Welcome to another enlightening episode of Your Digital Marketing Coach. I'm your host, Neal Schaffer, and today we're diving into the exciting world of marketing automation to help level up your digital business. Today we have a sponsored episode with our special guest, Amanda Northcutt of Level Up Creators, brings her extensive expertise in digital recurring revenue models to demystify marketing automation and share strategies for exponential growth.
In this episode, "Marketing Automation Simplified: How to Level Up Your Digital Business," Amanda unveils the secrets behind successful email sequences, the significance of serving with a sales mindset, and the transformative power of automating customer interactions. Whether you're a small business or on the cusp of hitting seven figures, you'll learn why marketing automation is your untapped asset, operating tirelessly to connect, serve, and elevate your customer's journey.
Prepare to challenge misconceptions as we discuss the accessible future of AI in marketing automation, the strategic shift from one-to-one to one-to-many sales approaches, and the importance of building trust through each stage of that automated journey. Further, we'll delve into the critical step of mapping customer experiences and using data-driven insights to fine-tune your marketing automation efforts for maximum impact and sustainable growth.
Tune in to learn how to leverage marketing automation to not only solve your customer's most pressing problems but also to guide them lovingly through their buying journey, increasing conversions, customer lifetime value, and referrals. Let's simplify the complex and make marketing automation your powerhouse for success. Now, let's get started!
Guest Information
Learn More:
- Join My Digital First Mastermind: https://nealschaffer.com/membership/
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00:00:01
Speaker 1: Marketing automation, it doesn't have to be a maze of
00:00:04
complexity. Imagine transforming your digital business with a
00:00:07
24-7 automated sales force that elegantly guides each customer
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through a personalized journey, skyrocketing your sales and
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streamlining your processes. What if the key to unlocking
00:00:18
this potential was in the understanding of a few simple
00:00:22
strategies and tools? We'll be diving into these secrets with
00:00:26
expert Amanda Northcutt, who will simplify the world of email
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sequences, lead magnets and customer trust. Don't miss the
00:00:33
insights to level up to a profitable, sustainable digital
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empire with the ease of automation. So stay tuned to
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this next episode of the Digital Marketing Coach Podcast.
00:01:10
Speaker 2: You've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer
00:01:15
is your digital marketing coach, helping you grow your business
00:01:22
with digital first marketing, one episode at a time. This is
00:01:27
your digital marketing coach and this is Neil Schaefer.
00:01:33
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, this is Neil Schaefer, your digital
00:01:36
marketing coach, and welcome to episode number 359 of the
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podcast. I'm going to get you on to the interview with Amanda
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shortly, but I'd like to start out with an update on, well,
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what is new in digital marketing , as well as the updates from
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neilschaefercom. So I'm sure that you have all heard of, and
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I've already published an episode about, the Google
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Helpful Content Update, but it is the second time in six months
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where Google has unveiled a new update and, man, there have been
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a lot of sites that have been de-indexed. I know that a lot of
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blogs that relied on advertising revenue have really tanked. I
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know of one specific website in the marketing space that curated
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a lot of content and wrote a lot of articles about marketing.
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They no longer exist. So Google is clearly very, very serious.
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It appears, thankfully, that those websites that were using
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AI to generate 80, 90 to 100% of their blog content that added no
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real value. Those sites, apparently, are now gone. Now,
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obviously, it depends on the industry, but I just want to let
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you know that when there is a change whether it is a Facebook
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algorithm, whether it is a new email spam law or GDPR you got
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to roll the punches and I just want to share with you I already
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talked about in that podcast episode about the Google Helpful
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Content Update how I was aligning.
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I realized with this latest change that Google is still
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looking at this whole EEAT right Experience, expertise, authority
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and trustworthiness and, yes, they want content that was made
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for humans, that provides value to humans, but they also want
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those other things. And I realized I never had a mailing
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address on my website, I never had a phone number on my website
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and I never had a cookie consent form on my website, which I'm a
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little bit embarrassed to say. And I decided you know what it's
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time to get. If I'm trying to compete with the HubSpots and
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the SproutSocials and the Hootsuite for traffic, then I
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have to have, as corporate of an entity of trustworthiness that a
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big brand has, no matter how small your business is, and that
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is what I have been spending time on, a lot of time on,
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actually, over the past few weeks. I've also just come to
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the conclusion that, with the Google Helpful Content Update, I
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just completely eliminated pop-ups from all mobile display
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of my content. Similarly, I always had these internal ads,
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as well as some Google AdSense, running inside a blog post. I
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just completely shut those off this week. Obviously, a lot of
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the sites that got burned were overly aggressive with
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advertising. They were using ad networks who were aggressive in
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displaying ads, and Google just used a spam right. So, anyway,
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we rolled the punches and that has been top of mind over the
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past few weeks. So, hey, if you're facing a drop in traffic,
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reach out to me. I'd love to help you and just share with you
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what I've done to help mitigate those risks for the future.
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For a personal update, I continue making progress on the
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book. I know I've been talking about it for a while, but I am
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just one, just final proofread. One thing that I'm going to do
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this time is actually do an audio read of the book. I have
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been using various proofreading tools and I just want to make
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sure it still sounds human, which, when you edit a book down
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, it sometimes loses that human connection. So I have an audio
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read to come. There's a lot of words that I
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use. This is getting really in the weeds, technical, but there
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are a lot of words that I use that I capitalize, and should
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those be capitalized or not? And if they are, they need to be
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consistent, but should they be? And I tend to capitalize a lot
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of concepts, but it may not be appropriate to do so, so that's
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another thing that I am looking at. I'm also seeing is there any
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other data that I reference that I do not have a source. That is
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obviously a best practice to make sure you have a source for
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every single piece of data that you refer to, and I think I
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caught them all, but when I was proofreading I noticed I didn't
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catch one, so I want to do another firm proofread. In other
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words, ladies and gentlemen, I am really trying to create a
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book that is of the highest quality possible, because I know
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that the higher the quality of the book, the more it will sell,
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pure and easy. If you buy a book , if you read a book and it's of
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low quality, you're not going to share it with your friends. But
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if you think it's of high quality and you write a good
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review and you share it with a friend or two, that is how
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that's how it works, right, it's customer experience, but it's
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from the book reader perspective that I am just really locked and
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loaded on. I am also continuing to work on
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the accompanying workbook. It's going to be a hundred page
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workbook of very, very specific exercises that will handhold you
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through implementing all of my teaching. I am really excited
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about this workbook. Working with an educational or I should
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say instructional design consultant, we have come up with
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probably over a hundred exercises. Each exercise is a
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paid, so they're not all going to make the final workbook, but
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I'm just waiting for the revisions of the last half,
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which are in my design consultant's boat, and then we
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will start the process of deciding which exercises that we
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are going to finalize on. So that is coming together real
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nicely. All I need then, after the final
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proofread is done, is to get permission from people that are
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interviewed, like on this podcast, to make sure that
00:06:40
they're okay with me using the content in the book, and then it
00:06:43
will be off to the formatter where I will be able to design
00:06:46
advanced reading copies to be able to send out to influencers
00:06:49
and other authors. And if you're an influencer or another author
00:06:51
and you'd like to get hands on that advanced reading copy and
00:06:54
maybe have a chance to provide a quote that I could put in the
00:06:57
book, that would also help promote you as well, feel free
00:07:00
to reach out to me. Neilshaffercom, slash contact,
00:07:03
or neil at neilshaffercom the real Neil. You knew that any a l
00:07:07
. All right, so we are going to
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get on now to the interview that I had with Amanda Northcott, and
00:07:12
, since I've interviewed her, her company, and you know we
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talk about marketing automation. I have a dedicated chapter in my
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upcoming book about marketing automation. It is that important
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. So her service, her company, is all about helping content
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creators develop a business, and , as part of that, marketing
00:07:30
automation is key. When we interviewed, though, I said look
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, I know that your company focuses on content creators, but
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they're also entrepreneurs, they're also small business
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owners. That should apply to anyone listening to this podcast
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and, of course, if you work in a larger organization, you're a
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marketer. You should be doing marketing automation. So, since
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we talked, she has really, and she's the CEO of level up
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creators. We level up creatorscom, by the
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way, they are the sponsor of this episode, and I am very
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selective as to who I allowed a sponsor, but I was so impressed
00:08:01
by the high quality of their product and the true value that
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they're offering. I mean, if you're a content creator, who do
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you go to to help? You know, let me give you, like the tagline on
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their website. Your knowledge plus our business expertise, we
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help you achieve sustainable recurring income that lets you
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live a life you love. Anyway, they have various packages that
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you can look at on their website . You know ConvertKit, which I'm
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a big fan of. They have some membership sites, sales funnel,
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email list. I really like how they have this productized
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approach, coaching packages, so I do hope that you'll check them
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out, but, more importantly, I hope that you'll listen to the
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interview. So, without any further ado, as I like to say,
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here is my interview with Amanda Northcut.
