I'm taking a hiatus from podcasting while I decide if it still fits in to my life. As I've always said, content creation is a full time job in big businesses. Right now, I create content that isn't as strategic or well-prepared. I don't mind creating, but I'm not willing to give the content the marketing time it needs to grow.

Thank you all for listening. Get out there and Start Marketing.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Cooler temps are approaching and that means that the hustle and bustle of marketing through the holidays is upon us. But, before we get too caught up in having an amazing fourth quarter, we need to reflect on our efforts this year and prepare for strategic marketing in 2023.

In order to avoid starting the new year doing the same ol' same ol' that may not even be working for us, or starting the new year doing spaghetti marketing (throwing things at the wall to see what sticks), learn how to create a strategic marketing plan that will grow your business.

The steps to prepare for 2023 marketing:

• Evaluate your 2022 strategies
• Set your business goals for 2023
• Set your budget for marketing in 2023
• Select your strategies

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Social media isn't the only way to promote your small business, gain brand awareness and increase visibility for your products and services. There are other free alternatives to social media. Learn about:

• Reddit
• Public Relations
• User Generated Content

and how to execute each marketing strategy to increase branding and awareness for your business.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

If you're struggling to convert leads into sales, today's episode is for you. We talk about how to reverse engineer a path to "yes". This is really just moving backward through the sales journey your customers go through to make sure you have content that addresses each phase and creates confidence to help move them to the next phase of the sale.

Each phase of the sales process creates an opportunity for you to have marketing strategies that move your buyers closer to a final sale.

We walk through an example of a wedding photographer and a few main phases and the types of content they can create to close the sales loop.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Do you ever wonder how someone's videos get people to stop scrolling and actually watch them let alone engage? There's a few easy things you can do to help stop the scroll and get your target audience to pay attention:

1. Research your audience
2. Answer one question
3. Bullet list your points
4. Create intrigue
5. Use text

Learn how to create videos that will engage your target audience and get more eyes on the content you work hard to create.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Creating content can feel overwhelming when you don't know what to talk about. Using content pillars helps:

• Create cohesive on-brand messages
• Keeps you relevant to your target audience
• Helps build your authority and trust
• Makes you more efficient in your creation process
• Helps move your target audience toward a sale

It's a fast easy exercise to do that has a lot of benefit.

Music: Tuesday, by Sascha Ende, Music.io

You spend a lot of time creating content that doesn't get a lot of visibility or engagement. What can you do to change that? Conduct keyword research.

• Use Google searches
• Use Wikipedia
• Use Uber Suggest/Google Search Console

Build your keywords and phrases into your content on your website, Google Business Profile, social media, hashtags and blogs. Publish consistently and over time, your content will gain visibility.

Music: Tuesday, Sascha Ende, Music.io

I get asked pretty frequently what free alternatives are out there for marketing that aren't social media marketing. While social media marketing is tried and true, it's a big ask to do organically for small businesses or solopreneurs. Content may be king, but if you don't have the time to do everything the algorithm wants you to do, you're stuck spinning your wheels creating content that gets little to no visibility but takes a ton of time to create. So what can you do instead?

1. Networking
2. Google Business Profiles
3. Referral and review programs
4. Pinterest
5. Create a hashtag strategy

I've talked about some of these before:

Pinterest

Networking

Google Business Profiles

Music Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

I get asked two questions frequently:

1. What's the best free way to market my business?
2. How do I know if my marketing is successful?

Marketing should support, not distract from your business goals. There are three simple steps to measuring the effectiveness of your marketing:

1. Create a sub-goal for each strategy that's tied to your business goal for the year.
2. Track each strategy but understanding costs and utilizing pixels/unique identifiers
3. Set a time period for your strategies. 

If your marketing isn't generating positive ROI, it's not for you.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

It's tempting to use social media as a stand-in for your website. But it's dangerous to build an audience on rented land. Why? Because if the algorithm changes or the platform goes away, so does your hard-earned audience.

Using a website is critical because:

• You own the brand aesthetic
• You own the data
• You own the audience
• You control the messaging
• You can ask for the sale

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

I didn't understand the mechanics of how to deliver a lead magnet when I wanted to start my email list. So today, I break down how to get started and what kinds of lead magnets you can consider. Key takeaways:

1. Develop your strategy
2. Design your lead magnet
3. Deliver your lead magnet

Of course, my favorite email provider is Flodesk. Use my link to sign up and receive a discount on this amazing platform. This is an affiliate link, but I only recommend products I really believe in.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Email marketing can generate high ROI for your business - $42 for every $1 spent! That's huge!

But how do you do email marketing well?

1. Get the opt-in - don't find yourself blacklisted or violating CAN-SPAM laws
2. Use a good email marketing system like Flodesk
3. Create a welcome email
4. Follow the 80/20 rule
5. Create a calendar to stay ahead of the game

Email marketing will help you with visibility among your target audience.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Today we talk about one of my favorite free marketing strategies: borrowing audiences and creating partnerships.

This is a great, inexpensive way to boost your visibility to your target audience, but does take time to build.

Here's what you want to do:

• first, you want to cultivate a relationship: help share their content, volunteer to fill in gaps that they advertise for, be active in their audiences
• Once you've cultivated a relationship, and this will take time, look for gaps that you can help fill for them
• Propose a partnership that allows you both to win - you don't want to be selfish and use it simply as an opportunity to advertise to their customers, but rather as a way to boost their credibility and get a nod from them

Ways that you can do this:

• look for other local partners that aren't in direct competition with you, but are parellel to your products/service
• identify areas of overlap and gaps for each other that you can fill 
• brainstorm ways that you can cross promote each other and help lift each other up: emails, co-hosting events, sponsoring events, giveaways with each other's products

Use The Wealth of Connection to give you a roadmap about how to build genuine relationships and partnerships.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

To grow a business, you need income or influence. You'll either pay to reach your target audience through advertising or you need influence; a network that allows you to reach them organically.

What is a recommended marketing budget?

For B2B: 2-5% of gross revenue

For B2C: 5-10% of gross revenue

How to build your budget:

1. research your industry
2. set clear goals
3. know what you should spend on each marketing strategy

Action step to take today: do the math and figure out how much you should be spending on marketing each year.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Today we're talking about consistency and using a marketing plan to keep you consistent. Marketing requires 7-10 touches with your target audience before they take action. If you're not consistent or not frequent enough, you're starting that cycle over every time you reach your target audience.

Key takeaways:

• block time to create consistency
• create a mini marketing plan to be effective during that time
• align your goals and your marketing to make them successful

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week's quick win is identifying your target audience. Marketing is about getting the right people at the right time in the right place with the right message for your products or services. Knowing your target audience will help you do all of those things and make you more effective and efficient in marketing your small business.

You can identify your target audience by:

• conducting interviews with potential target audience members
• looking at existing sales information
• competitor research
• market analysis/trends
• listing what your target audience ISN'T

What you're looking for:

• trends and similarities between buyers
• Geographic: location, region, climate, etc
• Demographic: age, gender, occupation, education
• Pyschographics: lifestyle, opinions, values
• Behavior: occasions for use, benefits seeking

Your target audience will give you clarity and focus. It will also help your marketing convert leads better.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

If you believe in the power of story brand as much as I do, you'll be excited for this practical action-oriented episode about how to implement the story brand framework.

Key Takeaways:

• Use the story brand frame work on your website, social media, emails, and all marketing materials
• Start with your homepage to implement
• Use your story brand script to brainstorm and plan your content
• Begin with the transformation your character will have with you
• Address the gut, brain and heart when crafting your messages for a powerful impact
• This framework works for all businesses
• Even if you think there isn't a deeper human need for your product or service, this framework will help you identify those needs

Raj Lulla is a husband, dad and author. He's also a certified story brand guide at Fruitful Design Co.

Connect with Raj

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

I am so hyped for this episode! The story brand framework can revolutionize your business. It's so powerful it can help you:

• Reposition yourself in the market
• Increase your ROI
• Clarify your target audience

This framework is authentic and easy to follow.

Key Takeaways:

• You must know your target audience well
• Storybrand attracts the right clients and repels the wrong ones
• Storybrand can make you more efficient at marketing your business

Raj Lulla is a husband, dad and author. He's a storybrand certified guide at Fruitful Design Co.

Connect with Raj

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week, I'm burned out on content creation. I'm wondering where it fits in to my business and if it's even worth it. I'm so burned out, I didn't even realize my mic wasn't plugged in for my recording. And, I couldn't even bring myself to re-do the episode.

The question I want to ask is: Is it fair for marketing experts and coaches to tell you to "just create content"? I don't think it is. It's well intentioned advice because content really is king. But content creation is a full time job. Is it sustainable for small business owners and solopreneurs?

You tell me. Shoot me an email: katlynn@getauthenticbranding.com

How do you grow your business to six figures? Nicka Johnson, owner of Budget to Success shares her marketing strategies and tactics. Spoiler alert, she could basically host this podcast! She's embodied all the strategic lessons we've talked about and used her tenacious spirit and drive to succeed to implement them and grow her business to six figures during the pandemic.

Key Takeaways:

• Exhaust free advertising before you move to paid advertising
• Make sure your paid advertising fits within your budget
• Be consistent with your presence
• Be authentic in your content
• Align your marketing strategies to your business goals and measure them to make sure they're contributing positive ROI

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Spoiler alert: I started a rebrand process and determined there was much more strategy work to be done behind the scenes in order to make it meaningful.

This week I use my monthly marketing update to pull back the curtain and explain:

• Why a logo change should never just be a logo change
• How I reframed my positioning in the marketplace
• The framework I used to create more powerful messaging
• How I'm re-strategizing
• How I'm re-branding

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

How should you execute digital ads? According to today's guest, you shouldn't. Yes, you should be doing them because they're a great, trackable way to generate leads for your business, but if you're not a digital ad expert, you should be hiring someone to run campaigns for you.

Key Takeaways:

• Your budget needs to be large enough to generate enough leads that it will be meaningful to your business
• Identifying your goals before you begin running ads helps create successful campaigns
• Hire a professional to do your ads to maximize your spend and ROI

Today's guest is David McBee. David started working with business owners back in the days of the original search engine: the yellow pages. When the Internet was born and he showed an aptitude for how it would impact his clients, he embraced the technology, becoming an Internet Trainer, traveling the country and teaching hundreds of sales reps and business owners about Internet Marketing. In 2008, David had the opportunity to be trained at Google’s Mountain View Googleplex, becoming one of the first Google AdWords Certified Trainers.

Having worked for a handful of Internet Marketing agencies and as an independent consultant, David was recruited to be the National Director of Training for a targeted advertising company. In this role, he works directly with business owners to help them understand the inner workings for targeted advertising, programmatic display and connected TV to increase brand value and grow revenue.

Connect with David by Googling him. If he isn't the top search result, he isn't doing his job correctly.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

If you don't have money to invest in advertising, don't start a business.

It's a bold claim made by today's guest, David McBee. But, it's not an incorrect statement. You have to have two things to grow a business: income or influence. It can take years to grow organic influence. Most small businesses believe they're going to generate leads and sales from digital marketing or targeted advertising.

But in order to make money, you have to understand the strategy behind targeted advertising.

Key Takeaways:

• Targeted advertising uses data to display digital ads to your target audience (what you probably think of as stalker ads)
• Your budget needs to be large enough to generate leads at scale so the profit is noticeable for your business
• Targeted advertising is advantageous for small businesses because it's trackable

Today's guest:

David McBee started working with business owners back in the days of the original search engine: the yellow pages. When the Internet was born and he showed an aptitude for how it would impact his clients, he embraced the technology, becoming an Internet Trainer, traveling the country and teaching hundreds of sales reps and business owners about Internet Marketing. In 2008, David had the opportunity to be trained at Google’s Mountain View Googleplex, becoming one of the first Google AdWords Certified Trainers.

Having worked for a handful of Internet Marketing agencies and as an independent consultant, David was recruited to be the National Director of Training for a targeted advertising company. In this role, he works directly with business owners to help them understand the inner workings for targeted advertising, programmatic display and connected TV to increase brand value and grow revenue.

Connect with David by Googling him. If he isn't the top result, he isn't doing his job correctly.

Music: Tuesday, by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Learn how to position your business and create messages that convert your target audience.

Jenna is a documentary photographer; instead of meeting your family in a meadow at golden hour, she comes to your home and spends the day with you. She captures what day to day life is like for kids and their parents--documenting all the little moments that families want to remember, like the way your toddler holds your hand when you walk to the kitchen or scoots onto your lap for story time. The way your teens laugh when they tell you a good joke. Equally as Instagram-able as the family photos we've all grown accustomed to, she helps you create a time capsule that you can look back on that brings you joy.

Jenna's restarting her successful photography business after living overseas for several years. Her questions include:

• How to position her business to her target audience
• How to learn more about her target audience
• How to create messages that will teach people what she does and lead to booked sessions
• What to include in a nurture sequence
• Creative ways to get her name out in a new community

We cover a lot of ground in this episode! Key takeaways for Jenna are:

• Interview past clients about why they worked with her
• Interview parents in her current network that can tell her why they'd consider documentary photography
• Create messages that are simple and precise to describe the experience she provides using the StoryBrand script of identifying and speaking to potential clients' external struggles (traditional photo sessions are stressful and nobody wants to remember the day), internal struggles (as moms we want to remember all the little moments we know make up our daily life with our kids and see ourselves on our motherhood journey) and philosophical struggles (families ought to be able to recall good memories when they see photos)
• Create a nurture sequence that introduces documentary family photography and overcomes objections clients may have
• Partner with local non-profits that support families to give a mini session away that the non-profit can promote on her behalf thus increasing awareness of her services

I genuinely enjoyed unpacking all of this with Jenna! What she does speaks to my soul and I hope you enjoy today's episode!

