Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect With Your Audience

Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect with Your Audience Featuring Ashleigh Chanel

Authenticity is a great way to connect with your audience. There’s an old saying, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken”. How true is that saying? When we try to be someone we arent it really hinders our connection with others. It can also make us uncomfortable with what we are trying to accomplish. Be yourself, you will resonate with those you need to resonate with!

About Ashleigh

Your friendly, virtual, neighborhood Marketing Genie here to make all of your marketing dreams come true.

I’m Ashleigh Chanel! A world-traveling gadgets addict and Expert Digital Marketer. I am also the CEO of Make Your Mark Digital Marketing Agency.

I’m passionate about helping women business owners to market profitably through innovation, creativity, action, and implementing strategic digital media strategies that transform their business.

Through my over a decade journey, I have consistently added monthly 5 and 6 figure revenue to my client’s top-line — product, service, and local businesses alike. This is all done through organic and paid advertising. This positions my clients as authorities in their industries, gain the trust of their ideal audiences, and builds highly profitable business.

Contact

Make Your Mark Consulting Website

Instagram – @ashleighchanel

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Full Transcript Below

Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect with Your Audience Featuring Ashleigh Chanel

Estimated reading time: 37 minutes

Thu, 8/5 12:13PM • 43:37

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

marketing, clients, people, business, messaging, audience, hire, Ashleigh, pay, buy, reach, ad, important, vanity metrics, influencer, run, bit, knowing, speak, stepped, Authenticity is a great way to connect, connect with you audience

SPEAKERS

Ashleigh, Roy Barker

Introduction

Roy Barker  00:03

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I’m your host Roy. Of course, we’re the podcast that brings you a wide variety of guests. That can speak to a diverse set of topics. Hopefully, we can shine the light on some things that you may not have thought about. Or at the very least. If you have something that’s keeping you up at night, we can provide you some information and some professionals to help you out.

Our main goal is that, you know, we want to see everybody successful. And today we’re excited to have Ashleigh Chanel. She is your friendly virtual neighborhood marketing Genie, here to make all of your marketing dreams come true. She’s a world traveling gadgets addict, addict and expert digital marketer. She is also the CEO of Make Your Mark digital marketing agency.

She is passionate about helping women business owners to market profitable through innovation, creativity, action, and implementing strategic digital media strategies that transforms their businesses. Through her over a decade journey. She has consistently added monthly five and six figure revenue to her clients top line. Product service and local businesses alike. This is all done through organic and paid advertising this. She positions her clients, as authorities in their industries. Gains the trust of their ideal audiences and builds highly profitable businesses. Ashleigh, welcome to the show. Thank you so much.

Ashleigh  01:32

Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Roy Barker  01:34

Oh, great. Great. Yeah, we’re excited to talk to you about, you know, getting into marketing and the authenticity aspect. But before we get there. Tell us a little bit about your journey. Is marketing something that you you know, you just have always wanted to do you’re always in that? Or is it kind of been one of those long and twisted roads getting here?

More About Ashleigh

Ashleigh  01:55

No, it has not been a long interested road, it has been a straight shot. My mom was an HR all my life. And she gave me those assessments, you know. Those like career assessments, and I took one and we kind of figured because I actually use my brain equally like the left side and the right side. So I’m creative, and I’m analytic. We figured that, you know. Marketing would be a great opportunity for me and I went and my undergrad was in entrepreneurship and marketing. And then my MBA, I got my MBA in Italy. That was a double concentration in global marketing, global finance. So it was a straight shot.

Roy Barker  02:38

Wow. And got to study in Italy, too. I did. Wow, I’m jealous, I’m jealous. Well, you know, we had a pre show conversation. And, you know, we want to talk a little bit about authenticity. And you know, you were saying that you’ve really seen a lot of changes from to, you know. Around 2018 2019 coming into today. Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, what you’re seeing?

Ashleigh  03:02

Yeah, I think because of COVID. Because of the pandemic, because of the shutdown, everyone kind of lost connection from, you know, family, friends, and sometimes within themselves. But what I’ve noticed was that people were craving connection. They were craving authenticity. I even asked my audience one of the questions. I sent them a survey and I was like. What is something one of the questions was, what is something that you cannot stand when it comes to marketing and marketers?

And they said, once I like they all say that, you know. This can happen overnight, or it’s one size fits all marketing. And I hate that because they know it’s not true, you know, our buyers, our customers, our humans, they are not dumb. So if you’re going to sell to them, sell to them in a way that makes sense to themselves, to them in a way that connects with them. Because what what was going on in 2012, 2016, 2018-19 is not gonna fly now. Because they’re just over it. So.

Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect

Roy Barker  04:11

Yeah, and, you know, there’s an old saying that, you know, you have to be yourself because everybody else has taken and so yeah, I think that we, you know, we miss that we look at there’s so much stuff coming at us all the time. We, you know, we think, oh, look at this guy, what’s he doing? And, you know, should I do that, and sometimes we just have to, basically, you know, we had to run our own race standard rule and do our own thing.

And, you know, kind of back to what you said to about one size fits all is that that’s one thing I kind of warn prospective buyers about is if somebody comes to you and says, I got you know, this plan is work for everybody. It’ll work for you. Typically a huge red flag because they don’t know who you are. They don’t know what your product, your service. You know, we have to have somebody that takes a lot of money. interest in that,

Ashleigh  05:00

yeah, it’s such a red flag. I it, you know, what’s so important to me is integrity. And one of the things that I tell my clients is that I’m never going to do a rinse and repeat for you I’m, I’m always going to analyze, what are your clients saying? What do your clients want, because my job is to help your clients connect with you, right. And to do one size fits all to do the same strategy I did for one of my clients doesn’t make sense for another one. Even if you’re in the same industry, even if you have the same business model, your audience is different, your messaging is different. And you’re like yourself, you’re the personality of your business is different. So using the same strategy across the board does not make sense,

Roy Barker  05:45

right. And let’s talk a little bit about marketing as a long-term strategy versus short-term and just that, you know, it’s a marathon. And you have to, and I think it’s interesting, you say, you know, we don’t do the same things for you know, each and every client. But also, as you get started down this path, you may need to tweak what you’re, you can’t just say, in January, this is our plan, and this is what we’re doing, but never really review what the results are that are coming from that.

Ashleigh  06:16

Absolutely data driven. Marketing is extremely important. Understanding what your clients are saying and, and what their actions are, is, is extremely important. I think it’s when when you are looking at what your audience wants, and what they’re saying to you, you can absolutely tweak in marketing, like you said, it’s a marathon, it is not a sprint, and what the marketing community, the online marketing community especially has done, they have done a disservice to, to business owners everywhere, in my opinion, because they made it seem like this one thing can help you move forward, or this one hack is going to transform your business.

But you have to look at what the data is saying if like for as just like for apps specifically, if someone if you have ads running and somebody is clicking, but they’re not buying, there could be a disconnect between your messaging from what you said in the ad versus what they see on the landing page, they could, your load speed for your page could be really slow, and they’re clicking out of it. Because who has time to wait, you know, point 03 seconds to load in a hurry, I gotta go. Exactly. So looking at the data and making decisions based on what is my data telling me.

So if people aren’t clicking on your ad, it could be your targeting, which means you may need to figure out some new targeting. Or it could be your messaging, you may not even be connecting with the with even the right audience. So these are things you have to look at and tweak. Don’t tweak them all the same time. Because then you’ll never know what what worked. But you really have to pay attention to what the data is

Test Your Entire Path

Roy Barker  08:00

telling you. Yeah, and you make a good point about the the disconnect between the click throughs. And what happens maybe once you get to your website, and it’s It sounds very simplistic, but it’s a step that is often overlooked is to test your path through there. Because there’s nothing more off putting as a consumer than to you know, either be signing up for an email or trying to sign up for a product or whatever. And maybe the send button, it’s not there. It does it.

Ashleigh  08:33

Yeah, because the page wasn’t optimized properly. And it’s like underneath this scroll, but you can’t scroll and click at the same time that has happened to me that

Roy Barker  08:42

you’re reading my mind. Yeah, and it’s just and then that sets a bad tone for that person or that that company, it’s like, because I look at things this way is that if you’re not really interested in getting my business or getting my money, how interested are you going to be in me, you know, for that follow up. And I think it’s so important that we really have to give our prospects are those that are in that between being a prospect and a client, we really have to give them a lot of attention to show them that we are interested, you are a value to us.

