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Foreign hello everyone and welcome back to the K Show. Today we're talking about mindless marketing versus thought leadership. How many of us push out marketing content just for the sake of being able to say that we are marketing, quote unquote. I was guilty of this for years until I realized it just wasn't working. It also wasn't fun and it took a lot of freaking time. Now the plus, the stuff that I posted on social media or sent in my mass emails or published on my blog felt overused and generic like everyone else was already talking about it anyway. And the reason I was doing all of that is because I had not become a thought leader yet. To be a thought leader, you don't need to hold political office. You don't even need to be an influencer. You just need to be very forthcoming about why you're doing what you're doing, why you care about how you're delivering a certain service. And if you see things in your industry that you're like, man, why do they keep doing it this way? I don't do it that way because it does not work. Kind of like how I am with social media. Like I'm very vocal about it. Social media is not a great way for anyone in the high end home business industry to grow their business. And so therefore I say, hey, not only do I not believe in that, but I also do not include that in my business. Now you might do something like that or you might do the opposite and say, no one in my industry is doing X, Y and Z in their organizing projects or whatnot. But I am because I see that it works. And there this is the only way this service should ever be provided. Therefore I am going to stand up and say, hey, I'm different. And here is why I I care about this. That automatically makes you memorable. It also keeps you honest because that is how you're different. So if you're ready to stop mindlessly marketing and become a thought leader in your industry, making yourself more attractive to serious leads and great clients, then you're totally listening to the right episode. So let's do this. Subscribe to and rate this podcast wherever you're tuning in. You can watch the video version of the podcast on Spotify and YouTube and of course the audio is is still available anywhere you get your podcasts. And every time you guys leave me a five star rating and even a written review, it means the world to me. I of course read every single one and I love hearing what is working for you on the show and how it's helping your business. All right, guys, let's get into today's topic. Mindless marketing versus thought leadership. This episode of the Kate show is brought to you by Honeybook. I love using Honeybook for my business because it helps create a streamlined workflow when people decide they want to work with me. Because you know, there's one thing to do the right marketing to get the client, there's quite another to impress them all the way through the end of the project. And with Honeybook, my clients are able to review and sign their proposal, make their payment, and then be told what to do next, all in one fell swoop. I've set up automations that remind them when they need to send me certain assets so that their website process project can go off without a hitch. And if you've ever worked with us, you know that Honeybook kept you on track. It kept us on track and it was really easy to use. If you're interested in using Honeybook for your business, go to honeybook.com and use the code Socialite at checkout for 50 off your first year. This episode of the Kate show is brought to you by the Foundation Website guys. If you need a new website for your business, but you can't afford a fully custom site or you just don't need just don't have that much time to spare, you should check out the semi custom website design service from the Socialite agency for home pros who need more than just a DIY website template. How many times have you purchased a website template only to never use it or get stuck because you don't know how to complete it, you don't know how to connect all the things and well, doesn't that end up being a waste of money? It does. That's why the foundation website exists. If you want a professional to set up your website, handle your on site SEO, optimize your images and write your copy and you want to maintain full control over that website moving forward. This website is for you. You'll be able to see what's included and what's not included by heading over to katesocialite.com and under the services page click on semi custom website design. Every great build begins with a solid foundation and we've made it easy. You'll be able to learn exactly how the process works, why we have a 10 business day turnaround, and why we can keep the fees so darn affordable with no ongoing fees to us whatsoever. The cool thing is, and the thing that a lot of our clients appreciate is that when you get our website, Whether it's fully custom or semi custom like this one, we are available to help make updates to your site. We only charge you when you actually need an update made, which means that months, years might go by. You don't have to pay us a dime. But when you're ready for help, we're there to help you. Head over to katethesocialite.com and look under the services tab to get the website your business deserves. All right, to start, let's go over some examples of mindless marketing so that maybe you can recognize some of your own activities that might fall in that category. The first thing is creating marketing content without correlating it to your offerings or without offering any sort of personal insights. So it's okay to talk about something in your marketing that actually has nothing to do with your business if instead you're sharing something personal because you are the best marketing asset your business has. So an example of this I recently, well, recently as in like two months ago, sent out an email detailing how My husband and two children, who are 2 and almost 5, were in a car accident. They happened the first week of April. We had a very bad snowstorm here in Wisconsin. Spring blizzards are probably the worst because it was raining and then it all of a sudden turned to snow, which means we had a layer of ice under the snow. And long story short, my family was in an accident. I was at home working. I never, ever want to get a phone call like that again, by the way, where my husband's like, we were in an accident. And I'm like, no, you weren't. You're just kidding. And then I hear the kids screaming in the background and I realize, oh, he's not kidding. Okay. Like, I get goosebumps just talking about it. Thank God everyone was fine. Like, we had some minor whiplash going on. My Jeep that he was driving was totaled. But it's okay, because material things can be replaced. My people, my little family cannot. And I cried for days after this happened. Like, I just randomly would burst into tears. Usually at the end of the day when I got the kids into bed. I was about to go hop in the shower, finally alone, and I was just like, oh my goodness, I almost lost my entire family. It's so scary how not in control I am over life. As though we have any semblance of control over life. No, we don't. God does. And I sent out that story in an email newsletter. Did it have anything to do with marketing? Not really, but there was an important Truth that I could correlate back into it. Control what you can control, and then you have to let the rest go. My family could have had something terrible happen to them that day. Like, I don't even want to verbalize.
