Megan Martin 0:00
This is talking small business with Kat Schmoyer. And Meghan Martin, a podcast for creatives who like to keep it real about what it actually takes to grow an online business.

Kat Schmoyer 0:09
We’re competitors turned to biz besties, who chat daily, and now we’re bringing you into the conversation.

Megan Martin 0:20
Welcome back friends to the talking small business podcast, I am super pumped to have a real and raw conversation about marketing your business and 2021 what’s working now? What do we see trends that are happening and look like they’re here to say stay. And then also what we both believe cat and I both believe is going to be a timeless marketing strategy no matter what year it is, and why we both really, really believe and focusing the majority of our marketing eggs in email marketing, so we’re gonna get to that later. But let’s start with cat. What does it look like to market your business in 2021? on social media, like what are you feeling? What are you seeing?

Kat Schmoyer 1:09
I mean, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna call it like this. Okay, I’m feeling the exhaustion of Tony to anyone social media marketing. I’m just gonna say it.

All right, we’ve got Tick Tock morphing into reels. I think there’s like Instagram guides now, which I’m gonna be honest, I’m not even really sure I’ve seen a few people doing them. I don’t I don’t really know. So yeah, it’s just a lot. It’s an ever changing landscape. And I feel like, from 2020, like the beginning of 2020, to right now, where we are now. So like, a year and a half, there have been a lot of massive changes to the way that the platform is not just the interface, but what the platform likes us to do. And what business owners need to do. Would you agree?

Megan Martin 1:55
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s always been an uphill battle on any social media platform for a business to thrive, right, because social media was not built for promoting your business, social media was built to connect with other people, like your friends and your family. And so we as business owners, since the inception of Facebook, and when Instagram came out, like we were immediately on it, we were immediately figuring out how can we capitalize on these social media platforms to increase our business and meet our goals? And so I think I’m loving this conversation already, and just can’t wait to continue to dive in. But like, what does it look like? To stop fighting the system? You know? Yeah, like in 2021, I feel like at the end of the day, you’re going to start seeing success if you will stop fighting the system and stop trying to use social media the way that you want it to perform for you and start using social media the way that the creator’s created it. To reach new customers

Kat Schmoyer 3:02
that is like a quotable seriously, I want to like raise all the emoji praise hands for that one that was so good. I’m sitting here thinking through like, remember, and we talked about this in our first episode, but we started our businesses 789 years ago, a long time, a long time ago, we run dinosaurs, okay, in the digital marketing world right now. I remember getting my first Instagram account, I remember when the feed was everything. And all I cared about was taking my next beautiful pink picture to put on my feed. And like literally like staring at my like, planning apps to like rotate how the images were going to be. So that then the top nine were like the most curated they could be. And that was my problem. Okay. And now, eight years later, I don’t care about my feed, I’m worried about the dancing and the pointing and the lip synching. And like all of these other things that I kind of wish it were the good old days, when I just cared about everybody my feed was, but now I’ve got to do all of these other things. But you’re right, we have to morph, we have to change with how Instagram is changing, or we will be non existent will can will be even more dinosaurs. And we already are.

Megan Martin 4:14
That’s not even a word. But it’s fine. No, it’s true. It’s true. And I think even thinking about, you know, friends who don’t have for example, if we’re talking about Instagram and friends who don’t have 10,000 subscribers, or whatever, followers, whatever you want to call them. And I feel like that’s been such a strong conversation and the last few years of like, frustration over like, Hey, I don’t have 10,000 subscribers and I feel like we just for the past few years in terms of ever since the algorithm has come out with Instagram, we have been focusing on the wrong thing. You know, we have been focusing on what can Instagram do for me as opposed to like, What can I do for the people who have already said yes to me and who already follow me? Yes. And I think we’re constantly hearing from the gurus like how do we convert our followers into customers? Which, yes, let’s be honest, that’s what marketing is marketing is about talking about your product, so that way people want to buy your product. But we continue to fight the purpose of social media at its core, which is to connect with people, right? And, and that is what leads to relationships with which what leads to customers. So I think I would love to talk to you, Kat, about you know, even thinking about this conversation of like us back in the day when it was the chronological order. And we were constantly focused on creating the most gorgeous images that were going to stand out that we could post three times a day, and we were like, I know me, I was like, in my porch with my covered patio with colored posters. I had like 10 colored posters, and I would style images. This is my real life, right? Like, all day, this is what I was doing, instead of actually doing the job that I was supposed to be doing. Right? Um, but I know for me, like I have carried this problem forward into 2021. Like my obsession, like you said, with your top nine I remember I I’ll never forget, someone was like telling me the the perfect. Like, I can’t even think of the word but like, thinking through your face needs to be in one image of your top nine in a product, the content for the Yes, need to be like all of them needed to live in the top nine. And it was so ridiculous the amount of like curation and obsession that we had with like, what looks good next to what photo? Right. And so we you say that you don’t care about that anymore. But I don’t know about you. But I do feel like that is still in the back of my mind when it comes to my marketing strategy. And it’s not just social media, it’s all my blog. How does my blog laid out? Is it does it look, right? Are the images fitting perfectly all the things like I’m just so hyper focused on this curated, beautiful pert, like, presentation that gets in my way, and I don’t actually do anything,

Kat Schmoyer 7:15
right. I wholeheartedly agree. And there are so many different reasons for it. And I definitely want to like unpack it, I think one of the first things that came to my mind is number one, realizing that because we are creative small business owners, we do value pretty like we do like we like pretty things we like whitespace, or the color palette that we enjoy, or whatever it is. And so, and on one hand, some of that I don’t really think is fixable, and I don’t think we should try to fix it. Because that’s a part of what makes us creative business owners like our feeds, and our marketing and our websites like all of that is going to look different than the corporate brick and mortar. And for you like with a website designer, like it’s gonna look different for a corporate website design company versus mega Martin created like it’s naturally going to be different. So on one hand, I do want to highlight like, let’s not say we have to fix all of the things. But like what you said, we can’t spend eight hours a day, trying to make it pretty imperfect and polish when we actually have businesses to run. So we have to beat that mentality a little bit or switch our mentality to create content that is focused on our customers and our services and our products, but isn’t necessarily as pretty imperfect and polished. And I feel like right now with Insta story with real tik tok all of that, like, that’s what that’s doing like that short form video. It’s not pretty perfect and polished. It’s, it’s real, you know, I don’t know it’s it is what your name is for it.

Megan Martin 8:47
Yeah, I think about my friend Amber. She is she was a photographer, somebody who if you take images for a living you care about the way those images look like that’s just the at the core of every photographer, right? And so, now she doesn’t do photography anymore, but she’s actually a social media coordinator and manager and I she had like, blew up on tik tok. I don’t know I think she is like 100,000 followers on tik tok. And she just recently like hit 10,000 on Instagram, where it’s like everyone’s obsessed with the perfect curation and all the things and over here on tik tok. She’s sharing like raw style video content that’s not edited. That’s not like sparkles coming in all over, you know what I mean? Like and all of these crazy animations that we can like, think oh, that’s what we need in our business, you know? And but she’s grown a massive following on tik tok and her business is booked out, booked out completely with this more like real raw entertaining style content. And I think it’s a perfect point to talk about marketing in 2021. What is popular On these apps that you’re showing up on, like, yes, you need to focus on creating content that’s valuable, and content that’s going to actually point to whatever it is that you sell. But you also need to think through the lens of what is actually popular on this platform. And if you’re continuing to fight the system with content content that you just feel comfortable with, because that’s what you’ve done for the rest of time. Like Kat said, at some point, you’re going to realize like you’re not getting the engagement that you need, you’re not getting people to actually click your link in your bio and go explore more about your business. So for example, like thinking about Tick Tock like I am a new ish person on Tick tock, I’m new in the sense of like, I’m trying to start creating content but I love like, you can get sucked into Tick tock, I don’t ever I don’t know if you’re even on Tick tock, I am not. So I’m the one on this in this conversation that does not even have a tick tock account. Okay, so I am like at the baby beginning section of trying to use Tick Tock for my business. So I’m like excited maybe like a year from now. I’ll tell you how it goes, right. But I do consume Tick tock, and they’re very similar to rails in the terms of like, the way videos work, you know, on these platforms, Rails is obviously shorter videos than tic tock, I think Tick Tock can be a minute, maybe longer, I don’t even know. But I get sucked in to tick tock it is the most entertaining thing to watch. And as I’m building out my own strategy, being a brand new baby, business owner on Tick tock, I am not going to enter into Tick Tock with what I know about social media marketing, what I’m doing right now, instead of even taking a course about tic toc, I’m just watching what is popular. What are people loving? What are people sucked into? What do people want to experience? And I think this is also part of this fighting conversation. Like we have a goal to get you off social media and onto our website. So you’re by our products, but the reality is people want to be on social media, and stay on social media. So how can we stop fighting that system and figure out a way to show up consistently on social media in a way that’s entertaining and engaging based on what we know about reels and what we know about Tick Tock? while also consistently staying top of mind. It’s a really like, interesting conversation is it

Kat Schmoyer 12:31
is in for me, it’s like my pitfall. And so I’m super curious, like for those of you guys listening, like, please send us messages on Instagram, like send us a DM if you’re like resonating with some of this, but I do not feel entertaining enough, like myself as a person for a real or a tick tock style video. I have done some reels before I like played around with reels. So I have some of those. I enjoy watching those like and you’re right. I like the ones that are hilarious. Like, I want to laugh, I want to feel understood or seen or like feel related to you know, when I’m watching some of these videos, and I’ve seen business owners doing them in a business way that is hilarious, or, you know, relatable or whatever. But I as a person, like I’m not the funny girl, right? Like, I’m not I’m just I don’t know, I feel weird. Like, it’s not my personality, to entertain in that way. And so, I would love even Megyn like we’ve we’ve actually like, never talked about this. So I would love like, what would be your response to somebody that’s like me who’s saying listen, I’m just not entertaining enough for the style of marketing that is Tick Tock and reels, is it? Well, we just got to like, do it anyway, because that’s what the market is telling us to do. Like, that’s what Instagram is requesting that we do? Or are there ways that we can still be genuine to who we are, but use different tactics to get similar results. Do you have?

Megan Martin 13:55
Yeah, I think so. I think the answer is yes. 100,000%. Again, thinking back to Amber, I’ll link her in the show notes. But she doesn’t do entertaining, funny dancing. You know, like prank style videos on Tiktok. She’s doing what you would do in a blog post, right? Like so for example. She’s, you know, if you so she’s a social media manager. And so she shares a lot of tips, especially about how to use Canva. Like, literally how to use Canva. Right, which is like not entertaining on you know, right, right? You would think you would you to Google a YouTube video for that, right? But she’s using Tick Tock and the way that you would create a YouTube video or you would create a blog post, she’s got three tips, or you know, it’s either like a collection of tips or it’s like, Hey, here’s a specific thing that you might not know that you could do on Canva and she literally just in her little tick tock video, turns her phone around on her computer screen. It’s not pretty it’s not in terms of pretty I mean like that It’s not beautifully lit video, she’s not spending forever curating and perfecting these videos, she just gets the content out there. When it would have taken us, you and me cat, it would have taken us four hours to create a blog post. Right? Right, right. And she’s doing it in 62nd clips. And I think what’s interesting is to look at the entertaining content and say, okay, the truth about the entertaining crazy wild dancing funny videos is that, look, they’re not perfectly polished videos, the people who are in those videos, they’re not, they didn’t go to the hair salon, and the makeup artists to get perfectly done up so that they can show up on video, the lighting is not is not that great on a lot of these videos, right? And these are just cues that are saying, Hey, quit obsessing about perfection here. You know, we’ve already got enough on our plates to come up with the content ideas. And if you’re not into like the dancing, funny, entertaining stuff, you’ve already got to like, show up in a different way. And think about that. So let’s remove some of the pressure that we have put on ourselves. Right? Right. And one is the way that we’re showing up. And we’re obsessed with perfection, because again, of our days on Instagram, that is all about the perfect image and the beautiful feed. Like that’s one thing that we need to overcome. But I think you can also look at that entertaining content and see how it flows. And you know, people aren’t spending forever dragging on talking about ideas, you’ve got to be able to quickly and concisely deliver a message and you can do that and following people like amber for example is one person another person I’m obsessed with following is Alicia of lish creative on Tick Tock. Her videos are literally just like, just like you would be on Instagram story, hey, I’m showing up in my business today. This is what I’m doing in my business today. Instead of talking about an Instagram story, she just videos herself doing whatever it is she’s doing. And then she cuts the video to say, Hey, we did this. Then we set up the styling kit like this. And then we put this prop in and now we’ve got a shoot that’s done for our client. It’s literally like what you would do and how you would show up on Instagram. It’s just doing it in an entertaining video format. I love that. I love that. So

