How to Market Your New Business with Lauren Patterson Ep 112

Ever wondered how to authentically market your new business and connect with your audience in the digital age? Join me as I welcome Lauren Patterson, co-founder of That Random Agency, who brings over a decade of experience to our conversation, delivered at the SHIFT-LIVE-A-Thon event, "How to Market Your New Business."

Lauren shares essential tips for entrepreneurs and business owners, highlighting the importance of self-awareness and passion in crafting genuine marketing efforts. She underscores the need to deeply understand your target audience, identify their pain points, and effectively address their objections. Lauren also provides insights on selecting the right marketing channels and emphasizes the value of building a robust network through openness to new connections and opportunities.

But that’s not all! We also dive into the best practices for engaging with your audience during virtual events. Lauren discusses the significance of using chat features to connect with multiple speakers and provides her expertise on podcasting. As we gear up for insights from podcasting expert Kendra Corman, Lauren encourages listeners to connect with her on LinkedIn. This episode is packed with actionable advice and strategies to help you master digital marketing and audience engagement, ensuring your business flourishes in the digital space. Tune in to unlock the secrets of successful marketing and audience interaction from two industry experts!

Watch the video playback & get the resources from Lauren:
https://www.mellermarketing.com/shift

LinkedIn "Power Hours" (Single Session, x4, x12)
Each package includes: 

• LinkedIn consulting / coaching, personalized to your needs and focusing on your questions.
• Review of LinkedIn profile / company page to provide guidance / advice / recommendations

https://www.mellermarketing.com/powerhour 

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My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.

Visit mellermarketing.com

Let's connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendameller
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:48

We have our very next guest up with us, Lauren Patterson, and Lauren's going to be talking to us today about how to market new business. Very excited about this. Lauren, before we jump in there, why don't you take a minute? Tell us a little bit about yourself? What do you do for your business and who do you help Of?

Speaker 2: 1:04

course. So thank you so much for having me, brenda. I love to be on the webinar with everyone. So a bit about myself. My name is Lauren Patterson. I have just over 10 years of experience in digital marketing around the Metro Detroit area, and four years ago I co-founded my very own agency, digital marketing agency, with my husband, john. There's been a lot of learnings along the way, but we help quite a big variety of people. We love to make sure that we're able to help small business owners, solopreneurs, as well as large businesses, cpg brands, people as brands. We have fun with everybody pretty much, but I would say one of our big niches is definitely helping authors, keynote speakers, podcasters, anyone who wants to build their brand and start from scratch.

Speaker 1: 1:48

Awesome With that said Lauren, I'm going to take myself off screen, but first I'm going to pull your slides up on deck here and I'll be back in about 10 minutes. Sound, good Sounds perfect, all right.

Speaker 2: 1:59

Thank you everyone. I just shared a little bit about myself already. Wonderful to meet everyone. If you have any questions, definitely drop them in the comments. I'm happy to answer them now or shoot me a message on LinkedIn. But today I wanted to share five tips to market your new business and we'll just jump right in. If anyone has questions, jump in.

Speaker 2: 2:21

So the first one is to know yourself, and I know that might seem like obvious advice when you first hear it, but before you can begin marketing your business effectively, you really want to zero in on. What service or product do you want to offer? What are you really passionate about and what are your values? What type of customers do you want to work with? Everyone's had bad clients, I'm sure, in their career, and you want to make sure. What type of person do you want to work with. How do you want to spend your time? When you take that leap to become an entrepreneur and a business owner? It's a big risk, so you want to make sure you're setting yourself up for success as much as you can, and really knowing yourself and your strengths are a big part of that, and you always want to come from a place of authentic passion for what you have to offer. There's so many ideas nowadays on LinkedIn or YouTube about different types of businesses. You could start, but before you get going, you want to make sure you choose something that you're truly passionate about and you have the knowledge to support, because your customer is going to know if your heart's not really in it. So this is something that seems obvious, but it's really important when you think about starting your business for yourself and how you want to market yourself. When you've just gotten started. You need to be authentic.

Speaker 2: 3:30

That leads me into number two, which is knowing your audience. What are their pain points If you have a target market that you're thinking about? What's hard for them in their day-to-day work working style? What are their objections as well? What might stop them from wanting to hire you? All of these things are really important as you think about how you position yourself and your marketing, and then you also want to know how can you help. So what would your answers be to those questions? And you can even talk to colleagues or friends and ask them hey, put yourself in this position. What would your objection be if I approached you with this service or this product?

Speaker 2: 4:07

I think that is a nice way just to think ahead before you do any outreach or marketing. But once you have a solid idea of who your audience is, what do they need? How can you help? You can craft your marketing messages around that. And another piece of this, too, would be where are they spending time? Either online and in real life? So how can you get in touch with them? Is a podcast? The best way to go Is a strong LinkedIn presence.

Speaker 2: 4:31

I'd recommend that for everybody, but it was LinkedIn where you should really double down or maybe Instagram or even TikTok, so who you know your target audience the best, ideally, and those are the things you should keep in mind when you're thinking about how am I going to market myself and my new company? Where are people spending time online and how can you make sure you're available to them? Don't just pick the channels or the marketing channels that you're the most comfortable with. Definitely think about where do they live in real life. Maybe you know joining a group is the best way to kind of network and meet your target audience there. Think about different ways that you want to reach them and make sure that you don't try to be everything to everyone. Know who your audience is and feel confident in that, and don't be tempted just to say I offer email marketing and my niche really is this one group of people, but I'll just expand everyone just so I can have more money or more potential clients. Really, stay strong and confident in who your target audience is and where your expertise lies.

Speaker 2: 5:33

So number three would be building your network. So this one this has been really important just in the last four years how we've grown Random, which is our digital marketing agency. Say yes to that meeting If someone maybe you don't know what they'll offer you right away, for example, but just say yes, have that coffee with someone that you used to work with or someone that maybe through a friend of a friend, talking to people when you're out and about, you don't have to be salesy. You don't have to. I'm not a salesy person by nature. You don't have to change who you are, but I think being open to other people, talking to them, being curious about other people, this is a really great way just to build your network, because you never know who the person next to you knows or how they might be able to help you in your business or know someone who would be interested in your product or your service. So this is a really big part. I think sometimes people forget. Build your network, both online and in the real world, and it's also nice just to connect with people because we're all so digitally focused nowadays. All right, number four, moving quick. So next is to use your network. So they might seem like similar advice, but this one really is, when you take that. You have a great LinkedIn connection, you have people, old colleagues you've worked with.

Speaker 2: 6:48

Partnerships have really been the key for us to scale our business. So you know, initially word of mouth was wonderful when we first started the agency offering digital marketing services, and that's great. But in order to scale, partnering with other people who maybe they offer a complimentary service to what you do, or maybe they have a similar audience but they do something slightly different, or even if they do something pretty similar it's important to remember nobody does it alone. No one is successful all by themselves and it's really important to think about talking to other people and just pitch the idea to them. They can say no if they're not interested in a partnership, but just from our experience, it's been really helpful and it also as a solopreneur, it's nice to have partners and other people that you can collaborate with and work with and pitch new business.

Speaker 2: 7:39

Think about who in your network could be a collaborator with you and make sure have an abundance mindset about this Partnering with someone else. There's plenty of business and clients for everyone to be successful and if you meet someone else with that same mindset, you only expand the opportunities for your business and theirs and really the offering for the customer. That's been a huge piece for us. That's been really important and helpful for us to scale as we've grown. So don't be shy, don't be afraid to talk to people and see how you could partner up.

