199: SEO and Messaging for Your Design Business
Michele 00:00
Hello, my name is Michele, and you're listening to Profit is a Choice. With me today is Erin Ollila. Erin is a copy coach and a conversion copywriter and so much more. Erin believes in the power of words and how a message can inform and even transform its intended audience. Today we're going to be talking about the intersection of SEO, messaging and copywriting for your marketing materials, especially your website. So grab a pen and paper and get ready to take notes. Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health, and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses and the interior design, industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice. Hi, Erin, welcome to the podcast.
Erin Ollila 01:11
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Michele 01:13
Oh, you're welcome. I'm excited to chat all things, copywriting and see how that fits in. I speak in numbers and not in words. So I think this is going to be a fun conversation.
Erin Ollila 01:26
You know, it's funny, you mentioned that because I speak in words and not numbers. But when we look at how we approach our marketing for our business, even though it's copy related, there's so many ways that numbers actually play like such a valuable role in decision making, right? One of them is SEO. So you say you're a numbers person? Well, you'd be able to look at a spreadsheet that had a long list of options for like keywords or keyword phrases. And you'd be able to make like pretty instant decisions, because you can then look at the numbers and see how that relates to not necessarily financials, but maybe conversions, right? Like how do we take someone just searching the internet and actually, like make them come to like our site versus someone else's? So there are many ways that numbers really do play in with the words when it comes to marketing, right?
Michele 02:12
It's kind of like, I was talking to, I think it was Darla Powell one time on her podcast, and she made the comment that she's like, Michele, I don't understand how all this fits together with marketing and numbers. And I was like, oh, gosh, you can't break them apart. And then as we started having exactly that type of conversation, she said, oh my gosh, you're so right. But we don't always think we tend to kind of silo our thinking sometimes into what comes most naturally for us. And you know, what's also interesting, Erin, and maybe I don't know, this is just from my own engagement. before I asked you all the questions that everybody else came here to hear to figure out. But what I find interesting is sometimes I can come up or quite often. And maybe I know why, but I'm going to say anyway, quite often, I could come up with the words to describe something of someone else's 99 times faster than I can do it for myself. And I the minute I thought it and went to verbalize that to you. It's almost the same reason that I can design something made choices for somebody else faster than I can make them from my own home or my own space. I need somebody to kind of speak some truth into my area, but I can speak it into theirs. And I just find that fascinating. People will say to me all the times can you slow down, I need to write that down. I like that phrase, I want to use that when I'm talking to them about theirs. It's not we're not SEO going anywhere. It's just a natural way of describing for them. And I have a much more difficult time doing it from my own business is. Am I normal? Or am I weird?
Erin Ollila 02:14
You are so normal? I could totally be
Michele 03:44
Weird for other reasons.
Erin Ollila 03:45
Oh no. Yeah, you have you can have your own you know, interesting aspects of you. But that is the most normal way that people approach their marketing for the clients that come to me for done for you work. I always try to remind them that they really need to look at my job as their copywriter as kind of more of their this is not really how I phrase it, but kind of like a therapist meets like journalist right? Because like the what happens is all I'm doing like and I don't want to oversimplify my job because I do think you have to have the skills to do it. But all I'm doing is I am like internalizing what my clients are saying to me and then I'm processing it and then I'm putting their thoughts on paper. Like good copywriters are in everyone always ask like, oh, how can you speak in my voice and that's usually people's biggest concern. But the reason the good copywriters are able to do that is because we're listening, right? Like there's the skill that you have to learn of, you know, like what's important to the speaker and like how do they want to save their message, but in truth, you know, in some ways, it kind of feels like cheating because a lot of the end results the deliverables I have, they do come right from the client, right? It's just that I'm not like, you know, we all have our own blocks, just like you said, designing for yourself takes a lot longer than any, like, designing for someone else. Oh my goodness, if I could have timed how long it took me to rewrite my website, like year or so ago, I think I would be much mortally embarrassed by it because it took me forever, just because of, you know, your own blocks, perfectionism, overwhelming amount of choices, right. And that goes for any of my clients too. So I think it's nice that I went through that myself in somewhat recent time, because it gives me that empathy that I have when like, clients come to me, the number one thing I hear, number one, regardless of whether it's the done for you work, or the copy coaching clients that I work with is, I have everything in my brain that I want to say, like, I know my clients, I know their pain points, I know what like I want to say about my business, I just don't know how to say it. So they know what to say. They just don't know how. And that's, you know, it happens for a few reasons. To get back to that numbers, words thing. I like to tell people think of like content writing, so like blog posts, or even as simple as just personal journaling that comes from the creative side of our brain that has like the flow of like thought, right, so there's this part of part of our brain that doesn't edit, it's just straight creativity. So I like to look at content writing from that perspective, people can write in longer form a lot quicker because there's more space for them to explain things. Now copywriting is the complete opposite approach, when people sit down to write shorter amounts of copy. One, just besides the pressure, that there's less, like less opportunity to explain with fewer words, what's happening is their brain is coming from that editing part, right? How do I say the right thing with clarity and with like, quickness, and instead of just letting that flow come? They're really dealing with the, you know, the inner edit, or inner edit editor or the inner critic? I just really tried hard to combine that.
