Marketing isn’t a Dirty Word (How to Sell Authentically) | 66
In this Saturday's strategy session, I am talking about how marketing is not a dirty word but a tool to authentically sell. For a long time in the marketing world, marketing has been linked to slimy tactics where you feel added pressure to buy and sell. Marketing doesn’t need to be that, it should be a holistic authentic selling process.
Marketing is an essential tool in business and in this episode, I share how to holistically market in a way that feels good for your business;
A three-part content framework that can be used to authentically market your product or service.
How building relationships and getting your customer involved will get them to connect to your business.
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Episode Transcript:
Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow. A podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneur's 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.
Okay, so before we jump into the episode, I am super excited to share a brand-new freebie with you. It's my targeting ideas for Facebook ads. If you've dabbled in Facebook ads, and you're just looking for some fresh inspiration for your audiences, this freebie is for you.
I share my top Facebook ad targeting groups for you so that you can have inspiration and find those people that are perfect for what you have to offer from warm audiences to cool lookalike audiences, to cold interest-based audiences. I cover all three in this freebie. Head to marketscalegrow.com/audiences to grab your copy today.
Hello and welcome to Market Scale Grow, my name is Jenzaia, and this is a Saturday strategy session. I am as always super, super excited about this episode. We are going to be talking about how marketing is not a dirty word. I think that for a long time in the online space marketing has been associated with some icky slimy sales tactics.
So people who rent a hundred thousand dollar cars just so they can sit on them and look fancy and that extreme FOMO marketing where people are just terrified that they're going to miss out on something. And so, this extreme push or pressure to get in on something before the time runs out or else it's gone forever and you won't be as good as other people.
You can't be part of this club if you don't buy right now and that extreme emotional tug and not in a positive way, but in a negative way. A lot of these tactics that I just described are bro marketing, I think would be the term that we mostly associate and that feeling of icky and slimy and marketing does not need to be that it doesn't.
It, it really, really doesn't marketing should be a holistic authentic selling process. And so that's what I want to talk about today is holistically marketing and holistically, authentically selling as, what you're doing in your business in a way that feels good and that feels authentic, and that feels right for both you and your audience.
Where that starts is by having a holistic marketing strategy this will include holistically marketing for me, includes having a content marketing strategy, email marketing strategy, community strategy, sorry, community building strategy, and using paid ads to amplify everything. So, let's talk a little bit deeper about how you can authentically market and authentically sell your business with that framework.
So, the first strand, and now these strands do not need to be done in this order. I do recommend that you layer paid advertising in last, but you don't have to for it to be successful. But I do recommend you pick one strand at a time to focus on and to make your priority. And then once you have that up and running smoothly, you can layer in a second strand.
The order that I do them in is the order that I introduced them in my business. And if you wanted a recommendation, and a plan, then this is the order that I would recommend you do it in, but it's totally, totally up to you. What feels authentic for your business? What feels right for you and what makes the most sense for your bigger plan?
So, the first strand is content marketing. This is your long form content, and your podcasts like this, or your blog or video content on something like YouTube. Your goal of this content is to educate, to entertain, and depending on how you're going to go about it, maybe you're evoking emotions with some of the stories that you're telling, I personally focus primarily on educating.
I like to provide impactful episodes that are implementable almost immediately in businesses so that you can take what you've learned from the episode, and you can go and do it. I saved the entertaining content, the emotional content and then also I do more entertain or educational content, but I saved that for social media, and you don't have to do it that way again, there's this is almost a choose your own adventure.
If you want highly emotional or entertaining content for your long form content, you can absolutely go with that journey. I just personally have educational content as my base if you will. So that's the first strand is that long form content. You want it to be things that your audience is looking for to be educated about, to be informed about what they could be searching, because your long-form content is probably going to be the base of your search engine optimized content, where people can organically find you by searching a topic and on YouTube, that's super easy because YouTube itself is a search engine. Blogs there is some work that needs to be done to make sure that they're optimized for your search engines so that you're using keywords and you're researching those different pieces that people are actually going to be looking for.
I know that there are definitely some benefits to how you're structuring the blog posts with your titles and your subtitles and your headlines and all of those pieces. So, you need to make sure that you've optimized your blog posts for the search engine.
Podcasts are not super searchable at this time so you need to make sure that your title is searchable and has keywords in it, but you also should be creating a show notes or a blog post to go with the episode because those are much more searchable and they should follow a lot of the same tips and strategies for optimization as a blog post would this long-form content can absolutely include some hard sells and or soft selling in it.
Hard sell is where you're saying something along the lines of here's my product. You should buy it. These are all the great things about it. Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. Okay. That's the whole, the whole episode is just, here's my awesome thing and buy from it. Whereas a soft sell is something a little bit more like what I did last week and gave five tips and one of them included saying, hey, sign up for the dream list essentials waitlist it's opening soon. This may be a fit for you. There's not really like a you have to do this, but it's authentically included within the information that would be valuable without that. So that would be, I think the difference between a hard sell and a soft sell is that the hard sell is if you take out the pitch or the offer, there's nothing really left.
Whereas in a soft sell if you take out the pitch or the offer, they're still highly valuable content that somebody can consume and truly get something valuable from it. Okay, second strand is your email marketing. This is where you are sending regular emails to people who subscribed to you. It involves actually getting people to sign up for your email list.
