Unlock the secrets to marketing success with Angel Melvin from Light Alive Marketing as we share a trove of strategies and insights tailored for the budget-conscious entrepreneur. From painting studios to accounting firms, our conversation promises to equip you with the knowledge to craft a marketing language that resonates with your clientele. Discover how to create an impactful presence in the marketplace, find the sweet spot between DIY marketing and when to bring in the pros, and learn to navigate the challenges of self-promotion with the finesse of a seasoned marketer.
Diving into audience identification, we unveil the importance of knowing not just who your customers are but where to find them and how to capture their attention. Listen as we dissect the relationship between audience demographics and media channel selection, offering a strategic approach to content that converts. Whether your target audience is millennials on Instagram or boomers on Facebook, we've gotten the lowdown on how to engage them effectively with the resources you have at hand.
Lastly, we shatter the myth that email marketing is a relic of the past, highlighting its enduring value in a robust marketing toolkit. From becoming a Storybrand certified guide to weaving your customer into the fabric of your brand's story, this episode is jam-packed with practical advice and actionable steps. Ready to take your small business marketing to new heights? Join us for a marketing masterclass that will transform the way you connect with your audience and amplify your message.
Connect with Angel Melvin:
https://www.lightalive.marketing/
https://www.bbb.org/us/ok/norman/profile/digital-marketing/light-alive-marketing-0995-90060637/#sealclick
Email marketing resources:
Can-Spam: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
Story Brand: https://storybrand.com/
Follow BBB Serving Central Oklahoma on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn @BBBCentralOK
Unlock the secrets to marketing success with Angel Melvin from Light Alive Marketing as we share a trove of strategies and insights tailored for the budget-conscious entrepreneur. From painting studios to accounting firms, our conversation promises to equip you with the knowledge to craft a marketing language that resonates with your clientele. Discover how to create an impactful presence in the marketplace, find the sweet spot between DIY marketing and when to bring in the pros, and learn to navigate the challenges of self-promotion with the finesse of a seasoned marketer.
Diving into audience identification, we unveil the importance of knowing not just who your customers are but where to find them and how to capture their attention. Listen as we dissect the relationship between audience demographics and media channel selection, offering a strategic approach to content that converts. Whether your target audience is millennials on Instagram or boomers on Facebook, we've gotten the lowdown on how to engage them effectively with the resources you have at hand.
Lastly, we shatter the myth that email marketing is a relic of the past, highlighting its enduring value in a robust marketing toolkit. From becoming a Storybrand certified guide to weaving your customer into the fabric of your brand's story, this episode is jam-packed with practical advice and actionable steps. Ready to take your small business marketing to new heights? Join us for a marketing masterclass that will transform the way you connect with your audience and amplify your message.
Connect with Angel Melvin:
https://www.lightalive.marketing/
https://www.bbb.org/us/ok/norman/profile/digital-marketing/light-alive-marketing-0995-90060637/#sealclick
Email marketing resources:
Can-Spam: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
Story Brand: https://storybrand.com/
Follow BBB Serving Central Oklahoma on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn @BBBCentralOK
So I think that is one of the struggles that I see for new businesses um, that they they forget to plan for that. Whatever that looks like, they forget to plan for that. They say, okay, I got all my things in place, but I don't know how to market myself.
Speaker 2:Hey there, friends, and welcome back to the build with BBB podcast. I'm your host, casey Farmer, here with Angel Melvin of Light Alive Marketing. Angel, welcome to the podcast. Angel has been an ambassador for BBB. She supports all of our events. She's very active in the community. I think you also have an upcoming event with the chamber. So exciting she. You will see her at a lot of different places and we're so excited that she's also serving on our Revere and Rebel planning committee today. So if you haven't met her, welcome, angel. We're glad to have you on the podcast. Thank, you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2:So today we're talking about all things marketing which you and I think could get up down a whole rabbit hole course, because probably could marketing gals. But do you want to give a just an overview of what listeners are going to?
Speaker 1:learn today? Yeah, so today we're going to talk about some marketing tactics that you could use if you wound up being in a situation where maybe you started a business recently or you're just generally in a situation where you're not able to afford working with an agency, because sometimes that could get apparently pricey for small businesses or startups. So, basically, if they are not in the market to hire a marketing agency, but there are certain tools that they can use and there are just things that I think that every business should know about themselves and about how to promote themselves. So, if a business finds themselves in a situation where they're not able to hire a marketing agency because maybe that is just not in their budget, I would like to talk about a couple of tools that they could use, that are available to them, that they could still promote themselves, but also a couple of things that are important to know when using those tools, so that you're not just blindly marketing your business, but have a little bit of guidance on where to start.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so our first point that we are going to talk about today is understanding the challenges of marketing on a budget and what that means for a small business owner. Right, Because I have conversations with business owners constantly who say you know, I'm an expert in this field, but I'm not a marketing expert too, but I don't have the money yet to hire a marketing expert on my team. So what are some common challenges that businesses face when they're trying to do that?