Michele 07:11
A whole new word there like that. Yeah, right. Yeah, it was interesting. And all of this, Erin. So my son, he has dysgraphia and part of dysgraphia. There's like an OT part of it. And then there's another part of this is I've got the words, but I can't get them out and edit them and put them in alignment, ton of that organization of words before it gets out on paper. And so what we had to do to help educate around that was we used a product called Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. So it's a voice to text. This was back in the day, right? Because he's grown and married. Moving on. This is back in second third grade. And so we got this voice text, and we would say to him, and because I but I always say if I asked him something he could speak 45 pages to me, he could quote entire movies, he could he was super smart, he could write an entire novel, like he wanted to write he had, he had words that needed to come out. But when you gave him a piece of paper and a pen and said Now put it on paper, you need to capitalize it, you need to make sure you you do all the right, you know, grammar around it, make sure that you punctuate it properly, make sure that you indent, make sure you do this. And it can only be so many pages and you know, single space and double tie all the all the junk that went with creating it, he would write the most simple words, I had dinner, I ate steak, yet, if you would ask him to your point, the creative side would come out and he could describe this beautiful meal on this experience. And so with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, we would have him speak at all, it would convert it out into Microsoft Word. And then we would give it to him to go back and edit. But we had to teach him how to turn off the critic and the editor and write it and then go turn on the critic and editor as if they were separate kind of ways of looking at what he was writing. But that freed him up over time to be able to start to integrate some of that in his writing maybe not as thoroughly as others or as easily, but it allowed him to start integrating that that was eye opening for me. And it's an I'm now able just even from hearing you say that to connect those dots. I don't know that I've ever connected. I mean, I've always thought just write it and get it down and then we can go back and clean it up. But I never thought about it. Until you just said that how I feel connected all the way back to his the way that dysgraphia displayed in him.
Erin Ollila 09:36
Yeah, no, that brings up two really, really good points on a personal level. I have ADHD. And one part of the ADHD state that I struggle with is word connections. So for me, it's like I know what I'm like want to explain to someone usually while talking, but I can't pull the exact word. I just did it today. Well when I was shopping with my toddler in Michael's craft store, and there was a train and in my mind, I could not for the life of me say train. So I was like, the machine that takes lots of people and places and uses coal and stuff and my three year olds like, but like it was, I am an you know, I'm, like late 30s. At this point in my life, I've lived with my own ADHD for a while. So just like your son, we develop skills and tools to be able to meet our own needs as we go. So for me, I can sit down and write much better than I can speak in some instances, right. I've always been someone who doesn't mind being on stage or public speaking. And I think that helps me. But now, like, it helps me not worry about the fact that I can't pull out words sometimes, and I have to then describe them. So coming from the personal perspective, I, I really don't believe anyone is neurotypical, I think that we're all very neurodiverse. And it just comes out differently for some people. And it's very easy for others to get hidden, like under the rug, because there's just not enough like literature on not necessarily mental health awareness on any type of like neuro processing. So I think people are learning a lot about themselves in the past, like decade or so. But I really think that brain disconnect makes a big difference for business people, because there are some people who can sit down. And like when I work with a copy coaching clients, some people can write a draft immediately. There's no pressure on themselves, they get it all out there. But their drafts are not very creative. And they're not very, like aligned with marketing speak, let's say they're a lot of my clients will say like, this reminds me of the thesis I wrote in graduate school, or like, I feel like I just read like a textbook. But those are the people that don't really struggle with getting the words on the page. However, that other group that will come to me