Want smart, budget-friendly marketing strategies designed to help you? In this week’s episode of The Hayley Osborne Show I discuss what these are according to me, and how you can use them in your business to help you thrive in what is becoming a competitive market in every single industry.
With shrinking budgets and rising competition, it’s more important than ever to stay calm, focused, and strategic.
Discover how to build your brand, attract new audiences, and turn them into paying customers using affordable techniques in social media, email marketing, and SEO. I’ll also share how leveraging your expertise and thought leadership can set your business apart without breaking the bank.
If you’re ready to make your marketing efforts work harder for you, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you grow your business sustainably.
Recently I wrote an article for Smart Company and this episode is created from that article while building on it.
Enjoy!
While you’re here, I have a new key marketing tool for you over on my website which you can access here: www.hayleyosborne.com titled: 3 essential posts your biz needs to get more people through the door – with templates & swipe copy! This is a must for you to implement into your business to optimise your social media and make the most of the platforms.
SUMMARY
0:00:01 Introduction to Hayley Osborne and the purpose of the podcast
0:01:30 Overview of the article Hayley wrote for Smart Company on affordable strategies for SMEs
0:02:30 Importance of leveraging social media for small businesses
0:03:30 Statistics on the user base of major social media platforms
0:04:30 Tips for effective social media marketing on a budget:
0:07:31 The value of nurturing an email list
0:08:30 Importance of regular communication with email subscribers
0:09:30 Tracking email metrics to optimize the strategy
0:11:30 The role of email lists in increasing business value
0:12:30 Introduction to SEO as an affordable growth strategy
0:13:30 Strategies for effective SEO on a budget:
0:16:17 The importance of knowledge and consistency in marketing
0:17:30 Warnings against get-rich-quick schemes
0:18:30 The value of building trust and being top-of-mind for the audience
0:19:30 Concluding remarks on the power of knowledge and strategic marketing
Hayley Osborne
Hello and welcome back to another episode of this podcast. If you are new here. I am Hayley Osborne. I am your host, and I’m glad that you are listening. And if what has drawn you to listen to today’s episode is the thing that you’ll listen to, listen to a few of the more recent episodes that will also help you with what I’m about to share with you today, so earlier this year, so not, not too many months ago, I wrote an article for smart company that was published, and it hit the hundreds of 1000s of subscribers that they have.
And I thought that it would be a little bit of a shame not to also bring it into your ears, because it was pretty insightful. The piece that I wrote, and it was in and around affordable strategies for small to medium businesses. Tips on really leveraging social media, leveraging email campaigns and leveraging SEO on a budget, and that’s what I want to talk to you about today. So I’ve got some tips. It’s really timely for this time of year, leading into the festive season, because I know that you know small to medium businesses budgets.
You know they expand and contract, and normally this time of year they contract a little bit, getting ready for holidays. But I encourage you to lean in, because knowledge is power. The more that you know, the more powerful your business will be. So I think while your competitors really might be in panic mode as your budgets become smaller, the time for you is to remain really calm, cool and collected and learn to be able to build your brand to continue to attract new audiences through really clever, affordable strategies and convert them into paying customers.
And so your knowledge in your business and in growing your business, and your thought leadership in and around your business is a priceless tool to showcase how you can help people and with the right strategies, you can leverage your marketing efforts really, without breaking the bank. I think anyone can do it with the right know-how, once you know what to do, right? Because, like I said, knowledge is power, and I think that isn’t really important so firstly, let’s talk about social media, and specifically how you can leverage the billion plus monthly active users across all social media platforms.
And I think that it’s not a matter of if or yes or no doing social media. It’s a matter of how well you do it, because you should be using social media. And more businesses, I think, are recognizing the power of social media and how much of a large part it can actually play in their marketing strategy. So don’t discount putting some serious strategy behind your social media marketing, because it plays a really big role in your overall marketing strategy.
And I probably say this on every single podcast episode that I have. But you cannot discount your social media, because 99% of people are going to Google you before they pick up the phone and then that’s your suit and tie version, right? That’s your corporate front, that’s your website, that’s how you appear, and then they want to see the behind-the-scenes version of your business. And that’s your credible source, right? That’s your source of truth. Are you presenting yourself in a way that resonates with them over on your social media?
So that’s the shorts and T-shirt version of your business. That’s the casual version, and that’s the version that your customers want to see, because humans buy from humans, and so as of June 2024 Instagram has 2 billion monthly active users. Facebook has 3 billion. LinkedIn has 350 million. Tik, Tok, 1.2 billion. YouTube, 2.5 billion. In and Pinterest is 465 million. So that is a lot of people in your target audience to potentially reach every single month with the right strategy.
So even capturing 1% of those audiences, you probably wouldn’t be able to support the influx of clients into your business. But with those stats in mind, I’m sure that you’re like, Oh my God. Because, I mean, we all know that it’s a lot, right, but we don’t really know how much. So, I mean, it’s not something that you retain, unless you’re me, because I just love, I love this stuff so much. And I think you need to remember that these are free platforms to use, okay?
So if you are using them correctly and using them to your advantage, like with the stats that I just said, don’t you think that is 100% worth pouring some time and effort into upskilling and educating yourself in and around how to use them to benefit your business, so making the most of your social media. Circling back to on a budget, which is what this episode is about, you can use tips like, you know, picking the platforms for you.
So don’t, don’t try and be everything to everyone. Focus on the platforms that are relevant to your target audience. So you want to do them all. Fine, I can. I can understand. And imagine what some of you are saying, but I want to be everywhere. Well, I would encourage you to pick one, do it well, then, then set a time frame, okay, I’m going to master this, and then in six months’ time, I’m going to extend to the next social media platform, and then in six months’ time, I’m going to extend to that one and develop a system and a process in and around how you do that.
And then it becomes a lot easier, rather than doing everything all at the same time. And then the second one would be to create content to educate, inspire and entertain. So like I said before, humans buy from humans, no matter the size of the business, okay, we buy from humans, and we buy from the stories that we create and utilize. The third thing I want to say is utilize all mediums. So make sure you’re sharing a mix of content types, like images, videos, infographics. I know I see a lot of people not using these recently, and that’s a really good one to have as a carousel structured post where you have a lot of images and people flick through articles.
That’s another great one where you write a really great teaser and then the rest of the article is on your blog right, which then gets hits to your website. And so by using mix, it will keep your audience engaged, as well as leveraging what the platforms want you to use. So these social media platforms design all of these things because they want you to use them. And so the more that you use them, the more little street cred you have in your back pocket to be able to instigate those little robots in the back end to get this content relevant.
This particular account is using everything that we’ve given them to use. So therefore we’ll push it out a little bit more organically. And so just remember to use all of the content types that are available with a nice mix, okay, and then that keeps your audience engaged as well. Because there’s nothing like having a boring social media account, because, you know, that creates a lot of buy so remember, if you really like to just post images or carousel posts, that you need to include a mix of video, or if you just like posting video, it would be nice to include some stills as well, just to keep up the variety. I think that’s really cool.
Um, the second thing I want to talk about, in terms of affordable strategies, is, you know your email list, and your email list in particular, as a warm audience, they’re ready to buy from you. Okay, everyone on your list is there for a reason, because they are interested, and they want to hear about who you are and what you do. Otherwise they wouldn’t have signed up in the first place. So unlike social media, which is essentially a cold audience, very powerful, like a big pull to pull from, but a very cold audience, consumers are becoming smarter, right? So we don’t want to simply give our email address to anyone anymore.
So when we get them, okay, in our world, you need to use them and treat them like gold and nurture them. That means communicating with them on a regular basis, whether that’s weekly or fortnightly. I think monthly is a bit too. You’re far between drinks, I send my email list and email every single week, but you know, it’s like spamming in reverse. If you have customers that have signed up to be on your email list and you currently do not have an email strategy in place, I suggest that you quick, smart, add it to your list of things to do this week to actually nurture them, because, like I said, we don’t give our emails away for free, and so by not communicating with your email list, you are like spamming in reverse. Ill, alright, so people want to hear from you.
They want to know what you’ve been up to. They want to know about your products and services. They want to know, especially this time of year where people are looking to spend money around gifts. It could be service or product-based business, but consumers are looking to spend Okay, so educating them as much as possible is important. Now, I will say it anytime. Is a great time to start, but don’t expect, if you haven’t been nurturing your list all year to then ramp up your emails ready for the festive season and expect to get as much return as possible, because it doesn’t work like that.
