How To Market Your Health Coaching Business When You Don’t Have A Team
welcome back to the show now one of the biggest struggles that i hear from people is how to get started with marketing their business and you know especially in those early stages when they just don't have any help or a team to outsource to so that means they're doing everything all alone but also if you don't have a marketing background yourself then how are you supposed to know what to do so to help with those questions and all those struggles i've got a guest with me today who is going to offer some support on this sarah noel block is the founder of tiny marketing where she helps small businesses and entrepreneurs to increase their know like trust factor by batch creating one month of their content marketing and social media posts and email marketing all in one week so she's got a really cool system that she has developed and she uses herself in her own business in fact and in this conversation she walks me through exactly how she gets it all done we also talk about the most beneficial marketing activities when you're right at the beginning of building your business and what you should be focusing on and also what you shouldn't be focusing on and really how to get traction so that you can eventually get to the stage where you can outsource some things and then keep growing from there i think you're going to really find some useful tips and strategies in this episode so let's get right into it well hey sarah welcome to the show thanks for having me it's gonna be it's gonna be a fun chat it sure is yeah i'm super excited to really take a deep dive into marketing with you because you know obviously this is a huge topic um for you know of concern with my audience and you know most people i think like health coaches wellness coaches they of course realize that they need to market if they are going to get clients and grow their income and do all those things but many people i find you know lots of people don't particularly like marketing activities or they find it kind of overwhelming or they're just not even really sure what they're supposed to do um yeah so and and that's especially you know of course if you don't have a team if you're early on stage and you're it's just you doing it you're kind of having to figure it all out by yourself so you know i'm really excited to talk to you about all of these things and have this conversation but before we get into everything i would love for you to just give our audience a bit more context and just tell us about you and the work that you are doing yes so i'm sarah noel block and i have a show podcast and youtube channel also called tiny marketing where i talk about how to market with a tiny team i spent my marketing career working as either a one-person marketing department or a very small marketing department and now i work with small teams to help them scale up their their content marketing so i'm excited to talk to your audience and give them some of my little tips of the trade that i've learned along the way it's not their zone of genius it's not where they are spending their time so but there is an easy way to be able to do it even if that's not your thing oh that's exciting to hear about them i'm sure that people are going to be excited to hear about that so yeah i mean let's just dive on in i want to start by talking about an element of marketing that i think is it's from my understanding it's central to the work that you do sarah and and it's the concept of core content right yeah i would love for you to tell us what core content is yes so core content is that one thing that you can commit to doing every month even every quarter and you use that core piece of content to feed everything else so i mean you're doing something else you're not doing marketing you're a nutritionist you're a wellness coach you don't have time to create a lot of things but maybe you have time to spend an hour interviewing an expert in your field that could help your audience and drive value for your audience and that one hour can be repurposed into so many other things you can break it up into clips for youtube you can break it into audiograms it could be all of your social media for the month your emails but that core piece of content that one hour you spend can feed everything else hmm i love that that that's that's i mean that absolutely sounds doable right like one hour a month and that's your core piece and from there you can kind of like spin it out yeah you repurpose it chop it up and distribute it in different ways make it different formats so you're attracting you know the people who prefer podcasts you're attracting people who prefer video or writing but you're using that core content to feed it all yeah that's great and i like that idea of of you of then sort of hitting different media options right so because you're right like not everybody who you're trying to reach as an as an entrepreneur not everybody is going to be consuming your stuff in the same way right everybody learns differently mm-hmm yeah exactly okay that's that's amazing and and certainly sounds like you know uh it feels doable it feels like okay actually it is doable yeah because that overwhelm i think is a big barrier people think because we see you know pro marketers who have huge teams and we see how they're showing up and we think okay well if i'm not doing it like that then i'm not doing it right right don't compare yourself to that so true i mean that's generally true for pretty much all things right yeah right yeah but but definitely like we because because the team often is invisible right like those like the big influencers and things they have got a team but they're behind the scenes you don't realize that they've got a huge number of people who are just facilitating and getting all of this uh you know machinery behind the scenes happening so we think okay this is what i'm supposed to be doing and because i can't do that that means that i you know i don't i i can't be there opt out of everything then right yeah exactly and and that's a shame because then of course you're not actually showing up you're not being visible you're not reaching the people that you need to get the people that really need to hear your message um exactly exactly and it really doesn't take a lot of time to be able to show up consistently for your audience and add value for them while still doing your job if you just set it up like automate anything that you can batch all of the creation