for copy coaching, that ends up having really creative drafts, like really well written, they get their personality on the page. Those are the groups of people that struggle with getting the words out there. And I am, you know, I'm not a scientist, or I haven't really studied how this works, I just can empathize with it, because I see it very frequently. And part of the reason that I do copy coaching is because I want business owners to understand that they do have a lot of the skills that they need to potentially to write their own marketing content, right. So for that second group who ends up writing really good stuff, they just need someone to show them. This, you know, maybe the tips and tricks to like, get the content out quickly. Which brings me to point number two, because I did promise you point number two, when I was in my MFA program for creative writing, I had an incredible mentor. His name was Da Chen. And he wrote the best selling book Colors of the Mountain and a few other books. But in one of the classes that we attended, he explained that I'm pretty sure it was his first book, either first or second. He just kept complaining to his wife, like, I can't do this. I like he already had the book deal. He was already through drafts, but he just couldn't get those stories out. And he has lived through some very traumatizing and interesting times. So the stories were there. He just couldn't say it. So his wife actually tricked him and used it like tape recorder to record him telling her stories. Yes, telling her story. So she'd asked him leading questions like, What happened that time when you know, the people came to your father's farm and what happened when you were in school, and he would tell the stories. And then what he did was he, you know, at that time, we didn't have tools like otter AI to transcribe things. So he paid someone to transcribe the tapes for him. And he had like almost the whole book, it just then needed to be adjusted. So I always tell that story, one because I really, truly loved Da Chen, and he was a wonderful mentor. But I always tell that story to people who are trying to write their own stuff, whether it's social media posts, emails to their clients, their web copy, go into a Zoom Room by yourself, or pull in one of your business friends and ask each other questions about your business, or the topics that you want to write about. And then use a tool like otter to transcribe that because even if you can't use it word for word, which I will be completely honest, I highly doubt you could use it word for word. The first draft is done, like you have the whole project bear. And you can just edit and adjust, which is so much easier from starting been starting with a blank page. I mean, it's terrifying that even for me, as a business owner for almost seven years, as someone who has worked in copywriting and publishing for at least a decade before that, it really stinks to start with just a blinking cursor and nothing on that first page.
Michele 14:41
And I think that's why that Dragon NaturallySpeaking all the way back when my son was in second and third grade. It filled that same because we again, we didn't have otter we didn't have those things. And I'm so thankful that in the dyslexia dysgraphia world that that showed up. If there are any business people that are listening, there is a Dragon NaturallySpeaking for business people that actually will write in Excel, Microsoft Word and some of Publisher and some of the other Microsoft documents. So my husband's even used it. So that's pretty amazing when you can speak into a spreadsheet.
Erin Ollila 15:14
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say I haven't even heard that spreadsheet part. But there are many tools that work like that. Even Google has their own talk to text. So if you're using a Google Doc, you can put the text button on and instead of typing, you can just talk. Again, they're not as they're not as good as Dragon because Dragon's been around for so long. But it gets you started, right. And if there are tools that you're already using, so that you don't have to go out there and learn a new tech tool, because again, that's just another way to procrastinate. Just test it out, you know, use your talk to text and Instagram and send a message to a friend. And that message could be the social media post, that you know, everywhere we look, it's kind of built into tech. So I would say, That's right, take the tech you use and then see if you can use that option within that tech.
Michele 15:59
I love it. I love it. All right. So we kind of jumped ahead because we got out into the numbers and how we do it and how we get the words out there and take a minute and tell us about your business and who you are and what you do.
