Are you trying to put all of your eggs in one basket, building a business on rented land?

Take any industry in history and that’s always never a great idea for a sustainable business model.

I’d like to encourage you to use marketing to invite people into your community, however, taking the proper steps on getting the community established and on a platform that is entirely yours.

Dana Magnus shares why building a community on rented land can easily implode in your face after recent complaints from users on social media attest to unfair policy changes.

There are many resources such as an Email List, Patreon or Mighty Networks, learning platforms and more that aren’t social media. However, you must always download your data so you can upload your customer list in a flash, capturing birthdays, addresses, phone numbers, websites, and more.

CSV files filled with accurate, up-to-date, relevant customer information is truly the new version of having 100k followers!

Power words and setting intentions are totally not my inventions.

But, trust me, you are going to want to adopt this because it really helps you to alleviate the overwhelm! 

 You can browse around business podcasts, books, and resources for entrepreneurs- this is totally a thing that focused and action-taking CEOs do to gain momentum and alignment. 

I enjoy focusing on “one thing” because simplicity is absolutely essential if you are a mission-driven business wanting to make an impact on your goals.

Welcoming a new year, a new goal, a new offering, or just a new approach to staying in alignment with the way you want to genuinely and authentically operate and experience your business requires that focus. 

Here are my tips on how to discover your power word and make it stick for the year ahead: 

Refresh your Mindset 

Take some time away from work, meditate, journal, and relax. Unplugging yourself and stepping out of the day-to-day helps you to gain the energy back. 

You can gain so much more insight about what you are called to do and who you are called to be when you aren’t in the middle of the stress, the panic, the responding and the scrambling.

Let’s put it this way-  If you know things aren’t working to your best abilities or your businesses, it really isn’t going to cost you that much more to get away from it all in order to GAIN the things needed to make these pivitol adjustments that will create the necessary changes. 

Reflect & Reconnect

Spend some time looking at the journey behind you. What have you learned? What lessons have you lived through and need to keep top of mind? Where has your energy, time, and resource leak cost you the most? 

You can review your financial statements, look at the lack of voluntary client reviews you have (breathe, this is all part of a process we can fix!), or re-live the most joyful & pinnacle moments of your business over the last 12 months. 

Now, reconnect what has happened to what you want to happen. What resources will it take, what is required of you or your business, and what are you willing to do to make those things happen? 

Hit the Reset Button with small tweaks

A completely freeing practice you can do for yourself is resetting everything! This doesn’t mean deleting your social profiles or offerings and having to start new. Instead, giving up on what you’ve built, find where you can make minor, fine adjustments and reset yourself with this. 

Remember, all-powerful businesses that work really well focus on what is working well, even if it’s boring, and focus the effort on creating solid, sustainable output. You can do the same with the way you run your business! 

Reach Out for Feedback or Guidance

This can be absolutely free of charge, exhilarating, and filled with deep connection. 

Find a business buddy, fill your calendar with our 2-hour/month free CEO Days, or even reach out to me for a  strategy session to dive deep and to give you expert feedback on what an outsider sees about your business. 

Take that insight and turn it into a guiding nudge on what you could be focused on. 

Now that you have taken a few necessary steps to see what you need to see, you may feel one word or phrase just jump out at you. Journal about this word or phrase, think deeply about it for a few more days, and really see how it can play out to build a bigger vision for yourself. 

Where I can support you best is to help you to declare that and make it part of your brand this year. Helping you map out content around it and break it down to emphasize not only the meaning of this powerful phrase or word, but to help it resonate with your ideal clients and make a great impact. 

I can help you with your interpretation of this word and phrase by allowing you to recall experiences in your journey that make for amazing storytelling opportunities that turn into trustworthy personal branding content. 

Last, we can think of the visuals, the photographs, and the graphics needed to create attention-grabbing, scroll-stopping ways to relate your message loud and clear. 

To get started, I would love to invite you to the CEO Days workshop, “CEO Days: 12 Month View & Establishing Your 2023 Power Phrase

Have you ever heard the expression, “junk in, junk out” when it comes to nutrition, habits, and overall wellness?

As wellness is one of my top 4 values (being #2 on my list), I find this exercise along with regular attendance at CEO Days an essential part of keeping up with the health of your business and marketing “department.”

Do you ever evaluate the health of your marketing?

Maybe you feel like you are abiding by your plan, but do you know when it is actually working?

Here is a list of ways to look at your marketing and diagnose where you should be focusing on your efforts!

Please give yourself a rating of 1-10 in each area. 1 being weakest, 10 being strongest!

