Big Bang! Workshop: Putting Your Best Foot Forward

Thank you all so much for being here we have a  fantastic workshop prepared for you it really Vanessa has taught this before and I know it's one  that she has taught or taught a version of it um many times before so this is a real treat for the  Institute to be able to offer this and we're just so so glad that you're here thank you Vanessa so  I'm going to tell you a little bit about Vanessa's background and then I will hand it off to her so  she can dive a little bit deeper and then get into th

e meat of the workshop Vanessa Errecarte  is a top marketing consultant in Northern California with two decades of experience  helping businesses reach their growth goals Her particular expertise is in her ability to  create and customize campaigns for small to medium businesses and nonprofits enabling them  to be competitive in a world often dominated by organized organizations with large marketing  and staff budgets as the CEO of marketing uh simplified she has worked with businesses  in the s

ervice consulting construction real estate hospitality and retail industries and  not-for-profit groups ranging from Grassroots organizations to academic divisions and  universities so Vanessa graduated from UC Davis School of Management with an MBA in 2014 um  she currently teaches a class on personal branding at the school and she was recognized as teacher  of the year in 2022 so please join me in giving Vanessa a warm welcome and um Vanessa thank you  again for being here and I can't wait for

your workshop I know I'm going to learn a lot um  and so I will not waste any more of your time not wasted at all and thanks for having me I love  doing presentations like this because as you said kind of from my my bio I really believe that  we're in a time I know we're in a time where we have tools that can make us competitive with  some of the top companies we have tools that are easier to use and more accessible than ever before  and I'm excited to introduce you to some of them the flip sid

e of that is there's a lot of tools  right and everybody wants you to choose their tool to market your business and I know that can  be really overwhelming because you're starting a business which is overwhelming enough trust me I  know um and now you're trying to figure out well how do I market this so my goal for you today is  to bring to you a streamlined marketing approach so that maybe some of that decision making is  eliminated so that you can kind of get right down to business um I have s

ome friendly faces  here that have um that have been in my classes or seen me do um presentations before for um hi Amna  uh and so some of these concepts are concepts that I really I teach broadly and widely and really to  most people in my classes I'm going to teach you a very simple funnel because my goal for you again  at the end of this presentation today is for you to get started is for you to jump right in that's  kind of what you're doing in the Big Bang! anyway but I really want you to f

eel like you're equipped  and have the tools to do that okay all right now I always start all of my classes out with a joke  and I'm going to start you guys off because in marketing here's one thing they that that you'll  remember um because it's going to be coupled with this joke that's not very great but I think  it's cute so we want to manage expectations right so you know it's the same concept as um  under-promise and overdeliver right people say how do you get good reviews it's like well do

n't  overpromise right do what you say you're going to do um so we have to manage expectations from the  onset and so if I can tell you a really bad joke at the beginning of a workshop that usually means  your satisfaction only goes up from there right if I were to tell you a really good joke then who  knows right I'm putting myself in kind of a bad situation so here's my bad joke okay it's actually  a very cute joke that my seven-year-old son came home telling and it actually makes sense which 

is not aligned with his usual track record so why did the chicken cross the park Amna you cannot ask  answer you don't remember why the chicken crossed the park she doesn't even remember why the chicken  crossed the park wow wow okay anyone why did the chicken cross the park to get to the other slide  Kenneth to get to the other slide isn't that cute isn't that clever that Jack came home telling me  that I think it's clever anyway okay we're going to go uphill now give some more time people som

e  more time to log on we're reaching more a critical mass here now we'll now we'll get started with the  meaty part so I'm going to go ahead and uh share the screen share my screen and if um if anyone  has an urgent question during the presentation go ahead and raise your hand I do have this hour  kind of jam-packed with information so if you can remember your question if you can jot it down  I will save some time we have till 6:20 correct I will save about 10 minutes for questions at  the end

or more um but if you kind of an urgent question that you really need answered go ahead  and and use the raise hand function okay all right here we go so I've decided that I am going to oh  okay slideshow from beginning here we go okay so today I'm going to share with you a framework that  I call EPIC um and you'll see why in a moment um I'm going and it's so I've called my presentation  EPIC social media for startup okay I want you to have ethic social media but e ethic is really  a framework t

hat stands for four steps that I want to share with you today about how to get  social media working for you properly for your startup okay um I'm going to help you avoid some  common mistakes and again I'm going to help you make choices so that you can have a very effective  program to get started on right away okay um self- introduction so I already I was already introduced  I I make a self- introduction at the beginning of all my presentations um I've been working in  the marketing industry f

or 20 years I have a master's degree in mass communication um from way  back I studied um Web 2.0 if anyone remembers um that term that was when social media was first  coming out we didn't even have Facebook when I was in college but what I studied was something  called eWOM or digital word of mouth and I wanted to know does digital word of mouth can we mimic  um in-person word of mouth with digital word of mouth turns out we can come close we can't quite  mimic the power of in person word of m

outh but I've really been fascinated with that um ever  since digital marketing digital media came to be um before we even called it digital marketing so  that was my master thesis emerging Web 2.0 and how we can mimic digital word of mouth with that or  if we can um nine years ago I started a marketing consulting firm I focus really on branding and  digital marketing which is what I teach at the University um I teach uh digital marketing and  strategic branding and then also teach a weekend res

idential course in personal branding um a  big part of my business is also teaching and training corporations and marketing professionals  I love teaching I love mentoring and um I'm really delighted to be here today um let's see here so  oops did I go backward um so there's there's the first part of my introduction the second part  is um the personal side so when I'm not working I actually have a very boring life I'm usually  just spending time time with my family um or I am trying to do some k

ind of fitness endeavor to  burn off all the carbs I eat if you uh stick to a low carb diet I admire you I do not so I have to  um I have to make up for it all right so um great to meet you um and I'm am going to start off now  with a fun fact so recent uh statistics show that in the United States we're spending about eight  hours a day online now this could be emailing texting browsing or on social media um in fact two  hours of this time is spent networking on social media or again browsing so

if some of you remember  surfing the web um social media has become more of a passive tool in the last three years since  2021 that's really um started replacing that entertainment time so the good news for marketers  is a lot of times we're using social media as a discovery tool and I'm going to tell you more  about that in just a moment um worldwide users are are also um catching up throughout the world  and spending at least 2 hours and 27 minutes on average online each day so we spend a lot

of time  online in fact when you think about our habits in the US if you think about the fact that we also  eat food and go to the bathroom um we pretty much are spending and then sleep you know eight hours  a day or six hours a day even um when you think about that um we spend more of our waking hours  online okay yet we make a lot of mistakes about how we use the internet or how we show up online a  lot of us do something um with what I call what I lovingly call online marketing darts we're k

ind  of trying to be online and we're trying to form a strategy for our business but we don't really  know what we're doing or why we're doing it and so today I want to give you that strategy so that  every moment you spend online is a moment that is amplifying your business and isn't time wasted  in the vortex of all the other messages we're getting online out there because it is a crowded  space all right um so marketing online marketing I really think is is a lab for your next big  idea and I

think a lot of us have yet to think of online marketing in that way and I'll tell you  this little story about um a client of mine who um said hey I have a my daughter has a a business  that she wants you to help market and so I start talking to the daughter I said okay well what what  do you need what's your business and she said well I have I have an app and she explained to me what  the app was and she said that she had put $25,000 into this development this app okay and I said  oh wow okay

