Create An Effective Marketing Funnel and Content Strategy for Product-based Businesses with Ruthie Sterrett

In this episode of the Product Powerhouse podcast, we have a special guest, Ruthie Sterrett, the founder of The Consistency Corner, a content management agency for small business owners. 

Ruthie shares her expertise in content strategy and marketing, with a background in corporate retail marketing for over 15 years, Ruthie has developed a systematic approach to building successful content strategies. She discusses the importance of consistency and offers valuable tips on attracting, nurturing, and converting audiences through your long-form content. From quarterly content planning to utilizing different platforms effectively, Ruthie's insights are sure to empower entrepreneurs looking to elevate their marketing game. 

Key topics and takeaways:

• Mapping out campaign themes for product-based businesses
• Long form content for attracting new customers and nurturing existing ones
• Committing to a consistency that can be maintained
• Repurposing long form content into other formats

Connect with Ruthie Sterrett:
Website
Podcast
Instagram

10 Ways to Get More Eyes on Your Business

Transcript

Erin Alexander: Hello? Hello. Welcome to another episode of the product powerhouse podcast. I am so happy you are here. Today. I am chatting with Ruthie Sterrett from the consistency corner, and I had so much fun recording this episode and then listening to it again when I edited, because we actually recorded a few months ago. This is such a good episode, really actionable, you know, I love action oriented episodes. So, let me read you a Ruthie's bio because she is phenomenal. And then we'll dive into this episode. 

Ruthie Sterrett is a content and marketing strategist and founder of the consistency corner, a content management agency that helps small business owners create consistent content that drives revenue through quarterly planning, simple marketing best practices, positive reinforcement and accountability. Often entrepreneurs get overwhelmed, keeping up with content, prioritizing their dozens of ideas or holding themselves accountable to taking action. The consistency corner was established to help create simple content frameworks, which build trust and lead to sales every month. A retail veteran turned self-taught marketer and agency owner Ruthie grew in entrepreneurship while balancing a corporate job in retail marketing with experience in blogging, direct sales, and health and wellness coaching all while being a mom. As a Midwest native now, living in Florida, she lives by the motto, work hard and be nice and loves to cheer others on in their pursuit of big goals. As a marketer, Ruthie has been successful. Thanks to an ability to think strategically and be curious while managing details, communicating priorities and focusing on individual and team strengths to create consistency in all areas of branding and marketing based on core values and strengths, unique to each brand, she works with. 

Ruthie is so phenomenal. She has a long history in the retail. Management and sales world, and you are going to love this episode. So here we go. 

Hi Ruthie, thank you so much for being on the podcast. How are you today?

Ruthie Sterrett: I'm good. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Erin Alexander: I am so excited to chat with you. I am so glad that we connected. I just love everything you're doing. So let's start by telling everyone who's listening, who you are and what you do.

Ruthie Sterrett: Yeah, so I'm Ruthie Sta at the Founder of The Consistency Corner, which is a content management agency. And I also offer content strategy as a consulting or coaching service. And I've been doing this full-time for just about a year. We're like right at my one year anniversary. But I came from a background in corporate retail marketing and I had actually been in retail merchandising and retail management for 15 years.

I remember people telling me all the time that I should get into marketing when I was like, oh, I don't wanna work in traditional retail forever. Didn't want to work in overnights and holidays and all that. Once I had kids and people would tell me I should get into marketing. And I was like, but I don't know anything about marketing.

I don't have any experience in that. My degree is not in that. My degree was in selling and sales management. So then I actually ended up in a corporate merchandising job and worked really closely with the marketing department for a small business that had about 15 brick and mortar locations and an e-commerce division.

Worked really closely with the marketing team and realized like, okay, I don't know everything, but like I can figure this out and I know retail and I know product and I know people. Having worked on the sales floor for 15 years, like I knew people and how people bought, and some things happened in the organization.

I was offered the role of the marketing manager. I remember saying I don't know what I'm doing, but I will figure it out. At the same time, I was, side hustling and network marketing and lifestyle belonging and direct sales and trying to figure out what I was doing and teaching myself branding, marketing, messaging and content along the way.

And so a lot of the things that I was learning, I. On my own, in my side hustle. I was applying in my corporate job and like figuring it out and the brand that I was working for, we spent a lot of time when I first stepped in on the branding and on the messaging because when I took over it was very much about the product.