Ashleigh  09:14

Absolutely.

Roy Barker  09:16

Yeah. And we can talk we were, you know, talking a little bit about authenticity. And it’s interesting, because I hear a lot of times like, Oh, this guy’s got, you know, million followers or whatever, and I don’t but there’s a lot that goes into that. Number one, we don’t know how long they’ve been out there. But the other thing, I guess I saw this one thing, it’s like, you know, they show when called train wrecks or people have in, you know, confrontations and things like that. And, you know, unfortunately, people like to click on train wrecks and see what’s gonna happen. But that doesn’t translate to my business. I mean, I could go out and do a train wreck video of my own, but it’s not going to it will probably not attract People who are going to do business with me, right?

Ashleigh  10:03

Or maybe not even the people you want to do business with?

Roy Barker  10:08

Yeah. And so I think that gets back to, you know, running our own race. What is good for us? And that’s take that next step back is that this is why when you have somebody come in to help you with your marketing, they have got to ask these questions like, Who are you? What do you want to try to attract here? Are we just attracting views? Is that our main thing? Because if it is different than trying to attract for a high price service, maybe,

Ashleigh  10:34

right, I know that there’s a lot of a lot of disconnect. I think the the internet kind of makes you feel bad about yourself or your business sometimes. And people think because like, initially, a lot of people and I’ve done it before, when I first got started, you start doing what the gurus are doing. You don’t pave your own way. And I realized that people started hiring me because they liked me. I was like, oh, okay, well, then let me show my personality a little bit more.

And like, really enjoy what I’m doing. Because initially, I just wanted my work to speak for itself. But to be honest, your work can’t speak unless you do. So I needed to get out there. And I needed to show people who I was, what my values were, what mattered to me. And also letting them know what kind of clients I work with, and who likes to work with me.

Because once I started being authentic, I started loving my clients, because initially, I was working with people who they were the reasons why I have certain things in my contracts now. So just knowing you know, what you want, what you want out of life, what you want out of your business, is going to I feel like catapult you into a direction that you’re actually going to love and into a business that puts life into you instead of sucks the life out of you. Yeah,

People Buy People

Roy Barker  12:04

yeah, definitely. And you make a great point about, you know, your work speaking for itself, but people wanted to work with you, because I really liked you. And that’s so important. When we think do pictures and do videos, write our stories, that we have to be authentic and tell our true story. Because people tend to buy from people that they like, or people that they maybe see a little bit of themself in. And so when we’re trying to be somebody, we’re not like you said, we will attract people that we really don’t want to be doing business with.

Ashleigh  12:40

Right, I had, I was so scared to tell my story initially, because I didn’t have a rags to riches story. Like, I grew up in a great neighborhood, I had a great job. You know what I mean? And I didn’t have like, I haven’t been homeless, you know, so I was like, well, who’s gonna buy from me because I haven’t, like, pulled myself up from the bootstraps or from the mud. And I was really self-conscious about.

But when I realized that I have another story from corporate that was that, that I know, so many people can relate to, and that I really have a vision and a grand goals for myself that I know that people can relate to. And my goal is to help get them to their goals. So when I figured out that my story matters, that’s when a lot of like, I was just able to show fully.

Roy Barker  13:36

Yeah, yeah. And I think you’re right, that sometimes even that’s overdone, and because we really don’t know if those other stories are true or not. But you know, it’s like, I’m the same way I came from a great family, you know, had a great childhood growing up. But, you know, it’s taught me lessons, just like, you know, everybody’s story has taught them lessons, how to relate to people. And, you know, the other thing is listening, is you mentioned that earlier, but we really have to listen to our client, you know.

Not only who are they, But who are they trying to reach and, you know, setting down I guess, and trying to figure out that the avatar, you know, who is that person that you’re trying to reach out to with your product or service. Important for a lot of reasons, the messaging, if you’re trying to reach somebody of my age versus you know, a 20 something gonna be a lot. The stimulus will be a lot different. The verbiage will be different. But you know, we have to really know, you know, where is this messaging going?

