We are going to have a bit of a big think about social media and small business, because I’m getting some questions, more like statements, in the ethers of female experts who run service-based businesses. That is who I am talking to for context in this conversation.
If you have a product-based business, and primarily these are women who are offering services at a premium level, they are really asking to get paid for their level of expertise and for what they have honed their craft over the years, and they are really great at what they do, they continue on with their professional education, and they add value and they get their clients amazing results. Because of that, they choose to charge a premium price, and so that’s really who I am talking to here.
What I’m hearing is a couple of things.
One, I’ve spent a lot of money on marketing tactics and something tells me that more marketing tactics aren’t going to help me generate the revenue and make the sales that I want to make in my business.
The other thing that I hear people saying is “If I just had the right social media strategy, then I would have all these sales coming in.” What they’re essentially saying is if they have all these sales coming in, then they wouldn’t be worrying about money all the time. If I just had the perfect social media strategy, then I wouldn’t be worrying about money all the time. That’s not true.
Then the other thing that people ask is, “What is the marketing method that you teach inside of The Bold Profit Academy?”
I think that having this conversation is going to answer all of those questions for female experts running service-based businesses, charging a premium price. Premium, let’s say, is between a minimum of $3,000 to $5,000. But a lot of the women I work with are consultants, they are executive coaches, they are marketing experts, they are messaging experts, they are therapists, they are health practitioners, and experts in their related health fields. These are the folks that I’m talking to.
I think it’s important when we talk about social media because I think we’re seeing a lot of social media tactics being used without a lot of thought for the sales strategy in the business.
What I mean by that is I see a lot of people using influencer marketing tactics to sell a premium-priced offer—and there’s nothing wrong with influencer marketing, but you wouldn’t use those tactics or different tactics that you would use than to sell a premium-priced offer or even sell something in a B2B environment where you’re not selling directly to the consumer, where you’re selling to other businesses, larger businesses. Those are not the strategies that you’ll be applying to that business model.
I think there’s a big disconnect, there’s a gap in the market where we’re not talking about what are the appropriate strategies for the business model that you have and then what are the appropriate strategies for that business model based on what are your strengths, what is your personality, what are your values, and things like that. Social media becomes just this big catch-all.
What I think we’re really talking about when we talk about having an online business, when we talk about having a digital business, a virtual business, whatever you want to call that—and by the way, I don’t distinguish online business versus not an online business. I think of it as it’s all business. There are lots of things that work across industries, across different types of business that aren’t necessarily different if you have an online business.
I think that is a part of the big lie in that space is that somehow, everything you knew about running a business not online is now irrelevant and you need to learn all these new things about how things actually work in the online business space. That’s not true. I just think of it as a business. Whether you’re online or offline, that doesn’t really matter much to me. That is why I don’t really talk a lot about online business strategies.
As a matter of fact, I think some of the traditional online business strategies, or maybe more internet marketing strategies, are actually ineffective and they are a drain on profitability instead of increasing profitability. This is why I find having conversations about social media to be a bit complicated because I am pro-social media, when you use it in a way that makes sense and when you use it in a way that’s in alignment with a working system and when you are discerning about it because it can very easily become a time, energy, and money drain on your business.
I think what’s happening is women particularly are seeing this online business space, which then gets translated to be social media, as a new frontier. How can they come and use these tools to grow their businesses, to expand their reach, to maybe make things easier on them, to have technology that helps them automate and run their business in a way that creates greater ease than maybe what they’re used to? I’m very pro that. I am pro using the internet, not necessarily social media, but I am pro using the technology that is brought to us by the internet to help us run our businesses with greater ease and efficiency and to help us grow our reach if that’s needed.
I’m going to talk about some pros, some cons, I’m going to give you some facts, I’m going to give you some of my opinions, and I’m going to give you some things that I think you can do to improve or think differently about how you use social media.
More Systems and Strategies, Less Tactics
One of my biggest issues with social media is how it gets taught. Because most likely, you are an expert at the thing that you do, you have spent years honing your craft. Not so much an expert in business, and that comes with a lot of embarrassment and shame for some folks but it’s totally normal. Why would you be an expert in running a business growth strategy when you are an expert at mental health for teenagers? There’s no way, that’s not logical. That’s why I think what happens is women go, “Oh my gosh, there’s so much I don’t know about business. True, and therefore, I need to do more marketing, and to do more marketing, I need to use social media.”