And I remember telling the owners and even the buying team of people can buy stuff anywhere. In fact, they can buy this stuff other places. So it cannot just be about the product. We have to make it about not only the brand, but how the brand serves the consumer. And so I was really adamant about building the brand, creating brand values, clearly defining the ideal customer.

And through the foundation of a couple of years of hustling and doing that and working behind the scenes, when the pandemic hit, there was an opportunity to scale the e-commerce division. And we actually scaled it over 900% in one year while still growing brick and mortar sales. And now granted, I live in Florida stores didn't close here.

We were in a diff in a different world compared to the rest of the world in 2020. But we grew the e-commerce division 900% in one year, continued to grow brick and mortar sales and. I was having a conversation actually with a friend about that, and this is when I was still side hustling and trying to figure out what I was doing with like health and fitness coaching and just, I didn't know what I was doing.

And she was like you taught yourself how to do that? Give yourself some credit and if you can teach yourself, you could teach other people. And it was like a light bulb went off and it was like, oh. I can't. So I pivoted in a matter of six weeks. I had just launched my podcast and I decided to pivot it to marketing for small business owners because the, when I made that decision of oh, I could do this, the content like poured out of me, like the ideas and the thoughts, and so I did that as a side hustle for about 18 months and then had the opportunity to step away from my full-time job about a year ago and do this full-time.

So now I offer content management done for you for businesses and then that kind of coaching and consulting for business owners who are not quite ready to outsource, but they still need some support and guidance with their content and marketing strategy.

Erin Alexander: That is an incredible story. I am blown away. And also we have so many like little things in common. Like I tried the network marketing, I had a lifestyle blog. I tried like the health and fitness coaching and eventually in advertised design and then I transitioned to just design in general and it was like, oh yeah, I do know how to design logos and things.

So I started freelancing and then it just escalated from there. But it's so fun to see those little connections and just hear how you've taken, your background and turned it into this company that's now celebrating one years old. So congratulations and to see all the things you're doing and know that you self-taught is just such an inspiration and I'm really excited to pick your brain in this conversation today because I love content marketing. I wish that my whole business was just like around content, but I also like making money sometimes, so I'm excited to just talk about this.

So can we talk about the basics of what does content marketing even mean? Because this isn't a word that like the everyday population uses. This is something that we use in our like online business owner bubble.

Ruthie Sterrett: Yeah, so I would say that content is anything that your audience, whether that's the consumer, your competition, your community, anything that your audience can consume. Whether it's video, audio, something that they're reading, something that they're watching, it's something that they can consume that's not like a product.

And content can live on social media. It can live on your website, it can live in guest blogs that you do. Or if you are a product based business and you're showing up in somebody's gift guide, like you're contributing content to the gift guide. So content is things like information that people are consuming.

And the thing about content is your different pieces of content should have different jobs. And what I find is sometimes people get really overwhelmed because they think one piece of content is going to change their business. Oh, I'm gonna have a viral reel and my business is going to explode. No, it's not.

You're gonna have a viral reel and a lot of people are gonna see a piece of content. That's all that means unless you're creating content strategy. Funnels and pieces of content that are meant to attract, nurture, or convert your audience. And I get it because I was in the same space, five years ago when I stepped into a marketing role of like how many people bought the thing because of that one social media post.

Zero. But how many people bought the thing because they saw five social media posts. They are on the email list, they went to the website, they browsed the website, they came back to the website, they saw another social media post, they walked by the store. Like all of those things are content that works together.

And I love to share the analogy of salad. So you can have salad that is like iceberg lettuce and fat-free dressing and a piece of cheese and it's like a sad salad. That is terrible. Or you can have a salad that's like superfoods, kale and blueberries and quinoa and sunflower seeds and like a really yummy, delicious dressing made by hand.

And those are both salads and they can both nourish you, but one does a better job. And that's how marketing is. You can have small scale marketing that gets the job done, but not as well as a strategic marketing plan or I'll even say a more expensive marketing strategy because time and money are involved with marketing.

But you gotta start somewhere. And that's where we are with content, is we're layering content in as like ingredients in the marketing strategy or ingredients in the salad and different pieces of content provide different nutrients. They do different things. And so it's not about one post and throwing up one social media post or writing one blog of them being like, that didn't work.

It's a strategy and it's a system and it takes time.

Erin Alexander: Yeah, absolutely. I think a common misconception about marketing people think that it's a schedule. So they'll be like I need a posting schedule. My marketing strategy is that I post on Instagram three times a day and I'm like, that's not a strategy, that's a schedule.

It's all the things working together, and sometimes you need to, prioritize different pieces of those, of the salad, like you're gonna have more lettuce than you are gonna have blueberries, because different pieces of content do different things, and you need different amounts to actually have a solid strategy.

It's not just about the schedule of what you're doing.

Ruthie Sterrett: Yeah. And I talk a lot about, in addition to the marketing funnel, I talk a lot about the sales equation and looking at when it comes to our sales and the number of dollars that we want. Okay? We gotta work backwards because we're gonna get those sales from a combination of the average order value and the number of transactions.

Okay? So we look at the number of transactions how much traffic did we have and what's our conversion rate? We look at average order value. Okay, what's our average unit retail and how many units per order are people ordering? So those are four, six different things that you could influence with messaging and marketing, but you can't influence all of them at the same time.

You've got to decide which one you wanna hone in on and focus on, and then create a path or a roadmap to take your client through the journey to impact those things. I remember sitting in a board meeting one time where we were talking about a promotion for a holiday. I don't even remember what holiday it was.

And I was asking the c E o I was like what's the business goal? Are we trying to increase a o v? Are we trying to converse the conversion plan? Is it that we need cash and we're able to sell out, some things at a loss leader just to, for cash flow? Is it margin and you wanna sell? And he was like all of that all of that is the business goal.

And I'm like no. That can't be. Like, we have to pick one and work on that one and then see how that works. And then we can layer in other strategies. But there's different business goals at different times. And knowing that in and of itself can help your campaign calendar be that much more effective than just I, I post three times a week.

Erin Alexander: Yes. And I love what you said about layering that is the key. I think that people aren't they're not taking in consideration. Like they think, if I'm posting three times a week, then I should give you getting sales. But it's like you also have to have, solid messaging.

You also should be emailing. Maybe you have worked on your ss e o and it's like there is so many layers. It's like the tallest cake you've ever seen because you can't just do one.

Ruthie Sterrett: Yeah. Yeah. And I know in the beginning, or when you have a small team, it can feel like, oh my gosh, I can't do it all, but. You start and you work on one, and you get good at one, and then you layer in the next thing, and then you layer in the next thing. Because you're right, if you do try to do everything all at once at such a high intensity, you are going to burn out.

And in fact, like from this corporate background, I was actually just talking to another friend about this, about being on multiple platforms for social media. I ran a department of eight people and we were not on TikTok because we didn't have the bandwidth to be on TikTok. And I was like, I'm not gonna show up and be there and put content out there if we can't maintain that intensity.

Because at the time, in order to be consistent on TikTok and breakthrough, you had to be posting like seven times a day. I know that's those algorithms change all the time, but at the end of the day, it was like I knew we didn't have the bandwidth to do it, so I wasn't gonna waste our time.

I was gonna say, let's get better at Instagram, let's get better at email. Let's get better at the things that are moving the needle today. And then when we feel like we're hitting the goals with those platforms, now we can layer on another thing.

Erin Alexander: Yeah, I'm thinking about my biggest pet peeve lately, or that I've been like complaining to my biz besties about is most people are doing a lot of things halfway and they're not doing anything all the way. And if they just did the one thing all the way they would get better results than they are now when they're just doing, half of a strategy here and half of a strategy there.

Ruthie Sterrett: Yeah. And it's hard because we do, we get shiny object syndrome and we look around and we see people, whether it's friends or competition or whatever, or gurus telling us, this is the thing, this is the thing that's gonna change your business. And here's the thing. Yeah. All of those things could change your business, but not if you only do them halfway, not if you don't do them consistently.

And then it's gonna be just another thing that you're like that didn't work for me. It's not that it didn't work for you, it's that you didn't work it consistently. And so having, somebody to help you streamline and create that recipe or that strategy, and I work with my clients and we do quarterly content planning where we plan for a quarter and we say, this is what we are going to commit to for these three months.

And then after these three months, we can say, all right, are we ready to layer in another thing? Or is it, instead of layering in another thing, we're gonna get more intense or better at one of the things. So like email marketing, when I started out my business. I didn't have the capacity to do email marketing other than maybe one newsletter a month.

Like I just couldn't. And then over time I layered in a weekly email about the podcast. And so I was repurposing my podcast into an email. And then from there I was able to say, okay, I'm ready to layer in a second email, like a mid month email with a touch base or whatever. I have different strategies around it.

And then layer in nurture sequences that come after, downloads or welcome sequences, things that are more automated. But even in a product-based business and my corporate job, we did the same thing. It was like one funnel or campaign or sequence at a time. Instead of trying to do 18 things at once.

And then just none of them really working. 'cause you didn't really put enough effort behind them.

Erin Alexander: I, there's so many things I wanna talk about from what you just said, but I have lately been trying to, or like seeing so many people struggle with getting their, their newsletters out, whether it's monthly or weekly or biweekly, whatever. And I really started thinking about this in a new perspective.

And I'm gonna be teaching this at a event, and by the time we schedule this, the event will probably be over. But I've realized that we need to think about our sequences, like nurture sequences, thank you for purchasing sequences. Not as a, like something that happened one time, but as a touch point.

And. Instead of thinking, oh, I need to give them a nurture sequence in five emails and tell them what my company is about. What if that's just the first time that they get an email and you are consistently scheduling your nurture sequence to happen? Like they get an email once a week for 12 weeks, a year, it doesn't matter, and just start thinking of those as different touchpoints rather than like something with a specific goal.

Because that can help with one, it can help with the long-term sales because you are staying top of mind, you're showing up, you're providing them with great information, but it's also taking the stress off of us as creators. Two, have that idea like, oh, I need to put out a weekly newsletter. I need to send emails this many times a month.

Because we are creating so much content. We are creating reels and tos and Pinterest pins and YouTube videos, and maybe we're not creating all of those every single day. But if you start thinking about how much content you need to create, it feels very overwhelming. And I feel like this is something you could take off your plate until you're ready to come back to it just by creating some sequences.

Ruthie Sterrett: Yeah. And thinking about from a touchpoint perspective and like always being, creating, I think back to the time that, so I was a store manager and a visual merchandising manager for Victoria's Secret for 15 years, and once I sat in the corporate seat in a planning seat and I was able to look back on that time, I realized that, oh, every summer Victoria's Secret talks about strapless bras.

Every October it's jewel tones and celestial. Every holiday one is pinks and reds. Like they weren't reinventing the wheel every year. Yes, it was fresh content, but they were starting with a framework. So it wasn't like sitting around and looking at each other and be like, guys, what are we gonna talk about this month?

It was like they already had mapped it out and rinse and repeat year over year. And I think for product-based businesses, we have the same holidays and events year over year. And yes, there are trends and there are different things that you know, you can hop on, but Mother's Day happens every year.

Father's Day happens every year. Easter happens every year. St. Patrick's Day happens every year. Thanksgiving happens every year, Christmas, new Year's, all of those things. And so what I loved to do in the retail calendar was to sit down, and I would do this usually in like September or October, sit down with next year's calendar and map out campaign themes.

And sometimes they were based upon that holiday or whatever was happening, but sometimes it was like, okay, here's a six week break between holidays. What am I gonna talk about in that timeframe? And then we could pull in like a brand pillar and have a theme around that. So I worked in the fitness industry and our ideal customer was beginners.

And so it would be like tips and tricks for recovering from an injury. And we would create content all around that theme for six weeks. There might be three blog posts, and then there was gonna be social media pulled from those different blog posts, reels, and. Emails, but having themes or campaigns just makes it easier to sit down and actually create the content because you're not like what am I gonna talk about today?

And it's like food okay. I was telling my husband the other day, I was like, it's so hard to decide what to have for dinner because you just have to decide every single day and it just, you get decision fatigue. But if you have like a meal subscription and the meals just come to you and you're like, okay, which 1:00 AM I gonna eat?

It takes the decision out of it. And having a content calendar or a campaign calendar does the same thing for you. It makes those decisions easier.

Erin Alexander: Yes. So let's talk about this, quarterly content planning. I know this is something you do with your clients. What's the process? How do you create a quarterly content calendar?

Ruthie Sterrett: So we sit down and first I say, let's talk about attract, nurture, and convert, and we wanna talk about what I call 'em, activations. I realized in talking to somebody else the other day, that nobody knows what an activation is other than me. So a platform or tool are you using to attract? An audience, what tool are you using to nurture your audience and what tool are you using to convert your audience?

And often there are tools that can do more than one of those. So like social media for example. You can use social media to attract new eyes to your business through reels or collaborations or other people tagging you like that gets your content, your business in front of people who don't already follow you.

That's the whole goal of attract. And in social media, people who already follow you are watching your stories, seeing your posts, you're probably putting out nurture content, meaning you're like nurturing the relationship, you're helping them get to know you, you're adding value, you're entertaining them, you're validating the things that they go through as that you can relate to as far as your ideal audience.

And then convert is like tap the link to buy. Shop here, and we want to have on social media specifically a balance of attract, nurture, and convert. We don't wanna have all attract content. We don't wanna have all nurture, and we don't wanna have all convert. We need all three. But then, like we talked about with the layers, there's other tools that we can use.

Email. Email is for nurture and convert because you're not attracting any new people with an email. They're not on your email list, right? Okay, I've got email for nurture and convert. And then, we've got long form content can be used for attract because people are finding it via ss e o and keywords.

But long form content can also be used to nurture because it's. Adding value for that customer. It's teaching them things. You can put a blog in an email and send it out to your list and teach them something and help them, give them quick tips and tricks or to-do lists or whatever. And so we decide based upon your brand bandwidth, what are the tools you're gonna use and what is a consistency you can commit to?

And most people think they can do way more than they actually can. And so what I usually say is let's pull back and have a smaller number, and if you do more, great, but let's not overcommit. Because when we overcommit, then we beat ourselves up when we don't meet it and we think we're terrible and then we do nothing.

And that's not the goal at all. So we're gonna commit to a consistency that we can maintain. From there, we plan out the long form content first, because the long form content is like our starting point that can be repurposed into those other things. And I'll have business owners that just say I don't have long form content.

I don't have a blog. I don't have a podcast. I'm not doing any video on YouTube, so what should I do? Typically I'll say let's start with an email newsletter then, and make sure that you save that because it can become a blog when you're ready to layer in a blog, or if you're not even doing email newsletters yet, let's start with a meaty social media post and let's build from there.

And so we build out that quarterly content plan, and the real magic happens honestly, when I get to work with somebody for an entire year, and we can layer that quarterly plan in with their launch plans. So knowing when new product collections are dropping, when new arrivals are hitting, when you know.

Whatever's happening as far as a launch, because then we can build up to that convert phase through strategic attract and nurture content. And so it all works together in kind of a symphony. And then our launches are that much more successful.

Erin Alexander: Oh man, I love hearing how all the things come together and how exciting it is for those layers. Just like what you said with the symphony is like a perfect summary because you can have one instrument on its own and it is great, but you have everyone together, it's just mind boggling.

You're just like, whoa. And that's exactly how content works when you have all these layers and all these different plans that are working together and you've executed all of them. But I also loved what you said about, let's take a step back and focus on what can we actually do, because we do think we can do so much more than we actually can.

I want to start a YouTube channel, and I haven't done it yet, and it's been like a year and a half now, and it would be very easy for me to do it, but for some reason I just can't commit to making the videos. I kept saying I don't have time to make four videos a month. And my O B M was like, could you make one?

And I was like, why didn't of that?

Ruthie Sterrett: And I think, this happens to all of us. It happens in the solopreneur world as well as up to big corporations. What happens I think is we look around and we see what other people are doing and we're like if they can do it, I can do it too. You don't know their whole behind the scenes.

And I also. Oh, think about this of like when you're looking at your competitors, sometimes they can produce different content or less content than you, because they've already built brand equity and they've already got the compound effect from the content that they have been producing for years. You can't compare your chapter three to their chapter 30.

And I remember when I was working in the fitness industry, we would sit and have conversations about Nike does this. We're not Nike. Okay? Like we have to stop comparing ourselves to Nike because we're not Nike. We don't have the same ecosystem, we don't have the same brand equity in the marketplace, so what is working for them cannot be copied and pasted and work for us.

We've gotta start somewhere else. And that's one of the reasons that I get really frustrated with people when they're selling templates. Templates are great. They can help, they can s and I, believe me, I've purchased plenty a template. A template is not like a plug and play where this is gonna work because it wasn't customized for where you are in your business, the bandwidth that you actually have, the relationships you've already built with your existing customers, or the strategies that you're using to attract new customers.

So a template alone doesn't always do the job.

Erin Alexander: Absolutely. I always like to remind people that templates are starting points. You don't need to plug your stuff in it. This is my pet peeve with websites. They'll buy a template and then they'll just fill it in. Exactly. And I'm like, no, you buy the template, you wipe it clean and then you build, because that is just a framework for starting.

It's not like you're not supposed to be shoving your business into someone else's template.

Ruthie Sterrett: Yeah, and I remember, when I was in the merchandising world, I remember we would get. Brand guides, and it was like, okay, you're going to merchandise exactly this way. And as I moved along in the organization, was able to step into higher volume stores and get more training. It was like, no, it's not that you have to put this piece here and this piece here and make it look exactly the same.

It's how do you translate it and tell the same story in your space? And so with marketing, it's like how do you give the same message with the tools that you're able to use? How do you connect with the customer to build trust with the resources you have available to you, not what somebody else is trying to do.

Erin Alexander: Yes, absolutely. As we've been talking, you've mentioned repurposing, and I think that this is something that is a huge missed opportunity, especially for everyone listening because I have had these conversations with the listeners who are like I'm creating emails, or I'm writing emails and I'm creating reels, and I just have to create.

But they're not taking that content and repurposing it and there's so many ways to repurpose it. So can we talk about that a little bit?

Ruthie Sterrett: Yeah. So from a product-based business perspective, and I remember having this conversation when I stepped into a marketing role for a product-based business, was that people can buy stuff anywhere, right? So it has to be about more than just the stuff. And so as a product-based business, when you define your content pillars, and I typically say that businesses should have three to five content pillars.

One of your content pillars could be the stuff. Maybe two, depending upon your, line of business and how many different products you sell. Maybe two, but the other ones should be value that you can add to your ideal customer. Again, thinking about where they are in their journey, where they are in their life, who they are.

And I've had this conversation with so many people about niching down and I get it. It's like scary af to say, I'm niching down because I wanna serve everybody and I can sell to everybody. And we have the scarcity mindset of if I niche down, people aren't gonna buy from me. But what I found is that when you talk to everybody, nobody listens.

But when you talk to one person, other people eves drop and it gets that much more effective. And so choosing your content pillars and your content themes, again, when I was in the fitness space, our target market was for beginners. So we weren't talking about how to level up your training.

We were talking about how to start, we were talking about how to get off the couch, and that's content that like you can weave product in showing product, referencing product, but you're sharing tips, you're sharing value, you're sharing how tos. And with the retail calendar, again, we go back to Mother's Day always happens.

Father's Day always happens. Creating long form content, specifically around some of those like seasonal events. Then next year you don't have to create it again, you have to update it. Next year you swap out some images, you swap out some of the product that you linked to this season's thing, but it's already there and it's already made.

And so yeah, the first year it might feel like, oh my gosh, I have to pump out content. Which is exactly why like your O B M said, let's do one a month. So maybe when it comes to blogs, we're gonna do one a month for a year, and then next year we're gonna create one new and we're gonna update one old. So we're doing like one and a half.

And then the next year we could potentially layer into just updating, and it just, it gets that much easier and your content can work harder for you because it's able to compound and it's not based on product that sells out. Because that's the thing with product-based businesses, it's I don't know what I'm gonna be selling in six months.

Okay, you're always gonna sell dresses or you're always gonna sell notebooks or whatever it is. And so how can we share tips and strategies and how tos and tutorials, or even like stories that resonate and make us feel something. Those are the types of things that are gonna build relationships with your audience that can be repurposed.

Erin Alexander: Yes, I love it. I'm always asking people in this kind of idea of it, like how can you say the same thing in a different way? Say the exact same thing but in a different way because that's all you're looking for. You do know you're always gonna sell dresses. You do know you're always gonna sell something for Mother's Day.

And the idea of repurposing doesn't mean use the exact same thing over and over, although you might like, it might work out. Like I reposted a video that I did last year and it's really funny 'cause some people were like, oh, I already checked and changed this last time you mentioned it.

And I was like, good. Most people haven't seen this. But there are different ways of saying the same thing and our audience needs to hear things repeated also, like you can tell me 15 different ways to get off the couch to start an exercise plan, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna do it. But one of those might, might be the thing that clicks.

And that's the same with our content.

Ruthie Sterrett: Yeah. And if we think about who our client is, our idle customer, they have a goal. And your product can likely help them reach that goal, whatever it is. But they need other things than just your product. And that's where your content can come in and give them those other things, the education, the motivation, the inspiration, the tips, the hacks, the how-tos to achieve that goal.

And then your product just becomes the natural extension of oh, of course I need the product because it goes along with the things that she told me to do. And I tell people that have kids, like how many times do you have to tell your kids something over and over again before they listen to you?

Guess what? Your customer is the same way. If you are not sick of talking about it, you haven't talked about it enough because your customer doesn't know. And if we're filling the top of our funnel and bringing new eyes to our business, the new people haven't heard us talk about it yet, so we can keep talking about it.

Erin Alexander: I just posted a reel yesterday 'cause I am, I'm hosting an online event and the event will have already passed by the time we schedule this. But I said it was the mean girls one that said like 80% of the time I'm talking about the vent and 20% of the time I'm hoping someone else brings it up

Ruthie Sterrett: Yes. I remember hearing podcasters, it was a podcaster I listened to a long time ago that said if you're not sick of talking about yourself, no, nobody knows who you are. And this was in like kinda a PR sense. But it's the same thing with your business if you're not talking about those core pillars over and over again.

You're not gonna be known for anything. And that's what people need is they need that consistency to build the authority and connect. And I talked about bringing new eyeballs to your business and there's a lot of different ways to do that. I actually have a resource it's not my website, it's called these, the consistency corner.com/attract.

But it's 10 ways to get new eyes on your business because if you're not filling the top of your funnel all the time, you are going to run dry. And the thing is about attract marketing is it can feel like it's not paying off because it doesn't lead to sales immediately. But if we never work on it, we're never getting new eyes on our business and we're never gonna grow.

And you don't realize that you were missing out on that attract. That attract those attract activations until you haven't done them and your warm market has dried up like everybody who knew you, your past customers, your friends and family, and yes, you should absolutely be reselling to past customers, but if you're not bringing new people in, you're not gonna grow.

And it's so important to bring in those new people and then keep telling them, those things over and over again that you've already talked about.

Erin Alexander: Yeah. A few years ago I was at an event and someone asked me what's the best way to get sales to convert from Instagram? And I made them mad when I was, I said you have to think about it. Like Instagram isn't designed to convert people, it's designed to attract people or to nurture them, because Instagram doesn't want you sending them to your website.

That's why there's only one link. That's why things are the way they are. But you can attract them and you can keep showing up so that you're nurturing them, and then eventually that will turn into a conversion. But in the grand scheme of things, it's not designed to be like a conversion tool.

And they were just like, Oh, and they didn't like hearing that. But it's the truth. If you learn about how, how people go through that process, like even if they're coming into the top of your funnel, you gotta realize they might float around in there for a while before they actually get through and actually make a purchase.

And that's because need to hear something over and over, and you have to make that connection with them in some way because you are not Nike and you have to just keep going.

Ruthie Sterrett: If you want to convert on Instagram, it costs money. They're called ads, pay to play, and ads have a place. I absolutely think ads have a place in our world, but I think what's really important for small business owners is to get the organic marketing and the messaging right first. Because if you start pouring fuel on the fire without the kindling in the fire, it's just, you're just pouring gasoline on nothing, which means, basically means you're throwing your money away.

And I've seen a lot of people do that. They think that like ads are gonna save their business and they won't. Ads will blow up something that's already working and ads can work with organic content to nurture that audience. Because I, and I am an Instagram shopper, like I will buy things, I am likely to convert, but I will typically need to see the ad.

10 times before I actually buy it. And I'll typically like click on it, go to the website, look around, not buy, go to their Instagram profile, look around, maybe follow, maybe not. And I've actually even got to the point that I'm like, oh, I don't have to follow them because their ad will follow me around and I'll just buy it when I'm ready.

But for a lot of us who are not running ads, it's oh, that's disheartening. And so that's where the other forms of content, the email, the blog, the collaborations, the gift guides, all of those things make a difference.

Erin Alexander: Yep. Absolutely. I actually just got an email from someone the other day. She was like I heard you on such and such podcasts and I didn't realize it, but I bought something from you in like 2018. Is it possible for you to resend it? And I was like, yes. people are busy, they've got a lot going on.

They forget, they don't remember everything about you. But then, maybe they do get another ad and that's the thing that clicks, or maybe they hear about you again from someone else they trust. And that's the thing that clicks, maybe they see you at an event.

