Building Your Marketing Plan For The New Year

Brett Johnson [: 00:00:00

Welcome to the Circle sessions featuring the Circle of Experts. Each week, one of the Circle of Experts joins me to talk about critical aspects of growing your podcast. We focus on marketing, social media, monetization, and website design to help you implement all of these together. Circle of Experts are Yasmine Robles from Robles Designs, Tonnisha English Amamoo of TJE Communications, and Don The Idea Guy. I'm Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy from Circle 270 Media Podcast Consultants. This week, Yasmine is here from the Circle of Experts. Yasmine works alongside clients to design a website that's driven by strategy, looks amazing, and that you can actually use to grow your podcast and then in turn your business as well. Yasmine, thanks for joining us today.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:00:44

Yeah. Thank you for allowing me to keep coming back.

Brett Johnson [: 00:00:47

Oh, no problem. Yeah. Hey. It's easy. Give you the link. You come on. So, you know, depending on the time of year, I mean, we could we we typically look at marketing plans at the end of the year and, you know, for the next year. But, really, you could put a marketing plan at any point in time, depends on when you start a new business or when you maybe it's your annual anniversary of the beginning of your business, and you wanna go that route instead.

Brett Johnson [: 00:01:15

But, you know, whatever you plan on doing, that marketing plan, needs to work. And what's the first step small business owners should take when building their marketing plans for that coming year?

Yasmine Robles [: 00:01:26

Yeah. Yeah. I just wanna caveat or give a disclaimer that although we are talking about for the coming year, this is a very high level. You should still look at your plan and see if you're on track every so often. Right. But, really, the first step is to analyze that data from the previous year. So if you are a new business, you might not have this data. It might be a little bit of looking at your competitors and seeing what they're doing.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:01:48

But if you do have data, it's really crucial to review what worked and what didn't work. And some areas that you can focus on. And, again, you can try to gauge this for your competitors if you don't have data. Also, if you have been in business and you realize that nothing was connected and you don't have data, this is a good time to track. But really looking at sales data and analysis, so look at your sales trends month by month and identify those peaks and slow periods. I've been in business for about 10 years. And this past, I wanna say, year, year and a half, it's been a little off. Like, it's still following that typical pattern, but it's shifted a little bit.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:02:28

So knowing that, I can make knowing the previous before that, because I've been in business 10 years, and then knowing what the past year, year and a half has done, I can now try to figure out what the marketing slow times or what busy season will look like for the coming year. So kind of take a look at that sales information. Mhmm. And then look at your marketing channels and their performance. So really evaluate what worked and what didn't. It can be social media, email, paid ads, PPC, if you did any paid ads. Check to see, I would say, how much time you spent, how much money you spent, and what was that ROI or return on investment. So what gave you leads and how many of those leads really closed or were they qualified leads? So just kind of taking a look at any sort of sales channel that brought people to you or any sales channel that you were trying to tackle and then wanted it to bring people to you.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:03:30

So a few things that I would look into would be if you were really big on, let's say, Instagram for your business and you look at site traffic, you look at your intake forms, all of that, and nothing ever mentions Instagram and your engagement on Instagram wasn't there, it might be something that you could keep, but you might not put a big focus on in terms of energy or tie energy or or money for the following year. Take I would say take a look at your customer feedback. So if you're not collecting feedback, this can come in you can email them and just say, hey. Can you depending on your business. So if you are running a lot of a big business with a lot of clients or customers, maybe sending out a survey through your email list. It could be that you just email people personally and say, hey. Can you give me some feedback? There's also a tool that a friend of mine turned me to. It is called VideoAsk, and they do have a free version.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:04:29

