AMY PORTERFIELD: “We're seeing more consumer hesitation all around. That's where diversifying your offer comes in, so that people at all different financial levels can engage with you. This can both look like offering a low-ticket product and possibly, maybe, an upsell or a higher-ticket product.”
INTRO: I’m Amy Porterfield, ex-corporate girl turned CEO of a multi-seven-figure business. But it wasn't all that long ago that I lacked the confidence, the budget, and the time to focus on growing my small-but-mighty business. Fast forward past many failed attempts and lessons learned, and you'll see the business I have today, one that changes lives and gives me more freedom than I ever thought possible, one that used to only exist as a daydream. I created the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast to give you simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies to help you do the same. If you're an ambitious entrepreneur, or one in the making, who's looking to create a business that makes an impact and a life you love, you're in the right place, friend. Let's get started.
AMY: Oh, I'm so excited to tell you about this podcast that I think you should listen to. But to be quite honest, I think many of you are already listening. It's the Goal Digger Podcast by my girl Jenna Kutcher, and it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. So the Goal Digger Podcast helps you discover your dream career, with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more. I love all of Jenna's episodes because they are the perfect mix of actionable-meets-candid conversations. She'll cover things like how to improve your website and your email copy to how to say “Screw it” to your morning routine. You’re going to love it. So listen to Goal Digger wherever you get your podcasts.
Well, hey, there, friend. Welcome to another episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast.
I'm going to kick this episode off with a question for you, which is, do you feel a bit intimidated by all the changes that are happening in the digital-marketing industry? If the answer is yes, then you are not alone. There are a lot of things happening, and it can be a little hard to keep up with all of them, to say the least. But the thing is, as a business owner with a digital course or a digital product, it's so important that you stay on top of these changes and fully understand how they could affect your business. And the good news is some of the new tools that are popping up can really help you to be more efficient and serve your audience at an even higher level. All it takes is being open to it and investing a little time to learn more.
Now, here's the really good news. I've done a roundup of the seven biggest marketing-industry updates and trends that you can take advantage of right now. And I've tested out each and every one of them for you. Yes, my friend. I've done all the research, all the homework, and have tons of insight on all of the trends and technologies that you're hearing about. And in this episode, I'm breaking them all down for you in a way that's easy to understand.
Now, what you're about to hear is actually from a live training that I recently hosted, and I'm giving you full access to it because I want you to succeed in the biggest way possible. So if you're ready to give your marketing an upgrade, like the 2023 style, then open up a Google Doc and get ready to take some notes. And by the way, since this is a recording from a live training, you'll hear me reference some things in audio that only typically happen during a live event, so just a heads up on that. Let's go ahead and dive in.
We're going to talk about the state of the digital-course industry and, again, what it means for your business, what you can expect in the next year. So according to HubSpot, nearly 80 percent of marketers say their industry changed more in the past three years than in the previous fifty. Raise your hand; say yes in the comments; or say, “Hell yeah,” “Amen,” whatever you want to say. Has your business changed over the last few years? Mine absolutely has changed, which is why I'm doing this training for you here today. Things don't work like they used to. What's working now, very different than 2020, which was the golden year of digital courses.
So we've seen so many changes and many marketers—we're not alone, my friends—many marketers have agreed to this. So keeping up in an ever-changing climate is a lot of work, and that's why I put the seven biggest trends and changes, that you can take advantage of right now, that's why I put them together for you so that you can implement. Do you need to implement every single one of these trends? Absolutely not. In fact, I hope you choose two or three of them and apply them next quarter. So take two or three of these and make it your commitment to apply them in the next quarter. So once I get through all seven, I'm going to ask you, “What are your top two or three?” I just, I want to know. So really pay attention to, “Oh, I want to do that,” or “No, I’m not going to do that one. Feels a little hard. I'm going to go for the low-hanging fruit,” whatever you want to do.
So, are you ready? Okay. Here we go.
Trend number one, trend number one, create more connections with your audience. People value a close, intimate connection with the companies they purchased from—you know that, right?—which can be challenging in an online business, especially when you're a small business. So this is something that I first noticed in my launches about a year and a half ago, this, like, craving for more connection. I know it came out of COVID, when we were all so separated. So my team and I were seeing that those direct touch points that we were able to create made all the difference to our revenue.
