Episode 377: Is your business marketing stale and dead?
In this episode, Fiona inspires business owners to break free from the fear of imperfection and embrace experimentation with marketing platforms. She also encourages to infuse curiosity and fun into their strategies, emphasizing that the journey is as important as the destination. Tune in!
You’ll Learn How to:
The importance of experimentation in marketing
Personal experiences and insights
Encouragement to break out of the comfort zone
Tips for making marketing more enjoyable
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Mentioned Links/Resources:
Welcome to episode 377 of the My Daily Business Podcast. Today, it's a quick tip episode, and that's really where I share a tip, tool or tactic that you can implement immediately. If you have ever been worried or scared or even fearful or anxious about marketing, then this tip is absolutely for you. Before we get stuck, I just want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the beautiful land on which I record this and do the things that I'm about to talk about in today's episode. That is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. The other thing I wanted to draw your attention to is that group coaching is officially open. This is a program we've been running for years and years, and it's just such a beautiful program.
It runs for 12 months, and we meet every two weeks on Zoom. As long as you've got an internet connection, you can tune in from anywhere in the world. We've had people do it in the US, we've had people come from New Zealand, we've had people come from all different parts of Europe, and of course a lot of Australians as well. It's a really beautiful small group. We ultimately cap it so that it is small that everyone gets to know each other, and it's not part of this gigantic thing where you feel like you're not part of the community. We meet every two weeks, and then you have one-on-one sessions with me as well. The two weeks every Fortnight meeting is with a group. Then in addition to myself, we have other incredible experts who come in, such as lawyers, financial advisors, SEO experts and Pinterest experts.
This year we'll be having a TikTok expert come in. That's exciting. We have psychologists all sorts of people. You can find everything about that and what it involves, how much it costs and all of that over @Mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching. We do interview people on a first come first serve basis, and it is capped. If you are keyed to be part of that this year and make sure that 2024 is an incredible year for your business and also that you're set up for every other year afterwards as well, then get in touch. You can either just email us hello@mydailybusiness.com, or you can go to @Mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching and fill in the application form, and then we do a short interview and see if we can pull together an amazing group of wonderful people. We've done it year after year, and I just love the groups that come out of it and the chat and the friendships and just these incredible relationships that form as a result of people going through that program. We'll link to that in the show notes, but let's get into today's show.
I mentioned the TikTok expert coming into group coaching, and we have interviewed an amazing TikTok expert for this podcast. That interview will be coming up in the next couple of months. But I wanted to talk about the joy of experimentation today. The reason that I bring up TikTok is because this has been a platform that I've been experimenting on for the last year. Now I have been on TikTok for maybe two years, a bit longer, just as a bit of a lurker for the first year understanding the platform. It's very different to any other social media that's out there. I think that for a long time people just thought it was the new Instagram. They're like, well, why should I join? I'm already on Instagram. I've already got enough to deal with there. It is such a different platform, and the reason that I brought it up is that I have just enjoyed experimenting and trying different things and doing just stuff that I probably wouldn't do on other platforms and building an audience and having these different connections with people all over the world.
I have to say that a lot of the chats that I'm having with people and the comments and the getting in touch with stuff is people outside of Australia and outside of the normal audience that I would have on say Instagram. It's just been a real eye-opener, but also like a joyful experiment. That's what I want to talk about today when you look at your marketing for your business, how much of the time are you experimenting and doing in a way that brings you joy? I think often we do not want to show up on a new platform. I mean, TikTok is not that new, but to not show up on something until we fully understand it, until we can show up and look perfect until every single thing we post is going to get all these likes and all this engagement.
It's the same with emails. I know people who will be stuck not wanting to send their first email because they're like, “I've got this audience, but I don't know what to say. Or what if they don't like it? Or what if they unsubscribe?” You know what, they're not going to do anything if you don't send anything. That's where a lot of people sit. They sit in that comfort zone of like, well, if I don't send anything or if I don't show up in TikTok, or if I don't start experimenting with a podcast, then no one can judge me and no one can ever know that I might not be that good at it. I know that people sit in that space for a long time. I have been there myself, and I also have worked with countless clients who also sit in that space.
But I want you today to take away from this tip episode to think about how could you start experimenting with a different marketing platform or a different marketing channel, or even a marketing channel. Maybe you were doing it years ago and then you sort of everything fell by the wayside with the pandemic or anything else. This year you're like, “I'm going to get back into that.” How could you do it in a way that brings you joy? How could you do it? Take away this pressure that it has to be perfect, that you have to show up in a certain way that it has to compare to XYZ, who's already on that platform or already sending emails or already got a podcast and instead just be like curious about it and having a bit of fun.