that's a really big investment like how did you test the market um how many people do  you have that are interested how many potential consumers do you have on your list and she said  well that's what I want help with and my heart just kind of sank right because she didn't know if  this app was going to work or not and so if you're not using online marketing to prototype your ideas  your really doing it backward we actually have the ability to prototype our ideas with online  marketing because w

e can launch something as if it's already there right and we can start  getting feedback from the social universe social listening comments etc we can start getting  informal feedback informal market research back so when digital marketing came to be um and  and started really taking off you know 15-20 years ago our communication really went from one to many  to one to one but a lot of us in marketing still think of that kind of blast messaging and hoping  we get something in return versus encou

raging that thought encouraging that feedback and using  online marketing as a test lab okay so so I think as entrepreneurs that's a really important thing  for you to remember and and some of this is age dependent too I know when I went through school  it was like okay we write the final draft we make it all pretty then we launch it right it's not so  anymore now we're using marketing to help us get better and as we're putting information out there  we're still sending messages out there so not

only are we getting better at our own marketing  message and getting our products better to what the consumers want but we're also um spreading  word as well so it's it's two for one which is good um so another thing that's great about being  online and putting information out there online is you know when you're in a room with if I were in a  room with a bunch of you and we weren't recording this or anything um it would be done the moment  that I was done talking to you but this um but in the

online universe when we say something it  has a potential what we call shelf life so people can like it people can comment on it people can  find it months or even years after you create it and there's a lot more people that at any given  time can see your message online than in person so that's another reason why it's just important  to think strategically about what we put out there online um I also mentioned it's easier and cheaper  to get to Market than ever before because of the tools widel

y available I truly think if you have  a smart online strategy you can have a seat at the social media table so let's take a moment  to reflect because I truly believe things are possible these things are possible for you and  your business um and so I really want to get you to a point where rather than having to go out  and seek funding all the time maybe there's a pull marketing effect in marketing we talk about  push and pull marketing and pull marketing means when someone needs something you

're top of mind  so if an investor has a certain type of company they want to invest in we want them to just  be thinking of your brand we don't want you to have to uh come to them right when they need you  that's called push marketing when we try to find our customers um when they need us where they're  at what they need Etc there's so many things that have to come together for push marketing to work  in the moment but if pull marketing is already working which means people know your brand and 

have recall of your brand then you don't have to work as hard so we want people like potential  investors to already know you through the online marketing you're doing um we want you to become  a thought leader an industry expert a lot of times with startups um the person that founded  the business is such an integral start of the marketing and the story and the more of a thought  leader or a pundit you can be um the better for your business and we're going to talk about what  are some ways to

establish yourself as that person um I also really like to get businesses to a point  where they just don't have to go find customers again that pull marketing effect and again online  collaboration so we always think about in person which conference should we go to where where  should we put ourselves so that our networking is best we want to think about that online as well  so I'm going to talk to you a little bit about online networking today um in addition okay all  right and I also just wan

t to give you a little pep talk um because if you're left brained like  I am um create doing something creative can seem intimidating I went to one of those paint and  sip classes a couple years ago and I was highly highly nervous I love creating graphics but  on my computer in a very left brained way and so marketing I just want to tell you especially  digital marketing is a repeated process and our skills improve by receiving the instant feedback  you get in your analytics and so your marketin

g will become stronger over time so if you're  sitting there thinking how am I ever going to build a following or build an audience a lot of  people say it's just so overwhelming because I'm starting at zero that's actually amazing because  you can be testing messages with your friends with mom and dad with your first few customers  right they're giving you feedback back in a safer smaller audience so as your messaging  is getting better your audience is growing at the same time and everything i

s kind of maturing  um as it should and I think that that's another thing that's really neat about using digital  marketing and social media as a test lab okay so I'm going to talk to you about four different  steps today first I'm going to talk to you about how do you make a clear brand statement and just  figure out what you want to put out to the world and then how do you make people remember it we're  going to talk about using frameworks to do that then I'm going to talk to you just a little

bit  about what your website the parts that I think it should have a lot of you have a website  already I just want to make sure that you're thinking about the right ways to use your website  um I'm also going to talk about logos and even sub logos so how do we in marketing um we we talk a  lot about packaging right we want to package our information in that same professional way that  we package our products and I'm just going to give you a few little tricks so that you look  super professiona

l and almost more mature than you are with your packaging for your marketing  that's always a good place to be um then I'm going to talk to you about creating a funnel and  managing your social media your social media is actually just simply a tool to get people to your  owned space which is your website and I'm going to tell you why that's so important to think  of it that way and then finally I'm going to talk about growth how once you establish this  funnel how do you now speed it up and get

more people in that funnel what are some ideas to do  that and what are some secondary IP based ideas that you can add on to your business should those  apply as well okay so first so so as you can see this spells EPIC see that was why I called it  EPIC I hope you think it's epic but that's why I called it EPIC okay so first the established  part so I tell every single client I have and in my strategic branding class one of the first  things we do is we talk about brand statements and here's the

format of a brand statement I do what  for who because why what's your value position I'm sure that you did this maybe on the first day of  the Big Bang! you were really trying to straighten out what is your business how do you say it in  one sentence who's your ideal customer and what value do you provide that's different than others  right and how do we say that in one compelling sentence okay so an example for me would be  I'm a marketing teacher and consultant for entrepreneurs and small bu

sinesses because  everyone deserves to share their value with the world okay um now I want to I want to talk  to you a little bit about that last part of this statement because a lot of us can think very  easily about what our what our business is what am I or what is my business okay and who is it  for all right a lot of us have already thought of that but it's that why that value position at  the end that can sometimes get a little generic or muddled and the last thing we want online  is gener

ic or muddled so how do we make this tangible for your customers in a way that they're  going to take notice and listen how do we make this customer based okay um and so first I want  you to think about what are your special skills or talents what are your core competencies in your  business and why do your customers need those and that's the key um we want to think in the the  minds of our ideal customer and here's what I mean um a lot of us make a mistake in marketing  especially when we're so

close to like a a new product that we've made that we think is going  to maybe be a game changer in an industry we go to feature positioning which is ingredients  origin specs parts like running shoes are made of a certain foam that makes it comfortable for  the heel strike and makes you this much faster because and those are all features of the product  right and so for the longest time in marketing we always would would say benefits versus features  in fact some of you may have heard that and

some of you may have experienced that in some of  your classes it's a very common way that we teach marketing and benefit is a little better  right benefits say well you're com you're more comfortable in these shoes and you're faster  so we're going to respond to benefits a little more than features but really what cuts through  the noise and what we found over and over again especially in social media through researches  that value positioning is what people are really looking for and respondi

ng to so what are those  common things that we can all relate to so do you want these shoes that are comfortable and make  you faster because this company believes that everybody can be an athlete that is a value  position those are higher meanings customer sentiments customer morals those are the things  that bring a crowd of people with you if you ever want to re to uh witness a lot of valiant  attempts at value positioning take a look at political campaigns they're constantly trying to  make

that call to action right to take groups of people with them and that's what we need to do as  companies right we need to really play off that sense of belonging that thing in their heart that  they really want to tease out right so in in that example of the running shoes you know um all your  life you know you've wanted to do this too you've watched other people do it this is the shoe that's  going to take you there right and we strongly believe that you should be able to do that so  going back

