Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

Marketing Automation Simplified: How to Level Up Your Digital Business

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 359

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Welcome to another enlightening episode of Your Digital Marketing Coach. I'm your host, Neal Schaffer, and today we're diving into the exciting world of marketing automation to help level up your digital business. Today we have a sponsored episode with our special guest, Amanda Northcutt of Level Up Creators, brings her extensive expertise in digital recurring revenue models to demystify marketing automation and share strategies for exponential growth.

In this episode, "Marketing Automation Simplified: How to Level Up Your Digital Business," Amanda unveils the secrets behind successful email sequences, the significance of serving with a sales mindset, and the transformative power of automating customer interactions. Whether you're a small business or on the cusp of hitting seven figures, you'll learn why marketing automation is your untapped asset, operating tirelessly to connect, serve, and elevate your customer's journey.

Prepare to challenge misconceptions as we discuss the accessible future of AI in marketing automation, the strategic shift from one-to-one to one-to-many sales approaches, and the importance of building trust through each stage of that automated journey. Further, we'll delve into the critical step of mapping customer experiences and using data-driven insights to fine-tune your marketing automation efforts for maximum impact and sustainable growth.

Tune in to learn how to leverage marketing automation to not only solve your customer's most pressing problems but also to guide them lovingly through their buying journey, increasing conversions, customer lifetime value, and referrals. Let's simplify the complex and make marketing automation your powerhouse for success. Now, let's get started!

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Speaker 1:

Marketing automation, it doesn't have to be a maze of complexity. Imagine transforming your digital business with a 24-7 automated sales force that elegantly guides each customer through a personalized journey, skyrocketing your sales and streamlining your processes. What if the key to unlocking this potential was in the understanding of a few simple strategies and tools? We'll be diving into these secrets with expert Amanda Northcutt, who will simplify the world of email sequences, lead magnets and customer trust. Don't miss the insights to level up to a profitable, sustainable digital empire with the ease of automation. So stay tuned to this next episode of the Digital Marketing Coach Podcast.

Speaker 2:

You've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer is your digital marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach and this is Neil Schaefer.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, this is Neil Schaefer, your digital marketing coach, and welcome to episode number 359 of the podcast. I'm going to get you on to the interview with Amanda shortly, but I'd like to start out with an update on, well, what is new in digital marketing, as well as the updates from neilschaefercom. So I'm sure that you have all heard of, and I've already published an episode about, the Google Helpful Content Update, but it is the second time in six months where Google has unveiled a new update and, man, there have been a lot of sites that have been de-indexed. I know that a lot of blogs that relied on advertising revenue have really tanked. I know of one specific website in the marketing space that curated a lot of content and wrote a lot of articles about marketing. They no longer exist. So Google is clearly very, very serious. It appears, thankfully, that those websites that were using AI to generate 80, 90 to 100% of their blog content that added no real value. Those sites, apparently, are now gone. Now, obviously, it depends on the industry, but I just want to let you know that when there is a change whether it is a Facebook algorithm, whether it is a new email spam law or GDPR you got to roll the punches and I just want to share with you I already talked about in that podcast episode about the Google Helpful Content Update how I was aligning.

Speaker 1:

I realized with this latest change that Google is still looking at this whole EEAT right Experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness and, yes, they want content that was made for humans, that provides value to humans, but they also want those other things. And I realized I never had a mailing address on my website, I never had a phone number on my website and I never had a cookie consent form on my website, which I'm a little bit embarrassed to say. And I decided you know what it's time to get. If I'm trying to compete with the HubSpots and the SproutSocials and the Hootsuite for traffic, then I have to have, as corporate of an entity of trustworthiness that a big brand has, no matter how small your business is, and that is what I have been spending time on, a lot of time on, actually, over the past few weeks. I've also just come to the conclusion that, with the Google Helpful Content Update, I just completely eliminated pop-ups from all mobile display of my content. Similarly, I always had these internal ads, as well as some Google AdSense, running inside a blog post. I just completely shut those off this week. Obviously, a lot of the sites that got burned were overly aggressive with advertising. They were using ad networks who were aggressive in displaying ads, and Google just used a spam right. So, anyway, we rolled the punches and that has been top of mind over the past few weeks. So, hey, if you're facing a drop in traffic, reach out to me. I'd love to help you and just share with you what I've done to help mitigate those risks for the future.

Speaker 1:

For a personal update, I continue making progress on the book. I know I've been talking about it for a while, but I am just one, just final proofread. One thing that I'm going to do this time is actually do an audio read of the book. I have been using various proofreading tools and I just want to make sure it still sounds human, which, when you edit a book down, it sometimes loses that human connection. So I have an audio read to come.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of words that I use. This is getting really in the weeds, technical, but there are a lot of words that I use that I capitalize, and should those be capitalized or not? And if they are, they need to be consistent, but should they be? And I tend to capitalize a lot of concepts, but it may not be appropriate to do so, so that's another thing that I am looking at. I'm also seeing is there any other data that I reference that I do not have a source. That is obviously a best practice to make sure you have a source for every single piece of data that you refer to, and I think I caught them all, but when I was proofreading I noticed I didn't catch one, so I want to do another firm proofread. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, I am really trying to create a book that is of the highest quality possible, because I know that the higher the quality of the book, the more it will sell, pure and easy. If you buy a book, if you read a book and it's of low quality, you're not going to share it with your friends. But if you think it's of high quality and you write a good review and you share it with a friend or two, that is how that's how it works, right, it's customer experience, but it's from the book reader perspective that I am just really locked and loaded on.

Speaker 1:

I am also continuing to work on the accompanying workbook. It's going to be a hundred page workbook of very, very specific exercises that will handhold you through implementing all of my teaching. I am really excited about this workbook. Working with an educational or I should say instructional design consultant, we have come up with probably over a hundred exercises. Each exercise is a paid, so they're not all going to make the final workbook, but I'm just waiting for the revisions of the last half, which are in my design consultant's boat, and then we will start the process of deciding which exercises that we are going to finalize on. So that is coming together real nicely.

Speaker 1:

All I need then, after the final proofread is done, is to get permission from people that are interviewed, like on this podcast, to make sure that they're okay with me using the content in the book, and then it will be off to the formatter where I will be able to design advanced reading copies to be able to send out to influencers and other authors. And if you're an influencer or another author and you'd like to get hands on that advanced reading copy and maybe have a chance to provide a quote that I could put in the book, that would also help promote you as well, feel free to reach out to me. Neilshaffercom, slash contact, or neil at neilshaffercom the real Neil. You knew that any a l.

Speaker 1:

All right, so we are going to get on now to the interview that I had with Amanda Northcott, and, since I've interviewed her, her company, and you know we talk about marketing automation. I have a dedicated chapter in my upcoming book about marketing automation. It is that important. So her service, her company, is all about helping content creators develop a business, and, as part of that, marketing automation is key. When we interviewed, though, I said look, I know that your company focuses on content creators, but they're also entrepreneurs, they're also small business owners. That should apply to anyone listening to this podcast and, of course, if you work in a larger organization, you're a marketer. You should be doing marketing automation. So, since we talked, she has really, and she's the CEO of level up creators.

Speaker 1:

We level up creatorscom, by the way, they are the sponsor of this episode, and I am very selective as to who I allowed a sponsor, but I was so impressed by the high quality of their product and the true value that they're offering. I mean, if you're a content creator, who do you go to to help? You know, let me give you, like the tagline on their website. Your knowledge plus our business expertise, we help you achieve sustainable recurring income that lets you live a life you love. Anyway, they have various packages that you can look at on their website. You know ConvertKit, which I'm a big fan of. They have some membership sites, sales funnel, email list. I really like how they have this productized approach, coaching packages, so I do hope that you'll check them out, but, more importantly, I hope that you'll listen to the interview. So, without any further ado, as I like to say, here is my interview with Amanda Northcut.

Speaker 2:

You're listening to your digital marketing coach. This is Neil Schaefer.

Speaker 1:

There are many skills that small businesses, entrepreneurs and content creators need to understand when it comes to digital marketing. One of those core skills that may not be as sexy as how to create your latest TikTok video or YouTube thumbnail is the topic of marketing automation. This is so critical that in my new book that I am still writing but making progress on, I have a dedicated chapter on marketing automation, because I think it is one of these essential components of any digital first marketing strategy. That's what I'm really excited today to have a special guest on, where we're going to dive deep into marketing automation. And really the concept here is we're going to simplify your understanding of it. I know for many there's a lot of misconceptions. It takes a lot of time, you know. Does my software support it? There are many ways to think about it. Today we're going to simplify it so that when you leave, after listening or watching this podcast episode, you will have a pretty clear roadmap as to how to achieve whatever you want to achieve with your marketing automation.

Speaker 1:

So today's special guest is the co-founder and CEO of a very, very unique company called Level Up Creators, Amanda Northcott. Level Up Creators is unique and I'll have Amanda introduce herself, as well, as they are a professional service firm that helps creators. So the creator economy is a business. Whether you are a small business and entrepreneur or an entrepreneur who calls themselves a content creator, it is a business. There are many things you need to do, and building a list and utilizing marketing automation is one of those core, critical things that can help impact your business in a major way. So, without further ado, let's bring on Amanda. Amanda, welcome to the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much, Neil. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me today.

Speaker 1:

It is an honor to have you. I just introduced you myself, but I guess I'd give you the opportunity to correct my introduction of you. More importantly, how did you come up? What prompted you to create this very, very unique type of company to support creators as if they were small businesses and provide them these professional services?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thanks for asking. So I started in the digital recurring revenue space back in 2005. So I started in collegiate sports marketing back when online subscriptions were just kind of in their infancy and I had such an amazing opportunity to work with a group of guys at techsagscom and built out kind of a cash cow within that business model, selling sponsorships to companies who wanted to reach those fans and helping with our subscription model where we were selling information about Texas A&M University sports and man, there are some seriously rabid fans and so we had again this is kind of early days obviously post like the crash of 99 and everything but early days of digital subscriptions, and I just had a great opportunity to get my well kind of thrown into the deep end. Honestly, I was the second employee there and helped build out the whole membership community thing and figured out kind of the monetization formula for these online recurring revenue businesses and that kind of led to consulting for other businesses along a similar vein and one thing led to another and ended up just doing consulting and then fractional executive gigs between now and then, which it's been, you know, 15, 20 years and oh yeah, we are coming up on 20 years, it's almost 2024. So my path has been an extremely nonlinear journey.