Speaker 2: 8:13

And then the last one is to tell your story, and here we say no, the real one. So I feel like on LinkedIn I've noticed especially lately it can be tempting to share the story or the version of why you started your business that sounds the coolest or sounds the best on LinkedIn or the most impressive. But I think, from my experience, being really honest and authentic about who you are and why you've started this business, or what opportunities fell all aligned in one place for you to begin as a solopreneur, it helps you break away from the sea of sameness. A lot of people are trying to put their most impressive foot forward, and that's certainly important. You want to be positive when you're sharing, but I can share just from my own perspective.

Speaker 2: 8:54

Random, we started in May of 2020. And in April of 2020, I was working at a startup and it was a live events based startup and obviously during the pandemic, april was not the best time for that, and so our whole team got let go. So that's an experience that a lot of people can relate to. Many people have gotten go from a job and how I chose to react to that. That was the pivotal point for us in starting random and being authentic and real about that story. A lot of clients have related to that and really like to see.

Speaker 2: 9:25

I think that says something about you whether you are working in corporate right now and you're just ready for something else, something new, and you want to start your business. I think being honest about that and wanting to bring your experience to a new place, a lot of people will relate to that and that can be helpful. Here's a short little recap of the advice. If anyone has questions or thoughts, feel free. I'll hang out in the chat as well, brenda, but feel free to message me on LinkedIn or we have some freebies to offer. About podcasting, that's one of the services that we offer at random, but would love to hear any thoughts, if anyone has comments.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Awesome. Thank you so much, Lauren, and I love when I talk to fellow solopreneurs who I like to say the universe nudged us forward. We didn't set out the path and say this is the thing I'm going to do, but sometimes the circumstances lead you to where you are and you just come from such an informed place and a passionate place, and I loved your tips today on how to market your new business, and I know there's people watching that are thinking about making that shift right now and this could inspire them. So could you remind me? You said you had a resource. What's the website that we could go to to pull up that resource?

Speaker 2: 10:30

Absolutely so. It's thatrandomagencycom. That's our agency website. You can learn all about the variety of digital services we offer. Check out some case studies if you're interested, and we also have a free download, podcasting 101. So it's a really detailed freebie If you're interested in a podcast. We love podcasts on our team and helping out potential clients with that, so feel free to also send a message on LinkedIn. If you can't find it, I'll be happy to send it to you.

Speaker 1: 10:57

All right. Thanks so much, lauren. We really appreciate it and we're opening this up to Q&A right now so you guys can see there's a ticker running below and I've asked you to bring in any questions or comments that you have. And thank you so much Carol's helping me out in the background here today with some links and information. We'll be dropping those inside chat. I do want to let everyone know any of the resources that speakers like Lauren are sharing here today. You'll be getting access to a playback page as well as a link that you can visit directly. So you have a notepad. You definitely I have my notepad and I'm taking my key takeaways as we go along today, so jot them down, but do keep in mind that you can also come back and check out your email later inside here. Thank you so much, lauren.

Speaker 1: 11:39

And for anyone who's watching right now, you're able to submit comments into the chat you want to. Right hand side of your screen is a little different than zoom, but on the right hand side of your screen you can add a comment. If you've not already commented, I want to encourage you to go into comments and give it a test out. You can say good morning or hello just to see what it's looking like, and I'm pulling a couple of these that are up on screen right now, and Brian actually asked what's the best starting point for a podcast, which is a great setup, because later on today we're going to have Kendra Corman talking about podcasts, which is wonderful, and the good thing is we have people like Lauren who have some podcasting expertise. You've got Kendra, who's got some. I've done a podcast as well so you can really learn from multiple speakers and presenters as we go throughout the day. And I'm assuming, in addition to your website, lauren, you're open to connecting with people on LinkedIn as well. Is that fair to say?

Speaker 2: 12:30

Yes, absolutely. Feel free to send me a message, a connection request. I'd be happy to.

Speaker 1: 12:35

Okay, wonderful, all right, lauren, thank you so much for joining us today. It was great to learn more about your business. I hope you're able to maybe stay on the event for a while, see if there's any questions or comments that I've missed inside chat, if that would be okay with you. Absolutely. Thank you, guys. Thanks.