AMY PORTERFIELD: Hey there! Amy Porterfield here, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast. I cannot believe how fast time is flying by! Do you feel it? We're already almost into the second month of 2014, and I feel like we just celebrated the New Year. It's just crazy how fast time flies!
Now, speaking of how fast time flies, I have to admit, I had a bad wife moment just recently. Yesterday was my fifth anniversary with my husband, Hobie, and days before I knew my anniversary was coming, so it's not like I forgot it, but I couldn't remember how many years we'd been married. When someone told me they thought it was five, I told them they were crazy! There's no way that five years had passed already!
I actually had to go and get my marriage license to just double-check that it had been five years. Pitiful, right? I should know these things, but I didn't. I couldn't believe that that many years had already gone by, and I have to say they've been really, really amazing years. I'm a lucky girl. I'm married to a really, really wonderful husband and father. I can't complain at all. But I just have to say, I don't know where time goes. It just flies by way too quickly!
Anyway, moving on, that was my bad wife moment of the week. But I have a few, let me tell ya.
Here we go, we're going to dive in to this episode here. This episode is all about some of the big business lessons I learned last year and that I'm taking with me into this New Year. I call them lessons, but really they were big wins that just really worked well that I think you can apply to your own online business.
Let's go ahead and dive right in.
For this first lesson, it's all about creating a year-long promotional calendar. You've probably heard this more often than not but stay with me here, because the real question is, have you actually sat down and done this exercise? It takes a few hours, if
not the full day, so it's definitely a big commitment to just sit down there and get this done, but it is extremely rewarding! And that's why I wanted to bring it up here. I do think this was a big, big win for me in 2013 and it can be so for you as well.
Here's the deal–first I got to give a shout out to my good friend Laura Roeder. About 4 or 5 years back she suggested that I do this promotional calendar planning and I've done it every year since, but I've really perfected it last year and that's why I wanted to bring it up here. Let's get down to the basics of how you do this.
First, I suggest you buy a big wall calendar. I bought one of those calendars where I can use the dry erase marketers so I can change things around easily. But it's a really big calendar that's on my wall where I can see the entire year. The goal here is that you can see a year at a glance.
I told my good friend James Wedmore, who's just truly one of my best friends, and I told him about this project, and James has the type of personality, if you don't know James, definitely check him out at JamesWedmore.com, but James had the type of personality where he makes everything even better. Like, if you give him an idea, he runs with it and perfects it.
What he did, and I thought this was a great idea, you might want to use as well–he got one of those desk calendars, you know those old school paper calendars where every month you rip off the whole month and throw it away and now you've got the new calendar for that month? Well, he ripped off all twelve and taped them to his wall, and then he got really colorful post-it notes and used the post-its to actually determine when he was going to do each promotion.
The reason why this was so cool is he could obviously, easily move those post-its around as they looked at the year as a whole. I thought this was a really cool way of really interacting with this calendar over a period of time, just to make it exactly how you want it and of course, all of this can be tweaked and flexible throughout the year, but getting it done in one sitting really makes a huge difference because you see this big picture.
Then of course he can take all those calendars and either move them into one of those dry erase type calendars I told you about, or if he wants, he could just go all digital and put it into his calendar on his computer or whatever he wants to do there. But I really like that process that he used.
Also, he did it with his VA, and if you have somebody else you can do this process with, whether they're a VA, someone on your team, or maybe just a peer of yours that knows you or your business well, so that you can bounce ideas and get a different perspective while you're going through this exercise, I think that's a great idea as well. But block the time to really do this.
Now, I want to give you an example of how I've done it so that you can really see how much detail I'm talking about here. I thought I'd give you a specific example. In April of 2014, I'm going to launch the Facebook Marketing Profit Lab again. This is a program that I've done for years now, I’ll talk about that a little bit later, but what I wanted to do was make sure I had everything on the calendar. I'm going to launch it in April and again in September.
