5 Marketing Tips for Getting Back to School Ready | 129
Back to school is approaching, and you might be a little resistant to thinking about it. Maybe you don’t want to end your summer break yet, or you’re not looking forward to the back to school marketing rush. Either way, I can’t blame you! However, this lull can help you prepare for a busy sales season.
To help you out, I’m sharing five marketing tips for teacher small business owners that will help you feel prepared for back to school.
#1 Look at Your Data and Optimize
First on your marketing to-do list is looking over your data. This means looking at your lead magnets, product listings, sales reports, and more. By looking at these items before back to school season arrives, you can use this information to inform how and what you will market.
For example, maybe you were thinking about updating Product A this summer, but by looking at the data you notice that Product B actually needs more TLC. The numbers might cause you to reconsider what you work on.
#2 Batch Your Content
Batching is probably my favorite marketing tip for small businesses. I know batching sounds tedious (and trust me, I was against it for sooooo long), but when you’re approaching a busy season, it can be a lifesaver. Batching allows you to focus on the right now and rest assured that your marketing content is locked and loaded.
You can batch your emails, blogs, social media content, and more. Definitely add this to your marketing to-do list because the sooner you start, the less stressed you’ll be.
#3 Conduct Market Research
If you’re not sure what market research is, it’s essentially gathering data and information about your audience. Instead of guessing what your audience wants, struggles with, and desires, you will actually ask them. You can do this in a survey, by getting on calls, using Instagram polls, and more.
The importance of market research is to keep a pulse on your messaging and offers to make sure it’s resonating with your audience. This can make a huge impact on your sales and how well your marketing performs.
#4 Build Relationships with Your Audience
If I had to rank my marketing tips for small businesses by importance, this might actually be number one. Building authentic relationships and connections with people in your audience is really important. You can do this through DMs, interacting with people in stories, replying to their email replies and more.
This relationship building feeds into trust, which is key in business right now. Unfortunately, too many people have been burned by small businesses, so they want to know they can trust you and the quality of your work. Definitely add this to your summer to-do list.
#5 Grow and Nurture Your Email List
My last marketing tip for small business owners (but certainly not the least) is to work on your email list. Buying cycles are becoming longer, which means the number of touch points someone needs before making a decision is bigger than it used to be.
The problem is that people will stop promoting their list, they eventually exhaust their current audience. And with no new leads coming in this typically (and fairly quickly) results in sales slowing down.
I hope these marketing tips for small businesses helped! If it’s feeling overwhelming right now, pick one thing from this episode to add to your marketing to-do list and start there.
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
Hey there - I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow - a podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Today we're gonna be talking about getting back to school ready with some marketing tips. And I know this is coming out in early July and you probably don't wanna hear about back to school yet. I hope that you are happily in summer mode. You're happily in relaxation mode. But I also don't want you to forget about your business and forget about your marketing. So here are some of my tips…five to be specific. Five tips on getting yourself ready for the busy season.
If you're not listening to this in the summer…there are busy times throughout the year, so maybe it's back to school, maybe it's Black Friday, or maybe it is January. Whenever the busy season is for you, typically right before that is a bit of a slower period where you can do some of these things.
And sometimes we have seasons in our business, it's a little bit of a rollercoaster, right? That we're working on the backend and the systems and the procedures to ramp up for a busy season. And maybe it's not a typically busy season, but for you it's gonna be a season of growth and push. So, here are my five tips specifically for taking the time this summer to get back to school ready now.
So number one is to look at your data and optimize. And so whether this is for your free lead magnet, for a sales page, for your T P T products or other items that you have for sale, now is a great time to look at what you have and make decisions about what you're going to do. So, for example, your opt-in. One of the really important numbers is the conversion rate, and now is a great time to look and see how you can optimize your landing page to get more subscribers onto your email list.
If right now it's converting at 30%, how can I get it to 40% or 50%? Also, part of your opt-in would be the thank you page. Are you taking advantage of that prime real estate? It's so important. People have already just said, yes, I wanna be on your email list. So are you giving them a next step? For me, it's to join the Facebook group. For you, it might be something different like book a call or check out this Instagram, or listen to this podcast episode.
