🛼 Let’s get transparent again — an update on our top 10 marketing practices at Softer Sounds

Amelia [00:00:02] [Music overlapping with introduction to the episode] Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients.

Amelia [00:00:08] I'm Amelia Hruby, writer, speaker, and founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio. On this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty.

Amelia [00:00:22] Download your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig and join us as we do it all off the grid [intro music jams and then fades out].

Amelia [00:00:36] Hi and welcome to Off the Grid. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I am a writer, speaker, and the founder of Softer Sounds studio. I am also the host of this podcast, as you might have guessed by now. If this is your first episode, thank you so much for tuning in. And if you are coming back, if you've heard all 15 episodes that came before this, thanks for being a longtime listener. I'm so grateful you're here and really excited for today's episode.

Amelia [00:01:04] It's been a minute since I've been on the mic speaking solo with ya'll. I've had some great guests in the most recent episodes, and then I was on a summer sabbatical before that, so I'm really pumped to be back here sharing more and actually catching up on something I shared in a previous episode and giving you some new updates on what's going on in my business.

Amelia [00:01:25] Before I dive into what we're going to talk about today, I want to give a quick reminder, my famous two things by now— well, famous to me [chuckles].

Amelia [00:01:33] But the first reminder is, of course, to go download the Leaving Social Media Toolkit. You can find that for free at softersounds.studio/byeig, that's b-y-e-i-g and that toolkit contains my three best, favorite, most helpful, coolest, most creative tools. Let me add a lot of superlatives there [laughs]. But my three tools that will help you leave social media without losing all of your clients, maybe without losing any of your clients, and in fact, while gaining new clients.

Amelia [00:02:06] I created that toolkit from my own journey of leaving social media, specifically leaving Instagram and launching a business without a social media presence. So, the tools in there can really take you far. It includes a five-step plan for leaving any social platform, my list of 100 Ways to Share Your Work Without Social Media, and a very fantastic Notion database of how to organize your creative marketing experiments.

Amelia [00:02:29] So, you can get all of that for free again at softersounds.studio/byeig. It's linked in the show notes or on YouTube if you're watching this on YouTube. So, go grab that toolkit today if you haven't already.

Amelia [00:02:41] The second reminder— thing I want to share is that The Refresh is coming up in less than a month. So, The Refresh is a three-workshop series that I am hosting on August 23rd, 24th, and 25th, 2022.

Amelia [00:02:55] It's going to be a really, for me, like, special culmination of Season One of this podcast. I had originally intended to do eight episodes, y'all, and we're going to clock in, I think at 17 for Season One because you've been so great and it's been such a joy to keep answering questions, keep sharing conversations, and keep continuing this show.

Amelia [00:03:14] But we are going to wrap Season One next week with the next episode. It's really hard to believe. And then, I'm celebrating by hosting The Refresh, hosting this workshop series. It's going to help you refresh your relationship with social media and set your business up for success going forward.

Amelia [00:03:30] So, the first workshop is on Clearing the Fear of doing business differently. We're going to talk about the fears that come up when we think about leaving social media or when we have left social media temporarily or permanently.

Amelia [00:03:42] And my friend and mentor and previous podcast guest, Mary Grace Allerdice is going to join us for that workshop to do an embodied visualization and help us actually clear the fear in our bodies, and our spirits, and our minds. So, I am— honestly, like, the series is worth it just for that workshop alone.

Amelia [00:04:02] So, join us at The Refresh, head to the link in the show notes, or go to softersounds.studio/refresh to sign up.

Amelia [00:04:10] The other two workshops are called Weave the Web and Make the Map, and I've gotten those backwards, Make the Map and Weave the Web, either way [laughs]. You can tell I love alliteration and rhyme, but in those workshops, we're going to get really clear on your core offers, your marketing channels, and your business community and help you understand how you can have a supportive and thriving business without social media because you can cultivate a community and share your offers with them and nurture that and market yourself and do all of those— I want to say our favorite things, maybe they're not your favorite things, but we can do them creatively with a lot of fun and that's what we're going to talk about in The Refresh.

Amelia [00:04:48] So, it's really totally new tools, a whole new framework, and in my mind, the perfect way to integrate everything I've been sharing on Off the Grid.

Amelia [00:04:58] This is not a workshop series that is going to take you back through the Leaving Social Media Toolkit that you've already downloaded. It's really going to take you so much deeper into that work to actually set your business up for success off social media or using social media less. And the best news of all is this three-workshop series, workshops— live workshops, recordings, and a Notion workbook to organize everything and other goodies is only $99.

Amelia [00:05:24] So, you can sign up at the link in the show notes or head to softersounds slash refresh. And I can't wait to see you at The Refresh. Come join us. It's going to be a blast. The crew signed up already is awesome. Honestly, if I just spent the whole time with them, I will be thrilled. But I'd love for you to be there too. [Transitional music begins to play] So, come join us.

Amelia [00:05:52] Okay. Let's dive into today's episode. Are ya'll ready? I'm trying to keep these intros below 5 minutes. I know I can get long-winded [laughs] and talk about announcements forever.

Amelia [00:06:02] So, let's dive in. If you've been a longtime podcast listener, you might remember that back in Episode Seven, I shared our top ten marketing practices at Softer Sounds, which is the feminist podcast studio that I run. It's the studio that produces this podcast and it's, you know, my full-time business that I launched just over a year ago now.

