Episode 98: 5 Marketing Shortcuts for 2022
Welcome back to Making Good, podcast for small businesses who want to make a big impact. I'm your host, Lauren Tilden. And this is episode 98. Today is the final episode of the year. And in fact, it's coming out on the final day of 2021. Like all of us, I've been thinking a lot about the year ahead of us. And I've come up with a list of five marketing shortcuts that I want to encourage you to use, and that I'll be using too in 2022.
One of the tough things about marketing is that you're never done, you never feel like you've done everything you could, there's always a long list of things that you could also be doing. Many times we find ourselves scrambling and overwhelmed and adding everything we possibly can think of to our to do list in hopes that something will work. But let me tell you friends, I am done with trying to do it at all. I own three businesses now, my paper goods line, Good Sheila, retail store Station Seven, and now Making Good Happen, which is my new membership program.
As of 2021. I'm also now a parent. I spent hours in the car everyday driving our baby to his nanny. While we're still temporarily living in a coma during our remodel, doing everything is not only not even possible, but it no longer sounds like something to strive for. So instead of everything I want to be doing the right things, and for me, the right things are the things that helped me make an impact, something I know motivates so many of you listeners as well. I believe that I can make an impact in two main ways. Through this podcast and my work with my new membership Making Good Happen. I help small business owners see more success and therefore help them impact the world positively. And two, through my own small businesses Good Sheila and Station Seven. The more revenue I make, the more I can donate. Serving your community and generating revenue are two goals that I know many of you share with me. So I wanted to share five marketing shortcuts that will help you spend your time and energy on the right things in your business, rather than trying in vain to do it all.
The first marketing shortcut for 2022 that I wanted to share with you is to keep your ideal customer close to your heart. The most important person in your business Far and Away is your ideal customer. The person who loves what you create who excitedly buys what you have to offer, who tells their friends about your business without even being asked. Your ideal customer is who you create everything for and who you should be speaking to and all of your marketing. One of the best ways to stay off marketing overwhelm is to have your ideal customer front and center in your mind. When it comes to new platforms, new strategies, social media, all the marketing things that everyone is telling us we quote unquote, should do, there's really a pretty easy way to figure out if it's for us or not. And that is by looking to our ideal customer. Where she's spending her time, where does she shop? What are her needs and desires? What keeps her up at night? What problems does she have that needs solving? If the answers to these questions involve new strategies, tactics, platforms, etc? Then maybe they're worth considering. But if not, you can skip it and move straight on.
So practically speaking, what does it look like to keep your ideal customer close? It means offering value to them 80% of the time or more and then directly asking them to buy things just occasionally. I mean, surveying your audience now and then to get to know them better. It means polls on your social media to find out what problems and questions they have that you can answer. It means paying really close attention to them, the things they say, the way they talk and the questions they're asking. It means having conversations with them, building relationships with them and creating trust. It means continuously working to create products that they love and taking their feedback seriously. It means showing up for them consistently. And it means keeping them very, very close to mind whenever you make product or marketing decisions.
The second marketing shortcut for 2022 that I wanted to share is to apply your energy where you see results, essentially double down on what works. There are a lot of ways to apply this concept. So let's start with the most obvious what drives your sales. Where are the people who buy from you coming from how did they learn about you? Maybe most people find you on Instagram, that would be evidence that Instagram is a platform that converts sales for you and is worth investing in. Maybe all your sales come from your emails. And that tells me that investing in continuing to grow your list would be a really great way to grow your sales. Maybe you've been featured in local publications for gift guides and that has led to some big jumps in your sales numbers. Well, that would tell me that actively pursuing some PR features in the future would be a good thing to work on.
I'm not saying that we should put all of our eggs in one basket. For example, if you see that your sales come from Instagram and nowhere else. That doesn't mean you should completely write off an email list, SEO or other platforms. But if you see that you're putting equal effort into your Instagram strategy, Facebook, Clubhouse and Tik Tok all social media platforms, but the only one that's really generating sales is Instagram. To me, that's an indicator that that's where you should be focusing most of your effort when it comes to social media because it works. If you don't know what drives your sales, that's a really great place to start find out.
Most website platforms have tracking so that you can see where your sales are coming from. You can also use unique discount codes for different platforms to see what works best. For example, you can have a free shipping discount code on Instagram and one on your email list. But make the specific code different so you can see which is used more often.
Finally, don't underestimate the power of directly asking your customers how did you hear about us. The second way to apply this double down on what works concept is in your marketing content. So broadly speaking, let's create more of the marketing content that works, more of the marketing content that generates engagement, audience growth and sales. One of the best things about modern day marketing is the level of data that we have access to. On Instagram, we can see what people liked the most, what they engaged with the most, what they shared or saved the most. In our emails, we can see what subject lines got people opening what links people clicked, and what type and format of emails were most effective. In paid advertising, we can see which messages and imagery generated the most conversions.
