 I do own a float center. My husband and I own Sukino float center in Salt Cave. We're in southern Indiana and I also have a company called Mindful Solutions and I do all kinds of marketing and training and other work. I'm not selling anything today. I'm just telling you this is what I do. Marketing is my main thing and running the float center as well but we're hiring staff who can really do that so I get to focus a lot more on understanding and learning marketing. I'm constantly soaking it all in. I also am a co-host on Art of the Float and for some crazy reason they decided to let me be the president of the float conference for a little bit so thank you thank you. I told Ashkahn he picked a really good year to take a break from that you know so let me reshare. Here we go. We're gonna start just right at it and I have a template that I'll provide to you guys if you want to leave we'll start a little sign-up sheet actually Tiffany we pull out a piece of paper and pass that around. If you would like a copy of our template for a marketing plan just drop your email address down and then I'll send you a link where you can download that template and what I really want to do today is just talk about some kind of basic marketing things. Some things you may already be doing some things you may not but I also really want to generate some discussion because there's so much knowledge in this room already that I think you guys can share as much as I do and that we can all kind of pick and choose and learn things that other centers are doing and finding successful or you can share something that you are doing as well. So when I start with a SWOT analysis you may have heard of SWOT before SWOT is something you should do for everything and repeat it again and again and again. So a SWOT analysis it doesn't have to be anything formal but essentially what you're doing is you're looking at your strengths and you can do this from a business level and then within each business function the same analysis. So what are your strengths in your operation? So this could be things like customer service you are just really great with people and a weakness might be that you're terrible running your numbers doing bookkeeping that's me I just hate it so that's a weakness for me. Opportunities are areas where you might be doing okay but you have some room for growth and then threats are things that are really need your attention. So that could be say you have no social media presence and somebody else in town is opening up a new center and they're killing it and they're taking a whole lot in the market share just because they have a really great presence. So this SWOT analysis can be for everything and when you think about marketing apply the same SWOT process and so I want you to think just for a minute and I would love to hear from some of you guys when you think in the marketing realm specifically what are some of your strengths already? Anybody just shout it out? What's that? Membership base yeah okay so and your members are part of your marketing plan we're actually going to talk a little bit about that in a little bit too having your brand like yeah having strong brand and and again we'll talk on that a little more too. Anybody else what are what are some of your strengths in marketing? Yes being involved in the community and Shawnee does a great job going live and you know showing people like what's happening at their center makes them feel like they're a part of that. Any other quick strengths? Strong word of mouth having a really great referral network definitely yeah love it cross promote with other businesses locally and I'm trying to repeat for everybody online to be able to hear too so and we're going to talk about some of these a little bit more specifically thinking about your weaknesses anybody care to share an area that you know you're just weak and like needs some some action on that consistency yeah that's probably the biggest one that I hear across the industry it's hard because you're wearing 17 hats and trying to do a million things Christian creating reels yes me too I do social media and reels that's a weakness for me yeah targets okay yeah so target markets can be a weakness yes yes and we're going to talk about that a little bit opportunities again those are things that like you're doing okay but you feel like maybe you need to do a little bit more yes yes so having a really solid approach across multiple platforms in methodology and so if you have a strong social media presence what are you doing on the email side and a lot of times it is imbalanced and threats so we're not going to dive into those we talked a little bit about weaknesses but just for the interest of time we'll move on um oh there's a fun delay on this there we go um before we go further though i want to talk about conversion funnels and um if you think about marketing as one giant group of people that you're trying to reach then that is an opportunity okay so your conversion funnel is so important to understand that the way you're reaching people in that kind of customer lifecycle is different so you have you know your actual visitors you have followers people who could be leads and then you have your actual customers so if you're looking at what you're really trying to do is get everybody eventually to become a customer but you have to start with those people who are following you who are curious and a lot of times that's going to start with either your referrals having that strong word of mouth presence or with paid ads okay people have to know you exist before they can know that they like you and the way that you're presenting that message is different because if you just go in with somebody and say you know join our membership and they don't even know what the hell floating is there's a mismatch there okay so you've got to really warm them up so you're warming them up from this like broad group of people to say all right you don't know anything about floating here's why you should be curious