that you're doing if you're interviewing that one person set aside that one day and chop up those videos put together your social media posts that you're going to use and schedule it out and then you'd only have to worry about it that one day yeah exactly okay so i mean i'd love to kind of like dig into this a little bit more and just kind of unpack how would this look and if you have any examples of how people have actually managed to execute on this kind of thing on their own i would i would love that but like how how are they actually like what is the very first step if you're trying to if you want to kind of implement this sort of strategy what are you doing first yeah so the first thing you need to decide is what is my core content what can i commit to doing and how often can i commit to doing it so for myself i do all of the marketing for my own business but i also market for 15 other customers so it's a lot of work but i use the method that i'm talking about today to be able to make it work for me i commit to an interview an expert interview every two weeks and what i do is i break that interview up into three segments so they end up being a series and then um so every other week a video show will come up and then those opposite weeks the podcast episode will come up ah okay carry on yeah and it all comes from that one interview so we've got six pieces of content right there from that one interview and then weekly emails which i just sit down and batch i write them all at one time schedule them out so i don't have to think about them and each one of those pieces of content so far we're at six you can create at least three social media posts from each of those so that's feeding your channel for all of your channels for a month with that much oh my gosh that's great i love that framework that's super okay so let me just make sure i understand so you so you do when you say you do two interviews per month that's you like actually sitting down like this basically right like interviewing somebody um and you do two you record two of those interviews a month but then you take that you take that recording and you break that up into both you separate out like video and audio podcast right yeah i do and each of those interviews is just broken up into three learning objectives so those videos are broken up into three episodes and then i'll record the intro and outro for each of those but it's a series of three right oh cool okay and so then do you i'm just curious like when you're planning to when you're doing planning your interview you're like you're recording are you planning ahead of time how you're gonna break it up into that series of three or does that kind of come up after the chat no it usually is before so we'll come up with three learning objectives before we have the conversation i'll have some general questions i might go off the cuff on some right i'll have general questions for each of those learning objectives and then i'll know exactly where to slice them like okay and we're stopping here and then this is where the next video will come in so they're aware also that it's being broken up into three yeah having those learning objectives and the this is what i want my audience to learn in this segment in my mind it helps a lot that's brilliant yeah so it does require a bit more work beforehand with planning and prep and stuff but sounds like much less work afterwards in terms of editing because you already know like where you need to slice yes and you just get a lot more content out of it yeah tons more content so out of each interview you're getting like three videos and three podcast episodes that's amazing yeah so then you've got six pieces of content for the month it sounds like that you can for that one yeah so yeah six pieces of content for so it's 12 total oh right right two interviews yeah okay gotcha and then um four emails that i send out so i send out one per one per week and um i just batch those so i do them all at one time and same with social media when i come up with my social media content i'll write it all at one time and then schedule it out that's brilliant yeah okay so you just sit down because there's so much value i find i mean i like to do this too when i can is like that batching because you just get yourself into the right headspace right yeah you're in that mind frame you can get to it yeah and it's much more efficient rather than sort of flip-flopping between different tasks and all of that yeah and you can sort of put yourself in that mind state when you're you have in mind okay i've blocked off my calendar on this day and maybe you book a hotel and you go there and you decide to do it there and you make a day of it you make it an event so it's a thing you look forward to and at the end of the day you have all of your content and you really only need to publish like that could feed two months of content those two interviews yeah absolutely oh that's amazing okay i love that um so i'm curious like how how else do you suggest like for for yourself or what's your approach that you take and of course for the clients or you're helping them with their marketing like how do you stay in front of your audience like you know of course we've been talking about ways to do it but what else like talk to me about you know what's the what can people do to feel like they're staying top of mind staying present you know all that kind of stuff yeah so as far as email making sure that you're doing it consistently send that email every week so you're always in front of your audience and then as far as social media is concerned just time block decide hey for this 30 minutes every single day i'm going to engage with accounts i'm just going to comment on other people's accounts and make sure that i am out there and i'm having conversations with people i'm responding to comments on my content and just that 30 minutes is enough to be out there show up for your people and keep that conversation and the relationship going yeah i think that that's so important like to really block out that time because as we all know social media can be a huge time suck yeah you can get sucked in there real good right you look up and it's like what happened to my entire afternoon so yeah so i what i do is i don't know what you do to keep yourself on track but i just set a timer for myself i am like okay and when that timer goes off i am out i'm just like yes it's stage left because i have to get out and get on with other things but you know just to because