What I did is I first mark the date that the actual promotion ends, and then I backed up everything from there. I was very specific on this calendar–not only did I put the date that the promotion ends, I backed up and said “Okay, when are we going to do a price increase?” because I like to reward those people that take fast action, so then I documented when the price will increase during the promotion.
I also am going to do 5 live webinars during the promotion, so I've blocked out on the calendar every single webinar that is going to be live–I made sure it was on the calendar. I actually even put the time of that webinar in there because I wanted to get as specific as possible.
Here's one other step that a lot of people don't do that makes a huge difference. I also documented each email that was going to go out during the promotion. Now, I've done this promotion a few times now, which makes this a lot easier for me.
If you're new, if it's a new promotion or you're new at doing this, of course you might have to tweak as you go, but at least force yourself to get something on the calendar so you can look at it objectively and think “Okay, does this make sense for the length of the life of this promotion where I'm placing these different emails?” because I send emails out to invite people to the webinar, I send emails out about the case studies so they can learn more about my program, I send emails out to let them know the price is increasing, or the card is closing–all of these emails are really important, so I documented all of them into this calendar. I did this for both of the big promotions this year.
Why this is so valuable to me is not necessarily that I can just see all the promotions in one place. But more importantly, it's a great way for me to see the breathing space. By
breathing space, I mean either the times I'm not promoting or I can look at it a different way, the times I can take a break, take a breather.
And I've never done this before prior to 2013 where I really focus more on “when am I not promoting?” Because my way of thinking in my business is that I've got to earn the right to promote my programs and products and services to you and the way I earn it is to create a lot of free, really valuable, relevant content.
I do this in my podcast, in my blog, in my free webinars that aren't related to a specific launch. I do this in many different ways, but it's important to me that I spend more time on creating free, valuable content than I do promoting my programs to you on a consistent basis.
I look at this year in review and think “Okay, do I have enough breathing space? Have I earned the right to promote?”
This really allows me to see where I might be doing a little bit too much promotion or overlapping or maybe you might even find out, you're not really doing ENOUGH promotion. Some people aren't making money because they just aren't selling enough. So, it works both ways, but a really great opportunity is to view your year in advance, a it's all documented.
I encourage you–get it on your calendar today. When are you going to sped, let's say, 3, 4, maybe even 5 hours documenting your entire year to make sure that you've got everything on there?
And in addition to these two big promotions I also have my three different affiliate promotions I'm going to do. They're much smaller than the profit lab, of course, because they're not my own programs,. I wanted to get strategic this year to make sure that I know who else I want to promote and be very selective about it. That way when other people come to me and say “Amy, will you promote my program?” And I've noticed the bigger my list gets the more often people are asking me to do so. And I can objectively look at my calendar, see if maybe I can fit it in–most often I can't because I've really thought this out in advance–so I can let them know “My calendar's already booked for the entire year, thanks so much for asking. I'll definitely consider it next year.”
You're more able to say “no” or to say “yes” when you know what the year looks like. And you can kind of use this calendar as a buffer between you and all the other opportunities that might come your way.
I don't know about you but I'm kind of a “yes” girl. It's easy for me to say “yes” because I don't want to let people down, but when I'm very clear about what my year looks like, it's very clear to me what speaking gigs I need to turn down or what affiliate promotions I have to pass on, or just what new products I should or should not create which I'll talk about in the next lesson here. But if you want a really good sense of what your year looks like and if you want to eliminate a lot of stress, take the time to create a very detailed promotional calendar.
Moving on to lesson #2, and this one actually ties directly into this planning for the entire year, and that is that I learned how to do more with less.
This is very different than a lot of online marketing business models, so I really wanted to break this down for you. With my first tip, the calendar planning tip, you might have noticed that I mentioned that I planned out my two profit lab promotions and also three smaller affiliate promotions. I'm also going to do an internal launch, so it's like a mini-launch, of my Facebook ads program this year as well.
What I am not doing is I'm not creating a bunch of new programs and products to sell. The reason for that is the goal of my business model is to keep things simple and streamlined, and do more of what has already been working for me.
2013 was my best year ever. We almost hit $1 Million in revenue, AND with that we did not create any new programs. Of course, we updated the programs that I already have and I did some affiliate promotions and worked with other people, but really the bulk of my revenue came from my Profit Lab programs where I had already had that program in 2012.
I tell you this because you do not need to create a bunch of new stuff to have a better year than you had the year before. What you need to do is find out what has already been working for you and optimize that.
In terms of optimization, what I did in 2012, I had the Profit Lab. so in 2013 what I did is I optimized it to make it better. When I say I made it better, I made it better in terms of the content inside the program as well as the product launch, all the strategy that went into that and all the strategy that went into marketing it. So I really focused on optimizing what I already had versus creating new stuff.
Now, for you creative souls out there that always have a million ideas and want to create and that's where you really get your juice, I'm not saying don't create. I'm seeing maybe think about creation in terms of free content for your blog, your podcast, or
webinars, wherever you put that content. Focus more on that area so you can build affinity and trust with your audience. But if you already have a few products that are selling, make them better and optimize them to increase your revenue.
I know this works because in 2012 when I was promoting the profit lab, I promoted it three different times, and each time it was about a $50,000 launch. The reason for that is there was a cap on how many people could join the program. It was a $500 program. The price changed throughout the year, but it was a $500 program and I only allowed 100 people to join because I had a private Facebook group that I actually jumped into every single day to answer everyone's questions. I couldn't make the program really big or else I would never be able to manage all those questions. So, there was a cap on the program in 2012 and that's why I was never going to make more than $50,000 because only 100 people could join.
In 2013, I invested in a project manager to help me streamline this program, so that's where some of my marketing dollars went, into getting more support to make the program better. So not only did I completely revamp the entire content of the program, meaning the training modules–I made them all better and bigger and really focused and structured.
I also decided to have two different tracks for the program–and independent track and then a VIP track. The independent track did not get inside the private Facebook group where I answered questions every single day, but not everybody needed or wanted that. And then I had the VIP program where 100 people could actually enter into the VIP program and get my personal one-on-one support inside the private group. This changed the ENTIRE game for me!
I went from $50,000 to well over $100,000 once I actually streamlined the program, and then the last time I did it in 2013, we made it even better. I tweaked the sales page, I made a new video, I updated the program inside of the members area–I made it all better and we doubled what we did the quarter before.
Now, I tell you all of this not because it's all about money. I’m actually more proud of the fact that we found a way to make the program bigger so more people could join. I would always get people to say “Oh no! It's already closed! Now I don't get to join!” and they were frustrated and they wanted to work with me and that didn't feel good for me because I hate to exclude people. So it was really exciting that I got to impact more lives, more businesses, as well as build my business in this whole process.
Again, I tell you this not to make it all about me, I want you to apply it back to your business, of course. Where in your business do you have something that's already working in terms of making you revenue that you can streamline, optimize, make better, so that you actually grow that piece of your business? A lot of people that struggle in online marketing are those people that are trying to do a million things at once or they're really attracted to that big shiny object or they get off course really easily because they have all of these great ideas that are flowing through them at any time.
I really try to stay focused. And it's not as fun in every minute of the business as it might be when you're constantly creating new things and meeting with new people and partnering with them. It might not be as fun at all times, but I can tell you the rewards are so much bigger when you see this all come together and that's where it starts to feel really good! I just wanted to put that out there, that you can look at your business in a different way. Do more with less in order to actually boost your revenue, make a bigger impact in your business, and eliminate a lot of the stress.
Now, of course this doesn't mean that I won't ever create new programs. But before I rush into another program that I want to create, I'm diligent to dial in what's already working and get it automated as much as possible. I think for every online business, automation should be at the top of your list, because the more you can automate, the more you do have that freedom to create what you want and do what you want in your business.
