#502: Make your marketing strategy work for you - Tash Corbin, Heart-Centred Business Podcast

Full article and show notes available at: tashcorbin.com/502

Make Your Marketing Strategy Work for You

One of the things I absolutely love about my business is the huge variety of people I get to meet. So many different personalities, business strategies, niches, and ways of showing up. Everyone has their own perspective on service and the gap they want to fill. It’s why it’s so frustrating to see people stuck on doing their marketing the same way as everyone else, and struggling to make their marketing strategy work for them.

The truth is: your choice of marketing strategy needs to be as unique as you are. So, in today’s episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, we’re diving into how you can make marketing actually fit YOU — because business gets really fun when your strategy is designed around who you are.

Learning From Others… But Making it Your Own

I’ve learned so much from other people, and there are a ton of smart business owners in the world. People have come up with all sorts of creative ways to grow audiences, nurture leads, and make sales. There are even businesses and services out there I didn’t know existed — solutions to problems I hadn’t thought of.

But every strategy, model, and tip I hear has to pass through a filter: is this a good fit for me? Not just for my business, but for me as a human. I think this is the piece that’s missing for a lot of people in business. We’re so quick to adopt what someone else is doing, but rarely stop to ask, “Will this actually work for me?”

...read the full article at: tashcorbin.com/502

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Transcript

2:58

One of my favorite things about being in this business is the sheer volume of people that I get to meet and get to know all of the different unique personalities and combinations of business strategy and niching and model and all the different ways that people want to show up and help in the world and their different perspectives on how they can be of service and what the gap is that they feel that they are filling. And so it can then be frustrating when people are so fixated on doing their marketing the same way as other people do. Because ultimately, when it comes to creating a business and creating growth, your choice of strategy really needs to be as unique as you are. And so we're going to talk about that in today's episode of the Heart Centered Business Podcast. This is episode number 502, which means you can find all the relevant links and the show notes notes for today's episode over@tashcorbyn.com 502. Let's dive into this one because I think it's a lovely discussion on how you can make marketing and business strategy work for you uniquely. Hello, I'm Tash Corbin, a business strategist and mentor based on the Sunshine coast in Australia. The mission of this podcast is to help Heart Centered entrepreneurs to make more money and in doing so, change the world for the better. This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Gubbi, Gubbi and Jinaburra people always was, always will be Aboriginal land. So let me first say that I do adore learning from others. There are so many smart people out there. There are so many people who have figured out really interesting and fascinating ways to grow their audience, nurture connection, generate leads and make sales, as well as so many unique ways that people deliver their services and so many unique services that you didn't even know were needed, let alone that the answer or solution even existed. Every strategy, every model, every tactic and tip that I hear about and that I learn, however, needs to be filtered and interrogated through a very critical lens before I adopt it for myself. And sometimes I think this might be the missing link for a lot of people asking the question, how does this fit for me, not just for my business, but for me as a human being. So, for example, connecting is one of my superpowers. People are shocked by how much I remember about their businesses and what they were up to, especially inside my takeoff program, in my mentoring programs, and when people work with me as a vip, they are flabbergasted about how many people I know and how much I know about Every different person's business. And even when I had a much more active role in the heart centered, soul driven entrepreneurs, Facebook community, people were blown away by how much I remembered about how many different people are out there. But that is my superpower that comes quite naturally to me. Ridiculously, I actually have face blindness. So I don't necessarily connect the face to the human to the name, but I connect the name of the person to what they do. That's where my superpower comes in. I can always, if I know someone's name, I can generally remember what it is that they do, what stage of business they're in. I've got a very good brain for remembering those kinds of insights. So because connection is my superpower and I get to know people really quickly and I am fascinated and lit up by interacting with other people, there are certain types of automations that I would argue aren't actually a good fit for me. And yes, automation has made a huge difference to the growth that I can achieve in my business. But it's very mindful and it's very particular about where I use it. I would not find myself drawn to using something like manychat or any of those automated of bot options to have DM conversations with people on social media, because having conversations with people on social media is what brings me joy. Not only that having conversations with people on social media is such a strong skill set for me. It's in my zone of genius that a lot of those conversations turn into hot leads very quickly. And there are very few chatbots that I feel have ever made me feel the way that having a conversation with a human does. And because I know this about myself and I know that that is a real superpower of mine, I don't get FOMO about it. I don't have fear of missing out when I hear people talk about the AI bots and tools and chatbots and automations that they use on their social media. I don't even care to know the detail of the depths of how it works. And that to me actually creates a lot of head space to not worry about it. The more that I know myself, the more that I trust myself and the more that I know what my zone of genius is, the less inclined I am to feel like, oh, maybe I'm doing something wrong, oh, maybe I've got something wrong. I do also think that that comes from my time as a business owner as well. The longer I've been here, the that there are those hot tools and hot tricks of the trade that people Talk about and people share as though it's going to be the next big thing. And I've definitely gone down the rabbit hole far too many times. Not asking that very important question first, not interrogating whether it's actually the right fit for me as a human. And it has ended up being often a distraction, a shiny object, a waste of time, and often it's a short lived flash in the pan. It doesn't actually create sustainable growth. The foundations of my business and the foundations of my marketing strategy have not changed since I started my business. There have absolutely been some changes to the way things work, the algorithms, the percentage of growth that can come from organic strategies versus paid strategies, right? In the finessing of the details, there have definitely been some changes, but at its very core, my foundations have stayed the same and those foundations are built to fit me perfectly. The reason why I'm so passionate about ensuring that my marketing as well as my delivery model fit me perfectly is because I want to enjoy this. I want this to be something that energizes me. I want 95% of the things that I do as a business owner to be things that I'm looking forward to rather than things that I'm dreading. And so I really want to encourage you to think about your superpowers, but also your personality type, what energizes you and what drains you and how can you incorporate the things that energize you most into your marketing and sales strategy, not just your delivery? I will yap all day, right? I will talk to people all day. I could run an eight hour workshop on niching and still be excited to do it again tomorrow. I love talking to people. I love being in teacher mode. I'm energized by others. But then if I hear that everyone is spending hours and hours training their AI to write for them, it doesn't light me up. I'm not excited by that. And to be honest with you, creating and writing and speaking and connecting with others and writing for others, they are the components of my business that bring me the most joy. Why would I outsource that? Why now? I've just said yes to being in the beta for Xero Xero, the accounting software and bookkeeping software. They have an AI tool that is going to be more trained up in how to categorize and reconcile my transactions. There's an AI tool I can get behind if it saves me having to justify different purchase decisions in my business. Having to remember, what was that $4.99 component I purchased on ebay, usually it's Davey buying some little something to add to my laptop or plug into a speaker at conference, Right. I have no idea. And doing that kind of administrative work is soul destroying for me so I can get behind AI tools that learn about my transactions and categorize those transactions for me. So all I have to do is, yes, I agree. Yes, you got it right. And I don't even have to go and do the heavy lifting on that, thank you very much. But it will be a really long time, I think, before I will let AI take away my role of communicating and connecting with other humans in my business. It just, to me seems counterintuitive. So here's the thing. All of these things can work. All of the strategies can work. I can make any strategy work, right? Like that is my superpower as a business strategist and as someone who maybe has like far too much obsession with marketing and biopsychology and copy and messaging and all of those sorts of things. We can make any kind of strategy work. But it may not work as well for me if I just want to follow the exact structure, the exact methodology, the exact strategies that someone else is using. And it's the same for you. So if the idea of training up an AI for you sounds amazing and you get really excited by that because you cannot stand connecting with humans and you'd rather get the AI to do it all for you. Power to you. Right? That's where I think we need to be far more clear on who we are as an individual. Individual. I am obsessed with knowing myself as deeply and as broadly as possible. I look at myself through so many different angles and facets. In fact, I was just updating my About Me page for my website. Hopefully it's out by the time you listen to this episode. And I decided to put in there all of the personality test results of mine as part of the sharing. And so as part of that, I got to do a couple more and I was like, oh, that's fascinating. Oh, that's interesting. And it was really fun and it gave me a lot of insight. And like, to be honest with you, I've been studying myself for a long time and I also have been quite meticulous in the way that I curate the way I run my business and my marketing strategies and those sorts of things. So in a lot of cases it was a confirmation. Oh yes. That's why this feels so challenging. Or that's why I love doing this piece so much. So I would love to encourage you to really get to know yourself more deeply and get to know yourself in depth in a way that gives you insight and information on how you can adjust. So for example, I much prefer running webinars live. I much prefer being in the room, being able to bounce off people, answering people's questions. But I also know that pre recorded video and self paced learning where people can pause and restart, they can work through it at their own pace, they can do it at a time that is more convenient for them, works for a lot of my audience. So I've never been one to say I don't want to do prerecorded video, everything needs to be live for example. Instead I look for ways to practice and test and refine my videos, my webinars, through live components, doing Facebook lives, doing periscopes back in the day, rest in peace periscope, doing livestream video, doing webinars, doing five day challenges, doing extra live support calls inside programs that were technically self study programs. I love doing those things because it helps me to feel connected in that delivery and then I can sort of tap into that insight, tap into that connection when I'm doing something that's more pre recorded or self paced. So you know, sometimes people will say to me, oh, I can't do webinars, there's no way I can't do webinars. And I'll ask, okay, well what is it about webinars in particular that doesn't feel like it fits for you, it doesn't feel like it suits you. And sometimes it's something where I'd say, well, we can work around that, right? So. Or it's actually a marketing problem. So I had someone say, I'm just not interested in showing up and teaching these people for free when no one buys anything. And I was like, okay, so if you were being paid $2,000 an hour to run a webinar, would you be okay with running a webinar? Yeah, absolutely. I've just got to be paid for it because otherwise it drains me. Well, to me, that says you've got a conversion and lead generation issue from your webinar. Either your webinar is structured in a way that doesn't lead to the sale being the next logical step, or you've crafted a webinar that's attracting people who aren't actually focused on investing in the next stage. Right. Or it's not a priority as big a priority for them. Or there's an issue with the topic of the webinar. It doesn't actually directly Connect to what it is that you're selling. And a lot of people craft their webinars based on, well, what do people want to learn from me or what do I want to teach people? And then they try and sort of wrestle it into shape so that they can make an upsell at the end. Well, for me, the problem is not webinars. It's just that the way that the webinar has been designed and structured or marketed or the messaging in it needs to be refined and improved so it does a better job. And a lot of people try and solve that problem by charging for their webinars, but then they end up making even less from them because people have paid for the webinar, therefore they need to have completed all the homework from the webinar before they're allowed to buy the next thing. Also, you're significantly reducing your numbers, right? So a lot of times people think that they're solving the problem, but the problem being that it didn't make you enough money. We need to diagnose the why of that. And I think sometimes people then come up with this solution being, well, I'll just charge for it or I'm only going to do webinars for people who are really motivated, incentivized, and guess what? They start putting on their signup page for their webinar. This is only for people who are ready to take action and ready to dive in and really motivated. And the very people who think that they are motivated and excited and ready to take action are the very people who don't. And so simply by labeling the type of person you're trying to attract and putting that in the messaging doesn't actually solve the problem. So, you know, I think that when it comes to crafting your marketing strategy, crafting your business model, crafting your decisions, yes, let's take inspiration and ideas and learn from others, but let's also ensure that we've got the space and the time and the structure to be able to interrogate that through the lens of will this specifically work for me and how can I make this aligned