Episode 68: How Small Business Owners Improve Their Strategic Marketing By Choosing The Right Marketing Channel For Them
In today’s podcast episode, Fiona shares which marketing channel a small business owner must use to promote their business (hint: it’s never the same for everyone). So, she gives questions to ask yourself to help you find out which marketing channel works best for you and which ones aren’t necessary for your business. She also talks about her two courses - Marketing For Your Small Business and How To Start A Podcast.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Being A Guest on The Balance Theory Podcast
Leaving Instagram
Google Analytics
How To Find Out If A Marketing Channel Works For You
1st Question: Why are you on this marketing channel?
2nd Question: Are you looking at the data?
3rd Question: Are you fully utilising the tool/platform?
4th Question: Does your reach equate to action?
5th Question: How much effort and energy is it taking up?
Thinking Strategically
Conclusion
Resources mentioned in this episode
7 Free Google Analytics Dashboards
Episode transcript:
Hello, and welcome to episode 68 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. I am recording this very early in the morning. Actually. It's not that early. It's like 7:00 AM, but it is just one of those mornings where everything is still peaceful. And I'm looking out my window and there's been rain last night. So all the bush around me is just kind of glistening, such a nice, such a nice morning.
But it's also a reminder that podcasting is such a fun, enjoyable, medium for a lot of people, you know, I'm by myself right now. I am just speaking into a microphone. I'm still wearing my pajamas. I have a cup of tea. It's actually quite relaxing. And so I guess what I'm going to talk about in today's coaching session is marketing channels and understanding which are right for your business, but also for you as a person - podcasting, I have found to be so enjoyable because I'm literally just talking.
I'm just riffing. Like I said, I'm in this office, I'm looking out at the bush. I have a cup of tea. I'm literally in my pajamas. I have not even brushed my hair or anything. And so it's not like videos. It's not like blogging. It's not even like, you know, writing. I'm a writer for a long time and I find that quite easy as well. But you know, there's still, you can sit there and writer's block and you're constantly just looking at this screen. Whereas right now I'm looking all around. I'm looking at this bush, I'm looking at photos of my family that I have in my office. So yeah, it's just such a lovely medium. And it's also such a useful one for my business.
Now, if you are interested in learning more about podcasting, I do have a course. It's just called How To Start a Podcast. And you can find that at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast. Now, while I'm on the topic of podcasts, I often interview people for my podcast, but recently I was interviewed on an amazing podcast called The Balance Theory. And you can find my interview over on Apple, Spotify, wherever you want to listen to The Balance Theory. I'm on episode 23. Now this podcast is run and started by Erika De Pellegrin. And when I spoke to her first, she is just doing so much. She is a lawyer. She also runs her own fitness business. She's running a podcast. And I think it just goes to show that podcasting for all types of businesses, wherever you are, if you're early stages say in the fitness business like Erika, if you're further along, you know, podcasting is just such a great medium to not only, you know, talk about your business or get your credibility across, but also to meet people.
I didn't know Erika. She, she found me through this podcast and now I'm an avid listener of her podcast. And I'm also really interested to see how she grows her fitness business. But if you want to check that out, like I said, just check out The Balance Theory on Apple. And of course we'll link to that in the shownotes.
But let's get into today's coaching episode. It's a good one. Especially if you are somebody who does not feel like they're really confident when it comes to marketing or you find it really confusing to understand which channels you should be focusing on for marketing your small business. All right, let's get started.
So I recently posted on Instagram, I'm at My Daily Business Coach about leaving Instagram and about how Instagram makes people feel, especially small business owners, you know, do you love it? Do you hate it? Do you kind of sit in between? It really depends what day you're there. And I followed this up with an email. I send an email every single Sunday. If you want to get on that, you can subscribe over at mydailybusinesscoach.com. But I talked about what, why I guess people are having this love-hate relationship with Instagram. And I have to say the subject line of that email was just, what if I told you I'm leaving Instagram and I have a really good open rate for my email, but that subject line just went off. The open rate is up around 80%, which is huge. My open rates are usually are about 40 40, 45 sometimes 35, but you know, usually in the forties and yet it was double that.
So that instantly already tells me that so many small business owners are kind of harboring this secret idea of, Oh my God, I'd love to leave Instagram too. And I know exactly why that is. You know, I work with hundreds of small business owners one-on-one. I teach thousands through courses and other things. And you know, there is this love, hate relationship with Instagram with social media, with Facebook, we've seen a lot of small business owners come off Facebook.
A lot of people move their membership kind of portal from say, Facebook groups to tools like Kajabi, teachable, even Squarespace. Now I think has a membership portal coming up. But I guess, you know, I'll put this question to you. What if I told you I'm leaving Instagram? You know, how does that make you feel? Like if you really think about that, are you jealous? Are you like, Oh gosh, I'd love to leave. Are you just really curious as to, wow, like why, why are you leaving? Or are you somebody who's like obsessed with Instagram? And you're like, no, no, no. How could anyone that runs a small business ever even consider leaving the gram?
Well I guess, you know, first of all, I'm not leaving Instagram. Instagram is a great channel for me, but it's also a channel that I regularly assess and analyze and I switch up how I'm using it so that it's not controlling me. I am controlling what I put out on Instagram. And I'm also able to to a degree, not always tweak things so that I'm utilizing it for, you know, working towards my business goals or what my objectives are with my overall marketing.
And I guess the reason that I was even, you know, putting all this stuff out was that last, I had just, you know, conversation after conversation with clients, with people that I was interviewing on the podcast with just friends about social media and I think 2020 taught us, you know, the, the impact and the power that social media can have in forming amazing alliances and collaborations, but it can also have such detrimental impact as well, particularly as bubbles get smaller and smaller and everybody we're following seems to be just like us.
And then when, you know, political things happen or other things happen and we think, gosh, how could anyone think like that? And it's like, because we're in this little echo chamber where everybody thinks the same as us, but also the reason, I guess I've been talking to so many people about Instagram was not just this lack of diversity or this lack of awareness of what else is going on in the world and being cocooned in this kind of social media world where everything looks glossy and lovely all the time. We also were talking about it because I think comparison is such a huge, you know, partnership to social media. So many small business owners utilize social media and they feel really great. And then, you know, they'll start scrolling and spiraling into "comparisonitis". And so I also around the start of last week before I started having these conversations, I just randomly, you know, when you're coming across YouTube and you were looking for something else entirely, and I found this video from a US-based photographer, Jordan Hawkins, and we'll link to the video in the show notes, but it was all about how he got off social media.
And at first he was quite scared because he was like, Oh my gosh, you know, I'm a photographer. And everyone tells me that Instagram is really my business card. So, you know, how dare you get off there because, you know, you're just going to lose all your business overnight. And really that sort of, that fear had kept him on there, even though he wasn't enjoying it. And also he was talking about the fact that it was taking up a lot of his time. So even if he was just walking his dog, he wasn't just allowing himself to walk the dog and look around. He was walking the dog, scrolling social media. If he was waiting for an appointment, he was, you know, scrolling social media. And so he sort of said, even when I'm alone, I'm on my phone and I'm on Instagram, I'm scrolling.
And I realized the need for alone time in my life. Time when I could really focus on the tasks, goals and visions for my life. Now later that day, I interviewed somebody who is coming onto the podcast shortly, Sean Woolsey out in LA. And he was talking about how he had taken a break from Instagram. And we had talked about, you know, how Instagram had been really instrumental early on in his career and his business to getting awareness and followers and all of that kind of stuff, but that he was definitely taking regular breaks from it. And he had a love, hate relationship with it. And then the rest of the week I had one-on-one coaching sessions and it came up numerous times with new clients and existing clients that had been working with for a few months where they were just all sort of coming in at this. -"I'm Not really loving it right now."
