Marketing that Actually Works for Doulas

Feeling burned out by marketing that doesn’t seem to work — or worse, doesn’t feel like you? In this honest episode of the Hip to Heart Birth Boss Podcast, Jodi breaks down exactly why traditional marketing advice fails doulas, and what to do instead.

We’re unpacking strategies that feel better and actually bring in clients: from content that converts (without going viral), to local referrals, collaborations, and borrowing audiences with ease. You'll hear stories from real doulas inside our CEO Track who saw big shifts by simplifying, focusing, and aligning their approach.

Whether you’re stuck in content chaos or wondering if you’re just not cut out for marketing… this episode is the exhale you’ve been waiting for.

🎧 Listen now, take a breath, and let’s reset how you market — together.

🔗 Resources Mentioned: For in-depth strategies and community support: https://www.hiptoheart.com/birth-boss-society-landing-page

✔️ Follow Jodi Congdon:

Instagram
Website

Birth + Postpartum Professionals (Facebook Group)

✔️ Create Your Six or Seven-Figure Doula Business:

Birth Boss Society (for Solo Doulas and Agency Owners)

Hip to Heart Birth Boss Academy

✔️ From Solo Doula Business to Agency:
Hip to Heart Agency Program

Transcript

0:07

Hey you guys, we are going to dive into marketing today, but marketing that actually works, right? One of the complaints I hear so much is that doulas are spending so much time working on social media and trying to figure out what to email people, newsletters, all these different things, and it ends up being a full-time job. packed onto the work that you're already doing with your clients and it's exhausting and you get burned out. And not to mention you get frustrated because you're putting all this time and effort into something that is not giving you the results that you're looking for. And obviously the results that you're looking for are visibility, which turns into more inquiries, which ideally turns into more clients or more opportunities. uh But a lot of times it falls flat. So we're going to dive into why that's happening and what you can do to turn that around and put in less time and have more results, better results, better visibility. And then you feel better, right? Your confidence is up. You feel empowered to get out there and be the expert and talk about your services and your offers and other things that you have to give to your clientele or the perinatal community. The first thing I want to talk about is like the actual problem, right? There's so many people out there saying that you have to post more and you have to do the things that are trending, which tend to be, you know, these dances or, you know, these voiceovers or whatever. And that's not getting you clients. That's not what our clientele wants to see, right? It's a different vibe for... our industry. People want to know more about what you know, right? They want to trust you. They want to hear you and see you. And you have to give a lot of value and that doesn't come with like a cute little dance and a caption. Maybe for other businesses it does, but definitely not for ours. There has to be the know, like, and trust factor, but I think the trust factor for us is like the absolute most important. People who get to know us through social media, mean, that's the way we're connecting with people these days. We're doing less and less in-person things, and we're gonna talk about that because our business is definitely a more localized. um Connection right so we're caring for these people in their home a lot of the time So we're not blasting out to the nation and the world We're kind of keeping it, you know pretty small but we have to make sure that What we're putting out there is Valuable, so it's quality over quantity all day every day for our audience, right? I'm not giving Vague marketing advice here. I'm talking about our specific audience people who are trying to conceive pregnant, postpartum. These are the people that need this pretty solid trust, right? So the first kind of big strategy I wanna talk about is more teaching and less talking. Your audience wants to learn from you. They wanna know what you know so they can utilize that for... their pregnancy or birth or postpartum or whatever. And that's how they're gonna get to know you and that's how they're gonna get to trust you. And if personalities match, that's how they're gonna get to like you, right? They're gonna find all these connection points with the way that you speak about something. And then they're obviously gonna suck in all of that knowledge too. So share the things that you know more than just, know, kind of talking to talk. And, you know, when I'm teaching, I always talk about the way we... talk to and teach someone who just had a baby, like bullet points, right? They don't want a whole story. They don't need something that like you start working on now and then three months from now they're going to get results. They need like actionable tools, bullet points, one, two, three. That is all they can remember because they're frazzled, they're anxious, they're tired, they're sore, right? um And so that's what we want to give our audience. know, that's the way that we want to teach them and give them the knowledge in these little easy to digest bits and pieces so they remember them. I feel like pregnancy and postpartum is such a time where you have so many people giving you advice and telling you things and you're reading stuff, whether it's a book or online or you're going to Facebook mom's groups or whatever, and all this information is being thrown at you all the time and it's so difficult to really take all of it in, especially when it's lengthy. And only a small part of what you are learning is applicable to you at that time. So we want to do like bullet points, bits and pieces. And one of the things that I love are things that a potential client or someone in our community can take with them. So some sort of checklist of things, right? Are we giving them a checklist on how to build a postpartum team, what to register for. Small things like five signs that you're in labor, um five different positions to try when breastfeeding, something like that where it's very small, it's digestible, it's easy to remember, and it's also easy to refer back to. Like a nice blog post too, right? um Something that is short and to the point and maybe has a few... links in there where people can click for further information, whether it leads back to you or it's like another article, whatever it is, um something that is easy and meaningful, right? Catchy title gets them and then they want to learn more. Once they learn whatever you're teaching them, they probably want to learn a little more about you, right? So now we're taking them back to wherever there's information about us, whether it's our website or Instagram, whatever. um It could even be, you know, book a short call. And they're getting to know you and now it's your turn to get to know them. So that's like my strategy number one. Strategy number two in our industry, again, these are all pinpointed to us, to doulas, to birth professionals, birth workers, newborn care specialist, people who work with the perinatal population. Get known locally, right? Stop putting all of your efforts into social media and get your body in front of people who are local. So I think our local OOBs, midwives, pediatricians, um our other practitioners, chiropractors, um prenatal yoga studios. And I'm not saying go out and blindly send them rack cards or swing by and drop off some business cards. It's not what I'm talking about. That is not getting to know someone that is not a meaningful connection. That is bombarding someone with some of your stuff that they're probably gonna throw away because they don't know you. There is no connection point. And that's super important. You have to have a connection point. So when I am interviewing clients or having these first meetings with them, I always get the name of their care provider. I always get where they're delivering. And then later on I get more information like pediatrician, things like that. um Are they seeing a chiropractor? Do they do prenatal yoga? Any of the information that can help me connect with people in my community because I want to be able to reach out to a local home birth midwife and say, you know, I'm caring for a couple of your clients um for a local prenatal yoga studio. You know, I'm doing the postpartum care of a bunch of people in your, you know, Tuesday night class or whatever. And that immediately opens the door for me. They know someone that I know, I'm caring for someone that they are also caring for. And then we can start that connection. Do not just go in blindly. I remember when I first started out, like I thought that when someone got my rack cards in the mail, they'd be like, my God, this is what I'm waiting for. No, they're not waiting for you. They were not waiting for me. That is for sure. I probably spent hours, if not days. getting these things together, researching names and addresses and putting everything in envelopes and writing these notes and sending them off, zero, I got zero response from them. My very first really good connection is someone um who was the OB for a client of mine when I was her birth doula. And she reached out to me a week or two after this person delivered, uh which makes me think I made an impression on her. I was on her mind, right? uh She reached out and just said she liked my style. It was like a short and sweet email Would I mind if she referred me to some of her patients? Um, no, I would not mind like this was what I had been waiting for right um and ultimately it ended up being more than you know, I could take on as a solo doula and you know fast forward had it been, you know when my agency was built it would have been a different story, but I ended up having to say no to a lot of the people that she was referring because they came in fast and furious. But that's your golden ticket. Whether you're a solo doula or an agency owner, whatever you have going on, one or two strong connections, big connections, that is all you need to consistently keep you busy. And it's not just those clients that we're capturing. They are now telling friends and college roommates or old college roommates, obviously, um sister-in-laws, co-worker, like they're, you your name is now getting spread far and wide. And, you know, that's what I always say when people are talking about how busy they are and they're saying no to, you know, potential clients. And they're like, it's such a bummer because I'm losing out on that revenue. You're not losing out on caring for just that person or just that revenue. You are losing out on the potential for that person to have told three or four other people. You are losing out on future revenue, right? So it is not just that particular client that you will not care for and not get the revenue from. It is potentially multiple future clients too. You also want to have a strong Google business profile. That's important also that as you get moving, That is where people will find you and as more people find you there, it will be easier for more people to find you. And it just brings it back to when you're kind of staying local, when you are working with local practitioners, when someone refers you, like when my chiropractor refers a client to me, that client, her patient, already knows her, already likes her, already trusts her. So when they come over to me, They already trust me. So now we just have to, you know, connect, hopefully our personalities match. And then they will, you know, now they know me, now they like me, right? They already trusted me. So it is such a beautiful thing to get referrals and give referrals and have a really solid local network. My third strategy is collaboration, right? Doing things with other practitioners, not just referring back and forth, but like an online workshop. I did um a Instagram live years ago with my chiropractor and a local IBCLC. So the topic was gassy babies. And that is the one thing, we chose that one, obviously intentionally, but that is the one thing that I think people are so afraid of, having a gassy, fussy baby, and they think that they can't do anything about it, they're gonna be up all night, and it's gonna be horrendous. The angle was we were going to talk about bussy babies, gassy babies. The chiropractor was going to talk about body work. The IBCLC was going to talk about feeding and gut health. And then as the postpartum doula, I was going to talk about things you can do at home, actual hands-on things with the baby. So the three of us collaborated. We figured out what we were going to say. And it was such a well-attended, free, obviously, Instagram Live. We all got clients from it. We all got clients and then referred back and forth. you know, granted, would it have been better in person? Absolutely, because we want to capture our local crowd. We did capture our local crowd because we sent it out to, you know, our clients, each sent it out to our clients and we're obviously, you know, local practitioners. But what's nice is other people from other states who were not going to use us. per se or need our in-person care, we're learning something. And who knows who has family in our area, friends in our area, um old college roommates in our area. Well, they'll be texting them, hey, hop on this person's Instagram and check this out. They're talking about something that you'd be interested in. So definitely collaborating with other practitioners in a way where you're doing like a workshop or an Instagram Live. ah Maybe you write something for their newsletter, they write something for your newsletter, right? And you're sending it off to your audience on their behalf and they're sending it off to their audience on your behalf. Now, these are all like super warm leads, right? This is your ideal audience. We share an ideal audience even though we are obviously doing two totally different things. So it's perfect. It is the most beautiful of relationships, right? Because these are... my ideal client, but they're eyeballs that may not have been on me, right? They may not have known I existed, but there's a good chance they're going to want and need my services and the same when it's the other way around. em Also popping into, you know, speak somewhere where your audience is, you know, a shared audience. If you are, you know, connected to a childbirth educator, right, in your doula, maybe you could pop in on you know, the last of the series and talk about the importance of postpartum care. Now you're not going in for the hard sell. You're not saying, Hey, I or me, you're talking about the importance of postpartum care and maybe what doulas do. uh Maybe you're popping in when it's like, you know, post Shavasana in a yoga class, right? They're there. They just did their yoga. They're relaxed. They're, kind of thinking about what is in their belly and what's to come. Right. uh And then you come in very, you know, quietly and you start talking about you know, what happens after, right? What happens when the baby's here and you talk a little bit about postpartum care and a little bit about postpartum doulas. Again, it's the right space. You're in the right space. um And they probably know, like, and trust wherever they are. And so you coming in, you will be very warmly received, right? m And that's a great way. You're like borrowing someone else's audience, right? It's someone who is not a competitor, but it enhances your care that you're providing and enhances the care that they're providing. And if you're thinking about, you know, how are you enhancing the care of like, you know, an obstetrician, you might, you're enhancing the care in the way that their offers become more comprehensive, right? They're not only offering the care that they would normally be offering, but they're offering a referral. Like, here's what you can do to... benefit your postpartum time. Here's what you can do to have someone else there during your labor and delivery, right? So I'm the clinical piece and someone is there for the mental, emotional, social relationship, all the other pieces, right? That's a birth doula. um So it's just more comprehensive care. So you're borrowing someone else's audience, the audience that they worked really hard to grow. And it's your audience that you worked really hard to grow that you will now let them borrow. And it really makes it easy for people to say yes to your services. They already feel comfortable. You're not going in cold and like, hi, my name is blah, blah, blah. And I'm here to talk about blah, blah, blah. It's such a comfortable, seamless transition. The conversation flows most of the time. um That's where you want to spend your time and effort. Now, I'm not saying by any means, drop your social media and don't worry about it. I'm not saying that at all. You definitely want to keep providing the information, keep teaching, keep sharing about yourself on social media. But what I'm finding is that's not where you're getting clients for the very first time. People aren't finding you blindly on Instagram and then hiring you. They hear about you somewhere else, somewhere in your local community, and they check you out on Instagram. So that has to check out too, right? They can't. You don't want them to look at your account and be like, oh, that fell flat. Like she hasn't posted something since, you know, November, 2023. Like, is she even still relevant? Is she still even doing what she says she's doing? So you have to stay up to date on social media as well. It has to be interesting. It has to be eye and ear catching, right? But it doesn't have to be you trying to do these trendy voiceovers and trendy dances. being so uncomfortable that the person watching you is uncomfortable watching you, because it's like, it looks like you don't want to be doing it, right? So you find what's most comfortable for you. And if you don't love, you know, doing video and being on camera, maybe you take like a nice photo of yourself and then you record something over it, right? So it's your voice, you're talking, but it's just a photo of yourself. Maybe it's a carousel of photos or infographics or whatever. but make sure you're comfortable doing it and do not make it a full-time job. Now, if you are doing something like a blog post or if you're a guest on someone's podcast or whatever, use some of that information. If you can use some of that video, if you're making a webinar, take the webinar, use it for what you're using it for, and then chop up some of the bits and pieces to post on um Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, or you can throw in your stories. You can do so many things with one piece of content that you don't have to just keep doing from, you know, scratch all the time. That's exhausting. You know, and one of the things that, you know, people always say too is if you just take like one Sunday a month and take three or four hours and, you know, have a couple of different shirts, right, you can record a bunch of videos and do a bunch of things. And that works for some people that absolutely does not work for me. I don't have that kind of time to carve out and I surely don't want to be doing it on a Sunday, right? I like to do, I like to plan ahead as far as like the bigger content, but some stuff I just do on the fly. You if I'm walking my dog and something pops into my head, like a cute idea or something I think clients would like, you know, I record it right then and there, or I plan for like the next day. So I'm not like a huge batch content person. It is really helpful if you do have that kind of time to carve out. And it makes me think too, I feel like people are always saying, you know, cause I'm always complaining about like, you know, what to make for dinner. take a couple hours on Sunday, make like, you know, 47 crockpot meals and like stick them in the freezer. That's just not me. I'm not that kind of person. And I don't know what the title for that kind of person is, but it's not me. So for me, that feels like a much bigger undertaking than, you know, doing dinner on the fly and some nights having, you know, peanut butter and jelly, which, you know, is fine. But you definitely want to make sure whatever you're choosing, however you're choosing to do all of this. um feels the most comfortable for you. You want to be comfortable because if you're not, the other person feels that, you know, sort of tense, anxious, you know, feeling. um And that's not the energy you want to put out, right? You want to put out like chill, calm, confident energy. um A lot of this stuff we talk about in Birth Boss Society. um Birth Boss Society, again, we're talking about community. I have a membership community that is specifically for birth workers who are established in