mentioned Linktree and that’s just having a link in your bio. That’s got A bunch of different options for people to look at. And for the longest time, I would see people with these and I would go, there’s no way I have enough people clicking into my profile.

That would actually look at that. I don’t have that many followers. There’s no way that many people like Instagrams, you know, according to Natalie Frank in an engagement recession, right? Like I figured there’s no, it’s not worth my time to create one of those. Well, I created, I finally got over myself basically.

And I created my own website page where I just have a bunch of different buttons, people can click, put it in my bio. I have been amazed. At how many people are actually clicking that. And it’s not like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, but it’s still enough that I’m like, I wish I’d been doing this five years ago when I was thinking that I never had enough people because it’s, you know, 15 people a week is a lot of people seeing the different things that you have to offer and that you’re actually looking at showcasing upfront.

So for anyone who’s like, that’s not for me, I’m not big enough, or I don’t have whatever your excuses. Have some kind of multi link thing in your bio because for the longest time I was like, I’ll just change out the one link. It’s fine. Then you forget. You get busy and you forget and you don’t change things out.

And then you put up a post that says, go look at my bio and it’s not in your bio and no one gets to go see it. So anyways, just a little side tangent there. Oh, I have so many questions. Let’s start with tripwires. You mentioned that they are. that initial page right after someone signs up for a freebie.

What have you found tends to work really well for tripwires, both in the way you lay out the page, the offer you put up, just kind of all that. What have you found works

Dr. Destini Copp: really well? Well, I would say that the good news is there’s a lot of different things that work well there. I mean, it could just a simple spreadsheet that you’re selling.

Maybe you put together, uh, I’m talking off the top of my head here, but maybe you help people, you know, get out of debt. Maybe that tripwire offer is just a simple budgeting, you know, I’ll use the Dave Ramsey type thing, debt snowball spreadsheet that you have put together that you’re selling for, you know, 17 or whatever.

It doesn’t have to be a super, you know, Extravagant, you know, hot, you know, mini course. If you spent a ton and ton of time, it could be something extremely simple. You could go get a journal, like one of those done for you type journals, put your special touches on it for your own unique business and sell it in, you know, as a tripwire, like I said, it doesn’t have to be anything, you know, major, you know, you’ve put a ton of time in it.

Just get something that’s valuable for your audience and test it out. It may be that it works. It may be that it doesn’t work. It may people, you know, I’ve built tripwires. I’m like, yeah, that didn’t do so well, but I’ve looked at my data and I’ve, you know, made some changes there and kind of tweaked it. I, you know, in terms of the sales page, it does need to be a sales page.

I mean, you are selling a product, but it doesn’t have to be, you know, a mile long, you know, generally my tripwire sales pages are fairly short. They’re not, you know, extremely in depth, extremely long. Um, another tip that I’ll just kind of throw out there. One of the things that we’ve been doing here lately It’s using AI writers for our sales pages, you can use chat g p T.

And that has really helped us. ’cause we’re not copywriters, you know, I’m not a copywriter. Probably good at marketing, but I’m certainly not a copywriter. And that’s kind of helped us. So if you’re really struggling, you’re like, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to put on my sales page. There are, you know, prompts that you go into and kind of put those in, in, you know, one of the AI writers to help you write that content.

So

Amanda Warfield: have you found that there’s a certain price range that tends to work well for tripwires? What

Dr. Destini Copp: does that look like? Yeah, so that’s a really good question. And I would say it kind of just depends upon your audience. Generally kind of the B to C type audience. So if you’re marketing to consumers, you might go on, you know, it might be a little bit lower, might work better, you know, 27, 37.

I have even gone up to like 49 even for a B to C type. audience and it still sold very well, still converted extremely well for the beta, um, you know, the business audiences or B2B, you can go up a little bit higher. I’ve done anywhere from like 49 to even up to like 79 and 99 for those. And those have sold well.

So it’s just a matter of kind of testing them out and, you know, figure out kind of what works for you.

Amanda Warfield: Yeah. And with these tripwires that you’re setting up for yourself and your students and your clients. With the offer that you’re offering the tripwire. Are you doing a limited time discount or are you just saying here’s the offer?

What tends to work better there? Or does it

matter?

Dr. Destini Copp: This is another great question because I would say that we’ve tested out both ways. We’ve tested out not having, um, not having that timer on that sales page. And we’ve tested it out having that timer on that sales page. And I will tell you in our test, And what we’ve done, and we’ve tested this both in B2C audiences and B2B, because I do have a B2C business where we’re marketing toward to consumers, and we’ve tested it in both of those audiences.

And only, I only recommend putting timers on there and really truly making it a limited time offer. Um, we do 20 minutes. Um, we’ve actually tested even up to like 30 minutes. We lost them. 15 to 20 minutes seems to be the sweet spot there for all the tests that we have done. Um, but you have to have a limited time offer.

And basically what we do, you know, after that timer ends, they can still purchase it. It’s just not at that special discount. And some people do go back and purchase it, um, at the higher price. But, you know, we kind of live, live by what we say and say the discounts only available for this amount of time and having that urgency in there and kind of forcing that fear of missing out has definitely helped with conversion rates.

Amanda Warfield: So helpful. Okay. So are there any. Other than what we’ve already talked about, are there any mistakes that you tend to see people do with tripwires?

Dr. Destini Copp: Any mistakes? Um, I, you know, when you’re writing in a really, most of it comes down to the sales page and how you’re clearly kind of communicating, um, the benefits is you talk more about what’s in it for them, the benefits, what are they going to get out of that product, rather than going into.

Here are the features like here’s what you’re going to see, you know, here’s what you’re going to learn in module one, or here’s what module one’s about, you know, that’s. That’s somewhat interested and you know, some people might be interested in that, but really they want to know is what is their transformation once they go through and consume your content, whether it’s a Google sheet or plan or journal, or even if you’re selling one of your many courses there, they really want to know what their outcomes going to be, what their transformation is going to be.

And that’s what you need to focus on. In your marketing copy and an AI writer can definitely help you do that. If that’s something that you struggle with, you know, you’re kind of, you’re not alone because I’m in that same boat. I think a lot of people struggle with that. That’s really what you want to kind of hone in on tests and kind of test there.

So if somebody, um, what we, and I’ll just go into some of the data there if you, if you want me to, Amanda, but what we really try to shoot for on the conversion rates of the tripwire are around 10 to 15%. And I would say if you’re in that range, your, your trip wires converting, you know, at a, at a good, you know, at a good rate, if you’re much lower than that, I’d really, you know, go in and see kind of what you could do and tweak on that sales page to more clearly communicate their transformation or their benefits there.

So just to

Amanda Warfield: reiterate that math, because this is where people get tripped up so often, they put something up and they think it’s not working because. They probably haven’t driven enough traffic to it. So if you have 100 people, see that tripwire page. That means that what you’re aiming for is 10 to 15 sales out of that 100 people.

And so it’s not something that’s going to convert every single person that sees it. It is going to be a smaller percentage. And I think that’s something that’s so key to point out. So thank you for sharing those numbers. If we’re not hitting that 10 to 15%. Tweaking the copy obviously is going to be something worth doing, making sure we’ve got some kind of actual limited time offer, not a fake limited time offer, a real limited time offer.

Are there any other things that we can look at to tweak on that page to try to bump that conversion rate up?

Dr. Destini Copp: So, um, I definitely will go back to your question, but I also want to reiterate about the numbers a little bit. When I’m, when we’re talking about a hundred people hitting that sales page. So what’s going to happen when somebody comes into your lead magnet?

They see your they go to your landing page for your lead magnet. Not everybody’s going to sign up for that. Right? So you may get 50 percent conversion rate on that. I’d like to see a little bit higher than that, but you might not get it. So you have 50 people signing up. Not everybody’s going to land on your tripwire page.

Some people are just going to sign up leave. They’re not even going to see it. So you really have to look. Let’s say you’re using lead pages. You really have to look and see how many people actually saw it. So that’s number one point. Um, so let’s go back and talk about it. So you, you asked me, you know, they’re going into your, your.

Tripwire is not converting. It’s not in that 10 to 15 that we’d like to see what else could they look at? Obviously the copy is one. Um, and it could be the offers just not as compelling as you would like it to be. I don’t normally go there. You know, first off, because a lot of, a lot of the products that you guys are creating are fantastic.

And you know, that is something that your, your audience wants, but that’s another place that I would go look at and see, another thing is just the headline really hone in on the headline and see if the headline is really capturing their attention. Another thing that we do on our tripwire sales pages is we install hotjar.

And basically what Hotjar does, it will tell you kind of where people are going on that sales page and when they’re dropping off. So if they’re getting to a certain section on that sales page and they’re not going further, that might, that might be a clue saying, you know, we need to go back and look at that sales page or that section on that sales page saying, you know, if they’re dropping off here, something’s wrong with that section.

Um, so that’s another thing to look at. Another thing would be to put a video. Hello. Up there, videos tend to convert very well. It could just be a three minute video, super, super short. You going over what, you know, what the offer is and what their transformation or the benefits would be by taking advantage of it.

So those are some things that I would look at and things that we look at when we, you know, when we have things that just aren’t working as well as we would like. Oh my gosh, this is so helpful. There’s so many good nuggets

Amanda Warfield: in here. Um, okay, so we’ve got our tripwire set up. We’re working towards that 10 to 15 percent conversion rate and working on improving that.

Next you talked about order bumps, which when they’re paying for the tripwire, you said was just like that one click upsell basically that someone can say, yes, I want this. Tell us a little bit about how you utilize

Dr. Destini Copp: those in your businesses. Yeah, so order bumps are actually one of my favorite things because we get such high conversion rates on them.

So generally we’re seeing, and this is pretty consistent for almost all of our funnels, a 30 percent conversion rate, 30 percent Amanda on that order bump. 30 percent conversion sounds incredible.

Amanda Warfield: But is that because you guys are just. Genius and incredible at what you do, or is that what we should be aiming for?

I mean, obviously we should always be aiming for better than what we have, but you know what I mean?

Dr. Destini Copp: Yeah, so really industry standard. If you look at all of the, you know, kind of the industry standard data out there is 20 to 30%. So I’d like to shoot for 30 percent because that means that, you know, I feel confident that we’re, we’re doing what we can and doing everything we can to maximize it.

Right. Um, but generally 20 to 30 percent is industry standard.

Amanda Warfield: Okay, great. And have you seen, well, what works? Why don’t you tell me that? What, what do you find that works for the order bumps?

Dr. Destini Copp: really low cost, no brainer type offers. And it needs to be something that somebody can look at it and say, Oh, I got to have that because you don’t have a lot of place to put any copy or anything.

Basically you’re just telling them what it is. You might get a little bitty paragraph to describe it. But it just needs to be something that is absolutely no brainer. So maybe a 7 offer or a 9 offer, but I wouldn’t go much higher than that because it really just needs to be something that they can click and move on.

Okay.

Amanda Warfield: And are you discounting these? As well, or is that, that’s an offer you have that’s just always seven or $9. So

Dr. Destini Copp: I, I really recommend that folks have these in their back pocket and it could be, um, and I’ll give you some examples of some of the ones that we do. So a planner or a journal, Or one of the ones that we do for our summit is like a digital organizer.

So helping them organize all of their digital resources, just a 9 type workbook. It comes with a Google sheet too, that they can use to kind of keep track of everything that they’ve purchased in the VIP All Access Pass, but journals. planner, spreadsheets, you know, something that is something that people understand, right?

They know what a journal is. They know what a planner is. They know what a google sheet or an excel spreadsheet looks like so they know what they’re getting because you don’t want them to be confused on what they’re getting because it’s like I said, it’s just they’re going to look at it. They’re going to know exactly what they’re getting.

They’re going to hit that button and move on. Okay.

Amanda Warfield: Okay. Great. And any tips or things to avoid for order bumps? Like I know, like you said, there’s, there’s a very small amount of space that you really have to play with,

Dr. Destini Copp: but yeah. So I would always recommend including a visual. So for a lot of the cart systems, you’ll have a place to put like a, A title, maybe a headline for it, a little bitty paragraph.

Obviously, you have a place for the price point. And a lot of them will also give you a place for the image. And I would say definitely, you know, make use of that. Because going back to that old saying, right? A picture’s worth a thousand words. You know, giving them a visual of exactly what they’re going to be getting.

They can just look at the picture and say, Oh yeah, I understand it. I get it. That’s what I want. I want to go ahead and, you know, sign up for that. And then you

Amanda Warfield: also mentioned upsells. And same kind of questions. I mean, what are best practices for that? What are we looking at as far as, you know, what, what works best for an

Dr. Destini Copp: upsell?

Yeah, so I’ll give you some examples for this, and there’s really a lot of different things that you could test and use as an upsell. We’ve, we’ve, you know, done some that have worked. We’ve done some that haven’t worked. Um, the key to all of this. And I really did fail to mention this earlier, but the key to all of this is thinking about the customer journey and all of this needs to tie in together.

So you have your lead magnet, you have your trip wire, which needs to be related to your lead magnet, right? Then you’re going to have your order bump. that still needs to tie in to what you’re doing. Uh, and, and also with the upsell. So just to give you an example of somebody that I’ve worked with in the past, and I don’t remember exactly all of her products, but she was in, she helped people plan home gardens.

So she had like a, a lead magnet and I want to say it was something like planning your home garden. So it was like a planner or something like that. And then on the tripwire, it was a mini course on like container gardening. So going out and building like a container garden, if people know what that is, and order bump on that was like, you know, some type of ebook on, you know, tips on tomato plants.

You know, because people, you know, struggle with kind of keeping them alive. And then, um, one of her upsells was, uh, one on one virtual consulting with her, which I thought was fantastic because, you know, that, you know, that’s really, um, you know, a great way to kind of go ahead and get people to engage with you if that is something that you have.

So it doesn’t even have to be a digital product. It could be a service like that, like a consulting service that you have. Another thing that I’ve seen that works very well in upsells is like a free 14 day or seven day trial. So if you have like a membership where you want people to kind of, you know, test it out, Because they’re getting a free trial, that’s, you know, a great way to go ahead and get them to kind of get a taste on what your membership is.

So there’s a lot of different things that you can do with these upsells. Of course, too, you can still sell your digital products. in the upsell. So in an upsell page you’re going to have more room for your sales copy and more room for images so you can go into a little bit more detail than you could like with an order bump.

So you can sell a higher priced Digital product here. So if you had like a 99 product or even, you know, 200 product, you could include that in an upsell. Okay,

Amanda Warfield: so let me see if I if I’m paraphrasing this correctly when we’re trying to decide which different offers to put in these different places. You kind of want your mid range offer to

Dr. Destini Copp: be the tripwire,

Amanda Warfield: potentially at a discount.

You want one of your low range offers to be the ups, nope, the one click order bump. And then, uh, larger, higher ticket item would be the upsell at the

Dr. Destini Copp: end. Generally, yes, the higher ticket items are going to be the upsells, but I’ll just throw a little bit of a monkey wrench in there. A lot of the funnel systems out there, Thrivecart included, you can do, if somebody didn’t take you up on that upsell, you could do a downsell there, too.

So, I mean, like I said, there’s a lot of different ways you can set this up and test it out. So, let’s just say, For instance, let’s just say you had, you had somebody doing a free 14 day trial. And let’s just say they took you up on that. You can also even do an upsell for an annual membership past that.

Say, oh, you’re interested in this? Do you want to get two months off? If you do, you can go ahead and purchase the annual membership and get these amazing bonuses for being an annual member. So you can keep going. Um, and, and, you know, as long as you have them and they haven’t clicked out, there you go. Wow.

Amanda Warfield: So what, what should we be shooting for conversion rate wise for the initial upsell?

Dr. Destini Copp: Let’s, let’s say. So generally the initial upsell, and they’re also called one time offers, depending on what system you’re using. People call them different things. It’s actually going to be a little bit lower, so five to ten percent is generally what you’ll see as the industry average for something like that.

So not a lot, but you know, it’s worth it, right? Because you’re tripwire was 27, and you have a non dollar order bump, and then you have a Upsell, that’s another 50. Think about what that, you know, what that initial free lead magnet turned into,

Amanda Warfield: right? Absolutely. And then for the people that say no, thanks to that initial upsell and they get the downsell, what conversion rate does that typically bring in on

Dr. Destini Copp: average?

Um, I don’t really have those numbers, Amanda. I’m sorry. It’s fine. I’m just getting really like, I personally have never done an upsell like that. Just because the products and services that I have just didn’t fit. Well, but there’s, like I said, there’s a lot of different ways you can set this up and the other thing is they’re on your email list.

So, let’s just say they didn’t take advantage of any of this. that none of it. You still have the opportunity to go through, you know, week down the road, two weeks down the road, and circle back and offer that, you know, online course or whatever you were offering them as that initial tripwire. You can still offer it, you know, at whatever price point you want to.

You can give them like a 20 percent off discount. Might not be as much as it would have been. At the tripwire offer, but you can still do things to entice them to go ahead and sign up. Oh, man, this is all so

Amanda Warfield: good. If you could give everyone just 1 action step to take this week after listening to this episode,

Dr. Destini Copp: what would it be?

I would say don’t get overwhelmed and really start slow. So. I’m assuming that the majority of you out there have your lead magnet set up, right? So you have your lead magnet and you have your thank you page. The next step will be to figure out what kind of, you know, what tripwire you want to offer. And like I said, keep it simple.

It could be a planner, a journal, a spreadsheet. It doesn’t have to be a full blown course. I would keep it simple and start small. It could be something that you’re selling for 17. I don’t care. It could be a 9 offer for all of my, you know, for all tits and purposes. It could be a 9 offer that you’re going to use as an order bump later down the road.

But start small. Set up that sales page, use an AI writer if you need help with it, and go ahead and get that set up in your business so you can start getting a little bit of income there and start like learning how to do this and test it out. Look at your data, figure out how it’s working, and again you’ll be selling.

And then you can add additional products as you build on to them in your business. There’s lots of opportunities. We’ve talked about all of those today.

Amanda Warfield: And I think an important point that you just made is to test it. We’re not setting and forgetting these things. We’re setting them up and then we are going to wait a little bit and come back and look at the data and see how we can improve it.

I

Dr. Destini Copp: would recommend doing that at least once a month. Love it. Yeah, going back and look at it at least once a month. And a lot of the issue, if you feel like you’re not getting enough sales, a lot of it’s a traffic issue. It’s not that your stuff’s not converting. You just need a lead generation demand. You know, you need lead generation in there to really, you know, see what’s working and what’s not working.

I’d like to see a minimum of 100 people go through it. Absolutely. Okay.

Amanda Warfield: So for everyone who’s like, this is, I’m overwhelmed. I need help. Destiny, how can you help me? Where can they go to find more about

Dr. Destini Copp: what you do? Yeah, so you definitely go to my website, destinycop. com. We have a lot of free magnets out there.

On the back end of those lead magnets, you will see, I’ll just go ahead and tell you, you will see our tripwire offer. So if you’re interested in creating an online course, we have an offer for that. If you’re interested in setting up one of these evergreen funnels that we’re talking about today. We have an offer for that too.

Perfect. And we’ll

Amanda Warfield: definitely link to that in the show notes. Now I don’t let anyone leave without giving it one book recommendation for everyone. So what’s one book that everyone absolutely needs to go read and it doesn’t have to be work. It can totally be fiction, but it can be work

Dr. Destini Copp: related too. So this is very difficult for me because I am an avid avid reader.

I have probably 2000 Kindle books and I don’t know how many books in my house. A lot of books. I would say business wise, one that I think every business owner needs to listen to or read is Atomic Habits by James Clear. And really what I love about that, and I really take the heart with that, and one of the things that I’m trying to do personally is You know, get healthier, lose a little weight, you know, and it’s really, as I went back to read the book, it’s really about that one little step that you’re going to take every day to get better.

So, you know, and one of the things that my coach is trying to get me to do is eat more protein. So one little step. So she gave me some tips on how to do that this week, and I’m trying to do those one little steps. to eat more protein. So from a business standpoint, that’s it. I will tell you, I just want to tell you, I have started a new series and this is not business related.

So if anybody would be interested in that, I found a new author and I’m trying to pull it up on my audio app. See if I can get it to do this. And her name is Frida McFadden. And one of the books I read This week is the housemate secrets and I read another one of her was called the housemate and it was fantastic.

It really was good. We will link those in the show notes.

Amanda Warfield: I’m excited to check that out. That sounds very interesting. Destiny, thank you so much for being here today. I’m so grateful that you came on to share all this knowledge about something that Honestly, I think a lot of these words get thrown out in conjunction with each other.

So I really, really appreciate you coming on and just helping us make it a little bit more clear what they’re for and how we can use them in our businesses.

Dr. Destini Copp: Well, thank you so much for having me, Amanda. I enjoyed being here.

Amanda Warfield: Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes, as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

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Evergreen Sales Funnels with Sharice EnisWe hear a lot of information about how different offers and revenue streams are the key to scaling our businesses. And often, what can happen is that we create the offer, we launch it, and then we hear crickets. Where’s the scaling? I have been guilty of this more than once – and now I’ve finally learned that there’s a key component of scaling, and that’s an evergreen sales funnel.

Which is why I’m so excited to be joined for this week’s episode by my friend Sharice.

Sharice Enis (IN-es) is a sales funnel strategist and designer for coaches and experts. Sharice specializes in creating evergreen sales funnels that help her clients generate passive income and scale their businesses without burning out. Sharice has helped hundreds of clients streamline their marketing into automated systems that sell on autopilot. Through her done for you marketing services she’s giving entrepreneurs the hands on support they need to scale their businesses. If you’re interested in learning more about how evergreen sales funnels can help you create more time freedom and scale your business, you can connect with Sharice at http://Shariceandco.com .

In this episode, Sharice shares what an evergreen sales funnel is, when to use one, what the purpose is, and how to know if your sales funnel is working. By the end of this episode you’ll definitely have a lot to think about.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Summit – Sales Funnel Secrets: The Exact Strategy of Successful Course Creators * 15 Minute Assessments * This week’s action step: Start digging into your analytics. Particularly your top performing content. * This week’s book recommendation: Finish by Jon Acuff * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Sharice Enis (IN-es) is a sales funnel strategist and designer for coaches and experts. Sharice specializes in creating evergreen sales funnels that help her clients generate passive income and scale their businesses without burning out. Sharice has helped hundreds of clients streamline their marketing into automated systems that sell on autopilot. Through her done for you marketing services she’s giving entrepreneurs the hands on support they need to scale their businesses. If you’re interested in learning more about how evergreen sales funnels can help you create more time freedom and scale your business, you can connect with Sharice at http://Shariceandco.com .

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IG: @‌shariceandco

Free Sales Funnel Playbook

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAmanda Warfield:* We hear a lot of information about how different offers and revenue streams are the key to scaling our businesses. And often what can happen is that we create the offer, we launch it, and then we hear crickets. Where is the scaling? I have been guilty of this more than once, and now I finally learned that there’s a key component of scaling, and that’s an evergreen sales funnel.

Which is why I’m so excited to be joined for this week’s episode by my friend Sharice. Sharice Innes is a sales funnel strategist and designer for coaches and experts. Sharice specializes in creating evergreen sales funnels that help her clients generate passive income and scale their businesses without burning out.

She has helped hundreds of clients streamline their marketing into automated systems that sell on autopilot. Through her done for you marketing services, she’s giving entrepreneurs the hands on support they need to scale their businesses. If you’re interested in learning more about how evergreen sales funnels can help you create more time, freedom, and scale your business.

You can connect with her at shereesandco. com. And in this episode, Sheree shares what a sales funnel is, when to use one, what the purpose is and how to know if your sales funnel is working. By the end of this episode, you’ll definitely have a lot to think about. You’re listening to episode 182 of the chasing simple podcast.

And I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your 2024 version at amandawarfield. com / planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And, when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing… Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week.

I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just Have to share something that I’m really excited about with you. My book, chasing simple marketing is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that masters of business administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing.

Overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages. I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing, and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business.

To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amandawarfield. com book. I’ll see you there, Sharice. I am so excited to have you here and have you back in the Chasing Simple ecosystem. For those that have not gone through the Chasing Simple Summit, you need to, and we’ll link that in the show notes, but Sharice was actually one of the speakers for that.

So if you are just meeting her for the first time, you’re in luck. There’s more of her in the Chasing Simple ecosystem. But for now, Sharice, tell us a little bit about who you are and what it is that you do.

Sharice Enis: Yeah. So I’m a sales funnel strategist and designer. And to be honest, the title piece has always, um, tripped me up.

But essentially I am your tech wizard. I come in and help you figure out your sales funnel strategy so that you can systemize and streamline all of your marketing so that it can run 24 seven for you so you can free up your time. Um, without having to sacrifice your income or without having to burn out.

And it just makes your business more scalable. So I own Teresa and co, which is a marketing studio. And we specialize in working with, uh, coaches and premium service providers to help them, to help them do that. It’s funny how figuring

Amanda Warfield: out what to call ourselves is always the hardest part of entrepreneurship because, you know, there’s this, oh, I’m multi passionate, and I’m a multi passionate entrepreneur so I don’t have one specific thing and it’s like no you just haven’t figured out what your thing is yet and it is hard.

It’s not easy to figure out how you bring all of your passions into it. One place. And

Sharice Enis: so that for

Amanda Warfield: the longest time, I have five years in, and I just now feel like I know what I’m calling myself, but also the, as soon as I figure out, I feel like something changes.

Sharice Enis: Yeah, it’s for me, it’s been a lot of like, well, how do I call, what do I call myself in a way that people understand?

Cause at first it was like email marketing automation or marketing automation. And that sounds like super foreign to most people, but now most people are starting to get familiar with the phrase, like. Sales funnel and says like, okay, now I can talk about like sales funnel strategists, but I also don’t want to leave out the part that at Shreessen Co we actually built, like do the building and implementation, which, um, you know, some people don’t do that.

A lot of people just do the strategy. And so I was like, okay, I just need to marry the two. I think people understand what this means. Um, but I’m like, regardless of what you call me, I’m going to help you systemize. Your marketing. I love it so much. So

Amanda Warfield: in their introduction, I mentioned that evergreen sales funnels, they’re key piece of the scaling puzzle, right?

But what even is an evergreen sales sales funnel? Can you tell us a little bit about what they are and what they do for a business for someone who hasn’t heard of it yet?

Sharice Enis: Yes, I am so glad we’re starting here because I feel like it’s one of those phrases you’re hearing a lot because it’s almost, and it’s almost becoming, I don’t want to say overused, but people use it in different ways.