it is important like exactly like you said you got to show up for your people you have to be present and engaged but that doesn't mean spending the entire day being present and engaged that's you do that you're not working are you right exactly like you've got a business to run you're not just you know social media butterfly so yeah yeah and if you're bad about that like you just can't step away from the phone there are apps that will block them for you like i use this pomodoro um app that it's like 25 minutes on so this is like my zone time five minute break and during those 25 minutes on it also blocks all of my apps so i don't get any notifications and i can't go in if i want to perfect yes exactly if you know that you are just not great at this this is a bit of a weak point then just just outsource the discipline to something yeah yeah okay cool actually i want to circle back to because you mentioned email marketing because this is definitely i know that this is a struggle too for many of the people in my audience is just you know we know i hear from many many people who say i know that i'm supposed to be you know i should be nurturing my list and communicating with them regularly but i don't really know what to say or i don't i just sort of can't get around to it or you know those kinds of things so tell me what's your take on you know how to stay consistent with email marketing what kinds of things are we emailing our audience all of that stuff yes so the content that you're creating in that core content it's feeding those emails you it builds out and nurture a nurture system because theoretically any content you're creating should be adding value for your audience otherwise don't create it if it's not teaching them something that they care about yeah so those should be your email talking about what you've created sending that call to action to that piece of content you could do that every week easily with core content and if you are doing podcasts or you have a pr mention throw that in there it adds a little bit of social proof like other people trust my opinion here's evidence of this it's important really important yes but i i would say send weekly emails so people get used to it and also just the way email works in general you'll show up not in the spam or the promo sections of their email if you're doing it every week at the same time gmail comes accustomed to your email showing up they're like oh okay this person's legit i will send them through yeah absolutely are there specific times that you recommend or have found have been particularly um you know just optimal times or days or you know that kind of thing when people are sending out their regular weekly emails it depends on the industry i work with some facilities companies and like 5am is the hot time because they're working really early but you need to really a b test i send mine at six and i get like a 40 to 50 open rate nice so earlier has always done better for me as far as email and then when it comes to social later always like after work hours always does better that's perfect and and during the week you find it's more you know optimal during like monday to friday not saturday to sunday or what if you think i don't bother on the weekends yeah so i mean you could always test it because maybe your people are different than mine but no i do tuesday tuesday and wednesday are supposed to be the best email times just in a general sense but every audience is different well that's exactly it right like it really does and it all comes down to and in so many things in business we're always saying well like really you've got to know who is your audience and who is your ideal client and what did they need and what did they want and where are they showing up and all that kind of thing test it out see what works for your people and accommodate them yeah exactly yes okay so you recommend weekly emails if at all like if you can get that but and to help you with that batching it it's all at once so it's just batched it's scheduled it's you don't even have to think about it it's just all good to go yeah you're just writing four emails scheduling them out so easy and at the very minimum monthly yeah it's agreed totally if all you i mean weekly is ideal but if you just simply don't have the bandwidth or you don't have like the muscle yet right like it's just not a habit yet you haven't kind of got your system down then if just commit to doing once a month email and then when you when that feels like it becomes you know easier right like when you get that kind of feeling like i got this down i can do this then scale up and and do twice a month and then move up from there right start it once a month that is perfectly fine and people listening right now might be like sarah that's a lot of content 18 pieces of content in one month but i mean you could do one interview a month and spread it out over a quarter you don't have to be doing it as much as me it's just uh setting those systems and putting them in place but you can distribute them however you want yeah exactly right and that and i guess even though like going back to the way that you kind of slice and dice out your content you're not sending an email to correspond with each of those pieces because i'm assuming you're not like or are you sending out 12 different emails during the yeah i send out four emails and that content is distributed over a long period of time like i did a whole bunch of interviews in february and they're feeding me through fall nice that's awesome that's great okay so good right okay so for people who are like let's just go back pull back the uh you know back up the bus here for the people who weren't right at the beginning of like right at the beginning of their marketing journey or their business journey and they're like oh my gosh i don't even know where to start with marketing i've got like this person saying do this thing and that person's saying do that thing where where do you think is it really is the best place to just start with marketing your business the assets you own is the best place to start you need to build your home instead of renting it so a lot of people start on social media because that's where the people are hanging out yeah but you need to really build your home first so make sure your website appropriately shows your business and um is the face that you really want showing and build your email list those are the top concerns when it comes to marketing so you you might need to you'll