But you can record yourself asking a question, and they can record themselves answering the question. The beauty of that is that you potentially can use that video as a video testimonial. You can grab a transcript from it. And so now you have a testimonial, but you can also ask questions like, how was our intake process like? How did you feel after, you know, the completion of the project? Was the offboarding appropriate? So you can get feedback and fix up your internal processes, but you can also gain some video testimonials. So review those and really figure out how they describe the pain points because as you're thinking about your marketing in the coming year, you want to make sure that your messaging is speaking to them. So if I I came in here, and sometimes I do do it, I'm like, SEO, blah blah blah blah, PPC, all those words, ROI, if you're not from that world, you might not understand what the heck I'm talking about. So you want to really listen to that video, and that's why the video is beautiful because you wanna listen to the words they use. So if you are I go back to personal trainers.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:05:32

Right? If somebody said, do you wanna get healthy? I'm like, ew, no. That doesn't sound like fun. But if they said, girl, you've been have wanting to lose those last £10 for the last 10 years. I'll be like, true. Sign me up. So you want to talk the way that they're describing their pain point. Yeah. So and then budget.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:05:50

So look at your budget. How much money did you spend on marketing? And the way I look at it is it's marketing from your paid ads. It's marketing that you paid someone to do your marketing for you, right, like organic, social, all that. Did you spend money on being a vendor, or having an exhibit somewhere at a conference? So all of those, I consider sell marketing. They're brand awareness. Which ones brought in some of those clients? And or if you were strategic about being a vendor, etcetera, did you gain momentum in whatever, key performance indicator you were tracking for? Right? If you said, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna purchase this vendor table. I'm gonna go to that conference and and work that table.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:06:35

Did you gain a client from it or was that even the goal? Did you just wanna get people on your email list? So

Brett Johnson [: 00:06:39

Right.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:06:40

Look at that. Yeah, the the effectiveness of your budget and then look at your competitors. I know a lot of us love looking at our competitors and what they're doing. I think we look at our own competitors' websites more often than our own. But look at what they're doing in terms of social, their website. Are they out and about at a bunch of vendor tables, or do they not even do that? Is their SEO really done really well? Just look at overall how they're doing and then see how you compare. So just this analysis really helps you understand what your efforts were, how much energy, time, money you spent, and how successful you were in order to pivot for that growth.

Brett Johnson [: 00:07:21

Yeah. One idea that came to mind when you're talking about customer feedback, and specifically for podcasters and those that interview have an interview style podcast is, you know, this is a great way to make sure that your process of asking of the interview and also the post interview of what you do is effective for what you're doing. It is it is it the what you're doing making it easy for the guest to be a guest. Mhmm. And this is a great way to, you know, send a a question. If you haven't implemented it yet, take a look at implementing it now. 2 or 3 questions after especially after the interview. Because once we get an interview done, we kinda move on to the next thing.

Brett Johnson [: 00:08:01

It's recorded. It's gonna get posted. We're kinda done. But that guest probably has some feedback for you in regards to and it it turns into testimonial that, yeah, that was a great interview. Thanks for having me blah blah blah blah blah. All of a sudden, you have whether it's video recorded or a a written, feedback, you've got it. And use it for testimonial purposes if they had a really good experience on your podcast. So look at it that way that it's, you know, kinda turn this into what can you do to better yourself as well as possibly getting some great feedback, that could be used on your website or on your podcast somehow, that sort of thing.

Brett Johnson [: 00:08:39

Yeah. That that that triggered some thoughts, in regards to, you know, really implementing. We didn't I have a couple of clients who've been talking about it, and we just hasn't haven't implemented. It's finding the right software. And just that software you mentioned might be the easiest way. They you know, software comes so quickly kinda go, oh, didn't know that existed, you know, and and all of a sudden, you can implement it very easily too. So once they review their data, what should their next step be in that planning process then?

Yasmine Robles [: 00:09:07

Yeah. Once you, yeah, once you've gathered as much information as you can, I would say start creating goals, and we've all heard smart I think we've all heard smart goals, so specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound to really get a direction? So this would be an as an example, if you are at 50 users visiting your website a month, you say, okay. I wanna increase it to 75 users per month by x date, by the end of Q1 of next year, whatever whatever it may be.