to my statement um again I put some value positioning in there right I truly believe  that you and everyone deserve to share their value with the world just as much as Google right and  that is my value position that's why I do what I do and I pick my clients based on that um and  it's what drives me to do my work every single day okay so what is your value position and again  what are your special skills skills what's that ultimate goal what are some things you can think  about to tease out th

at value position for your company why are you truly here at the Big Bang!  saying I have something that's a little different that's more special that's better that will help  people more than what's already out there okay how can you tease that out I'm going to give you  one more way to look at this okay transformation versus information this is like one of my favorite  things ever to teach in workshops because um your offer is not your your offer is not your product  okay so the value proposit

ion that you are trying to talk to people about isn't your company it's  not your your product suite it's not what you're doing for the industry and here's what I mean so  when we are about to go make a conversion right we're about to step on this tightrope and we have  a certain amount of trust that we need to feel to step out and walk across this tightrope and get  to the other side and that's what our offer does it gives us that trust it gives us that emotional  connection it says come along

with me step step out and give it a try your product your frameworks  your value all of that in your company your your is your um that's your product that's the safety  net okay so I always use my grandma as an example who broke her femur vacuuming and is now 99  years old she broke her femur when she was 97 and she doesn't want to go to assisted living  she lives alone and her four um children my mom one of them is really worth about her right and  but she's 99 she's not going to change her min

d and so they said well at least let's change the  way she lives in the ways we can and so one thing that they um one thing that the kids thought of  her kids thought of was okay um maybe we should buy her a Roomba because she really cares about  a clean house and she broke her femur vacuuming right and so they didn't care about what makes  this i-robot work and and go across and vacuum your floor for you they didn't care about the  specs in there they didn't care why it's the best robot to vacu

um your floor right they cared  about my grandmother's Independence so the value position for them was you know helping helping  your helping people live a more independent life right that would have been their value position  and that would have been their offer right so the offer to my grandmother and the offer to her  kids is a lot different than maybe the person who made the product wants to mark it okay and so  really remembering that nuance immediately takes us from giving information abou

t our company to  showing the transformation okay and so much of the battle in marketing is getting people to connect  with that transformation once they've connected initially to that emotional transformation they  want to learn more they're naturally going to start learning more about your product then you  start peppering in the facts of um hey this is why this is simple to use this is the technology  we've put in it so this is why we can make good on our offer so an offer is pretty empty wit

hout  some of our product in it right but we want to weave it in and lead with that offer and we want  to create our value position based on that offer okay so now that we're thinking about things that  way I always encourage people if we were doing this in real time and writing one brand statement  then you're talking about your value positioning you reorganize your thinking you're starting to  think about offer versus product force yourself to rewrite it based on what's the value position  at

the end there okay all right and then you can change it you can elevate your brand statement  for different places so of course I don't say it in that exact format on my website and other  places and you won't for your company either now frameworks um a lot of times when we are trying to  get to market and trying to establish credibility um a framework helps us a lot and that's how  most IP uh intellectual property products are based right a recipe isn't a recipe until you  write down the steps

right then all of a sudden you can sell it in a recipe book framework is the  same thing that's how intellectual property starts right you make a process official you copyright it  you license it you sell it okay and so I encourage you wherever you can to make frameworks for your  business okay so you have something that makes your technology so special um what are the four  steps that makes that technology special what are the four aspects that makes that special and what  can you call it okay

anytime we can put names on things it just looks and feels more professional  okay and so um and also frameworks tend to fill a gap present a new idea or present knowledge  in a new way so when you're trying to think of frameworks to really think about the crux of what  you're making frameworks about I want you to think about it in a customer centric way so that we keep  that transformation in there and how to do that is okay how does your ideal customer feel right now  what was the problem that

drove you to start this business how do they want to feel and then what  is the counterintuitive new or surprising thing that your ideal customer needs to do to get there  and how will they feel when they get there right so a lot of times in my business I go against the  grain of the industry and I say to be successful in marketing you need to do less you need to do  certain exact things and people turn around and look right because not a lot of marketing  consultants are trying to say you need

to do less let me teach you how to streamline this  right A lot of them are trying to teach them how complex it is because they want to serve them and  they want to give a variety of services right but that doesn't necessarily get a marketing program  done and implemented for people um so again what makes someone stand out in a way that you're  not used to seeing because all of a sudden then someone is an expert let me give you another  example so online when we see things that have been told t

o us a thousand different ways before  we don't tend to look look twice at messaging so I actually happened to have an overweight and  an underweight child and for years we had two different kinds of milk in our fridge um we were  using different strategies my son would finish eating he'd get to get up and play on his iPad so  that he wouldn't want seconds while my daughter had to stay at the table so that she would eat  enough and it was it was bananas right how is this going to ever work for o

ur family um these  two extremes and so all I was scrolling down um I think this was in and one day I saw this post  and what stands out about this post is it says treat your children the exact same way if they're  overweight or underweight and this will work and then you start reading the information in this  post and it kind of makes sense right if we can teach them these things and focus on these things  and live our life like this maybe it will work right and so I did I said okay gone are al

l the  milks um we're gonna have the same kind of milk we're gonna have the same food and we're gonna  focus on this and we're going to do this for a few months and lo and behold it worked right so  this woman that put this out there happens now to have this online business selling recipes to  parents with picky eaters right she didn't start out that way she started out just as a thought  leader but now her business is really taken off um and she did it by showing her expertise she  did it by no

t sounding like everybody else and simplifying what I needed as a busy working mother  was a simplified process for feeding my children who both had different issues with it right so  she stood out as an expert and everybody else who were still trying to who were still trying to  tell me to buy two different kinds of milk I never noticed them I didn't have time to notice them and  there's too many of them for me to notice right so when you dare to say something a bit different  and tease that ou

t in a way that's compelling to your ideal customer right that's when you make  that connection okay so I encourage you all to use these questions about your company and say what  is that thing what is that secret sauce that I'm trying to communicate and why is it different from  everybody else why should someone turn around and look twice at me okay um and then once you do that  oh and so I already kind of explained how I do it but I kind of call people out in my content  and say you know a com

mon mistake people make especially entrepreneurs is that and and marketers  is that they get overwhelmed and they just start trying to do stuff and they research exactly what  they should be doing they spend hours creating content individually for each platform and then  they measure success based on followers versus relationships um and it actually doesn't really  matter how many followers you have um and I go on to tell them why in different pieces of content  and I say you know this strategy

is wrong because it makes you give up and you lose the chance to  actually build um a following in an own space that does matter I'm going to tell you how to do  that in a second but um that's what gets people initially emotionally connected to me because they  say oh shoot I am playing online marketing darts I did that exact thing and I'm sitting there  saying it's wrong and there's a better way and then I create a framework as my answer I call my  framework the four C's it's just something I m

ade up um and so you can do this with your business  as well um you can you can do um a signature framework which this is this is what a lot of my  courses are is are based on um but you can also do frameworks for um littler things too um different  processes things like that again it elevates your material um and so framework does not have  to be product based in fact if you're just writing a thought leadership piece if you're if  you're writing a white paper something like that um just get in

the habit of using frameworks to  organize your thoughts um and you know start with dividing something into three to five steps name  it with a literary device can it spell a four or five word or three word can it all start with the  same letter we all learned about literary devices as we were growing up um and then when you share  your knowledge again share it packaged in that way to elevate the content okay so now speaking  of sharing knowledge now that we've gone to how do we really establish

