Empowering Healthy Business: The Podcast for Small Business Owners
The Empowering Healthy Business Podcast is THE podcast for small business owners seeking to balance having a nicely profitable business, a sustainable, scalable, and salable business, lower stress levels, better work-life balance, and improved physical and emotional fitness. Yes, this is possible! Though it’s not easy. We’re here to help you navigate toward this objective.
Empowering Healthy Business: The Podcast for Small Business Owners
#31 - Lean Marketing for More Customers at Lower Cost
Would you like to learn how to get more customers at a lower cost of customer acquisition than your current marketing is producing? In this episode Sarah Noel Block presents her approach to lean marketing that can be done in just 4 hours per week.
More specifically, this episode includes:
- 01:48 What is “Lean Marketing”
- 02:19 Narrowing your focus to attract more, better-qualified leads
- 05:56 Clearly defining your Signature Offer
- 07:00 Selecting One Marketing Channel to be efficient
- 08:25 Utilizing a Gateway Offer to start new customer relationships
- 11:10 Core Content to nurture prospective customers
- 14:29 How Sarah uses AI to create all her content in 4 hours per week
- 23:59 Passive lead magnets and active lead generators
- 25:42 Sarah’s Tiny Marketing Club resources
Reach Sarah Noel Block at https://sarahnoelblock.com/club
Sponsored by SmartBooks. To schedule a free consultation, visit smartbooks.com.
Thanks for listening!
Host Cal Wilder can be reached at:
cal@empoweringhealthybusiness.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/calvinwilder/
Welcome to the Empowering Healthy Business Podcast, the podcast for small business owners. Your host, cal Wilder, has built and sold businesses of his own, and he has helped hundreds of other small businesses, whether it is improving sales, profitability and cash flow, building a sustainable, scalable and saleable business, reducing your stress level, achieving work-life balance or improving physical and emotional fitness. Cal and his guests are here to help you run a healthier business and, in turn, have a healthier life.
Calvin:Welcome. Today I'm joined by Sarah Noel Block, who runs Tiny Marketing and supports the marketing efforts of small and mid-sized businesses, and what I found different about Sarah is that she talks very explicitly about doing things cost efficiently and has built kind of a model around that. You may have heard the term lean Lean as a business term, kind of like agile, which I think maybe started in software development, where you had small teams, minimum viable products, getting feedback, focusing on what really matters most to the end user and not trying to build everything into the product. But I think for small businesses this is key because we don't have the luxury of large marketing budgets and we do need to be very focused. Maybe it's just founder led marketing or maybe there's just one employee doing most of the marketing.
Sarah:That's who I'm working with.
Calvin:The multi-million dollar question is how small businesses can do marketing better while sticking to a limited budget. So that's what we're going to talk about in this episode. Welcome.
Sarah:Sarah, thank you for having me, my very favorite topic, if you could guess.
Calvin:So what's your overall approach to this issue? Before we dig into some of the details, yeah, so let's lean into that word lean.
Sarah:Basically we're looking at the most optimized way to market. So you're not doing everything, you're not mirroring what someone else is doing. You are identifying what works and then create like a scalable system around it so you can repeat it and just bring in leads on autopilot.
Calvin:Well, that sounds good. So how do you actually do that?
Sarah:So I always start out with asking the question tell me about your favorite projects, the clients that you loved working with. And when my clients start telling me about the projects, what happened and who they were working with, we're able to identify these traits. And that's where we start. We start by identifying who that dream client is and what project would we want to replicate and turn into an offer. So we start there and build out the messaging strategy. So we're attracting those people.
Sarah:As soon as you start identifying really specific traits, you're going to get a whole lot more people raising their hand and saying, oh, that's me when you're talking about the challenges they went through. When you're going to get a whole lot more people raising their hand and saying, oh, that's me when you're talking about the challenges they went through, when you're talking about the goals that they have. And it can be really easy too you can pull up the transcripts from your sales calls with those projects that went really well and hear firsthand what were they talking about? What did they really need? I just throw those transcripts into ChatGPT and ask those questions what challenges did they talk about the most? And that helps me a lot in identifying what my messaging should be, so I start there.
Calvin:And that might seem a little bit counterintuitive, because I think what you're saying is really narrow who you're trying to talk to and what you're trying to sell and so it's kind of scary in that you may turn away a whole bunch of people who might want to do business with you. But I think you're going to say and make the argument that you're going to end up being able to sell a lot more and grow more effectively by having that narrow focus, and it's right.
Sarah:Yeah, trust me that I was anti-niche for a really long time and then I think about niching differently than other people. So I'm not when I tell you to think narrow, I'm not saying choose an industry and you only want to work with them. Something like that where you typically hear niches fall into Like I work with wedding photographers. It doesn't have to work with them. Something like that where you typically hear niches fall into Like I work with wedding photographers. It doesn't have to be like that. It can be looking at the overall traits or triggers that a company was going through where they needed you and you were able to perform a really amazing transformation for them. An example from one of my clients is they realized that their best projects came right after a company merged. There was a merger or an acquisition and that triggered the need for her services and she's done that process so many times she's in operations that she's able to provide that amazing transformation every single time.
Sarah:Where another one, it's a manufacturing company. They realized that working with manufacturing companies were the best way to get a transformation because they have similar traits. Things aren't always optimized. There's silos within the company that make it where her transformation is especially powerful for them. So that's how I niche down is how do you make your transformation that you're able to take clients through the most powerful, because you're going to get more referrals. That way You're going to get more customer stories to be able to pull in new clients and it gets a lot easier.
Calvin:Okay, all right, so focus on figuring out who your dream client is. Okay.
Sarah:Yep. So start there and then, once you do that, move on to your signature offer. This is one place where you can like the journey that you're taking people through, and I'm working with consultants and fractionals and every single one pushes back on me and says it's custom. Everything is custom, but the way we do it it's still custom. What you want to do with that signature offer is identify the steps in that journey, the basic framework you're taking all of your clients through and then positioning it with that in mind and then, if you have that, you have a relatively good idea on how much time it takes to take people through that transformation and you can package it up really nicely how much time it takes to take people through that transformation, and you can package it up really nicely. The idea behind this is that you have easy numbers to forecast with. Like this is the basic package, this is how much it costs. Then you have upsells and downsells, but you do all the customization during that gateway offer. So everything is still custom.
Sarah:So that's two way offer. So everything is still custom. So that's two. Three is the main channel. You don't need to be on every single channel. You don't have to be on Instagram. If you hate Instagram, choose one channel where your clients are hanging out, and if you hate social media, altogether, that channel could be like a niche community. It could be a Slack community, where you have learned that your favorite clients spend time. They're asking questions in there, and that is a really great place to be a big fish in a tiny pond.
Sarah:Okay, any questions before I keep going.
Calvin:One channel, okay, so how do you go about picking the channel?
Sarah:So you don't have to pick it right away. I would start by selling your gateway offers and selling as many as you can, and as you're doing that, ask those clients where do they spend their time, what channels are they in? Are they in any communities? Those clients, where do they spend their time? What channels are they in? Are they in any communities? Gather that data ahead of time before you decide to narrow down. But you could make just an estimated guess, like, if you're a B2B, probably LinkedIn is the right spot for you. So start with your best guess, your educated guess, and then, through the gateway offer process, you'll learn the actual best one.
Calvin:Okay, so this gateway offer? I could guess what that might be, but why don't you define that for us?
Sarah:Yeah. So the gateway offer goes by many, many names. I've heard wedge offer, bridge offer, entry offer. It's an entry point for your clients to go through before they lead into the main offers, so it's something that you want every single client to go through where you can. It's an easy yes, so it costs a fraction of the main offer, it's repeatable, you can do it again and it also does all of the discovery work for you, onboarding work for you, and gives you the information you need to build out a strategy. And during that process, that's when you would propose the next main step, because you can actually give an informed prescription, we'll say, on the symptoms that they're feeling, instead of just a guess at what it should be. That's the process where you would be doing the customization.
