62 – 5 Marketing Tips with Danielle Harris

Laura

0:04
Hi, this is Laura Lee Griffin.

Nikki

0:06
And this is Nikki May with the Startist Society, inspiring you to stop getting in your own way and start building an art biz and life that you love.

Laura

0:15
We are artists who believe strongly in the power of community, accountability, following your intuition, taking small actionable steps and breaking down the barriers of fear and procrastination, that keep you stuck.

Nikki

0:30
Follow along with us on our creative business journey as we encourage you on yours.

We recently introduced you to Danielle Harris, a marketing expert for creative entrepreneurs. So if you haven’t had a chance to listen to that episode yet, be sure to check it out. She gave us some great marketing advice. And today, we have her back to share with us her five best tips for marketing your business without feeling overwhelmed. Danielle, what’s your first tip for us?

Danielle

1:03
My first tip is to focus on one marketing medium. Especially when you’re first starting out, you’re going to have the urge to be everywhere and on every single thing all the time. Resist that urge.

Nikki

1:15
And that’s just gonna get you super overwhelmed to where you probably freeze and don’t do any. So pick one platform.

Laura

1:23
Yeah, that’s good advice.

Danielle

1:24
Absolutely.

Nikki

1:25
Yeah.

Laura

1:26
All right, what’s tip number two?

Danielle

1:29
My second tip is to experiment, you absolutely want to figure out what’s going to work best for you. Because what works for others might not work for you and what works for you might not work with others. But then also on top of experimenting, give some time for the experiment to work. So you can’t just post one thing, one time, and say like, oh, that didn’t work, try something else. No, you have to give it time. Do it a couple different times. And in a true scientific-type method thing, you don’t want to have too many variables going on. So if you’re like, Okay, I did this one thing, one time, let me change one thing about that, See if that works. So if you’re looking for a general rule of thumb, give something like six weeks, see if that works out for you.

Laura

2:10
Yeah, I love that. Because a lot of times we think that somebody did it a specific way. And so that’s the only way that we’ll succeed is if we do it the exact same way. But experimenting is awesome, because it will be unique to each person.

Nikki

2:22
Yeah, and definitely one post saying I have this for sale, and then getting discouraged because nobody bought it. You know, you’ve definitely got to give it time because it takes, what’s the what’s the marketing rule, it takes people like seven times seeing something before they pull the trigger?

Danielle

2:40
Absolutely, and that’s what the assumption that they saw every single post that you had. So you know with the algorithms, depending on what platform you’re using if you’re using Instagram, or Facebook, or whatever, people may or may not see every single time that you post, so you could post every single day for an entire month. And you could still, someone could have only seen it like four times. And if it takes seven times, then you’re gonna have to post more than just that one time. So keep at it for a good amount of time before you say, Oh, this doesn’t work.

Nikki

3:12
Yeah.

Laura

3:12
That makes sense.

Nikki

3:14
And what’s your third tip for us?

Danielle

3:16
My third tip is to know your brand story. So know the story of yourself, and then know the story of what you and your business are trying to accomplish. Because that’s what’s going to connect people with you. So the better you have that nailed down, the better you’re going to be able to connect with people.

Nikki

3:33
Can you give us a little bit of example about what you mean about brand story?

Danielle

3:38
Yeah, so it could be how you started off. So it could be about yourself, you could be that I’m Danielle, I was always attracted to the color blue. And whenever I went around something, I always picked up something that was blue. And next thing I knew I was painting, and I use exclusively shades of blue, in all of the artwork that I create, because it gives me a calming sense.

Nikki

4:03
Yeah, that’s perfect.

Danielle

4:04
Some variation of that could be your story as to why you have your medium, of why you do whatever, exactly like that. Be very clear about that, that origin story, why you do something the way that you do it, why you value whatever it is that you value. Make that very clear, so that people could be like, oh, yeah, I know Danielle, she’s an artist that always uses blue because you know that calmed her, or whatever it is. You want to be able to have people say oh, yeah, like that’s, that’s that person and that’s that thing that I connect with that person because that story was repeated and very clear.

Nikki

4:37
That’s Nikki, she’s the one always talking about bourbon.

Laura

4:42
Alright, so what’s tip number four?

Danielle

4:45
Tip number four is to know your numbers. So that sounds a little intimidating as far as like oh, like…

Nikki

4:50
Not for Laura.

Laura

4:54
I am a numbers geek.

Nikki

4:55
She’s a numbers girl.

Danielle

4:57
Yeah, I mean, sometimes people love it. I kind of like, when I’m in the mood to go do a deep dive on that. That could be like followers or your web traffic and stuff. But it could also be like, how long does a process take for anything? So does it take you an hour and a half to create an email? Knowing that type of number is very important as you’re organizing, getting your day together? So know all your numbers for any prospective.

Nikki

5:24
Yeah, that’s great advice, because I know, it’s true for me and I think it’s true for most of us, we underestimate how long something’s going to take.

Laura

5:34
Yeah, for sure.

Danielle

5:36
Absolutely.

Nikki

5:37
So that would be super, super helpful. Okay, and what is your fifth and final tip for us for today?

Danielle

5:44
My fifth tip is to trust your own knowledge. Especially when you’re first starting off, there are a lot of things that are pulling you in a lot of different directions. And especially if you don’t have business experience, per se, you’ll say like, well, everyone else, like knows more about business than I do, I don’t know anything, I can’t trust anything that I have. But everyone has their own unique vision. And specifically when it comes to marketing, it’s about you and stuff about you. But it’s also about the people that you’re trying to connect to. So how are you trying to connect and trust that process, there definitely can be people to help you hone in and refine how you connect with that. But trust your internal gut of like, oh, this is the general direction that I want to go into. And don’t completely ignore that or say that you don’t have any answers within yourself. You do have answers, you know more than you think you do. So hone in on that.

Laura

6:37
Trust that intuition.

Nikki

6:39
Yeah, I think it’s definitely true that we know way more than we think we do. We just second guess ourselves. So if you just listen to that voice, you definitely know a lot more than you’re aware of.

Danielle

6:52
Oh, yeah.

Laura

6:52
But but don’t overthink it.

Nikki

6:56
That is also Laura’s specialty.

Danielle

7:02
I mean, that would be my other secret sixth tip is to just start doing something. If you think something’s a good idea, try to start it. Yeah, see what happens. You never know.

Laura

7:13
Yeah, yeah. And it’s not the end of the world if that thing doesn’t pan out. It’s just an experiment.

Nikki

7:19
Yeah, nobody’s sitting there on the other end, checking off how many times you experimented and failed? Except you.

Danielle

7:26
Exactly.

Laura

7:27
Well, Danielle, thank you so much for coming back and sharing your knowledge with us. We could always use a little advice on how to get better with our marketing right Nikki?

Nikki

7:36
Are you looking at me with judgment, Laura?

Laura

7:40
Pot over here calling the kettle black.

Nikki

7:45
We can all stand to use Danielle’s awesome tips to get better at marketing consistently. Right. So we’re going to help you out and to get a downloadable PDF of Danielle’s tips and tricks, visit startistsociety.com/marketing tips.

Laura

8:02
Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.