Vivian:
First off, happy holidays, everybody! Whatever it is that you might be celebrating this time of year.
Chelsea:
Happy Spotify Wrapped to everyone who celebrates. I'm having a great time. Today, the day of our recording is when Spotify wrapped came out. So I'm having fun.
Vivian:
Yeah, can we also talk about how they've done this for creators? So what was interesting is for one, I loved opening up my personal Spotify to see exactly who I was listening to. I was thinking about how we often talk about customization and everything and how brilliant Spotify is, all they're doing is taking the data they're collecting from us and wrapping it in this nice little package and then feeding it back to us. They know how self-absorbed we are, how much we love that, and I just love that they're doing this. They've made a tradition now. Everybody looks forward to getting it.
If you are a fellow podcaster or you're thinking about podcasting just to let you know, they also do this for podcasts, for creators. So Chelsea and I spent some time today looking over our stats, where our audience is coming from and all that. The packaging on it was impeccable. So Spotify, thank you so much for that. We love learning more about our habits and the habits of our audience.
Chelsea:
Yes, absolutely. So Vivian, what's the actual topic for this episode?
Vivian:
Okay, so you know how typically it's 12 days of Christmas, all of that. we are turning this into. What do you want to call it, like 12 days of actionable marketing tips for 2025?
Chelsea:
First off, an Advent calendar is December 1st through the 25th. So this isn't really an Advent calendar. 12 days of Christmas, when Vivian and I were talking about this topic and we wanted to do 12 days of Christmas, I got it wrong. We got it wrong, Vivian. The 12 days of Christmas is from Christmas to New Year's Eve. That's what those 12 days are.
Vivian:
So it's a song about Post Christmas?
Chelsea:
Yes.
Vivian:
Okay, well news to me, I always thought the song was about 12 days leading up to Christmas.
Chelsea:
That's what I thought too, but I looked it up the other day and I saw that we were wrong. I figured I wouldn't bring it up until the actual day that we're recording.
Vivian:
Listen, typically I don't encourage bullying, but if you guys want to bully us in the comments about this, please do. I mean, we deserve it at this point. The fact that we are the age that we are and we do not know what the 12 Days of Christmas song is leading up to. So going back to the topic though, for listeners out there, what we're going to do today is we are going to dissect and do our own spin on the 12 Days of Christmas.
What we're hoping and what I encourage you to do right now is if you're a small business owner, we want you to save this podcast episode in hopes that in 2025, you will come back and listen to this maybe every three months because there are some actionable things that we're recommending and suggesting that you could do throughout the year that we think will help you stay on top of your marketing.
We've given this some thought. We think that the ideas or the recommendations we have are pretty good. Remember, you guys are hearing this from two marketing professionals, two gals whose jobs were to stay on top of marketing. Nobody better to tell you, hey, if you want to keep a pulse on your marketing as a small business owner, here are the top things that you should be doing every once in a while.
Chelsea:
On the first day of marketing Christmas, our number one tip, the most important marketing rule that I will die on is you need to know your target audience. If you don't know your target audience, your marketing is not going to work, period.
Vivian:
Agree. I think that's probably the biggest, hardest thing to do. The reason I'm going to say this is because I know as a small business owner, sometimes we get caught up in some of the stuff that isn't as important. It's not that we do that purposefully. It's just over time because you're in the trenches, you're just getting by. You don't have a whole lot of time because you are running your business on top of planning and doing your marketing. It's a lot to keep up with. I think sometimes we get so bogged down by trying to keep up with the latest trends or doing what we think is going to grow our business. So we maybe overlook the fact that knowing our target audience is most important. The thing that I want to bring up here and just remind you guys is that, just like small businesses change, just like you as a human being evolve over the years...I mean, I hope you do. I hope you're not the same person you were at bratty 15. Just like we grow as people, so does your target audience. The reason your target audience does that is because they are in an environment that is consistently changing over time. Look at how much technology changes. Look at how people are consuming content. Look at how much they're not watching cable TV anymore, but now they're streaming services. Now they're finding information on TikTok, who ever thought that would be the case. People change over time, so checking in throughout the year is a good idea just to be sure that you have a good handle on who your target audience is and perhaps how they may be changing or evolving over time.