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Speaker 2: You're listening to your digital marketing coach.
00:08:43
This is Neil Schaefer.
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Speaker 1: There are many skills that small businesses,
00:08:52
entrepreneurs and content creators need to understand when
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it comes to digital marketing. One of those core skills that
00:09:00
may not be as sexy as how to create your latest TikTok video
00:09:04
or YouTube thumbnail is the topic of marketing automation.
00:09:07
This is so critical that in my new book that I am still writing
00:09:12
but making progress on, I have a dedicated chapter on marketing
00:09:15
automation, because I think it is one of these essential
00:09:17
components of any digital first marketing strategy. That's what
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I'm really excited today to have a special guest on, where we're
00:09:25
going to dive deep into marketing automation. And really
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the concept here is we're going to simplify your understanding
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of it. I know for many there's a lot of misconceptions. It takes
00:09:35
a lot of time, you know. Does my software support it? There are
00:09:39
many ways to think about it. Today we're going to simplify it
00:09:42
so that when you leave, after listening or watching this
00:09:46
podcast episode, you will have a pretty clear roadmap as to how
00:09:51
to achieve whatever you want to achieve with your marketing
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automation. So today's special guest is the
00:09:57
co-founder and CEO of a very, very unique company called Level
00:10:02
Up Creators, Amanda Northcott. Level Up Creators is unique and
00:10:07
I'll have Amanda introduce herself, as well, as they are a
00:10:10
professional service firm that helps creators. So the creator
00:10:15
economy is a business. Whether you are a small business and
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entrepreneur or an entrepreneur who calls themselves a content
00:10:21
creator, it is a business. There are many things you need to do,
00:10:24
and building a list and utilizing marketing automation
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is one of those core, critical things that can help impact your
00:10:30
business in a major way. So, without further ado, let's bring
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on Amanda. Amanda, welcome to the your Digital Marketing Coach
00:10:37
podcast.
00:10:38
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Neil. I'm glad to be here. Thank
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you for having me today.
00:10:42
Speaker 1: It is an honor to have you. I just introduced you
00:10:45
myself, but I guess I'd give you the opportunity to correct my
00:10:49
introduction of you. More importantly, how did you come up
00:10:52
? What prompted you to create this very, very unique type of
00:10:57
company to support creators as if they were small businesses
00:11:01
and provide them these professional services?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for asking. So I started in the
00:11:08
digital recurring revenue space back in 2005. So I started in
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collegiate sports marketing back when online subscriptions were
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just kind of in their infancy and I had such an amazing
00:11:20
opportunity to work with a group of guys at techsagscom and built
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out kind of a cash cow within that business model, selling
00:11:30
sponsorships to companies who wanted to reach those fans and
00:11:33
helping with our subscription model where we were selling
00:11:36
information about Texas A&M University sports and man, there
00:11:40
are some seriously rabid fans and so we had again this is kind
00:11:45
of early days obviously post like the crash of 99 and
00:11:48
everything but early days of digital subscriptions, and I
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just had a great opportunity to get my well kind of thrown into
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the deep end. Honestly, I was the second employee there and
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helped build out the whole membership community thing and
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figured out kind of the monetization formula for these
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online recurring revenue businesses and that kind of led
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to consulting for other businesses along a similar vein
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and one thing led to another and ended up just doing consulting
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and then fractional executive gigs between now and then, which
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it's been, you know, 15, 20 years and oh yeah, we are coming
00:12:25
up on 20 years, it's almost 2024 . So my path has been an
00:12:29
extremely nonlinear journey. I am a subject matter expert
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within, like digital businesses with an emphasis on recurring
00:12:36
revenue, like membership mastermind and things like that,
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and you know, I'm just long on creators at this point.
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I believe that creators are the future of direct to consumer
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businesses, and creators have this very unique opportunity to
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engender a great deal of trust and brand affinity with them
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through direct interactions on social media and in our inboxes
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I mean, we have our emails email addresses to very, very few
00:13:01
brands and creators have a unique opportunity to capture
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those from us and continue to provide value in so many
00:13:07
different ways. So I've helped a lot of big
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companies make a lot of money, frankly, over the last 10 years,
00:13:15
and I feel in my bones that I needed a big shift and I wanted
00:13:20
to shift to helping women and people from traditionally
00:13:23
marginalized groups create generational wealth, and I feel
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like the way to do that is to help creators, who are these
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people across all walks of life who have demonstrable subject
00:13:35
matter expertise, who have engendered these amazing
00:13:39
connections with their communities, massive communities
00:13:42
online and I feel like those people deserve a shot, and so my
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team and I, who are the most amazing business operators on
00:13:49
planet Earth are bringing all of our B2B business skills to
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creators to help them truly level up and build businesses
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with digital and physical product suites, and using
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marketing automation Hint Hint to make that all kind of like
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work together and build wildly profitable, successful
00:14:07
businesses based on their subject matter expertise.
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Speaker 1: That's a pretty incredible story, amanda. So you
00:14:14
were working on subscription based revenue models and
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membership revenue models. What year was that? Approximately?
