Things You Must Know About Summer Marketing Meltdown

 Have you noticed that you have not been 100% recently? Have you started something but failed to stick to it 100%? Are you hearing the sound of crickets on your offers or promotional posts?

You are not alone!

Here are the activities I suggest you refocus for the next 2-3 weeks:

Build AWARENESS around your brand!

Talk about:

• What exactly do you do for your clients
• Who your ideal client is
• Problems you help people solve etc. Talk about your values. Talk about what are NOT your values.
• Create both video and text-based content on these subjects.

Don’t forget selfies (or generally pictures of you)! Adding your face with your long storytelling post is one of the most powerful tools for personal brand visibility.

WORK SMART: repurpose your good long-form written posts as articles and publish them on your blog and everywhere else you can.

A good tip: change the article title for each of the platforms you are reporting them – like Medium, Elephant Journal, Odyssey Online, LinkedIn Articles, Twitter Notes, etc. There are many platforms that do not require unique content.

Create a Content Library from your past posts

If you are not feeling creative, you can still be productive!

Go through your profile to find good posts that you have written. Save them into Evernote/Trello/Google Docs/ or any other system you may be using. OR you can do even better and use a tool where you can paste these posts with their pictures and then set the tool to post these good posts for you on autopilot once a week – this is what I do and here is more about what I use and how to set it up. This is LIFE-CHANGING! Click here.

Do not judge your posts by the number of comments and likes, judge by the way YOU feel about what you said.

This is the secret for picking out energetically correct posts. Engagement can be low, because the post was thought-provoking (and often people do not engage) but engagement is a vanity metric. But people who are reading and watching silently are much more likely to invest when their timing is correct. (“Lurkers buy” is a secret every marketer knows, so always focus on the long-term picture and do not dwell over how well each post performs engagement-wise.)

Plus there are silent ways of engaging that we do not see– for example, how many people clicked on “Read More” feature to open up the full post, or watched a part or all of the videos we posted. There are no visible stats we can look at on our profiles, yet Facebook AI will take note of that and continue showing our posts to these people. I have clients who had stalked my profile for a year before they invested, and then some invested straight away. People are different and we need to focus on staying in that nurturing cycle (which means focusing on visibility as a process) instead of having a transactional mentality (immediate validation/sales.)

Grow Your Facebook Group (IF this is a part of your funnel)

• Use an invite to join your group as a Call To Action in all your personal posts. Start getting more active inside your group.
• Create at least two posts that are focused on engagement (gamification, self-promotional content). These can be asking people to share something like:
• their Facebook page, any other social media platform link, or their website (good, if you target entrepreneurs)
• their activity of the day (like a Lazy Sunday etc.)
• ask them to take a selfie or better a view from their window
• ask them to share a photo of their pet
• Agree or Disagree posts – Make a statement and start discussions (I have more trainings on this inside my Visibility that sells accelerator mentorship program.)

The idea is to create content that even quiet members would be happy to share in the comments. This boosts the engagement and more group members see your posts.

Oh, and just because you read the above you do not HAVE to go and start a group or engage in a dead-weight one that makes you want jump off the bridge. Running a Facebook group is far not for everyone and when I look into Human Design specific for myself and some of my clients there is SO MUCH proof that running a group is an activity that stalls us, not grows our business. Always follow what feels aligned, and do not try to rationalise when something feels off when you try it (you have to try it to REALLY KNOW, right?)

Check out a Marketing Blueprint By Design™ report if you are not sure you want or need to focus on growing your group.

Grow Your Email List

Leveraging on growing your Facebook group, you can ask for an email address as people are joining your group in exchange for a valuable freebie.

An idea for you: Run a series of video trainings or mini challenges.

Where: You can run these in your free Facebook group, or if you choose not to have one – you do not have to have one – then do it on your business page.