Brett Johnson [: 00:09:39

Yeah.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:09:39

So you wanna make sure that they're that you have a number. I love numbers when it when it comes to marketing. So have a number, have a date, and then kind of break that down as to what really is going to contribute to obtaining, to achieving this goal. And then really look at your target market, your audience, and refine it and really assess the what you've learned about them from your data or from interacting with them. Who was so, for example, if you're a service based business, who was the target market or the people that you worked with that really did have the budget to pay you, that you really enjoyed working with, what industry were they in, etcetera. So that way, you can start kind of gauging who that real ideal client is, what age. You can look at demographics, and I think we've talked about this in other episodes, but the demographics, psychographics, geographically, where are they, income, all of that kind of stuff so that you understand them as a person, and then start making brand messaging adjustments. So now that you know your person, let's say it is, not speaking from experience, but let's say it is as a personal trainer, you're trying to get 36 year old women to go back to the gym, right, or to do a private session.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:10:58

And you are looking at your messaging and your messaging might not necessarily fit them because it's like a bunch of buff dudes in a weird looking gym, dark gym, start looking at that messaging that you're putting out there and start adjusting it for that ideal client, whoever it may be. So that way everything aligns and they feel like they're comfortable, like they you're speaking their language, especially if you did that video, testimonial or whatever it may be. And, again, back to that gym, if you said, oh, all the people that I that responded to this, all the women that I'm targeting, they talked about fitting back into their pants, whatever it may be. And so now you can shift your messaging from, you know, let's get healthy to let's fit back into your skinny jeans. That's a very, very broad way of putting it, but you wanna make sure that messaging messaging is is aligned, the text, the visuals, all of that.

Brett Johnson [: 00:11:58

Well, it's a good start. Well, it's what you just said is a good start. Okay. So maybe it's generic like that, but it's like, okay. That's okay. Now refine. Refine. Refine.

Brett Johnson [: 00:12:06

Refine. Sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:12:08

Yeah. So, for example, one of the things that we learned when we did this process was the people who responded, a lot of them said flexibility or some kind of, word that means flexible. And it was about the way we sometimes, will really work with and partner with the client instead of kind of being an agency hiding everything and then presenting a final thing. We try to make it really open and transparent. So, transparent partnership and flexibility was worth some of the words that were said a lot. And so now thinking about our own marketing, how can we put those words into our messaging? So and then look at new opportunities. So if you look at the market trends, and consumer behaviors that you saw emerging as you were looking through that beta and try to see how you can capitalize on those and look at your resources. So determine what resources, whether it's budget, personal personnel, technology, you have, that are are available to you to achieve your goals that you have set.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:13:18

So just kind of look through those, and then, really, that's gonna help create a a solid foundation for all of these elements. And your marketing plan is really gonna be effective realistic effective, and you're going to be able to look back and say, yes. Yes or no. Blogging 7 days a week worked for the traffic, but it was not realistic because I do not have the personnel for that. So you can start adjusting these goals, once you know all that information.

Brett Johnson [: 00:13:44

Right. Exactly. And information is information. Use it as such that, yeah, could actually maybe make your life a lot easier Yeah. Than trying well, like you said, if you're doing 7 blogs a week and you'd somebody's told you you had to do it and you're doing it. And after a year or let's say 6 months, and you're gonna go, I'm killing myself here doing this and it's not there, then stop. Don't do it anymore. Look at something else.

Brett Johnson [: 00:14:10

But but also look at you did 6 months worth of blogging. You can create content even though you don't like it, but maybe find a better outlet for your content creation.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:14:20

Mhmm.