Chelsea:
Exactly. If you ever feel like you don't know what you're doing with your marketing or you're not sure if something's a good idea, go back to your target audience. Look at your target audience. Will this work for them? So if you feel a little iffy when it comes to your marketing, go back to that number one rule.
Vivian:
So that's number one. On the second day of Marketing Christmas, our recommendation is going to be to tweak your marketing initiatives at least twice based on data. This is what we mean by this. Let's say you're doing something as simple as print ads, okay? So you got an ad out in your local newspaper or a local magazine. Be sure that you're able to tie metrics back to that particular ad and every once in a while you check in on that data to see how that ad is performing. Tweak that ad based off of that data. So if you have an ad that is underperforming, change the ad copy, change the ad design, all right?
Chelsea:
A great example for digital marketing is, let's say you have a digital ad going and looking at the data, you see that the people who are interacting the most with that ad is of a specific age group. Go ahead and tweak that ad so that it aligns more with that age group so you'll get even more interaction.
Vivian:
Yeah, and the key here is really going to be, we want you guys to get in the habit of understanding that successful marketing is a lot of pivoting. What you're doing essentially is, you guys are little experimenters. You're scientists. What you do is you put something together, what you think is going to work based off the data and the information that you have at hand based on who your target audience is and what the particular marketing initiative is. But rarely are you gonna hit a home run the first try. What we want you to get in the habit of is simply putting something out there, looking at what the data says, and then tweaking, pivoting, adjusting as you need to in order to improve that ad. This should be a cycle of continuous improvement based off of information, not just based off of "I feel" or "I think", but based off of what the actual results are showing you.
Chelsea:
Yeah, marketing is starting with an idea and then pivoting based off of concrete evidence. You should not be tweaking your ad because "I have a feeling that they'd prefer this". We want you to tweak your ads with data.
Vivian:
We want you to feel super confident about what you're doing in your marketing. Nothing is going to make you more confident than you saying, I know who my audience is. I know what their preferences are because I have information that backs that up. Therefore, I'm able to make the best decisions with all of my marketing initiatives over time because I'm able to couple and to connect that information. So I'm able to take the information I know about this audience and I'm able to provide them the best ad that's going to get them to click, to purchase, to sign up for my email list, whatever that is.
Chelsea:
Talking about initiatives, let's go ahead and do the third day of Marketing Christmas, which is going to be pick three initiatives to do at a time. So don't overcommit yourself.
We want you guys to experiment. We want you guys to try new things, but don't try 50 new things at once because you are limiting yourself and you're making it way too difficult on yourself to really optimize and do your best at each of these initiatives. So magic number three, stick to three initiatives at a time that you can sit down and really polish and tweak and get good results.
Vivian:
Let's be real, unless you guys have a sugar daddy sitting around somewhere that's funding your business, most of us do not have all the funds available to be able to do 10 marketing initiatives at one time. It's nice when you narrow it down to three, because for one, you're able to keep up with it. Okay. You're able to go back and look at the data, pivot, adjust. It's also going to help you concentrate your efforts on growing something the right way.
There is something really effective or something happens whenever you concentrate your efforts on fewer projects than when you stretch yourself too thin and you're trying to do too much. We all know this. I don't care how good of a multitasker you are, it's going to be hard for you to keep up with 15 different things. Could you do it? Absolutely. Could you do it well? Probably not. Something's going to slip through the cracks.
Our purpose in telling you guys to stick to three marketing initiatives to focus on. It doesn't mean that you can't change those three. But we want you to see those three to fruition. You should be ensuring that you're doing what needs to be done. Then you can move on and based on the results, you can decide if you want to keep that or if you want to do away with it and try something different.
Also, don't be afraid to try something different, please.
Now moving on to on the fourth day of marketing Christmas, we are going to recommend that you guys check in on your marketing plan four times a year. That's once a quarter. The reason we want you to do this is because we do understand that sometimes it could be overwhelming to create a marketing plan for an entire year. So if putting it into smaller bite-sized portions, quarterly helps, then we want you to do that.