You need to nurture an audience on your email list all year round, because then when they need what it is that you have to offer, you’re top of mind, and they will buy from you, even if it is seasonal. You have to stay top of mind. And so, you know, unlike social media, we need to make sure that we manage this list, and it’s like liquid gold, okay? So usually, if a business is looking to sell, and I may have said this before, if you’re an avid listener of the podcast, but you know, the bigger your email list is, if your exit strategy in your business is to sell the business down the track, if you have taken time to grow your email list, you will essentially get an extra zero or two on the end of the sale price because you have a big email list of engaged customers.
Okay, this is important to remember, so free to nurture. Okay, aside from the platform that you house your list may or may not cost you money, depending on how big your list is, but your email list should be your go to and the first group of people to know when you are announcing something, new, products, developments, knowledge, things you want to teach them. And you know, you can see who’s opened your emails. You can see the percentage of openings, a really good open rate is around 25 to 37% or 38% any higher, is bloody awesome. Any lower, you’ve got work to do. But you can see the number of clicks on your email.
You can see the bounce rates, which all allow you to fine tune everything in your email strategy to really Max impact at a minimal cost. Okay, so one of the things I absolutely love doing is, at the end of the week, I go into my stats, and I track my stats every single week, because I just love numbers, and I love seeing growth is to look at the open rates. I always click on See who’s open what, and are they following me on social media. How many people have clicked through? How many people have clicked over to listen to the podcast?
And I find it really interesting. How many people have unsubscribed? Oh, that’s just the best. I love looking at all of that stuff. And it’s, it’s pleasantly surprising. Honestly, it just starts to light me up. What can I say? And you know, I think that when you are looking at your email strategy, if we’re talking about strategic things, your email should be a small story to start with about you. What’s been happening inside your business, as well as a marrying of a strategic call to action to purchase a product or a service or listen if you have a podcast, I always talk about what’s happening in the podcast this week to encourage people to go and listen, because I think it’s important.
You know, I always like to deliver exceptional value, and it’s one of my highest values being education to my audience, to continue to upskill you. And so I include that in my email list every single week, and a story at the beginning, so that you know what’s been happening in my life. I think it’s just lovely. And like I said, humans buy from humans. And so I think if you have a strategy to also continue to build and leverage your email list by crafting specific messages and stories you can consistently promote all year round, what it is that you sell without the need.
For expensive advertising campaigns, okay, without the need of always running Google ads, Facebook ads, you know, I don’t know if you do any gorilla marketing, but even printing of collateral, like flyers and things like that, that are probably going to end up in the bin, this is where it’s at. Nurturing your list is important. Or you know if you’re buying display ads in a publication, or I know that recently, I’ve seen some emails come in my inbox about running some advertising in lifts in buildings where they have the TV monitors in lifts people see.
So I think that’s important, but just be wary, right? If you are not consistently emailing your list, do that first before you start to spend big on other advertising costs. Now the third thing, so I want to talk about socials. I want to talk about email the third thing I want to talk about to be able to help you create affordable strategies if you are a small to medium business, is SEO, okay, so that is your search engine optimization, and I think you can do this while maintaining a budget, I just have to have a little drink because, you know, this is I’m a human, and I just can’t talk for that long without having a drink.
But when it comes to your SEO, so your search engine optimization knowledge is power, and I have just taught Module Two inside the magnetic marketing formula on SEO and how to have an optimised website, which is, you know, has been amazing because that’s where part of your marketing foundation starts. Okay, so the more that your business can demonstrate its knowledge through your website, the higher relevant score Google will give your website, and it also comes down to readability. And the relevant score that Google gives you is determined by how relevant your content is on your website to who is searching for, what your business is, products or services aligned to your zone of genius.
All right, so the higher your relevant score, the more likely your website will rank on page one organically. But just know that Google can read words, it cannot read images. So every single day, that’s why you have to keep adding words to your website every single week. If you can, I have a podcast. Obviously, Dora, you’re listening to it every single week, and that adds around, you know, 1600 words to my website through the transcript.
And then I write a regular blog, which is about another 650 words. And the blogs are really strategic in terms of getting that connection right, where what people are searching for versus what content is there, hopefully they match. And the idea is that my website comes up as the answer to people’s questions in Google, okay, and that is, in essence, the bee’s knees of SEO without having to pay for Google ads. If you can do that, that is amazing. Okay, so the higher the relevant score that Google will give you, the more likely that your website will appear on page one.
