342: Case Study: 3 business owners with more clarity and consistency

I could talk about content strategy in theory all day, but I think it lands so much better with real examples.

In this episode, I'm taking you through three business owners from a recent Bootcamp round, each with a completely different plan, different channels, different pain points, because content strategy was never meant to be one-size-fits-all.

If you've ever wondered whether a strategy could really work for your specific business, not just "post more" advice, this one's for you.

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

JOIN THIS LIVE ROUND OF BOOTCAMP!

KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

✨ Why posting every single day isn't a strategy, and how one client scaled back to a sustainable two-week content sprint instead

✨ Why having too many offers and ideas can leave you paralysed, and how narrowing in on themes and building a proper launch runway fixed that for another client

✨ Why community can become the actual goal of your marketing, not just a stepping stone to a sale, especially for premium, service-based offers

✨ Why "what's trending" or what worked for someone else's business isn't the point, the right strategy depends entirely on your own audience, energy and goals

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 342, and I thought I would take you through three different businesses and three different business owners with more clarity and confidence as a bit of a case study episode. Welcome to the Content Queen podcast. I'm your host, Mariah, entrepreneur, storyteller, digital nomad, creative of Content Bootcamp, and founder of Content Queen, with over 10 years experience in marketing.

This podcast is here to help you create your ideal content marketing strategy by blending storytelling and strategy. So let's get into it. All right. Hello, gang. I thought I would take us through, like, actual evidence of what it looks like to have a business that has its own strategy, what's it doing, and how it actually works.

Because people just assume that content strategy, and I've talked about this many a times before, but I know we need to hear things often in different ways and from different people as well. But a content strategy can often mean by a lot of business owners... When you're first starting out, you don't know because you're not a marketer.

You didn't do this to become a marketer. You [00:01:00] did this to sell products or a service and to align with your overall purpose, vision, mission, all the things. So we often think, "Okay, if I post X time- amount of times on social media, maybe I have a motivational Monday and a wellbeing Wednesday," or whatever that looks like, and we use sort of this framework, and we have these kind of pillars that we talk about, that that's a strategy.

And the reality is a strategy that is built goes up against so many other factors that you're not taking into consideration. One of the biggest ones I see with a lot of business owners is what they're currently selling And how it aligns to their overall goals and how and why being on certain channels in certain ways relate back to other goals other than just selling your- That's what I see a lot.

So really what I've tried to create with something like Content Bootcamp, which I'm gonna take you through three businesses that did my [00:02:00] recent bootcamp, and I did it a little bit differently than I've usually done it, so I thought it would be interesting to share, is really every person, every individual business has a different plan and strategy, different channels, different outlook.

Yes, we'll have a posting plan in there. They have different audiences, all the things, right? And they all had very different pain points and goals as to why they joined bootcamp. So I thought I'd share it because often I think evidence is really important when we're doing these things, so I like to share evidence.

I like to share what I've worked with other businesses so that maybe, yes, it can help you. If you don't ever wanna join my bootcamp, I think you're still gonna get a lot out of it. And if you have been thinking about joining bootcamp, this will give you a bit of behind-the-scenes, and we have a live round kicking off, like, really soon, like, as in a week from this sort of coming out.

So make sure you join. If not, you can join, and there'll be another live round. Basically, as soon as I get enough people, I'm like, "Let's do a live round. This is gonna be great." And what I've done from... differently from fu- past episode, uh, past [00:03:00] bootcamps is I'm doing a, a live hot seat coaching. So basically everyone gets their own one-on-one call dedicated to their business.

Now, in this particular bootcamp, I would then go away and implement these strategies for these business owners, work with them collaboratively to create it. Um, but this round, you can still do that, but it's just at a different price point because it's, it's a lot of work. It's building a strategy for a business.

So business owner number one was all about that consistency without burnout. So basically she came into bootcamp, she was posting every day at that point in time because she had relaunched her brand. She had a new website. She had a new look and feel. She had a whole lot of energy that she wanted to give.

So she was like, "I'm just gonna show up on social media every day, and I'm gonna see if I can do it." And I think that's a great goal. And then she got to that point where she's like, "Okay, well, I'm doing this. I've been doing this for..." I think she'd been doing it for, like, at least three months, and she's like, "All right, I need a different strategy," 'cause [00:04:00] posting every day is not a strategy.

