Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi there and thank you for
joining me for this workshop, we will establish which marketing
strategies 60 festival. I wanted to talk about whether these training is
created for you or not. So I have designed this
training session which will be most relevant for you if you are a business
to business service, particularly virtual assistants and online
business managers, especially if you manage your own marketing so you
don't outsource that at all. It also relevant to you
if you feel constantly overwhelmed by the
pressure to be everywhere, to do everything to sort of marketing strategy that
is throwing your way. If you are not
confident that what you are doing is actually working. And if you kind of wish there
was an easier way to do it. If you answered yes, then this training is
certainly for you. What I'm going to cover
in this workshop today is to first of all get clear on what a marketing
strategy actually is. That we're on the same page before we delve
into the workshop, then I'm going to share with you some of the very many
marketing strategies, particularly the ones that I know from previous experience and historical
daughters that work for business to
business benefits. I'm also going to prompt
you to think about your own strengths
and weaknesses and how they can use them to figure out which
strategies would be most natural for you
in your business. Because I'm a big believer
that you should be marketing your business and running your business your way.
2. What is a marketing strategy: First of all, let us talk about what a marketing
strategy actually is, because I want us to be on
the same page about it. Dictionary states that
a marketing strategy is a plan of action that is designed to promote and sell a product or service. Now, I want to delve into
that a little bit deeper. So my definition is that
a marketing strategy is an overview of
business intends to put their services in front
of its target audience with the aim of encouraging them to become a paying client. That is my definition of
a marketing strategy. I hope that's a
little bit clearer. Marketing strategy. There are five key things that your marketing strategy
can achieve for you. First of all, it needs to, it needs to help
you with discovery, needs to help me with brand
awareness, awareness. It is how your target audience first discovers
Italian, find you. You'll marketing
strategy should also be a way for them to
further connect with you. It gives them a way to
stay in touch with you. It's a way for them to
further that connection through bonding. It gives them a way to know you better to like you
and to trust you. Your marketing
strategies should also encourage them to take the
next step to working with you. We also want them to
become an advocate for your marketing strategy should make it easy for
people to recommend you, to leave recommendations
for you. Let's look at an example. Now. Your marketing strategy should
nurture a client journey. And the client journey, the journey that your
target audience or an individual will take when
they first know you too, when they start working with you and becoming an
advocate for you. So let's have a
look at how that, how that journey could play out. So the discovery phase, you can imagine if you
attended a networking event and you met somebody who
could be a potential client, you had a good chat and
you connected really well. The next stage was after
the networking event, you both decided to follow
each other on Instagram. The bonding happens
over the DMZ or the messages following
each other's content. When you have conversations
over DM and you can really further nurture
that relationship. You can build your friendship
or your connection. Encouragement could be that the potential client saw a post that you
shared that quilt, a fear that they have about reaching out to you
and working with you. They saw that Quayle was
feared them like Okay, I'm gonna take the next step or book a discovery call with you. Then after the client has
been working with you for a little while and they
absolutely love you. That's where advocacy comes in. They love your work and they decide that they want to
fill out your Google, My Business Review and
leave a testimonial. Fourier said, other
people can see that social proof that you
are great to work with. So that's how that
client journey can work in a real life examples.
3. What strategies work for freelancers: Now that we're clear on
what a marketing strategy actually does and what the purpose is for a
marketing strategy. I wanted to look down, look a bit closer into
the strategies that work really well for business
to business services. Because there are lots
of strategies out there. And I don't want you to feel overwhelmed by having
to do all of them. So I first want to give
them magnifying glass on to some of the key
strategies that work really, really well for our industries. The first of all, I'm gonna
start with content marketing because you are being exposed
to it every single day. Content marketing strategy of content marketing
involves creating and sharing online content as a way of helping
people discover you, helping them to get more interested in what
you have to offer. It helps you stay front of mind and it helps you to build
credibility and trust. That's something that content
marketing can do for you. A few examples, the social media content
that you see every day. Freebies, lead magnets,
blogs that you read, YouTube videos that you watch, podcasts and liberate us. The email marketing is another. Now as we go through this, you might say that there's a bit of a blurred line between
these e-mail marketing, social media marketing,
content marketing. You can all think that
they're the same thing. But I did feel that some of them weren't separate
descriptions. Like I said, e-mail
marketing is a strategy that involves encouraging people
to subscribe to your list, to receive regular
communications from you at direct
into the inbox. An e-mail marketing
strategy would evaluate to connect
with your audience. It Shays values that helps
to build that know like, and trust that credibility. And it keeps you front of mind. It helps them remember you suck, they say out of
sight, out of mind. You don't want to be
out of sight to them. An e-mail marketing can also encourage the next steps
for you to engage. Another one is search
engine optimization. That's what SEO stands for. Search engine optimization. Seo strategy would involve configuring your website
or your content so that it's more likely to appear in searches made from
your target audience. If your target audience is searching a virtual
assistants in Brisbane, your website would be optimized to appear
for that search. Now if they are optimization
and increases the chances of your target audience
actually finding you through your content
or three new website. And it increases the number of people that visit your website. And therefore, these people
are remembering you. They are increasing
the brand recognition. And there's more of
a chance that they would take the next step if your website's built to help guide
them to take next step. First one is talked about SEO because we immediately
think of Google, but Google is not the only
search engine that matters. If you also think about
Pinterest and YouTube, they are also
search engines that you can optimize
your content for. But let's talk about outbound
marketing strategy now, you may not have heard
of these before. Outbound marketing
is basically where you reach out to people
to make connections. That includes cold calling. You've probably all had
telemarketing calls before where they renew and say, Oh, DNA printer ink
or do you insurance? That's all cold cooling. Also, you might get direct
messages, your inboxes, probably full spam saying hey, you need SEO, your
website is not ranking. That's all cold calling. It helps people become
aware of you and it provides them with an
opportunity to connect. Also usually has direct
encouragement or calls to action to take the next step, collect
outbound marketing. Advertising is another
strategy that can work well for business
to business services. And basically that involves
putting your content or your office in front of your target audience,
using paid channels. That is going to help
people discover you. They first find you
that way it shows your offers and encourages
them to take the next step. And also with
repetition helps you stay front of mind when
they're ready to engage. Now when we think of
paid advertising, we probably automatically
think of Facebook ads. That is one way of
implementing paid advertising. But you've also got
directory listings. You've also got Google
ads and YouTube ads. You've also got magazine
advertisements, radio, billboards, and MyLab. So those are all forms
of paid advertising. Next one I wanted to talk about is social media marketing. I'm pretty sure that you are familiar with social
media marketing. That strategy involves building
a network of followers and creating and producing and sharing content that
connects with them. Of what a social
media strategy can do for you is help people
first discovered. Then it can help you
connect and bond with them by sharing content that
keeps them interested. It helps you build
the relationship, builds that know like and
trust that credibility. And also through
repetition helps you stay front of mind so that when they are ready to
engage with you, they are front of mind. Another marketing
strategy I wanted to talk to you about is networking. You might not even realize
that that is a strategy. That strategy involves
meeting people regularly, face-to-face in-person
virtually or otherwise. These helps people discovery. They first meet you and they first learn about who you are. It does really helped to
facilitate that bonding, that connection where people
would build, know like, and trust a lot faster than they would through other means. And regularly,
regular meetings or regular networking also
helps build familiarity. So the more regularly
that you can say people, the more they like and trustees and what
they get to know you, the more familiar they are, the more likely they are to
engage in your services. Examples of implementing
networking strategies would be attending regular
networking events, memberships, referral networks, and even joining
co-working spaces. When I heal this workshop live, I said, who has gained a
client through word of mouth. Every single hand went
up as expected word. If math is one of the best
ways to gain new clients, to build know like and
trust and credibility. Word of mouth, strategy. It's basically sitting
your business up to encourage clients
affiliate frame, business buddies, and
that sort of thing to share how amazing
you are to work with. And it helps build
that awareness, that credibility
and trust and helps people discover you that otherwise wouldn't
have known about you. An examples of word
of mouth could be testimonials, recommendations
from friends, past clients, current
clients, referral networks, and even affiliate marketing is part of word of
mouth strategy. Now, at this point, I've shared a lot
of information. What I don't want
is for you to feel overwhelmed thinking that you have to do everything
that I've talked about. That is the opposite
of my message today. What I want to do
is share the option so that you can choose
which strategies you want to use in a way so that you are marketing your
business in a way that feels most natural to you. My message for you today is you don't have
to be everywhere. You don't have to do everything. And you don't have
to be everyone. Just because somebody
else's engaging in this marketing
strategy doesn't mean that you have to
just because I do, it doesn't mean
that you have to. What I want for you is to, for you to market your business in a way
that works really, really well for you
so that it feels natural and so that
it feels easier. You don't have to implement
all of these strategies. But what you do, what you to do is to choose some strategies that will
cover all the bases. We talked earlier about the purpose of your
marketing strategy, which should help
with discovery, connection and bonding,
encouragement and advocacy. If you imagine that
that is a journey that your clients go through when they're
working with you. You will strategy needs to
cover all of those areas. What I've created is a
comparison chart for you. These strategies that
I've shown you today will actually cover most
of those bases. You can see from the chart
that all along the top, you've got the marketing
strategies that I talked about. And along the side, you've got the client journey. So the different stages
that people go through, and it also represents different purposes of
your marketing strategy. Okay, So you might be wondering if I can't do all of
these strategies, how many strategies
should I choose? What I would recommend
that you don't attempt to do lots of strategies because you may end
up doing poorly. What I do recommend
is that you choose few strategies and doing
really, really well. Start with perhaps
three strategies. Choosing three strategies
that you want to focus on. If you're feeling adventurous, choose three, choose five. So it's three to
five strategies is a good place to start. I recommend not doing too many. It can also be a problem
if you do not enough. So as an example that
you can see on screen is a common mistake that some
people make and that is relying on social media
to be the only strategy. Your strategy needs to
cover all the bases. You could look at
this and say, well, social media covers
all the bases. It covers discovery,
connection and bonding, encouragement
and advocacy. However, do you feel that it's wise to put all your
eggs in one basket? Social media can
be quite volatile. While it is unlikely that Facebook could go down
forever and you could lose. The bigger problem is with your account is
hacked and you lose your account, is it frozen? There are a lot of people
that I know who've experienced their Facebook or Instagram accounts
being frozen for one reason or another
or being hacked. I have myself had my social medias have
to couple of tons. The thing is there are
very real risks to putting all your eggs in
social media basket. However, it is a
good strategy to use with other strategies. Another example of choosing
a couple of strategies. You can look at SEO, search engine optimization,
and paid ads. As you can see by the chart, it is really good for
discovery connection and encouragement. However, you miss the bonding
stage, the advocacy stage. It's important that
you choose a couple of strategies that
cover all the bases. But you're not relying on
one more than the other. Email marketing, it's not necessarily great for discovery. However, it is really good
for connection, bonding, and encouraging them to
become paying clients. Seo is fantastic for discovery and nurturing
that connection. And networking is
a brilliant way to cover almost all the bases.
4. Identify your strengths and weaknesses: Now that I've covered a
lot of the strategies that work really well for business
to business services. Now I want to direct
the attention to you. I don't want to look at which
strategies are going to be most effective
and natural for you. What I would love for you to do now is go and grab
your workbook. You'll find the page
where you can map out your strengths
and your weaknesses. Let's now in your strengths, I want you to list. You'll make it a little bit of a brainstorm or a bit of a list on your
personal strengths, some of the personality traits, some of your preferences. And on the other side,
I want you to listen if your weaknesses are
some of your aversions. Before you pause this recording
and do that exercise, I want to share what
my strengths and weaknesses are just so that you have a frame of reference. Some of my strengths,
I'm introverted. Now I just want to say here, I'm not saying that
extroversion is a weakness. I'm just saying that I am introverted and that
is my strengths. So if you are extroverted, that is your strength.
I'm introverted. I find it really quite easy
to form virtual connections. I have built a couple of communities online
and I find it really, really easy and natural for me to form connections online. I love teaching and educating, and love educating people. I'm a great designer. I spent 13 years of my life
being a graphic designer. Should have some scuba nail. I'm also quite tech
savvy as well. On the other side, my weaknesses that I struggled meeting
new people in person. It's not, it's definitely
outside of my comfort zone. I do feel quite anxious in really large crowds or with
a really large audience. Um, I struggled
writing, I'm not, I'm not really great at writing. It may come across that
I can write quite well, but the actual process of it
I find really, really hard. I also struggled to be
salesy or to steal myself. I find it hard to talk about myself even though
I'm doing it right now. I'm talking about
myself right now, but I do struggle to sell
myself into make offers. Those are my strengths
and weaknesses. You can feel free to use them as inspiration for your own strengths
and weaknesses. So feel free to
pause this recording while you do this exercise.
5. Matching Strengths to Strategies: Hopefully by now
you've made a little bit of a list of the
strengths and weaknesses. It doesn't have to be
a really big list, it just has to explore some of your primary strengths
and weaknesses. What I want to talk to you about now is how you can
start thinking about your strengths
and weaknesses in relation to the marketing
strategies that you choose. I'm gonna give you a
few examples of how I look at my orange
strengths and weaknesses. And I use that to form my
IT or marketing strategies. The marketing strategies that I use that come most
naturally to me. It's when I consider that I love educating and then
I'm great at design. And then I struggled
to sell myself. With that converts into
content marketing. I loved creating, visual, educating content that I rely on to help me build that know like and trust that
credibility in my content, it by way of automations skills for me so that I don't have
to do the selling. In looking at some of my other
strengths are witnesses. I'm introverted. I like hanging out at home. Home office works
really well to me. I find it quite easy to
form virtual connections, but I struggled meeting
people in person. That to me means that social media marketing is a
really good answer for me, particularly when I connect
it with content marketing. I can form those connections with people in direct messages. I can follow their content. I can build the relationships
and I can also form connections with
my own followers. Find my Facebook group, my Facebook, my Instagram. So it makes a lot of sense to me to use social media marketing. Another example is I love
teaching and educating, so I have a lot of
content to share. I struggled to write, but I'm a good designer
and I'm tech savvy, which means that I can
produce non-written content. It also means that search
engine optimization is a really good option
for me so that my content can be
found by more people. Okay, so let's talk
about the strategies that I should avoid if I struggled to sell myself than cold calling and
outbound marketing is definitely not for me. I could not pitch myself
if my life mattered. So I'm not going to be
using cold calling, but some people
thrive on selling. Some people really, really enjoy that process and
maybe cold calling, cold emailing is a really
good option for them. I struggled to rot quite well. So that to me means that I would avoid written tint content or I would outsource it a definitely want to
outsource writing. The facts that are struggled, meeting new people in person and logic craftsmen
me quite anxious, then networking in-person is not the best option for me unless I can push
through those spheres, but it doesn't come
naturally to me. It's quite outside
of my comfort zone, so it's not naturally the
first one that I would look to as being an
effective strategy for me. What I want you to do now
is after going through how I use marketing strategies with my strengths
and weaknesses, I want you to think about your own strengths
and weaknesses. How can you convert
your strengths and weaknesses into an effective and natural
marketing strategy? So for instance, if you love
meeting people in person, if you survive on
that connection, the networking isn't
really good one for you. If you're an amazing writer
and you love writing, it comes really
natural to you in social media and content
marketing is really, really great written content. People who love to read
if you gain a lot of clients through word of mouth and we have a lot
of connections, then you can definitely
consider networking or word of mouth marketing as being
one of your primaries. Next activity that I
want you to do is to look at your own strengths and weaknesses and
look for patterns. Is there anything that stands
out to you that could be content marketing
strategy that you really want to
focus on that would come sign naturally to you. Just jot some notes
down in your workbook. One thing that I
want to note though, is you may see in the workbook that under
Content Marketing, below that are a lot
of options and blogs, webinars, podcasts,
social media. I just want you to know that
you do not have to do all of the options that have beneath
the marketing strategy. You can choose a few that would work really,
really well for you. So don't feel like
when I'm saying you have to do all of them.
6. Reflective Questions: Okay, so we're reaching the
end of this exercise now. But what I would really
love for you to do is this is a basis of workshop that
is a lot of food for thought. You're going to have a lot
of clarity as you may have some aha moments where you've
had some realizations. What I would love
for you to do is just spend a minute or two reflecting on what's going
on inside your head. So there's a couple of questions that I wanted you to answer. What sort of strategies
do you want to focus on? Strategies that you want
to stop focusing on now? There are any changes
that you need to make in your business. Once the recording is stopped, feel free to reflect
on those questions. That you can start creating beautiful plane for
yourself moving forward with your own
marketing strategy. Now if you have any questions that you'd like to
ask me or if you have any feedback or any
guidance that you need on this, feel free to contact
me. Otherwise. Thank you for watching
this workshop and enjoy your new
marketing strategies.
Michelle Marks, Surface Pattern Designer