00:14:22
Started in 05. Okay, I thought that was the
00:14:24
case. You've been working on these things when they were very
00:14:27
much in their infancy, so I see that you've seen them grow and
00:14:31
it's extremely applicable to the creator space. Totally agree,
00:14:35
and I love that you talk about how your business operators
00:14:37
because most you know, whether you're a content creator or
00:14:40
another entrepreneur or business owner you, when it comes to
00:14:43
marketing, there is this operational efficiency,
00:14:46
operational excellence, that will make or break your business
00:14:49
, or make them successful or not as successful as they could be.
00:14:52
They'll really appreciate the. You know everything that you're
00:14:55
doing. I want to go a little bit deeper into the topic of today,
00:14:59
which is marketing automation, and when I asked you for your
00:15:02
advice on what we would talk about today, you said the first
00:15:05
thing is let's reframe our thinking around marketing
00:15:09
automation. So what did you mean by that? Are we wired
00:15:13
differently to think about it? Are we not thinking about it
00:15:15
enough, or what's your take?
00:15:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, my take is that I guess what I hear from a lot
00:15:20
of businesses is our business owners, small business owners in
00:15:23
particular is that marketing automation feels icky, it is far
00:15:28
too complicated, it's not personal enough, the technical
00:15:32
hurdles are far too great to overcome to implement it. My
00:15:35
business, you know, basically just this kind of POV, that it's
00:15:38
not for me kind of a thing, and I wanted to spell that myth for
00:15:43
sure and help small business owners and creators understand
00:15:47
that it is for you. It's a phenomenal level to be able to
00:15:51
pull and there's a lot of rewards to be had with it and
00:15:54
you can do it in a way that continues to create trust and
00:15:59
value to your audience again, without feeling icky.
00:16:03
Speaker 1: So, based on that, I guess, when business people
00:16:07
understand the value that something can bring them, they
00:16:11
will start to do it. When you see the ROI, you'll start to do
00:16:13
it right. So, when it comes to marketing automation, what are
00:16:16
the things that you'd like to talk about of what it can do for
00:16:19
businesses, or what you want people to think it can help do
00:16:22
for their business? I think you already mentioned a few, but are
00:16:24
there any others that you would mention?
00:16:27
Speaker 3: Yeah well, try and think of marketing automation as
00:16:29
sort of like the behind the scenes automated sales force
00:16:33
working for you around the clock I mean really 24-7, 365. And I
00:16:36
don't actually even I feel like marketing automation at this
00:16:38
point is even a misnomer. It's sales automation on a certain
00:16:43
level. I'm not talking about B2B enterprise businesses who have
00:16:47
full stack marketing teams and SDRs and account executives and
00:16:51
things like that. I'm talking specifically about SMB and
00:16:54
Creator First businesses. And so a thoughtful marketing
00:16:59
automation machine or sales automation machine will
00:17:01
literally connect every digital touch point you have with your
00:17:05
customers and prospective customers social media and email
00:17:08
with a backend tool or two, and those tools are carefully
00:17:12
configured to take your community of followers on a
00:17:14
thoughtful customer journey that leads to purchases or whatever
00:17:18
you're asking them to do, whatever the CTA is, and that
00:17:20
can be overlaid in a number of different ways.
00:17:22
But marketing automation should be thought of as a way to be
00:17:25
able to talk with your customers one-on-one At least it feels
00:17:29
like it's one-on-one to them to help them solve their struggles
00:17:32
and show up as like the trustworthy hero. Right, you're
00:17:34
the subject matter expert. You know what you're talking about.
00:17:37
The email sequences let them do those one-on-one. Let you do
00:17:41
those one-on-one conversations and demonstrate value, and it's
00:17:44
this long-term play that yields sustainable growth long-term.
00:17:48
Like you don't have time as a small business owner or a
00:17:50
creator, to talk to people one-on-one and to sell them your
00:17:53
$299 course one-on-one, I mean that's just. The road ends
00:17:58
pretty quickly on amount of time you can spend selling times, the
00:18:02
number of sales that you make, and so you need to take this
00:18:06
one-to-many approach rather than one-to-one to be successful
00:18:10
long-term.
00:18:11
Speaker 1: Got it. So one of the things you've said as we
00:18:15
prepared for the interview was having this fresh mindset right
00:18:19
down, and really this is something that our listeners and
00:18:22
viewers can do right down three things that you'd like marketing
00:18:25
automation to do for your business, and I'm assuming that
00:18:28
everyone listening would probably say increase sales,
00:18:32
obviously, I guess increase relationships with people that
00:18:37
have subscribed to my list, and what would be? What are some of
00:18:42
the other popular things that you see when you talk to
00:18:45
creators and businesses of what they are using marketing
00:18:48
automation for?
00:18:50
Speaker 3: Yeah Well, marketing automation should just be fuel
00:18:54
on the fire of what you already have going, and you always want
00:18:56
to start with first things first in business, and you always want
00:18:59
to think from a customer's perspective. How are they
00:19:01
perceiving this? What are you doing for them? It is all about
00:19:04
them. It is not about you business owner or creator, sorry
00:19:07
. It is about you identifying problems that you can solve for
00:19:12
your audience and reverse engineering a way to solve them
00:19:16
in a one to many approach again, as opposed to that one to one
00:19:20
high touch approach. And if you are able to consistently solve
00:19:24
people's problems, that turns into this self-perpetuating
00:19:29
flywheel of maximizing conversion rates, customer
00:19:32
lifetime value so that's how much people pay you on average
00:19:35
over time referrals and things like that. And so you've got to
00:19:38
think about, in terms of top three things you would want
00:19:40
marketing automation to do for you is well, what can I do for
00:19:43
my customers? What are the top three problems that I can solve
00:19:47
for my customers? What am I bringing to the table? And
00:19:50
that's what you want your marketing automation to do for
00:19:53
you, and a lot of that's going to be along the way building
00:19:56
trust, because trust is the great risk reducer, I feel like,
00:20:01
and when we are making purchases we want our risk to be reduced
00:20:05
as much as possible so that we feel comfortable and affirmed in
00:20:08
our purchase right, and if that trust exists between a person
00:20:13
and a brand, they're going to be able to make that initial
00:20:15
purchase with a great deal of confidence.
00:20:17
And then you can use marketing automation to help them make
00:20:19
other purchases to solve more problems and therefore
00:20:22
furthering that flywheel and maximizing that customer
00:20:25
lifetime value, helping your ability to capture referrals and
00:20:29
then put those referrals and ask for referrals, get testimonials
00:20:32
as well and then inject those testimonials back into your
00:20:35
marketing and again just feeds the flywheel, feeds the flywheel
00:20:39
and eventually you want to end up with a suite of digital
00:20:43
products and services sometimes physical products as well that
00:20:46
your marketing automation can help kind of guide your
00:20:48
customers, help them bounce from one thing to the next as it is
00:20:53
best for your customer. And so sophisticated marketing
00:20:57
automation this is kind of taking it to another level you
00:21:00
can implement all sorts of tags and things like that and help
00:21:04
segment your audience to better understand their preferences
00:21:07
over time, based on the type of emails they open, the type of
00:21:11
links that they click on inside of emails, and so you can track
00:21:14
behavior and further curtail the marketing automation that the
00:21:19
customer is receiving based on their preferences. So it becomes
00:21:22
even more specific and even more relevant and you're able to
00:21:27
again sell more, get more testimonials, feed the
00:21:31
testimonials back into the flywheel and keep going. That
00:21:33
was a long answer to your very short question, but if I can
00:21:37
help someone understand how to think about this, they're going
00:21:39
to come up with the best answer right, as opposed to like
00:21:42
feeding an answer.
