Not Every Piece of Marketing Needs to Make You Money

Here’s the thing, I’ve been in marketing for over 20 years and there is a time and place for everything. Conversions (aka marketing and getting dollars) is only one piece of your marketing pie. And you don’t get to have that piece until you’ve earned it.

There are actually three categories of content that you’ll need when you’re marketing your business: awareness, conversion, and retention. And by content, I mean the stories you tell about yourself and your business that are then built into social media platforms, emails, videos, etc.

But before I go much further, I want to be clear that I’m talking to legacy makers in this post. The people who are trying to build their business for the long-term. Because there are plenty of black hat marketing techniques that will get you fast money, but like Gene Deal once said “I’d rather make a slow nickel than a fast dollar.” Amen brother…amen.

So for my “slow nickel” folks, let me break down these types of marketing content. Because though it’s very demure, very cutesy to want to go all in and push that new online course or one-to-one session, people need time to get to know you. They need to build trust that you are who you say you are and they vibe with you. This is awareness marketing content.

Awareness is the time spent in your marketing talking about who you are, what you do, and the stories that support those two things. When you start out with a new business, you’re going to spend a lot of time in the awareness content arena. Which if you zoom out, logically makes sense. Because no one knows you’ve spent X number of years honing this craft that you’re now putting out for display.

Woman with megaphone on the sidewalk facing the street

The two top two reasons you’ll need to spend a considerable amount of time in this lane of content is 1. when you’re beginning your marketing and don’t have much of a client base OR 2. you have a brand new product or service you’re testing out.

If I’m to put this into perspective, 80% of your content in a months time would be focused in this area. And please don’t mistake what I’m saying to mean that you crank out 3 or 4 posts a day on social media. You want the right content, not all the content. I just mean if you do 3 posts a week on social media (or 12 posts a month) about 9 of those posts would be awareness focused.

Now, how do you know your awareness content is successful? People will start to DM you or email you or comment “hey could you help with…” or anything along those lines. This means you’re reaching people, telling aligned stories, and connecting to your future clients. This is proof that your efforts are paying off (even though that’s not necessarily with cash yet). And, you have traction! New people are seeing you and responding to you which means you should high five yourself immediately. Further, it makes you ready to introduce the second kind of marketing content: conversion content.

image of hands on a laptop with the screen displaying a Facebook profile

This is where your marketing begins asking for something in return for all your awareness efforts. This could look as direct as booking for a paid session, but it could just as easily look like asking them to join your email list or become a member of your free online group. An exchange of a phone number, email address, or joining of a private community all count as conversions.

We’re not here to make a fast dollar, we are here for the long-term and this takes patience.

So what can be considered conversion content? Please keep in mind there is always a nuance to marketing, so what I’m sharing here are rough guidelines on how to move through these three aspects of marketing. When it comes to converting, your audience may need something like an eBook, or cool font, or 5-day free email class, to eventually convert to dollars. Just never sleep on the knowledge that attention is capital even if you’re still in your wallet looking for dollars.

Marketing is the pretty picture and stories we tell. Sales is the buy button.

Now that you understand a bit better the first two kinds of marketing content, we’ve come to the final piece of marketing which is retention. This is where you keep these lovely people happy and interested after all the hard work you did to get their attention in the first place. Sometimes, no money will be exchanged for an extended amount of time (thanks to the economy and oversaturated social media feeds), but understand they are still watching. And because they are still watching, there’s still hope!

I consider people in the retention category even if they haven’t bought anything from you yet. Especially the people who comment, like, and share your content. Perhaps they cannot yet afford your services, but their interaction with your stories is telling you that you’re on target. So how do you repay them? You continue to give out the good stuff, because you’ve honed your message and your stories to the point that not only are new people joining you but the ones who already said “yes” want to hear more.

image of small heart-shaped cookies with orange and blue icing

I think it’s super important to know that a lot of businesses focus on attracting new people and forget the ones they already have. They neglect the retention aspect of their marketing. This actually sent one business called ZOE into a tailspin. They spent so much time acquiring new customers as a start-up they didn’t keep the ones they achieved happy and people bailed from their health platform.

As you can see, this is a grave error – especially for my legacy makers. Learn from this and understand that nurturing those who have already said yes to you is really where your bank account expands and where the win-win environment lives for any and all. There’s a reason so many people bring up Pareto’s Principle which is where 20% of your customers make up 80% of your revenue. It’s because it’s true. And it’s true for any size business (and I’ve worked for $25 million a year companies where this 80/20 still applied).

So as a recap, here is what should make up your content in marketing: awareness, conversion, and retention. When beginning, spend more time building awareness. Try to think about how you structure content in percentages over the course of a month. Consider lower percentages of content at first when trying to convert people or retain them with your messages.

Got it? Great. That’s it for today from Your Marketing Auntie. Now go tell some good marketing stories.