And I almost feel like it has different meanings. And so, um, an evergreen sales funnel is a marketing and sales system that can run 24 7 and. I used to explain it as like being your customer journey, but really it’s actually the container for your customer journey. So it’s how someone goes through the, um, buyer’s process of awareness, interested decision, action, and so, um, an evergreen sales funnel, which makes it different than a regular sales funnel or.

Is that it’s running all the time, whereas sometimes a sales funnel may have an open and close. So it might be a campaign where there’s like, our cart is open on this date, and then it closes on that date, which you see a lot for, like, group coaching programs or courses or things where, you know, there might be a live component.

Um, but evergreen is great for. Passive income and like selling something that where people can always access it, you know, what makes it, um, so attractive to people is that it sort of allows you to create that more stability in your business. And it helps you to streamline and understand, okay, you’re marketing from like, this is what I’m doing to build awareness.

This is what I’m doing to nurture. Um, and this is what I’m doing, like, in my sales process to now take those leads and turn them into customers.

Amanda Warfield: I like how you said it’s a container for the customer journey, and that I’ve not heard anyone else say that. I think that’s incredible. And I also love that you touched on the fact that you have to bring your people from problem

Sharice Enis: unaware.

All the way through all these different

Amanda Warfield: steps to the student, the customer, the purchaser. But I’m wondering, what does it look like? So we kind of have an idea, right? Of what it is and what it does, but what does it look like in the day to day of a business? You know, what is the business like before? And then once you put it in place, maybe if you have like a client example, you can use or even in your own business of what was happening before for a certain event.

Product or offer. And then what was happening after?

Sharice Enis: Ooh, I love that question. Um, so when, so One way, I guess I’ll start with like the visual representation of a sales funnel and part of why it has its name is because it’s looking at it almost like an upside down triangle, like a funnel where you have like this top piece where it’s like, where all your traction strategies are happening.

So that’s like the posting on Instagram, the. You know, putting things out there to bring people in towards you and then your lead magnet is where they’re opting in. So now you’re getting further into the funnel, um, where they’re showed. Okay. Like, I have some interest now that I’ve seen your post and Instagram.

Now I’m going to opt in for that lead magnet. And that’s where you start to nurture them. And then the reason why it gets smaller and smaller as you go down the funnel is because at the top, you start off with a lot of people and then you start to weed out. Okay. The people who aren’t interested or find some other solution, right?

So it gets all the way down until you’re left with your really warm leads that turn into customers. And so in a day to day, or like real life example of what it looks like before you have this, and we all go through this, I’m not having one at all. Um, is doing very manual processes, especially when it comes to sales.

So it could look like, um, having to like manually follow up with someone, um, doing a lot of outbound sales calls or cold calling or cold damning. And then, um, Which even that can be automated now. So maybe I shouldn’t say that necessarily, but it looks like sort of that manual lift of like, okay, I have to go reach out to someone now.

I’m going to send them my calendar that I’m going to send them a reminder, especially if you’re not automating those pieces. Cause I take for granted that I automate. Those things. And I think I’ve been automating them for a long time, but a lot of people aren’t quite sure, especially if you’re not tech savvy or comfortable with tech, aren’t quite sure how to use those built in automated reminders for their calendar.

And then it looks like, okay, I have the sales call. Now I got to go draft up the contracts and the contracts and the invoice. And then if they’re on a payment plan, then you got to follow up with them on the payment plan instead of sort of automating it. Um, so that’s sort of like a basic sales funnel. Uh, and sales funnels can be super complicated and have these like Ascension models or they can be really simple.

It could be as simple as someone comes to your page. They download the service guide and now they’re receiving like an email, um, automated sequence or series. Or it can be as complicated as, like, there’s a lead magnet and a trip wire and an upsell and a and an add on. Um, and I, and a lot of us at this point probably have experienced something like that, where there’s a low ticket offer for, like, 7 and you, and you.

You go to pay for it and then it’s like, but wait, you could add this for only 17 and then you check out and it’s like, but then there’s this one time offer. That’s an example of what they call self liquidating offer funnel. And those are pretty common because they are a great way to grow your email list while still getting paid to.

To grow your email list. Um, so it helps like offset your advertising costs, which makes those really attractive. But I mean, sales funnels are really all around us, whether or not we realize that. I think the bad ones, the ones I can give sales funnels a bad rap. Um, we notice those more when we feel like we’re being manipulated or tricked or sold to or feel really sleazy or like unethical tactics, but, you know, kind of like I was referring to earlier, a sales funnel doesn’t have to be, it doesn’t have to be complicated, but really it is that container for your customer journey.

So thinking through step by step what someone needs to go through to then become a customer. And it can be as you can get as detailed and get as grow as far as okay. Top of funnel. What am I doing to build awareness to, you know, you can even just think of like a very simple, basic funnel of like.

Delivering a service guide to that people who landed on your work with me page, have something to take with them and you have their contact information, even if they’re not ready to book a call with you, you know? And I think that’s, you know, I, to me, I think that’s actually an underutilized opportunity because not everyone’s ready to book a call.

And I

Amanda Warfield: think for, so for all of my listeners that have heard me talk about the two different parts of every marketing strategy, you’ve got your growth. Section and you’ve got your nurture section, the growth part of the nurture strategy or marketing strategy, excuse me, the growth part of the marketing strategy is everything you do to get people into your funnel and then your funnel is that nurturing strategy.

It is a type of nurturing strategy. And so that’s how this comes into play with all that we’ve been talking about on the podcast for so long about the different parts of a marketing strategy and how they play into your business. Your sales funnel or any kind of funnel in general, like you said, it all comes down to nurturing your people so that maybe one day they do become a sale, a client, a student, a purchaser, whatever you want to call them in your business.

I’m curious to know, so you talked about how it kind of works and what it looks like for service providers. What does it look like when you’re looking to scale your offers with your business? What does the sales funnel, an evergreen sales funnel look like for that if you’re trying to scale products

Sharice Enis: or offers?

So I think the really great thing about sales funnels or evergreen sales funnels is that they are inherently scalable because you just need to put traffic through them. And when you’ve automated the process and systemize it, you’re able to, um, serve more people and. Increase your reach. And so oftentimes scaling can look like actually just increasing the traffic to the funnel with ads, you know, and it can also look like, um, just doing more.

I think of the visibility and attraction and, you know, creating that growth content that you that you mentioned, which I think that’s actually really great. Point. I’m so glad that you brought up, like, how does the content fit into the sales funnel? Because you have that content that’s going to, uh, you, it could be a blog post.

That’s like going to generate traffic for people who are at that awareness phase. And then you might have a blog post. That’s more about people who are further down who are weighing like, what are my different options? Right. And so you start thinking about your content and these ways of, like, is it nurturing?

Is it. How’s it helping to lead to the sale? I, I just feel like the sales funnel helps bring it all together, brings the content together with your sales strategy together so that they’re all sort of working in harmony. And so when you’re thinking about scaling or just in general, like, I, I think personally, a lot of times it’s, there are more things that you need to do on the backend and asking yourself, is my business.

Able to accommodate scale. Most of the time, if someone is doing like a lot of 1 to 1 work and they want to start offering a course, they may have gotten by doing the 1 to 1 work without a sales funnel because you don’t necessarily have to have some, you know, big complicated sales funnel or even evergreen sales funnel.

And I think a lot of people are able to get by when they’re doing the 1 on 1 work with just. You know, doing a lot of things manually, but when you are looking to scale, you’ve got to start to automate and, um, systemize and streamline everything. And so, um, your sales funnel doesn’t necessarily change. Um, it really depends on like, if you do have any pieces where things are happening manually, you might have to figure out a different efficiency, or maybe that requires hiring someone to do that specific part.

If it’s something that needs that human touch, but. I think that’s the benefit to building in a sales funnel from the beginning or before you actually think you really need one is that you have something that you can scale immediately. It’s like, okay, I want to create this, you know, I want to switch my offer from it being a 1 to 1 to group program or a course.

Now, I just, you know, you’ve already gone through the process. You know what those steps are. You have sort of the foundation and now you’re just applying it to another. Okay. So

Amanda Warfield: if we are, we don’t have a sales funnel yet and we are at that beginner, where do we start with creating one? And then how do we shift it to

Sharice Enis: help grow it over time?

Yeah, absolutely. I think the best place to start is. And actually it depends. I, someone asked me this question recently and I, in answering it, I realized it kind of depends on where you’re starting from. So if you’re really like just beginning, you know, really defining that target audience and that ideal client in that audience that you’re trying to grow, and you’re probably going to be starting out looking more at the strategical stuff, making sure you’re refining your message, figuring out what that lead magnet is.

But for someone who’s. Maybe a little bit more advanced in business, but hasn’t created an evergreen sales funnel or created a sales funnel. If you don’t already have an email list. Okay. It’s like, all right, let me create a lead magnet. Let me take some, you know, top performing topic that I have and turn that into something that people can opt in for, um, and start building an email list.

So like that sort of an actionable step, but the step that I think. Not as fun, not as sexy sounding is really having to sit down and strategize and think about what are the steps. And I really recommend working your way backwards from your offer. So like, this is the offer. What do they need to be ready for that offer?

What do they need to, to know to opt in and sort of step by step sort of breadcrumb what, what the journey looks like for them. Um, and so it may go through many iterations, but really writing it out, having it mapped out. Written out step by step is incredibly important for giving yourself clarity. Also being able to outsource any of the pieces and get help because I’m going to be completely honest.

I am rebuilding a lot of the backend systems of my own business and rebuilding my own sales funnel. And it’s hard when you’re doing it for yourself, when you’re like in the nitty gritty of it in the weeds of it. And so it’s really useful to be able to get outside perspective, but in order to get outside perspective and, um, utilize support, you’ve got to know what you’re, you’ve got to know what your strategy is.

You got to know what your end goal is and, um, have some idea of like how you’re trying to get people there.

Amanda Warfield: That’s, that’s so important. And it’s not talked about enough. And it’s something that. I feel like I’m just preaching over and over and over again is you’ve got to know what your goals are. You’ve got to know what your goals are.

But so often we’re just taught you need this in your business. You need to have a course, you need to have this. And so we create these things without really having a goal in mind, other than I want to make money with it. I want to grow my business with it. And then we get to these, these. strategic parts of trying to figure out our messaging and how we’re going to get people into our funnel and how the funnel is going to take them from beginning to end to student.

And we have no idea how to do any of that because we didn’t have a strategy or a goal in mind when we created it. And so then you’ve got to go all the way back and start over with finding out what that goal is and what it is that you’re trying to accomplish with having this piece in our business.

Yeah, and

Sharice Enis: that’s why, um, I mean, I think you bring up such an excellent point because I see this often, um, or have seen this, like, throughout my time of working with, with people and what happens, I think, because of all the marketing messages we consume, it’s like our goals start to sound a lot like the marketing messages that are out there, and so it’s a lot of like, I’m chasing, all of a sudden we’re chasing six figures, seven figures, and these, these goals that are Maybe they don’t necessarily align with us.

Maybe that’s not exactly what we wanted. And, you know, maybe we want it more time freedom. And I think that’s the intention. A lot of us start our business with is to have more freedom in our day to day to replace our income from the job that we had or to be able to make income sort of independent of having an employer.

And then somewhere along the line, especially too, because we’re passionate, right? We’re passionate about what we do, and we’re trying to build something that plays to our strengths and our interests. But then somewhere along the line, I think there’s all these marketing messages of like, this is the way to do it.

This is the blueprint. This is the formula, or you have to reach 6 figures or 7 figures. And we get kind of sidetracked as to like, what really is the goal and what are we actually trying to accomplish? And I think, unfortunately, as the other piece of that is like, it’s really hard to see what the, what the big picture is with the high level.

Like what, how do all the pieces fit together? And what I love, I think about, you know, shifting your thinking to like thinking about your marketing as the sales funnel is that it really. Brings all the pieces together of like, okay, traffic because you need people, your offer and your sales system and getting it and thinking about it really as a system because that’s where the time freedom lies.

That is inefficiencies in an automation. And so that’s where, you know, for me, I think the, the time freedom piece and being able to make money lies and being able to sort of systemize all of that. Um, it’s not in like, oh, you need to build a course, which I think is what’s often presented is like, oh, in order to scale, you need a course, but no one’s asking or saying you need to think about.

Can my business accommodate that scale? If I all of a sudden have a group program or a membership, you know, can I accommodate those new operations that come with it and the marketing of it? Because I’ll tell you membership sites or even customer or even, um, courses have a deceptive amount of customer service involved on top of that upfront work of like building the thing.

Initially, there’s so much

Amanda Warfield: work. And I think. We’re kind of getting off on a tangent here, but I think it’s an important tangent where I’ve had a conversation over and over and over again, recently with people who have been questioning, well, why don’t you want to hire people? Why don’t you want it? Cause I’m at this place in my business where.

Sharice Enis: I could

Amanda Warfield: hire people to help. Like I have an established business at this point, right? Like I, I have clients, I’ve got offers, like my offers are set. I, you know, I’m set. And I’m at this place where most people look at that and go, okay, well now you need to hire people so that you can grow even farther and you can scale even more.

And I’m like, no, no, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t want to do that. And I get this question of, but why, why would you not want to make more money? Why would you not want to see higher revenue and do all like they can help you grow and scale? And it’s like, but I don’t, I didn’t start my business to manage other people.

I started my business to help with marketing, you know, and I started to help other people simplify what they have going on in their lives. I don’t, I want to keep doing what’s in my zone of genius. I don’t want to hand off all of the things that I love. And then scale just for the sake of scaling.

Sharice Enis: Yeah, I’m so glad that you shared that because The, you know, prominent message out there is to scale, scale, scale more, more, more, you know, I remember when it was like six figure, this six figure that, and now it’s like, you’re starting to see seven figures and it’s like, even, and I’m like, hold on.

Yes. The goalposts just keeps on moving and it can feel really frustrating when you’re like, but I just want to like, sort of work independently. Maybe you want to have a team. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you want to, you know, like you don’t have to do these, these things. And I think the online marketing, not the online marketing world, but the online business world, particularly the, you know, people selling to businesses or the message that’s out there is very much of a.

I found this solution, like, here’s this solution. You have to do it this way to get this result instead of like, there really are a hundred different ways to do this, to build a life that you love and build a business that you love, that looks like what you had envisioned for yourself. And so, yeah, it’s hard to kind of like, you know, take a step back and say, um, you know, okay, this is, this is what I want.

And I, and that’s the other thing that, you know, the other reason why I feel, I think. More, I don’t know if the word is passionate, but just I feel like evergreen sales funnels are not, it’s not a trend. It’s not something that’s going to go away. It’s really rooted in core marketing principles, not fluffy frameworks that someone made up or anything like that.

It’s, it’s And it doesn’t have to be, you know, whether or not you intentionally have created 1 or strategize 1, like you have 1. so you might as well get intentional about it. Right. And fix it. So that, like, it, it works the way that you want it to work. So it can be as hands free as you want it to be. Or if you want it to be manual, it can be.

It doesn’t have to be. Automate it. But that key that I think a lot of people are after, um, with the time freedom piece really lies on creating that efficiency in their marketing. And the best way to do that is with an evergreen sales funnel. So I feel like, you know, if you want to run your business solo, evergreen sales funnel works for you.

If you’re trying to scale to have a team, evergreen sales funnel is a great place to start. And you’ll probably have one as you scale, because that’s the only way you’re going to be able to reach and serve and get more people through your, your pipeline. To my point earlier, I’m certainly

Amanda Warfield: not saying there’s anything wrong with scaling and having a team for anyone listening that’s like, but I want to do that.

That’s great. If that’s what you want to do, I’m 100 percent for it. But I think what we’re talking about here is. What is it that you actually want from your business and not what are other people telling you that you need to have? Cause you’re right. It is that like, well, I did this and it worked really well.

So if you do this exact thing too, you’re going to have a super explosive growth business and it’s going to be crazy and you’re going to make all kinds of money and that’s just not, that’s not how business works. You can’t always be in growth mode and you can’t always see an increase in revenue.

They’re going to be down times and that’s normal. And they’re. Everything that’s out there messaging wise is just growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. It’s like, well, yeah, yes, but also. Look at any, look at Disney. They’re not always growing like they have to, you know? Um, okay. So good tangent. I love that.

I’m glad that we touched on that. If we are ready to start creating our first funnel or revamping a

Sharice Enis: funnel that we already have, what are some

Amanda Warfield: key pieces that we shouldn’t miss within our funnels?

Sharice Enis: Yeah, that is a really great question. So if you’re revamping or looking at a funnel that’s just not performing the way that you expected it to perform, you got to think about your analytics and like your metrics.

And most people, the only metric is like how many followers or subscribers they have or how much money in the bank they’re getting from it. And so while those are important metrics in order to really pinpoint where. Things might be going awry or variables that you might want to play with. You’ve got to sort of track, um, how the different aspects of the sales funnel.

So, like, how many people are landing on the page? And then what is that conversion rate once they’re getting on the page? And then once they’re on the email list, like, what is the conversion rate on your email where the where you’re making the sale or the pitch? Um, so, for for those who already have a sales funnel or have something in place where they’re already creating content to sort of get people down that that.

Pat that pipeline. It’s really more of a reflection, um, and analysis and assessment of what they already have going on to see where they might be missing out for people who are just getting started with a salesman or don’t have one. Uh, like I said earlier. It’s about strategizing. And so sort of working through, and again, you can also like someone who may already have a sales funnel work through what are the steps that people are taking right now?

Like, how are they finding you? Um, what does your sales process look like? And like, what content are you creating? That’s like bringing and gravitating people towards use that you can start to think about. The, you know, your content as that entry point and create that lead magnet so that, um, which a lead mag is really a free resource that you’re providing that they give their email address and first name, uh, for so that they can, so that they can gain access to it and you put them on your email list, which your email list is something that you own.

You own that list. That’s a list of your leads of your contacts. Um, unlike on social media where you don’t own those followers. And if your account is deactivated, those followers are gone. But the great thing about an email list is you can change providers. You get to download that email list and you bring them over to the next provider.

Like it is yours. It is an asset. Um, so that’s where I would begin is taking your content, create that lead magnet and create that first account. Um, welcome sequence so that you are, you know, nurturing them once they become subscribers and, um, building that like no, no, and trust rapport with them so that you can then get them to take the next step.

And I should say, get them to, but encourage them to and give them the information they need to be able to take the next step because that’s really what it is. It’s not about convincing or manipulating people. It’s really about building the report saying, Hey, this is what I do. If. That sounds like something you need, then, you know, we maybe we’re a good fit.

Um, so that would be my, my recommendation is, um, you know, for someone who’s more advanced, take an assessment of what you have going on someone who’s just getting started, you know, take a look at what you’ve got and. Build in that step by step journey. So starting with that, mapping that that out and setting up an email list.

Okay, definitely want to come

Amanda Warfield: back to the customer journey thing, but you touched on this for just a quick second. But how do we know if a funnel is working? And I think this is something where people give up too easily. So how do you know what do you look for? And then, How do you know what to tweak to improve it instead of giving up on it entirely?

Sharice Enis: Yeah. So another potential tangible, hopefully not. Um, I think that there’s like this expectation to have like this crazy fast success and that everything’s going to like convert it like a hundred percent and it doesn’t. So the conversion rates, you might be surprised that some of them are low. So from an email list, You know, sending out sales emails during like a launch or like a campaign that can be like two to five percent conversion,

Amanda Warfield: which can we pause and put actual numbers to that for people that aren’t Matthew.

So like, you’re going to make me do math. Well, we can do really simple math. If there are 100 people on the list, that means two to five people are going to buy. And if you have ever gone through the process of building 100 people on your email list, you know that takes time. And it’s not a, let me put my freebie out and 100 people are going to sign up.

It’s a very slow build. So yes, an important tangent for sure of the numbers are low and it is a high volume. Type of thing to see if it’s

Sharice Enis: working. Yeah. So, and that’s oftentimes people give up and think it’s not working because they’re, but they’re not getting enough traffic, like. They’re just not getting things in front of enough people.

They’re like, I got in front of 15 people, like 15 people is not enough. We need more people. And then also it really depends on your audience. Some people build audiences first and then sort of work their way backwards to monetize them. Like my husband started, he sort of relaunched his coffee roasting business and he has this warm audience and following.

And so like we grew his email list to a hundred people, like super fast. He sells out with every, like, coffee drop and has, like, I don’t know, maybe it’s like a 30 or 40 percent like convert, like, his conversion rates are crazy because he has a small, but very warm audience. Right? So sometimes it’s not. So, yes.

It can be about the numbers, especially when you’re scaling. It’s like high volume. But if you have a already very warm audience, you can like blow those conversion rates out of the water. So it really depends on again, like where you’re where you’re starting from. And I also think that’s that kind of.

Trickles into like, I think that easy success is that sometimes people have success in their business and are like, look, I did this overnight, but it’s like, they didn’t factor in that. Maybe they had a warm audience already that maybe they transitioned and pivoted audience or business that they already like, established.

They went from like, fitness business to like, fitness. Business coach. And now all of a sudden, like, you know, I have shared this story on the

Amanda Warfield: podcast so many times, but I think it’s one that I cannot share enough. I can vividly remember driving home from teaching one day. I’m in the first like year of my business and am very frustrated.

By a lack of success, because I’m not seeing those conversions that I thought would happen, and I’m listening to a podcast episode, and I don’t even remember who it was that was on it, honestly, but I can just remember listening, and the interviewer said, Hey, tell us About how you got started doing this and she goes back and she goes, you know, it’s funny.

I had a blog for five years before I started selling and then I started selling and I made six figures in my first year and I had this epiphany of she had audience that she had built for five years. Five years before she ever tried to sell anything. Of course, she was able to scale really fast and easily.

I don’t have that audience. I’m starting from scratch. I mean, my first year of audience building, this is going to take a lot longer than I thought. Yeah.

Sharice Enis: And I think, and that’s where the content comes in, right? Cause you’re building your audience. And so, I mean, you know, if you already have an audience and then you can put a lead magnet in front of them, your conversion rates might look.

Different. They may have been craving also your niche and topic. It may look different. Exactly. Like if you, you know, some, some niches are, don’t have a lot of competition in them. Still. Um, I have a client who works specifically with. With therapists, speech therapists, and there’s not a lot specific to them.

And this is why people say to niche down. And this is what I talked about earlier getting clear. Like, if you’re really just getting started, really getting clear on what your target target audiences and I think within that means, you know, to be specific because, you know, being specific and you build that audience, um, build rapport with them, you’re building things specific to them that can actually help your conversion rates.

So, you know, to get, I think back to our topic of like, how do you know if your sales funnel is working or the things to, to tweak from one standpoint, there’s the actual tech. So, like, running through it and making sure that it’s actually working, because, you know, a broken page could be the thing that’s actually, or a form that’s not working or an email that’s not sending can actually be the thing that’s.

Breaking it, um, but it can be like your messaging and your targeting and like making sure that your message resonates and it’s specific to, you know, to the, to the people who you’re trying to attract and that you are speaking to, in my opinion, speaking to their desires, um, not only just speaking to the pain points, um, I think speaking to their desires and their visions is also really important and you’ll see a difference in sort of the, the, who you attract in that.

So messaging, and so, and as I had mentioned before, it’s, you know, to know that this is working is looking at those conversion rates and, you know, to do that, depending on your platform or what you’re using. I mean, Google analytics is a great tool to use. It’s a little, there’s a bit of a learning curve there.

But you have to also look at the traffic. So you have to keep in mind, like, did 15 people see this? Did 100 people see this? Did 1000 people see this? Did the right people see it? Um, so there really are actually a lot of variables that go into. Um, a sales funnel, which is which is why it’s great to start with organic and it’s great.

If you can start with, like, if you already have somewhat of an audience built that where you can, like, test your messaging with, um, but you really just want to test each variable and individually and don’t change them. Too much and you want to give something time you want to be like, you know, check in at at a 30 day mark, check in at a 60 day, 90 day mark and you can always like, check in, like, especially if you’re running ads, you want to check in sooner than that.

Um, but you just as long as you’re tracking those analytics and you can see, um. You’re not changing everything all at once. You know, getting feedback. I think a lot of people don’t ask for feedback often enough because that can be really helpful to hear what your audience is saying or thinking or, you know, was this helpful for them or ask, you know, even just asking them.

I think the best way to figure out what your lead magnet should be is to ask your audience what topics underutilized

Amanda Warfield: comment. Way to just get market research. Essentially we think of market research is this big, like I’ve got to hop on calls or I’ve got to send out a survey and you can literally just put up a question on Instagram and see what comes out of it because the people that are most engaged with you, even if you don’t get a ton of responses, you’re going to get the people that are most engaged with you and they’re going to be the ones that are going to download whatever you create next or go listen to whatever episode you put out or whatever that may look like.

Sharice Enis: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it’s a really an easy way, um, to get the, um, You know, to get that sort of feedback and I think interviews or, you know, being able to speak with people is is also really great. But also you can just observe in Facebook groups that you’re that they’re in and see what questions are they asking?

That’s a really great way to figure out. Okay. These are the topics they’re interested in. This is what they want more of. It’s better than trying to funnel hack someone else’s funnel. Um, you can always look at someone’s funnel and say, okay, I like that strategy. But the thing is, you don’t know what’s happening on the back end.

You don’t know if it’s actually working for them. You don’t know what kind of like crazy complicated mess there could be. So it’s better to, um, you know, you can be inspired by like, Oh, I like that strategy, but it’s better than trying to just funnel hack someone else’s funnel and be like, okay, I’m going to do that.

Same. Exact thing is to go and sort of do your own market research and, you know, create your own strategy and message so that it stands out. And so that’s unique to you.

Amanda Warfield: Yeah. And so that it builds that customer journey that you’ve mentioned a few times, which how in the world do we even go about starting to think about building a customer journey into a funnel?

Yeah.

Sharice Enis: So like I mentioned, the The sort of customer journey or like buyers process really goes into these phases of like the first one being awareness. So they need to be aware. They need to be either where that they have a problem. They need to be aware that you exist. And so that’s. So that’s the starting place for every customer.

So whether or not you have a sales funnel, they need to be aware that there’s an issue and then, or that, that they have a problem. And then there’s, let’s say they’re searching on Google and they find you, um, because maybe you don’t have maybe a strategic funnel. So maybe they just find you. By chance, because of SEO on Google or something, um, and then they, you know, what is the next step from there?

So you really want to think about, okay, if someone becomes aware of this problem, where are they looking for answers or solutions or help? Like, where are they hanging out? And so, like, the mention of the Facebook groups, how are they going to become aware of me and that I exist? So that’s like your attraction strategies, the things that you’re doing to be visible.