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

In this week's episode, my guest Derek and I discuss how to build your own credible website. As a small business owner, you may not have the money to pay someone to build a website for you. The good news, is that you can build a credible website on your own.

Key Takeaways:

• Start by reverse engineering a path to "yes" for your customers to purchase
• Make sure you have clear call to action buttons
• Use free tools like SEM Rush or Uber Suggest to help you identify keywords
• Understand the story you want to tell by using the Story Brand framework
• Keep your design simple

Derek Jensen has a passion for building systems and processes for people that scale and create the capacity to do what they do best every day. His experience has included working with large brands down to small startups in industries ranging from Powersports, management consulting, finance, legal, hospitality, software as a service, and manufacturing. Understanding each situation, the individual and company needs, allows Derek to assess and provide solutions that best support product sales and improve efficiencies and performance.

Derek’s experience building and launching products have helped the companies he works with to add new revenue, develop a more extensive more engaged customer base, increase internal and external communication, and create increased capacity. His work has directly resulted in leaders reaching their next level goals.

Derek and his wife, Grace enjoy spending time with their four children, Cora, Asher, Micah and Declan, and their dog. In their spare time, they support their children in their passion for becoming playground connoisseurs. As a family, they also enjoy traveling together.

Purchase Derek's course for expert guidance to build your own website.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Having a website for your small business is critical - even if you design it yourself. Why? It creates confidence in your consumer that you are a legitimate business. How? By allowing you to tell your story, showcase your expertise and provide a direct call to action that you lack on social media.

It's tempting for small businesses to rely on social media as their "website", but it's a risky move because you don't own the space. If your favorite social media platform suddenly closes shop (as they sometimes do), you don't want to be left high and dry without a website to help you reach customers.

Key Takeaways from this episode:

• Websites create confidence in your customers
• Websites build authority for your business
• Websites help you convert more leads into sales

This week's guest is Derek Jensen. Derek has a passion for building systems and processes for people that scale and create the capacity to do what they do best every day. His experience has included working with large brands down to small startups in industries ranging from Powersports, management consulting, finance, legal, hospitality, software as a service, and manufacturing. Understanding each situation, the individual and company needs, allows Derek to assess and provide solutions that best support product sales and improve efficiencies and performance.

Derek’s experience building and launching products have helped the companies he works with to add new revenue, develop a more extensive more engaged customer base, increase internal and external communication, and create increased capacity. His work has directly resulted in leaders reaching their next level goals.

Derek and his wife, Grace enjoy spending time with their four children, Cora, Asher, Micah and Declan, and their dog. In their spare time, they support their children in their passion for becoming playground connoisseurs. As a family, they also enjoy traveling together.

Connect with Derek.

This week's episode is a hot seat coaching session with Clarissa from Setting D Ranch. Her and her husband Dan are third generation ranchers selling whole hogs and cows. They recently added individual cuts and shipping to their business.

Clarissa's challenge is how to create awareness about the new part of their business and generate new customers.

Key Marketing Strategies we discuss:

• Identifying a target audience
• Creating partnerships with other local vendors to cross promote each other
• Adding long form content such as recipes, shopping lists, or videos to Setting D Ranch's content schedule
• Creating seasonal content for Pinterest that links back to the website where they can cross-sell accompanying cuts and boxes.
• Using email to capture more repeat business

Deep dive into strategies:

• Target Audience: while food seems like it's for everyone (because it is), identifying who's making the decision to purchase and following through on the purchase can help you identify people like them. Once you've identified who has the purchase power, you can create content for the channels where they can find you. We determined that women, and moms specifically, might be a good target audience. Another target audience might be meat eaters who are looking for healthier or more eco-friendly purchasing options.
• Setting D Ranch already has existing partnerships with a local farmer's market and many of the vendors. One way to capture more business is to cross-promote the other vendors she partners with by creating a guide about how to shop for all of your weekly meals at the farmer's market complete with a grocery list and recipes to make it easy. This content translates easily over to Pinterest where recipes are one of the top types of content.
• Because we could be targeting moms, creating recipes and content that explains how purchasing whole hogs and cows can make meal prep easier would be a great starting point. Creating recipes or videos showing how to prepare the meat could also be valuable content to attract new customers.
• Following up on Pinterest, my favorite platform for small businesses because it can drive traffic back to your website and doesn't require you to have a lot of followers to have good reach, creating seasonal content for summer BBQ's or winter months that refers people to the pre-cut shipped boxes on the website could bring in additional customers.
• Finally, using email to encourage repeat customers is a smart, cost effective use of that data you already have. It's easier to create repeat spenders than it is to create new customers. Just make sure that you have them properly opting in to your promotional emails so you don't accidentally get marked as spammed or put on Google's blacklist, rendering your emails useless.

Interested in purchasing from Setting D. Ranch? Check them out.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Spoiler alert: I'm not being consistent.

Consistency is the key to great marketing.

Strategies that are going well:

• Pinterest marketing
• Networking
• Relationship building

Strategies that aren't going well:

• email marketing
• guesting on podcasts

Your marketing plan should play to your strengths and your capacity. While mine plays to my strengths, it doesn't fit in with my capacity. So how do you create consistency in your marketing strategy and see success? Give this episode a listen!

Join my email list

Preorder Fran's Book

Inspiro Tequila by Mara Smith

Lisa's 1973

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Branding is the key to attracting your ideal clients and making your marketing more effective and efficient. But how do you build a resilient brand?

Learn how to build a brand for your small business.

Help your small business grow and scale by building a resilient brand.

Key Takeaways:

• You do not have to outsource branding to an agency in the early days of your business
• Build a brand by identifying:
• Who you are
• What you stand for
• Your Target Audience
• and Your voice
• Use design as a silent ambassador of your brand

There is so much strategy that goes in to building a brand and it's not just for big businesses. Help your business grow and scale by making sure every part of your brand, from your decisions to your culture is aligned and sending the right message.

Today's guest is Kristen Graham Brown. Kristen is the owner and chief creative officer at Hoot Design Company. After working in advertising in Chicago, Kristen started Hoot as a custom paper and design shop.

11 years later, it's a boutique branding agency with 14 employees and a home in a newly renovated building Kristen and her husband purchased at the end of 2020.

Hoot specializes in full scope branding which starts from the inside out, it includes culture and every touchpoint someone has with the brand. They specialize in the hospitality industry where customer service and brand experience are essential to success.

Connect with Kristen

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Every big business started as a small business. If you want to be resilient, you need to focus on your brand early.

Learn why branding is important for small businesses

Create a resilient small business by building your brand

Key Takeaways:

• You can tell your own brand story or you can let others tell it for you
• Having a brand helps your small business survive
• A brand is the heart and spirit of your business
• A brand will attract your target audience
• Branding is not just the designs you use in your advertising
• Having a brand will make your marketing more effective
• Having a brand will make creating your marketing more efficient
• Your brand will guide every decision you make in your business from purchasing to culture to marketing

Today's guest is Kristen Graham Brown. Kristen is the owner and chief creative officer at Hoot Design Company. After working in advertising in Chicago, Kristen started Hoot as a custom paper and design shop.

11 years later, it's a boutique branding agency with 14 employees and a home in a newly renovated building Kristen and her husband purchased at the end of 2020.

Hoot specializes in full scope branding which starts from the inside out, it includes culture and every touchpoint someone has with the brand. They specialize in the hospitality industry where customer service and brand experience are essential to success.

Connect with Kristen

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Hey Start Marketing listeners and welcome to today’s episode where we’re going to do a deep dive into how to use podcast guest spots as a way to promote your brand and business with our returning guest, Elaine Appleton Grant. 

Elaine Appleton Grant runs Podcast Allies, LLC, a training, consulting and podcast production company. She's passionate about teaching solopreneurs and mission-driven leaders how to produce and grow high-quality podcasts. A lifelong journalist, she reported, produced and hosted shows for three different NPR affiliate stations — WBUR (Boston), NHPR (New Hampshire) and CPR (Colorado). Today her work revolves around strategic storytelling: the most purposeful ways individuals and organizations can use well-crafted stories to reach their objectives. She has written and produced audio stories or podcasts for organizations ranging from NPR and Wondery to the University of Colorado, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Learn how to:

• Pitch yourself as a guest
• Find podcasts to be a guest on
• Be a good guest and get the most out of your episode
• What to do if I get nervous
• What to do once your episode goes live

Key Takeaways:

• Create a good one sheet
• Make it easy for the host to say yes to you by providing questions/topic ideas
• Listen to one or two episodes to ensure you're a good fit
• Have a unique perspective to give to their audience

Katlynn's one sheet

Connect with Elaine

Podcast Liftoff: From Creation to Promotion, Get Your Podcast Off the Ground

https://podcastallies.com/podcast-liftoff-overview

Save $50 with discount code TRUSTYOURSELF

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Hey! Start Marketers, don’t forget, this season we’re shaking things up and trying to really live up to our mission to make marketing more accessible and actionable for you. In the spirit of breaking things down, we’re splitting our episodes into two segments. You’ll get to hear from each guest two times. The first, just like today, to hear about the strategic power of their marketing strategy and the second, the following week to hear about the bite-size tactics to implementing the strategy. I’m really pumped for this format because it’s going to keep my shows shorter, but also because it really does make marketing more accessible and actionable for you.

Today’s guest is a fantastic storyteller with a journalist’s mind and a friend of mine from the Total Life Freedom Mastermind, Elaine Appleton Grant. 

Elaine Appleton Grant runs Podcast Allies, LLC, a training and podcast production company. She's passionate about teaching solopreneurs and mission-driven leaders how to launchg and grow high-quality podcasts. A lifelong journalist, she worked for three different NPR affiliate stations, from the east coast to the mountain west. She has written and produced audio stories or podcasts for organizations ranging from NPR and Wondery to the University of Colorado, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Today her work revolves around strategic storytelling: the most purposeful ways to use well-crafted stories to reach your objectives. 

Obviously, I’m a podcaster, so I really believe in the power of podcasts to help tell your story and market your business, but I always think hearing about a powerful marketing strategy from not just myself, but another industry expert lends it more credibility. So, today Elaine and I are going to walk you through why guesting on a podcast is a great marketing strategy for your business. Note, I didn’t say starting a podcast, because that's a whole different ball game (but also one Elaine can help you with!).

Key Takeaways:

• Guesting on podcasts is a free marketing strategy
• Tools to help you streamline the guest booking process
• Why podcasting is an effective marketing strategy for small businesses

Connect with Elaine

Podcast Liftoff: From Creation to Promotion, Get Your Podcast Off the Ground

https://podcastallies.com/podcast-liftoff-overview

Save $50 with discount code TRUSTYOURSELF

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Grow Nebraska Marketing Monday's partnership announcement.

I'm so excited to announce Marketing Mondays presented by Grow Nebraska in partnership with the Start Marketing podcast.

Every Monday beginning February 7th from 12-12:15, I will host an Instagram live Q&A session with marketing tips for small business owners. Follow Grow Nebraska on Instagram.

Anyone can join; you don't have to be local! Grow Nebraska members will receive additional benefits such as monthly newsletters and opportunities to be in the hot seat for my monthly coaching sessions.

Non local listeners can get the newsletter updates by subscribing to my email list and get their chance at the hot seat by joining the Start Marketing Community.

Music: Tuesday, By Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week it's my first hot seat episode! The hot seat is when I offer a small business the opportunity to be on the podcast, go through their biggest branding or marketing challenge and I coach them live on the air.

This week, in the hot seat, is my friend Jeremy Allen of No B.S. Branding. I was surprised that Jeremy asked to be on the show; he's actually helping me work on my graphic identity.

In this episode, we talk through his challenge of being the cobbler with no shoes when it comes to branding and how to create awareness for his new business.

We cover:

• brand strategy
• Pinterest marketing
• Google Business Profiles
• workshops
• niches

Join the Start Marketing community for your chance to be in the hot seat.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Learn how to build a powerful network that helps grow and scale your business.

On to today’s show. I’ve been looking forward to this interview for a while because it’s with a guest that I know well because I belong to his community, Vincent Pugliese. Vincent is, first and foremost, a husband and a father. He and his wife Elizabeth homeschool their three sons in Bredenton, Florida. Vincent is the host of the Total Life Freedom Podcast, a daily, short form show teaching you something new about every day about business and living a life of freedom. He recently launched The Wealth of Connection, a podcast studying the super connectors of the world through deep conversations. Vincent’s new book, The Wealth of Connection will be published in the spring of 2022, and he is the leader and founder of the Total Life Freedom Mastermind, connecting and helping entrepreneurs live a life of time, money and location freedom. 

You can check out what he has going on at totallifefreedom.com and connect with Vincent on Instagram at totallifefreedom1.

Key Takeaways:

• How to build a network to promote your business
• How to use your network to grow and scale your business
• How to approach networking authentically so it doesn't feel like a sales pitch
• How to talk about your business with your network so it feels relevant
• Take an actionable step every day to build your network: use one hour to connect and talk with your network

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Learn how networking can be a powerful marketing strategy for your small business.

