Journal

Marketing A Service Based Business – 001

April 11, 2022 by Jonathan Gaby

Introduction

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of Marketing Distilled. I’m your master distiller, Jonathan Gaby. Here on the podcast I discuss marketing best practices, trends, and more with the intent of distilling down the complex to the simple. This week’s topic is marketing a service based business.

Introduction of Topic

In this week’s episode I take a listener question from Lily Neal. Lily is the owner of a professional organizing business called Revise Your Space. She is based in the Austin Texas area. If you are in the Austin Texas area and you need help getting your office, home, or business organized, you might want to check her out. She can be found on the web at reviseyourspace.com or @reviseyourspace on social media. Now, I should mention that everything I’m talking about here won’t necessarily guarantee results. It’s marketing after all.

Background:

According to Lilly’s listing on the National Association of Professional Organizers, she has been in business for less than five years. Austin TX is home to approximately 52 or more other professional organizers. Without getting into too much in the weeds I think it’s safe to say that the geographic area is a good place to have a business and has lots of opportunity.

Big Picture

Let’s look at some strategy first. I think it’s always good to have an understanding of what our North Star or our goal is in business is. I state this simply as:

Revise your space helps your organize your home or work to help you enjoy all that Austin has to offer. I think that is more of a vision/mission, but it’s not a goal. Let’s say that Revise Your Space wants to acquire 20 new clients by the end of the quarter. at the minimum offering of $225 for three hours, this means that you’ll make $4500 for the quarter or $1,500 per month. You’ll also need to budget the required time you’ll need to provide the services, which are 20 hours for discovery calls, and then 60 hours in delivery of the services. So a total of 80 hours for the quarter.

So we know what your goal is to acquire 20 more clients in the quarter and earn $4,500 in revenue. This isn’t including your existing clients. and it doesn’t factor in more services/hours according to what a client might need. You might come out even on this projection or you could come behind or ahead.

Now that we have a goal, what’s next?

Get Website Ready

We’re not going to cover everything here, but broadly here are some recommendations for Lilly’s business. These tips might help you in your business too.

Follow Don Miller’s guide on Story Brand Marketing.

Generally, for Lilly’s website I notice that:

She has great positioning and a “hook” in that she is targeting new comers to the Austin Area
Swap your introduction section with your testimonial slider.
Make better use of your graphic elements. Instead of photos of bookshelves maybe photos of work being done or happy clients.
I love the slider of before and after on the contact page.

Break

Call to Email with Questions or just say hello: Contact @ Jonathan Gaby . com
What am I drinking? – Evan Williams Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

Let’s get back to the content where we are providing some marketing help to Lilly Neal, owner of Revise Your Space, a professional organizing company in Austin Texas

Social Media:

I think that she is doing a great job pulling back the curtain on what you do and how you help your clients. I would recommend that you get more customer testimonials and put your clients first to show the transformation of getting organized and the peace of mind or sanity they gain from hiring you.

Sadly, without looking at the analytics and data behind your posts, I can’t see how to improve, but I like your work so far.

Actually, if you could create some general ad and do zip code targeting or look more into your target audience and just run ads to encourage people to book a discovery call you could do that, if you’re not doing that now.

Marketing Idea

Direct mail

I think you are on to something when you are targeting real estate agents and people that are moving. One thing you might do is consider doing direct mail to people in a targeted area who have just moved. This isn’t something new, but something I learned from listening to a podcast episode with Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Computers. at the time he was selling papers, I think in Austin, and he figured out that the time to market newspapers was when people moved. He thought that people new to the area would want to know what’s going on in the community and more. So, he offered something to people new to the area.

I think it’s pretty interesting that you’re working with real estate agents and working this angle, I would also encourage you to do direct mail on your own.

It seems to me that you might be discounting your services too severely. I would stop doing that and not give away so much free work. Stick to your value and provide that and make sure that you are wowing your clients and asking them for referrals or cross selling them with helping them at work or similar situation.

Email Marketing

One other thing I would add to your marketing mix is using email marketing for your business. Everyone needs to have an email list I think. and you are no exception. I see email as another way to add that Know Like, Trust factor to your business. It’s a great way to establish your relationship with a new client and reinforce existing ones. You don’t have email daily, maybe every two weeks, but probably you should consider:

An Organizing Tip

Story from a client (success)

And Call to action : Have an area to organize? Call me!

Those two things will get and keep you top of mind in your new customers.

Conclusion

Well, that’s about it for me here at Marketing Distilled. I hope that Lilly, if she’s listening, gets some value out of this episode and that she can work on her website, social media, direct mail, and email marketing.

Podcast Production: Three Must Haves for your Studio

March 18, 2022 by Jonathan Gaby

Podcasting is the latest content type that marketers and content creators are heading towards in the internet space. A podcast not a new medium though, but it seems that with the popularity of such shows like The Joe Rogan Experience podcasting has taken a bit of a lead in the various types of content.

Picture of a podcast production studio with four microphones and a Rodcaster Pro — Photo by **Harry Cunningham @harry.digital** from **Pexels**

As a podcaster myself, I have produced various shows. I’ve produced and podfaded a podcast for conservative politics in my state, a marketing podcast, but now, I have relaunched a podcast called Marketing Distilled. As a result, I’m writing this post about the three things every podcaster should have when they launch their podcast.

[Read more…]

Marketing Distilled – The Trailer Episode – 000

March 16, 2022 by Jonathan Gaby

Hello and Welcome to the Marketing Distilled podcast

My name is Jonathan Gaby and I will be the “master distiller” here on the podcast.

That’s fancy marketing for me to call myself the host. Master distiller sounds way fancier.