And what was often happening is, um, while she was posting every day in that point in time, she was getting awareness around her business, so she wanted to do more things in terms of launching products and services. She also had family commitments coming up, and she knew that she couldn't... She was literally posting on the day in which she needed to post.

So it would get to whatever time, say, 5:00 PM, she'd go, "Okay, I've got to post," and then she'd come up with an idea, or she'd film a video, and she would put it out there Now, of course, if you are just starting out, I think that's awesome, but you get those growing pains where you need to elevate. So yeah, she had things coming up.

She knew she couldn't keep it up. So really, what we talked about, and it was so interesting in the first call, that she was the first hot seat. And she said... I said, "Okay, so we're not gonna do that anymore." She's like, "Oh, thank God." She's like, "You're telling me that I don't have to post every day?" I was like, "Yeah."

So you'd often think that maybe joining some sort of boot camp, joining some sort of [00:05:00] marketing course or program, that they're going to get you to do more, and that's not often the case. I'm looking at so many different variables when I'm recommending strategies to you. And posting three times a day is not sustainable if you're not a content creator , and we are not.

We're not full-time content creators. We're business owners. We're here to do a thing. So really, she wanted that consistency without it burning out. She wanted a proper plan, and she really wanted to create it so that it wasn't from a place of, "Oh my God, I've gotta show up," and then sort of just sharing her offers, kind of just, like, laying them all out there.

Even also having launch plans that were so close together that it was just one thing after another, after another So basically, what we did is the first thing we did is we made it manageable, so we stripped back her posting plan. We also looked at her audience and worked out that she was getting a lot more traction on other channels that weren't just Instagram.

And if you go back and listen to my last solo episode on Instagram's not working for me, this was [00:06:00] this client who was thinking like, "Okay, Insta- Gram is not working." But what we found out from analysis, looking at her data, and also looking at her audience profile, that Facebook was a better sustainable channel for her.

She could still show up on Instagram, but that's where we built a really key... And that comes into the second point, repurposing plan. So creating a long form piece on a channel that she really enjoyed, which was long form video, and then utilizing that to be consistent on social media platforms, but also giving her a little bit of freedom for ad hoc content when things come up, when you just feel like it, when there's things that you wanna talk about.

We all need those sort of wiggle room for when we're like, "Oh, cool. Let's do that." But we're looking at her goals. We're looking at her target audience. We're really building a plan that was sustainable for her. And the third thing was creating a process. So because she was posting every day at 5:00 PM, or whatever time it was, I'm just saying 5:00 PM because that used to be me when I worked in corporate.

I'd come home from work, and I'd heat up my Yu Foods, 'cause I started investing in packaged food to my house [00:07:00] because I wanted to build my business into a full-time job, and I didn't have time to cook, and I didn't particularly like cooking. Um, and I was like, "Oh my God, I gotta post." So I would, like, grab my phone and I would search for a picture, like a picture that I took, maybe like some flowers when I was traveling in Vietnam, like, literally, actually.

And I remember one time I was posting about time and how social media takes up a lot of our time. I was like, "Oh, what am I gonna post for this?" So I had, like, my Apple Watch, which if you're watching, it's actually not this one 'cause I smashed it, but it's very similar. And I had another wat- two watches on my hand and I, like, took a picture.

Maybe if, um, Mitch can find it, he can put it on the editing of this video. So I just, like, took this picture and talked about time and posted it. Now, this was before the days of reels, so there was a lot of stock images, but these were the things that I was doing at that point in time because I was like, "I just need to put something up there."

This is what this client felt like. So what we did, one, I looked at her energy and when she likes to create. She really liked creating on a Monday, and she [00:08:00] really liked Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but she felt like her energy started to tamper towards the end of the week. So I created a process, and I created it in a two-week content sprint, which I love doing.

If you are a fan of Agile, you'll know. So I created a two-week content sprint for her, and then she was able to, as soon as she sits down to do her strategy, she can go into a beautiful Trello board, which I created for her, and she would see, "Okay, Monday, week one, this is what I need to do." So it's all there for her.

And from there, now she's able to create consistently, still consistently, but consistently from a scaled back sustainable way. And then moving forward, she's able to align her content with what she's planning in her business, what her goals are, and she can make it work around her life, not dominating her life.

