Hello  there, ladies. We're back. What are we talking about today? Anyone know?  Marketing.  Marketing day. I'm very excited because this is my favorite topic of conversation. So your job, Sam, and your job Nikki is to get me to shut up every once in a while, so you can get a word in. So this is cool. How do we feel about both of you?

Obviously business Running excellent legend type people. How do we generally feel about marketing both of you?  Do you love it? Sam's hiding behind her pants.  You can see the footage right now. Sam's hiding. Yeah. It's essential, but it's never on the top of the list, is it?  I think it's one of those things that I feel like I often talk about, but it feels like do as I say, not as I do moments, like, you know, you know, the things you should be doing, you know, best practice, but the reality sometimes of juggling it all means that you're not necessarily doing all of the things that you could be doing.

And I, marketing is one of those things I very much feel like. And then sometimes I get too busy for, and that sounds really silly, but like, yeah, it's one of those things.  Well, that's probably why we make such a great trio is because it's my favorite thing. Well, it's certainly my favorite thing to talk about.

As you say, like execution, sometimes it gets set aside, you know, working on other people's businesses rather than on your own. It's the old, I don't know, whatever analogy,  there's someone that who does other people's stuff and their house is a disaster or something. I can't remember. That was. Awesome chat. 

Anyway, we have so much to cover on the topic of marketing that we thought that we would do a little thing called breaking it into two parts. So today we're going to be covering the, the real, the early day stuff that really starts to,  Shape the success of selling your thing down the track. So we're going to talk about launch strategy in another episode, but we're going to start where we kind of left off in the last episode around validation as far as building the runway is really, really important that as soon as you kind of have an inkling that this thing is.

You're committing to it, that it's coming, that it's going to happen, and you start kind of telling people that it's coming and it's going to happen and here's some ideas, even if you're still in the validation stage, or you're still kind of  cogitating, I suppose, on exactly how it's all going to take shape.

Building that interest is super, super important. So I suppose, ladies, are there any examples you can think of even in your, your client's world or your own world where you've, you've really enjoyed that process of dropping those breadcrumbs?  Lucy, can I just say as well, I love your analogy of runway because for me,  I've always understood the concept of like, you need to warm your audience before you just throw a thing at them.

Like, I get it, but runway, it just makes sense in my brain. I'm like, Oh, like a long straight line that leads us somewhere cool. Right. I do get it.  I absolutely love runway. It's my favorite thing at the moment now.  I'm pleased to have had some impact on your life, Sam. How exciting is that?  But yeah, then it does fit with the launch thing, right?

So it makes so much sense. So  yeah. Yeah. I've been in business like 12 years and that's never clicked before, but you. Yeah, you've done it for me. My podcast is still one of my most favorite things I've ever launched. And I'm quite happy to put my hand up and say, I don't love launching things. I don't, I don't love that feeling.

But the podcast was probably one of the most fun things we did. And we built that runway really quite early on interviewed people about what they wanted to see on the podcast, started to drop sort of, you know, Teasers about the art podcast art and say, look, we're trying some art images. Here's the bits we're playing with.

Here's the color scheme. Here's the tile. Now we've decided here's the countdown to the number of days till it arrives. Are you ready? Like it will be on your Spotify in six days, five days, four days. And then we had a, we had an actual party, a podcast party and played some games that engage the audience as well, which I'm sure we'll talk much more about in the proper launch phase, but like that whole process, you know, Was fun and enjoyable, which I can't always say about my marketing.

So that one was, was probably my favorite of all time. Yeah. That's very cool.  Yeah. You can't, you can't take it all too seriously in the end. Like, of course it matters and it matters to each of us. It matters to every business owner that their thing does well, but also it doesn't mean that you can't enjoy the process as you go and make it your own and do stuff that just.

It's silly or out of the box or unusual. It's just you doing you, I guess. Nikki, what's your favorite example from your own or from somebody else that you've seen of building that runway?  I think I have to put this out to one of my peers out there who was writing a book and the way she actually went through that process of writing, of just launching her book.

She put it out there and said,  she told everyone I'm planning on writing this book. I need you to help me to be accountable. That was, I think the best marketing tactic and strategy that she's had. And I love it because. She planted that seed and she helped everyone else almost became a part of this journey with her of, you know, are you writing your book?

Have you done your chapters? Have you done the data? And then when it came time to actually launching,  everyone went and bought the book because I was so invested in it with her through that journey. And I think it was like the best marketing strategy ever. I loved that. Very clever. Was that, was that Kate Toon? 