And then interest is, okay, how am I nurturing them and taking them further, which can be and is like your, your email sequence, but it also could be other content that speaks deeper to the thing that you do, like, that would speak to someone who’s like, okay, I’m interested in this, but I need more information.

And so, so that’s how you begin to sort of map that out. And when you don’t already have this in place, but if you’re listening, I’m assuming you’re already creating content, right? You can start with. Okay. They’re finding me through this content. I’m building awareness through this content. What do I, what do I think would be the next logical step?

You can also look at if you do have data, like, what is the, the next step that people have been taking or what seems to be the next. Best popular piece of content. I have that people are consuming or what’s getting the most engagement. And then the other piece of that is really thinking about what do you want your sales process or customer journey to look like?

What does it need to look like? What are you selling? Because selling a 10, 000 offer versus, you know, something that’s

Um, you know, we’re selling something that’s 97 like that doesn’t require a sales call, but, you know, selling something that’s 500 or something over 1, 000. You’re going to have that, that sales call something that’s 500. You may not be having a sales call, but they’re probably a lot more nurturing a lot more touch points.

And getting them to, you know, make that that, um, decision that purchase decision. So it really depends on the offer. It depends on, you know, what you want it to look like. And I say that in terms of, like, if you’re working with people, 1 on 1. Maybe you need to have an application where you are or inquiry form where you’re weeding out people who are not going to be a good fit for, and you’re not going to jump on a sales call with them, you know, or maybe you want to have a sales call with every single potential lead and talk to them.

And what does the follow up after that sales call look like? Because that’s the other piece. It doesn’t just sort of end at the sales call, and it kind of doesn’t really just end at the. Sales funnel, like to take it a step further, especially if you’re still doing that one on one, like managing your leads and following up with your leads and also following up with your customers is a great way to add more revenue to your business without having to attract more clients, working with people, you know, getting customer repeat business, um, is much more cost effective than having to always have this pipeline full of fresh people.

Thank you. And so that’s again where it’s like, okay, there are some variables where it really depends on what your specific situation is. But the basics really is, what are you doing? Like, starting with that awareness phase and then okay, what’s the, what’s going to be that next step of interest? Am I inviting them to a sales call?

Am I inviting them to take a quiz or is it a free consultation that they’re getting or free to Discovery call. And then, okay, what happens after that? So it’s just sort of like, you know, this continual and then what and then what happens and then what happens until you get to the end. So

Amanda Warfield: for someone who is feeling unsure about their customer journey, you offer 15 minute assessments, right?

Can you tell us a little bit about

Sharice Enis: those? Yeah, so a free 15 minute assessment, um, if you already have a funnel, this is great because we can take a look at what you already have in place and we’ll look at your Funnel strategy, we’ll look at the offer and we’ll look at your messaging to see what areas, if any, have opportunities for improvement.

Oftentimes, there are some areas, even if it’s like doing pretty well, there’s usually something that we can do in terms of like the messaging or maybe a little tweak to the strategy because messaging can really be as finicky as like saying something like get clients versus attract clients can Drastically change who you’re actually attracting, which sounds crazy, but it can.

So it’s like, you know, for someone who already has something, we’re looking to like fine tune and optimize it for someone who’s just getting started or like maybe has like, um. Like, uh, I don’t want to say like a simple funnel or a basic funnel or, um, maybe doesn’t have one. We can talk about the different strategies that could be that we could use and align that up to your offer and your specific goals and your goals, not only being the monetary goals, but like how you want your business to run and feel, because I think that’s the piece that.

To, to me, I just feel like we’re, we’re missing so much of that. So for, um, people who don’t have something in place, it’s really great opportunity to get some outside perspective on what you could possibly build in a way that’s going to support you and your customers. How can someone sign up for one of those?

Yeah, so you can go to shresenco. com and sign up for the free assessment. There’s a link on my site and you’ll be able to go straight to my calendar. Book a time and there’s a little form where you’ll get to tell me more about your business. And so I’ll do my homework before we sign up, uh, before we chat together and this way, so that you really are getting the most out of that 15 minutes.

It’s not like 15 minutes of me trying to figure out what’s going on with your business. I come prepared and. We chat about those things. I give you a follow up and it’s not a, you know, it’s not a discovery call like disguise or sales call or anything like that, it’s really just about giving you some feedback and helping you so that you can, you know, get to that, get to that next level.

Amanda Warfield: We will link to that in the show notes friends so that you guys could take advantage of that. Sharice, if you could give everyone just one action step to take today, what would it be? I would

Sharice Enis: say to start digging into your analytics actually so that you can make some data driven decisions. And I think that’s something that anyone can do wherever they are, um, in the process.

So start looking at your data.

Amanda Warfield: I love that so much. Is there any specific piece of data that you would recommend everyone starting to

Sharice Enis: track? I think the Best piece would be, I’d say, I guess it really depends on, like, what your platform is, but I would look at, like, what’s your top performing content? Like, what’s getting people engaged?

What’s getting people coming to you? Because I will say the biggest challenge when someone has a funnel is traffic. It’s the traffic piece. Um, and so, like I said, right, like, when you have those, like, People who have those anomalies sort of conversion rates that are outside of the benchmarks. It’s usually because they’ve spent a lot of time building up an audience and now they’re catering directly to that audience that they built.

And so they’re seeing like, these crazy conversion rates. And so if you can understand. And really get to know what pieces of content and like who that target audience is through your data. Um, not just by asking them, cause sometimes people will say things, but it’s, it’s not exactly true. Um, then you’ll set yourself up for creating a funnel based on data that will just increase the chances of it working well and performing really well.

I

Amanda Warfield: love that. And if you had a book recommendation, one book that everyone should go read, what would it be?

Sharice Enis: Ooh, and it doesn’t have to be

Amanda Warfield: a business book, right? No, it doesn’t. Any book, any, I mean, an audiobook counts

Sharice Enis: as well. Well, I feel like everyone’s reading Atomic Habits. I started reading that, so I’m actually not going to say that one.

I’m going to say John Acoff’s Finish. Um, I think it’s actually a really good compliment to Atomic Habits, and I listened to it as an audiobook, and I really enjoyed. I really enjoyed his, he read it. So I really enjoyed listening to him read it. And I think there’s a chapter, um, about goals and he talks about making goals fun.

And I think for me that was like my biggest takeaway from the book about turning my goals from like, I need this to like, I want this, I want to help. This many new business owners, or this many women do achieve X, you know, like changing it from like conversion numbers and KPIs to like something that feels human just feels so, it just feels so different.

I feel like that’s just

Amanda Warfield: perfectly full circle with all that we’ve talked about today, too, of just making your goals and your business totally your own and what you actually want versus what you’re being told to want. Yeah. Charisse, thank you so much for being here. I know that everyone has probably pages and pages of notes right now of things to consider and think about as they go into implementing and tweaking their own sales funnels.

Where can they find you to continue learning more about

Sharice Enis: funnels? Yeah. So I. Really am active on Instagram. Um, so that’s the best place. That’s the best social network to find me on. And I hope to launch a Facebook group. I don’t know if Facebook groups are in or out, but I just want to keep the conversation going and build more community.

So if. That sounds like something you’re interested in. Definitely go connect with me on

Amanda Warfield: Instagram. Perfect. Thank you again for being here today. I really appreciate it.

Sharice Enis: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend.

Amanda Warfield: You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 182: Evergreen Sales Funnels: The Key to Scaling Your Business with Sharice Enis appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Recession-Proof Your Business With Accessible OffersIt’s no secret that spending habits have shifted dramatically in the last three years. If you saw record high sales in 2020, you’re likely not experiencing those same numbers today.

Business owner after business owner has mentioned to me that they’re worried about their numbers being down, and we’re all wondering – what can we do to continue maintaining the level we were at? And recession-proof your business moving forward?

I can’t promise that you’ll be able to hit those record high numbers again, but I do have a solution that will help – creating accessible offers. Today I’m sharing a peek behind the curtain at my actual sales numbers, a case study for two offers that I made more accessible, and seven ways that you can create accessible offers for your own business to boost sales.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * This week’s action step: Choose one offer, and one way to make it more accessible this week and put it into practice! * This week’s book recommendation: You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone by Rachel Lynn Solomon * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateIt’s no secret that spending habits have shifted dramatically in the last three years. If you saw record high sales in 2020, you’re likely not experiencing those same numbers today. Business owner after business owner has mentioned to me that they’re worried about their numbers being down, and we’re all wondering, what can we do to continue maintaining the level we were at?

Well, I can’t promise that you’ll be able to hit those record high numbers again, but I do have a solution that will help. Creating accessible offers. Today I’m sharing a peek behind the curtain at my actual sales numbers, a case study for two offers that I made more accessible, and seven ways that you can create accessible offers for your own business to boost sales.

You’re listening to episode 181 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your 2024 version at amandawarfield. com / planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And, most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing…

Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week. I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps.

And judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips and advice on uncomplicating, your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just.

Have to share something that I’m really excited about with you. My book, chasing simple marketing is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing.

Overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages. I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing. And you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business.

To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amandawarfield. com slash book. I’ll see you there. Are we in a recession? Are we not in a recession? I honestly don’t know. I’m not an economist. I frankly try to avoid all of that as much as I can, um, because it’ll send me spiraling into panic attacks.

And so I really don’t know. I’ve seen people talking about the fact that we’re in a depression even worse than the Great Depression. I’ve seen people talk about the fact that we’re heading into a recession. I don’t know. What I do know… Um, is that regardless of if we are or if we aren’t all of our spending habits have changed all of ours because.

Um, whether we’re actually in it or not, we are mentally prepared to be in one. And so we have all tightened the purse strings a bit and that affects our businesses, right? Sales are down. Almost every single person I know in business, sales are down. Um, whether that’s. Friends or clients, myself, numbers are lower than they have been in a long time.

We had a huge boom in our industry in 2020 and beyond thanks to stimulus checks and people being home and all of that fun stuff. And we’ve seen that slowly starting to turn around and this year, more than ever, we are seeing sales are down. We are also seeing people that are much more interested in DIY options versus done for you options, meaning that people are less interested in outsourcing and hiring things out.

That’s not to say that’s not happening, but we went through this boom of done for you options being. A great fit and people being really interested in, Hey, my time is more valuable than my money. And it seems like that’s shifted. It seems like people are now saying, Hey, my money is more valuable than my time.

Thanks to this mental, are we in a recession? Are we not kind of mindset? And so what does that mean for us? Well, let’s just talk about some real numbers. Let me share some real numbers from my own personal business. In the last six months of 2022, my shop made 1, 500 for me. In the first six months of this year, it made about 900.

Now, I’m comparing the last six months of the year and the first six months of the year, which normally I wouldn’t do because buying habits tend to be different in different parts of the year. But my shop was only open from July on in 2022, and so I only have that data available to me. So there is a grain of salt there, for sure.

But that difference is still fairly significant. I made much more with my shop last year than I have In the first six months of this year, but what I have seen is that I’ve made more sales I’m just selling more of my lower priced items than I did last year so last year a big chunk of my sale were some of the bigger offers versus this year i’m The bottom line is less, but the sales are up because people are buying more of the smaller price lower offers.

Another thing that I’m seeing is that last year, my courses sold fairly well with just their, their one time. I didn’t have payment plans. This year I added payment plans and that made a huge difference for those bigger offers as well. Outside of my shop, I’m also seeing significantly less one on one inquiries and lots more I want it, but I can’t afford it.

Now that’s not to say I’m not getting clients and the inquiries that I do get, those are almost better inquiries because it’s people who have done the research, know what they want, know what the prices are, know that they can afford it. And they’re much more likely to only put out an inquiry if they know that they’re ready to take that next step.

And so my conversion rates are higher. So that’s just a peek behind the scenes of my own business and what I have seen in this year with this kind of mindset of possibly recession, depression, I don’t know. And now I want to talk about something that I did very recently and just kind of share a case study with you of something that I’ve done in my own business very, very recently surrounding batching bootcamp.

For background, when I originally created that course back in 2020, it was a course and for an entire year, that’s, it was just a course and I ran it live three times, which was great. I love doing that. I’ll probably continue to do that in the future, but I ran it live, taught it live. And then after each live round, I would send out feedback questionnaires and say, Hey.

What did you like about it? What’s missing? And over and over and over again throughout all three rounds the feedback I got from everyone was this course is incredible. I love it so much. I love what I’ve learned I wish there was some sort of ongoing accountability. Well in order to Be able to put the time into ongoing accountability.

I knew I needed to turn this into a membership. So club content batching was born. The whole membership surrounded the idea of holding people accountable to actually doing their batch week. Like, Hey, you know how to do batch week, but let’s make sure you’re doing it month after month. And the membership was successful.

It did really, really well for me. But the only way to get content matching bootcamp was through the membership. It wasn’t for sale outside of the membership. And over time, I began to hear from more people who were interested in the course, but not the membership. Over time, I began to see the enrollment in the membership go down.

Because again, as we headed into this recession, no recession kind of mindset, people were less interested in spending all of that money on a membership when they just wanted the course. And the membership existed for about two years and in about a year in I began to feel like it wasn’t the right fit, but I wasn’t really sure how to move forward.

And so I sat with that for a while, um, for about a year before I figured out what I needed and wanted to do. And What that was was make all of this more accessible. I loved having a membership, but I didn’t love The price point my entry level was at so I have a standard level for my membership And I also have a VIP member level and I was pretty happy with the the VIP level price at, um, 127 at that time.

And I felt good about that because, you know, my VIP members get a ton of one on one attention that, that felt fair to me, but I didn’t love that. The standard membership was also 127. And the way I had set it up originally was that you enrolled and after a year, you are automatically a VIP member. And so it was like, Oh, you get all this extra attention.

after being in for a year and that’s great and I didn’t, I didn’t love that after it had been going for a little while and I wanted to switch it up so that it was more accessible and so that people could choose. Hey, instead of waiting a whole year to be a VIP member, if you want to just be a VIP member, join the VIP tier.

If you have no interest in that extra one on one accountability, I wanted it to be more accessible and I also wanted content batching boot camp to be more accessible. I didn’t want it to be hidden behind the membership any longer. And so what I did is I took content batching bootcamp and I turned it just back into a solo course.

It on its own is a course you can enroll. It is by itself, you know, go for it. And that made that more accessible because you didn’t have to buy into this membership that was a year long commitment and all of this stuff. It, you know, all of these things that were taught about this is a great way to get members and hold on to them and all of this fun stuff.

I pulled it out. So that it’s just a course and you can just enroll and it’s accessible and it’s easier to get into. And then I took the membership and totally chopped up the tiers where there’s a VIP tier and there’s a standard tier. The standard tier is 27. The VIP tier is 147 and you get to choose which one you want to be in so that it’s accessible to your needs.

There’s also no kind of commitment. It’s month to month. You stay as long as you want, and when you’re ready to go, you give two weeks notice. So I wanted to split those up and make them more accessible, and already there’s been a huge success. When I opened Content Batching Bootcamp just as a course. I had a ton of sales immediately right away for people who’d clearly been waiting for that to be an option.

The membership itself has been much more successful having that accessibility and having those two different tiers where you could decide which one you actually wanted and the amount of support and accountability you actually wanted. So And the membership itself is totally different. It’s no longer surrounding content batching.

It’s just simplifying marketing in general. We’ve got each quarter, we’ve got a quarterly theme that we’re working through. And if you want to learn more, you can go to amandawarfield. com slash community. But basically it’s. I still have a membership, but it’s totally new in a lot of ways. So that’s not really what this episode is about, but there’s that peek behind the scenes.

And by making both of these accessible, I’ve seen much more success with them. And so that’s what I want you to consider as well. In order to keep on going through and make it through the recession, you have to make your offers more accessible. We can’t keep doing the same things that have worked in the past because…

That’s just the nature of business is change is going to happen change is going to be necessary and we’re going to have economic shifts So you want to make sure that you are? recession recession proofing your business with accessible offers making some changes to the way your offers are structured and really Maybe switching up the difference of where your focus is for me I went into this year really hoping to focus on VIP days and one to one offers and I’ve realized that that just can’t be the case right now that if that’s my focus I’m not gonna see the sales I want so instead I focused more on some of my smaller offers and making those more accessible So that’s something to consider, but how do you make them more accessible?

Well, like I said earlier, DIY options are much more enticing right now, because a lot of people are more interested in. Taking the time to do something themselves versus spending the money to have someone else do it. So creating DIY options for your one to one offers if you don’t have those. Instead of doing it for someone, can you teach them how to do it?

Can you give them tools to do it? Creating offers surrounding that kind of mindset. You can also offer payment plans, like I mentioned with my courses. All of my courses, there’s a one time payment, and there’s also a three month payment plan, where they pay three payments. Of whatever that one month payment is split.

There’s a lot of conflicting ideas about whether or not a payment plan should basically cost someone more. The kind of two schools of thought are, one, it penalizes people who are, aren’t privileged enough to be able to pay up front. The other school of thought is that, well, when you have to chase someone down because they didn’t finish paying for something, it costs you extra time and money and inconvenience, so.

Those are the two school of thoughts. I see the pros and cons of both. At this point in time, I am playing around with just simply the three payments add up to the one payment and that is what it is. Um, but maybe in the future that mindset changes. I really don’t know. But regardless, offering payment plans of some sort can help make your offers more accessible, especially if they are something, basically anything of mine that is over a hundred dollars, I’ve tried to put a payment plan into to make it more accessible.

The other thing you can do is lower prices. Normally, this isn’t something that you would. want to do all the time, it’s not necessarily always fair to people who have bought at that higher price. You have to try to figure out, you know, how can I make it right to the people that have bought at the higher price and things like that.

But that is an option. Like I did with the membership. I wasn’t comfortable with that. Hey, you’re going to immediately buy in, right? It basically the VIP tier, but you don’t get VIP tier. perks until after you’ve been there a year, I decided I didn’t like that option. And so I lowered prices and I made that right with the people who had bought in.

Tiered pricing is another option. So you can do similar to how I did with the membership is basically just adding another tier where, Hey, You can get this for lower at this price. You don’t get as many perks, but it’s there as an option. So you can add tiered pricing. You can also run free trials. People are more hesitant to put their money down for something and so you can say, hey, here’s a free trial.

Check it out. See if you like it. If you do like it and you want to stick around, This is how much it is to join. And so you’re giving people the chance to try it before they buy. Kind of like a test drive for a car, right? Give someone a free trial, they’re more likely to give it a try. And if they like it, and if, you know, your sales page matches up with the offer, and you’re actually solving the pain point, um, they’re more likely to actually buy into it.

You can also do scholarships, where, you know, it’s basically a marketing campaign to get more eyes on it, but also, hey, here’s a scholarship where I can let someone in for half price, or even, you know, They get the course for free or whatever that may look like. That’s something that you could do as well.

And then of course, there are also bundles and limited time offers. You can bundle multiple offers into one offer. You can give a limited time pricing, like, Hey, for just this weekend, it’s 50 percent off or 20 percent off or whatever, so that you’re giving people different ways to get in at. More accessible prices and offers.

So again, just to run down that list, DIY options, create them if you don’t already, payment plans, lowering prices, tiered pricing, free trials, scholarships, bundles, limited time offers. There are a lot of different ways that you can make your offers more accessible. Another thing that I want to throw out there, Is to make sure that you’re transparent in your pricing, particularly when it comes to one on one things.

I know for a fact that if I go onto someone’s page and I’m interested in a service they have, but they don’t have their pricing on there, I’m immediately done. I’m not interested because it’s not worth my time to find out. If the pricing isn’t listed, I automatically assume I can’t afford it. If the pricing is listed, I know right away whether or not it can work in my budget.

And that way I only reach out if it’s reasonable and realistic. And like I mentioned earlier, I’m seeing less inquiries, but the ones I’m getting are, I’m absolutely ready to get started. And I fully believe that that’s because of the price transparency on my website. You can go to my website and see exactly how much it costs to work with me.

And then you can decide, is it worth my time to move forward with? And that way nobody’s wasting anyone else’s time. And it just makes me feel a whole lot better knowing that I’m not trying to convince someone to work with me. When they’re ready to work with me, they come to me. So just want to throw that out there as well.

It, it kind of makes your offers more accessible, but really it just helps save you time and save your potential clients time so that they know what is realistic for them. Now, your action step for this week is to choose one offer that you have, and then choose one way to make it more accessible and put it into practice this week.

So maybe that means that you’re going to create a DIY option. Maybe that means you’re going to add a payment plan. Maybe that means you’re going to offer a free trial, whatever it may be. Choose one offer, one way to make it more accessible and put it out there and see what happens. See if that helps bump up your sales a little bit.

Your book recommendation for this week is You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone by Rachel Lynn So

No surprise that this one is in here as well. Um, this one is about two sisters, I believe they’re twins. And their mother, I think, has hunting tendencies. And they have to do genetic testing to find out if one of them has, or if either of them have the… You know the genes for the disorder themselves and all of that, and it’s a little bit different from her usual, you know, meet cute kind of book, but so good and well worth read.

So you’ll miss me when I’m gone by Rachel Lynn Solomon. And until next time my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode’s show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 181: Recession-Proof Your Business with Accessible Offers appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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When A Book Launch Goes WrongI love nothing more than a good launch recap episode, and chatting about what went well, what didn’t, and where I hope to improve in the future. So today I’m taking you behind the scenes of the launch of my book – Chasing Simple Marketing.

After more than a year of preparing to bring this book into the world, it’s finally here and the launch … well it didn’t go as planned. In fact, it went horribly wrong. And yet, it was still a huge success as far as the numbers go.

Why is that, and how did that work out? Join me for a stroll down launch lane and I’ll share exactly why things worked out despite an awful launch.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * This week’s action step: When you’re creating something, don’t let fear of it not happening keep you from sharing. In fact, this week – share something you’re working on behind the scenes and tag me! * This week’s book recommendation: We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This by Rachel Lynn Solomon * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateI love nothing more than a good launch recap episode, and chatting about what went well, what didn’t, and where I hope to improve in the future. So today, I’m taking you behind the scenes of the launch of my book, Chasing Simple Marketing. After more than a year of preparing to bring this book into the world, it’s finally here, and the launch, well, it didn’t go as planned.

In fact, it went horribly wrong. And yet it was still a huge success as far as the numbers go. Why is that? And how did that work out? Join me for a stroll down launch lane and I’ll share exactly why things worked out despite an awful launch. You’re listening to episode 180 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple content planner, and you can grab your 2024 version at amandawarfield. com.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming. So that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.

My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that master’s of business administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing… Overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages.

I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing. And you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business. Without it taking over your business to learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team Head over to amandawarfield.

com slash book. I’ll see you there as I’m recording this it has been just about one month since Jason’s will marketing my book launched and if you’ve been around for a while, you know that I love I love live launches. I love figuring out the best pieces of the puzzle to put together. I’ve got tons of podcast episodes about launching.

I absolutely love launching. And I also really love planning and preparing well for my launches. I am. Always 100 percent scheduled out before a launch. I love being able to enjoy a launch. I love being able to give myself space during launch. I, I’m a big pro of really being prepared for your launch. Now, this launch was no different.

I have been planning for this book release for over a year, and I was not only doing all of the things for the project. The book. But also the launch, and really prepared and ready to go for this launch. My launch did not go as planned, and I don’t mean that as far as sales. The sales, which we’ll get to, were really great.

I was really, really happy with the success of the launch. But I mean the launch itself, the launch activities, the behind the scenes, it just did not go as planned. So, what went wrong? Well, I launched the book on my 30th birthday, July 26, and for my 30th birthday, we took a massive trip that was incredible.

We flew out to Seattle, we spent about a week with our friends in Washington, and then we saw Taylor Swift in Seattle, which was incredible. The day after we saw Taylor Swift, we flew down to Disneyland for three days because we were doing this whole West Coast trip. So we spent three days at Disneyland.

Ending on my birthday. On my birthday, we were supposed to take a red eye home that night and land back in South Carolina the day after my birthday that next morning. Well, the day of my birthday, the day of the launch, everything had gone great up until that point. I was prepared. You know, I had, because I was on East Coast time, I was getting up early each day and getting like two hours of work in to help prepare for the launch while we were in Washington.

All of that went really, really well. I was on top of things. I wasn’t feeling behind. I was feeling pretty good. I woke up on my birthday, and I felt like I had a cold. And I was like, man, that’s awful. Like, I’m not feeling great. Um, I asked my husband and my sister, who all three of us were sharing a hotel room, I asked them if they felt like they had a cold, and they said no.

And I was like, oh, okay, well, whatever. We get going, we pack up, because again, we had to check out and go into the park, and we were going to leave that night. We pack up, as I start moving around, I start feeling better. Great. We are then standing in line for rope drop at Disneyland, and You know, my body’s kind of like, hurting, and I chalk it up to, well, we did the entire three hour Taylor Swift concert, plus all of the getting there and leaving and all of that, and standing and jumping and dancing, and then immediately flew to Disney, spent two days full out doing Disneyland, and now it’s the third day and you know my body’s tired.

So, once again, I look at my husband, Russell, and my sister, and I go, Hey, do you guys hurt? Like, is your body hurting? And they were like, Eh, I mean, I guess kind of, but not really. And you know, I’m just again, I’m like, Eh, I guess this is 30. Like, feeling, feeling tired, feeling achy, my body hurts. All, all of that fun stuff.

Like, this is just 30. Within a few hours. I was in a ton of pain, I was really not feeling great, and um, come to find out, I had COVID. So, came down with COVID on my birthday on book launch day, which, you know, left me not feeling up to much launch things. Well, this was the second time I had had COVID. Last summer, summer before, in 2022, I had gotten COVID for the first time and Honestly, it was mostly asymptomatic.

I just had the slightest of symptoms, and it didn’t last very long, and I was, you know, up and about pretty quickly. This year, that was not the case. I was down hard for a week, and I mean There was no, I’m the kind of person that like, if I can sneak work in, I’m gonna sneak some work in. I didn’t even think about work.

There was, there was nothing. I mean, I was just struggling. And so that entire launch week, I am sick, sick. I’m not getting any work done. I’m not doing anything. I’m like re sharing things on stories and that’s really it. And then, while I still had COVID, I’m not healed yet. I am still sleeping in our guest room, like I’m not interacting with Russell at all.

We are staying, you know, more than six feet apart. I’m not even really going in the rest of the house at all. My grandfather dies. And, um, yeah, it, well just suffice to say it was How quickly it happened was a surprise. We certainly weren’t expecting it to be then. We’d known his health was declining for a few months now, but it just the timing of it was shocking and the decline was quick at the end and our family’s very close and so that Was hard.

