105. Marketing Tech & Tools That Are Worth Having

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, hello, ladies. How's it going? Hope you're having a fabulous day. I'm excited to be with you today to talk about marketing and the marketing technology and tools that are actually worth you having. I don't know about you, but do you ever get overwhelmed with all of the available fancy things out there? Funnel builders and AI and all the things, right? Like schedulers and video editing. All the things get. So there's so many. And it's. And I love this stuff, right? I can geek out on it all day long. And so today, what I want to do is really just break down for you, like, what are some of the technology, some of the tools that could really help you save time and get your message, your brilliance out into the world easier, faster, and cheaper? How's that sound? Is that good? Sounds good to me. And I have experimented with so many different things, and so I'm going to just boil it all down for you, and hopefully it will be super helpful for you so you don't have to go out and try all the things. And I mean, if you want to and you're kind of a geek like me, go for it. But maybe you can share with me what you have found. I would love to hear, actually what you have found to be helpful for you, too, because there is so much brilliant technology out there and it's a super fun time to be in this world. Okay. I think I'm still recovering from being sick because I still have a little junk in my throat. So I apologize. So how is everything going? I'm doing well. I just had some lunch and had a little square of dark chocolate. I love to have just a little something sweet after lunch. So I'll have like a square of dark chocolate. Like the Ghirardelli dark chocolate with sea salt and almonds is the one that's currently in my desk here. And I absolutely love it. It's delicious and it makes me happy. So here I am coming at you with a full belly and a happy heart. Okay, so when we're thinking about the tools, the technology that we want to have in our business, I want to just share with you how I like to think about it. Because like I said before, there's so much out there. So Many great things, so many fun things to try. But we could spend all day and night trying new tools and not making money, right? Unless you get paid to try new tools, then that's a whole other issue. But for most of us, we're not get getting paid to try new tools. We need to use those tools in order to be more efficient and help more people and make more money. Right? So that's kind of the lens that I come at it. As a business coach, I am always thinking about my clients and like, how can I help them? Help you to become. To streamline and simplify what you're doing and not get bogged down in overthinking and decision fatigue and. And thinking that there's only one right way or thinking you must be doing it the wrong way, there's got to be some better way out there, and then just spending all of your time and spinning your wheels in looking at technology and tools. So this is how I like to think about what technology and tools to bring into my business and how I try to help my clients to make these decisions as well is to think about what are your struggles? Like, think about in your business. Well, and we're going to specifically talk about marketing tools during this episode today. So thinking about marketing tools, or, I'm sorry, thinking about your marketing, you have your marketing actions that you want to be doing, right? Like, you know, networking, sending out an email newsletter, posting on social media, whatever it is. Now, none of us, me included, are perfect in all of our marketing actions, right? There are reasons why things don't get done or they take longer than we thought they should or would. And so think about what are those struggles? What are those obstacles that keep you from getting your brilliance, your marketing message, your service out into the world, and think about what those things are and just think about maybe three or four of them. And right now, like, the top three obstacles to you getting your stuff out. So what I often see, and I'm just gonna give you the three or four that come up for me and come up for a lot of my clients, a lot of the women that I talk to. So number one, not enough time. Like, I know I should be, you know, creating a podcast once a week, sending out email newsletters once a week, posting on social media every day, but I just don't have time for all of that. Does anybody relate? Can you relate to that? I'm raising my hand. Are you raising your hand right? Or number two is creating content is hard. That's what my mind loves to tell Me, and I hear this from other women that I talk to, from clients as well. Like I sit down to write or sit down to create something, and I have no idea what to say, what to create, what people want to hear, what's going to be, you know, the one right magic thing that I can say that will just like, open up the floodgates of business. There isn't just one thing, right? If you've been around here or know me at all, you'll know I will tell you. There's not one right thing, right? The, the right thing is whatever you're doing consistently. Because all the marketing things work. So we each get to decide what are the marketing things we want to do. We want our energy and our focus. And so there's not one right thing. Okay, I'm off my soapbox now. Moving on. So, and then the next thing is I hear, like, I have nothing important to say, right? You ever heard or ever thought that, like, you have nothing. I, I have no idea. There's nothing I can say that's really, that, you know, earth shattering. So that can be a struggle. Or maybe I sit down to work during my work time and I have no idea what I should be doing. Like, there's 5 million things that I need to do. My list is like a mile long, and I