Amelia [00:06:23] So, in that episode, I walk through our top ten marketing practices, and if you listen to, I think, Episode Three, you'll also remember when I shared how to create a fun, feel-good marketing plan.

Amelia [00:06:35] There were three important things there: growing your audience, nurturing your community, and selling your offerings.

Amelia [00:06:41] So, when I was reflecting on the top 10 marketing practices I shared, I was like, “Amelia, do those do all three of those things you've said are super important? Do they grow your audience? Do they nurture your community? Do they sell your offerings?” And on reflection, I was like, maybe not [laughs]. Maybe I am not, you know, taking my own medicine, like heeding my own wisdom, like understanding and implementing my own framework. Does anybody else ever feel like that? Like I can great— give great advice, but taking advice— my own advice, no way.

Amelia [00:07:08] I had one of those moments when I was looking back to that episode and when I was making my quarter three marketing plan because I recorded that back in quarter two and it's a brand-new quarter, which means I'm refreshing and revisiting my marketing activities from my creative marketing database.

Amelia [00:07:25] So in today's episode, I want to kind of refresh the top 10 marketing practices at Softer Sounds and just talk a little bit more about how I think through this.

Amelia [00:07:34] So, this episode is going to do, I'll say, three things [chuckles].

Amelia [00:07:37] First, I'm going to talk about, kind of, how I see the difference between marketing and sales and how that works with that— like the three marketing strategies that I've mentioned.

Amelia [00:07:46] In part two, I am going to kind of regroup and look back at those top ten marketing practices and share with you like:

Amelia [00:07:52] What went great? What didn't go great? What am I still doing? What have I stopped doing? So, we'll kind of look at them again and reconsider what's working— one of my favorite things to do, something we should always be doing in business [chuckles].

Amelia [00:08:05] And then in part three, I'm going to share some new things that I'm doing or some things that I just, like, should have put on the original list and didn't do because I do them all the time. Some things that maybe are so ingrained I'd forgotten I do them all the time, as well as some things that I'm trying out, some new experiments for this quarter and the upcoming quarters of this year.

Amelia [00:08:23] So, that's going to be today's episode. I hope you're excited as I am. I know the original episode got a lot of love because all of you are like me and you like to know what other people do in their businesses. And you're like, "Let me see behind the scenes. Let me get that info. I need that inspo [laughs]." Sorry. I can't help myself.

Amelia [00:08:42] Really this is me getting vulnerable, opening up, and talking about how all of this works in my business. The business that supports me, supports my tiny family of my partner, and our dogs, and our cat, and that I love and cherish and work on every day. So, let's dive in.

Amelia [00:09:02] I promised that I was going to start with a conversation about marketing and sales. So, when I think about marketing, let's start there.

Amelia [00:09:10] Marketing to me is what attracts new people and brings them to your business, your product, your services. So, it is growing your audience, it's getting your business in front of new people so that they can know who you are and know about you. Marketing is that really expansive growth and in some senses, it's casting a wide net. You know, it's a wide net of people who you think might be interested in you but with marketing, you know it's not everybody who you market to or who learns about your business is going to buy something from you, but you're growing your community. You're growing your audience at large.

Amelia [00:09:45] When I think about marketing, I like to think about a question I first heard from Tara McMullin of What Works. She had this really great framework for how she organizes her marketing and sales practices. And so, the question about marketing is: What am I doing to regularly put my business in front of new people? Again, that's Tara McMullin's question. You should totally subscribe to her What Works newsletter that I'll link in the show notes [laughs]. And that question is: What am I doing to regularly put our business— my business in front of new people?

Amelia [00:10:15] So, I ask myself that a lot. To me, that's what marketing is about. Marketing is getting your business in front of new people so that they know about you. Its partially why branding is so important so that when people see your business, they can like recognize it, they can engage with it, they can relate to it. That all happens within marketing.

Amelia [00:10:33] So, if that's marketing, what is sales, right? So, sales works with the people in your audience or talks to them, has conversations with them, and it tries to convert them into customers essentially. That's where that word conversion, right— you might have heard the term conversion rate— the term conversion rate is just how many of the people you marketed to actually bought something? And it can be calculated all sorts of ways. Not going to get into that today, but sales is about making the sale. It's about the transaction to some degree. It's not entirely about the transaction. There's so much more that goes into sales than that, but it is about taking someone from a maybe to a yes or from a I'm looking at your sales page to I'm purchasing something [chuckles] from your sales page, right? That's what sales is about.

Amelia [00:11:20] So, marketing has that really expansive quality. I think of marketing in terms of the elements, it's like air, it is like going far and wide. It is like sharing your business. Like, there's so much going on with marketing.

Amelia [00:11:31] Sales is about bringing all of that air down to earth in the material and then there's, like, a lot of fire and water in there to, like, get people excited, make them feel certain ways and do all of that in the mix. So, all the elements are here. But when I think of it like a marketing, I'm expanding sales, I'm taking it into the material.

Amelia [00:11:49] So, why did I want to go into this— like what is marketing versus sales? Well, I find that for most small business owners, we are doing a lot of one or the other [chuckles lightly]. I think most of us, myself included, are doing a ton of marketing and not so much sales. Where in actuality, I think what will grow our businesses and grow our revenue, perhaps the way we want to, is a lot more sales and a lot less marketing [laughs].

Amelia [00:12:16] So, when I did look back at that list of the ten top ways, I was marketing Softer Sounds, it was all marketing and very little sales. I think when I mapped it out— and I'll go into this in a second, but I think there was like, literally one thing was sales, everything else was marketing. And I promised you a list of top ten marketing practices. So, you know, that's fine.

Amelia [00:12:35] But I just want to emphasize that all of that marketing, all of that growing our audience does not necessarily grow our business or does not necessarily grow our revenue if we are not also selling.

Amelia [00:12:47] So, we need in our businesses, we need marketing and sales. We need to be doing both of those things.

Amelia [00:12:52] Now, what happens between marketing and sales? So often, like, in a traditional business framework— in a traditional like— I don't mean like corporate structure or business bro world [laughs], not a world I live in, but a world we encounter for entrepreneurs or business owners.

Amelia [00:13:08] You know, you often will hear about marketing and sales and, like, these two separate things, it's like those are the two pillars or two pieces, two core pieces of business. But I really think as I shared in my episode about creating a fun, feel-good marketing plan, I think it's more about three things:

Amelia [00:13:25] Growing your audience is marketing.

Amelia [00:13:27] Selling your offerings is sales, but in between is nurturing your community.

Amelia [00:13:34] People in your general audience who've just learned about your business don't often buy from you, don't often, like, convert into customers without a whole journey of nurturing in between. It takes so much time, attention, care, conversation to take somebody from a general, you know, vaguely knows you audience member, to a customer, let alone a, like, happy, like, referring people to you, like, amazing core client customer, right?

Amelia [00:14:04] And we want to get them all the way there. We wanna take people from your audience all the way into like your diehard fans, your BFFs.

Amelia [00:14:11] So, between marketing and sales is community building and I cannot stress enough how important that community building piece is. And again, when I looked back at my list [chuckles] of my top ten marketing practices, I was like, "Oh, that's really missing here, Amelia."

Amelia [00:14:28] Like, where are you doing that? Why is that not on the list? And how can I do that more intentionally?

Amelia [00:14:34] So, recapping part one of this episode before we move on [chuckles].

Amelia [00:14:38] Marketing is how we grow our audience. We expand the reach of our business and who knows about our business.

Amelia [00:14:47] Sales is how we convert people from audience member to customer or client. It's how we make the sale.

Amelia [00:14:54] And in between that is all the community building that happens to make people want to buy things from us. And some people collapse that into marketing, some people collapse it into sales. I like to pull it out as its own distinct task or strategy perhaps, and I did not invent that. I get that, again, from Tara McMullin of What Works that when she talks about marketing, she emphasizes that part of the process. Also, from the crew at Holisticism, when they talk about marketing, they emphasize that community building part of the process.

Amelia [00:15:22] But I think that when we are thinking about creative marketing strategies and practices at Off the Grid or thinking about leaving social media, the things that we do on social media so often are expand our audience and build our community, strengthen our community ties, and then maybe we make the sale. But I often— you know, you might actually do the selling on your email list or somewhere else. The things that social media is doing is growing your audience, albeit maybe poorly these days, [laughs] and nurturing your community. And so, those are the things we need to find replacements for or do in other ways if you would like to run a business that's not on social media.

Amelia [00:16:01] And then we need to do a lot more selling, just, like, a lot more. As small business owners, we need to do a lot more selling to actually grow if— if our desire is to grow our revenue for our business. And every business owner I know right now is trying to grow their revenue so their business can support them and be more supportive of their lives and their clients’ lives, their customers lives. So that's part one.

Amelia [00:16:25] Now part two, let's get into the like peek behind the curtain, all the Nosey Nancys listening in, myself included. Even when I make this list, I'm like, "What am I doing? I want to know [laughs heartily]."

Amelia [00:16:37] So, if you haven't listened to Episode Seven to hear my breakthrough of the top 10 marketing practices at Softer Sounds, you're welcome to do that. You'll learn a lot more about these things that I'm going to talk through, but I'm just going to give you the list of the ten, first— we'll start there.

Amelia [00:16:53] Number one, I marketed by using the tools in the Leaving Social Media Toolkit. This was a little bit of a shameless plug on this list [laughs]. That's really honestly more of, like, a systems thing than it is a marketing practice. But you know what? We need good marketing systems as well. So, it landed at number one on the list.

Amelia [00:17:11] Number two was pitching and direct sales via email.

Amelia [00:17:15] Number three was creating SEO-optimized blog posts.

Amelia [00:17:19] Number four was joining cool online communities.

Amelia [00:17:23] Number five was growing my list— email list with free lead magnets.

Amelia [00:17:28] Number six was using Pinterest to drive traffic to my business.

Amelia [00:17:32] Number seven was offering free workshops.

Amelia [00:17:34] Number eight was placing paid ads in newsletters.

Amelia [00:17:38] Number nine was guesting on podcasts.

Amelia [00:17:40] And number ten was launching my own podcast, this show— Off the Grid. Thanks for listening. You're participating [laughs] in one of Softer Sounds top marketing practices.

