Andréa Jones: So if someone found you today and then binge watched all of your content, I'm talking your Instagram posts, LinkedIn, your emails, your blogs, your listen to your podcasts. If they binge watch all of that, would they actually know how to become a client and how to work with you? Because I think a lot of us are sitting on this idea of trying to figure out what content to post instead of the bigger issue, which is trying to figure out. How people go from not knowing who we are to becoming a raving advocate of our brand. We don't know what that next step is. And we're basically just putting on good content out here in these internet streets for free. And if you're a business, that thought should scare you. But never fear, my friends, today in this episode, I'm gonna be talking about content and content paths specifically, paths that lead towards people buying from you. And listen, I know we've all been taught that age-old story. The content, quality content is king. Post more, be consistent, be on this platform, be on that platform, repurpose, create a hook, write a good caption, have a carousel post, be trendy, try long form, do short form. I mean, I love content. I'm not saying I don't love content, okay? I love it. And also, content is not my entire marketing strategy. Content is to me. More of an invitation, you know, like someone discovers me and I'm like, hey, here's a little piece that you can learn about me before you purchase from me. It's like this one time I went to Bath and Body Works, y'all. I love Bath and Body Works, but I I'm an online shopper. I don't usually go in the store, but today I was feeling frisky. I was in the mall, went into the store. This was pre-pandemic, y'all. Okay. So I go in the store. And immediately they're like, hi, this is our sale. We have buy four candles to get one free. I was like, Yes, thank you. I didn't realize that was a thing. please help me find the candle scent that I like. It was the holiday times. I wanted a holiday scent. She said, right over here. Okay. I think a lot of us are assuming people know where our store is, they know what our sale is, they know where the holiday scents are, and we're giving them the whole rigmarole of explanating, explaining things. When what they really want is to buy the thing that they came here to buy or to learn more about it, right? So the content itself isn't the whole business, but it's part of the experience to invite someone to understand your business enough so that they can become a client. And a client path, a lot of people call this a funnel. A lot of people call this, I call this a marketing ecosystem. All right. But a client path is simply the actions someone takes. From I don't know who you are to like, I want to give you my money. Okay. A stranger, I want to give you my money. And when someone finds your content, that helps them along that path in some ways, but there are other things that help them along that path as well. Your content is part of your marketing and sales ecosystem. Okay. So some things your content may do is your content may help them understand how you think. So for example, I have a client who is all about perimenopause. Specifically, she helps people with a whole body solution to perimenopause and menopause, right? So there's a lot of education that her content needs to go from I feel insane amounts of rage to I need to work out Eat the specific food, like work out a specific way, eat the specific food, and like really care for my body in this specific way, right? There's a path that goes there. And that path is her ecosystem, right? So underneath the content is her message, her ethos, her philosophy that has to be developed first. The content is just the understanding of that, using stories, using perspective, just like I do in this podcast. The content helps them trust you just a little bit more. Helps them understand you more. And then they can start to see why your offer makes sense for them. It's a path. It doesn't need to be complicated. Okay. It doesn't need to be complicated. One of my favorite client stories from this was a potential client story. Was this life coach who lived in a retirement community? And she came to me for a consult call and she was like, I'm fully booked, but somebody told me I need to be on social media. And I was like, okay, let's rewind. Why do you need to be on social media? And she was like, Well, people say that you know, more people need to hear my message. She specifically worked with retirees and like discovering how to enjoy your life when your life has a lot more time in it, but your body maybe can't keep up with some of the things that you want to do, right? So she helps people and guides people through that. And after talking with her, we at the end of the console call, she was like, Thank you. And I was like, You're welcome. And I lost a club potential client with joy because. She didn't need social media. Her marketing was word of mouth. And her quote unquote funnel was just having an amazing offer that people talked about. And then her local community continued to buy and book from her. So when new people came into the community, they heard about her work and they got into her wait list. And then if someone exited her wait list for whatever reason, she had a list of people who would be lovely and and wonderful and want to work with her, right? She was trying to make that process complicated. Just because her wait list was a handwritten list, just because she called people instead of emailing them, she thought that she seems s needed something complicated and she didn't because her business was, it fit her life, it fit her model, right? Not all of us live in a small town with a handwritten wait list, but I tell that story to say your marketing doesn't have to be complicated. And where I see people get lost and fall apart in their marketing all the time. Is they think about, let's take Instagram, for instance. They think about Instagram as the driver to their marketing, right? They're posting this amazing educational content. It's beautiful. People are watching, people are listening, people are soaking it up, right? But they never tell people how to work with them. They never tell people how to work with them. They don't even tell the next step, right? That should be crystal clear, especially on social media, because we're all busy, we're scrolling. We just saw a cute dog video and then we just saw you know, some meta glasses, and now we're seeing you talk about your offer. And then we're gonna scroll on and see like a kid's bar mitzvah, right? So like when we're watching your content, what do you want us to do when we go, man, I really need that? What do you want us to do next? Think about that. I see this all the time as well with my clients who come to me for email audits, where they are emailing their people, right? They are emailing, but they're not talking about their offer. And this is why I'm a huge fan of my before I go strategy because I still can connect. I still can be educational. I still can share something personal. I still, I still can have a marketing lesson in there. But I made a promise to myself to always be selling, to always be inviting, I should say, to always be inviting people to work with me. Because I do have quite a number of offers and I fairly consistently have ways for people to work with me. For example, the new offer that I have revamped is all about strategy and building these marketing ecosystems. Previously, I had a 30 minute consult call and I realized those calls were going over and over, and people afterwards were like, my, this huge document is amazing. Great. So we revamped that to be focused more on the actionables and not the 30 minute call, right? So it's a 90 minute call, but the biggest piece is you get this living document. Where your strategy lives. Okay. So, like, you know what you're supposed to be doing. You know how everything is connected. I am going to be talking about that in this podcast, the next one, in all my emails, right? Because this is how people know that I have an offer that is available. And I think we try to like we hit synth on our email, we hope this helps. Hope they get curious and look at our website. And the age of that is over, my friends. So sorry. it's not that your content isn't great, it's great. And it's not that people aren't interested, they are. It's just they don't know what to do with it and then they got busy. Okay. And I don't know about y'all, but a four-year-old and a two-year-old, sometimes I'm looking on emails on my phone and I go, I should look at that later. And then I don't. So give me something to do so that I can be like, remind me to look at this later, right? So I want you to audit your own path right now. Pretend you are someone who has never heard of your business before. They don't know you from Suzy Q down the street, right? I want you to take a look at your entry points. Okay. How do people find you? So I'll use my brand as an example. People typically hear me in a number of ways. I guess on a podcast, I speak in an event, they see me on social media, et cetera, et cetera, right? Typically there are two places that I direct people from there: my do less, market better kit, which is my main freebie, or my podcast. So now I need to see am I talking about my podcast? Am I talking about my free kit when I am going to these places? That's how you can audit if your path is working. Then inside the kit, inside the podcast, let's get serious. Are am I talking about my offers? I can tell you right now, inside the kit, I just redid that entire funnel because I wasn't talking about my offers enough. Right. And so for me, I go, okay, they get into the kit, they don't know me. So how can I help them understand me, my philosophies after the kit, and then invite them to join the lab? And I have a new kind of invitation in there for that. If they watch a YouTube video of mine, typically at the end of my YouTube videos, unless it's For a tool or something like that, I'm inviting them to take a next step. So if it's about Instagram, I have my Instagram mindset guide. If it's about TikTok, I have my TikTok cheat sheet. If it's about marketing in general, I have my my marketing kit, right? So you wanna quickly be able to scan and see what you do, who it's for, why it matters to them. Like what's the easiest way that someone can understand what you do? Not being cute, okay, being clear. And I also want you to figure out if someone finds you today, how many steps they have to take before they can work with you, right? The steps do matter as well. So typically the type of offer you have will depend on how many and what those steps look like. Customized offers, like for our marketing agency at Uncommon, it's a client call. So all of our calls to action are to build a client consultation call with us. We need to talk to you. We need to fully understand your problems and then figure out how or if our team can help resolve those problems for you, right? That requires a high level of conversation. In something like my strategy calls, it's the podcast. I literally had someone book a call with me last week and they said, I found you online. I listened to like 12 podcasts and I get, yes, you're for me. And then they booked a strategy session, right? So for me, it's that. You need to understand. What pe what steps people take from like, I don't know who you are to like, I will give a stranger on the internet money. And I'm not saying you're bad at marketing if you're looking at this. Please don't judge yourself, right? I just want you to understand that path. So a few things to understand in this path if you're like, no, things are broken. One, I was talking with a client recently, and the reason her client path was broken is because she has a zillion offers. Okay. Like way too many. We need to start with the offer and make sure the offer matches that client path. So I'll give an example in my own business as well. I'm a talker, y'all couldn't tell. And so a lot of my offers are me talking of inside the Marco Mindful Marketing Lab. I'm teaching. In the strategy sessions, I'm talking, even with my one-on-one client work, usually there's a lot of client calls. I send Loom videos, things like that, right? So I'm talking. So the connection to that is a talking thing. I'm I have a podcast, I have YouTube videos. That's how people kind of understand my ethos. If I started, for instance, blogging and I was writing exclusively, and then they got into working with me and it's all talking, there would be a little bit of a disconnect, right? So we wanna make sure that the offer. matches the path that people take to get to that offer. the second reason that your offer may not be clear is because your messaging may be a little too cute. And I see this happen all the time, especially with people who work in the coaching and consulting space. You're selling your genes quo, right? You're selling your ideas, you're selling your Philosophy. You're selling your thing. So if you help coach people with money, we don't necessarily want to be too cute about like manifesting your dream life because sometimes that could be a little bit too much for people who are like, I don't have any money. I don't even know what manifesting means. Right. And so we want to use words that they understand so that they can get to the point where they understand manifesting your dream life. We're going back. a couple of layers in their knowledge And you're speaking at a place where they currently are not. And so there's a disconnect between where they are, where you are, and the messaging path to get there. Again, it's not that your content is wrong, as that your assumption about your client and their knowledge may be a little more advanced. I'll give you one more example here as well. Sometimes we're tracing the wrong metric as well. So when I think about auditing clients content paths, right? Like how do people get to your offer? Nine times out of 10, when I'm getting on a call with someone, they go, I need more engagement. And I go, okay, let's look at it. Do you need engagement or do you need clients? And they always go, Well, I need clients, but my posts aren't being seen because I don't have engagement. Let's back up. We don't need engagement for your posts to be seen. I'm gonna say that again. We don't need engagement for your post to be seen. We need views. We don't need comments or likes necessarily. I'll give another example. A couple years ago, I was working with a divorce lawyer. people aren't commenting, I'm about to get a divorce on her posts. They're not saying, man, this is a challenging situation. They're not doing that, but they'd be watching and they were sharing. And so we're looking at the metrics that matter so that she can repeat. The process and the words that she's using in her content to really connect with her ideal client and customer. It's not engagement we're looking at though. We're looking at how people find her and what they do next. For her, they call her. So instead of saying comment, now we put her phone number in the post itself so that people can call and be like, I need help, right? Now we can measure are people calling. Is this a pretty measurement system? No, it's manual. I don't care. If the end result is the same, why does it matter? Right. I think sometimes we get so stuck in the like picky metrics of like engagement and comments and likes. And it's like, all right, and follows. All right. Like that doesn't really matter. What matters is we're growing a business here. All right. So I've talked a little bit about my business, but I want to talk through my own client path just so you can really see how this works. Typically, people will find me through that entry point, Instagram, YouTube podcast. Also, in my data dates, I have been loving seeing y'all come from ChatGPT. Chat GPT has my back, man. thank you, Chatty. but yes, then they download the Do Less Market Better kit or any of my other freebies, then they're on my email list. On the email list, they hear my approach to marketing, they listen to the podcast, they realize that there's a whole thing behind market less. And it's not like we're lazy, it's that we're doing things the smarter way, right? And so then maybe they join the mindful marketing lab or they sign up for a strategy session. Maybe they even upgrade to pro because they're interested in building their own business, right? Each part of that process naturally leads to the next step. I'm not starting off with, hi, you just met me join the mindful marketing lab. That's a bit aggressive. And I'll say this. I love using the dating analogy on this podcast and in my trainings because it works. And as someone who is back on these daty streets recently, yeah, it works. So let's say you're dating, you're on the prowl, you're looking for some fun, or you're looking for your person, right? everyone has a different timeline to when they want to be in a relationship. Some people go on dating apps looking for relationships, some people go just looking to have fun. You won't know really, truly, until you talk to them. Even whatever's on their profile, sometimes they put stuff on their profile that ain't it, right? So same thing happens in business. You won't truly know if someone's looking to hire you or not until they consume your content and they reach out to you. So you just have to put yourself out there, put your best foot forward, have some conversations, talk to some people. Is every person you talk to going to end up being the one? No. In fact, no, most of them aren't. Most of them are going to be like wasting your time. That's what happens on social media too. Most of the people who look at your content, like your content, share your content are not going to be a client or customer. All that's helpful. It's research, it's information. But most of those people aren't going to be a come a customer. And we're not going to cry tears over that. Okay. We just understand that that's part of the process. That's part of the process. As long as we make those next steps clear, as long as we know ourselves and our boundaries, we can move through that process, right? Same thing as dating. the homework for today, audit your content, specifically your entry points. I want you to look at your website, look at your last five social media posts, look at your signature content, beginning, middle, end, right? Read your last email and ask yourself if I just saw this for the first time, what would I do next? What would I do? Not what you would hope they would do. Okay. Take yourself out of it. What would you actually do? And if you have a friend. Swap. You look at their email, they look at your email. Okay. What would you do if you looked at this email? What what are you clicking first? What are you clicking next? Where are you going from there? And if it's not obvious or if it's confusing, or if the answer is like, honestly, babe, I have no idea, then now we have work to do, right? Content is great at getting attention. Don't get me wrong. I love it. I love a good attention moment, but the attention itself is not what builds a business. The clear path. To your content is what helps people understand you, it helps them trust you, it helps them give a stranger on the internet money. All right. So To also mention, if you're interested in learning more about my philosophy, you gotta download the Do Less Market Better kit where I walk you through exactly that. I actually had someone email me last week and say, my gosh, you're the person who explained this the clearest to me. And I like screenshotted the shit out of that and posted it on threads because I was like, thank you, it's working. So yes, grab the kit, it's free, and it'll walk you through the next step naturally. And you can even just download if you want to be nosy. I don't mind. Anyways. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Mindful Marketing Podcast. I will be back next week with another episode. In the meantime, make sure you rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Helps keep us in the top 100 marketing podcasts. And that's all because of your support. I'll see you next week. Bye for now.