There was a lot of grief. There still is. Obviously, it hasn’t even been a month. Um, But all that being said, I had planned to take two weeks off and realistically I was taking two weeks off from client work, but I had only planned to take a couple of days off Just those like few, like the 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, really That was it, and the 23rd was a Sunday.

The week before that, I was still doing a little bit of work here and there. I was still getting in like 2 or 3 hours each morning, and I had planned on the 27th to jump right back in once we got home. Well, I ended up taking closer to 4 weeks off of work and just kind of doing the very, very, very bare minimum for four weeks because of the trip and getting COVID and then my grandfather dying.

So in that sense, the launch did not go as planned because I certainly had not planned to get sick or to lose my grandfather at that time. And I, I had very different plans. For what I was anticipating with this launch. So my original plan, again, earlier I mentioned project versus actual marketing, right?

So project part of any launch is the creation or updating of whatever it is that you’re selling. In this case, that was the book. The marketing part is, you know, all of the launch initiatives that you’re doing to Send emails, get, get out there, basically. So in this case, my original plan for the project part of the launch was to release all four versions back to back to back.

So my plan was to on launch day, well, really before launch day, I was pre launching and pre selling the hardcover version and the Kindle version. The goal was to have both of those ready to go, starting to get sent out like up and ready on the 20. Six on launch day and then you know all of the hype of the launch was supposed to like help with that Then the following week I was gonna release the paperback and then the week after that the audiobook and so basically my plan was to use this like rolling momentum strategy of Okay, these first two versions are available.

You can either get a hard copy or you can get A Kindle version. And, ooh, launch, exciting. Let me reshare all the stuff. People are buying it. People are getting it. Yadda, yadda, yadda. And then the next week, okay, well, if you didn’t buy yet because you didn’t want to pay for a hardcover, okay, well, the paperback’s here and it’s a little bit cheaper.

So, hey, if you haven’t gotten it yet, here’s the paperback. And then the week after that, hey, you want to listen? Here’s the audiobook version. And so the idea was basically just to have a good reason to keep talking about it week after week after week. And use that momentum on the marketing side of things.

I was obviously going to be putting stuff up on social media. I plan to show my face a whole lot like I do during any launch. I plan to send launch emails and, you know, send my launch team. I had an incredible launch team, send them emails every day with updates. I had a launch team, Facebook group that I was going to update.

And that was my original plan. Now I mentioned earlier that I am a huge proponent of scheduling everything out. For your launch and just having all of that content ready to go. So you can just kind of show up, uh, as you feel inspired, as you feel like it. And you’re not having to do a ton of hard strategic thinking during the launch because launches are tiring to have to show up and be so present.

It is exhausting. And so I’m really a huge proponent of scheduling everything that you can out and having everything prepared before the launch even begins for this launch. I purposely chose not to do that because I was so excited about getting this book out into the world that I really, I wanted to just be fully present and in the zone and be able to give, you know, real time updates and all of that fun stuff for the launch itself.

Well, with everything that was happening, it is not a shocker that none of that happened. I still, as I’m recording this, well, the paperback is now out, I haven’t announced that it’s out, the audiobook is not out yet, by the time this airs, they’ll both be out and you know, you can go grab them if you’d like, but one month later.

They’re still not announced and out officially, but I couldn’t ride that momentum wave. I couldn’t sit there and go, okay, well now we’ve got this and now we’ve got this. Like I had planned a full month essentially of launching and that didn’t happen. I also didn’t end up leaning on my launch team enough, which is such a shame because Truly, I had the most incredible launch team, and they were so willing to be so helpful, and I just wasn’t, because I didn’t have email scheduled out, I didn’t lean on them enough.

And that’s on me, because they truly were, it is an incredible, incredible, incredible group. I cannot thank them enough for all that they did do. But I didn’t ask enough of them, and that’s on me because I didn’t have emails scheduled out. I also didn’t send any launch emails the week of I didn’t send any emails out the week of the launch.

And I had to end up going back in and basically being like, hey, I didn’t schedule my emails out, but the book’s out. And so it’s like, after the official launch day had passed, I did send out some emails and did what I could, but The whole launch plan that I had didn’t happen. The week after it launched, I sent an email to my launch team and said, Hey, we’re going to try this again.

I’m going to do like a real launch week now that I’m better. But with everything going on with my grandfather, it just didn’t happen. And so I had all of these intentions. I had a plan and I just wasn’t able to execute it because I didn’t execute ahead of time by using a scheduling tool. So what were the results of the launch?

I mentioned earlier, I still was really, really happy with the success of the launch. Despite all of that, um, my goals were to have a hundred sales, 50 reviews, and what I ended up with were 67 orders and nine reviews. Now, that 100 sales number was kind of a number that I pulled out of thin air, which I’ve preached about over and over again.

That’s not something you should do. And so when I set those goals, I knew that they were a stretch. And that I was just going to work towards them. So I was actually really, really happy with that 67 number. I didn’t know what to expect, honestly, because I had never launched a book before. So that’s 67, thrilled with.

The nine reviews. Not so much. But again, that’s on me because I did not lean on my launch team enough. I only sent out one or two emails asking for reviews when I had this whole plan to like individually follow up with everyone. And there were a ton of people who had said that they were willing to do extra things for the launch to get in front of new people.

And I didn’t follow up on any of that. Which again is, I’m really disappointed in myself because I didn’t do that because I didn’t schedule things out ahead of time. Other really cool launch results that I wasn’t expecting I had someone message me one day in my DMs and go hey, did you see this and The book was number one new release in Joe direct marketing on Amazon, which blew my mind That was not a goal I was aiming for obviously when you release a book like secretly you hope for those things but that wasn’t something I was really doing anything to aim for other than just Talking about the book.

And so that was incredible. And then we also at one point ended up in the top 10 in home-based businesses category. And so I truly am thrilled with the results of this launch. I’ve also seen from the book, which. I’m not sure if I’ve talked about this previously in an episode, but the strategy behind the book is the book is a marketing tool, basically.

And so my hope is that I go and I share about the book when I’m speaking, when I’m doing different things like that. People read the book, they buy it, they read it. I’m not really making money on the book itself. I make a couple dollars each time a book sells. But the goal is, is that the book, you know, it gives such a deep dive on.

All of my, my own strategies and my own processes and how I teach things. And so the hope is that, okay, I’m building the know, like, and trust factor. And then within the book, I mention a couple of different offers that I have. And the hope is that at some point someone will decide, okay, I really love what she taught me here.

I’m going to take the next step. And I’ve already seen results of that as well. So that has been really exciting. I have seen people purchasing different offers that I have, um, and based on. Tags I have in my email marketing system and coupon codes that they’re using. I can tell that they came directly from reading the book to those things.

So that’s been really cool too. So all in all, I consider this launch a success regardless of not really hitting my plans because Of all of the pre launch I did, that pre launch made this book launch a success. Without it, the launch would have been awful. From the very beginning of deciding to write a book, I was very, very open about it.

Before I even began writing about it, I started talking about the book and sharing about it. And, And doing that for so long, all that time I spent working on that project, it built a community around the book itself. And because of that, all of that pre launching, all of that seed planning for the last year, that’s why this book was such a success.

Because even though I wasn’t able to send out those launch emails, I had people who were such cheerleaders of the book, people who were so excited about it, people who shared about it. And it really made all the difference. And so, what I’ve learned from this? In the future, I’m going to schedule everything.

I will not attempt a non scheduled launch again, because it just doesn’t make sense. If I want to add real time updates, I can go in before an email goes out, because I know when they’re gonna go out. I have that in my plan. And so I can go in before an email goes out and update it, if I have the capacity to, um, and give some extra real time updates.

But I’m gonna have everything scheduled out, in case I don’t have that ability again. And I also learned that, yes, pre launch is very important, and planting those seeds. As early as possible is very important and updating constantly about a new project is going to make a huge difference in the success of that launch.

So, your action step for this week is that when you’re creating something, Don’t let fear of it not happening keep you from sharing. I could have easily from the very, like I said, I started sharing about the book before I even started writing it and I could have said, well, I want to work on it, but I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to do it.

I could have kept that from sharing. And if I had, the success of this launch would have been. Well, not, honestly, it probably wouldn’t have been very successful. So I want you to not let that fear of, will it happen? Will it be successful? Keep you from sharing about what you’re working on. And in fact, this week, your action step is to share something that you’re working on behind the scenes and tag me in it.

Okay. I want to see what you’re working on. I want to hold you to it. Let me hold you accountable. Share something that you’re working on behind the scenes and tag me. And if you haven’t grabbed a copy of the book, be sure to do so. Like I said, we’ve got hardcover, Kindle version, paperback, audiobook. We’ve got all the versions.

So be sure to grab one. You can find it on Amazon under Chasing Simple Marketing. And if you have read it, but you haven’t left to review, you It would mean the world to me if you could. Like I said, I am not quite at how many reviews that I would love to see there. And so if you’ve read the book or listened to it, it would just mean the world to me if you could leave a review.

Now, this week’s book recommendation is We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This by Rachel Lynn Solomon. I… I have talked about numerous books of hers on the podcast, and I also, I believe the next few book recommendations are going to be books of hers because I went on a reading kick for all of her stuff. Um, so as always, just.

She’s an incredible writer. She’s so talented. The books are fun and cute and easy to read, so we can’t keep meeting like this by Rachel Lynn Sullivan. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and biz.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 180: When Launching Goes Wrong: A BTS Look at My Book Launch appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Unveiling the Impact of a Cohesive Content EngineAs I record this episode, we are all recently enamored with threads. It’s just a few days old, so I’m not going to be sharing any tips or tricks or strategies for how to use it, but it is relevant to another important topic about our content marketing – creating a cohesive content engine.

You see, we are all enamored by Threads because it’s fresh and shiny, but also because it’s enabled us to do what Instagram has been not allowing us to do lately – see growth. The real beauty of the app is that we have all been SO over Instagram, but not willing to fully leave because we love the community we cultivated there.

There have been so many complaints about not wanting to move to TikTok because learning a new app sounds like too much work. But the release of Threads has shown that it wasn’t the work, and it wasn’t the overwhelm from having to learn a new app – it was the overwhelm of having to build a new community.

Because, boom – Threads is a brand new app, with better engagement, but we also get to bring our exact community along with us since it’s connected to IG. And people have FLOCKED to it. In the first two hours, they passed 2 million sign ups. In the first four, 5 million. In seven hours, they hit 10 million, and the morning after it launched? 30 million sign ups.

It was never about learning something new. It was about not wanting to start over. But if you don’t have a content engine, you’re going to find yourself having to start over at some point, and that has the potential to truly devastate your business.

So, today, we’re going to talk about what a cohesive content engine is, how you can build your own, and how you can use it to run your business through all of the ups and downs of social media.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * This week’s action step: Start your email list. Choose a provider. Welcome sequence templates. VIP Days for copywriting. * This week’s book recommendation: Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAs I record this episode, we are all recently enamored with threads. It’s just a few days old, so I am not going to be sharing any tips or tricks or strategies for how to use it. But, it is relevant to another important topic about our content marketing. Creating a cohesive content engine. You see, we are all enamored by threads because it’s fresh and shiny, but also because it’s enabled us to do what Instagram has not been allowing us to do lately.

See growth the real beauty of this app is that we have all been so over Instagram and Instagram’s lack of engagement But not willing to fully leave because we love the community that we cultivated there There have been so many complaints about not wanting to move to tick tock because learning a new app sounds like too much work But the release of threads has shown that it wasn’t the work and it wasn’t the overwhelm from having to learn a new app It was the overwhelm of having to build a new community Because, boom, Threads is a brand new app with better engagement, but we also get to bring our exact community along with us since it’s connected to our Instagram, and people have blocked to it.

In the first two hours, they passed two million signups. In the first four, five million. In seven hours, they hit ten million. In the morning after it launched, 30 million signups. It was never about learning something new. It was about not wanting to start over. But if you don’t have a content engine, you’re going to find yourself having to start over at some point.

And that has the potential to truly devastate your business. So today we’re going to talk about what a cohesive content engine is, how you can build your own, and how you can use it to run your business through all of the ups and downs of social media. You’re listening to episode 179 of the chasing simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing. I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing…

Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly before we dive into this episode, I just have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.

My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but. Without that Masters of Business Administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating.

Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing, and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business. Without it taking over your business to learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team head over to Amanda warfield. com / book. I’ll see you there. I have spent a lot of time talking about showing up consistently with your content marketing. However, when we’re talking about your content strategy. Consistency within your strategy refers to more than how often you’re showing up. That is a part of it, it is a huge part of it when it comes to your audience, which is why I talk about it so much, but it’s not all of it.

You also want to be consistent in your messaging, in your audience, in where you’re showing up, and in your content engine. So, if you’re only showing up on social media, it is past time for you to expand it. Let’s face it, Instagram is falling apart, and if you are only on Instagram, it is, if it is the only way that you are generating leads, your business is likely floundering right now.

But, if you have multiple content avenues… Well, when one of them starts to fall apart or not get the reach that you’re used to, your reach continues. And that is why it’s so important to have a content engine. You cannot have just one.

And you especially cannot have social media be the one place or even the main place where you’re showing up. Because social media is not a platform. Guaranteed. We do not own that land. We do not own our audience. At any point, our accounts can be taken from us. They can be suspended. They can be removed.

If you think that can’t happen to you, I’ve seen it happen over and over and over again. And sometimes for no reason at all. Your audience can disappear on social media at any time. Your content can be throttled because of the algorithm. Social media cannot be your entire content engine. Instead, you want those multiple content avenues.

You want to have a social media platform that you’re showing up on. You want to have some type of long form content, whether that’s a blog or… A podcast or a YouTube channel and you want to have an email list when you have all three of those different types of content platforms, you have a fully functioning content engine.

And when you have a full, fully functioning content engine and something happens to that social media platform where you are generating most of your leads. Your business won’t flounder because your reach is going to continue through that email list and through that long form content, your listeners, readers, watchers are built in.

So even if social media is not sending new people to your content, those people that are already invested will continue to have your content delivered straight to them. Or in the case of a blog or YouTube, they may have to go search it out, but they’re used to you showing up on a consistent basis there.

But when you add in that email list and you are sending your people that long form content, which we’ll get to in just a minute, when you’re sending your people to that long form content, it’s still being sent to them just in a different way. And so your reach continues. Your growth may falter for a bit as you have to pivot your lead gen, but your content and your reach continues through the nurturing you’re doing of the people that you already have.

It is easy. Well, the easier to pivot your lead generation, it is not easy to pivot your entire content engine. So if social media is your. The only place you’re showing up on that is your only place for lead gen. That’s the only place that you’re nurturing your audience when that fails and it will fail at some point, your business will flounder.

You have to start from scratch when you are using it simply as Legion and you’re sending people through your content cycle, your content funnel, you’re able to simply go, okay, how else can I find leads? Let me try a different way and it doesn’t feel like you’re starting from scratch because you still have a built in audience that you are Tending to and nurturing so your content funnel instead of looking at it as a funnel Which is the typical way that we look at Bringing in leads.

We, we get this visual of a funnel where it’s larger at the top, smaller at the bottom. You bring in this large amount of leads at the top and you funnel them through these different things to finally, Hey, they’ve purchased or hey there, you’ve decided to work with me, right? Instead, I would love to have you visualize it as a content cycle because this engine that you’re creating, all of these pieces are working Together.

Honestly, a web might be more accurate, but for the sake of simplicity, we’ll go with a cycle. When all these pieces are working together, it’s not just, this goes into this and then this goes into this, and this goes into this, and finally they work with me. It’s no, they’re a continuous cycle that you are sending people through.

So, Your social media, let’s start there. You have your audience on social media, whatever that is right now, whether it’s Instagram stories, Instagram threads, whether it’s Tik TOK, you’ve got that social media platform where you are looking to grow, be seen and make connections with new people. From there, you want to send your people to your long form content.

So you share about your blog. Or your podcast or your YouTube channel and you say, Hey, this is my latest content or Hey, I’ve got this cool snippet of stuff. And if you want more, you can go here, you send them to that long form content. Then once you have them in your long form content, you use your long form content as an opportunity to share about a free opt in that you have.

Now, that free opt in, once they join, if they decide to join, gets them onto your email newsletter. Within your email newsletter, you’re able to share about your long form content, which is why I said this is almost more web like, right? For the sake of simplicity, you will use your email newsletter to talk about your offers.

That’s not the only thing you’re using your email newsletter for. Again, we’re simplifying here. But you’ll use your email newsletter to talk about your offers and to share them and to send people links to them. And then people buy the offer. Within your offer, you encourage them to go follow you on social media so that they can engage and be nurtured there.

And then from social media, the long form content, to the free opt in, to the email newsletter, to the offer, to the social media. So it just cycles. Again, It’s not quite that simple. It’s more web like. Everything kind of sends to everything. But, that is the general idea, and so instead of looking at it like a funnel, looking at it like a cycle.

Might be more helpful for some of you who don’t quite understand the funnel concept. I know I didn’t. It still is hard for me to this day to really conceptualize that. So, the content cycle. It’s a lot easier to just pivot that one piece of it though. Versus the entire content engine. If social media is the only way that you’re sending people to your offer and then your offer to social media, what happens when that social media is no longer useful?

Social media is simply a lead generation tool. The goal is to get people into your content engine cycle. That way, when a social media platform throttles engagement, you just move on to the next lead generation tool. It may take some time to get the same amount of leads back into your business, but in the meantime, the bulk of your engine is still nurturing leads that you’ve already brought in and is sustaining your business.

We’re not ever going to see continuous growth with our businesses, right? There’s going to be moments of growth and moments where you’re sustaining and moments of growth and moments where you’re sustaining. And so we have to make sure that we’re planning for that. Without that core engine being something stable, your content strategy is going to be very volatile for your business.

So, your action step for this week is to start your email list. Choose a provider. If you are on a budget and you’re not even sure where to begin, I really recommend MailerLite. The first, I believe, thousand subscribers are free and you can get started there really simply and really easily. When you’re ready to expand, I really love Cardra.

I have been using it. I switched from using MailerLite and Teachable to Cartra because Cartra is an all in one and I’ve been using it since 2021 and I cannot foresee myself moving anywhere because it really does everything that I need and more. They are continually adding features that I I’m glad to have but didn’t even realize I need it.

So if you’re looking for something more advanced, it’s an all in one, it’s got your email list, it’s got my products, it’s got everything basically, the entire back end of my business, but it is pricier. So there are two different options for you, but choose a provider. And if you’re looking to get your welcome sequence set up so that you have something ready to go, I do have welcome sequence templates in my shop.

Not only are they email templates for what to send and when as far as the welcome emails that are just plug and play, but They also have a full funnel overview of what that looks like within your funnel. Um, there’s a visual guide to help you set that up as well. And if you are looking for someone to help you, either write your welcome sequence or write email newsletters so that you just…

Can get them put out there, but you don’t have to do it yourself I have copywriting VIP days that we could talk about that you can find more about on my website So your action step is to start your email list The very first thing you’ll need to do if you don’t already is choose your provider And if you need other resources to help you get started The welcome sequence email templates and my VIP days are a great place to start, but if you’re looking for something else, feel free to send me a DM and I can let you know whether I have something like that, or I can share a friend who has something that I think would be helpful for you.

Now, this week’s book recommendation is Today, Tonight, Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon. I know that I just shared another one of her books, but you know, sometimes I get in… in the zone with an author and I just read everything they have all at once. And this one is, again, another, she’s just such a well done writer.

And, um, this one is about two high school academic nemeses and they graduate and there’s this whole graduation party and then they finally actually get to know each other a little bit better and, you know, a typical like Romantic comedy type thing, but today, tonight, tomorrow, if you want to check it out, I will link to it in the show notes.

And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 179: The Art of Consistency: Unveiling the Impact of a Cohesive Content Engine appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Create A Course Online with Mara KucirekToo often, the focus of adding a course to our businesses is what that course can do for us – how it will improve our businesses, and how we can ensure we have the best course launch ever. And while I am really passionate about helping other educators have the best course launch ever, the former teacher in me is also really passionate about ensuring that our courses are the best they can be for our students as well.

Which is why I knew I NEEDED to bring my friend Mara on to help us ensure that our courses are even better than our marketing.

After years of working in corporate marketing and spending time as a middle school English teacher, Mara traded in the 9-5 life to help creative entrepreneurs share their knowledge through online courses. She provides the accountability, tech support and most importantly – strategic curriculum design – that ensures your students actually learn something and fill your inbox with glowing reviews.

After this interview, I realized just how much I could do to improve my courses for my students, and I know that you’ll also walk away with tons of great tips for improving your courses, or creating them with the student experience in mind right from the beginning!

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * This week’s action step: Sign up for your course as if you’re a new student. * This week’s book recommendation: Deep Work by Cal Newport * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

After years of working in corporate marketing and spending time as a middle school English teacher, Mara traded in the 9-5 life to help creative entrepreneurs share their knowledge through online courses. She provides the accountability, tech support and most importantly – strategic curriculum design – that ensures your students actually learn something and fill your inbox with glowing reviews.

Social Links:

https://marakucirek.com

https://instagram.com/marakucirek

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateToo often, the focus of adding a course to our business is what the course can do for us, how it will improve our businesses, and how we can ensure we have the best course launch ever. And while I am really passionate about helping other educators have the best course launch ever, The former teacher in me is also really passionate about ensuring that our courses are the best they can be for our students as well, which is why I knew I needed to bring my friend Mara on to help us ensure that our courses are even better than our marketing.

After years of working in corporate marketing and spending time as a middle school English teacher, Mara traded in the 9 to 5 life to help creative entrepreneurs share their knowledge through online courses. She provides the accountability, tech support, and most importantly, strategic curriculum design that ensures your students actually learn something and fill your inbox with glowing reviews.

After this interview, I realized just how much I could do to improve my courses for my students. And I know that you’ll also walk away with tons of great tips for improving your courses or creating them with the student experience in mind, right from the beginning. You’re listening to episode 178 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist.

Speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing. I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing…

Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week. I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall

we?

Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.

Hello, my book, chasing simple marketing is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that masters of business administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages.

I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing. And you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business. Without it taking over your business to learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to Amanda Warfield. com / book. I’ll see you there.

Hi, Mara. I am so excited to have you on. I have been really looking forward to this interview all week long, so I’m super excited that you’re here. Can you just tell everyone a little bit about you and what it is that you do?

Hi, everyone. My name is Mara Kuceric. You can thank my husband for the crazy last name that no one can pronounce.

I am an online course creation expert and an instructional designer, which is the fancy term for setting up online courses, but that’s the term they use in the corporate world and in the teaching world. I’m based in Tampa, Florida. Before I was full time in my business, I was a middle school English teacher.

And then even before that, I worked in corporate marketing. So I have a huge background in education and marketing. And right now in my business, I help. Entrepreneurs and small business owners launch online courses specifically focused around making sure your students have really great experiences and actually get results and they learn something from your course and don’t just take it and then never come back and never have anything good to say about it.

Yes, I love it that

that student experience is so important and I feel like we hear. We hear people who talk with coaches and who teach coaches all the time about how important a client experience is so that you get those word of mouth referrals, but yet. We don’t hear people talk about the student experience enough.

It’s just make the course and sell it to as many people as you can. But really what we want is we want those people who are going to say this course did something for me. I finished it. It was amazing. I got that transformation that they promised. And now I’m going to tell my friends about it. And yet we just don’t hear people talk about that experience

enough.

Yeah, people don’t really talk about it at all, which is a little wild because when I was a middle school English teacher, you had to prove that your curriculum was effective. Like your students were tested. You got interviewed. You had observations around how you’re teaching. Skills were, and if it was effective, and in online courses, it’s not something people talk about very often.

And most people who are creating a course in online business, they don’t have a ton of teaching experience. So it’s not natural of, oh, wait, how do I teach people in a way that they will actually learn? And when your students have a really good experience, when they feel supported, when they feel like your course helps them, it’s Achieve something in their life, like they will talk about and start selling your course for you where if the opposite happens, and people have so so experience, they didn’t finish your course.

Maybe they felt like it was a little boring. I think we all have some courses that we personally have bought that we feel that way about that. We did 3% of and never finished when that happens. It’s kind of hard to get testimonials. It’s a lot harder to sell your course and sometimes people don’t understand why that’s happening because they don’t look at the experience of the actual students of like, is your course fun?

Is your course interesting? Do people know how to log in? Like, it’s amazing how often that’s this like, holding block of people don’t remember how to log into the course. Yeah,

well, and I think a point that you made there is so important. The fact that a lot of us go to school to learn how to teach, yes, there are people with natural abilities, but even then, you go through licensing programs, you go through all of these different things to learn how to teach effectively to others, and that’s not to gatekeep any of this by any means, there are people like you, right, that help those of us that didn’t go through that, learn how to do that, but There’s a reason that people have to go to school to become a teacher and learn how to effectively teach so that your students pay attention and get to the material and can then be tested on it and all of that.

And that’s something that I think just doesn’t, it doesn’t get talked about enough in the online space because it does feel gatekeepy even though it’s not but I sit here and I look at some of these courses like you said that I take and I’m like, I’m getting information I’m not getting education. And that’s what we want to be doing is we’re creating courses, and yet all of the.

The information about courses out there is really about how to market a course and how to put a course into your business so that your business can passively sell and make that quote unquote passive revenue. And it’s not as simple as that. And in fact, it’s funny, I was talking to one of your clients today, actually, Alex cook, and she, she’s creating her own course.

And she’s like, this is incredible. I love it. I had no idea how much work goes into actually creating a course. By itself, and it’s like, well, yeah, because no one

talks about that part. Yeah, people there’s a lot of focus on the selling of your course. And people don’t always tell you about, like, designing all of the lessons, making sure they’re not.

Long and boring, because frankly, none of us want to watch something that’s long and boring and it’s unfortunately. Easy to accidentally do that and all of this stuff is learnable because when I started my business, I had no idea that curriculum design is not a thing. Most people have done any classes or courses on.

And there’s so much that goes into it about, you know, people have different learning styles. How do you accommodate for all of it? How do you make sure people retain the information? How do you not over teach? Like, that’s a huge thing as well, if not overwhelming people, but it’s really not a thing. Okay.

In the online course world that people really talk about about what happens after you launch your course. How do you keep supporting your students? How do you work through, like, troubleshoot if they’re not having, like, finding information useful to them? And there’s so many things you can do to help out with that, but it’s just something most people don’t even realize until they’re in that boat of, oh, wait, I created my course.