eventually go on social media obviously but start with your home and create a lead gen that will generate enough emails that you can start sending email emails regularly because that's a list you own linkedin instagram twitter it could all go down tomorrow who knows but you own that email list yeah yeah i totally agree with you i love how you said that to like start with your home because and i know that so many people most of the people that i have like clients and people in my programs they start by oh well let me just get on social media and i'll just start like posting stuff because that's it feels like the obvious thing right because you see that's what other people are doing that's where everybody is hanging out so it kind of feels like okay that's where i need to start but it really i i agree with you completely sarah it's like that's step two you need to get yeah foundation first of all because ultimately you want to be driving people back to your you know your storefront right like you don't want to just be like out there on social media talking about you don't even really know what yet um because that's just kind of wasted effort right so yeah and if they go to your website they're like okay this person's cool i want to work with them they go there and they're like what is this what's happening what do they sell it's immediately turn a turn off yeah you need to have that home like ready to sell for you yes agreed yeah totally okay so start where start with your building your home first not like on rented space but yeah where you live yes that's awesome and then from there like we you know we've been talking about people who are marketing their businesses and their solopreneurs they don't have a team um they don't have anybody that they can outsource this stuff to yet how do you prioritize what um marketing tasks to actually work on and you know when you're in a busy week especially if you are kind of short on time if you've also got a job and you've got kids you know all the all the stuff that demands on your time so really prioritizing is so important so how do people actually prioritize what stuff they should be doing well the person that you just described was me when i started my business i had a full-time job as a marketing director i was building my business on the side i have two little kids that was me right but i had to somehow build my personal brand and the priority that i took was pr so getting mentioned in publications writing guest posts on any publication where my audience might be hanging out being a guest on webinars and podcasts that was my priority because you're borrowing someone else's audience bringing them over to you and that's how you can start building your foundation and your home you can build your list through those pr opportunities have a lead gen that makes sense with each of these pr opportunities that you're doing and you can build your list that's brilliant yeah i like that idea because it can to me that's like a not it's like a shortcut right like it sort of can jump you up in terms of getting in front of a whole lot of people very very quickly um without you having to do a ton of legwork exactly i got my first six clients from pr opportunities from guest posting and other publications guest posting in particular and webinars are genius ways to do it because you're showing your smarts you're showing what you know and how you can solve a problem so people will reach out to you that way even still i've been doing this for a long time and the pr opportunities that i have drive a lot of it because i'm getting in front of those audiences and they're saying okay sarah knows what she's doing i will reach out to her so pr is the best way to start and it's easier than you might think like help a reporter out harrow miss you media mentions and backlinks to your website which help you get up in google rankings um it also has gotten me um podcast opportunities through there too and then um there are websites where you can find you know what podcasts are looking for people to interview you can reach out to people on linkedin and say hey do you want to collaborate on a webinar it's easier than you think pr sounds big like it's too much for you to handle but it's really not yeah i agree i mean it does sound it sounds like fancy like you need to have like some kind of like professional who's handling your publicity or your pr yeah you don't you don't need that you can absolutely do that on your own and yeah i mean i i of course because we were talking about like creating your content and nurturing your list and all those kinds of things that is absolutely necessary i think that that's what you're saying too is like you have to do that stuff that is your core that is how you're nurturing marketing all of that kind of stuff but it can be more of a slow burn right like that is more of a it can take a little more time to build yourself up in organic search results and like all that kind of stuff for your content all takes time but eventually it moves to a point where you are getting 100 of your incoming leads organically i don't do any outreach at all it all comes through what i've been talking about these things yeah that's awesome and then that becomes even then you're into like then things can really snowball because you're not having to spend a lot of your like time and effort yeah in in all that outreach stuff that you had to do at the beginning because now it's coming exactly it's coming to you which frees you up to you know keep on keep on growing and and just like continue to climb the ladder so it sounds like in the beginning you know yes there's going to be some leg work you're just going to have to get to roll up your sleeves and get out there and and pitch yourself and you know try and get on podcasts and try and be a guest authority do some guest posting like so that you can do what you can to get yourself in front of as many of your ideal clients as possible like right out of the gates and then keep on going from there yeah exactly start with borrowing other people's audiences make sure you have legions in place that you can use so you can pull them over completely so you actually have them on your list and then you can start reaching out to them directly and then go into your core content so you're building your home your seo that way it all works really well together but it is it is a slow burn it it takes a minute but it really works and then you don't have to do any outbound sales which feels icky at least