005. How to Make Your Marketing Simple & Create More Clients

Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time. Well, hello. Hello, my friends. Welcome to episode five, how to make your marketing more simple and create more clients. How are you? I hope you are having a fabulous day, a fabulous start to your week, and it's been a little crazy around here. October for me was a lot of business travel, which the actual events I went to were amazing, but the travel, not so amazing. But I am back in Colorado and just really excited to be home for a while and start preparing for the holiday season. I absolutely love this time of year in Colorado. It's so beautiful, the weather, but I love just celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas and all the things, all the family time that goes along with that. So that's what's happening around here. And I wanted to talk with you today about your marketing. And I talk to so many women and one of the things I hear all the time, and it's true for me, too, I've been through this also, that we struggle with marketing because we think we need to be in all the places doing all the things, and it's so overwhelming and we end up not doing much of anything or the things that we do are so rushed and pushed, put together quickly without fun, that they're just not that effective. And so we love complicating our marketing because oftentimes we think that it's our marketing that creates clients. Well, I have some news for you, my friends. It's not your marketing. It is you and the value that you offer, the energy and connection that you bring that people want to be around. They want to work with you and your company because of the connection that they have with you. And so a lot of times I see women compensate for lack of confidence and understanding their value and what they're actually selling. They compensate for lack there with fancier marketing. We think that having a fancy website or having beautiful brand colors and a custom font and all these things that fancy us up will make up for our lack of confidence and lack of understanding our value. I know that's hard to hear, but I know this is true because I see it all the time. And I know that in my own business journey, I started my business back in 2005. So I've been in business marketing and selling my services for 16 years now. And I have an MBA. So I learned all of the fancy corporate marketing techniques and strategies, and none of that I have used in the building of my own business. And so I have basically been a marketing rebel. I'm very rebellious when it comes to marketing small business, because really, you need a lot less than what you think, a lot less fancy than what you think. You can create a much easier and simpler and actually fun marketing practice in your business that will not be as heavy and will actually be creating more clients for you. So I want to talk about that today and talk about how you can boil down your marketing to the few things that actually create clients. Go all in on those few things and have fun and just let that be enough. Okay? So if you're open to learning how to build and market and make lots of money and have fun and make it simple, then this episode is for you. So buckle up and here we go. I want to point out that all the things that I, you know, all the complexities that we want to have, like, we want to be in all of the social media channels, we want to have a YouTube channel, we want to have a podcast, we want to, you know, be doing all of these things, they all work right? Have a. Having beautiful branding and colors and, you know, professional photography. All that works. It's wonderful. But we don't need all of it, right? And we don't need all of it right up front before we actually go to market. And so I want you to just let all of that go. Just let it go. And let's discover how, if we strip all of that away, that you are enough. You are what your clients want. Your clients want to know that you can solve their problem. So if we strip all of it away, marketing is simply letting other people know that you care about them and that you hear them and that you can solve their problem. And so how do we do that? We can do that very simply. And so I'm going to talk about how we put this together, how we put together a simple marketing strategy and mindset that is going to get across to your audience, that you hear them, you see them, you care about them, and you can solve their problem. And we don't need any fancy in order to do that. So the first thing that you need to focus on is knowing your value in the marketplace, and you are 100% valuable and worthy inherently as a human. But this is talking about the value that you and your company bring to the marketplace, the value that you offer to your ideal client. And that is something that is extremely Important because once you really understand this and internalize it to the depth of your being, it makes marketing so simple. The marketing, the message that you care and you see your people and you understand their problem, that just flows out of you so easily. So there's two different parts to knowing your value. And the first part is the tangible service that you provide. Whether that is, you know, virtual assisting services, or coaching services, or consulting services, or bookkeeping services, whatever those actual services you provide. So for example, if you're a bookkeeper, you, you know, can help folks, you know, reconcile their bank statement and you can produce