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Questions to Ask Yourself to Keep your Marketing Message Fresh
If you’re feeling like your marketing is boring and you’re struggling to come up with what to say, you may be tempted to take a left turn and start exploring a new theme in your content. However, this can lead to confusion with your audience, and slow down the Know Like and Trust growth.
Not to mention it may impact your sales.
Instead, if your marketing is feeling stale, I want to encourage you to ask yourself the 4 questions I’m going to share today – they’ll help keep your messaging fresh, without taking you down a rabbit hole.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5-minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time. Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or 1:1 services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays! You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YT – @mrsamandawarfield or by heading to amandawarfield.com/youtube/ – I hope to see you Monday!
- Gaffin Creative: https://gaffincreative.com/podcast-production-management/
- This week’s action step: Take some time to sit with these questions and answer them for yourself.
- This week’s book recommendation: Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD by Susan Pinsky
- 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
If you’re feeling like your marketing is boring and you’re struggling to come up with what to say, you may be tempted to take a left turn and start exploring a new theme in your content. However, This can lead to confusion with your audience and slow down the know, like, and trust growth that you’ve been building.
Not to mention, it could impact your sales. Instead, if your marketing is feeling stale, I want to encourage you to ask yourself the four questions I’m going to share with you today. They’ll help you keep your messaging fresh without taking you down a rabbit hole. You’re listening to episode 225 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.
This episode was brought to you by Gaffin Creative Productions.
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? Hey, sweet friend. It seems like I attract a lot of introverts with my marketing and if that’s you and you have been throwing around the idea of adding long form content to your marketing plan, you might have been thinking about a podcast.
Podcasts are great for introverts and just for those of us who want It’s the easiest possible route for creating long form content, because you can do it in your pajamas, you can do it no matter what you look like, and all you need is, honestly you don’t even really need a microphone, I suggest you get one, but you just need something you can record on, and if you’re gonna go that route, you need a great editor.
Now, whether you are thinking of starting a podcast or you’ve already started a podcast and you know how overwhelming the production side of having a podcast is, I want to introduce you to Gaffin Creative. Gaffin Creative is a podcast production company. dedicated to empowering creatives like you and like me to use your voice and grow your brand.
They’re not just another production company though, they’re your partners in creativity, community, and success. I have been working with Hayley Gaffin and her team for Gosh, years now, and it is the best thing I spend money on in my business every single month. I love that I can hand off what I’ve recorded, and I know it’s in good hands.
I know that I can fully trust them with all of the audio aspects. They are so aware of how to improve your audio. But then they also do things like, Hey, if you make this tweak while you’re recording, it’ll sound even better. And they’re just, they’re really dedicated to quality. And I knew that, but I really discovered it when I had them edit the audiobook for my book, Chasin Simple Marketing.
They were just so dedicated to the quality, and they were so committed to that project. Honestly, more than I was. And it was just such a reminder of how amazing they are to work with. I know that when I hand over my content each month, that it’s going to be wonderful and that you, as a listener, are going to get a great experience because of them.
So, whether you’re launching your first episode, or you need some ongoing support, they are on a mission to turn dreamers into doers. Thanks. The founder of Gaffin Creative, Haley, actually, she joined us on episode 93 where we talk about cheering other women on in life and business and episode 202 to discuss visibility and podcast guesting.
So if you want to learn more about Haley, those are two great episodes to go check out. And if you’re ready to take your podcast to the next level, visit gaffincreative. com and discover how they can help you bring your podcast to life. Do you struggle with feeling like your content is getting boring?
Like you’re saying the same thing over and over again. And frankly, you wonder if you’re doing yourself a disservice by not keeping things fresh. I know that I actually hear this all the time from clients and it’s not something that I, well, I struggled with at the very beginning of my business, but once I really started to understand marketing, I didn’t struggle with it all that much, mostly because.
I’m an Enneagram One, and my brain likes repetition, but I know that a lot of people struggle with this. This struggle of, well, I feel like I’m just being really repetitive. I feel like my audience is bored. I feel like I’m bored. And this is something that is really, really common. So if you can relate to this, you are not the only one.
And so I want to talk about keeping your content fresh, because it’s actually really important. A good thing to be a broken record. That’s actually what we want is we want your content to kind of sound like a broken record. We want it to be the same thing over and over and over again. And that’s because when we say the same things over and over again, when we’re broken records, when it comes to our marketing, that is when we connect people with.
their areas of expertise. So if you’re hopping around from topic to topic to topic to topic, people aren’t going to know what it is that you do and how you can help them. But if you’re saying the same thing over and over and over again, they’re going to go, Oh yeah, this person connects to this. Oh yeah.
