3 Phases of a Business Journey

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I’m sharing what the 3 phases of business are, how to know which you’re in, and how to leverage the best marketing strategies for each phase.

When it comes to marketing strategies, there are hundreds out there that you could implement. Which can be fun, but is also a leading cause of marketing overwhelm. Because oh my goodness there’s so much to do but so little time.

The good news? You don’t need to implement every marketing strategy in order to see success. In fact, depending on where you are in business, there are certainly strategies that will work best for you, and you can forget the rest.

It all comes down to the 3 phases of a business journey, and where you fall on that path. In today’s episode, I’m sharing what they three phases are, how to know which you’re in, and how to leverage the best marketing strategies for each phase.

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: For more ways to simplify your marketing strategy, be sure to preorder Chasing Simple Marketing!
This week’s book recommendation: Chasing Simple Marketing by ME! Amanda Warfield
Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield

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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

When it comes to marketing strategies, there are hundreds out there that you could implement, which can be fun, but is also a leading cause of marketing overwhelm because oh my goodness, there’s so much to do, but so little time. The good news, you don’t need to implement every marketing strategy in order to see success.

In fact, depending on where you are in business, there are certainly strategies that work best for you and you can forget the rest. It all comes down to the three phases of a business journey and where you fall on that path. In today’s episode, I’m sharing what the three phases are, how to know which you’re in and how to leverage the best marketing strategies for each phase.

You’re listening to episode 169 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book Chase and Symbol Marketing, and you can grab your own copy 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? Our launch is 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 will 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 simpy 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 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 uncomplicate, 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/book.

I’ll see you there. Within a business journey, there are three different phases, particularly in relation to how you’re marketing your business and your marketing strategy. You’ve got the content creator phase, the foundation builder phase, and the established entrepreneur phase. So let’s start with the content creator phase.

Now, not everyone will actually go through this phase. This one is kind of optional and it just kind of depends on. How you start your journey. So there are many of us, especially in this online business space, where we did not expect to become business owners. It was never our goal. It was never our intention.

We don’t have an MBA or a business degree. We just didn’t plan. In hindsight, when you’re a few years into business, you may look back and go, huh, all the signs really were there when I was a kid. But at the time it’s not. It’s not like it was something you actively thought about, right. And so a lot of us end up either following a passion of ours and it kind of turning itself into our a business.

A lot of times this is makers or photographers or something in that super creative space where you started something because you had fun with it and it was almost a hobby, and then it kind of turned itself into a business slash You’ve also got those of us that never planned to start a business, but then one day we.

Kind of woke up and recognized the opportunity that is this online business space and decided that we were gonna, we didn’t know what we were gonna do, but we were gonna figure it out, which is kind of how I got into this. And there are some people even who start creating content with zero plans to start a business, and then one day they wake up and go, oh, I have an audience.

I could turn this into a business. So there. Are really three types of people that end up in this content creator phase, but also there are a lot of people who start a business and know they’re starting a business and they jump straight into that foundation builder phase. So you may or may not go through this one or have gone through this one, but the content creator phase is essentially this phase of business where alls you’re really doing is creating content and you’re maybe trying to figure out how to get a client and what you’re going to do to help your clients and what that looks like.

But you’re just kind of floundering in a way. And a lot of times we feel like we’re floundering and we shame ourselves for it. And I’m not gonna get on a soapbox about this, but I really could go on and on about it because I wish I could go back and talk to baby entrepreneur, Amanda about this and let her know that that’s actually a good thing.

And to encourage myself to flounder. Because that’s really what this phase is all about. So when I’m breaking down these phases, there are three things that I talk about. There’s the business goal. And that’s kind of the overarching, within this phase, what are you trying to do for your business? And then there’s also the marketing strategy, which is broken down into two parts, growth strategy and nursery strategy.

So in this phase, the business goal is to determine how you can use your talents and your gifts to help others and figuring out what that first offer will be, and then making those very first sales. So you’re. Floundering and just kind of figuring out how can I help people and how can I use what I can do to help people to actually make money and okay, how do I get those first few clients or customers?

That’s the goal of this space is just figuring that out. So how do you market that? How do you, how do you utilize marketing if that’s your goal and it’s just kind of figuring things out? Well, your growth strategy, which remember a growth strategy is how you’re bringing in new audience members. You wanna really make sure you’re focused on making and building connections.