financial reports for them, their profit and loss, you can manage their vendors and make sure they're not getting overcharged or whatever. The actual services that you provide, that's your tangible services, right? And that is one reason that people pay you. But there's also your intangibles. And this is where your value really comes in. And the, it's the way that you do your business, the unique way that you provide your services and, and how you help people in ways like none other. And when I think about this, I think about a client of mine that I have that is a non profit strategist. And so her tangible service is, I mean, she does a lot of things, but I'm going to simplify her business for the purposes of this podcast. But tangibly, she helps form nonprofits. So she will file all of your paperwork with the irs, help you to form your nonprofit in a way that will keep you out of jail, out of in trouble with the IRS and with the government. And so she does all of the things that help form a nonprofit and get you running in the right way. Okay, so that's the tangible things that she provides. But, and when we're talking about intangibles, I think about the way that she does her business. So, and that comes from your experience, it comes from your passion, it comes from your education, all those unique things about you that make you ideally suited to serve your clients. So in this case, she has got tons of experience. She's been a nonprofit CEO and she knows how to run and start nonprofits, right? So she's got that experience. She also absolutely loves the hands on advisement. She loves being that advisor and helping her clients to, you know, develop their mission and their purpose and really just walk hand in hand with them. She loves answering all of their questions. And most of the people that come to work with her have not formed nonprofits before. So this is a new territory. But they have something that they're very passionate about and the impact that they want to have. And so she really helps them behind the scenes to make it all legal so they can raise money and do it in a way that is with integrity. Right? So she really loves helping them in all aspects of that. So she has a real high touch approach. She, she is not like, you know, the legal zoom of nonprofit formation. If you want that, then you go to an organization like that. But she's very hands on and loves that part of her business. And so that is very valuable to the clients that she serves. They love that high touch approach. They love that they can call her. They love that they know that she's going to be providing them ongoing education on how they can, you know, raise up a powerful board and find and recruit board members that will be helpful and raise money. And they love all of that service that she provides. So that's her intangible. So yes, people will pay her because she'll help them with the tangible part of forming a nonprofit. But they see her intense value in the way that she does her business, the intangibles. So I want you to think about what are your tangibles and what are your intangibles? How do you do your business that your people just love working with you? Right? And so those things, I want you to really just internalize those and understand the depth of the experience and the uniqueness and the way that you do business. Because once you really understand what you're selling, because it's not just the tangibles that you have to understand that you're telling selling the tangibles and the intangibles that really helps you in having that confidence to go out and market yourself effectively and to takes away that salesy, sleazy feeling, especially for us women. Because the statistics show that the majority of women that start their own businesses do so out of wanting to have an impact and because of something they're passionate about doing. So we need to harness that in order to make our marketing more simple. Right. And simplify that. And so doing this work is super important. And then from that you will create your. The second step is to create a simple message and a simple offer. And so for my friend, my client, her simple offer is that she provides nonprofit formations with high touch service. And so if you have a dream, a nonprofit dream, she will help you build it. And it's just very simple and passionate comes, you know, that passion comes through in her message. And so a simple offer. And she starts out with offering nonprofit formations, right? That's Something very simple to understand has no jargon or technical language. It's something that your third grader and your grandmother can understand. And so I want you to think about what is your simple offer. And then step three in creating simple marketing is to increase your visibility and increase your offers. And so I want to say regarding visibility, you need much less stuff than you think to effectively market yourself. I know when I started out in my business 16 years ago, I did not have a logo. I still don't really have a logo, honestly. I did not have brand colors. I built my own simple website. But I don't even think you need to have a website. You could have a web page page, like a landing page. And I know most of you probably already have websites, but the point there is, is that we can create clients with, with much less stuff than we think we need. So I would say you definitely need to have business cards or a landing page, like a simple one page website or a Facebook page, somewhere where people can go online