10 Ways to Instantly Improve Your Promotion Strategy (Best Of Episode)

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Hello, my friend, and welcome to our show. And I want to tell you right away that we are going to be sharing one of our best of most popular episodes in this creative checkup of the God and gig show now due to a failed laptop battery. Honestly, it's the only reason why I couldn't bring you one of our new episodes. But this is one of our most popular from the last two years. I talked about promotion and honestly, some of the that I'm sharing here really rang true even today where I need to change some things and apply the lessons from this episode.

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So enjoy. Take some notes and definitely make sure that you pay attention to the ten ways that you can increase the way you promote and do so effectively.

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It's a word that most creatives hate to hear, but we all know we have to do it. It's called promotion. The dreaded P word. You have to do it. You have to promote.

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But most of us either feel scammy about doing it, we feel like it's just something that it makes us feel icky inside because we have to talk about ourselves and we want to be humble, but we can't because we have to share and post and all these other things. Or you might be hyper focused on promotion because you think that you have to be out there every single minute and every single thing you do is all about promoting yourself and you just don't know where the balance is. Well, we're going to help you find the balance and solve this problem of promotion today on this creative checkup episode of our guiding gig show.

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And welcome to our show. Thank you so much for making this podcast a part of your creative day. If you are new to the show, you are in the right place, especially if you're a musician, creative entrepreneur, entertainer, freelancer, anyone at the intersection of the arts and entertainment industry. But you also have a Christian or a faith focused background, and you want to apply the best of those principles to the temporary creative problems that you might be facing. This is where you can do just that.

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We've been here since 2017. I'm your host, Allen C. Paul, and I love meeting and connecting with creatives just like you who want to build better creative lives from the inside out. Now, let's dig right into this issue of promotion, because it's the number one thing most of us have to deal with right after you create. And I have this little five step framework that I like to talk about when it comes to the creative process.

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You've got to do the planning and the preparation, and then there's the actual creative act creation. Right. And then after the creation, you've got to do some of the production, editing, things like that. And after that you got to do distribution. But after distributing what you have to distribute, in other words, you put it on Spotify or you put it on behance or whatever you do, you put it out there.

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But after that, yep, there's promotion. There's promotion and conversation. You've got to do those things to tell people what you are sharing. So here's the two levels I think people get stuck in. They either get stuck at a level of feeling like they are spammy and scammy, where they don't want to share all the time, and they feel like even if they post it one time that they're overdoing it.

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They feel so out of place because they feel like they're not being humble, that they're drawing attention to themselves. As an artist, you want to care about the art, but you don't want to care about how people are going to perceive it, how they're going to buy it. That part of the business just makes you feel icky inside. Or maybe you're on the opposite side. You are so obsessed with promotion that when people only like your post one time, you feel like it's a failure.

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If you don't have 100 people who are noticing your post or noticing your emails or whatever it is that you're doing, you feel like a failure every single time. You don't get the response. So we got these two extremes, right? One of you is probably listening and you're thinking, I don't like to promote at all. The other one is right next to you.

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And they're thinking, I promote all the time, but it's so frustrating because no one ever seems to listen. So that's the problem. The problem are these extremes. And here's something that I took from actually.

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It is one of the most time honored and probably the most annoying forms of marketing and promotion that we know of. And it is the infomercial. Everybody knows about infomercials. Whether you've been up at 02:00 in the morning watching an infomercial or whatever it is, whether it be shamwow or whether it was the guy with the oxiclean cleaning up the things or the flex seal. The fact that I can even think of these commercials are proof that infomercials do work.

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But we all know what they are. We know that they are basically paid advertisements for about 30 minutes, 20 minutes an hour, even where someone is going to demonstrate a product and we are going to be told to buy it. Limited time only. Call us 800 number. And we all know these infomercials are usually, if we're not interested, we're watching them for entertainment purposes, I guess, but we're not interested in the product usually.

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But here's the thing. Why are infomercials still a thing in the age of Internet, in the age of so many other media outlets, TikTok and Twitter? So why do we still have infomercials? Well, it's clear that infomercials still work. And they work for one huge reason that we cannot forget.

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When it comes to your artistic life and your promotion, they work because they only have one goal, to be there when the one person who wants that product so bad and has the exact problem that that infomercial is talking about, and it is positioned so that that person that's watching it two in the morning picks up the phone and says, yes, I want that. The infomercial has that one purpose, to be there and to be playing and saying the thing that will draw the person, not all the hundreds of thousands of people who are just going to turn it off. They don't care about that. The infomercial is literally just playing over and over again. And notice that word over and over again because they want to be in position for the one person that will pick up the phone and say, yes, I want the shamwow.

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Yes, I want the gentoo knives. Yes, I want the George Foreman Grill. Whatever it is, it is designed for that one moment. And so the problem of promotion is that a lot of times we think that either it's a failure if I don't get that one person, or I think it's beneath me to look for that one person. And it's not fair and it's scammy and it's spammy.

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When, if you think like this, these people who put on infomercials, or whether it's direct mail or whether it's commercials, you name the big company, whatever it is, they are not concerned with all the people who are saying no. Now, I'm not saying to go out there and start spamming everybody and sending it to everyone, but their first intention is to reach the person who they are trying to reach and to be there when that person is ready to buy, is ready to sell, is ready to support, is ready to connect, they want to be there. Because if they're not there and that person is up at 02:00 in the morning and that commercial does not come on. They've missed their opportunity. And so one of the things I'm going to tell you as a very practical strategy is simply say, how can I be in the place and the time and the space where my ideal customer, my audience, how can I be there the moment that they need me?

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How can I be there the moment that they think, hey, I really need to hear this. I really need to see this. I need this artistic thing in my life. I need this blessing in my life. How can I make sure that I'm there?

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Because at some point they're going to turn on the television. At some point they're going to go on Twitter. Will I be there for them, or will they see an empty space? Because you see, the problem of promotion, once again, is that we think of it as all about us when it's really all about them. It's all about the person you're trying to reach, that God has put in your path so that they would interact with your art or with your creative gift, and so that you can be a blessing to them at the time that they need you.

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So you have to turn this around. The problem of promotion is you cannot make it, and this sounds very weird, you cannot make it personal. Not personal for you. You can make it personal about the person you're trying to reach, make it personal for them and change your mindset so that your problem no longer becomes, how would I get more people to notice me and becomes more, how can I make sure I'm there for the one person when they're ready to buy, when they're ready to connect? How can I make sure I'm there so that I don't miss that 02:00 in the morning opportunity.

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When they turn it on, they're like, that's just the thing I need. And of course, I know sometimes you think, okay, they didn't really need the Ginsu knives. But you know what? There's a feeling that I know when I buy something, I'm like, yes, I really wanted this. I feel great because I know it's coming to my house, and I don't have that buyer's remorse that some people think about.

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So I want you to think of not buyers remorse, but I want you to think of buyers acceptance and buyers happiness when they get the thing from you or they buy the book or they buy the course or they download your song or they get your artwork. I want you to think of the moment that you were there to promote your art, your creative gift, and say to yourself, thank God I was there at that right time. So let's talk about some practical things before we close out this creative checkup episode. My favorite idea when it comes to promotion and it goes to social media, but it also goes to really anything, is to show up in ten different places. How can I show up in ten different places each day?

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So that somebody that's looking, because ten is just a good number to aim for. Now, that ten could be a LinkedIn post, and then it could be Twitter, and then it could be Instagram, and then it could be Facebook. That's four. Maybe my fifth way would be email. Maybe my 6th way would be quick text to somebody say, hey, I just want to show you my podcast episode.

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Or hey, I just want to remind you about my show next week. And maybe seven is I go to someone and I hand them a flyer or I put up a flyer or someplace, I do something physical. And then eight, maybe eight will be something that I do outside of social media and outside of my phone. Maybe I will go ahead and do like a conversation with someone while I'll be talking about just random things. And I'm not going to try to promote myself, but I'm going to make sure that I'm in a certain place, maybe it's a concert or something like that, where I'm around other people and we're talking about things.

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And my conversation can include my art, what I'm talking about promoting, and I put myself in a position to serve others, but I also can talk about what I'm doing. Okay, so that's eight and maybe that's nine. Maybe you do that twice and then ten. You know what? There's still physical mail.

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You've ever heard people mailing people. You might say, oh, my gosh, I would never do that. But why not? Why not write a letter to someone and just say, hey, I just wanted to let you know what I was doing and what's going on in my life. I'm doing this show.

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I'm doing that stuff. Want to know about you send something in the mail. You'd be surprised how many people love to get things in the mail still. So I just gave you in that quick synopsis, ten ways you can reach out and promote yourself in one day. And you might say, that's a lot.

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But if you just get in the habit of writing a letter, sending out seven or eight different posts, going somewhere, talking to somebody, you'll be surprised how quickly you get in the flow of always being in a place where people can find you. And that's how they will be able to connect with you and get the thing that they want from you at the very time that they need it. God can really do that for you, by the way, that's something you can pray about. Lord, how can you position me today? How should I position myself so I can serve others, but also be in the right place to talk about the thing that you've gifted me to do so that when the person is ready, I'm there?

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So you probably haven't thought of connecting prayer with promotion before. I would suggest you do that because none of this works unless you are in the right place at the right time. And we know that God is really the one that orchestrates all these connections. So I hope that you now have a better perspective on promotion just from this conversation. I know that this will help you if you just get out of your own head and think of how can I be there when the person that I'm trying to reach is ready to receive what I'm offering?

00:12:16
Okay, that's our creative checkup episode for today. Thank you so much for listening. Once again, if you're new to the show, thanks for giving us a chance. Make sure you subscribe, review the show, and share the show with somebody else. Just tell somebody else.

00:12:27
Hey, I found this show that's all about creatives who are trying to build better lives on the inside out. They have a christian focus, but they're all about mainstream everything. It's not just about church. It's really just about showing up as my authentic self in the mainstream arts and entertainment space. And that's what we do here.

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Please let them know about the show. I would love to meet them and help them also. Just like I want you to do to become the creative that you were created to be. That's what I want for you and for all who are going to be part of the God and gigs community. So until next time, continue to do that.

00:12:59
Thank you so much for watching and listening and we'll see you next episode. Thanks for joining us here at the God and gigs show. Please leave us a review on iTunes, like our Facebook page, or visit godandgigs.com and tell us what you thought of this show. We'll be back soon. In the meantime, go create something amazing.