Again, I'm not trying to take away the creativity and fun of your business, I'm just saying really focus on what's already working, automate it, get it working to the best of your ability, and then move on to the next project.
Of course, I'll always be creating content, but first I focus on creating free, valuable content that I know will build my brand, my exposure, make an impact in businesses, and then from there when the time's right, that's where I focus on creating new programs and products. So, that is truly the secret to me success–do more with less, and hopefully it resonates with you a little bit and you can see a piece of your business that maybe you can focus on even more to build out before you move on to the next big thing.
If you’re just starting out in your business and you're not exactly sure what is working for you–you know, you haven't been doing this long enough to really know what's going to work and where you should optimize and spend your time. If that is you, I
encourage you to focus on list-building. You've heard me say it, probably a million times–the energy of your business is directly tied to your email list.
In just a minute, I'm going to get into a lesson I learned about creating marketing funnels, and when I talk about that I'll talk a little bit more about list-building and how you can optimize your business with list-building and make some revenue in the process. Stay with me here, because I'll get to that and that will help those of you that are listening that are more brand-new and you're not exactly sure what's working in your business yet.
Before we get there, another lesson that I learned in my business is to expand the platforms that I use to get my message out. Specifically, it's this podcast. I actually started working on this podcast in 2012, so I didn't actually launch the program, though, until January 2013.
This podcast has been a really great addition to my business, and again it ties back to my goal of creating more free content. But it also expanded my brand in terms of allowing me to talk about topics beyond Facebook marketing. I'll always have my foundation in teaching Facebook marketing to entrepreneurs but there was a lot of other things I wanted to share as my business began to grow. List-building, email marketing, how to build your business, strategies, tips related to productivity. There's just so much I wanted to talk about that didn't really fit into my online programs that I created about Facebook. And so I created another platform for me to expand my brand.
I've talked about the success on my podcast and what it's done for my business in episode #22, AmyPorterfield.com/22, I interviewed John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur On Fire, and this guy knows podcasting. He broke it down–how to start a podcast, what equipment you need, how to get people to interview. He really painted the picture of how to start a podcast.
So, if you're curious about podcasting, definitely check out episode 22. But if you're not ready to start a podcast–because let me tell you, it is definitely a lot of work–if you're not ready for that, what are other areas out there that you can take advantage of to expand your brand and really build out your platforms? Maybe it's that you spend a lot of time on Facebook but you know your audience will respond well to videos as well, so maybe you want to build out your YouTube channel even more. Or you might want to spend a little bit more time on Pinterest because you've seen a lot of traffic come from Pinterest to your website.
You've got to do a little research here, but if you've been using the same platform over and over again for years now, think about how you can expand. I personally think a podcast is a really, really smart way to do so, but I also don't want you to rush into that.
Think about it this way as well, though–a podcast is an entirely new project that you need to start. Of course, it does relate back to that free content goal of mine, so it made sense for me to explore this, but when you're starting a podcast you're taking away time from optimizing what's already working in your business. You've got to manage your time really, really diligently and make sure that you're not starting five different things at once. If you're going to start a podcast, I suggest you put on hold other things that you wanted to start until that podcast is up and running and you're seeing some success with it.
I know I keep harping on this point but I truly know that your business will be more successful if you pull yourself back a little bit and say “where are all these loose ends here? I need to build a bridge with all of the projects I'm working on to get to the other side.” I learned this from my good friend Carl White. He taught me that you have to look at your business–where are some broken bridges, meaning you haven't finished something so you can't get to the other side. If you have 5 or 6 broken bridges right now, choose one of the projects, finish it out, build that bridge to the other side, make sure it's working and then come back and look at the other project you want to do to build the next bridge.