So, one of the first things we did is we created a sales team. Now, we didn't call it a sales team, but, essentially, when we launched Digital Course Academy, I had a few people on my team that knew the course really well and knew our audience well, and they got on Zoom calls, during my digital-course launch, so that when somebody was on the fence and they needed fifteen minutes to talk to someone to know if they were really right for the course, they could get on Zoom. And these calls changed everything. How many of you actually maybe were on a call? Many of you purchased DCA after talking to Josh and Jilly and Sylvia and Megan and so many more of either my team members or DCA alum. Shout out to my DCA alumni who got on some of these calls. I am forever grateful.
So, I didn't have a real sales team. I didn't pay commissions. It wasn't, like, heavy hitting. It was just a team of very caring team members and alumni who said, “Yeah, let me tell you about why I think you're right,” or “Let me share with you why you might not be right for this program, but here's how to get ready for it.” You could do this. I actually have an entire podcast about how I put together this concierge team so that I could use it for DCA, and we will absolutely be bringing it back.
Next up, VideoAsk. Every single one of you can use VideoAsk on a sales page. You can look up the software later; don't leave me now. But it allows people to get their questions answered with a video or audio or text if they want. So some of you used this during Digital Course Academy, where you got to send in a video, saying, “I don't know if I'm right for the program. Here's where I'm concerned,” and then one of my team members or alumni sent you back a video. And the beautiful thing about this is if you're a really small team and you don't have a lot of people working with you, it doesn't need to be real time, meaning they can send in a video and you can get back to them in an hour or so—the faster the better—but you don't have to be on the hook every minute. And so VideoAsk was a huge, huge converter of people moving from on the fence into DCA.
Okay. So this one is very grassroots. So if you're already multitasking, come back to me. What I did during DCA is that we got really behind in customer support because we had a huge influx of questions, which when you do a launch right, you're going to get a lot of questions. And so we use Help Scout in my business, and my customer-support team—shout out to all of you. I love you all so much. They were working their buns off—but usually during a launch, we have to do all hands on deck. So we do power hours where everybody on the team that's available, they get into Help Scout and they answer the questions they can, including me. Now, at first I did it because I thought I was just helping out. But then I realized, “Wait. This is a really important part of the launch. Next year, I need to book a few hours every day to get into Help Scout.”
Now, I didn't want to get on camera. It was, like, kind of getting late. I was super tired. It was near the end of the launch, and so I didn't get on camera, but I used Loom, as you can see here, and I just recorded the screen. So the Loom video—let's see if I have a picture. No—the Loom video is just a screenshot of, like, Nadia's question. So, “I'm on the fence, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.” That's all she said. And so usually the questions were a little bit more detailed, like, “I'm a dance teacher, and I have a brick and mortar, and I want to create a course.” So they were a little bit more detailed. This one was an easy one for me, right? I could talk about all the reasons why she should join. So she just heard my voice and saw a video of her question. But she knew it was me, right? She heard me.
And so can you imagine, when you want to buy a course from somebody, and the person that is the face of the course actually answers your question with a thoughtful answer? It took me hours and hours to get through a few hundred, but it made a difference. And I know it increased our sales.
So if you could do—this is janky. It doesn't look great. It doesn't matter. I have a multi-million-dollar business, and I'm not doing anything fancy here. But I am giving them my time and focus, and that makes a huge difference.
All right. Moving on. Hosting more live experiences during a launch, where my audience can come online and talk with me. So some of you did the Post-it Note party, some of you did a topic test drive, but we got people on video, asking questions, working together, doing the Post-it Note party. It made a huge difference. And we didn't have as much engagement here as maybe my webinars. It didn't matter. It still gave people, after my webinars, a chance to engage with me and my team.
Okay. So another way is DMing people on social media. So according to HubSpot, using social media for customer service has the third-highest ROI of any marketing trend, with more than 20 percent of gen zers and 25 percent of millennials contacting brands via social media in the last three months. And as social-media apps like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook add and develop e-commerce capabilities, this is only going to get bigger.
And so this is something I think my team and I could do even better because we didn't necessarily devote time in the DMs to answer questions. We wanted people to come into Help Scout. We can control Help Scout better. It’s easier to respond. But people sometimes naturally gravitate to get into my DMs when they have a question about buying.