I sold it. What do I do with all of these people now to keep nurturing and supporting them? So let’s just dive in there.

What do you do once you’ve actually gotten people in the door with your course? How do you nurture them?

How do you keep it engaged? There’s so many good, good things for this, and I have kind of a list I like to run through of people because you do want to have a long term Engagement strategy, basically, and really what you’re doing is making people feel supported, heard, cared about, even if your course is something where you have like a live cohorts and then, you know, they have access to the lessons, but you’re not actively doing coaching calls.

You still want to regularly be emailing people highlighting a few lessons. At the, I always tell people at the end of all of your emails about your course to your students, put the link to log in because people will forget it. They won’t know how to do it. Also put at the bottom in a PS of every single email what to do if you forgot your password because people always forget that.

So you want to be regularly emailing students if you have some sort of community like Facebook group or a circle group or a slack channel, wherever you support people regularly checking in. Celebrating student wins. That’s something a lot of people miss. And when I was a middle school English teacher, you called out people for good behavior because you wanted them to do more good behavior, right?

You wanted them to be on task. Adults are the same way. Adults are crazy similar to teaching middle school students of if I was in your course, Amanda, and you said, Hey, Mara had an amazing win this week. And I saw that she completed all five modules. You bet I’m going to go back into that course and finish the rest of it because it feels super special to feel shouted out.

And that’s something you can just do from time to time. I tell a lot of my clients, pick one day of the month, go into your student group and find like two to three people who are using the lessons or experiencing a win. Or you can also look on the inside of your course and see who’s been really active.

Who’s watching the videos and most online course software is going to give you those sneaky, creepy details, which people don’t always realize that we can see that. But we can see what you’re doing in the course. And then you can. Either shout that person out in an email, shout it out in the Facebook group, or just send them like a personal DM on Instagram and say, Hey, I noticed you completed a bunch of modules this week, and that’s awesome.

And often just recognizing people is enough that they will feel supported, they’ll feel better about your course, they’ll have a better experience, and they also know it’s a place where they can celebrate their wins and also ask questions as well. So do you recommend

having like a Facebook group just for

students?

I usually do and There’s various ways you can do this. Facebook is still obviously very popular and there’s some other things that have popped up like circle, because not everyone loves Facebook, which I agree. Facebook is the bane of my existence sometimes, but Facebook is often the place, at least right now, in 2023 where most people are, and every time I’ve ever done a poll of, would you rather have the group somewhere else?

Facebook always wins and ends up being the most engaged active space. I also have seen success with Slack channels for courses that feel super intimate, but it might get a little out of control. Like Facebook, you usually don’t have to respond to everything. Slack is a little harder if you’re going to want a smaller group.

And then the third option is just using comments inside of the course, which can work, but It’s hard to foster community and just a comment section underneath a video where a Facebook group, you can recognize names. You can recognize individuals. So most of the time I do recommend having some sort of student group unless you have like a mini course, because any sort of group you add.

There’s a workload to taking care of that group. You’re going to have to figure out what to do with people who misbehave, which early on doesn’t happen. But as your course. rows, you’re going to get people who break the rules, who post things that are mean sometimes, and you have to figure out how to navigate and deal with that.

Do you allow people to talk about things that are off topic in your group? Do you only talk about your course? Or do you let them talk about parenting and health and there’s pros and cons of doing both? But I just always remind people. If you’re selling a 49 workshop, you probably don’t need a Facebook group for it because you’re going to have to nurture that group every day.

And that’s a benefit, right? Like, growing a community and nurturing them is a great thing, but realistically it takes time. So just be realistic about your time and the investment of your course before you commit to some sort of group. But if it’s a higher price point, I would say Over a thousand or more, especially more, a lot of people really benefit from having a place where they can connect with others.

They can ask questions. They can see you showing up and answering questions and see you as a teacher. Yeah, I think that’s

really important having that community aspect when you say that you, you do call out and you email your students, even after the launch, right after they’re going through the course.

Do you combine that email? Is that part of your weekly or monthly newsletter, or is that a totally separate newsletter that only students get? How does that work in conjunction with other

email marketing you’re doing? Ooh, this is such a good question because there are, there’s usually I tell clients to do both things.

So usually there is kind of like a secret student newsletter that only students get. And the benefit of that is you can talk about things you don’t necessarily want your entire audience to know. So usually most people will feel comfortable with you sharing their name. In something that’s only going to students now, if it’s going to your entire list and you say their name in an email, I would absolutely ask for permission and make sure you’re telling them how that’s going to be used.

And I am very ask for more permission than you probably need. So typically to your whole entire email list. If you see a win or you see something that where someone’s like, wow, lesson number 3 was really good. It helped me with X, Y, and Z. Ask that person for permission. Ask if you can use it in your email and then send that to your whole email list and do that regularly.

People often forget to be continuously talking about their course and unless it’s a course that. Is currently not available for sale. If people can’t buy it, don’t talk about it. But a lot of people have like launch periods, but you can technically still buy the course. So get in the habit of regularly showing up and sharing.

Hey, people are inside of my course right now, experiencing wins. And then on the students only 1. that’s where you can get a little more intimate and a little more detailed. Usually the whole newsletter. You’re just sharing wins on the student 1. sometimes I’ll highlight a student who. Is having trouble, like, I’ll say, hey, Amanda asked a really good question in the Facebook group about bookkeeping.

If you have any ideas, comment back to her here, but, you know, that can feel a little private and confrontational. So you just want to keep your spaces secret in, you know, the parts where you’ve said it’s member only and then share the larger wins.

Yeah. Okay. I love that. I love that idea of having just like a separate student newsletter.

How does that work? And I’m just getting

like really logistical questions here, but how does that work with if you have multiple courses? Do you send totally separate student newsletters or is it one overall student

newsletter? All right, this is also a good question because some people do have like 15 different courses, especially if they’re smaller courses.

Be mindful of, you don’t, you don’t want to have to write 15 emails a month and send them to everyone. So I’m always pro, bundle them together where you can. If it’s a course where you can talk about similar things, then bundle the emails together and just be mindful and respectful that people might not have access to certain content.

But if it’s really. Of course, they’re, they’re totally separate, like, 1’s about dog walking and the other 1’s about, like, accounting, like, people are probably not going to care about the other 1. and so you might want to do something separate there and you can change the frequency. In that case. I usually recommend at least a monthly student newsletter.

That’s sharing a few wins reminds them how to log in. Talk about what’s going on in your personal life. That is often a good spot to also tell people, Hey, I’m going to start promoting the course again. Do you want an affiliate link? Do you want a test? Like, can you give me a testimonial? And it gets people in the habit of talking about the course, but you can send it less frequently.

You could do quarterly if you have multiple courses. There’s no hard and fast rule. And I have some clients who they’re religious about doing a weekly email for their course. And that takes a lot of work to do every single week, but it can create a lot of community as well. So

one aspect of a great student experience is this community that we’ve just like deep rabbit hole into.

What are some other things we can do to really ensure that our students have a great experience in our courses?

The number one thing I always tell people is giving people clear Directions when I was teaching, you’d always start the lesson right with, okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Here’s the instructions of exactly how to do it.

And I would have it written on the whiteboard. I would have it on the overhead projector. And if there was a worksheet, I would type it at the top of the worksheet. And still, the minute I say the instructions, 10 hands go up. Wait, Mrs. K, what are we doing? Where do I put my name? What am I supposed to write?

Like adults are the same way. So make it super clear what they are supposed to be doing. Have multiple spots where the link to log in is. So in the welcome email, you might want to have a link at the top of your website that says something like student login. Um, and then you want to constantly be reminding people.

When are the coaching calls? How do they access them? How do they go through the lessons? Are they supposed to go in a certain order? Like, there’s all these questions that as the course creator seem really simple, but people are going to overthink them. And I usually recommend make people. A checklist people love this when you do it, by the way of the lessons and some of the key action steps they need to take to go through the course and people will print it out and send you screenshots.

Or you can also do something like a bingo card where you put the lessons are not even necessarily in order. Because some courses you don’t need to do in order. And if that’s the case, tell people that otherwise they’ll get confused and they’ll never get past it. The first lesson, but doing fun little things where people can track their progress and it reminds them, Hey, just log into the course, do a 10 minute video or do this exercise.

It’s a lot less intimidating for people and they don’t talk themselves out of doing the work. I love the idea of

gamifying it. It’s like adding a bingo card of adding a checklist of some sort, just so people have. More interest in actually showing up and doing the work itself, because let’s be honest, like, a lot of times we buy these courses because we know it’s something we need to learn more about, but actually doing

the work feels like a lot, and it just feels hard to get into.

And we’re all so busy. I So I do this for a living, and I have courses that I have to remind myself and like make a sticker chart. I have a sticker chart right now for a course I’m going through. And I have to do 10 minutes a day, and then I get um, a sticker. It’s a minion sticker on my chart to just remind myself, do a little bit each day.

But anything like you can do like that makes it novel, it makes it fun. Like treat yourself like a kindergartner is how I often tell people. Wait, how cute would it be to like print?

And send in the mail branded stickers and sticker charts

to new students. Yeah. Oh, and people love stuff like that. Like, it is usually so simple to execute.

I’ve given them a printable, or I have done snail mail things, because I think snail mail is so fun. Um, and then people hang it up. They take photos. There’s so much more, like, from a marketing perspective. They’ll share cute photos of your sticker or like their sticker chart. And then other people are like, wait, what are you doing?

Like, why do you have this random chart? I mean, you can even I’ve done ones where it’s like a roadmap people have to follow or they’re like, at the end, there’s like a funny castle or like some sort of prize. And like, you can also give away prizes if you want to do that. I usually advise be really careful about over promising stuff.

It’s like, yeah. Same thing. If you become the teacher with candy when you’re teaching middle schoolers, you’ll never get out of it. You’ll be giving candy out your ears for the rest of your life. So be careful about, like, giving financial rewards. I do think it’s fun to give people, like, Starbucks gift card giveaways sometimes or, like, surprising and delighting students in other ways.

But you don’t have to do that. People love just, like, a sticker chart or you saying their name or A shout out in a podcast or something like people just want to be recognized, man. Okay. So for

everyone listening, if you start seeing sticker

shirts showing up in your mailbox, you’ll know where that idea came from because that’s genius.

Okay. So we’re, we’re gamifying.

We are rewarding, we are surprising and delighting and we are building communities or anything else that we can be doing to really up that student experience.

Really keeping in mind the different learning styles. So most courses, not all of them, it’s a video of you talking to the camera or you talking over slides, right?

And really, that’s only covering one learning style visual. Maybe you could argue that’s also auditory, but There’s people learn in different ways. So you want to make sure you have things in your course where people can visually learn. So like pictures, images, anything like fun and interesting. Audio is a huge one, because how many of us have not done a course because we don’t want to sit down at our desk, but if we could listen to the lessons on our phone, we would do it.

So if your online course software has an app, or you can create just audio files. Make your courses. Of all of your videos, you just take the audio out, put it in like a folder. Someone can download and I’ve done that on like Google Drive or Dropbox to make it really easy. You can also get fancy and make a private members only podcast, which is amazing, but it’s a little bit more of an investment, but that gives people a way to do the work on the go and.

Be thinking about how can you make it as easy as possible for someone to do the work? How can they do it in their car? How can they do it while their kids are screaming and throwing a tantrum while they’re doing dishes? Like, people really appreciate having multiple ways to go through the course. I usually recommend some sort of video, have a transcript of your lesson, because a lot of people, and this is what I do, Sometimes I just read the transcript because I’m not, I don’t want to watch the whole video.

I’ll just skim the transcript. So have a transcript. Have some sort of like written Lesson and it doesn’t it doesn’t need to be word for word, but, like, the key steps because a lot of people, they don’t like watching videos. People don’t realize this, but not everyone wants to watch videos and then some sort of audio where they can take it on the go, or.

They can listen, maybe on their computer, but they don’t have to be watching because I listen to stuff all the time, but I don’t have the video pulled up off my screen. So be thinking about. The different ways people are going to consume your content and how you can allow them as much freedom as possible to do your course however you want, like you want to be the cool teacher that lets you have class outside, that lets you do class on the couch or at the swimming pool.

Yeah, I’m definitely one of those

people that does not like watching videos. I know so many people who are like, Oh, YouTube is incredible. YouTube is the best. I love watching YouTube and I just can’t get into it. I want to be able to multitask while I’m learning something so that my brain can process better.

And if I’m watching a video and I’m just sitting at my desk or sitting in bed, watching the video, I’m automatically going to get distracted because my hands want something else to do. But if I can listen, and that’s why I love podcasts so much. If I can listen while I learn. And also clean the house or do the dishes.

I’m going to process that information so much better. And it also feels so much easier to, there’s a lower barrier of entry. It feels like we listen, but I know that that’s not for everyone and that other people are video learners or kinetic and all of that, but. That I’m definitely one of those people that’s like, no, I’m not, I’m not interested in

video really at all.

I’m a similar way where when I’m consuming courses, I mean, I’m a busy business owner. I know you are as well. I don’t always have a ton of time to watch a video, but if I can listen and I can knock out my social media for the month, or I can do all the dishes that are in my sink, I’m so much more likely to do it.

And I think that’s pretty much how everyone feels because. Whenever I talk to people about so often for clients after a big launch will do a why didn’t you buy survey and this is super helpful information. I’m sure you’ve probably done this in your business to where you ask people. Hey, why didn’t you buy my course?

And the number 1 response is I didn’t have time to go through this course. So if you can think about how to solve that problem for people before you’re doing the launch, like, that’s going to make your life so much easier of saying, hey, I know you’re busy, but you can listen to the podcast. Um, the lessons are only 10 minutes long.

You can read the transcript. If you don’t want to watch the video, like, people really appreciate that freedom. I love that so

much. So many different good ways to get them that information in a way that. is attainable for different people and different learning styles. And then also, if they do look at the checklist that you give them or read the transcript and they’re like, I want to actually see this visually, they have the ability, but you’ve drawn them in at that point instead of, Oh, I don’t have any way except the video.

Okay. Well, I’ll get to it at some point.

Yeah, and assume that people are going to do the bare minimum. This sounds terrible, but when as an edge, yeah, when as an educator, you just assume, okay, what is the bare minimum that someone would need to have success? Um, and every time I’ve ever looked at a client’s course, literally every time it’s.

too long, we end up taking lessons out because it’s really tempting to, you get really excited about your course, you’re brainstorming it. And I do this too, by the way, when I make courses in my own business. And I’m like, here are the 100 lessons I’m going to do to give them everything they ever need to know about this topic.

That’s super overwhelming. Don’t do that. People want the shortcut and you can always give them more information. You can add bonuses. You can add like a part 2 lesson, but at that surface level, you want it to be as approachable as possible. And a lot of people, like a lot of people, the reason they joined your course is because they want the shortcut.

They want to use their time efficiently. And to get the results. So if you record a 2 hour workshop where you’re screen recording your entire video, like there’s times where that can be helpful, but there’s also times where no one’s going to watch that. And so I always tell people just like, give people the bare minimum to do.

And often once they have that, they will go farther on their own, they will explore the bonuses, they’ll explore the extra lessons. But if you include that all from the beginning, they will log into your course, panic, run away, and never want to log in again, which happens a lot, unfortunately. People will join

your course because they want the shortcut.

That is so good because you’re right. We don’t, we don’t want everything. We just want, I want the easiest and fastest way to X, whatever that is. Also, if you really minimize what you’re putting in the course, it’s going to be so much easier to market it and to launch it because you can give one clear transformation versus I’m going to give you everything you need to know about how to market a course that they don’t want that.

They want, how do you market it? for Evergreen? How do you market it for launching? Maybe, how do you combine an already Evergreen and already live launch system that you have, but they don’t want, how do you do all

of the course marketing in one? Yeah, it’s, it’s way too much. It’s overwhelming. It’s too much to comprehend and process, and no one sets up a real class that way.

Like, In school, everything’s organized by individual subjects and individual lessons, and then you move on to a different grade. Or in college, like, you have a very specific scope of curriculum, and they don’t, like, if you get a business degree, they don’t in one class try to teach you everything you should ever know about business.

But when you’re creating your course, it’s really tempting to do that because you probably really care about helping people, which is a good thing. And so you want to give them Everything, you know, on a topic, like, it’s so tempting to do that because it feels good. But from the student perspective, it’s, it’s really overwhelming.

And you just gave them a bunch of extra steps when what you want to do is you want to give them the fastest path possible to the results. That you’re offering so good. It

makes me think about how when I was teaching, I really had, I had 15 minutes max before all of a sudden the kids were in their own worlds.

They were not paying attention. I was getting asked about flamingos instead of whatever it was that we were learning about that day. That’s something I should probably keep in mind. Now, as we’re doing this, I’m like, man, I just need to hire her for my own courses. And I did. Go through I have a degree in education.

Like I should I could get a 2nd pair

eyes on all my stuff. Yeah. Well, and secretly behind the scenes, Amanda and I have boxer chats about courses like, we just all the time, which is the best. I remember when I found out that you were in. Like education as well. I was like, Oh my gosh, someone else in this world who like understands also the weird education world that we came from and all of the pros and cons of it.

And some of the weird business mindset things we now have from coming from the education world. Like personally, I always feel like. I need to answer every question everyone ever has, because that’s what I did as a middle school English teacher, but that is actually not helpful in my business of, I don’t need to answer every random question that people personally email me.

Wait, that’s so true. I’m just like, that’s just looking very, because the amount of times we’d be doing circle time. And

I would be reading a book and I get asked the most, I’m like, where is your head child? The most random questions. And I would sit there and try to give them an answer. And I do

carry that over.

That’s a good mindset. So teacher turned entrepreneurs. I’ve realized we tend to hire less in our business. Because as a teacher, we had to do everything ourselves. We made the copies. We designed the curriculum. We were the janitor and I have a couple of teacher friends who run their own business and one of them pointed this out to me that like, cause I personally struggle to hire in my business.

It’s something I’m working on, but I feel like I should be able to do it all. Right? That’s how I’m going to be successful. And I’m like, oh, that’s where that comes from. As a teacher, you’re, you’re literally expected to be customer service. Clean up everything. Take care of ev, all the kids D graphic design, all of the lessons into these beautiful, amazing worksheets and slides.

That’s a really painful realization, . I know it. It burns a little bit. When I realized, I was like, oh, that’s why I sabotaged myself in this way because it was really successful in my past job. You had no choice. Not so much. Yeah. Well, yeah. That’s what I mean by successful of you literally have no choice.

You had no choice. Yeah. Oh

man. Oh, that’s fun.

Okay, so we’re working

on updating our student experience. Alongside that, a big part of that student experience you’ve hit on a few times is lessons that aren’t overwhelming and that actually people want to complete versus just sitting there and not doing.

So how can we make sure that our lessons are something that people want to complete. What will actually help them learn versus just be given information?

Ooh, this is, this is the part where I think it gets the trickiest. And you said something earlier in this podcast about you’re giving people information and not an education.

And you want to be giving them an education. Um, and sometimes that’s a little tricky to do. It’s not impossible, but really just being intentional about the information you are giving. Not giving too much. Presenting it in ways that feel interesting and novel, that might sound kind of weird, but like humor, things that are funny, things that are new, help people learn.

So like, even things like having funny gifs on your slides, in your course, or funny diagrams, or telling a story, like storytelling is Huge way people learn. So being mindful of being concise, not overwhelming people. Don’t just read the slides. I, I know that’s something we all learned, like, in our college presentations, but still I audit so many courses.

And I go in and it’s someone showing me slides and they’re reading bullet point by bullet point. What is on the slides? And so I usually tell people, think of it as action steps, not bullet points or information. You’re giving them, like, you’re teaching them how to do a process. And if you don’t feel like your video.

Is teaching any sort of process, like, is there a step 1, a step 2, a step 3, and sometimes it’s a little convoluted depending on the topic, but there should be some sort of process, then you’re probably a little off track. And you’re probably just regurgitating information. That’s not super helpful for people.

That’s so good.

That’s a. A good, um, orange flag, yellow flag of this is something to double check on. If you can’t form a process out of it, either you’re regurgitating information or maybe you don’t know it well enough yet.

Yeah, yeah, and maybe you haven’t experimented with it enough to run into some of the pitfalls.

The other thing you want to keep an eye on is how long your videos are. It is so easy to intend to make a 10 minute long video. And you accidentally make a 30 minute long video. And I always tell people if your video is over 15 minutes in your course, and unless it is really like an in depth one off video where you’re showing like my batching process from start to finish, that stuff’s amazing, but not every lesson should be that long.

10 to 15 minutes, and if you really can’t fit it in 10 to 15 minutes, Your video probably needed a part two or it’s another module in the lesson or something like that because we don’t, we just don’t have long attention spans. I know that’s hard for everyone to hear, but people also need a break. They need to get the content.

They need some time to absorb or go do their homework or however in the course you have been kind of test and work through that with exercises. So just giving them hours and hours of information, which this happens because. You get on Loom, or Zoom, or wherever you’re recording your videos, and you think of all these other things you should talk about, so try to restrain yourself.

You can always edit your videos as well. Most people end up cutting parts of their videos out after recording them, because there’s things you say that you realize, well, they probably don’t actually need to know that to get, like, the main core and the main gist of the lesson. Okay, so you mentioned that

you audit courses for people.

When you are auditing,

what are the things that you’re looking for? So, 1st of all, so people in case that word sounds confusing auditing is where I go in and I pretend I’m a student. I sign up for your course. I see what happens after I sign up. So you want to be looking for the immediate experience people have after they sign up.

And this particularly is going to help with your refund rate because if you implement some of these things of having a thank you page, that really celebrates the person on that. Thank you page. I usually recommend. Giving them their first steps, which usually an easy one is go join the Facebook group, the Slack channel, whatever.

Often it does take a couple of minutes for their actual login information to come. So give them something more to do than just go to your email and look for your login information, because that’s frustrating for people. Um, you can also give them something to celebrate, like a social share image on the thank you page, but make it feel really good.

Hey, they’re in, it’s amazing. And then within the first five minutes, they should also get an email That tells them everything they need to know about the course, how to log in, when the coaching calls are, and then you want to give them their first steps. So in that first email, it should be very specific of watch the first video and comment your favorite flavor of ice cream or your favorite cookie and make it something like really weird and specific.

When I was a teacher, I used to do this thing where I would greet my students at the door every day, and I would ask them a question like, what’s your favorite cookie? What’s your favorite? Okay. Whatever, or sometimes it would be really weird. Like, would you rather be able to chew gum all day in school, or you can’t talk at all in school?

And it’s like, so interesting people’s answers, but when you ask them something weird, they’ll remember and they’ll go do it. And, like, all you’re doing by asking something their favorite cookie is teaching them how to log into the course. Cause now they have to figure out how to log in, they gotta figure out how to comment.

And how to play the intro video. So you sneakily just convinced them to log in and create the habit of knowing where to access your course. So that’s the 1st thing I do of what’s the immediate experience because that. Lessons your refund rate, if you offer refunds, 1st impressions are honestly everything like they are everywhere else in life.

And then I go through the content and I’m looking for how long are the lessons. Um, Are they too long? Are there spots where my own, like, attention is waning? Which, if that happens and I’m being paid to go through your course, that’s a problem. Because most people are not making money to go through your course.

I’m looking at the worksheets, the lessons. I’m also usually looking at what’s broken, which sounds weird. The courses are usually massive and always have broken links, worksheets that don’t download, the wrong video in a spot, and, or typos, and students don’t always tell you that, which is kind of funny. I had a client, and we had a course that was out for years, and she emailed me one time, and she was like, I just found out that all of Module 7, like, the videos don’t work, and no one ever told me.

So just like the practical of making sure things work and that’s something I really recommend you or someone on your team is doing at least once a year in your course, you’re gonna forget the things you say in there. Some people will say stuff that gets like wildly out of date. I have a client right now who she had a course and she had just written her first cookbook.

She now has four cookbooks and we never talk about the other three cookbooks anywhere in the course. So we’re updating all of that. So just make sure. Links work they can download things all of that stuff. And then the other thing I usually look for is places where you’re engaging students. And this is usually more on the back end.

There’s a lot of stuff you can do with most online course softwares. I’m going to try not to get too techie here, but you can set up like a zap or a notification. For example, where if someone doesn’t log into the course for 60 days, they get an automated email that says something like, hey, Amanda, I noticed you haven’t logged into the course for 60 days or for a couple of months.

I just wanted to check in with you, see where you’re getting stuck and, like, all of that sounds very personal, right? But it’s automated and like, so I check in on the back end of do we have anything set up like that? Because we want to prevent people from. Just completely falling off the cliff and never logging into your course, because honestly, as amazing as your course can be, sometimes the biggest hurdle is just getting people to do the work.

And that’s always going to be a hurdle. You’re never. 100% going to get every student in your course to be amazing, like middle school teacher. I never could get every student to pay attention. That would have been impossible. So don’t like, expect. That you’re going to be able to have every single person have an amazing transformation because some people just won’t do the work, unfortunately, but you can do what you can to.

Prevent them from completely falling out of touch, just just regularly reminding them and often having automated emails like that. All right, enough like, that’s all it takes for someone to come back and say. Oh, you know, I totally forgot that I had access to this. Thank you. And like, often they’ll personally respond and you can do that in a lot of different ways.

And it doesn’t have some people think, oh, Mara, you’re saying I have to go in and manually email students. No, I’m not saying that technology exists. There’s so many different ways where you can, like, say, hey, if a student never gets to less than 5 within the 1st, 20 days, you know, Let’s send them an email and offer an alternate lesson, or let’s send an email reminding them that there’s a podcast, so you’re giving them different routes and paths to go down in your course and making them feel supported.

Oh, this is all so good. I want to go revamp

every single course I have right now with all of these ideas. This is incredible. If someone is like, wow, I didn’t realize that all of this went into creating a course and maintaining a course, I guess may even be a better way to put that because. We get a lot of create the course and then just keep selling it, but there’s a lot of maintenance that does go into it, even though you can automate a lot of it.

You want to build that community with your students. How can they find you? How can they learn more about what you do

and how you help people? Yes. So my website is the best place to find me. It’s my first. And last name, my last name is K. U. C. I. R. E. K. and I’m sure Amanda will put it in the show notes also sending me a message on Instagram.

You will find me. I’m often answering people’s random course questions or just helping them navigate random student. Issues of students misbehaving sometimes, which sounds crazy, but happens in courses or people just feeling frustrated of they’ve asked for testimonials and no one has given them any. So that’s my website.

