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A Peek At My New YouTube Channel
You might have heard this mentioned on a previous episode recently, but I started a YouTube channel! Don’t worry – the podcast isn’t going anywhere. But I wanted a way to connect even further with you, so every Monday at 4:00 pm Pacific Time/7:00 pm Eastern Time, I’ll be LIVE on YouTube.
I kick things off each week with a quick teaching, similar to the podcast. But then, everyone who is there live gets the opportunity to ask further questions and just interact! I’m loving this chance to connect more already, so I wanted to share a peek at what exactly that looks like with you on the podcast this week.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- There are a LOT of different marketing strategies out there. from content to networking to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next – without seeing results. Especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own. After hearing from listener after listener wondering WHICH marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield.com/quiz/ to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy, and start seeing results from your marketing! Again, that’s amandawarfield.com/quiz/
- 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
You might have heard this mentioned on a previous episode recently, but I started a YouTube channel. Don’t worry, the podcast isn’t going anywhere, but I wanted a way to connect even further with you, so every Monday at 4 p. m. Pacific Time, 7 p. m. Eastern Time, I’ll be live on YouTube. Kick things off each week with a quick teaching, similar to the podcast, but then everyone who’s there live gets the opportunity to ask further questions and just interact and hang out together.
I’m loving this chance to connect more already, so I wanted to share a peek at what exactly that looks like with you on the podcast this week. You’re listening to episode 214 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 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 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? There are a lot of different marketing strategies out there.
From content, to networking, to speaking, to ads, and so many more. And with so many different marketing strategies, it’s easy to find yourself hopping from one to the next. Without seeing results, especially when you see other entrepreneurs getting results from their marketing strategies, when you aren’t seeing any from your own.
And after hearing from listener after listener, wondering which marketing strategy they should focus on, I decided to create a quiz to help you narrow down which strategies will be best for you based on your current phase of business. Head to amandawarfield. com slash quiz to take it, learn where you should focus your marketing energy and start seeing results from your marketing.
Again, that’s amandawarfield. com slash quiz. Marketing isn’t easy, but it can be simple or at least simpler than you’re making it right now. I’m Amanda Warfield. I am a simplicity focused content marketing strategist and copywriter, and my mission is to help other small business owners simplify their marketing so that they can spend less time marketing and more time doing the things that actually move the needle in their business.
And also. Working less because we all started our business for freedom and flexibility and yet somehow we get caught up in these Work cycles where we’re working constantly because the to do list never ends and that includes the marketing to do list So today I want to cover three important, they’re not necessarily mindset shifts, but they’re not firm tips either.
But three important things that you should know about marketing in order to help simplify what you’re doing with your marketing, I guess is a great way to put that. So first things first, I just want to start by talking about what is marketing and what is content, because as a content marketing strategist, a lot of times we can On one hand, start to think that our content is our business.
And a lot of times we can start our businesses by starting a content platform. There are so many people out there who started a blog and then that started a business for them or who started a podcast channel. And that’s what created their business. That’s how I got started with my business. And for a long time, I thought that running my business meant.
Putting out new content. Turns out that’s not how that works. So that’s on one hand, but on the other hand, we can tend to think that marketing is just content. And that is also not the case. So we can, we can understand that our content is not our business, but we can also at the same time think, well, That’s my marketing and we can think that that’s all we need to do for marketing.
So I just kind of want to give a quick rundown. So marketing is essentially Anything you do to get more eyes on your business to make your business more visible, right? Within marketing we have paid marketing, ads, right? Anything you’re doing to pay to get your name out there. But then we have organic marketing and that is where a lot of us as small business owners we tend to lean further into because it’s free, right?
Or at least low cost, which could still be paid. But a free or super super low cost organic marketing tactic that will help us spread our name, our business, without putting a bunch of money into it, without having a marketing budget. A lot of us start there and a lot of us continue to put the majority of our marketing efforts in that and that’s perfectly okay.
So, within Marketing, we then have Paid Marketing, Organic Marketing. Within Organic Marketing, we have content, which is blogs, YouTube, podcasts, email newsletters, social media, that’s all content, right? It’s something that we’re creating, that we are putting out there. And there are also other types of Organic Marketing, and that can look like, Okay, we’ve got content, we’ve got Connecting with others.
