Intuitive Marketing Podcast
Ditch the bro-marketing BS and embrace big sister vibes instead!
Your New Biz Besties Are Here
Welcome to the Intuitive Marketing Podcast, where we guide heart-centered entrepreneurs, changemakers, and purpose-driven business owners through the wild world of marketing with heart and soul.
We're Meg and Chelsea, your hosts and intuitive marketing experts who have teamed up to help you align your passion with profit and make a bigger impact in the world.
With solo episodes and our juicy joint chats, you'll walk away with strategies, tools, and inspiration to grow your business intuitively, attract your dream clients, and create a brand that feels authentically you.
Intuitive Marketing Podcast
#22: What Good Is Going Viral If Your Business Isn’t Ready?
We share the hidden side of visibility in business—the backend systems that ensure your audience doesn't just listen, but actually takes action when they find you.
• Visibility without preparation leads to missed opportunities and burnout
• Most businesses focus on being seen without preparing for conversion
• The tension between visibility and profitability requires strategic systems
• It typically takes 90 days of momentum before seeing financial returns
• Email lists convert at much higher rates than social media followers
• Speakers need landing pages, QR codes, and follow-up sequences
• Authors should build community through supplementary materials
• Podcast guesting requires tailored lead magnets for each audience
• Backend systems make promoting visibility opportunities more exciting
• Start with one simple backend improvement this week
Ready for Support from Meg & Chelsea?
👉🏼 Looking for the Intuitive Business Community? Visit www.joinibctoday.com for all the details. We're here to help you step into bigger visibility. Bolder opportunities and greater impact with three coaching calls a month, hands on feedback, and a powerful network of like minded women.
👉🏼 We can take a deep dive into your client journey or your visibility strategy and show you exactly what's working, what's not, and how to fix it. Ready for clarity and a plan that actually works book your audit today at www.intuitivebusinessbydesign.com/audit
👉🏼 Explore the services offered by our marketing agency Intuitive Marketing Collective and request a free Discovery Call to explore how we can support your business. Go to www.intuitivemarketingcollective.com
👉🏼 Follow the agency on Instagram to continue to conversation beyond the podcast @intuitivemarketingcollective
Want to connect more with the hosts?
Follow Meg on Instagram @megoneill10
Follow Chelsea on Instagram @intuitivebusinessmentor...
What if the secret to making your next big visibility opportunity profitable isn't just about what you say in the moment, but what happens behind the scenes?
Speaker 2:Today we're digging into the hidden side of visibility in business, the backend systems that ensure your audience doesn't just listen but actually takes action when they find you. And this is a must if you're growing an audience on social media, running in-person events, publishing a book or even speaking on stages. Hey there, friends.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the Intuitive Marketing Podcast, where we ditch the bro marketing BS and bring you big sister vibes instead. I'm Meg and this is Chelsea.
Speaker 1:Your new biz besties.
Speaker 3:We met on TikTok in 2023. Fast forward to now and we have teamed up here to guide you through the wild world of marketing your business with heart and soul.
Speaker 1:Are you feeling lost or overwhelmed, maybe unsure of your next steps, but you have a big vision of where your coaching, healing, speaking or writing career could be in the next five years. 10 years Don't worry, we've got your back. 10 years Don't worry, we've got your back. We'll help you tap into your intuition, build a brand that lights you up and leverage proven marketing strategies to grow towards a six or even seven-figure business in a way that won't make you cringe.
Speaker 3:We're actually here to help you bring the magic back into your marketing.
Speaker 1:Because marketing should feel good, not gross.
Speaker 3:Grab your favorite drink, get comfy and let's get started.
Speaker 1:We're deep in a season of overhauling our own backend systems. We have a brand new website, we are updating Funnel, we're creating a new application system for our agency, an evergreen email sequences, automations and, let's be honest, it doesn't always feel money-making in the moment. We're so behind the scenes. It's hard to also be visible online, which we are. We're doing a good balance, but this is the work that's essential for growth and we know it. We're sharing how preparing your business for visibility lays the foundation for actual profitability and sustainability, I would say and how skipping this step could leave opportunities on the table and leave money on the table.
Speaker 2:Invisibility without preparation can mean missed opportunities, and we hear this all the time You'll hear. I remember hearing a story about someone who had 300,000 followers on Instagram and launched a merchandise like t-shirts in their brand and sold zero Right, and so that had not been an audience that was like trained for profitability. They weren't asked to be taking actions until they had something to sell, and so it can just feel like there's so many wasted opportunities and that can lead to burnout if you feel like you're creating, creating, creating, growing a community. But having that visibility, sidestepping with profitability, is really what we need as business owners, if you're more than just an influencer or a content creator, and so today we're going to share some practical ways.