for me and my business? And it's part of the reason why I mentor that way as well. I'll often talk about foundations and I'll talk about some of those non negotiables, but we can resolve those non negotiables in a myriad of different ways. So instead of saying this is the exact model, this is the exact steps, this is the exact mix that you need in your marketing strategy, instead I help you to ensure Your foundations are solid and they're validated with rigor. Absolutely. But there are dozens of ways to do that validating, depending on you, depending on the resourcing that you have available to you, depending on the market that you're wanting to work with, depending on your time sensitivity and the urgency with which you need to get that validation taking place. A lot of people suck the joy and the zone of genius out of their business in pursuit of being advanced, or in pursuit of making a certain amount of money, or in pursuit of the ego of being able to say that they are rolling out an XYZ person's model and they've done it perfectly. And in the process of doing that, they kind of lose their individual magic. They lose the unique perspective that they could have to share with their audience based on their lived experiences, based on their expertise and zone of genius. So ultimately, it is a question of asking, well, what is important to you and what is it that you started this business to achieve? Yes, there are financial results that you're likely looking for, but is it at the cost of creating a job for yourself that you aren't excited to engage with? Is it at the cost of feeling like you need to act more like someone else every day in order to be successful? Is it at the cost of you need to mask who you truly are? Because if you were to unleash all of you onto your audience, the marketing strategies, the model, the messaging that you've been using would be incongruent. There's a lot of unmasking that happens when you become a business owner and when your messaging in particular reflects who you are as a human. And that can take a little bit of unlearning as well. Because often in order to be successful in a corporate role or in a job, we do have to mask. We do have to be like everyone else. We do have to conform. And so that that can be kind of hardwired into our brains that it's unsafe to unleash all of us. It's unsafe to stand up for what it is that you want. It's unsafe to ask a mentor, hey, I'm more introverted than you. How could I make this work for my introverted self? Or, hey, I am someone who loves talking and connecting. And I've noticed that this entire strategy doesn't have any connection or interaction with the audience. Is there a way I can bring that connection and interaction in to be able to feel like it's aligned with my personality? It's aligned with what sorts of things bring me joy and energy. And that can feel challenging as well. I know that not all mentors are happy to have those kinds of conversations. Not all mentors want to be able to finesse and, and make that more unique and more aligned with you. So, you know, it can be a brave thing to ask that question. But that is the mission I want to send you on today. I want you to interrogate what parts of your business, particularly in the marketing and sales side, do you find particularly challenging? But not just, oh, social media is really challenging, right? Or running webinars is really challenging. I want you to get into the depths of it. It what parts of social media are particularly challenging for you? And if what you were doing was bringing in 50k a month, 100k a month, would you still find it challenging or would you be excited to do it? I think a lot of the times we connect a particular activity as being draining when we feel like it's wasted effort. And that's different too. It's draining even when I do it and it's successful. They're two very different experiences. So for every single strategy or every single part, I want you to dive into which part of it, which specific piece, feels like it's misaligned, feels like it's not your wheelhouse, feels like it's not aligned for you? Why does it feel like it's not aligned? If it was making you a heap of money, would it still feel misaligned? And if yes, you still wouldn't want to do it. What's a way to achieve the same outcome but with a different approach, with a different way, with a different style, with a different model? And you might just discover a far more unique and uniquely you marketing strategy that is far more effective and you enjoy it more and you're energized by it far more. Okay, that brings me to the end of today's episode. I hope you found this particularly helpful. Something that I did mention in this episode was around messaging and that it's not enough to just talk about the kind of person that you want to attract. If you are wanting to attract action takers into your business with whatever strategy it is that you're implementing. I actually have a free training called Resonate. It's about messaging that ignites the action takers within your audience and grows an audience of action takers as well. So I'll pop a link to that with the show notes of today's episode over@tashcorbyn.com 502 thank you so much for joining me for this episode. Until next time. I cannot wait to see you shine.