And then Instagram is basically my hub of where I’m constantly talking about education, online courses, and then passive income.

I love it. And we will definitely link to all of that in the show notes. But if you could give everyone just one action step for this, for this week, let’s say, what would it be?

Yes, so this one’s super simple. It literally will take you 10 minutes or less. I should say 10 minutes or less, but sign up for your courses if you’re a new student. So a lot of softwares will let you do a test checkout, or you can make a coupon code that’s free, sign up as a new student with like an alternative email that’s not your email, because sometimes if it’s the email you send emails from, your software will get mad.

And just check, what does the thank you page look like? Did you ever customize it and make it super fun? And then Did you actually get information about how to log into your course because that stuff breaks and people don’t realize it that people are buying your course, and then they’re never getting any sort of follow up information.

So, just from a fresh set of eyes, and I usually for all of my clients, we do this once a month where we sign up as a new student. It takes, like, 10 minutes and we just double check. Everything’s working. It still feels really exciting when they join the emails are triggering, right? And there’s nothing broken and we do end up catching a lot of.

Really random things where we’ll realize, ooh, the thank you page has an out of date link, or it has the wrong coaching calls on it. Or there’s so many things that you forget that you didn’t realize you put in your course originally, and then becomes out of date. That’s really good. That’s

really helpful.

I also would highly recommend for everyone that’s going to do that screen record yourself doing it because if you’re like me, you’ll do it and you’ll make notes and then you’ll go back to it later and be like, what was I talking about this

now? Yes, and if, if you have a virtual assistant or someone on your team, this is also a great thing to have them do, because usually it’s a little easier for someone else to be a little more honest about if things are working, if things look good, if the audio in your video is good, but really you’re just focusing on if someone buys my course, do they get further instructions and can they actually log in?

Because that’s. just a really easy first step that sometimes breaks and people don’t realize it. Yeah, absolutely.

So if you could give everyone a book recommendation, what

would it be? Ooh, um, I love, so Cal Newport’s Deep Work, which is an oldie, but I’ve read it multiple times and it’s all about Working with more focus in your business and he’s a little crazy in it where like he talks about going to like a dark room and no one can talk to you at all for like three hours.

I don’t do that. But since I’ve read it, I’ve implemented a lot of I have do not disturb on my phone certain hours. So people can’t communicate. I have a sign for my office door for my husband that like tells him When I’m doing deep work so that he doesn’t, I call it Kramer, like Kramering from Seinfeld into my room.

Cause we both work from home. And so ever since the pandemic, we had to solve this problem of don’t barge into the other person’s office and tell them the random fact you just learned. Cause it’s really tempting to do that. But I really love deep work and he has another book he just released about email as well, which I just read, which was super good about how to not let I think digital minimalism is what it was called about.

How does not not have email rule your life, which sometimes my inbox is a scary place. I will admit. Yeah, absolutely. I’m at the point where I just

ignore it almost for a whole week, and then I do like a deep dive, and I don’t think people like that, but

it’s what I’m doing. It’s very necessary sometimes though, because email aisles up, and I like try to be crazy strict about not being on extra email lists.

I have office hours listed at the bottom of my emails and I still get a lot and I, then I get burned out on responding to all of them. And I, I have templates and all of this stuff, but I’m just saying, I also have days where I close my inbox and, um, unless there’s like an emergency or something like that, I say, okay, we could, we could look at it again tomorrow.

Yeah, I definitely do. I do like a morning,

afternoon, end of day check in to see if there’s

any fires and if there’s not, I just. Maybe tomorrow. Yep. Yep. All right. Thank you so much for being

here today. I really, really appreciate it. And I feel like we could do 10 different episodes together, honestly, with all that we can cover, but this was such a great overview and then a deep dive into that, that student experience.

And I know that everyone’s going to have lots of questions and lots of things to think about. So we will make sure to link all of your things in the so that they can come find you.

Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. This was so much fun.

Thank

you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 178: Create a Course Your Students Actually Complete with Mara Kucirek appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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From Strategy to Results: Analyzing a Client’s Recent LaunchHave you ever wondered what the behind the scenes of a launch looks like? The exact pieces of a strategy, the timeline, the numbers? If so, you’re in the right place because today I’m bringing you behind the scenes of a recent client launch.

In this episode I’ll be sharing the details and strategy behind the launch plans we put in place, as well as the results achieved from said strategy. Then, I’ll close by sharing what we learned and took away from this launch, and potential improvements we could make for future launches.

Launch management is something that I offer for my 1:1 clients alongside their content strategy, but I want to encourage you that you can absolutely pull this off yourself as well. I hope that this episode is empowering, and that it leaves you feeling inspired for your next launch.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * Episode 123: Course Marketing – Launching vs Evergreen: Which is Right For Your Course? * This week’s action step: Want my guide to emails to send to your waitlist to warm them up before a launch? Head to amandawarfield.com/guide/ to grab my free guide * This week’s book recommendation: See You Yesterday by Rachel Lynn Solomon * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateHave you ever wondered what the behind the scenes of a launch looks like? The exact pieces of a strategy, the timeline, the numbers. If so, you’re in the right place because today I’m bringing you behind the scenes of a recent client launch. In this episode, I’ll be sharing the details and strategy behind the launch plans that we put in place, as well as the results that we achieved from said strategy.

Then I’ll close by sharing what we learned and took away from this launch and potential improvements we could make for future launches. Launch management is something that I offer for my one to one clients alongside their content strategy, but I want to encourage you that you can absolutely pull this off yourself as well.

I hope that this episode is empowering and that it leaves you feeling inspired for your next launch. You’re listening to episode 177 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing…

is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly before we dive into this episode, I just Have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.

My book, chasing simple marketing is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that masters of business administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing. Overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages.

I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing. And you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amandawarfield. com / book. I’ll see you there.

In order to keep this anonymous for my client, I’m not going to be sharing any details about the offer itself, and I’m not going to be sharing any Revenue numbers, but we will talk about the launch details. So we’ll talk all about all of those different details. We’re going to talk about what the launch strategy was, what the goals were, how things turned out and what we learned from this launch.

So first things first launch details. There are so many different ways that you can put together a launch strategy. There are so many different options out there, and it really depends on a lot of different things, which I know is not helpful, but I say all of that so that you know that there is no one right way.

To launch something this is the way that we chose for this client and this client’s business in particular But that doesn’t mean that this is exactly what you need to be doing with your launch. So Use it as inspiration, but not an exact roadmap So for this launch, this was a live launch, meaning that we had doors opening and we had expiration and it was a period of time where we were pushing this offer constantly.

That was the only thing we were talking about for that launch week. We were going all in versus an evergreen launch would be something that you are more so doing behind the scenes. That you’re setting up so that it’s running in a funnel versus live emails being sent out at a specific time. An evergreen funnel’s timing is more dependent on when someone joins your funnel versus a set date that you put in stone with a live launch.

Back in episode 123, I talk all about live launching versus evergreen and which is right for you. So that would definitely be an episode that if you’re interested in diving more into the differences between the two, I would highly recommend that you go check out episode 123. So we’ve established this was a live launch.

This also was not the first ever launch of this offer It had been a while since this offer had been launched But it was not the very first round, the very first time that it was launched. The doors had been closed Like I said, it had been a while since it had been launched and it was not set up on Evergreen So doors had been closed for a long time, very long time and This client wants to turn this offer evergreen, so we decided that the doors would stay open at the end of the launch, but There were going to be some live calls So you had to purchase by a specific date in order to get those so there was a bonus That would expire even though the doors weren’t closing a lot of times We use doors open doors close especially with live launch models To encourage people to sign up during that launch time frame because we weren’t going to close doors We had to come up with something else that would help entice people to make that decision, right?

It’s not necessarily about forcing someone into your offer But it’s to encourage them to actually make a decision instead of I’ll think about this later and putting it off So we had that bookmark to really okay doors are opening but then this expires We also chose live calls specifically to help really build relationships.

That is something that, and this is a side tangent, but that’s something that’s missing in a lot of the education in our industry is that personal touch. And obviously when you’re selling one to many, you cannot. It’s not feasible to do one to one for everyone, but these live calls were a way to, to really build that in and help encourage people to actually use the offer versus just buying it and letting it sit there and get dusty, right?

So that’s why we chose that specifically. Now, as far as the plans for the launch, we had a variety of different groups that we were trying to speak to. So we had the. Waitlist that we were sending people to in the pre launch phase when they would talk about their offer They would say join the waitlist so that you know when doors open again and that way we have people who are hot leads Which means that they are people that said yes, I specifically am interested in this offer we also had a free video training that we set up to lead people directly into a This offer was very specifically created so that it would bring in warm leads for people that were interested in that topic.

So we had that section that we were talking to as well. Then we had our visibility booster, which is the thing you do right before your launch. Your live launch in particular to really get eyes on you. Typically it’s something free. In this case, we did an email challenge and it’s something that you build a lot of attention towards.

You get people to sign up because it’s free. It is geared specifically to be the step before whatever your offer is. And the goal is to warm up your leads even more. So they may not be hot leads yet because they haven’t said, yes, I want this offer, but they’re warm leads. And the goal is to. Um, and them really warm and work them towards hot so that when your offer is available, they’re interested in buying it.

So we had that as our visibility booster. And then we also had former purchasers that we were going to have a special offer for as well, as far as a timeline goes for this launch, we had doors open mid June. And the day before doors opened, we had doors open for the waitlists, and for former students, like I mentioned, they both got special offers, which is something that I always recommend if you’re going to do a waitlist.

I will link my Free guide to the emails to send your waitlist in the show notes But if you head to amandawarfield. com guide you can download that but basically if you’re going to have a waitlist you need to reward people for being on the waitlist and I think that you should always have a waitlist because it’s The best way to build hype and momentum before the door is even technically open to everybody It’s really nice to have those sales coming in immediately from people who are very interested and it kind of shifts the model of typically most of your sales come at the end of the launch to most of your sales are happening at the Beginning and it just takes so much the launch That’s a whole other episodes topic, but I will link to that in the show notes and again, you go to amandawarfield. com / guide and snag that outline of the emails that you should be sending to your waitlist If you want to implement that as a strategy in your launch, but the waitlist and former students got in a day early and the week before doors opened, we had that visibility booster, which in this case, again, was that email challenge, but whatever your visibility booster is.

You would do it right before doors open and you want the ending of that visibility booster to coincide and overlap a bit with doors opening the challenge. The visibility booster was announced about 2 weeks before. It actually happened and took place. So they were about two weeks where we were encouraging people to get in and sign up and do this free thing with us.

And then the free training that I mentioned earlier that we were using to gather warm leads. That was announced about two months before the launch. I. I, in reality, wish that we had launched that earlier, but that’s just how the timing worked out in this, so this is your friendly reminder to get your free opt ins where you’re going to be gathering worm leads for specific offers.

Get them out as soon as you can because you can never have enough time, realistically, for gathering those leads. So, that was what the timeline looked like for our launch. We got things really kicked off and started, uh, roughly in April with the announcement of that. Free training, although we were working behind the scenes for longer than that and then the doors opened in mid June So live launch not the first time this has been offered before doors opened, but they weren’t going to be closing.

So we had that bonus of live calls if you bought before a certain date and we had Um, and a few different parts of our list that we were building and talking to in order to really build up those warm and hot leads. Now that can be part of a launch that we forget about. And it’s a big reason why it’s so important to have a 12 week pre launch, which I know a lot of people don’t love.

They don’t like that they need to have that. And it is overwhelming, but you really have to be intentional about building up your leads, because if you’re not building up your leads. Each time you launch something you’re just launching to the same people over and over again and your launches are going to get worse instead of better So let’s talk about goals when I have a client that I am helping with their launches when I’m helping manage the launch I always have them.

Tell me what their goals are and This is not a me thing many people do a good better best goal But I have them set good better and best goals so that we kind of have an idea of what we’re reaching for now I I gave this client the assignment to give me those goals without any kind of context. The good goal was to have 10 people from the waitlist and 25% of past purchasers to repurchase.

That was the good goal. The better goal was 15 from the waitlist and 33% of past purchasers. Purchasers, and then best was 20 waitlist and 50% of former purchasers. Again, I’m not sharing revenue numbers, which is really where these came from. They gave a revenue number and then we broke that down into what that would look like, but I’m not going to share revenue numbers on this because they’re not mine to share.

So we broke that down. Good, better, best. Then I went in and we had a conversation about, okay, but what can we expect as far as conversion rates in this case, even though this had been launched before, we did not have.

And so we had A lot of what we were doing for this live launch wasn’t done previously. And so we just didn’t have those numbers. So we went off of industry averages as our expectation marks. And that meant for the. Overall newsletter, regular email lists, we could typically expect 1 to 2% to convert for the freebie list.

That free training that we had been pushing for a few months. We could expect 1 to 2% to convert for the waitlist 5 to 10% for the challenge 2 to 5% and those prior purchasers. We were guessing 5 to 10%. I actually did not have a number for this. Um, and so I just. Um, and then I just went along with, okay, well, they are warm, hot leads because they’ve purchased before if they’re interested in purchasing again, they’re hot leads.

So let’s go with the waitlist number. So those are kind of the expected industry averages. Had we had previous numbers for this client, we would have used those. The goal is always to improve on what you’ve done previously. So we would have used those. We didn’t have them. So those were the expected, which meant that while we obviously hoped to exceed expectations, we had to look at what their numbers were in order to determine if those good, better, best goals were actually realistic.

So in early May, remember, we were going to start announcing things and launching things. You know, end of May, early June for that challenge for that visibility booster, and then mid June for the offer itself. So when we looked at their early May numbers, what we were expecting sales wise, based on those conversion rates, we were expecting about six to 13 purchases from the regular newsletter list, one to three from the freebie list.

One to two from the wait list, which left us with an expectation of somewhere between eight to 18 sales before we even got into challengers and. Past purchasers because at this point early may we didn’t have anyone signed up for the challenge We hadn’t announced it yet. And we again just weren’t really sure what was going to happen with those former purchasers So I wasn’t including them in those numbers with those numbers 8 to 18 sales is the realistic expectation based on average conversion rates And then their good, better, and best goals, well, we had a roughly 10 people from the wait list, 15 people, 20 people.

Then the hope was, you know, 25, 33, and 50% of former purchasers. So if you’re looking at those numbers, it was clear that yes, the goals that they had set were a tad high, but they weren’t outrageously so. So it was something that we could work with. So keeping those numbers in mind and trying to work towards these goals that may be a tad high, but aren’t too outside of the realm of reality.

We didn’t change them. We just kept them as is and we continue to Really lean into that pre launch strategy and the launch strategies that we had set out so that we could make sure that we were putting out this content that was leading people to the right things. So, over those, however many weeks, those few months during that pre launch strategy, we were really pushing that freebie and the challenge once it opened.

So, I’ve already kind of shared what those numbers were in early May, or at least, What we were expecting sales wise based on those numbers, but the actual launch week numbers between early May and launch week. The free training grew from 129 people to 143. The wait list grew from 18 to 103. The challenge grew from nothing to 398, and then former purchasers were at 1 51.

That number didn’t change. So the expected numbers based off of those launch week numbers, as far as sales, we were expecting six to 13 sales from the regular, just newsletter, email list, people who were not on any of these others, the freebie list, we were expecting one to three sales, the waitlist we’re expecting five to 10, the challenge we’re expecting eight to 20 and prior purchasers we’re expecting seven to 15 for a total of 27 to 61 sales.

All of those numbers are based off of those launch week numbers and those expected industry average conversion rates. So originally, before we had really made sure to focus on that promotion during that lead up for that last six weeks to really, really hone in on, okay, here’s what we need to push. We were expecting roughly eight to 18 sales.

Based on the new launch week numbers, we’re expecting 27 to 61. So that just shows how important it is to really stick to the plan when it comes to your pre launch strategy. So as far as actual sales go, the final numbers, the regular list did not convert how we expected at all. That saw zero sales. So a 0% conversion rate when we were expecting 1 to 2%.

The freebie list also did not convert as we expected, so we were expecting 1 2% and we had zero sales again there. The waitlist converted much higher than we anticipated. We were anticipating somewhere between 5 10% for the waitlist and it actually converted at 17. 5%. So that alone brought in 18 purchasers.

The challenge was lower than we expected, not by a whole lot, but we were expecting 2 5% and we had a 1. 5% conversion rate. So that brought in 6 sales and then prior students We again, weren’t really sure what to expect, but we hypothesized somewhere between 5 and 10% and it actually converted at 13. 9% for 21 sales.

So there were a total of 45 sales of this offer and based on those launch week numbers and the averages we had expected, we were Anticipating 27 to 61. So we were right smack dab in the middle there. They did again, I’m not sharing revenue numbers, but they hit somewhere between that good and better goal, which is about what we were expecting, knowing that those numbers were a tad high.

So overall, this launch did really, really well. And we were really excited about these results. But with every single launch, there are things that you can improve on. Obviously, with every launch, we will try to improve on those conversion rate numbers that we now have. We now have a baseline for, okay, instead of using industry average, we can look at regular and freebie as a 0%.

A wait list is 17. 5. Challenge is 1. 5 and prior students, 13. 9%. Next time we live launch this. Our goal will be just to increase each of those by half a percent or 1% so that we can see more sales. But there are also other things that this live launch in particular told us. So, one, we know that we can step up our game when it comes to priming that full list and that freebie list.

Both within funnels and in content leading up to the launch itself, so we can do a better job about talking to the people that are just on our regular newsletter and getting them through that customer journey and making them aware of the problem that this offer solves. We can do that within a welcome sequence.

We can do that within just the priming content that we create leading up to the launch. We can also look at that freebie and. Maybe decide that it’s not the right freebie for this offer. It may not lead our audience to where we want it to go. So those are some things that we’re going to have to go back and look at and decide, do we try to change the freebie or do we decide to do a better job priming?

We don’t want to change both because we just want to change one thing at a time, but that’ll be something that we’ll consider moving forward for the next launch. It also tells us that our challenge might need some tweaks. Again, it didn’t convert too much lower than we thought it would, but we definitely would like to see it converting higher, especially because there were some live components to that challenge.

And so we want to see what we can do to improve that and improve the. The gap between the challenge and the offer. The goal is to make it a no brainer. So we sent out an email asking those that were part of the challenge, but didn’t purchase why, why was it not a no brainer? What could we have done to make it a no brainer?

And so we’ll have to use that feedback and go in and review the challenge to see what changes can be made. Maybe it’s to the curriculum. Maybe it’s to the way it’s set up. Maybe we’ll have to figure that out. The third thing that it tells us is that, like I said, we’ve now got a baseline to judge future changes against when it comes to those conversion rates.

So when we look at the freebie and we decide whether we’re going to try to do better with priming, or we’re going to try to change the freebie, we can then choose one. That’s our one change for that. And then we can say, okay, here was this baseline number. How does this change compare in the next launch?

Or probably a better example would be the challenge because. We can it’s possible for that number to go down. It’s not possible for zero to go down But with the challenge we can look at that and make a change and maybe we decide that it needs to be formatted differently And so we change the format and see did that improve or make it worse and so we can look at those numbers We have that baseline to then make improvements to continually try to increase those conversion rates Because the higher the conversion rates, the less people you need to bring in, right?

So those are three big things that we will be looking at for this client’s launch in particular. Like I mentioned, we hit between her original good and better revenue goals. And overall, the launch was a huge success. We intentionally built in plenty of ways to mine her audience for copy for messaging moving forward.

That way we can make it even more clear who the offer is for and what the problem solves. Thanks for watching! Along with talking about it in a way that really speaks to her audience. If hearing about the different ways that we built in message mining is something that you’d like to hear about in a future episode, send me a DM or an email and let me know because I think it would be really fun to talk about.

But I want to make sure it’s something that you want to hear because to me, it’s very copywriter, I know that I get really excited about things like that and other people may not. So if you’re interested in hearing how we have intentionally built that in so that we can continue to improve this offer, let me know.

Now your action step for today is to go download that guide that I mentioned earlier, that that guide to emails to send to your waitlist to warm them up before your launch had domain to warfield. com slash guide to go ahead and grab that. And this week’s book recommendation is See You Yesterday by Rachel Lynn Solomon.

I know that I’ve mentioned Rachel’s books before in the past. I love them. They’re based in Seattle. It just makes me feel like, like I’m home. I love this, the references that she makes about Seattle and the weather and all of the things, but she also is just so well written. And this one in particular had a very interesting premise.

It’s about this girl who goes to college. It’s her first day of classes, and she does them, and then she wakes up the next morning and it’s the first day all over again. And she is essentially living this Groundhog Day over and over again, but the twist is that there is another guy that she meets in one of her classes that is also stuck in this time loop.

And it’s really well done because it’s It’s kind of sci fi y, but it’s not. It’s, it’s a, an easy, quick, beach read almost. And yet it has this sci fi aspect to it that, yeah, Rachel just does such a good job, like, weaving that in without it being… Heavy or overly complicated or anything like that. So see you yesterday by Rachel Lynn Solomon.

And now my friend I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your marketing a business

Thank you so much for joining me here today friend You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 177: From Strategy to Results: Analyzing a Client’s Recent Launch appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Facebook Group Marketing Ideas with Elizabeth HensonAre Facebook Groups dead? I was convinced they were, but I was seeing my friend Elizabeth have tremendous success not only in her own business, but for her clients as well. So I set out to discover … are Facebook groups truly dead, and if not – how can we effectively use them as part of our content marketing strategy?

Elizabeth Henson is the owner of Elizabeth Henson INC., founder of The Messy Success Podcast®, and The Community Growth Lab®. Elizabeth has become the go-to expert in community based marketing and leadership. She helps six and seven figure companies become pro’s at building and maintaining large communities that turn into marketing machines. Elizabeth’s signature system for building, nurturing, and monetizing communities has changed the landscape of digital marketing. She gets businesses out of the content generating hamster wheel and into relationships that leverage their authority. Elizabeth is also a BBD Plus Coach and Sales Pro for James Wedmore.

You can find Elizabeth working from home while jamming to 90s music! She loves hot yoga, and her core values are simple: To be creative and operate from her highest good, while inspiring others to do the same. Her Community Based Marketing Agency and online course is built around a unique 5 step framework that masters community building and Email marketing.

And like I said, I was seeing Elizabeth have incredible success with Facebook groups. So I set out to discover … are Facebook groups truly dead, and if not – how can we effectively use them as part of our content marketing strategy?

And boy, did I learn a lot, all of which you’ll hear in this episode. Elizabeth has me convinced that I just may be starting up my own Facebook Group here in the not so far future.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * 25 prompts freebie * Group Leads * Elizabeth was a speaker at Chasing Simple: The Summit. Get your free ticket: https://amandawarfield.com/summit/ * This week’s action step: If you have a group – post some thoughtful questions and see what happens. If you don’t – explore what that might look like. * This week’s book recommendation: Trust and Inspire by Stephen Covey * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Elizabeth Henson is the owner of Elizabeth Henson INC., founder of The Messy Success Podcast®, and The Community Growth Lab®. Elizabeth has become the go-to expert in community based marketing and leadership. She helps six and seven figure companies become pro’s at building and maintaining large communities that turn into marketing machines. Elizabeth’s signature system for building, nurturing, and monetizing communities has changed the landscape of digital marketing. She gets businesses out of the content generating hamster wheel and into relationships that leverage their authority. Elizabeth is also a BBD Plus Coach and Sales Pro for James Wedmore.

You can find Elizabeth working from home while jamming to 90s music! She loves hot yoga, and her core values are simple: To be creative and operate from her highest good, while inspiring others to do the same. Our Community Based Marketing Agency and online course is built around a unique 5 step framework that masters community building and Email marketing.

Website: https://elizabethhenson.co/

FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thecommunitybuilder

Freebie: https://bit.ly/TheCommunityBuilder

IG: https://www.instagram.com/elizabeth.henson/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethhensonco/

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateAre Facebook groups dead? I was convinced that they were, but I was seeing my friend Elizabeth have tremendous success not only in her own business, but for her clients as well. So, I set out to discover, are Facebook groups truly dead, and if not, how can we effectively use them as part of our content marketing strategy?

Elizabeth Henson is the owner of Elizabeth Henson Incorporated, founder of the Messy Success Podcast and the Community Growth Lab. Elizabeth has become the go to expert in community based marketing and leadership. She helps six and seven figure companies become pros at building and maintaining large communities that turn into marketing machines.

Elizabeth’s signature system for building, nurturing, and monetizing communities has changed the landscape of digital marketing. She gets businesses out of the content generating hamster wheel and into relationships that leverage their authority. Elizabeth is also a BBD Plus coach and sales pro for James Wedmore.

You can find Elizabeth working from home while jamming to 90s music. She loves hot yoga and her core values are simple. To be creative and operate from her highest good while inspiring others to do the same. Her community based marketing agency and online course is built around a unique five step framework that masters community building and email marketing.

And like I said, I was seeing Elizabeth have incredible success with Facebook groups. So I set out to discover, are Facebook groups truly dead? And if not, how can we effectively use them as part of our content marketing strategy? And boy, did I learn a lot, all of which you’ll hear in this episode.

Elizabeth has me convinced that I just may be starting up my own Facebook group here in the not so far future. You’re listening to episode 176 of the Chasing Symbol podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple content Planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as the Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.

My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that master’s of business administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing… Overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages.

I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing. And you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amandawarfield. com / book. I’ll see you there.

Hi, Elizabeth. I’m so excited to have you here for the podcast. It feels like I’ve had you on the podcast already, but I guess you were just one of my summit speakers. So I’m thinking about that, which we will link to in the show notes, everyone. If you have not checked that out, you’re definitely going to want to check out her presentation in the Chase and Simple Summit because it’s absolutely incredible.

But for those that haven’t gone through the summit yet, tell us a little bit about who you are and what

you Yes, I’m so excited to be here. I know we went live on my Instagram once too. I feel like we’ve had enough collaborations that we’re like, this isn’t the first rodeo, but, uh, I’m Elizabeth. I am a professional community builder.

I specialize in community based marketing and helping people build communities. And newsletter marketing to go with those communities so that marketing is light and easy. And I even have a really, really specific system that can keep open rates above 40% for your newsletter and engagement rates above 40% in your community.

So we have the data to back the, uh, we’ll call it my methodologies, but that’s kind of my little, uh, niche, but I am with leadership, and I do a lot of consulting inside teams, uh, as far as leadership and building community, because it really does start from the inside out of your business. You have to have good culture and community, you know, behind the scenes to have that good culture and community externally as well.

