EP. 13: Simple 3 step marketing plan (without the to-do list of doom)

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What’s this episode about?

Spoiler alert: I love creating a plan (with multi coloured pens and a new notebook ideally!) but I almost never stick to it! Since running my own business it’s been a bit of an issue. Well, until I realised that initially all I needed to do was: one thing that bought new people in to my world, one thing that nurtured them and one thing that converted sales. Then I shared my simple plan with clients and I realised it’s a pretty effective way of getting sh!t done! So this episode shares my simple method and how you can use it in your business.

Episode key takeaways:

• The To-Do List of Doom and why it’s stopping you moving forward

• How I built a marketing plan I actually stick to

• 3 core marketing activities you need to be doing every week (and my advice from testing them myself!)

KEY LINKS:

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Join my email list and get the ULTIMATE GUIDE TO TARGETING PARENTS WITH YOUR FACEBOOK AD'S

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Read the transcript:

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. Hello, and welcome to growing pains. The marketing podcast for parent and baby brands who want to grow and get more consistent sales, but without the overwhelm of feeling like you have to be online 24 7, I'm Sophie, your host, and a Facebook and Instagram ad strategist who specializes in parent and baby brands as well as a mom of two. Join me each week as I alongside some wonderful guests, she had practical tips and advice about how you can use and combine marketing strategies to get more impact for your effort. Hello, welcome to this week's episode before I get started. I just wanted to say a massive thank you to all of you who are downloading episodes. Messaging me. Saying that you are taking action or that you loved an episode or that it was really helpful. I really, really appreciate it. And if you know anyone who you think might also be interested or it might also help. Really, really appreciate it. If you would share the podcast with them. [00:01:00] Whether it's like a Facebook group you're in, or if you've got business friends that you. Or if you're in a mastermind or a membership, anything like that, I'd hugely appreciate it. If you would share the podcast with them so that we can let more people know about all of the great stuff I am sharing in these episodes. Now today I was going to talk about creating a marketing strategy. I actually realized that detailed strategy is not really my thing. If I'm honest, I'm a high level person. I like to leave some freedom in my life. I'm not someone who schedules every minute of my day. I'm actually, I feel quite claustrophobic if I do that. I also love spending a lot of time making the plan. I then tend to leave the plan where I left it and then carry on with my day as if the plan hadn't been made. So over the last. Five years since I'd been working for myself. This has become a bit of a sore point for me. If I'm honest I've worked with coaches. I know what you should be doing. Quarterly plans, annual plans. Like I should be knowing what I'm launching [00:02:00] when over the next year. My brain just does not work like that. So I've come up with my own methods for keeping myself on track and making sure that I'm doing what I need to be doing. And I've also used it with clients and it's worked really well. So for me, it's really about getting clear on priorities, taking action, reviewing the impact, moving forward, tweaking, changing, reviewing, tweaking, changing, reviewing. Essentially, it's all about taking action because I learn by doing, I'm not someone who will sit and watch a video in full, and then go and take the action. I'm someone who will have the video on, I will be trying to do the thing at the same time. So I'm all about action taking. So this week, I put a call out on my email and my social media to see if anyone would have a chat with me about their business, where they are. They're kind of big blockers they're having at the moment, you know, where they want to be. To see if the group program I'm launching in a few weeks is going to be a good fit. I'm really kind of solve those issues. You're having. Something that came up on every single one of the [00:03:00] 10 calls I did was a version of the to-do list of doom. Now the to-do list of doom. Is this. Okay. You've got your normal to-do list. You've got your day-to-day staff that has to get done. So you start working, you know, you've got to check your emails, maybe put something on Instagram, you've got to send out orders. You've got to contact clients. That sort of stuff. You're normal to do this. And this is other less. No, it doesn't have to be written down. It doesn't have to be a physical list. It could be in your head. Essentially it's made up of things that you should be doing. Like probably email marketing, as we all know that we should be sending an email out every week. But you're possibly not doing it. As well as you things you've seen other people doing. So like maybe I should abandoned Instagram for Tik TOK. For example, maybe I should be in LinkedIn. Maybe I should be doing something that everyone else is doing and I don't seem to be doing. Or it's a quick wind strategy that you've seen on a downloadable or a masterclass or a challenge, anything. Oh, well, maybe I should switch everything to doing that. [00:04:00] Like maybe Pinterest is what I should be doing. Cause that might be a quick win for my business. It's essentially a long list of stuff. That you think maybe you should be doing, and maybe it's the answer to your business's prayers and it's going to be a golden Bella, and you're going to do that one strategy and everything is going to suddenly click into place. Well, actually it is, is an overwhelming list of things. That you don't know where to start with. You don't know which one is going to have the best impact on your