So that was case study number one. Number two, and I'm sure we can all relate to this, is having multiple things that we wanna do. Multi-passionate, right? Multiple offers, multiple [00:09:00] launches, all the things. So basically, she had multiple things going on at one go, and what we had to do was simplify it, because what was happening for her is she was doing keynotes, she was doing workshops.

She had one... two particular client bases that we had nutted out together, and then we worked out which offerings or which things that she was doing aligned to those two. The good thing is that we're very similar in terms of values, they were just at a different point, at a different stage. So what we did is we created different launch runways for the different offerings that she had.

So she could also forecast her income, so we created a bit of a sales plan. She started to notice that in, uh, September, October, got a little bit more quiet in her business. So we created a launch in that time to help boost up her sales. Um, and as I'm saying, like, sales and marketing work so closely together, right?

So we, we need them to work together. I used to say when I worked in corporate, we had sales on the ground floor and [00:10:00] marketing on the top floor, and we didn't often communicate. So we didn't even have a joint meeting, which in hindsight now owning a business is crazy. So anyway, we created and mapped out a full product funnel for her as well, because she was doing all these amazing keynotes and then getting email subscri- you know, a piece of paper, or she had all these, like, manual email subscribers to add to her list So we started to work out, you know, what she could offer at those keynotes she actually emailed me or messaged me the other day to say she had 67 leads come from one keynote from an offering that she created.

So she was starting to see the funnel, and she knew all this 'cause she is really good at it. For her, it was just sitting down and having someone help guide her through it because when it's often your own business, it is really hard to sit down and do it. So that was her accountability was joining this because she is really good at marketing.

She is amazing at sales. So it was just laying it all out there for her. Then we decided to add in some other elements of her marketing strategy, word [00:11:00] of mouth, referrals, and partnerships, which was something that she'd thought about, but she wasn't sure how it would fit. So we created her themes. So themes are what I talk about are the topics in which you wanna talk about.

So because she had so many ideas in her head, we needed to simplify it, so that's what we did. So for the people that wanna launch a million things, that is okay, but it's about creating the plan so you're not like, "Oh, I'm doing this at this time and this at this time," and like you've got so many things going on at once that you don't know what to talk about, and that's what was happening with this particular client.

She was paralyzed with what she needed to do. She knew she had all these ideas, so when she'd go to sit down and create content, she was like, "Ugh." And then she was feeling guilty because she'd done keynotes, she'd done workshops, she'd done amazing things, and she just didn't have the time to talk about them.

She also in the back of her mind that every time she logged into LinkedIn, she had loads of li- uh, news connections, but she wasn't doing anything with them. So I created a bit of a plan so she could slowly ease her way into LinkedIn, repurpose content from her social media in a way that works for [00:12:00] LinkedIn and show up there in an intentional way without it again taking up too much of her time.

We also looked at her week, what she had planned, and how we could get her marketing to fit in so she wasn't again just playing catch-up all the time. I see this so often. We're always just playing catch-up with our marketing. And then we get busy and we just turn the marketing tap off completely. No marketing, 'cause I'm too busy.

And then when we need to sell stuff because maybe we need new clients or whatever, we then just go online and we just sell, and that's all we do. And we're all guilty of it. We've all done it. I've even done it with bootcamp. So that's why I'm just, like, always trying to talk about it and lean into it rather than, "Oh my God, I've got a live round, I need to do the things."

And it takes work, it takes time, but creating these plans helps and allows us to filter in and factor in those things so that we don't always feel like, "Oh my God, I've gotta scramble." Like, the amount of clients that I've had reach out, or potential clients saying, "Hey, I really would love [00:13:00] to work with you.

I'm doing a workshop in two weeks and I need to start promoting it now." And I'm like, "We should've been having this conversation, like, two months ago." Because we just, like, we don't have enough time, but we wouldn't know, especially if you've ghosted them and no- and haven't spoken to them for ages, right? I just wanna hijack this episode to tell you about something that is generally helping and changing the game for business owners that I work with.

So if you're sitting there at 5:00 PM scrambling, not sure what to do, what to post, you are not alone, and I have in fact been there, along with many other businesses that I've worked with. Getting to my laptop, throwing something together, pushing it out there, throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Now, this is not strategy, and it really feels like survival. That is why I created Content Bootcamp. It is my signature program that takes you through the seven steps to create a really intentional and aligned content strategy for your business. One that is actually documented, is actually for you, and actually gets results.