Ashleigh  14:38

Absolutely. I think the buyer persona or customer avatar, they’re the same thing is the foundation and that’s something else that I realized that the online marketing space has done everyone a disservice in and they don’t teach marketing, which was crazy to me when I finally You know, realized, like, got over being starstruck and and saying, Oh my goodness, they’re doing this, they’re doing that when I really took a step back and was like Ashleigh, you know you like in our in the marketing, or in my entrepreneurship program, it was the number one entrepreneurship program in the country.

We had, you know, business owners and millionaires coming in every Tuesday doing lunch and learns, telling us talking to us about things and showing us their business and how things work. And I was like, Ashleigh, you know, what you’re doing. And all of this stuff was not rooted in marketing. It was rooted in hats. And it was rooted in. I don’t know, some, some of it was fear mongering some of it was, you know, do this, because it worked for me. And I’m like, that’s not how you run a business, you have to have a foundation that’s rooted in marketing.

And the number one thing is knowing your audience, knowing what not only what age they are, what their sexual orientation is, what their marital status is, like those, okay? But sometimes those only matter if they matter. But what really matters is what makes them buy, what is it? What do they value when it comes to buying your product or service, what is it that’s going to actually excite them?

What are they freaking out about, what is wearing them day and night? And what do they what goals do they want to achieve? What do they want their life to look like, after they hire you or purchase your product or service, you know what I mean? So that is so important. And once you know that you’ll never run out of content, you always know how to talk to your audience. And you’ll always know how to reach them and where they are.

Authenticity Shown Consistantly

Roy Barker  16:48

Right? Yeah, and talking about that a guy told me a long time ago, if the influencer to make the purchase may not be the same person that’s taking the money out of their wallet. That’s another thing to think about. And this, this guy did a, he had Taekwondo studio for kids. And so you know, what he, after advertising to the adults, because they’re like now that the, you know, the kids will never do it. Not much traction. But when he shifted to, you know, running videos of kids breaking boards, and all the cool stuff that they were doing, he says, it took some time, but the kids just wore the parents down, like, I want to do this, I want to do this. And that’s really when they picked up some traction.

Ashleigh  17:37

Yeah, that’s so important, knowing who the influencers are, as well. And also, knowing when to when to speak to them. So I mean, I think that’s awesome. I mean, good job for him. Because a lot of people don’t realize that sometimes, you know, especially like, you know, what’s interesting going into this new era of having partnerships in your relationships, and listening to children and allowing them their opinions to matter.

This is something that was not the case, in my mom’s generation, she raised me and sometimes not even in mind, but she raised me in a way that she asked for my opinion, and my opinion actually mattered. I know that I have a lot of friends who did not grow up like that. And I know a lot of people who did not grow up like that. But we’re, we’re in a new era, and you have to pay attention to that there are, you know, Generation Z, they are challenging their parents and their parents thinking, right.

So when you are learning to market, that one of the things about being a marketer is that you can’t be judgmental, you have to take what’s that? So right now, we know that generation Z’s are challenging their parents, how can how does that affect your marketing? How does that affect them showing up? And are they the influencer? Or are they the one who can actually you know purchase?

Generational Differences

Roy Barker  19:03

Right? Yeah, definitely. And that’s something else, you know, there used to be some good, good information on the different generations kind of what they were about what they wanted. And it’s, it’s an interesting background to really think about that not only for the communication part, but also for the, you know, what do they need out of this?

Because there’s some times when, you know, we can talk about employment that, you know, the younger generation now, they want the, the company to be more philanthropic, philanthropic, thing, you know, like environmental issues, or maybe they want some time off, once, you know, every month, a few hours a month to go work toward a charity or something that they really believe in.

So, again, it really affects our messaging. Another thing I think is important is that whether you bring this in house or whether you hire somebody From the outside, like yourself, the business owner still really needs to be involved, there has to be communication back and forth for a lot of different reasons. But it’s not just like, Oh, I finally got somebody do marketing. Now I can just not even think about that anymore. There still has to be. And I’ll let you talk about, you know, kind of what do you need from your client to actually help them be successful?

Ashleigh  20:25

Yes, I’m so happy you said that. Because I cannot work with people who do not want to be involved in their own business, I can’t, I can’t work with them. Because they think that, Okay, I’m going to toss it over to them. And I don’t have to do anything, which maybe if you’re an enterprise, that is true, but when you are a smaller business, or even a medium sized business, you still need to be involved.