Speaker 2:It'll be a little bit more of a learning moment here in this episode, because we want to ensure that your business is ready when big moments come, when big stages present themselves to you, whether you're launching a book, landing a speaking stage or getting featured on a podcast, we want you to have practical steps that you can have put in place before those big opportunities, and hopefully, a couple of these steps just like along the way, because we all work so hard creating new exposure opportunities for our brand, our business, our social media accounts. But if you haven't put some of these steps in place so that there's an intuitive next step for people that find you, it really is cutting yourself off at the knees and it just makes it harder to recoup the investment of time or money that you put out to create that new exposure, if that makes sense. So it's this self-fulfilling prophecy If you don't have systems in place, the visibility doesn't end up paying you more, and then you start to burn out.
Speaker 1:Right and there's a tension between visibility and profitability, because people often feel like, well, I'm being consistent, I'm being visible, okay, wonderful, but we have to figure out how to bring the money in, as, on, these systems help you. Make that easier for people to know like, oh wait, I can buy something from her, I can buy something from them. And the thing is is that visibility isn't usually immediately profitable. You have to build like know and trust with people to get them to spend money with you sometimes. So it takes really showing up and consistency and then having the systems in place before you actually can sometimes see the return on your visibility and that's okay, that's expected. So a lot of us think like, okay, if I just show up and post something on Instagram every single day, I'm going to make money. Well, no, no, no, no. We got to back up a little bit.
Speaker 1:We get an email list going.
Speaker 1:We have to do some other things and potentially it could be three months, 90 days of really creating momentum and having these systems in place and increasing your visibility, increasing your conversations with people, getting in front of the right people before you see that anybody is maybe even interested in buying what you have, and really leaning into the fact that there's going to be a buildup season. You're going to have to invest time and energy into systems and that might feel like okay, but I'm spending all this time and I'm not moving the needle. I'm not getting where I want to go, but it's so, so important so that then when you potentially have that viral moment and you get, you know, 100,000 people on your website or you get whatever it is, that then there's a pathway to walk them through to purchase whatever it is, because we oftentimes put Instagram and social media as the first thing that you should be spending all the time on. I got to get visible, I got to be in front of the people and say cool, but then what happens?
Speaker 1:if you're visible, right, and so there's that tension there of it's okay to be less visible while you're setting up these systems.
Speaker 2:And you've been in the content game for so long. I do remember when it was like you had to hit 10,000 followers on Instagram to be able to share a link and it was like in everybody's mind, guaranteed that you would become profitable once you had that opportunity and they started giving everybody links and people didn't really know that you had to have like happy systems in place and I remember that switch happening and people being like wait what I'm not like all of a sudden a millionaire because I can just write into a story.
Speaker 2:It's so crazy. And so what are some of these systems that we're talking about? What does it mean to prepare for visibility? So some of the things that happen quote unquote behind the scenes, yes, creating a content plan. So if you are wanting to show her visibility, audits and intensives and helping you to create so that process is simpler. So that can definitely be considered a behind the scenes system. But you showing up is part of your visibility, right?
Speaker 1:Right, and with that, I think, something that we do a little bit different. In these content plans and visibility audits, we make sure I go over with everybody If you're putting time into this content plan, what's your freebie going to be? What's your lead magnet? Where are we driving this traffic to? Because putting content out just to put content out is not going to increase your bottom line. You need to have them going somewhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think making sure that you have a way to be collecting emails, staying in touch with your subscribers. One of the primary goals of showing up on social media should be that a percentage of those followers take a step to join your email list either because they just want to be on your newsletter list. But I feel like that's not sexy enough these days. Most people it's that they're going to opt in because you have a free or low ticket offer that solves a problem for them, that takes the conversations you're putting out on social media a next step and delivers some value.
Speaker 2:And then we spend a lot of time working on funnels. We do custom marketing funnels at the agency and that's either looking at like free opt-ins, so a lead magnet, or email sequences that are going to fire off once someone has taken a certain step in your business, or sales pages where you're selling your course or your membership and really walking people through a great onboarding on the back end. So those are going to be so important as you have a bigger audience looking at your website, clicking through, Can they find what you just mentioned on your social media post easily, right? And then making sure that there's clear pathways from discovery to conversion. I am someone who I've never gone viral. I have been very consistent for probably a decade on social media, but what I find more maybe it's my astrology or human design, I don't know, but it's for me social media the purpose is more to build that know, like and trust factor.