have no idea what I should be focusing on and what's going to move the needle in my business, what's going to bring in the clients, what's going to move the business forward. So can you relate to any of those? Yes. So, okay, so that's where we want to start, right? Is think about what are your top struggles. And then what I'm going to help you do is to find tools and technology that will help you overcome those. Right? So think so keep that in mind. Anytime you come across a new piece of technology that you know, sounds really exciting, really sexy, and you're like, should I use this? Should I try this? I want you to come back and think about, how is this going to address those struggles that I have? Like, how will this help me to get my brilliance out into the world? How will this help me to be more efficient? How will it pay me back? Because anytime we are investing time or anytime we're investing money and in anything in our business, we want to make sure we're creating a return on that investment. We have to know how that return is going to be created, and we are responsible for creating that return. Right. Anytime that we're spending time or money in our business. So so that's kind of the mindset that I like to have, that I like to think about when I'm looking for new tools, new technology, and when I'm implementing new tools and technology. Right. And sometimes what will happen is you will find an app or a piece of technology or a tool, and you think, oh, this is that missing piece that I've kind of been looking for because there's been the struggle and I haven't been able to address it. And so I'm going to try to plug this thing in there and see how it works. And so we plug that thing in there and we see how it works and it doesn't work the way we thought it would, or it's not effective in saving us time or money. Right. Or it's not going to give us that return that we were hoping. I had this happen. Recently, I've been experimenting a lot with different AI tools. And so I'll be talking to you more about that because I'm totally geeking out in the I AI realm and it's so fun and blowing my mind and I can't wait to start teaching it. But I want to be learning a little bit more about it first. But one tool that I tried was an AI calendar tool, calendaring tool. So it was supposed to be like an add on to my Google Calendar. And then it would look at all the things I have on my calendar and then it would ask me, what are my priorities in terms of, you know, focus, time or working out or, you know, what are the things I want to be spending my time on? And then it would help me fit all those things into my calendar. That sounds great, right? So I was like, all right, sign me up, I'm all in. So I did a trial and I implemented it with my project management, with my calendar. I got them all synced up together and which was not hard, it was super easy. And I put my priorities in there and I thought, oh, this is going to be amazing. And it just wasn't like the way I already had my calendar set up because I've kind of been doing this on my own without AI or without technology or I'm. I mean, I'm using Google Calendar but without AI, I guess. And so I had already kind of had all of my calendaring set up the way I like it. And so trying to fit this other tool in didn't work for me. And so I uninstalled it and from everywhere and went back to the way I was doing it. But that's okay. And I was able to determine that it wasn't going to work for me pretty quickly. And so at that point I was like, all right, am I going to spend the time to re, rejigger all of my, my calendaring the way I'm currently do it? I would have to completely change it all. Do I want to invest the time in doing that so that I can use this tool, or do I want to just continue what I've been doing that's working and get rid of the tool? And so that's what I decided to, that it wasn't going to be worth the investment of time for me to get it up and running because it really wasn't going to do what I wanted it to do or do enough of what I wanted it to do to make it worth my time investment. So I want you to just keep that in mind so that you can make these decisions for yourself. And, and you don't, you know, if you download and implement and free trial something and you feel like it's not working, just get rid of it. Like, don't you know that I can't remember what they call it, but it's basically the sunk cost. Sunk cost. Like, don't feel like you have to stick with this thing because you've already invested some time into it to try to see if it's going to work. Like if it's, it's going to work or it's not going to work, let's just, you know, either keep it or get rid of it. And it doesn't matter how much you maybe have invested time or money wise and go forward. Right? And, and so I think that's a really important point, is that just because you've invested a little bit doesn't mean that you have to stick with it. Right? If you're sure it's not going to work or, you know, if your intuition is telling you this is not going to work for me. So, so, okay, so we're thinking about our struggles, right? And, and so I mentioned the top ones that I see. And so then from there, then we're going to find the tools that will set us up for success and what is going to give you the greatest return on that time and money, right? Because there's so much amazing technology out there that you don't have to settle, number one. And number two, there's, you know, there is a tool, basically, I, I believe there's a tool for any task that you have that you don't want to be doing or don't like. And so I'm going to talk with you today about four that I have found to be indispensable. For me, these are tools that I use just about every day. And you know, one of them I'm actually using right now as we speak, as I'm recording this. And I'm going to talk with you about how I use them and give you some examples. And then, you know, so I just encourage you, these might not be best fit tools for you, best fit technology for you, but they are for a, for a wide range of people. So that's another reason why I chose them. And if you want my help in talking through what might be some great tools for you, please reach out to me because I'm happy to help you. I'm happy to brainstorm those solutions for those greatest struggles that you have. And okay, so for me, the first tool I want to talk about is project management. And I personally use Asana. There's a lot of different project management tools out there, but getting on board with a project management tool has been indispensable for me. I could not run my business without it now, like, if it went away, if Asana just like disappeared, I would be, I have no idea. Because what I have used Asana for is removing all of the cognitive load of like, remembering things that I need to be doing. Everything gets dumped from my brain of things I need I need to do. It gets dumped into a sauna. I create basically checklists or, you know, the fancy people call them workflows for everything that I do regularly in my business, right? So like this, this production of this podcast, I have an entire checklist. So on the day that I have time in my calendar to report, record this podcast, I open up that task in my asana and I have my checklist of all the things I do. And obviously recording like I'm doing now is just one step in that process, but I have everything in there, so all I have to do is follow the plan. And I think that for me has been one of the greatest lessons, learning in engineering and reverse engineering. My success is create a plan and then set yourself up for success with tools like Asana and then just follow the plan, right? And then we evaluate and do all those things and, and iterate. But when you have a plan, then you don't have to sit down at your desk and be like, okay, what am I going to do today? Right? You're like, you know what your, what your focus is, you know what you're doing. You can Just forge ahead. You don't have to use any of mental energy trying to figure out what you're supposed to do today. And so that has been incredibly helpful for me. It's created so much more efficiency, so much more productivity and so much less overthinking because I'm, I'm like, well, I could record a podcast today or I could, you know, do follow up calls or I could write a post on social media. It's like, no, I, I'm recording the podcast and here's my checklist, right. So it really helps me to keep focused on what I need to be doing at any point in time. Okay. So, and also it helps me to communicate with my team. So my team, we barely ever communicate an email. The only time I see them come into my email inbox is when there's something, an email that I need to proof. Right. That I need to look at. And so other than that, most of our communication is happening in Asana, which is very helpful because you and I both know we don't need any more crap in our inboxes. There's just so much in there. And things fall through the cracks in Asana, there's notifications, messages in there I need to read and they'll stay right there, top of mind. And I can get in there and read those and respond to those. And so it's just a great way to stay organized. So you can use Asana for all the little projects in your, in your own marketing system. Right? You can use Asana for tracking leads even, and tracking, you know, kind of your, your pipeline of, of customers coming into your business and all the steps they take. Right. And so if you have a large number of customers, it probably wouldn't work, but like for my business, it works really great. I don't necessarily use it. Well, I kind of do use it for that. Right. I use it also for planning my events. I host two, one in person and one at least one online event a month. And so, you know, I have all my little checklists for those and I even will keep track of people that want me to register them or want to be invited again. And so I, I track all of that in Asana. So it's everything that I want to keep track of. Let's see. So that's Asana I highly recommend. And so Asana, I do love it because it's a free tool. I know there's paid versions of it, but for me and the size of team that I have, we have a free version and I have Never felt the need to upgrade that at this point, at the size of my business. So that's a free tool for you right there. You could get started on it right away and. But at the very least, I think a project management tool can be incredibly helpful to stay organized and to keep focused and know what you're doing when you sit down at your desk to work. Okay, so then number two is, so here's my first little foray with you into AI is Chat GPT is a tool that I use a lot and I'm going to do some more teaching on AI and how I like to use it. But what I with any of these tools, like we talked about before, what I like to think about is what are the obstacles that I currently have in my business that this tool can help me with. And so for me, I have a lot, I get a lot of decision fatigue around creating content, like should I create this or what, you know, what am I gonna do for that? Or what kind of what should I do for my post? Or how am I going to write this email? Or any of that. So I use Chat GPT to help me minimize decision fatigue. So anytime I find myself getting into a loop like, okay, I need to create some content, what am I going to say? I use Chat GPT to help me generate ideas. And so that has been really helpful. And it also helps me increase my reach and get more of my brilliance out into more people. And it does that by helping me to repurpose content. And so I'll talk a little bit about how I do that in the next tool. But I use Chat GPT. So we're going to use this podcast as an example, right? So after I record this podcast, I'm