341 Your Q4 Marketing Guide: Try These 3 Strategies to STAND OUT!
New Marketing & Visibility Strategies
Your Q4 Guide
Your Q4 Marketing Guide: Try These 3 Strategies to STAND OUT!
We ALL need to shake up our Marketing & Visibility Strategies, sometimes :) We dig into a few easy-to-implement tactics in this weeks episode.
Kelsey chats about...
Experiential Marketing Over Transactions
Unique vs better standing out from competition
Personal experience and touchpoints to improve customer loyalty
Engaging actively with communities both online and in-person
Importance of identifying energizing vs draining marketing activities
Episode Time Stamps:
[00:00] How anyone can excel in marketing with consistent effort
[07:18] Double down on marketing strategies can energizes you.
[11:04] It’s important to focus on relationships, not just sales for conversions.
[14:59] Personal interactions do foster genuine connections over AI
[23:15] Focus on concise messaging to attract clients
[25:52] Embrace uniqueness and stand out with authentic experiences.
To connect with Kelsey:
Access the transcript for this episode:
-
Hey, visionaries. Welcome back to the show. Today, I want to dive into a really fun topic, which is predictions for the future of marketing or just enlightening you on the fact that there are so many ways that we can experiment with your marketing strategy, especially going into the final 90 days of the year, or whenever you're listening to this, if you feel like you just need a little boost, a little motivation, a little energy around marketing, I am your girl and I am so excited to talk about this topic. But I know most people, they hear the word marketing and they're like, like, oh, my God. It's just something I'm not very good at. So, first off, if you've ever said, I'm just not good at marketing, know that we have to drop the story, okay? It's not a story that's gonna serve you moving forward, because for so many of you, you are the chief marketing officer of your business. You're the one that needs to come up with campaign ideas. You don't have the budget necessarily, or you're not further along enough in your business to have a full time marketer come work for you.
You could hire someone like myself and you could have me help you implement a strategy that works, but then ultimately, you're responsible for carrying it forward until you want to offload that part of the business and pay someone a six figure salary to deal with it. So the first thing I need to share before we get into this episode is that anyone can become good at marketing. I promise you that same way that if you wanted to apply yourself and learn mathematics, you could do that. If you wanted to become consistent at bodybuilding and enter into a bikini competition, you could do that, too. You may not identify as a fitness competitor right now, but in 365 days, if you show up at the gym every day, you'd be well prepared for that. The same goes for marketing. If you decided today that you wanted to start posting on LinkedIn and also build an email list from that, and I hopefully get yourself tons of new leads for clientele through that strategy in 365 days. If you said, kelse, I have posted every day, I bet you would be a thousand times better as a marketer than somebody who just sat there for the next year and said, I am not good at marketing.
So this is very much a skill that once you drop the story of I'm not good at marketing, you can really start to lean into, okay, well, maybe I can be good at marketing because I started my business and I'm really the one that knows best how to talk about it, how to connect with people, how to engage them with content and what they need right now in their journey before they hire me. And you can lean into where you feel energized when you're creating awareness campaigns or when you're getting visible and where you feel drained. So I literally want you to make a list right now because you're listening to this episode, I'm assuming, because you're like, okay, I want more clients. I want to grow the business. I want to increase my impact. I want to grow the visibility. I want to become a millionaire. Like, you can declare that money goal here.
That is okay, this is a great space for it. And it's also something we do inside of our wave mastermind, because we have a group of female entrepreneurs that are kind of unapologetic about the fact that, well, wave stands for wealth, ambition, vision, and energy. And the women inside our group have a lot of that. And we support each other in scaling from zero to ten k months, ten to 50k months. So if that's you, just a little side note, dm me on instagram with the word wave, and I'll share more details you can apply on my website at kelsey rydell.com mastermind. But every single woman in business should be part of a group like this. But anyways, this is all just to say that we can really start to lean into our unapologetic goals and then ask ourselves, like, I could end this episode after this sentence. Where do you feel most energized when you're showing up to talk about your business and to share value? And where do you feel most drained? I was even talking to a friend the other day who she had this idea that all social media was draining to her.
And I completely resonate with that. I've gone through phases of not wanting to be on social, and one of my big, big audacious goals is to be off social media when 100% of my leads come from search engines. So from podcast search engines like Spotify and Apple, from Google, or other search engines like Yahoo, and from eventually, chat, GPT, and other AI software that pulls snippets when people ask it questions. And so my client, I will call her C. She had this goal of not relying on social media. However, when we started working together, and I was helping her to build out a marketing strategy that would help her become fully booked as a health professional, she said, you know what? I think I would actually like to try being on LinkedIn. And I said, great, let's do a 30 day LinkedIn posting challenge, for lack of a better word. So we decided on every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, show up, create something.