Amelia [00:17:50] So, now that you've heard the list again. I want to walk through just, like, an update on each thing, how it's going, and how I think about it now.

Amelia [00:17:56] So, I already mentioned the Leaving Social Media Toolkit is marketing systems tools. So, if you haven't downloaded it yet, please do. If you have taken this much time, 20 minutes with me today to listen to this podcast. You're going to love the toolkit. Go grab it. It's free.

Amelia [00:18:11] So, now let's move on to number two, pitching and direct sales via email. This is the only sales practice that I put on this list [chuckles]. So, this is the one thing that I do to kind of make the offer and quote unquote, convert someone.

Amelia [00:18:28] And what I meant by this and what I mean by this, as I've mentioned two things in the last episode, when I launched Softer Sounds, I emailed— I sent like 60 emails, everyone I could think of to tell them the company existed, asked them to check out the website, work with me, or refer me to other people.

Amelia [00:18:41] And the other thing I mentioned is occasionally— is sometimes when I listen to a podcast and they say they need an editor or someone tells me they've heard a podcast where they need an editor, I will reach out to them directly with a list and a link to my services.

Amelia [00:18:53] Now, when I was launching this worked great. Like it truly— like when I launched the business telling everyone I knew with like a direct, individual email to them, catching up, letting them know what I'm doing. That worked awesome because it was already people I was in community with.

Amelia [00:19:09] On the flip side, when I email people who don't know me, who've just said on their podcast, I need an editor. I have very mixed results because I have not done any community building with them yet and they're getting a lot of emails from editors who want to work with them.

Amelia [00:19:25] So, this is a sales practice that I still use on occasion, but I would say it is not a core sales practice at Softer Sounds and not something I'm really doing right now.

Amelia [00:19:33] Number three: Creating SEO-optimized blog posts. This is a marketing strategy that I still use and I've kind of systematized it by deciding that I will create one new blog post and lead magnet each quarter.

Amelia [00:19:49] And I've actually gotten more support for this. I've hired a great copywriter, shout out to Madison [chuckles], and I'm working with a great VA company, shout out to My VA Rocks. And that's really taking this off of my plate because, in Q2 of 2022, I did not make [laughs lightly] the blog post, lead magnet, or anything else because I was too busy with client work.

Amelia [00:20:09] So, what I realized is this is still a great way to grow my business. It's still a marketing practice I want to do. And that means I'm going to need to hire support to actually make this happen, to write the post, to get it on the website, to set it all up in the— in Flodesk, all of that. So, this is still working.

Amelia [00:20:24] I see people coming to my website because they're finding these search results. You know, it's not a ton yet. I mean, we're— we're talking dozens, not hundreds of people coming to the Softer Sounds site from searching for, you know, "Canva templates for podcast art" or "Intro template for podcast" or "Cheap podcast equipment". But they are coming through. And from what I know about SEO, it just grows over time. The more you keep enriching your site, the more people keep landing on it and spending time on it, the better you'll rank, the better this will work for you. So, that is happening.

Amelia [00:20:56] Number four: Joining cool online communities. This is also a marketing effort that I am still doing. In fact, I have joined two new communities since [laughs] the last time that I shared this. I joined The Origin Membership with Kate Northrup, and I joined the Fuck the Hustle with Amy Kuretsky, which is another great community.

Amelia [00:21:14] And you know what? I love being in these spaces and I find that when I can authentically show up in a community space and share what I do. Honestly, there are always people there who want to start a podcast and are pumped that I've arrived at that moment and shared generally a free resource or something else with them. So, this is still a great marketing strategy for me, and it really hits kind of the growth piece of growing my audience and the nurturing piece of nurturing my community because I'm engaging, interacting in those communities, people see me more, they get to know me. So, this is really a great growth and nurturing practice.

Amelia [00:21:48] Number five: Growing my email list with free lead magnets. This is also something that I am still doing. I really like to take the SEO-optimized blog posts, make sure that I create a new lead magnet out of each one, embed that in the post, and then deliver that through Flodesk. So, that's a great growth strategy for me. I also then for every lead magnet, there's a nurture sequence that nurtures someone and kind of brings them further into the fold so they can get to know me better and eventually sells them something. So really, the lead magnet, the, like, blog post to email delivery of lead magnet to nurture sequence with like two or three emails that share more resources, share more about me, and then two emails that finally, like, make a sale. That to me— the reason people use that structure, talk about it all the time— the reason I talk about it a lot, there's a whole episode [laughs] on that with Mary Grace Allerdice, you can head back and listen to that one if you want to know more about email and how to nurture your community with email. But that strategy really hits the like growth, nurturing, and selling.

Amelia [00:22:53] Growing, nurturing, and selling. All three marketing strategies we want to be implementing at any given time. Marketing and sales strategies, I should say. So yeah, we're doing great. And I'm thinking more about how I can create some more lead magnets in the near future before the end of the year.

Amelia [00:23:06] Number six: Using Pinterest to drive traffic to my business. Okay, this has been a big one. I did a whole episode with Brooke about how to use Pinterest and how to start paid ads, and I talked about how excited I was about doing paid ads. And now I need to, like, confess that I have stopped doing paid ads [chuckles] on Pinterest. I mean, I've stopped doing paid ads in general, but Pinterest is the only place I was doing them.

Amelia [00:23:29] So, why did I stop doing paid ads on Pinterest? I would say I have not stopped doing paid ads on Pinterest forever. They were very successful in bringing lots of people to my lead magnets and getting new email addresses on those lists. The difference between like a month when I was running those ads and a month when I wasn't [chuckles], was like, we're getting 80 new emails versus we're getting 15 [chuckles]. There is a— there was a big difference. Those ads were working, and they were getting people to see my pins, and to give me their email address in exchange for a free resource. But what I found is that no one was purchasing anything. People were getting the free resource, getting all of the nurture sequence, follow-up emails, even staying on my email list. I don't have a high subscribe rate. It's like 10% or less of people who unsubscribe from those, but they weren't buying anything.

Amelia [00:24:20] So, what that signaled to me is that the offering I was giving them was not a fit for what they needed. And that kind of made sense because right now I run a very service-based business and I have high-touch, expensive services. You know, my launch package costs, I think at the time I'm recording this like over 1500 dollars.

Amelia [00:24:40] So, that's not probably where you're at if what you did was look at a pin and claim a free resource, it's going to take way more [chuckles] to convert you to this expensive high-touch launch package. So, what I did in the in-between is I created a new, less expensive one-on-one offer, just a one-off 90-minute session. I call it a podcast planning session. And so, now for people who get the free Podcast Launch Checklist through Pinterest or elsewhere, they get that list in the workshop, they get the nurture sequence, and then it invites them to do a 90-minute call with me to plan their podcast or to do the full launch package.

Amelia [00:25:20] And in that whole sequence, it talks about how if you do the call and then you do a launch package, I'll take the price of the call off your launch package, etc., etc. So, I spent like six weeks experimenting with seeing if, you know, the new people on the list who got that email about a less expensive offer would purchase that coming in from Pinterest and still didn't really get many— I think I booked like two of them and then I think both those people were also people who knew me from elsewhere. So, I felt like the Pinterest ads were working great to get people on my list, but there was something in my offerings or my messaging that wasn't converting them. So, I paused all of my Pinterest ads to take time this summer and at the start of fall to figure out what's next.

Amelia [00:26:04] So, how am I going to do that? I am going to email them and ask them [laughs]. So, I've been working on a survey for that list of people. It's almost 200 people at this point who have gotten a free resource from me, who have gotten one of my lead magnets. And I'm going to email them with this, you know, short, six-question survey and ask them to fill it out so I can know what they want. And it's got questions, you know, about like where they're at in their podcasting journey, what area of podcasting they want the most support in, what their budget is for podcast support, and some other sorts of things.

Amelia [00:26:34] So, that I'm hoping will give me a lot more information so that I can create something that is very like Pinterest user-friendly and that they do want to purchase. So, that when I'm spending money on those ads, people are buying things because [laughs lightly] I'm not just trying— like I don't just want to grow my audience. If my only goal was growing my audience, then paying for Pinterest ads is great because you will just keep getting people on your mailing list. If you've got a lead magnet, you pay for ads for it on Pinterest with some cute pins, like, you're golden.

Amelia [00:27:02] But my goal for Softer Sounds is not to have a giant audience, it's to have a great, happy, healthy client list. And so, I have paused on Pinterest ads as a growth strategy because I'm realizing I need to do more work on the nurturing and selling parts of that strategy [deep sigh]. That was a long detour [laughs] through Pinterest world. I hope that that update is helpful and if you have thoughts or questions about Pinterest, I would love to hear from you in our SpeakPipe voice message box that's linked in the show notes.

Amelia [00:27:32] Let's move on to number seven: Offering free workshops. This is also a marketing strategy that I still use and that I think is fantastic. So, I have offered free workshops through my own business that I have— you know, we've done Launch Your Pod in 2022 workshops at the start of the year, and I've also offered free workshops for other people's communities and those are also great at sharing the business, sharing this podcast. I've done some Off the Grid ones, sharing the Leaving Social Media Toolkit and bringing more people into the fold. So, I love the power of offering a free workshop. You know, I also love to get paid when I do that for other people's communities. So, you know, this marketing strategy can really be like a win-win all around.

Amelia [00:28:14] Number eight is placing paid ads in newsletters. So, I have not done this in the past quarter or two, but I still stand by this strategy. It's worked great for me as a marketing strategy. It works great for audience growth. And I think the key for this one is really to— well, in my experience, the ads work best for something that is free and time-sensitive.

Amelia [00:28:39] Now, you might be like, Amelia, why would I pay for an ad to advertise a free thing [laughs]?

Amelia [00:28:45] Well, because when you are advertising to someone else's audience, it's like a cold reach out, basically. They don't know who you are. They don't know anything about your services. They have no reason to want to buy something from you. So, I've found that when I'm in front of someone else's audience, if I offer them something free and of value, they're much more likely to say, "Yes, please."

Amelia [00:29:05] And then they can come to the workshop with me, they can get the email sequence with me, they can get to know me, and that will lead them to purchase. When I have just advertised my services or paid offerings in other people's newsletters, I've gotten some clicks but, like, no follow through. So, I definitely suggest advertising a free event or resource when you place paid ads in newsletters.