Speaker 3:

I am a subject matter expert within, like digital businesses with an emphasis on recurring revenue, like membership mastermind and things like that, and you know, I'm just long on creators at this point.

Speaker 3:

I believe that creators are the future of direct to consumer businesses, and creators have this very unique opportunity to engender a great deal of trust and brand affinity with them through direct interactions on social media and in our inboxes I mean, we have our emails email addresses to very, very few brands and creators have a unique opportunity to capture those from us and continue to provide value in so many different ways.

Speaker 3:

So I've helped a lot of big companies make a lot of money, frankly, over the last 10 years, and I feel in my bones that I needed a big shift and I wanted to shift to helping women and people from traditionally marginalized groups create generational wealth, and I feel like the way to do that is to help creators, who are these people across all walks of life who have demonstrable subject matter expertise, who have engendered these amazing connections with their communities, massive communities online and I feel like those people deserve a shot, and so my team and I, who are the most amazing business operators on planet Earth are bringing all of our B2B business skills to creators to help them truly level up and build businesses with digital and physical product suites, and using marketing automation Hint Hint to make that all kind of like work together and build wildly profitable, successful businesses based on their subject matter expertise.

Speaker 1:

That's a pretty incredible story, amanda. So you were working on subscription based revenue models and membership revenue models. What year was that? Approximately? Started in 05.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I thought that was the case. You've been working on these things when they were very much in their infancy, so I see that you've seen them grow and it's extremely applicable to the creator space. Totally agree, and I love that you talk about how your business operators because most you know, whether you're a content creator or another entrepreneur or business owner you, when it comes to marketing, there is this operational efficiency, operational excellence, that will make or break your business, or make them successful or not as successful as they could be. They'll really appreciate the. You know everything that you're doing. I want to go a little bit deeper into the topic of today, which is marketing automation, and when I asked you for your advice on what we would talk about today, you said the first thing is let's reframe our thinking around marketing automation. So what did you mean by that? Are we wired differently to think about it? Are we not thinking about it enough, or what's your take?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, my take is that I guess what I hear from a lot of businesses is our business owners, small business owners in particular is that marketing automation feels icky, it is far too complicated, it's not personal enough, the technical hurdles are far too great to overcome to implement it. My business, you know, basically just this kind of POV, that it's not for me kind of a thing, and I wanted to spell that myth for sure and help small business owners and creators understand that it is for you. It's a phenomenal level to be able to pull and there's a lot of rewards to be had with it and you can do it in a way that continues to create trust and value to your audience again, without feeling icky.

Speaker 1:

So, based on that, I guess, when business people understand the value that something can bring them, they will start to do it. When you see the ROI, you'll start to do it right. So, when it comes to marketing automation, what are the things that you'd like to talk about of what it can do for businesses, or what you want people to think it can help do for their business? I think you already mentioned a few, but are there any others that you would mention?

Speaker 3:

Yeah well, try and think of marketing automation as sort of like the behind the scenes automated sales force working for you around the clock I mean really 24-7, 365. And I don't actually even I feel like marketing automation at this point is even a misnomer. It's sales automation on a certain level. I'm not talking about B2B enterprise businesses who have full stack marketing teams and SDRs and account executives and things like that. I'm talking specifically about SMB and Creator First businesses. And so a thoughtful marketing automation machine or sales automation machine will literally connect every digital touch point you have with your customers and prospective customers social media and email with a backend tool or two, and those tools are carefully configured to take your community of followers on a thoughtful customer journey that leads to purchases or whatever you're asking them to do, whatever the CTA is, and that can be overlaid in a number of different ways.

Speaker 3:

But marketing automation should be thought of as a way to be able to talk with your customers one-on-one At least it feels like it's one-on-one to them to help them solve their struggles and show up as like the trustworthy hero. Right, you're the subject matter expert. You know what you're talking about. The email sequences let them do those one-on-one. Let you do those one-on-one conversations and demonstrate value, and it's this long-term play that yields sustainable growth long-term. Like you don't have time as a small business owner or a creator, to talk to people one-on-one and to sell them your $299 course one-on-one, I mean that's just. The road ends pretty quickly on amount of time you can spend selling times, the number of sales that you make, and so you need to take this one-to-many approach rather than one-to-one to be successful long-term.

Speaker 1:

Got it. So one of the things you've said as we prepared for the interview was having this fresh mindset right down, and really this is something that our listeners and viewers can do right down three things that you'd like marketing automation to do for your business, and I'm assuming that everyone listening would probably say increase sales, obviously, I guess increase relationships with people that have subscribed to my list, and what would be? What are some of the other popular things that you see when you talk to creators and businesses of what they are using marketing automation for?

Speaker 3:

Yeah Well, marketing automation should just be fuel on the fire of what you already have going, and you always want to start with first things first in business, and you always want to think from a customer's perspective. How are they perceiving this? What are you doing for them? It is all about them. It is not about you business owner or creator, sorry. It is about you identifying problems that you can solve for your audience and reverse engineering a way to solve them in a one to many approach again, as opposed to that one to one high touch approach. And if you are able to consistently solve people's problems, that turns into this self-perpetuating flywheel of maximizing conversion rates, customer lifetime value so that's how much people pay you on average over time referrals and things like that. And so you've got to think about, in terms of top three things you would want marketing automation to do for you is well, what can I do for my customers? What are the top three problems that I can solve for my customers? What am I bringing to the table? And that's what you want your marketing automation to do for you, and a lot of that's going to be along the way building trust, because trust is the great risk reducer, I feel like, and when we are making purchases we want our risk to be reduced as much as possible so that we feel comfortable and affirmed in our purchase right, and if that trust exists between a person and a brand, they're going to be able to make that initial purchase with a great deal of confidence.

Speaker 3:

And then you can use marketing automation to help them make other purchases to solve more problems and therefore furthering that flywheel and maximizing that customer lifetime value, helping your ability to capture referrals and then put those referrals and ask for referrals, get testimonials as well and then inject those testimonials back into your marketing and again just feeds the flywheel, feeds the flywheel and eventually you want to end up with a suite of digital products and services sometimes physical products as well that your marketing automation can help kind of guide your customers, help them bounce from one thing to the next as it is best for your customer.

Speaker 3:

And so sophisticated marketing automation this is kind of taking it to another level you can implement all sorts of tags and things like that and help segment your audience to better understand their preferences over time, based on the type of emails they open, the type of links that they click on inside of emails, and so you can track behavior and further curtail the marketing automation that the customer is receiving based on their preferences. So it becomes even more specific and even more relevant and you're able to again sell more, get more testimonials, feed the testimonials back into the flywheel and keep going. That was a long answer to your very short question, but if I can help someone understand how to think about this, they're going to come up with the best answer right, as opposed to like feeding an answer.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, I thought that was awesome because you focus really on not just the customer but also their pain point how can I help solve their problem? And in doing so, that's how you're building up the trust. That's how you're building. I guess you can get people to somehow subscribe to your email list, but if they tune out your communications, your communications of no value. Therefore, if you begin with that, focus on how can I go further and help me know I'm assuming that that leads to a lot of educational content, perhaps at the beginning, but once we get them on, and I think the next thing we should be talking about is this concept of the customer journey and the customer journey.

Speaker 1:

You had already sorted a hint at it. Where do we want to lead people on this journey? But by solving the problems and getting them to engage with our communications, we can then begin to really bring them anywhere we want to, obviously, or guide them. I should say we can't force them to do anything, and I know from clients that I've worked with that have these, you know, basically, okay, when someone subscribed to our list, you know, based on their interest, where do we want to take them, what products or services, what education, et cetera. So I'm assuming that's what it is. But since you do this for a living, I'm assuming you have a better way of explaining it. How would you explain for the you know, the people that think that marketing automation is somewhat icky or it's a lot. How can we, you know, I don't want to say dumb down necessarily, but make them embrace this concept of the customer journey and how it could be digitally mapped out with marketing automation?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, let's, I guess, break it down to some more practical examples. So social media is probably at the top of everyone's funnel, so to speak. That's where people find you, whether they've been referred from another social media account, or someone finds me because I'm on your podcast, neil, for instance. So this is a top of funnel space. And so if you can move people from your social media account to an email list, you're moving that audience from rented to owned and then you're not so subject to social media algorithms, changes in ownership of major social media platforms and rule changes and all sorts of things like that.

Speaker 3:

And so if you can start with the right offer to the right person at the right time in the right way on social media to get them to jump over to your newsletter by offering something of value or well, I'll come back to lead magnets in a minute but if you can get someone to sign up on your newsletter and then commit to consistently engaging with your community of followers who have signed up to receive your newsletter, probably on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, and show up and provide value over time, that's a great way to start with this whole concept of an email list and something that will enable you to use marketing automation and I certainly would encourage you. I mean, like first piece of marketing automation you could put in place, here is the newsletter sign up, and I would recommend ConvertKit for this for anyone getting going. They've kind of got the drill down there and they'll kind of grow with you as well.

Speaker 1:

Big ConvertKit Pem.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, get people to sign up for your newsletter, and your first automation could be a welcome email, and it's just a hey, welcome, I'm so glad you're here. Here's what you can expect from me, and here's an additional little bit of value that you can have right now, immediately, and then be consistent in communicating with your list. And the next piece of marketing automation that I would recommend is what's called a lead magnet. I'm sure a lot of your listeners are already very, very familiar with the lead magnet, but it's simply a piece of collateral that someone will give you their email address in exchange for, and so this could be a top 10 list, a white paper, an industry report, a guide, an e-book, anything like that anything you're offering for free in exchange for an email address, and so ConvertKit allows for this as well. They'll set up a really cool landing page and you put your lead magnet offer up there. Someone and you direct people from social media to that landing page and they provide their email address, and then whatever cool thing you offered them shows up in their inbox immediately. And then, typically, you want to associate a lead magnet with something you want your customers or your new email subscribers, I should say to actually buy.