One of the copywriting frameworks that I was giving her, and let's just see how it goes. And it's funny because I was actually on my own LinkedIn journey, which I talked about in the previous episode. And what was really, really cool was that both of us started to see tons of connections being made. She realized she actually loved posting on LinkedIn. Her impressions were skyrocketing. She was really starting to see the return on her time, not only in developing her thought leadership, developing new relationships, but also just being top of mind when someone needed to hire her type of health professional. So it's not that all social media is bad. And you know, when she thought about social media, originally, it was kind of in that battery draining column.
But now she's realized that, okay, Instagram and TikTok are in that battery draining column, but she's loving LinkedIn. Like when she posts there, when she opens the platform on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, she's happy to connect. She's happy to send a few DM's and just be like, hey, haven't chatted in a while. We should meet up for coffee. She just moved to a new town on the west coast, so she's leaning into who can I connect with? Or what organizations or associations can I easily make that point of contact with? And the creation of the content is fun again. So first and foremost, when we think of the future of marketing and how to stay ahead of the game, stay on top of the curve so that you're not falling behind and still posting on periscope or something. It really does involve leaning into where the energy is magnified when you show up to work on the business and where the energy is drained. Just as a simple example, you guys, some of you have been listening to this podcast for over six years now.
I could never show up and record 350 episodes. And we used to record all of these episodes in person. So I would take half days. I would get on the road, I'd bring all my equipment. I would show up at somebody's office, I would spend an hour or two with them recording. I would go home, I would save everything. I would edit the file myself, I would create the promotional assets, do the Instagram clips, do the email marketing associated with it. The list goes on.
I could never have done this consistently for six and a half years if I didn't truly feel energized by podcasting. And I think that's why we are a top 2% podcast. That's why I have never just put the podcast on hold, even through maternity leave. Yes, we've been changing up the style because I'm really prioritizing motherhood and taking on one to one clients. And, you know, the marketing is almost a bonus at this point, but I'm also eight years into business, so I can have some flexibility. I wouldn't recommend that for somebody new and starting out. But again, when I started this show, it was like, it was oozing out of me how energized I was. Which actually takes me back to one of my first roles in marketing.
A lot of, you know, I started my career working for Vega, which is a plant based protein company. And just for context, I did not go to school to be in experiential marketing. I didn't even know what that field was. And in a serendipitous interaction, I was working at a gym, and I was the front desk girl. And the Vega team came in for a workout, and I was like, who are these magnetic people? And they were just so spunky. They were fun. They handed out samples to all the staff at our gym. And then I ended up chatting with the current experiential marketing manager, and he asked for my Facebook.He said, let's connect. I'd love to come back into the studio. Maybe we could host an event here. And I was like, yeah, awesome. So he added me on Facebook, and we got chatting through DM's. This was, like, over a decade ago. And. And this is one of the reasons why I love social media, too.
Because without Facebook, I wouldn't have ever launched my career in experiential marketing. Without that connection, I would never be where I am today. But, yeah, we got chatting back and forth, and eventually he said his job was posted, and he told me I should apply. And literally the first thing I said to him was, Michael, I don't have the right experience. I was basically saying exactly what I told all of you at the beginning of this podcast, which is, I'm not good at marketing. Like, yes, I love to do it for my own little holistic nutrition business, but it's not my skill set. He said, but you have the energy for it. He's like, we can teach you.
You should apply. And what's crazy is that four weeks later, I was actually on a plane to Burnaby, BC, to their headquarters, to meet Charles Chang, who's the founder, to meet Brendan Brazier, who is the athlete who had the need for these Vega products to begin with. And they shared their vision with me to have Vega in every single cupboard across North America and then across the world. And basically my task was, okay, go back to Ontario. Go back to Toronto where you live and make it happen. And so my role was in experiential marketing. And the vision was use events and activations and relationship building to get Vega into more households. So I basically had to sit back and brainstorm.
This is like very first principles. Thinking has nothing to do with marketing. But I only had a job if I could prove their return on investment in the Toronto market. And so I asked myself a few questions. I said, where are our Vega dream clients hanging out? Where are health conscious people hanging out? So I want you to ask a similar question for your demographic, your dream clients. And I knew it was race finish lines. It was at the health food stores, it was at places like Whole Foods. And then I thought, how can I talk to them about this product without overwhelming them? Well, what if I gave them a sample? What if I called them in with a phrase, have you tried Vega before? And again, I want you to apply this to your own business.
