Inspiring Women in Business Podcast - Episode 4 - The Right Marketing Strategy That Gets You More Sales

In this episode, I talk about the right marketing strategy for your business. It will help you get that clarity on where you should be putting your time and effort to get results, get more customers, attract the ideal clients that will be ready to work with you, love working with you, and pay you the right amount of money.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Avoid comparing yourself, avoid distractions, and be intentional.

Be clear on how much time you will be online.

Be clear on what you want your business to look like. (7:55)

Be clear on who you are connecting with. (9:10)

It is important to have a website. (10:03)

Be profitable by pricing the right way. (11:04)

Connecting your marketing strategy with sales strategy. (11:24)

Recap (12:11)

More about Ruth:

Hi, I’m Ruth, a business coach specializing in helping freelancers and business owners adjust their mindset and their marketing so they can get fully booked with clients they LOVE to work with. I’ve helped hundreds of self-employed women achieve the time and money freedom they craved.

I’ve started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I’d created a glass ceiling for myself.

In 2017, I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn’t doing what I loved and fulfilling my true potential.  It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call.  I don’t want the same to happen to you.

You can expect practical advice, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you have been putting in your way.

I’m on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business.

Connect and know more about Ruth Gilbey here:

Coaching: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/coaching

Free stuff: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/next-client

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ruthgilbeymarketingandcoaching/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ruth_gilbey/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthgilbey/

Transcription

INTRO

Hello, and welcome to the inspiring women in business podcast. My name is Ruth Gilbey. And I'm a business and marketing coach. I'm on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business. Now I started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was just grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I created a glass ceiling myself. It was in 2017 when I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn't doing what I loved, and I wasn't fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. And I don't want the same thing to happen to you. You can expect practical advice, interviews, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you've been putting in your way.

BODY

Hello, and welcome to today's episode, where I'm going to be talking to you about what is the right marketing strategy for your business or helping you really get that clarity on where you should be putting your time and effort to get results, attract your ideal client, get more customers, attract the clients that are actually going to be ready to work with you, love working with you, and pay you the right amount of money.

So perhaps you're a new business owner, or perhaps you're a business owner. That's taking a step back and thinking you're not getting the results that you really want. You're finding yourself really busy working in your business, you're finding yourself really busy doing all the different things, and you're not getting the results you actually want. And that's where I want to help you in this episode is by talking through my tried and tested methods that I've been doing for my own clients for years as a marketing consultant. And also, I teach now in my program, the online business blueprint, and in my membership, as well.

So I just want to ask you and get you thinking about where you are right now, what you're actually doing, and what does your marketing actually look like? Are you finding yourself really busy and not getting the results you want? 

So let me ask you these questions. Be honest. Be honest with yourself. Do you find yourself spending hours scrolling on social media? Do you think because your peers or people that are in a similar industry to you or whoever you're searching and following online because they're on social media in air quotes all the time? Because it feels like they're on social media all the time, wondering how do they do it? How are they so busy all the time? How could they be on all the platforms? How are they managing to do it? Do you feel like because they're doing it, you should be doing it? You should be busy on social media as well.

The thing is about comparing yourself to others and spending time looking at what other people are doing, and thinking that you should be the same. To be doing the same is that you don't actually know what results they're actually getting. You don't really know what's going on behind the scenes. You only see one side of it. You don't know if they're getting leads and sales from the activity that they've got.

But because there's so much noise, we have this feeling of FOMO and compare-nitis all the time, thinking that we should be doing all these different things. And it doesn't help that there are also so many distractions, so many shiny red objects out there, so many things, tempting us all the time on social media, you know. Do you find yourself getting distracted by the latest Instagram update? And at the time of recording, this Clubhouse was all the rage when they'd used a FOMO marketing technique that was invite-only to this new social media app?

Are you spending your time on the right things? Are you getting distracted by the new latest shiny red object. Now, where I think you can start to get that clarity to get that focus is by starting with stepping back from it all and getting really clear on what your goals are. What's your business? What are your plans? What are your dreams? What do you want to achieve? And this will really help you. This will really really help you stay in your lane.

Avoid compare-nitis. Avoid that shiny red object syndrome. It will reduce the FOMO. You'll be more intentional. You'll hopefully stop the scroll or reduce the scrolling because you'll be going online and being intentional. What you want to be doing, your goals are, when you are online, or when you are working on your marketing, are you want to be creating and engaging more than you're consuming.

And if you're really honest, if you audited what you were doing, which one are you doing more of? Do you find yourself scrolling and consuming more than you're actually creating, engaging? And that's what I mean when I'm talking about being intentional.

Now, I know how hard it is, particularly in the last year with news and being in lockdown. As I'm recording this, we're in a lockdown in the UK, it's January the 21st when I'm recording this, and we're in the middle of a lockdown. And it's really hard to, you know, the notifications, the news, etc. We can spend ourselves spend so much of our time-consuming content online. And as an aside, that's not really very good for our mental health either. That's what we have to be very intentional and clear about how much time we want to be online, how much we want to be consuming, and where we're getting our information from, as well, you know, making sure it's from reputable checked sources.

I’m kind of going off on a bit of a tangent here. But that's all to do with being intentional as well. And like saving yourself time, preserving your energy, looking after your mental health so that you can actually show up as the best version of yourself.

