Hey Rebooters! We have a super inspiring episode for you today, full of things you can take away and action – woo yay! We’re joined by the brilliantly dynamic Charelle Griffith!
Meet Charelle
Charelle Griffith is a marketing strategist and business mentor for coaches, consultants and service based business owners. She has a passion for supporting solopreneurs and small business owners, and she focuses on taking the overwhelm out of marketing and creating marketing strategies that help her clients to shine snline, consistently create content that converts, and ultimately build a thriving business that supports the lifestyle they desire. Which sounds bloody brilliant to us!
She’s also an award winning book blogger and founder of the PropelHer book club.
In her own words, she’s a chartered marketer who’s been working in marketing for more than a decade, and when she came across ambitious, amazing women in business through her book club who weren’t seeing the success they should, she decided to help people learn how to market themselves and successfully run their businesses.
Phew! We knew we were going to learn LOADS from our conversation with Charelle and we absolutely did – here’s a whistlestop tour!
What we talked about
Having a love/hate relationship with marketing. What even is marketing – a definition (spoiler alert, it’s not just social media!). The fact that social media didn’t exist 15 years ago and for decades and centuries before that, people successfully marketed and advertised their businesses. (we love this!).
Separating marketing and advertising. Different forms of marketing, from the social media which has become a bit of a default setting, through long form content like podcasts, videos, blog posts, email. Email marketing as a backbone to a business. SEO, marketing which brings people in, content which gets people excited.
Conversations rather than shouting into a void, and telling people what you do in an effective way (which is marketing!).
Working with tech and taking your marketing to another level when you need to expand your audience beyond word of mouth, and putting yourself out there as the face of your business – and the confidence building that possibly needs to happen first.
Figuring out what works for you, eg recorded video vs live video, or doing something on your own vs doing it with someone. Not caring about algorithms, but finding the balance of what works for you, and being able to build know, like & trust.
Nothing is dead
If you hang out in the online marketing space for any length of time, someone will tell you that xyz thing is dead (usually blogging, although it’s not!). Offline marketing is also absolutely still valid, especially if your business has a local physical presence.
You have to look at what makes sense for your own business – which is often predominantly online, but not entirely.
Trying all the things, and then figuring out which ones to keep. Having a strategy for whatever you’re doing, from flyers to online ads and beyond.
What to focus on when you don’t give a stuff about the algorithm – broadening your marketing spectrum and having less of a focus on social media makes a big difference.
Concentrating on making content that is attractive and enticing for the people you want it to be for, the people you most want to work with.
Chasing likes and engagement on socials doesn’t necessarily mean you’re making content which converts. What people like on social media isn’t necessarily what makes them take action and buy or contact you.
Buying isn’t everything, either – using the Ink Drops State of Desk email as an example, putting yourself back in your audience’s awareness can lead to an uptick in sales or enquiries, even if you’re not converting to sales from the specific email you send.
Making marketing creative
Most of our lovely listeners are creative in some way, and marketing can sometimes feel very data driven and un-creative – so we asked Charelle to elaborate a bit on creativity in marketing, something she does incredibly well.
Marketing in its truest form is part art and part science.
Charelle Griffith
You’ll have to listen to the episode for her full, brilliant answer, but we’ll give you some hints: lots of hats, take the pressure off, power to create, experiment and play.
Short form video is super powerful – so many different formats, you don’t have to have your face involved unless you want to, and if you can make it fun, you’re much more likely to share it AND you’ll come across better to your audience.
When you go looking for information, end up overwhelmed and get stressed about marketing your business, remembering to play and see what happens is fantastic advice that we might have to tattoo somewhere.
Test, review, change if needed – nothing has to be set in stone.
On consistency
Argh, consistency – the biggest bugbear of a creative, right? But Charelle reminds us that being consistent with the output doesn’t mean having to be consistent with the input. The power of a marketing plan means you can create further in advance, play, experiment, test – and still produce what you’re supposed to at the time it’s due to go out.
You can then wait for your inspiration because you’re not working right up to a deadline!
Making a marketing plan
Distilling wild panic into a plan – we think this is a bit like (good) witchcraft! And certainly a skill Charelle has.
Again, listen in for the full answer, but some of her tips include theming content, so you’re not trying to do seven different things at once; figuring out your content pillars, the 3 to 5 things that should be the main focus of your content, and the backbone of your marketing strategy. This will help with the “what am I meant to be doing today?” feeling.
Creating one piece of long form content on a theme and then using that, getting all the different angles, and everything you post in that week is around that – this can be easier than just having a whole bunch of prompts and choosing one!
Check your frequency
So, “best practice” will often say post x number of times on this channel and put y things out at z interval on another.
When you bring together everything you’re trying to do and look at it all at once, you get a better idea of whether that’s realistic or not, and it’s usually not.
Individually those things are manageable, but if you time how long it takes you to do things, you’ll suddenly realise that you can’t do all of it – that best practice across every channel isn’t designed for one person running their business and doing all of it.
Repurposing content can be very good for helping with this, and once you’ve created a piece of content you like, make sure it’s everywhere it can be to get the most out of it.
A note on short form video
Everyone has a love/hate relationship or a “should” around short form video – reels, TikTok, etc. But it is continuing to grow, there’s no getting away from it, and our audience’s attention spans are shrinking.
So if you can get your points across in a short form video, the skill of being concise will help in all your marketing. Distilling down to the essence also means when you do create long form content, it feels gloriously free!
Also, the nature of short form video and the platforms which use it lend themselves to inspiration and playing and experimenting. TikTok especially has a lot of silliness and fun, and means you don’t have to be super professional in your filming to be able to join in. It’s a place to explore!
Using platforms appropriately
Charelle reminds us (gently, but effectively) that social platforms are meant to be social. People are there for connection, not to be sold to, so the 80/20 rule of what you’re sharing there probably does apply.
But then if you have an email list or similar, you can sell much more through that, because that’s what they have signed up for – and you can use social to get people on your email list.
In summary, the 80/20 rule which is often talked about works well when social media is part of a bigger marketing mix, but probably needs breaking if you’re purely or mainly marketing on socials.
We will let you listen to Charelle’s wise answer to what she wishes she’d known back then – and we’ll just pull out that yes, you should protect your brand and get your handles everywhere! It doesn’t matter if you end up using it but it’s important to have them – but once you have them, do check your messages on them occasionally, as people are going to try and contact you even if you direct them elsewhere.
And finally
The most important thing is you have to implement it once you’ve chosen something to try. Take the action, or you’ll never see the results.
And you should have marketing which plays to your strengths – if you’re struggling with it right now, it probably means you’re trying to market your business in a way that’s not right for you.
We both came away from recording this episode absolutely BUZZING with inspiration, and we really hope you do too!
Get more Charelle in your life
Mostly she can be found on her website charellegriffith.com – you’ll find blog posts, information about her one to one mentoring and all kinds of other good stuff there.
The content marketing plan template she mentions is right here
And of course you can find her on socials:
And if you’re curious about the book club, you can see that here: