Episode #13 - Essentials to a Solid Marketing Foundation

[00:00:00] Terrica: Welcome to the marketing cocktails podcast. We're your hosts, Terrica Strozier, that's me a brand designer and sugar addict and Vanessa Shepherd, launch strategist and content creator. With a love of all things Disney. Each week, you'll hear, our behind the scenes conversations and expert advice on marketing and launching your next offer a product while doing it all ethically and organically.

And giving that bro marketer advice the booth. Thanks for spending some time with us today. Grab a drink and let's jump into today's episode.

Welcome to episode 13 of the marketing and cocktails podcast. Today's podcast is all about the essential keys to a solid marketing foundation. A solid foundation is essential to the growth of your business. So today we've decided to give you a few tips and tricks to just strengthen the foundation of your business.

So if marketing has been on your to-do list for awhile, take a listen.

Vanessa: So we're back with some [00:01:00] marketing foundation chit chat about all the things. That you kind of need to have to have an awesome, solid foundation for your business and all the things that you really need to be reassessing and fine tuning as you go. So the cool part about creating a business is that it is always going to keep evolving.

You're always going to have to be making sure that you were kind of coming in and looking at everything and how it's working, where it's not working and adjusting it just because you have. Something today, whether it's a product or a service that isn't selling doesn't mean that you're not on the right track or you're not on the right vein.

It just means that maybe it's not reaching enough people or maybe your messaging is a little off, or maybe the people that you thought would vibe with it. Aren't actually the right people. And some other group is going to vibe with it instead. So we're going to kind of cover some of the essential marketing foundations and then talk a little bit about, even how to like, look at fine tuning some of those pieces as you go as well.

So [00:02:00] one of the big things you've probably already heard about, and you're going to keep hearing about if you're in the online business space is a sales funnel. that's something that. There's some people out there that they say, you, you know, you have a bajillion funnels and you do this really, all you need is one, one way to get people in and to get people converting from somebody that's just viewing you on the outside to actually signing up for your email list to actually purchasing your product.

However, that is what ever that is. Whether it's a product you're selling our service, you're selling. So a funnel is basically just. A flow of how you attract a lead, turn them into a prospect and finally turn them into a customer. So it's basically a process of gaining awareness, enticing those people to sign up for your list and then nurturing the relationship so that those people will become lifelong customers.

And the reason why we use a funnel is that it starts [00:03:00] out, as a way, just to demonstrate the fact that you have to put yourself out there. And that you have to get people aware of your brand. think of like the shoes that you buy, the brand, you chose, you chose it because you became aware of the brand and then you became aware of the product and the features and how it could benefit you.

You knew what your needs were and you made that final purchase because it checked all those boxes on your list. So a funnel is basically going to help people do the exact same thing with whatever that you're selling. It's kind of a, a flow of a way to get leads in, get the leads, learning about you.

Seeing him as the expert, seeing him as somebody with the right solutions to help them solve their problems. And eventually they're going to basically buy your product because they see that you are able to help them in solving this specific problem.

Terrica: Yeah. I always look at funnels as just the direct implementation of a [00:04:00] customer journey.

So if you look at super simply, I want someone to walk into, I'm going to say, even if you don't have a real store, is it if you have a brick and mortar, but we're going to have like give a digital store or a digital storefront. I want people walking in. I want them to feel this way. As soon as they come in, they're like excited.

You know, the lighting's amazing, the music, the ambiance something catches their eye, whatever. Then I want them to direct to like this product I have, maybe it's the clothes. And then they pick up the clothes and then they're like, Oh, this is amazing. And then you like brought that up. But then while there, you know, Picking up a little clothes that intrigued them, the sales person comes along and says, Oh, Hey, you liked this sweater.

Gorgeous. Did you see the pair of pants that are looking at amazing with it? You know? And then now you have digitally, you have an upsale, but in a regular store, you would have a sales person telling you, you know, something else that [00:05:00] will boost up what you've already chosen or what you already purchased because you came in there with this need.

And so now. Hopefully along the way, by the time someone gets to the register and they walk out, they have this full, complete outfit, even though they came in thinking that all I needed was a sweater. And then now they feel amazing. And they're like, everybody used to go to said store because they help you get the complete op outfit.

You just don't need this sweater. They don't tackle one thing. They tackle everything. And now I feel amazing about myself. I have like all these options mean you can do this with a service or product. To me, that's how my brain sees funnels because funnels can get really complicated and convoluted and all of that jazz.

And my brain is like simple, simple, simple, simple, simple. How can I make what I want people to feel? And then put it into a way that is application. And then on the tail end, we both get what we need.

Vanessa: Exactly. And we [00:06:00] can't stress enough that what you're doing in your marketing, what you're doing with, you know, running a promotion, running a launch, creating a product, creating a service.

It doesn't have to be complicated. It can be really, really simple. And actually when things are simple, they're more effective. because they they're eight people are able to just glom on. They're not, they're going to be less overwhelmed because there's not a ton of things going on. they're going to be able to kind of hop into something and be really clear, really fast on what it is you do and how you can help them.

And the simpler things are. The better it is for you now over time. What started out as one, one simple thing , you might, eventually expand some way of like maybe getting awareness or expand the process a little bit. That's okay. Because it's not going to, over-complicate what you're doing.

It's just going to like accent what you're doing. It's like throwing a scarf on top of an already awesome outfit. What we need to get you to in your marketing is having that already awesome [00:07:00] outfit, which is like the core of your business. So to go with a sales funnel, you definitely need an email so that you can do email marketing.

And this is something that you're not going to run out of your Google inbox. Please do not do that. So you're going to need an email list service kind of like ConvertKit, which is what we use or like Flodesk. Oh, it's basically a service that allows you to collect people's email addresses when they sign up for an opt-in.

And it allows you to email them on mass, something like your ordinary email service provider. Like your Gmail is only designed to send emails to a few people at a time when you need to email hundreds of people at a time, you need to use a special service so that your emails actually get priority. And they're not treated like spam.

Terrica: Yes. Yes, guys. I've, I've been behind the scenes at a business who ran like this, like no joke. Everything was in Gmail. We used to send, or [00:08:00] I used to send emails to 200, plus people blind, copied as groups. The issue, then what you get is the deliverability there's people who are like, I never got your email and never showed up.

Then what you get is from Google is. Oh, sent at this point, essentially 600 emails in a day, and then they penalize you and you can't send anymore. Yeah. And then you wait too, like you're out of Google jail, email jail, and it's like, you're free to go. Don't do it again. Watch out. And then what we go do we do it again.

And this is revolving cycle. When you have an email service. There's no limit. I mean, you can email 10,000 people at a time and they take a while you won't get it done instantly, it may take an hour. It may take, you know, whatever the service is, maybe 30 minutes and maybe it's dripped [00:09:00] out for a couple of hours because it's such a massive amount of emails, but you don't get penalized about that.

So please guys, don't conduct your email marketing from Gmail and groups. Lesson learned.

Vanessa: Yeah, the other great part about using a service like convert kit is that you get data built in. So if you think about your, your Gmail inbox, you have no idea. If your email say, if it was delivered, if it was opened, but an email marketing provider will allow you to see things like your email open rate.

Or the email link click-through rates, how many people are hitting the unsubscribe button, how many people are actually going through and opening your content and clicking through to what you want them to do with that, with including a call to action in your email, that data's really helpful because that helps you to see if your marketing message nailed it or failed it.

Terrica: Yes.

Vanessa: And when you know that if an email message, you know, knocked it out of the ballpark, or if it fell flat on its head, [00:10:00] then you that's, that's an indication. So if an email doesn't do well, it forms kind of below average for you or below industry average, that is a really big sign that you need to go back and fix your messaging

Terrica: for sure.

Vanessa: And if you're wondering, okay, well, what's an industry average for me. There's a ton of information on the internet about industry averages. but like a good rule of thumb is an average email open rate sits between like 20 and 30%. That's pretty average. If you're sitting in the 20 to 30% realm, you're kind of.

I kind of want to say underperforming of it because you obviously want those open rates to be higher than average, because average is that spectrum from like no opens all the way to a bajillion opens and you're falling somewhere in the middle. There's always an opportunity to kind of improve them a little bit more.

Hope that makes sense? So you really need to know, pay attention. How your open rates are doing how the click-through rates are [00:11:00] doing, how many people are actually getting delivered your email and interacting with it. That'll tell you where you need to refine that message. If you need to improve it, how it needs to be improved, and if you're going well, I don't even get people opening the emails.