So what if you and what if I said, “Okay. Two hours a day, there's someone devoted on my team to get into my DMs and do customer support. Like, answer as many questions in customer support as possible”? And this makes all the difference because you're leaving money on the table if you're not addressing issues and questions about your course that they want to buy in real time. You might say, “But, Amy, I want them to go into my helpdesk.” I know, but they didn’t. So are you going to whine about it, are you going to try to move them over, or are you just going to address it right there where they're at? Meet them where they're at in real time as much as possible. It makes all the difference.
Okay. This one is going to blow your mind. So chatbots. I never, ever thought I would tell you that I'm using chatbots, and it has been huge. So for the record, School of Bots is the company I use. Tell them Amy sent you. If you're interested, she will absolutely take extra good care of you if you let them know, “Amy sent me your way.” But let me tell you, it's not free. School of Bots is—you have to kind of start to research to figure out prices and all of that. But don't go there yet. Hold on. Before you go to the website, let me explain what I'm talking about. So hold on.
So instead of having your audience go to the link in the bio, all they have to do is comment a trigger word. So I work with this company that helps me set up these trigger words. And so here's how it works. I set up this trigger word. Then, you send them a personalized DM with all the details. So as soon as someone engages with your content on social media, you can start a real-time conversation with them. So I did this for my book. So during the Two Weeks Notice book launch, we told our audience, “Comment the word book to grab a copy of Two Weeks Notice.” So they would go into my DMs on Instagram, type in the word book, and I would instantly send them a link to where they can go preorder my book and then a link to where they can get all my bonuses. This was all set up in advance.
And the reason we do this is people are getting more fatigued with “link in bio.” And also, a lot of us like to use the link in bio, like Linktree, where you click it, and there's lots of different things they can click on. So now I can get on video and say, “DM me the word book, and I'll send you,” or “DM me the word list building, and I'll send you a link to my free training,” or whatever it might be. And we set these up in advance. And then, when they get into our world, we actually ask if they want to be on a VIP list. And if they want to do that, then we can send them a DM whenever we want.
So in the last four months, we've grown our email list by seven thousand new email subscribers, and over five thousand nine hundred, or almost six thousand, people are on my VIP DM list, meaning they want to hear from me more regularly about different offers and different fun things coming down the pipeline. This is more advanced. It's an expensive strategy, but it works. And so if you're struggling with Facebook ads and you want to try your money somewhere else, School of Bots, tell them Amy sent you, this one can go a long way.
Okay. So that was trend number one. And I just covered a lot, and we have six more trends to go. But you understand what that trend is, right? It's personalization. So out of all the things I just showed you, which one kind of speaks to you the most? Like, out of the different strategies—the chatbots, the VideoAsk, the concierge team, doing the Loom videos and customer support—what speaks to you the most? Where's the low-hanging fruit? What could you implement in your next launch?
Now, I know some of you are thinking, “Amy, I don't even have my course done yet.” We are going to talk about that. But you are launching this year, my friend, so you're going to need these strategies. So maybe even think, what was your favorite one? Get into the comments. Let me know.
Okay. Trend number two, short-form video. You've heard about it. You've seen it a lot. I'm talking Instagram Reels. I'm talking YouTube Shorts. That's all the rage right now. I'm talking about TikTok. According to Forbes, this is a trend that will only continue to grow.
So if you haven't been active in these formats, now is the time. If you're really new to this, start by spending some time on the platforms, watching short-form videos. Watch Reels on Instagram. See what catches your eye. See what people are doing in your industry. See what the big shots are doing, because it's likely working for them. I want you to start experimenting with this because it goes a long way.
And in fact, I want to share a few easy ways that you can use short-form video, and for most of us, it would be Instagram reels. A lot of you don't have YouTube big, thriving channels yet, a lot of you aren’t on TikTok, but many of you are on Instagram. So let’s talk about Reels.
The first thing you can do is you can create a really short Reel, sharing your favorite book of the week or favorite book of the month or even make a series about your favorite reads. Like, maybe every week, you’re sharing something new and why you love it. That's a Reel. And if you want to share my book, we're going to really celebrate that.