Because you know, your client better than anyone. I mean, I do some in depth research, okay, I talk to their clients. And I do research on you know, their, their buying patterns and things like that, and go deep into their financials and things like that. But you still know your client, best your salespeople are the ones going out, or your front of house are the ones speaking to your clients. So you still have to be involved in some way to help shape and, and build a path to to the goal that you’re looking to build.

I mean, in those who don’t want to be involved, I don’t think really understand business, or they don’t take their business as seriously as I think that they should. Because when I have stepped out of my business, things do not run the way that or when I’ve stepped out of certain pieces of my marketing, things don’t run the way that they should. Right. And you have to be involved in it has to matter to you.

Lots of Feedback

Roy Barker  21:54

Yeah, because I think there’s there needs to be a lot of feedback. And this is where, you know, what I see a lot of times from, sometimes even the smallest of companies, if they have one person marketing, one person selling, there’s no communication. And so, you know, you start a plan, something is not right, the wrong people are calling me if I never communicate that, how, how can we ever tweak our plan?

You know, that’s part of it is, you know, if I’m, if I used to do a lot of work in the senior living industry, and one example that I use, there is like, if you run marketing campaign, and you get 1000s, of inquiries, that’s awesome. But if they’re all 20, something, people with kids that you know, not your customer, not looking for a parent or grandparent, then it really doesn’t matter. You know, the, to me, the success is that if we can convert all these leads that we generate into actual clients, which takes some, you know, back and forth to, to get that messaging just right,

Ashleigh  22:57

right. And, you know, marketing, no piece of marketing works by itself, you can run ads, but if that’s all you’re doing, ads are only there to generate leads, they are not there to sell for you. And that is a big misconception. You know, your your landing pages cannot work. If nobody sees them. You’re you know, you can’t follow up with people if there’s no one in your pipeline. So all of these things cannot work by themselves.

Marketing is a full and complete system. So you have to know who your audiences what your messaging is one of my clients, we, we honed her messaging. And then after that she started getting more clients because they aligned with the messaging that then the new messaging, right, because before she was speaking a little bit more generally. And when you’re speaking to everyone, you are speaking to no one I’m sure

Be Aware of Vanity Metrics

Roy Barker  23:50 Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect

your audience has heard that before. But I mean, it’s it’s so true. Right. And we talked a little bit about earlier. Well, we talked pre show about vanity results. And I always like to bring this up because, you know, there’s a huge difference in in, I’ve got 1000 likes versus what what am I getting for business and this kind of translates back to the train wreck stuff is that, you know, I could do outrageous stuff to get views.

But if those people are, you know, now they may be thinking this guy so crazy. I don’t want to do business with you anyways, it’s like, you know, you have to be careful. And, you know, like I’ve said before, is that you can we go to this Mexican restaurant quite a bit. And I always tell like, you know, one time I went in there, and they brought me the bill and I gave them a Facebook page and said, Well, can you just take it off these 1000 likes that I have and you know, they look at you like you’re crazy. So there’s a huge difference between getting some likes versus getting the dollars in the door.

Ashleigh  24:53

Right? I would say always mind the business that pays you and likes don’t Pay likes are vanity metrics. And they may look good because I mean, I have a story where someone didn’t hire me, because I did not have a lot of followers. And he was like, Well, how can you make me money if you don’t have a lot of followers, and I was like, Oh, sweetie, how sad that that’s what you think, is going to make you money instead of me knowing the fundamentals of marketing and getting you in front of your audience. But which is also interesting, people don’t want to pay money to make money.

Yeah, and sometimes, you know, you can start a business with little to no money. But typically, you do have to spend a little bit of money to make money. But when it comes to vanity metrics, I don’t have a lot of followers now, on social media. It’s not a priority for me to build my following, but I absolutely can make money. Because of what I know about my clients. And because I’m positioned properly, and because I have a great front facing offer to get people in to my pipeline. And I know my conversion rates, and I know all of these things about my business and my clients business and what they inherently want, which is to be able to do what they want, when they want how they want.

I can speak directly to that. I know not all marketers have clients who want that. Some people say some of my friends clients say the first thing that they say, I want to spend more time with my family. My clients don’t say that. But it’s involved in the doing what they want, when they want how they want. But the first thing that they really just want the truth freedom, that building a business can can give them, right, but there are steps you have to take in order to scale your business to that point.