How do I know that? My message fall flat? People not opening your emails is often a symptom of the subject line not being enticing enough. So it's not going to it not appealing to me, not appealing to me in the moment. Maybe it was gimmicky and it wound up in the promotions tab of all the Gmail users, or maybe it was really gimmicky and really hacky.

And it wound up in the spam folder

Terrica: Or you have some tech issues on the backend and it has nothing. I'm not saying nothing, but the majority of it may not even be. a messaging issue. It could be that you, depending on your email provider, that you didn't confirm, your web address, that you didn't confirm your, the email that is coming from that maybe you switched the [00:12:00] email that is coming from, because let's say a lot of business owners operate like this.

Vanessa, I have this, I have this in my businesses that you are G suite and. because with, G suite and using, the mail function, which is based in Gmail, you can have alias. So you may have [email protected] or whatever, and then hello, and your name and support act. And if you switch these emails every time that you send it, or you don't pay attention the next day, put you in the spam folder, if you.

Any date, your emails with images, those don't process. Well, that goes into the spam folder then as necessary the subject line, depending on the words that you use, Google, like picks those. And it's like, Oh, that looks like spam,  type of , wording immediately put into the spam. And then sometimes they even go through the trash and you don't even see them, like at all, they don't even pop up.

So tracking [00:13:00] your data and your email provider is vital because your open rate may be because of people not connecting with your content or what you're writing, but then it also could be that you aren't setting your emails up properly. And then there's something on the back end that they need to, to fix, because the reason why your open rates are.

Minimal or dismal or non-existent because nobody ever sees it. They never get anywhere. They never even land anywhere close. They just fall off into the black void of the internet. ,

Vanessa: totally. so with those. Kind of email deliverability issues that people have. There's three little steps that you could do to actually make sure that your emails have a chance of getting through to people.

One of the steps would be to authenticate your domain. It's done through, your email service provider. What it does is it helps to make sure that [00:14:00] your emails are secure, that there'll be able to be delivered and that you as a sender, have a good reputation. Having a good reputation, not only matters from impersonal personal relationships, it's matters 10 times more in online business and the reputation that you have on your email list on the way you show up on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on any of these platforms really, really matters.

So if you get caught in a trap of doing something that those providers view as being negative to your reputation, you'll get penalized for it. And you'll wind up in places like Facebook, jail, or Instagram jail, or, and here's these other cute little jails that aren't actually real places, but that caused you harm as an online business owner.

The other thing about authenticating your domain is that it helps email services and spam blockers know that your content, the content you're emailing people about is legit. So make sure that you're, you're going through those help docs in whatever service you're [00:15:00] using and making sure that you're taking those steps.

You're taking that time. First thing you should be doing. Is authenticating your domain. Okay. The second step you need to do is verify that your email lists permissions are in compliance with the anti-spam laws worldwide, especially where you live or especially where your business has founded, but definitely make sure that it's compliant worldwide, especially if you are targeting a worldwide audience and that you're, doing that again, to protect your sender reputation.

This is going to keep coming up again and again, If you can already guess, depending on your service provider and what that looks like will different. So again, go through the help docs. see what's going on. I know for float desk, which is one that's really common right now, cause it sends really pretty emails.

Is that the way they verify list permissions is that when you manually upload a new subscriber list of flow desk, you need to actually send them. Your opt-in records too. They're like they have a special [00:16:00] email address to that so that they can go through your Optane records and go through your list and verify that all of the people on your email list actually have given you permission to email them.

It seems like a lot of work, but they're willing to help with that, which is awesome. you can download those option records from a previous email provider or paste the records into some templates. You can go through their help docs. It'll it'll walk you through that. The third step you need to do is actually warm up your sending of your emails.

And this is again, requires a little bit of patience. So anytime you're using a new email marketing service, you need to warm up your sender reputation. So you can maintain what's called healthy deliverability and avoid the spam folder. So that's why it's funny. We see, we see this happening in groups all the time.

People are like, I just started using this new email service today and I noticed that my opt-in rates are lower. Well, a, you changed email service providers. So [00:17:00] you are starting at scratch at zero for your sender reputation. And anytime you switch an email provider this'll happen. So this makes it to where you need to warm up resending every single time.

What happens is you have to start by sending smaller volumes of emails and gradually increasing the number of recipients. So say you have, maybe your list is only 5,000 people. You have to start with a volume of say 2,500 subscribers in the first week that you send out emails. Okay. That'll be the first way of, and then you can increase your sending volume every five to seven days on average.

