Breaking Down Marketing Barriers with Expert Insights from Diane Freeman

Transcript

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Welcome to Ready Set Collaborate podcast with Rhonda Pearson, where we will dive deep into the world of networking, collaboration and partnership, unlocking the secrets to a successful team working within innovation.

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Whether you're an entrepreneur, a creative professional or just someone eager to understand the power of networking and collaboration, this podcast is your go-to resource.

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Join us as we explore the stories, strategies and insights from experts, entrepreneurs and thought leaders who have experienced the magic of networking and collaboration to achieve successful results.

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Tune in to Ready.

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Set Collaborate podcast on a journey towards achieving your goals with host Wanda Pearson.

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Welcome to the Ready Set Collaborate podcast with Wanda Pearson the Art of Marketing Strategy series.

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Today I want to speak life into someone who has been a cornerstone in the journey of this podcast, my marketing manager, diane Freeman, the sponsor of the Ready Set Collaborate podcast, isn't just a guiding star in the vogue of our brands, but a beacon that cultivator watering, nurturing and believing, sometimes even more fiercely than I did, in our ability to unite small businesses with intention of growth and shouting them out to the world.

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She is the maestro behind the melody that is Ready Set Collaborate.

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It speaks to the readiness to take in new challenges, the preparedness to set sights on higher peaks and the underlining spirit of a collaboration that fuels genuine success.

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She is passionate about helping entrepreneurs get to the goal of excellent clients through the marketing maze.

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Check her out at her website, bscenesocialmediacom that's spelled with a B-E, like a B seen S-E-E-N socialmediacom, or find her on social media at bseenssocialmedia, diane Freeman.

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Thank you, diane, for being a sponsor to this podcast series, the Market the Art of Marketing Strategies, and I want to thank you.

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So make sure everyone please subscribe, follow and share and like on all podcast platforms Spotify, apple Podcasts and more.

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The Ready Set Collaborate with Wanda Pearson.

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Now let's get on to the show.

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Welcome welcome to the Ready Set Collaborate podcast with Wanda Pearson and my guest, diane Freeman, who's actually my marketing manager.

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I am so excited to have Diane on my podcast because she's going to teach us some great tips and strategies on how to market your business, which is great.

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I'm so excited, diane, for you to share that.

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So I'm going to talk about your bio.

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Then I'm going to ask you a little bit about yourself.

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Can you tell me about it?

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So I said so.

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Diane Freeman has been a serial entrepreneur since college and loves to help women in business win.

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After years of marketing for a top 500 company, she switched her focus to marketing for small business.

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Now she's focused on teaching the newest marketing trends, using AI, short video and email marketing to help entrepreneurs learn how so they can be successful.

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I love it, diane, because you have been helping me out since last year, because you're like a savior to me to really get out, because I was just doing so much, especially with the podcast and my book and everything you've been doing for me.

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So I thank you for doing that.

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So Diane tell us a little bit about you.

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What did you ask?

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me, I'm sorry.

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Oh, tell me a little bit about you.

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Yeah, so, just like my bio said, I started off marketing for other people.

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Actually, I started off marketing for me.

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I had a paper route when I was young and I learned how to get new clients so I could make more money delivering the papers and I love that so much.

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It became my major in college and I'm really grateful that I've actually been able to work in my field ever since I graduated and I started off helping other people grow their business in like bigger corporations, the top 500.

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And that wasn't very fulfilling for me it was financially rewarding, but I have a mission to really serve and help businesses win.

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It's so complicated and difficult to figure out what is the right thing to do because it's constantly changing in marketing and when I started working for myself but helping smaller businesses get clients, that's when I really started to love what I do and that's where my focus is now.

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In fact, right now, I'm in the process of putting together a course to teach small businesses how to market themselves, because I think, whether they're ultimately going to hire someone to do it or they're going to continue to do it themselves or they're going to hire an employee, they should know how.

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When you have no idea how, it's really easy to get taken advantage of, because people can be lazy sometimes and not really do what needs to be done.