Making sure that you have a next step set up is really, really important so that these people feel like they are part of something. And not even part of something, but that they know what to do next and that they can keep moving forward and keep saying yes to you. If it's a sales page, looking at the sales data, the checkout information, rereading all of the different parts, making sure it's still relevant and still resonates with your audience.
For T P T or other digital products that you might be selling, look at descriptions, thumbnails, previews, videos that you have available. Making sure that it's well described, that the images are on brand, that they are current with current trends. So if you have any Chevron still sticking around, it might be time to get rid of that and move into the 2020s! So just looking and optimizing now when it's a little bit slower and you have a bit more time to look at those older pieces and bring them into today.
Tip number two is to start batching your content not only for the summertime, but for your busy season as well. I have some more tips on batching that are coming next week, so definitely tune in to next week's episode if you want a bit more information about being consistent and using batching in your business. But for right now, I'm just gonna say that yes, you can batch in the summer.
When you're back to school in August or September, it's probably gonna be crazy. I know for me, our son is going to school for the first time and I will be in school that one day a week and my business tends to pick up a bit in the fall. And so there's a lot happening. There's gonna be some pretty big transitions in our house with my son going to school, my daughter being home with us, just her, me back to school, right? Everything's happening. And the last thing you wanna be worrying about in that busy season is the content. It's definitely something you can do ahead of time and to schedule out so that you don't even have to think about it. So yes, batch your content so that you can be sitting by the pool and a blog post is still going out or your email is still going out, but also batch your content so when things get really busy, you don't need to be thinking about it either.
Number three. The summer slowdown is a great time to do market research and to work on your brand positioning. Market research is super, super important. Getting on calls, 15 minute chats with people or sending out surveys to your audience or Instagram polls is a really good way to keep a pulse on your messaging, on your offer, and just making sure that it's resonating with your audience and helping you to know what your next step is, what people want from you, how you can serve them better, and that helps you to make sure that your brand positioning is in the right spot.
When I say brand positioning, I'm not talking about your branding as in your logo, your colors, your fonts. You wanna keep a pulse on that and make sure that it's fresh and modern and has a great aesthetic. But what's more important to me in marketing is your voice and your messaging and your emotions, and just making sure that you are speaking directly to your customer, that you're evoking emotions in them and that they can resonate and that they are really getting value from the content you're putting out.
By doing this over the summer, when you come back in the fall, you're coming back fresh and on top of your game and you really are in a great position to speak to your people when they need it most from you.
Tip number four is to focus on building more authentic and genuine connections with the people who are already in your audience through one-to-one conversations and interactions. That doesn't mean stop making new connections. It just means to put some time and energy into enhancing the ones you already have and to strengthen those relationships that you already have. DM’s are a really great way to do that. Connecting with people through stories is a really great way to do that, and just making sure that you're building those relationships, because right now, trust is paramount. Building relationships is so important.
There's a lack of trust in the digital marketing space right now. Unfortunately, people have been burned. And by building those relationships, getting to know people, building that trust is going to help you in the long run. And so putting that time and energy into building those connections, having those conversations is so important and it really does need to be authentic and genuine. Sending out the same message to 50 different people is not going to do the job. You really have to be thoughtful and be genuine in those conversations.
Tip number five is to remember that buying cycles are longer now and more touchpoints are needed. So a buying cycle is just the amount of time that takes from someone finding you to when they buy. So ow long it takes for them to go through getting to know you, learning about your product, deciding that they wanna buy and actually buying.
And then touch points are just every single interaction that someone has with you. I like to classify touchpoints as macro or big touch points, and then micro touch points, those little tiny ones. A macro touchpoint is like you right now listening to my podcast. We're really having that deep interaction. I'm in your ear. You're probably washing the dishes or going for a run or driving in the car.
Another macro touch point would be a DM conversation, like I talked about in point number four, whereas a micro touch point is something so much smaller. Scrolling on Instagram and seeing your posts, but not even reading it, not doing anything, just like seeing it and continuing on. It's seeing your name in their inbox but not opening the email or doing anything about it. Just like seeing your name, remembering, oh, she exists.