So it's like, are you trying to sell people on a $5,000 service or are you giving them a sample? Right? And then the third question I asked myself was, how can I make a relationship, not just a sale? So can I learn about their health goals? Are they on a weight loss journey? Are they training for their first marathon? Do they have kids? And they often forget to eat breakfast and lunch because the moment you have that data, it is so much easier to make a recommendation to someone. You shouldn't recommend Vegasport protein powder. If this person does not go to the gym and could benefit from electrolytes because they just want to drink more water at their desk. You know, it's something that as marketers, we need to understand our dream clients before we can put marketing in front of them. What is the best suggestion? What is the best way to create a relationship and not just go straight to, I made a thing and you should buy it. And so that's a little snippet of how I initially launched into my career at Vega. And the reason why I kept my job for three years is because I was able to prove that I was handing out thousands of samples every single day to people at events, to people at the grocery store. And that ultimately led to conversions.
So people actually buying these $70 tubs of protein when they did not intend to add that to their grocery bill, so if we really think about that from a simple, simple marketing journey, it's like, okay, so we put a message, or in this case, a branded tent in front of them when they were already out and about living their life. Okay, that's like the top of the funnel. And then we ask them a question, hey, have you tried Vega before and offered them a sample? That's like the middle of the funnel. Getting to know them. Oh, what health goals do you have right now? So we're going a layer deeper in that middle of the funnel, and then we would ultimately make our recommendation, which is bottom of the funnel. So if I just lost you there saying, top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. Or in my world, if you're in the visionary community, tofu, mofu, bofu, this is something that I really want you to take a pause and even re listen to that and just think how a funnel actually works. Top of funnel, we make a connection.
We show up where our dream clients are. Middle of funnel, we go a little deeper and build that relationship. Bottom of funnel, we ask for the sale or we invite them to work with us or whatever your bottom of funnel conversion goal is. And again, we can apply this to anybody's business. But I think so often people are getting caught up in this idea that marketing is just posting on instagram and then walking away. That's only the top of the funnel. Barely the top of the funnel. That's just producing content.
What we really need to do from there is to engage with people, to see who engages with us, to get in conversations in the DM, and then ultimately to maybe invite them to a webinar, to a masterclass where we offer them to work with us or to join our program. So anyways, that's how I want to cue into today's topic. And now I actually want to get into just some predictions for the future of marketing. So the first thing that I want to talk about is trend number one, which is to continue to create experiences, not transactions. I really think that we are hypersensitive these days to people who are just in it to make a buck, people who are posting on social media, and they're just kind of trying to sell you their online course without actually caring whether this is the best fit for you. And more and more, we are leaning back into experiences that make us feel something, that have us evoking some emotion on the other side. And just as a simple example of this, you've probably noticed that so many people these days are using AI software like chat GPT. And don't get me wrong, I'm not against it.I use Jasper AI all the time. But when you just ask Chad GBT to pump out an email or pump out a caption, it feels really impersonal and it almost comes across as very robotic because it is right. And so when we have a genuine interaction with someone, when we dm with a big influencer and they actually send us a voice note back versus like a canned response, we actually feel something like, I'll remember that for the rest of my life. And so, in a day and age where AI is more prominent than ever, people are just trying to swing in their hammock and make passive revenue. It is those of you who create experiences, who bring your dream clients together for a meetup, like Emily and I do in puss, Lynch Lake and in Allora we have coming up, we actually gather female entrepreneurs and invite them out to an experience. This is so different from just pumping Facebook ads at people AI and posting content and just sitting back and hoping that people find your website online is the bare minimum, you guys. But getting out there, creating experiences, whether that's hosting a virtual masterclass, whether it's gathering local entrepreneurs in your town for a coffee, whether it is doing Q and a's on your Instagram stories, that is the heartbeat of what makes a business grow and what makes a business thrive, is because there's actually personal exchange going on. You're the entrepreneur who creates stuff.
