290: I did 3 workshops in 3 weeks: all you need to know about marketing

We did 3 workshops, 3 different topics, 3 groups of business owners with the same goal - get visibility, grow their business. 

So - let me share with you the 3 key takeaways and how you can use them to market your incredible, impact-driven business. 

This is a “working on the business” type stuff!  

If you LOVED this episode, make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag us @contentqueenmariah.

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KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

✨ The 3 things you need to know about marketing 

✨ How to step into the “marketer” for your business 

✨ The difference between marketing and content creation  

SHOW RESOURCES 👇

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @contentqueenmariah⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Other than that, enjoy - chat next week 💕

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This is episode 290, and I'm talking about the three workshops that I recently did, and basically a summary of everything you need to know about marketing. Welcome to the Content Queen Podcast. I'm your host Mariah, entrepreneur storyteller, digital nomad, creative content bootcamp, and founder of Content Queen.

I'm here to teach you how to share your unique story, create content, and market your business with strategy. Do the channels that work for you. Each week, I'll deliver a story to help you connect to a powerful strategy around marketing, business, and content creation. I'll also be joined by amazing souls and entrepreneurs who will share their own journey, along with actual steps to help you take your business to a whole new level through amazing storytelling, powerful and marketing and content strategy.

Let's do it. Alright. What do you need to know about marketing? Based on the three workshops that I recently did? So for context, we did three workshops in Gippsland where I grew up and all of them were on really different topics, which was quite cool. Part of the Content Queen Road show. Now, if you are in Australia and you are in any area, I would love to hear from you.

I wanna organize some more workshops. We're currently traveling towards Ellie Beach. We'll be in Ellie Beach around mid-October and we'll be going up that coast, spending a bit of time in Sydney, coming back down to Sydney around November time. So if you're along that area, you can even be inland. That's totally fine.

I would love to hear from you so I can tee up some workshops, whether they're with local council, whether they are with co-working spaces, you know, any venue. Whatever that looks like, I would absolutely love to hear from you and yeah, we'd love to see if I can put a workshop on for you. So I want to go through the three things.

So basically we had this workshop and really it was business owners from, there was people that help. Learner drivers get their license. There were clothing stores, there were people helping others through disability. There was restaurant owners, gyms, so many, right? So many different businesses and all with the same goal, get visibility, grow their business.

So I wanted to go through what are those key things that I think would help them. Grow and expand their business. And we had awesome feedback. It was a really good opportunity for all these business owners to spend time working in on the business, not in the business, should I say. And at the end of one of them, it was quite interesting because one of the guys was like, who here has taken time out of their business to be here?

And we kind of like, you know, all, put your hand up. And he's like. This is part of being in your business. This is not taking time out of your business. This is the work that's gonna help you in your business. So, very good reminder if you're listening to this podcast, it is part of being a business owner.

That's the work, learning, developing, evolving, and marketing is such a big part. It helps you get visibility. It helps you be seen by more people, more potential clients to sell your products and services, right? So the first thing that we talked about was, well, that I wanted to share with you is the marketing funnel and how it can help you.

So there's sort of a few elements if you think about sort of that traditional marketing funnel and I've got my hand up in a V and actually it was really cool in one of the workshops I demonstrated this and I got people to stand up and although very comfortable in their seats, I made them stand up and we.

Put together what the marketing funnel would look like. A traditional marketing funnel is somewhat very different to what it used to be. It's not as linear as someone sees you. They trust you, they buy from you. It can go like on a whole cycle and someone could like barely know you and buy from you. But for the purpose of this, think about it.

Traditionally I do like to see it as more of a cycle, like, 'cause it goes back around, but every channel. Lead you people further down your marketing funnel or further down to buying from you. So for example, social media can be the top of your funnel. Where more people see you, you have more visibility, and then sort of the bottom of your funnel being your website.

Less people go on your website than they would see your content on social media. And that's the point. That's why, you know, conversion rates can be anywhere from two to 3%. It could be higher. I mean, I would like to think it was higher as a small business owner. Because you know you have that sort of personal touch, but.

