Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Choosing Your Marketing Strategy Focus for Sustainable Growth
You’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% accurate
You’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.
+ view comments . . .