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What I Got Wrong in My 2023 Predictions
Last 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
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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
Last 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.
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