On to today’s show. I’ve been looking forward to this interview for a while because it’s with a guest that I know well because I belong to his community, Vincent Pugliese. Vincent is, first and foremost, a husband and a father. He and his wife Elizabeth homeschool their three sons in Bredenton, Florida. Vincent is the host of the Total Life Freedom Podcast, a daily, short form show teaching you something new about every day about business and living a life of freedom. He recently launched The Wealth of Connection, a podcast studying the super connectors of the world through deep conversations. Vincent’s new book, The Wealth of Connection will be published in the spring of 2022, and he is the leader and founder of the Total Life Freedom Mastermind, connecting and helping entrepreneurs live a life of time, money and location freedom. 

You can check out what he has going on at totallifefreedom.com and connect with Vincent on Instagram at totallifefreedom1.

Key Takeaways:

• Why building a network is critical to your success as an entrepreneur
• Why networking is a powerful marketing strategy
• When to start building your network
• The best way to use your network to grow and scale your business

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week I'm talking about how I'm changing my marketing plan for 2022. Instead of trying to build the entire marketing engine, I'm focusing on one strategy each quarter so I can do a deep dive and learn how to be great at each one.

My strategies are all tied to growing this podcast into the top 25% of marketing podcasts. They include:

• Being a guest on podcasts
• Utilizing Pinterest
• Growing my email list

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende at Music.io

Hey Start Marketing listeners, welcome to the final episode of 2021. It's hard to believe that this year is already done and over with. Today, it's just me and as a way to wrap things up and set up next year's season, I wanted to do this solo episode. It's been almost two years since I started my business and this podcast. So i think this is probably long overdue, but I want to review what's been working well when it comes to my marketing strategy and what hasn't. This will become a regular segment for Start Marketing.

So, let's dive in. 

Let's start with something that's had some ups and downs when it comes to marketing: my website. Now, you all know that I'm strong proponent of having a website for your small business. It's where you can tell a more complete brand story and sell your products and services better than when you rely on social media for your business. Plus, you own it, which means it can suddenly up and disappear like a social channel can. 

what went well about my website? I've been able to update my story as my brand and target audience has changed. I feel like it's a really great representation for me and it can house my podcast recaps which helps give me an SEO boost. 

What hasn't worked well for me? it's not so much about what hasn't been working as what I wish I would've put off investing in. Here's some context: when i started my business, I had a target audience identified and doubled down on them. I paid someone to write awesome, SEO optimized content for me. And then a several months later, I changed my target audience. And I hired someone to write brand spanking new copy for me and do a bunch of on-site SEO work. And then, a few months later, I found myself back at my original target audience. I think. Maybe. The thing is, I didn't know what I didn't know. I thought I was being smart about getting ahead of the SEO game; starting early with content and a keyword optimized site. But, what I didn't know was that in your first few years of business, you can (and probably will) change your target audience as you learn what works for you and what doesn't. So it's not so much that this marketing strategy didn't work, it's just that I wish I had waited to invest in SEO text until I was super sure of the direction I was headed. I can easily roll back my website to an earlier version, that has my original text on it, but that would also mean that I spent almost $3k on something I'm not going to use. Ouch. Omg, it hurts to say. My advice when it comes to this marketing strategy is to DIY the text on your site until you're absolutely sure you know your target audience. Give it a couple of years of business to let things settle so you don't get marketing strategy whiplash. And spend unnecessary dollars. 

Also in the bucket of things that didn't go well in the SEO game: signing up for YEXT. this was at the suggestion of someone I worked with early on, who has done great work for me in the past. Even she admitted that in hindsight it wasn't what she would recommend today. Yext, for those who don't know, is a service that will update your search engine listing for every known search engine out there (google included) at once. In theory, for SEO purposes, you're supposed to have the equivalent of Google My Business on every site that offers a directory listing. There's hundreds of them. But, it's expensive (about $600/year) and it's not really necessary. Focusing on Google My Business is a good first place to start. Save yourself the money. That's pretty much my advice when it comes to SEO. Focus on creating good content and learn how to publish it with solid SEO keywords and phrases, but save yourself the dollars and invest in SEO later down the road. You don't need to be rank #1 in google to get...]]>This week, I recap the marketing strategies that worked well and the ones that didn't as I close out 2021.

Hey Start Marketing listeners, welcome to the final episode of 2021. It's hard to believe that this year is already done and over with. Today, it's just me and as a way to wrap things up and set up next year's season, I wanted to do this solo episode. It's been almost two years since I started my business and this podcast. So i think this is probably long overdue, but I want to review what's been working well when it comes to my marketing strategy and what hasn't. This will become a regular segment for Start Marketing.

So, let's dive in. 

Let's start with something that's had some ups and downs when it comes to marketing: my website. Now, you all know that I'm strong proponent of having a website for your small business. It's where you can tell a more complete brand story and sell your products and services better than when you rely on social media for your business. Plus, you own it, which means it can suddenly up and disappear like a social channel can. 

what went well about my website? I've been able to update my story as my brand and target audience has changed. I feel like it's a really great representation for me and it can house my podcast recaps which helps give me an SEO boost. 

What hasn't worked well for me? it's not so much about what hasn't been working as what I wish I would've put off investing in. Here's some context: when i started my business, I had a target audience identified and doubled down on them. I paid someone to write awesome, SEO optimized content for me. And then a several months later, I changed my target audience. And I hired someone to write brand spanking new copy for me and do a bunch of on-site SEO work. And then, a few months later, I found myself back at my original target audience. I think. Maybe. The thing is, I didn't know what I didn't know. I thought I was being smart about getting ahead of the SEO game; starting early with content and a keyword optimized site. But, what I didn't know was that in your first few years of business, you can (and probably will) change your target audience as you learn what works for you and what doesn't. So it's not so much that this marketing strategy didn't work, it's just that I wish I had waited to invest in SEO text until I was super sure of the direction I was headed. I can easily roll back my website to an earlier version, that has my original text on it, but that would also mean that I spent almost $3k on something I'm not going to use. Ouch. Omg, it hurts to say. My advice when it comes to this marketing strategy is to DIY the text on your site until you're absolutely sure you know your target audience. Give it a couple of years of business to let things settle so you don't get marketing strategy whiplash. And spend unnecessary dollars. 

Also in the bucket of things that didn't go well in the SEO game: signing up for YEXT. this was at the suggestion of someone I worked with early on, who has done great work for me in the past. Even she admitted that in hindsight it wasn't what she would recommend today. Yext, for those who don't know, is a service that will update your search engine listing for every known search engine out there (google included) at once. In theory, for SEO purposes, you're supposed to have the equivalent of Google My Business on every site that offers a directory listing. There's hundreds of them. But, it's expensive (about $600/year) and it's not really necessary. Focusing on Google My Business is a good first place to start. Save yourself the money. That's pretty much my advice when it comes to SEO. Focus on creating good content and learn how to publish it with solid SEO keywords and phrases, but save yourself the dollars and invest in SEO later down the road. You don't need to be rank #1 in google to get started. 

Something that's gone well for me has been building my brand. I'm glad that I've spent time focusing on this. Even if parts of it have changed and evolved. Establishing my voice, my mission and the core values of my brand have really helped me stay on course so that regardless of who I'm talking to, my message has been consistent. I want to make marketing accessible and actionable. Do not underestimate the work you can put in to your brand. It will help you nail down your messaging and help you learn what work and what doesn't. I am a huge brand advocate because having one in place really does streamline the marketing process. It's the measuring stick by which you make all the decisions for your business including and especially the marketing ones. Having a brand also gave me clarity for my messaging on social media. Which leads me to something I don't think has gone well for me:

Social media. Oh man. If you're a regular listener, you know I am not a fan of social media. Ultimately, it drains me. I don't mind scrolling through and reading content from other creators, I don't mind using it personally, although I try to limit that because I find it to be unproductive most of the time, so when it comes to my business, I just don't think I've done a great job at establishing a social media strategy. I know I need to do more videos; I even have ideas for videos, but you know what I never do? Create videos. I know. Here's the thing that it comes down to: I spend a lot of time creating podcast content, so when I think about creating social media content, even based on my podcast content, it becomes another thing on the list that starts to overwhelm me. I know I could batch. It just feels like it takes so much energy, so I would give my social media a D. Maybe a C-. I'm consistent and there's good info there thanks to my podcast, but I don't do a good job of incorporating things like video or personal stories that could liven it up. The fact that it has any life at all is thanks to my fantastic VA, Kyla of Stories by Kyla. So shoutout to her for saving social for me. 

One thing I do think has gone well on social media front is my switch away from Buffer to HelloWoofy. Arjun Rai, the founder was a guest a while back and after our conversation, I immediately made the switch and I haven't looked back. It's less expensive overall and offers way more features than Buffer can at a higher price point. There's an affiliate link in the show notes if you're interested in checking it out. 

Something that did go well for me, but was also underutilized is my email marketing. I have a good open rate and a solid click through rate, but I lack consistency there, so it's a little bit of a mixed bag. The same goes for Pinterest. I am a big advocate of using Pinterest for small businesses because the algorithm is friendlier than other social networks and if you use the Tailwind app, it's so incredibly easy, but I also lacked consistency there this year. I think it's because I don't have a great process down to help streamline using it and once I fell behind it fell like climbing a mountain to get back on track. Which is funny, because here I just need to take my own advice and start marketing. Nobody except me is pressuring me to "catch up" on past episodes. I could literally start with the latest one and go from there. Instead, I've been focused on having a complete library that it's been too much. However, when I do post content, I see good engagement on it. This one, I'll call a mixed bag as well. The engagement and reach are good, but the engagement of saving the pin wasn't my original goal (it was email list building), so by that standard, this strategy didn't perform as well for me as I'd liked. 

I'll conclude with two things that have gone really well for me:

This podcast and networking. My podcast numbers have steadily risen over the past year, which is exciting to see. I can see spikes where gusts help promote their episodes and therefore help me get additional exposure and create some brand awareness for me. Podcasting energizes me, sparks my creativity and helps me meet all kinds of new people throughout the process. It also gives me a large library of content to pull from for social media and my emails. So that's a huge win; I'm never struggling to find content or something to talk about. 

Finally, the last thing that's gone really well for me is networking. I'll actually be covering how and why this is a powerful marketing strategy in January, but let me tell you. This was probably my most underrated marketing strategy headed into 2021 and it's become one of the best for me. I am fortunate, with the addition of my PayRecs director role, to not have the pressure to find clients and it's given me the chance to really focus on the things that I enjoy doing in my business. That being said, building a network of people who support me and help me grow as an entrepreneur and podcaster has led me to more clients than anything else. I'm gaining brand authority through networking because it often leads to speaking gigs or presentations and in general, people are getting to know me, my skillset and my passion through casual conversation. So, I'll put this down as the most successful way I've grown over the past year. I have invested a fair amount of money in networking groups and communities, but i feel like I've chosen wisely and they really pay off for me. I don't get a lot of value out of the free communities, although the Girlboss one might be the exception, but most of the others are just kinda exhausting and full of people who want to give opinions or through out a lead magnet just to grow their email list. It actually makes me a little sad to see because I see posts like "I've created the top ten things I did to earn 100k this year, who wants it?" or "I've created the perfect roadmap to a six figure month that I achieved in just one month after being fired from my former job, who wants a copy?" And I see so many people "raise their hands" and give over their email address and it just seems like a vicious cycle of women who've "made it" taking advantage of and using the promise of unicorn marketing to sell their products and services to women who are doubting themselves. And you all know how I feel about unicorn marketing pitches. 

So, to recap, the things that really didn't go well for me:

• Social media
• The amount of money I spent on my website - that should've been saved for another year. 

Things that were a mixed bag:

• Pinterest
• Email marketing

Things that went well:

• actually having a website
• building my brand
• this podcast and
• networking

I think what the stuff that didn't go as well as I had hoped comes down to is: spending money prematurely on the marketing strategy, not being consistent or not having a set strategy before I implemented. It's definitely something that I look at and kinda face palm myself, because I'm all about having a strategic marketing plan and executing against it. But, what I learned is that I probably had way too much on my plate than is really feasible for one marketer to get done and therefore spread myself too thin. what's that saying? when you try to do everything you end up doing nothing? That's kinda how I feel. It's a pretty harsh assessment of my own marketing strategy, to be honest. 

For 2022, I have a new plan that I am super excited about and addresses some of the challenges I've had this year. In fact, that's what I'm going to cover in my very first January episode before you hear from an amazing guest, Vincent Pugliese about how to use networking to your benefit. 

Here's a lesson that I learned repeatedly throughout the year (even though I already knew it, I had the pleasure of eating some humble pie regularly to be reminded of it): when you're marketing, you're playing the long game. There's no silver bullet. So, focus, create a strategy, invest wisely and for pete's sake, stop committing to more than you can handle. 

Alright Start Marketers. I hope you're a little bit inspired by this episode and the very honest reflections it includes. Tune in next week for my reveal about how I'm going to get my marketing strategy on track for 2022 by making some major tweaks and getting out of my comfort zone. 

Until next time!

I’m pumped for todays episode because it covers one of my favorite topics: branding. And you all know how much I enjoy a good brand conversation. Todays guest brings out the marketing nerd in me and makes me feel like I’ve just had a brush with branding celebrity. 