You invite people to test the experience and you learn from them and talk to them. Did you like this? What did you love? Can I help you find something better? This is the complete opposite of somebody who's in business looking for a transaction. So I really want to encourage you to ask yourself, where can I provide a better experience? Whether that's increasing or improving the experience by 1%, 100%? Maybe. You look at every touch point across the board and say, where am I dropping the ball and where am I being lazy? Where am I being lazy? And I'll say it point blanken. It is the entrepreneurs I know who are most connected in the real world that are having the most success on their monthly paycheck. It is a dead giveaway to me how somebody's business is doing when I see how well they are plugging into the online communities that they're a part of. So instead of just being part of Facebook groups or having an Instagram following, they're literally dming their they're people every day. These are real people on the other side and on the contrary.
The people who are staying at home looking for ways to just generate passive revenue without ever making a true connection or talking to their people or adding more value, they are the ones who are struggling right now. And so I think we need to ask ourselves, where can I show up and deliver a better experience? And go back to the initial prompt, what would feel energizing to deliver and what would not feel energizing? If you don't want to talk to people, you might as well just become a data entry specialist, right? Like, go work for a corporation. Go sit back with your headphones on and enter data all day. That is a job where you don't have to talk to people. But if you're an entrepreneur, you have to learn from who's showing up. You have to constantly evolve, be in conversation. It's the only way to stay afloat and to stay relevant. Okay, I'll get off my soapbox on this topic.
Let's get into trend number two. And that is that shorter attention spans are demanding clearer, succinct marketing messages. So get this. The average attention span has actually decreased from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to 8 seconds in the year 2024. So that is shorter than a goldfish, essentially. And in most cases, with our marketing, whether it's, we're posting on Instagram, whether we're running a podcast ad, we have to be so quick in the time period. We have to explain who we are, what we do, what problem we solve. So think about an Instagram bio.
Most people, they just kind of take their first glance. They read the first lines, okay, you're an adhd expert, and you've been featured in Forbes. I can trust you. If the first line is like, I help women and kids to feel nourished in their bodies and to reduce symptoms of. It's like, you've already lost me. Right? Two words. Tell me you're an ADHD expert. I'll figure out the rest.
So we need to be succinct. It's like, if you're going to a networking event, I don't know if you guys have ever been to an event or even an online zoom before, where people are just going on and on and on when they're introducing themselves, it's like, okay, tell us about yourself. We're doing a little bit of a roundtable, and somebody starts and I. It's like they don't even really know what they do or who they help. And so it ends up being like a four minute spiel of, I help people feel embodied and you know, I do these activations that release, and they feel more vibrant at the end, and it's like, okay, but who are you helping, and how can I recommend you if it's not succinct enough? So ultimately, we want to boil this down to one word. So for me, it's like, anytime somebody says, I'm struggling with marketing, I would want them to say, oh, you should work with Kelsey. Or anytime somebody says, I need a naturopathic doctor, I want to refer them to my sister doctor Melanie. Or anytime somebody says, oh, yeah, I'm just struggling with imposter syndrome, I would say, oh, you need to go chat with my friend Emily Elliott.
So how can we boil down what you do into something so clear and succinct? So let's give an example of somebody who maybe has lost the ability to communicate what they do clearly. Maybe they're a sleep consultant for little kids and for babies. And you go to their Instagram or their website, and it says, baby sleeping patterns are really quite a puzzle. And there are so many factors involved. When your baby won't sleep, there are a lot of people you can ask for advice, but sleep consultants should come first. Book your first session. Don't be afraid to inquire today, what if we could turn that on its head? Because you probably were just listening to that and going, you're right. Like, my attention span wasn't there.
And this validates that statistic that our attention spans have gone down. And it is those businesses and entrepreneurs who can be succinct that end up getting the clients and who are clear. So what if you could, as a sleep consultant, for example, say the answer to the 04:00 a.m. question of, why won't my baby sleep? So I actually saw this somewhere else. I don't know who to give credit to, but I love how it's clear, it's succinct, it's captivating, it's compelling. So maybe at a networking event, you'd look around the room, say you were coming to our event in Elora on October 25, shameless plug. And maybe you look around the room and say, okay, are there any moms in the room? And you get, like, you know, twelve women raising their hand, and you say, okay, I'm that person you come to when you're up in the middle of the night at 03:00 a.m. saying, why the heck won't my baby sleep? What's going on? And you get all those moms going, oh, my gosh.
I wish I knew about you when I was awake at 03:00 a.m. for an entire two year period. So see how clear and succinct that is. And then you call yourself. I'm a sleep consultant. I work with clients globally for kids zero to four years of age who are not sleeping through the night. Boom, done. I love this concept of making sure that we are clear and succinct with our words.
And I think in a day and age where there's more clutter than ever when we open Instagram and there's just a saturation of content, it's those of you who can really dial into the message that your dream client needs to hear the that gets the client. It's easy as that, right? And isn't this easier because you just have to say less. You have to boil it down to what is the one word, the one key phrase. I talk about this in my everyday SEO course. If you can't boil down what somebody is punching into Google while they're in line at Starbucks, one or two words, then your website is not going to show up and that's not a good thing, right? So really think, what is someone punching in when they have two words to punch into Google? Okay, let's go into trend number three. This is the last one I'll share today. I just wanted to pick a handful of topics that I wanted to just like preach on. I just always feel so lit up about marketing.
So sometimes it's hard to sift through when I have a half hour to record. But for trend number three, I want to talk about leaning into something that makes your business different. And this goes off of a training that I've been teaching for years. I remember when I was a member at Staples co working downtown Toronto, I taught this training and I had this quote that I shared that really resonated. And it's that we pay attention to what's different and we ignore what's average. One of my favorite marketers, Sally Hogshead, she says to be, she, okay, let me restart that sentence. She apparently my brain is going dead. She educates us to be different, not just better.
When you're just trying to be better than every other business, everyone else who does what you do, you're just playing this like constant game of like, oh, I'm going to one up you, I'm going to one up you. But what if you just looked at what everybody else in your industry was doing and just says, said, how can I be different? And I know this is like a huge open ended question. Grab your pencil or paper or your virtual note taking app and write down. The thing that makes my business different is dot, dot, dot. Maybe it's the true heart that you have to get your clients to results. Maybe it's the branding is like so fun and playful and bright. Maybe it is that you are so curious. And when you lean into why your podcast is different, it's because you ask better questions.
Maybe what makes you different, and not just better is that you have like, a medical clinical practice. But when people walk into your office, it's really like nature y and earthy and holistic and not this, like, clean hospital vibe with bright lights and nothing on the walls, you know? So if you ever feel like you're in a race to the bottom, feeling like you're just trying to keep up with your competition and nothing you're doing is standing out because you're posting kale salad recipes and green smoothies, and so is every other nutrition influencer. I want you to ask yourself, what can I do to be different? This is like Miss Excel. She could have just taught excel on the Internet, but instead she started dancing over spreadsheets and she now has a multimillion dollar business. This is like, I think I've stumbled on Haley Bieber. She does conversations with celebrities in her bathroom while they're eating breakfast. It's like she could have just sat in a stale studio to do that, but instead it's in her bathroom, so it's different. And of course, she's playing in a different field, being someone who has a major amount of followers.
But again, we all have that potential to say, well, if what I'm doing is just launching another podcast, it's probably going to get lost in a sea of everyone else who has a podcast on this topic. But if I did something different, I would just stand out right away. I'd be like that North Star that boldly shines where every other star almost seems to be dimmed when the North Star is so bright. So instead of asking yourself, well, how can I just be better and create better content, ask, how can I be different? So those are the three different trends. So again, number one, create experiences over transactions. Make your clients feel something with your marketing. Number two, be more clear and succinct with your messaging. Sell the outcome, or empathize with the pain points of your clients and really dial that into key words and maybe a key phrase.
And think about that baby sleep consulting example where the first time I wrote that sentence filled with jargon the second time, it was like any moms in the room. Did you ever wonder why your baby wasn't sleeping? You could call me for that. And then number three is to be different. Go that extra mile to show up in a different way, to make an impact. I wanna finish this episode with a quote that says, the last best experience anyone has anywhere becomes the minimum expectation for the experience they want everywhere. So if somebody was just online and they saw some really epic content, they want that everywhere. And they're gonna unfollow and ignore anyone whose content is subpar. So think about that when you're showing up to build out your marketing strategy.
Tune into the episode.
Tune into this episode with on your podcast app of choice:
If you’re searching for an Online Business & Marketing Coach for your Business, rest assured that you’re in the right place.
I've helped over 200+ people to launch their business, go full-time, get fully booked, and become #1 with The Visionary Method
Mentioned on the Episode:
Private 1:1 Marketing Coaching: Small tweaks to your Marketing Strategy can skyrocket your business success…. Working with a Business & Marketing Coach will help you identify new income opportunities, optimize your lead generation & sales strategies, and accomplish more than you ever thought possible, in just 4 months. Apply here ➡
Feeling overwhelmed with your Marketing & Online Lead Generation?
Learn about Marketing Coaching |Rank on Page # 1 of Google with Everyday SEO™ |
Email List: Join the Dose of Visionary Weekly Inspiration Roundup!
You Might Also Like:
