Crafting an Intentional Marketing Plan with Tayler Cusick-Hollman [Marketing with Intention Series]

Are you being intentional in your marketing? This week, we’re kicking off a brand new series on the podcast all about marketing with intention. Our first guest, Tayler Cusick-Hollman joins us to help lay the foundation of intentionality with crafting a marketing plan. After watching entrepreneurs with small marketing budgets struggle, Tayler developed Enji, a marketing solution for small businesses. Listen in as she shares how to prioritize your marketing efforts, determine your channels, and market with intention!

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Guest Bio:

A marketing consultant and small-business builder (and serial entrepreneur), Tayler is the Founder of Enji. In her newest endeavor, Tayler is taking everything she has learned over nearly a decade of helping small businesses with marketing to design and build a suite of online marketing tools that fit your lifestyle and make sense for you. Because, while you didn’t sign up to be Chief Marketing Officer of your business, at Enji, we believe becoming one doesn’t have to be so daunting—and our goal is to empower you with the tools and solutions you need to make more informed decisions, use your resources more effectively, get creative with how you connect with customers, and ultimately grow.

Today’s episode is brought to you by my Client Hub Template inside the DIY Systems Template Shop. Business owners often have their client information spread across a variety of different tools, making it hard to access the information they need to make critical decisions. That’s why I built the Client Hub Template for Airtable, to take the guesswork out of building your own!

Here are the highlights…

03:54 – The Importance of Marketing for Small Businesses

09:22 – Effective Marketing Strategies and Time Management

19:54 – Leveraging AI for Marketing

24:54 – Training Your AI Copywriter

25:51 – AI and Job Security Concerns

26:52 – The Importance of Feedback in AI

30:10 – Harnessing AI for Customer Insights

32:45 – Consistency in Marketing Efforts

38:52 – Tracking Marketing Performance

45:07 – Introducing Enji: A Marketing Solution

Mentioned in this Episode

Click to Convert by Inkpot Creative

Expanding Your Business through Virtual Summits with KP & Jessie of Inkpot Creative

Connect with Tayler

Website: enji.co

Instagram: instagram.com/enji_co

Facebook: facebook.com/enjimarketing

Podcast: prettyokaypodcast.com/

Youtube: youtube.com/channel/UCXUQ06KoBdHN91sFu-NSV4Q

Review the Transcript:

Colie: Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the business first creatives podcast guys. This is the first episode in a brand new series.

And if you’ve listened to my previous episode about how I build these series, I did this. Completely different, completely wrong, depending on how you look at it. Instead of interviewing a few people like I normally do and be like, Oh, that would make a good series. Let me just add one more person to the mix.

Guys, I planned this series from beginning to end. And now it has eight fucking people in it. This is why I don’t plan a series. Okay. Eight people. I have invited for this series, which is the marketing with intention series. And first up is our girl Taylor. I am going to let her introduce herself. She is amazing.

Um, and we’re also going to talk about some tech. You guys know, I love to talk about tech. So Taylor, welcome to the podcast and give the audience an introduction.

Tayler: Thank you so much for having me. I mean, first off, y’all like we, uh, we immediately bonded over our mutual love of rainbows. So I, you know, Colie’s wearing rainbow glasses. I have a rainbow shirt on. I ski in a rainbow jacket. We are, we are simpatico on the rainbow front, but my name is Tayler Cusick-Hollman and I’m the founder of Enji.

My background is in small business marketing consulting, and I’ve been doing that since 2015. And because my like, Corner of the universe. I hang out with way too many boys and way too many boys in technology. When I really realized, Hey, there’s this, there’s this really existential problem that small business owners who have to do their own marketing have.

And so my brain went to, I’ll create some software, right? So, um, hi, that’s where, that’s how we got to the whole tech startup founder title. But I mean, really over the course of my time being self employed because I’m a terrible corporate employee, all of my, like, heart and soul has been pouring into different ways that I can make marketing happen.

Way less shitty for the people who have to do it for themselves because it is so important to each of our businesses And it’s so emotionally loaded With all of these things on top of it just taking so much of the time that we all don’t feel like we have and so that’s why I wake up every day and I’m like how do I make this even just a little bit more accessible and a little bit easier and faster for folks so that’s what you’ll find me tippy tapping at my computer for way too long every day minus when I’m downhill mountain biking or skiing.

Colie: Yeah, I mean, so Taylor enjoys the outdoors. That is where we parted ways, guys. She started talking about her love of skiing and I was like, okay, we are no longer friends. Let’s move on with this podcast interview. I mean, everybody knows I’m definitely not an outdoorsy person, but guys, the reason that Taylor is here is because in the rest of this series, you are going to hear from from some really amazing small business owners who are going to tell you about the different kinds of marketing that can help your business.

But Taylor is here to like, kickstart this whole thing. I have listened to Taylor on three different podcast episodes recently. She and I were also both part of Click to Convert, which was an online marketing summit put on by Inkpot Creative, who have also been on this podcast before. But I remember listening to her presentation in that summit and I was like, Oh.

