✨ March Biz Forecast — Launch Season, Newsletter Ads & Maybe Everything is Free Now?
Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome, my friends. You are tuned in to Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients.
Amelia Hruby:I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. And on this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for growing your business with energetic sovereignty, radical generosity, and no or minimal social media. We're currently in season 3 of the show, and I'm sharing new episodes every Wednesday where you can tune in to learn marketing strategies and hear creative business journeys from some of my favorite people on the internet and off the Internet. And in addition to those weekly Wednesday episodes, this season, I've introduced a fun new format, which is these monthly forecasts. In this episode, you can expect a couple fun things.
Amelia Hruby:1st, I'm gonna share a few marketing trends that I'm into this month. Then I'm going to talk about a couple of biz care tasks that are on my radar that maybe you want to be doing for yourself in the month ahead as well. After that, I'm gonna give you a sneak peek of what's coming up on the pod feed in the next few weeks, and then we're gonna wrap up with our first listener q and a. I got a really great question and a couple of fun comments that I want to share here on the pod with all of you. If you are brand new around here, of course, I wanna let you know about the leaving social media toolkit.
Amelia Hruby:Head to the show notes, get our top three free resources to help you step back or away from social media. And if you want more support and more community around growing a thriving business that doesn't rely on social media platforms to make money, I also, real quick, wanna invite you to check out the interweb, which is our annual membership for creatives, artists, writers, freelancers, business owners, and influencers to provide on demand courses and live community calls where you can get support to launch or grow your business without social media. You can learn all about the interweb at off thegrid.fund/interweb, but I'm mentioning it here right now because on March 21st, we are having a spring social. I've also got a coupon code for you that will get you $20 off your membership. So interweb membership only costs $129 a year to begin with.
Amelia Hruby:And if you use the code spring, spring, at checkout, you can join for just $109 for the whole year. So head to the show notes to check out the interweb. Use the code spring to take $20 off through Tuesday, March 5th, and join us in our spring social on March 21st so we can celebrate the equinox, reflect on our businesses, get to know other people doing business our way, and honestly just hang out and have a good time. I'm just like super pumped about the members who have already RSVP ed that they're joining us, so join the interweb today and get yourself on that list. Now let's dive into our 2nd ever biz forecast.
Amelia Hruby:This one is for March 2024. Okay, lovely listeners. Let's kick things off with marketing trends that I'm into for March. So the first marketing trend that I'm really feeling right now is newsletter ads. A newsletter ad is very similar to a classified ad in a newspaper in that it's a short piece of text that you pay to promote in someone's newsletter.
Amelia Hruby:Typically, you're gonna be writing like a 100, a 120 characters. You're gonna be including a link to your work or to your lead magnet or to your podcast, whatever it might be that you're advertising. You are the next week or whatever date you've purchased for. I love newsletter ads because I find that successful newsletters have a really engaged, excited readership, and those people are clicking on the ads. They're excited to learn about new things.
Amelia Hruby:And so I've just personally had some good success with newsletter ads, particularly when I've been sharing free, thoughtful resources with that readership. So every time I place an ad for The Leading Social Media Toolkit, I always see people come through from the newsletters that I'm advertising in. And it's been a really helpful way for me to get this podcast and that toolkit in front of some new people. If you found me that way, welcome. Hi.
Amelia Hruby:I'm so glad you're here. Now every single time I talk about newsletter ads on this podcast, I get the following question in my inbox. And that question is, where do I find newsletters to advertise with? It's a great question. And my initial answer is maybe only helpful for the Gemini moons among us, like myself, which is just that, like, I subscribe to everything and I pay attention to, like, all of this media, and I'm always bookmarking newsletters that I notice take advertisers and saving them away for a moment when I'm feeling like I wanna put some money behind ads.
Amelia Hruby:That just feels like fun and easy for me. It may be super laborious for you or you may not run your inbox that way. So let me also give you a couple of my favorite places to place newsletter ads. My number one go to for newsletter ads is the I love creatives newsletter. They send out a weekly letter to their list of thousands and thousands of creatives in all sorts of industries, and you can purchase an ad in that for as little as $20.
Amelia Hruby:So I've really found that that is a great place to start out with ads and to test ads, like, to be like, okay, does this copy work better than that copy? Does it work better to advertise my free thing or my podcast or my services? Like, I love the I love creatives newsletter as a way to figure out, like, what's the best message and what gets the best click throughs before I might go advertise in a more expensive newsletter like this next one that I love, which is Anne Freedman's newsletter. So Anne Freedman is a journalist and someone I think of as like an OG podcaster. She co hosted Call Your Girlfriend with Ami not too So, and she runs a weekly newsletter that has, I think, like 50,000 something subscribers, maybe more by now.
Amelia Hruby:I'm not sure. You can check her website for that information. And her ads cost something like a $100 or $150 or something to place each week. So that can be another great place to get your work in front of new people. And then for my pod friends out there, for people who have podcast or have business services for podcasters or whatever it may be, I have 2 places I love to place podcast related ads.
Amelia Hruby:1 is the podcasting in her newsletter, and I find that it just brings through some really lovely aligned people. And then I also place ads in Pod News, which is an industry newsletter that goes out daily and just has a lot of traffic. So those are some of my favorite places to place ads. For this episode, I was also like, aren't there databases or, like, search engines? Like, hasn't somebody built a business where I can, like, search for newsletters to advertise in?
Amelia Hruby:I've tried to look for this multiple times, and I think it's been a real hole in the market. Currently, the best one I found is called Paved, p a v e d, and it looks like they have a huge list of newsletters that you can search by topic, and then you can place ads in them. So I've found a few interesting looking newsletters when I was searching through there, and if you are on your own newsletter ad journey, I will link it in the show notes for you. Okay. Enough about newsletter ads.
Amelia Hruby:What is another marketing trend that I'm into right now? As spring is sprunging, I noticed that I am reading more than ever. It's like spring comes and my brain turns on and I'm like, let me take in all of the information. I want to learn things. And so I have really been enjoying this list of marketing and business books by women and non binary writers that was collected by my biz coach, biz friend, and pod sponsor, Jessica Lackey.
Amelia Hruby:So Jessica has been doing the goddess's work and creating this really beautifully curated list of marketing and business books that are not written by men. And you know what? There are some great marketing and business books written by men out there, but so often they are the only ones referenced and boosted when people talk about learning about marketing or business. And I just think it's so important that we are taking in information and learning from people who share more of our experiences and who do business in the ways that we want to do business, And for me, that means that I don't necessarily wanna be reading business books written by people who are deeply embedded in corporations or who come from, you know, familial wealth that I don't have access to. Like, I want to read business books that are written by people who I can relate to and who have knowledge that I can learn from in ways that make sense in my lived experience.
Amelia Hruby:So that's all to say. This list by Jessica is great. I will link to it in the show notes. I highly encourage you to pick a few favorites, purchase through her Bookshop affiliate links, give her all the love, and learn from a few more diverse business and marketing experts this month. This takes me to my 3rd marketing trend that I am really loving this month, which I don't know if it's really a trend.
Amelia Hruby:Maybe it's just actually like a core value, but it's been feeling really important to me and I've been reminded of it as we're in this transition from Black History Month to Women's History Month. And that trend is creating content from our point of view to resonate with our community. And the way this came up for me is that I was reading a post by Edison Research that was about podcast listening among black listeners. And in their research, they found that of the top ten shows for black podcast listeners, 6 of them were helmed by black hosts. And this got me thinking about, okay, if I just go to, like, Apple's top 10, are any of the top 10 overall hosted by black podcasters?
Amelia Hruby:And so I pulled that up this morning and went through it, and I was like, well, no. Of these top ten shows, we've got Joe Rogan at number 1, we've got Crime Junkie at number 2, The Daily at number 3. We've got call her daddy on there, Huberman Lab on there, Smartless on there. So of the top podcasts, they're just predominantly hosted by white men, and that is a consistent trend that we can see across podcasting and I think across many industries. And I was thinking about that in conjunction with a question I got from a client recently that was kind of about, you know, I wanna share more productivity and wellness content, but I feel like there's so much of it out there.