That's kind of the channels, right? They act as a funnel, leading people further down to get to your website. But then also arguably content can work as a funnel. So you can have different content serving different purposes, some to attract more people, you know, entertaining content, controversial content.

Anything that's really entertaining in general, whether it's funny or not controversial, it can all create entertainment. Further down to, I guess, adding value, showing your expertise, showing you are the thought leader or you are the expert in this space through to, this is how you buy from me. This is people that have bought from me before and this is the transformation they had.

So I think what was really valuable to these business owners is to understand that social media, blogs, podcasts, email, marketing websites, all work within this funnel. But then within it we have different types of content. Would I then say, oh, well my podcast might be top of funnel. It might be, I might create a top of funnel episode, not necessarily because it sort of sits within sort of that middle funnel area can be top of funnel, um, as well.

But the content that you create is really about trust building. But on social media, you can create all types of that content and it can be equally as success, as successful as the other. But the thing is, if you are just creating all that promotional stuff. It's very hard for people to go, well, what is in it for me?

You're not creating any value. You're not trying to build trust with them. You're not trying to entertain them or even just engage with them in any way. You're just purely on there to sell. And that worked right, like five years ago, well, six, seven years ago now it doesn't, and we are seeing. Big brands, you know, create very top of funnel content from Clickup having multiple different content series within people on their team.

We are seeing TV series that are now marketing campaigns. Like if you see like a entertaining TV series on social media, it's likely part of a brand and a marketing campaign. So, so many, uh, different types of content that brands are now creating. And as a small business owner, we are able to leverage this.

So much easier than bigger brands. If you think bigger brands have more approval processes, they have more people to get through legalities, people to get involved, like if it's just you and maybe a smaller team or just you, there's so much that you can do. Does that make it overwhelming? Yeah, kind of.

What is my advice for that? If you're thinking about that top of funnel content, that stuff that people that don't know you was gonna see, you're trying to entertain them. Choose a style that you would like to try, would you like, does it make sense for your brand to be funny? Does it make sense for your brand to be controversial or aspirational?

Play around with a few different types of content and basically. 80%, if not 90% of that content will need to be video. Because if you do wanna reach new people on platforms like meta video content is going to reach more people. TikTok, it's gotta be video anyway. Platforms like LinkedIn, if you are building more of your personal brand, that would be more thought leadership stuff and you can decide whether you go like down that more controversial route or entertaining route through.

You can still do video as well. But the thing is with LinkedIn, the way more people are gonna see your content is if more people engage with it. So it does have to be content that maybe people will like, but also relevant to your brand. 'cause what does happen in this funnel process is you'll go, oh, that will be a funny idea.

Let's do this, let's do that. And then you start becoming content creators, and then your content then starts to shift away from the purpose of it being about your business. So it's a fine line. Yeah, that's why I have platforms like my content bootcamp. I do content clinics. I have my Ask Me Anything WhatsApp group, because sometimes it's hard to think of these things on your own and get that validation.

Had a content clinic the other day with a brand they're looking to launch. They've got a really cool brand personality with some characters, and we're looking at bringing them to life in the content to create that top of funnel. So I'm really good at brainstorming this. If you do need any help, just reach out.

But. That's basically the first thing we talked about, the marketing funnel. Really getting clear on that. Spend a bit more time learning it 'cause trust me, it'll help you if you can nail it. The second one was in another workshop. The main topic was don't just rely on social media, email, build your email list, like please build your email list.

The amount of conversations I've had in the last few weeks, and it's no shame, it's just social media is easier. It's easier, you can just post on it and be done with it. Although arguably it can be harder. But what if tomorrow Instagram decided Facebook or LinkedIn or TikTok, we are not gonna be here anymore, or you have to pay us money?