Most of us don't pay enough attention to what we can learn from our data. So here are some questions I'd love for you to consider. On your email, what subject lines got opened, what emails led to the most sales? What emails have the highest engagement? In terms of click rates and responses? What topics are people that most interested in? And what was the visual look of the emails that performed the best? For example, were there more images? Or were they more text heavy? on growing your email list? What incentives like a coupon or a lead magnet lead to the most people opting in to sign up for your email? On social media, what format generated the most engagement, what format generated the most likes and audience growth and by format, I mean, things like carousels, photo posts, video, reels. What subjects of content are people most interested in? What of your content is the most share worthy and had people sharing it with others, what of your content was the most likely to be saved? When things work, it's usually not random. It's for a reason. So when we take the time to actually identify what's working, let's try to make more of that happen.
The third marketing shortcut for 2022 I wanted to share with you is to pay attention to what energizes you. Enthusiasm is contagious. When you're excited by something when you're genuinely lit up by what you're doing. It comes through in a way that you can't fake. This excitement and enthusiasm is an energy that people want to be around. Looking back, the things that have always performed the best for me are the things I'm super excited about. When I create a product collection that I'm super excited about. First, it's super easy to market it, because I'm proud of it, and I want to share. And second, people can feel that passion around what I'm doing. And if they're my ideal customer, they connect with it. In your marketing, let yourself have fun, play and genuinely be yourself. That energy comes through loud and clear and it's magnetic. The fourth marketing shortcut for 2022 I wanted to share with you is to share what you're working on.
This one has been a real eye opener for me and one of my biggest takeaways from 2021. My instinct is to wait until things are totally perfect and ready to go as polished as they're ever going to be. And then pull back the curtain and show it off and say Tada. And sometimes that works. But this year in a couple of different ways, I tried a different approach, instead of working hard behind the scenes, not telling anyone anything until everything was done, and then revealing it to the world. This year, I decided to let people in on the whole process to let them see the messy middle the works in progress, in fact, to include them in the process. This is totally against my nature. But what's interesting is that when people watch the behind the scenes of something they see you working on it, they get to even be included in decisions, they get a lot more invested in thinking of two specific examples.
The first is the launch of Making Good Happen, my membership, which I've been talking about a couple of months here on the podcast. Even before there was a website to sign up for any information available, I still started planting the seeds that it was coming. I talked about the process of building it. I shared sneak peeks and photos and my emails and social media and I allowed myself to build anticipation for it for a couple of months before there's even a place to sign up, before there's even somewhere to buy the product. When the doors finally opened people had really learned about the membership and what was included, and they were excited to join if it was a good fit for them.
Another example is with my holiday launch for Good Sheila, my stationery brand. For the holidays this year, I introduced two new product categories for the first time, hand painted ornaments and wrapping paper. I was super excited about this, and I shared a lot of the behind the scenes process of creating and launching these products way before they are available to buy. I even invited my followers to vote on their favorite designs to help determine the final product collection. Normally, when I've had a launch coming, I like to hold back the final products and reveal them on the launch day. But this time, by the time the launch day came around, I'd already showed off everything in the collection. I also had set up a waitlist for people interested in the hand painted ornaments, and I gave them 24 hours early access to shop the collection. I was surprised by how many people signed up and were incentivized by the exclusive access.
All of this to say let people in on the process of creating your goods. Don't hold back for a final reveal, when people are involved in the creation process. and they get to see the behind the scenes, they feel so much more invested, which makes them more likely to want to purchase.
My fifth and final marketing shortcut for 2022 that I wanted to share with you is to execute, even when you don't feel like it, I'm going to be honest and tell you that I really hate this one. But for me, it really matters. For some reason, it's a bit of an epiphany for me that it's possible for me to do things in my business, even when I don't feel like it. After I quit my corporate marketing job, I think I expected that I'd get to always do the things I enjoyed in my business. So if I didn't feel like doing something I had committed to doing unless it was related to a customer or a client, I would just put it off to the next day. But consistently executing your plan is so so powerful, massive results come from consistent action. And that is action even when you don't feel like it.
The best way that I'm able to get things done, even when I don't feel like it, is by building accountability. I do this by telling other people like you what my plans are so they can hold me accountable. For example, my podcast audience knows that every Tuesday, there's a podcast episode that will be released. I know that if I miss a day, people will be asking about it and I don't want to let them down. So even the nights where I don't feel like podcast editing, I do it because I've made that public commitment. One way you could apply this to your marketing execution is by telling people what they can expect from you. For example, tell your email list that your emails are going to arrive every Tuesday.
So to review my five marketing shortcuts for 2022 that I hope you'll consider borrowing are one: keep your ideal customer close to your heart, two, apply your energy where you see results. So double down on what works. Three, pay attention to what energizes you, four, share what you're working on and five, execute even when you don't feel like it.
So, what do you think of my 2022 marketing shortcuts? Do you want to steal any? Let me know on Instagram at @LaurenTilden. That's L a u r e n t i l d e n, you can find the show notes from today's episode at makinggoodpodcast.com/98 . Thank you for being here and for focusing on making a difference with your small business. Happy New Year and talk to you in 2022.