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What could have happened.
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But trust me, my mind has gone there many times because it was terrifying. And in business, there's a lot that we cannot control, like inflation or the economy and crazy clients. However, there's a lot we can control. And in the email newsletter I sent out, I correlated it back to, if you are ready to control the few things in your business that you can control, marketing is one of them. So let's talk. But that wasn't, like, the main point that did become the call to action, but the main point of it was to really just share my own humanity with the thousands of people who are in my mailing list. And the responses, of course, were very thoughtful. And it. It made an impact. It also did result in people, you know, reaching out, because we all have that same feeling. It's very human of, like, I wish I could control this, but I can't. And there's nothing less empowering than thinking everything's outside of our control. But also, there is nothing less empowering than thinking everything's within our control, that we just have to manifest it into existence. That's a load of nonsense. We can't control those things, but we can control a certain set of things. So all of that to say, I use thought leadership in a personal and intimate way. I didn't always do that. I didn't always feel comfortable doing that. And you will know, like, you'll have that gut instinct of, should I share this or should I not share this? Like, for example, if you're in the middle of an ugly divorce, first of all, my condolences to you. That sounds terrible. Don't share that. Like, you're still going through it. But if you are able to come out the other side of it and be like, hey, here is the greater life lesson that I learned because of this hard thing I went through, and here's how I actually help people with that in my business. You know, through whatever service you offer. For example, as a professional organizer who used to struggle a lot with time management, you think, well, how can those things be correlated? Well, it's easier to manage your time when your space is organized. You can find everything that you need. Your kids know where to find things you need. Takes less time to get out the door. You can share that time in your life when you struggled with time management or money management or thought management, and then take that all the way to the finish line of. And now I help people manage their spaces, which helps them manage their mind so their time and even their money. Because now they're not buying multiples of things because now they know what they have. You can correlate things back. And when you become a thought leader and you have the confidence that is required to share personal things, because there is a level of confidence required for that, you will find that you are more memorable. You'll find that people connect with you on a deeper level. They don't just see you as that interior designer, that stager. They see you as, oh, that's the designer that beat cancer. Oh, that's the stager who lost her spouse and has become so strong and so, like, I admire her so much. I mean, like, these are like different stories from my own. My own clients. You know, I'm so inspired by you guys. And if you were to reach a point where you felt comfortable sharing your stories, it would make you a thought leader and it would be a beautiful thing that goes along with point number two. If you're not sharing your face in your photos or your videos, you're not going to be a thought leader because people don't even know who you are. The first time they see you might be the really tiny, grainy, outdated picture of you on your about page, on your website, or it might be when you show up in person for that consultation or whatever you're doing in their space. That's not okay. Right now. We have the beautiful ability to help people know, like, and trust us long before we actually meet them. How many of you, in listening to or watching this podcast, feel like you already know me? Well, I've heard from plenty of you over the years that you do feel like you know me. You feel very familiar with my philosophy on things. And when I talk to you guys on the phone or on a video call, we chat like friends. Because even though I don't know you, I'm very familiar with your kind, you know, with the entrepreneur in the home industry who's trying to create a lifestyle business and who often also has a family to think about. Like, that's. That's my ideal client right there. And you guys feel seen, heard, and understood because of that. So it really goes a long way to make sure that you are showing up. You are the CEO. There is no replacement for you. So you need to show up in photos and videos and whatever content that's being produced. For your company. The third thing that is an example of mindless marketing is relying too heavily on Canva graphics. Okay, guys, I love a good Canva graphic. I love Canva in general. It's so cool. However, if you are putting out marketing content and it's really not photos of your work, it's not photos of you or your team, it's not even stock photos, photos that would be a good representations of your work. And it's just graphic after graphic. You need to hit the pause button because that's not doing anything for your business. It's not hurting it, and it's not helping it. So take a step back from Canva and realize that the simplest marketing is often the most effective. Kind of like how the simplest answer is often that the real answer, like I believe that's called Occam's razor, isn't it? I don't know. Anyway, the whole point of it is when you start to complicate things, you lose people. So if you've got complicated Canvid graphics that you or your VA is spending hours creating, putting out on your website, your socials, whatever, how is that helping you? You might have cute little quotable things, but your face would be better. You on camera saying that quotable thing would be best. All right, you get where I'm going with this? Okay, number four, the another example of mindless marketing is running paid advertising