No, it was Jen Donovan , Jen Donovan. So they've done a similar thing. So I, I probably, I'm not a big reader. I'm sad to say it, I just don't have the attention span anymore. But Kate Toon, six figures in school hours. I absolutely witnessed that similar journey, and now she's done it again. Whatever, I can't remember the title of the next book, six, six figures while you're sleeping, I think.

And similar idea where she's taking you on the journey of, Oh, I've only, I've written 5, 000 words and all the way through to, Oh, I've sent it to the publishers and then of course, you're like, I am in this now let's buy it.  So it's cool. Like, and all to say as well that you don't have to have a finished product to start  selling it, I guess, in a way.

And I, and I don't mean necessarily exchanging. Money, but to start telling people this is worth your time, I guess. So yeah, great examples. You two fabulous. The only thing we really wanted to, to sort of touch on, and it does pair with the validating process as well as this kind of concept of niching. 

And I don't know about you two,  but in my space, I have a lot, a lot, a lot of conversations because we're talking about messaging around who are we talking to? And quite often we get stuck in the weeds of their  women who, and then that's it, that that's quite often that's it, which, you know, we have a few more distinguishing characteristics than our gender.

But, you know,  I really find that the storytelling of whatever niche you pick is the most important part of it, which is why we need to be clear about who we're talking to. But I feel like there's probably between us all a few opinions on niching and what that might look like compared to what we we've been told.

It should look like any thoughts there.,  I'm a big fan on you know, not trying to  spread yourself too thin and go across the board, but at the same time too, you've got to discover who your niche is along the way as well.

So it is a bit of a  balancing act. I don't know really what you'd want to call it, but if you're putting content out there, you've got to put the feelers out there. And that's like what we were talking in the previous episode in validation, you know, You can discover who your target market is and so forth through that validation and who's actually engaging with you and interacting and so forth.

So  getting a basic idea of who you're targeting, I think is really important. Sometimes, yeah. The, the, what's it called? I've just gone completely blank. With respect to, you know,  male or female, the, oh, demographics.  Yeah, the demographics.  I don't concentrate too much on that at the start because it's really hard.

You can't. So It's only until you start putting product out, like, you know, offer out there or conversations out there, et cetera, et cetera. That's when you're going to start building up the data. So that's my perspective on that. Also on that, on that before Sam, I'll come to you in just a second. One of the trainings that I pulled together around niching uses the example of Ozzy Osbourne versus King Charles, who are  both on the castle, both the same age.

But  born in the same country would you claim that class them as the same type of human though, even though those fundamental demographics are the same, exactly the same interests. No. 

 But what it, what it really illustrates is that demographics count for so very little of how you choose your niche. Sorry, Sam. I, I, I interrupted, but please carry on. 100 percent of what I, the way I wanted to say things, which was when we build courses, we do a lot of psychographics, not demographics. Okay.

At the end of the day, we want to know where they're stuck, how they're feeling, what's going on for them, but who they are doesn't make a huge difference because even if we did get our demographics, we said, you know, we're only dealing with women who are 45 named Karen, like they're still, once they get inside a course, going to learn differently.

So we still need to build a variety of learning styles and those sorts of things. So in terms of course development, it almost doesn't matter.  Their gender, their age, but what does matter is how they're feeling about where they are, where they're stuck and what they need to learn next. And so we can focus on those components of our niche and then the people find us because they're like, Oh, that is my problem.

The thing you post on social media really does resonate with me. I don't really need to know what their name is or if they have a Labrador, but I do need to know where they're stuck and how they're feeling.  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and that's, that's the whole point that again,  tied in so neatly with the validation stuff too, doesn't it?

Because  once we understand our, our perceived, like our chosen people's problem,  then we can solve the problem with the digital thing that we're offering. Right. Which is the whole point of this whole thing.  Doesn't it tie in nicely with itself. That's handy. So I guess to say this marketing piece is kind of concurrent with the validation.

Piece and there's a lot of fluidity between the two. What do you think  about the messaging that might come out in these early stages? Because I know there's a lot of people out there who feel that they need to have it all together and they need to be very professional and they can't let a crack in the facade show ever around.

Oh, I'm still building it or it's just coming or what are your opinions on that? I'm curious.  I think my facade is all cracks. I don't know if that's all I've got. Crap, it's genuine, and it's beautiful. No, no, cracks. Cracks. Oh, cracks. Cracks and cracks. I think that I just can't do it right. When I talk to my audience a lot about this, we talk about professionalism and I talk about congruency and it's like, I feel like my audience needs to know what they're about to get.

