What marketing strategy has driven the most growth for your business in 2020? Listen in as my guests share in celebration of our 200th episode!

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COLLECTION OF IDEAS FROM OUR IMPACT MASTERMIND…

Marketing Tip #1: Bonnie Christine [2:53]

I’m a surface pattern designer and online educator teaching other artists and illustrators how to create income from their artwork through my membership called Flourish and my signature course called Surface Design Immersion. My number one marketing strategy from 2020 has been incorporating a calendar structure that I call annual planning. Not having enough time or not being able to focus is the number one struggle I hear from my students, members, and peers. It used to be mine as well until I began studying and implementing time management skills and workflow techniques.

Annual planning has by far been the most impactful in my business. Before I started planning out my year in advance, I would find myself making inconsistent income, and feeling like I was scrambling on a daily basis trying to decide what I was supposed to do next. Now, I set aside a full day at the end of each year to plan for the next. This allows me to space out my income so that it’s predictable and reliable, never overbook myself and always have focus and direction with what I should be working on. It also helps me build in enough lead time before an event to start talking about it in advance. The idea is to refine your schedule by creating an annual plan that allows you to get into a methodical pace where you can consistently work, find a flow, and to have plenty of margin.

When you’re ready to make a plan for your year, begin by putting your family activities, vacations, and personal priorities down first. Then begin filling in the calendar with the deadlines you already know of and any business travel you already have planned. Then work to schedule extra projects, launches, releases, and any other projects you want to focus on in the time that is remaining. Having everything evenly spaced will help prevent you from feeling overwhelmed and it will allow you to see if you should say yes or no to extra commitments as they come along.

Marketing Tip # 2: Brenda Ster [5:45]

I help direct sellers and network marketers build their businesses and make money online without being spammy or salesy. My number one tip for marketing your business is to know your customer’s journey inside and out and align it with your value ladder or your offers. From where they’re starting, they may not even realize the path ahead of them. Or they have a pain point to the first steps of transformation that can happen as they start to take action to mastery of your subject matter. You can build your value ladder to match that journey from your free opt-ins to grow your list, small offers to deepen your relationship, to the high-end offers of your course or membership that really creates the transformation for your client. Aligning the customer journey and the value ladder has exploded my business and passive income in 2020 and I really hope it helps you as well.

Marketing Tip # 3: Emily Jeffords [6:39]

I am a fine artist that helps other artists run thriving and profitable businesses through my membership called The Collective and through my favorite marketing tip of 2020, which is super specific, super-targeted trainings that meet the needs of my ideal artist. My ideal artist is someone that’s in that growing phase where they know what they want to create, but they’re stuck on how to make an actual business out of it. So, I help them to outline a full year of strategy and give really practical advice for growing their business sustainably and consistently throughout the year. I market these really specific trainings, which could be in the form of a PDF or in the form of a workshop, through my podcast, blog, Instagram, paid ads, and all kinds of other ways. And they work really well for growing my audience and my membership, because they meet the needs of my perfect person. When these people find that my advice actually works, it adds credibility to both my work and my methods, and makes them want to join. Create Anticipation [10:15]

I got one final bonus idea for you. When you’re coming up with a new piece of content, if you know that something good is coming down the pipeline and you’ve been working on it, then create some anticipation for it. Don’t just put it out there. Create a little build-up for it.

For example, we’re coming up on our 200th episode. Did you know that? So, to celebrate, on the Marketing Your Business podcast, we’re doing something special. I’ve invited a number of people to come and join me for the 200th episode. You’re going to love this because I’m asking them one specific question. And you’re going to get rapid fire awesomeness throughout the entire episode.

Marketing Tip # 4: Suzi Dafnis [8:13]

We help women business owners finally create a profitable business that gives them the impact, the income, and the results that they want, and we do that through our membership, the Her Business Network mentoring and mastermind programs. My number one marketing strategy from 2020 was using client stories in our marketing. Whether you have five clients or thousands like we do, every single customer story is an opportunity for you to use that story to appeal to another client just like them. We have used our member stories on social media, on podcasts, in interviews, in publicity, on webinars, on our website, in live casts, and on sales pages. Using client stories has been hugely powerful because we’re using the actual words of real people and not our own marketing speak, and it helps resonate with them more. This has allowed us to really see a boost in our membership growth.

Marketing Tip # 5: Jamie Swanson [9:16]

I help transformation-driven entrepreneurs who are stuck in the messy middle to gently transform their business into something light and simple so they can finally get the results they know they should be getting by now. 2020 has been an incredibly hard year for everybody, and most people have a pretty low emotional capacity right now. What I have found is that people need somebody to believe in them more than ever. If you can be that person and make people believe that you truly care about them and can help them, they’re going to be far more likely to buy from you. So, my number one marketing tip for 2020 is to get as personal as you can and show your people that you care. Embrace personal DMs, voice messages, and custom videos as much as you possibly can in your marketing.

My favorite tool for doing this is called VideoAsk, and I use it to grow my email list for my podcast. Instead of people going to a landing page with an opt-in form, they go directly to a video of me welcoming them or thanking them, making a quick little connection with them, and telling them what they need to do to subscribe to my email list. Then they enter their email and their name just like normal. Right after that, they get another personal video from me asking them if they would introduce themselves and inviting them to ask me any questions they have. They can respond right there on the screen, whether they’re on mobile or their desktop with the quick click of a button and send me a video, a voice message or a text right back. That thing comes directly to the app on my phone and gives me a notification so I can respond right then and there. It allows me to have real conversations with my people, which means I can be constantly improving my messaging, and it increases conversions in a huge way.