Amelia [00:29:27] And I also suggest it being something time sensitive because I find that that really gets— its basic sales psychology that deadlines get us to move [laughs lightly].

Amelia [00:29:37] So, you know, I advertised my free Podcast Launch Toolkit, which is a checklist and a workshop, so I call it a toolkit or all three of those [laughs]. When I've advertised that in newsletters, it has not gotten as many clicks as the free workshop that is, like, time-sensitive because it will end. You can only sign up for a certain amount of time. So, those are my experiences with placing paid ads in newsletters.

Amelia [00:30:02] Practice number nine was guesting on podcasts. I love being a guest on podcasts. Please invite me on your show. Like for real though. Invite me on your show. I'd love to be on it. I will almost always say yes and this is still a great growth strategy. We talked about this one more on my episode about podcasting with Chelsea. So, if you scroll back on the feed, it's called something like, "Podcasting Can Bring You Clients and Make You Money," because that's Chelsea's experience. She's a great podcaster. We talk a lot more about guesting and how that can grow your audience. So, it is another great marketing strategy.

Amelia [00:30:33] And number ten was launching your own podcast. So, as I mentioned when I first went through this list at the top, Off the Grid is a marketing tool for Softer Sounds, who produces the studio— my studio that produces this. It's a marketing tool for me to grow my brand and establish my expertise in marketing without social media, and it's also— like it grows our audience in that way. Many, if not, I'd say most of the people who listened to this show, didn't discover it because you're looking for a podcast studio [chuckles]. You discovered it probably because someone sent it to you because you are sick of social media, you want to leave social media, you want to do business differently, you want to market yourself or your business differently. You know, any of those reasons.

Amelia [00:31:15] But now you know about Softer Sounds. So, that's a success for me. And then, you know, if you keep listening to more than one episode, we're nurturing our relationship, and then hopefully, you know, you'll join me at The Refresh, you'll become a customer and be even more in the community. So, I find that podcasts can be really great tools similar to the lead magnet email strategy. I think podcasts if you've noticed, my podcast has a lead magnet embedded in it, so that becomes its own full sequence marketing and sales strategy as well, growing the audience to nurturing the community, to selling the offering. All of that happens here on the show. So, you know, just trying to practice what I preach, as they say [laughs].

Amelia [00:31:56] [Deep sigh] So, again, that was a lot. My review of the top 10 marketing practices at Softer Sounds. The recap is basically of those ten.

Amelia [00:32:04] The first one, the Leaving Social Media Toolkit, was our marketing system, maybe more so than our practice.

Amelia [00:32:09] The pitching via email was the only sales activity I put on that list. And then the other eight were different marketing strategies, all for growing our audience at Softer Sounds. And of those, I found that growing my email list with free lead magnets is super successful for me, joining online communities of other business owners is super successful for me, and launching a podcast has been super successful for me. And I'm still doing all eight of those things— or all ten of those things— well, not all ten. I'm still doing [laughs] almost all of the things on that list. I've kind of backed off pitching direct sales via email, as well as pausing all my Pinterest ads for the reasons I mentioned before.

Amelia [00:32:50] So, now that we've done that, let's just, like, take a breath together and I'll share some of the new things I'm doing. So, if you are listening to this, wherever you are, I'm gonna invite you to just exhale— hold on— release any air you're holding on to [breathes out] and then inhale with me [breathes in]. And when you're ready to exhale again [exhales].

Amelia [00:33:17] I got to tell you, it's so helpful for me as a Gemini Moon who can just, like, spin out to just pause, take a deep breath, especially when I'm going through a list like that. I just get going and I talk really fast [laughs], and I have to slow myself down for myself and for you, lovely listener.

Amelia [00:33:33] So, let's wrap up with part three that I promised the kind of, new marketing experiments, the creative marketing experiments that I'm trying in quarter three and quarter four of this year. I like to look at my marketing plan quarterly, but I will often do things for 6 to 12 months to see how they're going.

Amelia [00:33:53] So, what's coming up at Softer Sounds? Like, what's next? And when I made this list, I really challenged myself— but not just put marketing practices on it, but to think about what I said, right? Like we have to do growth, nurturing, and selling. Growing, nurturing, and selling.

Amelia [00:34:09] So, it's like how can I make sure that when I'm thinking about marketing practices for the rest of the year, I'm doing all three of those things or experiments with all three of those things and not simply growing my audience, which is important and frankly, in my first year of business that kind of felt like the most important thing was growing the audience.

Amelia [00:34:26] But now, as I've entered Year Two of Softer Sounds existing, I feel like I can back a little bit off of growth and think about other— like really the nurturing. Now I'm really stepping into a period of a lot more nurturing because I've started building the community.

Amelia [00:34:38] So, let me walk you through what's new and the creative marketing experiments coming up next at Softer Sounds. We'll start with things I'm doing to grow our audience— growing our audience.

Amelia [00:34:48] So, one big thing [laughs softly]— there's really just one new one on this list because I had so many growth strategies before that I'm still doing, but the one that I'm working on right now is just asking clients to put Softer Sounds in their podcast description and in their podcast outro.

