Marketing Automation Simplified: How to Level Up Your Digital Business

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Speaker 1: Marketing automation, it doesn't have to be a maze of

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complexity. Imagine transforming your digital business with a

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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

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this potential was in the understanding of a few simple

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strategies and tools? We'll be diving into these secrets with

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expert Amanda Northcutt, who will simplify the world of email

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sequences, lead magnets and customer trust. Don't miss the

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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.

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Speaker 2: You've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer

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is your digital marketing coach, helping you grow your business

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with digital first marketing, one episode at a time. This is

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your digital marketing coach and this is Neil Schaefer.

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Speaker 1: Hey everybody, this is Neil Schaefer, your digital

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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

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they're okay with me using the content in the book, and then it

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will be off to the formatter where I will be able to design

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advanced reading copies to be able to send out to influencers

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and other authors. And if you're an influencer or another author

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and you'd like to get hands on that advanced reading copy and

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maybe have a chance to provide a quote that I could put in the

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book, that would also help promote you as well, feel free

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to reach out to me. Neilshaffercom, slash contact,

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or neil at neilshaffercom the real Neil. You knew that any a l

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. All right, so we are going to

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get on now to the interview that I had with Amanda Northcott, and

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, 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

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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

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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.

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This is Neil Schaefer.

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Speaker 1: There are many skills that small businesses,

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entrepreneurs and content creators need to understand when

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it comes to digital marketing. One of those core skills that

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may not be as sexy as how to create your latest TikTok video

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or YouTube thumbnail is the topic of marketing automation.

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This is so critical that in my new book that I am still writing

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but making progress on, I have a dedicated chapter on marketing

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automation, because I think it is one of these essential

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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

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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

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a lot of time, you know. Does my software support it? There are

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many ways to think about it. Today we're going to simplify it

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so that when you leave, after listening or watching this

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podcast episode, you will have a pretty clear roadmap as to how

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to achieve whatever you want to achieve with your marketing

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automation. So today's special guest is the

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co-founder and CEO of a very, very unique company called Level

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Up Creators, Amanda Northcott. Level Up Creators is unique and

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I'll have Amanda introduce herself, as well, as they are a

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professional service firm that helps creators. So the creator

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economy is a business. Whether you are a small business and

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entrepreneur or an entrepreneur who calls themselves a content

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creator, it is a business. There are many things you need to do,

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and building a list and utilizing marketing automation

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is one of those core, critical things that can help impact your

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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

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podcast.

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Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Neil. I'm glad to be here. Thank

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you for having me today.

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Speaker 1: It is an honor to have you. I just introduced you

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myself, but I guess I'd give you the opportunity to correct my

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introduction of you. More importantly, how did you come up

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? What prompted you to create this very, very unique type of

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company to support creators as if they were small businesses

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and provide them these professional services?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for asking. So I started in the

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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

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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

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sponsorships to companies who wanted to reach those fans and

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helping with our subscription model where we were selling

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information about Texas A&M University sports and man, there

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are some seriously rabid fans and so we had again this is kind

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of early days obviously post like the crash of 99 and

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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

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up on 20 years, it's almost 2024 . So my path has been an

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extremely nonlinear journey. I am a subject matter expert

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within, like digital businesses with an emphasis on recurring

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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

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brands and creators have a unique opportunity to capture

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those from us and continue to provide value in so many

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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,

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and I feel in my bones that I needed a big shift and I wanted

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to shift to helping women and people from traditionally

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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

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matter expertise, who have engendered these amazing

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connections with their communities, massive communities

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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

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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

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businesses based on their subject matter expertise.

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Speaker 1: That's a pretty incredible story, amanda. So you

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were working on subscription based revenue models and

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membership revenue models. What year was that? Approximately?

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Started in 05. Okay, I thought that was the

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case. You've been working on these things when they were very

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much in their infancy, so I see that you've seen them grow and

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it's extremely applicable to the creator space. Totally agree,

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and I love that you talk about how your business operators

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because most you know, whether you're a content creator or

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another entrepreneur or business owner you, when it comes to

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marketing, there is this operational efficiency,

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operational excellence, that will make or break your business

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, or make them successful or not as successful as they could be.

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They'll really appreciate the. You know everything that you're

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doing. I want to go a little bit deeper into the topic of today,

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which is marketing automation, and when I asked you for your

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advice on what we would talk about today, you said the first

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thing is let's reframe our thinking around marketing

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automation. So what did you mean by that? Are we wired

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differently to think about it? Are we not thinking about it

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enough, or what's your take?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, my take is that I guess what I hear from a lot

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of businesses is our business owners, small business owners in

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particular is that marketing automation feels icky, it is far

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too complicated, it's not personal enough, the technical

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hurdles are far too great to overcome to implement it. My

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business, you know, basically just this kind of POV, that it's

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not for me kind of a thing, and I wanted to spell that myth for

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sure and help small business owners and creators understand

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that it is for you. It's a phenomenal level to be able to

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pull and there's a lot of rewards to be had with it and

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you can do it in a way that continues to create trust and

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value to your audience again, without feeling icky.

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Speaker 1: So, based on that, I guess, when business people

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understand the value that something can bring them, they

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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?

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Speaker 3: Yeah well, try and think of marketing automation as

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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

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level. I'm not talking about B2B enterprise businesses who have

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full stack marketing teams and SDRs and account executives and

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things like that. I'm talking specifically about SMB and

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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

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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.