That’s dangerous because I think we need to zoom out and understand things from a bigger picture so we can have a broader understanding of basic literacy around business so that you can then discern and decide what are the tools and tactics you want to use.
One of the gaps that I see and then I talk about is that when you come onto social media and people are talking about business, (1) it’s in a bit of an echo chamber and a vacuum, but (2) they give you the tactics without giving you the systems or the strategies. For example, they are telling you to market using social media but they’re not telling you how that is going to help you make sales. Some of them do, not all.
What we really need for you to do is outline a sales process and then decide what tools you’re going to use to execute that process. Are you going to use a podcast? Are you going to use social media? Are you going to use email? Are you going to use a webinar? All of those are viable tools. But when you don’t understand how they fit into your system and how to make them work together in your process, that’s when it becomes like a giant drain and you’re like, “Why isn’t this working? If I just had the perfect this.” No. If you had the process and then you identified what tools you’re going to use in that process, that is when you’re going to experience greater success.
In The Bold Profit Academy, we’re going to teach you how to generate a high-quality leads system, you get to choose what tools you want to use to do that. We give you plenty of examples of what tools those are. We’re going to teach you how to create consistent and predictable sales by having a sales process, and you are going to decide what tools you want to help do that.
We’re going to help you create a money management, a cash flow system, and then you can decide what tools you might want to use in that system. We’re giving you a framework for three of the most important things in generating revenue, but not just revenue, profitable revenue. We don’t want you just making money, we want you keeping your money. That’s really where my ethics, integrity, and values start to rub up against dumping money into Facebook Ads. That’s really why I want to have this conversation because I want you to not only make more money, I want you to keep more money in your business so that you can pay yourself more, start to buy yourself some out of time by either some setting up some systems and some automation, or having contractors or an employee, or something like that, and then profiting and taking that profit and then turning that into more cash. You need to keep your money in order to do that.
That’s why when we present strategies and business models inside The Bold Profit Academy, we are presenting you with your most profitable options. They might not be your quickest, they might not be the most overnight success, but they work consistently and they will lead to more profitable revenue when you implement them right.
Now, Tara, do you hate social media? No. I don’t hate social media.
I actually think there are a tremendous amount of pros to social media. First of all, it’s here to stay. It’s not going anywhere. I do really object though to Mark Zuckerberg in this metaverse thing. I just think that’s dangerous stuff. I’m just not that futuristic where I want to be outsourcing some of these things to technology. I am a little wary of AI and things like that. That is a philosophical thing that I struggle with as I use social media. That is very pro-humanity, I’m questioning the ethics and the morality of this tool; and I can do that and still use it. I can do that and acknowledge it’s here to stay. I can do that and fight for a better way for us all to come together and use these tools. I think it provides a great way to cultivate a global network if that’s something you want or require. Not every business requires a global network. It gives you access to greater reach beyond your local market if you need it.
I want to break this down for a second because I’m not sure we sometimes even understand the tools. We have a platform, let’s just use Instagram. I actually think Instagram is a phenomenal platform for selling and for using that in your sales ecosystem. Here’s why: within the Instagram platform—so we have the internet and then we have social media platforms, and within this platform, you have different tools. One platform, multiple tools.
What are you talking about, Tara? We have the Grid, we have DMs, we have Reels, we have Stories and we have IGTV, we have IG Live, and we have Highlights. Within that one platform, there are multiple strategies that you can apply. What are the most effective strategies within that one tool for you to make sales? I think this is great. I actually like this when we are fully present to the cons, the drawbacks, and the grifting that is happening.
I need this to be an eyes-wide-open situation and that’s how I do best with social media; and realize that you don’t have to use it the way everybody wants you to use it. You can use it differently. When you have a solid social media strategy, meaning you know why you’re using it and how it leads to revenue in your business, please dear god, we need it to lead to revenue, otherwise, it’s a lot of time and effort that you could be doing something else with. It might not feel like time and effort, it might not feel like work because it’s something you also might perhaps utilize in your personal life, but it is work, it is effort, it is potentially not your highest and best use of your energy depending on who you are.
Listen, if you love it and all you want to do is spend all your time on social media regardless if it lands dollars in your pocket, be my guest. I honestly have other things and I don’t love it that much. That doesn’t mean I can’t use it for my business, it’s very much both-and. Now some businesses do really well with ads but you absolutely need to have a budget, be measuring your actual lifetime value of a customer, and have a system for converting the lead to a sale. I’m not even anti-ad. I’m anti you running an ad and not having a process in a system for converting the sale not knowing if your ad spend is going to enhance your profitability or detract from your profitability, and have you tried all of the non-paid strategies to generate leads and have you been successful with those before you start putting money into a paid ad strategy. I think there are things that need to be thought about well before you do that. That’s some of the things that we talk about in The Bold Profit Academy. As a matter of fact, there’s a guide in the Bold Profit Academy about how to know if you’re ready for a paid ad strategy. It’s not that we’re anti-ads, it’s that I want to make sure you’ve mastered all the tools and resources available to you before you go and do that and that you’re prepared when you do that for it to be a profitable option.
Let’s talk about the cons.
Running ads without having the business knowledge is a big mistake. That’s really what I’m seeing people do is that they’re outsourcing even to marketing agencies or to ad agencies because they’re afraid of it because they don’t understand how it works because they don’t know if it’s the right thing for them. As a business owner, abdicating your responsibility like that is costly. I really do want you to have an understanding. It doesn’t have to be your strength. Some things do, but sending it and outsourcing it without having knowledge of it working is problematic because you don’t know if you’re getting scammed. You have to be able to do some of these things and understand the basic functionality. The ad agency is not responsible. This is your business. You’re responsible.
Another con is flooding your business with hundreds of leads requires a system for segmenting them, nurturing them, and converting them. Otherwise, you have a really expensive repository of email addresses. I got to tell you something. If you’re an energetic being like me, if you’re into energy, I don’t like that. That makes me really creeped out. I like to have an engagement. I intentionally keep my list small. I intentionally keep my list engaged because it’s not about marketing, it’s about having a sales conversation through email. It’s about building relationships through email. It’s about being helpful through email, about being human, being an empathetic human being through email. If you don’t have a process for that, it really does start to weigh on you and feel very draining.
I’m going to be completely honest here and I’m going to give my full on opinion about another con of social media. That is that you can have really great content and still not be like a web celeb or have a big audience or a lot of followers or any of that stuff. I don’t understand the mystery of the algorithm and I don’t try and I don’t care. My business is not reliant on playing algorithmic games but we put out some really phenomenal content. I know this because wherever I go, if I walk into a room and I’m meeting somebody for the first time but they follow me or they’ve listened to this podcast, the first thing they say to me is, “Your content’s amazing.”
I’ve been creating content online for 10 years. I’m 100% a content marketer. I use my content to market and sell my services. I think I do that really well. The proof is in my bank account that I do that really well. I’ve even had a few pieces go viral, for me, not in the standards of the internet where thousands and people have seen a piece of content. Whenever this happens, I always send something to my team and I’m like, “Oh we got a piece going.” Because it’s funny, it’s particularly curious, because it doesn’t lead to more leads, it doesn’t necessarily lead to more follows, it doesn’t necessarily add to any more opt-ins than anything I do on a consistent daily and regular basis for me. I’m sharing that because I want to be transparent about what you’re actually seeing happening out there.
By the way, my opt-in is fantastic. I should be charging for it. I’m very confident in my content, in my messaging, in my opt-in, and in building relationships and all of those things. I have 2,000 followers on Instagram. Even my most engaged posts’ comments are few. Why is this? I’ll give you my assessment. My best fit clients, the ones who buy for me, the ones who stay with me, the ones who continue to buy, make referrals, share my podcast, and share my content, they don’t use social media in the way that a lot of people think you use social media. My best fit clients are DMing me with meaningful conversations about something I’ve posted, not necessarily commenting. They might not necessarily want to be on a public thread talking about money or business, or this or that. They have a level of discernment and they might not want to share those opinions, and I full-on respect that.
That’s why I repeatedly say my DMs are open. I want to get to know you. I want to hear from you because there are a lot of folks out there who don’t, who are like, “Don’t DM me. I don’t want you in my DMs.” That’s fine. That’s absolutely fine. We all get to choose our boundaries, but the way I’m using this tool is in alignment with how my best-fit clients want to show up, and Instagram isn’t even my primary marketing channel. This podcast is, then my email and Instagram.