I just want to like

put that on a loop and just have that be the whole episode. I, that’s it. That’s, that’s the whole

message. There’s your golden nugget. We’re done. Now we can just talk about like cats and dogs.

So, okay. I love, I love, I love, I love the light and easy marketing. That’s just, it’s what we all want.

It’s what we all need because let’s face it, marketing is a lot because there’s so many different options out there, but in particular. One marketing platform that everyone thinks is dead is Facebook, right? We all think Facebook said, I’m not going to lie myself included. I struggle so much with getting engagement on Facebook.

And obviously you don’t believe that because that’s a large part of what you do is building community within Facebook groups. So can you tell us a little bit more about why Facebook groups are still really beneficial for businesses?

Yeah. So Facebook groups are not trendy, right? They’re not what’s trending.

They worked 10 years ago and they still work today. And I think there’s something to be said for the marketing strategies that really last the test of time or whatever that saying is. And I wish that I had kept going on some of the Facebook groups that I started five years ago, 10 years ago. But. I really struggled with consistency back then, like who doesn’t, but they definitely are not dead.

I think the biggest, um, thing that I see people struggle with when it comes to platforms like Instagram is yes, they work, but they’re also trendy. They also take a lot of time and effort and, you know, and if time and effort is not your thing, then I definitely recommend Facebook groups focusing on searchability, like SEO, things that are going to continue to last.

And even the Instagram experts will tell you that like. 2% of your followers are seeing your content like 2% you and I both have like between three and thousand three thousand and four thousand followers on Instagram. Like only a few people are seeing that mouth. It’s horrible. Like only, and that is the Instagram experts are putting that statistic out there.

60

people for 3000, 3000 followers, 60

people. Yeah. And if I look at my stories, I would say consistently it’s between 60 and 200 people. And I have to work hard to get that number to 200 on a daily basis. It’s closer to that 60 to 100 mark that are watching my stories. And then seeing the feed is even lower, but my reels.

It averages between one and 400 people, but that’s out of 3500 people that said, raise their hand. Like I I’m following you. I want to see your stuff. And they’re just not. And Facebook groups are not dead because 40%. Of people are going to see your stuff. So you’re already ahead of the curve. If you can keep that engagement rate up and even Facebook groups that are dead and they haven’t touched them.

I’m still seeing that number closer to 20%. So right there. Wow, it’s already working in your favor. Not to mention, you don’t have to work hard branding your stuff in Canva. Facebook groups do not care about pretty branded curated. They don’t. You’re just getting conversations started. And a realization that I had recently that I love.

is Facebook groups are like second base. So think of Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, wherever you are, that’s first base, that’s where people find you. But then if you invite them into your Facebook group, and you followed some of my optimization processes, so you’re you’re attracting and repelling the right people.

That’s second base. So not only are more of those people seeing your stuff, but they’re also warmer leads, because they’ve gone that next step of finding you on one of these. Diamond or what a needle in a haystack platforms, but now they’re like, no, I want more. And I want to be part of your community. So it’s, it’s, it’s a better place for lead generation because it’s second base.

I have so

many questions. I don’t know what direction to take this

next. Well, I got time,

baby. Okay. So first question going directly off of that. Well, essentially what you’re doing is you’re putting Facebook groups on the same level that I put email lists, email marketing. How do, how do those work together?

Because I’m like in my mind and what I tell my clients is all of your social media, you’re just send people to your email list. That’s the whole purpose of social media is to send people to your email list. Selling through social media is a bonus. What you want to do is get people on the email list. And so if you’re focusing on that with Instagram and tick tock, and then you’re also trying to push people to Facebook, how do those work together?

Oh, my gosh, I love this question. And this is what really makes this marketing plan so unique. Your Facebook group, your online community, I never like to make people think it has to be Facebook group, any online platform, circle, discord, whatever, doesn’t matter. But your online community, your Facebook group, and your newsletter are the same.

Same, okay, you’re going to populate that group with the same people that on your newsletter, you know, you can segment your newsletter. I have a segment of mine that’s called the community builders that matches my Facebook group, but now that leverages the amount of things that you have to talk about in your newsletter.

And you can say like, man, Amanda had this great question inside the community today, go, you know, give her some advice or check out the answers, or I’m going live on Friday. And I actually use the newsletter strategy To help that engagement on the Facebook group and vice versa. And I see it week after week.

As soon as that weekly newsletter goes out, engagement gets bumped up. People are interacting with the posts because we all know in marketing, it’s like repetition, getting things in front of people multiple times. So if your newsletter efforts are not being backed by an online community and vice versa, you’re kind of leaving engagement on the table.

Oh, man, this is a where you think my entire strategy,

I know, and you’re probably asking, like, well, how do you set that up? Because I think a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their brain around. What do you mean by pairing it? So in the questions to enter the group, you have an opportunity to promote your freebie.

And if you set up the group, Properly, you can maximize SEO on Facebook. So say you create a group on how to tie your shoe. So for someone to get into that group, they answer these membership questions, which are awesome. Cause you get to know your customer. Um, you can ask for their email address and you can put them on your list directly there.

So I might say, join this group to learn five ways to teach your kid to tie their shoe. And as they enter, grab my free guide on how to teach your kid how to tie her shoe in one hour. Right. It’s the same problem we’re solving. And so they’re going to get that freebie as they enter the group. Now, if you already have the freebie, you’re just going to add to that welcome email.

Oh, by the way, we also have a community if you haven’t joined yet. So now the freebie and the Facebook group are two gateways to the same destination. So you can talk about your Facebook group on your other platforms, which gets people on your list, or you can talk about that freebie on your platforms, which gets people to your Facebook group.

And you use both of them simultaneously, week after week after week.

Okay. So how do you fit in podcasts, blog posts, YouTube videos into that strategy, because what I’ve been doing and what I tend to have my clients do is your weekly or biweekly or monthly newsletter is sending people to those. Long form content pieces so that people can get to know you.

How do you fit that into the strategy? Yeah,

that’s such a good question. So I do feel like my, my podcast is almost like third base, right? So when people find my, and some people do find my podcast and that’s like, that gets them to first, second, third base. But most of the time people in my community will say, Oh my God, I didn’t know you had a podcast.

Like I’m running to listen because I didn’t know this. So I use the podcast in all the different ways, but my content has more variety on the podcast where my Facebook group is very, very specific. My Facebook group is where I really want the people that I’m selling to because they’ve kind of raised their hands saying, like, I want you to solve my problem or my podcast is like where people can get to know, like, and trust me.

So my strategy might be a little bit. different there where some people are selling straight from their podcasts, so they might want to use the group to drive traffic to the podcast. But I will say I’ve had a lot of people come to me and say, I created a community for my podcast and like it’s not working.

And it’s just because you got to think about. human behavior. People are not going to a Facebook group to then leave the Facebook group and go listen to a podcast. So when people create a community and they’re like, here’s episode 102, here’s episode 103. That’s not why they’re there. Like people are in Facebook groups to be seen and heard.

So there’s an opportunity for you to get to know your listeners, to ask them questions like, Hey, how would you teach your kid how to tie their shoe? And that’s what Facebook groups are really about. So it’s thinking about your content in a way that this is the place where I get to start conversations, but my audience is going to really take the lead and continuing the conversations.

And you have.

a freebie that will help with that, right? Tell us a little

bit about that. Yeah. So I have a freebie that helps you double your engagement in two weeks. It absolutely works if you do it. And it’s simply just adjusting the way of thinking to asking questions. So if I were to go to your Instagram, I could come up with like 10 conversation starters in just a few minutes because Facebook groups love One line questions.

So 80% of your content can be one line or less, and it doesn’t even need to be branded. That’s why this is a five minute a day strategy. And that guide helps you think about questions that are easy to answer. that help you get to know your your members and get them talking about a pain point. So it might be what’s one thing that you start but never seem to be able to finish.

Some people might say working out some people might say cooking dinner, but you might get that person that’s like Ah, I can never finish teaching my kid to tie their shoe. Boom, you get to like be the person that rescues them. Oh my god, did you know I have all this content on how to do this? Or, you know, here’s my offer and you can just sell straight to them or whatever that looks like.

But that’s sort of what that that 80% of content being one line or less. That’s like, it’s just gold. It’s so easy. So

do you, is the majority of what you’re posting Facebook groups that, I mean, I guess you just said 80% one line or less, the majority is that, but do you also, do you ever send people to your podcast?

What does that look

like? Yeah. So recently I did, cause I kind of, I guess when I started this strategy, like. I kind of forgot that they would even be interested in my podcast because I just wasn’t focused on that. So just recently I started incorporating in my weekly newsletter what’s on the podcast if it’s relevant.

But here’s where I really get kind of flip flip over the way you’re thinking about it. I go live in my group two to four times a month and I go live to talk directly about the pain points that they have in those questions that they answer to enter the group. Those Facebook lives. Are my first content creation and those are getting repurposed.

on YouTube and for my podcast. So not every single Facebook live gets put on the podcast, but a lot do. Um, so I can remind people, but I just send them back to the Facebook group to go watch that live stream. But if I have an episode on the podcast, that’s slightly different than I’ll remind them about it.

So I don’t use the podcast quite as much as I use. Uh, the features that Facebook groups already offer, like going live. But one of my favorite tips that like blows people’s minds is you can actually change the thumbnails of your Facebook lives. and create your own little YouTube channel. So inside my group, you can click on media and videos and you can choose all these different videos that are on the topic of like why the people are there.

So I’m almost creating my own little experience. You know, and the podcast is just like icing on the cake. The podcast is like, you know, where I really share the behind the scenes and the nitty gritty of my business, more so that I’m not really selling for my podcast. We all are in a way, but I’m using the podcast to drive more traffic to the Facebook group.

So I guess you could say it’s like one of my first bases. Yeah, I

know. That’s, that’s interesting. I wasn’t thinking about it in that way because in my mind, the, the long form content was the end all be all, but what you’re doing is you’re repurposing what you’re doing in the Facebook group to the podcast and to your

YouTube channel to the more long form stuff.

Yeah, because the way I see it, anybody that finds me out of the blue. On the podcast, on YouTube, on Instagram, on TikTok, I want them to make their way, like you said, to my email list and to my Facebook group. So, and those are, those are so much more friendly, like people are still finding a YouTube video I did five months ago and getting on my newsletter email that way.

Like that doesn’t happen on Instagram. Like a post from five months ago is gone. It is long gone. Two days ago was gone. Exactly. Exactly. So that long form SEO is definitely where, you know, our efforts are, which is why I’m like, I’m not on Instagram as much as I used to be, but it’s just not the best use of my time.

No.

And that is such an important point because you can’t be on every marketing platform unless you have a massive team. And even then, is it worth the time that you’re paying someone on your team to do for you is another great question. Okay. So. We’re in our Facebook groups. We are 80% of the time using one liners to encourage conversation.

And if we don’t know where to start, we’re going to go to the show notes and grab Elizabeth’s freebie where she has 25 conversation starter prompts for us. Yes. How do we get people into our group? You mentioned earlier, really focusing on SEO and obviously using all of our other content platforms to drive people into the Facebook group.

Is there anything else you do to really encourage that join this group kind of thing, especially when people are thinking about it all. Not as excited about using

Facebook anymore. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love this question and you’re going to love the answer because my, my favorite way to get people in the group is speaking opportunities and summits.

And I see time after time again, we try to do a summit every month because summits will dump. Anywhere from 30 to 60 new members in my group because they’re getting to know me directly right through that summit presentation that talks usually about community building or Facebook group in some way, and they’re just like so ready for more that they jump right over to the group.

So that’s my favorite way. That’s not the easiest. way. Not everybody is already on stages, but um, I use Instagram to talk about it. So like this Friday, we have a Pinterest expert speaking in the group. So I’m sharing that on all my other platforms to drive traffic to the group. She’ll tell her audience about it, which will drive traffic to the group.

So guest experts is kind of like in between, I

would say I share about it on Instagram. My freebie drives traffic there. My freebie is. You know, gosh, going on two years old now, it’s a great freebie. It has. an incredible open rate and click rate and all those things. So I’m like, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So people find my freebie on Pinterest.

They find it on being on podcasts like this, all of these different evergreen strategies. And anytime someone downloads that freebie, they usually end up in the group as well. So it’s really just creating a group and remembering to have it top of mind as a next step for people, not just like, Hey, come hang out in my group because it’s fun.

But come hang out in my group because we’re talking about this because I’m offering this because I’m going live, like giving people a reason to join is so important. Those are

all such good strategies. And I’m, I’m excited to start potentially played around with this. I’ve got one specific client in mind that I know this would probably be really great for, but I’m wondering, so you’ve mentioned.

The idea of, okay, this is kind of a long term strategy, almost like Pinterest in my mind is what I’m thinking. You’ve mentioned that that’s a big issue people have where they don’t give themselves long enough to see results with it. You’ve mentioned that people don’t, they don’t market it enough using all of these different ways.

And you’ve mentioned that people aren’t using SEO to their advantage. Are there any other common mistakes? that you see people make with their Facebook groups where they’re not seeing results.

Yeah. I mean, one of the easiest ones is just to optimize the group either from the beginning, or if you’re refreshing the group and really thinking about the name also is an opportunity for SEO.

People tend to like be like Elizabeth. community, right? But like, nobody’s searching for me because of me, right? People are going to search for the problem they want solved. So naming your group, again, using those SEO strategies of what someone might actually type, because people do go to Facebook, they go to that little search bar, they type in their problem, and they hit groups, right?

And you want your group to pop up based on the problem that people would want to find like minded people with and this works. And if you can play Facebook’s game a little bit, like not putting a ton of links in your group, then you never know, you might be one of the groups that shows up on people’s, you know, sidebar and you’ll get tons of new members overnight.

So I’ve seen it happen with my clients. Um, it has not happened with me yet, but, uh, you know, my problem is probably not specific enough and I need to continue playing with that. You can change the name of your group, like once a month, but you want to use. The name of the group in the description is an opportunity to attract and repel those, um, problem aware audience members.

So people forget that like Facebook groups alone, even if you set it and forget it, and you forget to even post in the group, if you optimize it, you could still get people on your list. Just on evergreen because you’ve figured that little strategy out and what they’re typing in.

That’s so great. So, okay, you mentioned we need to optimize it and you mentioned you had some some techniques for that.

Kind of run us through what those are. Yeah, so that’s considering the name, the description, I’m using the description to say things like this group is for you. If bullet point bullet point, this group is not for you. If and then attaching the freebie. The next 1 is those membership questions to enter, which you have 3 opportunities to.

Um, get to know their problems. I’ve seen people use dropdown menus that are really streamlined and the answers that they want to see. Um, I leave mine open because I love hearing and their words, what they’re struggling with. Um, and you can ask it really specific. Like what’s one thing you’d like to get from this group versus like, what are you struggling with right now?

Right. Like that’s takes a little more thinking power to answer that second one. Um, and then of course, have you downloaded my freebie? Here’s how you can go. Download that to solve X problem and then I see so many people that do these questions and they do nothing with them. I’m like you spent all this time getting people to answer these questions and you’re just letting them in the group and then poof, you’re never looking at those answers again.

And I like to tell people there’s an opportunity here for law of attraction. And if somebody is excited to be in your group, and they have spent time answering those questions, even if it’s just a minute or two, we need to spend time taking care of those answers so that we can serve them. And you can put all those answers into a spreadsheet.

There’s, um, a couple programs that will automate it for you. I use group leads and I have this. Beautiful spreadsheet with every single answer. So I know who’s joining, what they do, what their problem is, and if they downloaded my freebie or not. And I go back to that spreadsheet when I’m like, I need an idea for the podcast.

What am I going to talk about live? You know, and we see common themes, like how to get more engagement in your group, how to revive your group. Should I have two groups? Are Facebook dead? You know, Facebook groups dead. So we see these recurring themes, but it’s still is always a breath of fresh air that I don’t have blank canvas syndrome where I can’t think about what to talk about in the group.

Incredible. I just am just blown away. I literally did an interview yesterday, all about how to, how important it is to do that market research and different ways to automate it into your business. And there you go, right? There is another way to do

it right there. That’s free. Like Facebook groups are free, right?

Like, how much can we complain when 40% of our members are seeing our stuff and it’s free?

To clarify, when people answer those questions, when you accept, there’s no, like, after you’ve accepted someone, there’s no way to go back and see those again, right? So you have to copy paste, do whatever before you accept someone in your

group.

Is that right? So they did make an update about a year ago where you can go back and get those answers, but you, you have, I know, right. And I, that’s my most popular YouTube to recover member answer. So you can, but you have to click on people one by one to do it. So it’s not effective. If you have like 300 people that joined your group in the last month and you want to get all those answers, like, Holy moly, I’m not even sure I would pay a VA to do it.

Although if their email addresses, I absolutely would. But, um, With group leads, it just automatically dumps it into a spreadsheet. So you can kind of set it and forget it and just accept in that those, those get documented automatically. But I will say like, I harp on my clients all the time, like they are giving you their email address and the market research, like.

Take care of these answers, like check your spreadsheet every day to make sure that it’s working properly and take care of those answers because those answers are gold. Like email addresses are worth dollars. Like we, you know, if you really know the numbers in your business and you know, a dollar amount that each email address is worth.

Yeah,

that it’s so important. And it is one of those that if you don’t have something doing it. on an automated system for you. It can seem just too tedious to be worth it, but that is a really big deal. Anytime someone’s willing to give you their email address, it’s a really big deal.

Yeah, exactly. And you can’t have a VA do it.

Uh, absolutely. It’s not a hard thing to outsource or delegate, but group leads is 29 a month. You’d end up paying a human being more than that. But you can have someone else on your team manage it and make sure that it’s working properly every day so that you don’t have to be the one letting people in.

You know, there’s a lot of different ways to kind of streamline that, but it’s an important piece.

Do you have thoughts on using Facebook groups for free communities versus paid? And by paid, I mean someone’s purchased a course or a membership and there’s a Facebook group component to it. What’s the difference there?

Is there one that’s better or worse?

What are your thoughts on that? I know that’s such a good question, and I haven’t formulated a strong opinion because I think that it really depends on you as a business owner and how you want to serve and what kind of experience you want to provide. I use it for both, but I am very curious and moving one of my paid communities onto like Slack or Heartbeat or something, um, you know, a little less distracting.

But we’re already there. They haven’t seemed to feel strongly about moving it. Um, my paid communities tend to really just value whether it’s zoom time or that extra layer. So, you know, for me, I use it for both. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong. I think a lot of people, you know, have the mentality of what if I’m giving all this energy into my free group?

Like, I feel bad if I’m not giving the same energy to my paid group, you know, and I’m like, but, but we should be. Giving a ton of energy to try to get people to know like and trust us and pay us right well and

you’re that’s probably not the biggest it’s a bonus in a paid group most likely versus the

exactly exactly exactly and if it is the paid thing and you’re doing a membership and you’re really fostering community and there’s no course or whatever to go along with it then yeah you probably need to spend a little bit more effort there but if you’re just creating a container like I love to think of These these communities as containers, then as long as they have access to you or your team or whatever that looks like.

You know, it’s on them to do the work and ask the questions like we don’t, it’s not always on us to pull that out of people. You know, there’s a little bit of accountability and responsibility that needs to happen when people make an investment. So good.

So just another

loop right here. Even though we want it, we want to be the superhero.

But, you know, realistically, we have to release ourselves from that, that pressure.

So you’ve mentioned Circle and Slack and Discord and Heartbeat and all these other different places that we could build communities. What are your thoughts on those versus Facebook groups, particularly in keeping in mind with a

free group? Yeah. You know, I have not found one. That can compare or compete, I guess I should say in the areas that I’ve worked.

And I’ve helped a couple of clients with Mighty Networks and it’s great. From the user perspective, you know, there’s like ones I didn’t love. I love Slack for teams and I love Slack for like masterminds. I’m not sure that I would want to use Slack for a free community. Uh, I have my eyes on heartbeat because I feel like it kind of mimics Slack and the way that you can build the different channels and the different experiences.

And I think the best. Non Facebook group that I’ve seen is Jasmine stars, social curator. They just recently moved. Um, I think they’re on circle like a custom version of circle and they do a really good job. But if you look at their numbers. Like, it’s 10 people answering a question where it used to be like 500, you know, but I think in their situation, they may be seeing it as a good thing for that reason that we just talked about that, like the quality of people engaging as way more intentional because they’re not being reactive to a notification.

They’re visiting the group on purpose, you know? So sometimes we have to be willing to let go, like sexy engagement numbers. and understand that we’re actually leveling up because now we’re talking to people that are more serious. You know, there’s a, there’s a balance there. So speaking

along those lines, Facebook now has the at everyone function, which for some reason I don’t have, and I don’t really understand why I don’t have it, but I see people use it all the time.

Yeah. What are your thoughts on that and how best to use it without being annoying?

Yeah, well, Facebook only lets you use it once a day. So I personally only use it if it’s something really important where I’m like, Hey, I’m actually doing people a disservice if I don’t help them see this. I think it’s a little bit the people that get super annoyed by it, or when people are super apologetic, like, Hey, I’m not going to abuse this everyone tag, just stand in your power and be like, I have frickin value to give you and if you don’t like it, then don’t be here.

You know, like you can only use it once a day. And again, I don’t use it a ton because I think it’s not effective anymore. I feel like it was effective the first week, but now people are seeing that they can, in your notifications, it’ll say like Amanda has tagged you and others. So it’s become just as easy to skip over as any other notification.

So that’s why I don’t use it. I use it in my accountability group because they They are paying for that group to be held accountable. So I will use it in there, but that that’s really it. I don’t have like, I don’t, I don’t waste my energy being like, this is annoying or I’m annoying people. It’s like, no, I’m here.

I’m here to help. And it’s my job to get my content in front of you because you raised your hand to be here. That’s a good mindset shift. I

like that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this is all incredible. But what we don’t want to do is we don’t want everyone to hear about a new marketing strategy or tactic, even though Facebook is not new, but hear in a new way and get really excited about it and jump in and not give it the energy it deserves because not every marketing strategy is right for everyone at a specific time.

So what would you say people should think about as far as whether or not A free Facebook group for building community is right for them. And at what place in business is it right to start implementing that?

Yeah, that’s, that’s a really good question. I feel like it would take a little digging into like what someone wants and what they want out of their community.

And I have always known that. I am good at community. I love community. I love bringing people together, being able to tag people and introduce them. I spend so much of my time just connecting people to other people that I know, and I’m passionate about it. There are some people that are not right that they are like, I don’t want people asking me questions.

I don’t want people tagging me. I don’t want to be available 24 hours a day. Like that makes some people just so uncomfortable. So that’s probably not the best solution for them. If you’re, if you’re one of those people that like, you want to sell a course and just be done with that transaction, then a Facebook community might not be for you.

You know, I, time is definitely not a thing. And I, I hear people say all the time, I don’t have time for a Facebook group, but I’m telling you, like, all you have to do is post three to five times a week. Remembering that that content is one line or less. And one email newsletter a week to kind of go along with the experience you’re providing.

And just one really good piece of value a week is enough. Like people have even said, I love, you know, your groups because I can come and get caught up and I’m not scrolling forever trying to figure out what’s new in the group. I can keep up. With the pace of the value that’s being given. So just one little value nugget a week.

And other than that, you can ask questions. You can share funny gifts. I mean, it’s minutes. It’s minutes a day. So I don’t like time to be the thing that stops people. Cause I’m like, how much time are you spending on those beautiful Instagram graphics and reels?

You know, I get seen by 60 people.

Yes, exactly.

Um, and I even had one of my best friends, Angie, you know, she didn’t start her group forever. And I was like, you know what? You’re so good at Instagram. Like, it’s just not for you and that’s okay. But she started a group and she’s like, I wish I would have started this soon. Right. And, you know, I think with certain niches like photography, the group will, uh, kind of have an ecosystem of its own and the members post way more often than I see in other niches.

So some niches naturally just take off. Whereas I find like coaching and consulting to be a little bit harder for it to just take off on its own. But, you know, occasionally, like you don’t even really have to do the heavy lifting, your members do it for you. But it’s not for everyone. So I really appreciate you asking that question because it truly isn’t.

And they’re like, if you’re in the influencer and you love being on stage, you know, stay on stage. But a Facebook community is like sitting at a lunch table.

So there’s, there are so many nuggets in this episode. If you could give everyone just one action step to take today or take this week, what would it be?

If you have a group, just post some thoughtful questions in there and see what happens. And when I say thoughtful, I mean Easy to answer, but also give people an opportunity to talk about themselves because that’s why they’re really there, but you don’t want them to think too hard. Right. But you want them to be able to showcase what they’re good at.

Not just like share your website, but, you know, one of the, one of the questions that was doing really good for a while was, you know, if you were to land on stage right now and give a presentation, like, what would it be on? You know, I think some of those questions have kind of lost their excitement because so many people have used them, but those are the type of questions you want to ask.

Like, what’s one thing you’re going to let go of in the next six weeks? Like be specific, but also something that people already have at the top of their mind and they can answer. So that would probably be my first thing is if you have a group, just try posting questions and stop posting like bullet points and content like it is not Instagram, it’s so different.

And then if you don’t have a group, I would just encourage you to explore what that might look like or what might become possible for you. If you know, 40% of people are actually seeing the hard work you’re doing. Was that specific enough? Yes, that was,

yes. Specific and simple enough. Sometimes I have people answer with like five steps and I’m like, that’s

not actionable.

But I do want, you know, if people have taken the time to hear this, I do want them to walk away and say like, I know what to do next. And if you don’t, if you’re not in one of those two scenarios that I mentioned, then just reach out and we’ll help you brainstorm.

And probably listen to this again, because truly Elizabeth has given us so many different nuggets and things that I’m going to go back and listen to this one

again.

I already know. Yeah. The only, the only part of my system that we didn’t touch on and we won’t go deep, but Facebook groups allow you to create an onboarding experience. And again, you can’t do that on Instagram. Like you can tag them in a welcome post that tells them how to get the most out of the group.

You know, you can send them a message. There’s so many different ways that you can. Automate again, that experience. And when you guys join my group, you’ll kind of see it in action where you get tagged in a welcome post. And then you get a little DM from me, and it’s not selling. It’s like, literally, I’m glad you’re here.

And I know you have value to bring. So making them feel, you know, seen, heard and important, but a lot of platforms, you can’t do that. You can’t give people an entire onboarding experience the same way you can and teachable or Kajabi you can do right in a Facebook group. That’s so true. That’s such

a good point.

