Marketing

From the very beginning, all I’ve wanted to do is serve business owners – I hear from a lot of female entrepreneurs and business owners when we release these podcast episodes, and we came up with this new service offering from the feedback I’ve been receiving from YOU. So – let me tell you why you should consider hiring a part-time CMO.

We’ve noticed over the last several months that many of the businesses we serve are getting hit pretty hard by the wavering state of the economy. We’ve seen consumers start holding a little tighter to their wallets and it’s been impacting some of our clients in ways that make them need to reevaluate how they’re spending their own marketing dollars. And guess what? We encourage that! (What? A marketing agency telling people it’s OK to trim back on marketing?!) The one thing we want to make sure of is that you’re doing this smartly and strategically and that you’re not cutting off your sources of clients (because that’s what will pull you OUT of the financial struggle!). 

We want to come alongside you and help you figure out what you should do based on your budget, team, & resources so you’re not stuck paying a marketing agency to do every little thing. Enter: our new monthly CMO service.

We can create a strategic plan of how to get things done given the resources you have and help hold your feet to the fire to make sure it’s *actually* getting done. Our monthly CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) service helps answer questions like:

-Can you show me examples of how this should look?

-How do I do XYZ?

-Will you take a look at what we’ve put together and provide feedback/suggestions?

-Who on my team should I delegate this task to? 

-What is the wisest way to spend my marketing budget this month? 

We’ll meet with business owners (and their teams!) 2 times per month to help answer questions, make plans, and pull all the pieces together so you can execute your own marketing. It’s truly like hiring an expert-level CMO without having to put another person on payroll!

Let us help you tap into the resources you have & utilize them most effectively. Learn more on our website or message us on social media to hear the deets!

Have you ever sat down to plan out your sales, promotions, or events and ended up just staring at a blank screen for hours? Or, better yet, have you never even tried to plan ahead and have just been winging it every time? 

Friend, this is your chance to reduce that anxiety and set yourself up for success by planning promotions for the next quarter or year ahead of time! Promotions go hand-in-hand to support your financials, a.k.a. how your business continues to live, so they’re an essential part of any successful business. 

We encourage people to plan their promotions a little differently than you might think; rather than basing it solely on financial goals, we recommend planning the specific dates of your promotions around your personal life – if your calendar is packed, you won’t have time to dedicate to that promotion to make it run smoothly. Plan financials first so you have a roadmap of how you can support those goals, but use your personal life and cyclical map to guide the specifics – you’ll be amazed at how smoothly it can come together!

Tune in to learn how to identify your marketing platforms, set deadlines, plan it out week by week, and put it in your calendar to set yourself up for your best year yet.

Download our Marketing Promotions Planner: https://bit.ly/promo-planner 

Download our Financial Forecasting Guide: https://bit.ly/fin-forecast 

I’m drawn to social media because it feels like it gives me inspiration to see what other people are doing. However, over the last several months I’ve discovered that it might actually be doing the opposite! This is what led me to a big decision: I choose to delete social media apps from my phone. 

Now, this isn’t an easy decision in this day and age; I would tell myself that “I need it” because I’m a business owner and I needed to stay on top of our clients, our community, and all the things. But the thing about being a consumer of social media is that it makes us start questioning the way we do things, doubting ourselves and whether we’re doing “enough.”

I deleted social media from my phone and have been using my computer to check social media to minimize that dopamine hit and the endless scroll. Let me tell you…it’s been liberating! 

And listen, I understand this isn’t fully possible for everyone. A lot of us need to manage social media for our jobs, but we have to check in with ourselves on how much we’re consuming it. You have to be careful with how much creativity you let in because it prevents you from focusing on your own creativity. 

Tips to minimize your social media consumption:

1. Use an app that tracks your social media time
2. Use a scheduling app
3. Use your desktop instead of your phone

Try it out for a few weeks for yourself and see how much mental space it opens up! 

When you bring up the terms “bear market” or “recession,” a lot of people want to just avoid the topic altogether. Business owners don’t want to think about it until they absolutely have to, but this head-in-the-sand approach creates a scenario where you have to be reactive rather than proactive and prepared…and that’s not a great place to be! 

In this episode, we’re going to help you create a plan and feel SECURE in your business, no matter what the market does or how your industry changes.

You don’t have to come up with a buttoned-up plan or completely restructure your business in a bear market, but this is the time to take a step back and look at the changes happening in your industry. NOW, before sh*t hits the fan, is the time to plan out how to market and/or pivot your business going into a recession and adjust to the changing climate.

Step 1 is to create a threshold for survival; essentially, get an idea of how much revenue your business needs to survive at the bare minimum. 

Next, we’re going to make a variety of worst-case scenario plans: what happens when business goes down 10%, 20%, 50%? Make an A, B, and C plan for these scenarios so you have a solid plan of what to do if these situations arise!

-What expenses can you trim back?

-Who do you have working for you and who do you need at different levels of business?

-What additional tasks do YOU need to take on without driving yourself into the ground?

Why do we do this? To help our brains feel SAFE. If the worst-case scenario does happen, you already have a plan, a safety net of how you’ll survive and you don’t have to go into panic mode. 

Another aspect to evaluate during a bear market or recession is your marketing; look, I know we run a marketing agency so this might seem a bit biased…but PLEASE don’t eliminate marketing until you absolutely have to!

Marketing is like your main source of food for your business; why would you cut off the source that’s feeding you? It might seem like you should spend less on marketing during a recession, but large companies actually DOUBLE their marketing budget during recessions; why? Advertising becomes cheaper, there’s way less competition, and there’s a HUGE opportunity to gain ground in the market! 

Here are some ideas on how to take advantage of marketing in a bear market:

-Create evergreen ads that you can turn off/on

-Turn up/down your ad spend depending on how much business you’re in need of

-Take advantage of low/no-cost networking and marketing opportunities!

It’s as simple as this: you can’t turn off your marketing and expect your business to grow. 

Lastly, think about how your clients and customers are working through these same things; look into what their pain points and struggles are and utilize their language and their mindset to get their attention. 

Tune in to the full episode for more tips and information on how to best prepare your business for any upcoming recession. 

Need help putting together a plan? Download our free bear market guide at theminacompany.com/bear-market-guide-freebie/

In today’s episode, we’re diving into two real-life client personality assessments and how we interpret that information (combined with the magic of cycle mapping) to create marketing strategies customized to a business owner’s strengths and weaknesses. 

Using these personality evaluations, we can also make informed assumptions about working with certain clients, anticipating roadblocks and issues that might come up before they arrive as well as predicting which clients have the potential to be big, high-paying accounts and which don’t – and both are OK! 

This is something that we wish we had known YEARS ago, having the ability to really learn about and get to know clients before we take them on. These are the things that you typically don’t realize until you’ve lived it and learned it firsthand, but having the opportunity to get a bird’s-eye view beforehand really gives you a leg up to creating long-lasting, successful relationships with your clients. 

Teaching our own internal team about their own personalities and educating them on cycle mapping has also been a game-changer in our own business! It has been a crucial step in creating a well-rounded team that keeps everyone balanced, in check, and as efficient as possible. 

Tune in to hear real-life applications and takeaways that you can apply to your own business!