Sure, we do move people from social media to the email list, and it’s not easy, and there are absolutely people who buy from me because they’ve seen social posts. Because it’s an ecosystem, it’s not just one piece. Social media isn’t just one piece of the puzzle, it is a microcosm of a larger ecosystem in how I sell and how my business makes sales. Yet there are web celebs out there whose comment sections are hundreds of comments deep, and people are like, “Don’t you feel like crap, Tara, when you see that so many people are engaging on so-and-so’s content?” No. Because those are most likely not my best-fit clients.
I go and I read the comments on those posts and I ask myself, “Are these the conversations, are these the comments that I would want on my posts? Are these the conversations that I want to have? Are these my ideal clients?” A lot of times, they’re not, and a lot of times, people comment on larger brands’ social posts as a way of driving traffic back to their own social media. They’ll write a thoughtful comment and then they’re hoping that people will click on their profile and see them and follow them in that way. I’m sure that works. It’s just not my strategy. It’s not how I use social media. I don’t comment on a lot of stuff on social media so why would I expect my clients to comment on a lot of stuff on social media? That’s not how I use it.
Social media has become incredibly unsocial, and that’s really one of my biggest challenges. My personality type, I’m here for the deep stuff. I’m here for the conversation. I’m here for the nuance. I’m here for meaningful dialogue and I don’t always find that on social media, and that’s okay. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to spend all my time there. I’m going to spend my time serving my clients and my students and engaging with people who are already buying from me. What goes out on my social feeds are automated stuff, stories. I do live because I want to. That’s it. I want to post stories. I enjoy it. I like it. It’s actually how I process and think if you ever follow my stories, they’re actually more like journal entries and me testing messaging and seeing what resonates and asking questions.
I do a lot of polls. I love using Instagram for research and to add value to my Instagram and my podcast community by then sharing the research we collect on our Instagram. I think that’s highly valuable to all of you to hear and see what others are thinking about what questions they’re asking, how they’re considering certain or different aspects in their business. That’s what I love because that feels like a huge service to folks is to do things like that and to be able to give voice to some of the things that are really happening because one of the surveys we did, 91% of the respondents said they don’t feel like social media is giving them a realistic and accurate view of what business ownership is about. If I know that that’s missing and then I can ask questions over on Instagram and collect that data and then share it, that’s really valuable to those 91%.
The way I do social media looks different and then it might look different for you.
For example, I wouldn’t mind doing Instagram lives. Every time I poll my Instagram community, they’re like, “We’re not watching lives.” I’m like, “Okay fine.” So I’m not going to do a live. You really have to consider how you want to be showing up and how your people want to be consuming this and what is the purpose that this tool serves in your system or in your process. I think there’s this real big lie because I’ve been around the online space for a long time.
I started a moderately successful blog in 2012 and went headfirst into digital marketing. How do I get more traffic to my blog so people read the words that I want to put out in the world? I’ve learned a lot over the last 10 years and one of the things that I for sure see is there’s this axiom that the rich just keep getting richer. It’s like those with the most followers just keep getting more followers, and people who got in early and ran ads when ad buys were much cheaper were able to build big platforms much more quickly than today. But does that equate to dollars in the bank? To have a financially lucrative, profitable business that puts money in your bank account so you can provide for your family, live that upgraded lifestyle and build wealth, you don’t need platforms of that size.
As a matter of fact, my favorite way to use social media, like I was talking about, is for research and listening. What I hear more than anything is that like “Oh, my reel went viral and added a ton of followers but didn’t equate to money in the bank. Or my Instagram makes me look a lot more successful than I actually am financially, or the post that went viral led to DMs filled with shitty people saying shitty things, bots, or whatever.” Social media is not the democratization of media advertising that everyone thinks it is. As we know from the Facebook whistleblower report, the platform has its own depth of hell and cronyism. While we have this perception that it helps small businesses get seen, small businesses are not a huge priority for these social media giants of today. They say they are but I really question it based on the actions that they take.
I follow Scott Galloway. He’s got a blog called No Mercy, No Malice, and he wrote this incredibly compelling and well-researched blog post called Carcinogens. He’s far more eloquently voiced in these topics and his concerns for digital advertising, and specifically like Facebook Ads, but when I read this, I just shook my head “yes” the entire time. As a matter of fact, the article that he wrote references a report put out by the World Federation of Advertisers called the Compendium of Ad Fraud Knowledge for Media Investors. I didn’t even know this was a thing but this is such a topic that there’s a Compendium of Ad Fraud Knowledge for Media Investors. I think that if we are going to buy media in our businesses, then we have a responsibility to understand how that works and what the pros and the cons are.