00:21:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I thought that was awesome because you
00:21:45
focus really on not just the customer but also their pain
00:21:50
point how can I help solve their problem? And in doing so, that's
00:21:53
how you're building up the trust . That's how you're building. I
00:21:55
guess you can get people to somehow subscribe to your email
00:21:59
list, but if they tune out your communications, your
00:22:02
communications of no value. Therefore, if you begin with
00:22:05
that, focus on how can I go further and help me know I'm
00:22:08
assuming that that leads to a lot of educational content,
00:22:11
perhaps at the beginning, but once we get them on, and I think
00:22:15
the next thing we should be talking about is this concept of
00:22:18
the customer journey and the customer journey.
00:22:21
You had already sorted a hint at it. Where do we want to lead
00:22:24
people on this journey? But by solving the problems and getting
00:22:27
them to engage with our communications, we can then
00:22:30
begin to really bring them anywhere we want to, obviously,
00:22:34
or guide them. I should say we can't force them to do anything,
00:22:37
and I know from clients that I've worked with that have these
00:22:40
, you know, basically, okay, when someone subscribed to our
00:22:43
list, you know, based on their interest, where do we want to
00:22:45
take them, what products or services, what education, et
00:22:48
cetera. So I'm assuming that's what it is. But since you do
00:22:50
this for a living, I'm assuming you have a better way of
00:22:51
explaining it. How would you explain for the you know, the
00:22:56
people that think that marketing automation is somewhat icky or
00:22:58
it's a lot. How can we, you know , I don't want to say dumb down
00:23:02
necessarily, but make them embrace this concept of the
00:23:05
customer journey and how it could be digitally mapped out
00:23:08
with marketing automation?
00:23:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, let's, I guess, break it down to some
00:23:13
more practical examples. So social media is probably at the
00:23:17
top of everyone's funnel, so to speak. That's where people find
00:23:21
you, whether they've been referred from another social
00:23:23
media account, or someone finds me because I'm on your podcast,
00:23:27
neil, for instance. So this is a top of funnel space. And so if
00:23:32
you can move people from your social media account to an email
00:23:36
list, you're moving that audience from rented to owned
00:23:41
and then you're not so subject to social media algorithms,
00:23:45
changes in ownership of major social media platforms and rule
00:23:49
changes and all sorts of things like that.
00:23:51
And so if you can start with the right offer to the right person
00:23:56
at the right time in the right way on social media to get them
00:23:59
to jump over to your newsletter by offering something of value
00:24:03
or well, I'll come back to lead magnets in a minute but if you
00:24:07
can get someone to sign up on your newsletter and then commit
00:24:09
to consistently engaging with your community of followers who
00:24:14
have signed up to receive your newsletter, probably on a weekly
00:24:17
or bi-weekly basis, and show up and provide value over time,
00:24:22
that's a great way to start with this whole concept of an email
00:24:25
list and something that will enable you to use marketing
00:24:28
automation and I certainly would encourage you. I mean, like
00:24:30
first piece of marketing automation you could put in
00:24:32
place, here is the newsletter sign up, and I would recommend
00:24:36
ConvertKit for this for anyone getting going. They've kind of
00:24:39
got the drill down there and they'll kind of grow with you as
00:24:42
well.
00:24:43
Speaker 1: Big ConvertKit Pem.
00:24:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, get people to sign up for your newsletter, and
00:24:47
your first automation could be a welcome email, and it's just a
00:24:50
hey, welcome, I'm so glad you're here. Here's what you can expect
00:24:53
from me, and here's an additional little bit of value
00:24:56
that you can have right now, immediately, and then be
00:24:59
consistent in communicating with your list. And the next piece of
00:25:03
marketing automation that I would recommend is what's called
00:25:06
a lead magnet. I'm sure a lot of your listeners are already very,
00:25:09
very familiar with the lead magnet, but it's simply a piece
00:25:12
of collateral that someone will give you their email address in
00:25:16
exchange for, and so this could be a top 10 list, a white paper,
00:25:20
an industry report, a guide, an e-book, anything like that
00:25:24
anything you're offering for free in exchange for an email
00:25:27
address, and so ConvertKit allows for this as well. They'll
00:25:30
set up a really cool landing page and you put your lead
00:25:33
magnet offer up there. Someone and you direct people from
00:25:36
social media to that landing page and they provide their
00:25:39
email address, and then whatever cool thing you offered them
00:25:42
shows up in their inbox immediately. And then, typically
00:25:46
, you want to associate a lead magnet with something you want
00:25:50
your customers or your new email subscribers, I should say to
00:25:53
actually buy. And so if you are creating a
00:25:56
course, for instance on, we'll use Aaron Francis
00:26:01
screencastingcom. So everybody should check out
00:26:04
screencastingcom. That's where all my cool lights came from and
00:26:07
all the ideas for my AV set up too. But we'll use Aaron as a
00:26:11
good example because he's a great guy. So Aaron put out this
00:26:14
course and his lead magnet was here's several videos from the
00:26:19
course, right? So you give me your email address, I'll give
00:26:21
you access to several of my videos. And then there was an
00:26:25
email automation happening in the background where people who
00:26:29
gave their email address, they immediately got access to a
00:26:32
couple of the course videos. And then there were just three or
00:26:36
four emails that went from the time that someone gave their
00:26:40
email address to the course launch. And so those emails
00:26:44
helped again in Gender Trust promote the value offered within
00:26:49
screencastingcom and highlighted outcomes and value, not just
00:26:53
features. Right Of you know here's the tactical stuff you're
00:26:56
going to get within this course, but here's the transformation
00:26:59
that you are going to undergo after you purchase the course
00:27:02
and watch the videos, right. And so that lead magnet got people
00:27:08
in a funnel. They raised their hands and said, hey, I'm
00:27:11
interested. And he provided consistent value over time via
00:27:16
email that ended up with a whole lot of people purchasing his
00:27:20
course, because he was able to demonstrate value, create more
00:27:23
trust and people felt like, oh, okay, I believe this guy you
00:27:28
know he's obviously put a lot of effort into it he's
00:27:30
demonstrating that through these emails that I've allowed for him
00:27:32
to put into my inbox and I'm going to pull out my credit card
00:27:35
and go for it. So that would be like a lead magnet to purchase
00:27:40
automation. And then the number three one
00:27:42
that I think people should start with is a post purchase
00:27:45
automation, also called onboarding, and so an onboarding
00:27:49
sequence you could call it would be like okay, I bought it, I got
00:27:52
a quick confirmation, I know that my credit card did not just
00:27:55
get swallowed up by the internet , and so Aaron has let me know
00:27:59
that you have, I have successfully made my purchase,
00:28:02
and then a couple of days later, an email might include like hey,
00:28:06
have you started your course videos yet? Here's what you can
00:28:08
expect. And then here's my top 10 equipment recommendations
00:28:11
kind of a thing. And so your onboarding sequence would help
00:28:15
people get the most value out of the thing that they have already
00:28:17
purchased, which is super important for getting
00:28:20
testimonials and helping them purchase your future products
00:28:24
and services right? So does that kind of like bring it to life?