like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google Ads, without first determining how your ideal client makes buying decisions. How many people make a buying decision based off a social media ad when it's not just a retail product? Now we make buying decisions for retail products all the time based on advertising. But when it comes to having someone come in our home and organize a space, remodel the kitchen, stage our home so that we can sell it and move on, like anything like that that's costing, you know, tens of thousands of dollars, you need a lot more than just an ad. And you also have to understand that your ad is going to be competing with tons of other ads and that's not the best place to be selling a custom high end service. So that's one thing to keep in mind. Now the other thing kind of tags along with that. Operating without a marketing plan where none of your marketing efforts connect to each other or have a consistent flow is an example of mindless marketing. So you're pushing out content on social media and then you are sending out an email newsletter, which is great by the way, but if it's not connected to anything, it doesn't really help. And then if you have a website but you haven't updated it in a while, you don't have a lead magnet, you don't have project photos up there because you haven't prioritized taking project photos or you just haven't gotten around to uploading them. That whole thing is a quagmire of mindless marketing.
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The other thing is inconsistency with how often you market and inconsistency with your visuals. So maybe you've got those canva graphics, but the look is always changing because.
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This week you like this font, next.
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Week you're going to like that color palette and none of it really matches your branding and Then also, your messaging keeps changing. So one week you're talking to this ideal client. The next week you're talking to an ideal client that is totally different, has no correlation to anything else you were previously talking about. That's another problem, because people get confused. Like, are you a generalist? Are you a specialist? Are you jack of all trades? Like, what the heck are you? Never mind. Moving on. That's not an ideal situation, and it's one that's actually very easy to avoid. All right, so let's go through some examples of thought leadership marketing. I've already given you some sneak peeks, but we're going to dive into this a little deeper. Number one, it can be as simple as explaining why you care deeply about making sure your trade of choice is done correctly. So if you specialize in kitchen and bathroom models, and you're like, okay, why is it that all my other colleagues run their projects this way when they really should be done that way? Because it works better. And because there's better communication with the builder and the other tradespeople, get vocal about it. Like I said earlier, number two, sharing the emotional and mental impact your services have on your clients rather than focusing on the service itself is an example of thought leadership. Okay, this is like not marketing 101 anymore. This is marketing 2.0. I don't even know if that made any sense, but you guys get the point. When all you're doing is focusing on hire me for staging, Hire me for organizing. Hire me, hire me, hire me. You're not focusing on, hey, did you know that here is how, like, you can have someone remodel your kitchen. You can have anyone remodel your kitchen. But how do you want to feel during that remodel? Do you want to feel like someone has it under control? Do you want to feel like all your questions will get answered in a timely fashion? They're going to be the translator, the interpreter between you and the gc. Then you need us, because that's what we do. We want our clients to feel taken care of. Not just because we have a good end result for them. Not just because we created a design plan that really suits the dream space they wanted, but because we're taking care of the not so fun parts of it. And here is how we do it. It's actually one of the best things you can do for your business is sharing that part of it that goes along with. Number three, presenting your unique cocktail of beliefs, such as controversial real estate, staging methods, or the other things that will make you memorable and honest about why you're different. Because you might have a room full of 10 home stagers. They all are different. They might all be serving the same real estate, they might all be wanting to get in the same homes, but they're all going to stage it a little bit differently. And if you can pinpoint why you do it differently, if you can pinpoint, well, I take into account not just this space, but also the different ways the space could be used or the neighborhood that it's in, or, you know, I'm never trying to cover up flies. I'm just trying to offer cosmetic upgrades and that's the actual service. But then what is the experience like for the real estate agents? And how do you promote the real estate agent long term so it's not just a turn and burn situation where. Okay, I staged your listing. Thanks, bye. No, how do you help the real estate agent long term? That makes you a thought leader and an industry leader. That also goes along with a focus on making sure your client gets a great end result versus focusing on giving them what they think they want. Because what clients think they want and need versus what they actually need are often two different things. I feel like interior designers run into this more often than other home industry professionals because a client will say, well, I want a mid century modern design in my living room. And you might walk into their home and be like, okay. However, everything about your space screams traditional. So we could probably incorporate some elements of mid century modern, but if we just go straight mid century modern in the living room, it's going to feel so just disjointed with the rest of the space. Now, in doing this, you run the risk of it upsetting