In this report, they reported 88% of clicks on ads are fraudulent. I knew this was going to be high, folks, but I was bowled over; 88% are bots, fake accounts, click farms. It’s fraudulent. You have to really think about how we got here and why are we partaking, again, this is Tara being philosophical and sometimes we do things in our businesses that don’t align with our principles and our philosophies, but this stuff can get me a little tripped up because I also think there’s a better way. This isn’t the only way but listen, Facebook is a business that has a valuation of one billion dollars. I think it’s one billion, I should have checked that before I said that, but because they sell air, digital ad space is a highly profitable business model for them and they don’t have to guarantee any kind of result. It’s a slot machine. You put money in and you hope that you get money out. I gotta tell you the lights are always on for Zuckerberg, the lights are always on for Zucks.
Are there things that you can do to enhance your chances of getting a return on your ad spend? Yes, 100%. Is spending money on ads bad? No. Could it be worth the money that you are putting into it? Sure, if you know exactly who you’re talking to and how to convert those leads to sales. But most business owners are struggling to do that because they’re seeing the ad as the solution and not sales skills and the ability to convert as the solution, which is why in The Bold Profit Academy, it’s a sales program, not a marketing program. We are teaching you how to convert the leads that you already have—and you do already have leads. I can help you find your invisible leads—and then turn those leads into more profitable business through client retention and referrals which are a lot more profitable strategies.
Now you might even know this already, you might be saying like, “Yes, Tara. I know this. I logically understand what you’re saying to me. I know this, but still feel a strong pull toward these tactics.” You might even catch yourself and think, “No, I know this isn’t the answer. I’ve tried this, it didn’t work,” but you’re still feeling pulled in. Some people even call it shiny object syndrome. We’ve put a label on it, but what this really is is an army of middlemen that are making money marketing these tactics to you in the hopes that maybe you will make money.
Now this is not all marketing people are bad. This is not an “all ad people are bad”. We have to trust but verify. But I just want you to know that the reason why you’re feeling pulled in, the reason why you might have overspent on these marketing tactics is because of the exposure you’re having to them. There’s no way to will power yourself out of this when you’re consuming as much marketing material and content promoting these things. It’s a bit of a system that gets you hooked in which is actually one of my greatest concerns. The reason why people are so enticed by ads is because it’s rife with fraud all the way down the line due to the amount of people who are in this game all along the way not being guided or scrutinized or anything by, say Facebook Ads people. The actual Facebook Ads, there’s not a lot of governance here.
Scott Galloway in this article talks about the publishers and the middlemen who place ads with them tout all sorts of supposed fraud detection technology. He quotes industry experts saying it’s largely worthless. He goes on to say that these players benefit from inflated ad views. Why would you suppress them? If you watch HBO’s Fake Famous, they talk about that in there around why Instagram is no longer trying to patrol for bots because it looks good when they’re marketing to ad people who are going to advertise with them. They get to say, “Oh we have all these people on the platform.” But how many of those are real accounts or how many of those are bots? The rest of this quote from this article Carcinogens says, “In 2008, Newsweek Media Group infected its own fraud-detection system with malware so it could charge advertisers for bot-generated traffic on some of its websites. Recently collapsed Ozy Media was a heavy buyer of fake traffic, and we haven’t seen the last Ozy-type scandal.”
Here’s another favorite quote of mine from this article—favorite, I mean like my eyes peeled open and I was totally shocked—he says, “A study by MIT professor Catherine Tucker found that even targeting something as basic as gender was unsuccessful more than half the time (i.e., it was worse than random). A Nielsen analysis of a household-income-adjusted ad campaign found that only 25% of its ads were reaching the right households. As much as 65% of location-targeted ad spend is wasted. Plaintiffs in a class-action suit against Facebook have alleged its targeting algorithm’s ‘accuracy’ was between 9% and 41%, and quoted internal Facebook emails describing the company’s targeting as ‘crap’ and ‘abysmal.’” I don’t have a problem with business owners going down the ads route as long as they understand this, as long as they know when they’re putting their money into something like this, the likelihood is less than they think. That’s it.
Test it. Test it for yourself.