Kat Schmoyer 17:23
with marketing our business in 2021 What’s the balance? Right? Like? What’s the balance of doing what’s trending? Okay doing going where the people are. Okay? They’re on tik tok. They’re on Instagram and Instagram is saying reels perform better. This new guide thing again, I don’t even know what that is, honestly. But there’s, you know, there are things right, we need to research we need to be doing on Instagram. Okay, so we need to go where the people are. Yes, absolutely. But it is an ever changing landscape. tik tok is new. What’s how’s that going to change? Like, what’s going to be the next thing in 2022. So my my thing too, and this is definitely my like, futuristic brain. But then I go to what I want to do what is happening now, but also set myself up for the future. So what about the evergreen content? The blog posts, the YouTube videos, Pinterest, etc? Like, how do we make sure that there is enough balance of where the people are, but where my website is, and like that evergreen type of content?

Megan Martin 18:27
Yeah, I think for me, I would say, I would encourage you to have, you know, five to 10, tops, maybe really high quality content on your website. So, you know, I’m talking about blog posts at this point. Or maybe maybe it’s a written blog post, or maybe it’s just a post that has a video, or maybe it’s a post that has an audio recording, but something that just gives really high quality content that can prove to the person on the other side of the screen that you are legitimate, and whatever it is that you do, and that you can actually help them get whatever desired results or transformation that they are looking for. And then I would have you just think about, like, how do people use the internet, you know, I know we like think about customer journeys and the fact that like, hey, they hit follow on Instagram, and then they’re gonna watch this post that we created. And at the end of that post, we’re gonna say, go to this website page, and then they’re gonna go to that website page, and they’re gonna read that thing, and they’re gonna purchase right there. And I want you to think about yourself as somebody who uses the internet and do you actually do that? I know for me, I don’t, I might see somebody give me a call to action, but I never visit their website at that time. Right But it for me, it’s about consistency. When I continue to see someone showing up over and over and over again, and they’re continuing to deliver the same type of message or content about the same type of message. At some point, I’m going to get intrigued enough to visit their website. Amber is a great example of this. Like, I knew that she was doing social media coordinating. I did not visit her website till about six months after five Following her on Instagram, which is crazy,

Kat Schmoyer 20:02
right? It’s so crazy, because I feel like my brain is a little bit of the opposite. Like, I tend to go to the website pretty quickly. And I don’t know if that’s part of my like, my researcher or even like in my line of work like literally with a conference. I’m like educators and you know, constantly wanting to see what people are putting out and like pulling information together. But even even to say that though, even though I’m the type of consumer that goes to the website earlier in my journey, I do agree to your first point of how five to 10 quality pieces of content, like I don’t necessarily think like so in the beginning of my business, I blogged five days a week, like it was literally for the first two years I was blogging Monday through Friday. That is not how to market your business in 2018. Like, do not do that. In 20. When did I start 2013? Yes, that was how to market your business, not the reality right now. So I do still believe in blogging. I currently blog once a week. So I believe in blogging, and I believe in leveraging that. But it’s if you’re just getting started. Or maybe your blogs been on hiatus for a while or you’ve had a YouTube channel on a hiatus like something like that, think through, okay, what is your business doing right now? And what is quality pieces of like pillar content that you can provide and going back to Megan’s point of like five to 10. I think that’s a great number that lives there. That’s getting you the SEO that’s getting you Pinterest hits, if you’re also leveraging Pinterest, which you Yes, I believe that you should be. So I think that less is more when it comes to the evergreen content, because it’s evergreen, because it’s going to stay there and still work for you again and again. And then that leaves you as your marketing hat on to be able to focus on the ever changing landscape of Instagram of Tick Tock not necessarily feel burnt out with what I have to blog three times a week and do five reels a week at bullet like No, just alleviate some of that off of your plate off of your mental capacity. Focus on that pillar content, get that out there very meaty information for your customer, and then do the short form video or focus on stories focus on for me, this, I’ll stop there, I’ll let you comment. And then I have another like thought I want to share about like how I’m leveraging like changing, but I don’t want to go get too far ahead of it. I’d love to hear like your thoughts on that.

