Ep 164
===
Melissa Kellogg Lueck: [00:00:00] Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Leuck, and this is the Doing Business like a woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom, one business at a time.
hello. Good morning. Hope you're all doing well. I have some really special I have a really special teaching for you today I have been sharing stories and from my last 20 years, and things I've learned, and things I wanted to teach you.
But today I really want to teach you why your marketing often feels random. And I wanna teach my simple marketing system, my one-page marketing plan, and my three simple steps. And so I have a slide deck. It's gonna feel like an official teaching today, like a [00:01:00] little masterclass, which is what this is.
It's our Mini Masterclass, right? I'm really excited to get to bring this to you today, because every time I do this teaching, people are just blown away and they think about marketing in a whole new way. And for those of us that are entrepreneurs, that are the face of our business thinking about marketing in the way I'm gonna teach today can change everything for you.
And I really want you to know that if you're feeling overwhelmed by marketing and intimidated by marketing it's not that you're doing it wrong, it's that it's too complex. And so I'm gonna go into that today.
I'm really excited to get to bring this to you today because this work has been so important to me, and also every time I do get to teach this training, it really has a huge impact on the people that receive it.
So yeah, we're gonna talk about your one-page [00:02:00] marketing plan today.
This is a workbook.
It's a really valuable workbook that I wanna share with you. So I've got lots of fun things for you today.
So I want you to real quick just think about how do you feel about your marketing? Like when you think about marketing for yourself, your business, what are your first three emotions, feelings, thoughts that come up when you think about marketing?
And just take note of that. Either write it down, or if you can't write it down, just have it in your mind. We're gonna get back to that later. But what I wanna leave you with today is some new ways of thinking about marketing so that you know what's working and what's not, and really exactly why.
And I think that's where we get caught up. We're doing all these things, and we're not sure what's working, what's not working. We're not making the money we want bringing in the clients we want, and we're not sure why. So we're gonna talk about that. You will walk away with a clear understanding of what's actually working and what's most essential for marketing your business [00:03:00] simply.
And then also, you have the workbook, which I'm gonna walk you through, but by the end of our time together today, you're gonna have a simple marketing plan that you're confident will bring in consistent flow of clients and revenue into your business. How cool is that, right? Who am I?
My name is Melissa Kellogg Lueck, and I am the founder and CEO of the Avanti Business Academy for Women. And I'm celebrating 21 years in business. I've been helping small businesses and entrepreneurs to market themselves and their businesses for 21 years.
So I've learned a lot in that time. We'll talk about that in a bit. And I love teaching, coaching and consulting on small business marketing for entrepreneurs. I'm also a managing director with E-Women Network, which is a global community of women entrepreneurs, and so I lead a in-person community here in northern Colorado, where I'm located.
And how did I get here? It's a long [00:04:00] story, but the short version is, I started my business 21 years ago but how I got into the work that I'm doing now is when my youngest kiddo started school, I had been in business for just over 10 years. AndI was a full-time mom and also working in my business, and so I had transitioned at that point into doing corporate marketing for small businesses. And I had clients and, it was great, it was whatever. But I didn't really feel like I was growing or challenging myself.
And so when I had more time when my youngest started school, I was like, "Okay, I am ready to go full out in this business." And so I decided I've got all this experience in education and marketing. I could just be teaching people how to do marketing, right? So I created an online course andwhat I found when I went to market that online course, I had to step out from behind my computer.
I'd been helping other people market, but I had never done that for myself, right? [00:05:00] And most of the clients I got were word of mouth and things like that. And so when I had to step out from behind that computer and stand up and say, "I've got something to offer and, I wanna teach something to you," I really came up against so much internal resistance, and discovered I really was missing the courage, the confidence, the belief in myself to go out in the world and sell my expertise, right?
And so that's when I discovered in very real terms that the entrepreneurial journey is as much about that inner work of marketing as it is about the outer marketing strategies. And I also discovered at that time and through that journey, I had been feeling very disillusioned with the work I was doing in marketing.
And I also came back to really seeing the magic of marketing and the magic that it's all about connecting with other humans and not just doing a bunch of things. And [00:06:00] so we're gonna talk about that today, and that really invigorated me and turned my business around, and since then have just been spending most of my time teaching, coaching and consulting for women entrepreneurs, and it's been wonderful.
It's been awesome. So what I've done is taken what I've learned over 25-plus years of experience in marketing small businesses, my own included in addition to having an MBA in marketing and I've really taken that and distilled it down into what I've seen over the last 25 years are the most effective, most critical foundational aspects of our marketing that we can we can simplify so many of the things that we're doing, and so we're gonna talk about that today.
And so let's dive right in. Okay. so the reality of being an entrepreneur, the real problem that no one talks about for those of us that are in service-based, [00:07:00] trust-driven businesses where we are the face of our business, so tell me if you can relate to this, is that you've spent your, much of your life, your career, your education becoming an expert in your field of service, your subject area, and you're great at what you do.
And maybe you were in a corporate setting, and you rose through the ranks, and you were just really great at what you do. So you decided I wanna break out on my own. I don't have to do this work for a corporation or a boss. I can do this and have this impact on my own.
I want a different kind of a lifestyle," right? And so you start your business. You start serving clients. You wanna make an impact and work on your own terms. Anyone, can anyone relate to that? And you're so great at what you do. And then you get your business going, and then you discover you've gotta, go get the clients.
You've gotta go find the clients, and you've gotta be a [00:08:00] CEO, and there's so many other things, so many other jobs that that you have to do that you never signed up for. And marketing is often a big one, and I hear that so often. "I'm really great at being a consultant or an attorney or an HR advisor, but, I'm not good at the marketing and the sales and all these other things that a CEO has to do."
So you do what you've always done, what you're best at, right? You go and you get educated, and you dive deep into, "I'm gonna become a marketing expert," and you jump down that rabbit hole of marketing, learning all of the things. how to build a website, how to build a landing page, how to build a funnel, how to do reels, how to dance on TikTok or whatever.
And in doing that, you spend a lot of time and money away from and disconnected from your zone of genius, your best fit clients, and it sucks the joy and the connection out of your business. And you often are [00:09:00] creating way fewer clients and way less money and impact that you wanted. And you think it's it's because I'm not good enough at marketing."
Can anyone here relate to that? Let me know. Let me know in the chat. Okay, I'm seeing yep. Okay. And so I want to just say that all stops today, because I'm gonna offer you a couple of really amazing shifts that will help change that for you. So what I'm going to tell you today is probably something you'll never hear another marketing consultant or coach tell you, but you're you are doing too much marketing that's not creating results, right?
That's not probably a news flash to any of us. But what's happening is, so you're spending too much time trying to perfect your marketing and not enough time and energy doing what you're really great at, right? So but what do we do about that? And so the problem I often see is that entrepreneurs make marketing so [00:10:00] complex because they think that perfecting their marketing is what's gonna create the clients.
But they're spending all that time on the tools and the tactics and managing an overly complicated marketing machine, right? And less time really connecting and with their best fit clients, building relationships, and creating value and thought leadership, which is really, what actually builds consistent clients and revenue, right?
So what are we gonna do about that? So what I know to be true is you don't need any more strategies. You don't need to be a marketing expert. You just need to think about marketing differently, okay? And we're gonna take it all down, simplify it all. You don't need more strategies.
You don't need to be a marketing expert. We just wanna think about marketing in a different way that's really gonna help you increase your impact, increase your leads coming in, and increase the [00:11:00] revenue in your business. But first, let's define marketing. So what is marketing? And this is how the lens that we're gonna look at it through today.
This is how I think about marketing. Marketing is all the activities, the inner work, and the public-facing activities that you do in order to create awareness of your work, interest in your work, connection with your best fit clients, desire among them to come check out, is she the person for me and then the action, right?
All those actions that create sales opportunities, right? So the goal of your marketing is always to be creating sales opportunities. It's not just to check off a thing that somebody said you gotta do. If your marketing is not creating sales opportunities, it's not working . Okay? Okay.
So that's how we're gonna define marketing [00:12:00] today. let's get back to the freedom from the cycle of feeling like you're bad at marketing that you're not doing enough marketing, or this whole marketing perfectionism, not being able to keep up with it all consistently learning more, trying to perfect it or spend time away from the work that you love.
Freedom from all of that begins today with a simple shift in how you think about marketing. So I want to invite this new belief to become part of who you are that I'm gonna share with you now is that there's not one magic marketing strategy or tool that works. All marketing works.
In fact, I know this to be true, and it's not because of the strategy, it's not because of how good you are or not good it's because of who you are and the energy of connection and service that you bring to the actions and the [00:13:00] practice of marketing, right? Your best fit clients, for those of you that are in service-based businesses, trust-driven businesses, your best fit clients want to connect with you, get to know you so they can learn about you, so they can know you, like you, trust you, right?
Because that's who people are gonna wanna work with. And so how do I know this to be true? First of all, because when I started my career in marketing 25 years ago, the most effective tools for folks like us were AM radio ads and Yellow Pages ads . And that's how we got all our business, right?
And, there was a few other things, of course, print advertising and, whatever. But there was no email, there was no Facebook, there was no TikTok, none of that, no social media. There were totally different ways of marketing, but people were still- [00:14:00] Bringing in clients and making money.
And so how I know that all marketing works is because throughout time there's been all kinds of different marketing tactics, but the one thing that has always remained the same is the clients want to know us, like us, and trust us, right? So over the years, the tech and the tools have changed, but we've always been able to bring in money and clients, and it's not because of the tools and tactics.
Those are just tools. It's like saying, I'm building a house and there's only one tool I can use and it's a hammer. No, we use a whole bunch of tools to build a house, and those tools have changed over the years. If there were only one way to do it or two or three ways to do it, we'd all be doing those things and we'd all be successful, right?
But the common denominator is you, is the human connection. Just keep that in mind, right? And so here's your next shift. So who here loves [00:15:00] the work that you do? I love hearing this. We all, we love our clients. Who loves the clients that you work with and loves serving them, right? And who here would love to do more of that and less of all this other marketing, sales, CEO stuff, right?
All of us. So the next shift I want to offer you is that to think about what if your marketing could feel as fulfilling and purposeful as serving your best clients, your most favorite clients. Would you like that? And every time I ask this, everyone's yes," right? Yes. Raising our hands.
Thank you. So what I want you to know is that it is possible to be able to feel that purpose and that enjoyment that you feel when you're serving clients even when you're marketing if you [00:16:00] think of your marketing as simply serving your future clients. Marketing is serving your future clients. It's serving the people that haven't paid you yet, right?
So your marketing can be an extension of the service and the value that you give your clients. And so obviously your current clients are paying you to help them, but they're paying you to help them implement, right? But all the wisdom, the experience, the expertise, the thought leadership that you have created can be used to serve your future clients so they can learn to get to know you, like you, trust you.
And then they maybe try to go out and do it on their own, and then they discover that they really need you to help them, and so they wanna come and work with you, right? So that's how it works. so marketing is just serving those future clients. if that were the [00:17:00] case, would you enjoy your marketing more, right?
What if your marketing could feel that connected, that fulfilling, that purposeful and impactful as when you're working with your best fit clients? And so I love to think about marketing as something not that I have to do, but something that I get to do as a form of service. if that was a shift, how would that change your experience of marketing?
Just think about that, right? And why these shifts are so powerful is that much of the marketing activities that we're doing are from a place of getting. "I need to get clients," or get leads or get consultations, and they're very self-focused, right? But when we get out of that get energy and we we're thinking more about service and connection then that's when our marketing becomes magnetic, right?
When you're thinking of serving, creating value, [00:18:00] giving to your most favorite clients, your energy is much more attractive. It creates connection, and it turbocharges that trust, right? So if you think back to the beginning when we were talking about those three emotions, thoughts, feelings, emotions that you have about your marketing, if those are negative, those color all the marketing that you're doing. They become like your unintentional marketing message, right? Because marketing is a transference of energy, of connection, and so it's either building trust or it's creating disconnection. It's either creating connection or disconnection.
It's either creating trust or distrust. And if you're thinking of serving people, that creates connection and trust. And so in today's buying environment, we are seeing such a deficit of trust, right? People don't know what's real. Are you [00:19:00] AI?are you real? Are you a bot? And so anytime that we can connect with our best fit clients, our best fit future clients in our marketing, that's gonna help them to trust us and to want to work with us if we are the best fit for them, right?
And that is our responsibility. It's our responsibility as CEOs, as entrepreneurs to takethe lead in building that relationship, in building that bridge of trust. And so that's what I'm gonna show you next is okay, you might be thinking at this point, "All right, this all sounds great, but what do I actually do for marketing?
Okay, I've got these two new shifts and two, two new beliefs that I'm thinking, but what do I actually need to do to create clients?" And that's where we talk about our one-page marketing plan. So many entrepreneurs, like I said before, are stuck in perfectionism and stuck in creating this overly complex, complicated marketing system that they just [00:20:00] can't keep up with.
I was in this place too early on in my business. I was a young mom with young kids. I had to keep it simple , right? I didn't have time. As CEOs, we've got so many things to do. We don't have time to sit around and market all the time, right? And that's how I created the simple three things that your marketing plan needs, this one-page marketing plan that simplifies all of the marketing activities, so you can just focus on creating that connection in these very intentional ways, and your leads and your opportunities will flow in.
I know it for sure. This is what I've been doing in my own business for twenty years and over a million dollars, and this stuff works. And with my clients as well. Okay, so the three essential things. So the three things you always need to be doing in your marketing, and if you're doing these three things, you will be able to create all the clients, all the revenue, all the impact that you want.
I know this after working with [00:21:00] small businesses and entrepreneurs for the last twenty-one years, that if you're doing these three things consistently, you will bring in the opportunities. So number one is bringing new people into your orbit, always bringing new people in. And we're gonna go into detail on these, but just, as the overview, number two is nurture.
Nurturing relationships, growing relationships, allowing them to connect with you, learn to trust you, know you, like you, right? And then number three is always making invitations and offers to guide them in that relationship journey with you until they are ready to buy or refer, right? So the world needs you spending as much of your time in your zone of genius.
So that's the beauty of this process that I'm offering you today, is I want you to get back to your zone of genius where your impact, your legacy are. if you're focusing on these three essentials, [00:22:00] plus service and connection, you will always be able to do less in quantity of marketing because the quality and the value will be higher.
You will have a larger impact and offer better results to people even before they've ever paid you, and that is going to result in more revenue and profit for your business, right? And so I always like to say yes, all the funnels, the ads, the social media channels, all those things, they all work. There's nothing wrong with them.
But I like to say let's just leave that to our future marketing department, right? Keep it simple and so that's what I'm gonna share with you right now. Okay. So what I love teaching is these three essentials to successful marketing. So one, number one, we need to be visible to new people constantly, consistently.
Every day, how are you meeting new people? New to you [00:23:00] people, right? And then we need to be nurturing those relationships, staying connected with those folks. And like I said, allowing them to be in our energy, to get to know us, like us, trust us. And in each one of our marketing activities, we always wanna be making invitations and offers, letting people know what is the next step to go in the relationship.
And it's not always about buy my thing." It's about knowing the relationship journey that these folks are on and offering that next step in the journey with you. You are responsible for growing the relationship, right? So step one, we're showing up, we're visible, we're letting people know we exist.
I always like to say have three simple ways that you can keep up with consistently of how you're meeting new people. Stick with what's working and expand it if you have things that are working. Most of us in our businesses, we've got things that are working and things that aren't [00:24:00] working.
But do the things that are working, lean into those. Have three things that that allow you to meet new people consistently. And then step two is nurturing those relationships. We wanna stay connected, so whether that's email or if you have coffee chats or phone calls or, social media can be a way of nurturing relationships.
Community leadership, getting involved in the communities where your best fit clients hang out. Those are nurturing activities. And so I always like to have a list, keep a list of those people, whether it's a spreadsheet, on a notepad, or if you're really fancy you have CRM. But just a way that you can keep up with people, right?
And so why is that important? Nurture is what I often see business owners are lacking, is that they're running around networking everywhere, meeting a whole bunch of new people, and people aren't saying, "I wanna work with you right now," and so they just move on to the next person, and they're a mile wide and an [00:25:00] inch deep.
But they have all the business that they could handle already around them, but they're not nurturing those relationships. And so what I wanna say is that about sixty-five percent of your business comes from people that are already around you, right? And I would be interested if you look at your own business what that percentage is.
You have a much higher probability of selling to an existing customer or a current connection sixty to seventy percent higher than the five to twenty percent likelihood of a new person buying from you. And so it costs more to acquire new customers, new connections, right? A small increase in customer retention and nurturing relationships can lead to a substantial increase in your profits.
So this nurture is super important. And then step three is to make offers and invitations, right? We always wanna know the journey our clients are taking as they get to know us, like us, [00:26:00] and trust us, and then always be inviting them on those different steps. And so you've gotta know your customer's buying journey.
What are all the planks in your bridge? I always say your customer is over here in the before picture, and they wanna get across the bridge and get to their after picture, right? And so all these planks in this bridge, those are all the steps that you are taking them on as they get to know you, like you, trust you, and eventually they learn from you and then buy from you.
So what are all those steps they need to know or experience to come across this bridge with you? For example, maybe you meet someone networking or in a Facebook group or something, and you send them an email, "It's really great to meet you." And you invite them to follow you on social media.
And then once they follow you on social media and they're loving your things there, you invite them to subscribe to your email list, right? To receive your email or your newsletter. And then you invite them to listen to your [00:27:00] podcast. Maybe you invite them to come to your free workshop. And then once they're at the free workshop, you invite them to come to your five-day challenge.
And then once they're at the challenge, you invite them to join your 12-week program. And then once they've gone through your 12-week program, you invite them to work with you privately. It's this journey, right? It's not just you show up once and then you know, tell them to buy your thing, right?
It's allowing them to get to know you, like you, trust you. Okay. And then so this is where our one-page marketing plan comes together. So when you have the opportunity to dive into the workbook, it will walk you through all this. But I love to see a consistent or balanced plan where we have equal number of activities that bringing in and meeting new people and an equally amount of activities that we're doing to nurture those relationships.
You don't wanna have, all new activities and very [00:28:00] little nurture or very little nurture, or lots of nurture activities, but you're not going out and meeting new people. You wanna have a balanced marketing plan here, and you wanna have goals for each one of these activities so that you're measuring what's working and what's not working, right?
And how you wanna have processes for how you wanna set yourself up for success, and then know exactly, specifically, measurably how will you measure your success. These are all super important. Okay. So that's your one-page marketing plan. So I wanna just summarize real quickly and share with you how you can go to the next step with me, if that's of interest to you.
if you want to consistently create clients, let's just summarize what we talked about today. When you're believing that all marketing works and that marketing is simply serving your future clients, and you consistently implement the framework of [00:29:00] bringing in new people, nurturing relationships, and making offers, this gets you out of overwhelm and over-actioning.
It calms you down. It brings you back to what's most important to you, which is the work that you do with your best fit clients, the impact that you have on them and their lives, and brings you back to that connection and service. And that's where I want you to be around trying to do so many marketing things and perfect them all, when really it can be so much simpler.
And so that's what I want you to take away from today. why this works is that when you keep your marketing simple and consistent and connected, it creates trust, right? We talked about that a lot. It creates value. Your value increases. You become more irreplaceable because you're free to spend more time and energy solving your current and future best fit clients' problems, which increases your value to them and helps them to get better, [00:30:00] faster results, right?
Which creates more clients for you. And then once you're doing all of that, your confidence is increasing. You're increasing your value, and the results your clients are getting are better, and that increases your confidence and your referrals. So that's why this system works. And what I always like to say is marketing that feels like you is the most powerful kind of marketing that there is because it's the marketing, the activities that you can bring your energy, your belief, your courage, your confidence to.
And I believe the work that you do and you're doing in the world, I believe in the power of that. And so let's make your marketing simple so that you can spend more time in your zone of genius, having your impact on the world, and that's my place in the world. That's what I want to be doing, and that's what I am doing, right?
And yeah, so how was that? Do you find that helpful, useful? That's what [00:31:00] I have for you today. And I'm so excited to get to share this with you.
But if you have any questions, if there's any way I can serve you please reach out and let me know.
All right, my my friends, thank you so much for being here. I will be right back here, same time, same place next week, and I look forward to seeing you then. And I hope you have a fabulous week.
and look forward to being in touch, and I will see you all real soon. All right? Take care. Bye.
Melissa Kellogg Lueck: Hey, if you like this podcast, I wanna invite you to become part of my community Each Friday, I'm gonna deliver to your inbox my weekly celebration, as well as my thoughts on the latest and business and marketing. I wanna keep you in the know about my upcoming events.
Free trainings, book clubs, all the fun things, even some free gifts. And of course, I'm gonna let you know about these new podcast episodes. I'll see you there.