I should invite Taylor to the podcast. And y’all know me, if I don’t make a note, I don’t remember that shit. So then it was like three weeks later when I heard her on someone else’s podcast. I don’t remember who the first one was, but then she was on Jordan Gill’s and you guys know, I love Jordan.

Jordan’s been on this podcast. And I was like, okay, no, Taylor should come on. Oh, now I remember whose podcast it was. You were on the Kara report. Kara happens to be my blog writer. And I was like, that was when I sent you the message. Do you want to come be on my podcast? But guys, what Taylor has talked about on other people’s podcasts is marketing by accident and how we have to get us all to stop.

But before we talk about that topic, Taylor, I want to talk about the importance of marketing for small business owners in the first place. Because I feel like none of us jump into entrepreneurship with ease. any fucking clue of how much marketing is going to play a role in our business. So let’s just start with like, I don’t know if we want to start with some numbers, but like if we are talking about a hundred percent of the time that you spend in your business, doing your marketing, doing your communicating, doing the actual service that you provide, doing your bookkeeping, all the pieces of the puzzle, How much should we be devoting to our marketing?

And I know that it’s going to vary, but how much should we be devoting to our marketing?

Tayler: You know, I have to, I have to start my answer with, it’s the biggest bait and switch of all time. When you start your own business and you’re like, I am going to, I’m going to bake cakes. That’s what my, like I’m going to spend my time in the kitchen doing this thing that I love. And then all of a sudden it’s like, you’re going to spend your time, Looking at your accounting software and tracking down invoices and trying to get people to understand that you even exist so that you can bake said cakes, right?

It is just, it’s this really amazing opportunity that, and, I mean, it’s a big like jump that we all take to start our own businesses. And there’s just so much of it that we are so in the dark about. And marketing is a huge piece of that. So my, my answer to your question of how much time should we be spending on marketing is I’m going to give you like a very non answer answer.

And that’s, and that’s however much time you can dedicate to it. And, you know, I talk to small business owners, like it’s my job. I mean, it kind of is my job, but. One of the questions that we ask in the marketing strategy questionnaire, that’s a part of how someone creates their marketing strategy in Engie, is how much, how many hours per week do you have to work on marketing, to dedicate to marketing?

And I can’t remember the exact percentage, but it’s like, it’s over or about a third of small business owners who have answered that questionnaire tell us they have one to two hours a week. And I think that that is so important. For everyone to know, because most people, when I ask them that question in real life, or at least I can see their face, they make this face.

They’re like, I have like an hour or two a week, and they’re really kind of embarrassed or ashamed to say that number because it is so small. That’s kind of the norm. You know, every once in a while I meet someone who says, I have more like four to six hours a week, but it is so rare. So, so rare that I ever talked to someone who says, Oh yeah, I have like 20 hours a week that I can work on my marketing.

Cause if that’s the case, then that business has probably already gotten to a certain point where they’ve been able to outsource other components. Right. And so then they, as the business owner can spend the majority of their time doing strategic things. But for those of us who are in the weeds, It is not a lot of time.

And so it’s whenever someone is sitting there and trying to decide how much time, finger quote, should they spend on marketing? The answer is however much time you can protect, like fiercely protect. And if it’s, you know, If you don’t give yourself a realistic number, then it just becomes this vicious cycle.

Like, you bit off more than you can chew and then you feel like shit because you didn’t actually do it. And then you’re like, why do I do marketing in the first place? It makes me feel terrible and I don’t get, right? So don’t spiral. Be realistic with yourself and then just commit to that amount of time that you said you would commit to.

Colie: I mean, but Taylor, you bring up a very good point. It’s however much time you can commit and protect. Because the thing is, you don’t want to say that you have an hour or even two hours, and then a week goes by and you’ve done no marketing. Because I don’t, I don’t know what your phrase is. I’m going to tell you what mine is, and then you can kick back with what your, what your similar phrase is, because all of us have got one.

I say you market today for you in 90 days. Yeah. She’s shaking her head. Yes, guys. So. You, you’re marketing now, and if you don’t market this week, you’re probably not going to see an immediate change. If you don’t market next week, same thing. But I can tell you guys from personal experience this year, you guys all know, I barely worked for a whole quarter.

I’m now feeling the fact that I didn’t market very much in Q1 or Q2 of this year. Like now is where I would usually get the fruits of my marketing labor from like the end of Q1 into Q2. And lo and behold, I am here. And there is no one beating down my door. And so protecting that time and making sure that you’re doing, even though I had a really good excuse for not doing it.

I mean, and I was, I even say this, Taylor, there was marketing being done. It just wasn’t being done by me. I mean, but it wasn’t the kind of marketing that I would normally do that actually brings in the clients. But protecting that time, making sure that you are keeping to that time every single week in order to do your marketing activities is one of the best things that you can do for your business.

But let’s talk about marketing activities because there are so many in so little time. So how does one decide, I’ve got two hours this week, how should I spend that time marketing my business? How does one decide that?

Tayler: You know It’s not as complicated as everybody thinks because strategy is this like this word that is so loaded and it feels so big and complicated you you go to the you go to Google and you try to figure out what it means and you’re like I am I’m more confused now than when I was, when I was typing my question to Google.

So the way kind of to quickly piggyback off of what you said and how, how do we explain the importance of marketing over time? I, if you take nothing else away from me in this conversation today, I want you to remember this phrase, marketing is like farming, right? It’s exactly what you said, if you don’t dedicate.

yourself and some of your time to the action of like planting a seed, taking care of said seed, making sure said seed is protected from the elements. You won’t have anything to harvest come the time that you are hungry and need food, right? So marketing is like farming. But when you are trying to figure out what are you going to do in that one or two hours a week that you have, the most important thing is to think of what are your goals?

Because if you don’t have goals, then you are just totally marketing by accident, right? You’re just waking up every, every day and winging it or flying by the seat of your pants or, you know, every other cliche that you can come up with. And so it starts by looking at your goals, And then creating a sort of plan that works backward from there.

And for most people, the place that they get stuck is figuring out where am I going to do my marketing? Now there are some really core marketing channels, right? Those are the places that you can do your marketing that are very consistent in some industries. And in the creative entrepreneur space, we’re talking about social media, we’re talking about email marketing, We’re talking about referrals.

and Pinterest usually, and then blogging and SEO, right? Like those are kind of the core five. Do you agree with that?

Colie: I do. And I just want to interject that in this series, we are going to hear from experts to talk about all of those, except social media guys. I purposely left social media off because I feel like when it comes to marketing, everybody talks about social media and I’ve had so many social media marketing experts on this podcast.

I wanted to make sure that you guys really heard about, like she said, of referral marketing. We’re also going to talk about affiliate marketing. We’re gonna talk about the kinds of marketing that maybe you didn’t know exist, because the world just always talks about Instagram, and Instagram is not marketing.

Tayler: Nope. It is not. It is not marketing. It’s, it’s one of the things you can do to market your business, but it is not those marketing and Instagram are not synonymous. They’re not one in the same thing. So when it comes to figuring out, okay, strategically, what am I going to do with this like precious little bit of time that I have?

Most people in one or two hours a week only have the capacity to do anything significant on like three marketing channels. And I don’t typically include referrals in those three because it’s not something that you have to give even monthly attention to. Right? Like you’re going to do what you need by going to networking groups and being a part of communities and serving your clients really, really well so that they want to refer you.

But so when we’re talking about the other things, most people can only do three. And so the way that I like to look at someone’s sort of monthly calendar is We want to create a routine. We want to create a pattern that becomes familiar over time because familiar things become easy to do. And so if we’re going to kind of talk about an example where someone’s doing blogging, social media, and email marketing. like to, my approach is to start with the heavy lift to use a totally corporate, I fucking hate that I use that term now. It’s so corporate.

Colie: I mean, I keep hearing low lift recently though, and I’m like, oh my God. Can we talk more about low lift? But I’m with you Taylor. I’m with you.

Tayler: So if you’re just listening, I totally rolled my eyes as I was like saying, Oh, it’s a heavy lift. Uh, but this is why having business partners who have done a lot more time on the corporate world is a bad influence.

Colie: Mm-Hmm?

Tayler: Choose your friends wisely folks. Um, but so the, for a lot of people blogging is the thing that’s going to take more time for, for most people, cause y’all hate writing, but we have AI copywriters now, so no one has an excuse, but so I like to start week one, you’re going to write a blog post.

And the reason I say you have no excuse now because of AI copywriters is you, an AI copywriter will literally draft a six to 800 word blog post for you in seconds. And so even if you spend another 30 minutes revising it, adding things, deleting things, and then, you know, the 10, 15 minutes it takes to put it in your, in your website, in your blog and get it published, like you can do that now in an hour.

Colie: Mm-Hmm.

Tayler: So that’s what I like to do with week one. Then week two and four. I like to suggest that people schedule social media content because now you’ve got your blog, you can repurpose that across, you know, the content that you’re scheduling. You can work in the other things. You know, most people are not trying to crank out five reels a week or more and like, right.

So if you’re just posting a couple of times, if you’re just showing up, like popping up and down, like, Hi, I’m here. I’m here. Then you can do that. You can schedule one or two weeks of content in an hour or two. And then that third week. is where you’re going to sit down and you’re going to schedule some email newsletters to go out.

And then you’re just going to lather, rinse, repeat on this cycle. And it becomes something that’s very intentional because you’re showing up on the three core channels that are a part of your marketing strategy. And you’re staying top of mind with folks in all of those places rather than like, I haven’t, I haven’t done anything yet.

I should probably blast out an email newsletter because no one’s heard from me there in four months. Like that’s. That’s the, like, the exact opposite of what we’re talking about here.

Colie: Yeah, and I just want to say a couple things that have come up in like the many podcast episodes that I have recorded related to this marketing idea of different channels. Guys, number one, You probably have a very small handful of people that are going to see what you post on every single channel. So please don’t be afraid of repeating yourself or talking about the same topic or the same content on all three channels, because the people that are following you on Instagram are probably not the same people that are on your email list are probably not the same people that are going to go to your blog naturally.