about floating and then you're going to move them in they're they're learning about your process and then you're going to eventually convert them into customers who may eventually become members we're going to get there and it's going to jump like five screens in a second event okay so there we go nope the ideal client avatar if you were with us last year for the virtual conference i talked a lot about this in my talk about social media it's such a huge piece of all marketing efforts so your ideal client avatar you'll also hear a customer profile the ica your avatar it doesn't matter what you call it as long as you spend some time in this and if you have paper i would love it if you start like jotting down some of these notes about your ideal client avatar who are they why do you think you're going to float with you and you might know this already just by thinking about your best customers your best guests your best members what do they do for a living what is their familiar status where are they on the gender spectrum how old are they what are some of their hobbies even understanding a little bit about their income so those are things that you may not have exact data because we don't necessarily don't ask people like what's your income when you come into float we don't ask these things but as you're building relationships you start to get to know these sorts of details and then you take all of these ideas and you create an actual person a persona that you are trying to talk to so for our float center this is marni and everything i write everything i do for my marketing is too marni everything okay i'm talking to marni because i know her i know that the reason she floats is for stress relief that's the number one people come to my center i know that she's an account manager so she has an office job okay that can be hard on our body just a very sedentary lifestyle and i know that she's married she has two kids she loves to float because what's really interesting we had a moment this year where we typically stay pretty busy but we noticed looking ahead about two weeks on this schedule we were packed on this one particular wednesday two weeks ahead of time we're like what is going on here it was the first day of school all the moms saw that it was the first day at school kids are out of house they came to float with us so that was a really great checkpoint for me to say oh that's our target market we're hitting it these are the people that i know are coming in to see us and this is just a quick little easy way that we were able to validate that we were reaching our target market and it's not always just about like the big data but to be able to look at that and pinpoint so precisely and as people were coming in that day they're like yeah the kids are back in school kids are back in school and so we're like oh yeah we knew that we knew that but that also means that we could have run a special that you know kids are back in school come in and float and you don't even have to monetize that you don't have to push a sale because that people are coming in anyway so it's not just about offering a discount but we know what her hobbies are she loves hiking she loves painting and she's about 43 years old and so everything that i'm doing i am talking to marnie really trying to understand her mindset where does she shop go ahead um how did you arrive at this is it based on data or um some is data driven and some is really just getting to know your customers having conversations and my husband is amazing at customer service people love to sit and talk to him and we talk about things constantly such as such came in today because of x y or somebody was saying that they went to this store and really enjoyed this thing whatever it is we talk about like the minutia and that really helps us to get into their mindset some of it can be data driven um we do collect birthdays you know and so we know how old our guests are we can pull all of that data out of our systems so go ahead i love that question so do you have more than one ideal client avatar and the answer is maybe the answer is really get solid on one first and if that one is filling your tanks do you need more because you could convolute the message if that one isn't filling the tanks either you've got the wrong audience or you have an opportunity to also market to someone different someone separately when you're thinking about doing that though also taking into consideration what is the vibe of your center okay we do have some folks who come in for chronic pain relief but for us when you come into our place we don't give off that like medical pain relieving sort of vibe um so for us we're kind of sticking with just this one it works really really well and it's really interesting that we have a salt cave and if you know anything about halo therapy the major benefit is all respiratory and some dermatological so people come to see us and sit in our salt cave for stress relief so we try to push the respiratory thing but our market is so zoned in that we just say you know what just come relieve some stress in the salt cave too and it works so you can have multiple and there are definitely some opportunities I would love to hear does anybody here have experience with that that you feel like you have go ahead mm-hmm yeah so I'm curious if you don't have a particular demographic that you're targeting are you in an area that is already very very well versed in floating interesting yeah and curiosity can be a big piece to consider curiosity can get them in but then you have to get them to come back because curiosity is often whenever you have that one-time visit and your retention rates I would watch that if it's just a curiosity factor go ahead graham yeah what's curiosity as they never take that source around that that's your niche and kind of start seeing the same kind of people that they're returning the way it wouldn't come with modelings yes present yourself mm-hmm present yourself neutrally yes no there is no idea will am I