Speaker 3:

And so if you are creating a course, for instance on, we'll use Aaron Francis screencastingcom. So everybody should check out screencastingcom. That's where all my cool lights came from and all the ideas for my AV set up too. But we'll use Aaron as a good example because he's a great guy. So Aaron put out this course and his lead magnet was here's several videos from the course, right? So you give me your email address, I'll give you access to several of my videos. And then there was an email automation happening in the background where people who gave their email address, they immediately got access to a couple of the course videos. And then there were just three or four emails that went from the time that someone gave their email address to the course launch. And so those emails helped again in Gender Trust promote the value offered within screencastingcom and highlighted outcomes and value, not just features. Right Of you know here's the tactical stuff you're going to get within this course, but here's the transformation that you are going to undergo after you purchase the course and watch the videos, right. And so that lead magnet got people in a funnel. They raised their hands and said, hey, I'm interested. And he provided consistent value over time via email that ended up with a whole lot of people purchasing his course, because he was able to demonstrate value, create more trust and people felt like, oh, okay, I believe this guy you know he's obviously put a lot of effort into it he's demonstrating that through these emails that I've allowed for him to put into my inbox and I'm going to pull out my credit card and go for it. So that would be like a lead magnet to purchase automation.

Speaker 3:

And then the number three one that I think people should start with is a post purchase automation, also called onboarding, and so an onboarding sequence you could call it would be like okay, I bought it, I got a quick confirmation, I know that my credit card did not just get swallowed up by the internet, and so Aaron has let me know that you have, I have successfully made my purchase, and then a couple of days later, an email might include like hey, have you started your course videos yet? Here's what you can expect. And then here's my top 10 equipment recommendations kind of a thing. And so your onboarding sequence would help people get the most value out of the thing that they have already purchased, which is super important for getting testimonials and helping them purchase your future products and services right? So does that kind of like bring it to life? I'm not sure if that's what you were going for, but yeah, no, I mean it does.

Speaker 1:

And I love the explanation of begins. This is almost how I'm structuring this section of my book, because it begins with a lead magnet because you need to build the list, but after that comes the automation. And then after that comes some advanced automation, some things you already referred to tagging, triggered based communication, what have you. But what I love is that you paint it all in the picture of this relationship with the customer, whether they have never purchased from you before or they did purchase. And really strategically thinking about these things, I think there might be a lot of small businesses or creators that, okay, I need a lead magnet, I need to build a list, but they don't strategically construct that welcome email sequence because that's when they're probably going to get the best open rate and first impressions matter. Right.

Speaker 1:

And also, after the lead magnet, where do you want to lead people? I mean, there's, you know, lead magnets to get leads, but it's also, you know, leading in terms of guiding and what direction. If we're going to build a sequence of a few emails, how does that fit into our products and services? How do we guide them along the line? And then, as you mentioned, which I thought was awesome as well.

Speaker 1:

A lot of people don't talk about is the onboarding sequence how do we turn them from customer to advocate or get them to buy other products? And I believe this is all part of this huge customer journey map, but it's really thinking strategically and holistically about that target persona avatar, where they are and how what you do, what you offer, is going to help them. So I think, even though and I think you'd agree, amanda that marketing automation seems this extremely technical aspect, it actually requires a lot of creativity to go through all that and then to be able to craft the specific emails, the timing, to be able to really nail it down. I'm curious, and obviously you know level up creators. I'm assuming this is part of what you do for creators, but is there any additional advice outside of what you just said, based on you know my take that you would offer you know, whether they're creators or entrepreneurs or business owners of how to go about sort of crafting this so that they can embrace it and not think, oh gosh, another icky thing I need to do.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, totally, that's a big question. I think again, I would encourage you to put yourself in your customer's shoes. We're going to start small here. You don't need to go in and be like I'm going to sign up for Active Campaign, which is a super robust, amazing marketing automation tool. You know it's probably not the best place to start.

Speaker 3:

if you're doing this yourself yeah, so go sign up for a free ConvertKit account.

Speaker 3:

And as you're doing that, most importantly again, you're thinking about what problems can I solve for my community of followers, and you need to put yourself in their shoes and think about where are they right now, where do they want to be in terms of okay, the problem is now solved, and what's keeping them from getting there right?

Speaker 3:

What's standing between your follower and them purchasing your course or joining your membership or your mastermind or whatever it may be?

Speaker 3:

And start thinking about what those roadblocks actually are, put some context and color to them, write them down and these are going to be like your most common objections, if you're talking about, like a traditional, you know, selling relationships, and so if you can identify what's keeping someone in your community from purchasing your course, you can really methodically and strategically and simply address those things within a sequence of emails that's, you know, starts with again that lead magnet uptake leading to course purchase, and maybe it's just a three email sequence and you are, again, strategically, kind of knocking down each one of these barriers that standing between you know where a follower is now and them actually making the purchase, and so you want to Nurture those leads by both again demonstrating that you can solve their problem. You're overcoming their objections and and letting them know that you've got their back. You're here with them, you're here to support them. So you're engineering trust, your overcoming objections, you're instilling the value that you have in the product that you are selling and Overcoming objections.

Speaker 1:

I may have already said that, but I guess it's almost like having a virtual Conversation with a potential. If they were in the room with you, how would you guide the conversation? What would be the two or three things that you would probably that would come up as part of the conversation, right, and maybe that's an even easier way of thinking about it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I love that and that's really stage advice for marketing is if you were Talk to one person this is that's the whole concept of like an ICP, your customer avatar or target audience. You think about one person, you fully kind of flesh out Demographic, psychographic information about them and then all everything that you write is to that one person. So it would probably be convenient if your best friend would be like a potential customer of yours and so you could pretend that you are sitting there having a conversation with your best friend. What questions would they have that may be standing in the way of them making a purchase? And so think about the key points that would come up in that Conversation, how you would address those to kind of reduce risk, reduce barrier to entry and increase confidence in what you're selling.

