How I Think About….Marketing
Welcome to the Ambitious Introvert Podcast, created especially for introverts, empaths, and highly sensitive entrepreneurs to help you build, grow, and scale a successful, sustainable business. I'm your host, Emma Louise Parks business and mindset coach for ambitious introverts. After 17 years working as an air traffic controller, the ultimate fast-paced high stimulus, extrovert-friendly role. My mission now is to show introverts that they too can create big results and success because of who they are, not in spite of it. I focus on introvert friendly business and marketing strategy to help you switch overwhelm for clarity, confidence, and clients.
Hello and welcome to the Ambitious Introvert Podcast with me, Emma Louis. And the second in this special how I think about series where I am literally just emptying out the contents of my head around a certain subject that pertains to business. So I can share with you some of the ways that I think about these things and hopefully they will resonate with you.
They might give you a new perspective. They might be very permission given if you already think about them in that way. And this is by no means to say, The way I think about these things is the only way or the right way or anything like that. But I think it's so important that we don't just see business through things like social media where people are sharing, you know, a very curated experience and actually to be able to hear from other business owners how they think about things, because then we get to decide if we would like to think about things in that way.
So I really hope that you tuned in and heard last week's episode, which is the first one in this series, all about mindset. And this is an equally loaded topic for me because today I'm gonna tell you how I think about marketing. Now let's break it down into, I think it'll be most useful to share how I used to think about marketing and how I now think about marketing because they are very, very different.
Obviously when I came into business I had like zero experience with marketing at all. So the way I felt about it then was very, very different to how I feel about it now, four years later. And I think it's important to look at both. Aspects of it. So like I say, on day one of my business, I had no marketing experience.
I'd never walked, never done any kind of job that had required marketing at all. Wasn't familiar with social media, sales, anything. So I was really scared. Of marketing. It took me a long time to feel confident enough to even start marketing, and when I did, I was racked with insecurity from it. I used to put so much pressure on myself to get it perfect, and because of that I spent far too much time fiddling with it behind the scenes.
I spent far too much time learning about it and taking courses and reading. Which was all great and really helpful, but I wasn't taking action and testing it at the same time. So I was kind of given my power away to someone else's expertise or what someone else was telling me was working for them. And what I've grown to understand now is that.
I know myself, I know my audience really well, and those ways, they, they could be good, but they might not necessarily be the best way of doing it. And the only way to find out the best way for you and your services and your audience and your energy and all of that is by testing. And I definitely spent too much time trying to get it perfect before I put it out.
And the way I used to think about marketing, that was for me, really problematic. Now I look back is I used to think of it as individual pieces of content. So this was before I started the podcast and before I sent a regular newsletter. But I would look at marketing as each individual post. And I put so much pressure on each piece of content because I had no marketing plan, I didn't have a system in place.
I just knew that I had to be creating content and sharing it regularly. So I was doing that maybe twice a week, maybe three times, sometimes not at all because of the chatter that I had going on in my mind, telling me when it. You know, not good enough, or I hadn't got it perfect, or I spent too long on it, or I couldn't even bring myself to do it because I felt like I was gonna fail.
But these individual pieces, when I looked it like that, the reason this was really problematic was because, I put so much expectation on each piece. So I would spend, I don't know, 30 minutes, 45 minutes crafting a piece of content, and I would put everything into it, and I would put this huge expectation on this poor piece of writing.
And I would be like, oh, this is, am I gonna sign a client? Is someone gonna sign up with me? And you know, there's a lot of toxic messaging in the online space about, you know, the post that got me $10,000 and all of that. And it probably came from there. So I would be so focused on one piece of content and then I would post this one piece of content to my very small audience and nothing would.
Or a few people would like it and comment and I would be going back to check like how many people have seen it, how many people have liked it, has anyone commented on it? And I really gave away a lot of power and put so much energy in the wrong place. And then of course, if that content didn't perform well, or you know, I didn't sign a client from it, which I never did.
Creating something else two days later felt almost impossible because I was coming off the back of, no one's reading this. No one cares, no one likes it. All of those kind of things. So thinking of marketing as individual pieces of content were, that was incredibly problematic for me. I now think of marketing as more of an ecosystem, and obviously as I've grown, I've got more experienced.
I've been able to make a plan and become, you know, much more consistent. That's not to say that I spend a lot more time marketing, I don't, but I've got things in place which enable me to do it on a regular basis, and so it feels easier. So thinking of it as a system takes so much pressure off. I no longer think.
I've recorded this podcast episode, and is this gonna sign me a client? Is someone gonna reach out and wanna work with me after hearing this? I don't think of it like that. I think of the ecosystem made up of all these individual pieces, like podcast episodes and pieces of content and newsletters and Instagram stories and whatever else it is that I share.
And I just think about all of those consistently building up and being this great bank of marketing for me. So it really takes that pressure off each individual item, which was not great for my mindset at all. So that's kind of an idea of how I used to think about marketing in the early days, and I was given this some thought before I hit record.
