Ep. 31: 5 Marketing Mistakes You’re Making & How to Fix Them 

Meg Casebolt 0:01
You’re listening to social slowdown a podcast for entrepreneurs and micro businesses looking for sustainable marketing strategies without being dependent on social media. Social media is a double edged sword. It’s a wonderful way to stay connected. But it also can feel like an addictive obligation. And it’s even more complex for businesses, your audience might be right there, but you’ve got to fight with algorithms to maybe be seen by them. So whether you want to abandon social media altogether, or you just want to take a month off, it’s possible to have a thriving business without being dependent on social media. This podcast is all about finding creative, sustainable ways to engage with your audience without needing to lipsync send a cold DMS, run ads or be available 24/7. Let’s get started.

Hello, friends, it’s Meg Casebolt. Here I am here with an impulsive solo episode of the podcast today. This was not actually part of our content strategy. We already have the next month of podcast recorded and scheduled for release. But earlier this week, I had a burst of inspiration. So we’re shifting things around so I can share this with you. This burst of inspiration that came when I was leading a live training for my SEO agency love it for search. The topic was all about maximizing your marketing time by creating evergreen repurposing content that can generate new leads. In the live training that I ran earlier this week, I outlined five common time wasting marketing mistakes, and then I work through their solutions. And then I invite people to work with me to solve these problems within their own marketing strategies and content plans. As I was presenting this training earlier this week, I hit on marketing Mistake number four, which spoiler alert is repurposing your work across multiple channels. And I realized that I very ironically, dumped a ton of time into creating these slides and getting this presentation together for only one purpose. Instead of sharing this information much more broadly. It was like a total facepalm moment in the middle of this presentation. If you watch the replay, you can actually watch me go like well, why not repurpose this, but I’m teaching right now about repurposing. So today, I’m going to share this framework work with you here on the podcast. Just like the live training, I’m going to outline the five mistakes, explain the five fixes, and then invite you to work with me on what this could look look like for the marketing for your business. Now, two caveats here. Normally, when I teach this, I have visuals to illustrate my points. So while I’m going to be doing my best to verbally explain the concepts, we’ll also create the corresponding graphics, and we’ll include those in the show notes and on social media. So if you are a more visual learner, you can go check those out. I mean, we might even get really fancy and like put the graphics into the chapters. So depending on your podcast player, you might see them on your screen. While you’re doing this. While you’re listening. Caveat number two, I also wanted to share that the invitation to work on this with me and my team and love it for search is both time sensitive, and not time sensitive. Podcasts are really tough, because they’re released at a specific time. And so I try really hard to not put time sensitive content into these podcasts knowing that people will be listening to this in the future also. So if you’re listening to this, when we release this audio in May 2022, we have a small group that starting this month that you can join, if you’re binging this in the future, or we re released this in the future, you can still work with us on this, we typically start these groups about every three months. So there will still be dates coming up in the future. You don’t have to kind of skip the part at the end with the invitation. Because it will still be relevant. Just I can’t give you all the times on this podcast. I’m not going to spend time doing that. That’s actually marketing mistake number three, so it kind of works out right I get to kind of practice what I preach here with you guys. So with those disclaimers aside, let’s talk about these marketing mistakes, what you can do with them. So here’s a quick list, then I’ll explain in more detail, then I’ll tell you the fix Okay. Marketing mistake number one, irrelevant topics. You’re creating marketing assets that do not actually lead to somebody working with you to a sale to somebody buying from you. Marketing mistake number two, the curse of knowledge. You’re writing about what you know not about what your ideal client wants from you. Marketing mistake number three, your posts are in the past. Your content is time sensitive. They’re outdated, really soon after you create them. Marketing Mistake number four, you have a content graveyard, you hit publish and you hear crickets and you expect people to come but then they just don’t. Instead of having a content marketing distribution plan and a marketing Mistake number five, your marketing strategy is basically throwing spaghetti at the wall You keep creating and creating and creating without knowing what’s actually working to generate sales to generate leads to bring the right people to you. So now that we have that shortlist, let me tell you all of the ways that I’ve made these mistakes in my eight years of business. So number one, irrelevant topics. Here’s an example, my first blog post that really ever took off for me in search, ironically, is a review of the client management software dubsado. I’d heard a lot of people asking around the internet for suggestions of how to write proposals, and how do you get contracts. And so I spent this blog post explaining what dubsado was and how it had replaced other software I’d be using and who that might be good for and who it wouldn’t be good for. And the post actually ranked number three for the keyword dubsado review for years. And