Speaker 3:

And Once you kind of have that outline, you can put that into three emails. They need to be short and sweet. People do not read much in emails and you really have to grab them at the top of the email, for sure. And if you're not good at this or if you hate writing or if you're really not sure and I'm sure you've got 14,000 things to do on your list today there's a lot of people out there who can help you with this. But again, convert kit they have actually a lot of templates and Help and supplemental materials to kind of get you up and going for those more entry-level email automations. And so, again, a total plug for them. And If you just want it completely, 100% done for you, that's exactly what my team does. I mean from Strategic implementation, we're going to guide you through making this customer journey, helping you figure out what kind of problems you can solve for your community of followers, and then we'll reverse engineer the process of solving those with a suite of products and services and Do all the heavy lifting so that you can just create cool stuff. So, yeah, I think Taking it one step at a time is super important if you're going to go at it alone and know that there's a whole lot of content and you know a one-to-many help out there available for you to get for free and Try not to overwhelm yourself. Like you, you are the expert you can help your followers, and so if you take this posture of Service and helping others, it's a lot less intimidating, because then that you take the pressure off of oh, I've got a cell.

Speaker 3:

I hate sales. I'm really uncomfortable with this, but if you can solve problems for people and you're helping people and that truly is the posture that you're showing up with, I Think that pressure should you know, drain from your body literally. If you're really showing up to help, then I think it's your focus can become much more clear with regard to what you would need to say to someone to show that you truly do care About them and that you are here to help and that this really awesome thing that you made Really really is going to help them. I think that's the mental aspect of this, if you can kind of turn that on its head From oh my god, I have to sell. I hate selling, selling too. I'm here to help. Here's how I can help. I think that's probably a prerequisite to everything we've said thus far. Interference approach.

Speaker 1:

That's almost like a separate podcast episode, isn't it the mindset of sales getting over imposter syndrome, etc, etc. But I think that concept of and I try to do this my own business, but really serving others, because if you come to serve you're not, it's a natural sale, you're serving right. Yeah, and you had already answered this. But just to confirm so, when people think about these sequences, they don't need to overthink them. You mentioned three emails. I know that and once again, if people search on Google they're gonna find lots of different formulas a lot of experts have thrown out there, but you know, the normal advice I've seen is three to five emails. Is their particular. Obviously it depends on the person, their, their ICP, what have you? But would you say three to five is sort of the sweet spot, or just keep it short at three?

Speaker 3:

Three to five is completely fine, especially if you're keeping the emails pretty short.

Speaker 3:

But it depends, honestly on what you're selling and so, again, if you can just kind of outline that pretend conversation and see what comes up, that will probably provide an answer for you and how many emails it should be, and Kind of depends on how close you are to a launch of a specific product, for instance. But I'm a very efficient person. I'm very big on efficiency and standard operating procedures and things like that, and so I think a newsletter and a lead magnet or what ends up being a suite of lead magnets, is a really strategic move for a creator or a small business owner to make. But we're always like recommending having a newsletter out there to Capture people whenever they want more information from you. They can grab, you know, they can sign up to receive your newsletter. But then if you're creating lead magnets, we want to do that with like a great deal of intention. Where you got the lead magnet, therefore, you're clearly showing intent and I'm gonna send you a three to five email sequence leading up to the launch or Post launch.

Speaker 1:

Just you know, a regular, evergreen sale of whatever this corresponding product or service is yeah, I also sometimes have very, very long sequences, but they're less about selling a specific product and more about building trust. So obviously, if you want to focus on selling something that's directly related to that lead magnet, you want to keep it fresh of mine, top of mine, and if you wait too long, you know maybe their need changes or they forget about their needs. So I think the three to five is is great advice. So you know, hopefully people have come away of the value of marketing automation. I'm how to think about it in terms of that customer journey serving, solving problems, getting over objections.

Speaker 1:

And then those three Major automations that the three initial ones, the welcome sequence, the lead magnet it's not multiple lead magnets and then the odd morning, if not multiple onboarding, depending on the products and services they have. What would be you call it the next right action step to level up your automation capabilities? I'm assuming once you have these in place, you're not limited just to these things and there's a lot more. That obviously, really, we begin to open the Pandora's box what is possible with marketing automation? So I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about that, that advanced side, once people feel really comfortable with this.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so the next right thing for you Well, if you haven't already mapped out a customer journey, you need to do that. You need to identify problems, that you can. I know I've said this a million times on this 40 minutes so far, but airs repeating that is the basis of all businesses.

Speaker 3:

We are solving problems for our customers, and the more problems you can solve and the more effectively you can solve them, the better off you will be. That will enable all sorts of horizontal growth. That's the same customers buying Different things from you over time, rather than having to find a new customer every single time. I always think of cut-co-knives for Vertical growth because they have like a lifetime guarantee. So you're always having to find a new customer, whereas a creator, a small business owner who has a great deal of trust with their community of followers, we'll have a great end for helping them make the first purchase. And then, if you nail that and help your customer do Solve, you know you solve their problem. You have a fantastic opportunity to sell them the next thing and the next thing in the next thing, and then their behavior, based on your marketing automation data will tell you what the next thing is.