Megan Martin 22:30
I think the point is like, it doesn’t matter. I think that we just can’t be so obsessed with like trying to create and map out a perfect customer journey because like you said, you’re gonna jump to the website. First thing, when you find somebody, I might not jump to the website till six months later. But if you have that core quality content on your website somewhere, then you know, it doesn’t matter when I land on your website, I can I can establish that like no trust factor that’s necessary for me to want to potentially hire you. But I just want to encourage you that, you know, we don’t have to fight these platforms. And not every post has to be about getting somebody on our website. The goal is consistency and staying top of mind because marketing at its core is presenting the right product to the right person at the right time. When we’re talking about something about like social media, you there’s no personalization involved in social media, you put a post out there and it goes out to everybody. And yes, you hope that it goes viral and all the things right. But you’re crossing your fingers and hoping somewhere somebody out there in the world needs what it is that you have to offer. So I think that we have to rethink our social media strategy to say not every single post is about getting a product purchased. It’s about staying consistently top of mind. So that way, when it is the right time for a person to purchase a product, you are the person that they think about.

Kat Schmoyer 23:57
Absolutely. And that leads to what I was going to say a minute ago about for me personally, might because I don’t feel like I have the entertaining factor. And so I’ve you know, played around with rails a little bit but it’s not something I’ve like gone all in and I don’t even have a tick tock account like I’m not against those things. I love hearing these stories. Have you been mentioning Amber’s like, Natasha, Stephen and like some of the ladies that I know like I love hearing like really awesome stories and seeing their businesses quite frankly blow up by leveraging those platforms. I just have not necessarily found like the right fit for me in that style of marketing yet. Maybe that’ll change in the coming months. But for me what I’ve started to leverage more is the DM conversation. Right so the personalized approach on that platform for me specifically with coaching and with service professional so those of you listening that our service professionals, dm is a great it’s a fabulous opportunity to I’m not talking hartselle in a DM I’m just talking Get to know your people have conversations I send voice DMS A lot of people, whether I’m connecting, and I’m wanting to start that conversation, or they’re reaching out to me, so in my call to action on my Insta story or on my feed post, it’s saying please do this. Send me a DM, like, send me a voice dm and then actually moving forward with that conversation. It’s not just a double tap in the DM, and then I get out of there like, No, I’m responding, like we’re conversing. And it used to be this is the change from the 2013. me was like, nobody, I don’t respond to Facebook messages. I don’t respond to DMS, like send me an email, this is my client communication. It’s, that’s not no longer do I want the bulk of communication with actual clients in an email or in a Slack channel. Yes. But I’ll talk to you about my booking process and a DM I’ll talk to you about if we’re a good fit or not, and a voice dm for coaching. And I never would have done that in 2013. So that’s a changing landscape. I feel like of the professional polished, older forms of marketing, right? The pretty feed, send me an email, this is how we’re going to navigate it. Now it’s watch a funny video, send a DM or you could book a 234 $1,000 package I kid you not by having those personalized relationships and being real in that conversation.

Megan Martin 26:14
Yeah, which is such a great example of stop fighting the platforms that you’re trying to leverage to grow your business. It’s like you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Right. You know, right. Absolutely. I love that. Okay, so

Kat Schmoyer 26:27
we mentioned in the beginning, that, you know, we wanted to also talk about what we feel like is the tried and true, you need to be doing this if you’re not doing this when it comes to marketing in your business. And number one, y’all you have got to be growing your email list, like we’ve talked about? Yes, be where the people are. leverage the ever changing landscape of social media? Yes, yes, yes. And we hope we’ve made you know, that point clear and shared some reasons why and how we’re doing that. But also, your email list is vital for your business growth. And I know you feel so passionately about this too, Megan, we actually talked about this, we have a free guide for you guys. 10 things we would do if we were starting our business from scratch. And one of the main things that we talk about in this guide is leveraging email marketing. So if you haven’t already, make sure that you grab that, but we want to talk about it a little bit here. So Meghan, what are your thoughts on that? Like,

why?