And maybe it's the start of the year. Maybe it's, we've all had a really crazy 12 months and continuing, and people are kind of overt being on screens all the time. However, I actually think another thing is at play here, and it's not just another thing, but one of the things that's at play is that if you are on social media for business and you don't have a strategy, often it can feel like you're just throwing stuff at the wall, or you're turning up to talk because you think you have to turn up every single day to talk. Now I have a course Marketing For Your Small Business, and I'm actually launching a eight week online coaching program, along with that. And that's open now, you can find it at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. Uand in that course that I have, and what I'll be talking about in the coaching program that runs one hour every week for eight weeks, is literally about making sure that your marketing works for you and for your business.
So you might have a business and think, well, I have to be on say a channel like Instagram. And yet when we work through all of the steps of marketing for your small business course and the coaching program, it might, it might uncover things for you that you're actually like, you know what, my income doesn't come from social media, my income comes from getting out and meeting with wholesalers or getting out and meeting with stockers or really tweaking my Shopify site so that the traffic coming into it is converting at a higher percentage. Now I'm not saying, Oh my gosh, you should all get off Instagram at all. You know, Instagram works for my business. It's a really great channel for connecting, but I'm also utilizing it. And that's another thing that we talk about in the marketing for your small business course, we talk about what are your goals for the business, and then how can you reverse engineer your marketing to fit those goals?
And again, I think this is where people kind of lose their focus. They get told somewhere along the line that you need to be on Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest and Twitter, and, you know, TikToK, Snapchat, the list goes on and on and on. And yet they're not actively looking at the analytics and looking at, okay, when I post on Pinterest, I actually get fewer people coming to my website or my service offering. But yet they convert at a much higher percentage. Whereas say, when I do Instagram I get more people to the traffic, to the site, but none of them convert. So you want to get smarter when it comes to your marketing. And I guess that's what I wanted to talk about today. So marketing for a lot of people is scattergun and also marketing.
And I've talked about this before. I think it was in episode 25. I talk about your marketing hater. And I think a lot of people come to marketing with that kind of dread fear, hatred for marketing. They think marketing is, you know, selling out. They think it's salesy, scummy, but what you want to get clear on is firstly, I guess, how do you feel about marketing, but then also, why are you marketing? Like what is the actual goals for your business and how is marketing going to help you achieve those goals? So for instance, if you are on Instagram, let's talk about Instagram. Cause that's what I've talked about today so far. If you're on Instagram, you know, you really want to be asking, why am I on there as a business owner? You know, why is my business on there? Is there a clear goal or a very clear objective for being on that particular program/platform?
Where does that sit in the customer journey? Where is it sitting in sort of my sales funnel? Is it just because everyone else is on there and I should be on there or is it, my audience is 10000% on there actively looking to purchase or find a service offering. And so I need to be on there or is it just, I should be on there because you know, everyone's on Instagram.
So the first question is, yeah, why are you on there? The second is, you know, are you looking at the data? And of course I'm talking about Instagram, but it can be anything that you're doing in marketing. Are you looking at the data? So I'm all about gut feeling. And I talk about that in my book, but I also say along with gut-feeling needs to be data. You need to look at the numbers, you need to know your numbers and not sort of, it's just like money. I mean, you need to know your financial numbers. You can't just sit back and be like, well, well I think we're doing okay. The same with Instagram, if Instagram or any other marketing platform is taking up a bulk of your time. And we all know that time is brushes for everyone, especially small business owners then is it working for you? And are you setting up some sort of template or system process where say every Monday morning or every Wednesday afternoon or whatever it is, you're spending 10, 15 minutes looking at your numbers and making sure that they're working for you. And that marketing that you're doing has actually having an impact. It's strategic. It's not just scatter gun.
So there's a bunch of ways to look at the data. You know, platforms like Instagram have their own insights built in, especially if you're on a business profile. There are so many other things. If you use scheduling tools like laid out plan PLANOLY, I kind of square all of those things. We'll have data attached as well. You can also look at Google analytics. So Google analytics, it's a little bit of code that is inserted into your website. Most website developers will have put it in for you if they haven't. You just want to go and check. If you use a platform like Squarespace, it's already in there, you just need to add a little code. But yeah, Google analytics gives you a lot of information, but can happen, especially if you're not used to analytics, is that you open up a platform like Google analytics and you're just overwhelmed.