Moving on. Another thing you can do is you can take a clip of yourself doing something you love, but they don't hear you talking. They just see you. Like, here, I'm in an interview right now, so I'm getting interviewed about my book. But you can do it about teaching, gardening, dancing, sewing, whatever you do in your business. And then on top of it, you put an inspirational soundbite, whether it's your own soundbite, or there's a lot of inspirational soundbites already created on Instagram Reels, and you can just overlay it. Do you have to figure out how to do it? Yes, you do. Is it easier than you think? Yes, it is. Trust me on that one. You can figure this out. But they see you, and they hear something inspirational. So easy.
Here's another one. Grab the top things that you can't live without as an entrepreneur and share them with your audience. So this is a short video where I'm sharing, like, all these different things I love, including my remarkable digital notebook. But you can share with people what you do and what you love to do behind the scenes in terms of running your business.
And then, here's one from my girl Jasmine Star. Use a clip of you working at your desk or walking on the treadmill, and maybe have the text say, “Here's what's been inspiring me lately.” So you’re just talking over it, which Reels gives you an opportunity to do this. So Jasmine is just typing at her computer. Then, she's talking over it. And I love that because it's so easy. And add a little fun music, maybe some trending music; that always helps. You can do this.
One note of caution when it comes to short-form content. Digital marketer and content creator Jay Clouse, he made a great point that I want to share with you. He said, “Short form is great for discovery”— building a bigger audience—”and reaching new people. It's not great for developing deep trust and getting somebody to buy a higher-priced product.” So you want to do them. But you have to remember that once you capture your audience's attention, make sure that you are still creating weekly content that will nurture them and add value and continue to deepen that relationship so that, then, when you're ready to promote your digital course, the trust is there.
So you all know me well, right? You know what I mean by “weekly original content.” You got to blog, podcast, do a weekly video show, or do a live Q&A on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever you want to do it, every single week.
So here's my next question for you. Come back to me. If you got distracted, come back to me. How many of you—I want a yes or not yet, because there's no noes here. A yes or not yet—how many of you, rain or shine, for at least the last three months, are blogging once a week or podcasting once a week or doing a video once a week or doing a live Q&A once a week or you're going live in a private Facebook group that your community is in once a week? Now, I want yes, if for the last three months, rain or shine, once a week. And I want a not yet, just to tell me that you're committed to at least exploring this.
I know many of you are not doing this yet, but once you start to do it and you give yourself time, I'm going to promise you, this is the missing link. This is likely why you're struggling to grow your audience, why people aren't following you on social media enough, why you're not growing your email list. It's that weekly original content. So maybe today your biggest takeaway is you're getting your digital course done, and you're making sure you're creating weekly original content. It could change the game for you.
So I just want to remind you, this is how you build the deep relationships. Many of you really feel connected to me because I'm in your earbuds every Tuesday and Thursday. I've been sharing with you since 2013 about online-marketing strategies. You see me as your go-to source because I continue to show up for you. We have a trust between us. That didn't come overnight. It took me a while to get there, and I had to stay dedicated to showing up for you every single week, even when I sometimes didn't feel like it. Sometimes I don't feel like podcasting. It's rare, but sometimes it happens. Sometimes I don't feel like working in my business. It happens. But I still show up because I'm very clear about my why. I want to help you build a business and a life by your own design. So I got to show up for you because I want you to show up for yourself. That's my why. We'll talk a little bit more about your why in a moment.
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All right. We're moving on to trend number three, diversify your offer. So, in this economic climate, we're seeing more consumer hesitation all around. That's where diversifying your offer comes in, so that people at all different financial levels can engage with you. This can both look like offering a low-ticket product and possibly, maybe, an upsell or a higher-ticket product.
I love to teach you by example. So let me give you an example here. Last year we added a paid boot camp for both of my digital courses. So for List Builders Society, many of you might have been there. Give me some emojis. Let me know in the comments, were you present at last year's Subscribed or this year’s Subscribed? It was thirty-seven dollars, and it was all about getting started with growing your email list. Or many of you joined me last year in my boot camp that was forty-seven dollars, Course Confident: How to Get Going with Your Digital Course. I take these boot camps very seriously.
They’re really cheap, but they’re very valuable. You get to see my teaching style. It's an introduction to what I teach and what I offer, at a very affordable price. This has changed my business, my friends, because it's an entry—it's like a low-pressure entry, no barrier, thirty-seven bucks. Most people are like, if they're serious, they want to do it.