Why do we want people to connect with them on Tick Tock or on a reel? And then get them to our email list? Why not just get them to the blog post or get them over to the website? Why email marketing?

Megan Martin 27:33
Yeah, I think, you know, just the sheer volume of content and people on the internet is completely overwhelming, right. And so we have a very limited time period, from the time somebody first finds out about our brand to you know, whether or not they’re going to stick around and be a follower for a long time, you have a very limited opportunity to catch capture their attention. You know, we have so much coming at us in 2021. So many distractions be mainly because of our phone, right? Like a phone provide, like just opened up this entirely new world of content and distraction for us. And our brains literally haven’t evolved enough to handle the amount of distraction that comes at our way. And so you have a finite amount of time, from the time that somebody is introduced to your brand, to get them to want to connect and stay and be around for a while. And so I think the best way to get them in the door is to have them on your email list. Because again, we’ve been talking about social media for the first 20 minutes of this. And the whole theme of all of it is that it’s a changing landscape. Right. And I feel like this is such a, you know, typical phrase that an email marketing expert would say is that you don’t own social media, you don’t own your followers, you know, like this is not new information, right? Like that. Any any email marketing expert is going to tell you you don’t own your followers, right. And so that’s why you need an email list because you own that. If Instagram changes again, and you don’t want to dance on video, and you’d rather like pluck your eyeball, eyeballs out, then do that. But that’s what’s getting engagement. That’s what’s being shown up in the algorithm, right? If you have an email list, it doesn’t matter if you don’t do that. Hence me being a baby business owner on Tick Tock like it’s not brand new, you know, reels are not brand new, but I have been so slow to adapt to these new trends and tactics. Because I’m, again, already running a business like there’s only so much time in the day that I have to focus on marketing. And so as a small business owner, my goal is to pour into my customers, especially as somebody who’s running a membership like it’s not a one and done I’m consistently having to show up and serve my customers month in and month out. And so my marketing time is really, really slim. But email marketing, whether or not you believe it is not going anywhere, and you own that list. And so you can continue to leverage it as many times as you want. And I would say that like we You and I, I don’t know how you feel about this cap, like, I would say that when I give my email to a company, at this point, I understand the relationship that we are about to get in, like I understand, I understand at this point that like, if I hand you my email, you are going to show up in my inbox. And you’re going to be talking about your business, you’re going to be sharing about your products, you’re going to be consistently engaging with me. And I’m going to have to make decisions as a consumer if I want to purchase your products and stay in your tribe, right? Absolutely. And I want that,

Kat Schmoyer 30:59
right. Like as a consumer, I am opting in to receive those updates, whether that be sales, whether that be promo, like whatever it is, you know, free content, a discount code, whatever, I want it, I’ve raised my hand and said Yes,

Megan Martin 31:15
right. I think like five years ago, when people were approaching email marketing, they were like approaching it in a way that people are stupid, and they don’t understand why they’re opting in, you’re going to surprise them all of a sudden with this, like marketing strategy. Well, let’s just be real, it’s 2021. And people are not stupid, right? Okay. They know if they give you their email address that you are going to pitch them products at some point. And so I even think about like, when I’m shopping online, at retail stores, I literally will hit no to the pop up that says Do you want to save 10% because I know they’re going to help me in my email inbox. Right. But I think that’s just proof that email marketing is so dang strong, that that’s what we know, we know, as a consumer that we give our email address, we’re inviting that person into our inbox, and most likely going to be pitch. And I think that it’s just a testament of how strong email marketing really

Kat Schmoyer 32:12
is. Well, in now to go back with when we were talking through social media strategies, and you know how to leverage the ever changing landscape of social media. You mentioned that for you, you might take a while before you go from social media to the website. And I’m the consumer. That’s the opposite. I usually like jumped to the website a little bit earlier on in my life journey with them. But regardless, you’re still getting that person to the website. So for in Megan’s case, she’s seeing amber show up over and over and over again, seeing the content that she’s offering over and over and over again. And now saying, alright, yeah, I’m sold. Like, I want more, go to the website. So let’s have an opt in there. Let’s have a freebie. Let’s have a guide, let’s have something that can then continue to give Megan the content that she’s already been consuming on the TIC Tock platform. But now, right to her inbox, the ease of it, it’s so much better. And for me, I’m the person that I see something, I’m immediately sparked like, okay, yep, I want it. I’m going to go to the website, where’s the opt in? Like, where do I get more of what I just saw, whether it’s market research, because of my conference votes, whether it’s because I wanted to help my own business, it doesn’t matter. I’m agreeing, because of what I’m seeing on social media, now come into my inbox, help my business, do this better, stronger, faster, whatever. And so that’s where the email marketing as a part of that funnel is so important to turn that consumer into a customer. It’s like a huge missing link. And I know I mentioned to the DM conversation, yes. But then get them to the email list, like give them those resources to turn them into a customer.

Megan Martin 33:55
Yeah, yeah, I think back to like the thought process of you have a finite amount of time. Like, you use that, you know, I go to the website, right, right off the bat when I find someone and I’m like, okay, I go to the website, like months later, right. But the next part of this conversation is like, do you ever actually go back to the website? I know for me, like, rarely do I ever go back to the website, if I did not act and take an action right then and there when I visited for the first time. I, I don’t go back because I’ve already seen it, right. And so this is part of this email marketing conversation is like, if you can get them on your email list, and you can show up in their inbox with really valuable content that’s going to like delight and surprise and engage them. You are just furthering this conversation of being able to consistently show up and I tell you, I’m telling you, like people have such a huge fear of being salesy. But email marketing is such a natural way to actually show up and pitch your products because again, social media was never meant for business owners to grow their business. It was meant for people to connect As humans, and make friendships and relationships, email marketing is inherently different. It was not created to become friends with somebody It was created to sell your products. So we as consumers know that about email marketing and are inviting you to do that for us. We’re inviting you to tell us about your products and services. So you can utilize email marketing and that way and stop worrying about the fear of being salesy.

Kat Schmoyer 35:30
I love this because my wheels are turning with what you talked about with the website, right of like, I feel like as business owners, and maybe I’m the only one, but I feel like I will put so much of my effort into the web presence, right? Going back to like, the perfectly polished like, is this here? Are their brand photos? Like, what are my colors and my fonts? And again, there is some of that is fun, and we are creative small business owners. And I know I’m speaking to a web designers, I don’t want Megan to be like his cat about this day, like it’s it’s gone. I’m not saying throw up some website that like isn’t branded well. But but the website is the hook, the email marketing is what’s actually selling them right. So when we when Meg and I both teach like the funnel process like passive revenue, it’s, it’s literally a funnel, and it sounds super fancy. But you’re getting people from one point in the process to the other point. So if we look at a funnel, like a triangle, you’ve got all of these people in the opening of the triangle, right? Like, it’s huge. We’ve got so many people out there. So you’re using Tick tock, you’re using reels, you’re using Instagram, because you want to speak to the masses to get the right people. And then you want them to go to your website, which is the like going up the triangle, go to your website, and then you want them to opt in to join your email list and then become a customer. So I just think that that is so mind blowing, Megan and like such a good thought process for all of us that like yes, our website is so important. And we want to just say the right things and have the right words and look the right way, because of the hook proponent. But you’re exactly right. I rarely go back to somebody’s website, unless I am looking for something hyper specific, like I know, oh, I’m pretty sure so and so blogged about this. So I need to go find it on their blog, or Oh, I’m pretty sure so and so offers this service. So I’m going to go to their work with me page, because that’s where I need more information about that service. But I’m only browsing the website, the very first time that I like hit the website.