accepted here right yeah and there are definitely benefits and there are some opportunities to being in that neutral zone because one thing you don't want is to be so neutral that people walk in and they float and they're like yeah that was pretty cool and then they leave and they don't feel like there's a reason for them to come back if you have a place that is very inviting that feels just warm and people want to be there that can help as well and that's part of your brand is like the vibe of your center how does it feel how comfortable are your chairs okay those sorts of things all come into that overall um experience for people so when I talk a little bit about a couple of the most common marketing methods you probably know all of these hopefully you already have these in place they're kind of the basics um organic social media just having a consistent practice of posting create a schedule um and I have last year's talk that I gave gave you some tips on how to do that and paid ads are huge that's a great way to find new clients to bring in and then we all talked about referrals that can also be your membership base because those are the people who are going to stay with you they love your services they're coming in as often as they can and trade shows this is an area where some some of us probably do okay but it might be an opportunity to do a little bit more I know it is for us um we hit some of the health and wellness trade shows we go do some um like employee health benefits shows but there are a lot of other things that are happening if you can get in it you know a yoga festival that's in town or an expo that's all related to like running or um you know if there's a big race in your area you have the opportunity to go set up a table at those events so that's some of them and then obviously your website itself is a marketing tool it needs to be maximized there are ways to really make it work for you but just having a website itself is going to start that process um one huge thing that I want everybody to do go look at your website see if it has two big things one your address where are you what is your street address and what is your city when I look at float centers I can say probably about 50 percent don't have that listed and if you don't have your address listed people come across your website they don't know how to get to you why should they bother staying on your website and you might not even be in their local market um a second thing is your float tanks have some kind of photo out there at least a description something that shows people what it looks like to float with you because when you google floating what you see may be completely different than what you're offering at your center and people may make an assumption that you have one particular model of a float tank and they don't like that model and so they never come to see you so there's a ton more that you should have on your website and how to you know optimize it but those are two big things that are just so often missed you know and if you're looking at it from that customer standpoint a couple of little tweaks can go a long way a few others um blogs how many of you guys run a blog on your website okay got about three or four hands any of you consistent one one kind of maybe um i'm terrible at it it's on my to-do list and i'll talk about my to-do list and i'm the next main stage thing but i just haven't gotten there yet um eventually i think that i will uh but having blogs can really help you in a way that you're probably not thinking about um out of those who have blogs what do you think is the real benefit of having those education that's definitely a huge benefit anybody else website ranking thank you it's like i know you guys i'm looking over here in like this little tech circle like i know your website ranking so your seo search engine optimization results if you're constantly putting fresh content on your website the google gods love you okay that is an easy way to keep getting a little bit more ranking okay key words if you have a blog with some specific benefits about floating okay that's going to help when people are searching for you know natural ways to relieve migraines and they're in your area you know having things like that can help um your blog can do a lot backlinks i don't want to get too technical in there but every opportunity that you get if you have a chance to write say an article for a local organization and maybe there's a company that wants to provide some information to their employees about stress relief or about pain relief or an insurance company that um has a lot of folks that they're dealing with who have chronic pain issues if you write a blog or you write something for them even if they're hosting it on their platform have them backlink it to your website okay if you can get in with some of the bigger ones local news outlets they have a lot of traffic and if they're linking to your website that's a strong backlink if you're just kind of helping each other and like somebody doesn't have a lot of traffic their website isn't doing really well and they backlink you you're not going to see a lot of results from that but as many places as you can go ahead jonathan absolutely have to write publications with backlinks just tell people like close my website on your specific site especially that has a high degree of authority on google meaning like it's already ranked high and you're going to rank high as a result of that you got it random shout out like to scm rush it's actually free what will you just get the tool and look at all your backlinks and look at all your competitors backlinks or look at all your friends and you got it backlinks you got it really great tool yeah scm rush scm rush it it's really really helpful it's something that i just started looking into myself um but scm rush anywhere that you can ask people you know if you've got a news story coming into to talk about your center ask them specifically will you link my website in the article a lot