it brought me a ton of traffic. And the problem with that is that I am not an operations consultant, I did not want to help people actually figure out how to use dubsado. In their businesses, I was a designer, I was sharing my personal experience, people shared that post as a resource. But the post didn’t actually bring me new clients the traffic that it was bringing in, were not people that were going to hire me. So that was the first mistake writing about things that do not lead to a sale. The second mistake is being a little bit too knowledgeable and sharing what you know, instead of what your ideal client needs to learn from you. Here’s another example. When I first started my business, I was doing a lot of print design work. So brochures and flyers and ads that go into nonprofit events and things along those lines that you could actually hold in your hands. So I wrote a super detailed resource about the difference between vector images and raster images and when you would need vector versus raster and what the heck is the difference between a ping and a JPEG and GIF. And looking back on it, I think that I felt like I needed to prove that I had expertise and technical knowledge. But guess what my clients did not care. They just wanted to know that I would get them the file types that they needed, they didn’t really care if that was like an AI or an EPS file, I would have been better served to write a case study of how my clients were using their designs in real life showing how they were putting those logos on T shirts and hats. Rather than explaining the details about file formats that they didn’t care about. That was our second mistake, having the knowledge and trying to prove your technical expertise versus thinking about what your clients actually need to learn from you. Our third mistake is creating posts that and content in general across all of these marketing channels, that is really time sensitive. So here’s an example in about 2016, I started running live challenges, they were like three days long or five days long. And to promote them, I would write detailed blog posts about what people would learn and the challenges. And then I would create the social graphics with the dates printed boldly on them. And I’d put them in the blog post and I’d share them on social. And then when the challenge was over, I’d have to like either go back and remove the blog posts, or update the blog posts and be like, Oh, you missed it. Or I’d forget and I’d leave it there and I get comments like, oh, I can’t believe I missed it. That’s such a bummer. You can be running this again. And I so now what I don’t want to get into my recommendations too much. But I have content that is not time sensitive. But then I have little popups on the screen. If I do have a time sensitive offer that will say, Hey, do you want to find out more about this and drive people to a specific page that I can not promote during the offseason when I’m not running those live events. I’ve also had other times that sort of thing that I’ve done is I’ve written posts that are like announcement style posts about the SEO industry like Google’s about to change their algorithms. And then I had to go back and update them later once those rollouts had happened, and we had more information about what it meant. And guess what, my clients still didn’t care about that it’s back to that being too knowledgeable problem. They didn’t care what Google was doing. They cared what they’d need to change on their websites. So I was creating time sensitive content that people didn’t care about that wasn’t bringing in the right people it’s like this stacking problem of creating things that aren’t the right fit for my clients. Marketing Mistake number four. Having that that content graveyard of stuff that just sitting around waiting, like so many of us who have tried to figure out this marketing thing. I had a an if you build it they will come approach to marketing. I thought that if my work was so valuable that people would just come find my website. But this isn’t Field of Dreams. This is you know, nobody was Coming to this equivalent of an Iowa cornfield, I had to learn to distribute my work around the internet, I would now we shared excerpts on social media, we work our best content into our email, nurture sequences, our newsletters, we link to other content or on my website. So that way, nothing’s kind of living on its own. We earn links from other websites, we’re doing a bunch of additional marketing and utilizing what we’re creating in multiple channels, while also optimizing it for search. So it’s not just waiting on Google to get those people to come, but also making sure that it’s working across all of the different places. And then finally, the fifth marketing mistake is throwing spaghetti at the wall and trying every marketing tactic out there, but also not tracking and seeing if it’s working, or giving it enough time to really take off on its own. And I’m not going to give specific examples here. I don’t even want to try to make a list of all of the marketing squirrels that I have chased, because it’s embarrassing how many shiny objects have caught my attention over the years. And I’m guessing if you’re listening to this, you’re nodding along because whenever I get to this part of the live training the chat box, the chat box just blows up and people are like, Oh, mg, me do I have tried everything that people have told me would work, and don’t have no idea what is actually bringing me clients, or there’s one thing that works, you know, sometimes sidebar, sometimes people will be like, Oh, I have a really good referral network, but like it’s not enough. And instead of doubling down on that referral network, they go, and they decide to like spend more time on social media, or they’re going to do something else, instead of doubling down on what’s working. So sometimes we even do know what’s working. And we don’t take the time to emphasize that instead, we track those shiny objects, and we keep throwing that spaghetti to see what sticks. But even if it sticks, like we’re not, we’re not watching, we don’t know. So those are the five marketing mistakes that I have made that I see lots of other people making. And I want to talk now about what the solution is or what the fix could be. I’m not, you know,

