Adam And Amy: Marketing is Not Just About Numbers and Big Audiences

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Many of us believe that if we have a website, numerous social media accounts, and learn a few marketing ‘tactics’ our business will suddenly take off.

We spend so much time on tactics and distribution (should I start a podcast? what about Pinterest? What about Instagram?) that we MISS OUT on the #1 ingredient in your marketing…

Today, Adam and Amy will talk about what the # 1 missing ingredient is in your marketing.

We’ll cover:

— The counterintuitive way you need to look at your marketing strategy
— How do you know you are ‘missing’ the number 1 ingredient
— Why we tend to focus on the wrong things, at the wrong time in our business

Need a little help to get started, download our Storytelling Roadmap (FREE) today: changecreator.com/storytellingroadmap/

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Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:03

Welcome to the Change Creator podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn how to live their truth, get rich and make a massive difference in the world. I’m your host, Adam forest co founder, Change Creator and co creator of the captivate method. Each week we talk to experts about leadership, digital marketing and sales strategies that you can implement in your business and life to go big, visit us at Change Creator comm forward slash go big to grab awesome resources that will help drive your business forward. Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show This is your host, Adam force, we have an interesting discussion that we’re going to have today, this is going to be with me and Amy, we’re going to be talking about the fact that marketing is not just about big numbers and big audiences, this is something that so many of us get stuck on, just because of the way that marketing has shifted over the years, as we went digital, the perspectives of marketing and how we communicate, and what we’re trying to achieve has changed, right. And it causes a different objective in the minds of marketers, we had another discussion called stop thinking like a marketer, right? So, you know, a lot of us feel that when we have our websites, and social media accounts and all these things. You know, we want to learn these tactics, and probably heard before, like, stop focusing on tactics only, and all that kind of stuff. But we feel that those are things we can accomplish the things we can figure out. And that’s what’s going to make the difference in our business and help it take off. So we spend all of our time on these these ideas like Pinterest, and Instagram. And they’re important, and they play their part. But what we’re saying is, it’s not just about numbers and big audiences. So we want to get into that in more detail in just a few minutes. Um, guys, if you missed the last episode, it was a fun conversation with Corey Ames. And it was about carving out your own path and getting traction with smart marketing. He’s somebody that was a CEO of an agency and did he has a lot of digital marketing experience, kind of like me and Amy and our backgrounds. And he made the transition. And he started his own company grow ensemble, and he’s had some successes. And he so he shares that stuff. It’s inspiring to hear, we want to make sure we have people on the front lines here, kind of giving their aha moments and how they’re getting started and how they’re getting traction, right. It’s always helpful to hear from people’s experiences. So we’re going to get into that stuff. We have some exciting stuff going on here. We’ll be making some updates here at Change Creator, we’ve had just so much evolve in the business, and you guys will start seeing some of that come down the pipeline. Just as far as our, you know, branding and things we’re focusing on, you know, we’re really, our backgrounds are really in the branding and storytelling space. So kind of like how do we identify with clarity? Like, what the heck, we are all about who we are and how do we communicate our stories with the world and get attention, but not only get the attention, we are actually understood. And we get loyal customers, right? This this is all has to work together. And we’re going to be talking a lot about that stuff. So if you guys haven’t stopped by Change, Creator calm, go over there. We have a lot of our show notes from the podcast and other articles that are going up. That will continue to to get that stuff populated there. And if you want to learn more about storytelling, right, getting clarity that you need for your brand story, and then your sales stories, get on the waitlist for the captivate method. Alright, you’ll find that on the homepage, over at Change creator.com Alright guys, that is it. For now I’m gonna shut up and we’re gonna dive into this conversation with Amy and Mike. Okay, show me the heat. All right, we made it What’s up, everybody? Adam and Amy here. hope everybody’s having an awesome day. We just wanted to talk a little bit about you know, marketing and what it really is, right? Because we get so excited about having big audiences and reaching tons of people and all that stuff. So we’re going to tap into what is actually the truth behind marketing what that missing ingredient is today. So Amy, and I’ve been talking about this quite a bit. And so marketing is not just about big audiences and how many people we reach and distribution, right. That’s a small part of it. Do we need to get traffic? Yes. So we’re going to tell you a quick story about a friend of ours who has a killer program. It’s a it’s a course based program. And how they went almost a full year with no results, just sales trickling in. And then all of a sudden, in the 11th hour, they blew up. All right. So what happened? This is interesting. And Amy, you could chime in with any details here on this as we go. But you know you get set up and you’re running all these operations and they were they were kind of like fixing Their program and trying to really get it to connect with people. And they were getting as much traffic as possible into this program. But the sales weren’t coming in. And so they had to really kind of just sit back and figure out, well, what’s going on? And they would try all kinds of different things and different audiences that you would go after to get different types of traffic, right? Well, maybe we need to go after this audience or these people with these interests and things like that. And it just wasn’t making the connection. And so they started figuring out well, we may not have the right story, right. So what was the missing ingredient here, that really started to turn things around, and after about, I think it was 10 out of 12, like months right out of the year. They were we had a comment from them. And they were like, we’re so close to having the right story. And we were like, Oh, my God, I love that story. Here, right. And so on the front end, when people think about marketing, Amy, right, we say, all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook ads, like, that’s what people automatically associate with marketing

Amy Aitman 06:06

Perfect. E-mail list, all that stuff all the tactical things…

Adam G. Force 06:10

And why is that? Because, you know, we’ve all believe that the more traffic and people we get in front of the more our businesses will thrive. And so our friends, you know, they were getting in front of all the people, but why weren’t they thriving yet? Over time, they kept refining their story, which is when we say that we’re saying their marketing message, right? storytelling is your marketing. And that’s what we teach in the captivate method is really, that’s the most important part of the marketing strategy. So we say marketing, instead of thinking, distribution, and connecting a big audience and all that kind of stuff, and ads, we should be thinking, messaging stories in Italy, right? Like, we want to connect. And guess what, they finally got the right story, their their strategy aligned, and in that 11th month and 12 month, that 11th month alone, they had 70 sales. Now you multiply that by I think it was a 1500 dollar program. That’s a good chunk of change.

Amy Aitman 07:09

It’s a higher ticket offer.

Adam G. Force 07:11

Sure, it literally happened in that one month,

Amy Aitman 07:14

from like one or two sales to 70 in a month.

Adam G. Force 07:18

Exactly. And all of a sudden, I was like, Whoa, so the power, like you can have all the reach and big audience. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t take the time to create a really smart marketing strategy. So understanding how to use storytelling to connect with people, get them on board with what you’re doing. That is the key, and obviously why we put so much emphasis in it in the captivate method program. And it’s kind of counterintuitive, right, Amy? People don’t, it’s not something people feel like, Oh, I don’t have time to do that. I got to work on, you know, running my ads. And I got to work on getting Pinterest set up

Amy Aitman 07:57

I think if I asked a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs, like, what is your marketing strategy, I’d say nine out of 10 of them do not say storytelling, they do not say anything about storytelling, they feel like storytelling is a great add on. Or I can fix my messaging when or I can hire someone to fix my messaging. You know, that’s just a copywriting job. But really, I’ve seen it so many times, if your sales aren’t coming in, if your marketing is not effective, most nine or 10 out of 10 times, it’s your messaging, which is your storytelling. You know, sometimes there’s a there’s a problem with these, the automations are whatever, but nine out of 10 times or 10 times it’s your messaging, that’s not working. Because a lot of people get, you know, get really good at the distribution side of things, they get really good at, you know, creating a funnel or having their website or doing social media. But just because you get attention doesn’t mean you’re getting sales and doesn’t mean your marketing is actually working.

Adam G. Force 08:58

Exactly. I mean, I mean, and we see it a lot, too. I mean, you get on to Instagram, Pinterest, and all these sites, and you get so excited about like, Oh, I’m gonna create a killer Instagram strategy and all these things, and you spend so much time see this over and over again, whether it’s a social media platform, or maybe a podcast, right? I’m going to create a podcast, I’m gonna get in front of all these people. And, you know, we have a podcast, and we had a magazine, all this stuff. And we started a very complicated business at Change Creator. And I’ll tell you right now, every time I hear someone say, depending on where they are in the business, right, that I’m going to start a podcast. I want to be supportive and say, Yes, get your story out there and get in front of people. But I also know that it’s going to be a massive distraction, and it’s going to be very difficult to monetize. So this idea of this distribution on the podcast is so sexy and fun. I’m going to interview people and do all this stuff. Yeah, we can enjoy it and we want to do the things we enjoy and that we’re excited about. And all of a sudden, a year goes by and we look back and realize I was just solving the wrong problems. I wasn’t doing what I needed to do, I needed to understand, let’s say, three key things right aiming, it’s, well, how do I create the right marketing strategy based on who I am as a person and the business that I want to run? Right? How do I get clear on how to talk to my perfect customer? Right, how to connect with them and get them to understand my business? And then how do I create a system to automate my sales, so I can free up my time, like, these are your factors. And none of that you can’t create the system and automate sales to have the right message. Right? The right story

Amy Aitman 10:40

It’s a step that you can’t ignore, I see a lot of people coming to us in the captivate method. And they spent years, not just a year, they spent years and years and years on their marketing, and focusing on the wrong things at the wrong time. And really missing this key ingredient. And like kind of hoping to skip over it. Because I feel like this, this is something that may or may not come naturally to everyone, but it’s something that you can learn and you can develop, and it can become a practice that you that is really energizes your entire business. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of digital entrepreneurs, especially like, we just focus on the wrong things. And it’s usually things that we like to do. Yeah, so for me, I would say, early days, I mean, I love writing. So blogging was like writing blogging, content strategy, I could spend all day doing that, you know, but it’s like, actually getting out and doing the things that I need to do and tapping into my core story into into the stories for our marketing. Well, at first those a little uncomfortable, wasn’t it? Adam?

Adam G. Force 11:43

It always is. I think a lot of people avoid this work because one, they think they’re above it, they think they’re above digging into this, but to they also get very uncomfortable, right? It’s uncomfortable to dig into what is necessary to really create the marketing strategies that we need today to connect with the right audience. It takes real work to get this stuff done. And that’s why we have such a powerful methodology to help people get through that process. And once you do, you like you don’t ever want to outsource your marketing strategy and your sales in the first several years of your business. Like you need to master that craft yourself.

Amy Aitman 12:22

Yeah, messaging, you’d never want to outsource that messaging her and you really can’t, it’s almost impossible. Because I’ve hired a lot of copywriters over the year, I’ve been a writer for years. And the first thing any great advertising team is going to do and any copywriting team is going to do is they’re going to ask you for your story. That’s right. I mean, really are they’re gonna ask you about your story. They’re gonna ask you about your customers, they’re going to ask you for the things you need to know for your messaging. And if you let them guess,

Adam G. Force 12:53

You’re screwed.

Amy Aitman 12:54

You’re screwed.

Adam G. Force 12:54

They’ll take your money, they’ll take your money.

Amy Aitman 12:56

They will, they’ll take your money, and they’ll guess,

Adam G. Force 12:59

and they’ll guess. And we’ve done that we’ve hired expensive PR teams, marketing people, because we were thinking, hey, they know this better than us, or we just don’t have the time for it, or, you know, like, we have all these doubts in our brain. And then we start doing that, and we spent tons of money guys sent tons of money. And it was a huge waste of time and energy. Because now like, for example, we have all this stuff, obviously very solidified tons of stories. This is what we teach and we thrive on. And so we have a Facebook ads team. And guess what one of the first things like Amy said, we gave them a folder of like 3040 stories that were essential. We gave we know exactly who we’re talking to. So they could set up everything based on who we are as a brand, based on the stories that we have in order to accomplish certain things. It depends where someone is on that buyers journey, right? Yeah, what story do I tell? When do I tell it? What, like, there’s so much to this. But the more you focus and practice and get into these flows, then when you put effort into your distribution and reaching many people, it’s going to be effective, right?

Amy Aitman 14:05

Yes, it is. And you’re not going to spend waste time and money. putting things out at the wrong time. wrong message the wrong people. So how do you know how would you know, Adam? I have an answer for this one, that you’re missing this number one ingredient that you’re missing storytelling in your marketing. How do you know? What are the signs?

Adam G. Force 14:25

Yeah, well, I guess one major sign is that you’re not you’re not selling consistently. I mean, that’s number one, right?

Amy Aitman 14:32

That’s a big sign.

Adam G. Force 14:34

And people will start to say, ah, these Facebook ads stink, man. They don’t work, right. I can’t, I can never get sales. I’m like, Yeah, dude, because your messaging is completely off course. Not. Not only is it the wrong message, but it’s not being done in a way that’s compelling and thought provoking. It doesn’t it doesn’t connect with people. Marketing goes deep on how you actually connect with someone. And you should know Do they say in traffic every day, are they drinking a glass of wine having a, you know, drowning their sorrows every night like who is this person? And there’s lots of, there’s lots of ways to get to that. And that’s obviously stuff that we go through and teach in our program, because it’s so important. And did you have other thoughts Amy about…

Amy Aitman 15:23

I was gonna say the same thing, you know that you’re missing this when parts or all of your marketing is not working for you. So if you invest, say so much time into an Instagram strategy, and it’s just not connecting, it’s not getting to sales. This is where I like to look. And I like to say, okay, what’s missing? And it’s usually this messaging, if you find yourself getting a lot of people that like, love what you do, but are buying from you, then it’s, you’re missing this key ingredient, right? Um, that’s those are the two like, those are two key indicators that I’d say, look at your marketing. And I look at if you if you feel like everyone that you’re bringing into your world is not the right audience. This, again, is probably the the missing ingredient for that too

Adam G. Force 16:14

And you know what? There’s a major distraction that causes some of this for people. When we think marketing, remember we said earlier, we think marketing, we think social media advertising, you know, the distribution side of it, we don’t think that the connection, the communication side of it, but when we think about that distribution, think social media, well, we’re gonna say, we have a fear about what people think about us. Right? Yes, trade. For starters, people were afraid to put ourselves out there. And then when we do well, what are people going to think when I only have 20 people on my Facebook page? No one’s gonna trust my business. No one’s gonna buy from me, right? And guess what? That is the furthest thing from the truth ever. Okay. It’s about what you’re saying. It’s about who those 20 people are. What if each of those people was spending $1,000 a month of reoccurring revenue with you? Because they’re your perfect customer. So you got to Facebook people making $20,000 a month, okay?

Amy Aitman 17:10

This is a big mistake that we see so many people making, especially when it comes to story is they we they confuse trust with big numbers and they say if I had a million followers, and everyone would trust me, and I want when I when people tell me that I always ask them, okay, I have a product here, and I’m going to send out an influencer with the million followers, and it’s going to try to sell you or I’m going to send your best friend in the world that says, You got to try this product. Dude. This is the best product ever have I love this product? Someone that is that close to you? Who do you trust more? The Kylie Jenner’s of the world, or your best friend, or your best friend?

Adam G. Force 17:54

What about that story there is that girl on Instagram where they’re like, hey, she has like a couple million people or something following her. Like, she tried to sell a T shirt that someone was like sponsored to pay her to, like sell or something. And she was only able to sell like four t shirts to like millions of followers. And, you know, again, no connection. It was fake. Like, we just making the point about vanity metrics, this stuff just doesn’t matter. So that will hold you back. Yeah, it’s a leaf, right, or a false belief. And it’s based on that fear, the fear of what will people think? Right?

Amy Aitman 18:28

Yeah, because really, in today’s digital marketing, especially for mission driven entrepreneurs, it’s about connection. It’s about building trust, it’s about business connection. And it’s about finding the right people that our products can serve. That’s what it’s really about. It’s really not about how many people we have, you know, on our Instagram accounts or honor, you know, Facebook accounts. And I can tell you from being in the business and in the digital marketing space for quite some time, there’s a lot of ways to fake food, fugazi these numbers, and people know that… People totally know that as well. And so I feel like Nowadays, people really want that connection. And it’s more and more important than ever before, to have to build that connection with our audience to get that trust.

Adam G. Force 19:16

Absolutely. It makes a big difference to what you’re doing. So, you know, just to recap, the lesson here, guys is to where you’re putting your energy. I mean, we have to understand storytelling. Again, storytelling is your marketing. It’s how you’re communicating how you’re getting people on board with what you do, how you’re connecting with them. It’s also grounds your business and what kind of business you are and what you stand. There’s so much behind it. Storytelling is where you should be putting most of your energy any any company that has a great story to add is great, what storytelling will be a great company. Right? I think that covers that topic. I mean, it’s such an important one. So anything final words here. Any questions from anybody that is listening? We are happy…

Amy Aitman 20:03

No, Krista just said thank you, Adam. It’s so important only understand what you’re talking about connecting with your ideal customer. That’s true. Yeah, you see that a lot as well. I mean, it’s so important to have these connections and to build that trust.

Adam G. Force 20:19

Yeah. So think about your messaging. And connecting with people don’t worry about the big numbers and the distribution. Everything has its time in place. So we can always do the right things at the wrong time and averaging. So we really want to be take putting our priorities in the right order here. So marketing is not just about your distribution, it’s about what you’re saying, who you’re saying it to, and why you’re saying it.

Amy Aitman 20:46

Definitely. And like our friends that finally got the 70 sales on month 11 that we finally got the right story. And I can tell you from from knowing their story, they spent a lot of time and energy building traffic and doing that. Yeah, that wasn’t that that’s not what works.

Adam G. Force 21:05

Awesome. All right, guys. We’re gonna wrap this up and we will catch you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast, visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.

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