Marketing and Advertising Are Marathons Not Sprints

Roy Barker  26:42 Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect

Yeah, and it gets back to the longevity and the marathon that, you know, that’s this is kind of extreme. I know, but I can’t give you $25 and say, Can you just buy me a Facebook ad? And then, you know, we’re done. Right? I mean, it takes a lot of it takes, you know, there, there used to be formulas that said, if you want to increase it by this much, this is what your ad spend should be. But you know, the the I think the reality of this is that it it’s over time, because the first time I see you, and your product or your service.

If I’m not needing it, I’m just moving on, I don’t even pay attention. But now I’ve seen you 10 times A times 30 times. Well, now today, guess what I woke up this morning, and I need what you’re selling. So you’re top of mind, because you’ve been there, right, you know, period. And, again, I think it’s a misconception with the internet. And with our short attention spans, you know, we think we can just throw a couple dollars out run one ad and be like, we’ve done are really in there.

Ashleigh  27:51

It’s so interesting, because now, you know, I know a lot of people know, or have heard that it takes you know, seven times for somebody to buy from you seven to nine, and that’s active selling, right? That is like somebody coming to your house or calling you and you know, having a sales call with you and things like that. But on the internet, it takes upwards of 12 times for someone to even trust you 7-12 touch points.

So meaning them seeing email saying add watching a video, looking at your content, and up to 24 times for somebody to touch points for someone to buy from you. Yeah. So how are you reaching these people? Do you have the content out? And is? Is it the content that makes you money? Because I have people who find me who have never heard of me before and book a call because I have all of my touch points available for them.

Yeah, and I and my content speaks directly to them. So I don’t need 5000 people to like my video, I need five right people to watch my video. And so when you’re talking about vanity metrics, like you said, vanity metrics, they don’t pay bills, your views don’t pay bills, you’re the only time your views and likes may or may pay bills as if you are an influencer, like your job is to partner with brands and give them that brand awareness. But other than that, awareness doesn’t always it doesn’t typically pay the bills for most businesses.

So what you need to do is get in front of the right audience and speak their language speak to their problems or fears or goals or pain points and whatever challenges they have. So that when they like it, they’re actually going to take action on it not, you know, just having 1000 likes and then nobody does anything with it because it’ll

Marketing Strategy

Roy Barker  29:44 Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect

Right, right. Yeah. And I’m sure like an all inclusive strategy. You tell us what components of that typically look like because, you know, we may have one sector that performs better than others, but we really can’t just ignore different parts of the marketing process, right?

Ashleigh  30:04

So what I say is, I help my clients in a way where I build funnels for them. And a funnel is just a marketing and sales system. That’s all a funnel is because I know the word funnel kind of freaks people out sometimes. But it’s just your sales process. It’s just how you get someone from point A high to point B, why buy, right, so they’re not knowing you and then buying from you. So the components of that are, you need a traffic system, a conversion system and a follow up system. These are the only components that you need.

And within that, within those three components, there are many things. So your traffic system is your social media, which is organic, or you can use paid, which is like Facebook ads, or Google ads or something like that, then within your conversion system, you need a great front facing offer. And what that looks like, is some type of lead magnet, which does not necessarily have to be free. Your lead magnet is what engages them so that you can get some piece of information from them, whether it’s your phone number, or their phone number, their email address, messaging with their messenger, some way to contact them outside of them looking at your your page, right.

So once you have your front facing offer, whether it’s something free or something paid, then you can move them in and figure out what is your ascension model, how are you going to get them from just giving you their you know, phone number or their email address to purchasing whatever it is that you want them to purchase. So that’s where your convergence system comes in and you understanding what they want what they need, as your as your customer or potential customer. And making sure your messaging is on point.

Because like you should always be paying attention to your messaging, always be paying attention to what your clients want. And then the last piece in your follow up system can be retargeting ads, it can be your email, it can be your SMS, text, message marketing, but all of these things only work together, they cannot work by themselves. So if you have their their phone numbers or their email address, and you email them, but you don’t send them anywhere, because you don’t have anywhere to send them, what is the point?