Brett Johnson [: 00:14:21

Maybe it's doing video instead. Short I mean, it's that you did it for 6 months. Congratulations. Just wasn't the right medium Yeah. To do

Yasmine Robles [: 00:14:28

it for more. Yeah. And then you can reuse it depending on the articles. Right? If you really did this. Let's say, in 6 months, you did this. You have if it was good content, you have so much for video, podcast, presentations. So don't feel like, oh, I did 6, 3 months, whatever, maybe, of blogging or whatever it was that you were doing. Look to see if you can utilize that work already in other ways.

Brett Johnson [: 00:14:53

Yeah. Yeah. And that's a fun that's the fun part. You've are you've done the hard work. Oh my you're 90% there to create something else. Exactly. So how important is flexibility in a marketing plan? How can businesses prepare for unexpected changes? You know, the market changes or a new competitor in play, and all of a sudden, it's like, that doesn't fit my marketing plan.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:15:13

Yeah. Yeah. Competitors never fit in our marketing plan. They never do.

Brett Johnson [: 00:15:17

We never plan for competitors, do we? We never do. Ain't that funny? It just no. It's it's gonna be static. Just move on. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:15:26

Yeah. So flexibility is really vital, to any plan to especially marketing plans. Everything can shift rapidly, and so just making sure that you're prepared for a quick pivot, especially as small business owners and podcasters. I think it's a little easier to make that pivot versus a large company. So that's the beauty of of being in a small business. Some things that can keep you adaptable would be to have quarterly reviews. Depending on how much effort you're putting into your marketing, it might be, sooner than that. But at least a quarterly review, schedule it with yourself or with your team and check-in and see the effect effectiveness of your strategies and make adjustments adjustments.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:16:08

So if you said, we're gonna increase our LinkedIn followers by 10%, has are you on track for that? Is what efforts were put into play for obtaining that goal? And how if you do have a team, how does your team feel about that? Is it just, like, really a drag, hard work? Maybe that goal gets to shift. So and then budget the budget flexibility. So allocate a portion of your budget for these unexpected opportunities or challenges. So in my personal experience of the year, I didn't budget for being a or having a vendor table that'd be your best self conference. It was a blast. Like, I did as much as I could. We went all in. We had tequila, all that stuff.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:16:48

But, you know, it wasn't in the budget. Was it a great experience? Yes. Would we like to do it again? Probably. But now it's going to be in the budget. So kind of give yourself that little buffer of these vendor tables or whatever it may be in your industry for additional, marketing. You can even Google, like, a high level view. You could say, if I did this for a conference, how much would it potentially cost? And that way, there's a buffer.

Brett Johnson [: 00:17:13

Yeah. So you you could even engage that with your employee feedback too. Will they be excited to be there? And if so, it's like, well, better not Yeah. Better better take a look at this. Or if it's an opportunity that the team doesn't really wanna be a part of, then why do it? Yeah.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:17:28

Yeah. You

Brett Johnson [: 00:17:29

know? Yeah. You don't wanna that you don't wanna drag them kicking and screaming. You want them to be kind of like, let's go do it. Let's have fun. You know? Sort of. Yeah. Yeah.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:17:36

Yeah. And and to that point, really, I guess this goes more into having the right people in the right seats. But, really, if your team doesn't or if your team's skill set is better at so let's take the vendor table. If your team's skill set is better at networking, it might not benefit to have them stuck behind a table. Right? So can you bring in someone that somewhat knows your industry if, let's say, you can't hire someone else? But if you have a friend or somebody else that knows kind of what you do and, really, the whole point of a vendor table is to spin the wheel and win some tequila, can you have someone back there that will hand out your promotional items while you and your team go out and network or or do whatever else you need to do. So that way, it everyone is playing to their to what they love doing, to their skills, and you're not you're not forcing them to be stuck behind the table. And this goes for any sort of marketing. So if it's a designer or a I don't know.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:18:35

Like, if you're running ads, try to figure out what your team loves doing or what you love doing and see if there's a budget to outsource or get a volunteer or something like that.