You do not want to be building six bridges at once. It just doesn't work that way, and it's not fun! It's WAY too stressful. So I encourage you to take on one big project at a time. It might be podcasting. That might be the project you want to work on–so definitely explore this option. It has changed my business dramatically. A bigger audience, I can talk about more topics that excite me and I know make a big impact in other people's business, and it just allowed me to be more creative in my business as well, which is important for all of us in order to enjoy this process. But, again, we don't want a bunch of broken bridges, so get really smart with how you look at your business. Pick one big project at a time.
This next tip here is a bit more advanced but I feel that it was important to mention here. If you're just starting out in your business, look at the big picture of what I'm going to explain here and see how it can relate to your business. Maybe at a smaller level, until you're ready to go bigger with it.
As you know, my motto is to do more with less. As I mentioned, I did not create any new products in 2013 but I had the most amazing year ever in terms of revenue and impact. One of my success tactics was to create marketing funnels in order to promote what I've already created.
You already know I have the Profit Lab program. That's my big signature program, and when I launch it there's a start date and an end date to the program, so it's very timely. But in 2010, I actually created a Facebook program that is just $97, and I update it regularly. In 2011, I created a Facebook ads program, again that I update regularly.
So what I did in 2013 is I took those two programs and I built marketing funnels around them. Let me tell you specifically what I did so it will make sense. I created a auto-webinar, meaning I recorded a webinar, training webinar, that's free. And at the end of that webinar, i tell people “If you want to go to the next level with me, I have this $97 Facebook program.” Or in another webinar I'll say “I have this Facebook ads program.”
I used Facebook ads to drive people to the auto-webinar. They sign up for the auto- webinar and now they're on my email list. Now I send them a series of emails to encourage them to make sure they get on the webinar at their date and time that they've chosen, and then from there I send them the replay, and I send them a series of emails telling them why Facebook is so important and explaining the value of this program I have.
I have an entire autoresponder, which is just a series of emails, that is already created so when someone enters one of my funnels–meaning they sign up for one of my webinars– they're now going to get a series of emails to encourage them to check out my Facebook program.
Now, why this works so well is it's truly on auto-pilot. It took a while for me to create for sure, but once it was in place it was fantastic to know that at any time of day, people can be signing up for my webinars and they could then be buying my programs. A lot of other people that I work with–David Siteman Garland, Melanie Duncan, James Wedmore, these are people that I work closely with–they all have the same type of system set up where they give away something free, whether it be a webinar or a 3-part video series or whatever that might be, and at the end of that giveaway they promote their program.
I encourage you to explore this because even if you're just starting out and you just have one program, let's say it's $97, you can create something on the front-end that's free in order to get people to sign up for it and then you can promote your program on the backend of that free giveaway. And this can work at all times.
I've done a few episodes all about Facebook ads and I'll continue to do more because I think Facebook ads is the #1 way that you can grow your email list, and again I use Facebook ads to do exactly that with these marketing funnels. I will say that I use InfusionSoft. InfusionSoft is my CRM. It's the tool that I use to collect names and emails and send emails out from. It's so much more than that, including it's my shopping cart, so InfusionSoft is pretty robust.
But I use InfusionSoft because it's allowed me to create these funnels and then send out different emails based on different behaviors that people take with my content. If you haven't yet chosen an email service provider, or maybe you're using AWeber or Mailchimp, this might be the year that you want to go bigger.
When I did that, it was very scary. When I invested in the new tool, InfusionSoft, it was very confusing to me and it felt so much bigger than my business. But I slowly eased my way into it and figured it out, and it truly is one of the #1 reasons why I had such an amazing year in 2013. I started to take advantage of all the things that it could do.
In terms of these marketing funnels, that is definitely one of the first things you would want to do if you decided to go bigger with your email service provider. You can do something similar to this in AWeber, for sure. It just won't fire on all cylinders like I'm explaining here, because there's some limitations with the smaller email service providers. I throw that out there–again, this is maybe more of an advanced tactic, these marketing funnels, but the reason why they're so important to my business is that I don't have to be constantly feeding those funnels. The Facebook ads actually work for me.