not a guru. I don’t want you to follow me but mindlessly and all of this, what I really want to do is say here are some alternative ways to fix some of these problems. Here’s the way that I teach people to do this. So here are some of the five marketing fixes. If you have content that isn’t necessarily relevant to your audience, if you have that irrelevant content, like me writing about dubsado. Instead, I want you to flip this over and lead all of your marketing strategy with your offer, make sure that everything that you’re creating leads to your products or your services. Think of your marketing as like a waterfall, your offer is at the top tier, which then feeds into your call to action. Then underneath that in the next year. This is when I really wish we had visuals underneath that in the next year, we have a way to gather your visitor information like a lead magnet, an application a coupon code some way that you can get their information to be able to reach out to them in the future. The next tier down is your evergreen content. That could be you know, written audio video that could be your email nurture sequences, some way that people can engage with you without you need to spend time on it. And then at that bottom tier is your social feeds, your broadcast emails, the things that are more time sensitive. So if you’re thinking like where do I get started with this, go look at your website, make sure that it’s clear what you sell. Make sure that you’re telling your readers what to do next, and make it really easy for people to buy from you. All right, the curse of knowledge piece, this idea that we’re talking in our own language as experts, but our clients and customers don’t necessarily have the knowledge that we do, which is why they need us right. So the fix to this problem is to know what your client’s problems are, and then position yourself as the solution. There are lots of different ways to get this information. In copywriting speak this would be called voice of customer research, understanding what your customers would say in this environment. In my world in the SEO space. This is called keyword research. So Google will share with you exactly what people are searching for word for word. And you can take that information and use it to create answers to the questions that they’re already asking and position yourself and your website as the place that they go for those answers. You can use your ideal clients words empathetically. To show that you understand what it is that they’re looking for, what problems they’re experiencing, why they would be searching for it. And then you can show that you have experience working with people who have been through that and show that you know how to help them. Fix number three, if all of your content is time sensitive, if you’re heavy in launching, or if you run a lot of live programs, or things like that, even if you do have time sensitive offers, you can still create evergreen content. So your posts, your videos, your audio, you can create things that don’t expire, and have them have a shelf life that’s significantly longer than the time sensitive things that you’re creating now. So if you’re like, Well, what would that even look like? Okay, here are some questions you can ask yourself to think about being more evergreen and making something that can be found in search for years to come. Question could be what will people What will my ideal clients still be searching for in five years? Another question could be more seasonal, what are people searching for every May or every October? So it doesn’t have to be consistently that people are searching for it. But it could be that you know, behaviors that are showing up at specific times of year. Another question you might ask yourself is, what would they go to Google for that they wouldn’t ask a friend about this? Is it particularly helpful in industries where the work that you do is more sensitive, so if you are a therapist or a coach, and you know that people are searching for, you know, marriage counseling, and they don’t necessarily want their friends to know that their marriage is in trouble, they’re gonna go to Google? And then lastly, like, what do I want to show up for? So thinking about what what is the relevant question that people might be consistently asking, or the search that they are going out and trying to find a solution for, and figuring out what you want that to look like and what where you want to show up in those search results. The benefit of evergreen content, is that your hard work will actually appreciate over time, and then your workload will go down. It’s kind of like every piece of content that you create every YouTube video, every podcast, every portfolio that you make, every product you create an optimize, is like putting a deposit into a high yield savings account. It is like the least sexy way of making long term capital. Like as far as investments go, like even the investment brokers like really, that’s what you want to invest in. But it makes a long term yield, right? So it’s okay to create something that can continue to work for you for years and years to come. fixes for that content graveyard for the if you build it, they will come approach to this is you don’t have to even if you’re creating amazing search friendly, evergreen content, you don’t have to wait for Google to send you traffic, you can take excerpts from the evergreen content that you’re creating, and then push that out to social media and out to your email list. So you can fill your feed and your newsletter with things that can continue to generate traffic for you long term on your website. I really wish I had visuals for this.