their business, they're getting going and they're looking to scale, right? So a lot of these bits and pieces of information are things that we talk about, but we talk about them, we dive deep into them and it's an elevated version of the things that you're learning every day about marketing. you know, the three or four strategies that I just talked about, that's like the tip of the iceberg. You know, you're learning a little bit and then you have to dive deep and actually do the work. um You talking about content systems, Better collaborations, you know, thinking really long and hard about who you want to collaborate with and what that's going to look like to your audience. um In-depth marketing, right? Not just, again, you know, writing a blog post and sending it out and crossing your fingers and hoping that, you know, it lands somewhere. There has to be intention into it. Right? um And not only, you know, are you putting out this blog post, like where can people go to find out more about you? What does that blog post lead to? What does that Instagram real lead to? Does it lead to your services? Does it lead to an offer? um You know, what's your call to action? You always need to have a call to action. I actually not always, most of the time you should have a call to action. Sometimes I just like to post to post. because it's funny or I think someone wants to hear about it, it doesn't always have to have a call to action, but most of the time you wanna have a call to action and then a plan after it. Don't just go in blind, create a ton of content, put it out there and then people, they don't know what to do with it. Like, yeah, maybe they laughed, maybe they learned something, but what is next? We're not out here just to like teach for no reason. We wanna teach, we wanna get people to like us, trust us and then want to work with us further, right? um We always have something else, whether it's our services, we have other offers, classes, trainings, whatever it is. You want to make sure that there is a very intentional call to action and then all the information behind it. So those are some of the things that we're working on in Birth Boss Society and the CEO track. We have a CEO track and an agency owners track. The agency owners track generally is a lot of the information we're working on in CEO, but we're moving it over to an agency model. So things, you know, are a bit different. Our clients are a bit different the way we interact with them. We're working with, you know, other people, whether it's, you know, our contractors or our employees. A lot of times we have, because it's a bigger business, we have like an admin team, we have other employees. So it's a little bit different. And so everything again is elevated one more level for the agency owners. um You know, you're also getting lots of, you know, templates and things you can sort of take a look at and go below the surface, right? So we think about marketing, um what's one level down, who are we marketing to? And we kind of keep digging deep until we figure out who our ideal audience is and then how we can utilize whatever offer that we have um in a way that's scalable, right? Because as an agency owner, we're not talking to one or two or three clients, we're talking to 20, 30, 40. um So we're digging a little bit deeper, but we're also building a little bit higher. um You know, I want you to think about one, I want you to think about your content strategies now. I want you to think about your marketing, and I want you to think about after listening to the strategies that I provided, what's one thing you might do differently this month? So in May, what is one marketing strategy or one, you know, piece of content or type of content that you're putting out, how do you want to change that? And not only how do you want to change it, why are you changing it? What do you want to achieve by changing it? And again, all of these things are things we talk about each month. We have a specific topic. It's broken down into weeks in Birth Boss Society. um So we're always trying to get to a place where we are building to something that is easily scalable. We don't wanna just have one service that we have to do in person, hands-on, and you're constantly trading time for dollars. We wanna have a business that is well-rounded, that may have some of that, but also has things that are scalable. Weave in some passive income, digital courses, things like that, all relevant to our clientele, but just is building our business, and we have a well-rounded business. So I want you to tell me what you're gonna try new this month from the things that you learned in this video. Do not forget to like and subscribe. And there is so much more of this, so much more just little gold nuggets that I provide that are just a little bit elevated from the basic. marketing knowledge that you're learning, you know, all day, every day from the places that you learn from. So I appreciate you guys listening till the very, very end. Obviously, this struck a chord with you and you're now you're rethinking your home marketing strategy. um Do not forget to reach out to me if you need something, comment below and we can start this conversation. Keep being a boss, guys.