that value position in a  way that makes customers want to listen and then how do we package it into a framework let's go a  little further on packaging and talk about website logo and sub logo um so most of you probably have  a website started um you either made your own or you outsourced it um and um one thing that I  want to be really um upfront about in um this presentation is that your website is going to be  your most important path in your digital funnel what we want to do is we want to

use social media  simply as a tool to funnel people to your website so that we can own the contacts that we get  my goal is for you not to get followers it's for you to get email addresses phone numbers or  both because if social media went away tomorrow and you're trying and you're working so hard to  build your audience on social media you've lost your audience okay so our website allows us to  use email marketing software text software CRM software and really start building a following we  wa

nt to give people a reason to want to hear from us on a regular basis and have a relationship with  us online once we're in someone's email box we are a lot better off than when we're on social media  anyway people believe it or not for brands that they appreciate and pay attention to they can  convert twice as often via email as they do on social media so we want to be in their email box  and you can think about it yourself as a consumer if you walk up to a computer someone walks up to  your co

mputer that you've left unattended and your email's open you might feel more violated than if  your newsfeed on Facebook are open okay because we still see email as more personal than social media  and that's why we convert more on it it's more of a trust area for us so we really as a company want  to be in someone's inbox also if we have that kind of information we can do better targeting when  it does come to digital ads because on a lot of platforms we can upload these lists these data  lists

and we can match it to profiles and we can go laser target people and give them another touch  on social as well as emails so for many reasons we really want to have a place where we can collect  this and that's going to be our website okay so um I I want to make sure that um again your website  is in order um and if you're trying to build it on your own you're probably using Wordpress and I  want to point out if you use the divvy AI theme um you will probably really like it it's kind of a  Gam

eChanger when it comes to DIY websites so if you are doing that for your business I want to  call some attention to that I also want to call some attention to my typo in the bottom of the  screen I'll change that before I send these out all right um next it's it's really a myth that  websites should contain a lot of information remember that slide we want to get people across  the tightrope right and the more time we give people to do research and one reason I like that  graphic so much is like

literally we're making them look down in doubt okay this is why when  you buy a new car all of the specs all of the information is folded very small and is behind a  plastic piece of tape on your window right that's not what we're looking for when we buy a car if we  are kind of gearheads and we're buying a car based on the engine then we already know the engine  we want when we walk into the car dealership and we're buying the car because we feel like more of  a gearhead when we drive the car w

e are buying a car based on how we feel we make all decisions  based on how we feel even the most analytical person is in the end making decisions based  on feeling we've studied this so many times in marketing and we all like to think we're logical  beings but the truth is we're not when it comes to making decisions we're all very emotional we have  different degrees of that but that's a good thing for marketers right because we know we know that  we get to people based on that value okay and s

o what we want to do on our website is have just  enough to create that emotional connection and show them what they need to do next okay and  so having kind of that about section having a blog that you update regularly with thought  leadership pieces um contact information um that's good adding some testimonials in there  for social proof that's great if you can adding a social media scroll with a plugin is also nice  to the bottom of the website it keeps it active adding case studies is also n

ice but really you  need very little to create a website that looks and feels nice to your consumers a website again  is a landing place to capture information the most important thing you need to have on your website  is an opt-in and sometimes an opt-in could just be a Weekly Newsletter teaching someone something  okay so I know I'm going to put Amna on the spot because she's in this call and I know her business  and so she has does how you and um she's trying to teach caregivers and so she mi

ght be saying you  can opt in and get a Weekly Newsletter about um the caregiving community different types of  things but also she might take it up a level and say I have a workbook or I have this road map  for you to really get started on this journey um and so um in exchange for an email you're going  to get this workbook or piece of value you see this happen with food bloggers and recipes and  like that so for your company um we call this a lead magnet or gated content can you think of  some

thing that can really give an incentive for people to give information to you and you want  that right up top at the header of your website so if you were to go to my website you would see  right at the header of the website is a place to opt in to my content okay and um sometimes I'm  selling like more of a workbook or a road map if I'm really trying to like sell a program sometimes  it's just a weekly email um alls you need is a Weekly Newsletter to start but um again you can  elevate it by cr

eating some kind of um elevated content as well one word to the wise on your  website before I just move on from doing kind of a little checkup on websites is um social media  it's great we all want to show that we're on it that we're cool um and um can use social media but  I constantly see social media icons up at the top right on websites that would be like if you owned  a retail shop someone gets to your front door and then you have instructions to your competitor  you would never ever do th

at we want people to land on our website and give us our personal  information okay um or give us their personal information their email their phone number Etc um  we want them in our CRM system we don't want them to go back to where we found them right we want  them to discover us on social media and then we want to own them in our space on our CRM systems  in our website so put those social media icons at the very footer of your website okay all right  let's talk about logos and sub logos many

of you have logos for um your business already I would  assume um if you don't I think Canva is a great place to create them also looka.com is a great  AI option where you can put different specs um or different sentiments about your business you  actually answer questions on that platform about your business and it will generate four different  logo choices for you why I'm going over logos when you probably already have them is it makes  you look more professional to have sub logos at well as

well so maybe you have a sub program or  some kind of framework that you're making um in addition to your business if you put a sub logo  on that again we're very visual online and we're scrolling right so anytime you can add a visual  element to something you should do that right so like for my four C's framework for example I have  a logo I have actually call that program zero to digital I have a logo a separate logo for that  so I encourage you to make some sub brands in your business um and

canva is a great place to  do it many of you have probably used it you can take simple templates like the one on the left and  make them into the one on the right um and there's different types of templates to choose from um if  you're not the type of person to DIY like that um I love looka.com as an AI tool to help you okay  um remember when you're doing this it seems like a lot to just start creating frameworks logos  and throwing it out there but done is better than perfect you can always cha

nge things right  and I always ask people who remembers the old Instagram logo and who cares okay sometimes we  put such big um roadblocks in our way because we want to make the perfect branding decision  because we think it's going to ignite something in our ideal customer that another decision  wouldn't it's the value position that ignites that psychological appeal in the customer that's  the secret that's why some brands get in your head and others don't think about all the brands  that are y

our favorite and they get in your heads they're connected to you with the value position  so let go of everything else just get it done you can always change edit and update I truly am a  firm believer that done is better than perfect and this one hangup is the biggest thing that's  going to stimy your marketing remember how ugly this was okay and we all still use Amazon don't  we all still use Amazon so you can always change and edit okay all right now the moment we've been  waiting for so now

we have our brand statements in order we have our value positions we're thinking  about those right I want you to spend a lot of time reflecting on that if you can and we have  kind of our look and feel our packaging up to snuff with our Frameworks what we're going to call  them our website our sub logos so we're looking not only are we connecting with our customers  with that value position we're looking really legitimate and professional okay now how do we  get the word out how do we use socia

l media to do that okay so I always say choose your social  media based on these following factors okay and if you notice what I'm doing here this is just  another framework that I made up because there's four things I think you need to pay attention to  when you're doing social media and this is why I try to do things in a streamlined way so first  the most important things are towards the bottom consistency and time what makes social media work  is that you do it over over and over consistentl

y so you need to make sure that you have time to  be on the platforms consistently that you choose and um that you keep that pattern going then we  think about fit right maybe it might maybe you have that kind of audience that you know you have  a bunch of like teenagers that you want to Target and you want them to tell their parents to buy the  product right and so you know that Snap or maybe TikTok is like the best place for you but you're  actually really good at Instagram you're you're still