Networking is a great way to organically market your business. Networking, word of mouth, getting out, meeting other people, that’s a really great way to organically market your business. So anything you can do that is going to get your business more visible without putting money behind it. So that’s what marketing is.
It’s simply a way to get your business more visible, right? But what marketing is not Marketing is not sales. These are actually two very different things. So if you think about, you know, a massive company, they’re going to have a marketing department, and they’re also going to have a sales department. But a lot of times, again, a lot of us are solopreneurs.
A lot of times we tend to think, okay, well, my marketing and my sales are all in one. And they’re, they’re close. One leads to the other, but they’re not the same. So, I want you to think of your, you’re marketing your sales like a mountain. And at the top of that mountain, that is where they tag team. So your marketing, it, it does the hard work of leading people to a sale, right?
It, it does the work of moving them and getting them interested in that sale. That, that’s the deep, the steep climb, right? But then you get to the precipice, and your marketing takes it to, or takes your audience to the sales precipice, and you get to that sales precipice, but then your sales, that has to do the rest of the work, and it should be an easier path, right?
Because you’ve already gotten them interested, you’ve already done the work of helping them find you, getting them interested, helping them know that they have the problem that they have, right? So, You’re working them up to that sales precipice, but then once you get to that sales precipice, that’s when sales takes over.
So your marketing is not responsible for your sales. It’s simply responsible for getting your audience to that sales precipice. So your marketing is things like that content that we’re talking about, right? That getting visible, all the things you’re doing to help people know who you are. who you are and what your business does.
That’s all marketing. But your sales, that’s your sales page, your sales call, your sales sequences. Those are all the things that happen after someone’s already interested. And again, sometimes there’s some overlap, a marketing strategist like myself, I will work on both that marketing aspect, but then I also work on sales pages and sales content.
For my clients as well, right? So there can be some overlap, but they are really two very separate things. And so when you’re thinking, why isn’t my marketing working? Your marketing might be working. It might be bringing the audience to the sales precipice. Your sales might not be working. And so those are two different things.
Now, the final shift I want you to make as you’re thinking about your marketing, in order to help simplify your marketing, is that there should be two parts to every marketing strategy. And I alluded to this a little bit earlier when I was talking about what marketing is, but when it comes to a marketing strategy, a lot of times we think, well, I just need to put content out.
And that’s great. But if you’re only putting content out, how are people going to find you? So you need to have both a nurture strategy and a growth strategy within your marketing. So your content tends to be a nurture strategy. It nurtures the audience that you’ve already brought in, the audience that has already found you, right?
And you’re giving, you’re showing up consistently, like we talked about yesterday. You’re showing up consistently. You are giving them what they need. They’re, you’re building that know, like and trust factor. You’re building that relationship with them. That’s what your content is doing. It’s nurturing the audience you already have.
And so your content strategy is part of your nurture strategy. And Other things in your nurture strategy may be, uh, sales funnels you’re creating, nurture sequences you’re creating, your welcome sequence, client onboarding, there’s, there’s a lot that can go into that nurture strategy, right? But content, content marketing goes into that specifically.
Now, the other part of a marketing strategy is a growth strategy, and these are the things that you need to do, the marketing tactics you need to do to bring more people into your audience so that you can then nurture them with that content strategy. So things that go inside of a growth strategy would be Being on a podcast, going and speaking in front of somebody’s membership, or going to a conference, or putting yourself in any position you can to be found by people who have not found you yet.
And by being found, I mean easily being found. So working on your SEO could be a growth strategy. Working on your Pinterest strategy could be a growth strategy. There are so many different ways you can do that. But Those are the kind of things you want to be thinking about. And when it comes to your marketing strategy as a whole, you want to have both that growth strategy and that nurture strategy.
So with that growth strategy, you want to make sure that you have, okay, I have this one strategy that I’m focusing on. I really suggest you take one growth strategy, you focus on it for 90 days at least, because it takes time to see that traction and also, Play around with the strategy. You can go, okay, well, I’m going to work on Pinterest and you can go learn all you need to about Pinterest.
But the reality is whatever you implement first thing right off the bat, it’s not going to be the best strategy for you. And so you have to play around with it and continue to tweak it. So I highly suggest to pick one strategy, focus on that for at least 90 days for a full quarter, and then see where you’re at with it.
Maybe you want to continue playing around with it. Maybe it’s not for you, but that’s your one growth strategy. As you get to understand how some of these growth strategies work, you may be able to put some of them more on autopilot, hand them off to an assistant or whatever, and then you can add on additional growth strategies and start to see growth coming from multiple channels, and that’s great.