Brett Johnson [: 00:18:44

Right. Agree. Agree.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:18:47

Yeah. And then, again, just building those contingency plans, backup plans for campaigns that you might be running. So if you say, I'm gonna launch a course, what are the backup plans for if there's a there's a delay, if anything happens, just kind of make those, plans. I tend to be an over planner, but at least have a plan a and plan b. And then just really create open communication, foster a culture of communication within your team to share insights and really pivot quickly. And they if they feel comfortable with you, hopefully, they will say, hey. You know what? This task is taking me way too long. I don't is it really important, or do we offs you know, offload it to someone else? Or is it not really gonna drive that big of a change and we need to change those goals that we set up in the beginning? So, again, just be flexible.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:19:38

Marketing plans are never really set in stone. Anything can happen with the economy. Anything can happen. Right? So you wanna be open to that shift and also keep an eye out on what your competitors are doing and what other industries are doing with their marketing because there could be a a a gap where your competitors are not doing it, but there is a beauty in in that gap for you. And you can take a the deep dive into it, and that can help your marketing.

Brett Johnson [: 00:20:03

Right. Exactly. Yeah. I I just had a marketing meeting before our recording, and, they were talking the client is a a roofing company, and they were talking about how competitors are somewhat replicating some things that we're doing. And I told them it's like, doesn't matter. First one in wins. It's marketing 101. So

Yasmine Robles [: 00:20:24

Yeah.

Brett Johnson [: 00:20:24

You know, looking at it from the standpoint of planning marketing, if you're ahead and somebody else, is starting to replicate what you do, that's great. Let them do it. You did it first sort of thing. Yeah. You know? And just keep keep being flexible, keep moving forward, and don't worry about what's in the rearview mirror per se. Yeah. Keep moving forward.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:20:43

Yeah. And there's also you can be flexible and so there's a thing called market saturation and market expansion. So if you let's say you feel really great let's say Columbus, Ohio. We feel really great about being an agency in Columbus, Ohio, and then you start notice you're achieving all these marketing goals and you start noticing competitors. You could the goal could be, let's saturate that market even more. Let's try to get like, really compete for those clients, and this depends on the industry. Yeah. Or do we then expand out? So, like, do we then go to Cincinnati and start expanding the agency that way? It it just really depends on the business, but I think try to, again, be flexible, be open to that change, build in some buffers, have input from your team, and that'll help your marketing go a lot further.

Brett Johnson [: 00:21:30

Yeah. Sure. Any additional tips for small business owners to enhance our marketing strategy for the upcoming year?

Yasmine Robles [: 00:21:37

Yeah. Don't, first, don't be feel overwhelmed.

Brett Johnson [: 00:21:40

Yeah. And and, you know, and we did cover a lot of stuff. It can be overwhelming, but you're right. It's that don't don't let it. Easier said than done, of course, because we both own our own businesses and, you know, practice what you preach kinda thing. But, yeah, it can be overwhelming, but it's that it's a necessity. You have you have to do it somehow and and do it the best you can. Yeah.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:21:59

Yeah. I I do have some tips. I will say that having one of my team members, especially, we bounce ideas off. So when you're a solo person, you can put as many especially me. This is me. I put as many goals as possible, and I'll say, I'm gonna achieve all of these goals, but in 1 month. Right? It's probably not going to happen, but having somebody go, really? How many hours? Let's break this down. How many hours is this gonna take, and and can we do it in 1 quarter, or do we need to put it push it off to another quarter, reminding you to sleep, etcetera.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:22:33

You know? There's only so many hours in a day. So I think that would be one of my personal tips is well, you can put all the goals you want and all the KPIs, but at the end of the day, can somebody can you bounce these ideas off of a team member or somebody else? And that way, you can see the realisticness. Yes. That's how realistic is your goal.