Like what would feel fun right now? And even if it's, say you record a couple of podcasts that never go anywhere, or you put them out and maybe change it up as you go. We are all humans and people love that. People love to see a change or how people adapt or things that aren't perfect. I think that's why I'm drawn to TikTok, to be honest, because much of it is lo-fi. It's not the polished presence that we've grown to become accustomed to on say, Instagram, although that's changed over the last couple of years. But I think I'm just really enjoying the algorithm is like nothing else. I mean, it's literally inside your brain. That's what I feel like. But also just the conversations that I'm having with people. And of course, there's still a lot of crap like there aren't lots of platforms, but I'm just finding it interesting and it's been exciting and enjoyable to be testing this stuff out for the last year.
I mean, we haven't posted that many actual TikTok, but each TikTok that we've posted has been like, “What if I did this? Or what if we tried that?” It could be anything from a trending sound through to chopping and changing. They've got the whole 30 minutes and they're going to try and compete more and more. I think with YouTube over the next couple of years, we are going to see just people trying to do things in whatever way they want to. I think that's exciting. I think it's always interesting when something shakes everybody up for a minute. We did see certain things happen previously with Clubhouse, and I don't even know what's happening with threads, honestly. I have many people being like, threads is dead. Then I have this other camp being like, oh my God, I love everything on threads.
To me personally, I can't see a difference between Instagram and Threads. I get that it was trying to be Twitter when Elon Musk took over Twitter and rebranded to X, which nobody can ever understand. You still have to search for Twitter even if you put in X. But that aside, I actually think that TikTok, I mean it's been around a lot longer than these platforms, but it's also just enjoyable as a user. I think that's where the joy comes from. It's enjoyable as a user. As a business owner, and I'm in my forties, I put my hand up, I did not grow up with social media. I did not grow up with a camera in my face 24/7. But I'm finding it enjoyable and fun, and I am going to be showing up on there a lot more often, and I just love it.
That's what I wanted to get through to you today, if you are in a bit of a marketing lull or you're feeling like it's not that joyful, I would ask you, even if it's not going onto TikTok or not going onto YouTube or not starting a podcast, if it's just the same marketing that you've been doing, really think about how could I make this more enjoyable? How could I get curious about it? As opposed to maybe feeling like it's tedious. How could I show up and bring that energy and that fun and that enjoyment into my business and therefore hopefully attract that same energy back? I know it seems a bit fluffy, but I have worked in marketing for 23 years now. That's probably longer than some people reading this podcast have been alive.
But I've worked in it and I've had lulls in marketing myself where I'm just like, I'm bored. Honestly, if we have to do one more of XYZ, I've been able to pull myself out of those lulls and be like, “What would it feel like to feel like this is fun? What would it feel like for my Instagram to feel fun? What would it feel like for a podcast to feel fun again? What would it feel like for XYZ to feel fun as opposed to something that you've just gotten into the monotony of doing?” Look at your marketing for 2024 and beyond. If you're reading this years later, who knows where TikTok will be there? This might sound very outdated, but if you are looking at your marketing at the moment and you're thinking it just doesn't feel that exciting, then I would urge you to think about how you could do things differently, how you could get more curious.
Maybe it's about switching up and changing a few things. Maybe it's about going onto a different platform. Maybe it's about trying a new channel. Maybe it's just about getting excited again and thinking about when you started that, what was exciting? I know for example, when I started Instagram and I started it used to be my daily business coach, I gave myself a deadline that I had to hit every week about how many posts needed to go up. But I also challenged myself to never put up something from Tim Ferris, Richard Branson, all the usual suspects. I made myself go and research and find entrepreneurs that were not as much covered in social media at the time and not as much covered definitely from an Australian perspective. I did this little thing on Wednesdays called Brand Watch Wednesday, and I would find a brand that was interesting and I would do a little synopsis of it on my channel.
It was interesting for me because I was growing my own knowledge, my own networks and connections, but also showing up on a platform. I think over the years, you can get complacent about certain marketing that you're doing, and people feel that. People feel it. That is it for today. It's a quick tip, just really thinking about where is the joy in your marketing and where's the experimentation? Are you just doing the same thing that you've always done or are you starting to experiment again? It's in the experimentation that we learn and we start to see patterns emerge that can then help in terms of impact and achieving your goals through marketing, but it's also just more fun to experiment and to do things differently. I hope that that helps. And of course, we have our marketing for your small business course, you can buy that anytime.
Just go to Marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com and twice a year we run a coaching program. In addition to that, if you do sign up for group coaching, as I mentioned at the start of this episode, you will get free access to all of our courses as well as our coaching programs outside of group coaching. That is it for today's quick tip episode. Where's the joy? Where's the experimentation? Don't be a stranger. You can come on over to TikTok and say, hi, I'm just at mydailybusiness or you can DM me on Instagram at mydailybusiness_, or go old school and email us hello@mydailybusiness.com. I'd love to hear what you're going to experiment with and where you're finding joy in your marketing in 2024. If you want to find the links to anything I've mentioned, including our social media and group coaching and marketing programs, you can find that over at my daily business.com/podcast/377 as this is episode 377. Thanks for reading. I'll see you next time. Bye.