So there's no more guessing, no more winging it, [00:14:00] and no more content hamster wheel. By the end of your journey in Content Bootcamp, you'll have a clear plan on what to post, where to post it, and why, plus the confidence to actually execute it. And you're not doing it alone, because I do live calls all the time, so you'll get access to me, I can help you with your strategy, and a community of other business owners that are doing the same thing.

You'll also get lifetime access, so if your business evolves and grows and changes, it will grow and evolve and change with you. So if you are ready to stop winging it and start being intentional with your marketing, get a strategy behind you, head to contentqueenmariah.com. Check out Bootcamp, Content Bootcamp.

I would love to see you there. Going back, with this client, we really wanted to unlock the key foundations of her audience, all the things that she wanted to do, and how it could fit into a nicer package, right? How she could also show up to it for her m- email list without it being, "Oh my God, again, I've got something to sell.

I need to show up." How we could create that nurturing, we could create that trust [00:15:00] and that credibility, then so when we sell, people are ready for it and people are like, "Cool. I don't feel like I'm just being bombarded with sales." And the third one was all about community building. So this particular client had shifted her niche slightly.

She was still servicing similar people, but she wanted to get a lot clearer on that, and she wanted to be more consistent. She was also really loving building a community on a third-party platform. Think Facebook group, but a little bit different. You can monetize on this platform, and it's really trending at the moment.

So what we did is... A- And also, it worked really perfectly 'cause she was doing another program working out her core offering. So she worked on, "Okay, what is my core offering? What do I wanna be known for? What do I wanna sell? And now I need the marketing so that when that is ready and off the ground, I know what to do."

So what we did is we created a plan where her community was the end goal, not so much a sale or just building email [00:16:00] list, 'cause this community was also building her email list. So if we could get people into this community, she was able to share more, teach more, nurture more, and then eventually make that really, um, intimate sale.

Because her product, she can't... It, it... She's a service-based provider. She can't just, uh, you know, sell to the masses. It just doesn't work like that. It's project-based. It's, it's more one-on-one. It's more premium. So we needed to build her community up, get her known in this space, because she'd been shifting for a while, but now she's fully owning it.

So w- we wanted to create a plan that allowed her to do that. So all eyes led to community. So what we had to do is take a step back and look at the content that needed to be created for that particular audience to shift them into this community. Already, without doing much marketing on it, she had grown that community, so imagine just turning the tap on that and amplifying it.

So basically, rather than her social media being a place of selling, it became a [00:17:00] place of building. So that's what we did. We created a plan where she could also create long, really long form stuff for her community, also create monetized stuff for her community, because on this particular platform, you can monetize.

So especially if you are creating a more premium service, you do want people buying from you sooner rather than later, so they get used to making that purchase, right? Buying a service in the thousands needs a lot more than a free offer to get people, you know, more used to your work and, and nurturing.

Although, in saying that, as service providers, sometimes it can be that big jump. But we wanted to create those things of the in between, so she could nurture people that weren't quite ready. So really, what we were doing is just taking a step back and creating short form content that would give people a glimpse of what it would be like to be in that community So then we could just lead people to it.

And then all she had to do was get people in there and then once people were in there, she could nurture them, learn more [00:18:00] about them, have intimate conversations with them and then choose the people in which she thought needed her service, and that's when you can create that kind of selling process. So Top of funnel became really important for her, just like eyes, numbers, you know, like eyes on her content, people learning more about her community and just to be honest, talking about it flat out.

Unfortunately with that much content out there, we need people to know what we do. But in saying that, doing it in a way where it's not just always, "Join my community, join my community, join my community," it's like, "Here's what I know," gaining trust, and then inviting people in. And there is no right or way...

wrong way to do this. It just really does depend on your audience. If you are marketing more to business owners, they are particularly online for business things. If it's more B2C, like business to consumer, maybe you do need to do more of that fun, entertaining, controversial, aspirational content more often to bring more eyeballs on your content, and then of course, [00:19:00] show them what you're offering.

So that was all about building community, and I think as business owners now, we need to diversify in the way in which we grow and build audience. Yes, like, as I said, we are not in the business to be content creators and influencers, but we can take on the things that make influencers and content creators really successful to help us.

One of them being community. Even product-based businesses now have communities, right? If you think of things like, uh, uh, I see online now, like cookie clubs, where you get a monthly subscription of cookies. That is creating a community, right? So it's not just the service-based business owners that are creating community, it's, it's really all of us.