Calvin:And I guess it's also a point where you maybe you can weed out engagements that you just aren't really going to be a good fit for you before you've started the main work.
Sarah:Yes, who wants to be stuck with someone that you hate working with for a year? A gateway offer is a great way to say okay, this is a great fit for me, or it is not, and it needs to be able to stand alone where it's powerful in its own right. It will take them to the next milestone, whether they work with you or not.
Calvin:Okay. So in my business, which is accounting-related services, we could hypothetically have a gateway offer to provide a very low-cost financial metrics analysis and meet with the client, get to know them, deliver some value at a pretty low cost. It's templated, it's standardized, it's repeatable. It doesn't cost us a lot to do if we can standardize it. Doesn't cost us a lot to do if we can standardize it, and then we get to know the client and then we can both decide whether it makes sense you know, to really outsource ongoing services to smart books.
Sarah:Yeah, so I work with a lot of people in the bookkeeping CPA, fractional CFO space and they all have different gateway offers depending on what their specialty is. One of them they do a QuickBooks analysis. This is the checklist that you would want to go through to make sure your QuickBooks is working efficiently. She just works in QuickBooks when another one has a 10K in one day, where they'll go through your books and they will uncover $10,000 in unoptimized spending.
Calvin:Okay, great Okay, so you got your gateway offer, okay.
Sarah:Yes. So then there's only two other pieces left. We have our core content. So that would be like a signature series where you are one, you own the stage. So it's a great biz dev opportunity. When you're doing networking calls, connection calls, you can invite them. That's like this. It's a great way to nurture. So it takes time for a show to build up enough momentum to nurture, but eventually you get to a point where your clients come in pre-nurtured and they're ready to sign in that initial sales call. So it does the heavy lifting for you. I have always found that signature series. They have different levels.
Sarah:When you first start it, the first benefit you get is the business development that you're able to reach and have these conversations with people you wouldn't have otherwise. And then the next step is the nurturing. People start listening to the show and they are selling themselves through that experience of listening to you. And then the next one is the discoverability. Eventually your show gets big enough that people are discovering that you exist in the first place from it.
Sarah:Now another track if you hate content marketing like, let's say, you're listening to this and you're like that's great, that sounds like torture. I have zero interest in doing something like that. That's when I would recommend doing a collaborative, active lead generator for your core content, and that would be finding someone who shares the same audience as you and co-hosting or doing a webinar swap on some sort of thing that would be gated, so it could be like a roundtable or a panel, a networking group or a webinar. You're doing it with someone else, so you're borrowing someone else's audience. You're getting extra eyes, you're building your email list Less of a lift, you don't have to do it as often and you can also use all of the insights that came out during that event to feed your social media channels, your emails, things like that.
Calvin:Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, these days, by the time you actually have a conversation with their prospective customer or client, they've probably already done their homework on you, right?
Sarah:Yes, exactly, and the longer I have had my podcast, the more often my sales cycle is shrinking and shrinking and they come in like I've already actually listened to your show a bunch and I know what it's like to work with you. So just what are the logistics Like? What would be the kickoff date, how much is it? Things like that.
Calvin:Right, okay. Well, this all makes sense. I mean, it sounds simple, but it's probably not easy to do right things, and I do it in a Monday morning.
Sarah:I call it my Monday morning marketing time. I finish it all then, and then the rest of the week is dedicated to client work.
Calvin:So what do you actually do during that half day block that you're able? How are you able to get all this done in? You know, four hours or less.
Sarah:Yeah, so it's a lot of creating content babies. I do everything during that four-hour block, so I set up my interviews on Mondays for my podcast and then afterwards I will do the quick editing and schedule it to go on Buzzsprout and YouTube, and that includes the video. You use Descript. So do I, and it's super streamlined. There's so much that it does itself, so that makes it a lot easier.
Calvin:Let's say you're not doing a podcast as part of your core content. Let's say you actually need to write articles and things like that. How do you go about getting that done efficiently?
Sarah:Yeah. So if you're choosing to do articles efficiently, yeah. So if you're choosing to do articles, how I do it anyway is I'll interview someone that's going to be part of it a collaborator and I use that and have ChatGPT create an outline for me. I will fill in the stories that happened in there. So I use ChatGPT to create the first draft and then I put in all of the important elements that I went in there so you can still do that in that four-hour block. So after I do that, I write my newsletter for the week and schedule it out, and I break up whatever was in that episode into little teaching moments and schedule out all of my content on LinkedIn for the week.
Calvin:So you can recycle core content, slides and dice can recycle.
Sarah:That is the point of core content is to create tons of little content. Babies, it becomes so much easier. My newsletter it's about the topic that I talked about in the podcast that week. My social is all leading back to that podcast and it's not about promoting the podcast, it's about taking those teaching moments, just like one thing that you're like I could dive deeper into that and it'd be really valuable and pulling that out into your social.
Calvin:Okay, great. So, as you've helped your clients implement this kind of approach, what are some of the challenges, or if there are kind of common challenges, with implementing this kind of lean approach with your clients?
Sarah:I would say the biggest challenge that people have is building out that initial foundation, because it takes work to get it prepared to be repeatable. If you don't have guidance on that someone in your corner providing feedback and showing you the way, it can be really easy to be like never mind, it's not worth it, never mind, it's not worth it. So I would say the foundation and that initial build out is the hardest part. And then the second hardest part is if you don't have cheerleaders cheering you on, you might just let it drop, and if you stop being consistent with your marketing, you're going to lose trust with your audience. If you promise, you're going to lose trust with your audience. If you promise you're going to produce a podcast episode a week and then two months go by and you're like, sorry, your audience is going to notice and they're going to be like, well, they didn't follow through with what they said on that. What if they don't follow through with the project?
Calvin:okay, and let's's say we're talking about a founder-led effort here and the founder doesn't really like to talk or write a lot and is not that promotional about their business. How can they still effectively get people good results here?
Sarah:So when we're talking about that, are they alone? Are they solo?
Calvin:Let's say they have a team of, you know, five or 10 people.
Sarah:Okay. So if they have a team, I usually interview the team like the faces, the people who are customer facing, and I get their insights. That helps a lot in creating content. Having all of the people who are sending those DMs who are trying to book the sales calls if they're customer facing and they're part of the content, that would work really well Finding the experts. And they don't have to be like face to screen. It doesn't have to be like that. You just lean into whatever works for you, what your comfort level is.
Calvin:Yeah, it seems like these days there's a lot of respect for people just being authentic, even if they don't look that polished. As long as they're authentic, I think there's respect right.
Sarah:I agree. I agree. I think that the more polished something is, the more fake it feels. People like the mess ups. They like the realness, especially with AI and everything. When they see that reality it feels a little bit more comforting. I'm seeing that person. I can relate to them more.
Calvin:Yeah, in your experience, what percent of the finished product can you rely on ChatGPT to do accurately? Because I sometimes have challenges if we get into more technical topics or just looking up what's in the encyclopedia and repeating it or regurgitating it doesn't work very well because you have to have actual understanding as opposed to just pulling words from the encyclopedia or various online sources. If you have to really understand what you're talking about. I've seen some challenges where we've had to do some major editing of AI generated content. But overall, kind of what can you talk? What can you say about the quality of the actual content that gets produced by AI?
Sarah:now I think that I use it a little differently than most people. I don't use it to find the information I need. I interview the experts and I use those transcripts to build out whatever content I'm creating. So I'm giving it the information I want it to spit out in a prettier way.
Calvin:Okay. So let's say we did a transcript of this episode and we sent it to chat GPT. What would we tell chat GPT to?
Sarah:do with that content. Yeah, so there are custom bots specifically for this. I'm actually in the middle of doing that for my episode this week, so I use a specific one that is turning podcast transcripts into articles, and so it's really good already at what it does. But one thing that I specifically say because this is how I like them done is I want this article to be actionable. I don't want it to be referencing the podcast at all. I want it to be educational. I want it to speak to this pain point in this person and, most importantly, I want it to match the voice of the speaker, and usually when it comes out with needs hardly any editing, because it's getting all of the information in the transcript, it has the data, it has the tone of voice, so that makes it easier.