Maybe you'd go, ah, righto. I'll pay anyway. I'll come my losses. What if your account got deleted? There was a lot of Australians recently that got caught up in an absolute scandal, which the Australian government's actually helping. I got caught up in this earlier this year where our accounts had been taken down.

Now, I was lucky enough that I knew someone that knew someone that could help me, but a lot of these small business owners, ev, they were hacked. So everything was deleted and. Meta wasn't helping. So the Australian government stepped in. I dunno what's happened, but that can happen. Now I'm not gonna manifest that on you 'cause it's not gonna happen to you.

But that's how we wanna future proof. So one of the topics that I talked about was future proofing, build your mailing list. I had a woman in the crowd that said to me, ah, I've got enough leads. I don't need to build a mailing list. She did then correct herself later and said, no. That was a little bit naive of me to say, I do need to engage with my email list a little bit more.

So. Have a think about how you can build that mailing list. Is it through offering something in exchange? Is it doing events? You can do lots of things to build your mailing list if you are. Some of these brand, uh, businesses that I was doing workshops for has a physical store. Can you do it manual, old pen and paper, or scan the QR code and sign up for my mailing list?

Try and build that as much as possible. I've got clients at the moment where, yes, that's the focus because we know once we get people to the mailing list, they convert. So how can we get more people there, discounts, live events, whatever it looks like. Try and get people to your mailing list, but also think outside the box.

Even one of the businesses was working in disability and they were like, oh, I would love to do a podcast. And it was so interesting 'cause I went into this going, alright, mailing list is gonna be the main thing that they're gonna wanna grow. Maybe a blog because. Blogging's good for SEO and now with chat t, we wanna sort of be up there, but people were putting their hands up and be like, I would really like to start a podcast.

And I love this because businesses, no matter what can create really entertaining content on a podcast. Your podcast. You could sponsor the show of the podcast, and the podcast could be on a different topic. Like for example, a bank doing a podcast on business. So they did like a business podcast and the goal was to attract new business clients.

And it wasn't about banking, it was about business. So you can go, you know, the next degree over and start something that's not super direct to your business, but is in alignment with your audience. So, yeah, we had people putting their hand up and wanting to start podcasts and I was all for that. But don't just rely on social media to build your brand, have other things.

'cause building a digital footprint is so important. I had a content clinic today with a woman who was using LinkedIn and was like, oh, I do these articles. And I suggested a really great repurposing plan for her so that she could continue to build on other platforms and build up her blog at the same time.

So. Social media's great. We love social media. We love the visibility, but we also need to be thinking about other places. If you've neglected your email list for a long time, this is your sign to build it back up and to re-engage. I've had clients I've started working with recently, we've been re-engaging with their mailing list 'cause they've, there's been crickets for quite a long time, so it's not too late.

You can, you don't even have to say sorry. I think like, you know, you don't need to be like, sorry I've been absent. Hit them with what they can expect moving forward and just do it. And keep yourself accountable. It's very important. And the third one is spend time on it. Don't just try and do things as quickly as possible and get AI to automate it.

I did a whole video on this, but basically one of the biggest things was, yeah, this takes me a long time. How can I get it? Take me less time. But I wanna argue that how can you make it more effective and get the most results from it before you start outsourcing it to ai? Now you might use AI for ideas.

You might use AI for research. You might use AI to clean up your caption or to get your caption started, whatever. But before you start looking at how you can do workflows and get this spot to talk to that bot and spend hours in an ai, like I think it's very important to to work out and to learn of course.

But please work out what works first. 'cause AI is gonna know. AI is pulling from internet research not from your specific audience. It is the same as taking someone else's formula and plugging it in. Of course, you can feed heaps of information to ai, but only as much a information as you have. So if you spend time learning what gets results, doing tests and understanding that marketing is mandatory, I actually saw an amazing post of.

A business owner saying you can't, you have to be the sales person. You don't have a sales team. You gotta do it. Even if you've got someone helping you with your marketing, that's awesome, but you also need to go, okay, before we mass scale this with AI and batch and put content on 50 million channels so that I can spread this digital footprint.