going to create a description of the podcast episode, like the show notes, right? I'm going to create an email that gets sent out to my email list, which if you're not on my email list, I would love for you to be on there and you could receive the email and then there's social posts that go out. And so Chat GBT will help me with each one of those things. And so what I do is I will put the transcript of this episode into Chat GPT and say, okay, here's the transcript, here's everything I've said. Now help me, you know, create a subject line for the email, you know, draft a 300 or 250 word email, you know, summarizing this, this episode. So it's not like I'm asking Chat GPT to, to be, to Create the words that I speak. I've already spoken the words. I'm just asking Chat GBT to summarize them for me, right? So it still will have some of my flavor in it, which is what I want. Like, I don't want to just delegate all of my thinking and writing to Chat GPT, but for some of these things, it's very helpful, right? So rather than it taking me an hour, which it used to do because of my perfectionism, to write the podcast description and an email talking about telling my audience that there's a new podcast available, I would. And. And just writing a social media post, I used to take an hour for that, which I'm embarrassed to say, but now I just put the transcript in Chat GPT and I asked Chat GBT to write a summary, you know, an email, and that's done in just a matter of minutes. And so it saves me time, right? And still it allows me to get my service, my value out into the world and out to you. It makes it easier, right. More efficient. And there's a lot of other ways that I use Chat GPT. I did, I have used it to help me come up with ideas for the podcast and I gave it themes and then, you know, different themes of things I want to talk about and then it will help me to come up with because it knows who my audience is, who my, who I'm speaking to, and it helps me to come up with themes for my podcast episodes or subjects for my podcast episodes. Now it's me that's going to create the content, right? Because it's me speaking now. These are my words, my ideas coming to you. But it's really helpful for me to have Chat GPT say, oh, why don't you do an episode about how, you know, self care for a female entrepreneur. I'm like, oh, great idea. I have lots to say about that, but it's my words that say it, right? So that's really helps me to get my thoughts out into the world to have those prompts that Chat GPT gives me. So I use it for a lot of idea generation like that. I also use it for, I have asked it to create a list, actually an entire month's worth of ideas for, for me for social media posts for this women's success summit that I'm hosting in April, which if you're not coming and you, I would love for you to be there and I'll put the link to that in the show notes, but I wanted to post about that regularly, right? So I put in all the information about the event and all the marketing copy that we've already written. And I said, you know, provide me with ideas for social media posts from today through April 12th. And so it gave me like, I don't know, 90 days or, I don't know, 75 days or whatever of ideas for social media posts. So it'll give me a prompt. I write the post or record the video or make the reel. But I just love having those ideas, and so that just really helps me. So think about. It goes back to thinking about what you struggle with and then applying the tools to that. Right. But I always want it to be my voice because I'm really. I. I believe I want to share my own intellectual property. So I use chat to prompt me for ideas, but then I share my own thoughts. Right. My own work. Okay, so we're going to be talking more about that in the podcast. I'm going to do some webinars and things in the months, weeks to come. So watch out for that about AI because there's so much great stuff going on there. Anyway. Okay, Tool number three. And I know we're getting a little bit long now, but I think that's okay. Tool number three is descript, and that's spelled D, as in David Descript. D, E, S, C, R, I, P, T. Description. And so it's an application that you have on your desktop computer or your laptop. It is not an app on the iPhone or an app for a smartphone. It is. So it's a video audio editing platform, and. Which sounds very fancy and very techie and very overwhelming, but it's not. What it does is it has an incredible suite of capabilities that help you to repurpose content. So whatever kind of content you have, it can help you to repurpose it. So the way I use it is to repurpose this podcast, which this podcast is like my main big content piece every week, right? This is where I put all of my creativity, my thinking, my value in creating this podcast for you. And then I create this one big, special piece of content, and then I repurpose it in a whole bunch of different ways. And I repurpose it using descript. And so just real quick and how I use it with a podcast. So I record this podcast, audio and video, either within the descript. I can do it within Descript or on Zoom, because I like Zoom's filters to soften my face. I don't know, it's very silly, but I just do. I like their camera looks really Good. In Zoom. So I record In Zoom because I do use the video from the recording of these podcasts, right? Okay, so I record In Zoom and then I'll upload this video, an audio recording, into descript. And so what descript does is that it transcribes the entire episode. So then I have the video, I have the audio, and I have the words. And so what you can do in descript is basically it, it on the screen, it'll have two panes. On the left side is the transcript, it's all the words. It looks like a word document. On the right side is the video. And so I can, on the left side go through, you know, with my mouse and highlight words, like