Ruthie Sterrett: Yeah. And I wanna say something else about email marketing. If every single email you send is buy the thing, your open rates are going to totally drop, and eventually you're gonna be in everybody's spam filters and nobody's gonna look at your stuff. But if some of your emails are, here's some tips.

Here's a blog we published about X, Y, Z, and it's just giving value, then people are more likely to open the emails whether they're selling something or not. Or at least not delete them immediately. And here's the thing about email. Yeah, people might delete them without opening them, but they're seeing your name in their inbox and they're remembering so that when they're ready to buy, they're going to think about buying from you versus somebody else that sells the same thing because you've been following up and adding value, adding.

Erin Alexander: Yeah, absolutely.

Ruthie Sterrett: And that's one of the reasons that I love and speak so much on long form content, because long form content adds value, which nurtures the relationship, which is what is getting the customer likely to buy when they're ready to buy.

Erin Alexander: I agree. Okay. I feel like there, there's so much to unpack with content marketing. It's like a never ending thing. There's always new activations and things like that to bring in. So I feel like what is one tip you could give somebody who is just feeling overwhelmed or you're just like not sure if their content is working, they don't know how to do the strategy.

Do you have any tools or resources or a tip you could give them?

Ruthie Sterrett: Yeah, so I have a content planning bundle that is actually, it's my exact spreadsheet that I use to plan content for my business and for all of my clients. And it's a little mini e-course that comes with it that maps out. Those content pillars and themes, which is really a great place to start. So I highly recommend that, and you can link that in the show notes.

It's on my website of the consistency corner. It's like we said earlier, bad content or even, okay, content is better than no content. So get started thinking about what content can I create to attract, what content can I create to nurture? What content can I create to convert, and how can I layer those in at a consistency that I can maintain?

And then if you find that the consistency you thought you could maintain, you can't dial it back a little bit and get consistent. And I, like I said, I really recommend the quarterly planning. I love to start with at least a penciled in overview of the year with those campaign themes, but then planning by detail by quarter and just reevaluate quarter by quarter.

Erin Alexander: Yeah. I love that. That's a great tip. Thank you so much. So before we jump off, I have one question for you that I ask everyone on the show, and that is, what is something you're currently learning in your own business?

Ruthie Sterrett: I am a chronic learner who is probably in too many memberships and masterminds and courses because I love to learn. But what I'm currently learning, I actually just recently joined a mastermind for business owners that run an agency to scale the agency because I really, with the consistency corner, today it's just me and my own personal why kind of behind the business and why I wanted to be a business owner and start a business was to help working moms.

And when I say working moms, women that like, they know they wanna work because they love to work. Hello, I love to work. They also wanna be there for their families. And I realized that as an agency, I could take marketing off people's plates, but the goal is to also be able to employ other women and, help them step into their zone of genius, whether it's content creation or project management, or whatever it may be, so that they can have kind of that freelance opportunity to work on their own schedule, but serve and lean into their zone of genius.

So when I was in the corporate world for a long time, I was looking for that job and I realized I, I wasn't meant to find it, I was meant to create it, and 

Erin Alexander: Oh, 

Ruthie Sterrett: to create it for other women. So I am currently learning how to scale up to an agency model so that I can have more people on my team so that I can serve more clients.

Erin Alexander: that's incredible. I love that. That'll be so fun and it'll be fun to watch you grow into this agency. Thank you so much. Okay, so the last thing I have to ask you is where can people find you and hang out with you online?

Ruthie Sterrett: Yeah. So I am on Instagram that is my platform of choice at the consistency corner. And then you can check out my podcast, the Consistency Corner for marketing and mindset tips.

Erin Alexander: Absolutely. So we will have the link to both of those in the show notes. We will have the link to your 10 Ways to Attract New Eyes and the link to your content bundle because we need those 

Ruthie Sterrett: I, I'm telling you a good spreadsheet can go a long way in helping you

Erin Alexander: absolutely.

Ruthie Sterrett: I am a calendar systems, pens like junky. And as much as I love a paper calendar, having it digitally makes a big difference in keeping you organized.

Erin Alexander: Yeah. Sometimes I brain dump on paper and then put it into my asana.

Ruthie Sterrett: Yes, absolutely.

Erin Alexander: Yes. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your background and your knowledge with us. I think you gave us so many tips that we can put into action right away, which is like my favorite kind of podcast episode. I love it when we can listen and then take action and see it pay off.

Ruthie Sterrett: Yes, thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Erin Alexander: Thank you.