00:28:28
I'm not sure if that's what you were going for, but yeah, no, I
00:28:31
mean it does.
00:28:32
Speaker 1: And I love the explanation of begins. This is
00:28:36
almost how I'm structuring this section of my book, because it
00:28:39
begins with a lead magnet because you need to build the
00:28:41
list, but after that comes the automation. And then after that
00:28:44
comes some advanced automation, some things you already referred
00:28:46
to tagging, triggered based communication, what have you.
00:28:49
But what I love is that you paint it all in the picture of
00:28:52
this relationship with the customer, whether they have
00:28:55
never purchased from you before or they did purchase. And really
00:28:58
strategically thinking about these things, I think there
00:29:01
might be a lot of small businesses or creators that,
00:29:03
okay, I need a lead magnet, I need to build a list, but they
00:29:06
don't strategically construct that welcome email sequence
00:29:11
because that's when they're probably going to get the best
00:29:13
open rate and first impressions matter. Right.
00:29:16
And also, after the lead magnet, where do you want to lead people
00:29:19
? I mean, there's, you know, lead magnets to get leads, but
00:29:22
it's also, you know, leading in terms of guiding and what
00:29:25
direction. If we're going to build a sequence of a few emails
00:29:27
, how does that fit into our products and services? How do we
00:29:30
guide them along the line? And then, as you mentioned, which I
00:29:34
thought was awesome as well. A lot of people don't talk about
00:29:36
is the onboarding sequence how do we turn them from customer to
00:29:40
advocate or get them to buy other products? And I believe
00:29:42
this is all part of this huge customer journey map, but it's
00:29:46
really thinking strategically and holistically about that
00:29:50
target persona avatar, where they are and how what you do,
00:29:55
what you offer, is going to help them. So I think, even though
00:29:58
and I think you'd agree, amanda that marketing automation seems
00:30:01
this extremely technical aspect, it actually requires a lot of
00:30:04
creativity to go through all that and then to be able to
00:30:07
craft the specific emails, the timing, to be able to really
00:30:11
nail it down. I'm curious, and obviously you know level up
00:30:15
creators. I'm assuming this is part of what you do for creators
00:30:17
, but is there any additional advice outside of what you just
00:30:20
said, based on you know my take that you would offer you know,
00:30:24
whether they're creators or entrepreneurs or business owners
00:30:27
of how to go about sort of crafting this so that they can
00:30:30
embrace it and not think, oh gosh, another icky thing I need
00:30:33
to do.
00:30:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, that's a big question. I think again, I
00:30:38
would encourage you to put yourself in your customer's
00:30:40
shoes. We're going to start small here. You don't need to go
00:30:43
in and be like I'm going to sign up for Active Campaign, which is
00:30:46
a super robust, amazing marketing automation tool. You
00:30:48
know it's probably not the best place to start.
00:30:50
if you're doing this yourself yeah, so go sign up for a free
00:30:54
ConvertKit account. And as you're doing that, most
00:30:59
importantly again, you're thinking about what problems can
00:31:01
I solve for my community of followers, and you need to put
00:31:06
yourself in their shoes and think about where are they right
00:31:09
now, where do they want to be in terms of okay, the problem is
00:31:12
now solved, and what's keeping them from getting there right?
00:31:16
What's standing between your follower and them purchasing
00:31:18
your course or joining your membership or your mastermind or
00:31:22
whatever it may be? And start thinking about what
00:31:26
those roadblocks actually are, put some context and color to
00:31:28
them, write them down and these are going to be like your most
00:31:31
common objections, if you're talking about, like a
00:31:34
traditional, you know, selling relationships, and so if you can
00:31:36
identify what's keeping someone in your community from
00:31:40
purchasing your course, you can really methodically and
00:31:44
strategically and simply address those things within a sequence
00:31:48
of emails that's, you know, starts with again that lead
00:31:51
magnet uptake leading to course purchase, and maybe it's just a
00:31:54
three email sequence and you are , again, strategically, kind of
00:31:59
knocking down each one of these barriers that standing between
00:32:03
you know where a follower is now and them actually making the
00:32:07
purchase, and so you want to Nurture those leads by both
00:32:11
again demonstrating that you can solve their problem. You're
00:32:13
overcoming their objections and and letting them know that
00:32:17
you've got their back. You're here with them, you're here to
00:32:19
support them. So you're engineering trust, your
00:32:21
overcoming objections, you're instilling the value that you
00:32:24
have in the product that you are selling and Overcoming
00:32:28
objections.
00:32:28
Speaker 1: I may have already said that, but I guess it's
00:32:31
almost like having a virtual Conversation with a potential.
00:32:34
If they were in the room with you, how would you guide the
00:32:37
conversation? What would be the two or three things that you
00:32:39
would probably that would come up as part of the conversation,
00:32:41
right, and maybe that's an even easier way of thinking about it.
00:32:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that and that's really stage advice for
00:32:47
marketing is if you were Talk to one person this is that's the
00:32:51
whole concept of like an ICP, your customer avatar or target
00:32:54
audience. You think about one person, you fully kind of flesh
00:32:56
out Demographic, psychographic information about them and then
00:33:00
all everything that you write is to that one person. So it would
00:33:04
probably be convenient if your best friend would be like a
00:33:06
potential customer of yours and so you could pretend that you
00:33:09
are sitting there having a conversation with your best
00:33:10
friend. What questions would they have that may be standing
00:33:14
in the way of them making a purchase? And so think about the
00:33:18
key points that would come up in that Conversation, how you would
00:33:21
address those to kind of reduce risk, reduce barrier to entry
00:33:25
and increase confidence in what you're selling.