Amelia Hruby:Like, does my voice matter in this space? And that client was not a cis white man. And so I was like, yes. Like, your voice matters very much. And in fact, there are people like us out there who are seeking out podcasts that are not from these, like, societally dominant perspectives.
Amelia Hruby:And so this is my 3rd trend of the month, and I guess, again, it's a core value, it's an encouragement, but I really just want us all to be taking seriously that it's important to create content from our point of view for our communities. And that doesn't mean we don't listen to content made by people who are super different than us or podcasts hosted by folks whose lived experience will never know or understand. In fact, I think it's important to be listening to a diverse array of podcasts or reading a diverse array of books or watching a diverse array of movies. Like, I think all of that's important, but we can't let these dominant voices keep us out of these spaces. And what I think this Edison research survey shows, and just like a really broad way, is that black listeners are seeking out black podcasters.
Amelia Hruby:No matter what the topic of the show might be, they want to connect across all these aspects of their experience. And I think that for us, that could mean that your community is seeking out your perspective And especially if we belong to marginalized communities across any aspect of identity, it's important to be sharing from those perspectives for those perspectives. And that pairs really well with the episode I just shared this week with Samara Bey about how to show up in your business and your life. And we talk about sharing your voice and we talk about the unique nature of each person's perspective. So if this feels resonant or a little challenging to you, head to that episode, hear all of the amazing wisdom that Samara has to share, and, you know, get out there and do your thing.
Amelia Hruby:Make it. Share it. I wanna hear it. Send it to me so that we can all be learning from each other together. So my 3 marketing trends for this month were newsletter ads, marketing and business books by women and non binary writers, and creating content from our point of view to resonate with our community.
Amelia Hruby:Now let's move on to biz care tasks for March. March is the last month of q one. And for me, that means that March is the time to wrap up my start of the year things. Right? Like, every January, I kick off the year with a whole list of stuff I'm gonna do in my business and my life to, like, bring it all together, to plan ahead.
Amelia Hruby:And typically not a whole lot of that stuff gets done in January. Some of it gets done then in February, but March is where I'm really like, all right, Amelia, if it's a start of the year thing, you gotta get it done now. We gotta wrap it before we head into q2. Once we get into q 2, once we hit April, I am like full swing spring. And so March is the moment where I pause, I pull out my start of the year list, and I either do those things or decide I'm not doing them for the year.
Amelia Hruby:You don't have to do it all just because you said you would in January, but your 1st biz care task of the month is to check back in with those things and see what still needs to get done or what can be released. And speaking of full swing spring, my friends, now that we're heading into March, it is launch season. I find that everybody is launching in March, April, May. Like, there's this kind of window of spring, like, after Imbolc, before we hit summer equinox, where everyone is sell, sell, selling. And as a business owner, you can be part of that every one.
Amelia Hruby:But March is a great time to start planning your spring sales calendar and especially your launches. So your 2nd best care task of the month is to create a sales calendar basically from now until summer. Like, sit down, think about what you wanna sell, write a list of all those things, put some dates on the calendar. And when I say dates, that actually includes like a lot of different things, right, because a launch cycle can include a presale, a wait list, an open cart, a closed cart. It can include your promo period, your sales period.
Amelia Hruby:So, like, make the list of what you want to sell and then think about the strategy for each of those things, and then put dates on the calendar for how that's going to happen. This month is your time to figure all of that out so that you are feeling prepared for launch season, ready to go, and you could get to work on developing all the materials that you will need for a successful launch. And then my 3rd and final biz care task for us this month is to spruce up our creative marketing experiments database. So if you're a long time off the grid listener, you know that that is the 3rd tool in our leading social media toolkit. And, hopefully, you've been adding some marketing experiments that you might wanna do to that database.
