Ep. 245: Looking Back at My 2024 Marketing Predictions

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Revisiting My 2024 Marketing Predictions

Today we’re doing something a little bit different here on Chasing Simple. For this episode, I’m going to be giving you a replay of an episode I released a year ago. Episode 190: My 2024 Marketing Predictions. This episode aired originally on December 12, 2023. And the reason I’m replaying it for you is so that we can discuss it next week.

Often, you’ll see podcasters put out these types of episodes about their predictions, but you don’t usually see them go back and talk about them later. But I thought that would be fun, so today you’ll hear my 2024 predictions again, and then next week I’ll go over where I was wrong and where I got things right.

My hope is that this series is informative for you as you move into planning for 2025, but also that it’s a fun break from all of the end of year hustle that we’ve been doing lately between Black Friday and the holiday season.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives!
Snag the 2025 Chasing Simple Marketing Planner!
Check out my book for a crash course in content marketing
This week’s action step: Come check out the Rising Tide Society
This week’s book recommendation: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
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

Today we’re doing something a little different here on Chasing Simple. For this episode, I’m going to be giving you a replay of an episode I released a year ago. Episode 190, my 2024 marketing predictions. This episode aired originally on December 12th, 2023. And the reason I’m replaying it for you is so that we can discuss it next week.

Often, you’ll see podcasters put out these types of episodes about their predictions, but You don’t usually see them go back and talk about them later. But I thought it would be fun, so today you’ll hear my 2024 predictions again, and then next week I’ll go over where I was wrong and where I got things right.

My hope is that the series is informative for you as you move into planning for 2025, but also that it’s just a fun break from all of the year end hustle that we’ve been doing between Black Friday and the holiday season and starting to prepare for the new year. You’re listening to episode 245 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 slash 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 or 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 isn’t 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 about 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?

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner.

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 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 review if you haven’t already, it would truly mean the world to me.

Last year, I only had four predictions for 2023, but today I have six for you. So we’re going to go ahead and dive right on in. The first one I feel like is a no brainer. And that is that there’s going to be a continued emphasis on video content. So whether that means you are showing up on YouTube. Or tiktok or reels or stories, whatever the case may be, video content is going to continue to be king.

It just really builds those relationships with people, especially for content. That’s going to be. The foundation, I guess you could say, it’s that first entry point, whether they find you on YouTube, or they find you on TikTok, or they find you on social media, and it’s going to be, you know, the, the thing that gets them into your world, whatever it may be, video is going to be such a A big part of that, a big part of bringing in those foundational relationships and just letting people into your world and into your personality.

So I encourage you to really lean into video marketing. You don’t have to use video in every platform, but I would choose at least one platform where you’re using video. And again, it can be as simple as stories and you just Put your face on stories a couple times a week and talk to the camera. That can be it.

It doesn’t have to be this huge coordinated thing, but if you’re not already using video in some capacity, I really, really suggest that you do. The second prediction I have is possibly wishful thinking on my part, but I think that there’s going to be more emphasis on email marketing versus social media marketing.

Now, I do think this is going to be happening because I’ve already been noticing this year in 2023 that there has become a lot of apathy towards social media. We kind of talked about that in the last episode, but there’s just been a lot of apathy towards social media where people, Instagram engagement particularly has really died off and people are not interested in pouring a ton of time into a platform that’s just going to do that to them again, which honestly I’m here for.

I have. I’ve always said that worrying about the algorithm is not worth our time, and it’s not worth our mental health to pour all of our time and energy and efforts into social media. Do I still think social media has its place? Yes. But I’m hopeful that people will start doing more with their email marketing.

Instead of their social media marketing. And when I say instead, I mean, strategy wise, focusing their strategy on their email marketing, not only doing email marketing and not using social media because social media can be a great way to get your leads. Into your email marketing, which we’ll talk about one of those ways and when I predictions later, but that’s kind of what I’m thinking is going to happen is people will be more interested in email marketing strategy and less interested in social media strategy because of the apathy that we’re seeing with social media.

But I’m hopeful that we won’t give up social media totally as business owners, just because it is such a great way to build community and be connected. My third prediction is one that I. Don’t love to say, but I really do think is going to be true. Um, and that is that even more small businesses are going to close.

We have seen many small business owners closing their doors this year. We’ve seen a lot of small business owners quitting their business and going back to working a corporate job. That has just been the case this year. And. You know, if it has to happen, it has to happen. And that’s just the unfortunate reality of a recession and economic downturn, but I hate to see it.

And so my hope is that I can continue to give resources and give education that will keep business owners from having to do that, but I do worry that that will be the case on a happier note. Let’s talk about some things that can help you avoid that. So my fourth prediction is that there’s going to be a bigger focus on tiny offers in 2024.