[powerpress]

Anyhow, I’ve gained several years of experience working in marketing for hospitality, professional services, and other industries. I want to share with you my perspective on marketing, and distilling big concepts down to simple things that you can take action on in your business.

You might want to know how I won a contest with other stores in my market to increase mobile orders, how I increased one business’s social media a whopping 2,000%, and more.

In addition to my experience, I’m working towards my master’s degree in marketing from the Carl H. Linder College of Business at the University of Cincinnati (Go Bearcats!) I will also share with you what I’ve learned.

But, it’s not all about me. I will bring thought leaders in for interviews on the tactical and strategic aspects of marketing.

At least every two weeks you’ll get valuable content that is marketing related in your podcasts app. That’s my commitment to you.

You can subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts, like Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

Oh, and before I forget, I’m part of the Marketing Podcast Network. A collection of podcasts all about marketing so, check out other shows on that network if this is your thing. I’m joining such shows as Jason Falls’s Winfluence, Nick Westergaard’s On Brand, and Colin Jeffries, and Eric Reed’s Rethink Marketing. You can find out more at marketingpodcasts.net

Finally, you can find me on the following channels:

Website: jonathangaby.com

Twitter: @JonathanDGaby

Instagram: @JonathanDGaby

Linkedin: @JonathanDGaby

Finally, shoot me an email at contact@jonathangaby.com to let me know you’re listening.

Thanks for listening to this episode. I will talk to you in two weeks!

Five Components of a Healthy Brand: A Primer for the Small Business

January 15, 2022 by Jonathan Gaby

Branding is all the rage on the internet. It’s almost ubiquitous and understood that businesses need and are a brand. Now, many people are working hard in an effort to create personal brand. It’s almost incessant.

With all the talk about branding these days I think it’s necessary to understand what a brand is and to define the components of what makes up a brand. This post will share with you the five components of a brand and how those work as a whole.

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The Big Picture Marketing Framework: A Crash Course

September 14, 2021 by Jonathan Gaby

Marketing is crucial to the survival of any business or firm. A business must be able to establish brand awareness and sales of their product or service to make sales, drive revenue growth and stay in business. There is almost a plethora of approaches to marketing that many businesses attempt.

This image contains the framework for Marketing Management: The Big Picture — The Big Picture Framework

With so many frameworks and approaches to marketing, it’s dizzyingly complex and the right framework must be chosen in order to do the right job. As part of my graduate studies, I’m taking Marketing Strategy, with Drew Boyd at the University of Cincinnati. We are studying Marketing Management: The Big Picture. This post will be a crash course in what I’ve learned so far.

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Top Five Reasons I’m Using Nimble for My Job Search

August 19, 2021 by Jonathan Gaby

What is one of the most daunting and demanding things an adult gets to do in their life? Some of the aspects of adulting include buying a home, raising children, or purchasing a car. Right now, I’m facing one of the most daunting things of my life, and that is a job search. The job search is a process that has many, many moving parts and I need a tool to help me manage the job search. Enter Nimble, a CRM that I have found to help me in my search.

A picture of a man at a computer looking at his phone using Nimble CRM for his job search. — Photo by **Vlada Karpovich** from **Pexels**

What exactly is a CRM? A CRM stands for customer relationship manager. This is a tool that most people in sales and marketing roles are familiar with, because they have been and use a similar tool to make sales, grow a business, and increase something in their career. You can use the same system for a job search. After all, a job search is very similar to a sales. In this post, I’ll share with you my top five reasons you should also be using Nimble for your job search.

[Read more…]

Crash Course In Email Marketing

March 17, 2021 by Jonathan Gaby

The goal of any business or cause, especially ones with a mission or a message, need to grow their email list. Yes, there is social media and online advertising, but those methods are largely dependent on algorithms, and now the whims of founders and developers who might not agree with the message or the mission of the organization. An email list and a thriving email marketing strategy and campaigns, will always trump the efforts of someone who utilizes social media exclusively. Email marketing is a straight line from the message or mission to the audience or activist. There is no middle man.
How does one start and grow their email list and begin to see the benefits of email marketing? There are really three steps to get started.

Sign up for an email marketing system service
Create an opt-in to attract subscribers
Develop a welcome sequence
Develop a consistent calendar to engage and keep engaged your list

Sign up for an email marketing system serviceThis is very simple. Go to MailChimp.com and sign up for a free account to get started. You’ll get the tools you need to start growing your email list for free up to 2,000 email addresses.
Create an opt-in to attract subscribersAn email address is an increasingly personal piece of information. We use email addresses every day to sign up for things, get emails from others, and create a conduit for communication. But, it’s the goal of the mission or message to get the address of the website visitor. To do this marketers create opt-ins or a reason for someone to give their email address in exchange for a piece of content.
What makes an opt-in great? It depends. You could create a checklist in pdf form, a white paper for a business case, a chapter of a book if you’re a writer, a series of videos if you’re a speaker, or even a few songs if you’re a singer or musician.
The nitty gritty comes in where you need to place that opt in in a prominent place to advertise on your site and include a pop up form or some form of lead page to your site to get people’s attention.
Develop a welcome sequenceThe next step is to develop a welcome sequence or some sort of an onboarding sequence. This could be a series of emails that are sent over a period of time to further introduce you to your new email subscriber, further develop your message, or ask them to take a series of actions. It’s really up to you what this might look like.
Commit to a regular calendar of emailsAfter you have developed your opt-in and are collecting emails, you now need to create a calendar for emails you will send. These emails could be blog posts you’ve created, products you want to sell, news you want to share, podcast episodes, or anything else you want to promote to them.
The key here is to keep your list engaged and make sure that your list is hearing from you.