Speaker 1:Well, I get this question a lot too, and I sometimes tell people well, you know what I may do all the marketing things, but I am not a finance person right Numbers, financial things, okay. So I have to decide is it something that I feel confident in taking on myself, even though I know that that's not my strong suit, or will I look for options where I have somebody help me with that? Because once in a while, even if you think it's not in the budget, not getting that can be more detrimental to your business than trying to figure out ways to pay for it. So that is one thing, and I'm not saying that everybody should be able to just write out the door, be able to hire a marketing agency. However, it's something where you really have to decide. Is it something that I could take on, that I feel confident of taking on, or is it something where I should at least you know, maybe consult with somebody, because there are options in between hiring a marketing agency to do all the work for you? You can still hire a marketing coach, for example, which is one of the services that I offer is to work with a coach and getting started and handling it yourself, but still being able to market yourself professionally, looking professional and giving your customers a good impression.
Speaker 1:So the struggle comes in a lot of businesses when they start out, they have all their pieces in place. When it comes to their actual operations, whenever it comes to, say, your painting business right, you know how to paint, you know where to buy the paint, you know how to, you know maybe you know how to talk to customers, you know all those things, but you don't know how to market yourself. And that's okay because you're a painter, so nobody expects you to market yourself. But when you start out your business thinking about the painting process itself and you leave out the marketing piece altogether, you're setting yourself up for failure. It's like coming up with a product and you're not telling anyone about it. I mean, even if you go outside your door, you know you develop some cool little new thing in your garage, you walk out your door, you tell your neighbor about it because you want to make money, you want to sell it. Well, that's marketing. But if you don't tell anyone, no one's going to know, you're not going to be able to make any money, you're not going to be able to sell your services, your business or you know products if you don't market at all.
Speaker 1:So I think that is one of the struggles that I see for new businesses is that they forget to plan for that. Whatever that looks like, they forget to plan for that. They say, okay, I got all my things in place, but I don't know how to market myself. So what I recommend as businesses are starting up you know, especially starting up is to remember that just doing the job alone is not enough.
Speaker 1:Just being a good painter or just having a cool new little project product that you're trying to sell is not enough. You have got to plan for the marketing. So when you establish your business plan, when you try to figure out how much money am I going to need to get this business off the ground, marketing should already be part of that. And then you can still decide well, I may have $20,000 to launch my brand, which is a decent amount to you know, get an agency to do some of the stuff for you. Or you can say you know, I really just don't have any money, so I have only a few dollars to work with. Now we want to look at what that may look like if you only have a very small budget, and then you know what can you do as a business to still not look like something that was produced in your basement.
Speaker 2:So are we going down the line, or I think what you're getting at is hiring a full agency to do all of your marketing versus hiring a marketing coach. How do you know which way to go? Is it all based on budget? Is it based on the type of business that you have? Who you're serving, how big your service area is?
Speaker 1:I mean primarily it's based on budget, of course, but another factor that may affect your decision there is how confident you feel in handling some of your marketing, just like the example I used earlier with the finances.
Speaker 1:You know, do I want to run my own finances for my business? No, I certainly don't. I just I don't feel competent in the financial aspect. I keep track of what's going on, I know where we stand and then I let my accountant do the rest and I have got to come up with the money to pay my accountant right. So that is a huge factor for me when I run my business to figure out what am I going to outsource and what do I feel like I could handle, with a little bit of guidance maybe, because I mean, the truth is that most people if they start a business, they don't really know everything. That's part of it, like it's. You live and learn, you know you have to, you get into the processes and then suddenly you've got to learn how to you know have employees and how to run payroll and how to have good processes and HR stuff, and you know the list goes on, it just keeps going.
Speaker 1:You know and you have to learn. You have to learn all the different different aspects and you have to decide for every step what do I feel like I can learn and I can handle, and what is just over my head. And if marketing is way over your head, if that's like a foreign language to you, then maybe that may be something where you need to look at, maybe hiring someone to help you with it.
Speaker 2:And it can be for so many, because you and I both know that it's constantly changing. There's always new information out there. There's always a new platform that you've got to learn and that you've got to get trained up on and figure out. Is my business supposed to be there? Is it not supposed to?
Speaker 1:be there Is this represent my brand.