Speaker 3:

That's a quantitative perspective. You can also, of course, get the qualitative perspective, which would be just people's opinions and feedback and survey results that are, you know, kind of fill in the blank stuff, and you ultimately want to marry quantitative and qualitative data to further hone in on or home in on your customer journey and Helping people solve one problem after the other and you want them to tell their friends and you want them to prompt them. You want to prompt them to tell their friends through your marketing automation. You want to capture the testimonials and put that back into your marketing automation again. This whole concept of this Virtuous cycle and this flywheel that you're building. So I totally forgot the question that you originally asked me. You know, I think, oh, next right, action right.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, but you're, you're sort of in the process of doing this, and what I love about this aspect of digital marketing Versus when you post something out there on Instagram it's here today, gone tomorrow Is that you're truly building asset right, it's 24 7 and you can you continue to add to it and make value of it. I think that that was where. Where I wanted to go was what additional value can we get out of this system once we have these, these three things in place? That's, that's the direction of the question.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean, the additional value to be had from marketing automation is that it works for 10 people and it also works for 10,000 people. And so, if your systems are in place, when your post goes viral or some amazing creator with a huge following shares something of yours and it gets a bunch of traffic and your lead magnet, suddenly 4,000 people have picked it up and one day, marketing automation can handle all of that. And again, that's this huge advantage of having this infrastructure laid. It's this foundation that you are creating for your business for the long haul, and if you're a subject matter expert or a small business owner, you probably are actually a subject matter expert as well, If you're listening to this and you're probably creating a lot of digital products.

Speaker 3:

If you're in this longterm and you're building a sustainable, profitable business where a flywheel can be created and generate high profit margin sales for you and therefore a highly profitable business whose customers stay with you for the longterm and buy a lot of stuff, you're pretty good to go here. I mean, this is like the sky is the limit sort of a situation. If you've identified your niche on the internet and you can solve their problems strategically through really awesome products and services. I mean we're seeing people go from five figure businesses to seven figure businesses in nine to 18 months, implementing these kinds of strategies Like leave the one to one stuff behind, or that's also for, like, bigger businesses, very high touch, high value, high dollar sales motions. That's a totally different ballgame. I came from that world and I left it for a reason.

Speaker 3:

I love sales. I've actually been in sales since I was 16, but that is kind of not where the world is going, at least with creators and small business owners. You have to nail this one to many aspect of your business for it to really stand the test of time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I couldn't agree more and I love when every week I get a you know, an update from ConvertKit. This week you sent out this many tens of thousands of emails and I have a weekly newsletter. That's part of it, but the automated part is just great. These touch points and they're, if they're well thought out. You are continuing that conversation, so I'm a huge fan and I know we could probably have a separate podcast on these advanced triggers and automations, above and beyond what we talked about. We'll leave that for, you know, potential clients years.

Speaker 1:

I want to get in touch with you or people that want to read my book, where I plan to cover some of that.

Speaker 1:

But one final question for you. You sort of hinted at it, but I'm just curious because marketing automation has been around, you know, when we think at the enterprise level, like the Marketo's and the Pardo's, more recently ConvertKit, I think every email marketing software I would say even a MailChimp is trying to create pretty sophisticated marketing automation. So most of these inexpensive, like ConvertKit email marketing software also can handle a lot of automation. What are some of the biggest trends, or are there any trends that you see as we head? Or now we're in 2024 by the time people listen to this. Are there any trends and I'm assuming that one word we have not talked about on this episode, which is the first time in more than a year, is the topic of artificial intelligence and in generative AI, which I'd be curious to hear your opinion on. But outside of that, are there any other trends that you see in the marketing automation space that we should all be aware of?

Speaker 3:

That's a great question. I feel like I'm trying to pick a category of type of trends. I mean, obviously AI is a huge thing, and so getting AI to help you write your emails for marketing automation is great, but ooh.

Speaker 1:

Or maybe AI is the biggest trend and it is the biggest trend for many things marketing these days.

Speaker 3:

So yeah, I'm not seeing AI play a huge role in terms of like building automations, yet I bet that's next. I cannot imagine a single big marketing automation service who is not, who does not have their ear to the ground and trying to get their engineering team figuring out how to do that and make it easier for people, cause that really is the biggest barrier to entry is, most of these tools are quite technical and if you are not a particularly technical person, it is really overwhelming. Like I'm not gonna lie, it's like if you're going into active campaign, you're like what the hell's going on here.

Speaker 1:

I suppose that might be. You know, because this human communication, the AI, written emails. You know there's a lot of opinions about them, but at least ideation in terms of I would like to create a three email, email sequence. This is the pain, these are the pains. How would you recommend? I would craft, you know, using it as this really intelligent assistant of yours, I think, can really have a big value, whether or not you use it for the actual content creation right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I think my company should build a template for that, for here's how to use chat DTP.

Speaker 1:

That's a new product right there and every day. It's funny. I talked, I was at VidSummit last week and I talked to someone who works at one of these video tools companies and he created a prompting solution for YouTube titles and descriptions and I showed him what I currently use. He's like oh, I go way beyond that and the results are much better. I'm like dude, productize, what are you waiting for?

Speaker 1:

So I think you know we're in this new age where it's possible to do that right and to use everything we've been talking about here to help you grow your business. So, amanda, this has been really awesome and I know that we have just touched the you know tip of the iceberg when it comes to market automation. We can go really deep on this, but I'm hoping that people got a good taste of what it's about, what it can do for them and, most importantly, how to get started. Lots of resources out there, obviously, level up creators being one of them. So, amanda, if people want to find out more about you know level up creators or want to get in touch with you, where should we send them?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, our website is welevelupcreatorscom and we have a podcast, the Level Up Creators Podcast, which is a video podcast. You can find it on YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts, you can join our newsletter from our website as well. And if anybody's listening to this and thinking, man, I would really love to get into marketing automation. I'm well positioned for it, but I don't know what to do next and I'm still really confused. Reach out, amanda at welevelupcreatorscom. I'll get on the phone with you for a half hour. Just mentioned that you listened to Neil's podcast episode and see if we can. I'll just help you. I'll just help you. I'm not gonna like. I'll let you know if I think my company can help you, but otherwise I would love to lend a hand, no problem.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, man, I love how there's a lot of people who talk about marketing automation, email marketing but technically they're brilliant but they don't seem approachable. And I love how approachable and really drinking your own medicine, of helping others and being a problem solver and serving, so really appreciate that. I urge all of you, if you are interested, check out welevelupcreatorscom and definitely get in touch with Amanda. Amanda, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Any parting words of advice that you'd like to offer anyone out there?

Speaker 3:

Oh, if you're not thinking about a suite of products and services as opposed to just one, you're missing out on so much income. That has to be partnered with marketing automation. But you need to be thinking next step, next step, next step what's the next problem I can solve and what's the best way to deliver that? Whether it be a course, a membership, one-on-one coaching, group coaching, a guide, a book, whatever it is, if you're a creator or a small business owner in the digital space, you need a product suite and you need marketing automation to link those together. To maximize LTV. You've got to get the same customers paying you as much money as possible to have a sustainable business. So start thinking along those lines.

Speaker 1:

Amen. I want to share with you all I am getting ready to. I haven't finished writing my next book, but this time I do plan on self-publishing it instead of working with major publishers like I have in the past and been listening to a lot of podcasts on self-publishing. One had an interview with the great Brian Tracy. Brian said look, when I go to your store and all I see is one book, that's not enough. I want more of you. I want to consume you. I need your help in so many areas, so you need to have this.

Speaker 1:

I've been absolutely thinking about the same thing that you mentioned, amanda, which is why it's so tough. You need a plethora of products and services, different ways. Just like you produce short-form videos, long-form videos, tweets, images, carousels, you need to give people different ways of consuming your content. You also need to give people different ways of you helping them. And if you're only thinking that one course, what about the mastermind? What about the group coaching? What about bite-size courses or that second or third course? And I think that and I think you'd agree, amanda is where the marketing automation, when you have these multiple products and services and when you can create linkage between them as part of that customer journey, it becomes extremely powerful and I'm sure that's one of the reasons why you've had these people go from five to seven figures. So really great advice. I have my own mastermind, my digital first mastermind.

Speaker 1:

I know we have some members listening in today and I'm always like we need to be creating more products. The marketing part is not the easy part, but once you get it, it has no value. No matter how much you invest in creating reels or TikToks, if you don't have product to sell, you're sort of wasting your time. Let's get the products down and then let's use digital to push those, and I think a lot of creators as well that might be listening might not have those products yet and maybe we'll have to have you come back because we could talk about even selling without a product and test marketing yeah, using everything we talked about today, but anyway, there's so many directions we could go. Amanda, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your time and everyone out there. Thanks for listening and definitely check out WeLevelUpCreatorscom and Amanda Northcott. Amanda, thank you again.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, Neil.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I hope you really enjoyed that interview. I love geeking out on this stuff, but Amanda obviously has a deep expertise of marketing automation and really the application of it to a business, so really appreciate her insights. I really hope you did as well. And, once again, if you're interested, please reach out to levelupcreators at WeLevelUpCreatorscom. One word, no hyphens, alrighty, I want to thank you. Every subscription, every download really means a lot to me, and it's funny because the changes in the Google algorithm is just a reminder that you need to go wide with your content, and the podcast is one way of. No matter what happens to Google, I still have you and I know that you have my back and I'm really thankful and grateful for that for the subscriptions, the downloads, the reviews. So I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. And that's it.

Speaker 1:

Next week will be a solo episode and I want to talk a little bit about TikTok next week. I was recently on a webinar where TikTok actually collaborated with Adobe Express and those that know me should know that I am a brand ambassador for Adobe Express but they really dumbed down how any business can easily leverage TikTok and I wanted to share that information with you. So it's going to be more of an informational presentation. And, yes, I know they're talking about banning TikTok. I do believe at the end of the day, even if it's banned, it'll be bought out or something will happen and the app as we know it will continue to run.

Speaker 1:

I do believe so, and I'm not here to be political yay or nay on the Chinese influence, what have you but it is a legitimate app that is just central to popular culture in Gen Z society. So I just can't see it going away as is and you know it's a lot of fun. And if you haven't been on it, I mean you know TikTok can only steal the information you give it. So you don't have to publish information on it. You don't even have to connect with friends. You could just purely have a ghost account and just consume the content, and I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised by what you see. All right, well, that's it for another episode of the digital marketing coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach, neil Schaefer, signing off.

Speaker 2:

While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community If you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.