And when they get inside the course, this, she says, waving Lucy at her face is what they're going to get. So like, That's the realism. I need to bring in my messaging too, because once they get inside, that's what they're going to buy. And I don't want my audience to see this shiny Prada, like golden silver messaging, and then get inside and get Sam who will probably rock up in her tracky Dax because she will.

So like the two would just not fit. And I think therefore my messaging just needs to be me up front. Otherwise it's not going to sell in the long run anyway. I  wouldn't agree more. Although let me say that the quality and the knowledge that you offer is way better than Prada. Like if we're going on the scale of labels, it's probably what an Hermes or something.

It's spectacular. But exactly. The congruency is a massive part of the whole piece is if you're not a real bulshy, boisterous out there person, then your words probably won't reflect that. Or if they do reflect that. But your presence in videos or in your teaching or wherever  is out of alignment with that, then that's a real problem.

Nikki, how about you? What do you see in your space? Look, I struggled a hell of a lot when I was like building my platform. For example, I want to be the person behind it. I didn't want to have to be in front or anything like that. But I also realized too, that.  You know, people want to know who you are and if they're going to know who I am, they've got to know the real me and I'm not going to dress up all pretty and all that sort of stuff, you know, online anyway, from meeting you face to face, I will brush my teeth and brush my hair.

But with respect to, you know, the information that I'm sharing to me, that was the most important thing to share across the information, the message. I'm not there to, you know, look pretty and all that sort of stuff for you. It's the information that's important here, not necessarily the look of me. But.

You know, obviously they, they can go hand in hand, depending on the topic you're talking about. I don't know. But yeah, to me, that was a really important thing  when I was sharing my message, just to be genuine and transparent. I was honest. I wasn't scripted. And I'm very often not, and I don't do words really well, but I do, I, I did discover that, you know, It took practice and that's why I thought I'm not going to put too much stress on the visual or the actual organizing of everything.

I just want to make sure I get that message across. And then as I go over through time, it became more  beautiful. Oh, there's such an evolution. I think it's really important to note here that humans buy from humans. Right. So we're expecting a little bit of imperfection. And I think if we're too focused on simply being the most perfect and the most professional that's  becomes, there's the detachment there from reality.

And. I think reality sell really, really well as well. Like we wanna see a little bit of, of mess and a little bit of, ah, she's just like me, or they're just like me. You know? It's it's a tricky, it's a tricky balance to strike because yes, we do wanna exude an air of confidence and if we're not feeling confident and not feeling together that day. 

We're allowed to share that too, but we also need to be clear that we're not just a complete mess all the time,  you know, like it's an interesting balance to strike. I personally have gone through Lots of evolutions of message. And I feel like the longer that I do what I do, the closer I get to what I actually wanted to say.

So I suppose it's really important to normalize the process of,  you know,  Messaging is an iterative process. So if you're at the start of selling something, what you say about it now is probably going to be quite different than what you say about it. Even by the time you get to properly selling it, or by the time you've been selling it for a long, long time, have you guys had a similar experience? 

Oh yeah. If I nodded any harder, my head would fall off. Yeah. A hundred percent. And, and over time, the, the way you, the way you present online might change, the way you word things will change, like the whole, everything. If you'd have said to me years ago that I would be where I am now, Talking about the things I'm talking about.

Like I just, it was miles apart from the way I presented and the things I spoke about. I think you're right. That's very much that natural evolution. And it's, as you become more familiar with your audience, more familiar with what you want to say and the messaging you want to get across, like you don't know all the answers at the beginning and you just can't, I don't think you can.

And it's not until you start the doing that you start to learn. There's only, And I think all of you will agree here, and this is why we focus so heavily on, on the doing component of things, because while you're just planning things or preparing things or scripting things, there's only so far you can get, because we don't get those true learnings.

We don't see how it works. We don't see what we want to change until it's live. Like I always see my best mistakes the moment I hit send,  but until I hit send, I think it's perfect. But the moment I press send, I'm like, Oh, I see that flaw right there, but I don't see it until I, until I send it out live into the world.

And I think there's so much we're blind to until we start the doing.  Beautiful. That's so important to normalize though, as well is that, you know, nothing's set in stone. Even if you commit to something to start with. Well, one, there might be some, some glaring errors in it that you don't see cause you got a blind spot cause you're in it.