Amanda Warfield, she helps with marketing strategy. Annie Porterfield, also marketing strategy. Marie Forleo, Motivation, Natalie Frank, community, right? Like there, there are these names that we know, Oh, this person does this and this is what I can connect them with. And then when someone says they need that thing, you go, Oh, you need this person.
Oh, you need this person that does ads. Oh, you need this person that does membership setup or setup or whatever the case may be. Talk about something and the more you’re a broken record the more that you’re gonna be connected in that way You’re gonna be that expert in someone’s mind But, I know that that can feel, it can feel stifling for a lot of entrepreneurs, right?
We can feel like we’re bored with our marketing, and we can feel like, but I know so much, I want to share all the things that I know. And here’s the thing. If you’re bored with your marketing, kind of, kind of just blunt there, but too bad. Your marketing is not for you. It is for your audience. And so if you’re bored, it doesn’t matter.
It matters what they need, not what you need. That being said, all of those great things you have to offer, you pour those into your students, to your clients, those are the things that you Help your clients do that. You pour into your membership, pour into your courses. For example, my clients work with me for content, marketing, stretching, copywriting, but what they really get out of working with me is so much more than that, because yeah, we’re working on strategy for marketing, but that also kind of leads into business strategy and inevitably there are mindset issues.
And there, you know, what we end up doing with our one on one clients is a much bigger reach than. What we’re just saying we’re doing with them. And it’s not that it’s a bait and switch. It just naturally, because all of these different aspects of business. They, they overlap. Naturally, our skills are going to overlap in that way too.
And we can kind of help and guide in those ways as well. If you feel like, but I have so much to offer. I want to be a multi passionate entrepreneur, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s not that you can’t be. It’s just that those skills need to come out in different ways. It’s also a great thing. For, you know, going out in the networking communities and you can share things and talk with others and just getting to build community.
That’s a great way to kind of get to dive into those other things that you love. But when it comes to your marketing, you’ve got to be a broken record and you should be bored. The more you talk about something, the more likely people are to see you as that expert. And this is also really important when it comes to marketing, content marketing in particular, because people see such a small fraction of what you’re posting with your content.
So let’s say. We all know that, like, someone has to see you tell them to take action on something seven to ten times before they do it, right? If we don’t know that, that is just a general kind of marketing thing. I’m not actually sure it’s accurate anymore. It might even be higher than that at this point.
But that’s kind of a general marketing rule of thumb is someone’s got to see it seven to ten times in seven to ten different ways before they’ll take action on it. So you have to talk about your offer seven to ten different times before someone’s going to actually take action. When you talk about one specific thing, you’ve got to ask yourself, have I talked about it seven to 10 different times?
If the answer’s no, that’s a real quick, you’ve not talked about it enough. But even if the answer is yes, you also need to consider the fact that if you’ve talked about it seven to ten different times, no one has seen all seven to ten of those times. They’ve seen a fraction of that. And because we see such a small fraction of what anyone puts out on social media or within their content.
That means you need to talk about it 10 times, that number, so you need to talk about it 70 to 100 times before someone is going to take action on it. And then you’ve got to think about the fact that people find you in different capacities and different ways, and they’re going to, you know, maybe someone found you when you talked about it on the 50th time and there were only 50.
Or 20 to 50 ways that you’ve talked about it in, right? Even if they saw everything. Just because you’ve talked about something a lot, doesn’t mean that people have seen it a lot. And if they haven’t seen it a lot, they can’t connect to you as the expert yet, right? And so when it comes to being bored with your marketing, it’s not for you.
It doesn’t matter if you’re bored, but also you’ve got to think about how many times do I actually talk about this before people are seeing it? And that doesn’t mean send 50 emails or anything like that about one specific thing. That just means you can create 50 to 100 different touch points throughout all of your content and really keep sending people back to that content that you’ve created, those ideas that you’re sharing.
You can be a broken record and you can talk about the same thing over and over again without repeating yourself verbatim. And this is where we can really bring our creativity in and keep it fresh for ourselves and potentially for your clients. It keeps it fresh for them. Or your audience. It keeps it fresh for them, but it also, different ways you say things can connect with people in a different way.
Like, have you ever watched a TV show or a movie and you’ve re watched it and then you see something new or something hits differently that time? It’s the same thing with your content. So even if someone has heard you talk about the same topic, if you just say it in a little different way, they may get it differently.
Or, on the flip side of that, They may not have been in a place where they were ready to get it yet, and now they are, and now I cli So you want to make sure that you’re keeping it fresh while still talking about the same things. And the best way to do that, I actually have these questions inside of the Chasing Simple content planner at the beginning of every single month when you do your prep work inside of the content planner.