of local news places won't do it they'll do a story on you that got the video but they don't automatically put your website link in there ask them to do that be really really clear about that if you've got a physician who comes in regularly you know ask him if they've got a lot of you know great traffic hitting their sites ask those people specifically to link to yours and not just your home page okay so it's great to have your home page linked in other places but if you've got a page that talks specifically about stress relief link that particular thing so it's not just getting traffic to your your landing page and a lot of people don't even go into those extra layers so that's going to help to boost those things in the search results too go ahead um it depends on the the group you know if they feel like you're trying to take advantage of them like they may but a lot of like local news stories and things they they'll do it very quickly and easily you just have to remind them because they're not thinking about that particular you know thing for you they it's for them they've got a story they've got an interest piece that they can fill airtime and so they're not necessarily doing it to help you market they're helping to fill their airtime but some might be already already doing that like if it's a local news segment that loves to talk about small businesses that might already be a piece of it if you're working with other small businesses there might be some you know but I would say there's nothing that I can think of like from a grand level. Go ahead John this is what I find yeah this is where you get the biggest bad things they write their own blog about them writing about your book center and of course they're going to link to those of the most wholesome yeah you got it if you can get some really good bloggers um yeah then those are going to send you some great traffic so if it's somebody who's just starting out you got to understand they're they're probably in the same boat as you and they're trying to build their rankings as well yes right yes so she's sharing if you have a local chamber of commerce if you have other organizations um a lot of downtown's just have associations or things very it's it's similar to a chamber but they might call themselves something different but getting them to link for you as well and those are groups that typically are all about it that's why they exist and they want to help you promote some um let's talk about partnerships I'd love to hear some ideas on this so other local businesses are good but not just anybody okay a lot of folks will come in and say hey I really like this can we give a discount code to our customers for you and that sounds great but are you are they a really good fit are their customers your customers and can you all actually create a really good relationship for this I'd love to hear does anybody have a partnership you feel goes really really well mm-hmm yeah our center wow it's it's really cool but but as far as the partnership goes I guess you're talking about backlinks like obviously I should be with the letter page and I have a great website you could be growing us more yeah definitely and that's a big piece sometimes you'll have a partnership and like you're like yes let's do this let's promote each other and then you might mention it to five people over the course of a couple of months at checkout that's not a partnership that's like your buddy that you know who's hey you should go check this place out like that's not an actual partnership from and we love people and they love us so we just give their toys anyone that joins a team of flow and then we keep our beginners guys floating over there and all their sushi chefs on the island making sushi talk about it because they just have experience and like that has become that's one of the top 10 referrals wow they send us hundreds of people yeah a year it's great it is it's also my wife yeah seriously so like you can't find these awesome partnership people you never suspected yes it's really cool yeah so local restaurants can be a really great source and you know especially if you're in an area where people go to this particular restaurant and maybe if they're out of towners or maybe they just have a really solid customer base already they have their regulars and everybody knows everybody it's I mean talking about floating is probably one of the most interesting things everybody's curious about it and you know even something as simple as like saying to people hey if you are standing around in a social interaction and you don't know what to say talk about floating boom go ahead another vote for kending clinics if you'll have that going in your your local market cannot recommend enough it's a perfect demographic for what we offer and very strong alignment on the mission we also have a great partnership with an IV bar we don't offer IVs in the lab but someone's paying 175 to 400 dollars for an IV they're probably also interested in actually having a float what's really cool about our relationship there is our employees get discounts on each other's services so the IV Incusiveness are talking to people while they're floating yeah and then our employees will also be able to go over there and get like the adjustments for G12 shots yes yeah IV clinics ketamine clinics a lot of other wellness providers definitely um go ahead in the back yes yeah and it's really easy to forget you got it and that's why you know we won't ever start a partnership with anybody after their first float so many people come out totally euphoric I loved it I'm going to send everybody here and then if you never hear from them again like you went through all the effort of creating a flyer promo code whatever it is that you're putting together for them and that's wasted effort but if you've got somebody that you've noticed they keep coming in and keep coming in and then they're talking about hey can I grab a couple more brochures today like that's when you start really asking questions