It's 2025, and that means we're going to be talking all
about 2025 marketing in this right here podcast episode.
Welcome to the Mindful Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Jones, and
it is my honor to help you scroll less, connect more,
and grow together. Before we get into this episode though, a quick word
from this episode's sponsor. I've recorded over
300 podcast episodes. Yeah. It's a lot of podcast
episodes, and I've tried a lot of different virtual recording studios,
but my favorite has been Riverside. Riverside
makes their virtual recording studio look so profesh. My
guests love it. Plus, I also low key love
recording YouTube videos in here as well because it's so easy to use.
My team also loves Riverside because it spits out separate audio
video tracks, making editing easy breezy, lemon squeezy.
And if you want a little magic, they've got this tool called MagicClips,
which uses AI to take your video and turn it into
perfect social media sized videos. I'm talking vertical videos for TikTok
and Instagram, Facebook Reels, all the places you can post these videos with
the captions included, and you don't have to hunt and search for
that perfect clip. So if you wanna try this out for yourself,
click the link that goes with this video. Or if you're listening to the audio
on the podcast, it's in the show notes. Okay? Click that link.
Use the 15% off coupon code. It's Drea, d r e
a, and try Riverside for yourself. Thank you,
Riverside. Alright. 2025.
I talk in my predictions episode about a lot of things changing
in marketing this year. And we as
business owners, as leaders need to change with it. Some of
the things I talked about in that episode are things like reputation
being the cornerstone of our marketing, how the algorithms are
changing, and how community is the backbone of everything that we do. Well,
in this episode, I'm gonna talk more about how we can implement all of those
things using 6 different elements of your
marketing ecosystem. These elements are so important
to creating a cohesive strategy that works for you and
with your preferences, especially for those of us who are personal brands.
Meaning, our face is the face that people
see when they connect with our brand. It's a face that's on our social media
accounts. It's a face that's on our website. It's our personality driving the
business. And whether you're doing this for yourself or your clients, these six elements
will help create a cohesive strategy. So this works no matter if you're
podcasting, writing emails, and, yes, posting to social media.
Now the first step in this ecosystem is
your POV statement, your POV statement. This is something that
we worked on last year in our program, which is
a statement that is your guiding light for your marketing. It
has a bunch of different elements to it, but the core idea behind a POV
statement, it is it's your unique perspective. K? A lot
of times in branding guides or marketing guides,
this is called your USP, your unique selling point.
But my POV statement combines the USP, the unique selling
point, with your own client avatar. So we've
heard that line before, client avatar or,
ideal client, ideal customer avatar. These are,
you know, essentially personality profiles of the type of people who
purchase from you. So POV statement marries those two ideas and
combines your own value system into that. And I think this is
so important that all business owners should have personality driven brands
or otherwise. The POC statement will be your guiding light when it comes to
creating content. And I see time and time again where brands and
businesses, something happens in the world and they're not quite
sure what to say. They're not quite sure how to respond. And usually, it's because
they don't have a POV statement. They don't have,
a a guideline in their marketing playbook to help
them understand how to move forward
with that response to something that happens. And so the
POV statement is a key element into your
marketing. Now when we think about the POV statement as well, this
isn't something that you just create once and you set it and forget it. It
is something that's a living breathing document. So I'll use my own brand as
an example in this episode. So my POV statement includes
things like my family history. You know, a lot of the
work that I do comes from my own history, my own personal
background. I talk a lot about that in my work. My
POV statement includes my values, so things like social media
boundaries or social media mindfulness. My POV statement includes
the values of the people that I work with, so their
family situation. A lot of my business owners that I work with are busy.
They're busy with life things. Right? Like aging parents, young
children, they're going back to school, they have a full time job. And so we're
trying to run our business while life is happening,
and marketing is a part of that. And so when I teach marketing,
I always make sure to teach it from the perspective of that lens because
that's the lens that helps me and that's the lens that helps my clients as
well. So those are the things that you put into your POV statement when it
comes to building your marketing plan.
2nd element of your marketing plan is your offers. And I think a
lot of times we dismiss the inherent value of our
offers when it comes to marketing because
our offer should actually create its own internal
marketing ecosystem. So here's what I mean by that.
One of the clients that I worked with 1 on 1 last year, had
an amazing internal marketing system. Her she actually did not have a lot
of Instagram followers, and she came to me because she didn't have a lot of
Instagram followers. But as for after digging into her work, referrals
were her best source of business. Why? Because her
offer was irresistible, and her offer was so good that
other people would go, oh, you need help with this? You gotta go see so
and so. Right? And so I think sometimes we dismiss the inherent value of
our offer and it can be very challenging to market it because it doesn't have
its own internal marketing. And I saw this when I ran my agency
the best. My agency thrived off of referrals because
me and my team would come in, we would do the work, and people
would talk about it because it provided a lot of value
to them. And so not only do you have to have this shiny, you
know, polished marketing playbook on the outside,
like, your actual offer on the inside has to be good. K? So your POV
statement and your offer. The third thing, and this is a
really big thing when it comes to your marketing plan, is having a signature
content piece. This is kind of a third and the fourth thing because I'll also
talk about supporting content in this plan as well. So
signature content, supporting content. Now I'll say this as well.
I'm gonna spend a lot of time diving into signature content and supporting
content in a 3 hour workshop that I'm teaching inside the Mindful
Marketing Lab. If you're in the lab, we're gonna go in this
in-depth. If you're not in the lab, you can purchase a
ticket to this workshop by going to onlinedrea.com/playbook.
I will have the option for you to purchase the workshop there whether you wanna
join live or watch the replay. Okay? But I'm gonna give you, the down and
dirty version for the podcast. Okay. So signature
content is the content you don't miss. Okay? It is your ride or die content.
It is the content that you're known for. It's a content that people share the
most. It's a content that is the easiest for you to deliver. I
was talking with, a Subsack, person,
and they were really considering TikTok. K? Long
form content writer. I think their content would actually perform really well,
like, as a talking head on TikTok. But after going through a consulting call
with them, I realized they do not like recording talking
head videos. In fact, it would take them hours and hours and hours just to
get through one video with all the stops and starts, with the nerves and all
of that. And so after digging through all of that, I was like, why are
we even, like, fiddling around with TikTok at all? Well, it's because
someone else told them that they, quote, unquote, should be on
TikTok. And I think when we think about marketing,
itself, sometimes we take all the shoulds,
and then we try to do that plan. And it doesn't
work because someone else told us we should be doing it, and it's not coming
from an inspired place. And we can sense that when you're creating the
content. Like, we can sense that this content isn't coming from an
inspired place. It kind of feels like
this content may be, you're
forcing it a little bit, you know. And so when I think of
signature content, your preferences come first,
specifically how you deliver your expertise.
So, again, I'll use my brand as example. I,
am a talker. If y'all if y'all didn't pick up on that little tidbit, I
like to talk. This is how I process information. It's actually the best way that
I can explain things most often. It is my comfortable spot, especially
if I'm, basically talking to myself in a room like I do when I record
this podcast. This is where I shine. Okay? So when I'm
creating content, I tend to lean towards talking
content, audio and video specifically. So when I
think about my signature content piece, for me, that is the podcast. We
produce an audio stream for all the podcasting apps. We take the video, put
it on YouTube. Even Spotify now has the video on there as well. So
for me, if I were to create a signature content piece, it would be
talking. If I were to start over again today and I had to start over
from scratch, I would actually probably choose maybe even a
live stream. And I would love to livestream if, like, my
time frees up a little bit with the kiddos. Livestreaming
was so fun for me when I did it back before kids,
and, I would happily do it again because it is my happy place.
It's so off the cuff talking is my jam. K?
If you told me, Andrea, you need to start a
substack newsletter and produce 2 newsletters a
week on that platform with a bunch of exclusive written content,
I could do it. I'm not saying I couldn't do it. I could do it,
but I wouldn't be happy doing it. It's not my happy place. It'd be like
pulling teeth. It would take me a lot longer to produce that content.
And so while that is a great strategy, there's nothing wrong with that
strategy, it's not the strategy for me. And so when you think
about your signature content, your preferences
matter here. And if you're working with a team, I just have to
say the preferences of the leader, the face, the
personality behind the brand definitely matters. So if we're
talking about, you know, course creator, and let's say you're, like, the
virtual assistant or you're the social media manager for a course creator, you need to
think about your client and their preference. Are they a talker? Are they a writer?
If we're developing a marketing plan for them in 2025, we wanna think
about what's the fastest and easiest way for them to create that signature
content piece. I'll give another example of this. One of my past
clients, Cara Lowenpile, was a great example of this. She
also is a talker, but she is very intentional
about the words that she chooses and and chooses and she did a ton of
research on her podcast and she would do podcast
episodes. Now I'll say this, she's not really, like, a huge video
person. She's doing it more now, which is great. I love that for
her. But when I worked with her, she didn't wanna be on video. She didn't
really care about video. And so we dismissed it. We test a
few things, but it wasn't really a huge focus because her signature content was
her podcast. Her podcast was the thing that when people found her, when they
discovered her, they, like, went back and listened to all the back
catalog. Okay? Her podcast was the thing people were texting to their
besties going, did you listen to this episode? It was amazing.
The thing about her podcast as well is that because her work was so
conceptual, a lot of times it didn't work well-being
truncated for social media. You kinda needed the full experience
order to fully understand her work and her perspective on the
world. So podcasting worked for her. K? I'll
give another example of signature content. One of my clients,
Linda Taliferro, also is a talker
and would do live streams for her. So Linda works best
with a bit of interaction. And she doesn't wanna feel like she's talking to nobody.
She wants to have interaction. She had a weekly live show, where she
would interact with the people who were listening. We had topics that we came
up with every single week. We would still follow the topic, but she would have
more of a conversation with her audience. That was her preferred
method of delivery. Show up, live, and present.
That's signature content. Supporting content
is the content that supports the signature content. Right? So I think
oftentimes, we try to put an even playing field for all of our
marketing. Right? We're like, social media is equally important to email, it's equally
important to the podcast, it's equally important to YouTube. And then this is where we
get burned out, because we're trying to put equal levels of importance
on all of the various elements in our marketing, when really
there should be a couple that are signature and a couple that are supporting. So
I mentioned for me, my signature content is my podcast. My number
one supporting content is not social media. It's actually my
email. And this realization early last
year is part of the reason why I rebranded away from Savvy
Social Everything towards Mindful Marketing Everything
because I realized then that social media, while it plays a huge
role in my marketing ecosystem, it is not the
signature content piece for me. K. It is a supporting
role, and it plays a very big supporting role. You know, like, supporting best
actress, supporting best actor. The movie would not be the same without those
roles, but they're not the lead. Okay? So the lead for me is my
podcast, and then my number one supporter to that is my email marketing.
That is where I have my largest community of
my Internet friends. Alright? In the supporting content
category as well for me are things like social media. I consider my
YouTube channel to be supporting content, though it's a little bit on hiatus
right now, because of the, you know, whole having kids
thing, 2 kids in 3 years. Hello, busy
life. It will revamp, once I
get more time. But when I analyze where to put my time and I realized
the podcast was it and I still take podcast is still recorded in
video form, so put those videos on YouTube. I don't create custom
YouTube videos at this moment because I realized it plays a
supporting role in my marketing strategy. So hopefully, like, the
difference between, signature content and supporting content is a little bit
of a relief to use your thinking about where to spend your time.
So back to my client Cara. Her
signature content, the podcast. Supporting content, social
media, email marketing, even guesting on
podcast, like, those are her supporting
content pieces. K? So supporting content
is important. It plays a crucial role in your marketing ease
ecosystem, but there's a hierarchy to all of this. Now
I gotta also talk about attraction strategies because I think sometimes we think
the content is the attraction strategy. Sometimes
I'll say it again. Sometimes we think the content is the attraction strategy,
but that is not always the case. Right? It's not always
the case. In fact, more often than not, it isn't the case.
There are a few exceptions, and I think actually describing the exceptions will help
you understand the attraction strategy. So there is exceptions to this.
YouTube is a great, example of, an exception,
and it's why I love YouTube because it's both it can
be all the things, signature, supporting, and attracting. K. Just
by publishing content on that platform, you can check off signature
content, supporting content, and attraction strategy in your marketing plan, in your
marketing playbook. Now, that is because
YouTube is search first, social second. So people go on the
platform looking for the things that they are looking for,
then your content could show up, then they could consume your
content, come into your marketing ecosystem, sign up for something, head down the
rabbit hole, and away they go. Right? YouTube is great for
that. Platforms that aren't great for that, inherently,
things like, posting to your Facebook page.
That is not inherently an attraction strategy. Facebook is not
actively taking page content like native
photos and, text based post and pushing them
out to people who don't follow. Maybe for big pages, but for small
businesses, like a lot of folks listening here, that's not an attraction
strategy. K? That's maybe supporting content. Used to be attraction
strategy. It's not an attraction strategy anymore. Posting to
Facebook reels is an attraction strategy,
because currently at this moment here now and today January 2025,
Facebook is prioritizing the discovery of reels. So if
you post to Facebook reels, Facebook is going to take that content and try to
show it to people who do not follow you, so therefore,
attracting new people into your ecosystem. K? So
when we think about attraction strategies, it's intentionally
designed to find new people, and posting content
doesn't do that. And this is why podcasting, while it's a great signature
content piece for me, it is not also typically an attraction
strategy for me. For my brand, I like to do podcast
guesting and I like speaking in summits. K. Again, leaning in my
preferences, give me an off the cuff q and a. I could do that all
day, any day. And so for me, being on a podcast,
guessing in summits, this is my biggest way of of
meeting new people essentially and having them know about me and my work.
That is my attraction strategy. For other
people, this may be networking on social media. Maybe you're connecting with people on
LinkedIn. Like my client, Linda Talifera, she connects with people on
LinkedIn. That's her attraction strategy. That's how she brings new people
into her world. For Cara, it was more of the podcast
guessing piece. She also did a ton of media. I'm talking being
on television shows, being featured in magazines, things like
that. That was her attraction strategy. The attraction strategy
has to be, also lean into your strengths, but
you have to understand that attraction strategies aren't always signature
or supporting content pieces. K? Sometimes it can be. Again, YouTube
is a great example of this, but sometimes it's
not. K? So when you when you're analyzing if your marketing
is actually working for you, I want you to ask yourself,
do you have, you know, your attraction strategy? Do you have
your signature supporting content? And then, you know, the other things we
talked about, is your POV clear and, are your offers
helping with that attraction strategy as well? Okay. I said there are 6
things. So the last piece of this marketing playbook is
analyzing your metrics. I know. I know. People don't like the metrics
word. Okay? The the metrics word can be a little bit
scary, but it's so so
important when you're thinking about your marketing playbook because
I wrote this in a newsletter the other day. Sometimes it feels like we're
throwing spaghetti at the wall, and we're, like, completely out of
noodles. And we're, like, well, now what? That feeling.
That feeling comes from not looking at your
spaghetti strewn noodley wall and going, okay.
I saw those noodles stuck, but the rest of them didn't. So what's so
different about those noodles? Like, you really have to analyze these
things. And I know it's not necessarily a fun thing, but we we really
need to take a look. So here's my personal example on this.
If y'all been following me for a while, you know I'm a huge RuPaul's Drag
Race fan. Love RuPaul's Drag Race. Love it. Watch all the seasons,
spin off seasons, all star seasons,
international seasons. I I just love it. I love the show.
However, y'all don't really care, and that came from the
data. Like, I love talking about it. I love using it as an example,
but it's not something that a lot of my community
is a super fan of, like I am. K? You may like reality TV
shows, but not necessarily RuPaul's Drag Race. So I may use,
like, generic reality TV show example, but I'm not gonna go
deep into the RuPaul Drag Race references. Okay? That
doesn't really work, and that came from looking at my metrics. I'm not
saying I'm not sharing my love of RuPaul's Drag Race. I'm just saying I'm not
gonna use, you know, like deep cut inside jokes
because it doesn't land. Right? And so I think that comes from
looking at the metrics. What does work is when I talk about my
family, when I talk about family values, when I talk about my family
history. Right? So I often share those
stories over my hobbies and things like that
because they're more resonant, and that came from looking at my metrics.
One of my top posts from 2024 was a
post I shared on threads about my family history.
I talk about how my, you know, great great grandmother was a
slave. My grandmother were worked on a pig farm.
My mom, you know, owned her own business, was basically a
a not saying home mom. Sorry. Single mom,
and then there's me. I own my business, and I'm, like, creating
new generational opportunities for my kids. Right?
I shared that on threads, and it got shared reshared, like, a bunch of times.
I've made the same video on TikTok. It's, like, one of my most watched TikTok
videos. I was just sharing something in the spur
of a moment where I was like, I think this will work, and
it did. I infused my story into that, and
it really connected with people. And so I'm not
saying I'm I'm, you know, not sharing everything
about my life. I don't. I don't share everything about my life online. But I
notice the things that really connect with people and I go, maybe I should share
more personal stories. And this ties into the running thread
into all of this and the thing that we're really focusing on in the
mindful marketing lab in 2025, which is this idea
of experimentation and playfulness in your
marketing. I think that this is gonna be huge for marketers,
especially those of us with personal brands or personality driven brands,
is having moments of experimentation in play. And big brands
do this too. K? If you look at their marketing, it's not all
serious. In fact, a lot of big brands have a lot of
fun. The one I point to right now is,
the Beyond Meat brand on threads. And I'm just
I said that out loud, and then I was like, is that the brand? I
think it's Beyond Meat on threads. The Little Cow,
their social media team is having a wild time just having a
silly old time on the platform, and it's working.
People are liking it, following it, sharing it. And this goes back
to one of my predictions in the predictions episode, which is social media now back
at the top of the funnel. Right? It's not about
directly converting every single person who looks at a social media post.
In fact, that's just not gonna happen. So we need to set that thought aside.
So if that's not gonna happen, how then can we connect with
people and connect with them in a way that's sticky and that's
memorable? And oftentimes that means being very, very human. And in
order to do that, we need to experiment and, I don't know, have a
little fun, in this marketing thing. Right?
I want you to think about your experience scrolling through social media today or yesterday
or recently. K? You're on your app of choice. You're
scrolling. What content makes you stop and watch? What
content makes you wanna like and comment? And what content makes you
wanna share? And the share worthy content is the
content that wins because we're getting our community
to be our attraction strategy for us. K?
And when we think about the share worthy content, it's oftentimes not,
like, a sale or a promotional offer. K?
It can be, but it's more often than not not
that. K? I have a little running thread with some of my,
spicy book friends where we we just share, like, little memes and
funny funny reels with each other, and it's fun. Right? We each have a little
little blasty blast. I feel like
that level of fun needs to be infused into our marketing.
And I can't give you the formula for this. That's why experimentation
is key. And it's one of the things we're really heavily leaning into in the
mindful marketing lab coming up this year is how to build your own
formulas based on this marketing playbook outline, based on
your preferences, based on what you know about how the algorithm works, based
on things like your signature content, your supporting content, but
infusing lots of experimentation and play into your marketing
so that you actually have those posts that take off, so that you
have, a content strategy where people are, you know,
texting their friends like did you listen to this episode, so that you have
that working for you and it doesn't feel like you're clawing and fighting and
biting for every little like and comment because Instagram didn't show your post
today. That last one is a little bit personal because Instagram's
having a moment right now, and it's not a good look, Insta.
They'll fix it soon, but it's not fun for me right now, and maybe you're
feeling the same way. So to recap,
your 2025 marketing plan needs to have a very
clear POV statement highlighting your unique preferences,
your difference that you make in the world, your
customers' values as well, and tying that all up
into something that is very clear on how you're different from your competitors.
You need to have a really significant offer where the transformation
is clear and people get results. You need to identify your
signature and supporting content pieces so that there's a
hierarchy and importance in your content, and you're not trying to give
equal attention to everything and therefore burning out. You need to
clearly identify what your attraction strategy is and know how new
people can discover you and be delighted by your signature
and supporting content. And then have a frequency where you're analyzing
your metrics. Metrics that matter. Metrics that actually tie in
to your business goals and your bottom line. So as I mentioned, we're going
really in-depth into all of this in the Mindful Marketing Lab
with a 3 hour workshop. If you wanna join me
for this 3 hour workshop, it's on January 16th. I will put the link in
the show notes. You can also go to onlinedrea.com/playbook
and sign up there. If you're not a member, you can just join the workshop
itself. It's $97 or join the lab for $97,
your choice. And I'd love to support you in co creating your
2025 marketing plan. I'll be back at you with another
episode soon. That's all for today. Bye for now.