So, so that's not a problem, but also it's just simply, we're evolving as humans at the same time as we're evolving as business owners. So what we have to say now may change one, two, three, five, 10 years down the track as we develop in our own lives as well. 

I suppose the last thing we really wanted to touch on. After the messaging point, which, you know, this is such a top level conversation. We could talk for days and days about any one of these topics. So I could definitely, because this is my, this is my happy place. But let's talk about, you know, we've talked about the set and forget kind of idea and how that's not really going to serve us.

The other thing I wanted to cover, and I wanted to get your input on it is around the idea of building a marketing ecosystem. So.  I don't know about you guys, but in the past, I have seen several business owners put all their eggs into one marketing egg basket. So I'm purely going to focus my energy on social media.

For instance, how important is it to you guys to really flesh out that marketing ecosystem? So, you know, your emails, talk to your  Website that talks to your social media, that talks to your networking and it all kind of sounds and feels and looks the same and encourages you to interact with that ecosystem.

How important is it to your businesses and the people in your space?  I think it's way more important than I probably have consciously thought about. It's one of those things that I guess, like all these marketing things we're talking about developed over time. But for me, the more I showed up everywhere, the more I was like, I'm talking about the same things.

I'm doing the same things. I'm presenting the same way. Like you, whether you chat to me in on LinkedIn, please never do, or on Facebook messenger or via email, like I'm the same Sam. And so I think, Like that's the core messaging is I'm, I'm still me. I still present the same way across all of the systems.

And we've come back to that. We're congruent, right? It needs to be the same feeling because if they hit you up on Instagram and then they won't go to your website and then they end up on your email list. And there's just this weird feeling that it's,  Feels like someone else is talking or it feels like something else is going on.

People, they won't buy, they won't stay because we're very good at having that weird gut feeling that goes,  something's not quite right here. And we leave, we really do. So I think that you're so spot on with that ecosystem needs to be that, that bigger picture. Of the same messaging, the same feeling, the same sense everywhere, and that they all feed in and work together because we can't pick where someone's going to find us or where their first touch point is going to be.

Like, I don't know if their first time ever learning about Sam Winch is on Facebook or if it's when they got sent a link to my email or like, I just don't know. So for me, it's about making sure they get a similar experience. I'd love to say same, I can't guarantee it, but it's the same Sam with a very similar experience wherever they go.

Yeah. Yeah, and detail matters there actually, for sure, you know, even from I've helped people pull together, you know, like a full funnel, which includes mapping out the journey from the Facebook ad right through to the point of sale. And when I received some, some of this work, initially, there's like the ad says one thing and the landing page says another, and then the checkout looks different and  there's no consistency throughout.

And so that's something that's a detail that's really, really important to keep in mind is it's not just language, but also the  aesthetics, the visual sort of assets that you have as well. Does that sort of factor in, you must've looked at that Nikki for yourself, as far as bringing all these amazing people into, to the wisdom  community. 

I know there's a lot of congruency there and consistency.  Was that, was that conscious or intuitive?  Conscious, very conscious of that. It was, you know,  I think I studied marketing, but I understand that. Yeah. When it comes to, you know, that consistency, the view, the message, all that sort of stuff is very important.

But my perspective on things too, is keeping that ecosystem broad. Is so important for data gathering as well. I do come from that, you know, data gather world, making sure I'm like continually analyzing where people are coming from, how they're getting there and so forth. That's just that. That perspective of keeping it broad initially, and obviously you will filter your funnel based on, you know, maybe a particular offer program, discount, whatever it is that you might be doing at a certain time.

That's when I sort of go focus.  You know, and pinpoint a particular direction, but majority of the time it is that whole brand profile building trust building. It's broad. Mm-Hmm. But when it comes down to certain specific areas, maybe I will sort of narrow it in a little bit.  Yeah. I think it's, it is important to keep the, the big picture in mind when, when we're especially building this runway.

You know, like we want to get people invited, make it as easy as possible for people to find us and connect with us and, and understand what it is. We're even attempting before, like, it doesn't have to be built as we've said, but if your email, you've got a wait list building even, and then you need to nurture that.

And then we need to talk about it on our socials.  We don't even necessarily need to have a full website that's got all the bells and whistles, but some kind of presence that. Makes, makes it clear who we are, what we do. I imagine many people listening will have some kind of website already. They're just looking to add a new component to what they already do.

What else have we not touched on in the ecosystem? There's so many things. What have I missed? We've got emails, social media, website, forums. Like I, I think forums are great way to sort of dive in. And if, especially if you're building up your trust, you know, and who you are, are you the right person to share this message?