highlight a part of it where I really like the words. And I can have Descript create a clip for me based on that. It will grab the words and the video, right? And it can create clips. So then I'll use those clips for short form video, like reels or TikToks or whatever. You can do it for anything. And I can see right on the screen how long the clip is. Also, descript has its own very robust AI that's getting better and better. And it can pull out clips for me. Like I can go into the, after I upload it, just ask the AI to pick out five to seven clips that are 60 to 90 seconds long, you know, that are like the juiciest parts of this episode. And it will do that for me. It will also pull out clips in the script. Basically the transcript, right, that I can use for copy posts or for quotes on social media and like anything for copy. So, you know, we publish, we're publishing the transcript of this podcast now, and that's all coming from descript. I could even publish it as a blog post as well. And you know, you get the benefits of SEO from doing that. So I can do this one piece of content, this one podcast, and I can repurpose it. I mean, obviously we publish the podcast, I take the transcript, and that's what I feed into chat GPT to write the email and to write the description. I can use the transcript for social media posts, I can use the video for short form video posts, right? And that's all from just this one piece of content. And so that for me has helped tremendously to not only create, it gives me more time to create more valuable, great, better podcasts, but then to be able to get them out, get that, that value that content out to more people. So that has been definitely worth my time and money. In investing in descript. Now descript does have a free version, which I started using at the beginning and I feel like it was enough to get started. But then when I really fell in love with it and I wanted to go all in and I wanted to have more storage and whatever, then I started a paid plan. And I believe it's, oh goodness, $25 a month or something like that. Like it's not for me, cost prohibitive. So that's tool number three that's been really helpful. And then finally is streamyard, which is a broadcast, a live video broadcasting platform. So how I use streamyard is it's kind of like, it's definitely. It's like zoom. It's basically like zoom. It's a little fancier. But what I love Streamyard for is it allows me to broadcast live video, so like Facebook Live, Instagram Live, LinkedIn Live and YouTube Live all at the same time. And so it helps me to efficiently reach more people on all those platforms. And so as we know, video is kind of a big deal on social media. So if you're doing video, great. If not, and you're interested in doing video, I suggest you get started. And video is something I've learned to enjoy and I actually feel like it's the easiest and fastest way for me to create content now. So I don't mind doing it. And so Streamyard helps me to speak to my audiences on all the social media platforms that I enjoy being on and go live and do all of them at one time. It also automatically records everything. So then I could take those recordings and again put them into descript, cut them into short form video, take this transcript and use it in post, those sorts of things. So those are the tools and the technology that I believe are actually worth your time and money. Now Streamyard also, let me just say they have a free plan and I think on their free plan you are limited in how many channels you can broadcast live to. And I can't remember how many, if it's one or two, maybe it's two. So if you want to broadcast to more than that, then you upgrade to a paid plan, which is also, I believe, a very reasonable price. So, so that is a great tool that, that I think is worth it as well. And let's see. And streamyard has a lot of other capabilities. I won't go into all of that, but it's great if you're, you know, online classes and things like that because it has some really nice on screen graphics that you can very easily put in place. And. But those are four tools that I use all the time. They are indispensable. I can't run my business without them. I suppose Streamyard, I could run my business without it technically, but I really enjoy the efficiency that it gives me in being able to go live on all the social media channels that I want to and reaching more people, helping more people. So I hope this has been helpful for you. And so I want you to just circle back around and think about your top three struggles. And then what are the tools that. Or, you know, what could a tool help you? Help to set you up for success in overcoming those struggles? Right. And so I think these four will help a lot of you. And if you have specific struggles that you want to discuss with me, please reach out to me on social media. Or if you're on my email list, you can just reply to the email or you can go onto my website and book a call. But I am here to help you and help you be more efficient, streamline your business, create more simplicity so that you can get more of your value, more of your brilliance out into the world. And I believe that the world needs what you have to offer, and I'm here to help you get it out there and have more fun doing it. All right, I hope you have a great week and I will talk to you next time. Bye. Hey, if you like this podcast, I would love for you to become a part of my community. Sign up for my Friday, Sally. The link is in the show notes. And each Friday I'm going to deliver to your inbox my weekly celebration as well as my thoughts on the latest in business and marketing. And I want to keep you in the know about my upcoming events. Free trainings, free gifts, book clubs, all the fun things. And of course, I'm going to send you notification of my latest podcast episodes. So get signed up and I'll see you there.