You're like, Oh my God, where do I start? Analysis paralysis. And so what I suggest to people is go and find some Google dashboards that other people have already put together. So Google dashboards are like WordPress themes. So WordPress is a huge hosting platform for websites. I think 70% of websites around the world or roundabout that figure are built on WordPress. And so thousands and thousands, maybe even millions, I don't know, hundreds of thousands, probably of themes are created for WordPress by developers all over the world and designers. And so you can download a theme, you can put it onto your WordPress and suddenly it looks, you know, pretty.
The same thing happens with Google analytics instead of you having to build dashboards. And a dashboard is really where you come into Google analytics and you can see, you know, the analytics that you want to see quickly say, you might have a social media dashboard and it tells you all the different social media channels, how much traffic is coming from there, what are people doing and the conversion, if you sell products or, you know, the, the form signups, if you have like a service offering. And so you can find a Google analytics dashboard for pretty much anything. And what I'll do in the show notes is a link to seven free Google analytics dashboards that are really useful for small business owners. So when you're looking at the data for social media, you can start understanding, okay, how many people are coming to our site from Pinterest versus Instagram versus Facebook versus TikTok. And then how many people from those are acting or doing, or making some sort of action on the website? How many people are just bouncing right off? You know, they're just leaving the website straight away. How many people are converting? Are actually signing up to, you know subscribing to something or buying something? And so you really want to be looking at the data. That's the second point.
The third thing, when it comes to Instagram or any other platform like this is, you know, are you fully utilizing it? I mean, sometimes I think, well, no one can fully utilize it all the time unless they have a big team, but these platforms are constantly bringing out new and exciting ways to utilize them, especially for business. So, you know, for instance recently they put out Instagram guides. And so you could have, if you sell products, you can use Instagram guides to create gifts for her gifts, for them gifts, for, you know, whoever gifts for kids gifts under $50 gifts for whatever, whatever. And so you can create those guides. And then when you're talking about things in, you know, wherever it is on Instagram, so stories or anything else, you can point people to those guides. And you've got a curated list of products that they can just quickly go and buy.
You can also, you know, I've got a guide on there for small business owners that stock my book. And so I can go in and I can put that. And so if somebody DMs me and says, you know, I really want to support small business owners when I buy your book, instead of going to the bigger companies that stock my book, I will point them to the guide and be like, look, all of these lovely brands sell my book and you can play it. And you know that you're also supporting a small business owner.
So when you're thinking about any platform that you're using for marketing, you want to be thinking, am I fully utilizing it? And especially if you're a small business owner with a small team you want to be, or even just yourself, you want to be really strategic about your time.
So instead of saying, okay, I'm going to be on Facebook. I'm going to be on TikTok, I'm going to be on Instagram. Maybe you're just on Instagram and you're doing it really well. And you're utilizing that fully. You're utilizing all the different parts of Instagram, so reels and stories and lives and guides. And you're utilizing that platform really, really well as opposed to doing multiple platforms. But half-heartedly.
So thinking about that, you know, it's so much more Instagram than just putting a post on a grid. And even now the algorithm is more likely to reward you for using things that are not on the grid, but it's really about knowing where is my audience and knowing if a platform, any kind of channel, whether it's an email, it doesn't need to be to social media, whether it's email marketing, whether it's a podcast, whether it works for your audience and your business.
So is your audience there? Tick. Yup. They're engaged. They're already there. So it's a playground they play in you, you know, you want to be there talking to them where they are comfortable at. However, you also want to be making sure that you're guiding those people off of that platform to something else that is yours, where you own it, such as, you know, your website, an in-store event, signing up to an email, all of those kinds of things.
So thinking about, you know, if I'm going to use a platform like Instagram strategically, what does that look like? If I only have 40 minutes a week to plan content, am I planning it to, you know, get people into the DMs, which is the direct messages, like your inbox on Instagram. So then I can nurture them into, you know, getting in contact with me or buying something or something else, or just nurture them to make connections and increase brand awareness, or maybe nurture them so that you can collaborate with them into the DMS, or is it building awareness through strategic brand collaborations doing, say Instagram lives with other people who have a similar audience who have an audience that you would like to reach. So that was the third point - are you fully utilizing it? Whether it's Instagram or any other platform and you fully utilizing it.
The next thing to think about is, you know, do you know if your reach, so that is, you know, how many people saw your post or story or real equates to action. So we hear this a lot and you might not have heard the term, so I'll just explain it. But there's a term called vanity metrics and really it's, you know, it's these metrics that are like, Oh, I've got a hundred thousand followers and it's like, that's great. But what does that actually mean in relation to your business and your business goals and the impact that those hundred thousand followers have on your business goals? Now, I work with a range of small business owners and I can definitely tell you vanity metrics, like how many followers they have does not equate to financial metrics or financial success or other success.
Sometimes people have these huge audiences and it's actually more of a stress because they're like, gosh, I've got to keep feeding this beast or I'll lose my numbers, but yet it's actually like, well, let's have a look at feeding your bank because you're losing numbers there too. So, you know, do you know if you have great reach, if you're like, Oh my gosh, I've done these reels. And I've got 2000 people watching it. It's like, awesome. What are those 2000 people doing? Imagine if even, you know, 10% of them signed up to something that you're selling, that's 200 sales, rather than just this constant. I want to be seen. I want to be seen, I want to be popular, which is the vanity metrics.
So really be aware of that and, and understanding like, especially if you work with an agency and I'm not bagging out agencies at all, but social media agencies, they have changed - a lot of them, but a lot of them will still give reach as kind of a key metric.
So, Oh, we'll get you seen in front of this many people. And it's like, that's great. But how many people actually hit something? Did something saved it or, you know, went into the DMs actually contacted me, commented. You'll see. A lot of times people will say things like comment. Yes. If you'd like to, you know, me to get in touch with you or comment. Yes. If you'd like to get my free e-book. And so you'll see. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Now that at least is asking people to do something so you can then follow up. It's kind of permission marketing, but I'm rambling a little bit, but the point is with this, do you know if your reach equates to action, how is this reach helping you with the goals and objectives that you set for this platform and in turn your business? So that is kind of the fourth question.
And then I guess the fifth question and probably the most important is how much effort and energy is it taking up. So whether it's Instagram, whether it's another marketing channel, you know, how much energy does it take from you? And I know I talked to a lot of small business owners that might say, we know when we look at their time blocking of the week and we look at mapping out, you know, where they're spending time, they might say, Oh, I only spend, you know, an hour a week, you know, looking at my social media content, creating content or correcting content, editing it from an agency or from wherever. They might say, I only, you know, only spend an hour and yet they're thinking about it, like another nine hours of the week. They're looking at Instagram, they're checking their competitors, they're doing this, they're doing that.
And so really thinking how much effort and energy is this channel taking up and is that comparable with the impact or the return on investment that I'm getting? Where might that energy be better directed? Or how could I time block and really stick to my boundaries so that I'm making sure that I'm only giving Instagram or another platform the minimum time that it needs.
Now I should point out here if you're somebody who uses platforms like social media and you just, you want to use it. You're happy to use it. You know, it's got a good impact, but you struggled to come up with creative ideas for it. I do have a 90 day content calendar with more than a hundred ideas for content, whether it's on social media, whether it's on, you know, other platforms that you might use as your marketing channels and of course we'll link to that in the show notes.