Like you’re going to get organic traffic to your blog, but. People on your email newsletter are not going to know that you wrote a blog unless you tell them. Like, no one is searching your website every week to be like, Ah, did Colie write a new blog post this week? Let me come see. So you also have like, once you’ve done that hard labor, For whatever your core piece of content is, you mentioned a blog post, Taylor, and I love that.

Mine happens to be the podcast. So if I’ve put all my effort into this podcast episode, that is whatever the topic is, whatever the idea is, I can then use that for the other pieces that you were talking about. So guys, I’m going to say your low lift is that once you have done the heavy lift for the blog, the low lift is just taking the same shit that you’ve already talked about and sprinkling it around like glitter.

Tayler: Yeah, you know, yeah, I take longer form Instagram content that performed decent, and I legit just turn that into an email newsletter. Because it’s about the same length, right? I’m not one of those people that’s going to write an actual novel in their email newsletters. That’s not my personal style. But a long Instagram caption with a couple, you know, graphics or photos, I’m throughout it.

That is a very robust email newsletter. So like the marketers are shameless about doing this and there’s something someone at some point told. Small business owners that every piece of content needs to be unique. Like that’s bullshit. Like be smart like the professional marketers who are repurposing all of their shit all of the

Colie: Time. Yes. And I mean, that’s not to say that whatever you produce this month, which is July of 2024, you can’t reuse that in January as long as it’s not time sensitive. Now guys, if you write about summer shit in July, please don’t repurpose that in January when it’s the middle of winter for those of us in North America.

Like, please don’t do that. But other than that, like the things that you do now. You are going to be able to use it in the future. You are also going to be able to change it in the future. If you write something now and it doesn’t land, figure out why it didn’t land, and do it better next time.

Tayler: Mic drop.

Colie: Mic drop. I know, are we done, Taylor? I mean, do you wanna, do you wanna have a cocktail on, on our, uh, for the rest of our time? Okay, so we’ve talked about how you get started in your time, and I don’t want to glaze over the AI part that you’ve mentioned, because you mentioned that the AI blog writers can get something done for us within seconds.

But Taylor, I never find that what AI spits out for me is good. So what is it that I have to do to get it postable? And believe me, this is a trick question because I know the answer.

Tayler: Okay, cool. Cause I was like, I was literally thinking, so my answer is going to sound like an asshole answer, but because this is a loaded question, it won’t be an asshole answer. So one of the sort of phrases that I talk about in When I’m talking about AI copywriters is trash in equals trash out.

Colie: Mm hmm.

Tayler: And so this is the new skill that we all need to be honing is the ability for us to prompt an AI chatbot, an AI copywriter, An AI image generator, because if we don’t prompt it well, then we did not set it up for success. It’s just how it is. Like, these AI everything, it’s not actually smart. It’s just math being done at an insane scale, and it is guessing what the next likely word is, as it’s writing, based on what you prompted it. Right? So, if you want an AI copywriter to give you a really good draft, like, without you having to go, Oh my god, this is, I should start totally over again.

There’s a couple things that it needs to understand. The first is, it needs to understand what its role is in all of this. Right. So, you know, if you’re using, there’s a, there’s a, I’m going to do like a little bit of a shameless plug here. There’s a difference between how you would prompt something like chat GPT or Jasper to write for you and how you would need to prompt NG’s AI copywriter, because I, have set things up so that you can be a little bit more lazy because I’ve done like the technical work behind the scenes for you.

So that being said, if you’re, if you’re starting from scratch and you want to learn the skill, cause it is important to me that people learn the skill. It needs to understand what its role is. So the, this is the, you are a helpful marketing assistant, right? Like that’s. That’s what that is. You need to tell it what, what function is it trying to serve or fulfill.

Then it needs to understand what its goal is. So you are a helpful marketing assistant with the goal of writing a 1000 word blog post. Okay. So now you’ve given it, you’ve oriented it as to this is the mission. Right? That I want you to accomplish. Then you need to give it context. You need to give it details to work off of.

Because if you don’t, it will just go out onto the internet and look for things and say, is this what you wanted? And most of the time you’re gonna be like, That’s dog shit. That’s terrible. And also the internet is a big scary place and it’s gonna come up with like crazy shit, right? Like, so you want to give it context and like bring those constraints in a little bit more so that it’s staying, it’s really staying in its lane. And then lastly, you want it to understand what’s the voice that it needs. How does it need to sound, right? Brand voice has become more and more of a topic of conversation because of AI copywriters. And I’m glad, like the copywriter in me is like, thank goodness people are starting to understand the importance of these like fundamental marketing pieces.

But, you know, you need to be able to communicate how you want it to sound. Are you dry and sarcastic or are you like soft kid gloves? I’m so warm and approachable and I’m like the kindest human on the planet, right? Like. You need to teach it these things. And over time, if you’re using one platform like Chad, GPT, it will learn these things, but you have to constantly coach it right.

With something like Enji, we’ve taken out that responsibility because we know everyone’s fighting time. And we’re like. Everyone just needs the, the lowest lift possible to get something done. But that’s how you get a not shitty draft from an AI copywriter. And that’s how it really can save you time.