to me and you don't have to spend a lot of time on creation because you have a system in place yeah oh yes i'm all about that like systematizing where you can and um love it yeah yeah that's that's awesome and then you get to the point where you actually do have some resources where you can actually outsource and hire some people yeah to help you make it easier yes exactly but you gotta get there first with the prps like with that you know publicity do you find you know either for yourself or for your clients like is there any particular avenue especially for somebody who's new and doesn't feel like because i know that i i can hear people like with this concern right now like i can just hear their thoughts right now is thinking well how can i be like a guest if i or an expert authority or whatever if i am brand new like how who's gonna listen to me yet and how can i do that at the beginning shouldn't i get someone build up some authority first and then reach out to you know publications or whatever can you can you tell me about that yes um so they don't feel like they are an authority and that's the problem start with guest posts because you're proving you're an authority through that you're educating and then as you start to do that more people will feel comfortable bringing you in like with guest posts you're like okay free content if it's valuable they're like yes thank you thank you keep coming but then you have that as a reference like see this publication trusted me this is what i this is the value i added and then you can use that to snowball into webinars which get you a lot of leads at one time that's a real list builder and especially with partnerships and um and harrow is another easy way to start because they're looking for just really smart quotes to add to articles and you can do that as a beginner just as well as someone who has been doing it for years yeah it's so true i mean and in part this is also a mindset thing too right is that like really knowing that you have got something of value to share with the marketplace and really owning that um even yeah you sure you don't have the years of experience but you certainly have a lot that you can that you can share even if you have some one small thing that you can help somebody out with um that's valuable and uh you know you want to get it out there but what i hear you saying sarah is that really guest posting pretty low is the lower barrier one right because the yeah you know they're it's not taking applications are exact they're excited to get yeah they want content to fill they need to fill their web pages yes so it's the lowest barrier one tarot is slightly harder because they're a little pickier on who to take votes from but start trying that right away and then partnerships with the webinars podcasts those you have to have built a little bit of authority through those two other means first before they'll start taking you seriously yeah but yeah that's the the way out the direction i would go with it yeah that's that's perfect yeah i i like that like that journey kind of thing it's very easy to do and um like easy way to start out and just and get your name out there and and then it builds right so yes every and literally everyone has to start from the beginning anyway right we all started from the beginning no one came out of the womb a genius that's something right with with all sorts of established authority and credibility and all that kind of stuff we all have a media kit and one day old yes exactly actually do you have any tips on on putting together like a really simple media kit for yourself like you have to do this yourself of course like what what would you do you have any suggestions on that anywhere you've been mentioned make sure to put that in there if you have any quotes from customers or people that you've collaborated with on podcasts live streams whatever put that in there um your follower account email count that all matters and what value you can bring to the table what come up with a content differentiator what makes you different than everybody else what can you teach that other people can't i think that makes a huge difference yeah i like that yeah really focusing on what makes you unique i think to help you stand out of course right um yeah yeah and it's really it's easier than you might think because you're like oh i'm a wellness coach like everybody else but that you are you right you are somebody else you aren't like everybody else and even if it's just your personality or how you approach coaching something is different about you yes always your your story your experiences the journey that you've been on that your particular philosophies like all that stuff is unique i do i i hear that a lot a lot of people feel like there's nothing unique about them but that is not true i've never once had a situation where i thought yeah this person is kind of the same as everybody else's person is exactly like everyone else no not possible yeah exactly well this has just been so fantastic having you on the show sarah i just have really that you've shared so many useful tidbits i can imagine that people have been like scribbling notes to themselves like what they need to do next um and it's just been awesome so but tell us where can people go to connect with you um you know and learn more about your work and all of those things yeah so you can find me pretty much everywhere at sarah noel block that's my name it's my website it's what i am on social media and then i have a youtube show and a podcast called tiny marketing show so you can find me on youtube or any podcast network perfect i will put all of those into the show notes and just make sure we link all of that stuff up um it's just so awesome thank you so much for for having this conversation with me it's just been great thank you it was fun being on here okay well i hope that you got a ton of value out of that conversation and i really hope that we helped to clear up that overwhelm about where to start and what to prioritize as you begin to market your business i would love to hear your thoughts on this in particular i'd be interested to know your thoughts on sarah's core content strategy and if that is something that you would like to try go ahead and let me know in the comments below this video or if you're listening to the audio of this episode then find me on instagram and let me know okay that is what i've got for you today have a wonderful week and i will see you again very soon you
2022-08-08 16:09