In other words, you don’t have to wait for Google. Google can be the long term strategy, but short term, you can share it with your warm audience, but the people who already know you. So in the live training, I have two examples here I have an example from Annie who has a YouTube channel. Every time she creates a YouTube video, she makes sure that she includes keywords in the YouTube video. And then she, you know, transcribes it and turns it into a blog post and embed the YouTube video in it. And then she shares it with her email, then she creates a carousel of that YouTube video idea. And she’ll share that out to LinkedIn. And she’ll share it out to you know, Instagram as a carousel, and she’ll put in her IG TV and there are a lot of different ways that we can take the same information, repurpose it out to these time sensitive platforms, like social media and still be able to have a presence that people can engage with and you can nurture your audience there without needing to create specifically for those channels. Another example is one of my students, Amanda. She has a podcast and every time she releases a podcast, she turns it into a blog to embed the audio in there, she sends that out to her email list. She puts graphics into the blog that are both square and vertical. And then she shares those out to Pinterest. She shares them into her Instagram feed she creates stories based on on what happened in the podcast, whether that’s an excerpt of the audio and an audiogram, you know, there are a lot of different ways that you can take the content that you’re already creating, and then send it out to people who are already familiar with you. And then you know, especially if you’re doing an interview podcast, a lot of times people will share that interview podcast and the excerpt from it on social, whereas you’re not maybe not going to get their entire email list, but you can be shared on their social media channels and grow your audience that way based on that conversation. Now, typically, when I teach this, it starts from the content that you’re creating that kind of authority hub content on your website, whether that’s gonna get on your podcast, your YouTube, your blog posts, but this doesn’t just have to be that traditional content marketing piece, I’m recording this content that this podcast rather based on the intellectual property from my webinar, so don’t feel like you have to limit yourself. This was the big aha moment that I had earlier this week of like, Hey, I don’t have a blog post about this, but I have a webinar about this. And it would be a really good podcast episode. So if you’ve created any assets, in your marketing, anything, they can be repurposed, they can be shared, they can grow your audience, they can attract your ideal clients, you can think outside the box on this a little bit, too. Okay. Six, number five, the solution for trying all the marketing strategies without knowing what’s working, is to track and improve what’s working.

This is a place where I am actually going to come out and say this is this is the solution. I try not to say this is the solution very often. But if you are spending a lot of time on your marketing, without knowing whether it’s working or not, I want you to take a step back and figure out how do I know what my time what what the return on investment of this time is. So no matter what you’re spending your time on in your marketing, if you’re not also looking at the analytics to figure out what’s working or looking at your sales data, or your intake forms to figure out where your clients are actually coming from and where your leads are being generated, you might have some spaces that are taking up a lot of your time, but not necessarily giving you a return, that is going to lead to revenue. So my approach to this is to get to know your analytics to figure out what’s working, and then find ways to make that work harder. You can go look at your social analytics. Or if you’re, you know, one of my people and you want your website to be the space where you’re bringing in more traffic, then you can go take a look at your website analytics, and improve what’s working there. So I want you here’s, here’s a metaphor that I’m probably going to stretch too far, I want you to think of your website. And as part of that your content as a garden, you don’t always need to be planting in your garden, I think a lot of us have this feeling of like I need to create something new all the time, everywhere. And that’s, that’s what marketing is, is planting more plants. But really, if you are thinking about this, like a garden, sometimes your time will be spent watering or weeding or fertilizing what’s already there. And if you make a really good plan at the beginning, and you set up your planting schedule correctly, and you diversify your crops, and you spend time tending your garden, you’ll have a consistent harvest, and a variety of vegetables. I’m sure I could continue to expand extend this metaphor to talk about seasonal protos. Soon canning and preservation. But I’ll let it go. The idea here is that if you can look at your analytics and plan ahead a little bit, then you can spend a lot less time creating and more time weeding and optimizing really. So using a tool like Google Search Console to figure out what are all of the terms that I’m actually showing up for in my search results. And then you can go in and update old content and improve that. Or change out some of the texts on your homepage or your about page in order to grow and improve how well you’re showing up for specific search terms that you’re already ranking for. That’s the weeding and fertilizing I’m talking about. It’s like you don’t always have to create something new. Sometimes you can take something you’ve already created, make it better spend, you know, 20 minutes improving something you’ve already got. And it can produce dividends really quickly. So it doesn’t always have to be Create, Create, Create. Sometimes it’s just improving and tracking and figuring out what’s working.