This week's guest is Megan Kent. Megan Kent is one of America’s premier brand strategists, with over three decades of experience coaching brands on how to find and maximize their inherent strengths. She’s held leadership positions at some of the world’s premier ad agencies and shaped brand strategy for some of the world’s most important brands—Clinique, BMW, Coca Cola, the New York Times, Microsoft, and Brand USA. Having witnessed both success as well as failures in the advertising industry, she began to reassess industry practices and seek out more predictable solutions. With the aim of understanding more deeply the consumer decision-making process, Megan spent over a decade immersed in the science of the mind. By combining her real-world experience with the latest findings in cognitive science, she developed a new branding model called Brain Friendly Branding®. She has identified 7 easily deployable “Brain Friendly” behaviors that brands can use to more powerfully connect with deep-seated human instincts, and begin building neural pathways to YES for their brand.

Today Megan is founder and CEO of Megan Kent Branding Group.

Key Takeaways:

• people are naturally inclined to avoid what makes them feel weird
• big brands start as consistent small brands
• telling stories is critical to brand building

Connect with Megan

Buy Megan's Book

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Learn how to fix a sales funnel that isn't working for your small business.

We've talked about building funnels in the past, which is essentially mapping out the journey you want your potential buyers to take and intentionally leading them through a small series of 'yes's" to get them to purchase. But, have you built a funnel only to find you've got kinda ho-hum results? You can see the leads start, but you never see them close? Well, if you're wondering where you're losing your potential customers along the way, but you're not sure how to fix it, then I'm excited for you to meet our guest today, Dan McGaw.

Dan McGaw is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker and the CEO of McGaw.io, an analytics and marketing technology consultancy and SaaS platform, UTM.io.

In addition, Dan also finds time to be a 500 Startups Mentor, and has previously started the first business accelerator in Orlando.

He’s also a thought leader in the MarTech world and CXL instructor on the topic. Having spoken at the leading Marketing conferences and online events, including Traction Conf and Forget The Funnel, his expertise lies in helping businesses extract and interpret the right data to grow their revenue exponentially.

Dan previously served as the Head of Marketing at Kissmetrics and in the past he’s worked as a CMO consultant for a number of high-growth companies, implementing tools, offering support, and analyzing data.

In 2015, Dan was selected to be a United States Ambassador of Entrepreneurship by the United States Department of State, where he had the privilege to advise the government, universities, and private corporations on how to build entrepreneur ecosystems. He even flew out to Mexico to be an entrepreneur ambassador for Tijuana and Mexicali!

Key Takeaways:

• What makes a successful sales funnel
• How to keep your sales funnel simple
• How to identify weak spots in your sales funnel
• How to create a sales funnel that resonates with your target audience
• Why you need to understand your target audience before you build your funnel

Connect with Dan

Music: Tuesday by Sacha Ende, Music.io

How having a target audience streamlines your marketing.

This week's guest is Jeff Solomon. Jeff has a varied startup background as a six-time founder with three exits, most notably: selling his Saas CRM company Velocify in 2017 for $128 million. He co-founded the accelerator Amplify.la in Los Angeles, he teaches high school entrepreneurship and is one of the top advisors on Clarity.fm.

Key Takeaways:

• What is a target audience
• How do you get to know your target audience
• Why customer development is critical to business and marketing success

Connect with Jeff

Website

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Learn how videos can help you reach your target audience.

Professional videographer tips.

This week's guest is Matt Peet. Matt Peet is a Videographer turned Marketer. He got his start shooting weddings 10 years ago where he learned how to shoot and edit video fast. He then took that to the entrepreneur space and has been the videographer at large 4000 person events and small 30 person masterminds in places like Puerto Rico. Some of his clients include John Lee Dumas, Disney, Podcast Movement, Woodhouse Day Spa, and more. He has shot at events with speakers like Dan Kennedy from Magnetic Marketing, Pat Flynn, Tony Robbins, and Mark Cuban.

Key Takeaways:

• How video helps boost your reach
• How video helps you engage with your target audience
• How to make adding video to your content easier
• How to find creative video content ideas
• What you need to film good videos

Connect with Matt:

Website

Facebook

Podcast

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

How to build a brand that resonates with your target audience.

Our guests today are Emily Soccorsy + Justin Foster of Root and River Branding. They are a brand strategy team that guide leaders to master intrinsic branding. Intrinsic brands are known by their consistently evocative language, standard-setting experiences and legendary storytelling. They believe that every great brand is a spiritual experience and starts with a powerful message and have recently co-authored the book called Rooting up, Essays on Modern Branding.

Key Takeaways:

• How to create an authentic brand
• How to build a brand that resonates with your target audience
• How to build an ethical brand

Connect with Root + River

Website

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Using Google My Business to help your business rank in Google searches.

This week's guest is Amanda Tento. Amanda owns TDM Marketing and is the determined mom. When she was three months pregnant she was determined not to go back to her 9-7 managing a credit union branch. She started The Determined Mom Digital Marketing Agency to help small business owners grow their business and reach more customers. I have 13 years of business management experience and I use it daily for my clients and my own business!

The Determined Mom offers SEO, WordPress Design, Social Media Management, Ads Management, Blog Writing, SEO and Marketing Coaching and more! We serve Mom Business Owners to help them grow and prosper while spending more time with their kids!

Key Takeaways:

• Why everyone should claim the Google listing
• How to update your Google My Business listing
• How to use Google my Business to help find new customers
• How to use Google my Business as an SEO tool
• How to maintain your listing

Connect with Amanda:

Website

Facebook

LinkedIn

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Learn how to pick a niche.

Why small businesses need to know their target audience.

This week's guest is Christiane Mohr. Christiane has a masters in marketing and helps health & personal development coaches to build an ethically rooted & profitable business by defining their niche and their stand-out offer that they love to talk about (and fearlessly). 

Key Takeaways:

• Why having a niche is important
• Why having a niche can help you make more money
• How to identify your target audience
• How to connect with your target audience

Connect with Christiane:

website

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

How to create a personal and professional brand

This week's guest is Tracy Borreson. Tracy is a corporate marketing dropout, personal brand advocate and a believer that bringing your personal brand to work is best for you and your business.

Key Takeaways:

• How your personal brand shapes your professional brand
• How to define your personal brand
• What authenticity looks like in your work

Connect with Tracy

Website

LinkedIn

Instagram

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Market to your target audience in a way that leads them to purchase.

This week's guest is Naira Perez, owner of Springhill Digital. She's a digital marketing and paid media enthusiast who works with small businesses to help them grow their digital footprint.

Key Takeaways:

• Marketing communication as a two way street
• What is digital marketing
• How to use digital marketing for small businesses

Connect with Naira

Website

LinkedIn

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Learn how to build a network and create a community.

Anjali is an innovative and enthusiastic Marketing professional with over 7 years of work experience broadly ranging from Corporate firms to Marketing agencies to Startups. Her expertise and skills lie in Digital Marketing, Strategy & Planning, Brand & Account Management, Social Media Marketing and Blogging. She has executed strategic marketing initiatives and solved brand issues creatively for several projects under her belt.

Anjali is also passionate about empowering Immigrants living in the States. She writes helpful articles on life in the US at theanjalinair.com where she shares resources for Immigrant women to establish a career and navigate their new life in the States.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn how to find your target audience
• Learn how to a adapt your marketing strategy to your target audience
• Learn how to use your network to create a community

Connect with Anjali

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Our guest is Caroline Addington. Caroline is a scientist who discovered she had a real gift for organic marketing, building community and creating a compelling vibe on Instagram. When her friends who were coaches started asking her how she was doing it, her business was born. She’s deeply in love with helping heart-centered online coaches finally figure out how to attract their ideal clients on Instagram. 

Key Takeaways:

• How to create an authentic Instagram and social media vibe
• How to be authentic and vulnerable on social media
• How to build relationships without spending all day in someone's DMs
• Alternatives to cold DM's to make sales
• How to approach social media with intentionality

Connect with Caroline

Website

Instagram

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week I chat with Carrie Carr. Carrie helps her clients write engaging emails that drive action. Whether you're launching a course, launching a new product or warming up a cold audience, Carrie can help.

Key takeaways from today's discussion:

• Messaging should drive action
• How to get people to open your emails
• Crafting intriguing subject lines
• What you should say to drive sales

Connect with Carrie

Website

Facebook

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week's guest is Linda Barutha. A former IT professional who uses her organization skills to help small business owners automate their business and marketing.

Key Takeaways:

• why automating your business will help you grow faster
• the difference between a hobby and a business
• how to work in your business, not just on your business
• how to repurpose content

Connect with Linda:

Website

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

On this week's episode, I talk about "un-marketing" with guest Stephanie Benedetto. Stephanie started her business by accident and came from a desire she had to go deeper as an entrepreneur and get people to take action AND see results.

She started down this journey as a transformative coach and helps her clients unleash their unique, authentic, powerful messages and attract clients with what she calls “un-marketing”.

Key Takeaways:

• How to create authentic messaging that sells
• How to connect with your ideal client or customer
• How to create unique messaging that helps attract your ideal customer
• How to stop imitating competitors and be unique
• How to be your most authentic self in your business

Connect with Stephanie:

website

Facebook

Music: Tuesday By Sascha Ende, Music.io

On this week's episode, I talk with Linsday Johnson.

Lindsay grew up in an entrepreneurial family, so it wasn’t any surprise when they decided to become an entrepreneur too. After years of repeating the same cycle of burnout, they decided to figure out how to build a profitable business by working less and playing more. 

They were determined to find a profitable way to run a business that was lfun, authentic to their vision and values and most importantly was fun. They spent the past 20 years learning all things entrepreneurship and business development and has distilled what actually works into simple strategies and formulas for new entrepreneurs to follow. And today they’re here with all the details.

Key Takeaways:

• using entrepreneurship to build the life you love
• how to get to know your clients and make more sales
• why marketing plans are not a "one size fits all" solution

Connect with Lindsay

Website

TikTok

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week's guest is Heather Thatcher. She shows lifestyle & wellness entrepreneurs what to post to social media and give away for free to convert their audience into customers so they can have a bigger impact and make more money. 

Rather than give you high-level theory and just tell you to “be consistent” and “authentic”, she shares a scientific model to help you know what kind of content needs to be shown to your customer at each stage of their buying journey so that you create content with type-a strategy that consistently makes you more money.

Key Takeaways:

• Clarify Your Message
• Give away the right content for free
• Streamline your content creation
• Systemize your launch

Get the Solopreneur Survival Guide

Music: Tuesday By Sascha Ende, Music.io

On this week's episode, our guest is Jena Bagley.

As the Advocate Manager for AWeber, a leading email service provider and the very first autoresponder, Jena works closely with content creators, podcasters, social media strategists & enthusiasts, coaches, entrepreneurs marketers and more.  

Through email marketing you can connect with your audience and drive them back to your podcast, website, blog or social platforms over and over again, keeping you top of mind. Want to help others grow their business and stay connected with their audiences? Jena helps with strategies on how to connect other entrepreneurs and small businesses to our powerfully-simple email solution through support, education and promotional advice.  

Having worked in several different industries over her career including restaurant, bridal, new construction, real estate, recruiting, direct sales and now Software as a service, Jena has acquired a wealth of knowledge about sales, marketing and what it means to build a relationship with your target audience. 

Key Takeaways:

How to successfully use email marketing

How to be authentic through email marketing

How to craft clear messages through email marketing

Connect with Jena.

Music: Tuesday By Sascha Ende, Music.io

I'll be changing the name from Startup Marketing to Start Marketing as well as creating a Patreon platform and membership community.

Be on the lookout for the name change and new artwork in the near future.

This week's guest is Arjun Rai, founder of HelloWoofy. HelloWoofy is on a mission to support small businesses and is a social media tool that allows you to use AI to create, curate and schedule content anywhere.

Arjun is a New York City based entrepreneur originally from West Windsor, New Jersey (aka Princeton Junction). Since high school, Arjun has been networking with some of the most well known entrepreneurs and even worked on a few projects and startups of his own.

Upon graduation, Arjun pursued his career opportunities and came to New York City where he enrolled at the New York Institute of Technology in 2011 with scholarships and grants. Following a few weeks into college, Arjun launched his second startup, fuelbrite.com, a social media agency focused on small businesses and startups, and a student-focused organization, TheBizDen.

After interning at a PR and ad agency in the summer of 2012, Arjun quickly saw the need for yet another startup within the tech space and raised a seed investment round to build it out. That startup became Wrkbench.io which was a virtual collaboration space designed for creative and visual people (we liked to say we make visual conversations).

After spending a few years and learning the ins and outs of running a venture backed startup, Rai set out to modernize another industry related to his former passion of social media. The startup would be known as HelloWoofy.com which is a social media management platform driven by artificial intelligence to help small to medium sized businesses with digital marketing.

Arjun currently lives in New York City. Arjun went to the NYIT School of Management (majoring in Small Business and Entrepreneurship). He also holds several notable awards and has been previously or is currently a member of the Phi Eta Sigma Honor Society and Golden Key International Honour Society. Professionally, Arjun has also been a member of The One Club, The Art Directors Club, The Advertising Club of NY, Social Media Marketing Society, IVY Connect Club etc.

Featured on: Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes, Inc Magazine, MarTech Today, Search Engine Land, NASDAQ, Small Business Trends and more.

Key Takeaways:

• The future of social media
• How to build a brand in startup mode
• How to fundraise capital
• How to build community

Sign up for HelloWoofy. Connect with Arjun.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week's guest is Peter Kelly of Peter Kelly Media.

Peter has over 15 years making corporate videos as well as working the Canadian television industry. He’s worked for companies like Glassbox Television and Blueant Media and on projects like “Ink: Alter Egos Exposed” and the BiteTv sitcom Guidance. 

