How To Stop Sucking At Marketing - With Strategist Megan Brame
May 18, 2021Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Megan Brame.
Megan is a 5x award-winning Advanced Digital Marketing Strategist who helps entrepreneurs develop marketing initiatives that create ride-or-die fans for life.
Why you've got to check out Megan's episode:
- Discover how Megan helps Entrepreneurs who don't have a traditional business background that may be growing but don't really know how to get to the next level.
- Learn how Megan's clients may get intimidated by business jargon, marketing initiatives and sales, and end up with imposter syndrome.
- Why so many start up business entrepreneurs get stuck before they reach their fullest potential and how Megan helps her clients with the mindset needed to grow and run a successful business.
- Understand why you shouldn't follow your competitors and instead go to where your people are and use that platform the way they use it.
- Get access to Megan's Marketing Audit Spreadsheet which helps you to lay out your quarterly marketing goals, and keep yourself accountable to achieving your goals.
- Also hear how Megan ended up with 20,000 soap samples in her studio after a business deal fell through.
Resources / Links
Transcript
Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to the Flow And Grow Expert Interviews. The place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.
Hello. I'm Tom Bailey. And I'm joined today by Megan Brame, who is a five times award-winning advanced digital marketing specialist. So, Megan, hello, and a very warm welcome to today's episode.
Megan Brame: Thank you so much for having me. I am so delighted to be here.
Tom Bailey: Amazing. Thank you. And whereabouts are you in the world right now?
Megan Brame: I am an upstate New York, so I am right on Lake Ontario.
Tom Bailey: Incredible. Thank you so much. And let me get onto the subject of Megan then in more detail. So, Megan helps entrepreneurs develop marketing initiatives that create a ride or die fans for life. The title for today's episode is How To Stop Sucking At Marketing.
And Megan is going to show us how to do that in just seven minutes.
Megan Brame: Hopefully
Tom Bailey: No pressure. And question number one today who are your ideal clients?
Megan Brame: So, I really like to work with entrepreneurs who don't have a traditional business background. They've just kind of made it up as they go along and they are growing, but they're not really sure what they're doing at the same time.
So, I really like working with people who are just at that next level, but they don't know how to get to there and they need some help. So, that's who I really love to work with.
Tom Bailey: Got it. Thank you. I'm sure those people have lots of different challenges, but what's typically the biggest challenge that they face.
Megan Brame: Well, again, I think that they get intimidated by the fact that they don't have a traditional business background. Like they didn't go to school for business or things like that. And so, they feel like they have a lot of imposter syndrome going on. Also, they don't really know what sort of marketing initiatives will work best for them.
So, they just kind of do like a buckshot, you know, they kind of just go everywhere and see what happens. And it's my job, I think, to really help them focus and figure out what is the lowest hanging fruit for them too. Get what they want accomplished. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Tom Bailey: I've got to, of course. And I guess it's two things that imposter syndrome is huge one for, for the entrepreneur.
But then also, like you said, there's hundreds of different marketing initiatives they could do. So, it's knowing which one to do. So, with these two things happening, then what impact does that typically have on them or their business?
Megan Brame: Oh, I feel like so many people just get stuck and it's no hurdle that they can't overcome. It's the self-imposed wall that they put up. And so, I think that it just really prevents people from reaching their fullest potential. So, that's why I really like to make sure that when I work with my clients, we're really tackling not only marketing, but also the mindset of how you're going to be able to expand your business and accept that you deserve to expand your business.
Tom Bailey: Yeah. Yeah. Understood. Thank you so much. And what is one valuable piece of advice that you might give to somebody to really help them solve this problem that they've got in their, in their business right now?
Megan Brame: So, my best tip is, and this is going to sound counterproductive, but don't follow your competitors. Don't go on Instagram because you see your competitors on Instagram, because most likely what has happened is they saw their competitors on Instagram and so on, and nobody knows what they're doing. So, instead of thinking, getting this fear of missing out this FOMO, Go to where your people are and use that platform the way they use it. You know, don't go on Instagram, trying to post about jobs, go on LinkedIn and post about jobs, go on Instagram and post beautiful pictures and behind the scenes and things like that.
Tom Bailey: Amazing. Thanks so much. So, so yeah, go where your audience are and interact with them as they interact in an authentic way.
Okay, perfect. And next question then from me is what is one valuable free resource that you might be able to share with people to help them solve this?
Megan Brame: I have this fantastic marketing audit spreadsheet that is totally free. Everybody can download it. What it does is it takes you every quarter through your marketing goals and it helps you lay out what you're going to focus on this quarter.
What you're not going to focus on this quarter, which is just as important and how to keep yourself accountable. And it's totally free. It's something that I use with all of my clients and they are free to check it out. I think you have the URL, so.
Tom Bailey: Yes. Your notes. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. I've got that here. So it's Meganbrame.com/marketing audit. And I'll put that in the show notes as Megan just mentioned. Fantastic. So, we'll get that up there. And then the next question from me is what would you say is your greatest failure that you've ever made in life or in business? And what did you learn from it?
Megan Brame: My, my first company was a soap and skincare company, and I had a deal with a very large subscription box service to deliver 20,000 samples to them to help promote my brand. When it was ready to ship them, they backed out on it. And I was sitting in this tiny, tiny studio with 20,000 soap samples, you know, or, and I just like, what am I going to do? And I realized that this was going to be something that was either going to break me or something that I was going to not accept.
And so, I had met the founder of that company at a cocktail party before, and I actually had her contact information. So, I reached out to her and I said, Hey, we had this deal that your people have backed out. I'm a small business. Like I hate to play this card, but I can't, I can't accept that. And it ended up that it worked out and it became one of their best-selling products in their subscription box.
So yeah, I had this terrifying moment of thinking. I was just stuck in that I was at this impasse and what I learned from that is one it's never as bad as you think it is. Like, it feels terrible right in that moment, but you could pass it and there are ways to correct. The mistakes that you've made and move on and make it successful.
Tom Bailey: And don't be afraid to ask for help as well. If you feel like you might need that. Yeah. Amazing lesson. Yeah. Thank you so much. And the last question for me to say then is what is the one question that I should have asked you today that will also give great value to our audience?
Megan Brame: This is probably just my marketing nerd in me, but I wish people would ask me what my favorite marketing campaign of all time was.
What was it? I love the Blair Witch Project when it was first coming out, like the internet was still kind of new, online marketing was still kind of new. And I love talking about it because it's so hard to replicate. It can never really be done the way that it was done there. And it shows that you don't have to have this giant marketing budget.
You just have to have a really creative idea on how to target the people who will get what you're trying to do.
Tom Bailey: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. And that can be used in so many different ways. Sometimes you need to just take some, take some time, have a think about it and, and, and start innovating. Exactly. Awesome.
Thanks so much for that final tip. So, Megan, thank you so much again for coming to this interview today and for sharing such great value with our audience.
Megan Brame: I am so thrilled. Thank you so much for having me.