Colie: Yeah, I always feel like you should also take it and treat your, I mean, and actually I didn’t say this, Don Richardson said it, but it’s like the best thing that I’ve heard. Your chat GPT, or I should say anything that’s publicly available on the internet. So chat GPT, Claude, all of those, treat them like they’re an intern.

Treat them like they are capable, but you have to tell them what you need and want. And when they give you something that’s unacceptable, you don’t tell an intern, Oh, okay. Thanks for trying. And then you spend hours fixing it. Do you do that? No, you tell them what’s wrong with it and tell them. Try again.

And so if everybody could just approach their AI copywriter in that manner, that is how you get better drafts. Now, when it gives you something that’s unacceptable, it’s like the same thing as a photographer training their editor. You have to tell them how what they did was different than what you expected.

And the whole thing about training your AI, like things like Engie, or when you get something that’s very specific to write, like a specific blog or a specific email, someone like Taylor. was behind the scenes, basically telling it what an appropriate output would be for an email, telling them what an appropriate output for a blog is.

I mean, ChatGPG doesn’t automatically know what you find appropriate for a blog. So again, you have to train her, him, and him. Whatever it

Tayler: They.

Colie: It, yeah, whatever pronoun. Actually, you know what? Maybe we, maybe someone should ask ChatGPT what

Tayler: its pronouns are.

Colie: what are their pronouns?

Tayler: be curious. But you know, this is one of the reasons why I know a lot of people are concerned Even if they won’t publicly admit it, that AI is coming for their job. It’s only going to come for your job. If people somehow all of a sudden become 100 percent accurate at describing what it is they want. Right. And in the context of just this conversation that we’re having right now, it’s hard to, to communicate exactly what it is you want. Right. And so dial the temperature down, like no one has to freak out.

I mean, maybe copywriters need to freak out a little bit about AI

Colie: need to freak out.

Tayler: No, cause it’s just another tool. Right. But that’s the, that’s the only one where I’m like, there’s a direct line where there are some people who are going to be impacted by this in the short term. Right. But someone who designs websites, or writes website copy, or is a brand photographer, like, AI is not coming for your job because trash in, trash out, right?

Like, humans, humans are only good at setting trash fires, and so that’s where we’re at at this

Colie: No, and I mean, you and I both know Cara and she recently wrote a blog post for me where she used the analogy of a Swiss Army knife. And I read her draft and I was like, Oh, that’s cute. And then I closed it and I walked away and I came back and I was like, no, absolutely not. So then I removed the Swiss Army because that’s just not something that I would reference again, guys, I’m not outdoorsy.

So I went in there and took five minutes. To change it from Swiss army knife to magical unicorn assistant. I mean, clearly I had just interviewed Emily Reagan, who will also be in this series later down the road. She talks about hiring magical marketing assistants, but I changed it to be my magical unicorn assistant and I changed it in a few places and I sent it back to Cara and I said, Cara, I took away Swiss Army knife.

I would never say that. I said, but can you go read it and make sure that I didn’t completely fuck it up. And she read it and she’s like, no, that’s great. And she’s like, I now, I mean, I will never make a reference like that again. I mean, great. But I just wanted to, I’m not doing this to call out my blog writer who, by the way, is next week’s guest.

I am doing it because even if you are hiring a human, they still need to be told when they are using an example of something that you would personally. Never say. And one of the things that I found out recently, I’ve seen so many prompt, like buy my prompts. And I was like, what exactly am I buying? But now that I’m like really jumping into AI, I’m like, oh, you’re really getting like the step by step from them of how you get better drafts out of AI.

But someone the other day was like, well, you should start by, you know, what is a list of words that you use? And I was like, How would I tell somebody a list of words that I use? I don’t

Tayler: know, that’s a hard question for most people to answer, like, what do you say, what do you not say? They feel like very basic questions, but As someone who has written a ton of copy for people and has an intake form where I would ask those things, like more than half the time that section would be left blank because it’s just like, I don’t fucking know what I don’t say.

Colie: I’m not going to leave a blank anymore though, Taylor. I’m going to take five different podcast transcripts and feed it in a chat GPT and say, chat GPT, what words do I use over and over again when I interview my guests? Bam.

Tayler: rainbows. Unicorns.

Colie: Fuck! I mean, I think of more of it than I use. But, I mean, that’s also like the power of AI. I mean, again, guys, nobody is saying that you do it and it gives you something, and in two seconds you hit publish. But it gets you from a blank page to somewhere that you feel comfortable starting to edit. And it takes, you know, if it would normally take the average person a couple hours to write a decent blog post, it AI and other tools are helping you get it done in that one to two hours that Taylor asked you.

What kind of time do you have every week to commit and protect for your marketing activities?

Tayler: Yep. And you know, speaking of, you know, marketing with intention, that’s, that’s, that’s why we’re here. It’s the overarching rainbow to this conversation. You know, I don’t think that you can have a conversation about intentional marketing and just talk about strategy because we don’t do marketing for ourselves.

We do it for our people, right? And so, one of the amazing things that we all can do now using AI is dive into our customer insights like we never have before. And I often talk about this, it’s in my AI and Marketing presentation, but you guys are gonna get it here too, is You know, we are all sitting on data sets and we don’t typically think that we’re doing that.