How to grow your list with these: Promote the free training on your personal profile, business page AND inside your existing group and get people to opt-in via a registration form or a landing page and then redirect them to join your group or to like your page. This way anyone who want access to this free material gets onto your list, even if they are already in your online space.

Think strategically and do not miss out on the opportunity to build your email marketing in anything you do. While I do not believe it is about the massive numbers of subscribers on your list, I guarantee you, that your sales will be steadier if you use email to connect to those who follow you on social – it is much easier to find an email with something we want than scroll through Facebook posts, as an example.

These trainings do not HAVE to be livestreams if you do not want them to be. You can prerecord them and schedule to be posted at a certain time. Then create emails that will be sent at the scheduled time with the link to the post – this will help people easily watch your content, when it is convenient to you and even much later.

If you are not a huge influencer, it does not matter if you are there live or not, but while recording, do ask viewers to reply to small questions or type something to agree with you in the comments and later ALWAYS reply to all comments. People engage even with replays so it does not matter if you prerecorded and posted your video – just pretend you are livestreaming and interacting with people in real time! These are the best kind of videos to create (as opposed to “presentations” that can feel horrible to record).

You can make some bullet points on a sticky note in front of you to remind yourself to “interact” with your imaginary audience.

Always think strategically and don’t be afraid of repetition– mentioning the same links and resources in multiple places. These days any email marketing software will have an option to automate a welcome email after they opt in to your list to get their freebie and make sure you invite them to join your group in the emails they receive and/or on the Thank you page. So even if you are redirecting the subscribers to your Facebook group, as an example, you should still send them a link to join the group, or any relevant links to follow you in the Thank you email.

Plan your strategy for the rest of the year

As you grow your visibility and your businesses, you will of course need to get some level of clarity on

• WHAT are you trying to create in your life,
• WHAT you are offering and in what way you deliver your services – you need to focus on the style of delivery that brings the best results and that you will enjoy, so you ARE building your dream life and not killing yourself trying to do something that does not offer you what you want to achieve
• WHO exactly do you want to attract
• HOW does what you offer will fit into that ideal client’s needs and what needs adjusting.
  (remember every offer has its own perfect client)

Based on that you should have a plan of action for at least 90 days ahead and your goals for the year. Yes, it is not necessarily a natural thing for a lot of solopreneurs to plan ahead, but it is a vital part of running a BUSINESS and being visible without overwhelm.

In Human Design there are two general types of planners (depending if they have Active or Passive Brain and Strategic or Receptive Mind, and of course if their Will center is defined, undefined or completely open ) – those who need to have detailed goal-setting, targets, numbers, etc., and those who just need an overview and focus on feeling how would they experience what they want and where they want to be. (I am personally the latter – creating monetary targets is the best way for me to do absolutely nothing as I stay overwhelmed and paralysed in my marketing. If that is you, then any “make 10K a month” strategy is NOT for you, as it will focus on setting measurable goals. You could do better with focus wheels and visualisations – while leaning into your creative energy and focusing on the process and the feeling of success.)

IF YOU HAVE NO CLARITY – use this time now to build your brand awareness as described at the start – but still plan your monthly themes, and your weekly content ahead. The more people know of your brand, the better it will be when you are clear and have something to launch.

IF YOU HAVE NO CLARITY BUT WANT TO TRY SELLING SOMETHING – do it! It is only through taking action we start seeing what is working and what is not working. Do not get disheartened if you see no sales, use this opportunity to connect to people who were active in your launch and ask them why they did not buy. That could be super valuable feedback for you to tweak and try again.

This is a very “birds-eye” strategy for the quiet summer time, some parts may not apply, and it is ok. I just want to inspire you to learn to navigate the quiet times in client attraction to turn them into your best times for brand awareness and audience growth!

And of course, if you want MORE clarity, we could create your personal Marketing Blueprint By Design™ report and draw inspiration from there. Click here to find out more.

What are you up to this summer??? Send me your direct reply below.