Through all of this experience he’s learned how to tell a story so it resonates with the viewer and today he’s going to break down all of that experience into actionable insights for you to use video to help grow and scale your business. It’s something I don’t do enough of myself, so I’m super excited to get inspired and use more video!

Key Takeaways:

• Social media channels recognize video content as premium content
• Your videos can stink and still make a good impact
• Potential buyers relate to video better
• You can create authentic videos without being a professional

Connect with Peter

Website

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

On this week’s episode, I chat with writer and content creator Stacie Kiselman about vulnerability and sharing your unique story in order to build your brand and help others at the same time.

Stacie thrives on being an advocate for mental health and for people with visible and invisible illnesses. She talks about her own story and struggles and how she used those things to launch her forward.

Key Takeaways:

• How to be vulnerable when you tell your story
• How to process your experiences to better tell your story
• Why part of your story is about advocating for mental health and inclusion
• Moving forward and learning from trauma

Connect with Stacie

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Today's guest is Kristi Porter. Kristi helps nonprofits and social enterprises get noticed and grow through effective marketing and communications. She also teach solopreneurs and small businesses how to give back with their business.

Essentially, she makes cause-focused organizations like yours look and sound more professional so you can build a larger audience, increase sales or donations, and do more good. 

Key Takeaways:

• How to have a big social impact as a small business
• How to evaluate social marketing opportunities
• How to talk about the causes you support without sounding self-serving

Connect with Kristi:

Website

Facebook

LinkedIn

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

As the founder and CEO of her boutique business consulting company Bootstrap Dreams, LLC, TaJuanna applies 15+ years of small business and state government experience to teaching “The D.O.N.E. Formula™”, her proprietary strategy. Through this formula, TaJuanna proves that even the most lofty business endeavors can bypass overwhelm using a flexible structure, processes, and systems. 

TaJuanna has received over 9xs awards for leadership, social impact, implementation, contribution and exemplary service and carries the credential of certified Project Management Professional (PMP®). 

Driven by resilience and relentlessly speaking from the gift of encouragement, TaJuanna finds fulfillment in faith, exploring new things, journeying through motherhood and effective co-parenting. Doing life in community with others inspires TaJuanna to share messages of hope that are prompted from life’s messes, and is on an impassioned mission to turn all of her former sufferings into service.

Key Takeaways:

• How to put strategy to your vision
• the D.O.N.E method to executing your vision
• Thinking through "what if" scenarios
• Finding the right path to success
• Finding the small wins

Connect with Tajuanna:

Website

Instagram

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

In this week's episode, learn how to prioritize your health while building your business.

Nika is a Functional Nutrition and Lifestyle Practitioner, Conscious Living Advocate, and Founder and CEO of Health + Hustle, LLC and the Avapothecary.

She’s dedicated to helping people heal their bodies through nutritional, behavioral, and conscious living strategies by guiding them through the process of designing a personalized lifestyle and developing a skill-set that leads to optimal health, allowing them to thrive in their daily hustle. 

She’s on a mission to transform the quality of life for people around the world, by providing tools, resources, and education on the importance and simplicity of diet and lifestyle modification. 

How you take care of yourself directly impacts your business, so let’s dive in and learn about better ways to take care of ourselves without approaching burnout. 

Connect with Nika:

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Stacey is the founder and facilitator of Engage the Room and the host of the podcast “Shed the Formality. She makes speaking, selling, small talk, networking - whatever face-to-face interactions feel awkward - feel more natural (& be more fun and engaging). She believes human connection is impossible when you are acting like a robot. Boring, bland and basic are default settings- but they aren’t the only settings. With the right setting, you can drop learned behavior that never felt natural in the first place, step out of the conventional bubble and engage the room with who you really are.

Why is this so interesting? Because nobody told me when I started my business, that networking was going to be my number one marketing strategy. And it’s intimidating. But thanks to Stacey’s approach, it feels so much more natural. And, if you’re anything like me, understanding how to make networking feel less awkward so you can grow and scale your business, is much-needed knowledge. So let’s dive in. 

Key Takeaways:

• How to be engaging at networking
• How to be effective at networking even as an introvert
• Reframing how you think of networking
• How to use networking to grow your business
• Questions that go beyond small talk
• How to create meaningful connections

Connect with Stacey:

Website

Instagram

LinkedIn

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Today is an episode that I’m interested to tackle because it’s about something I honestly have no desire to do; blogging. Yep. Lots of you love it, I know the value, but it’s not something I’ve felt like I can tackle. So, I’m excited to bring you this conversation about how to start a blog and build it authentically in a manageable way with our guest, Samatha Laycock. 

Samantha started blogging in 2014 as a way to share her story. It was the only way she knew how to heal from my past. 

​Over a year, she truly fell in love with who she was and began to notice the impact that she was having on those around me.

​She started blogging as a self-care/mental health blogger and has grown throughout those years. 

​Whether you want to start a blog to share your story, grow your business, or build a business, she is here to help you.

Key Takeaways:

• How to start a blog
• How to plan your blog
• How to identify your target audience (and write authentically for them)

Connect with Samatha

Website

Instagram

Pinterest

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Today we’re chatting with Aura McKay and doing a deep dive in to some great foundational marketing tips and tricks and how to connect with your audience as well as how to price your services as a creative entrepreneur.

Aura is an enthusiastic, get right to the heart of the matter coach and founder of Business of Creativity helping small business owners figure out how to make more money, work less hours, and create the lifestyle and impact they want.

She loves working with passionate, creative service-based freelancers, consultants, and entrepreneurs who are feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or plateaued trying to build their thriving and predictable business.

Key Takeaways:

• When to invest in courses
• How to price yourself confidently
• How to create unique and authentic marketing strategies
• How to find the best clients

On this week's episode, I do a deep dive into public relations and how it can help small businesses and startups with my guest, Lynette Pettinichi of Mint & Honey Co.

Lynette Pettinicchi is the owner and powerhouse behind the boutique public relations and digital marketing firm, Mint & Honey, Co.

In her 10 years of experience in the consumer lifestyle industry, she has executed PR and digital marketing strategies for global, national, regional, and local clients, including countless product and service launches, and an abundance of collaborations and partnerships.

 A forward-thinker who uses her creativity to deliver quality campaigns even when there’s limited resources and budget, Lynette is not afraid to take risks or go against the grain to ensure success for clients.

 With science and fitness at the core of her personal and professional brand, being immersed in the health, wellness, food/bev and fitness industries allows her to leverage her knowledge to help clients gain the most awareness, visibility, and ROI, growing varying aspects of their businesses.

 Mint & Honey Co. is a full-service public relations and digital marketing agency that focuses on creating fresh, new strategies for start-ups and small businesses that produce results that stick, have staying power and continue to pay off over time. 

Key Takeaways:

• What is PR?
• How can it help small businesses and startups?
• How to get started using PR
• Crafting PR pitches
• Working with influencers

Connect with Lynette:

Instagram

Website

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Hey Startup Marketing listeners! I’ve had so many changes the past two months, that I decided to do a bonus episode. Today it’s just me and this episode has been percolating in my heart and mind for a long time. It’s my personal story and I hope that I’m able to capture and highlight all the reasons why I believe this is the start of a very important conversation that I can help lead.

I’m going to start with the most exciting part about all of these changes and then kinda walk you through my rationale for them and the lessons I’ve learned over the past year and a half that led me to make my choice. 

I recently started a position as the director of marketing for a startup called PayRecs where we offer an online app to help automate and simplify international payments for financial institutions. For the past year I’ve been trying as hard as possible to NOT be a financial marketer, but it seems I just can’t escape it! I guess when you’re good at something you should lean into it? IDK, more on that thought later. 

So, what enticed me enough to take a full time position when I already have my own business?

There were a lot of things that went into this decision:

• The economic impact of covid on my family
• My desire to be a part of an awesome project
• My ability to focus more on the parts of my business I love rather than prospecting
• So much more

I hope my story shows you that an entrepreneurial journey looks different for everyone.

Sources for the statistics I cite:

Pew Research Study

How Not to Hate Your Husband - the phenomenon of why men's responsibilities in the household haven't increased while women's responsibilities outside it have

Labor statistics

Find me on social

LinkedIn

Facebook

Pinterest

Instagram

Email me: katlynn@getauthenticbranding.com

In this week's episode, I talk to Lynn Power about building a brand as a startup and how to do marketing well in the early days of business.

Lynn Power is a 30 year advertising executive (formerly CEO of J. Walter Thompson NY). Throughout her career, she has worked on some of the world's most iconic brands, including American Express, Clinique, Hershey's Campari and L'Oreal. Lynn met her Co-Founder, James Hammett in 2018 and they launched MASAMI, clean premium haircare in February 2020. Lynn loves helping women find their voices, disrupting the status quo and building high performing teams.

Key Takeaways:

• Where to focus as a startup
• How much to budget for marketing
• How to conduct market research
• How to create exceptional offline brand experiences
• Developing partnerships for growth

Connect with Lynn

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

On this week's episode, we discuss how to identify you target audience, pivot your business and gain clarify as a highly sensitive entrepreneur with Create Coaching's Stacey Hagen.

Stacey Hagen is business coach and brand strategist at Create Coaching & Consulting, where she works with new business owners who want to grow their business and make an impact. She works with clients to build their brand while being themselves, so they can serve more of their dream clients and make a living doing what they love.

Key Takeaways:

• How to define your brand
• How to put your brand out there confidently
• How to clarify your message
• How to identify your target audience
• How to built and adapt a business plan

Connect with Stacey

Facebook

Instagram

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week's guest is Sharon Guitierrez from Compliments of Sharon. Sharon Gutierrez is a force of nature! An International motivational speaker, marketing coach, best selling author and now tech-founder, her speciality is making things happen… fast! She built her first website at 14, built and ran a marketing agency for 10 years, and continues to run social ads for her own business as well as coach others, she knows small businesses! She has built her business through attraction marketing, which is creating valuable content for her target audience. 

Sharon is a powerhouse who offers us so much including:

• How to build a business
• How to know when to change your business plan
• How to reach your target audience
• How to price your offers
• How to master your mindset

And much more.

Connect with Sharon:

Website

Facebook

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

On this week's episode, guest Clinton Young, teaches us how to become a world class speaker, which isn't limited to keynote speeches and Ted Talks.

Clinton is a Globally Renowned Speaker and Mentor specializing in helping growth-seekers overcome failure, fear, and doubt. His work enables the courage and confidence to unlock your God given potential.

As an Award Winning International Keynote Speaker, Clinton has been recognized by Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global as a “Top 12 Speaker to Inspire You”. He has recently spoken to over 50,000 people across North America and Europe.

An experience of failure in 2008 shattered his confidence but awakened his soul. It set him on a spiritual path that led him to his purpose of “Re-Igniting the Human Spirit”. With a vision of causing a global tipping point in possibility consciousness by 2030, Clinton is on a mission to empower and equip an Army of 1,000 Purpose Driven Entrepreneurs and Influencers to grow their Impact, Influence, and Income by becoming World Class Speakers!

Key Takeaways:

• How to use speaking as a marketing strategy
• Practice makes perfect when it comes to public speaking
• Record and watch your "game tape" to improve your speaking abilities
• Work with a coach who can teach you strategies for overcoming your fears
• Shift your mindset to believe you're adding value to your audience to overcome your stage fright

Connect with Clinton

Website

Instagram

Facebook

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

In this week's episode, I speak with Jenny Ambrose from Puree Fatastico.

Jenny Ambrose is an award winning designer running an award winning design science & strategy company, Purée Fantastico. 

Having worked with large Fortune 500 brands like Old Navy, HSN, POPSUGAR, ELLE, American Greetings, Alaskan Airlines, 3M, Charles Schwab, Walgreens, Reuters, and thousands more across the last 14 years, Jenny understands the vast needs across the widest number of moving parts. And as for results? She’s taken large Fortune 500 businesses from 5M to 500M in revenue, boosted an art school’s attendance from 33%-77% and increased her small business client’s inquiries from 2x-15x. 

Part scientist, part artist, all powerhouse, Jenny knows how to sync with her client’s deepest voice and concerns and communicate the solutions as if they’d always been present (because they are!). 

She is currently launching an 12 year strong personal research project: an interactive platform exploring critical thinking, design messaging, and emotional intelligence using film as a lens. It’s a blend of anthropology, design, philosophy, geometry, and film making— and there’s never been anything like it before. 

She is also an adjunct faculty member at her alma mater, Ringling College of Art and Design teaching budding artistic geniuses design and typography, emotional cultivation, self esteem, and the much needed ‘inner knowing’. 

Whether it’s creative direction, design, illustration, copywriting, strategic building, content creation or thorough research and analysis, it can be trusted that Jenny can handle it with grace, tireless expertise, and unstoppable enthusiasm.

When I say Jenny’s website and ready “taking your business from mundane to mundaaaang” I knew I was in for a treat. 

Key Takeaways:

• How to decide what your brand should look like
• Understanding the strategy behind designing a brand
• How to update your brand

Connect with Jenny

Website

Instagram

Facebook

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

On this week's episode, I interview Gina Talarico.

Gina started working online in August 2018 and went full time in April 2019. She helps online business owners gain confidence promoting their business on social media. She started her first “big girl job” in banking and after a year of feeling completely burnt out, decided she could not continue working in a job that she felt stuck in for the next 35 years. She began her business as a virtual assistant and learned that social media was her zone of genius. Recognizing there was a gap in social media marketing, especially with promotion and position of businesses online without looking desperate and spammy, she launched her own business helping other ambitious entrepreneurs leverage social media as FREE advertising tools for their businesses. 