But if you were to think of, okay, well, if I took all of my inquiry emails. And if I took all of my client reviews and if I took all of the it’s not you, it’s me emails of people that went in a different direction and I fed them to an AI chatbot and asked them for the common sentiments, the common words and phrases, how much fucking smarter would I be about how I need to intentionally do my marketing?

Because now I understand I am in my people’s heads. Right? They’re giving you the words, the phrases, the emotional strings to pull on because as humans, we don’t have the time to go through and like read all of these things and try to find the patterns. Like that’s not, not a thing. I’m not asking you to do that.

But what I am asking you to do is use this new tool to help yourself get way more intentional with understanding who you’re talking to. target ideal customers and clients are and what messages you need to be putting in front of them.

Colie: Absolutely. And the systems girl in me is going to tell you, listen, guys, I know that you guys see sometimes when people like, oh, somebody said something kind about me on Instagram, screenshot it. I want you to take it one step further. And I want you to copy and paste the text into somewhere. I’m going to suggest an air table database, but a Google doc will work too.

You need to be putting all of these things in a central location so that when you are ready to do these marketing tasks and ask an AI consultant, But to help you, you have all of this stuff at your fingertips so that you can, you know, work on your customer insights, just like Taylor gave us an example of now, because all of those things are going to help you get better at your marketing in less time, which is the key to marketing with intention.

I mean, I can’t give you more time. I’m sorry. Maybe if we lived close to each other and like your kids were driving you up a wall and I took your kids for an hour, I could give you an hour, but that’s not going to happen for most people. So we’ve got to get you better at marketing and the time that you can protect and commit to that activity and then make sure that you’re actually doing it on an ongoing basis.

So Taylor, how do you make sure that people are doing their marketing on an ongoing basis and that they’re not saying, Oh, whoops, I didn’t have time this week. Maybe next week will be better.

Tayler: I mean, for those of you who are watching the video, you are experiencing facial expressions. If you’re listening, just know that I like sighed and had a sad look on my face because this This is one of the things that I know, and it’s very much tied to the fact that, like, business, businesses, and life, goes and life’s on us, and time gets taken away from us. But what is, what the, like, psychological thing that I feel like I will be a bazillionaire if I figure this out, is why for small businesses, for small business owners, Right. Why is marketing the can that always gets kicked down the road? For the dumbest reasons, right? I have my hypotheses about it, but as an example, you know, you’ve, you’ve sat down and you’re starting to write on, you’re starting to write a blog post, and then one of your clients emails you, and then you just, Totally shift gears and you go down the rabbit hole and they’re like, Oh, can we actually get on a call?

And then boom there that blog post isn’t good. It’s not getting written There are things like that that happen all of the time and That’s why at the very start of this conversation, like you have to protect that time, right? Because if you let things overwrite it, they will overwrite it. And then that time is gone.

And so there is the only thing that I can come up with is like, it has to come from within you. It has like, I am literally here. Investing countless hours. At this point, I’ve already been working on ng for three and a half years. Like, we’ve only been launched for a little over a year, but you guys, it takes like a fuck ton of time to get a startup off the ground.

And way too much actual, like, money from, like, projects. My personal banking account and an opportunity cause like I am literally trying to create software That helps small business owners fight time like win their battle against time but it’s I have to do that because Y’all kick the can down the road.

And so if someone knows the answer to that question, then I would, I am all ears here because like I said, my hypotheses are that you’re not comfortable doing marketing, right? Like your confidence level around it is low enough that When something else comes up, you’re like, I’d rather do that because that will make me feel good for whatever reason.

That’s my, my big hypothesis, but when push comes to shove, I can only lead the horse to water and I can’t get you to drink it. And most people can’t. afford to have, like, all of their marketing completely outsourced, right? Like, that’s the only way to truly solve this problem right now. And that’s not an option for a lot of folks.

So, it’s, it’s the one question where I’m like, well, fuck if I know. Because,

Colie: But I mean you’re doing a really good job of starting though because I will say when you sign up with Enji and you’re setting up your marketing plan, you’re sending those emails that are like, Hey, I mean, it’s helping you create your calendar. And yes. If you have something on your calendar, and I know that you said it in one of your onboarding emails, I’m pretty sure it was, but like, if this doesn’t feel good to you, let’s take it off and choose something else that feels good.

So, I think that where people get lost is, first of all, they don’t really have somebody telling them what to do every step of the way. Like, hey, if your plan is to use two hours, these are my recommendations. But you also give them the time and space to say, if you don’t like any of these recommendations, let’s pick something else.

That’s number one. And then the second thing is once you actually get into the groove of things, I feel like clients seeing results are what helped them get motivated to do their marketing. Cause someone like me, it wasn’t that I stopped marketing this year because I didn’t see the value in it or that I didn’t know how to do it.

Or that in most times I can’t commit the time to it. It’s just literally I was physically unable to do it. But like, once you figure out how great marketing can be, and when you market effectively, and when you feel good marketing, it brings in the clients that are very aligned with whatever the services that you do.