Speaker 2:Well, all of the things. So let's now go into, like, budget-friendly marketing strategies, how to create content, what those marketing ideas should be. Leveraging social media platforms, of course that's a free, cheap and easy way to do. Digital marketing, which I'm sure you see a lot of yes. Creating engaging blog content, and why somebody needs to do that. Or user-generated content, which I don't want to go too much down the hole of all these things, because, of course, these are all services that you offer at your business and could help a small business with.
Speaker 2:But what tips do you have for a small business Maybe who's just getting started and hasn't hired somebody yet?
Speaker 1:So the first and foremost to me, the most important thing for marketing overall, it doesn't matter what you do, how you market yourself. The one thing that you've got to understand is who your audience is, and that is something that you can do Absolutely for free. You know, you can sit down and just brainstorm. We want to know you know some of the demographics. Are they male, female? Are they? What is their age range? Sometimes it's relevant what income range they are. What are their interests? Are they into a healthy lifestyle? Are they into fancy cars? You know, and it's not so much just what your business offers, but we want to try to create a profile. We call it like a customer persona. We want to actually create a person, like a person that we make up, basically a character. It's like you make up a character for a movie, except they're your ideal customer. So what does it look like if you are a roofing company, for example? Most likely, I mean, they're going to be homeowners, right? Because somebody that rents is not going to, it's not going to hire you as a roofing company. So if they're homeowners, they probably have a certain income level. If they have a certain income level, they probably have a certain they have certain interests. It's not. We don't always know exactly what it is, but we can derive things from establishing those facts that we do know for a fact. We do know that a renter or a college student that is renting a house is not going to pay for a new roof. So they're not within our target audience, right? So you just break it down into what we define as our target audience. Now, once we do, once we write all of that out and I would highly recommend you write all of that out, so don't just sit there and have it in your head, write it all out, put it on paper or on your computer, whatever you prefer, but write it out and come up with this image of this is my person, this is the person I'm talking to Now.
Speaker 1:We have usually have a primary audience and at least a secondary audience. There's not usually just one type of audience, but try to figure that out, Try to figure out who you're talking to. And then, once we figure out who we're talking to, then you can say, okay, this audience is mostly between the ages of, you know, 40 and 50 years old, for example. Then we think about, like, the channels, the multimedia, the media channels, for example, even even social media. The younger generation tends to be more on Instagram, whereas you know my daughter, my daughter is 23, and she says Facebook is for old people. So there's 21 over 23, apparently, is old and is on Facebook.
Speaker 1:No, but on a serious note, it's you. You figure out not only who, who your audience is, but where they're at. Do they drive to work every morning? Do they see billboards along the highway? Do they listen to the radio? Maybe are they going to spend a lot of time on social media? And so by figuring out who the audience is, you're automatically going to figure out some ways of how to reach them. Because if you don't know that piece, then you can spend thousands of dollars here, thousands of dollars here, and you're still not going to talk to the right audience. So that is the number one thing that I think every business should do, and that is also the number one thing that I have noticed in marketing coaching when businesses come to me, that a lot of times they don't know, they don't know who their audience is. They say everybody.
Speaker 1:They say everybody, and nobody has an audience of everybody. It doesn't exist. Or you can say well, everybody who needs a new roof, that's not an audience. So we have to be more specific than that, and I mean that's one of the services we offer, that I offer as a marketing coach, but also that we offer, you know, as a business, we sit down with our clients. For the most part, they will, you know, we just ask specific questions and they will know all of the answers, but they have never sat down and actually put it on paper or put it, you know, anywhere where they can see exactly. This is who we're talking to. So, and once you, once you have determined who your audience is, then you can get into some of the details on how are we going to reach them. Now, like I mentioned earlier, you can figure out do they spend time on social media? Do they spend time reading the paper? Do they look at different magazines? You know where are they at, what are their behaviors and how do we reach them through that?
Speaker 2:So how do you, if you're, how do you figure out where your audience is?
Speaker 1:You figure it out based on what you determine their interest is and what their lifestyle looks like and what some of their habits are, which is what you can figure out. I mean, you're not going to know that 100%, but we can sort of figure out. You know what the main bulk of our audience is most likely doing and what some of their behaviors are. So, again, if they're of a certain age group and you want to figure out where to reach them on social media, you can look at some statistics that you can pull. You just get on Google and see you know what are some of the statistics of what age groups hang out on what social media platforms. It's free information, it's out there. I think there's also if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 2:if I am, I will cut this out, but I think that there's a database offered by the Pioneer Public Library as well for small businesses that can kind of find some of that information. I think there used to be the Metro Library also.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's several sources like that that will offer this information, and I mean to be completely honest with you. I mean as a marketing firm, and we have to stay on top of everything. On a regular basis, we use the same type of resources. It's just we research that for our customers so that we can then share the knowledge with them, so they can paint.
Speaker 1:You know, and they don't have to worry about the money. That's exactly right, so that they can do what they're really great at and which is, you know, their job. But if someone were to be in a position where they are not able to work with us, they could then spend some time and go research that information and it'll just give them some insights on that. You know, like, who knew that YouTube is now the second largest search engine? You know, so if you're not on YouTube, you're missing out on a huge crowd. I mean, those are things. When you tell people they are usually surprised.
Speaker 1:But again, this is information that is publicly available that you should spend the time if you're not able to work with an agency. Spend the time research. You know. Research the, the, the channels, research, the Research the platforms that you could use, especially when it comes to social media, to figure out by, by age group, by interest, what would be a good platform to use. So then, we're facing the challenge of what is it that we're going to post, because Just posting memes usually does not do the trick, although sometimes memes can be great, but it's not really gonna promote your business.
Speaker 1:You know, you're not really gonna get any sales off of posting a bunch of memes and I just use that as an example because that's a lot of.
Speaker 1:Big go-to of just post funny memes and and and that's great. Funny memes are great, but in moderation. So the first thing that I would Recommend, if you are trying to create social media content for your own business, is to come up with a strategy. I feel like everything in marketing should have a strategy. You should never just blindly throw stuff out there and see what sticks. Doesn't usually work.
Speaker 1:Usually and so social media strategies can look a couple of different ways. I mean the first. The first thing I would do is coming up with what we call like a content pillar system where we we Define how many posts are we going to create per week, or you know per month, or you know for for whatever time frame, and then what types of posts you know. Help yourself out by giving yourself a structure. Don't just start writing. Figure out Okay, we're gonna have two posts where we talk about our products and services.
Speaker 1:We're gonna have one post that can be a funny meme, one post that is maybe Something related to the topic that you're talking about. You know, could be industry related, could be educational resources, could be community events. I mean, that's always something that's nice to promote if, if businesses show off that they are Basically active in their community, that they care about the community, and so come up with a list of I want to do so many posts of this, so many posts of that, and Then, when you get to that point of writing, you're already gonna have a structure.
Speaker 1:You're not just writing wildly and running out of content in two minutes because you have ideas now and and when writing. Think back on that time that you were sitting down and coming up with this customer persona that describes in detail who you're talking to, and imagine that person sitting across the table from you. Imagine this person is sitting there. They're your potential customers and you have to convince them to hire you or to purchase a product from you. So we want to think of who they are. How do we talk to them? What kind of tone of voice do we use? Is it gonna be all fun and you know, crazy wild, or do we have to sound really professional? If you're in the financial field or Something, or you know in law, you may not want to sound crazy wild. You want to maybe sound, you know.
Speaker 1:You want to sound right, but that's the tone.
Speaker 1:That's the voice that you're you're Using in order to talk to your client and to your customers, and for that you got to know who you're talking to. Again, it always comes back to the one thing, and so once you Figure out who you're talking to and once you're figuring out what types of posts you're writing, remember that the only reason that people are gonna do business with you is because they have a problem, a problem of sorts. If you're a painting company, well, their walls don't look great, or they just really don't want to deal with, you know, having to paint their house or whatever their problem is, but you're here to solve that problem. So you don't just say I paint, I use red, green and blue. That's not solving anybody's problem.
Speaker 1:But if you can say, you know we can give your house, we can give your home the new fresh look that you've been wanting to get, or you know you can, you, you basically want to focus on how you can improve their lives, how you can make their lives better. Fix that pain point. Fix that pain point. Yes, exactly so address their problem. Never, never, stop talking about your customer's problems.
Speaker 1:Because, that's where you're here to do is to solve their problems and fix the pain points, and so think in terms of what the customers want From you, what they want, how they want to improve their lives and how you are able to improve their lives for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah we.
Speaker 2:I know we're talking about content. We want us just a little low. We're not rewind us, but for the brand new business. I know we talked a little bit about this before the show, about branding and why that's so important, and maybe this is the thing you want to spend a little bit of money on. Do you want to talk about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, um, branding is one of those things that I think if you're going to have one piece and all of your marketing materials that you're gonna that you Should work with a professional Um. It would be the branding piece. You want to look good, you want to look good but you also more.
Speaker 1:So we're not talking, we're not just talking about a logo. When we're talking about branding, we're talking about establishing who you are and what you stand for and what you're trying to communicate. So, as a brand strategist, you know yes, I wear a lot of different hats I'm also a brand strategist and work with businesses to um to establish their brand and their brand narrative Um.
Speaker 1:That is equally important, if not more important, than what your logo looks like, um. So we want to not only know what the visual aspect is going to be, but also what are we representing? How do we say what we're, what we're trying to do? How do we communicate that to the brand? How do we define what our business does like?