I want to make it really clear, I don't spend thousands and thousands of dollars of month on Facebook ads. You don't need to do that to make this process work for you.
Just something to explore, and again if you want me to get in deeper about these Facebook ads and how I use them with an automated funnel like this, leave a note in the comment section of this podcast–podcast #23–and that will help me decide if I should go deeper into this topic. If you want more of it, just let me know!
Now, the final lesson that I want to share with you that I learned in 2013 that I'm taking with me in 2014, is the power of Masterminds. To be really honest, I've always known that Masterminds work really well when you find the right one for you. But I saw it work on a whole new level in 2013. Let me explain what I mean.
When I first left Tony Robbins, I joined a paid mastermind with Marie Forleo. Marie Forleo is a great friend of mine today, but at the time she was just my mentor. Meaning I didn't know her well but she had a business that I wanted. She was doing everything that I wanted to do in my own business, so I started to pay close attention to what she was doing.
One thing I learned from Tony Robbins is find out who's already doing what you want, who's getting the results you want, and then model what they're doing. That's really what, to me, a paid mastermind is about.
I actually was in Marie Forleo's mastermind for two years and it was expensive! I think the first time I paid for it was $17000 and then actually I think it might've went up to
$20,000 for a year. And some of you might be thinking “Are you CRAZY?!” But it changed my business! The direction I was going when I left Tony Robbins looked very different then than it does now, and that's because of the feedback that I got from Marie and from everybody in the group. It was a group of women entrepreneurs that were doing not similar things, but were all marketing online, so we learned from each other.
I tell you this because investing in a mastermind when you're brand-new to me is a really smart strategy. I wasn't sure how I was going to pay for it. I knew it would be a stretch for me. But don't get stuck on the price right now. Really, what I want you to focus on is the fact that when you're just starting out, finding a webinar that is lead by somebody who's getting results that you want is really smart because you're going to need that direction, you're going to need that recommendations, the strategies–you need some of that know-how that they already have.
That's why I loved the mastermind I was in with Marie Forleo. She doesn't offer these masterminds anymore. she now offers an online program called B-School, and I'll actually be talking about that in my next episode, episode #24, so make sure to check that out because so much of what I learned on how to grow my business came from what Marie teaches in B-School, so I'm going to break it down for you in the next episode.
For this episode here, when we're talking about these lessons learned, when you invest in a mastermind where you actually have to pay for it when you're just starting out, this allows you to get the support and the help that you need.
Once you get your business off the ground, you're actually brining in revenue and you're moving in the right direction, at that point it could be a great strategy for you to actually create your own mastermind. If you've become friends with people in your industry and you know that there are people out there that are getting similar results or even bigger results than you, and you know that you can offer value to them and they can offer value to you, you might want to tart your own mastermind where nobody pays, you just come together as peers.
After I did two years in Marie's mastermind, that's exactly what I did. I actually got into a mastermind with my peers where we didn't pay, we just got together, and we would get together every single quarter in person but then we would do weekly calls as well.
And that mastermind, to be really honest, it was with GREAT people that were doing fantastic things, but it wasn't a good fit for me, and never felt right for me, and so a big mistake I made that year–this was a few years back, is that I didn't speak up and get out of the mastermind when I should've. I stayed longer than I should've, which wasn't fair to the people in the mastermind and wasn't fair to me.
I tell you this as a little lesson. If it doesn't feel right, go with your gut and make a decision to switch paths if that's what might support you.
Once I had that experience, I knew what wasn't right for me. I then got into a mastermind where it was a perfect fit, and I've been in this mastermind over a year and a half–we meet every single quarter. We actually don't even talk once a week, we just email each other when we need feedback and support from each other. But this mastermind has changed everything for me. I am 100% sure that my success in 2013 was directly attributed to the feedback and the guidance and connection that I had with these people in my mastermind.