Brett Johnson [: 00:22:53

Right.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:22:55

So beyond that, I would say just really focus on those customer relationships. Build up the relationships relationships that you currently have. It's it's hard, I know, because you want to go after new clients, but you want to also make sure that that relationship that you have with your current clients stays stays really, incredible. Right? Yeah. So, again, prioritize building those relationships with your existing customers and personalize those marketing efforts. Leverage your technology so you can invest in marketing automation tools to really streamline processes and improve your efficiency. Experiment with new channels. Don't be afraid to try out new marketing channels or trends that might reach a broader audience.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:23:39

So if you haven't tried TikTok and it might be something you wanna try, give yourself some grace as you're entering whatever channel it may be and and kind of add it to your list and see if that would, increase your your reach. Collaborate and really network. Just making sure to engage with other businesses or other organizations. You can reach out for partnerships and really amplify your reach. And then make sure to continue to measure and then celebrate your success. Another thing that I don't do enough of is celebrating successes. And so set up those metrics and then when you hit one of the metrics, one of the goals, even if it's like the if you say it in the next year, within the next 3 months, part of that goal will be done. Well, you already hit 25%.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:24:27

Let's celebrate that at least. And, no matter how small it is, just keep your motivation up. Again, this is from personal experience. I tend to not celebrate, and I tend to shift the goalpost and say, well, if I got a 100 more followers, I should have been able to don't do me. Celebrate those wins. Get some a shot of tequila. Whatever it is that you you do you, but celebrate those. And then those strategies hopefully will not only enhance your marketing efforts, but also position your business for really sustainable growth throughout another year.

Brett Johnson [: 00:25:01

Yeah. I think you make a good point about celebrating the wins, and I'd even I'd even look at it as it's so your maybe your goal is to increase whatever it is by 25% the first in in a quarter's time. But you maybe, were successful at a 10% growth. Maybe the 10% growth is more of a reality than the 25%. Celebrate it. You did increase by 10%. A lot of people can't haven't done 10, 15%. So there may be some reality in that number that maybe 25 was really stretching it that you couldn't do that, but you did 10.

Brett Johnson [: 00:25:33

So let's look at the 10 as a as a as a true growth number. It puts reality to say to things that you're not always kicking yourself or doubting or reevaluating and changing and tweaking things that you don't have a good measure on what's what's really going on. Mhmm. But I agree. Celebrate what what you did win and and and not kick yourself for not making certain goals. If you grew, you grew. You know? But, yeah, maybe not as my by as much as you wanted to, but take a win.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:26:06

Yeah. Take a win. Yeah. The bigger you are as a business, I think, the harder it is to grow. So, like, if you doubled your business in 1 year, is it realistic that you're gonna double again, or is it more like you're so kind of, again, give yourself some grace.

Brett Johnson [: 00:26:20

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Some really good ideas with this episode. How can a listener get a hold of you to explore 1 or many ideas that you had today?

Yasmine Robles [: 00:26:30

Yeah. You can always find us online, RoblesDesigns.com. If you just wanna send me a message, usually, I'm active on LinkedIn. So just look for me, Yasmin Robles. And if you want to, you can download our free PDF. It's a website checklist to go through your website and see if you've got all everything I guess, you can check everything off. You can gamify it if you want. That's roblest designs.com/checklist.

Brett Johnson [: 00:26:56

And you can get a hold of me at, Circle 270media.com, or go to right right to my scheduling calendar on my podcast guy.com. And and like you, I'm mostly active on LinkedIn. I'm I'm pretty responsive there. So, any ideas that you wanna try to kick around for marketing for your podcast or business around your podcast or monetization around your podcast, we'll probably pull Yasmine in or Tonnisha or even Dawn, you know, that sort of thing, the Circle of Experts are there to help you grow whatever you need to grow, whether it's the podcast specifically or business around podcast or the business and helping the podcast grow to help support the business. Whatever it might be, it's all in one, and we're all there to to help you if you're needing some help and and you can get a hold of any of us at any point in time. We'll get it scheduled. Thanks for joining me, Yasmeen.

Yasmine Robles [: 00:27:42

Yeah. Thank you for having me.