Alright, so that concludes the part of the podcast where we talk about what these marketing mistakes are and how to fix them. If some of these mistakes are things that feel familiar to you and You want to do better at maximizing your marketing time you want a system to do that you want a mentor to help you figure out how to make this work in your business. Here’s a hint. That’s me. And if you want a small group to help with accountability and implementation, as you’re figuring this all out, I’m going to invite you to come check out my attraction activate program. It is hopefully easy to remember its attract and activate.com, you can grab the link in the show notes also. Okay, so what exactly is attract and activate, attract and activate is a group coaching program that helps you create an evergreen organic lead generation system, you’ll learn how to make SEO work for your business so that you can attract your ideal clients from Google, and then activate them to buy your products, book a consultation or join your email list. The way that it’s structured is that it is a self paced SEO course, because I know that people are busy and want to be able to binge on things when it’s convenient not have to wait for time sensitive content to come out. It’s designed to be implemented while you learn with short. To the point videos. There’s no fluffy theory here, it’s all practical advice that you can implement on your own websites. We also have live coaching calls to help align those SEO lessons with what works for your business model, what works for your time commitments, your ideal clients, how quickly you want to grow. We also provide feedback on the updates you’re making on your website, the new content that you’re creating. This includes monthly q&a calls, customized feedback videos, and an online community that’s not a Facebook group. It’s actually encircled communities. And that’s a space where you can ask questions as they arise between calls and get to know people who are working through this program. At the same time. As you know, if you’re listening to this episode, when it’s first released, May 2022, we do have a group starting this month, if this isn’t a good time for you to jump in, or if you’re listening in the future, we will most likely have a group starting very soon. Whenever you’re listening, we usually open these groups about every three months. Typically, as I’m recording, we run these groups starting in February, May, August and November. So there’s probably a group coming up for you soon. So regardless of when you’re listening, you can head over to attract and activate.com to get more details and get the dates for the next time we start. Now, I do also want to give the caveat here that I’m being really transparent. I hope I feel very strongly that I want you to know the full picture here. There is some urgency to join soon if you’re listening live because of the group that starting soon. But also like this isn’t your last opportunity to join. So I’m not going to do this high pressure sales thing. Whenever you’re ready to get started, we’ll be ready for you. So again, you can head over to attract and activate.com find out more about that. Or if you have specific questions about the program, you’re wondering if it’s a good fit for you, you can email us at support at love at first search.com and we will answer your questions about whether this is a good fit for you. So I hope that walking through these five time consuming marketing mistakes was helpful that you can kind of see how some of those marketing fixes would be beneficial for your business. And we’ll be back with our regularly scheduled conversations about decreasing the amount of time that you’re spending on social media and finding alternative marketing strategies that work for you and your business and your life and your audience in upcoming episodes, and I will see you then thank you all so much. Thank you so much for listening to the social slowdown podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe or come on over to social slowdown.com and sign up for our email list. You never miss an episode. We’d also love if you could write a review to help other small business owners find the show you can head over to social slowdown.com/review Or grab that link in our show notes for easy access. We’ll be back soon with more tips to help you market your business without being beholden to social media Talk to you then

Please forgive any typos as this transcript was automatically generated by otter.ai.