going to find those people on Instagram  start with Instagram don't try to learn a new platform right so again think about fit but make  sure it goes along with consistency and time okay you want to make sure you can stay consistent  and have enough time to use these platforms so many people think they have to be on a brand new  thing I'm going to tell you in a minute why that's a myth also achievement you really want to help um  you really want your chosen platforms to help you achieve your go

als for your brand I have personal  brand in this slide sorry it's it's a recycled slide but for your brand in general you want um to  choose social media uh channels that are going to help you so for example your best Channel might  be LinkedIn if you're more B2B right so again um we want to make sure that we're choosing the right  channels and that we're not overdoing it so that we can stay consistent okay and here's why um  you know being the first to market isn't always great so you've learn

ed about this probably  already in the Big Bang or if you've been in an entrepreneurship class this is the Innovation  adoption curve and it shows how different portions of the population accept new technology right and  so when we look at this um we don't necessarily want to be on a brand new platform because we want  to be in front of as many people as many of our ideal customers as possible okay so I always say  you want to be inside the gold lines you at least want to be through halfway of t

he early you want  to be halfway through the early majority before you adopt a platform and there's really only  a few social media platforms that have gotten there yet okay even if we look at TiKToK by the  numbers they're still not halfway through their early majority phase so again really try to use  this to do a gut check of what social media you should be on because you again want to be spending  your time wisely um just for fun this is the first fax machine that ever existed um and he was

a very  very very lonely fax machine and he had nobody to talk to but 10 years years later he got very happy  because friends were sending him faxes okay and you know he was a lot cheaper 10 years later  too more people wanted him so again really be discerning in how you're choosing your platforms  because there's not a lot of utility as a business to be on a platform where you don't have a lot of  Ideal customers so in absence of having time to go through all the platforms individually and real

ly  pick them apart like we do in some of my classes to choose them um here are my recommendations  Facebook and Instagram they have the same ads manager which means you get a lot of bang for your  buck as a marketer um because one thing achieves two objectives okay and so I recommend those are  very good blankets here's why um personally people like to use Instagram quite a bit and it covers  that younger audience but the older audience as we know is still on Facebook and even the younger  audi

ence research in 2023 which is the most recent we have shows that when it comes to making  a purchase people are still purchasing twice as much on Facebook as they are on Instagram why  because people might say they don't trust Facebook but people act most people have actually made some  kind of purchase or conversion through Facebook to the point where they trust it more because their  past behavior has shown them that it will be okay if they make a purchase there so behavior is a lot  stronger

than what we state as human beings so you might hear a lot of people say oh I never used  Facebook anymore but they may still be purchasing on Facebook and trusting it as um as a lurker I'd  say so Facebook and Instagram are going to blanket you pretty well YouTube is also something most  adults 97% of American adults have used YouTube um the most common search on YouTube is how to so if  you can make a video and a framework that's how-to something that is related to your brand I highly  recomm

end that for YouTube but again being on YouTube not only blankets a user base but it also  gets you good search engine optimization because YouTube is owned by Google Now if um you have B2B  or your your company is more thought leadership based more of a personal brand um then you want to  bring in LinkedIn okay and B2B stands for business to business so let's say you're selling your  product to hospitals right LinkedIn is a good place for that because you're selling to other  professionals okay

so I always say um if you're going to choose some things make sure you have  Facebook Instagram and YouTube add LinkedIn for again personal brands and business to business and  if you have time add X/ Twitter uh because that really establishes you as a thought leader we find  that it doesn't do much for audience growth but it does really establish expertise but again if you  have time because I always say use as much as the same content as you can you can use a lot of the  same video stuff on t

he upper three platforms but once you get to Twitter you have to modify your  amount of characters where you describe the video Etc so again if you have time add Twitter and then  be discerning for all of the other platforms okay so I don't even really want you to think about all  these other platforms out there until you kind of master those ones up at the top and then um add  them in as you see fit based on their user base we don't have time to go through each of them  today but I want you to

really get good at this Topline funnel first all right now um I want you  to create a funnel and I want you to think of your funnel on a weekly basis why weekly and why do I  have email in here weekly when I say this a lot of people get shocked like why am I asking people to  send emails every week um the reason is because we want to form a relationship and become someone's  friend when we do um online marketing um because again that relationship leads to trust which leads  to a conversion so wh

en we see people once a week and when we're getting value once a week in a big  way versus once a month um that actually creates a better relationship and we also have recent  research that has shown that that is the sweet spot to get weekly information from businesses  now that being said this all starts on social media and I always say it starts with something  I call Cornerstone content and so each week what I want you to do is put out a thought leadership  piece okay we earn trust by giving

value okay so what is the value you're providing for the world  you're already thinking of that overarching value position right so now each week give a little  value so each week what I do in my business is I write about a topic in marketing that people  are thinking about so I might write how to make AI work for your business right here's a four-step  here's here's a four-step framework for AI for beginners something like that and each week I  think of a little topic and I write you know 500 w

ords okay easy to read or you can video it  face the camera and then I want you to recycle that across every platform that I mentioned you  should be on now if you are comfortable enough I prefer that you go face to camera um on a video  and why I prefer that is because then you can get that video transcribed so you can edit a written  transcript so you can post a video and a written transcript or a blog post um which is essentially  what an edited written transcript is once a week on the blog s

ection of your website and then you  can disseminate it out to YouTube and everywhere else and video just converts so much better  than written but if you're only comfortable with written that's fine take out YouTube for the  moment okay um so um one little trick I can tell you too is if you go live on Facebook you'll get  more visibility for your business and I know not a lot of people are on Facebook but Facebook is the  only platform that lets you download a live video from Facebook into an M

P3 format and then you can  go recycle it you can add it to YouTube which then allows you to embed it on a blog on a weekly email  link it on LinkedIn it allows you to um you can take that MP4 and turn it into a reel on Instagram  um and again Facebook is the only platform that allows you to download a live video you've already  made so you're enjoying the algorithm benefits on Facebook and you have this live video that you've  made face to camera um another reason I like it is because people ca

n kind of tell when you're  making a live video and they expect mistakes I've probably made a few mistakes here I've probably  stumbled over my words sometimes but you expect that because we're live okay so when people think  they're watching something that was just casually made face to camera you don't have to worry as  much about editing okay so my goal for your funnel is to once a week do this and that allows you a  starting point to blanket all of these platforms that I just told you about

okay by linking this  video or written content okay then what you can do and I just describe this the head to camera video  um transcribe it rev.com rev.com is a good place where I like to go for transcriptions because  you can get your um you can get your transcript and you can save it in an account profile and you  can edit it right in that platform um and you can even get it translated into other languages it  has a lot of capabilities and it's only a dollar a minute for transcriptions so I t

hought I'd share  that with you there's a lot of free transcription tools but it's so cheap and it's has so many  capabilities I wanted to share it with you anyway um so then once you do this I'm going to move  ahead for a second um once you do this you can um then create other posts around it okay you can  say okay I'm going to now break it up into pieces and give people a preview each week so I'm gonna  say okay um new blog is coming on Wednesday but here's a preview you can do that one day um

you  can give a piece of maybe a personal story that led you to want to solve this problem with your  business right whatever you're writing about you can be engaging you can ask a question you can say  have you struggled with this particular piece of um or with this particular problem that again  you're solving through your thought piece that week so you can see how very quickly and you can  always add fun in pop culture like Pi Day right for filler but you can see how by having that once  a w

eek thought leadership piece of content and some weeks it could even be interviewing someone  in your industry or interviewing how a customer uses your product right but if you have that one  piece of Cornerstone content each week that's high value you can build a lot of content off of that  okay okay we're going to get there but I just want to say a few other things you need to make this  work is email marketing software because remember we're collecting email addresses um so that you  can stay

in touch with your audience and be in a personal space I recommend Constant Contact  for all small businesses it it is a paid model um it is a nominal fee um and MailChimp is Free  as a backup but I do recommend Constant Contact and the reason you have to have email marketing  software is because you need to hook that into your website to get those opt in right that will  then live in your email marketing platform you'll have those email lists okay underneath the Bold  line there I have CRM pla

tforms so as you grow you might want to change to something like Salesforce  or Ontraport so that you can track more than just email addresses you can track purchase patterns  and if you have a high level growth plan and you think you're going to be making sales pretty  quickly you might think of having a CRM program that incorporates email marketing from the outset  um same with texting texting is becoming um more and more popular in a lot of Industries it's worth  a try these days again you ha

ve basic software on top and you have more of um more capabilities on  the bottom as far as opting in email to text Etc so um I I think Textedly is a great place to  start but I've given you options here so you want to make sure that that you have again at  least that email marketing software so that you can have those opt-ins on your website um when  you do have people opt into email marketing you can also say you can have them give you their  email you can also choose to say phone number optio

nal that's what I do um because then when  texting becomes something that's more and more accepted um I already have a list of phone numbers  to start texting people all right so why is it so important to do this weekly thing where we're  providing this high value content well first we can build a lot of social media content off of  that so we can get consistency off of that pretty regularly and it gets us into this consistent  pattern of creating our marketing right now you have this whole syst

em of how to blanket your  social media with recycled content you don't need to curate specific content for each platform okay  um so you have that number one and then number two you're building relationships now traditionally  the marketing funnel we've thought okay people become aware and then less people consider less  people convert and less people become loyer loyal or I should have said fewer each time see live we  can make more mistakes um well now in marketing we people become aware but

if everybody that becomes  aware then stays in the consideration phase or a good amount of them and we stay in touch we don't  have to lose them right so at any given time we have more people that are likely to convert  and then as people convert we don't have to lose them in the loyalist phase either as they  stay in touch and they can make referrals and feed the awareness phase right so because we have  that ability to stay in a relationship with our customers and we're collecting that data al

l of a  sudden um we don't have to work as hard um to get to get new leads in the awareness phase and again  the loyalist will feed that and so I really think that's somewhere we haven't caught up with yet  in marketing and so to know this from the outset with your startup I think is very valuable because  what happens is we tend to overfund awareness and underfund consideration and loyalty we want to  give people incentives and reasons to come back we want to give people a discount to make that

  first purchase and we need to write that into our budget and if we're spending so much money getting  people aware and just paying for ad after ad on social media we're not spending time keeping that  relationship and making them do things with their our brand um we're really funding the marketing  funnel wrong so I really do believe that we have um we have this digital media that allows us to  do so many more things but we still think about funding the funnel in the same way that we did  befo

re we had digital media please don't make that mistake please nurture those customers in  the consideration phase or potential customers and please nurture those customers in the  loyalist phase okay all right next um so I I'm talking about this weekly content I'm talking  about these posts how the heck do we come up with all of this well um prompts is how profession  writers have always come up with content okay so I've given you a few prompts here my favorite  one is I remember if you write so

mething like I remember or we remember and you you start off with  some kind of story that is a great way to segue into a product I remember when you know I was  working the night shift at this hospital and we had this problem with these medical records this  is why this company was born right you explain that and then boom you have your intro you share  your framework of you know what needs to happen to make sure that charts stay in order or whatever  and you have your blog post for a week so a

gain using prompts um even weird ones like I don't know  if it's on here but my favorite ice cream flavor is because yeah if I were an ice cream flavor I  would be um excuse me I'm about to sneeze no I'm not if I were a favorite ice cream flavor I would  be um some of those really force us to think in different ways about our business and it gets us  to the value positioning anyway and there's some great books on prompts out there my favorite book  is 5,000 writing prompts by Richard Bayan um al

so there's AI you can have AI give you prompts you  can say this is the type of business I have give me 20 prompts to uh create thought leadership  content with you know for the next 20 weeks and it will all right um and then how do you write  titles headlines um how do you write those posts that really cut through the noise the reason why  you see a lot of posts like this with these kinds of words or a lot of headlines or email subject  lines is because they're rooted in theories of persuasion

so in my strategic planning class  we talk about theories of persuasion and then we build on that with content creation because  um good content creation is persuasive right so practical value we all tend to seek practical  value okay we want to get that information that we think is going to make us better so tips reasons  what are you searching for right take a shortcut those are kinds of things that are rooted in that  persuasive theory of optical value if you want to read a book on this Conta

gious by Jonah Burger is  great he's out of the Kellogg School of Business and he researches what kinds of things and content  is has has been over time most sharable on social media and then he looks for patterns right and  he he categorizes it so practical value is one of those things social currency um what we have  social currency when we have something to give others okay inside information if you will so what  I wish I'd known back when I was whatever problem your business solves right peo

ple really respond  to that myths right here's a myth I'm going to tell you why um especially if people kind of  subscribe to those myths and it's hurting them right in their business um what do you regret if  you regret something you're about to teach them a lesson right pure honesty ahead talk about  inside information and social currency right um another one I really like is using triggers so  we want our brand to be top of mind every day when possible Cheerios has more mentions on Twitter um

  by lots of factors than Disney that is surprising at first until you think of the fact that we  eat breakfast or feed our children breakfast every single day there's more opportunities to  talk about Cheerios KitKat did this really well when they started their give me a break campaign  we take a lot of breaks right let's think about KitKat as the candy we're going to take a break  with so we're sorry then be contract we're sorry we're about to give you a bunch of high value  content we all rel

ate to sorry we all say it a lot we probably say it at least once a day get out  of your breakfast R your mom was right right what are those common things that we can trigger people  with okay and then my favorite flip a statement into a question we are all adults we don't like  to be told what to do even children don't like to be told what to do holy shite children do  not like to be told what to do seven and nine old here I am in the thick of them not liking  to be told what to to do and I hav

e a feeling it's only going to get worse or so I'm told so  let's create agency let's flip a statement into a question Nike tells you to just do it what  if Nike asked you why you do it right so what can you do to get people to slow their scroll  and think right L'Oreal tells you that you're worth it what if they ever asked you why you're  worth it we don't do that a lot we tell people to buy buy buy look look look why do they need  a better system for this right what is that and that gets again

to that value position flipping a  statement into a question is my favorite whenever you can do that please do it okay and then a  marketing calendar I will send this out with the presentation okay a marketing calendar um  helps you to batch content in advance I always say think of 12 topics at a time um and then take  those weekly contents that we talked topics that we talked about um and break them up into your  daily posts um it by doing content in advance too by planning in advance you can

also see if like  wait a minute I'm giving away the whole recipe at once here is there a way I can break this  up and have even more content right so maybe there's 12 steps to something and you can do it  over three or four weeks okay so remember not to give away too much information at once it's okay  to be redundant we we need to say the same things over and over we constantly have new people coming  into our audience so how do you say the same thing in a different way right um and again purpo