I did not do this well, and I wish I had because it would’ve set my business up for even faster growth. I wish I had been so much more intentional from the beginning about [00:08:00] getting out and going to conferences and networking, attending retreats, and just putting my name out there and. Meeting people because relationships are going to be so, so, so, so, so, so important for building your business.

So that’s your growth strategy is just get out there and make connections, whether you go to things in person or you attend virtual events and you’re really intentional about connecting with other attendees and the speakers, whether you just make sure you’re in intentional about connecting through social media and content, but taking the time to do that and to just connect with people and build relationships.

Your nurture strategy, on the other hand, is what you are doing to build relationships once you’ve brought in those audience members. So that would be experimenting and having fun, posting the social media, creating content. You don’t have to have it all figured out and. Your content can kind of be all over the place.

You can really just throw spaghetti at the wall, right? So that you can just figure out what it is that you wanna talk about and how you can help people. So this phase is, again, not very defined, and I know it doesn’t sound super strategic, but I promise if you give yourself that permission to. Not be super strategic, it’s gonna take you a long way.

So we’ve got the foundation builder phase. Some people start here, like I mentioned, some people totally skip the content creator phase, but for others it’s the second phase in business. And in this phase, you know how your business serves others and you have at least one offer that sells. It may not be making you six figures or even it may not even be making you.

You know, $20,000, but it’s an offer that sells and that you can consistently see sales from, and you know you’re gonna be able to continue to tweak and hone in on it and make it even better and more appealing. So with this one, your business goal. Within this phase is to determine the foundational offers of your business by creating offers that are complimentary to your main offer.

So you’ve got your one main offer. As you start this phase, what is the step before that offer, and what’s the step after? And you wanna make sure you’re developing those offers on either side so that you’re kind of hitting this range within the customer journey. So if you look at. Content batching Bootcamp.

My course about bashing your content, that course came out and it was the main course, right? It was my main offer, and it was for people who needed help solopreneurs or people with really small teams that needed help creating a month’s worth of content in just one week, so that they weren’t constantly creating content and stuck on that content creation hamster wheel.

Right? After running that a few times and launching it a few times, and it’s selling really well, I began to see that there were two different ways I could take things. I had my students that had done that and were successful, but needed ongoing encouragement to keep up the system. And then I also had people who weren’t quite ready to buy because they just didn’t even know what to post about or win.

They were so overwhelmed that the idea of creating content in general was just too overwhelming. And so I created for those people a year’s worth of content prompts. So they could just go in and say, okay, what’s this question? Here’s my answer to it. Let me create a piece of content around it. What’s this question?

Here’s this. And so they didn’t have to think about anything. They just sat down and created prompt or created content based on those prompts. But then the people who had taken the course and were ready for the next step, well, they were able to either go on and. You know, they have their content under control.

So they’re ready for strategy and ready to work one-on-one with me, or they’re ready to move into a membership and just get ongoing accountability. They could kind of take it in a couple different ways, but I was able to, once I had that foundational core offer, I was able to really look at it and say, okay, well what do people need next?

And what do they need before this? So that’s what you’re trying to figure out here is what is this little mini value ladder within my business so that I can walk people through these different phases. So what does that mean for your marketing? Okay, well, your growth strategy, you’re gonna go back and begin to leverage those relationships that you’ve been making in order to get in front of new audiences.

Because remember, we’ve always gotta be getting in front of new audiences in order to bring them back to nurture them. So all of those connections that you’ve been making, do they have a blog? You could write a guest post for it. Do they have a podcast? You could be a guest on? Do they have an Instagram that you could go live on them with?

Like, how can you get in front of new audiences? Just with the friends that you have at this point, how can you leverage each other’s audiences in order to get in front of new people so that you can start bringing them back and share what it is that you do, and then once you’ve brought them back, your nurture strategy is going to be to continue to refine your messaging.

Now that you have spent some time throwing that spaghetti against the wall, and now that you know what your main offer is and you’re starting to figure out, okay, well the people that aren’t ready for the offer need this, and the people that have finished the offer need that you’re able to really narrow in on your audience and also to really hone in on the problem that you solve.

And so you can continue to refine your messaging to make sure you’re talking to these different parts of your audience. And also these different problems that they have. But until you’ve created that foundational one offer and you’ve moved into this foundation builder phase and you’re ready to build upon that foundation, that’s gonna feel really overwhelming.