There are a few questions that I always encourage my students, my clients to sit down with and anyone who’s bought the planner knows this. This is in the prep work for every single month. So we’ve got within the prep where we’ve got business goals. There’s questions about your business goals. There’s questions about repurposing, but then there’s also a couple questions about messaging.
So I’m actually gonna read those out to you right now. So the first is what is currently affecting your niche? For example, maybe it is November and your audience is feeling really burnt out and they’re just ready for a break. What’s currently affecting them? What is going on in the sphere of your clients?
As I’m recording this right now, it’s summer. So anyone who is a mom right now, or a parent in general, they are Their minds are split, right? They, they’ve kind of got their mind at work, but they’ve also got their mind at home with their kids and they’re figuring out, even if they don’t work in the online space, even if they work a typical 9 to 5, they’re trying to piece together childcare for the summer and camps and conferences and all these things for their kids, right?
And so that’s something that’s currently affecting your niche if you have parents in your niche, right? Then you want to ask, what is happening in current events in pop culture right now? Just a few off the top of my head that I can think of. Justin Timberlake’s arrest, that’s going viral right now. And the fact that the cop, uh, didn’t know who he was because the cop was so young, which hurts my soul, but it’s fine.
Um, that’s something that’s going viral. Taylor Swift having Travis on stage at the Arrows tour, which like, I can’t, can’t right now. Um, but even if you’re not a Swifty, you’ve probably seen people talking about that because it’s a huge pop culture moment. That Swifty fans are like, wait, what’s happening?
This is not a thing that she does, right? Um, so those are just a couple, like, really quick off the top of my head. These are pop culture things that are happening right now. The next thing, what does your audience need to hear from you this month? And so this kind of relates back to that first question, like, What do they need to hear from you?
And what are they struggling with? And then the final question is, how can you serve your audience this month? So, if these are the things they’re struggling with, these are the things they need to hear from you, how can you serve them well? How can you take that and serve them well? And then you want to take all of your answers to this and look at it through the lens of whatever you’re marketing currently.
And so if you are, if, Business goals was again, one of those things that I mentioned a whole bunch of questions about business goals that I walk people with the planner through, but you take those goals and let’s say you’re in the midst of pre launching a certain offer. So, okay, within that offer, what’s your messaging around that offer and how can you take that messaging and.
Look at it and recreate it through those lens, through the lens of those four questions I just asked. So, how can you talk about that thing and maybe use a meme from the Justin Timberlake’s DUI? Or from having Travis on stage? Like, how can you take pop culture moments? and look at that messaging and kind of give them a spin that just is eye catching and funny.
How can you look at it through the things that your audience is struggling with right now? So you can take that general messaging and then really gear it specifically towards what they’re struggling with right now and what they need from you right now. And so that’s just four questions you can ask yourself to take what you’ve always like that broken record aspect of I always talk about this, I always talk about this, I always talk about this and give it just a quick twist to make it feel a little fresh even though it’s something that you’ve talked about a hundred times, two hundred times and you feel bored with it.
This can help your boredom and it can also help it connect with Your audience as well in a different or new way that being said just a quick recap if you feel like a broken record That’s actually a really good thing If you are bored with your content too bad because we want you to be a broken record so that your audience can connect you as an expert with that idea and if you You can keep things a little fresh for yourself by asking yourself those four questions.
What is your audience currently struggling with right now? What’s happening in pop culture and in current events currently in this moment in time? What does your audience need to hear from you right now? And how can you serve your audience well this month? So ask yourself those four questions. Take the messaging that you feel like is just a broken record and so boring.
Mash them together. That’s gonna help you keep your marketing fresh. While still submitting yourself as the expert in whatever it is that you talk about and whatever it is that you’re offering your audience. Now, your action step for this week is to take some time to just sit with these questions and answer them for yourself and for your own messaging.
And your book recommendation is Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD by Susan Pinksey. I really like the way that she laid this book out. It’s kind of, you know, room by room, section by section, and although I didn’t love all of the tips, it did help me understand better the way my husband’s brain works as far as how he thinks organizing should happen, and that was really helpful.
I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to the way things are organized in our home. Despite the fact that I’m pretty sure I have ADHD, but that’s a, that’s another topic for another day. Um, but I highly recommend this book, even though they weren’t all my favorite solutions, it did help me better understand so much more about the ADHD brain by reading it.
So, highly recommend if you were Someone in your household has ADHD, it’s a good rate for sure. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.
Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode’s show notes as well as all of 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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