Megan Martin 37:31
Yep. Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, and that’s back to that lag time period, you’ve got such a short amount of time to, to not only help your person on the other side of the screen, decide if they like know and trust you but also decide if they want to stick around and, and be a part of your brand ecosystem. And so just relying on your website to do the job is not going to work. I mean, again, it’s 2021. How do people use the internet, like they don’t keep their tab of your website open for the next six months until they decide to work with you, right? So email marketing is a way that we can consistently show up through you know, we, when we bring them in the door, we can create a welcome sequence. And essentially, that’s when we’re like really diving into building the connection and creating a foundation for the relationship that you’re going to have with your customer, you’re going to set up expectations and you, I would encourage you to actually also in your welcome sequence, share about the products and services that you offer. Because there might be a person that wants to buy the first day, the first week write that they join your email list. But in my own experience with my website, template business, specifically, I have people that sit on my list for three to six months before they purchase a product from me. But by me consistently showing up in my email, with email marketing, there comes a time when it’s the right time for that person to need my product. And what you’re talking about kept saying like, Oh, I remember this person blog posted about XYZ topic, like, you got to have a pretty good memory to think about that. Right? But email marketing allows you to, to not put the burden of memory on your customer. Right, right. Right. Like you’re you’re making it easy for them. You’re saying hey, like you don’t need to remember that. I’m the girl that sells website templates. I’m here telling you every week that I’m the girl who sells website template, right? So it is it truly is a powerful form of marketing. And we’re not even talking about like I mentioned earlier that social media is not a personalization marketing tool, or aren’t even talking about the power of personalization and email marketing. Like you have the ability with tools today that are out there on the market like email service providers. I know I use ConvertKit specifically, but you have the ability to create really, really personalized marketing experiences based on the app that people are taking. So if they click a link and you you had an email and you send out and you had three different services or products that you offer, and they click one of those links, you could build out an entire sequence that follows that action to be able to pitch your product or service that is right for them and relevant because you know, they clicked on a link that shows they are interested in that. And now we’re back to the golden rule of marketing, which is present the right product to the right person at the right time. And email marketing opens up the entire door to the personalized marketing game. Absolutely.

Kat Schmoyer 40:35
yes to all of this, you guys, I hope that I hope that you feel fired up to get your email list off the ground, if you do not have an email list. Or if you have an email list, continue to use it continue to show up in serve, and find a way to do that that is realistic for you and your life. Don’t make you know, this crazy goal of you know, every day sending an email, I wouldn’t even recommend that anyway, we don’t even do that for our businesses. But create a system or a plan that makes sense for you with email marketing, and move forward with that. But know that email marketing is such a powerful tool. I know we’re going to be talking about it even more on, you know, future podcast episodes, because we feel so passionately about helping you guys do that. Like it has done wonders for our own businesses. So while we’re navigating, like the ever growing changes of social media, like right alongside you guys, we’re also going to be leaning into our list and leaning into how can we show up and serve our people over and over and over again? Because that’s how we use email marketing. Like that’s how we like Megan keep saying like, how are we using the internet? Like, how, how does Megan Martin do it? How does Kat Schmoyer do it like that’s what we do. Like I go in my inbox and I see what people are doing. I see where my next purchase is going to come from literally right there in my email inbox. And so we need to be doing the exact same things with our clients and with our customers.

Megan Martin 42:00
Yeah, and I would encourage you that if you listen to the first 20 minutes of this episode, when we talked about social media, and just the pressure and the overwhelm that if you are feeling that I would highly encourage you to stop focusing on social media for a hot minute, pour your energy into email marketing, because it is it’s hard to focus on all the things that all the times and I wouldn’t encourage you to do that, especially if you’re a solopreneur. But I’m saying it cat is saying it. We are both six figure business owners, people that you probably know love and follow. I’m talking like Amy Porterfield level, all of them all of us are saying the same thing. The power, the most powerful marketing channel that we have is email marketing. It’s not the sexy thing. It’s not the vanity thing. But it is worth you pouring your attention there. Absolutely,

Kat Schmoyer 42:49
absolutely all Well, I’m gonna make sure that we give everything that we listed here link to below. Some of the awesome women that we are currently following on well, Megan’s following on tik tok once again, not on

the mentions that Megan shouted out on Tick Tock

ConvertKit is a great email marketing system. So we will make sure to link that for you guys, too. If you are getting started with email marketing. And as you guys are listening to this, or if you have specific questions that you want us to be answering in future episodes around email marketing, we would love to hear from you. We would love to make sure that we get those questions answered.

Megan Martin 43:27
Thanks for tuning in. We’ll catch you in the next conversation.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai