76: What Marketing Really Looks Like in 2025/2026 (And Where Most Business Owners Are Getting It Wrong)

When you hear “market your business,” do you think of nonstop content, algorithm-chasing, or burning out on trends?

In this episode, we’re breaking down what modern marketing really is—and why most business owners are missing the mark. You’ll learn what’s no longer working in 2025/2026, what today’s smartest marketers are doing differently, and how to shift your strategy so people actually want to buy from you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:03

When you hear market your business, what comes to mind? Is it Instagram, sharing your life on stories? Is it doing dancing trends in your kitchen and crossing your fingers that someone lands on your page and wants to buy from you? Well, in 2025 and upcoming into 2026, the old tricks aren't cutting it. Today I'm showing you what marketing actually is and how to do it in a way that makes people actually want to buy from you. At the end of this episode, you'll walk away with a clear idea of what it looks like to start marketing smarter, not harder. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Virtual Assistant School Podcast. I'm your host, Kate, a teacher-turned entrepreneur, mom of two, and I teach women how to use the skills they already have to make money from home as a virtual assistant. Every Tuesday and Thursday, you'll get step-by-step strategies, behind-the-scenes insights, and hear honest, unfiltered conversations about making money and growing an online business so you can stop feeling stuck and start taking action toward your goals. Whether you're looking for a flexible side hustle or want to take your business full-time, this podcast is for you. Building a business or starting something new can be super overwhelming at times. But here, you don't have to do it alone. So grab your coffee or make another cup and let's dive into this week's episode. Hello and welcome back to the Virtual Assistant School podcast. I'm so glad that you are here, but before we dive in, we have to do a little work phone update. I unintentionally took a break from the podcast. I did not mean to do it. It was not planned at all. Um, life just was lifing, and I got behind in releasing episodes and recording and all of that stuff. Um, and so I left you hanging on this little 30-day experiment that I did with getting a work phone and how it would help me with social media boundaries. Well, it did not go the way that I expected, actually. I hated having a work phone. Um, during the first couple of weeks, I had my son got croup, and a lot of different things happened, like in our personal life, that required me to not work as much because my family obviously always takes priority. And I found that having a work phone was actually just not as helpful as I thought it was going to be. Like it felt more complicated to have like a designated phone for work instead of, you know, my son is sick and we're just sitting on the couch and he's taking a nap on me, like being able to work from my phone. Um, it just really made things more difficult. And so I scrapped the work phone. My husband is actually using the phone now, um, because it was his upgrade anyway. Bless him. And I went back to brick. So I mentioned brick in my last episode, and I have been using it on and off for over a year. It came with me to Idaho from Arizona, um, and I did have to order a new one because I lost the original one. Um, but that's neither here nor there. I went back to using brick and I am loving it. It is helping me so much with my screen time and my boundaries around like my phone use. Um, I actually have it auto-brick me at 8 p.m. Um at night, and then I don't unbrick it until it's time for me to work in the mornings, typically. Sometimes that looks like you know, unbricking it around 7 if I, you know, have something I want to post on Instagram or something and it doesn't interfere with like our morning routine. Um, but typically I don't unbrick it until closer to eight, if not nine. And that's something I'm really trying to stick to. I'm not perfect at it by any means. Um, this week I've actually been a little bit lax with it and unbricking it a little bit sooner than usual, but just having it brick before bed has been such a game changer because typically by 8 p.m. we've put the kids down. I'm usually, you know, maybe doing like our closing shift routine in our kitchen or downstairs. Um, or I'm actually upstairs starting to kind of wind down and get ready for bed. And um my phone will automatically brick. So there's been multiple times where I'm like doom scrolling uh, you know, or close to 8 p.m. and all of a sudden I can't scroll anymore because I get bricked out, and I'm not going to get up out of bed or stop doing what I'm doing to go into the other room or go downstairs to unbrick my phone. I keep my brick magnet on um the fridge, and so I would have to actually go to the kitchen and unbrick my phone. And so if you don't know what brick is, it's literally like this little piece of plastic. It's like 3D printed, it's a magnet, and you can just tap your phone to it and it will lock you out of apps that you select. So all of my social media apps are selected for me. And you can, you know, when you want to use those apps again, you have to physically go and unbrick it again. Um, like if you left the house, you would not be able to unbrick it if you're out of the house unless you use one of your emergency unbricks, which is like that's dire, you know. Um, and so it's been really great. And that is really just, you know, that was the whole point of the experiment, right? See if a work phone was gonna work for me. I thought it was gonna be a game changer, ended up being more of a hassle than anything. And I went back to, you know, using my brick and I'm loving it. So I did end up getting a code for you guys from Brick. So I will put that in the um show notes and in the description of this podcast. If you want to order your own brick, you get a little discount. Um, but yeah, that's my little update. So let's dive into this episode, okay? What actually is marketing? Okay, so quick definition: marketing is the practice of promoting and selling. But what I'm seeing happen is people are confusing marketing with promotion. Okay, so promotion by definition, I'm literally gonna read you the definition, is activity that supports or provides active encouragement for the furtherance of a cause. Okay. So um you're promoting something, it means that you're talking about Instagram, you are doing all the things and things aren't working, right? Um, maybe you're doing, you know, content calendars and you know, posting all that you can about your offer and doing 30-day challenges, and that's all, you know, great and can work when it comes to getting consistent with creating content that you can use in marketing, but our brains filter out what feels irrelevant, overwhelming, or misaligned. Okay, our brains like safety, our brains like even familiarity, and that's why you can post daily and still hear crickets because your what you think is marketing, your content is really just promoting. It's not marketing, it's not storytelling, it's not positioning your offer in a way that gets people emotional or wants them, it's like desires for them to have that transformation. Um, and it's also not building trust with your audience. That is why it is so important to start making some shifts in content now more than ever before. Because right now there's so many people promoting online, so many different offers, so many different things that you could be promoting and sharing about. But in order to actually get sales and get people in the door and book clients, you have to be marketing. And there's three shifts that you really should consider making in Q4 of this year and going into 2026 because it is more important than ever before to have strategic marketing that actually sells because there's so many people doing it. There's so many people out there trying to sell something or promote something. And like I said, our brain is filtering out what doesn't feel like it's, you know, it's irrelevant, like something that we don't want, or it feels overwhelming, or it's not aligned. Um, you know, part of your job as a marketer and as a business owner is to make people care about your thing, make people care about your service, make people care about your business because of the transformation and the value that it is going to give them. I've been in the online business space for eight years. It'll be eight years in December. So I've seen so many iterations of marketing and how people utilize social media in particular. Um, but now more than ever before, there's really these three things that I'm like, you have to have this in your marketing. You have to because it's going to be what sets you apart. It's going to be what helps you find your ideal clients, it's going to be what helps you scale your business. Okay, so the first shift that you need to make in Q4 and going into 2026, if you want to continue to grow your business, no matter what business you have, whether you're a virtual assistant, whether you're a different service provider, you're an online coach, you are a strategist, whatever it is, even product-based business, you need to shift number one from this idea of going viral, this virality obsession, to a memorability strategy. Memorability means being easy to remember or and or being worth remembering. Okay, so instead of just going viral or getting content that gets a lot of views, you want to be memorable. You want to be top of mind. You guys hear me talk about becoming the go-to gal in your industry, or you know, if someone thinks of a virtual assistant, then like they think of you. Or if they are thinking of, you know, a launch strategist, they want to think of you, or you want them to think of you. If they are thinking of um, you know, one of my friends owns a productivity company. When they think planners or productivity, they think of her. Like having this memorability strategy is going to be so important. You want people to remember you. They you want to create content that connects with them. And the best way to do this is by storytelling. Okay. There was a research study done at Stanford where students were asked to give a one-minute speech, and most presentations relied on statistics, and only one was telling a story. Okay. Ten minutes after the speeches, only 5% of the audience could recall a specific statistic. Only 5% could recall a specific statistic. In contrast, a remarkable 63% of the audience remembered the story. What does this tell us? This tells us that people are going to remember your stories. That's part of the memorability strategy. For years, I talked about how when I first started building my very first business, one of the stories that I used was when I was a teacher back in California before we had kids, we had just gotten out of college and we were really struggling financially. I remember not being able to pay for the big bag of dog food at the store because it was like a Tuesday and we needed more dog food, and payday didn't come until Friday. And I could only afford the smaller$15 bag without overdrawing my account and not, you know, the$45 or$60 bag that I would be able to purchase on Friday, but I had to wait until I got paid. I told that story over and over and over and over again for years and years people came back to me and said, I remember that time you talked about the dog food. Right? Like that was a story that I told for so long. Um, these days I tell a story about, you know, wanting to go to the pumpkin patch with my kids. Like one of the biggest, biggest whys that I ever had when I started my business before I was a mom, before I was even married, was um thinking about going to my kids' field trip to the pumpkin patch. That was like wanting, like wanting to have the flexibility of that was a huge part of my why. So the story, and it's a story that people remember. I brought it up just the other day because I actually was able to fulfill that dream and go to the pumpkin patch with my kids on their preschool field trips this year. And people came back to me that had heard that story like six years ago and were like, I remember the first time that you told that story. Or I remember when you told that story on a call that we were on, that that was like part of your why. And you didn't even have kids yet. People remember stories. Okay, that's how you build a memorability strategy. So inter, you know, interweaving storytelling into your marketing is so important because that's what's gonna get you remembered instead of trying to just go viral all the time. Number two shift that you need to make in Q4 is messaging that mirrors your ideal customer's mind. I want you to think of your messaging as a mirror and not a megaphone. Okay, you want to reflect their thoughts, their desires, their feelings. You don't want to yell at them. Okay, you want to build trust with them. I'm gonna get into this a little bit, but like you want them to read your content, be like, wow, like how did she know that that's what I was thinking, right? You don't want to be yelling at them or like shouting at them. You want it to be a mirror, not a megaphone. Okay. The brain is wired to pay attention to familiarity. When your messaging reflects a person's inner thoughts and like the things that they're thinking about, they instantly feel seen. Okay. You want to post content that