to see you. But you don't need, that doesn't need to be very complex. And I know like I said, most of you have all of this, but we complicate marketing because we think we need to be everywhere. But really what we need to be doing in terms of visibility is to focus on creating relationships and, and connections in just like one or two places. So I want you to think about where you enjoy creating connections and relationships and where are your people? Where are your ideal clients, the people that you feel that you are best suited to serve? Where do they hang out? And for most of us, they hang out online in Facebook groups or you know, just in your personal network on LinkedIn. But they also hang out in person. Right. Where are these folks? You know, can you go meet them in person? So I have a lot of clients that aren't real big fans of social media. And that's fine. You don't have to have or be on social media in order to be successful. You can go and meet people in person and create relationships with people in person. I do that. And before the pandemic, I was doing that most. I think that was like the majority. I mean, I kind of do 50, 50 between meeting people online and meeting people in person. But I absolutely love in person networking and have learned to love networking on social media. But you can do it either place. And the point there is that you just want to focus on one or two places that you enjoy being and just go all in on those couple of places and meet as many people as possible and interact with them, create relationships with them and offer to help when it comes. It's, you know, seems reasonable. I mean, you don't have to be salesy or sleazy or weird, but just be a normal human and go out and meet people and make offers to help them. And that's really what marketing is. And so, like I said, if you have that foundation of knowing your value and how you help people, anytime you run across people that need what you have to offer, of course you're going to offer that to them, right? And then the final step is just to create a very simple plan that works for you consistently. And I know we would love, like, I do this myself. I'd love to be like, writing long form social media posts five days a week, you know, posting on YouTube and doing lives on LinkedIn and, you know, having this podcast and doing all the things. But when we bog ourselves down with so many expectations, what happens? We end up doing nothing or doing very little. Right? And it all feels so heavy. So I want you to, like I said in the beginning, just strip all of it away and ask yourself, what are the one or two things that I can do consistently? Because it's consistency that really matters. To meet people and grow relationships with them that sound fun and easy. And as we know, life isn't always fun and easy. But when you pick things, a couple of things that you want to be consistent at and do them, they will generate revenue and clients for you. I guarantee it. Okay, because. Because I know that where your focus grow goes, your money and your business grows. So where do you want to focus and create that simple plan that you can commit to and just go and do it? Right. I know for me, just out of, as an example, I have a networking group, I have a few networking groups I'm involved in and I absolutely love all of them. But there's one of them that we meet weekly. And you know, when I first joined it, I thought, oh my gosh, meeting every week, that's a big commitment. But what I have found is just being part of that one group once a week and showing up consistently. Not perfectly, but pretty consistently. My business has grown as a result of being part of that group. And so it's the same way for you and for whatever else, wherever else, you want to be visible. So, you know, maybe you want to have some visibility on one social media channel like LinkedIn and then maybe go out to one networking, you know, event or one, you know, commit to networking once a week and then a few social media posts a week or whatever it is, you get to pick, you get to decide. But focus. Create the focus and the consistency in places where you feel fun and energetic and go there and that is how you create simple marketing that will create clients. And I talk more about this and coach on this in my monthly free online live training. And it's all about creating more clients. It's called why you're not creating clients and how to create them now. So I invite you to join me for that. On November 17th is the next one that's coming up and it's live on Zoom at 12:30 Mountain Time, 2:30 Eastern Time. We will have the link in the show notes and and it's also on my website and in my social media links. So go there and I just invite you to also come back next week for the next episode. And if you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and if you so feel like it, leave a review. I'd love to hear from you and what you think of what we're doing here. So. So I hope you have a fabulous rest of your week and I will see you next time. Bye. If you like this podcast and want to take this work deeper, I invite you to coach with me one on one. It all starts with a conversation. Let's get on a call together and I'd love to learn more about you and your business and together we can identify what is standing in the way of creating, creating the business and life you envision. And then we'll create a plan to get you there. So visit my website@melissamkellog.com and find a spot on my calendar. I look forward to seeing you.