Amelia [00:35:06] So, for many Softer Sounds clients, you will see in their description on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, the very last thing it'll say is, "Produced by Softer Sounds." And if you listen all the way through their outro, you might hear them say, "The show is produced by Softer Sounds." And that is something that, like, should have felt very obvious to me from the beginning and I think to some degree did, but I've really gotten better at asking people to do that and encouraging them to put it in their outros if we're producing their show.

Amelia [00:35:34] And I think, you know, that definitely benefits me. It definitely benefits Softer Sounds. It helps just raise awareness because if someone's listening to a podcast they like and they're like, "Maybe I want to make a podcast, I wonder who does their podcast?" And we answer it for them, because most often I found people won't actually reach out to podcasters they like to ask them, but they will listen. And if it's in there, they'll be like, "Oh, well I should reach out to this person too. They already make a podcast I like. They'd probably make me a podcast that I like too."

Amelia [00:36:01] So, that has been a really, so far, successful and something I'm working on just like having a system for. We think back to my upset with Patty, right? It's easier to make that ask if it's a system and it's built into those podcasts’ set up I do for all my clients. So, I've been working on developing that system so that it's even easier to make the ask and more people find out about the show. And I think, you know, I already said it benefits me, but I also think it benefits my clients in that your show sounds more professional and more [laughs] like a better posture but that's not what I mean. What I mean, it's like you just sound, like, more together and more intentional maybe is what I want to say if you work with a production studio.

Amelia [00:36:41] So, if you can say, “This show is produced by Softer Sounds” or, “Produced by Amelia at Softer Sounds,” it adds a little extra, like, cachet to your show as well, and it helps raise awareness for me and my podcast company. So, that's our new experiment for growing our audience.

Amelia [00:36:56] Experiments for nurturing our community— so the big one for me here is developing an email newsletter. So, I have been collecting emails. As you might have heard, I have a lot of lead magnets. I collect people's email addresses; I send them nurture sequences. You can join the mailing list for Softer Sounds on our website.

Amelia [00:37:15] For our first year, I sent out an email once a month about what's happening at the business, and that's basically— that was my strategy. It was, like, a very low-key email newsletter monthly— one time a month, and that was primarily just because I wanted to share a little bit of behind-the-scenes stuff and let people know what we were up to. And I think one of my tasks for the next three or six months is I want to think about, like, what— do I want to send that email newsletter more frequently? What should include? How can I be more strategic and intentional there? Because just sending whatever is on my mind once a month [chuckles] has been great and I've enjoyed writing those. And if you're on the list, I hope you've enjoyed receiving them. But I think that for nurturing my community, that's my next step, is getting really intentional about a more regular email newsletter, not just like the lead magnet delivery and nurture sequences, not even just a monthly update, but like what is the strategy here? So, that's one experiment that I'm working on for nurturing my community.

Amelia [00:38:15] A second is a referral program. I have amazing clients. I love them, I appreciate them, and they so often refer other people to me, and I want to make sure that I am showing them a lot of appreciation for that. So, I'm working on a client referral program so that if existing clients refer other folks, they get a benefit. I have not figured out what that is yet [laughs softly]. I have a whole Notion, as you might imagine, a whole Notion doc of ideas that I'm working on with my VA, and we will figure it out. But a referral program is an experiment that's on the list for the upcoming quarter.

Amelia [00:38:49] And another one for nurturing our community is a membership space of some sort. It's going to start, I believe, by being just for clients as like a bonus for anyone who's a client of Softer Sounds to kind of have access, more personal access to me, more personal access to a group of podcasters. And then I'm working on thinking about what that becomes more generally.

Amelia [00:39:09] So, these nurturing my community efforts, you'll see, like some of them are focused on the community of people on our email list. So, a community of people who are interested in Softer Sounds, some of them are focused on a community of people who have already bought stuff from Softer Sounds and I'm really trying to make sure I nurture our client community because word of mouth is the best sales strategy that has worked for me and just in general— word of mouth works best.

Amelia [00:39:35] So, this will take us into selling our offerings. What are the experiments here? So, the reason I'm doing all of that client nurturing is to try to encourage more word-of-mouth sales and discovery. But other things I do to sell our offerings at Softer Sounds— the big one is discovery calls. As you might have figured out by now, I love to talk [laughs], so I love a sales call. I love hopping on with people. I love getting to know them. I love sharing more about myself and what I do at Softer Sounds. And I find that, like, within 15 to 20 minutes, we kind of have a sense of like— is this a good fit? Are we a good fit for each other? Would you want to work with me?

Amelia [00:40:12] And that's really important in a business-like Softer Sounds because I do high touch services and so it's really important that we get along [laughs]. It's really important to have that sort of vibe check, as I think Chelsea puts it, in her one-on-one client process. But like, we need that— we need that so we can get to know each other. And I've found this podcast is a great way actually that helps people feel even more comfortable. I've had clients come through that say, "I listen to your podcast, I'm so excited to talk to you. I booked this call just to be 100% sure that this is what I need to launch my show."

Amelia [00:40:42] And so, now that I have a podcast, more and more of my clients— more of my discovery calls are with people who are already trust my voice and want to learn more with and from me. And so, that makes sale calls even easier. So, the biggest, like, thing I do for selling offerings at Softer Sounds is these discovery calls.