Amelia Hruby:You've been noticing what other people are doing, putting it in there so you could potentially do it. And I think that March is a great time to pick a few experiments for the months ahead. I really like to do 1 a month. So for me in March, I'm doing newsletter ads, hence why that is a trend for this episode. In April, I'm gonna be part of the first summit that I've ever been a part of.
Amelia Hruby:So that'll be a marketing experiment. And I haven't picked May's marketing experiment yet, but I think that it's good to be connecting with that creative marketing experiments database and picking a monthly marketing experiment to try. So again, number 1 biz care task was wrap up your start of the year tasks. Number 2 was build a spring sales calendar to get ready for launch season. And biz care task number 3 was clean up your creative marketing experiments database and choose a monthly experiment for the upcoming months.
Amelia Hruby:Woo hoo. That's our biz care for the month of March. Up next is just a reminder that next month in our April forecast episode, I will be sharing a financial update from softer sounds. So I kicked off this season with an episode on overcoming under earning, and I shared some really big revenue goals for softer sounds this year. You gotta listen to the episode and make it to the end to hear those, but I thought I would use these monthly forecast episodes to update you on how it's going quarterly.
Amelia Hruby:So next month in this right here spot, after Biz Care Tasks, we will talk about how much money softer sounds made in q one and how I'm feeling about that. I can tell you that January was a big month for us, and then February was like crickets. I should insert a cricket sound here as the podcast editor I am. Here they go. Crickets.
Amelia Hruby:Cricket. Cricket. Cricket. Chirp. Chirp.
Amelia Hruby:Chirp. Chirp. It was kind of a bummer. So we'll see how March goes, and then I will let you know the actual numbers in our next forecast episode. So stay tuned for that.
Amelia Hruby:Moving right along to what's coming up on off the grid this month, we have some really amazing episodes and conversations. Like, I'm so excited for the things that are gonna be on the feed in March. Coming up next week, we have an episode on escaping the attention economy and cultivating resonance over reach in Your Marketing with Jay Acunzo. And I'm really excited because his work has been really influential for me. He's got a lot of great frameworks that have just unlocked how I think about marketing, and we had a great conversation.
Amelia Hruby:So you're definitely gonna want to tune into that one. After that, Nicole Antoinette is returning to the podcast to continue our conversation about how much is enough. So after all the love on my overcoming under earning episode, I've decided to sprinkle in many more conversations about money this season, and this conversation with Nicole is one of those. Her episode from season 2 was the most listened to interview we've ever done, and I thought this conversation was even stronger. So I'm really excited to share that one with you.
Amelia Hruby:And then I'm gonna have Yaro Magdalena on the podcast right after the spring equinox to talk about embracing seasonality in our businesses and some ways that we can shift from winter to spring and support our bodies, our businesses, our energy in that process. So those are 3 interviews we have coming up. And then at the end of March, I'm gonna do a big solo episode on how to launch your next big thing, whatever that might be, without social media. So that's gonna be a great episode on the pod feed, and it's also gonna be a new mini course inside of the interweb. So, so much great stuff coming up this month.
Amelia Hruby:Definitely make sure you're subscribed, get your friends subscribed, And as someone who's already recorded all those conversations, I just know that you're gonna love it. Like, stay tuned. It's gonna be so good. Get excited. I can't wait.
Amelia Hruby:Now we head into our final segment of the monthly forecast episode, maybe the most exciting segment we have, which is our listener Q and A. So after the February forecast where I made a big call for questions that is still out there, send me an email, drop me a voice message. Links are in the show notes to do that. I wanna answer your questions. But after February's episode, this question came through from Marika of Here's the question.
Amelia Hruby:How do you decide which content of yours should be offered for free via the podcast, lead magnets, or resources on your blog? What you offer freely is of high value, but how do you give just enough and not too much to help build trust while potentially boosting sales visibility, etcetera? When I read this question, the first thing that came to mind is that Julian Welch song, Everything is Free Now, because in the spirit of radical generosity, I do give away a lot of free knowledge for softer sounds and for off the grid. I often say to myself that I never want to gatekeep or hold back how to do something. So that reminded me of that song, Everything is Free Now.