Work out what your audience enjoys consuming, work out what resonates with them before you start implementing all of these things. Then go forth and conquer. I spend a lot of time marketing my bootcamp and marketing what I do around time saving because I think I truly believe having a strategy does help you save time.

But what actually helps you save time in the long run is. Learning to enjoy it. Learning what works, doubling down. 'cause you save time because you've built a process. Then outsourcing it or using AI or whatever, outsourcing it to AI to do, spend time on it first, and I know you, you've got a million other things to do.

I get it. That's why finding what you enjoy and finding a process is so important. 'cause you do have to spend time on it. I had a call and a conversation with a business owner and I said. How much time do you have to dedicate to marketing per week? And he said to me, 30 minutes. And I said, well, without a content strategy, you're gonna spend 30 minutes thinking about what you've gotta post, but you do need to spend a little bit more time before you get it started.

So is there someone, he has a team, is there someone that can learn this? Possibly. Yeah. If you have a team, great. Utilize them as well. But we are so caught up in how we can get AI to save us the most amount of time that we can squeeze out of it so that we can go and do something else. And then we've got this social media going on in the background, not working for us.

So then we go, oh, well, AI's just doing its thing and I'm not spending any time on it, so whatever, I'm not losing time. But then you're not getting the results that you need to move the needle to make the sales, to grow your business. Whereas if you spend the time learn it what works and gets results, then you can outsource, outsource it to ai.

It will save you time. There's no point outsourcing it to AI or getting AI to do all the bits for you if you don't yourself know what's working. 'cause it's only as good as what you feed it. Plus what's on the internet, right? So. I see this of, oh, this takes me too much time and I'm not getting results anyway, so I might as well outsource it to ai, and then it doesn't, still doesn't get results, but you're outsourcing it to ai, so it's a win-win.

But why don't we go back and get the results first and then work from there. Really, what I learned from this whole experience in this three weeks workshop is everyone's experience are different, their audience are different, their goals are different, and it is hard when there's so much noise online. To not let that get in the way of what you are doing, because you are seeing all these things that you should be doing and all the things that you could be doing.

And just because Mary grew a thousand followers per week, creating a certain type of content doesn't mean you have to do that and doesn't mean it's gonna necessarily work for you. So if we talk about content creation versus content marketing. The whole going viral thing doesn't necessarily mean the end goal for a business unless super aligned to what they're doing and does actually generate them leads, conversion, sales, whatever that looks like.

But what ends up happening is we just get stuck in this kind of content creation space that we forget about the whole marketing thing, and then we wonder why we become these 24 7. Um. Content creators that are always on social media rather than the business owner with the marketing expertise. And that's really what I wanted to convey to a lot of these people is, yeah, like content creation is really fun, creative element of marketing, but it is still marketing and you have to treat it like marketing and do the things in a way that is marketing your business.

Because as I said, lots of people can go viral, but not necessarily for the right reasons. And then wonder why. It's not working for them.

So use the marketing funnel. Don't rely too much on social media and spend some time, learn it. Learn what works. And when I say what works, it doesn't have to be, again, this whole viral thing. It's just like getting that messaging right, seeing some traction and results, and then moving through to how could I optimize this and save me time.

But be a content queen or king, and remember that developing your strategy and story develops your business. Thank you so much for joining me today, and please don't forget to share this with all your business and entrepreneurial friends. You can do this by adding it to the stories and tagging me at Content Queen Mariah, or just tell 'em about it and if you do rate review on whatever platform you listen is on, it does help me get more guests on, get more amazing content out for you guys.

So if you have a cheeky five seconds, I would love to hear from you. And if you do rate review. Leave the five star, leave the comment, whatever that looks like, it'll just continue to grow and flourish this podcast and follow me on Instagram or TikTok and let me know if there are any topics you want me to talk about in the future.

I would love to hear from you. Bye.

PodcastMariah MacInnesmarketing, marketing advice, how to be authentic online, business ownerComment