Each year, we learn something that takes us forward in our business, even if we had to fall down to get back up. This year, I learned quite a bit about marketing, both for my business and those of my clients. 

Here’s what I can share:

5. You don’t have to do a lot, but you do need to be strategic. My only consistent content was in the month of October for my out there . All other revenue came from referrals, mostly from people who I engaged with on LinkedIn, especially on comments on their or other people’s posts. I’m rarely someone’s first pick. They are only impressed once I solve someone ELSE’s problems. Moving forward, I want to formalize an updated referral partner program so people are incentivized to let their people know about me.

Another client did well, not from blog posts or social media, but doing most of their positioning by speaking at industry events. As their marketer, my main focus was on repurposing that content and amplifying it beyond those events so others who weren’t in attendance could benefit and raise their hands.

You don’t need a lot, but be strategic.

4. Focus on strategy first, not tactics–and no, they aren’t the same thing. We all hear ads saying they are teaching strategy, and in fact, they are teaching one tactic. A strategic goal looks more like “increase online sales by 25% by March 2023”. A tactic would be to “reach this goal by focusing on paid ads”. Guess what? You could still get the 25% more online sales through other tactics, and I recommend that you do. One tactic doesn’t cover all the bases consumers need to spend. With the same goal, you can try two other tactics including, rolling out a referral and loyalty program, like one of my clients did by rolling out Smile.io on her Shopify store, or using Instagram Reels with tags to increase discovery and conversions.

3. Raw video, Canva, Descript, and an all-in-one business platform are really the best things a marketer has at their disposal to generate interest and revenue. Most of the value I created for my clients was with video and those three tools. That’s it. That’s all. No gimmicks. I even let my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription go. 

So you, my dear under-resourced executive, can do great things with these tools, but ONLY, and only if you learn to use each to their full capacity. For an all-in-one (or at least full-featured) solutions, Hubspot, Kajabi, and Shopify solved most of the revenue operations needs my clients had. I’d even recommend solopreneurs use two or all of those together depending on if they have merch and online courses to supplement SaaS or consulting businesses. 

Then, create raw video, edit, embellish, and publish with the other tools. Note: Canva has a content scheduling tool but now that LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram have scheduling, tap the native scheduling for best results. Basically, you just need to have a few tools to get things done and it doesn’t have to cost $30K/year–this is not unusual for licenses in the tech industry, but unless you’re funded and in the tech industry, start with these three and you should be okay. See #1 and #12 to think through how to use the content you produce for marketing and sales enablement.

2. Every company that is not an ecommerce or low-rate e-learning company must engage a formal outbound sales strategy to supplement their marketing programs. I’m willing to do a TED talk on this. We are scammed by marketers who say that all we need are blogs, LinkedIn posts and ads. Nope. We need conversations. Lots of them. 

If I’m being honest, I didn’t do well because I “marketed” this year. I did well because I had really good conversations that led to closed sales. SaaS companies understand this. Professional services providers and others companies with higher priced products ESPECIALLY those that don’t have an established brand, need to MANUALLY find the best people they can solve problems for and initiate conversations. I say manually because bots (looking at you PhantomBuster) will get you banned and most bots aren’t executed well so learn how to do outreach manually. 

Write out and edit 1-5 emails like this one I generated with Canva Magic Write (only an example– don’t rag on me BDRs), and send to people on LinkedIn who are in your target market, whose posts you’ve commented on meaningfully, and who you’ve connected with and started to build a relationship with. There are others who will suggest something far more sophisticated (aka complicated) but since most of you are new to doing ANY outreach, start with this and learn as you go. 

1. Data is useful but only as part of a composite picture. Everyone wants to make data-informed decisions, but do they actually know what this means? I live in data. Most aren’t data analysts, extracting useful insights that inform strategy around customers, products, marketing, or revenue. They have literally a Facebook ads account and Google Analytics and that’s it. Great start, but it’s hard to make critical decisions with just that and it’s also challenging to capture and monitor loads more without resources to help you make sense of it. So data is important, but you have to #1 get more fluent there #2 check analytics from ALL your activities (usually something you can find in each tool, i.e. Instagram, Wordpress, Shopify, Quickbooks, etc.) and #3 use it to give you reference, not necessarily letting it be the final determining factor for your decisions. 

Be balanced here, and get smarter here so you can realize that basically everyone wants to use data to predict the future and it’s pretty impossible. See everything that happened in 2020-2022 for reference. To make this advice most actionable: If there’s a pixel to install, or an integration to another tool, install and connect it. Create an analytics dashboard so you get the big picture. I like Hubspot. Others use Google Data Studio. Lastly, use common sense.

That’s it, everyone. This is what stood out to me this year and I look forward to helping businesses especially those in the Gulf Coast and other Southeastern states to market and sell better in the new year.

Right now, I’m consulting with a handful of clients and taking them through my Debut go-to-market program where we discuss product, marketing, and operational strategy. Right now, it’s a really nice Excel workbook full of frameworks but I’m hoping to pull everything into Miro so it’s prettier. We'll work together in Butter and Asana so we can have really fun consulting experiences while working through the exercises and getting things done. There will be a private community so you'll be on this journey with me and an equally awesome group of other startups.

I work with solopreneurs and small teams with product and revenue operations (marketing, sales, customer success) by establishing or revisiting Go-to-market strategy, demand and lead gen, providing direction and structure for vendors and internal teams, and enabling the organization to manage operations through the improved use of technology.

I also teach companies:

👉🏿How to increase revenue streams in ONE business leveraging services, SaaS, e-commerce, courses, memberships, events, acquisitions, strategic partnerships, and consulting

👉🏿How to use research and data to build products and experiences people clamor for

👉🏿How to establish the right KPIs, then focus and align efforts to push performance

👉🏿How to be more efficient and simplify their tech stack

👉🏿How to create search optimized, zero-click content for brand awareness

👉🏿How to enable marketing, sales and customer success with Hubspot

👉🏿How to run paid ad campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Google

👉🏿How to generate credibility and leads through membership groups, publishing and PR

👉🏿How to build a website that converts

Founders, CEOs and teams that vibe with me, my methods, and trust that I probably have sorted out a thousand hairy marketing issues in 18+ years as an agency and SaaS professional are encouraged to reach out (or tag their senior leadership team). 

I’m looking for fun, collaborative, respectful, and progressive relationships, both on the consulting side and when it comes to my bread and butter of being a fractional CMO or head of content. See more and let’s talk soon via DM or book some time here.

See you next year!

Jasmine

P.S. Reply to this email and tell me what you're launching or growing in 2023. I'm excited to hear from you!