Marketing Tip # 6: Susan Bradley [12:32]

I am the founder of The Social Sales Girls, and we teach e-commerce store owners how to get more traffic so they can sell more of their beautiful products and really build the business that they’ve been dreaming of. My best tip for marketing in 2020 is pretty simple. It’s just a consistent focus on generating leads. Instead of really getting heavily invested in building a great big launch list and a build-up to opening the doors to the inner circle, I made a conscious decision to focus on generating leads every day of the year. We really just set up one really good lead magnet, with a budget and a lead goal every month.

Then, we keep those leads super warm by making sure that they get an email every week. The email delivers a quick win, something that will help them in their business, and as a PS to every single email we suggest them to consider joining the inner circle if they want more wins like that. We give them a one-click opt-in to our waitlist, and tell them the next time the doors will be open so that they can be ready when we open up our cart. It’s taken a lot of pressure off me, and instead of worrying about the success or the outcome of a launch and getting super heavily invested, I always have a pool of people that are ready to join the inner circle. It’s also made me feel focused and in control of the growth of my business.

Marketing Tip # 7: Hayley Hobson [14:59]

It was my first ever membership launch so everything was a strategy to me. But I think the reason we had success and exceeded our goals was because we did a Reclaim Your Time challenge. My audience was interested in eating smarter, resting better, and being more productive. Every day, I taught them something new about how they could task out all the items in their life, whether they were personal or business, get them into these massive lists that they broke down and help them find time in their calendar. We had some incredible testimonials with people saying that we changed their life because they couldn’t figure out in the past how to do anything, or even how to have any free time, or haven’t had any whitespace in the calendar. When I launched the day that the challenge was over, we had a really great Open the Cart Day.

It did slow down in the middle of the week, so I threw in a whole bunch of bonuses. One of the bonuses was a course for anybody who did a year payment plan. They got my Healthy Habits & Holistic Happiness course, and a meet and greet with me on Zoom. I didn’t know what to expect – my goal was 100 members but we ended up with 130 and did seven box upgrades.

Marketing Tip # 8: Jennifer Allwood [16:50]

I’m the author of Fear Is Not the Boss of You and the person that runs the Creators’ Inner Circle for about 2,500 entrepreneurs every single month. I help those entrepreneurs use social media to build their business without compromising their faith or family. My number one marketing strategy from the year 2020 was just treating people as people and not as a transaction. We tried to get really personal this year, and that meant me spending a lot of time in my DMs on Instagram, in my DMs on Facebook, and really just meeting people where they were at and building that trust factor.

We’ve also started calling our clients to do a check-in with them and make sure we’re meeting their needs. This has been really good for retention in our monthly group. We’ve also been doing things like voice or video memos back to people when they’re sending me comments or questions in my DMs. In a year like 2020, people are lonelier and suffering from anxiety more than ever before, and not feeling great about the life circumstances because we’re so distanced from one another. I find that even on social media, if people feel seen and valued, they are going to be customers and clients of yours for life.

Marketing Tip # 9: Nicholas Wilton [18:57]

At Art2Life.com, we help people discover and ignite their art. My number one marketing strategy from 2020 had to do with engagement, and interestingly, it was more of my engagement. I had to become more interested, more focused, more excited about what was happening inside my membership. The way I did that was increase the number of interactions. I started a monthly community call where I just got to know people and hang out with them, and that’s made all the difference in the world.

Marketing Tip # 10: Sarah Williams [19:34]

I have a retail business and a thriving subscription box, and I also teach people how to start their own subscription box business. My top marketing tip for 2020 is simple. It’s about connection. More than ever, people need the connection in their life. For my retail business, I built this connection through a texting app that I use. It’s a two-way texting app so it’s not just a marketing blast, and it feels like they’re texting a friend. For my coaching group, I created a micro offer this year that allowed people to spend a week with me. I was all-in on that week. I showed up live every day. I was in the conversations, in the Facebook group, and I built a lot of connections in a short amount of time that led into a higher dollar offer.

Marketing Tip # 11: Tracy Harris [20:38]

I help moms make more revenue in their business by mastering Instagram, and I do this through a number of online courses, but also through my membership, The Social Method Society. The focus is on helping these women develop their skills and confidence in showing up as themselves online. When they do this, they can continue to build and nurture their own online communities, and turn those followers into customers and clients without being salesy. So, my one top marketing tip for 2020, is to keep building my audience beyond what it is at present and to do this through Facebook ads and a really well-placed freebie.

Once you have a beautiful organic audience that is following you on Instagram and Facebook, and once you have a segment of people that are already signed up to your mailing list, you can then use this information to target audiences of similar people through Facebook ads. I’ve taken one of my most popular freebies that my organic audience loves, and put some Facebook ad budget behind it. The freebie focuses on something they’re struggling with, and on the other side of that freebie is a small low-end offer that gets presented to them once they have opted in to receive this free resource. I’ve done this throughout the year and it has helped to continually grow my email list with buyers, old soulmate clients, and customers.

Resources

Flourish
Surface Design Immersion
The Elite Suite
Emily Jeffords Studio Fine Artist
The Collective Membership
Her Business
Her Business Network
Bright Entrepreneur Podcast
VideoAsk
The Social Sales Girls
HayleyHobson.com
Healthy Habits & Holistic Happiness
Fear Is Not the Boss of You: How to Get Out of Your Head and Live the Life You Were Made For
Creators’ Inner Circle
Art2Life
Framed!
Launch Your Box
Mums With Hustle
The Social Method Society

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