At least four times a year, we want you to go back to that marketing plan and say, Hey, is this working? Is this still the direction I want to go? Has anything in my business changed to where I would have to update my marketing plan?
Chelsea:
Yes, you do not have to make a yearly marketing plan. Like Vivian just said you can make a quarterly one or you could have a yearly marketing plan. Whatever you decide to do, we just want you guys to continuously check up on your marketing. So try once a quarter, four times a year, go back and say, you know what, actually my goals have changed or actually my target audience has changed. That can happen. We want you guys to make sure that you're checking up on what's going on with your business and your marketing.
Vivian:
We want you guys to make time to talk with your business, and your environment. Here's the other thing, just this morning, we were talking about a coffee shop that just opened up down the road from where I live. You were telling me that there's a new business out in North Charleston.
The environments change in the small business landscape. You want to be considering too, with a marketing plan is you want to be looking at what we call a SWOT analysis. Your strengths, your weaknesses, your opportunities and your threats. When you're going through that exercise, you want to consider who your competitors are or what new competition may be in the area.
I don't mean they have to be in your same industry. What I'm thinking of is here locally, Chelsea and I go to a cafe that's a little further down the road. That was the only type of coffee, little cafe thing that we had in this area. I live out in the boonies. So that was our go-to. Now we have a coffee shop that just opened up close.
So if I'm that little cafe, I'm thinking I need to be sure that I revisit my marketing plan to now adjust and include the fact that now there's another coffee option in the area and that I may have to do something a little different for my promotions because now I have a competitor that's down the street. Not that you need to base everything you do off of your competition, but it's unrealistic to not include that.
Chelsea:
Yes, I'm so glad that you brought that up.
We're talking a lot about marketing plans right now. If you don't feel comfortable with marketing plans, we do have two episodes specifically about creating a marketing plan and why you need a marketing plan. So go listen to those if you're feeling a little iffy. A marketing plan is definitely something that you need to consider if you want to take your small business seriously, and if you want to take your marketing seriously.
Your fifth day of Christmas when it comes to marketing is we want you guys to try to go to at least five marketing events in 2025. Networking is extremely important, especially for small business owners, and it can help you stay connected with your community. It's a great way to connect with your community. I know people don't like networking. It's not that bad. As an introvert, I am an introvert, y'all, it's not that bad. It's something that we have to do. Just try five times within 12 months, you can do it.
Vivian:
Every single time that I go to a networking opportunity, there has not been one time where I've thought that's been a waste of my time. Not once. I get it, I'm an extrovert. Chelsea over here is the introvert. I understand that, but I have never left without meeting somebody new or somehow making a connection with a small business that then I can follow on Facebook and then I have a face to a name.
It's never a waste of your time. I'm going to be cheesy and tell you that that's because your approach and your attitude plays a big part in how much you get out of networking events. So if anything else, I'm going to remind you that social media can only do so much. I get it. We live in a time where it's all about social media. Connect with me on Instagram. Follow me on Facebook. Watch my videos on TikTok. When you are in front of somebody, you shake their hand or you meet them, something just changes. It's different. That connection cannot be replaced.
There is a time and place and it is so valuable and you're not going to regret it. If you do regret it, then you could come back and tell us. You can say, "Vivian, I'm charging you for an hour of my time because you told me to go to a networking event and it was not good". Also remember the one thing that helps tremendously before I go to any networking event is I understand what my purpose and my role is in showing up. So I don't just show up just doing whatever. I'm here. Hello.
It's always with a purpose. Chelsea and I have attended events before and I can tell you, we did a business after hours event a couple years ago. The reason it stands out to me at that time is because her and I were in a different place in our small business at that time. It was interesting though, because we knew what the purpose was before we went to it together, and so that steers the conversation. It steers the people that I want to meet and get in front of. I think it's just helpful.
All right. So on the sixth day of marketing Christmas, we want to encourage you to practice some type of gratitude six days a week. We are giving you one day to be angry. You can pick if you want it to be on a Saturday, even though I don't think you should spend your weekends sulking about anything. That's precious time. You want to be mad at the world, do it on a Monday because that's socially acceptable. Don't take up your weekend with it. The reason we say this is Chelsea and I, two or three episodes ago, you guys can look it up. We did an episode on gratitude and what it did for our small business. We didn't do this thing where it was, every day I'm just going to be grateful for X, Y, Z.
Instead, we integrated it into our weekly meetings and we made it a point to be sure that it was something that we took seriously and we gave thought to, even though Chelsea does admit that she typically did not think about it until that moment and that's why she would let me go first in practice. What we found is it was extremely helpful in the day-to-day marketing stuff that we were doing simply because it gave you perspective long-term on your initiatives. It also increased creativity and did a whole bunch of other stuff for what we were doing in our small business. So if you're interested in hearing the details about that, go listen to that episode. We want to encourage you to do the same. Figure out a way to integrate some type of gratitude at least six days a week.
Chelsea:
Vivian and I talked about how we put thought into our gratitude for each of our weekly meetings, and they were more in depth. You don't have to do that every single day. You don't need an in-depth reason to be grateful every single day. It can be something little, but even just that little bit is so helpful to keep you focused and positive when it comes to your day-to-day running your small business. We understand you can't do that every single day, so you get a little free day.
Vivian:
You do get to reframe your mind a little bit. When we make a mistake or there was an error on something, I always think to myself, "well, dang, I'm really glad that we caught that when we did because had we not, it could have been expensive. Had we not, it could have led to a lot of confusion. Had we not, we would have had to do a lot more communication to clean up or do whatever". I think even in times when you're in disastrous situations and you're like, man, it's really hard for me right now to find any gratitude in what is going on in my business.
That's where the creativity comes in. Because if you start to practice this six days a week, I think those are muscles that you start to train and you start to get really good at it.
Then you can say, "you know what, let me just say, I hate that this happened. This shouldn't have happened. It will not happen again on my watch. However, I'm grateful that I learned my lesson. I'm grateful that now I know I need to double check every single ad that goes out there. I'm grateful that, I need to look at my data. I now know to look at my data sooner so that I'm not wasting money on an initiative that's not getting me anything."
Chelsea:
Okay, so seventh day of marketing Christmas, we want you guys every seven weeks to look at your data. Notice I said every seven weeks. Okay, not seven days, not seven hours, but seven weeks. "Well, Chelsea, why is it that long?" Let me tell you. A lot of times...
Vivian:
I like that we're doing a little role playing over here. You're doing both Chelsea and the listener.
Chelsea:
I want to make it very clear. The reason why it's this long of a time frame is because a lot of times we'll pull the plug early on initiatives because we haven't given it enough time to perform. We're back to the second day, if we're making at least two tweaks to our initiatives, but then we're looking at our data a week later and pulling the plug, you haven't given that marketing initiative enough time to pivot, to change, and to be successful. Marketing is not overnight. Marketing is a long-term game.
Vivian:
It's a slow burn. We just talked about this slow burn. If you guys don't know, we have a community, it's a membership community that you could pay $50 a month to meet weekly on these calls with other small business owners and Chelsea and I. we had this conversation with one of our members yesterday about the slow burn. I was telling him how proud I am of him because he started a tradition this year that he plans to continue. It's a holiday promotion type thing. He's said, look, I'm already getting engagement, but if it's not a banger right off of the rep, then it's okay. I'm willing to do it again next year because I'm starting a tradition. I want this to be something that happens in my business every year because it builds community. I told him how proud I was of him having that mindset to begin with just because so many people have that, "it needs to go off without a hitch right now," and that rarely happens.
It does happen sometimes and more power to you, if you're one of those people that everything just kind of turns to gold whenever you try it the first time. That's not me. I am the queen of a slow burn. It will probably happen in my lifetime. I'm cool with it, but it's going to take a while. So, yes, the seven week period is very good because it does allow room for some of those initiatives to kind of curate.
You've seen it possibly where you've uploaded a reel or you've uploaded content and it's done okay, but then you go back and look weeks later and you're like, why is this taking off? Sometimes time is your friend in that sense.