Amelia [00:41:00] And then the other thing that I'm doing, this is sort of a sales effort for selling our offerings this upcoming quarter is actually redoing our packages and then announcing all of those changes.

Amelia [00:41:14] Now, you know, this is a core offer change, this is a systems change, just kind of hits every area of the business, but it is about selling our offerings. And so, I'm thinking a lot about, and I mentioned this when I went through the Pinterest example, like how do I design offerings and price offerings so that they feel really supportive to clients and also really supportive to me and really supportive to my contractors who I work with?

Amelia [00:41:39] And so, after a whole year in business and learning, I've realized I need to make some changes to, particularly, how we structure our editing packages. And so, I'll be doing that. And then, I think it's its own sales effort to communicate that in a really, like, compelling and exciting way so that people are pumped about the packages and want to purchase them.

Amelia [00:41:57] So, that's another way that I'm selling our offerings in the upcoming quarter which right now will be this summer and fall. And then, of course, I'm also [giggles] selling The Refresh, as you might have noticed, that's happening on this podcast and it's happening on our email list. If you've downloaded the Leaving Social Media Toolkit or you do download the Leaving Social Media Toolkit, you'll get a weekly email from me with the new episode of the podcast and then generally some type of information about The Refresh and encouragement to join us.

Amelia [00:42:27] So, that's also— like that's not really a— that's just one thing I'm selling [laughs] in the upcoming quarter, but you know, if you're like me and you like to, kind of, watch somebody sell something and then reverse engineer how it happened, you can do that with The Refresh. You can also just come to The Refresh. We will talk more about those sorts of things [laughs] together and I can help you figure out how to build a strategy like that for your offerings. And in fact, what you just heard when I talked about changing our packages and honestly, through all of this, one of the big things that I've seen as I talk to people who love Off the Grid, who want to learn more about marketing, who are really pumped to talk to me about podcasts or anything else, is often I've done a number of one-on-one sessions now with folks who want to leave social media or who want to change their relationship to social media. And normally what we discover together is that it's not really about social media, it's about something else that's not working in your business.

Amelia [00:43:24] And so, often what I end up doing is helping people think about their client intake process, or their offering structure, or their pricing structure, or their marketing channels. And when we make fixes to those areas, make adjustments, have creative new ideas there. I think almost everyone I've talked to doing— making those changes had left them feeling so freed up that they realized they didn't necessarily have to leave social media to feel better in their business. It was like there's a different— that was just one thing that was kind of covering up a different issue, perhaps.

Amelia [00:44:01] So, I say that because really The Refresh is about clearing all those feelings about social media so we can go deeper into our businesses and be like, "Okay, what are my core offers? What are my marketing— like core marketing channels, and what's my community like?" Because those are these three pieces, right? Like, you know, we talk about growth, nurturing, selling [laughs].

Amelia [00:44:24] It's also core offers, core channels, and core community. That's like what's at the core of our businesses, the what that we're selling, the how we tell people about it, and the who that we're telling it to. What, how, who [chuckles].

Amelia [00:44:36] And you know, and then our mission is the why. But I designed The Refresh to help get us there. This whole podcast has been about teaching strategies for leaving social media and for marketing your business off of social media. When I thought about what I really wanted to teach or what I thought people could really use, it was like, "All right, let's clear all the feelings and all of this gunk that is stuck in our bodies [laughs softly] around social media. Let's clear that and then let's go deeper to these core offers, core channels, core community, so that we can have beautiful, thriving businesses."

Amelia [00:45:09] Leaving social media is not what's going to give you a beautiful, thriving business. It will probably give you a lot of energetic clarity [laughs]. But once we get that energetic clarity, we need those other things to have the business that we envision or dream of for ourselves.

Amelia [00:45:22] So, I hope you'll come to The Refresh. I hope I've convinced you [laughs] with that— have given you some clarity about why that's what I decided to teach. You know, I didn't want to just offer another, "How to leave social media workshop" to wrap up this season, I wanted to offer something much more integrated and integrative and just like, deeper, and softer together. That's all I want. So, that's it for me today.

Amelia [00:45:49] Thanks so much for staying tuned. As we walked through the difference between marketing and sales, how we can focus on growing our audience, nurturing our community, and selling our offerings. My recap and review of our top ten marketing practices at Softer Sounds from the first half of the year and the new creative experiments that I'm planning for the second half of the year.

Amelia [00:46:10] I love having these conversations with you, and I'm a little sad that Season One of the podcast is coming to an end.

Amelia [00:46:18] In next week's episode, I will share— well, I will answer all of your questions [laughs] and I will announce our giveaway winner for our lucky listener who's going to win an Instead Deck because they submitted a question over the course of Season One. So, all of that will come up next week.

Amelia [00:46:37] Between now and then [outro music begins to play], grab that Leaving Social Media Toolkit. Sign up for The Refresh.

Amelia [00:46:44] And until then, y'all. I'll see you off the grid. Bye.

Amelia [00:46:55] [Outro music continues] Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Find links and resources in the show notes and don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig. That's softersounds dot studio slash b-y-e-i-g.

Amelia [00:47:11] This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Purple Planet and our logo is by n'atelier Studio.

Amelia [00:47:17] If you'd like to make a podcast of your own, we'd love to help. Find more about our services at softersounds.studio. Until next time, we'll see you off the grid.