your client. But as a thought leader, you can say, well, no, I. I'm here to protect you and to protect your investment. If we go the route you're suggesting you, you're going to regret your purchases. We don't need buyer's remorse here. Let's create a custom plan and let's figure out what do you actually like about mid century modern. Also, are you defining mid century modern as what it actually is, or are you looking at a different design aesthetic and you're getting your terms mixed up? A lot of this just has to do with being confident enough. Always goes back to confidence. Being confident enough to push back on your industry, on your clients. Pushing back with professionalism, with intelligence, with wisdom, sets you apart, makes you memorable, makes marketing easier. The next thing you'll need to do for thought leadership marketing is have A laser focus on the ideal client that you serve so that you can talk about their pain points and how you solve them. It will be absolutely impossible for you to have effective marketing or talk about someone's pain points if you haven't detailed who they are. So you might focus on a certain type of project or you might focus on a certain type of client, or you might, you might be hyper niche and focus on both. The next thing you'll need to do is limit where and how you market your business and then be consistent in those few areas. I'm going to give you an example myself. So I run a completely online business. You guys know this. I do not have a physical location, so I am not pinpointing my marketing strategy to any certain geographic area. But I'm focused on the demographics. So I am focusing on the creative home industry professional who is, you know, female most of the time and who likely also has children in her home, maybe their grandchildren or her own children. And she is trying to create a lifestyle business and run a business that has marketing that she doesn't hate. So one would think that in order to market that type of business, I would need to be obsessively on social media showing up. Because interior designers are on social media. So our home stagers or home organizers, they're all over social. Should I should be there too, right? Well, I'm not. I post maybe once a week on social media. That's just not how you guys make your buying decisions. You make buying decisions based on referrals and based on who's already been helpful to you. So, like this podcast is where a lot of you find me and end up working with my agency. And if I'm only marketing myself in a few different ways. So the podcast and my email newsletter and then strategic partnerships with various other people in the industry, various other influencers, you might call them those. That's like the three key ways that I market my business and that's it. I don't do paid advertising. I haven't done paid advertising in years. And I really don't do social media. I instead focus on those other three things. I do them consistently and strategically and I actually am able to get better results that way. You can do the same thing. If I, as an online business owner, don't need social media, nor do you. If I, as an online business owner, do not need paid advertising, nor do you. Now, is it wrong to use those things? No, not at all. But you have to be sensible about how you're using them. They should fit into the greater sales funnel that you have set up. And that is why less marketing is often better and more effective. So if you're like, okay, well, what's the bare minimum marketing I should be doing to help my business become successful and grow? I'll tell you. You should be sending out a monthly newsletter. So it could be bimonthly, meaning like two times a month versus just once, but no more than that. That'll start to irritate people. Um, the next thing you should do is make sure the SEO of your website is up to speed, which means you might need a website refresh or a partial refresh. And it means you should be blogging maybe once a month, too. Blogging is not for everyone because if your clients tend to not be on the Google machine, it may not be as important, but it's becoming more important for more and more people. So that's why I always include that. But also, having a way to capture people's contact information on your website if they're not quite ready to fill out the contact form or book a call with you is also another essential thing. That's called a lead magnet. You might have people enter their email address to get access to a video that you've created, kind of like this one. Or you might have them get access to some audio or an ebook. But all of that has strategy behind it too. It shouldn't be too long, it shouldn't be too generic. It should be helpful and valuable, really, if you are staying in touch because marketing is a relationship, so you just stay in touch with them via email once or twice a month. You have a way to attract new people into your list. And you also focus on your SEO. You have solid marketing. And then on top of that, you also add in the relationship element with your colleagues. So how can you partner with other people in your industry who serve the same ideal client you do without being your competitor? That will grow your business more than anything because word of mouth referral is still the best, most effective, also the oldest form of marketing out there. And you also have to keep in mind, if someone is referring people to you through a Facebook group, that is not a social media lead. That is a word of mouth referral lead. If somebody is on Instagram and they DM you and they say, yeah, so and so told me about you, I just thought I'd DM you here. That's also not a social media lead because they did not find out about you and learn to trust you through your social. They found out about you through another person. So it's very important to pinpoint the origin of your leads so you can see what is working and what is not. And it's important for you to limit where you market so that you can track all of this and so that you can do those few things well and consistently. All right, guys, until next time, keep your marketing simple, your message clear, and I will talk to you soon.