And so we need to remember that buying cycles are longer and more touch points are needed because of that. Growing and nurturing your email list on a consistent basis is so important. So you need to be doing it now, tomorrow, next week. And even though this is a slow time, it's not the time to stop.
There's never a time that I would recommend you stop growing your email list. There are times that you can make the intentional choice, but what's gonna happen is it's gonna slow your business down. And so continually growing your email list is so, so important. And because buying cycles are longer, it takes more nurturing, it takes more showing up in the inbox, more emails. And I'm not saying that you need to send out more emails than you are right now. I'm just saying that someone needs to read your emails for a longer period of time.
I read a study that said showing up more than twice a week is like too much for a lot of people. And finding the right cadence for your audience is really important, and that one to two times a week is a pretty good max for most people.
I know that there's some big, big, gigantic corporations, like Old Navy, that show up in my inbox at least once a day, if not two or three times. Doing that outside of a launch period where it's like a very specific, focused time. If you're always showing up every single day, you're always showing up multiple times a day, that's going to exhaust your audience. So I don't want you doing that one. Maybe two times a week is a good spot to be if it makes more sense for you and your business. And your capacity to be showing up every other week or once a month, then that's totally okay as well, as long as you're consistent in your showing up.
Also considering ways that you can increase your touchpoints, so potentially running visibility ads, potentially trying to increase the amount of content you're putting up. Maybe if right now you're sending out one email and one blog post each month, can you increase that to two blogs and two emails, and just where can you increase those touch points so that people are interacting with you more often? Can you get on stories every single day? Can you post one more time a week?
Like if you're right now posting three times a week, can you go up to four? If you're posting seven times a week, can you go to eight? Like, can you just increase that just a little tiny bit to increase those touch points? And remember, micro touch points are a thing, so someone just needs to scroll past and that's one of the main reasons why I really think branding is important.
I really just wanna encourage you to consider ways that you can be showing up while you're lounging by the pool. So if that is collaborating with another person's audience so that you're extending your reach and they can be continuing to watch that interview or listen to that podcast while you're lounging by the pool. Maybe it's running Facebook ads so that they're doing the work while you're lounging by the pool. Just want you to consider ways that you can do that.
And then my last bonus tip is to take some time off. Like really off! So that you're refreshed and you can have some time to focus on yourself, your family during this slow season. Now, if this isn't a slow season for you, for whatever reason, like maybe your business is running basketball camps. Maybe this is a really busy season for you. That's totally cool. Don't take time off if this is your busy time. But if the summer is your slow season, take some time off and you can do one of two things.
You can model what it's like to take a break and that's what I did last year. If you go back to my podcast episodes, I talked about how I was taking a break and when I would be back. I'm not taking a break this year, I have more support in my business. I have more accountability in my business through the people that I work with and the people on my team. Shout out to Branda! Shout out to Brittany! So I'm actually not taking a break. I'm going on vacation in July. We're leaving shortly for our vacation. So I'm really, really excited about that.
But I have systems and procedures in place because I can do that now. So I highly recommend that whether you intentionally take a break and you model taking a break and you don't send emails and you don't put out your long form content, or you choose to continue through because you've batched and you have support in your business. Both are great, but still, if you can, take a break.
And then also if you're anything like me, you have a to-do list that's a mile long of all the things that you wanna do in your business while you're outta school and while you have all this extra free time. But there's gonna be a lot of competing pieces of your life, maybe your kids, your friends, vacation, relaxing, just the beautiful weather. So remember to be kind to yourself and you're making the best choice at this moment. You're making the right choice at this moment. And by looking back and saying, oh, I should have worked more on my business, or I should have... Not worth it.
So just be kind to yourself and I hope that you are enjoying your summer so far, and that the rest of your summer goes extremely well. And like I said in tip number two, if you want more tips on being consistent in batching, be sure to come back next week because we're gonna be talking about consistency over perfection and how batching plays into that!
Thank you for listening to this episode of Market Scale Grow. I'm so thankful that you've taken some time out of your busy schedule to make me part of your journey. If you love this podcast, don't forget to share it with your friends. And then head to your favorite podcast app to subscribe so that you won't miss next week's episode or any of the upcoming ones. And if you loved it, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcast so that other people can find this podcast and we can impact teachers and teacher business owners around the world!