How do you implement honest, authentic marketing into your business? Why does being an honest marketer matter? Lauren reveals 5 marketing strategies in this episode to help you be an authentic marketer, attracting a tribe of GOOD business that stands the test of time.

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Welcome back to another episode of She’s Busy AF, I’m your host Lauren Loretto. Today we’re gonna be talking about honest marketing- and this comes for a very good reason. I’m just sick of seeing a lot of tactics done by businesses of all sizes. I would love to at least have an influence on you, the listener right now, to set forth and put in play some honest marketing tactics. Or at least just assess your marketing, and make sure that you’re on the right path. So that’s what today’s episodes gonna be about. I’m really excited to dive in. I’m gonna give you five marketing strategies that are centered around authenticity, that you can start implementing into your business today.

I’m gonna talk for a second, about two of my favorite fictional Hollywood concepts, and they are Harry Potter and Star Wars. I promise this is gonna make sense in a minute. So please bear with me. They had two super big things in common for me growing up, and that was this: when I was in the middle of reading Harry Potter books, I got lost in them. I read them like you’d binge any good Netflix series.

As we all know, the Star Wars movies were always so immersive, kind of like the Harry Potter books, and then later on the Harry Potter movies. So as a result, I felt like I was living in those books and in those movies, in a sense, when I was reading them or watching them. I would walk out of a Star Wars movie and feel like I had been there, you know, I’d walk out with like, “oh, where’s my light saber?”

I don’t know. Like you just, you know what I mean? You feel like you were immersed in that experience in the same fashion. I would turn the last page of a Harry Potter book and actually be depressed because I realized I wasn’t a fly on the wall in those books, and the mood of those books carried into my real life, even if for a little, which probably made me one strange kid. Pretty sure when I played dolls with my sister, there was some wizardry or Harry Potter involved.

But what I’m getting at is this: marketing has the same effect. Marketing infiltrates your brain in the same way until eventually you give in and you buy the dang thing. This is kind of me right now with the love, a love, every Montessori kid toys, I’m getting served so many ads. And it’s all I think about is like sensory development for my kid, and then the next thing you know, I see a “love every” ad and I have almost pulled the trigger so many times and that’s what good marketing does.

So how does this relate to being a business owner in marketing your business? I’m glad you asked. We can be so influenced, also by how other brands market their business and think that that must be the right way to market ours when sometimes it’s not the most ethical or honest. So when you have moments like this, I wanna encourage you to come back to one big thing. We all started our business for a reason, we have a mission. We want to make an impact, and that impact is our business. With the messages we put out there, we want people to feel good about it. So if we’re gonna be pumping out marketing, like every other business, it needs to feel good. It needs to be good. It needs to be honest and it needs to be authentic.

 

Why Did You Start Your Business?

So there’s a few ways to be more honest and authentic in the marketing of your business, here’s how. Number one, the reason you started your business, define it. AKA tell your story – stories are the key differentiators of every brand. It’s how humans have communicated for thousands of years. They’re so extremely powerful in marketing strategies.

Think about these things. Why did you get started? What is the brand’s background? What hardships did you have to overcome? I like to break out the story into three pivotal moments, and I feel like that helps you kind of figure out a beginning, middle and end in a climax and all of those things. And one story I come back to for myself was lying my way into my first ad agency job and getting that experience and then starting my business, my first business, selling that business, and now being a mother and how that’s transitioned my business and my business practices. So that’s just one example, but telling your story is so authentic, especially if you’re telling the truth, because that’s just how people can relate to you, even more.

 

Be Genuine

Number two, be so genuine that your clients and customers feel compelled to share about you on and off social media. So this happens so much more naturally than you would think, and it’s where so many brands fall short. They focus on so much of the marketing side of things, and how it looks good, and what looks good, that they completely fall off in the client experience. It can really be as simple as sending a new client, a welcome box of goodies, or in the way you deliver your final piece of the project that makes them want to share, or just how good your product is, and how great you made them feel about consuming it, being a part of it, purchasing it.

 

Stop Thinking About Appearances

Number three is gonna be to stop thinking so much about how good this is going to sound. I just put that in air quotes. What I’m getting at with this topic, which might be slightly controversial is this, when there are moments in which brands are expected to take social responsibility – I’m just thinking any political movement, anything that’s going on in the world, environmental causes. Don’t lean into it unless you’re in alignment with the cause, or feel educated enough to take a stand.

It’s one thing to act on feelings, but you really want to be rooted in your belief of something and how you feel about it and what you know about it before taking a stand. I could go on for days about this one, but it’s, it’s really going to be about what is an alignment with your brand and not just you and your feelings. Yes, you are an extension of your brand or rather your brand is an extension of you.

But just think about these things, go back to your core values and think about how you’re gonna act on it. Not just for show too, a lot of brands just act on things because they think it’s the right thing to do. But again, go back to your core values. Go back to your beliefs as a business owner, and as a brand, and do things from a place of like, authenticity and being genuine.

 

Benefits Over Features

Number four is talk more about the benefits of your product or service as opposed to its features. So you can tell someone all day that you can post four times a week to social media for them with pretty posts. But then all they’re gonna be thinking about is numbers. What is the actual impact that they’re going to receive from your product or your service? What is the transformation they can expect to walk away with at the end? Focus on those things in your marketing, for the most part.

People can go to your website to figure out the logistics of what’s involved, it’s all about making them feel good. I find that talking about my experience and being my authentic self on social media and highlighting some client wins and things like that – that sells itself, and people reach out to ask about logistics. So logistics don’t matter as much as you might think they do.

 

Let the Annual Filings Speak for Themselves

The last thing is gonna be let your annual filings speak for themselves. I’m definitely getting a little more niche here, but basically what I’m trying to say is don’t be that brand who sells your services and program spots based on how much money you made that month. I have countless clients who’ve spent over $10,000 on programs, masterminds services that a got them nothing tangible in return, and B made them feel scammed because now they have mega trust issues investing in anything for their business. That’s not fair to the rest of us service providers who are ethical, honest, and authentic in what we do for other brands, and not just relying on what our business is doing.

All right, y’all this is what I help my clients achieve. This is what has allowed me to have a sustainable business for the last seven years. Be a good, honest, authentic marketer. Do good and honest work and watch as you attract the perfect clients and customers to your business, because I promise, you will. If honest, authentic, and ethical marketing is something you need help with in your business, I’m your girl. There are several ways we can work together from audits to marketing strategies. Click the link in my show notes to learn more.

To recap, here are the five marketing strategies you can implement into your business that are honest and authentic and help you be a more honest and authentic marketer. Number one, tell your story. Number two, be so genuine that your clients and customers share you organically. Number three, be in alignment with everything you put out as a brand. Number four, talk more about the benefits of your product or service. And number five, don’t be a sleazy used car sales man, all right.

Y’all this is Lauren Loretto and you just listened to another episode of She’s Busy Af – we are always looking to release episodes based on your needs, so head on over to she’sbusyaf.com, our new website, and submit your request there. We drop new episodes every Wednesday, and it would mean the world to me if you screenshot this episode, share it on IG and be sure to tag me at She’s Busy Af. Thank you so much for being a part of the she’s busy community, and I would love to rethank you by sharing those tags. All right, y’all see you on the next one.