Welcome back to another week of March Your Way to Success! During the month of March, I will be going over how you can march your way to success by gaining a footing in different areas of your life.  Last week, I talked about Budgeting and provided an actionable worksheet to help you with creating a budget like a pro. Today, I want to focus on Marketing!

I asked my friend Amanda Griffith if I could interview her for the marketing piece and she kindly agree. Let me tell you a little bit about Amanda: Amanda has successfully built and ran a networking group called Conscious Business Connections (CBC) for the last 6 years in Fort Collins, Colorado. She has helped numerous people in the group (including me) to gain clarity on how to speak to our audience and how to use techniques on talking with people during discovery calls or even when we’re talking about an upcoming class!

Amanda is truly a kind hearted and understanding person. I have gotten to know her since I started to attend CBC last summer and she has such keen insight into what you’re trying to say and she really wants to help people out. Every time I tell her what’s going on with Monica Writes, she is truly excited and I’m excited about her newest adventures as well! I know this is a short description of Amanda, but I cannot tell you in words how impactful and amazing Amanda is as she continues to lead, guide, and give herself to so many people.

There will be an free actionable worksheet at the end of this blog to help you get started in your marketing process!

Amanda, tell us a little bit about how you got started with your coaching.

I am a Fort Collins, Colorado, native and I thought I had all the contacts that I needed since I knew everyone in town! But when I opened my business, I thought to myself, “Clearly I’m going to go out and tell everybody to come to my class and it’s going to work great!” Guess what? It didn’t! After four long months and only having two clients, I began rethinking my marketing strategy and went to work on that piece. Within a few months, I had more clients than I thought was possible!

That’s when it hit me! How many other people were struggling with getting butts in seats in their classes?! That’s when I began my journey as a marketing and speaking coach.

What is Marketing?

My marketing has never been super professional or sleek and shiny as I feel many people think it should be. My definition of marketing is, “Be yourself, Bigger!” or another way to say it is, “Be yourself, but just get in front of more people.”

What about marketing for online businesses?

It’s the same thing: be yourself, but bigger. More eyes on your articles, videos, website or product. Good marketing is getting deserved attention to move to the next phase: the sales process, which is the potential client saying, “I really need to do business with you RIGHT NOW!”

Why should you market?

To get more clients. If you’re not getting clients, then you need to do more marketing and making more sales. You can offer value to the world through your marketing by giving away a little bit of your value.

Another great reason to market yourself is to build who’s a good client for you. While you’re marketing, you’re screening and finding better and better clients to choose to work with.

What are three tips you can give to people to begin marketing themselves today?

Here are my three tips on what you can start doing today without a marketing coach. If you’re already doing these things and are still struggling, I would recommend seeking out help to lead you by the hand to form a personalize route to your success.

Tip 1: Get in a Box!

I know entrepreneurs want to be outside of the box and think in creative ways. But the first thing we need before going outside of the box is to get inside of a box for people who are first meeting you. Before explaining how unique you are, you want to explain to them something they can recognize right away and put you in a box so they can say to themselves, “Oh [Your name] is that!” Afterwards, they begin to relax and think they know who you are, and then you can get outside of that box and become more creative!

The box begins with a title, tag line or a little phrase. I put myself in a box by saying that I’m a marketing coach. It’s two words people have heard a thousand times and know what they are. Other ways to place yourself in a box is by saying that you’re a Graphic Designer, a personal trainer, a massage therapist, or a writer. Something general and specific that people have heard.

Get a tag line that is a short phrase (nothing too long as no one remembers everyone else’s elevator pitches!). One person I know says, “I’m a Graphic Designer that helps small businesses look big.”

I use the phrase that I help you get butts in seats and people respond to that, so when they need help filling a class, they think of me.

Tip 2: Speak!

The easiest and most effective and cheapest way to market yourself is to speak!

Speak for free to your own group that you put on (such as a class) or in a group that someone else is gathering the audience. Start off small: gather a 10 minute talk that leads up to a 20 minute talk and then work your way up to 30-60 minute talks.

Think of a way to really package your message in a small, powerful way and go talk about it! Call people, tell people you’re a speaker, put it on your website and social media that you’re looking for places to speak. Give your speech a really great title and get out there and SPEAK!  When you meet another speaker, ask them how they found their speaking gig and I bet they will give you a new tip on how they got their speaking gig that you have never thought of before.

Tip 3: Sell FREE tickets!

If you decide to put on an event and you’re charging for it, still sell free tickets! Make sure you’re getting their information still as you’re going to be putting them on your email list. This gives the customer a sense of investment in themselves.

You can promote these tickets on Eventbrite and then begin posting on social media on how many tickets you have left. You can start with 10 and then announce when you have 8, then 5 and then 3 left. Then open another 10 tickets and repeat the process. Get a countdown going! The marketing principal I’m teaching here is urgency! Give your customers a call to action by telling them to sign up for your class with their own unique free ticket, or sign up here button, something that will prompt a person to sign up for your class. This is a game changer when you want butts in seats.

There’s no shame in selling free tickets either. In the beginning, you need to get those butts in seats and learn how to sell yourself in front of an audience. If you get in front of 20 people, 3-5 people will hopefully be moved to get into a one on one session with you (discovery call) or move into a paid program hosted by yourself.

How do you deal with disappointment when people you’re speaking to don’t buy from you? How do you handle that emotion?

One approach I take, which is my foundational mindset, is by thinking, “This is my life’s work and I will figure out how this works no matter how long it takes. I will figure out how to handle my bills in another way. I want to teach these classes and I want to make a living off of it, even if it takes me 10 years! I’m in it for the long haul!”

This helps me gain the expectation that some things will go great while others won’t go great; I’m either going to win or learn from everything that happens.

One time I taught a class and no one brought from me. I thought to myself, “What the heck am I doing wrong here?” I’ve learned a few things from teaching that class – such as the material for it, who my target market was, I was forced to listen deeper to see what my audience did want. The one thing I still have from that workshop is the relationships I built while teaching – which is what I want.

 

I hope you have enjoyed learning how to market yourself in this blog! If you would like to get your FREE actionable worksheet, then click on the below image! In this worksheet, which I have provided the questionnaire part below, you will discover what areas you need to work on and how you’re going to achieve it. I also include an ADDITIONAL page on easy places to find speaking gigs as well as Amanda’s information and my own.

If you want to talk to Amanda on how she could improve your marketing and speaking skills, you can visit her website.