Now, on the whole flip side, I also launched a brand-new one-on-one coaching program. It's called Your Digital Course, and it's for my students who want to work one on one and get their digital course finished in ninety days. They want a one-on-one coach. They want the attention. They want the accountability. They want the troubleshooting. So they're willing to pay a premium price to get it done. So this is more high end. This boot camp is more low end. I'm seeing that diversifying my offers, having lots of different ways to work with me, that is something that's working right now. I don't want to add twenty new things to the mix. But some of these smaller things and then a bigger coaching program makes a huge difference.
But don't just take my word for it. Let me give you an example. So this is Tracy. And Tracy has a digital course helping entrepreneurs get unstuck and grow their businesses. She also offers three guides for seventeen each, or a bundle for thirty-four, which helps get new people into her world. So she's got a bigger program and a smaller program, or smaller offers.
So here's what this could look like in yours. You can add a paid boot camp or a paid challenge. You can try sites like Patreon and Substack to monetize your content, to monetize your work. You can add a VIP option to your digital course. I teach you that in Digital Course Academy, how to offer a VIP upsell. Or maybe you want to include some one-on-one coaching like I'm doing now. So there's so many different things that you can do, but you got to diversify your offers.
Now, I'm not saying add a bunch of offers. Remember, keep it simple; get fancy later. But over time, those highs and those low offers, they make a really big difference.
All right. We're moving right along to trend number four, values-driven genuine content. People want to do business with companies that they see themselves aligned with and companies that they can relate to. And that means they want to see your values as a brand played out in your content. They want to see you and your team, if you have one, advocating for what you stand for. That might include including some behind-the-scenes type content that shows you living out your values both professionally and personally.
Like Jenna, Jenna Kutcher here. This picture speaks volumes. She's all about body positivity on top of what she does in her business. Or my friend Luvvie. She posts about her community. Or my girl Jasmine. She posts about showing her daughter what is possible. That last picture there, that is Jasmine at my book event. She spoke there, and she brought her little girl. And when Jasmine was on stage, if you see that screen behind you, her little girl was in this room watching her mom. And she kept saying, “That's my momma. That's my momma.” That little girl gets to see her mom do big things, and then Jasmine shares why that's important to her, on social media. That's not the content Jasmine sells; that’s the content she believes in. That makes her who she is.
We need to do more of that. I could do a better job at sharing things behind the scenes of what I care about most. Does it make you vulnerable? It does. It does. Jasmine sometimes gets emails of people giving their opinion of, should she bring her daughter to events or not? Or is she mothering right? How dare they? But it happens. We’re going to get the negativity. We're going to get people to say, “You shouldn't do that.” But if we believe in it, the people that really resonate with us and believe in it, too, they will find us. So we've got to get more comfortable with the negative comments as well, including me. I'm very sensitive, and I do not like them. Who does? They're going to happen. But those are not your people. And we have to remember that.
So share what you believe in. It's less about the perfectly polished feeds and more about storytelling. You can connect with your community more when you show that you are open and vulnerable and you care about things so deeply that you're willing to share them, even if you're going to get the negative comments.
You also want to make sure that your messaging is genuine. Here's something to pay attention to. Consumers are getting smarter and way more savvy, and they're very put off by overly exaggerated statements. You know them. “Work three hours a week and make seven figures.” “You can get your dog completely trained after a one-hour workshop.” No, Scout's not going to be trained after one hour of workshopping, but maybe he'll get closer to not jumping on people when we open the door. Don’t get me started. But I think it’s important. You've got to share real results, you have to be very, very careful not to exaggerate, and take people behind the scenes about things you care about.
So this trend is important. People are paying attention. They want to be aligned with your brand. They don't just want to like your product, they want to be aligned with your brand, so share with them what you're all about.
All right, trend number five, motivating action. So in today's market, getting people to opt in, like, get your list-building freebie and take action, it is difficult at times. I've seen this. Like, my show up rates. If I don't go the extra mile to do something special to get people to show up, they'll decline. And we've seen ads, paid advertising, get so expensive that when I use it for list building, when I use them for webinars, I'm paying a lot of money to do so.
