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The Best Marketing Strategies To Use
As 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
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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
As 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.
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