Back to Podcast

Forget Trying to Be Fancy

Brief Overview

Earlier this week my wife Amy came to me with a challenge. She wanted to grow her mastermind for women entrepreneurs and she was stuck in terms of what she should do to market the mastermind. In this episode, I’m going to tell you how she managed to move forward and what helped her make it work.

Big Ideas

Overthinking the Next Move  [0:51]

I spoke about getting stuck and overthinking the rollout of marketing promotion in Episode #87 called Stop Overthinking, and this is the mode my wife Amy was in. She’s been running her amazing mastermind for 3 years now, and she did the first year for free to get the experience of being able to serve a group of women at a high level. Last year she rolled it out for the first time as a paid mastermind. Although Amy had an amazing group of women join and stay with her, she wants to grow even bigger.

Amy started thinking through the things she could do in order to get the word out and start marketing the mastermind. As she was detailing for me all of her elaborate plans, I stopped her and said, “You don’t need to go to this extreme when you can make it really, really simple and you can actually start welcoming people today if you just get moving.

Sometimes Less is More [2:46]

The first lesson I want you to understand is there is no need to go overboard. You can forget all the fancy stuff, and instead match your marketing to the availability and capacity that you have.

Amy specializes in helping women entrepreneurs who are in the earlier stages of growing their business and she doesn’t have a ton of openings. She really doesn’t need to go to the extreme of producing all kinds of stuff because she will only be accepting a handful of people anyway. Making it simple is the key. If you are ever caught in this, go back and listen to Episode #1 called Marketing Is Simple to feel the simplicity of what Amy ultimately did.

When it comes to marketing your product or services, make it stupid simple. What is the bare-bone minimum that’s going to enable you to get going so you can create a little bit more momentum for yourself?

Spread the Word by Celebrating Your People [4:27]

Amy was so caught up in making a fancy marketing strategy that she wasn’t even spreading the word about her offer. If you’ve got a great product or service, you have to tell people. If you don’t tell people, nobody’s going to have the opportunity to buy or show interest. So lesson number two is start spreading the word. Leverage the assets you already have that you could spread the word on, which in Amy’s case are social platforms like Facebook and Instagram, where she began mentioning her offer.

The best way you can do it is by sharing the progress and the success stories of people you are already serving and helping. The women in Amy’s mastermind are making major progress, so one of the best things you can do as an entrepreneur is to celebrate the progress that your people are making. First of all, it validates and supports the people you’re serving, and there’s nothing better you can do than to be a champion for your people. Secondly, when you celebrate your people and talk about the results, it communicates that you have this thing that you’re offering and if people want results too, they should join it.

A Clear Call to Action Goes a Long Way [7:49]

Lesson number three is include a clear call to action. When Amy started talking about growing her mastermind, she was concerned that she didn’t have a sales letter or a landing page. The truth is, she didn’t have to have any of that stuff. All she needed to say was “if joining a group of motivated driven successful women is something that you want to be part of, then just send me a direct message.” That was her call to action – “just send me a direct message and ask for more info.” The reason I suggested this to her, was because it’s the fastest and easiest way for her to start spreading the word and to start engaging with people. Why put friction in the way if you don’t need to?

Anna’s Story of Success [9:23]

I have to share with you how I was inspired by the simplicity of this from one of our Tribers, Anna. When Anna was at our Tribe Live event last summer, she was really inspired by all the stories of people who were launching their membership sites despite not having everything pinpoint perfect. Anna told herself that she’s going to launch her membership site before she leaves this conference. She didn’t have time to get a sales letter or a checkout page, so she simply made a post on Facebook and her call to action was – “If you want to become one of my founding members of the membership site, then send me a direct message.” Could it get any more simple than that? Within 24 hours, she had made over $5,000 thanks to just keeping it stupid simple, spreading the word, and having a clear call to action.

Forget the Fancy Stuff  [10:27]

The same thing happened with Amy’s story. She started spreading the word on Facebook and Instagram and people started sending her direct messages. It was like a popcorn effect of people reaching out because she was putting her message out there. So forget all the fancy stuff, sometimes you simply don’t need it. By keeping it simple, you can make it happen a lot faster and a heck of a lot easier.

Memorable Quotes

We have to match our marketing to the availability and capacity that we have. ” – Stu McLaren

“There’s nothing better you can do than to be a champion for your people.” – Stu McLaren

Resources

MYB 001 – Marketing Is Simple
MYB 087 – Stop Overthinking

Rate & Review the Podcast

Reviews for the podcast on iTunes and greatly appreciated! They help us build awareness for the show, which in turn allows us to bring value to more listeners like you. Not only that, but they help us better understand what matters the most to you so that we can constantly improve. If you received value from this episode, it would mean the world if you could take a moment and leave your honest rating and review. You can do that by clicking here.