So if what I find is that a lot of people, a lot of my customers, a lot of the women that I coach, a lot of the people that I speak to, and a lot of the people that I see online when they've got a new business is they think being on social media is the answer that they need to be visible. They need to be busy, but it might not be getting them the results that they want. It might be, but have you analyzed it? Have you looked at it? Have you looked at what you're doing is what you're putting in getting out what you actually want? Is it getting leads? Is it getting sales?

So what do I think you should be doing instead of being on social media at the time? And by the way, I love social media. I think it's amazing for building relationships for connections. And I think over particularly over the last year for finding your tribes and your community. It's wonderful. But it's not a marketing strategy. Being busy on social media or just prying and prying is not a marketing strategy. So you might say, well, what is there, Ruth? What is a marketing strategy? And I'm going to go through a five-step system that I think would benefit you to do.

Maybe before you're spending your time on social media, or maybe taking a step back and thinking about how you're showing up on social media as well. So this is what I teach in my signature program, the online business blueprint. It's a five-step system to get you more clients more sales without doing all the things and being on every channel.

Now, step one in this system is going back to getting really, really clear on what you want your business to look like. We've talked about this, well, I've talked about this in previous episodes, a big thing to think about what you want your business to look like. And for now, if you're still thinking about that, maybe consider, like, take the pressure off and give yourself permission, that it's okay to change your mind about what your business is going to be. It's okay to allow that business to evolve. But if you had to pick now what business you've got and how you articulate it. That's what we're going to start with you.

So you want to start with planning, really getting clear on those goals that you want, where you're moving forward, you're heading in the right direction. So when the next new shiny red thing does come along, you have a qualification process. You can say, is this going to get me closer to my goals? Or isn't it so you can ditch it? You don't have time to be doing all the things. It's about getting really, really intentional. You've got that clear focus, those clear goals, you've got your business plan, you've got your targets, you've got that clarity, you can say with confidence. Yes, this is what I'm going to focus on. And no, this isn't that step one.

Step two is really getting clear on who you're connecting with. Who's your ideal client, who would you want to work with, who you have worked with because they might not be your ideal client, you might your messaging might not be connecting with the person you really are, the people or the businesses that you really, really want to work. It's getting really, really clear your messaging is so important. And once you've nailed it, it creates content and puts your copy on your website so much easier, so much easier for so many people skip this step really dialing into am I actually creating content that connects with my ideal client. It's also making sure that your messaging tells everyone who you are how they can work. With you what your unique selling points actually are.

And step three is the thing that so many business owners actually skip because they go straight to social media. After all, maybe that's where they're comfortable. And they're on there. And it feels like a quick win if they skip having a website. And I know that it feels like a massive thing to have a website, and you don't have to stop doing anything, or you don't have to pause. I want you to continue doing what you're doing. But I want you to really factor in when you're going to have a website, if you don't have one, when you're going to plan it, or spend time if you do have a website, upgrading that website. So it's a sales machine for your business, that it's a lead generating machine for your business, that when people go there, it's really clear how they can work with you. It's really clear what your offers are. It's really clear how they can contact you. It's really clear the actions and the next step, they want to go to your website because it's got great content as well.

And the fourth step is your pricing strategy, making sure that you are creating a business that's going to be profitable pricing the right way. And overcoming any fears or blocks you've got around money as well is so important. So many women undercharge because they don't address this.

And the fifth step really is connecting your marketing strategy with your sales strategy, making sure that you are getting leads, have a lead generation strategy, have a sales process, and don't have to be complicated. It's all connected to these step by step process. If you're setting up your website to be the sales machine, it's actually going to get you leads and sales. What you want is you want to be getting clients. What you want is to get on a call and know how to convert them on a sales call. You want to know how to pitch to them. You want to know how to create an amazing proposal because loads and loads of work for you actually convert people. So that's my five-step system. This is what I think you would get more results from than just posting on social media. 

Let me recap that for you one more time, plan out your business, plan out the business that you want, make sure that you're really, really clear on what you want your business to actually look like who you're working with step two, getting clear on your ideal client and making sure that your messaging connects with your ideal client. Step three is prioritizing your website, prioritizing your website to actually have a website. And also to make that website and sales machine. Your website is never ever finished, it's going to make you continue to work, and you're going to see it as part of your marketing, not something that you just set and forget, imagine how much time you would save if you actually, you know, spending your time on these areas rather than trying to be busy doing all the things. Step four is making sure that you have addressed any money blocks that you have that you're really clear and confident with your pricing. Again, if you're clear on offers, if you're clear on your messaging, if you're clear on who your ideal client is, this will all connect really nicely with that. And Step five is making sure that you prioritize a lead generation strategy. Marketing without sales is not going to help your business. It's all got to flow nicely together so that your marketing attracts your ideal client, gets them to take the next action, and moves them closer to buying from you. I hope you found this useful.

I know how scary it can be to step away from doing being busy on social media, and social media has this ability to make us feel like we're taking action and we're moving forward with posts we look for likes, we look at the comments. We're engaging with people, and that's great, but you've got to make sure that you've got this foundational stuff in place first, this business plan, this marketing strategy, this sales strategy as well. I hope you found this useful.

OUTRO

Thanks for listening to the inspiring women in business podcast. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, I would love it if you would leave me a review. Also, I would love to connect with you on Instagram. That's where I hang out most of the time. I'm @Ruth_Gilbey. I'll put a link in the show notes for you as well come and connect with me. Tell me about your business. And also tell me what you'd like to hear next on the podcast. And lastly, go and check out the business building hub on my website. There you can find more amazing free resources to help you take the next step in your business. And you can also find out other ways that you can work with me. I'll see you soon.