00:33:27
And Once you kind of have that outline, you can put that into
00:33:31
three emails. They need to be short and sweet. People do not
00:33:34
read much in emails and you really have to grab them at the
00:33:36
top of the email, for sure. And if you're not good at this or if
00:33:40
you hate writing or if you're really not sure and I'm sure
00:33:42
you've got 14 things to do on your list today there's a lot
00:33:46
of people out there who can help you with this. But again,
00:33:49
convert kit they have actually a lot of templates and Help and
00:33:53
supplemental materials to kind of get you up and going for
00:33:56
those more entry-level email automations. And so, again, a
00:34:00
total plug for them. And If you just want it completely, 100%
00:34:04
done for you, that's exactly what my team does. I mean from
00:34:07
Strategic implementation, we're going to guide you through
00:34:10
making this customer journey, helping you figure out what kind
00:34:12
of problems you can solve for your community of followers, and
00:34:15
then we'll reverse engineer the process of solving those with a
00:34:19
suite of products and services and Do all the heavy lifting so
00:34:22
that you can just create cool stuff. So, yeah, I think Taking
00:34:27
it one step at a time is super important if you're going to go
00:34:29
at it alone and know that there's a whole lot of content
00:34:31
and you know a one-to-many help out there available for you to
00:34:35
get for free and Try not to overwhelm yourself. Like you,
00:34:40
you are the expert you can help your followers, and so if you
00:34:43
take this posture of Service and helping others, it's a lot less
00:34:49
intimidating, because then that you take the pressure off of oh,
00:34:53
I've got a cell. I hate sales. I'm really
00:34:55
uncomfortable with this, but if you can solve problems for
00:34:59
people and you're helping people and that truly is the posture
00:35:02
that you're showing up with, I Think that pressure should you
00:35:06
know, drain from your body literally. If you're really
00:35:10
showing up to help, then I think it's your focus can become much
00:35:15
more clear with regard to what you would need to say to someone
00:35:18
to show that you truly do care About them and that you are here
00:35:21
to help and that this really awesome thing that you made
00:35:24
Really really is going to help them. I think that's the mental
00:35:27
aspect of this, if you can kind of turn that on its head From oh
00:35:31
my god, I have to sell. I hate selling, selling too. I'm here
00:35:34
to help. Here's how I can help. I think that's probably a
00:35:37
prerequisite to everything we've said thus far. Interference
00:35:41
approach.
00:35:41
Speaker 1: That's almost like a separate podcast episode, isn't
00:35:43
it the mindset of sales getting over imposter syndrome, etc, etc
00:35:47
. But I think that concept of and I try to do this my own
00:35:50
business, but really serving others, because if you come to
00:35:53
serve you're not, it's a natural sale, you're serving right. Yeah
00:35:57
, and you had already answered this. But just to confirm so,
00:35:59
when people think about these sequences, they don't need to
00:36:01
overthink them. You mentioned three emails. I know that and
00:36:04
once again, if people search on Google they're gonna find lots
00:36:06
of different formulas a lot of experts have thrown out there,
00:36:10
but you know, the normal advice I've seen is three to five
00:36:12
emails. Is their particular. Obviously it depends on the
00:36:15
person, their, their ICP, what have you? But would you say
00:36:18
three to five is sort of the sweet spot, or just keep it
00:36:20
short at three?
00:36:22
Speaker 3: Three to five is completely fine, especially if
00:36:24
you're keeping the emails pretty short.
00:36:26
But it depends, honestly on what you're selling and so, again, if
00:36:30
you can just kind of outline that pretend conversation and
00:36:32
see what comes up, that will probably provide an answer for
00:36:35
you and how many emails it should be, and Kind of depends
00:36:40
on how close you are to a launch of a specific product, for
00:36:42
instance. But I'm a very efficient person. I'm very big
00:36:45
on efficiency and standard operating procedures and things
00:36:47
like that, and so I think a newsletter and a lead magnet or
00:36:51
what ends up being a suite of lead magnets, is a really
00:36:55
strategic move for a creator or a small business owner to make.
00:36:58
But we're always like recommending having a newsletter
00:37:02
out there to Capture people whenever they want more
00:37:05
information from you. They can grab, you know, they can sign up
00:37:08
to receive your newsletter. But then if you're creating lead
00:37:10
magnets, we want to do that with like a great deal of intention.
00:37:13
Where you got the lead magnet, therefore, you're clearly
00:37:16
showing intent and I'm gonna send you a three to five email
00:37:19
sequence leading up to the launch or Post launch.
00:37:22
Speaker 1: Just you know, a regular, evergreen sale of
00:37:24
whatever this corresponding product or service is yeah, I
00:37:28
also sometimes have very, very long sequences, but they're less
00:37:31
about selling a specific product and more about building trust.
00:37:35
So obviously, if you want to focus on selling something
00:37:38
that's directly related to that lead magnet, you want to keep it
00:37:42
fresh of mine, top of mine, and if you wait too long, you know
00:37:45
maybe their need changes or they forget about their needs. So I
00:37:47
think the three to five is is great advice. So you know,
00:37:51
hopefully people have come away of the value of marketing
00:37:54
automation. I'm how to think about it in terms of that
00:37:57
customer journey serving, solving problems, getting over
00:38:00
objections. And then those three Major
00:38:04
automations that the three initial ones, the welcome
00:38:06
sequence, the lead magnet it's not multiple lead magnets and
00:38:10
then the odd morning, if not multiple onboarding, depending
00:38:12
on the products and services they have. What would be you
00:38:16
call it the next right action step to level up your automation
00:38:20
capabilities? I'm assuming once you have these in place, you're
00:38:24
not limited just to these things and there's a lot more. That
00:38:27
obviously, really, we begin to open the Pandora's box what is
00:38:30
possible with marketing automation? So I'd love for you
00:38:32
to talk a little bit more about that, that advanced side, once
00:38:35
people feel really comfortable with this.
00:38:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the next right thing for you Well, if you
00:38:41
haven't already mapped out a customer journey, you need to do
00:38:44
that. You need to identify problems, that you can. I know
00:38:47
I've said this a million times on this 40 minutes so far, but
00:38:50
airs repeating that is the basis of all businesses.
00:38:54
We are solving problems for our customers, and the more problems
00:38:57
you can solve and the more effectively you can solve them,
00:39:00
the better off you will be. That will enable all sorts of
00:39:02
horizontal growth. That's the same customers buying Different
00:39:06
things from you over time, rather than having to find a new
00:39:09
customer every single time. I always think of cut-co-knives
00:39:12
for Vertical growth because they have like a lifetime guarantee.
00:39:15
So you're always having to find a new customer, whereas a
00:39:17
creator, a small business owner who has a great deal of trust
00:39:20
with their community of followers, we'll have a great
00:39:23
end for helping them make the first purchase. And then, if you
00:39:26
nail that and help your customer do Solve, you know you solve
00:39:30
their problem. You have a fantastic opportunity to sell
00:39:33
them the next thing and the next thing in the next thing, and
00:39:35
then their behavior, based on your marketing automation data
00:39:39
will tell you what the next thing is.
00:39:41
That's a quantitative perspective. You can also, of
00:39:43
course, get the qualitative perspective, which would be just
00:39:46
people's opinions and feedback and survey results that are, you
00:39:49
know, kind of fill in the blank stuff, and you ultimately want
00:39:52
to marry quantitative and qualitative data to further hone
00:39:56
in on or home in on your customer journey and Helping
00:40:00
people solve one problem after the other and you want them to
00:40:03
tell their friends and you want them to prompt them. You want to
00:40:05
prompt them to tell their friends through your marketing
00:40:07
automation. You want to capture the testimonials and put that
00:40:10
back into your marketing automation again. This whole
00:40:12
concept of this Virtuous cycle and this flywheel that you're
00:40:17
building. So I totally forgot the question that you originally
00:40:21
asked me. You know, I think, oh, next right, action right.