like what do you do who are you giving those to we have a chiropractor who sends us his patients a lot and we're we haven't finalized anything just yet but we're hoping to have him actually come he has a mobile unit and we want to have him come set up at our building and do chiropractic adjustments and floating in combination we have a local acupuncturist who used to be located in the same building as us but she's across the street now and we're referring people constantly back and forth to each other we keep her brochures she keeps ours we have people who come out and they're talking about specific issues that they have like this was really great for my low back but I've still got an issue with my wrist and you know I want to do something else and I can send them to her and then she's sending people over to see us constantly and you know we both use each other services we both refer each other's products we both sell retail and so you know if there's something that I don't have that she has I'm like yeah run across the street go over there and get this and we have little discount cards that we can get if you go over to her clinic and buy this product you get x percent off and so we have cards even for specific retail products and she kind of prescribes for her people to come over and buy some of our our retail products great johnny yeah and and they really wanted to help incorporate us and so so we go back and forth a lot on their promotions currently they're getting an adaptive planning program for individuals and we partnered with them on backwards so that both their volunteers and their clients will be coming over to yes I love it I love it it's a great thing if you have another business who already does corporate events piggyback there because it is so it's really hard to get that going and I think that's one of the most common questions that people have is like how do I set up a corporate membership what should I do how should that work and really the the possibilities are endless but if you have somebody else who's already offering something you can talk to them what are you offering that way I can make my offer pair really well with yours and you know work through that together and of course you're cross-promoting and then those you know those corporate clients are coming in and then they're going out and telling all of their friends so a really great ripple effect on that go ahead yeah there's also a local healthcare mastermind like this just networking community once a month with different practitioners in the in the area right they're really cool to meet the other local businesses yeah all kind of in the same sort of bandwidth you know and your local business owner community is another great network that you can tap into and you know just getting to know them and that's a good place where you can kind of test some ideas give them a free float you know if you're a member of your chamber or some other organization offer free floats then see who comes in and see what they do with that how much they enjoy it and then you can kind of start going from there and I'm a hunch that like I mean there are companies that have money to throw around around as a employee you know well be there's people staring at screens all day yes and you know they're creative people building stuff I feel like both things already would be so great if you could cross over for a benefit or a work for tech companies and I'm just wondering if anyone's know that down at all anybody have experience helping with the tech company do you not necessarily tech but I wanted to make a comment I'm sorry I keep commenting but you know the comment I was going to make is along this line of when people come forward or especially you know when you find out what to do when they work for one of the questions I'd like to ask is do you have a health and wellness director because if they have an entire section of their company because guess what they get an email every month from that health and wellness director you know for the sake of morale and health and our organization you know go try this I get lots of people from like sales force or both employees but yeah the health and wellness director sent us an email and I saw it for months and here I am yeah and that's a big piece for because you can just throw it out there and say we have corporate wellness packages but it's probably not going to stick it really does take a lot of legwork reaching out to those companies and talking to an HR director a benefits director somebody of that nature and they can really help you to guide like how much money they have how do they want it to work all of those sorts of things and truly I think most corporate wellness packages that are successful are completely custom because if you just put out this is what we offer that might offer that might work for some companies but not for others go ahead yeah we've had some mild luck with like 100 to 200 person companies you start getting to the big tech companies it's some weird work with like HR liability we're paying all of this is a stressful workplace environment and they offer a stressful service in there is there a lawsuit? I thought that was the most off-the-wall walkers possible but that was a really yeah larger companies yeah it's it's pretty fascinating they don't want to admit that their stressful workplace one company is like just employee reversible if they come in sort of pre-package numbers yeah hang on just a second okay so a virtual attendee is asking if anybody partners with a non-profit organization does anybody have nonprofits that do well she's pretty so sad I know sorry sorry lindsay anybody I can I can speak a little bit to it but it's more of a contribution has led to and this is with the DEA so I have not successfully landed any contracts in fact I'm really interested to listen to learn about that but that's been one organization that has I think paid I'm not necessarily caring more about helping veterans right care more about that like but I