And I think there are two things that I wanna share about how I think about marketing now. So one is. I think about marketing as a way of building relationships, because ultimately that is what it is. We are building relationships with our audience, with potential clients, with potential collaborators, whatever that is.
When I'm marketing my business, I'm always building relationships, so whether it's online, whether it's in person, whether it's podcast interview, whether I'm sharing a newsletter, whether I am at a virtual networking event. , all of those things are doing the same thing. They have the same outcome, and that is that they're helping me build relationships, albeit that it's done asynchronously most of the time.
So I am there, you know, sharing my thoughts, giving value, giving tips, you know, telling people what I think, showing people a little bit about me, about my world, about how I operate, about my business, about how I run my business. And that helps me to build relationships because other people are consuming that content and either thinking, ugh, not for me, and unfollowing me and unsubscribing or going, yes, I love this.
This really resonates. I love everything that's being said here. And sticking around and getting to know me a bit better, which is all it would be in real life, right? When we meet people, we don't hit it off with everyone that we meet. We don't become firm friends with every single person that our path's crossed.
So I don't see this as any different. I can just show up and be myself and share what I'm gonna share, and the right people will be interested in getting to know me more and building that relationship further. And the wrong people won't, and that's fine. So my marketing now, rather than. You know, this pressure on this post has to perform amazingly, or I'm gonna put this one sales post out and someone's gonna sign up and join my program.
It's not about that. It's about consistently sharing the right things so that people can get to know, like, and trust me. And obviously they need to know, like, and trust me before they will even consider working with me. So, That is the one way that I definitely think about marketing that's probably a little bit different to a lot of people.
I think about it as building relationships, and the second way that I think about marketing from more of a logistical perspective is I think about marketing as a business task. So it's something that has to get done in my business the same way my taxes and accounting have to get done in my business the same way.
You know, clients, you know, I turn up for my client calls for my business, the same way that any of those things. So I guess what I mean by this is I don't expect to love it or necessarily enjoy it. Oddly enough, since I took, gave myself permission to not enjoy marketing, I've actually enjoyed it a lot more, of course.
But in the early days, I used to think. It needed to feel amazing and like everything I did in my business I needed to love and that I needed to be in this really creative and inspired space. And if I didn't feel like that, then I couldn't write anything. And you know, there's a lot of that with, you know, get into flow and feel creative and give yourself space and that's all great.
However, it can also be problematic when it's, when we think that if we are not in that a absolute optimum mindset and energy, then we can't write. And we end up, you know, not putting content out for weeks. So thinking of it as a business task is not very sexy, but it is a business task. It's a task that needs do in the same way that I need to respond to my emails or the same way that I need to pay my team's invoices.
All of those things are business tasks, and so is marketing because I recognize that if I want to sell my service, Then I need to market because I need to build relationships with people. I need to build relationships so that people can see who I am and see what I have to offer so that they can decide if they'd like to take that relationship further and become a client.
So I guess I think about it very neutrally as something that just has to be done. I don't dread it. Hate it or anything like that, or you know, not look forward to it. But equally, I know I'm not necessarily gonna be excited and jumping around about it. I didn't start my business to be a marketer. I started my business because I love coaching people, but marketing is the gateway to build in those relationships.
That allow me to connect with people so that I can coach them. I think it's important to remember that there are always things in business that we don't love, and that's okay. There can be this really fantastic idea that especially if you've come out of a nine to five, that you really hated that when you start your own business, you have to love every second of it, and that's a great idea, but equal.
It is a business and there are always gonna be so many hats that you wear and different things that you do that it's okay not to love all of it. It's okay if some of it is just okay. It's okay if you're doing it just to tick it off the list because it needs to do on that day. So that is pretty much how I think about marketing.
Some days I. Writing newsletters more than others. Some days I enjoy recording podcasts more than today. I'm very much enjoying recording this podcast, and some days it feels harder or some days I don't have as much energy for it, but I still do it and I don't make myself wrong for that because ultimately it's a part of something that needs to be done for the business so that I can sustain the business, and that really is it.
I Marketing can be so it can feel so loaded. There are so many things out there that can make us feel like we are doing it wrong or we need to do it more or better or differently, or we've chosen the wrong platform or it's not working, which is a great story that I told myself for the longest time. But ultimately, We are building relationships and if we have product or service or whatever it is that we want to sell, we need to build relationships with people through our marketing so that.
They feel confident in making that decision to work with us, purchase from us, et cetera. So I really hope that that has given you a brief insight into some of the ways that I think about marketing. I hope that you are enjoying this, how I think about series and I will be that next week, opening my head and spilling my.
On another topic and yeah, tell you how I think about all of these things in business. But until then, have a great week. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Ambitious Introvert Podcast. With me, Emma Louise Parks, if you enjoy this show, please, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review on iTunes.
As a thank you, one lick reviewer, each month will win a 60 minute one-on-one coaching session with me where you'll get the clarity. Confidence to attract your ideal clients. And if you know someone who could benefit from listening to the show, then please do share and help me reach as many fellow ambitious introverts as possible.