So that would be the promotion of your, lead magnet or masterclasses or challenges, whatever you're choosing to do to get people on your email list. Generally speaking, this is something free. It could also be a low ticket offer something that's like $27, $47 that people would purchase., but with the sole goal of getting them on your email list, this strand of your marketing also includes and probably primarily includes the actual emails themselves. So, sending out regular consistent emails to your email list, I highly highly recommend that these are weekly emails that you're sending out so that people remember who you are they look forward to it, trying to do it on the same day, at the same time, so that people start to expect it and there's a pattern and you can get some consistent readership. What I personally did and what I highly recommend is that this email is an expansion on, or an extension or a promotion of your long form content. So, what I like to do, like I said before that these podcasts, I like them to be educational, highly impactful, short episodes.
So, I take the information for my email, and I tell a story around it. And so, I get some emotion going and I try to draw people in with the story piece and the emotional piece or the entertaining piece in my email. Sometimes I add a little bit of content and educate in the email. And sometimes they say, if you really want the good stuff, then go listen to the podcast.
The email is again, it's a nurture. This is where you're building relationships and you can be your authentic self with email. You should, I recommend that you are selling there as well. And so, I like to do this in the PS of almost every single email like hey PS, we currently have one space open for ongoing ads management or hey PS you could grab this template from us or whatever it may be that we're promoting at this time. I generally do that in the PS. And then I also sometimes will include more salesy emails where it is literally just a, hey, we have a couple spaces open if this is something you're interested in, hit reply, let us know. We would love to work with you. So, hitting reply is the first step to starting that process.
Email marketing is super, super important for that authentic marketing plan, because people really do get to know you better there and build relationships. It can feel like a one-way conversation because you're sending out to people but finding ways to get people to hit reply and to continue that conversation can be really beneficial to the open rates, because you're more likely to be marked spam if nobody is responding to you so getting those people to reply is a great way to lower your spam count. So, saying like, what's your favorite vacation location? I'm thinking about planning a trip and I want some recommendations hit reply and let me know. If that makes sense for you and your brain. I've done that. I got some great recommendations and feedback is another way saying, hey, I'd love your feedback hit reply and let me know, or fill out this survey, whatever it may be, getting people to engage with your emails is really important because it turns that one way conversation into a two-way conversation.
Okay, so the third strand of the holistic marketing strategy is community building and this is where you're either building a community on some sort of social media, like Instagram or Tiktok or in a community like Facebook or Mighty Networks. My recommendation typically is either Instagram or Facebook group Tiktok is getting more and more and more of a platform that people are going to, but you need to be aware of where your audience is and so thinking about that, that's really important. I also realize that you're not building a community the same way on Instagram or Tiktok as you are in a Facebook group. The Facebook group is a great way for you to get people to interact with you, but also. Especially, as it gets bigger and bigger, they'll start interacting with each other and building relationships and connections in true kind of community fashion.
If that's what you, you're looking for more of an legitimate community where people are interacting with one another than a Facebook group is probably the way to go. When I say community, I need a way to continue to build those relationships. People will send you DMS and they will comment on your posts on Instagram comment on your, Tiktok videos.
So, you're starting to give your audience a way to communicate more directly with you and with your content and that's truly what this is about is to have people communicating with you in that direct way, because one-to-one communication is a nurturer a relationship builder. So, when they start to send you DMs and they are replying to your stories and responding to polls that you're putting out and commenting or remixing your reels, those are all building your community, building those relationships with people and helping you to connect with your audience more.
And that is truly the goal of the, the community building strand of the holistic marketing strategy. And then of course, paid advertising. Is the last one. And this is where you're going to amplify the efforts that you're doing elsewhere. So putting some ad spend behind your list, builder, putting some ad, spend behind your long form content, putting some ads, Ben behind your sales page.
There's a way to do this in a more authentic way I call it the invisible funnel where there's three different pieces or three different ads that you want to get up and running. The first one is that list builder. Is that people are getting onto your email list. The next one is brand awareness and visibility ads, so that you're growing your warm audience and you're nurturing people so that then they will subscribe.
They'll get that other one and then the third one is your sales or your offer ads. So, people are without even realizing it once this entire invisible funnel is built out, they will see an ad for your blog post and they'll read your blog post and then they'll see another ad for a different piece of content.
And then they'll start seeing your list, building ads and get on your email list. And then they'll start seeing those promo ads to buy from you. And without even knowing it, your ads are visibly funneling them through your customer journey. And by doing it that way, you're adding, nurturing into your ads and you’re marketing.
You're adding that list building and the email marketing into your ads and your paid strategy. You're adding all of those layers in. And so, you're not just going straight to buy from me. And if you don't buy from me, your business will fail and life will be over and you won't have the same hundred thousand dollar car that I have.
No, you're bringing them in, nurturing them, getting them interested in your business, getting them involved in your business, engaged in your content so that they are building that relationship and feeling connected to you because we buy from people we buy when we are connected to the thing that we're buying or the person we're buying from.
And so having this authentic invisible nurturing funnel that they're going through can be very, very powerful. So, I hope that this has given you tons of ideas of how you can authentically market your business so that you don't feel like marketing is a dirty word because it's absolutely not. Marketing is a powerful tool and necessary piece of your business.
And if you aren't marketing it, you may hit a plateau. You may stagnate.] And business may get really hard. And so having a marketing plan helps you to feel authentic and not icky and slimy and gross like a car salesman or whatever analogy you want to associate with this. So just as a quick reminder, dream list essentials is opening soon.
I would love for you to get on the waitlist, so that you can get more information. I dropped some information for the waitlist last week. More information is coming this week and I'm super, super excited. So, if you want additional support for getting Facebook and Instagram ads up and running to create this invisible funnel in your business to fill your email list with dream clients so that you can be selling more and enjoying your business even more than get on the waitlist, you can go to marketscalegrow.com/dreamlist sign up there. And like I said, more information is going to be coming to the waitlist later this week. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I will be back in your ear with an exciting interview next week. I'm so excited about it. So, stay tuned for that and have a wonderful week.