You know, all that sort of stuff.  Would I want to come and work with you as a coach sort of thing or whatever it is? I think forums are great with, you know, helping other people, you know, showing up like that, obviously networking events, things like that too.  But I guess it depends on what it is that you are.

You know, we think sometimes the other side of it as well is because we think something is digital. Everything has to be digital and it doesn't have to all be digital in the marketing world. It can also be face to face. So I'll bless you. Bless you for giving me that opening, Nikki, for my second branch of

The thing is, right, my, my overwhelming sense is that experience,  the experience of somebody matters and is more memorable than anything else. So I have in my space and for myself, actually, I can see there's tension around nailing the social media. Like, that's the thing. We've got to be really good at social media.

And what I have discovered over many years of operating is that. The social media and even our website and even our emails to an extent are secondary to the 1st impression that we make as a human being to human being, you know, so whether we're networking or whether we're running a workshop or whether we're in some kind of webinar with other people. 

The ability to make that first impression and a lasting, meaningful first impression is so much more doable  in that format rather than, Oh, here's a static social post that I did, or even here's a real, you know so. I really encourage the people in my space to kind of flip the importance of social media invert it and put it kind of much further down the ladder than you might think.

Yes, it's, it's certainly a factor. It's certainly important, but I don't honestly believe it is as important as being in the room with people. Any thoughts? Am I wrong? Am I right? The only caveat I put on that is sometimes it's a game of numbers or a game of scale. So I find a lot of course creators, I I'm the same as you, right?

I still believe there's my best ever clients. My best ever leads have all come through knowing people. And like, whatever that might be, knowing them through webinars, knowing them through old school networking, face to face my, my best ever clients, prospects, and everything always come through getting to know people.

I do find a lot of new digital something creators in my world, mainly courses are just trying to play the numbers game. Like they know if they need a thousand sales that they need 10, 000 leads that they need and doing that through. Old school networking, you just can't meet that many people. So that's where the numbers game comes in.

But I think you're right. If you want to build proper, like really good value and connection, then hands down, knowing people like getting to know real people will win out over social media every time.  And I really believe that plays a part in what is the offer value? Like what offer are you actually providing?

So if it's something that is high ticket, there's that high trust required. So therefore that closer proximity is probably more quiet. I don't know that word of mouth, all that sort of stuff, you know, that becomes that. It's a completely different game. So I think it always relate, there's so many pieces to the puzzle, but it does come down to, you know, what is it that you're actually planning on offering?

And then you work out the effort that you have to put into it. And that effort obviously comes about from, you know, what marketing effort you're going to put into it too. Yeah, it's a much, well, once we've started to really peel off the top layer of what it means to be a strategic marketer of whatever it is that we're doing.

And it's very tempting to dive right into that, but I think we might need to leave it there for today. So the only thing left to do is to assign the action tasks. For the day.  Who's going to, who's going to tell us what our homework is. What have we won? Me? No. 

So your action step for today's episode is to go away and start laying your runway. Now the what for that will depend on where you're already at and what you're doing, but we want you to do the doing, not just think about, not plan your next project. Post, but do the doing. So whether you start to post in your Facebook group and tell people, things are coming, whether you do a story on your Instagram, whether you send an email to your list, whatever that looks like for you, but lay a single breadcrumb today, but do a doing and take a step and let us know and let the world know what what's going on for you. 

Oh, and come back. Yes. The way you let us know is to come back to the link in the show notes to our little voicemail box. Cause we want to hear from you. We want to feature your progress on the next episode or maybe a later episode, who knows?  That tells us where you're up to, what you've done and where we can go find it.

So we can come and support you as well, which is a really important factor in all of this is we are here. To support you. That's the whole point. Any thoughts, Nikki, on that?  I'm just looking forward to seeing what, you know, our audience people might come in with, because I love seeing what other people are thinking and where they're at and what they're doing.

I love it. Yeah.  That's perspective, right? It's other people's genius.  Seeking out into what they do, which is really exciting. So that's kind of it for marketing episode one. Next one is going to be down the tracks. We've got some work to do in between before we start launching the digital thing that you are creating currently.

So thanks for the chat ladies.  Thank you. Thank you so much for leading us through this Lizzie. Oh my goodness. It was fun. Right.  Go do your things girls. I know it's a busy day ahead. Me too. Thanks for listening everyone else and we'll catch up with you next time.  See ya.