Speaker 1:If I meet you somewhere, you know, walking down the street and asking hey, what do you do as a business? I want you to know exactly how to answer that and I want you to know exactly what to say, like the actual words that you should say as part of your elevator pitch or as part of your descriptions that you put on the screen. So that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to do that. So if you're not going to be in your elevator pitch or as part of your descriptions that you put on different platforms, you know what good is a facebook account if you don't know how to Describe what your business does? You can post all the stuff in the world, but if you don't know how You're going to talk about your business, how you describe your business in the first place, then it's not going to work, and that's what we do in branding.
Speaker 2:It should be a little bit more than we paint.
Speaker 1:Yes, we're here to help. Yeah, that's great. It's so deeper than that it is. It is a running joke a little bit in our Within. Our team is so that we're here to help, because that is the most generic marketing message you can ever have, and you see it a lot. You know you got a problem. We're here to help. Well, that's wonderful, but what are we doing?
Speaker 2:Like what are we helping? What problem are you solving?
Speaker 1:What problem are you solving? Are we a doctor? Are we a painter? Are we a marketer? Are we a you know? So we're here to help. Is, um, not really equal? And just speak to your customers.
Speaker 1:But, that's what we figure out during your brand session to your brand brand strategy is what are we saying? You know, what are your values that you want to stand on? What are you taking those values? How do we now communicate that with the customers? What sets us apart from the next, from the next person? I like the painting example. You know there's a lot of painting shops out there Pain companies so what makes you so different? Why do people come to your business and not to the next guy?
Speaker 1:I mean, there are many factors, but one of them is to figure out how do we communicate what we are doing. How do we improve your lives? And so the brand strategy piece, I think, is, if you have never worked with that before, so if you are not savvy in marketing or branding, I feel like that is one of the things that you should really try to find someone that knows what they're talking about, to get that piece off the ground, to design you a logo professionally. So we don't want to Just get in all the free software and put some circles and shapes together and it's not going to represent your business in the light that you want to be seen. And so once you have that once you have your brand narrative, once you have your logo and all the visual aspects that go with it you know fonts, colors once you define that, then you can take those and implement them into other materials. You know you can put them on social media. You can even put them on a website if you feel like you're savvy enough and want to build your own website. I mean, there are many, many things to know and to remember when you're building your own website, and just because something is cheap doesn't always mean that it's going to be a good product. However, if that is all you can afford at the time, you know, at least you know that it's going to represent your brand.
Speaker 1:If you have worked with a professional that has developed that brand for you, I think the branding should always come first. However, if you are in a position where you have already started doing some of those things and the sooner the better, I'd say you can still go in and make some adjustments and, you know, tweak it to where it represents your brand. But that's really, again, that is going to represent everything that you're going to do. Visually, the logo is going to be, is going to be important. It's going to be on all of your materials.
Speaker 1:So if you don't have that in place, how are you going to create materials? What is it going to look like? You can make it green one time and black the second time, and now we make it yellow. You know, because you don't have consistency, you can't be recognized, people don't know they're dealing with the same business. So we want to have that in place. And then the same with the, with the narrative, with the verbiage that you know, that you can use across the materials and knowing that you're communicating what you want to communicate.
Speaker 2:And that can be extremely confusing for a consumer who's found you on. You know, found your website and they're looking at the things and it looks one way. And then they find you on Facebook and they say this doesn't even look like the same business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which can truly be a detriment to your business.
Speaker 2:Exactly, Keep somebody from calling you because they're like man they don't even seem like they know where they're headed. So why would I hire this business?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and but that's exactly that in a nutshell, why branding is important so that people can recognize you for being.
Speaker 1:You know the business that you are and that people do know that you know the website, your local listings, you know Google listings and such social media. All of those things tie together and it's all consistent across the board. That gives you credibility. I mean it looks professional, of course, but it's. It establishes trust that you know what you're talking about and that's important. And if you don't have that, I mean we've all seen businesses that just try to put something out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and to be clear, like we're not doubting you for what you've done, we recognize that it's a lot of work to do. Absolutely this is more, just like, just be a little more thoughtful about it, because marketing might not be your thing, and that's where hiring a company like yours can be so, so helpful, because one you're not stressing about it anymore.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like it's not your thing and you can worry about the problem that you're really good at solving. But, then it's not going to be the thing that keeps you up at night wondering like what am I going to post tomorrow or what should? Those like pillars of my social accounts be. Instead, you're wondering like okay, how can we get some business to roll in so that I can pay my employees this week, or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, yeah, and I think I think, no matter what having a strategy, you know, if you are one of those people that just is trying to do it on your own and it keeps you up at night and you're stressing about it because you haven't you haven't posted anything on social media in a month, or you know that your website is not bringing you any leads there's so many things. It's it's okay, you know. I think a lot of businesses have been there. They've tried that, they started something. But that may be a good time to really think about what the next step is going to be. If it's going to stress you to that extent or if it keeps you up at night, consider maybe working with a marketing coach If you feel like you can't afford working with a marketing firm. You know most marketing firms. They will give you free consultations, they will talk to you about what it is that you need and if it's something that you can that they can help you with.