Everybody does similar things in my mastermind, which isn't always a necessity, but that actually has helped me. They understand my business, they know how I work, how things work in my business, and that was a huge plus for me because we could talk apples and apples. But one thing we do in my mastermind is we invite somebody that's not part of the mastermind, we invite them in every time we meet in person. So we already have one guest that tends to do something a little bit different than we all do.
That way, we have a whole different perspective. So I love that aspect as well.
I tell you all of this because I do think that masterminds are really essential to the success of a business, especially when we're doing online business and we're not necessarily meeting people in person on a regular basis. That connection with people in real life is really important. So, if you get into a mastermind and it's not feeling right for you, don't beat yourself up. I've been there, I know what it feels like, and you have to go through all of taht to find out what really works. It's like every lesson in life–you have to have the messy stuff to really appreciate what's working.
Explore this! Look for different masterminds that might work for you. I know it's not always easy to find a paid mastermind that's a great fit but start asking around, asking your friends, asking your peers, and you'll be surprised what you might be able to find out there. I encourage you to either get in a paid mastermind or a mastermind with your peers.
One more thing I really want to hit home with is the reason why I suggest that a paid mastermind in the beginning is because you might need a little bit more handholding and direction and you might need to really understand what works. If someone's leading the mastermind, someone you respect and that you know is getting true results, you're going to have more of that handholding support.
When you're ready to maybe go out on your own, moreso, then that's when you might want to get a group of people together that you can all help each other and you don’t need as much handholding. At least that's how it worked for me and I think that it's definitely built my business every single year, even the year that I was in the mastermind that wasn't the right fit, I still found nuggets in there that helped me build my business in a smarter way, more strategic way. There's always some good things you can find, whether it's the perfect fit or not. So, just wanted to throw that out there.
Finding a good mastermind–definitely a great stepping stone when you're trying to build your business online.
Let's go ahead and wrap this up. Hopefully you've found some lessons in here that you can apply to your own business as well.
We went over creating that year-long promotional calendar. Again, it's going to take you a few hours to really get everything on there but it will take a lot of stress off your
plate when you know what the year's going to look like, and it can always be flexible but get it on the calendar first.
Also,, we talked about doing more with less. You don't always have to create a bunch of new stuff in order to create more money in your business. Perfect what's already working! You'll make a better impact with your customers as well as a bigger impact in your business.
In addition, we talked about expanding your platform by creating new ways to get your content out there, your free content. I personally suggest a podcast, but that might not be right for everybody, of course. And you might not be ready to take on a new project like that. So, just think of different ways that you can use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, in order to expand your brand and your message and reach more people.
And then we also got into a little bit of a more advanced strategy and that is creating a funnel, a marketing funnel, or multiple marketing funnels. I call it advanced because you might need to upgrade your email marketing service in order to make this really work for you, but for those of you that are just starting out, the reason I wanted you to hear the idea of the marketing funnel is you could just start out with one very simple marketing funnel where you have your free giveaway, your promote your program or product on the back- end, and you send them a series of emails in an auto-responder series in order to encourage people to check out your program or product. That might be just one way to start and then you can expand from there.
Lastly, we talked about masterminds. Paid masterminds versus free masterminds–and whatever might work best for you I encourage you to explore this option because it's always nice to have people you can bounce ideas off of and get new suggestions and ideas and breathe new life into your projects and programs. It's always a great thing when you know you're supported by other people.
There you have it. I'll make sure to include a bunch of links for you to help you along in all of these different lessons I learned in my show notes, so amyporterfield.com/23 will take you right there.
Also, you've heard me say it many times, but if you like this podcast I would really appreciate it if you would just take a few minutes and leave a review for me on iTunes. That will help me reach even more people with all of my episodes. Just go to amyporterfield.com/review and it will take you to a page that you can click to launch
iTunes and leave a review. It would mean so very much to me and I thank you in advance for that.
Until we speak next time, make it a great week and I'll talk to you soon. take care!