Like that’s where you get more motivated to do the marketing versus that other shit that like pulls you down. Because We all say that we don’t have time to outsource our marketing, maybe we don’t have the budget, maybe we’re not in a place in our business, but like bookkeeping is really that thing that no one likes to do, and it’s so mundane, but like, bookkeeping is literally not a revenue generating task in your business.

Marketing can be, marketing

Tayler: Marketing is.

Colie: and so, yeah. I would just plead and beg everyone. I understand that taking care of your clients is usually that top tier activity and I get it. Taylor gets it. I think everybody gets it, but you also have to make sure that you’re not overburdening yourself with clients so that you can still market for the new clients that you need down the road.

Now, if you get five clients and you work with those five clients every single month and you don’t need new clients, I’m probably not talking to you. I’m talking to the people who helped five people this month, and you need a different five people next month or whatever it is that your number goal is.

Tayler: Yep. Yep. I know. It’s, You need to make the plan. You need to do the plan, and then you need to figure out how you can do it more efficiently over time. Right? And so one of the things that I love that you talked about kind of this. You basically were talking about positive reinforcement, right? And seeing the fruits of your labor.

And one of the things that no one does is track numbers. And so that’s why we have this fabulous and pretty KPI dashboard for you to track your numbers and, you know, we celebrate KPI Day in the Engie community. But that’s one of the things, like, you build the routine and then My hope is is that NG is like the little tippy tap on your shoulder that keeps you at least aware that like hey You said you’re gonna do this and you didn’t

Colie: Listen to your voice, Taylor. Don’t be shy. Say it with your chest. Hey girl, you said you were going to do this. Did you do this shit? Check yes for yes and no for no. And if you didn’t, I’m going to remind you again tomorrow.

Tayler: you know, I’m trying to, you know, sometimes I need, I tried to read the room. I should build this in like, hey, do you want Engie to talk to you like Taylor like

Colie: Oh my God, Taylor,

Tayler: do you want soft kid gloves? Like the, oh, I understand that life got in the way. Maybe we can fit this in.

It’s like, what the fuck, man? Like, why didn’t you do this? So we could have, you know, we could have a scale of things there. But like

Colie: but I’m like, I really want to see that in NG in like the next month or so. Do you want tough love or do you want me to be like that kind soul? Yeah.

Tayler: exactly, exactly. But, you know, the KPI is really, you know, it’s one of the features that I have been surprised that so many people are like, Latching onto and I’m it makes me so so happy because it is how you actually start to get better and more intentional at marketing over time because you see where your marketing efforts are paying off and you are seeing where it’s a waste of time.

Of resource, and then you can ditch the things that even if you were emotionally attached to it, if they’re not, if at the end of the day, these numbers are telling you the truth and that it is not worth the time and money, then you just have to walk away from it. And that’s how you get better over time.

And then the core of marketing is do more of what works, but you have to know what works in order to do more of it. So, yeah, track your numbers, folks.

Colie: I mean, Taylor, I’m listening to you and I’m feeling like a lot of people need that tough love with relation to Instagram. I can’t tell you the number of people, and I am very clear with people. I’m like, I don’t book people from Instagram. Like, I do podcast stuff over there, but I mean, I don’t get people from Instagram.

But if you don’t know where you’re getting your people from, You don’t know where to spend your time and energy. I know where I get my people from. I get my people from going in other people’s communities. I get my people from podcasting with guests, amazing people like you, and getting to know more people out in the world.

That is how I sell my systems. I, people don’t see me talking on Instagram and automatically hire me. That, that is not a thing. But if I wasn’t tracking. where the clients and the leads that I get come from. I would never know that. Hey, Instagram is not where it’s at. Now. I also want people though. I want to make sure that people aren’t just looking at that first step.

Cause I will say there are probably people that find me on Instagram and then go read my blog posts and do other things. And you know, I don’t want to shame that, but like, if you’re not getting people from Instagram, I would really encourage you to like, think of some other channels that you can go beyond and experiment.

Think of it as a game. What else can we do today in the marketing world for my business?

Tayler: You know, and when people, I do want people to think about their marketing channels as a tiered system, right? What is most important and most impactful for your business and getting you more inquiries and what is at the bottom of that? And so for you, it’s like, yeah, I’m going to show up on Instagram intermittently.

But it is not where I’m like gonna dedicate a lot of my energy and that’s fine. Like, you know, again, little things that we have in Engie that made sense to me. And then I’m like, very thankful for conversations like this. I’m like, cause I wasn’t crazy

Colie: You went crazy, Taylor!

Tayler: I wasn’t crazy, but you know, at the bottom of a marketing strategy, where you see your recommended channels, if you click into a channel, you can.

Make the circle bigger or smaller because I want people to be able to visually represent what should be taking up more of the oxygen in the room and living a little bit more rent free in my brain versus these other things that I’ll just let myself go through the motions on. And so you do have to come up with that hierarchy of things.

And for you, it’s like. Podcast is number one, and then I’m going to guess email marketing is number two and Instagram rounds it out. And that’s cool because you can emotionally not be so damn attached to the, the insatiable monster that is social media.

Colie: Yeah. And I mean, I would say for me that regardless of how I’m getting the people, my blogs have good conversion rates themselves. Like that gives them like a bigger picture that they couldn’t like see on a podcast clearly. Cause I mean, unless you’re watching it on a video, but even then I’m not like showing you my computer or anything.