So that was three different businesses and how we were able to use strategy to help them, right? And of course, I could do whole episodes on these sessions, but they're obviously, they're intimate business strategies that I won't share too much more about. But it really was sitting down with them in these hot seat sessions, [00:20:00] understanding their audience, their goals, what they're trying to do, what they're trying to create, to then recommend the right channels for them, backed by data that they'd shared with me.

That's why I shifted Content Bootcamp into a more hot seat session, because what I was finding is, yeah, I can jump on a live call and answer questions, but I found that the questions, whilst yeah, super helpful, weren't getting into the nitty-gritty of creating the strategy. So Bootcamp is there with the live modules, so you can watch them, you can do it yourself, and then we'll come together and do the hot seat session.

Of course, I can go away and do that strategy as part of the Content Bootcamp or with the knowledge that I've given you, you can go away and create your own. The beauty of having transcripts and AI now, we can create these things a lot quicker. Even with things like Claude, they can jump into a strategy Trello board or ClickUp or Asana and like start typing things.

It's kind of creepy But really, as I'm saying, like, three very different businesses, but how strategy was able to help them [00:21:00] personally. So yes, they're gonna be bombarded with noise on social media. There's gonna be new channels that they've been told to try. They're gonna go for coffee dates with their business and entrepreneurial friends who say, "You should do this.

You should do that." But they can come back to their strategy and go, "Okay, that's been suggested to me. Looking at all the variables, looking at my time, my energy, my goals, does that align? Yes or no?" And then you make a decision. So that's why I think it's really important, because there's so many factors of marketing.

There's so many things that we can do. I'd love to do them all. I'd love to be on every single platform. I'd love to do this, do that, but we have to be smart, because we don't have unlimited time just to show up. Of course, if we could just be the person behind the video just marketing, like, some of us love that, some of us hate that.

You know, you gotta play to your strengths as well. So, bootcamp live round, if you would love a hot seat like that to really understand your business, it's... I've made it super affordable. The thing that I want to share with you about bootcamp and why I'm doing this is I have Content Queen Agency. I [00:22:00] help small business owners and entrepreneurs with marketing.

It is a product I've never struggled to sell. It comes through word of mouth. I try to give a really great service, and that's what I've done. But I see a gap of small business owners who can't afford to outsource, and that's okay, or don't want to, but need a strategy to help them see the results. So I decided to do bootcamp because I really love it.

To be honest with you, I could have a lot more clients and do Content Queen Agency, and that's all I do, and I work, you know, 9:00 to 5:00. I turn my computer off. I don't have to do this podcast, all things, but I love all this. I love helping business owners. So that's why I try to make bootcamp really affordable.

It is really a passion project of mine. It is... sits outside of my, I guess, traditional 9:00 to 5:00 that I've created in my business or the hours that I wanna work. So if you've listened to my podcast for ages, bootcamp feels like something that you really wanna do, send me a message. Let me know what's holding you back.

If you have any questions, I'm here to answer them. I'm here to support [00:23:00] you. There's payment plan options. I've actually got an extended payment plan option because I understand that things are tough in business. I totally get it. So I wanna make these things affordable and easier for you so that you can start seeing results with your marketing.

Anyway, I just wanted to put that out at the end because I wanna empower more business owners to show up on these platforms 'cause I've seen how much they change businesses. It's not about going viral, it's about being sustainable and to actually create the impact that you're here to do, and have a legacy as well, 'cause I think that's super cool with these platforms.

So 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. Please don't forget to share this with all your business and entrepreneurial friends. You can do this by adding it to your Instagram stories, uh, tag me @contentqueenmoriah, or you can just tell them about it, send them the link, copy over the link.

If you join bootcamp and you want a friend to j- join bootcamp, I do have these kind of like bring a friend and I'll give you a one-on-one session with me. Sometimes I don't put it all in the messaging, but if you referred someone or you [00:24:00] joined with a friend, let me know. I'd be happy to, you know, compensate you both for joining.

Uh, and if you rate and review on whatever platform you're listening to this on, it does help me get more amazing guests, keep this content going, keep the podcast going because I love having amazing guests on. And let me know if there's any topics you want me to talk about in the future, anything you're really curious about.

Send me a message, follow me on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, all the platforms, and I'll talk to you next week. Bye.

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