And that’s okay because you don’t have to refine your messaging yet. And then we move into the established entrepreneur phase. These are the later years in owning a business where you are confident in running your business and really beginning to step into your own instead of listening to what all of the voices around you are telling you that you should do.

In this phase, your business goal is to set up systems that are going to help with scaling and growth. So maybe that means you’re setting up email funnels. Maybe that means you’re setting up automated CRM systems. Maybe that means you’re setting up, you know, if you had one-to-one offers and now you’re realizing, okay, well I could create a shop with templates, or I could create this or that, that I can then just go in and say, oh, I’m part of a summit.

Here’s a software that I have, and then I’ve got a trip wire, and then an upsell and a down. You know, all of those different things. You can set up these systems to help with scaling and growth. Your growth marketing strategy is to continue to leverage those relationships, but for bigger opportunities, larger audiences, and more selling.

So things like speaking, jv, webinars, summits, bundles, all of those things that are gonna take more effort, but also allow you to build a deeper relationship. Faster with these audiences and really bring them in and bring them in warm instead of bringing them in cold. And then your nurture strategy for this business phase is to really just focus on your funnels for nurturing and selling on a larger level.

Because when you go out and you say, Hey, here’s a freebie that I have, or Here’s a small offer that I have, and then. They sign up for your email list and then you don’t do anything with that. Well, it’s not doing you a whole lot, but if you can set it up so that, okay, they download the freebie and then they’ve got a quick trip wire where one of your products is available for a really cheap price for a limited time, and then there’s an upsell, and then there’s all of these different ways that you can set up funnels and you’re able to focus on simply bringing people into the freebie.

And then your funnel sells for you on the backend, and so you wanna make sure that the marketing that you have within those funnels is really nurturing your people and letting them get to know you. So your growth and nurture strategy align similarly here because you’re really focusing on getting people into those funnels, but then making sure that those funnels are actually going to build relationships for you.

So to recap, the three phases are the content creator phase, the foundation builder phase, and the established entrepreneur phase. And throughout each of these phases, you’ve got different business goals and different strategies. So when you’re in the content creator phase, you don’t need to be worried about speaking and JV webinars and bundles.

But when you’re in the foundation builder phase, well you should probably be doing a bit more than just kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall, right? So, With each step you take in your business and each phase that you transition into, there are going to be more responsibilities for you, to bring in new audiences, and then to nurture the audience you have really, really well.

If you’re not quite sure what phase of business you are in and what marketing strategies you should be focused on, hand over to amandawarfield.com/quiz to find out and to be sent resources to help you take action on those marketing strategies. This week’s action step is to pre-order chasing simple marketing crash course and content marketing for showing up, saving time, and growing your business.

Inside of the book, there is an entire section of the book that covers this, so I gave you a quick 15 minute overview. I’ve got an entire section, like we’re talking four different chapters. In this book that cover extensively exactly what this looks like, the different phases and the different strategies within each phase, and which ones you should be doing and which ones you’re not ready for, and all of those things.

So if you have not already, be sure to pre-order the book. You can head to amanda warfield.com/book or to Amazon and just search Chase’s simple marketing to go ahead and pre-order. Everyone who pre-orders is going to be sent the first chapter so they can start reading. And then also my KPI spreadsheet template.

This template is what I use for myself and for my clients, and it’s exactly how we track our goals and how we’re doing with those goals. And then we’re using that information to inform our content strategy, and it’s broken down by different types of goals. So if you have a goal to sell, A certain number of shop items.

I’ve got all of these different key performance indicators in that section that you should be looking at as far as, okay, how many people got onto the sales page, how many people actually went to the checkout cart, how many were hard abandoned, all of those fun things. It’s gonna give you some ideas for which KPIs you should be tracking so that you can help inform your own content strategy.

And I sell it in my shop, but you can get it free just by pre-ordering Chase and simple marketing. If you pre-order from Amazon, be sure to forward me your pre-order confirmation, your receipt so that I can send you your pre-order bonuses because Amazon doesn’t tell me who orders. I don’t get any of that information, so make sure that you go ahead and forward me that so that I know that you need to get your pre-order bonuses.

Like I said, you can search it on Amazon or you can head to amanda warfield.com/book. All right, my friend. 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 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.

Episode 169: 3 Phases of a Business Journey

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