00:40:23
Speaker 1: But yeah, but you're, you're sort of in the process of
00:40:26
doing this, and what I love about this aspect of digital
00:40:29
marketing Versus when you post something out there on Instagram
00:40:32
it's here today, gone tomorrow Is that you're truly building
00:40:35
asset right, it's 24 7 and you can you continue to add to it
00:40:40
and make value of it. I think that that was where. Where I
00:40:42
wanted to go was what additional value can we get out of this
00:40:46
system once we have these, these three things in place? That's,
00:40:49
that's the direction of the question.
00:40:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the additional value to be had from
00:40:54
marketing automation is that it works for 10 people and it also
00:40:58
works for 10 people. And so, if your systems are in place,
00:41:03
when your post goes viral or some amazing creator with a huge
00:41:07
following shares something of yours and it gets a bunch of
00:41:10
traffic and your lead magnet, suddenly 4 people have
00:41:13
picked it up and one day, marketing automation can handle
00:41:16
all of that. And again, that's this huge advantage of having
00:41:20
this infrastructure laid. It's this foundation that you are
00:41:22
creating for your business for the long haul, and if you're a
00:41:25
subject matter expert or a small business owner, you probably are
00:41:28
actually a subject matter expert as well, If you're listening to
00:41:31
this and you're probably creating a lot of digital
00:41:34
products. If you're in this longterm and
00:41:37
you're building a sustainable, profitable business where a
00:41:41
flywheel can be created and generate high profit margin
00:41:45
sales for you and therefore a highly profitable business whose
00:41:48
customers stay with you for the longterm and buy a lot of stuff,
00:41:53
you're pretty good to go here. I mean, this is like the sky is
00:41:55
the limit sort of a situation. If you've identified your niche
00:41:58
on the internet and you can solve their problems
00:42:01
strategically through really awesome products and services. I
00:42:05
mean we're seeing people go from five figure businesses to seven
00:42:09
figure businesses in nine to 18 months, implementing these kinds
00:42:14
of strategies Like leave the one to one stuff behind, or that's
00:42:19
also for, like, bigger businesses, very high touch,
00:42:21
high value, high dollar sales motions. That's a totally
00:42:24
different ballgame. I came from that world and I left it for a
00:42:26
reason. I love sales. I've actually been
00:42:29
in sales since I was 16, but that is kind of not where the
00:42:34
world is going, at least with creators and small business
00:42:37
owners. You have to nail this one to many aspect of your
00:42:40
business for it to really stand the test of time.
00:42:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, I couldn't agree more and I love when every
00:42:46
week I get a you know, an update from ConvertKit. This week you
00:42:50
sent out this many tens of thousands of emails and I have a
00:42:53
weekly newsletter. That's part of it, but the automated part is
00:42:56
just great. These touch points and they're, if they're well
00:42:59
thought out. You are continuing that conversation, so I'm a huge
00:43:03
fan and I know we could probably have a separate podcast on these
00:43:07
advanced triggers and automations, above and beyond
00:43:09
what we talked about. We'll leave that for, you know,
00:43:11
potential clients years. I want to get in touch with you
00:43:13
or people that want to read my book, where I plan to cover some
00:43:15
of that. But one final question for you.
00:43:17
You sort of hinted at it, but I'm just curious because
00:43:20
marketing automation has been around, you know, when we think
00:43:23
at the enterprise level, like the Marketo's and the Pardo's,
00:43:26
more recently ConvertKit, I think every email marketing
00:43:29
software I would say even a MailChimp is trying to create
00:43:31
pretty sophisticated marketing automation. So most of these
00:43:34
inexpensive, like ConvertKit email marketing software also
00:43:37
can handle a lot of automation. What are some of the biggest
00:43:42
trends, or are there any trends that you see as we head? Or now
00:43:46
we're in 2024 by the time people listen to this. Are there any
00:43:50
trends and I'm assuming that one word we have not talked about on
00:43:55
this episode, which is the first time in more than a year, is the
00:43:58
topic of artificial intelligence and in generative AI, which I'd
00:44:02
be curious to hear your opinion on. But outside of that, are
00:44:04
there any other trends that you see in the marketing automation
00:44:07
space that we should all be aware of?
00:44:10
Speaker 3: That's a great question. I feel like I'm trying
00:44:12
to pick a category of type of trends. I mean, obviously AI is
00:44:17
a huge thing, and so getting AI to help you write your emails
00:44:20
for marketing automation is great, but ooh.
00:44:26
Speaker 1: Or maybe AI is the biggest trend and it is the
00:44:28
biggest trend for many things marketing these days.
00:44:30
Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm not seeing AI play a huge role in
00:44:35
terms of like building automations, yet I bet that's
00:44:39
next. I cannot imagine a single big marketing automation service
00:44:44
who is not, who does not have their ear to the ground and
00:44:46
trying to get their engineering team figuring out how to do that
00:44:49
and make it easier for people, cause that really is the biggest
00:44:51
barrier to entry is, most of these tools are quite technical
00:44:56
and if you are not a particularly technical person,
00:44:58
it is really overwhelming. Like I'm not gonna lie, it's like if
00:45:00
you're going into active campaign, you're like what the
00:45:02
hell's going on here.
00:45:03
Speaker 1: I suppose that might be. You know, because this human
00:45:06
communication, the AI, written emails. You know there's a lot
00:45:10
of opinions about them, but at least ideation in terms of I
00:45:13
would like to create a three email, email sequence. This is
00:45:16
the pain, these are the pains. How would you recommend? I would
00:45:20
craft, you know, using it as this really intelligent
00:45:23
assistant of yours, I think, can really have a big value, whether
00:45:26
or not you use it for the actual content creation right.
00:45:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I think my company
00:45:31
should build a template for that , for here's how to use chat DTP
00:45:34
.
00:45:35
Speaker 1: That's a new product right there and every day. It's
00:45:37
funny. I talked, I was at VidSummit last week and I talked
00:45:40
to someone who works at one of these video tools companies and
00:45:43
he created a prompting solution for YouTube titles and
00:45:46
descriptions and I showed him what I currently use. He's like
00:45:49
oh, I go way beyond that and the results are much better. I'm
00:45:51
like dude, productize, what are you waiting for?
00:45:53
So I think you know we're in this new age where it's possible
00:45:57
to do that right and to use everything we've been talking
00:45:59
about here to help you grow your business. So, amanda, this has
00:46:02
been really awesome and I know that we have just touched the
00:46:06
you know tip of the iceberg when it comes to market automation.
00:46:09
We can go really deep on this, but I'm hoping that people got a
00:46:12
good taste of what it's about, what it can do for them and,
00:46:15
most importantly, how to get started. Lots of resources out
00:46:18
there, obviously, level up creators being one of them. So,
00:46:21
amanda, if people want to find out more about you know level up
00:46:24
creators or want to get in touch with you, where should we send
00:46:26
them?