So a few more tips, you know, like I said, Write a blog. Write a weekly blog, creating high quality, helpful content, answering some of those common questions people have. And if you’re struggling for ideas on what to write in your blog, you can always piggyback off of your frequently asked questions. Okay, so that could be something in and around, what you start your blog on. I think you really need to optimize your site for speed, making all of the images as small as possible. And there are other tools that I use that are free in my business, so that my website is fast.
Okay, so if it takes too long to load, you know, as a consumer, if you are looking for that outfit, and you are served an ad on Instagram, and you click on it, and the website takes a billion years to load because it’s really, you know, the content is heavy, you’re gone. I know that I am. I don’t have much time, so I’m like, I operate at the speed of light, and so if something is slow to load, I’ll just go somewhere else. So don’t be that business that is slow to load. And there’s lots of different tools that you can use and strategies that you can build through your website that are free to make it fast. So Okay, make sure that you also do your keyword research.
So we go through all of this inside my membership superhero marketing as well. And if you are interested, the wait list is there for you to add your name to? Otherwise, if you have other questions, just send me an email or just DM me on my social media. I think I love connecting with people that are listening to the podcast, so just come in and ask me, and I will gladly help but do your research. Okay, do your keyword research again.
We’ve gone through how to do your keyword research in the magnetic marketing formula we’re going through the weeks now, it’s so awesome, and I know that those that have joined this course, again, it having some really big light bulb moments, and are getting some good results, which I’m so proud of. And you know, like I said before, make sure that you know that Google can’t read images. So if your website is really image heavy, have a little think about shrinking them down and making sure that the titles of your images are also labeled as keywords.
Okay, so the more relevant text your website has, the better. So there’s lots of different ways that you can do that. These are some of the tips. There are other things that I use as well, which I can take you through if you want to sit down with me for a chat. And I think overall, like Knowledge is power. So if you have to invest a little bit on building your knowledge to be able to do some of these things yourself to create affordable strategies for growth.
I think that is definitely money well spent, because no one can ever take that knowledge away from you, and you want to be able to retain all of your customers, and ideal clients are going to turn into customers within your own assets. Okay, so, yes, I just spoke about social media, but your own asset is your email list, and your own asset is your website, okay? And I do think that when these things are used strategically and consistently, you can achieve massive results across your socials, your emails and your SEO, and it can really help your small business to grow that, you know, like trust factor.
It’s not an overnight thing. Someone actually landed in my messages the other day, and they said they just want to know how they can sit on their couch and make money while they stay at home. And I’m like, I pretty much said I’m not that person for you, because I think you have to do all the things. There is no quick way to win, and if someone promises you the world it is likely bullshit. Okay, there is no way to set paths to be able to make five figures a month, okay? Or six figures a month, whatever that looks like, there is nothing you have to do all the things.
And so I’m that person that can teach you all the things, okay? But if it seems too good to be true, guys, it probably actually is. So I think when your ideal client gets to know you, okay, through your consistency across all your marketing, they start to like you, and then the like turns into trust, and the trust will eventually create a sale when they need what it is to that you have to offer, but you have to continue to be top of mind and be one of those businesses that are always at the top of their mind, providing educational, inspirational, funny type of content.
And you know, these three things are a really nice mix of value on a high return with a low budget. So I hope that you’ve enjoyed those three tips from today’s podcast. Like I said, this episode was from an article that I wrote for Smart Company. It was very well received, and it appeared also in their email, in their weekly email, which I was so blown away by, and I thought that it would be a really nice idea for me to share the knowledge that I wrote in that article with you guys on my podcast. So there we have an affordable strategy for small to medium businesses, tips on leveraging social media, email campaigns and SEO on our budget.
That’s all from me, guys. I hope you have a great day wherever you are and whatever you are doing and I do. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to me and have me in your ears. It’s. Much appreciated. I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to this episode. If you have hit subscribe, so you don’t miss any new episodes released every Tuesday, and while you’re there, leave me a review. I would absolutely love to read it. Also, don’t forget to tag me @hayleykosborne over on Instagram and share this post with your audience so they can get learning too. Sharing is caring.
If you want more, head over to https://hayleyosborne.com/category/podcast/ for today’s show notes and links. Catch you next week for another episode of The Hayley Osborne show.