But, start with that one. So you’ve got that part of your marketing strategy, and then you’ve also got your nurture strategy, which like I said, that tends to be our content strategy. It tends to be the main part of our nurture strategy. Once we feel really consistent with our content, which if you did not see yesterday’s live, I shared three ways that you can simplify your content creation in order to get consistent.
So I highly recommend that you go check that video out. I will link it below in the comments. So I really encourage you to show up consistently and then once you’re showing up consistently you can then say, okay What’s another way that I can nurture my people? Maybe I want to work up my welcome sequence now Maybe I want to work on a nurture sequence and that way you’re bringing in both the nurture in the growth side into one strategy and you’re able to nurture and market your business and your offers and bring people to that sales precipice, so Those are the three ways that you can start thinking about marketing a little bit differently in order to simplify your marketing strategy for yourself.
If you have any questions and you’re here live, please pop them in the chat right here. I already see some, so I’m going to look at that in just a second. But if you’re here live and you have questions, please ask away. Anything about your marketing strategy, anything about simplifying marketing, I am happy to help and that’s what I’m here for.
And for those watching the replay. Go ahead and pop your questions in the comments, and I’ll come back and answer them. Alright, thank you so much for sharing the information about the different strategies and providing examples. So, I appreciate it. And starting my new business, it’s helpful to see where I should focus some of the marketing at.
Yeah, so when you’re starting a business, my suggestion is always Focus on one thing at a time. So I would focus first and foremost at the very beginning get consistent with that content and Really try to focus it on your messaging when it comes to growth strategy I honestly would suggest probably something like Pinterest where you can just create pins and then pin them on Pinterest and send them back to the content that you’re already creating within your nurture strategy.
It’s a great way to really share more about the content you’re already creating, share more about your business, without having to have your messaging fully nailed down yet. You’re just essentially kind of repurposing the content you already created. So you’re kind of getting a two for one deal slightly with your marketing and so then you can reach the nurture and the growth side of things.
When working with clients who haven’t figured their messaging out yet, it can be difficult to do some of the other growth strategies. When you aren’t quite sure what your messaging is. I have a client right now who is is Incredible at what she does, but she’s having a hard time with the messaging aspect.
And when people ask her, well, what do you do? She goes, I don’t really know. Um, because she does so much and it’s hard to put it into a simple sentence. And so she’s still working on her messaging and that’s something we’re doing together. So a great gross strategy for her right now is Pinterest. So for anyone else that’s starting a business and it’s like, I don’t even know what to do.
How do I do both of these? Parts of a marketing strategy that would be my suggestion for the growth strategy side of things So anyone else have any questions, please pop them in the chat if you’re here live I know i’ve got quite a few friends here watching. Hi. I’m, so glad you’re here. Um, and if you are watching the replay pop them into the Comments and I will be coming back and monitoring the comments and making sure that I can answer questions for you And who knows maybe your question will spark one of the very future videos So, for those of you that have not seen, this is one of my very first videos on my channel.
Welcome. And, I am going live every day this week at 4pm Pacific Time, 7pm Eastern Time, and we’ll be just chatting about all things marketing and simplifying your marketing. But every Monday after that, every single Monday, I will be going live and I will have a short teaching like this and then I’ll be available to answer questions while we have some and once we’re done with questions, we will be done for the evening and I’ll see you back the week after that.
Alright, bye! If you haven’t watched yesterday’s live all about simplifying your content creation, I highly, highly recommend that you go do that. I’ve mentioned that a couple of times here in this video already, but I talk about three ways that you can simplify your content creation. And this is so important because it not only saves you time, but it also can help you be consistent with your content.
And when you’re consistent with your content, you build the know, like and trust factor with your audience, which means you’re building a relationship with your audience, which means they’re more likely to buy from you. We don’t just market ourselves and we don’t just put content out to, Get people to buy from us.
We are truly wanting to build relationships But that is an important part of making sales and running a business So highly recommend that if you’re not consistent with your content yet go watch yesterday’s video I’m going to link it in this end screen and also in the description below And if you have any questions at all, let me know I will see you back here tomorrow and we will have another live chat and I hope you’ll bring your questions and we can, uh, work through whatever it is that you’re struggling with, with your own marketing.
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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