Calvin:Okay, that's very interesting. So there are these bots. I don't know much about this. I've played with chatGPT a very little bit, but I don't use it regularly. So there are these bots, that kind of plug into it, or how do you access these bots?
Sarah:So you need the premium account, which is like $20 a month, and the bots oh, I closed mine out. I was going to see exactly what it's called. You can build them yourself. So I custom build them for my clients so they're able to use it when I like. If they didn't need me to work on something and it'll match their tone of voice. Okay, so it's in the explore GPT section where you can get the custom bots or build your own.
Calvin:Okay, I mean, I think this is probably well, I'm maybe late to the game and you're in the marketing industry and I'm in the accounting industry, so I don't know much about this stuff, but it seems like such a game changer because historically, when we had to produce content, you know somebody would have to like sit down, get motivated, write it from scratch, get writer's block. It's very expensive to pay good employees to do that. So it seems like if you can get a little bit comfortable using AI, you can dramatically increase the rate of content generation, quality of the content and it's more on the strategy at that point, like what kind of content and how you're delivering it to who. It's more like what's the strategy becomes a lot more of the thing to manage rather than the actual content creation. Part of it, right.
Sarah:Yes, it takes away a lot of those like someone to take care of this before, or maybe you just chose not to do it because it didn't fit into your day, but now, if you have the right bot that's trained correctly, it takes five minutes. You might have to do a little tweaking, a little bit of editing, but it's not much.
Calvin:Okay, all right. Well, this is great. I can see how you can get a lot done now on your Monday mornings.
Sarah:Yeah, yeah. My processes definitely help in that, because people are like you're constantly creating content. How do you do that? This is how I do it. I'm really not creating content all the time. I'm just taking my core content and turning it into everything else.
Calvin:Okay, great.
Sarah:Yes, there's one part of the wheel that we didn't get to and that was lead generators. So I use two different lead generators and this is what I teach my clients too. One should be a passive lead magnet, so it's always on, people can download it anytime. It's a pop-up on your website Maybe you're promoting it in your LinkedIn banner, things like that so it always exists and it trickles cold leads in grows your email list. Second one is the active lead generator. So I do these about every six weeks. They're time sensitive and they bring in a flood of new leads at one time that are warm because, one, they have to consume it within a set period of time, and two, because of that urgency and when they need to consume it, they're going to be warmer because they will go through it, where a passive lead magnet may just sit in their inbox and you just cross your fingers hoping they consume it, because if they're not learning something and having some sort of transformation, they're not going to be interested in working with you either.
Calvin:Okay, and just to confirm you're talking about.
Sarah:I am talking about. These are free, so lead generators are free. Gateway offer is paid. Are free, so lead generators are free. Gateway offer is paid, so your passive lead magnet might be like a downloadable guide with a companion training video, something like that, where a active lead generator could be like your webinar or a workshop.
Calvin:Okay, got it. Okay, well, great. If folks want to follow up with you and get some help implementing and upgrading their own marketing, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you, Sarah?
Sarah:Yeah, so the easiest way to work with me is to join the tiny marketing club and you can go to sarahnoelblock. com/club where we build this foundation and you get support one-on-one with me. So it is a hybrid experience where you get trainings, you get tools, you get the chat GPT bots, but you also get pop-up consulting with me. You get strategies. There's a lot of one-on-one time that you get with it.
Calvin:Well, great. Thanks so much for joining. This has been a really valuable episode, I think. Reference show notes and find other episodes on empoweringhealthybusinesscom. If you would like to have a one-on-one discussion with me or possibly engage SmartBooks to help with your business, you can reach me at cal C-A-L at empoweringhealthybusinesscom or message me on LinkedIn, where I am easy to find. Until next time. This is Empowering Healthy Business, the podcast for small business owners signing off.