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They just with social media, they just post it's Groundhog Day, even though that may have no relevance to that particular business.

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They just look at it.

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Oh, there's something going out there.

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I'm fulfilling my contract.

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I'm putting out social media.

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That's what.

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I have a passion for is helping women, in particular in business, win.

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I love it.

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I love it because you have just been definitely helping me put that in place, and also my accountability coach as far as telling me what's bad, what's best for marketing, and doing that for me as far as, and even social media.

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I truly appreciate you doing that.

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I value your opinion.

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I value what you're going to be sharing with us today, so thank you.

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Thank you.

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So let me ask you some general marketing.

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I am too.

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I am too.

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So let me ask you some marketing strategies.

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Can you describe your overall marketing strategy?

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I know you say you put together a course, so tell us about your overall marketing strategy.

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So for marketing myself or for marketing my clients?

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Marketing your clients and how?

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What do you do to market their business and make them successful, to market their?

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business and make them successful.

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Great marketing brings you customers with money.

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That's the goal of all marketing should be to attract the right customer to you who spends money with you because you're serving them well, You're solving a problem for them and they happily pay you to have that problem solved.

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That is the ultimate goal of great marketing.

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A lot of times there's some KPIs it's a word, a slang that we use in marketing.

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It stands for key performance indicators but you have some smaller goals on your way to getting to those customers, because marketing is an art, but it's also a science, because you have to be creative, test what is going to be was going to work in the marketplace right now, but then there's a science behind it too, so you have to be able to measure to see what is working.

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How do I need to switch?

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And so a key performance indicator sometimes is my platform growing and followers Like you.

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The more people you can reach, the more likely you are to convert them into a customer.

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So with every client and myself, my goal is to serve more, to sell more.

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They go hand in hand.

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You have to sell to them in order to be able to serve them and then, of course, as a business owner, you need to be paid for your product or service so that you can remain in business.

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That's awesome and that makes sense a lot here.

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So which digital marketing channels do you prioritize and why Like social media, email marketing, SEO which ones do you prioritize?

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So for me, I think it's really important to put email marketing and social media marketing really together, not one above the other.

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Seo, right this minute, is going through a lot of transitions.

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Google just did this whole change and SEO is really struggling right now.

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For me, it's email and social media marketing and then SEO and SEO, done well is great.

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There's just a.

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There's a struggle right now in the marketplace.

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Great, there's just a.

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There's a struggle right now in the marketplace.

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The reason marketing and social media have to go together is you want to meet the person on social media, connect with them, but then you want to take them closer to you and have them on your email list, because when they're on your email list, they're your contact.

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When they're on social media, you have three seconds to get their attention and if they don't connect with you, they may never see you again, and no one makes a decision to move forward with a relationship that was started on social media in three seconds.

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So they really have to be together.

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So right now, I'm doing a marketing campaign for my vision, for a vision workshop, which is the first step for business owners to really understand how does their business fit into their life as a whole.

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And then what?

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How do they want their business to grow?

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And that's where marketing comes in.

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So a lot of times I find newer entrepreneurs especially.

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They really don't know what they're even marketing, and then it's hard for them to even talk about what they're marketing because they're not clear.

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And then the message is clear and a confused mind does nothing.

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So they're working really hard, spinning their wheels, trying to move their business forward and a clear message knowing what you want, knowing what you're selling is the very first step of marketing.

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So that's why I'm excited to offer this.

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That's awesome and I love it because I'm happy that you are my marketing manager, because you understand my services LegalShield services so by understanding that this way, you can promote that on my social media platform.

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That helps me because I'm between the podcast and marketing my business, also marketing my brand, wd Pearson Associates.

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So I truly appreciate you doing that and you've just been a pillow to help me not have to deal with that, but I know that it's going to be taken care of by you.

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When I was ready to get my LLC, legal Shield was there.

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They held my hand.

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It got done instantly and I just feel I sleep better at night, knowing when a problem comes up that involves the law, which it happens more than we think, right, even though we're good people.

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Stuff happens.

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Just knowing I have that behind me and it's for such a small amount of money, it's really amazing, but what a great deal it is.

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Thank you for that shout out.

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I tell you I really appreciate it.

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That's why I've been doing it.

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I would say probably a 20th of the cost of insurance or less.

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Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, less yeah.

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Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely.

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Just we call it peace of mind right.

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So having that peace of mind and valuable right yeah.

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Yeah.

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What would we pay for peace of mind?

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A lot, yes, definitely, definitely.

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But thank you for that shout out, but I appreciate that.

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So let me ask you another question how do you approach social media marketing?

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Are there specific platforms that work best for you, for your business, for other people's business?

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One of the things I do when I'm in the process of having a conversation with a potential client and then, when they become my client, onboarding them, is figuring out what social media platforms are they on, Like what do they enjoy doing.

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Because I suggest that they pick one or two and go all in on those one or two, because it's constantly changing.

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What gets a lot of views this week doesn't get a lot of views the following week.

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It's important that they understand how the platform works and, most importantly, how do they communicate with people when someone's reached out on their platform, One of the things that I offer my clients is I will actually, when they're getting engagement and people are commenting, I can reply for them through my software so that they don't have to sit there and monitor their social media Personally.

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My one, two and three are Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

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Because of marketing.

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I'm starting to play around with TikTok.

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I've had success on TikTok, but I'm nervous.

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There's a lot of legal action against TikTok right now and not against TikTok, but recently TikTok has been mandated that within two or three years, they can no longer be Chinese owned.

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I don't know what that is going to mean.

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Is TikTok going away?

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Is somebody American going to buy them?

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I don't know, but I would hate to have a client put all of their eggs in TikTok and then suddenly TikTok is gone and they've lost all of that.

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Which is why email is so important, Because, should that happen, if they have people that went from TikTok to their email list, then it's not as devastating if a platform should stop.

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Yeah, and that makes sense.

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You're right about that.

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So you need something that's longevity, that's going to last.

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So let's talk about content marketing.

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What role does content marketing play in overall strategy?

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Yeah, For my clients it's primary.

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So we start with.

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There's a system that it's called the buyer's journey, and so what you say to somebody in the beginning, called awareness like this, letting people know that, aware that you exist is different when you say you a little farther down on the journey.

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So if you talk about, like my vision workshop, this is airing in July.

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Right now it's May, it's next week.

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So what I said in the beginning of May, I was just saying, hey, this is out here and this is how this vision workshop made a huge impact on my life.

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And now that I'm further down, now I it's the impact phase where I'm just saying click a link, register now while it's still free.

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So you take people down that journey, depending on how much time you have to promote it, more is better and what's appropriate at that time.

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So when you're just introducing something, I did the same thing for you, wanda, when we started, we first came out with the podcast sponsorship.

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At first, the content that I put out there was just letting people know that it's possible to sponsor a podcast and all of the benefits of sponsoring a podcast.

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Now I'm talking about sponsoring your podcast.

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So, we've taken them from.

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Well, you can sponsor a podcast.

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Who knew I could sponsor a podcast?

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Wow, oh look, my friend Wanda, she's offering podcast sponsorships.

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And then the next one.

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We're going to go even further and talk a little bit more about the pricing and how easy it is to get started.

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Absolutely so that's.

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That is like the overall strategy of of my content marketing.

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The content reflects all of that.

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And in the end, again, you want to get them on an email list so that they weren't ready to buy now.

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It's OK, you're still in contact with them.

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They'll buy later when they're ready.

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No, I appreciate that.

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I appreciate you being my sponsor for this series, so thank you so much.

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So let me ask you something, because we're winding down to the time plans by so fast and I can have you on for an hour, but it does.

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So let me ask you about customer engagement and experience.

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How do you engage with your customers and build that loyal community around your brand?

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So I do it a few ways.

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I'm an admin of a few Facebook groups and in there I'm able to get them to chat to one another and and I appear as an authority.

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Next is my email list is letting people know.

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That's really my two ways.

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I have my own community in two places and then I'm an admin for two others and that I then appear to be the community leader because I'm the admin and the most vocal one in the group.

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That's it, the networking.

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I appreciate that I'm the admin and the most vocal one in the group.

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That's it, the networking.

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I appreciate that You're actually my admin on my Woman on Fire Facebook page, helping me to put information in there.

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When I don't have a chance to do it, you end up engaging with my clients in there or people that's in the group.

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So thank you so much as far as being part of that, as far as being my admin on that.

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My pleasure.

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That's a blessing.

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So let's talk about data and analytics, and I know you leverage that.

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So how do you leverage data and analytics to inform your marketing decisions?

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Let's say it's not doing good on this one here.

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How do you?

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manage that.

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So I have software that gives me real-time analytics for everything that I do, and it usually takes 24 hours to see what's happened with the last post.

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But I just basically use common sense and make no, oh, this carousel, which you sporadically, works really well because people have to stay on and swipe, so that's more seconds that they're on, and I actually just posted one for you today.

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And.

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I just take a look and see how things are doing and make tweaks continue, pushing out what's doing well and tweaking what is not doing so well.

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It's not rocket science, but you do have to look and for most of us, reach is the most important.

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Reach is how many people total are you actually getting out to, and reach includes people that are not connected to you.

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A reel goes to all of Facebook and all of Instagram, versus just putting a post on yours.

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If you just put a post, you're limited by the people that are following you.

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So, that's the benefit of reels.

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Still, everybody doesn't see it in either place, but more people have an opportunity to see it and to push it out if it's a reel.

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I love it because they have the technology, especially now, and they actually from Facebook to Instagram and all the macros to Instagram, especially if you click that thing and say, yeah, put it on Instagram.

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That helps you to be in both platforms.

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So other people that may not be people that you know it's on Instagram, so that is definitely a plus when you do that.

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I suggest people do that and I'm learning how to do reels myself, diane.

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I saw you've done some great ones.

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With the music and stuff so that really gets people's attention.

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You get more involvement people involvement when you do those reels that they actually like it, versus just putting the post on and thank you for doing my reels.

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I appreciate that, so let me ask you.

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We're winding down here.

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I wish we can go further.

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So what about challenges?

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What are some of the biggest marketing challenges you've faced and how did you overcome them?

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In my opinion, marketing and all of the changes.

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That's learnable.

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If you have a good strategy, it doesn't matter so much if this week Facebook is prioritizing posts and last week they were prioritizing reels.

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If your message is clear and you're consistent, it doesn't affect you that much.

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My biggest challenge is there's what my clients want, which is social media, and what they need, which is email marketing, and every time I have a conversation with someone who's considering being my client, I tell them they really need to do both if they want longevity.

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And they always push back and say they don't want to do it and I think that's because maybe they've been added to email lists.

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They've gotten four emails whatever.

00:21:44.480 --> 00:21:46.000
But that's my biggest challenge.

00:21:46.000 --> 00:21:50.652
I feel like I'm mom, and mom, you need to eat your vegetables to grow a healthy body.

00:21:50.652 --> 00:21:57.633
But your kid wants candy and you're like how do I give them the candy and the vegetables and get them to eat their vegetables?

00:21:57.633 --> 00:22:07.451
That is my biggest challenge, and some are more open than others, but the ones that are willing to do both are the most successful.

00:22:09.284 --> 00:22:16.224
Yeah, I love you being my mom, cause you give me my ideas and you actually helped me with my ideas, so thank you for doing that for me.

00:22:16.224 --> 00:22:17.028
I appreciate it.

00:22:17.028 --> 00:22:19.688
So let's talk about your future plans.

00:22:19.688 --> 00:22:21.113
What new marketing strategies?

00:22:21.113 --> 00:22:25.785
And you mentioned about your course you're going to strategy tools you're excited to try in the near future.

00:22:26.326 --> 00:22:54.045
So I have come to the place where I, one person, can only serve so many clients and I have a lot of people coming to me, it seems, every week that, or at least inquiring about social media, and I don't have the bandwidth without hiring more help, which means I have to raise my rates in order to pay for other people to do the work.

00:22:54.605 --> 00:23:18.940
So I've decided that I was going to create a course and teach them how, and we could work one-on-one on the side and then, once they really understand what marketing is all about, and if at that point they decide they don't want to do it themselves and they want to hire me, it's an easier sell, so to speak.

00:23:18.940 --> 00:23:21.887
They understand all that goes into it.

00:23:21.887 --> 00:23:27.952
So I use it as a way of serving and as well as helping my own business grow.

00:23:27.952 --> 00:23:36.813
And one of the course modules is going to be using AI effectively, and that can save a lot of time when you use it.

00:23:36.813 --> 00:23:59.334
Well, if you just ask it to do something and just copy and paste the prompt, whatever they spit out, most of the time you can tell immediately that it's an AI generated and there's like too many extra fluffy words and it doesn't get what it could if you just took some time and reworded it in your own voice and just copied the idea.

00:24:00.015 --> 00:24:08.829
So I'm going to be there, and there's new AI all the time and it's constantly getting better and better, so I'm excited about teaching that in particular, because I'm going to be learning too.

00:24:09.579 --> 00:24:10.623
Okay, that's awesome.

00:24:10.623 --> 00:24:15.682
That's awesome because that's the way of the world today with AI so it's tweaking what they have.

00:24:15.682 --> 00:24:19.607
It's just getting some ideas of what you're trying to get here, but tweaking it.

00:24:19.607 --> 00:24:22.731
It matters as far as making sure it's just in your.

00:24:22.731 --> 00:24:31.000
So now practical advice what advice would you give to small businesses or startups looking to improve their marketing efforts?

00:24:33.084 --> 00:24:38.731
So the first thing is really understanding what you're selling.

00:24:38.731 --> 00:24:50.950
What happens a lot is someone maybe they're selling, they're a direct seller, right, and they have all of these products or all of these services and they're like I don't know what to sell.

00:24:50.950 --> 00:25:02.362
I need to talk about everything, because people could buy everything and what happens is when people see all these different things, you only have them for three seconds.

00:25:02.362 --> 00:25:12.921
So if you're selling makeup and Monday you're focusing on lipstick and Tuesday you're focusing on mascara, on Wednesday you're focusing on eye cream, people often don't buy any of them.

00:25:12.921 --> 00:25:22.184
So the very first thing is really understanding what you're selling and being very clear and making sure your marketing matches that.

00:25:22.184 --> 00:25:28.287
You can still have promotions in the middle, but you need to have a plan three months out on what you're going to market.

00:25:28.607 --> 00:25:38.723
And probably the biggest mistake that I see is I see a lot of new businesses getting started and the very first thing they do is they go and they spend too much money on a bad website.

00:25:38.723 --> 00:25:56.511
Meaning what I mean by a bad website is a website that does not attract people to them, they're not using SEO on it, they don't update it very often and it usually costs thousands of dollars just to get it set up from the get-go.

00:25:56.511 --> 00:25:59.212
And you can have something that works equally as well for free if you have somebody guiding you to get it set up from the get-go.

00:25:59.212 --> 00:26:03.127
And you can have something that works equally as well for free if you have somebody guiding you to do it.

00:26:03.630 --> 00:26:03.851
Yeah.

00:26:04.020 --> 00:26:08.626
I love helping small businesses be successful and saving money along the way too.

00:26:09.148 --> 00:26:21.040
Yeah, I appreciate that, because we were talking about that with the website who I deal with here is for saving money, because it's like, okay, I need this, I need, but do I really need?

00:26:21.061 --> 00:26:27.142
everything exactly, but they make you think you do and then you get it and oftentimes you don't see any difference.

00:26:27.142 --> 00:26:33.137
Yeah, paying this extra versus not paying the extra because you can't.

00:26:33.137 --> 00:26:34.481
It's more than just buying.

00:26:34.481 --> 00:26:38.721
It's just like if you buy a course, your business isn't going to get better just when you buy the course.

00:26:38.721 --> 00:26:42.171
You have to go through the course and then apply what you learn.

00:26:42.759 --> 00:26:42.901
Yeah.

00:26:43.343 --> 00:26:46.680
And it doesn't matter if the course is free or it's ten thousand dollars.

00:26:46.680 --> 00:26:50.791
If you don't go through it and apply it, your business and your life will not be any better.

00:26:51.319 --> 00:26:52.642
Absolutely, absolutely.

00:26:52.642 --> 00:26:53.803
That's great Diane.

00:26:53.803 --> 00:26:59.289
That's some great advice there and I was going to ask what resources do you recommend for marketers looking to improve their skills?

00:26:59.289 --> 00:27:04.895
But really your class would help that as far as the behavior to help with that.

00:27:13.019 --> 00:27:13.580
So I appreciate that.

00:27:13.580 --> 00:27:15.344
So tell us how can we get in touch with you.

00:27:15.344 --> 00:27:21.815
So right now, the best place to get me is on my website be seen to be seen social mediacom.

00:27:21.815 --> 00:27:24.077
There's a contact me button there.

00:27:24.077 --> 00:27:27.243
You can contact me if you have any specific questions.

00:27:27.243 --> 00:27:39.373
And I also soon will have my my first module up there on how to getting your social media set up properly, how to make sure your accounts are set up to attract people to you.

00:27:39.373 --> 00:27:42.890
That will be the first module and that will be on that website.

00:27:43.701 --> 00:27:44.482
That's awesome.

00:27:44.482 --> 00:27:45.064
That's awesome.

00:27:45.064 --> 00:27:50.946
So I really enjoyed talking to you because you gave some great tips and strategies and the trends.

00:27:50.946 --> 00:27:55.902
So thank you so much for being on my podcast, ready Set Collaborate.

00:27:55.902 --> 00:28:11.112
So I want to tell the audience to make sure you subscribe and share the podcast because actually, if you go on WD Pearson Associates dot com, you will see all of my podcasts on the podcast and you can catch each one, because there's some valuable information, just like what Diane shared.

00:28:11.112 --> 00:28:17.732
Definitely, make sure you follow us, follow Diane on her social media as well, because she's a great wealth to help.

00:28:17.732 --> 00:28:20.169
I'll tell you I wouldn't I don't know what I would do without you, diane.

00:28:20.169 --> 00:28:27.748
So thank you so much for being on the podcast and I truly appreciate you and we will see you again soon, diane.

00:28:29.269 --> 00:28:30.352
Absolutely.

00:28:30.352 --> 00:28:36.027
Yeah, Next week there'll be another fantastic episode of Ready Set Collaborate.

00:28:36.027 --> 00:28:37.169
Don't miss it.

00:28:37.589 --> 00:28:49.945
Yes, every Wednesday is new, so make sure you share, follow and subscribe to Ready Set Collaborate with Wanda Pearson on all podcast platforms Apple Podcasts, spotify.

00:28:49.945 --> 00:28:51.790
It's even on Audible, diane.

00:28:51.790 --> 00:28:53.882
I didn't know it was on Audible, so it's all over the place.

00:28:53.882 --> 00:29:01.048
So definitely, thank you and until next time, the next podcast, listen in for Ready Set Collaborate with Wanda Pearson.

00:29:01.048 --> 00:29:02.182
Thank you, diane.

00:29:02.182 --> 00:29:03.488
Thanks for being on the podcast.

00:29:03.488 --> 00:29:04.902
Thank you.

00:29:04.942 --> 00:29:07.029
Wanda, it was my pleasure, thank you.

00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:13.845
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Ready Set Collaborate.

00:29:13.845 --> 00:29:24.596
For more information about the host head to WDPearsonAssociatescom and that's P-E-A-R-S-O-N.

00:29:24.596 --> 00:29:26.143
Want to connect?

00:29:26.143 --> 00:29:40.213
Send an email to Wanda at WDPearsonAssociatescom and, as always, stay tuned for the next episode of Ready Set Collaborate.

Breaking Down Marketing Barriers with Expert Insights from Diane Freeman

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