business. And you end up just wasting so much time. Looking at it, thinking about it, wondering which one to do, testing out our platform, changing our mind. Trying out a few different email platforms you're getting consistent with email for two weeks and then thinking, well, no, one's actually born, I think from me. I've been doing it for like two or three weeks now. So I'm going to switch to something else. Maybe I shouldn't be doing email. Maybe I should do something else. It's essentially this feeling when you sit down to actually like, be like, right, I've got time to work on my business, not in my business. And you just don't know what the bloody hell [00:05:00] to do. So does that sound familiar? Today. I want to talk you through how you can get back in control park, the, to do list of doom and start moving forward in your business. We all purpose. And so you're actually taking action and you know why you're taking it. So the indecision, the sherds, the procrastination com. When you either don't know literally what you're doing. So I, you need some support with the tech. You need to know how to get started. You need someone's experience and training and advice. Or it's when you just aren't really sure what the best thing is to do. So you might know how to do email. You might know how to do Instagram. You might know how to do other things. But you really don't know if that's the best use of your time. And you kind of need to explore that and work out how you can test that without wasting loads of time. So today I'm going to share my very simple marketing plan. Which even I, as a master procrastinator and overall plan avoider. Can keep on track with, and it's essentially three [00:06:00] core things. And if you get really, really good at them, You will be bringing in that consistent sales, you will feel in control. And if something's not working, you'll know what to do to improve it or get it on back on track. And I think that is just such a big thing for so many people. So the three things are you need one way to bring new people into your business. One way to nurture them. And one way to convert sales. And over time you might add to those things. But you need to make sure you have at least one of each of those three things so that you're always bringing in new people. You're always nurturing them and you're always getting sales. So let's go into this in a bit more detail. So one way to bring new people into your business. So interestingly, this is the one that most people don't tend to have is the one that takes more time, more effort and takes a bit more for I'm planning. But once you get it right, it's this organic way to bring people into your business consistently over [00:07:00] time, and it's the one that people try and use ads to replace. So you don't have this long form content. So you want to bring new people into your business. And so you kind of turned to Facebook ads. Well, they definitely can be used in that way, but it's going to be more expensive. Then, if you have a really solid foundation of long form content that you can then build your ads on top of. So what do I mean by long form content? Now, it really depends on your preferences, your style, your brand, what you have time for. Essentially, it's a piece of content that is more in depth and gives people time to get to know you. It gives you the space to explain your position, your expertise, your area of specialism, your passion, your values. It gives people time to build a rapport with you. You can think it through more, it's more strategic. And it's really, really good for collaborations and to get in front of other people's audiences. So examples might be a blog. If you really like writing. [00:08:00] It could be YouTube videos. If you are comfortable in front of the camera, it could be a podcast like this. So this is my form of long form content. And before I did the podcast, I actually tested out whether I could be consistent with a long form piece of content every single week by doing Instagram lives. And I did 20 of those. I did 20 weeks of Instagram lives, some solo episodes, some interviews and collaborations. If you go over to my Instagram at the underscore social underscore pod. go to my videos tab on the grid. You'll see all of the videos there. You can watch them back. And I did it for a really long time until I committed to the podcast because the podcast is next level commitment. And I wanted to make sure that I was kind of ready for that. So those are some examples of the kind of long form content you can do. A blog is probably the one that most people start with. If you're not comfortable in front of the camera, because it's really good for SEO because you can choose topics that people might be searching about your business. Instagram lives are really good, [00:09:00] but the reach on them is much more limited than it used to be. So it's good. If you want to test out collaborating with other people or cause you're reaching kind of their audience. But if you just going to do Sailo episodes, the reach is quite limited. As I found out. So I would really encourage you to look at other ways as well. Okay. Next is one way to nurture your leads, that you're bringing new people in. Through your long form content and what I should say as well, the long form content, isn't a quick win. This is something that is your slow and steady wins the race. Now you could be doing that monthly. So if you're going to write really well thought out, researched, considered blog, you might want to do it monthly. YouTube and podcast or ID live. I'd really encourage you to do that more like weekly. And it is a commitment and it does definitely take time. You could start doing it like every other week and build yourself up. But you really want to make sure that you are reaching new people all of the time and that's going to be the best way to do it. So you've got [00:10:00] your long form content, you've planned that in. The next thing, one thing you need to do is nurture those people that you're bringing in. Now generally for most people, the easiest way to do this is social media. And the it's really tempting to be on everything, especially if one platform is being a bit a temperamental, shall we say Instagram, for example, is having a little bit of an identity crisis at the moment. I think everyone is really feeling the pain of lower reach. More demands. I mean, gosh, you know, a few years ago it literally was just putting a post up. And then the layer upon layer upon layer of stories and IGT, TV, and reels. And, and then in the reels, I've got more complicated and you've got transitions. I mean, it's just next level. And it's really tempting to just say, do you know what? This is too much, I'm going to move to another platform. And the only thing I would say about that is if you're going to try and run multiple platforms at one [00:11:00] time, think about that split of your time. Like how long is it going to take you to get up to speed with another platform? Start building up relationships over that creating content. Really think about that time, because if you could use that time. Improving your messaging on Instagram, making more connections, like are you really being proactive and reaching out to ideal clients, commenting on other things, being engaging? Making content that's really engaging and spot on for your ideal clients. Actually, if you just put more time onto Instagram, would it be more successful? I think that's something you've really got to ask yourself. And the other thing really is to get consistent and I know. The hat when the platform is being frustrating and you're not getting the results you want to get, it's really hard to stay consistent because you just think, what is the point? When I was doing the Instagram videos, I did the 20 videos. Some weeks I would go live and honestly, no one would join me. Like it's really hard, you know, everyone has. Busy working days [00:12:00] and you know, you're never going at one time that works for everyone. So some days I'd have no one live with me. And I'm not going to lie. There were times when I was like, oh my God, this is just so pointless. Like, why am I even doing this? It takes quite a lot of my time to plan these and deliver them. But I cannot tell you the amount of people even now. And I haven't done one since January. I think. I can't tell you the about people, that message me and say, I've just followed you. And I've binge watched all of your videos or had a call with a client yesterday. And she was like, there was this one video you did about email automations. I need to do. And I wrote all of these notes. I did that video last August. Like it is there for people to see whenever you join. And you've just got to think that you are creating a bank of content that will nurture. Your potential clients and customers whenever they join you. So you've just got to think it might not be, you know, a viral real right now, but it's there. [00:13:00] And in the future that could change someone's mind about whether to buy from me or not. So get consistent and also use the long form content to help you do that. So part of the reason I did my IgE lives was because I had to commit to. Doing a post telling people what I was going to do the live about and then posting the live. That was two pieces of content that would go on Instagram every single week. And I knew then that the minimum I would post every week was two pieces of content. And for me, I'm okay with that. Like I'd normally do at least one other post. So three posts a week was good for me. At that point. And at the moment I know now that I do put two podcast episodes a week, I will post about both of those episodes. So I've got, again, at least two pieces of content. I normally do. I'm at the moment I'm doing four or five pieces of content a week. So it really can help you get consistent as well. The long form content. Finally, we've got one way to convert sales now. I'm just going to say that for most people, this is going to be [00:14:00] email. Yes. You might get sales on, on social media and yes, you can nurture your warm audience via email. So the two can work for both. But. Email consistently across all of the stats for really quite a long time. Now has the highest sales conversion rates. It is such a great way to build up a really strong rapport with people. And using it then to sell can be incredibly powerful. Now I fully admit, I did not realize the power of email until it was a little too late. And I am growing my email list. If you're not on it, there is a link in the show notes. Make sure you join it. I send out two emails a week. I do one on a Monday where I tell you about the podcast episode. That's the one where I share like tips and strategies and how tos. And then one on the Thursday, which is more about. What's working for me, the kind of things I'm talking to my clients about a bit more about running the overall business rather than the actual, how [00:15:00] tos. So, yeah. Make sure you join the email list. If you're not already. And it does feel weird. I'm not going to lie. So I'm, I'm very much of the social media background. I've built my businesses over the last few years using social media. And the thing with email I find is you don't get the immediate response that you get on social media. So it's, you know, you get that dopamine hit and you. Get that instinct of like, oh, has this gone down? Well, not now with an email often. You don't get a huge amount of feedback. It goes out there. You might get some clicks on there. You might get some people buying. You might get some you know, people book a call or whatever it is. But you don't want to get the comments like you do on social media. So you need to get like, oh great posts. I totally resonate or, yeah, I think this is great. You don't really get that with emails so much. And it does feel hard sometimes you think, well, really? Should I carry on? I'm not really sure. One of the big pushbacks I get is I don't know what to write. People won't want to hear from me every single week. And