your ideal customers are like, wait, how did she know that? Or like, wow, she's really in my head, or how'd she know that I just said that to my husband the other day? We've all had those moments, right? When we think about content, we think about people we follow, and they talk about something, we're like, How did you know that this was something I was struggling with? Okay. It's because those people that can do that, and when you are able to do that, you just know your ideal client so well, you know what they're thinking. And a lot of times you might have been that ideal client at one point. Mirroring your clients' thoughts, feelings, desires, even their objections and hesitations is really important in your marketing. Addressing what they're worried about before they even tell you builds trust. So here's an example. If you are a health and wellness coach, instead of saying like lose X amount of weight by doing X, Y, and Z before spring break. I don't know, whatever you might say. You can say you've tried every food tracking app and workout split on the internet and you're still not seeing results. That right there instantly makes people feel sane because we all know how many apps we've downloaded in order to get results, right? Or you've tried, you know, the whole calories in, calories out thing, and things still aren't working. It's actually talking to your ideal client and their objections, their hesitations, you're addressing the fact that they have tried all these different things and they're not seeing results and why they should try what you have to offer. It's going to make them pay attention because they're gonna be like, oh wow. Like she actually sees that like I am trying, I am putting in an effort. It's not that I'm lazy, I am tracking my food and I am, you know, working out and all this stuff, and I'm still not seeing results. She knows that she can see that. I'm gonna pay closer attention to her content. That's what that does. Also addressing, I know I mentioned like their desires, but also there's their pain points. Okay, it's the difference of what they want to achieve or what they want to, like where they want to go, which is like their desires, or what they want to avoid, which is pain. Okay. So um one example that I use in my business a lot is being able to provide financially for your family and still be able to take your kids to the park at 10 a.m. on a Thursday, right? That's a desire. A pain point example, you could say, you know, you're tired of posting every day, live launching only to hear crickets, and doing all the things with no real growth to show for it. Okay, that's an example of pain point marketing. They're tired of posting every day, they're live launching only to hear crickets, and they're doing all the things and they don't have anything to show for it. There is a caveat with pain point marketing. I'm just gonna briefly go over. If you are making someone feel broken or ashamed or like they failed, or just being like gross about it, it's gonna backfire, right? It like triggers defense and not necessarily desire to get out of the pain that they're in. So you want it to not be shamey, you want it to not like make people feel bad. And that's really, really important when it comes to pain point marketing. Okay, the third shift that you want to make in Q4 as you go into 2026 with your marketing is to sell beliefs and your ideal client's payoff versus your offer. Here's the deal: you can have the most valuable, well-structured offer in the world, but if someone doesn't believe that they can get results, they won't buy. I'm gonna say that again for the people in the back. You can have the most valuable, well-structured offer in the world, but if someone doesn't believe that they can really get results, they don't think it's possible for them, they will not buy. Selling someone on belief and what's in it for them is how you get people thinking about your offer as a no-brainer when they land on your sales page. Okay, it's the difference of saying, like, oh, inside this course you get six modules and a workbook and 30 templates and da-da-da-da-da, versus here is what you are going to achieve in this program. Here's how you're going to feel when you go through my coaching. You're going to be speaking more to the transformation, again, their desire, like what they want to achieve, versus like all these little details. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if there's six modules and a workbook and all these templates, if it can't help them get the results that they want to achieve. So you really want to focus your marketing marketing more on the value, the transformation, all that good stuff, versus here's everything that you get and what's included, right? That's important and that can be, you know, a conversation for another day, or it can be on your sales page, but it's not marketing. Again, that's more similar to like promotion. Okay. So to recap, the three shifts that you should make in your marketing as we go into 2026 is stopping obsessed with going viral and start being obsessed with being memorable. Okay. Number two is messaging that mirrors your ideal customer's mind. Stop shouting at them. Get inside their head, right? Even if you have to do market research to figure out what it is that people are thinking and what they're struggling with. I highly recommend that. And then number three is make sure you're selling beliefs and you're talking about their payoff and what they're gonna get out of the offer versus the offer itself. So if you loved this episode and you are ready to market smarter heading into 2026 and finally become the go-to gal in your industry or in your niche, I want to invite you into the clubhouse. It's our membership for online business owners who are serious about growing their brand, dialing in their strategy, and becoming unforgettable in their industry. We've got four founders pricing spots left, and those are only available until the end of October. So I'll drop the link in the show notes for you to learn more about Clubhouse and join us because we would love to have you. Okay, that's all I have for you today. I hope that you enjoyed it. I hope that you liked this episode looking at marketing and all the things because I love marketing. I love sales, I love talking about this stuff, and I love helping you get better at it too. Um, and so if you did love this, I would also love if you would do a five star review for us because reviews help the podcast grow so much. And I'd also love to hear your thoughts over on Instagram. So send me a DM after you listen to this episode. I'd love to hear what you think if you have any questions. And other than that, I will see you on the next episode. And as always, I'm rooting for you. Bye.