And you're going to also want to make sure that you're ELA emailing your most engaged subscribers first to make sure that they're opening your emails and that winds up training the email software and it trains through deliverability. And it makes sure that you have a good sender reputation. So anytime that your emails are getting opened, that's an indicator that you have a good sender [00:18:00] reputation.

Anytime that somebody is clicking on a link within your email again, that says, Hey, I've got a good sender reputation. So that's why you want to email your most engaged subscribers first, because those are the people that are typically going to open your email. They're going to read it. They're going to click on it.

They might even luckily hit, replied back and have a conversation with you in some way. If you start by say emailing your least engaged subscribers first, it's going to take you a very long time to warm up your sender reputation. If it ever gets warmed up at all, it's also why it's a really good idea to always be nurturing and getting people on your email list to engage with you because it increases your sender reputation and it increases the chance that you'll actually wind up in the primary tab instead of in the promotions tab or worse, the spam folder.

And along the way, you need to also remember to remove bounces and unsubscribes. before you upload a new list to, a new email service provider and make sure that any service provider you are [00:19:00] using removes bounces and removes unsubscribes so that you have, the ability to maintain a healthy deliverability and a positive sender reputation.

If you don't do that, that'll also negatively impact you as well.

Terrica: Emails can be alot, but when you set them up for success at the beginning, then, it makes it, you know, like going down the road just a lot easier rather than you trying to hack it along the way and just like full out going, like when you send all these emails. Oh, wait, they're not working back up.

Okay. What did I do wrong? Okay. You fix that. Okay. Dive in it again, rather than take it really slow. Make sure you go through everything that you need to at the beginning. it's the equivalent of, most of us don't do that, but you just went and bought something for Ikea, like read the directions, even if they're really difficult.

Cause I hate Ikea directions, but if. You don't then you will end up, I guys, if you could, you know, see like thing [00:20:00] I have put books, you know, bookshelves together actually have one in my office right now that you realize that when you get to the end, that the little polished end is on the wrong side, but you've already screwed it all in together.

And nobody's taking the whole thing apart to do it again. So you just have to look at it and then it looks really bad and it bothers you for a really long time. Business can be like that. Okay. Like business can be like that. There is no instruction manual to business, but if you start out with intention and a plan and a strategy, then you don't have to worry about sprinting the whole way, just to get it done, to then realize that you've messed up.

And flipped your proverbial shelves, the wrong way. And now you have to like take everything down to put it back the way that it should be. So those are a few keys of the central marketing foundation. just [00:21:00] as a recap, we started off speaking about sales funnel and. This is isn't something that needs to be really complicated. I know that sales funnels can get there, but at your core, you just need to have a simple sales funnel and ability to attract a lead, turn them into a prospect and finally into a customer.

So basically your customer journey, laid out completely. Now, there are times. And actually there aren't counts are always going to be times in your business where you're going to have to be consistently assessing testing and revamping your messaging, your offers, your positioning, your sales funnel, and even the content that you put out so. That's one thing that we want to just get across, is that really what the real real core of essential marketing foundations is the ability to always be in test [00:22:00] mode. Nothing is ever. Signed sealed and delivered and you just kind of plug and chug and you never have to change it. Business is always evolving.

Society evolves, the economy evolves and we have to evolve with it. So having your backend together, your foundations together, having everything solid and encourages a better viewpoint for you to make the necessary changes and it not feel overwhelming and it not feeling like you have to just like tear down the whole house and build again.

No, the foundation is tight. We may need to, you know, spruce up the walls, maybe putting in some new windows, but at the core, the foundation is tight. So that's what we want to express to you all. That is our mantra that we repeat not only in our business, but to our customers as well. And clients is that you have to get your [00:23:00] foundation and your backend tight doing that.

Allows for everything else to not be seamless because business isn't just seamless, but it allows it to be simple and intentional. And intentional action is key. So we hope that you guys enjoyed this episode. if you have any questions,send us a DM on Instagram, at she's got vision, send us an email at hello at she's got vision.com and we hope that you tune into our next episode.

Thanks for listening. Y'all you can find the show notes at she's got vision.com/podcast. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, please leave a review and subscribe to the podcast. And because word of mouth is still the best marketing Avenue. Please tell a friend to share it. If you do, don't forget to tag us as she's got vision on all platforms until the next time y'all were wishing you much success.

And remember, there's always time for cocktails.