Amelia Hruby:And then on the opposite end of that, I have worked with 2 clients over the past 6 months where they were doing a lot of free giving and not very much charging for things in their business. And so they weren't making enough money for their business to feel like a reciprocal supportive flow. And with those clients, I inversed this song name and I was like, what if nothing is free anymore? And I don't say that from a capitalist perspective of you gotta pay for everything. I say it from a way of healing the injury of overgiving, and pausing and asking yourself, what if none of this is free?
Amelia Hruby:What would it feel like if I were to charge for everything that I did? I think of it as a spectrum between the everything is free now end and the nothing is free anymore end, and we have to find our place on that spectrum. How much is free? How much is paid? Where does radical generosity live?
Amelia Hruby:For me, the spectrum then becomes a web because it is, you know, more than just a then becomes a web because it is, you know, more than just a single line. It's like this multifaceted ecosystem I'm working with, where in some places there's a lot that I give away for free, and in others there's much less. So one principle I have for this in my own work, particularly in softer sounds, is that I never want to gatekeep the general knowledge of how to do something. I often say like, I will always tell you how to make a podcast, but I will not do it with or for you for free because my time and my energy in being co present or asynchronously present with someone is incredibly valuable to me, and it's not something that I'm able to offer freely in the context of my business. And for that to stay in alignment with my values, I end up creating a lot of knowledge based materials that are freely available on my websites.
Amelia Hruby:And in the context of off the grid, this whole podcast is free, and, you know, I'll be honest, it's a ton of work. In this context, I am spending a ton of my time creating something that is free, but it is also a creative outlet that feeds and fuels my inner flame. And it is very clearly connected to paid offerings that people can take next steps into to both financially support the work and just receive really great resources and community support. And then I think a final prompt for anyone asking this question might be, where do you feel like you're overgiving and where do you feel like you're not giving enough? Because I find that I'm often asked this question by people who feel that they're not making enough money in their business or who just outright are not making enough money in their business and have really been burned by the content marketing strategy of make a bunch of free content to get people excited and then get them buying what you created.
Amelia Hruby:And that strategy just doesn't work for all businesses. In fact, it's most successful for, like, scaled tech companies. Like, that's really the boom of content marketing has come from that industry. And so when we're applying it in our, like, tiny, intuitive businesses, it may just not work. It may end up that we are giving everything away for free, and that's where I think that that antidote of what if nothing was free now can be really helpful.
Amelia Hruby:And then from that place of nothing is free, building back in the things that feel right to be free, which is probably much less than where you started. And so I have found that for myself, having a free podcast and a free lead magnet feels really good, but you'll also notice that, like, I'm not making any more lead magnets. I made the one, and that's it. I do make more episodes of the podcast. They're primarily, at this point, conversations with other people so that I can save some of my own teaching time for my paid Interweb members.
Amelia Hruby:And so that's how I'm currently thinking about it. Similarly, I shared in the context of softer sounds, I wanna make sure there are plenty of free resources on our site so that someone could launch a podcast with that basic knowledge from us. But if they want much more in-depth support, like through the form of our course or by working 1 on 1 with me, that's always gonna be in a paid container. So hopefully some of that is helpful. Thank you so much to Marika for the question.
Amelia Hruby:This was really fun to unpack. I wanna wrap us up with 2 quick comments that I got from listeners this month. I get so many amazing emails from folks who tune into the show, and there were 2 emails I got that just kind of really resonated for me this month. So I wanted to share a little bit more with you. The first was from Kim Barman.
Amelia Hruby:I will link to Kim's work in the show notes. And Kim shared this about the idea of boosting our visibility. There's a toxic message out there that if you aren't posting on social media and creating Reels that you have a visibility problem, that you don't want to be seen. I bought into this narrative for a while even as I could feel it wasn't true, and that narrative prevented me from stepping back and asking better questions, such as, what did I need from my marketing or outreach at that point in my business, And what were the various ways I could accomplish that? I didn't want or need fast growth.