But I guess the point of today's conversation is to really get you thinking strategically about where your time is being spent, particularly when it comes to marketing your business and looking at your marketing channels. And, you know, social media is just one connection point. It is not a marketing plan. And I really dive into this deeply in the marketing field, small business course, and the coaching program that kicks off in the 16th of February. Because I really think that we've been sold some sort of, I don't know what it is, not a lie, like a myth that you can just market it on social media and your business will boom. We don't control social media. We do control our website. We control our email list. We control our events. We control things like podcasting or blogging or vlogging, but we cannot control social media, you know, and I think more and more people, more small business owners are understanding that and really trying to get more strategic than if I am going to use this channel like Instagram, how is it benefiting my business?
And also where does it sit in the journey of my customer? You know, is it literally just for building awareness? Is it for retention getting back in touch with people? Is it for, you know, some other thing that I need in my business? So for instance, you know, I'm going to be transparent. One of the things that has happened with my book, Passion, Purpose, Profit, which is amazing is that so many people have shared it. So many people have shared it, which is fantastic. Now, one of the strategies that we have in Instagram with me and my very small team is that we flag. So every person that has messaged us, we flag them in Instagram. We make a note of their Instagram handle. And in time we go back to each person and ask, Hey, we really appreciate your, you know, your feedback.
Are you happy for us to use it? As testimonial, are you happy to maybe leave a review on Amazon or Booktopia, or, you know, elsewhere. And we've made that really simple cause we have a reviews page. And if you are somebody who's like, Oh, that sounds like a good idea. Then definitely go and check out my tip, which was, I think episode 63, which is about how to create a reviews page for your business. But that is one example of being strategic about using that platform rather than kind of just being passive and sort of feeling like, I just need to turn up, I need to talk, I need to be on stories 10 times a day. I need to do this, do that to everything else. And so you want to be making sure that you're doing it because it's got an impact on your business.
You can clearly see that cause you're looking at the analytics, but also in this kind of goes back to what I was talking about at the very start of this. You want to be thinking about marketing channels that work for you. You know, lots of businesses, lots of very successful businesses are not on Instagram. I know - shock - but they're just not. And they still exist. They still work really well. I have people who I know who have PR agencies and they're not on Facebook and that's like, they're still killing it in that area. So you just really want to be thinking about how you're utilizing platforms like social media or any other marketing channels so that it feels good for you as well as it feels good for your business. And you can actually track that now, as I said, if you are interested in getting deeper into this and you really want to understand how marketing works and actually how you can strategically map out a marketing plan for your business, you know, not just now, but future generations and how you can do that even if you've got a team or how you can just get more strategic and learn to love marketing, then definitely check out marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com.
Now there are two options. You can just buy the course that's online. It's self-paced, you can go through that. Or for the first time ever, I am running a live eight week coaching program. So there are eight key modules in the marketing field, small business course. And in the coaching program, we will meet each week to discuss further each of those modules. So it can be, you know, people might just ask questions about it. It could be that you're working through it and you've got, you know, challenges that come up or things that you'd like to bounce ideas around. And that's what we're going to be doing in the live coaching calls. If you can't make those live coaching calls, they're all recorded. You can also ask me questions ahead of time so that I can answer those in the live coaching calls.
But I guess the purpose of having this eight week program is to help you actually work through the course and not just buy the course and be like, yeah, I'm going to do it and then not do it. It's to hold yourself accountable.
So like I said, you can find all of that information over at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. The eight week program kicks off on Tuesday, the 16th of February until the 6th of April. So if you want to be part of that, I am capping it. I'm going to try and make it kind of small so that everyone has an opportunity to ask questions. Everyone has an opportunity to spend time with me as their coach. And yeah, I'm really excited about it. It's the first time I've done it.
I have been running this as live workshops and the online course for years, the live workshops always sell out. So yeah, go and check it out Marketing for your small business.com. I definitely dive into why social media is not a marketing strategy in there. And I give you so many ideas for other things outside of social media that often have a greater impact on your bottom line. So definitely check that out and everything I've mentioned today, including those Google analytics dashboards and everything else will be linked in the show notes, which you can go and find at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/68 as this is episode 68. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this, you found it useful at all. I would love it. If you could leave a review in Apple podcasts, it just helps us get found by other small business owners, just like you. Thanks so much. See you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