Key Takeaways:

• How to show up on social media authentically
• How to manage your social media without feeling overwhelmed
• How to humanize yourself on your business accounts

Connect with Gina

Website

Instagram

Facebook

On this week's episode, we take a deep dive in to using funnels to generate more leads and sales with Rebel Funnel's Keely Stawicki.

Keely is a master marketer who works to empower sex, intimacy and mindset coaches (All things spiritual and taboo) through strategic marketing strategy, well designed funnels and Facebook ads so they can generate leads and sales in their sleep without wasting time and money on strategies that don’t work. 

Her unique life experiences and interests give her a unique insight into the world of kink and spirituality which allows her to help coaches of all things spiritual and taboo to create massive momentum in their businesses. 

A self-proclaimed marketing nerd, Keely graduated from William Woods University in 2011 with a Bachelor Degree in sales and marketing. October 2020 she graduated from Funnel Gorgeous Society and became one of their first 10 certified master marketers. Additionally she is a One Funnel Away Alumni, a Bosscon 2019 and FHL2020 attendee. 

Over the last decade, she has successfully started and grown two businesses to over 6-figures in revenue, through digital marketing strategies. 

Key Takeaways:

• Defining a funnel
• How to create a strategy for your funnel

Connect with Keely:

Website

Instagram

Facebook

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Kathryn is an award-winning marketing and communications expert, published author, and messaging strategist and conversion copywriter for online entrepreneurs. She has a bachelor's degree in marketing, and master degree in communications with over 15 years of public relations, branding, and copywriting experience. She's the CEO at Creatively Owned, and the founder of her signature program the Messaging that Sells Accelerator. She's passionate about helping online entrepreneurs master their messaging so that they can stand out online, and create the impact and income they desire.

Key Takeaways:

• How to master your messaging
• Focusing on the benefits of your services
• How to become a better writer

Connect with Kathryn

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Mike Iamele is a Brand Strategist + Life Purpose Expert.

With his proprietary Sacred Branding® system, he’s helped hundreds of people to connect the dots between their lived experiences to find the common threads that explain their subconscious motivations, unique genius, and life purpose. 

People use this work for all kinds of things — from getting media coverage and building a business, to exploring identity and sexuality, to finding their artistic voice, to even re-discovering themselves after a life-altering event, like divorce or retirement. 

Mike’s also the author of Enough Already: Create Success on Your Own Terms (Conari Press 2015). He’s shared his provocative and vulnerable take on life in dozens of magazines, podcasts, and online publications, including a personal interview with NPR about his viral story on rethinking sexuality in his first same-sex relationship. 

Prior to Sacred Branding®, at only 22 years old, Mike co-founded Torch Communications, a boutique public relations firm, specializing in healthcare and disruptive technology. He currently lives in Somerville, MA, with his husband and two adorable dogs.

Mike takes me through a speed version of his Sacred Branding and we map my sensititivies. I was so nervous, but honestly, it was a ton of fun. 

Key Takeaways:

• PR isn't for everyone but great messaging is
• What are your sensitivities and how can you use them to craft powerful messaging?
• How to replicate your bullseye moments with your clients
• Using your lived experiences to drive authentic messaging
• How to use your vulnerabilities to your advantage in business

Connect with Mike:

Website

Instagram

Facebook

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Reggie Holmes is Owner and Creative Director of Enthuse Creative. A lifelong creative thinker, Reggie was doing graphic design before he knew there was such a thing.

I am “a thinking man’s designer” who partners with diverse clients to provide a range of creative services that advance their business or organization goals. I love to engage with people and problems, and I embrace opportunities to develop creative solutions to help others meet their goals.

Key Takeaways:

• You are in the people business, not the pixel business
• The science and strategy behind great brand design
• Why working with a designer is the best option when building a brand
• The difference between building a logo and building a brand
• Connecting your brand to authenticity

Connect with Reggie:

Website

Instagram

LinkedIn

Facebook

Music: Tuesday By Sascha Ende, Music.io

Learn how entrepreneurs can manage stress and anxiety.

This week's guest is Dr. Cristy Lopez.

Dr. Cristy Lopez is a psychologist, high performance coach, and founder of The Doubtless Woman. For the past 20+ years Dr. Lopez has been helping highly stressed professionals eliminate doubt and gain confidence so they can reach higher levels of performance. 

What sets her apart from traditional therapists and coaches is her unique action-oriented programs. You will not just sit on a couch passively chit chatting, going over and over the same woes or issues. You also will not need years of therapy or medication. Instead, she will guide you through a proven, focused, action-oriented program that use the latest neuroscience to target the skills, strategies, and practices you need to break through barriers and limitations, eliminate unhealthy ineffective patterns, and finally develop the more successful and healthy life you deserve with less stress and overwhelm.

Dr. Lopez has appeared on the Dr. Phil show and serves as an aftercare psychologist for guests on the show. Similarly, she served as an aftercare psychologist for Dr. Drew’s Lifechangers. Dr. Lopez also was featured on the reality TV series Downsized and The List. She is a cited and guest expert for media such as Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes, and Authority Magazine, as well as various podcasts.

Key Takeaways:

• Immediate steps to take to manage stress and anxiety
• How to identify stress and anxiety
• How to move past stress and anxiety to have a successful business

Connect with Dr. Cristy

Website

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

YouTube

Welcome to Startup Marketing! Today’s conversation is about branding photography, which I don’t think people give enough credit to. Today’s guest, Adrienne, walks us through the importance of brand photography and why it’s a solid investment for your business. I think you’ll find a lot of good tips in this episode if you’re not sure about whether investing in professional brand photographs is right for you.

Adrienne Duracinski, an Omaha Nebraska based portrait and personal branding photographer for women entrepreneurs.  She started Adrienne Kay Photography over 11 years ago, long before being a wife and mother of 2 littles.  She has photographed many children, families, and weddings over the years and most recently she has been growing her personal branding business.  She specializes in working with women and mom entrepreneurs who want to feel more confident and less overwhelmed in their business letting customers see the real person behind their brand.

Key Takeaways:

• Why you should work with a brand photographer
• How brand photography can help you grow and scale your business
• How to maximize a brand photoshoot session
• How to pick the right photographer 
• Who should do brand photography for their business
• When to invest in brand photography

Connect with Adrienne: website

Instagram

Pinterest

Facebook

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Today’s guest is Vince Warnock. Vince is an award winning business and marketing strategiest, coach and author of Chasing the Insights. 

An ex-radio announcer with over 20 years in marketing, Vince has founded multiple companies including the Chasing the Insights Academy where he empowers entreprenerus and business owners to grow the business they have always dreamed of. So, without further ado, let’s dive in.

In today's episode we talk about:

• Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
• How to chase the insights and not the wins in marketing
• How to meet your customers where they're at in their buying journey
• How to address the challenges and problems you're trying to solve for your clients/customers

Connect with Vince:

https://www.instagram.com/chasingtheinsights/

Website

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Running a successful Kickstarter Campaign

Ginger Baerg is a wife, mother and high school math teacher. God called Giner and her husband, Dustin to grow their family by fostering and adopting. Over the past seven years, the Baerg family has fostered six kids and have adopted two, becoming a family of seven!

Now, Ginger’s working on promoting her book, My Patchwork Family. Inspired by her family’s journey of fostering and adopting and she’s doing it all in addition to teaching! Ginger has an inspiring story and has a lot to share about Kickstarter campaigns and self publishing. I honestly did not know much about either of these things, so I learned just as much as I think you will today.

Key Takeaways from today's episode:

• How to set up a Kickstarter campaign
• How to structure the tiers of your campaign to maximize your fundraising
• How to reach more than just your friends and family with your campaign
• Options for self publishing
• The process of self publishing

Buy the book

Ginger's Instagram

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

This week I talk to Chyanne from Don't Be Chy Photography.

Chyanne is The founder of Don’t Be Chy Photography, where she specializes in shooting destination weddings with her husband Daryl. They help couples create lasting memories while taking the stress away.Don’t Be Chy has expanded over the years to include a team of wedding photographers, other types of photography sessions, business mentoring and even photography workshops. One of their newest divisions is the Don’t Be Chy Boutique, a space for all things creative. They have a hair salon, massage therapist, lash tech, photography studio and a retail space where they house mostly local artisans. Chyanne’s photography career started as a hobby with a gentle nudge from her husband and grew into so much more in just 6 short years. She could never have told you that they’d would be where they are today 5 years ago. She is a hairstylist by trade with an extensive back ground in not only salon management but retail as well. Her and Darryl have only been married 5 short years, but seemto have got so much done in that time. Chyanne lives on a farm in rural northern Alberta, with two beautiful daughters and a lot of animals where she strives to show the girls what a balanced life can look like as entrepreneurs. She also loves sharing their tips and tricks on their podcast to help others.

Key Takeaways from the episode:

• How to ask for referrals
• How to use those referrals to build your business and make money
• How to showcase your referrals
• Why referral marketing is easy for new businesses
• How to build an experience that will make your clients happy and excited to give you a referral both on and offline

Connect with Chyanne:

https://www.dontbechy.com

https://www.instagram.com/dontbechyboutique/

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

After 10 years working in Sales and Client Relationship Management in the Investment Management industry, Aggie witnessed a growing trend for clients to search and research for what they needed online. Her increased involvement in digital marketing paired with her love of eComm growth podcasts led to a change of career direction. Aggie went on to gain a Post-Graduate Diploma in Digital Marketing as well as Advanced Certifications in Social Media Strategy and Facebook Advertising.

Since qualifying, Aggie has managed online ad campaigns across the financial, FMCG and eCommerce sectors. Now even digital marketing agencies come to her for their marketing support. 

Aggie hosts regular workshops on how to run FB Ads as a Small Business Owner and works with small businesses to maximise the return on their investment when advertising online either through FB Ads consultancy or full Ads management.

In this episode you will learn:

• What you need to have in place before ever running social ads
• How to create a strategic paid ads marketing plan
• The best budget for running social media ads
• How to get the best ROI out of your ads

Connect with Aggie:

https://www.instagram.com/whitebeedigital

https://whitebeedigital.com

Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Learn how to evolve and change your small business.

I interview Mandy Kubicek. As a Certified Life Coach, Mandy Kubicek helps high-achieving women who want to love their work and are tired of feeling unsure. Before training with Martha Beck (aka Oprah’s life coach), Mandy spent twelve years overachieving in the software industry. She has an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis, a BS from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Raikes School, and is a lifelong learner. 

Known for her insightful questions and giant salads, Mandy lives in downtown Omaha, Nebraska, with her husband and boxer-coonhound. If you want to love your work life, visit www.coachkubicek.com for free digital resources.

Key Takeaways from this episode are:

• Avoiding the Shame Spiral in business
• How to use your feelings to create an authentic brand
• Evolving in your business and your niche
• Defining success for yourself

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Today's episode features Erica Cochran of AuroActive and EricaOnBrand. After 7 years building a career for herself in the corporate marketing world, running marketing departments and focusing on growth, expansion, social media & branding, Erica Cochran went off on her own this past year and launched AURORActive. 

Auroractive is a eco-friendly activewear line on a mission to give back to the community with every purchase. Realizing that an active lifestyle goes further than just hours logged in the gym, Auroractive sets itself apart as a brand dedicated to also being very active in your community. 

Erica is a Mom & wife and wears the badge “Momprenuer” proudly as she tries to juggle it all day to day. 

In today's conversation we cover everything about starting a business, fake marketing tactics that only serve to make other people feel inferior and building a brand from the ground up.

Follow Erica at:

https://www.instagram.com/ericaonbrand/

https://www.instagram.com/auroractive_/

https://auroractive.com

In this episode, I interview Angie Colee. Angie Colee is a heavily tattooed, colorful (in language and in skin coverings) rocker-turned-marketer with a specialty in direct response marketing and copywriting. In the last decade Angie's work has made over $50 million in sales. She’s worked with and written for some pretty big businesses and names – including Lowe’s, Masterclass, Kevin Rogers (founder of Copy Chief), and Jeff Walker (creator of Product Launch Formula). She’s also the author of the forthcoming book, Permission to Kick Ass, which focuses on showing creative freelancers how to hit the ground running with their businesses, instead of getting stuck in a soul-sucking routine.

You'll learn actionable tips and tricks for writing about your business that help you be authentic and from sounding like a used car salesman.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Connect with Angie: https://angiecolee.com/permission-to-kick-ass-granted/

This week's guest is Dr. Micaela Herndon. Dr. Micaela Herndon is a business and brand strategist who helps entrepreneurs monetize their influence and brand authority with magnetic video visibility by simply being themselves. After spending nearly a decade working in business and educational development for multimillion-dollar institutions and startups, Micaela knows how authenticity and expertise drive conversion, 5-figure launches, and sold-out events—and it’s not following the social media algorithm. It’s about connecting with clients on a human level and building rapport that speaks to the transformation clients desire to see in their lives. 

In this conversation, Micaela speaks with me about how to create a sustainable business presence on social media that feels authentic and how to identify and create you own path so you're not falling in to the trap of "unicorn success".

We talk about normalizing the journey of an entrepreneur and why it's important to carve out your own space where you can show up in a genuine way.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Connect with Micaela:

https://www.micaelaherndon.com

https://www.facebook.com/drmicaelaherndon

https://www.pinterest.com/micaelaherndon/_created/

https://www.instagram.com/drmicaelaherndon/

When's the right time to run ads for your business? How much money should you plan on spending? In today's conversation, I answer all these questions and more with Samantha Fine of Ninesixteen Media.

As a digital marketer, Samatha also helps moms use social ads to grow and scale their businesses. If you've been thinking about running ads on social media to boost your business, you won't want to miss this conversation!

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Connect with Samatha:

https://www.ninesixteenmedia.com

https://www.facebook.com/NineSixteenMedia

https://www.instagram.com/ninesixteenmedia/

https://www.pinterest.com/samanthapopperfine/_saved/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-fine-01269311/

So, enjoy a quick little two minutes on marketing budgets and then get excited for all the changes happening for Startup Marketing in 2021!

I'll be moving away from solo episodes and hosting guests from all over the world with diverse backgrounds in order to expand the number of topics and marketing concepts I bring to you on this podcast. It's going to be really fun and I can't wait for the next episode!

Each episode will still have a guide you can download from my marketing library and now there will be even more value being uploaded to it each week! Get lifetime access for $22 using the code SM21 by visiting: getauthenticbranding.com/resources.

And please rate, review and subscribe to Startup Marketing to help other women like you find this podcast. My goal is to grow this podcast that has a special place in my heart even more this year and leaving a review will help new people discover my podcast!

Cheers to a new year!

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

In this episode, learn how to create a marketing budget for your small business or startup.

There are many factors that go in to creating a budget, so start by taking 5% of your gross revenue and compare that to your desired marketing strategies and their costs. From there, you can adjust your budget or your strategies.

This planning phase will also look different for startups vs. established businesses because of the differences in brand awareness and brand equity.

Join me as we do a deep dive in to where to start and how to make sense of this process!

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Today, my guest is Kevin Urutia. Kevin is the co-founder of NY based Voy Media who specialize in creating Facebook and Instagram ads that are sophisticated and super creative. Kevin’s team are usually half on site and half around the world. During lockdown, they have all mbeen working remotely. Kevin also has his own podcast – Digital Marketing Fastlane which helps you to build, launch, grow and scale a successful online business. Kevin has been featured on Forbes, Adweek and given keynote presentations at several NYC digital marketing events. I’m super excited today to talk to Kevin about how he grew his businesses using digital marketing and the advice he has for entrepreneurs who are starting their journeys.

Music: Tuesday, by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Get your business goals in mind so you can successfully plan your marketing for 2021. It's pretty short and sweet this week. A good marketing plan is built on measurable numbers, so get yours ready and start planning!

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Starting a business in 2020.

Short and sweet:

1. Plan and save for your business when you can
2. Give yourself time to change your products and services before you invest in a lot of big marketing expenses
3. Have a good tax accountant

Happy holidays!

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Cynthia Hackler Flynn is the founder and managing partner of Hackler Flynn & Associates, a Southern California based employment defense law firm. Since starting her practice, she has grown the firm to a team of 10, with each attorney having over a decade of experience. The law firm’s focus is employment law where their mission is to protect and defend entrepreneurs and business owners. Cynthia has been voted as a Super Lawyer every year since 2017 and for the last three years, has been named as a Pasadena Top Attorney.

Learn about what legal contracts and documents your small business needs to get started.

Plus, learn about why working with a lawyer protects you, your small business, your employees and your clients/customers.

Cindy takes me through things like:

• Why working with a lawyer is the best option for a small business startup
• Types of entities you can form as a startup
• Things to consider when it comes to forming a business entity
• Contracts
• Employment law
• Remote work policies
• Employee handbooks
• Trademarks

Cindy is licensed by the State of California and therefore works with clients who reside in California. If you're a small business looking for a highly recommended lawyer in CA, connect with Cindy here:

cindy@hecklerflynnlaw.com

www.hacklerflynnlaw.com

323-247-7030

Even if you don't reside in California, but you need someone to point you in the right direction, Cindy is happy to connect.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

How marketing and sales connect and support each other.

On this week's episode, I speak with Sarah Tucker. Sarah is a sales expert with 20 years of sales experience. She’s successfully closed over $35 million dollars in products and services over the course of her career, and she isn’t finished yet! Sarah helps entrepreneurs rapidly scale their businesses by learning the art and science behind closing more profitable sales faster.

Together, Sarah and I outline how sales and marketing support each other and why you can't have one without the other. As entrepreneurs, we wear both hats, so understanding how they work together and their differences gets you to your ideal customer faster. Plus, Sarah outlines her BANT method for qualifying your sales leads and closing profitable deals to grow your small business.

Connect with Sarah on her website: itsallbettertogether.com

See the blog about BANT: https://itsallbettertogether.com/sales-training-master-the-art-of-deal-qualification/#more-229

Follow her on Instagram: @itsallbettertogether

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Video marketing is critical to growing your small business and reaching your ideal client.

Beth walks you through why small businesses and entrepreneurs need to use video marketing to:

1. Grow and reach their ideal client
2. How to choose which social media platform you should be on to reach your ideal customers and
3. How to create video content in an authentic and efficient way.

You can purchase Beth's Smart Phone Video Course here.

Follow her:

@bethryanmedia

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

In this episode, learn how to tell your brand story and connect with your ideal customer by starting with your "why".

Update to episode: resources available at: getauthenticbranding.com/new-resources. Listeners who want access to this guide use code SM20 for a discount to the marketing resource library.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Today we’re going to be talking about a popular question I get asked a lot: “How do I market my business?”. It’s kind of a loaded question, to be honest. There’s a lot you can do to market your business. So, I’m going to give you some considerations to think through and then give you some possible options for marketing your business that you can explore. 

Make sure you:

• know your business goal
• can quantify your business goal
• have a budget
• know your timeline

While marketing often feels like a blanket “yes” statement, there’s really quite a bit of nuance to successfully growing your business through marketing. 

Get my free marketing bundle at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Level up your marketing expertise with a lifetime subscription to my marketing resource library for only $22 with code SM20. Available at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Managing your marketing takes time and energy, which is why having tools to help make it more efficient is critical to being successful. Without these tools, or ones like them because there are tons to choose from, you’ll be doing everything manually and you’ll quickly feel like you don’t have time to get everything done. 

In this week's episode, I discuss how I use Trello, Buffer, Canva and my Best Self Journal to manage my marketing efforts efficiently.

Download my favorite tools to market your business easily and efficiently at getauthenticbranding.com/resources.

Subscribe to my marketing resource library with marketing templates and guides.

Startup Marketing listeners use code SM20 to get $5 off your subscription.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

In this episode I discuss why it's important to be authentic in branding and marketing and how to do it.

On the surface, it might sound really obvious to say “your brand should be authentic”. Nobody’s going to object to that until it comes time to actually create the brand or execute against it. 

When you’re authentic, you’re going to:

-       Inspire the right people at the right time

-       Build your credibility and authority within your industry

-       Be relatable to your ideal customers

-       Build trust

-       And encourage engagement. 

Be authentic by:

• getting your brand in place
• make sure you have a marketing strategy in place
• know your ideal customer
• interact respectfully & add value

Brand standards guide available at: https://gum.co/etIHP (discount code: Startup Marketing)

Authentic branding and marketing mini guide available in the Authentic Marketing Resource Library: https://gum.co/AgeFg (discount code SM20)

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

These are the high payoff activities that can only be done by you as the visionary or your business and will increase your visibility among your ideal customers, increase brand authority and increase your profitability.

You can’t afford to not do these activities. 

On this week's episode, I make the case for outsourcing parts of your business no matter what stage you're at; even if you think you're too small to do it yet.

If you're feeling stressed, overwhelmed or unmotivated, it's time to outsource. Getting time back will pay you in dividends and is well worth the money you'll spend.

Need to get marketing off your plate? That's what I'm here for. Schedule a free consultation on my website: getauthenticbranding.com

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

How to reach your ideal customer and gain visibility for your small business.

Using long form content such as videos, blogs, podcasts, guides and white papers can help increase your brand authority and bring you new customers; increasing sales.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Having a piece of long form content is going to provide you with a wealth of benefits like:

-  Gaining visibility. Like I said in episode 11, how to build your email list, long form content becomes a lead magnet for you. If you want to learn how to promote your new piece of content, hop back to that episode and give it a listen; it really comes down to promoting it on your social channels or doing paid ads for it. This point dovetails nicely in to my next benefit:

- They help you build your email list. A list of potential leads that you own and have direct access to, which means you can get in front of more people more often for potential sales.

- Long form pieces of content also increase the amount of time people spend on your site. Like I outlined at the beginning of this episode, when someone finds a good piece of content, they’ll be interested in what else you have to say and poke around on your site.

- They build authority in your expertise

- They increase trust because you’re viewed as an expert 

Why does long form content work and why does it matter? You might be thinking that creating yet another thing for your business is not something that you’ve got time to do, but, let me tell you, it’s going to pay in dividends to have one or two pieces of awesome long form content you can put out in to the world. 

Long form content works because it allows you to build trust with your ideal customer. 

If you’re not sure where to start, visit getauthenticbranding.com/resources and download my guide on How to Create a Lead Magnet. 

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

In today's episode you'll learn why you need to have a niche.

A niche is simply a narrow or specialized audience for your products or services. Having one is important because first and foremost, you can’t do everything for everyone and second, it makes it easier to describe what you do and sell. 

Learn how to identify a niche and why they make running your business more efficient.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

How to create a SWOT analysis, analyze your business and identify marketing strategies.

Going through the process of creating a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis can help you identify where you should spend your time and energy, plus how to tie your marketing goals to your business objectives.

I walk you through the SWOT analysis I created and how to apply it to jump start your marketing plan.

Download my free SWOT analysis guide at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Listen here

Stop being overwhelmed by running a business with these helpful strategies.

Marketing sounds hard and something a professional should be doing. So, how in the heck do I even market my business? I don’t have a lot of time on my hands, but I want to grow my business. Where do I start?

Let’s start with the definition of marketing. The technical definition of marketing is: the process of creating, communicating and delivering offers that have value for your clients or customers. Simplified, it’s a value exchange between a business and a person.

As a small business owner, you need to create a marketing plan that aligns with your business and operations goals. Marketing, is a key part of growing your business and becoming more profitable. Without marketing, you won’t effectively reach your target audience or tell them why they should invest in your product or service.

First, start with your 12-month goal. Next, refine that goal in to an objective by making it a SMART goal. Finally, outline strategies to achieve your goal and objectives and the tactics you need to accomplish the strategies.

Your marketing plan should help you make measurable progress toward your goal and objective.

Download my free marketing plan outline at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Knowing your ideal customer is critical for growth and creating a brand that resonates.

Learn how to identify your ideal customer and build a persona.

Plus, use my free worksheet to get started today: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

In this episode, I discuss five reasons why you want to have a marketing strategy and plan in place.

Download my free marketing plan template and my free marketing plan for small businesses at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

In today's episode, I break down why small businesses should invest in their website.

We'll discuss the value of a website developer, how a copy writer can help you and what an SEO expert will do.

These three areas of your website, when focused on strategically, can help you reach more potential customers and generate more sales for your business.

While investing is a major expense, I'll walk you through the success I've had with my owner personal experiences and hard-earned dollars.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

In this episode I walk you through why utilizing a planning tool, like Trello, can revolutionize your marketing efforts to make you more efficient. After implementing an organization system to keep track of projects, I was able to increase the number of campaigns from 10/year to almost 40/year in 2019, helping close the highest year of sales in my company's history.

Learn how I've taken that knowledge and scaled it to help keep me on track as an entrepreneur and accomplish my business goals.

Each week, I make measured progress without feeling overwhelmed thanks to Trello.

Not sure where to start when it comes to getting organized? Download my seven favorite business tools to stay organized at getauthenticbranding.com/resources. If you’re ready to maximize your time each day and start accomplishing big goals to grow your business, visit my contact page and schedule a free 30 minute consultation. I’ll show you how I keep myself organized and we’ll talk through what it would take to get you operating at a higher level.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

In this episode, I walk through my three-prong networking plan and discuss how to be prepared for success at a networking event.

I utilize free groups online, my own personal network and in-person/virtual networking groups to form relationships and build a referral network.

Download my free networking guide at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

According to Social Media Examiner, the answer is yes because:

1. They're inexpensive content
2. They create a sense of community
3. They incite shares
4. They support brand relevancy

As a business owner, there's a fine line you walk when posting a meme and it's critical to make sure that it fits your brand voice and is relevant to your customers.

Take a deep dive in to what to consider when posting a meme for your small business.

Download my free guide at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Learn how to create a nurture campaign or a welcome email sequence.

According to campaign monitor, a welcome sequence invokes trust from your audience and shows them you’re not just interested in them because you hope they’ll buy something, but rather that you’d like to engage and provide value to them. A good rule of thumb is to add value 80% of the time and sell to your audience 20% of the time. 

Follow my easy six steps to creating an email welcome sequence.

1. The freebie download
2. Welcome + more free resources
3. Checking in
4. Services/Expertise and an invite for a free consultation
5. Free consultation ask
6. I'll be in touch with more resources and tips

Download my free nurture sequence and welcome email guide at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Music: Tuesday by Sasha Ende, Music.io

They’re meant to be short, punchy phrases that communicate your brand mission, culture or tone of your products and services. 

You want your tagline to be short and punchy, think no more than a handful of words. You have to say a lot with very little text, which is why I’d emphasize choosing those strong, illustrative words because they’ll tell more of your story in less words. Remember, this phrase is supposed to define who or what you are or the problem you solve.  