Speaker 2:I grow up as people know what I stand for, they know what I offer, and I grow my email list and I don't have a gigantic email list, but it's definitely of people who are, like, excited to hear from me.
Speaker 2:I think, especially if we just think about the reality. You know, on, let's just say, for on Instagram, they say that what is it like? Three to five percent of your actual followers are likely to see a post. But if you're getting a 46 or a 52 percent open rate email list, that step like putting investing the time, energy or money to create that step so that someone can opt in to be on your email list there's so much more likely to actually hear from you. And then, of course, you have to decide if you're going to do like a weekly newsletter or like live communication to your email list, or if you lean more towards setting up like sequences so that people are just being catered to and communicated with. But these aren't like complicated systems that need to be put in place. But it makes such a big difference. And what we're going to do, we're going to talk through three like real life scenarios. So I'm going to speak about speakers and Meg is going to talk about authors. And if you're podcast guesting, like what are some real life examples of how these systems can improve your conversion and what's happening in the bank account for your business? So let's talk first about a speaker.
Speaker 2:Maybe you have been putting out your media kit and pitching yourself to summits or events, and so now you have, let's say, an in-person speaking event, and so you're carving out your time and your travel to be in person in front of a room, and so, yes, you've got to do all the preparation for your actual keynote or panel presentation so that in the moment, you're going to be just in your zone of genius, right? But you also want to be mapping out in advance what are you hoping to have happen in your business because of this exposure opportunity. Hopefully you're getting paid for your presentation, so like that's a win for your business in and of itself. So like that's a win for your business in and of itself. But you're on this stage, whether it's physical or virtual, with a captive audience of people who've already opted in to learn about this topic, and so what are you going to ask them to do? That could become more business for you, either today, while they're there in their seats, or even weeks or months from now. Ideally, you have a landing page ready for those event attendees. You want to make it as simple as possible, maybe in your slide presentation, if you have like slides up behind you on the stage, making sure that there's one towards the end with a QR code, so that people can just lift up their phone and scan it and take them to a link that's strategic for your business. It could be that they're opting into a texting service and saying, yes, I want to receive a text series from you that you've just spoken about from stage. It could be that you're collecting their email to give them a free checklist or something that goes hand in hand with the topic, just something that's going to be an easy yes. It could even be it takes them to a quiz.
Speaker 2:People love taking quizzes and multitasking for a couple minutes during a presentation if it's going to help tailor them knowing more about themselves. I remember doing a sleep quiz one time being in the audience, where it was like about sleep, like archetypes, and so, of course, I wanted to know what my sleep archetype was while I was in the presentation, because then he talked about the four archetypes, and so, of course, I wanted to know what my sleep archetype was while I was in the presentation, because then he talked about the four archetypes after. Or I was once in the audience of Kendra Hall, who wrote the book Stories that Stick, and she made it so simple during the presentation. She had a QR code. We all picked up our phone and she had.
Speaker 2:I think what you got was the first chapter of her book and a checklist that would help you implement some of what she was teaching from stage. So of course, everybody wanted to take their phone up and get that. And then in the back end, she was selling the full book and also a course about how to. I think it was about like how to get in touch with your origin story as a business owner, right, and so I just I was sitting there in this moment realizing that is so genius, like she's getting paid to be on this stage in front of about 5000 people. Everybody looked around and everybody's phone was up, and out of that, such a high percentage, I'm sure realize that when you have a captive audience, the more you can have thought through what is the next intuitive step. If it was a QR code to a $5,000 speaking course with her or a mastermind, that would have been such a big disconnect.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But thinking through OK, someone is likely to want to buy my book, they're likely to go through a small course to get to know what it's like to work with me. And so having those follow-up email sequences that nurture the leads after speaking engagements and sprinkle in a next intuitive topic paid course, discovery, call, like whatever it is that makes sense for your business model, or even if you really are just a professional speaker that doesn't have courses necessarily, it could be that those emails are following up with them and training them, basically training these new email subscribers on what types of events you speak and make it more gigs from the follow-up email sequence from people who saw you speak.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and most speakers like this that we're talking about are like big visionaries and they don't want to be doing this on the back end, and that's why we do this in the marketing agency because it is, although it's like simple steps that we're talking through, it is nice to just have that packaged and just like. In my opinion, that's like what I would go for, but in terms of authors too. So my first case study and working with authors was my sister and she self-published a book and became profitable within two months, which is very rare.