Yeah. If you could give everyone one book recommendation, what would it be? What’s a must read or a must listen

to? Oh, this is such a good one because I feel like I have a couple. Um, my most recent, I would say trust and inspire. Um, I’ve been doing a lot of like team building, consulting and There’s trust and inspire leaders and there’s command and control leaders.

And this comes in handy and parenting. It comes in handy and relationships and it comes in handy and business. And if you’re going to grow a community, that means you’re a leader. So you want to have the best leadership skills possible.

Perfect, and we will link to that in the show notes, friends. As always, we will also, of course, link to Elizabeth’s Facebook community, so you guys can go check it out and start learning from her.

Where else can they find you so they can start learning from you?

Yeah, so I’m on Instagram at Elizabeth. Henson, the Facebook group. You can just go to Facebook and search the Community Builder, and it’ll pop up, and, um, we’re on Pinterest and YouTube, but you can either search Elizabeth Henson or the Community Builder, and you can usually, Uh, find me pretty easily.

Perfect. Thank you so much for being here today, Elizabeth. And just for sharing so much actionable, practical tips. I really appreciate that.

Oh, well, it was easy. You’re, you’re so organized and fun to work with.

Thank

you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 176: Facebook Communities Aren’t Dead?! with Elizabeth Henson appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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How To Get Your Audience to Engage with Your ContentTired of putting out content and hearing crickets? You’re using calls to action, you’re asking questions, and yet no one ever responds. Your inbox is empty, your dms are empty, and it just feels like no one is paying attention.

The good news is that they probably ARE paying attention – you’re just not crafting your calls to action in a way that makes people interested in engaging. The other good news? All’s it takes are a few small tweaks to create content your audience will actually engage with, and I’m going to tell you how.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * This week’s action step: Choose just one of these to work on incorporating easier CTAs this month. * This week’s book recommendation: Who is Maud Dixon by Alexandra Andrews * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateTired of putting out content and hearing crickets. You’re using calls to action. You’re asking questions, and yet no one ever responds. Your inbox is empty, your dms are empty, and it just feels like no one is paying attention. The good news is that they probably are actually paying attention. You’re just not crafting your calls to action in a way that makes people interested in engaging.

The other good news. Alls it takes are a few small tweaks to create content your audience will actually engage with, and I’m going to tell you how. You’re listening to episode 175 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book Chase, simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend. This is Chasing Simple Where Practical Marketing Strategy Meets Simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one-on-one clients, such as the Contract shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or how my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell reading in our hammock watching Gamecock Sports traveling or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really wanna be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips and advice on uncomplicating, your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.

My book, Chaisng Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that Master’s of Business Administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing. Overwhelming and frustrating.

Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing, and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amanda warfield.com/book.

I’ll see you there. Wanna know the secret to getting your audience to actually engage with your content? It’s to make it as easy as possible. All too often when we create our calls to action, we create calls to action that are overly complicated and they seem simple. But when you sit down and think about it, the reality is, is that you’re asking too much of your audience.

So, for example, you ask a question and in your mind, A question is simple, just answer the question in the comments. Well, depending on how the question is asked or what the question is, it may require them to think, and if they have to think they’re not gonna answer because. It takes too much of their time and their mental capacity.

So what we wanna do is we wanna make sure that what we’re putting out is as easy as possible to follow by asking simple questions and giving simple commands. But we also wanna make sure that we’re not giving too many calls to action because that also can cause that analysis paralysis of, well, which do you want?

And what do you want from me? So when it comes to YouTube, for example, you want to make it as easy as possible to follow through. YouTube makes it easy because you can include links all over the place, which is really nice. You can include the link to other videos. You can pop up other videos within your video at the end of your YouTube video itself.

You can include the link to something that. Is outside of YouTube. You can include links in your description, all of these different things. So what you wanna do is you wanna decide what is your one call to action going to be. Maybe it’s to grab your freebie, but you wanna make sure you link to your freebie in the notes below, in the description.

You also wanna make sure that at the end of your video, that freebie link is there and that you’re sending people to that. But make it enticing, make it simple for them to know that they. Need it as well. Don’t just say, I have this freebie. Go download it. Instead say something like, if you want to x, I have what you need.

Here’s how you can get it. Give them a strong reason so that they know, oh yes, I do need that. If you just say, Hey, I’ve got this free training that’s gonna give you five ways to do this thing, they’re gonna go, but do I need it? Is it gonna help me? There’s all these silent questions that run through their mind, right?

Whereas if you say, if you want to achieve x. This is what you need. It’s gonna make it a lot easier for them to take that action step. The same is true for a podcast, but with a podcast it’s a lot harder because you, you can put links in your show notes, but when you think about how most people are listening to podcasts, they’re listening on the go.

And so you wanna make sure that if you are telling someone to go to a link, you’re making the link really easy to remember. You also, May want to consider that your call to action isn’t a link, or if it is that you’re gonna need to repeat it over and over and over again throughout multiple episodes, because they’re not going to most likely stop what they’re doing to look up a link real quick.

Every now and then people will, but for the most part, part, that’s not easy. It’s not simple, right? It’s, oh, I have to stop cleaning, or I have to pause. On my walk, or if they’re driving, they’re definitely not gonna be able to. So you have to think about that as far as, okay, a link may be difficult or it may be something that I realistically know that I need people to hear 7, 8, 10 times.

So I need to talk about it in all of these different episodes. Or what you can do with the podcast is have a simpler call to action, like head to. You’re a player and make sure you subscribe so that you get this episode so that you get my episodes every single week or every other week, however often they drop.

Or you could make it really simple as far as. Share this episode with a friend. Just click that little button, you know, make it as simple as possible so that they’re more likely to take action. In all transparency, a podcast is probably the type of long form content, or really content in general where you’re gonna get the least amount of engagement because it is.

Just the nature of how people listen to podcasts. You listen to it while you’re busy, you listen to it on the go, and so you’re most likely not gonna stop to take whatever call to action it is. So keep that in mind as well. It may be something that you should have to repeat over and over and over again throughout a series of episodes and recognize that you’re probably not gonna get a ton of engagement through a podcast.

If you have a blog, it’s really simple because you get to add links and you can add images that you make that when clicked, send people to a certain link. And so you can visually entice people. And you also, again, your phrasing is gonna be really important. And instead of, here’s this freebie, go download it.

You should say, if you want. This or to do this, to achieve this, this freebie will help you. This training will help you, whatever that would look like. But you could say it like that, and you also can add the addition of that visual graphic that you can stick in there. So that is a really easy way to gain engagement with a blog.

I would recommend linking two different blog posts that you have. Or, and because realistically for seo, you should be linking other blog posts throughout each blog, but your main call to action either being, go read this other blog post, or a way to get on your email list, potentially if the blog post is really, really specifically geared towards.

Say something in your shop or a service that you offer, link to that. But I wouldn’t ask people to leave comments. It’s not how people are using blogs these days, and alls it does is create work for you to have to moderate and then go respond and all of that. So I would recommend linking to another blog, a freebie, some way to get on your email list or a service or product that you have for your blog, and let that be the way that you get people to engage with it.

When it comes to emails, you want to make sure that you end every single email with a call to action again. When you’re linking to outside things, you wanna phrase it so that here’s what you wanna achieve, here’s how I can help you do it. But you also could just enter emails with a question and encourage your people to respond to you again, you wanna make sure that that question is so, so simple.

Give them a this or that type answer, or ask a simple yes or no question, and that’s gonna be more likely to get a response than. Tell me what your biggest struggle with this is. There are times and places where that question makes sense in your emails. Absolutely. I recommend that often for different types of emails, but for your general week to week email, just having a simple, have you already started doing this?

Yes or no, let me know. Type question or, Do you prefer this or do you prefer that, or do you want to start with this or start with that. Giving them a really easy way to just hit reply and send you a quick answer that they don’t have to think about. That’s gonna get you more email responses than a.

Open-ended, longer type question that they really have to sit there and think about. The same is true for your Instagram feed. Having those really, really simple questions in your feed is going to make it much more likely for people to engage on. One of my most ever engaged with post on Instagram, the call to action was, do you prefer hot coffee or iced coffee?

And I got more comments on that than I have ever gotten on. Any other post because it was really, really simple for people to say, oh, I prefer this one, or I prefer that. Now Instagram stories are going to be a little bit different. They’re gonna let you take it to the next level. So, Instagram has created all of these different stickers that you can use to help your people engage with you.

I really, really love using polls because it’s a simple this or that type answer, right? And they’re able to say which one they prefer, which one they think. It’s not something they have to think about. There are the question boxes, which are more open-ended. Those are great for recommendations when you’re asking someone for a recommendation.

They can be utilized in other ways, but you’re more likely to get engagement with a poll. Versus an open-ended question box unless you’re asking for recommendations. There are also these buttons that you can put an emoji and people can tap, or there’s a slider there. There are a bunch of different engagement type ones, but the two that I see get the most engagement currently are the polls and the question boxes, and you just want to be strategic about how you use them.

If you’re asking something open-ended, realize that it may not get as many responses. With the question box, but if you’re asking something open-ended, the question box is the way to go. If you’re asking something that can be poll formatted, I really recommend using the poll box. But if you’re looking for recommendations, which is a great way to get people to engage is ask what they think and what they use, incredible way to get engagement, and that would be a great spot for those question boxes as well.

And there you have it. Different ways that you can make it just a smidge easier and simpler for your audience to engage with your content. Those really tiny tweaks can go a long way towards boosting your engagement. And just one more thing that I wanted to say, particularly about engagement around social media right now, especially on Instagram, engagement is low and that can turn into a self-defeating.

Process where we aren’t getting engagement, and so we stop encouraging engagement. So I really wanna encourage you to think about that. Are you actually encouraging your audience to engage with your content or are you just putting content up and hoping they’ll engage? And there is a big difference there.

So your action step this week is to choose just. One of these to work on incorporating easier calls to action this month. So whether that’s your stories or your Instagram feed, or your emails or your blog, or your podcast or YouTube, what one place are you going to work on really tweaking and improving your calls to action so that they’re easier and simpler for your people to engage with so that they don’t have to think.

That is the whole goal is to make it so that they don’t have to do a lot of thinking. Now, this week’s book recommendation is who is Mod Dixon by Alexandra Andrews. And this is one of the twisties books I have ever read. So if you like surprises in your books and you like twists and never knowing what’s coming next.

This is when you’re definitely gonna wanna check out, and I will link to that in the show notes. All right, my friend. Until next time, I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over@amandawarfield.com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never missed an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now. Go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 175: How to Get Your Audience to Engage with Your Content appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Choosing Your Marketing Strategy Focus for Sustainable GrowthYou’ve been creating content for awhile now, and you’ve got a rhythm for showing up consistently. You know you’re ready for the next step – strategy – but you don’t know where to begin.

There are hundreds of marketing tactics out there that you could try to implement. But which ones make the most sense for your business? Where do you even begin? How do you avoid shiny object syndrome, and instead ensure that whatever you’re doing is worth your time and actually moving the needle in your business?

Today I’m sharing exactly how to choose where your focus should be for your marketing strategy, and how to get started in 4 simple steps as well as a peak at what my own marketing strategy is for 2023. So that you can walk away confident in choosing how to best leverage your time for marketing.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Need help with your content strategy? Book a 1:1 Content Marketing Strategy call * Are you looking to improve your content without spending a ton of time and mental energy doing so? Whether you’re looking for help knowing what to talk about, setting up content systems, or improving your launch strategy, the Chasing Simple Shop has something for you. From A Year of Content Prompts broken up by type of content, to my Launch Strategy Mini-Course – the Chasing Simple Shop is the quick and simple way to take your content to the next level. And you can get 10% off any item by using the code LISTENER at checkout! Just head to amandawarfield.com/shop/ and again, that code for 10% off is LISTENER! * This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/ * This week’s action step: Revisit your goals for the year, determine what your goal for your content is, and then ask yourself how you can measure that goal. * This week’s book recommendation: Dirt by Mary Marantz. 5 stars. So beautifully written. * Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield*

Did you love this episode?Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!

Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurateYou’ve been creating content for a while now, and you’ve got a rhythm for showing up consistently. You know you’re ready for the next step strategy, but you don’t know where to begin. There are hundreds of marketing tactics out there that you could try to implement, but which ones make the most sense for your business?

Where do you even begin? How do you avoid shiny object syndrome and instead, ensure that whatever you’re doing is worth your time and actually moving the needle in. Today I’m sharing exactly how to choose where your focus should be for your marketing strategy and how to get started in four simple steps, as well as a peak at what my own marketing strategy is for 2023, so that you can walk away confident in choosing how to best leverage your time for marketing.

You’re listening to episode 162 of The Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple content planner, and you can grab your own at AmandaWarfield.com/planner. ,

how do I run a successful business from my home? How can I possibly wear all of the hats? Am I the only one that struggles with staying organized? What am I supposed to do about work-life balance? How can I create a solid schedule and routine? How do I even stay productive? And the biggest question of.

How do I manage it all? And can I really create a business that I love without being chained in my laptop? Welcome to The Chasing Simple Podcast, where hard conversations and actionable education meet simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, time management coach, online educator, and crazy Cat Mama. My mission is to help overwhelm biz owners get more done and less time so that they have more time and energy for what matters.

If you feel overwhelmed or occasionally lost in the rollercoaster, that is entrepreneurship, I want you to know that you aren’t alone. Those things you’re feeling, you aren’t the first or the last to feel that way. The hard things you’re going through, someone else has already been there too. Each week bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and a judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love. Practical tips and advice on simplifying your biz. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

Are you looking to improve your content without spending a ton of time and mental energy doing so? Whether you’re looking for help, knowing what to talk about, setting up content systems, or improving your launch strategy, the Chasing Simple Shop has something for you from a year of content prompts broken up by type of content to my launch strategy mini course, which will teach you my entire strategy.

Launching your upcoming online course. The Chasing Simple Shop is the quick and simple way to take your content to the next level, and you can get 10% off any item Just for being a listener of the Chasing Simple Podcast by using the Code Listener at checkout, just head to amandawarfield.com/shop. And again, that code for 10% off is listen.

If you haven’t already listened to episode 1 48, I highly recommend that you actually go listen to that one first, because in order to choose where to focus your marketing strategy, you need to really understand the two parts of what compromises a marketing strategy, so growth and nurture. A really quick overview, again, I recommend go listening to the.

Full episode 1 48 to hear more about it. But growth and nurture are the two parts of a marketing strategy and your nurture strategy is how you plan to use your marketing to nurture your current audience. And your growth strategy is how you plan to use your marketing strategy to grow your audience and then lead them into the nurture side of things.

So I want to give you an overview of what my 2023 marketing plan is. That way you. As we talk through these different things, you can get a feel for what that might look like. So my 2023 marketing plan, my nurture plan is my content. So my podcast Jason sip, my blog post, my book, blog post, my social media, my emails, all of the content that I’m creating.

The big part of my nurture strategy. Now, a couple things. I have been intentional around setting goals for this year within that nurse strategy and within that content strategy is I really want to create more book blog posts for the SEO and also just for the like pre-launch. Hype around the book, so specifically writing blog posts about the book and the book process.

The podcast obviously will continue on as it has. I cannot believe 162 episodes in that is wild to me. So that will continue on my emails. My social media will continue on as is, but I also wanted to be intentional about writing blog posts that lead towards my shop products for. SEO and also just for people who are more interested in learning more about them.

So those were a couple things within my nurture strategy that I wanted to add in this year. Those book blog posts and those blog posts related torch shop products. I’m not gonna add in a. Specific ongoing blog post because the podcast episodes are essentially each their own blog post. Anyways, but those were some that I wanted to add in, and then another part that I had originally decided, and if you’ve listened to the latest conversations over coffee episode, you’ll know that I’ve askeded this for this year.

But I’m working on it, in a way, is a funnel overhaul. So I wanted to really improve how I’m using my funnels to nurture my people and to give them good, valuable content and advice and just make it all better all the way around. I don’t know how much of that’ll actually work on this year, but that is definitely part of that nurture strategy is, okay are my freebies actually helping?

What happens after they get my fee? Re what happens after that? And just looking through all of those things and really overhauling to make sure that I am nurturing my people in the best way possible. Now, my growth strategy, I’ve got a couple things. I’ve got seo. Where I wanna focus more on Pinterest and Google, and potentially even Etsy this year.

That one is a maybe, but I definitely want to be doing a whole lot more and doing better with my SEO strategy so that I’m bringing in those cold leads and hopefully converting them through blog post, podcast episodes or whatever. Into audience members. So I really wanted to increase SEO reach. Another thing that I really wanted to be better about this year was networking.

And not only growing my network and connecting with more people, but also being better about being a referral for other people and saying, oh my gosh, you need this person in your life, and oh my gosh, you need this person and this person can help with that problem that you have right there. And just being better about that in general and really helping.

Uplift other people in my industry and in the online space in general really. So networking, seo, two parts of my growth strategy. I also, the podcast Sprint, I’ve talked about a few times I believe, but for the book specifically, I really. I think that podcast Sprint is one of the best ways that I can market that book right now, particularly in this first year as it launches.

And so one of my goals for this year was to pitch myself to 100 different podcasts that I can go on and talk about the book and talk about the content surrounding the book and help people simplify their content marketing. And so that’s another thing, getting in front of other people’s podcast audiences.

I don’t know how. If I pitch 100 times, how many of that will lead to, we’ll see, I have no idea. But that’s a goal is this podcast Sprint of every single week. I am pitching myself to a couple podcasts so that throughout the year, I hopefully end up on a decent amount that will get me in front of new audiences that will hopefully then convert into audience members.

And then the final part of my growth strategy is JV webinars. That is something that I have been telling myself that I should. New for a while now, and as of recording this, I have not set my first pitch yet, but I am in the process of getting feedback on my pitch. So we’re getting there and we’re moving along.

But those four things, networking, so building relationships, seo, so bringing in that cold traffic and then leveraging. People that I already know, or even maybe people that I don’t for the podcast Sprint, and then leveraging my people that I have relationships with and that I think would be a good fit for JV webinars.

Those four things are part of my growth strategy for the year. Those are the two parts to my own marketing strategy this year when I am helping my clients set up their own marketing strategies for the year, they have those two parts too. We focus on what are you doing to nurture people and what are we doing to grow your people?

That’s the two parts you wanna have. But how do you figure out your own strategy? First things first, you’ve got to know your goals. You cannot lead anyone anywhere without specific goals in mind. So if you haven’t listened to episode 1 47, how to map out revenue projections if you don’t know your specific goals yet definitely go do that.

Go listen to episode 1 47. When it comes to your goals, think about what are your goals for the year? Are you trying to get sales? Are you trying to get lead generation? Are you trying to raise brand awareness? And you also have to think about this in both types. With your nurture strategy. What is your goal with your growth strategy?

What is your goal? Alright, your growth strategy most likely is lead generation and brand awareness, and then your nurture strategy is most likely sales. But even within that, can you break it down further and say, what is my goal for each different part of the growth or the nurture strategy? So for example, if I look at my network, Growth goal.

Okay. What’s my goal for that? My goal is really to build relationships there that could potentially one day lead to something. But the goal is building relationships. Seo. The goal is lead generation. I am wanting to specifically use Pinterest and Google to bring in people to my content that will.

Get them onto my email list. That’s the goal there. JV webinars. My goal is specifically to sell shop products. My podcast Sprint is specifically to sell the book, and so I’m using each one of those for a specific area of my business. The email list, the shop, the book. Just relationship building in general, right?

Same thing with nurture. What are, what is each different part of my content doing? Book, blog post. That’s to help sell the book, eventually the podcast. That’s to get people onto my email list to build that no, and trust factor and bring them into my list. The blog post towards shop products. That’s to help build the seo, to sell the products, right?

All of these different parts of my strategy have their own specific goal. So you wanna think about that. What are your goals in general? For your business for the year, what are your goals for your nurture strategy? What are your goals for your growth strategy? And within each one, what are the goals for each avenue within each part of your strategy?

So you’re going to try to figure that out and figure out what those goals are for each part of both your growth and your nurture marketing. The next thing is that I want you to start small. I have lifted. What, four or five different things for each category? For each of my growth and for my nurture. I want you to pick one nurture and one growth activity at first as you’re getting started with this and start with the basics.

It can really be as simple as your nurture strategy is posting a blog post once a month and your growth strategy is to connect with three new people each. And build relationships with and hop on calls with them. Here’s where we get overwhelmed is we see people talk about 1,000,001 different strategies that you can use in your marketing strategy, right?

And we wanna implement all of them, and we start trying to implement all of them, and then we get really overwhelmed because, How do these work together? What are they all doing? I’m really like, it’s a lot. So I want you to start with one, choose one growth strategy, one’s your strategy. Start small.

Figure out what your goal is for those, and start with the basics. You do not need to jump into SEO and networking and JV webinars and podcast sprints and discover. You don’t have to do all of that. Pick one thing. And start there and start with what comes natural and sounds easiest. You don’t need to get complicated and to achieve these massive goals right off the bat, just start small and start with what comes natural.

And ask yourself, can my audience be found there? And that’s really the key to this. Start small and start with what sounds easiest. And then from there say, can I find my audience there? And if you can move forward and put your effort into that and. Be excited about putting your effort into that.

The last thing I wanna say to this is life changes and different seasons of life may require you to focus on different things. For example, I have a client where when we planned out her 2023, we set up her growth strategy as podcast interviews, and she was going to really focus on pitching herself for podcasts.

Life circumstances changed for her, and when we just met to plan out her q2. It was like we have to totally change this. We’re, in fact, we’re going to completely pull this back down. And instead of focusing majorly on a growth strategy this year, all you have the capacity for is to really just focus on nurturing your people.

And that’s okay. And it’s okay to make changes like that as things change in life. So set your plans, set your strategy, but don’t if it’s not working. It’s okay if your life circumstances changed up, it’s totally fine. And I encourage you to do that. Don’t just blindly follow what you set out instead.

Really think through and think, is this right for me? Is this helping my business? And if you do have a strategy that you set and you get a quarter in and you’re reviewing it and you’re going, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s really helping. You can either decide, no, it’s not helping. This isn’t gonna be the right strategy for me.

Let me change things up. Or you can say, let me see if I can learn more to see if I can improve what I’m doing with this strategy, and then reevaluate three months from now. To recap, how to figure out your own strategy, first and foremost, you’re gonna utilize both nurture and growth marketing. Second, you’re going to really dive into your goals and understand where you’re trying to lead people this year and work back.

To determine what are going to be the best ways to do that, and how am I gonna get there? You’re gonna start small with just one nurture and one growth activity at a time, and then you’re gonna start with what comes naturally and sounds easiest for you. Ensuring that your audience can also be found there.

It doesn’t make sense to say, okay, it would be easiest for me to go get on Instagram live with my friend who does this totally opposite thing and doesn’t have the same audience. That can be a great way to practice as you start to get into maybe pitching yourself for IG lives with people that have your audience, but don’t let that be your only way to do some growth marketing.

Okay, so your action step for this week is to revisit your goals for. Determine what your goal for your content is, and then ask yourself how you can measure that goal. How can you determine whether or not you’re moving people onto your email list. How can you determine whether you’re getting more brand awareness?

How can you determine whether you’re getting more sales of a certain thing, and how can you do that within your own audience and other people’s A. This week’s book recommendation is Dirt by Mary Moz. This is another one of those rare five stars. I feel like I have. I had quite a few five stars in 2022 actually.

There were a lot of not so great books in between, but I don’t tell you about those. But there were a lot of five stars and this one was just, it’s a memoir and it’s so beautifully written and it really just shares a lot about Mary’s life. And she was the first person in her family, I believe, to go to college and then she got a law degree and just it’s so well done.

Five stars. Highly recommend. I will link to it in the show notes, but it’s so good if you like memoirs. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you will go out. And uncomplicate your life in biz.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. If you loved this episode, it would mean the world to me if you’d leave a rating and review. This is a great way to help spread the word about this podcast and help other wonderful women like yourself find it. You can find this episode show notes as well as tons of other great resources over@amandawarfield.com.

And if you aren’t following me on Instagram yet, I’d love to connect with you over. I’m at Mrs. Amanda Warfield. Shoot me a DM and tell me what you love most about this episode. Thanks for being here, friend. I’ll see you next time.

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!The post Episode 162: Choosing Your Marketing Strategy Focus for Sustainable Growth appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

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Showing Up on Social when Life is HappeningIf we’re being honest with ourselves, sometimes it’s just HARD to show up for the front facing part of our business. Whether you’re going through something difficult, or you’re just not feeling it – that’s okay. You don’t always need to show up and be “on”. But what we do want to do is make sure that we aren’t eroding the trust that our audience has in us when we do decide to take a step back.

Today’s guest, Meg Yelaney, has had practice with stepping back from the front facing side of business, and she’s here today to share more about how to show up on social when life is happening.

Megan is a business mentor, podcaster, and speaker whose passion truly lies in helping women build businesses that allows them to thrive in their marriages as much as their bank. She is an expert as unique framework development, something that makes her clients stand out to their niche by being their 100% authentic self. She has built three successful businesses, the latest to over $3Million in sales. Meg is a also a wife, fur mom to her mini golden-doodle Luna, actress and singer, and die hard Harry Potter fan. She truly hopes to help as many women as possible build wealth for themselves & their families in a way that lights them up every single day.

I think you’ll really love this episode, because Meg and I have very similar values in how we run our businesses. So buckle up, because she’s going to share some really great tips for continuing to build trust with your audience – even when you just don’t feel like showing up.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Get your year started off on the right foot with my new and improved Year In Preview workshop * Are you looking to improve your content without spending a ton of time and mental energy doing so? Whether you’re looking for help knowing what to talk about, setting up content systems, or improving your launch strategy, the Chasing Simple Shop has something for you. From A Year of Content Prompts broken up by type of content, to my Launch Strategy Mini-Course – the Chasing Simple Shop is the quick and simple way to take your content to the next level. And you can get 10% off any item by using the code LISTENER at checkout! Just head to amandawarfield.com/shop/ * This week’s action step: In the next 72 hours, schedule a da to take b-roll footage. * This week’s book recommendations: Atomic Habits by James Clear*

Megan Yelaney is a business mentor, podcaster, and speaker whose passion truly lies in helping women build businesses that allows them to thrive in their marriages as much as their bank. She is an expert as unique framework development, something that makes her clients stand out to their niche by being their 100% authentic self. She has built three successful businesses, the latest to over $3Million in sales. Meg is a also a wife, fur mom to her mini golden-doodle Luna, actress and singer, and die hard Harry Potter fan. She truly hopes to help as many women as possible build wealth for themselves & their families in a way that lights them up every single day.