se  that Cornerstone content into um all of these different places your blog email social media um  and YouTube if you're doing video um you want to spend a limited amount of time on marketing and  get the most out of it so start with the system okay we already talked about post ideas um and  then one more thing so you know this better than anyone else because you're starting a business um  penicillin was not created by the first person who came up with a framework for it right penicillin  was c

reated Andy Hargadon tells this story all the time in his classes penicillin was created  by I think like what the third person who got it just right based off of the prior research  okay so look at people look at businesses who are like yours and see what they're doing and  what's working well for them that's where I think you're going to get most of your ideas and  think about complimentary businesses too so I just mentioned Constant Contact to you as a business  as as an email marketing provi

der they might be saying something that really resonates with  their customers that I can learn from because if someone wants to learn from me they need to have  these software tools for their marketing right so complimentary businesses are good things to look  at as well as competitive businesses and then don't guess remember when I told you social media  is a lab for your content um line up your posts this is from a client um when I first onboarded  them years ago I lined up all their posts an

d I said what is it about these posts that did really  well compared to the other ones and then you can do more of that okay um and then oh Kenneth cool  thanks for sharing the article about penicillin I'll be sure to take a look um you can correct  me in a few minutes here if I got it right or not um and then um make sure as as you get out  on social media I want to remind you just like I did in the beginning with packages look good so  you can also find backgrounds on Canva that kind of go wit

h your logo and so if you don't have a  picture to post and you're just kind of trying to get information out there put a nice background on  it it just adds that professionalism and gives you more engagement one guy even um puts his picture  in all of his posts that are quote only I think that's very courageous I wouldn't do that I would  be more like the one on the left but hey um go there if you can okay so what is my goal for you  I've told you a lot today my goal for you is for you to use t

his funnel and truly do it because I  think you're going to build a great audience and it's going to pay you dividends and again don't  focus on those followers the the platform I have with the most followers around like sixteen  seventeen hundred followers my email list is like eight times that that's what I care about  people usually do one thing at a time if you want them to do one thing get them from social  media to your website opting in if you ask them to follow you they're never going to

get to that  often okay you're a business you don't need to be an influencer you need to be a thought leader you  need to create that value connection and you need to get people to your website and converting  right who cares about the vanity okay um so my ultimate goal is that you use this system to build  relationships versus followers going back to that mistake at the beginning we count our success on  followers versus relationships so keep doing this you know why look at engagement in your

analytics  as you use your social media tools your engagement might be more than your followers right people  may not be be following you but they might be looking at you engaging with you and the social  platform these days puts more on the algorithm to show you again to that person if they engage  with you so it doesn't matter if they follow you okay so my ultimate goal for you is to build  those relationships and keep doing this okay don't get discouraged if the followers don't come  quickly

focus on the emails focus on the contact my minimum suggestion would be a LinkedIn article  or a case study once a month to gain visibility and expertise so if you're a little shy about  this thought leadership and this weekly branding for your business um start with making it a goal  to write or to do videos of thought leadership once a month and post it on LinkedIn um you will  start getting more confident and then be able to switch over to kind of that once a week pattern  okay and now finall

y growth and management in one minute here I'm going to wrap this up so once  we have this whole funnel um going which is a lot right what I've told you in the last hour is a lot  once we get that underway um things you can do to speed up in the awareness phase look for people  look for other thought leaders in your industry and swap do some guest blogging and again focus  on those opt-ins right maybe you should write a little teaser blog about a lead magnet that  workbook kind of thing I showed

you so that you can get people to opt in from that other blog  and and share the benefits of that audience um you can talk to depending on the kind of business  you can influencers or affiliates you can start with and start micro people with between 1 and  10,000 followers are such a sweet spot because a lot of people in those audiences have actually  been personally touched by that person versus celebrities with millions of followers have never  met the celebrity trust is actually higher when

you use micro influencers okay and they're a lot  easier to get to pay attention to you too um you can start kind of social programs within your  business um I caution you with that that's kind of for more mature businesses but you see things  like Home Depot and Habitat for Humanity it adds an element to the business that people can talk  about right a tangible thing people can talk about and again that communication back and forth those  relationships with a company seeing you do good um reall

y helps online getting the conversation and  engagement growing the thing I recommend most to you is digital ads to grow your audience so once  you get this funnel down I want you to start using digital ads not to sell your product but to get  emails or to get phone numbers okay I want that to be your ask to want to learn more about this  process opt in for the recipe or whatever it is you're going to give people okay and grow that  email list quickly all right and then think about other things

you can do you're building  this audience right um and you definitely have your primary things that you're selling but  can you sell other thought leadership things can you package some of these thought leadership  things you're doing what can you package them into to also make revenue for your business to support  the big things that you want to fund okay so when you have this thought leadership stuff going on  and your basic ing your marketing on that value right use it to create value innovat

ion products  okay um the sky the limit when it comes to these things okay parting thoughts again done is better  than perfect remember these questions find that counterintuitive new or surprising thing so that  people follow you follow you as an expert and be customer-centric with it remember your product is  not your offer okay base it on transformation not information okay what is that ideal customers  problem that you're going to solve how are they going to transform and how does your produc

t  support it okay no one started as an expert okay you have nothing to lose and everything to gain  you have time to make mistakes in public before a lot of people notice it's a lab um no one knows  everything about what they're doing right you have everything you need right now you have a great  business concept you have a great model now you just need to start talking about it so instead  of waiting until you get this prototype perfect or something like that think what do you need  to do next

to create your personal or business brand all right and then um keep in touch with me  I've put my email here my LinkedIn here um and um my Instagram here and so feel free to keep in  touch email me questions I love to um look at concepts look at your marketing um and help you  out and that is it so now I am going to kill my slides and put us in Brady Bunch and I think as I  mentioned we have about ten now six seven minutes to answer questions so what can I answer for you  where are you right h

ere okay hey Vanessa I wanted to ask when it comes to video my sense of inner  critic and not being good enough is my constant reason why I don't go and do it because there's  a lot involved with video making and there are a lot of people who have really got the right  setup the right editing the right software and I just have a hard time starting I agree with you  that the it doesn't have to be perfect but there is also I recognize there is a higher standard  for video and it continues to get h

igher every week it seems like yeah yeah um you know I would  I would push back and I would tell you I would go against the grain on that too and I would say  um there's actually not a higher standard for video there's a higher standard for information  okay so how can you be compelling enough in what you provide do you really care the quality of the  video if you're getting amazing information right you probably don't so again stick to that value  positioning and just give it a try give it a tr

y I think the best way to start doing some of this  is just to jump in and you will get better like I said as as you put more out there you will  naturally get better at at at video and um it will work more in your favor probably but we find  actually that over manicured videos don't convert as well as the ones that kind of look homemade  are there some YouTubers that have done a really good job looking as homemade and quick shots and  stuff as possible and quick cuts and all that yes but that c

omes from the idea that they know that  the crappy stuff converts better so be a little crappy so I would just encourage you to give it  a try oh and here's a here's a tip um one thing that you can do is you can create a group  on Facebook and you can um you can set it to secret there's secret private and public  private is still publicly searchable if you set it to secret you can put only yourself in  that group and you can practice videos till you're blue in the face go live over and over in 

that group and if you get a good one download the sucker Mark Zuckerberg's good for something  all right um somebody says in the chat that they're having trouble narrowing down their idea  I believe I read so I have a hard time describing my products or service I keep changing it to make  it better so here's your trick here's what you're going to do June to change that and to kind  of stop that cycle who is your ideal customer and why did they need your product or service you  want to describe i

t to them you're very close to your product or service and so if I were to try to  describe what I do to people I wouldn't be able to do it in a sentence and I'm so close to it and I  want you to know all the special shiny things I do and I really want you to know how smart I am I do  I just do and I need you to accept me and tell me that it's great right because I'm so close to my  product and so are you so if I want you to come to me for marketing aervices I want to say something  like I think

you deserve to share your gifts with the world right I want to connect with you based  on that and the rest can fall into place okay so how would you describe your again go to that value  position what does your customer need to hear to realize that that product is relevant to them  so maybe take yourself out of it okay and really define that customer because when we have trouble  describing our product or service what's really giving us a problem is describing our customer  right because we th

ink oh if we say this well this person might count themselves out or this  person might count themselves out we actually want to decide on a customer we want to dare  to be polarizing we want to realize that we'll have secondary benefits and then we want to um  Target them in our words so try flipping it that way any other questions we have time we have time for more and  and June if you email me I'd love to workshop that with you too sometimes you need someone else to  push you as well um for o

ur social media as we're thinking about doing launches and things like  that do you have opinions on discounts what's appropriate yeah um I think as long as you  budget that discount in like I said you budget that consideration phase um you need to do it in a  way that you're going to feel comfortable right a lot of us budget for hoping for success but we  don't budget for success so that's number one that I'll warn you about um number two is I just  don't want you to get stuck in the discount t

rap okay um and so using discounts in the awareness  phase can really kind of do that versus trying to use that high value content but discounts in  the consideration phase I think a good place to start is you know in the 10 to 20% range um  10 would be the minimum and 20 would be the maximum and the reason I say that is  just mainly best practices we have found that um if if a discounts under 10%  we should say it in dollar amounts we need that double-digit discount to really pay  attention so

that's why I say 10% as the lowest and then 20% is the highest actually  research shows that discounts more than 25% some people actually start wondering what's  wrong so um we so I always say eh as a rule of thumb let's keep it to 20% okay then  people think they're getting a deal and they don't go so much to the what's wrong  so that's my that's my reasoning behind it anybody else all right well you have my email excuse me I  just got the battery saver I thought I had there we go I thought I h

ad my computer plugged in but I  didn't I changed my room to this fancy background this used to be my office but my kids what uh I  I had one more question before we end it oh go ahead uh so if you're marketing to um to audiences  and let's say you're trying to bring two groups together with your uh product what would you go  like how would you go about doing that because like just doing a blanket wouldn't work as well  okay who are your audiences um so my audiences are bike collectives which ar

e nonprofit um kind  of do yourself bike shop and also bike enthusiasts who like have these bikes that need these niche  parts okay who is the audience that you think you're going to sell the most to enthusiasts okay  I would lead with enthusiasts and I would consider the collective secondary to start you can take  more liberties as your business grows and matures but I think you need to in the beginning pick  your first audience that you want to market to and stick to that there are going to be

people  bike enthusiast enthusiasts that own collectives right in fact I can't think of any collective  owner that is not a bike enthusiast right so you're going to cover your secondary audience  with that primary audience so I think it's very very important to lead with a primary audience  at the startup phase for mature companies we can segment we can we can even create sub brands  and we can create different kind of branding um as we grow and we can really target those  segments but right no

w I want you to pick one segment and I want that to be your entire audience  thank you very welcome and and again that's just that's just part of the process of simplifying  the marketing none of you have enough time to do to do marketing right you hardly have enough  time to start the dang business okay so I want you to be as simple and as streamlined as possible  and it just turns out that that's what happens to work the best when it comes to conversions and  growing your audience quickly okay

I usually when I'm teaching class class and in person versus on  Zoom I have the tallest biggest person in class get up in front of the room and I hold a piece of  paper and I say okay you need to break this with your hand and they can't break it with their hand  and then I say now break it with your finger and you put a finger through and the piece of paper  breaks as I'm holding on to it right because again we need to be laser targeted at first  it's more efficient okay we can start worrying

about secondary audiences as we grow and it might  surprise you who your secondary audiences end up being any other questions I encourage all of you to  take advantage of this opportunity you have a true expert at your  disposal for a few more minutes sort of with kind of a runny nose that  makes me convert better though see the the imperfection fact that I have whatever  ever this cold is going around Davis right now uh have you started messing around  with any AI video making tools nope I have

not personally I've messed around with  AI uh content like graphic tools and written tools I have not messed around with video  tools if you mess around with video tools will you let me know I've intend to mess around  this week with some and I'll let you know cool I'd be I'd be happy to hear your feedback  I kind of just go old school face to camera but I will say my type of business is more  like that right so i' I'd be curious to see um to see what you find when you mess around  with them it

's on my to-do list my challenge is is is wanting to do something that like is  technical so when it's technical you activate system two and system two has a whole different  things and I think you operate more in system one and yeah that's that's a thing cool I'd  love to hear how that goes for you I really would and the only reason I haven't  messed around too much with AI video is you know those gold lines right like  not a lot of people in my audience care about it but your audience you  mig

ht want to mess around with it all right Vanessa thank you so much I will say  I loved um your mention of uh using AI to generate prompt and um I um Angela you mentioned at one  point how much you enjoy using I think you said ChatGPT and it's something that I have started  to play around with too for marketing purposes and I've been really like pleasantly surprised  uh typically I need to if it's copy I typically need to edit it a little bit but um it's really  helpful I want to warn you about o

ne study uh when it comes to AI that um we've done about that  that exists about content and um content was kind of rated between like zero and 10 and if you  um primarily hit it out of the park and create content that's 9 or 10 out of 10 AI is going  to bring you down to an eight it's general and it isn't as emotional right but if you if you  consistently create content that is like 6 7 8 right AI is going to kind of bring you up to that  eight so two things right we need to be aware of that an

d we need to think about our brand voice  okay so if you have an ideal customer what you all do you need to say write it for this kind of  person right and then I I yell at ChatGPT all the time I say take out this this and this word and  replace it with something more concrete right so we want to try to get that content up to a 10 or  we want to try to write our most creative content first and then ask ChatGPT to edit it um and then  we can see if we like it better or not okay so I just want to

caution you about that and that's  the first thing is how to use it in that way and how to make sure we don't fall into this trap trap  of generality and the second thing I just want to blow all our minds with is are we moving toward an  8 out of 10 world in general with AI I know that's like beyond the scope of this presentation but  it's very interesting when we think of that study right and um we think about you know across the  board as we all start using this very convenient tool what is it

going to do with our information  in general and I think it presents an opportunity for people to find how to you know really elevate  to that 10 doesn't mean not to use it it just means to be aware that there's certain ways we  need to elevate it with our own human brains right now thank you that is really interesting and it's  not something I hadn't known about that studier I wouldn't have really thought about that so I  really appreciate it okay Vanessa thank you so much for this fantastic w

orkshop I'm I learned  a lot I'm sure everybody else here did as well and uh we're just super grateful for your time  and expertise and you were just on point with everything I really appreciate that oh good I'm  glad it was valuable but hopefully that joke managed the expectations well then um all right  well it was great to see everybody um thank you so much for your engagement and the questions  and for having me and again please email me I will make sure that you get my slides via um  Julian

ne and Angela um and the content calendar I promised you as well thank you all right I'll  put that online everybody within the next um week it'll be on the website all right thank you  have a good night everyone all right bye bye