Speaker 2:Amazing.
Speaker 1:And how she did that was by creating real community around her writing style and around the fact that she was writing a book as a mom of three children under five years old at the time and working on it through the pandemic, things like that. She really documented and shared bits of that so that she had people primed and ready to go, ready to buy that book, no matter what the genre is or was for her. People wanted to read her, what she had created during this time. So she did that. She documented on Instagram, she documents on TikTok and then she also has a newsletter list. Something else that she created was book club questions for her book once it came out. Another way to like really promote community and doing it in a group.
Speaker 1:People wanted questions to go along with that. So that helps build her, you know, even just like her thought leadership as a self-published author and get people into her ecosystem and ready for the next book to come out. So it's, you can use different kinds of lead magnets like that, maybe like the book club questions. Or she also did things like she created merch around the book T-shirts stickers, but so that led her to like when she was at like more local like-shirts stickers. So that led her to when she was at more local craft fairy type places and she would be giving these things out. People would exchange their email for those types of things so that they again they were in her ecosystem. They were getting her newsletter For thought leadership books.
Speaker 1:Thinking through an evergreen place where you can send people.
Speaker 1:So maybe at the end of the book you can send them to your website or a quiz or a contact form saying that you're working on your next book that's coming out, a quiz around a methodology that you shared in the thought leadership book, so that they can also get to know like what kind of whatever it is they are. And then, finally, like you really want to think through having systems of handling the increased inquiries that come from a media appearance. So, whether it is like your book gets picked up and you are on a local TV show or you know Good Morning America, whatever it might be, you want to think through what is the journey that someone who is cold to your community, they've never heard you and what do you want them bumping into next? So say, you write a book on parenting and it gets picked up on a big network and you don't have anything set up on the back end. Right, they're going to see you. They're going to think, oh, she did a great job it was helpful.
Speaker 1:It was so helpful, right. And then they're going to go about their day. But how can you leave them wanting to be in your community, your ecosystem, and then thinking that through of? It could be a quiz, like let's use the quiz, for example. So they leave your little two minute segment and they say I want to learn what kind of parent I am in this person's framework, so lead them to that quiz, walk them through that. So then they're now getting your emails on the back end and start have somebody set up emails that are really going to speak to that type of person so that they want to then buy your $57 course or whatever it might be. So really maximizing that visibility, because we kind of stop at oh my God, Good Morning America called right, I'm on it. This is so exciting. But then you see, if you don't have those systems in place, it's kind of like a blah blah.
Speaker 3:So, cool.
Speaker 1:I can put that on my website now, but you didn't make any money from it. Right, and to make these situations sustainable and worth all the thought and time you've put into it, you really want to then turn people into buyers. So it's similar for podcast guesting, but at the end of every podcast most podcasts, 99% of them the host is going to give you an opportunity to share how the listeners can find out more about your work. Just make sure you think through what that's going to lead them to. So are you going to lead them to one landing page that gives a checklist, a freebie, like whatever? Oftentimes I get asked to be on podcasts that mix like motherhood and business. Oh, that, maybe that isn't my freebie about social media. Maybe I need to create a freebie on working motherhood or something like. I should sit and think through that journey too, because you could be on all different kinds of podcasts and look into, audit what you're being asked for and create some kind of opportunity and journey for those people.
Speaker 1:And then you're the. A community who's listening to a podcast really trusts that host, so they're going to trust your recommendation and it's a great way to optimize that relationship really quickly because you don't have to spend as much time getting them to trust you because they trust the host already. So if you are a huge fan of Jenna Kutcher's podcast and she brings somebody that you've never heard of, you might be more primed to buy their $100 course more quickly because Jenna recommended them right. So just think through that You're going to not have to work as hard most likely for their trust. And then guide them to this opt-in and make sure that that email sequence on the back end is selling something, getting them on a discovery call, doing a paid offering of some kind, so that you can really leverage the audience and speed up that process Because you have them in that moment. They're trusting you, they want what you have, so get that to work for you.