we've got a couple of really great episodes from email experts. One with [00:16:00] Kelly, which is already out, and then I've got another one coming up in a few weeks as well, which I'm really excited to share with you. And they should hopefully help you with this. What should I write? And nobody reads emails anymore. Just from my perspective, I think having a bit structure helps me. So having two emails that do two different things. And then really to be honest, like I mostly use similar consumer email that went out today. So this is a Thursday that I'm recording. This is Is on exactly this topic. Because this is my long form content and it will, I will also probably do a social media posts on it as well. So it's really great for taking these themes and then using them to inform my content strategy on other platforms because it saves me time. I think the final thing to say is email is definitely, don't be afraid to ask for the sale, but just don't make it all about the sale. I think this is especially true for econ brands. It can be really easy to just share your products over and over and over again, and hope that people buy them. But really thinking about. Segmenting your audience looking at what different groups of your customers need, and really trying [00:17:00] to focus in on how you can add value so that they want to get your email and want to open it. Now I was working with a client this week and we were brainstorming ideas for emails. Some of the ones we came up with were so let's look at a segment of customers who have bought your product more than three times. Let's send them a thank you email. So thank you so much for being such a wonderful loyal customer. We really appreciate it. Have you seen that, that we've launched a few new products. We want to give you a 15% discount. So rewarding loyalty. Get your people back who, have already bought from you. Another option is to look at people who've bought. In this case it was an age appropriate thing. So it was something with age three to five and send them an email saying, did you know that we also do similar products for age six to nine? So when your child is ready, make sure you come back to us. This is how it can help. Another one is people who are warm. So kind of have opened an email or clicked on an email in the [00:18:00] last three months or so, going back to them and sharing your best sellers and giving them a free gift. If they purchase within the next 40 hours or something like that. So there's loads of different ways that you can start talking to audience about different things. You don't have to send the same email to the same people all the time. You can segment up and initially you might have a really small list and there's you are sending literally an email to like four or five people. But if those four or five people all buy from you. I mean, how incredible is that? And then social media, you've got absolutely no way of tailoring your message depending on how interested someone is from buying from you. So it's really powerful to be able to do that. So, let me just recap for you. If you resonate with the concept of a, to do list of doom, where you've got a list of 20 things that you really feel like you possibly should be doing for your business, but you have absolutely no idea where to start, how to do them, whether they'll even be worth doing. Put the list down. Just put it to the side. And focus every [00:19:00] week on the three core activities. One way to bring new people into your business using long form content. One way to nurture them. And once they're in your business using social media, And one way to then convert them using email marketing. So those are the three things you can just be doing every single week to move your business forward and to start taking action to make changes. The group program that I'm starting in June. Since I have had these conversations with people this week, I've actually changed it quite a lot. And do you know what that's okay. So I started with an outline based on stuff that I've talked to clients about over the last few months. Then when I really spoke to people on these research calls, what I wanted to cover was all really relevant and really useful. But the big piece of feedback was I don't want to consume any more content. I don't have time to consume content. I don't have time to do a program or a course. I really just want someone to help me take [00:20:00] action. Help me clear the clutter. Move forward. Teach me what I need to be taught. Keep me accountable, but also just help me take action and make the changes that need to be taken. So that is going to be much more about what the program is about, and I'm really excited to start sharing more details about that soon. I'll put the link to the wait list in the show notes. And make sure you sign up there because those people on the wait list will get access to the program. First, it's going to be really limited spaces. So if you want to make sure you hear all about it then make sure you get your name on that list. Thank you so much for listening as always. I hope it was really helpful. If you've got any questions or you want to chat more about the to-do list of doom, come and find me on Instagram. I'm at the underscore social underscore pod. Or you can join my email list which as you know, you'll get two emails a week about the podcast and about all the things that you can be doing in your business to help you move forward without the overwhelm. Have a fantastic week and I will see you next time. [00:21:00] Thank you so much for joining me this week before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes, right when they're released. And if you ever enjoyed these podcast episodes, I'd really love to ask you to leave a review in apple podcasts reviews are one of the major ways that apple ranks their podcasts, and it only takes a few seconds, but really does make a massive difference to new people. Finding me. Thank you again for joining me, Sophie, in this episode of growing pains, see you next time.