You want your tagline to be:

-  Concise; think a handful of words

-  Strategic; it should communicate your value as a business

- Relevant; your ideal customer should be able to identify with your tagline

- Simple; don’t make the language hard to understand by including a bunch of industry jargon

-  Unique: you don’t want your tagline to be applicable to just anyone

-  Most importantly, you want them to be on-brand. Remember, we’re all about building an authentic brand around here, so if you write a sentence down and it doesn’t resonate with you or “feel” right, it’s not going to feel authentic to your audience. While there’s a definite science to creating a brand, there’s also your gut instinct that’s worth listening to to make sure you’re not straying into any weird territory. For me, being authentic means feeling genuine and relatable. 

I get a blank piece of paper and start writing any words that come to mind that summarize the business I’m branding. Then, I put similar words and phrases into buckets. Then, I begin creating phrases and scrutinizing them to make them the most impactful phrase I possibly can.

Download my free tagline worksheet at getauthenticbranding.com/resources to learn how to create your own tagline!

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

strategic Hashtags increase your reach and engagement

Conduct market research to create a strategic list of hashtags to help you increase your visibility and engagement on each social media platform.

I cover the basics of creating hashtags and how to research and find the best hashtags for your business.

Download my free hashtag guide at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Email workflows are incredibly helpful to you because, once built, they save you time and keep you in front of your customers, increasing brand loyalty and product awareness.

With any of these options we’re going to talk about, before you start creating, you’ll want to make sure you have a goal in mind. Remember, you want to serve your email list 80% of the time and sell to them 20% of the time. So, what is your end goal? Is it to buy something? Sign up for a service? Take a class?

Deciding your marketing goal ahead of time allows you to create an effective workflow and allow you to serve up valuable content while leading your subscribers to your desired goal. 

Six types of email workflows you’ll want to build out as your grow your email list: a welcome sequence, a newsletter, a campaign update, a sale workflow, a cart abandonment workflow, and a re-engagement email. I’ve created a free quide to these workflows for you that you can download at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources .

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

In addition to the six months of emergency savings we had in place, we determined we need an additional six months of business expenses on reserve in order for me to comfortably walk away from my corporate paycheck.

On average, 40% of Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency expense. This means an unexpected health bill, dentist visit or new tires can put you in a bind. So, even if you take nothing else away from this episode, I sincerely hope that you start building an emergency savings account.

Download my free guide to how we saved for my small business and expenses you can expect to pay upfront so you can plan financially for your own business at getauthenticbranding.com/resources.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

That’s really where the value of a coach lies. You get to soak in their expertise and implement it as your own, which means you save yourself a lot of time and headaches trying to figure it out yourself.

It doesn’t matter what stage of your business you’re at, a marketing coach can be extremely helpful to you. If you are someone who’s just starting out in your business, a marketing coach can help you:

-  Get your value proposition nailed down

-  Help you build your brand

-   Help get critical marketing platforms in place (like your website, email platforms, social media templates, etc)

-   Help you design and implement a process to make managing your marketing easy and efficient

-  Create a marketing strategy for you that’s easy to maintain and execute as a small business owner

-  Launch faster (because you’ll have branded templates and a process already in place to handle your business)

Where I add value to my client’s lives is by demystifying the process of building a brand, streamlining the process of marketing by creating a marketing strategy that fits your goals and budget and then creating the templates you need to get started on things like social media and email marketing. All of these things help get you to launch faster.

Download my guide to hiring a marketing coach at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

I can tell potential clients about all of my marketing experience, which boosts my credibility in the eyes of my potential clients. I can outline all of my packages in detail.

My website gives potential clients the full picture of who I am, what I do and the value I bring, whereas my social media posts give them a snapshot.

Consider using platforms like: Wix, Squarespace and Wordpress to build your site.

Download my free checklist to help you evaluate your website needs, choose a website platform and interview any professional you hire to help build it. Available at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Music: Tuesday, by Sasha Ende, Music.io

Generate revenue for your small business by building an email list.

Begin building your list by:

1. Creating a lead magnet or freebie
2. Create an opt-in form on your website or in your email platform
3. Promote your lead magnet or freebie on social media

Download my free list-building guide at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

I like Pinterest because every pin allows you the opportunity to link back to your website or your Instagram account, so you can continue to drive traffic to those channels. You can even add a “pin” button to your website, making it easy for your customers to save the things they love directly to a Pinterest board—and Pinterest pins can live on for months, even years. Which is an eternity compared to the fleeting 24 hours (or less) that you get from an Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn post.

You also want to take some time to learn the best practices of Pinterest:

-      You want to use as many keywords or phrases in your pin descriptions as possible

-      You want to make sure you’re pinning it to the appropriate boards

-      You want your boards to have accurate descriptions and be well organized

-      Plus, you want your content to have fresh imagery that is visually appealing on the platform

I like Tailwind because:

-      It automatically creates a schedule for your pins to maximize their impact based on your content.

-      You can cross post to and from Instgram.

-      The app scans your profile and boards and makes suggestions for improvements.

-      Tailwind has Smartloops for your ever green and seasonal content.

-      Most importantly, you get access to Tribes where you can upload your content to accelerate its visibility.

Download my Tailwind process at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

If you’re not posting content that adds value to your audiences’ lives and doing it consistently, it’s hard to gain any traction. And the reason you want to post valuable and consistent content is to establish yourself as an expert in your field. It demonstrates your value and elevates you in the minds of your audience.

So, where do you start? If you’re new to social media as a business or don’t have a ton of time on your hands, the easiest place to start is by posting things like:

-      Behind the scenes photos of the day to day stuff.

-      New products or projects that you’re working on.

-      Create videos or tutorials.

-      What you're doing today.

-      Talk about your favorite finds.

-      Industry info. You’ll teach them something and establish yourself as an expert; things that subconsciously elevate you in your audience’s mind.

If you’re already doing these things or you’re looking to take your social media to the next level, let’s talk through what that can look like.

• Start with a long form piece of content
• Break that content in to 5-7 posts for the week in Trello
• Keep a running list of hashtags you can pull from
• Create images for each post using Canva Pro
• Copy/Paste from Trello in to Buffer, add images
• Boom. You're done.

Download this content process at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Don’t let these strategies intimidate you just because they cost money; investing and paying for marketing can still be affordable. It all comes down to doing your research, prioritizing your efforts and finding the right partners to help you.

Prioritize your business goals, understand your marketing goals and decide what you have the budget to invest in. Common strategies small businesses pay for include:

• A website designer
• Professionally written website text
• Search Engine Optimization aka SEO
• Pay Per Click or PPC campaigns
• Social Media ads
• Influencer sponsorships
• Brand Strategists
• Marketing Coaches

Download the complete list of the strategies at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Use my five free marketing strategies to jump start your marketing efforts and get you on the path toward growth and profitability.

In this episode, I break down:

1. Social Media
2. Pinterest
3. Email Marketing
4. Google My Business
5. Creating a website

If marketing sounds expensive to you, but you’re not sure how you can grow and market your business to increase profitability, use my top five marketing strategies. The best news? They’re all free to you as a small business owner. 

Download my resource guide at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Let’s start with the definition of marketing. The technical definition of marketing is: the process of creating, communicating and delivering offers that have value for your clients or customers. Simplified, it’s a value exchange between a business and a person.

As a small business owner, you need to create a marketing plan that aligns with your business and operations goals. Marketing, is a key part of growing your business and becoming more profitable. Without marketing, you won’t effectively reach your target audience or tell them why they should invest in your product or service.

First, start with your 12-month goal. Next, refine that goal in to an objective by making it a SMART goal. Finally, outline strategies to achieve your goal and objectives and the tactics you need to accomplish the strategies.

Your marketing plan should help you make measurable progress toward your goal and objective.

Download my free marketing plan outline at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

There are five key principles every business owner should know when selecting their logo.

1. How you will use your logo - where will you be putting your logo? How many colors should be in a logo? How will it need to scale. These are all important questions and ones that should be answered before you move on.
2. What is the style of your logo and what do you need to communicate with it? Will your ideal customer be able to identify you from your logo?
3. What is your brand personality? When creating a cohesive brand aesthetic for your business, making sure your logo accurately reflects your brand personality is key.
4. Font selection - What kind of fonts can you use in a logo? Do they match your brand personality?
5. Color selection - what kinds of colors do you need to create a logo?

What things will you need from your logo designer?

1. An EPS file
2. A PNG file
3. A JPEG file
4. A wide logo
5. A stacked logo
6. A small logo
7. Black and white variation
8. Full color variation

If you're looking for inspiration, check out my logo boards on Pinterest @authenticbranding. Download my logo resource guide at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende, Music.io

To further crystalize those ideas, think of your key messages as things that articulate: what you do, how you are different and what value you bring to your potential customer’s lives.

You want your key messages to be:

-      Concise; think literally a sentence

-      Strategic; they should communicate your value as a business

-      Relevant; your ideal customer should be able to identify with your messages

-      Simple; don’t make the language hard to understand by including a bunch of industry jargon

-      Most importantly, you want them to be on-brand. Remember, we’re all about building an authentic brand around here, so if you write a sentence down and it doesn’t resonate with you or “feel” right, it’s not going to feel authentic to your audience. While there’s a definite science to creating a brand, there’s also your gut instinct that’s worth listening to to make sure you’re not straying into any weird territory. For me, being authentic means feeling genuine and relatable.

If you need help getting started, visit getauthentic.com/resources and download my key message brainstorming workbook. It walks you through the exercise we just talked about!

As always, if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review and subscribe to help other women like you find it.

Music: Tuesday, by Sascha Ende, Music.io

Your ideal customer, also known in the marketing world as your target audience, are the people who find the most value in your product or service. They buy from you the most frequently and more rapidly than someone outside of your target audience. Having an ideal customer in mind is critical to being efficient in your marketing efforts. But how do you even know who your ideal customer is? And when you do, what do you do with that information?

Use your ideal customer to create a persona. Personas are simply fictional characters that represent the 2-3 broad groups of ideal customers. Our goal with personas is to help you understand your ideal customers’ needs, experiences, behaviors and goals.

As a business owner, if you have a niche ideal customer in mind, it also makes your job a hundred times easier because you don’t have to recreate your marketing and business materials for several different audiences. You can spend your time creating high quality sales and marketing materials specifically for your those 2 or 3 ideal customers.

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende music.io

Humans, at their very core, are story tellers. Storytelling is still one of the most powerful ways to connect. Having a story is so critical to your brand because without it, your customers won’t connect with you in a way that feels authentic. When you tell your story in an authentic way, your audience is going to believe that you can help them or that your product or service is best for them because they believe you understand who they are as people.

First, you need to get super clear on your "why".

1. Why start your own business?
2. Why this business? Insert: marketing coach, fitness coach, etc.

Once you’ve gotten super clear on your “why”, your story really starts to take place. Having a story is so critical to your brand because without it, your customers won’t connect with you in a way that feels authentic. I’m more likely to purchase from a store or a service provider when I can relate to their story. When you tell your story in an authentic way, your audience is going to believe that you can help them or that your product or service is best for them because they believe you understand who they are as people.

The elements of a good brand story:

-      Incorporate your why. You don’t need to say it literally, but you want to tell a story around it. So make sure you’re super clear about it. This is where you implement all the things we’ve been talking about. Give your audience a reason to connect with you! Make them believe that whatever product or service you have to offer is going to add value to their lives.

-      Illustrate why you’re unique. You aren’t just like everyone else, so don’t tell your story in a way that could be copy and pasted over to someone else. You have something unique. Tell the world about it!

-      Make it personal. For some of us, it’s hard to be vulnerable; it’s something I have to work on all the time in my new role. Your audience wants more than a glossy story and pretty pictures, so open up and tell your personal story too. 

-      Make it authentic. Nobody likes a faker—be genuine and sincere when you tell your story. And make it an accurate picture of who you are, who you want to be and where you are today. Your story should feel like a natural extension of you as a business owner.

Use impactful language that paints a picture. Remember all of those creative writing courses you took as a kid where your teacher implored you to use descriptive and unique words to tell your story instead of just vague language? Lucky you! You get to dust off those skills and put them to work! Your story should be exciting! Don’t just put some ho-hum words together. Paint the picture for your audience. Make them feel! People will naturally imagine you within your story. If you don’t use impactful words, you won’t make a lasting impression.

Download a copy of my brand story as an example at: getauthenticbranding.Com/Resources

Follow Me For Brand Inspiration (My Favorite!) On Pinterest @Authenticbranding

Contact me at: katlynn@getauthenticbranding.com to get started on building your business or refining your brand today.

Episode music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende from Flimmusic-io.

When you're in the startup stages of building your business, it's critical to start by identifying your brand.

Your brand is your promise to your customers. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services and it differentiates what you offer from your competitors. Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be.

Branding is the action of creating an aesthetic, visual or graphic identity of your brand.

Both are equally important (and fun!) but having a clear vision of your brand is a critical first step that's easy to overlook because it feels "too fun" or frivolous. However, it's going to be the measuring stick by which you make every business decision going forward and having a clear vision of your brand will:

1. Give you clarity
2. Help you attract the right customers/clients
3. Make you look more professional
4. Make you more efficient

There's more than just a logo that goes in to your brand. Get started by knowing exactly who you are and where you want to go in the future. It will make building out the rest of your brand components and business must-haves easier.

Get my free branding checklist for five things you need to consider when getting started at: getauthenticbranding.com/resources

Follow me for brand inspiration (my favorite!) on Pinterest @authenticbranding