1. Look in the mirror

   First of all, what do we see? Take a look at your emails, your social feeds, put yourself on the listening end of your spoken elevator pitch- what do you notice? 

   Often, we can pinpoint what we like/ don’t like about others’ marketing, but what about doing a little self-check? We notice from others if their messages or posts made any sense or if it just seemed annoying. Have we taken a look at our own marketing content?
   
   

   1. Does this marketing content make me PROUD of my abilities or do I feel like I’m not giving it my best shot?

   2. What would I rate myself (1-10) on my efforts?
      Rating__________
      
      

2. Look at the metrics

   Data is easily accessible on our platform’s analytics dashboards- have you logged into these?

   Maybe you are taking a look too often and need to make some little “wins” along the way to keep feeling good and guided from these metrics. 

   1. Are my metrics clear and do they make sense?

   2. Am I using the application properly?

   3. How would I rate my performance on these platforms? (1-10)
      Rating__________

   
   

3. Look at who’s engaging vs. who’s looking

   1. Sent an email and ever notice who opened it, but they need a follow up?

   2. Do you have fans on your social media that you haven’t asked to become a client?

   3. Are you getting lots of positive feedback from people, but they never buy?

   4. How would you rate your overall engagement
      Rating__________
      
      

4. Look at what’s up to date

   Go through and make sure all of your systems are up-to-date and consistent

   Log into your multiple platforms- are they all saying the same thing?

   1. Do you see consistency or breaks or confusing elements across all of your systems or platforms?

   2. How would you rate your marketing “freshness” and being accurate with your information?
      Rating__________
      
      

5. Look at feedback

   If you are making a multi-platform funnel or sales flow, don’t stop testing and coming at the process with a critical eye

   If enrolled, ask MKTG Group members in Slack or friends and family to give you honest feedback and say, “who do you think this is intended for what problem am I solving- is the solution clear- would you buy it if you were in my customer’s position, why or why not?
   
   

   1. Do you regularly ask for feedback and how your marketing makes others feel?

   2. How would you rate your overall ability to get honest, non-biased feedback
      Rating__________
      
      

Marketing Health Analysis

Where do you score and what can you improve on?

Come up with a plan

1. If you notice some things need to be nursed back to health, don’t try to do everything overnight, let’s map it out!

2. Come up with a game-plan (below) to space things out and alleviate stress and anxiety around making these big changes:

3. Once you have all of your notes logged in, you can add to your calendar or plan out which weeks in the Impact-Driven MKTG Group, you’d like to work on these things with Dana’s 1-1 support help, the MKTG Group’s support slack channel, or on your own during our accountability work sprint time!

I’d love to hear about your marketing “health” and what you got out of this analysis! If you are interested in working together to nurse your marketing body back to health, let’s schedule a strategy session today!

Photography by Jungle Branch

I suppose I don’t talk often enough about the fact that businesses that prioritize ethics, humanity, the environment, and simply doing more good than harm to our planet by existing is working - working well!

You see, when we think about the way the world of business works, yes it is true that corporations & big powerful entities drive decisions and make the impact on global levels to either help or destroy our planet and the people inside of it. But who gives these entities the power?

Consumer trends, motivations, and values is among the first few steps to really understand when creating any marketing plan. Without knowing what society looks like and how it fits into the world of business, you will have a very hard time speaking to, engaging with, and being relevant to people who will be part of your business community as consumers, referrers, or just advocates of your movement.

Each Wednesday, I encourage us all to participate in #WorldViewWednesday to continue to expand our viewpoint around society. Have challenging arguments to really listen to the other side. Read books & do some research on projects or topic areas you find most interesting to dive into. Learn something new! Get out of your own way, and break some old habits of a belief system that limits your own perspective.

I like to think - there are nearly 8 billion people on the planet- we truly know NOTHING!

Furthermore, if you are looking at the way consumers are behaving and what they truly value, I believe it is social issues. Especially if you are marketing to the highly influential groups such as Gen Z and Millenials- they absolutely LOVE businesses with a great triple bottom line, or B Corporation certified businesses.

I found this lovely resource to give you some sharable, or tweetable, quotes to dive further into the mindset and values of these groups and how doing good in your business is actually the way to go.

As your mission-driven marketing planner, I encourage you to start reflecting on some of these statics and facts and ask yourself, “what is the opportunity for me?”

We want to always be innovating and looking ahead. I invite you to do so with a conversation with me- let’s chat about what is possible for your brand and how you can bring more good into the world!