There was already a clear uptick in this in 2023. So again, this is kind of a no brainer one, but I think that that will absolutely be continuing into this new year. That as long as we are in this economic downturn, that we will be seeing tiny offers being a bigger focus. It has certainly been a bigger focus for.

Purchasers and I think in 2024, we’re going to see a lot more focus from the business owner side of things where they’re really trying to take what they have and turn it into smaller offers, whether it’s a course and they take that course and they split it into multiple many courses that are cheaper or whether it’s adding on payment plans to turn a bigger offer into something that’s more affordable.

Or whether they’re creating totally new tiny offers, whatever the case may be. I think we’re going to see a lot more business owners really leaning into that this year because even though that means they need more sales, right? If you sell a product for 10 versus a product for 100 and you’re trying to make 200, well, it’s two sales versus 20 sales, right?

Which a lot of business owners, when the economy was doing really well, kind of Decided they would rather just find two people to pay a larger sum. And yeah, in theory, that is easier when the economy is doing well, when we are focusing on trying to keep things afloat, well, finding 20 people sounds a lot easier to pay 10 a piece versus two at a hundred each.

So while 2023 was full of purchasers focusing on those tiny offers, I think we’re going to see a lot more business owners focusing on creating and repurposing tiny offers. My fifth prediction is that Minichat will become inundated and stop working as well as it is now. However, I say this, and if you have not already taken advantage of Minichat, I want you to do so.

Hop on before it gets inundated, um, because it will, as does any new tactic, right? But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing in the meantime, especially because it’s free. So if you haven’t heard of mini chat, you’ve probably noticed it happening on your social media feed, where someone puts up a reel or post and says, comment, these specific words in the comments, and I will send you the link to this specific thing.

It could be a podcast episode. It could be a freebie. It could be a course. I mean, it could be linked to anything really. I’ve, I’ve been using it, uh, many, many of my clients have been using it this year. This has been a very well used thing already. And what it is, is that you can set up automations. And again, this is free.

You just have to connect your Instagram account to it or your Facebook account. When someone comments those specific words, there are also other triggers, but this seems to be the one that most people use. When someone comments those specific words, then it automatically has this automation. Where it will DM them a specific message or link and it also you can set it up so that you have a variety of comments that it will leave for people that do respond.

So you’re not just saying the same thing over and over. So it’s a really cool automation tool. Again, it’s free, and I’m sure that they will come up with new ways to be used as it does become inundated. But I think the way that it’s being used now with the comment, this and I’ll send you the link will probably get overused.

But I It’s still early enough that you should get on it still and start using it until that case comes until that day comes where you see it’s not working as well. And again, because many chap wants to make money, they will most likely find new ways. to automate and, uh, people will find new ways and it’ll be continuing to reinvent itself.

I am sure. So I do think the current way will become inundated at some point in 2024, but I don’t know when that will be. And I think it’s worth hopping on. Now, my final prediction, I kind of alluded to this one in last week’s episode. Well, I didn’t allude to it. I straight up said it in last week’s episode, but relationships will be even more important than ever.

And. This is something that I predicted in 2023, and I think that it will go even deeper in 2024, because without relationships, if you’re trying to do business alone, you will not survive. You will not survive this economic downturn. The way we’re going to survive is by doing it together. There’s that quote, right?

A rising tide lifts all boats. And when you link up together and you build that tide together and we all rise together, that is when We all succeed. So, your action step for this week is to come hang out with us in the Rising Tide Society. Rising Tide Society is a non profit that I volunteer with that I am really passionate about.

If you’ve read my book, you have heard me talk about it multiple times at this point. But, Their mission is to help lift each other up through community over competition. And they, you know, have tons of resources for business owners. It is a really, really great way to get connected with other business owners and also continue to learn and be educated and improve your business.

So I’m going to link to the rising tide Facebook group in the show notes. If you haven’t already become part of it, I really, really recommend that you do. And so that’s your action step for this week is to go join that Facebook group. There are over 75, 000 small business owners inside, and this is a global community.

Be sure to go do that. Now, your book recommendation is Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmas. This one was really, really popular last year, so you’ve likely heard of it. The cover gives off rom com vibes. It’s not. Um, it, it is a more serious cover. type of book. Uh, it really touches on a lot of issues that women face in the workplace, and especially that women in STEM face in the workplace, especially previously, but it’s not, um, who is it, Allie Hazelwood?

It’s not that type of women in STEM book. It is a much more serious book. There, there are some trigger warning, warnings associated with it that I won’t go into here, but, um, Yeah, it, despite the fact that it’s not what it looks like, you know, don’t judge a book by its cover, but despite the fact that it’s not what the cover really kind of showcases it to be, it really was an incredible read.

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.