Speaker 2:We're going to share just a couple personal insights from the overhaul that we've been doing. So it's nice to hear this in theory and be like, okay, yeah, this all makes sense. It's this phase of auditing what you have in place or assessing kind of what points in a client journey have a gap. I think that's something I love doing in my client journey audits is, sometimes you're just like too close to your own work and you're like, oh, it's obvious what people would do once they join my email list. Well, is it? I don't know, and it can feel very non-glamorous and even almost like vulnerable about. Okay, let's just put this out all on the table and really assess what's missing. But it's worth the effort because you know what we're seeing is there's so many different tools. You can look at your Google Analytics or download MS Clarity and see how people are actually navigating through your website. Because even if you think it is clear, if you realize that nobody's clicking on the buttons to book a discovery call and maybe there's like a really pretty, like spinny thing on your website that you think is really cool, but it's confusing people, right. There's so much data that you can collect instead of just assuming that what you're communicating in a digital landscape makes sense, and so for me, I really feel a sense of safety and also excitement when I know that we have a free let's say a free lead magnet. So we have our advanced intuitive pricing guide.
Speaker 2:Now that I know that the guide is beautiful Meg made it. We've got emails that fire off after that sell a really cool launch course that I've created. Like I know that if someone opts into that thing, they're getting introduced to really good, high value resources, and then they're also going to go through our welcome sequence and join our evergreen email sequence, and so I get excited for that opt-in. I get excited to then reverse engineer and think about how can I get a visibility opportunity to talk about this topic? Yeah, you know, can I do a YouTube video about it? If I get invited onto a summit, can I tie in pricing so that the freebie makes sense, like it just helps me in my very linear brain to be like okay, this now is a content pillar, because I don't want to just expect people will randomly bump into it. I need to promote it, I need to promote it.
Speaker 2:I need to talk about a free offer or a low ticket offer, as though it's like a high premium offer, because I still need to sell people on the idea of getting in and giving me their email address.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I don't get as excited about doing that if I've in the past, have made like really cool, valuable freebies and I just fizzle out on wanting to promote it because I'm like, but I haven't really seen anything happen in my business because of people opting in, and so that's really where the strategy and thinking through the client journey helps and then making sure, obviously, that the copy and the emails and automations are set up. But and maybe it's me but I get more excited to drive people to things that I know are well supported on the backend if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:I love that. It's just. It's like service and strategy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and. I think you want to choose, like freebies that really are of service and help your client solve a problem.
Speaker 1:And currently like that was a huge part of the board meeting not also having the strategy behind it, because I didn't have an email sequence that was like working for me, yeah, so it burnt me out. So that's a it's that was like real life examples, a real life, because I was serving, serving. Serving, yeah, but there's no strategy to it. So it's like that's where I'm learning the lesson of I like to move with intuition. I like to move with service, yeah, but the strategy is going to make a big difference for sustainability.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's so true, and it doesn't have to be that it's like a 20 email sequence on the back. Right, if you're running a weekly or a monthly free networking group, having two emails that go out after the call like, hey, maybe you're wondering more about. You know what I brought up today as the host. Maybe it was your first time. Here's the three ways people can work with me. Just to bump people into. You have invested energy, time or money to hold, and so then what is the follow up of that conversation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, those are really good things to think about and, just from a practical standpoint, some simple homework.
Speaker 2:If you're listening to this and realizing, okay, maybe I've been ignoring the backend of my systems or this is all new to me, here's a couple of just really simple things that you can do to audit your own backend. One would be to just ask yourself the question audit your own backend? One would be to just ask yourself the question if I got a major speaking gig or a TikTok I did, went absolutely viral tomorrow, how would it truly serve my business? Is my business ready to convert that viral moment into actual sales? And if you're not quite sure, then that's a good awareness.
Speaker 2:And if you're like, oh well, maybe, but I should really have more emails, if you can identify the next step, awesome. The second question would be to ask do I have clear funnels and links set up for people to join my email list or buy my offers? And the third would be what is one area of my backend that needs attention this week? You do not have to overhaul everything all at once. You can certainly just identify a slight improvement and then implement it and feel good about it.
Speaker 2:So we encourage listeners today to tackle one backend improvement, whether it's updating a link, creating a thank you email, going through one of your funnels yourself to make sure that it's still working, or setting up a simple lead capture form to grow your email list, and these are the things that Chelsea is a genius at, and I wouldn't have any if it was for what's after?
Speaker 1:So listen to this and then connect with Chelsea, because it will change your life. So we really hope that you found this episode of the Intuitive Marketing Podcast as inspiration to help you bring the magic back into your own marketing. Our goal is for the podcast to be a compass in the chaos. We know that you get bombarded with information options and conflicting ideas out there on the internet streets. We hope you'll tune into the next episode, where we will be diving into the topic of whether you really have to be on social media and how it can be one part of your visibility plan. We hope to see you next time.