4 Key Marketing Shifts for Online Business Owners

Earlier this year, I started getting the feeling that something in online business was shifting.

The 3 major places I see shifts are:

1. consumer purchase behavior
2. content consumption + engagement
3. and ad results/interactions

They’re not all “bad” changes necessarily — just different than what we’ve been used to for many years 🙂

I also started to notice a pattern not only in myself but in others in our space too:

Every time a formerly-trusty social app changes or something that we used to be able to rely on in our “strategy” stops working, we rush to answer the problem with a dopamine-filled strategy that needs to be filled up faster than a basket of tortilla chips from my fav Tex Mex joint.

If I’m being honest (which I have a habit of being lol), sometimes I find myself zooming out of all this Tik-Toking-IG-reeling-Clubhousing and thinking:

But for what?

What’s the goal? What’s this for? Is it going anywhere? It is really helping your business?

Or are you spending LOADS of time creating (what I call) toilet content? Content that goes down the drain faster than TP.

It’s so dang tempting, right? It’s so energizing to draft a post or film a reel and see the comments, likes & views pile up. And it’s so freakin’ demoralizing to see the opposite: you spend so much time and put yourself out there only to get….. crickets.

I’m so over it. I needed a little slap in the face (from myself to myself – with love) to remind me where I came from:

How To Get Back To Marketing Basics

My evergreen roots.

6 years ago I sat down and started playing around with SEO. I’d heard of it before, but really had no idea what it was.

I drafted 10 blog posts, created my website out of a WordPress theme, and had my first legal template sale within hours (to someone who’d found me on Google….).

I’m not necessarily telling you to run out and SEO-itize your business. You don’t have to become a blogger, if you don’t want to.

But I do want to encourage you to create more content that:

• lasts — instead of creating something that’s cyclical or dependent on the algo pushing it out, create something that’s valuable to your ideal client today, next month, 6 months from now, etc.
• shows up where your ideal client is already looking for you. For me, if someone wants to know something about legally protecting their biz, chances are they’re googling it — not searching TikTok.
• can be repurposed — if your blog post, YouTube video, etc is your primary piece of content, then you can take pieces of it and post it all over IG if you want to 🙂 But don’t make IG the primary.

So here’s how my strategy has started to shift:

01. Primary Content
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My primary focus is very clear: this email list I’ve worked so hard to build, SEO-optimized blog posts, and podcast episodes (that are optimized for title, description, and turned into website posts).

I’m going deeper with higher quality content, on fewer channels.

02. Secondary Content
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I’ll still be really present on social platforms like IG, but most of the content is broken out of my primary content (ie, taking something I said in a podcast episode and turning it into a reel or carousel).
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The purpose of that content is twofold: to nurture/educate/entertain depending on the type, and to drive leads to the primary content (which then drives traffic to my funnel).

03. Email Marketing
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​With my email list, I focus on cultivating community/connection, having conversations with you, generating interest in my offers + staying top-of-mind and present so you know what we’re up to and how we can help.

A reader wrote me earlier this week asking for me to share how I come up with email list topics and how I imagine who I’m writing to. Would you want me to share about that? I love, love, love email marketing – so I’m happy to.

04. Lead Generation
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​FB ads aren’t the only way to generate leads. And neither are reels. I’m a fan of the “low & slow” opportunities that evergreen content creates for us (ie blog posts, your website opt ins, freebies, YouTube, pod). There are also new ad platforms to explore, plus a super exciting new ConvertKit opportunity I’m jumping into as an early adopter.

If you can believe it — I have SO much more to share with you on this.

I feel so strongly about you not only creating a legally protected & secure business (obviously!) — but also one that doesn’t chain you to your phone.

Surely you didn’t set out to create a business that has you asking your friends/kids/partner/pets to hang on a sec because you need 1 more min to finish editing your reel…. 😂

A few weeks ago I started hinting at these major shifts I was making — and I shared with you that some of them came from going to ConvertKit’s conference in Boise, ID.

And SO many of you wrote & asked if I’d share what I learned there with you.

So that’s what I did. See – I really love you all! 🙂

PS. Did you see this week’s On Your Terms podcast episode?

In it, I recap every single takeaway from the ConvertKit conference, the major news/trends I learned about there, and so much more. It’ll be like you went with me!

OK, now you gotta keep your promise. Was this helpful? Then I want to hear about it! Bonus points if you leave a comment and tell me your #1 takeaway.