And then they’re on top of mind when they first sign up. But then you go three months, because I have done it before I have gone months without speaking to my audience. It’s kind of like crickets, so then you have to re engage them or go find new people. And that is Oh, my goodness, it’s annoying. And you have to start over. So in order to keep yourself from starting over. You have to stay engaged. And that’s also where automation comes from.

Roy Barker  32:46 Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect

Yeah, yeah, that’s a that’s a hazard for, you know, US entrepreneurs, solopreneurs people that, you know, we don’t have large staffs is like you market market market, and then you while you’re fulfilling, you know, yes, all your time. So no marketing, and, you know, that’s the best thing that people like yourself can do to help us is to, you know, show us how to level that out where, you know, we can have an enough marketing to fulfill our needs and not get overwhelmed, because what I was gonna say after, you know, you talk in through the system is that this is where, you know, great marketing advice can help you because what, it’s more about that I’m placing an ad or we’re writing a blog, or we’re doing whatever, it’s what is that follow up?

And what does that look like? Because Do I need to have people in place? Do I have to have, you know, is there is an automated follow up, I need to have this already, you know, we can’t wait until they’re like Holy smoke decided to do an awesome, alright, a lot of traction, but we’re not doing anything with them. They’ve fallen through the cracks, because, again, I’ve had that happen. With with more personal follow up where you reach out to want to talk to somebody, nothing. You know, I know, today COVID. I know we’re have some supply chain and staffing shortages.

But you know, discounting that this has happened long before COVID ever came around, you know, people just not getting back with you. And this can be this is something I think that has to be disclosed up front is not all businesses fail, because they don’t have any business. Sometimes businesses can fail because they have too much business. And they’re not handling it in the right way. Or they have too much too many inquiries or too many people wanting to do business. They don’t handle it correct. And then the next thing you know, they’re viral on the internet, about how poor they are, and then it kills their traffic.

Ashleigh  34:45

Absolutely. I think getting your client fulfillment and your customer experience is so important. And again, all of this is marketing because we have all read either on Yelp or Google some awful, and maybe sometimes hilarious reviews. And those things matter. Like the reviews matter the way that you make someone feel about themselves, even though this is business, we are all humans. This is human to human every single time. And when you remember that you are marketing to people who have feelings, who have things going on in their lives who have, you know, children, you know, business struggles, whatever, you. You can relate to them on a more human level and get them to trust you in a way that makes them comfortable and want to buy from you.

Reviews

Roy Barker  35:43 Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect

Yeah, I know, we’re running short on time. But one thing just off of what you said, is reviews. And people think that this doesn’t happen. But it just happened the other day, I was looking at a thread, where a lady just said, Look, we had problems with this company. I’m trying to find somebody to reach out to because they won’t return my calls or I can’t talk to him about it. That was it. Simple to say, I’m sorry to hear that. Ma’am. I will reach out, you know, however, let me know.

Oh, no, this business, I don’t know if it was the business, somebody within it how it happened. But this guy came back with this. Oh, you’re the worst customer ever. And you know, I’m sure you know, your husband waited in the car, because I’m sure he knew that you were going to be all crazy when you walked in here. And your something about it took so long to because your credit was terrible. I mean, they will go on. And it was you know, this lady had like three sentences.

And this guy wrote like, you can see that he wrote like this long response that was just terrible. I mean, in my opinion, is if that’s all you have to say, you’re better off being quiet. But absolutely. problems happen in businesses. Not going to say you’re ever going to be 100% error-free, but it’s how we handle it. And I think people look at that. It’s like, if somebody would have just stepped up and say, Hey, sorry, you’re having get in trouble. And I’ll reach out, we’ll work this out. I want to make you happy. That goes a long way to that next guy saying, Well, look, they’re at least trying to work with these people. But now, they just showed what kind of a business they were to a whole lot of people out there. It was crazy.

Ashleigh  37:27

Wow, that’s awful. Yeah. I have seen some like that, too. I also, I, because of my market, I look at how a couple companies do respond. And I love seeing the ones that are so gracious and so nice. Their response even if people aren’t so nice. It’s hard to do. Maybe it’s not you who should leave the response. Maybe you should get your friend to say something nicer, or you know, a different company to go through your reviews and respond. But yeah, that’s terrible. Because

Roy Barker  37:58 Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect

that, you know, to me, that just backfires. They didn’t make the lady look bad. There’s no way that’s going to happen. They just made themselves look bad. And again, no response to me is better than something a crazy one. And you know, we take like a match flicker and turn it into this huge flaming bonfire that was totally unnecessary. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you taking time out of your day. Before we get away a couple questions. First off, what is a tool or a habit? What is something that you do every day that you feel adds a lot of value can be professional or personal.