So what do we do about that? How do we motivate action? Well, there are some strategies that have worked well for me. Number one, in some cases I have not offered a replay, including today. Now, is that hard for me? It is. I want to please everyone and make everyone happy. Are there certain people that are on a totally different time zone, and they're going to need a replay? Yes. They’ll write into customer support. If it's 2 a.m. for them right now, I'm going to accommodate that. But for those of us that we can make time for this, you are here live, you are getting something out of this that someone that says, “I'm going to catch the replay one day,” will never get out of this. You should be so proud of yourself that you felt that you and your business are important enough to show up live, even though you've got a hundred freaking things to do on your to-do list.
When people show up live, they take action, they pay better attention, and they're really focused. I know this. I've been doing this for far too long not to know that personally. So sometimes we do not offer replays, and that way, we're making a bigger impact for the people that show up.
Another thing that we do is that we offer something that they can get if they show up live, like some kind of bonus, some kind of extra training, maybe a Q&A. It makes a big difference. So we often add a show-up-live bonus, and that makes a huge difference, too. So if you want to offer that replay, but you really want people to get on live—for the record, you will make more sales if people show up live to your webinars, to your boot camps, to your challenges—offer a show-up-live bonus. This is how we can help people get into action.
Gary Vaynerchuk said this on his podcast, “People on social want less of an expert and more of an enthusiast.” So I'm taking a quick little turn here. Your value on social media is showing your community that you're excited to work on the same goals that they're working on and helping to motivate them into action. I thought this was so valuable. This is important for us to know this year. And Gary always has a pulse on what's absolutely working. I think this makes sense. I had to think about this one for a second, and I thought, well, I'm an expert, and I know my students want me to guide them and teach them what I know. Like, these things have worked for me; now I'm showing them to you. That's very true. However, at the same time, you all need to know that there's things I need to work on. Like, I shared with you, I could do better at sharing my values on social media. I could do better by being more personal and behind the scenes so you know as a person what I believe in and what I stand for. And I also said that's very vulnerable, and you'll get a lot of negative comments about it, and you have to be okay with that, something that I, too, struggle with. So I am an expert, but I'm also an enthusiast. I'm also in the trenches with you. I'm also dealing with insecurities in my business and hiring challenges and list-building challenges. I have it all. But I need to make sure that I share that with you guys so I'm not presenting a shiny exterior and then behind the scenes, I'm struggling with a few things. So this, I think, is important what Gary's saying here, and I believe him.
So with this idea of getting people to take action and getting people to show up, I wanted to share with you one of my students, Kristie. So Kristie emailed each person who registered for her webinar a quick forty-five-second video the night before the webinar, saying that she couldn't wait to see them tomorrow. So it took her three hours to do this, and her show-up rate was over 50 percent. I don't have a show-up rate of over 50 percent. A normal show-up rate’s 25 percent. I'm usually at 38, 40 percent show-up rate. But 50? Come on. She put the time in, and she asked herself, “Where would it be worth putting my time?”
And speaking of that, it's important to use the 80/20 rule here. So focus on serving and retaining your existing leads and your customers versus—pay attention here. This is important—only focusing on acquiring new customers. So those relationships that you've already built are so important. People that already raised their hand and said, “I want to come to your webinar. I want to be a part of this,” so incredibly important. So I want to make sure that you understand that you, my friend, you have the ability to make it personal. And I just want to make sure that you know that.
So this year, we're working on reengaging our email list. We're working on nurture campaigns and updating our weekly newsletter. We definitely will share those strategies with you, but we know how important it is to make that personal touch.
Okay. So here is another example for you, Sherry Edwards. I've never shared about Sherry before, so this is fun. She sent personalized video messages to anyone who replied to her emails, sent her DMs on Instagram, or showed up live to her last webinar. Can you imagine how far this goes, that if you just jumped into someone's DM to say, “Hey, Sherry. I loved your last webinar,” and you get a video from Sherry, saying, “I'm so glad you were there. Here's the biggest takeaways I want you to have from that webinar”? Imagine getting a reply, a video reply. No doubt. One of my favorite tools to use for video replies that you can put in an email is BombBomb. B-O-M-B-B-O-M-B. I don't know why the company’s named that, but it is. It's very weird to me.
Okay. Moving on. We cannot talk about trends without talking about the elephant in the room, right? And the elephant in the room here is artificial intelligence. Like, it is something that is, like, taking over. Do I think that it will take over people's jobs? Maybe some. But I really don’t think that’s the big issue here. I don't think we're going to see a sweeping of people out of work because of ChatGPT. But I do think it's something that you cannot ignore.