All right. On the eighth day of marketing Christmas, we are going to tell you to go ahead and write down eight marketing strategies or initiatives that you have never tried, and we want you to pick one. We want you to step outside of your comfort zone and outside of your normal, what you do all the time.
We understand that it can be hard sometimes to flex those creative juices, or it can be scary to try something new, especially when you're putting money up against it. Money or effort or whatever it is. So we want to encourage you, write down eight marketing things that you've never tried before, and then pick one and try it out.
Chelsea:
Yeah, it might be perfect for your small business, but because you have never tried it and you're scared to do it, you're limiting yourself. So I loved that we added this because I feel like this is so important when it comes to marketing. Marketing is about your target audience. It's also about being creative and drawing in your target audience. If you guys are doing the same thing always, why would that stand out to your target audience?
Vivian:
Also, it may just interject a little bit of life into it. If you guys are like, "my marketing is boring, I don't like doing it". You have to do marketing for your small business. So let's try to find ways to keep it exciting and for you to actually want to do it. Let me give you an example of what this might look like.
Let's say you are a business that focuses on families. You've never tried a sponsorship or you've never tried attending an event. Why don't you go ahead and look at some of the mom groups in the area here locally in Charleston? We have a running moms group for people that had babies and they can bring their children, put them in strollers and they all run together. That's a great opportunity. If you have a product or a service, let's say you have a children's boutique, that's a great way for you to connect to the local community for the people that are primed to buy your products.
Think of things outside of the box that that doesn't necessarily cost a lot of money. Let me give you another example. We partnered with the elementary school to do the hanging decals in the windows that every single parent needs to have when they drive up to the school, get in the driving line to pick up the student. They make sure that they have that decal. Now it has the logo on it for that practice. Coming up with things that maybe you haven't tried before, you may just find that they're really good ideas for you.
Chelsea:
On the ninth day of marketing Christmas, we want you guys nine times a year - that's not that much. If you think about the entire year, 365 days. Nine times a year, we want you guys to reach out to other small businesses and be kind and personable.
The whole goal here is to connect with fellow entrepreneurs and to grow your community. Y'all, community is so important when it comes to small businesses. It's the entire reason that we can thrive, because people care about their local community. Reaching out to other small businesses, creating that relationship, it will help you grow, I promise. I have a really funny story, Vivian.
So The Design Demon, I reached out to her first, I was just buying all her jewelry. Now we're actually friends. Rae has been on the podcast a bunch of times. We're friends now. Recently, she had messaged me, hey, do you live in this county? Yes, I do. Well she said, I found these kittens and they won't let me drop them off at the shelter because I don't live in this county, and my county's shelter isn't accepting animals right now. So will you come with me to drop off these kittens so that I can actually leave them because I don't live in this county. I think that is a great example of I took the time to interact with someone, and now not only are we good business friends, but we're good friends friends too. That matters a lot when it comes to community and when it comes to small businesses.
Vivian:
Absolutely. I think that's where good partnerships stem from. That's where, coming from the corporate setting, it was always drilled into our heads that part of the reason that you do networking is because it's not about what you know, it's about who you know. That's a true testament, anyone that comes from the corporate world knows that to be true. I know you guys know someone that's gotten a promotion that did not deserve a promotion, but the only reason they got the promotion was because of some elbow rubbing they did with someone. That's just how it works. Just understand that humans are built on connection and we naturally are always going to want to help somebody we know. It just makes it a little easier to do business and also to collaborate, to do partnerships to feed off of people.
That's the whole reason we started our SOB, Small Owned Business Community, that membership I was talking about earlier. It was the idea that we wanted people to be able to be comfortable with us, to hop on a call and say, hey, I'm having a problem or I don't have any ideas for what to post on social media. I don't even know how to create an email list, where do I even start with this? We wanted to build that community where someone knows us well enough to feel confident that they could come to us with this question. They think, "they're going to give me good advice and they're not going to judge me." It's all built on that connection.
Chelsea:
Yeah, so nine times a year, just reach out to a fellow entrepreneur and be kind to them. Be personable. I just want to clarify though, do not start messaging me for help donating kittens, okay? I almost came home with another cat and I don't need another cat. I already have two, that is enough for the rest of my life. So don't start involving me in this anymore because Tim's going to be so mad when I come home with another cat.
Vivian:
What I am hearing though is that you do want to be messaged if they're donating lizards or snakes. If you guys have snakes that need to be rehomed, message Chelsea.
Chelsea:
Ooh, you know, I know people that would take a snake. So you know what? Sure. I'll help you re-home them.
Vivian:
My husband being one of them, he's like a snake wrangler. He loves snakes.
Chelsea:
Yeah see, you shouldn't have opened your mouth now. People are going to message me about snakes and I'm going to bring them to you.
Vivian:
All right, so moving on to number 10 because I want to get past this snake conversation. On the 10th day of marketing Christmas, we want you guys to open up your preferred social media platform right now and we want you to interact with 10 people. Okay. The reason we want you to do this is because we want to remind you that social media is actually for socializing, which means it's a two way street. Think of it this way. There are some times that you feel like, gosh I need to post something. I haven't shown up. So what you do is, you get on there and you post and run. Great, I did the thing, I can work it off my list and I'm done. But you really need to be on there replying to comments. You need to be on there priming these social media platforms and that means you showing up and perhaps commenting on 10 different accounts of people that are your ideal customers, right?
Chelsea:
If you want more interaction with your target audience on social media, guess what? You have to interact with them too.
Vivian:
Yeah, and let me tell you one of the things that I think also, if this hasn't been an aha moment for you yet, let me just help you get there. I'm going to save you a lot of time. We are marketing gals, which means that our content on our feed is marketing related. What I see some people doing in the same industry is they go and follow other marketing accounts. Then when they post something you see in the comments that it's all digital marketers or this and that. If that's not your target audience, then you don't need to be following other marketing accounts. Okay. So for us, we had the realization, we knew for some time now that us following other marketing people is not going to be helpful. The people that really can find value in the resources we provide are small business owners. That means that we need to be following small business owners. We need to be interacting and commenting and sharing stuff from small business owners because that's why we're here. Right?
Chelsea:
You might want to consider going through the people you're following and deleting people. That's what I did because when Vivian and I had this conversation, our feed is full of marketing stuff and we don't need the marketing stuff. We want to see our target audience. So I went through and I deleted a bunch of people because we don't need to be interacting with those people. We need to be interacting with our target audience.
Vivian:
Absolutely. And I think that helps with, going back to the first day of marketing Christmas, we're telling you guys to know your target audience. There is nothing better for us than to actually show up and follow feeds of people that we can help the most. How are we going to address pain points? How are we going to know what they're struggling with or what would be a useful resource for them if we're not in their day to day? If we're not following them and seeing they're having that problem. Maybe we could create a solution.
Chelsea:
I have a funny example of this. I have a lot of smaller metalcore bands that request to follow me because they know because they can see that I follow all these other metalcore bands and I interact with them a lot. So they're like, hmm, this is our target audience. If I request to follow her, then she'll look at our page, maybe she'll like our music and maybe she'll follow it. That's kind of the idea.
Vivian:
This is on her personal account, by the way. The Seasoned Marketer is not following Metal Core. I mean, listen, we may be because Chelsea handles most of our Instagram stuff, but the key there is brilliant on their part because like you said, they figured out the fact that, if she's on these other profiles and she's commenting on their content, if I comment on her stuff, she'll likely at least click on this to see if we're her vibe, right?
So that's a great example and a great approach to that. We want you to get on there, interact with 10 people, just because think about it, you do pay attention. So it is going to cause some intrigue on their part and your efforts will not be wasted. Guarantee, if you do that for 10 people, you're going to at least get one or two follows from it - and from people that are your target audience if you do it correctly.
Chelsea:
Yes. Okay. So for the 11th day, I want Vivian to explain this one. I'll do 12. Vivian, could you please explain your thought process for 11? Vivian was the one who pitched this one, and I understand it. But I feel like she's going to explain it the best.
Vivian:
I like how you just punted over to me. All right. So for the 11th day of marketing Christmas, this is a little bit of an exercise in visualization. What I want you to do is imagine the number 11, which is basically two sticks, separate them. Now you have a start and a finish line. What I want you to do is we want to encourage you to, from start to finish, map out your customer journey. I guarantee you, if you've never done this in your life, it's going to be eye-opening.
Chelsea:
Yeah, Vivian I love this one. I think a lot of small businesses forget to think about this and it's so important because understanding your customer's journey is going to help you find your bottlenecks. It's going to help you realize, actually, this process is not working, and I find this infuriating. How would a potential customer feel? Think about your customer's journey. They discover you. Then they, I don't know, look at an ad. Think of every step. They finally make a purchase. After they make a purchase, where are they going to go? Are they going on to an email list? You don't want to just lose them forever. You want to create a reoccurring customer.
All of these ideas are really good, okay? But I feel like 1 and 11, these are my two favorite on this list. Know your target audience and your customer journey. Those are my top ones. If that's all you take away from this episode, it needs to be those two.
Vivian:
Not that you need any more reasons to want to do this, but you're going to find opportunities to make more money. Can I just say that? Because here's the thing. Let's say you are a coffee shop, the coffee shop that just opened up. If I'm the gentleman that is the business owner, what I'm thinking is, okay, I'm a new customer. I walk in, I order a coffee. What then happens post coffee ordering. The experience I know is very good in the store. Now what needs to occur though, before they walk out, do I ask them before they pay for it, would you like to sign up for our email list? We have a rewards program, if you put your phone number in, for every 10 coffees you buy you get a free one, or whatever it is. Let's say they get put on an email list or on that SMS list, how many times are they connecting with you outside of that? Are you sending them maybe monthly texts that say, hey, here's the monthly drink. Here's the special price. Chelsea, you have used as an example of how one of your professors in college was obsessed with Starbucks because they knew his birthday. Are you collecting birthdays so that you can send them a sweet treat? Your birthday's coming up, here's a free coffee on us. What are you doing? What are the touch points so that you are staying top of mind? If you are this coffee shop owner and you are doing none of that, by thinking about your customer's journey you can now say, hey, I could probably increase my sales by a certain percentage by doing this.
Chelsea:
You know what this made me think of? If you give a mouse a cookie. If I give someone a free birthday cookie, then they're going to come in and they're also going to get a coffee.
Vivian:
Right. What it does is it just kind of helps you to figure out where there are gaps. I'm not saying that you guys are going to fix this all overnight, but I think knowing is the first step, right? So map out your customer journey so that you can find little pockets of opportunity. I guarantee you, you're going to find little things that you could do with little to no effort that you're like, wow, all I have to do is turn the setting on. All I have to do is amp up my Google reviews. None of my servers are handing a card. When they hand the bill over, maybe you put a QR code on the bottom of that bill to say, hey, scan this QR code and leave us a review. Right?
Chelsea:
Yeah, so customer journey, I love that one.
So our last 12th day of marketing Christmas is - you need to have 12 months filled with consistent marketing. Marketing is about consistency. You cannot have two months filled with marketing and then do nothing for four months. Your target audience is going to forget about you, they're going to lose interest, they're going to drop off. You need to be consistently showing up for people so that you can stay top of mind so that they're more likely to shop with you.
Vivian:
Marketing is your lifeline to your business. It is the feeder to sales. It is the feeder to good publicity. It is the feeder to all of that. I just want to remind you is it is a high priority thing. Okay. Do not deprioritize marketing. Do not act like it is an afterthought because it is not. If it is an afterthought, your business is going to reflect that.
Just like in your personal life, if you do not prioritize your health then it's going to get to the point where over time you're not as effective in recouping it. It's a lot easier to maintain good healthy habits and that's the same thing for your marketing. Create healthy marketing habits so that your business does not suffer. What I would personally do is I would divide marketing initiatives. 2025 is right around the corner. Get paper out and draw a line down the center of it. In one column, you're going to have marketing initiatives that you should be doing all 12 months, no matter what. That's going to be the fixed. Then on the other side of that column is going to be your variable marketing initiatives. That's going to be the stuff that you're not doing all 12 months, but you're going to sporadically intertwine into the year. The reason I say this is if email marketing is going to be one of the things that you focus on and you decide I want to do this once a month or I want to do this once a week, great, that's fixed.
That is something that you need to be concentrating on 12 months out of the year. The variable stuff is going to be hey, I want to do an ad for a quarter. You can sprinkle that in there whenever the time is right. The fixed stuff is going to be the stuff that you create the good habits around. All right, I need to know when I need to have my marketing email done. I need to know when I want to be releasing it. I want to be consistent. If you do monthly emails, y'all, that's only 12 emails. I think it helps to put stuff in perspective.
Chelsea:
Yeah. For our email list, The Seasoned Marketer, if you are struggling a little bit with your marketing and marketing goals, Vivian adds a marketing goal for each email. So something to consider and focus on for that week.
Vivian:
Yeah, so I don't want to hear y'all saying that we don't provide you with resources. We do. If you sign up for our email list, every week at the very bottom, there's a section that's the marketing goal of the week. Basically the idea being that if once a week you have a marketing goal, you're going to get through 52 actionable things that you are doing to stay on top of your marketing. That is super helpful when you break it down like that.
We just want you to understand that there is a relationship with you prioritizing your marketing and that your marketing needs to be top of brain 12 months out of a year. So don't do this thing where in January you plan all of your marketing for 2025 and then you don't check back in until April. Don't be that person, all right?
If you guys are struggling with staying on top of it because you're like, Vivian, I'm a small business owner. I can't be reading about all the crap on how to stay up with all these social media platforms and writing my emails and doing all this and that. If you need a little help, join our SOB community, our Small Owned Business community. Like I said, it's $50 a month. We have weekly calls that are Q &A style where you can ask your marketing questions from two marketing professionals. There are other community members in there that can also help to answer some of the questions. What we want to do is we want to do the community part of it where you guys feel like you have a place, a resource to go to, and you're not doing this on your own. There's also a bit of accountability there. We're going to ask you every week, how's your marketing going? What are you doing?
Chelsea:
We're going to be in your business, but in a fun way. Okay, Vivian, are we good to do the TLDL? Is it time? Okay, let's do the TLDL. If you are here and you didn't listen to the entire episode, but you're here because it's the Too Long Didn't Listen segment, then I'm glad that you're here getting the synopsis, the lowdown, but please, when you get a chance, go back and listen to this entire episode.
12 days of marketing Christmas. One, you need to know your target audience. Two, we want you guys to tweak your marketing initiatives based off of data at least twice. Three, pick three initiatives at a time so you don't overcommit yourself and you can really focus on perfecting those marketing initiatives. Four, check up quarterly on your marketing. Five, go to five networking events in 2025. Six, we want you guys to try to practice gratitude at least six days a week. You get one free day to be angry at the world. Seven, every seven weeks, you need to look back at your data. Don't do it before seven weeks. You need to give your marketing time to work. Eight, consider eight marketing initiatives or strategies that you've never considered before and pick one so that you can step outside your comfort zone and try something new. Nine, nine times a year we want you guys to try to reach out to other small businesses in your community and be kind and personable and make connections.
10, get on your preferred social media platform, whichever you prefer to be on, and interact with at least 10 other people within your target audience. 11, visualize your journey, start to end your customer's journey. Visualize your customer's journey from them first discovering you to after they make a purchase. Not when they make a purchase, but what you're doing afterwards as well. 12, 12 months filled with marketing. You need to be consistent. You can't just focus on marketing three months within the year. It needs to be 12 months of the year.
Vivian:
I love it. That was such a brief and concise wrap up. You guys, just one more reminder. If you got some value out of this podcast episode, please go ahead and follow us and subscribe and leave us a comment. Tell us how you're enjoying it or leave us a comment telling us what other topics you want us to cover here in 2025. Chelsea and I have a whole slew of ideas, but we would love for you guys to help us.
Chelsea:
Go be the best SOB you can be!
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