Amelia Hruby:I wanted to develop my skills as a coach and grow thoughtfully. I could and did do those things without social media. By talking to people I know about the work I'm doing and writing my newsletter, I got my start. And doing both of those things is being visible. Okay.
Amelia Hruby:I love this comment so much because I think it points to a couple of really important things. Like, one is that we have somehow equated visibility and social media presence in our culture, and those things are not the same. Social media is not the only way to be visible. And in fact, like, showing up on video or photo with your face is not even the only way to be visible. Sometimes I think the word visibility puts an overemphasis on the visual.
Amelia Hruby:It's about being present in so many different ways, and we can do that, again, through our writing, through our speaking, through our website, through social media, if you so choose, but that's just one of many options. So I love that Kim is pointing to that in this share. And I also appreciate her question, like, what do I need from my marketing at this point in my business? That is always what I'm inviting us to ask here at off the grid. Like, what type of business do you run?
Amelia Hruby:What type of marketing does it need? Because, again, in our society, social media marketing and marketing have become conflated, but social media is just one small or maybe large, but still just one type of marketing. So this is just overall a plus comment. Thank you, Kim. So glad that you reached out.
Amelia Hruby:And the last thing I'll leave us with is a really quick note from Kristen of Worthwhile Paper. We had a great episode together last month. And at the end, we talked about, you know, this sort of question of, like, is it a privilege to leave social media? And she shared a little bit about some of the pushback that she's gotten around her social media exit. And in the episode, she said that, like, these were pretty preliminary thoughts.
Amelia Hruby:So she reached back out to me to share more, and she wrote this, like, one perfect sentence that I want to share with all of you. So here's our little note from Kristin Drozowski of worthwhile paper. Kristin said, if you want to have enough of something to get off of Instagram, start building what feels like enough outside of Instagram. Let me drop that wisdom again. If you want to have enough of something to get off of Instagram, start building what feels like enough outside of Instagram.
Amelia Hruby:I talk to a lot of people who wanna leave social media and they often envision it as like stepping off a cliff or, to use a metaphor that Kristen and I used in her episode, social media is this shopping mall that they are exploring and or trapped in, and they can't imagine there's a world outside of it. It's like, if you step through the sliding glass doors of the shopping mall, you're just going to enter this, like, foggy abyss. And who wants to do that? Right? That sounds really awful and scary.
Amelia Hruby:But what if you built yourself a beautiful community garden outside the shopping mall, and that when you left the shopping mall for good, you were going to that beautiful, wonderful garden. Right? We're not stepping off a cliff when we leave social media. We don't have to exit and then just enter this foggy abyss. We can create the spaces that we wanna be in, and when we leave social platforms, we can then go and habit those spaces.
Amelia Hruby:And so I just really appreciated this quote from Kristin. I appreciated her reaching out. I appreciated Kim reaching out. I appreciated Marika reaching out. And if you, dear listener, have reached out to me, I appreciate you reaching out as well.
Amelia Hruby:And I hope that more of you will reach out so that I can share some of your words on the pod. And just to be clear, I don't just randomly quote you. I got permission from all of these people to share these thoughts. It's not that anything you send me could potentially be on the podcast. That feels like super not consent to me.
Amelia Hruby:So it's only happening if I ask for permission. Okay. This forecast episode got a little longer than I planned, so thank you so much for sticking with me. I'm so, so grateful to you for listening, to the amazing guests on our show for joining us this season. I'm also incredibly grateful to all of our Interweb members for supporting the show.
Amelia Hruby:And if you're not a member yet, now's a great time to join. Use the code spring to get $20 off your membership if you join by March 5th. Come hang with us at our March social on 21st. And if that's not your jam, just stay tuned because there are so many great episodes of Off the Grid to come. And for now, I will bid you a wonderful March, and I will see you off the grid and on the interweb.
Amelia Hruby:Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Don't forget to grab your free leaving social media toolkit at off the grid dot fun slash toolkit. This podcast Natalia Studio. I'm your host, Emilia Frooby, and until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the interweb. Phone away.
Amelia Hruby:Yeah. Let's go off the grid.
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