00:46:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, our website is welevelupcreatorscom and we have
00:46:31
a podcast, the Level Up Creators Podcast, which is a video
00:46:36
podcast. You can find it on YouTube and wherever you listen
00:46:38
to podcasts, you can join our newsletter from our website as
00:46:42
well. And if anybody's listening to this and thinking, man, I
00:46:47
would really love to get into marketing automation. I'm well
00:46:49
positioned for it, but I don't know what to do next and I'm
00:46:52
still really confused. Reach out , amanda at welevelupcreatorscom
00:46:56
. I'll get on the phone with you for a half hour. Just mentioned
00:46:59
that you listened to Neil's podcast episode and see if we
00:47:03
can. I'll just help you. I'll just help you. I'm not gonna
00:47:06
like. I'll let you know if I think my company can help you,
00:47:08
but otherwise I would love to lend a hand, no problem.
00:47:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I love how there's a lot of people who talk
00:47:16
about marketing automation, email marketing but technically
00:47:19
they're brilliant but they don't seem approachable. And I love
00:47:22
how approachable and really drinking your own medicine, of
00:47:25
helping others and being a problem solver and serving, so
00:47:29
really appreciate that. I urge all of you, if you are
00:47:31
interested, check out welevelupcreatorscom and
00:47:35
definitely get in touch with Amanda. Amanda, this has been
00:47:37
awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Any parting words of
00:47:42
advice that you'd like to offer anyone out there?
00:47:45
Speaker 3: Oh, if you're not thinking about a suite of
00:47:47
products and services as opposed to just one, you're missing out
00:47:51
on so much income. That has to be partnered with marketing
00:47:54
automation. But you need to be thinking next step, next step,
00:47:57
next step what's the next problem I can solve and what's
00:47:59
the best way to deliver that? Whether it be a course, a
00:48:03
membership, one-on-one coaching, group coaching, a guide, a book,
00:48:06
whatever it is, if you're a creator or a small business
00:48:09
owner in the digital space, you need a product suite and you
00:48:12
need marketing automation to link those together. To maximize
00:48:16
LTV. You've got to get the same customers paying you as much
00:48:19
money as possible to have a sustainable business. So start
00:48:23
thinking along those lines.
00:48:25
Speaker 1: Amen. I want to share with you all I am getting ready
00:48:27
to. I haven't finished writing my next book, but this time I do
00:48:31
plan on self-publishing it instead of working with major
00:48:33
publishers like I have in the past and been listening to a lot
00:48:37
of podcasts on self-publishing. One had an interview with the
00:48:39
great Brian Tracy. Brian said look, when I go to your store
00:48:43
and all I see is one book, that's not enough. I want more
00:48:47
of you. I want to consume you. I need your help in so many areas,
00:48:50
so you need to have this. I've been absolutely thinking
00:48:53
about the same thing that you mentioned, amanda, which is why
00:48:55
it's so tough. You need a plethora of products and
00:48:59
services, different ways. Just like you produce short-form
00:49:03
videos, long-form videos, tweets , images, carousels, you need to
00:49:07
give people different ways of consuming your content. You also
00:49:10
need to give people different ways of you helping them. And if
00:49:14
you're only thinking that one course, what about the
00:49:16
mastermind? What about the group coaching? What about bite-size
00:49:20
courses or that second or third course? And I think that and I
00:49:23
think you'd agree, amanda is where the marketing automation,
00:49:25
when you have these multiple products and services and when
00:49:28
you can create linkage between them as part of that customer
00:49:30
journey, it becomes extremely powerful and I'm sure that's one
00:49:33
of the reasons why you've had these people go from five to
00:49:35
seven figures. So really great advice. I have my own mastermind
00:49:39
, my digital first mastermind. I know we have some members
00:49:42
listening in today and I'm always like we need to be
00:49:45
creating more products. The marketing part is not the easy
00:49:48
part, but once you get it, it has no value. No matter how much
00:49:51
you invest in creating reels or TikToks, if you don't have
00:49:55
product to sell, you're sort of wasting your time. Let's get the
00:49:58
products down and then let's use digital to push those, and I
00:50:02
think a lot of creators as well that might be listening might
00:50:04
not have those products yet and maybe we'll have to have you
00:50:08
come back because we could talk about even selling without a
00:50:10
product and test marketing yeah, using everything we talked about
00:50:13
today, but anyway, there's so many directions we could go.
00:50:15
Amanda, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much.
00:50:19
Really appreciate your time and everyone out there. Thanks for
00:50:22
listening and definitely check out WeLevelUpCreatorscom and
00:50:26
Amanda Northcott. Amanda, thank you again.
00:50:28
Speaker 3: Thank you, Neil.
00:50:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope you really enjoyed that interview. I
00:50:32
love geeking out on this stuff, but Amanda obviously has a deep
00:50:35
expertise of marketing automation and really the
00:50:39
application of it to a business, so really appreciate her
00:50:42
insights. I really hope you did as well. And, once again, if
00:50:45
you're interested, please reach out to levelupcreators at
00:50:48
WeLevelUpCreatorscom. One word, no hyphens, alrighty, I want to
00:50:53
thank you. Every subscription, every download really means a
00:50:57
lot to me, and it's funny because the changes in the
00:51:01
Google algorithm is just a reminder that you need to go
00:51:03
wide with your content, and the podcast is one way of. No matter
00:51:08
what happens to Google, I still have you and I know that you
00:51:11
have my back and I'm really thankful and grateful for that
00:51:14
for the subscriptions, the downloads, the reviews. So I
00:51:17
just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. And that's
00:51:20
it. Next week will be a solo episode
00:51:23
and I want to talk a little bit about TikTok next week. I was
00:51:28
recently on a webinar where TikTok actually collaborated
00:51:31
with Adobe Express and those that know me should know that I
00:51:34
am a brand ambassador for Adobe Express but they really dumbed
00:51:39
down how any business can easily leverage TikTok and I wanted to
00:51:43
share that information with you. So it's going to be more of an
00:51:45
informational presentation. And, yes, I know they're talking
00:51:49
about banning TikTok. I do believe at the end of the day,
00:51:51
even if it's banned, it'll be bought out or something will
00:51:53
happen and the app as we know it will continue to run.
00:51:57
I do believe so, and I'm not here to be political yay or nay
00:52:01
on the Chinese influence, what have you but it is a legitimate
00:52:05
app that is just central to popular culture in Gen Z society
00:52:09
. So I just can't see it going away as is and you know it's a
00:52:13
lot of fun. And if you haven't been on it, I mean you know
00:52:15
TikTok can only steal the information you give it. So you
00:52:18
don't have to publish information on it. You don't
00:52:20
even have to connect with friends. You could just purely
00:52:21
have a ghost account and just consume the content, and I think
00:52:24
that you'll be pleasantly surprised by what you see. All
00:52:28
right, well, that's it for another episode of the digital
00:52:30
marketing coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach,
00:52:33
neil Schaefer, signing off.
00:52:58
Speaker 2: While you're there, check out Neil's digital first
00:53:00
group coaching membership community If you or your
00:53:03
business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your
00:53:07
digital marketing coach.