Habit

Ashleigh  38:37

Um, my most, the thing that I I’ve done is self-development. Knowing myself and being self aware has been one of the things that has tremendously helped me, I took this test. It’s called the Kolbe assessment, K O L B E. It told me that my follow through game was pretty weak. I loved hearing that because it made me realize that, Oh, this is why I look, I’m quickstart I’m quick to start something, but I need someone else to implement. And then I can come back and make it beautiful, make it better.

But that showed me that I needed a team and that there was nothing wrong with me because I was like, why do I start all of these things? And it’s taking so long to finish. Why is that? It’s because I need someone else to intervene and help me do do these things. So I need a team. And so when I figured that out, I was like, oh, okay, well, let me do this. And I know for a lot of people that might be a little difficult because you need cash flow, to hire a team. Right? And so that’s where all of the things that we were talking about earlier, the systems and the automation come in.

But me having a team helped me propel my business forward because otherwise, me me thinking that there’s something wrong with me, was hindering me and it was it was you know, low vibrational energy. And now that I know that I’m like, okay, so I just need to hire somebody to do this or hire Someone should do this or outsource this piece, you know, maybe not a full time member of the team, but someone who can help me do these things, and get me over the hump, so that I can make them as grand and as wonderful as they need to be. So I would say self development.

Roy Barker  40:14 Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect

That’s awesome. I think you make a good point is that those things aren’t necessarily to point out our flaws. But they are to point out, where we can take action to make those things better. And it doesn’t, you know, everybody has their everybody is good at one thing or another are better at one thing than they are others are finding those pieces to plug in to help us be better across the spectrum. invaluable. For sure.

Ashleigh  40:41

Right. And it helped me hire better. Because if I know that I’m a visionary, I can’t hire another visionary, who has low follow through game, right. So I need somebody who’s great at implementation, to take my vision, do something with it, and then I can come back and make it as as amazing as it needs to be.

Roy Barker  41:01 Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect

funny you say that, because I depending upon, you know, some of the way the responses or interviews, that’s one thing I have to sometimes make clear is that I’m not looking for somebody to re engineer this. I mean, I know, you know, in the beginning is like, I know what I want and what I need, and I’m trying to hire to that not somebody to come in here and you know, re engineer the whole process where you know, they can be the visionary. So

Ashleigh  41:25

Right, exactly. And that’s also when it comes to hiring. What I want your audience to know is that if someone’s trying to do that, I think that’s a red flag also.

Wrap Up

Roy Barker  41:35 Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect

Exactly, exactly. All right. Well tell everybody who do you like to work with? How can you help them? And of course, how can they reach out and get a hold of you?

Ashleigh  41:44

Okay, I love to work with people who know that marketing is a process who have something that has already worked. So you’re selling a product or service and you know that it works. You just need users looking to scale because you want that true freedom. And you want to be able to do what you want, when you want how you want. That is my absolute goal to help you get there. And you can contact me at theoffice@Make Your Mark consulting.com. And that is a tribute to The Office the show. I wanted to find email address that made me happy.

42:22

That’s good. That’s good.

Ashleigh  42:24

And you can find me @AshleighChanel on Instagram, or you can send me an email.

Roy Barker  42:29 Authenticity is a Great Way to Connect

All right. Well, thank you again, so much for your time. It’s been a wonderful conversation, a lot of things to think about a lot of great ideas as well. So y’all reach out to Ashleigh Chanel, let her help you get your marketing going. And that way you can have a little bit more of that free time to do some things that you want to do. that’s gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast.

Of course, I am your host Roy. You can find us at thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. We are on all the major podcast platforms, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify, and if we’re not a one that you listen to reach out, I’d be glad to get it added. So make your listening easier. Also, we’re on all the major social media platforms, we probably tend to hang out on Instagram a little bit more than others. Reach out be glad to interact with you there. You can also find a video of this interview when it goes live on our YouTube channel. So go check that out in a lot of our other great guests. Until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

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