You can test it for yourself and see what kind of results you got. I know a lot of you have tested ads. This is a scheme that takes advantage of business owners who are sold a big lie that Facebook answers are the answer to (a) their revenue dreams and (b) the very real problem that 83% of small business owners are living paycheck to paycheck. It’s the, “If I just had the perfect social media strategy, then sales would be coming in regularly and consistently and I wouldn’t be worried about money all the time.” That is the thought process that’s happening. But I think there’s a better way. I really do. There’s a better way. When women come to work with me, they’re experts at what they do but not experts in business. They’ve most likely experienced their success because they get people results, and through a set of happy accidents and happy clients, they have made money. Their business acumen, it’s okay, but nowhere near where it needs to be to go up against the pervasive and predatory marketing messages that we see today that promise quick fixes and easy effort to a group of women who are worn out, weary, and worried about when the next client is going to come through the door.
Here’s another quote, and I thought this one was fascinating as well. It’s why I’m sharing it obviously. The quote is “Several large advertisers have made deep cuts in their digital ad budget—including Procter & Gamble (cut $200 million), JPMorgan Chase (slashed ad reach by 99%), Uber (cut $200 million), and eBay (cut $100 million)—and seen little or no measurable impact on their business.” But what is really important here with this quote is what are they seeing that you might not be seeing? What do they understand that small business owners might not be understanding? Again, eyes wide open. When people ask me what marketing strategy I teach in the Bold Profit Academy, I don’t. I teach you how to generate high quality leads and how to sell. You might choose to use social media, webinars, ads, that’s up to you but you’re going to have the process in the system and you get to add the sales tools however you want to add a sales tool.
I think that the internet and technology is a great way to scale your sales system. For example, back in the day, (I’m 45) like 25 years ago, when people needed to make sales—talking specifically maybe in a B2B situation—they would go in and do a sales presentation, they would call up, “Can I get on your calendar to present my product, my service?” Sure. Come on in. They do a sales presentation and they take you through a consultative selling process that helps them understand the problem you have and position their solution to you through a PowerPoint presentation. Now we have tools that allow us to do that through webinar, through social media, through email. It’s the same. It’s a sales process, but now you have different tools that help you leverage that. But instead, people are giving away all this free content, all this free teaching, solving the problem content and not actually giving people what they really need, which is how to help them identify and discern if they are ready to engage in your service and solve the problem they have.
That’s what they actually need to know. They need to know that they can trust you and they need to know that you’re going to listen to them and they need to know that you understand them. That doesn’t mean you’re solving the problem you solve for them in a webinar. You’re helping them make a decision in a webinar. You’re showing them how you’re going to help them in a webinar. You’re not helping them in the webinar. That’s I think where tools before sales knowledge and sales systems can get really messy. When you know how to sell, any tool will work.
Now most people are spending too much time worrying about obsessing over social media while spending very little time on learning and mastering sales skills.
That’s the stand I’m taking and I think it’s intentional. Listen, it’s honestly easier in the short term to make pretty graphics and to give some value and some tips and some inspiration on social media, but it’s harder in the long run to show up and convert what you have going on social media into a sale without sales skills.
I want to give you some tips on how you can use social media to help you sell your services.
If you’re an expert providing a service, think like an expert providing a service and not an influencer. Lots of people are using influencer marketing tactics to sell services that require a different strategy. Influencers use their identity to promote mostly brand products, sometimes their own, à la like the movie with David Duchovny called The Joneses. If you haven’t watched that movie recently, go watch it. It’s a satirical, sarcastic view of influencer marketing. I think influencer marketing can be really cool as long as you’re clear that is your strategy and that is how you’re generating revenue in your business. All I’m saying is be aware of the strategy you’re using. Make sure you’re using the appropriate strategy. If a prospective buyer lands on your social account right now, do they have what they need to take the next step and make a buying decision now?
If someone lands on your social media right now, the likelihood, percentage-wise, 85% of them are not ready to buy. They do need some nurture. But think about that. If they land on your social media account and 85% of them are not ready to buy right now, do you have a clear path for nurturing them and helping them make a decision to buy? Do they know what you do? Do they know why you’re different? Do they know how you stand out? Do they see themselves in your marketing? Do they know exactly who you’re talking to? Have you articulated the problem you solve in a way that is empathetic? Does your social media convey that right now? Get better at analyzing your target market and how they consume content and want to be engaged with.
I’m seeing a staggering amount of people rather reading right now, they want to read content than watch a video. That’s what I’m seeing. What are you seeing? I’m not saying that that’s right for you. I’m saying that’s what I’m observing about my folks. What are you observing about your folks? What are you seeing from them? Consider how you use social media in your buying decisions. How does social media come into play in your buying decisions? Do you follow somebody on social media to see if they’ll build trust with you? Do you follow them because you want them, you’re looking for something specific that they’re going to say, that’s going to alert them? Are you looking for their values? How do you use social media for your buying decisions?
What is the journey you want your customers to take as they make the buying decision? I prefer for you to maybe stumble upon my Instagram account or you go there because you’ve listened to this podcast and you’ve stumbled upon this podcast or someone’s mentioned me and you’re going to come and check me out. Sure, hang out with me on social media. But I really focus on my email. That is how I love to sell. That is where I have the most fun and enjoyment. Honestly, if you like being meta and like studying people, you can come study how I email and how I use email. That’s always a good lesson and learning experience to see how other people use the tool. This podcast gets a tremendous amount of my time and attention, so listening to this podcast, sharing this podcast. What is the journey you want your customers to make? Ultimately, you’re going to come in through my podcast or my Instagram, you’re going to join my email list, and through joining my email list, you’re either going to get a lot of value, you’re going to enjoy your time there, or you’re going to make a decision that you want to join The Bold Profit Academy. That’s how that works.
I looked at some statistics that I just want to share with you that might be interesting. Social listening—that’s what I was talking about, listening, market research—social listening is the number one tactic used by marketers. That was reported on HubSpot in 2020. 66% of marketers say social listening has increased in value for their organization over the past 12 months. I 100% agree. The more I understand the people that I am here to serve, the more sales I make because the more service I can provide, the more value I can provide. The more I hone in on and niche down on who I’m talking to, the more clear and potent the results are that I get folks, the more I get referred, the more I retain. 100%, listening is key and social media is a great way to do that. It all starts with understanding your buyer’s psychology. What is important to them? I’ve worked with a lot of marketers in my business and I have recently come to the conclusion, after doing a set of polls and research in November, not one marketer understands my target audience. As a matter of fact, I specifically asked questions on my Instagram that marketers told me my audience would not resonate with, and you did.
Stop telling yourself that somebody else knows your expertise and who you work with better than you know yourself. You know this. Also, you can make sales without marketing. There are people who you know in your network who either need help solving the problem you have or know someone who needs help solving the problem. You can make sales right now. There are people around you who want to pay you for the service that you provide. For all of you who are like, “How is Bold Profit Academy going to teach me to market?” I hope this answers your question, we’re going to teach you how to sell and then we’re going to teach you how to use technology and tools of the internet to leverage and scale and make your sales easier. I talk about sales. I specifically do not talk about marketing because in my head, listen, I’m with you. Marketing felt fuzzy for me when I was starting my business and I finally just decided that I was going to stop talking in terms of like “I don’t know how to market. Marketing, marketing, marketing, no. Good at it. Bad at it,” and that I was going to focus on selling.
Whether you are marketing, which is talking to many people, or selling, talking to one person, if you’re going to want to grow and take your business to some different heights, yeah, marketing is going to be relevant. I market. I fully am here marketing, but I’m always keeping in mind that the point of my marketing is to convert to a sale, so really, I’m selling. How am I helping people decide? What I think marketing is is marketing is about being human, being an empathetic human, being helpful, and I say being humble. I like humility. I like being humble. I’m not always like, “I’m confident.” Confidence and humility are two different things. You can be confident and you can still be humble. What humble means to me, especially in terms of selling and marketing, is that I’m centering my buyer that they are the hero and that I am the guide, and that I’m not marketing from a place where I am the hero.
I know then this gets tricky because people are like, “Well, how do I talk about my credibility and all the amazing things I do? Because people need to know me, like me, trust me,” okay, yes, they need to know that you’re going to get them a result and that is in service to them making a decision, so that is not a lack of humility, that is actually in service as being helpful and empathetic to giving somebody the information that they need to make a decision. If what I’ve said here today resonates with you, and you are ready to increase your revenue and keep more of it, then I want you to join us in The Bold Profit Academy today and get started because we are going through our Revenue Acceleration Curriculum. We’re going through it live right now. This is where we help you find your invisible leads, this is where we help you identify what your highest priority sales activity is, and build the habit of doing this type of sales activity every day so you can accelerate your revenue.