 But I just, I feel like I just want everybody to dedicate the time. I want everybody to do the activities and I want them to not forget to write something about how it felt to them doing it and or what the results were like all three of those things need to be part of when you are trying to market your business with intention so that you aren’t just thinking about it.

Throwing things out and not kind of figuring out how to pivot and change your plan as you go. Cause that’s the other thing, nothing in the business world is set it and forget it. Like I am just telling you, dedicate a little time. Now don’t be changing your strategy every week, guys. Gosh, I felt like I did.

Taylor is just really shaking her head now, guys. I am not saying change your plan every week, but I am saying have a plan. Do it for a while. And then if nothing is coming of that, it is time for you to reevaluate and move forward.

Tayler: Yep. I second all of those things.

Colie: Okay, Taylor. So we have said Enji like so many times, and I honestly feel bad because I didn’t want it to sound like an infomercial, even though we totally could have made this an infomercial, but now I feel like you should just give us like a solid idea of what Enji is and what it would do for your business.

And then a link where the listening audience can learn more.

Tayler: Yeah. You know, I, I never want any, any opportunity that I have to, to chat with folks. I don’t want it to be an infomercial for Enji.

Colie: Well, I just felt like if we like talked about at the beginning, they’d be like, Oh, they’re just going to talk about her program, which I mean, her program really nicely aligns with everything that we talked about, guys, I would know, but continue

Tayler: yes. So Engie is marketing software for small business owners who have to do their own marketing, but are not marketing experts. And the reason it’s basically me as a marketing consultant turned into software So that you have someone. Who’s either slapping you across the face or soft kid gloving you to like, here’s what you need to do, right?

I’m going to tell you, to tell you what to do. It’s going to help you build a routine and it’s going to help you track your progress so that you can get better at this whole marketing experiment over time. but the core of our tools is a marketing strategy tool because all y’all are out there just like operating without one.

And maybe, maybe you’re like, no, Taylor, I only have one. Then my followup question is, Is it documented or does it live in your head?

Colie: that part.

Tayler: Because if you can’t share it with other people, it’s, you don’t have one. So you can create a marketing strategy and then there are the tools that you need to actually start to do the marketing strategy.

Cause that, right? Like you can’t just have the plan. You have to execute on the plan. But you know, What I’m trying to build that my big, my big swing of the biggest baseball bat I could ever imagine. And I’m so excited because as we’re recording this, we’ve started development on the, you know, the second version of our marketing strategy is I know.

What we need to do in order to build something that everyone’s like, is Enji is moving to a place where we are following the 80, 20 rule where Engie is going to do 80 percent of your marketing things for you. So that, right. Cause 80 percent done by someone else is a hundred percent fucking awesome. So that’s what we’re doing here.

Um, and so like the strategy is going to not just be the plan. Like it’s going to then drop, Hey, here’s your marketing strategy. We know your brand voice. We’ve talked, like we’ve created a social media plan. We know your content buckets and pacing and platforms. Like when you click create your strategy in the future, it’s going to drop a week’s worth of.

Facebook posts that are already drafted on your calendar attached to the scheduler. So all you need to do is add some media and approve it and make some late revisions. It’s going to drop blog posts that are relevant to your service or product in the copywriter. So again, you’re just coming in with the final pass on things.

And I’m really, I’m like sitting here like so impatient about it because it’s going to take us like four months to build all this if not more time because it is such a, it is such a big swing. But I am so amped to actually get it to that point because I have talked to too many small business owners. I am a multi hyphenate serial entrepreneur.

Most of my social circle are also self employed. And I know this is what we need in order to survive this whole, I’m a one person marketing department and I’m responsible. And it’s just one of the hats that I wear. So if you want to try it out in its current version, it’s still fucking awesome. It’ll be even better in the future, but you can go to our website, which is E N J I dot C O and you can do a free two week trial there and scope everything out and then join the community and be along for the ride as we keep pushing and building even better things.

Colie: Guys, I really hope that if you take nothing away from this conversation, you listen to the advice that Taylor and I have both given you about protecting the amount of time, whatever that time is, and just making sure that whatever marketing efforts you are doing, that they feel good to you, they are in a way going to bring you the clients that are ideal for the services that you have, and that you are also tracking those efforts and the fruits of what happens from those activities in some fashion.

Next week, Cara Duncan is going to be on the podcast. I mean, guys, this feels so good. I don’t think I’ve ever announced the next guest ever on this podcast, but Cara Duncan, who Taylor and I both know is going to be here and she is going to be talking about creating long term marketing efforts in blogging and Pinterest.

And it is truly going to be a continuation of this conversation that I have with Taylor. So please subscribe to the podcast and make sure that you get the episode when it drops. Taylor, thank you so much for joining me for this episode. It was as amazing as I envisioned in my head.

Tayler: Thank you so much for having me and for creating a safe space where I can say fuck

Colie: Ah, I mean, you know, I feel like I got all my fucks in today. It’s great. All right, everyone. That’s it for this episode. See you next time.