Speaker 1:I always ask my customers what is your budget? I know that that gets people kind of. You know they get they get a little weirded out by it sometimes when I ask about the budget but it's not about, oh, I can charge you this much or I can charge you that much. It's not what it's about. But if you tell me I have a $2,000 marketing budget, then I know what I can do for you within that budget. If you tell me you have a $20,000 budget, I know I can do a lot more for you, and so then we can talk through that what that looks like and how we're going to structure it so that you get the biggest bang for your buck. It's not about me trying to see how much I can charge you no it's not like that and I try to explain that to them.
Speaker 1:But you know, if, if, if you are on a very little budget, again, consider working with a coach, because that is that costs a lot less and the coach, like myself, would sit down with you and look at where you're at. And we have a couple of different sessions that are like the standard sessions that I offer. You know, starting with the target audience. Again, let's let's talk about whether or not you know who your audience is and let's let's talk through that. And it is.
Speaker 1:It is always great to see when businesses, when they, when we work through that and then they start to really understanding oh, this is, oh, yeah, okay, now you know it's. It's just something that you sometimes just need to sit down and talk about. And there's other sessions that we can, you know, talk about different types of media, you know what would be a good fit for your business, different types of strategies, content strategy. You know we can, we could talk about digital systems. How can we, how can you run your operations a little bit more smoothly by the use of digital systems?
Speaker 1:There are several different types of sessions, but you can, we can also just book a session where you're just talking about whatever you want to talk about. So it doesn't have to be like a pre shaped session of saying this is an area of struggle, I need to talk to you about said thing, and then we talk about it, and then you know I will be able to give you some guidance on your situation specifically and what I think that you could do within the means that you have available to you. Or if that's really a case where we say you know that this is such a struggle for you, let's see how maybe we can work something out where we can help you as an agency like we do it for you and still find like a happy medium that works for everybody.
Speaker 2:So, angel, something that we get a lot of questions about from small business owners is email marketing and how to do that on a budget and what that looks like. Let's go down that line because I think there's if you search email marketing in Google you're going to get really overwhelmed. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of tools. There's laws that surround email marketing that you have to be aware of, so let's go down that line.
Speaker 1:Okay, yes, so email marketing? I get the question a lot if email marketing is dead? The answer is no, not even close. We all get a lot of emails every single day and sometimes we get obnoxious marketing emails and sometimes that's too much. But at the end of the day, when somebody is interested in a topic and you subscribe to certain emails and you start receiving them, you are going to, even if you click delete 10 times, and then the 11th time you're going to need the service and you're going to remember the 10 times that you clicked delete. So email marketing is definitely not dead. And so again, their services.
Speaker 1:You know companies, agencies that help you with your email marketing, but it's actually something that is that can be done by yourself, because there are several tools available to you. So the first thing is you're going to have to have a system. So we don't want to send any emails from just your email address and CC everybody. That's one of the seven deadly sins of email marketing. We do not want to divulge the information and share email addresses and stuff. So that's a big no-no, even in any sort of form. We don't want to use just our email to send out bulk emails. So there are systems available and there are different types of CRMs, customer relationship management tools, so these tools will allow you to basically add contacts, a list of contacts. You can import them, you can manually add them and then you can design a little. They have a lot of templates usually that you can go into and if you are not a designer, maybe contact your brand strategist.
Speaker 2:Contact your brand strategist.
Speaker 1:But if you are not a designer, you should still be able to navigate those templates. Just pick one that you feel looks good with your brand, you pop your logo in there and usually I mean most people should be able to just kind of do that. You know, even if you don't come up with your whole custom thing. That's when you hire an agency.
Speaker 1:However, you can design those templates and then, when you write your sales emails again from a content strategy point think about the problems you're trying to solve as a business of what are you offering to them. Don't just talk about yourself and look at my product. Just think about the people that are reading it. But you can write content for it. You can go into the systems, you can put it into your templates. You specify your mailing lists. You know these are the people that I want to send it to and you can bulk send it out. Some of the tools that I would recommend are systems like Consum Contact. It's fairly cost efficient. They have a lot of options. They have a lot of add on options. So if you want to add more services to it, you can. You know you can add texts, messaging, you can add all kinds of stuff, but out of all of the CRMs, it's one that's fairly cost effective in what you get for what you pay for.