think it's paid for itself and whatever I contributed because it's brought their families and their friends and good community like feeling about it right but I wanted to also mention something has anyone considered this because this is what I thought there's a organization that represents employer provided health care funds and we have actually gotten our name in the header for those packets that are given out when they are issued employer provide HSA and FSA cards we accept those forms of payment and I would say 50 percent of everything that comes through the door is HSA and FSA that's awesome that's really awesome so HSA and FSA are really great if you can get that approved for your center that depends on your payment processor so if you want to get that set up contact your payment processor you may have some back and forth you may have to provide some documentation you may not mine was honestly a quick email and they're like all right you're set up great from what I hear it's usually not that simple for people so yay us but it can be a really great thing and then continuing to remind people that they can use HSA and FSA at your location and that's again where if you're contacting an HR manager a benefits manager and having those conversations and saying you know we also accept HSA and FSA that's a huge thing for them to be able to say here's another way to use your benefits go ahead Jeannie yeah um does anybody know yeah yeah we're considered an alternative health and wellness center through our payment processor and so it might it might be something that could be state specific where you have to be a healthcare provider licensed yes yes yes and some might get covered we're considered other personal services so there are different classifications and not every HSA or FSA will cover that particular category so that could be another layer of complexity yes you got it mm-hmm yeah yes yep yep we'll try to run anything like we'll take whatever payment you got go ahead yes yeah and so i give out their first free flow and then if they want to continue to get it right and that seems to work awesome awesome so and you tapped on another you know method that's up here is other sorts of media and that other sort of media involves magazines it could be local um i would recommend more local obviously the national unless you just want to help the whole industry in which case please do um but local magazines that have a really strong readership um and that could again like find those niche groups and tap into them ask them if they have any kind of ads and things that you can do um we were talking earlier about you know local events and things and if you're at trade shows find out like do they also have a magazine or some kind of publication that they're giving out to people that you can put something in print obviously you know commercials television commercials overall i think as an industry we've all said those really just don't seem to be very effective in the same for radio but some some and that's where i'm going a couple of people have had great success with that so would you mind sharing um what your do you have a secret that's awesome yeah so some and and that's yes and you got an that goes back to that ideal client avatar you know your people so well you know that they watch local stations not just you know cable or just podcasts or things like that go ahead and yeah that's awesome overall for those who are online if you mark is asking if anybody has run any ads before movies so at movie theaters that's probably because they had no revenue from people coming in yeah there you go yeah i love it when people start getting excited yes yeah hulu i i was gonna ask we chatted about that hulu has a an option where you can manage your own ads submit everything um i haven't tried it we i think we talked about that before have you gone live with that yeah i ran it for the last seven months minimal five hundred dollar ad spend yep um the biggest challenge i'm running to and annie will tell you it's just getting the video uploaded yeah did you not they're very particular about the format but i will tell you if you can as long as you're following the format to render it out correctly your color space and everything else is accurate but you hire a filmmaker or somebody that's just really good with video or your cousin or you maybe get a look up there and it will just run before the content you can specify the different points of interest the types of media the types of demographics isn't really cool yeah you always get people that's like i was watching hulu the day they saw your cat it's always like it's really cool you saw my yes you have numbers though that tell you of course yeah they do not have a hugely robust analytics platform but i'm expecting that that will grow as it just moves on i will say that you guys have spectrum or like some of the cable things they've now just released self-service platforms for ejecting commercials onto public elements yeah it's amazing i just i just lost this a month ago that's what you should look at look at the public the self-service commercial thing too that would be awesome yeah so there i feel like some of that might be shifting and especially getting into some of those streaming apps and honestly if you think about it when you're watching a show you're typically binge watching it and a lot of those shows will show the same commercial like five times in a row so you could get some pretty decent exposure from some of that last one then we'll move on yes all different locations also that would partner up yeah with whoever's on the digital signage yes so digital signage you can do like digital billboards there yes lots of different methods for that all right i want to bring this back a couple more and then this conversation i'm sure will continue i love another another good one depending on your area podcasts if you can be a guest on somebody else's podcast that's a really awesome thing some places already have their own you know some float