For those of you who were in Subscribed boot camp, I already went over this, but I'm going to go over it really quickly. So essentially, ChatGPT is what's working for most of us right now, where we're getting content ideas; we're getting past writer's block; we're getting inspired for social-media posts in new ways.
So I have a student, and she teaches women in their forties, fifties, sixties how to get healthier. So she was struggling with some content ideas. And I said, “Go to ChatGPT, type in ‘Can you create a blog post to help women over forty who struggle with sleeping?’” Boom. It gave her an entire blog post that she could essentially copy and paste. I think she should finesse it. I think she should make sure it's in her own words. But if you look closely, there's ideas in here that she could literally create podcast episodes about. She could take number six and do an entire blog post, podcast, video about it. She could take number two and create a lead magnet. If you're stuck and you don't have content ideas, use ChatGPT. It's something you cannot ignore.
Now, let's pretend that that blog post was written, but she said, “You know what? I want to make it more conversational, and I want to make sure it's written by a woman who's actually in her forties.” Boom. Now they've changed it around to make it more conversational and written by a woman who's actually in the trenches with them.
How about a social-media post? So she could type in, “Can you create an Instagram post about the importance of sleep for women over forty who struggle with sleep?” There you go. Not only is this a great Instagram post, they included emojis. Like, copy and paste this or tweak it, but she is now getting Instagram-post ideas.
But what if she said, “Wait. Can you make it more fun and light? Like, I want a different tone to this.” Notice what they say at the top: “Hey, there, fabulous ladies over forty. Are you tired of feeling tired all the time? It's time to catch some z’s and prioritize your sleep.” That is good copy. And, again, all the emojis. They made it fun. They used the hashtags. This is ChatGPT.
Do I think you should copy and paste this stuff? No. I think you could make it better in your own voice. But never ever again do you need to look at a blank Google Doc. Use ChatGPT. Don't go there now. But this is a URL you can use. It is free. You have to create an account. It's amazing. It's not the end all, be all. And there's going to be restrictions and things are, like, uncovering themselves by the minute. So I did not just give you a comprehensive training on it. But I hope I sparked your attention just a little bit, or your curiosity just a little bit.
And again, a little word of caution. I want you to explore the new stuff, like ChatGPT. But also, you got to get rid of the stuff you've been doing that isn't working.
So in the comments right now, can you tell me something that is not working? Can you get in the comments right now and tell me—be honest, be courageous—what is not working in your business right now? Either it's a mindset shift you need to make, or it's an actual strategy that you're like, “Screw this. It’s not working for me,” that you either need to change it, enhance it, recalibrate it, or get rid of it. So let me know in the comments. I want to see those comments going, what is not working for you? IG Reels or Facebook groups. Facebook groups don’t work for me as well as they used to. Facebook ads. So I'm not saying get rid of these things, but let's recalibrate and see if we can do them differently. But we have to be honest with ourselves that not everything we're doing in our business is working.
All right. So we are down to our final trend. We're in our home stretch. Make pivoting a part of your plan. So if there's anything we've learned over the last three years, it's to be ready to pivot at a moment's notice, whether there's a global pandemic—please, no more—an economic crisis; a technology going dark or shifting its algorithm—could happen any day—or even just your work-life preferences. You've changed. You want something different. We have to be prepared for uncertain times.
I've learned in my last fourteen years of doing business that the only constant in life is change, and we don't have to fear that. Instead, we can use it to create stabilizing structures in our business and our mindset to ride the tides.
All right, my friend. We've made it to the end of this episode, and I hope you'll agree with me that this was a jam-packed episode. I loved sharing these insights with you. And as I mentioned early on, you don't need to do all of these things in your business, but you might want to pick two or three of them and just test them out. So if you haven't already, I want you to pull out your notes, start going through the seven different updates and trends and technologies that I talked about in this episode, and I want you to think about which one or a few of them could really make a difference in your business. So I want you to pick, like, two or three of them max, and then start creating an action plan to implement them in this next quarter. After that, I want you to do an inventory of the things you're currently doing that aren't working so well. So consider either cutting them out of your digital-marketing plan—I know, scary but essential—or recalibrating so you can focus your time and energy where it counts.
Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast. I'll see you next week, same time, same place. Bye for now.