Speaker 1:So that is a great way to start with email marketing Now, as far as gathering the information, the mailing lists. So you can't just email anyone and expect that they're going to be happy with you. Ideally, people opt in to your emails, especially if it's promotional emails. So you can do that a couple of different ways. You could have something on your website that they can subscribe to. You know, whatever you call your publication we don't really want to call it newsletter, because people kind of get tired of newsletters but we can call it something something witty. Whatever you want to call your, you know your emails, but they can sign up for something.
Speaker 1:Another, another way to get their information is to, you know, have like a. For example, if you download, if you have a PDF or something that people can download from your website as a free resource, you get to capture their information and then you can follow it up with sending them emails. Now you want to have verbiage in there that says that they're opting in, so that they either have to opt in while they're subscribing, or what you see a lot of times is that it sends them an email that you have to then confirm. So it says you have signed up for such and such and such, you will need to confirm that you are going to receive emails from now on. So at the same time you have to have legally, you have to have an opt out feature in all of your emails. So in the footer, I mean these systems, they put it in automatically, just don't delete it.
Speaker 2:No, you have to have it.
Speaker 1:That is illegal to delete it. So you have to have an opt out and like an unsubscribe feature that if someone gets signed up and say, you know, I changed my mind, I don't want, then they can unsubscribe. They can, they can remove themselves basically from your email list and you're still going to have their information in the system, but you just will not send them any more emails. So that is a good legal way of you know sending sending emails and another, just one other thing to to consider when planning some email marketing. Usually, again, come up with a strategy. Usually there would be at least three to four emails. If someone signs up for something, I would maybe even try to say that you could send more emails. Don't bombard them. Don't send an email every day unless they specifically requested it.
Speaker 1:Give them a couple of days in between at least. But do follow up with the customers because a lot of times someone may not be ready to buy your product or your service at the time that they sign up. But again, you're gonna stay current on their radar when they do need something, or maybe they will just see something later on down the road and say you know what? That is really cool. Let me go back to their website. You may get customers that way.
Speaker 2:Maybe more than once every six months is a good idea.
Speaker 1:That would be a good idea.
Speaker 2:I have an email list that I'll get one, and then, six months later, I'm like did I, was I subscribed to that or was I? And confusing your customers is one of the number of things that you do not wanna do, or? Potential customers, and then also link down in the show notes. I will link to the FTC's page about laws and what it means to email market and what you need to know and what you don't need to know, all the things so you can check that out as well.
Speaker 1:And again, most of the systems they will have it built into their templates, so you're pretty safe when you're using. That's another reason why you shouldn't just use your email address and just email everybody in your contact list we can't subscribe.
Speaker 1:that way they get unsubscribed. But also you just you wanna be intentional about how you're going about this. Now, if you wanna publish something like a blog, if you have a blog, for example, on your website, or if you're running some sort of content publishing of any sorts on a regular basis, it is really beneficial to give your readers an option to subscribe to that, to receive that in their email, and that's something where you don't even have to put anything additionally into the campaigns if you're publishing the content anyway and have people subscribe to it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, we'll talk about that. Email marketing tips.
Speaker 2:I love it. So last year, I think, you and I met for coffee and you had recently become Storybrand certified, which is amazing. Congratulations, thanks.
Speaker 1:Well, it's been a year, I think so. It has been a year.
Speaker 2:Let's talk a little bit about that and tell our small businesses what they need to know about Storybrand.
Speaker 1:So I am a Storybrand certified guide and Storybrand if you haven't heard of it, you should really look it up, because it doesn't matter if you are a marketer or if you are running your own marketing and you're doing something completely different. Storybrand is one of those concepts that I think that anyone can benefit from if you're trying to market anything at all whatsoever.
Speaker 1:It is a marketing framework that was developed by bestselling author Donald Miller. He wrote a bunch of books and he created a bunch of courses that help businesses grow. Business made simple is one of them. Marketing made simple is part of it and it's literally what it says. Marketing made simple is coming up with a structure, with a concept to market your business. The information is out there. He has written a book about Storybrand.
Speaker 2:I think you get it from the library. I think you can rent it from our public metropolitan libraries. Oh okay, so just sharing, if you want to add a little bit about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the book is fantastic, it really is, yeah, and so in Storybrand and what it is, is a pattern, essentially, that is based on storytelling and it's based on the components of story, and we're not talking about telling our business story. We're not saying oh yeah, we've been in business since 1843, like nobody cares, right?
Speaker 1:I mean not that nobody cares, but it's not gonna sell anything if all you tell people is how long you've been in business 150 years, yeah, that's wonderful, they want to know. I mean, it does give you some credibility, for sure. But the point is, though, that it's not about us, it's not about telling our story. It is about using the components of storytelling to invite the customer into your story, so that, basically, you're taking the customer on a journey by inviting them into your story, and they're a character of the story that has a problem. They bring the problem to you, you become the guide and you call them to action, you give them steps on how to solve their problem, and then you basically tell them the successful outcomes, you tell them what's at stake, and so those are some of the components, and it's this pattern that Donald Miller developed, in which we use to base our marketing materials of. So we come up with this narrative that follows these guidelines, that describes in detail what your product offer is, how it's going to solve the customer's problem, and it is a way of breaking it down, clarifying your message, simplifying your message to where people can understand what it is that you're doing, and it's a wonderful marketing tool, and, about a year ago, I got certified in implementing this framework, and so I feel like I have learned so much just through doing that. And I've been in marketing for 12, 13 years, I mean since the beginning. I mean you think that you're great at what you're doing, but then Storybrand comes and brings up all these new aspects and it was an interesting experience and I love working with it.
Speaker 1:I mean we use the Storybrand concept for all of the content that we develop all of our own contents, but also for our clients website content, social media content, any type of marketing materials we base it on the Storybrand concepts. One way to learn about the Storybrand concept if you kind of want to venture out on your own rather than hiring a Storybrand certified guide, is to get the book Building a Storybrand by Donald Miller. Also, there are some online resources. So if you look at the website, you can just Google it. There are some online resources you can use. That describes the different components of Storybrand and how it's implemented, and so it is out there. If you need help with implementation, then of course you're always welcome to contact me or a Storybrand certified guide that is trained and certified to actually help you put it into action. But I do feel like there's a lot of great information out there and I see a lot more people reading it and figuring some stuff out for themselves and how to use it as part of their marketing narrative.
Speaker 2:Thank you for sharing. I know there's a lot that goes into becoming a certified guide.
Speaker 1:So I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:That's just a small little tip for people who are listening today.
Speaker 1:Like it is deep it is.
Speaker 1:It's not a training that you have to go through to become a guide For sure, for sure. Yeah, there's quite a bit of training, and one of the things that I realized becoming a certified guide was that there is Storybrand has. There's a lot of great information to it. It's really the training really helped me being able to implement it to pretty much any type of business for any types of materials. That it's not just.
Speaker 1:You don't just write what we call a brand script, which is kind of like the cornerstone for all of your brand narrative, and you don't just stay with the brand script. You use it, like I mentioned earlier, you use it on the website or you come up with the content structure on your website that's based on Storybrand. You come up with sales scripts that could be used for email marketing, for example, or for other sales materials. Your brochures, your social media content, even billboards anything that has any sort of narrative, any words in a simple form, can be based on the Storybrand concept and what you develop as part of that with the help of that framework, and it's really cool stuff.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for sharing Last closing thoughts, closing tips, maybe top three things that you want business owners to take away from this podcast today.
Speaker 1:Top three things. One marketing can be done even if you have no idea what you're doing. There's so many resources, so many resources out there. Take the time and read. Take the time and read. Educate yourself on what you can do. Educate yourself on marketing tactics and figuring out your audience. There's a lot of tools out there that are available for you. You just got to take the time and do it. Don't expect to just magically figure out how to market your business. There's a lot to it. I mean, there's a reason why there's agencies that have got years and years and years of training under their belt to try to do that for businesses. But it is doable. There are resources. Go out and find them. Go out and use them. The other takeaway is the same thing that I started with Know your audience Know who your audience is is the beginning and end of all things.
Speaker 1:Marketing. Yeah, and also the third thing, maybe, is try to figure out where you stand and if you feel like you really can't do it, like you're really overwhelmed with it, there are options, there are different levels of marketers there are some freelance marketers.
Speaker 1:That may be a better fit for you than having a full agency or just depending on what your situation is. But if you feel like you're just ripping your hair out, just talk to someone. Talk to someone like you would go find an accountant or a legal person, or I mean, that's why we're here.
Speaker 2:Angel, thank you so much for your kind of closing tips for small businesses who are listening today. If you want to connect with Angel, you're on all the social media accounts, of course you can send to there, also very involved with BBB and then with our Chamber partners, and you're always out in the community, so hopefully I'll bump into you there. You can find a live marketing on BBBorg, of course with other businesses as well, but you can find live marketing on BBBorg Listed linked below in the show notes. We'll have some of the resources mentioned today for small businesses who tuned in so that you can check out all of the camp spam laws, marketing laws, all the things that you might need to know, and resources and tools to get you started. In the meantime, reach out to you if they've got questions, if they said you know I love what Angel said today. I want to work with her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so make sure to check out her information below. Thank you so much for listening today and we will see you in the next episode. Bye-bye.