centers have their own podcasts and do really really well with that and there's a certain somebody in the middle of the room who does a great live podcast but they're so if you haven't seen it before go check out Floating Light their Facebook page you guys haven't done them recently during the pandemic though have you okay yeah they'll come back but if you go back and look through some of their past videos really really cool full setup just a really awesome vibe jonathan does a really really fantastic job with that and it's just a really cool thing for people to be able to see your space and hear you talking about it hearing guests who are coming out of floats and just a really great way to kind of share the people behind the business too you said depending on your area yeah um i think there are some areas where people just parts of the country where podcasting just hasn't really picked up yet um or certain demographics where podcasting hasn't picked up if you're going for say chronic pain issues and your target market is like 65 to 75 years old you're probably not going to find you on a podcast you know but if you've got a lot of tech folks who are coming in um then that's probably a pretty good place to be get on those tech podcasts something that they would be listening to so it doesn't necessarily have to be a health and wellness or a stress relief or something like that but think about who their audience is with their audience benefit from knowing about you and would the podcast enjoy having you on or not go ahead jonny yes you got it and that's a back link that's going to help bump your search results so you're getting their audience and you're getting you know hopefully a strong back link if it's a really well known um podcast um so there's a million ideas and whenever you're creating your marketing plan one big big thing to know is that you can't do it all at once okay you might hire an agency who's going to take everything and do it all at once for you um but start small like what is your first step and it doesn't have to be this order at all this is just a sample of what that might look like and you're going to start with one thing and get really solid on that post consistently on your social media start running paid ads whatever it is figure out what that particular thing is and get that steady state before you're doing more because if you start spreading your attention across every option that's out there you're diluting your efforts you're going to get burnout you're not going to see results and so you've wasted your time so come up with what feels like something easier for me to implement start there then go to the next thing then go to the next thing and remember you don't have to do it all and it might be a case where an opportunity comes up you're not ready for that yet because you're still focusing on something else just say to people i'm not in a position to do that right now but can i call you in six months because you've laid out your plan and you know that in six months you're going to be focusing on your partnerships and that could be a place that you want to start and there's nothing wrong with saying not now we have that tendency to say you know what i want to do this i'm going to do this right now i do that a lot and then i never actually get good results because i'm not being consistent okay so figure out what makes sense for you create your timeline within that timeline instead of budget okay by a quick show of hands who spends zero dollars a month in marketing okay two who spends say 200 okay and anybody spend a thousand or more yeah there's a lot of hands that that came up for a thousand dollars or more and out of that are you seeing a good roi because that's the the last piece and if you're starting to do a whole lot of things at once this gets really really hard because you just launched 15 different marketing methods how do you know which one's working okay start with one and then start to really monitor that is this working or not and if it's not and keep in mind you have to give it a little time depending on whatever that you know method is typically a couple of months you don't want to be jumping do something for a week and say oh that didn't work what's next you got to really let it play out before you're going to see some results there are short game marketing things that you can do there are long game organic social media long game paid ads typically a little bit shorter you're going to get people in the door a little faster referrals often a long game okay um you're doing rewards programs or referrals you might get somebody in you know here and there but then it starts to speed up the more people you have talking about you it kind of takes that snowball effect but everything that you're doing you also want to be able to measure okay as much as possible and sometimes those measure measurements uh Tiffany gave a talk earlier on the KPI sometimes those measurements might not be something really really tangible on our report but it could be something that you're noticing a different trend and the stories that are happening when people are coming in lots of different things so we have seven minutes so two things if you have questions feel free to email me this is my email address um we passed around for those who are in the room we passed around a paper um i'm happy to send you a marketing plan template for everybody online shoot me an email and i'll be happy to send that to you give me some time it will not be today or tomorrow it probably won't be next week because i'm going to like crawl into an introvert cave for a few days when i get home but feel free to send me an email one of my goals for the next year or so is to be able to start offering opportunities for you guys um to be able to to connect more and to share ideas i think there's so much value in that conversation and these ideas if i tried this and it worked or this didn't work for me but it might work for you so everybody out there thank you all for attending