Erin Ollila 16:10
Thank you. So I am a SEO copywriter. And what that means is I like to focus my work with my clients on creating words or assets that attract the right people to them. A lot of the times you'll hear the lip a term conversion copywriter, and you know, I would also identify that as well. But there's a very slight difference, right? So conversion, copywriters take your current audience and help to convert them into clients, whereas an SEO copywriter is attracting a new audience to you. And because I really love to write websites with my clients, I think that investing in SEO is probably the smartest idea people can can do. Because we all live in our little like microsystems of our own networks that you know, it's like swimming and tiny seeds. And we might jump into the next pond to like be in a podcast interview as an example. But we're not really jumping into the ocean, right in our own little business world. So when we use SEO, the SEO is really what brings the ocean to our ponds, right? Like, our water systems just keep getting like refreshed from the amount of people who can find us make the decision on their own, if we are someone that they want to work with, which is a very important part when it comes to our website, right? We can all acknowledge that people will check out our website without, you know, first contacting us or even necessarily, one, they could be referrals to they could be strangers, right. But people are looking at our websites. If we're bringing those people to our websites, and they decide to stay there and look around, then that's already there being primed for conversion, right, they are making the decision on their own, they're self identifying that they're in the right place, which makes that overall sale and customer experience later on much better. Because we're giving them the decision making, we're not forcing ourselves on them. It's not like we're paying ads. And there's nothing wrong with ads. But it's not like we're paying ads and like forcefully showing up in someone else's world. We're just inviting them into ours. So you know, I've written copy, I've written content. Originally, I started my business working for, you know, billion dollar brands, I was very fortunate to get a freelance position at one big brand that just introduced me to a few others and I loved it. The problem was, I was a new business owner. And I had no clue what I was doing. I mean, honestly, I think of my full six years this summer, and I still don't know what I'm doing half of the time, because I didn't go to business school. My all of my degrees were in creative fields like so I have, you know, two bachelors, one Master's again, all creativity. No one ever told me like, what it was like to do bookkeeping or what it was even like to do marketing. Even though one of my undergraduate degrees were in marketing, what I think, especially until at least the past five years or so, what we're teaching people in college is about marketing is how to market for the corporate world, right? We're still not teaching them how to be small business owners. So the long part of the story I'll cut it down is that I started to realize that there are a ton of people in my shoes, and I really liked those people. And it bothered me that you know, they didn't have $15,000 They could just spend on like a marketing efforts that might flop right. They were putting like a few $100 that they had here, a few $1,000 there and I got where they came from. So I wanted to really start working with those people because I cared about their efforts and like what ended up with them. So yeah, so I transitioned from billion dollar brands to very tiny businesses. Most of my clients now are anywhere from like a solopreneur to like, you know, 10 person aid mini agency. And I just get a lot of joy from working with them, because you can see that the investments that they're making, whether they're financial, or whether they're just mental and emotional investments into their own business, you can see the payoff, like immediately, whereas in the marketing world for big brands, and I still have a few client retainer clients that are big brand clients, it's fun, because I get to learn so much like I learned so much more about SEO working with big brands than I did before. And I had a lot of knowledge before that. But I learned more, I just didn't see the payoff. So it's really nice for me to be able to work with smaller businesses at this point of it.
Michele 20:44
Alright, so let's dive in. What comes first copy or design?
Erin Ollila 20:49
Oh, 100%, copy on this one. You will hear some people say things differently. And in some instances, I may agree that you can use design, and then use that to influence copy.
Michele 21:03
And we're talking about website builds here.
Erin Ollila 21:05
Yeah, we're talking about website or even I mean, there's other like sales pages, or even brochures, anything like that. Here's how I can best describe it to people. You don't have to close your eyes, I promise. But like it works. When I say close your eyes, imagine a website, any website, it could be Target, it could be your own website. Now, literally get the picture of it in your brain, then use like your brain eraser to remove all the words. Do you have any clue what that website is about? The answer is going to most likely be absolutely not. And that's almost 100% absolutely not. You know, I've had people that like respond to that to be like, well, their logo might help. But a huge portion of logos have words in them, right? Even sometimes images will not indicate what the actual company is about. Like you could have a leaf. And that leaf could be landscapers, the leaf could be like natural products for body lotion, right. So if you remove images from design, you may have a beautiful design, but the end user will have zero understanding of what your business is about. And there will be zero conversions because they're not going to click buttons. If they don't know what the buttons are going to lead them to write more pictures without words, more pictures without words are worse, like a sales page, right? That like I mean, the sales page just has another button, then they charge their credit card. And they're like what just happened? Because they don't know what that like journey, what user journey they're being sent on. Right? So you know, it's a silly example. But I think it's the easiest way to see why words are important. Earlier this week, I did a presentation for the Rhode Island chapter of the rising tide society, about branding. And we talked about this at length, because there was a nice mix of, excuse me, people who had product based businesses, as well as service based businesses. And the way that we talked about it was, even though I share that, and I think that copy comes first, really what happens is, everything falls under the bucket, the bucket of messaging. And in messaging, it's split by two things, design and words, right? So if we can get our message, like correct, then the words and the design can work at the same time, before after each other. But we really need the message to be able to inform both design and copy.
Michele 23:33
So when we're looking at that, then and let's say that we've got our messaging and our designing copy. This is where you kind of had mentioned about you know that right brain creative might create some words and an idea of messaging. But the left brain logical has to come in and start checking the SEO, why is it important, not only to write this beautifully written sales page, or beautifully written copy for a website, but to also make it SEO?
Erin Ollila 23:58
SEO? Yeah, no, that's a great question.
Michele 24:00
Sometimes it's, you know, you can tell when SEO in my opinion, you can tell when that optimization is done well. And when it's done, clunky. Oh, yeah. Because I've seen some that if I had read the original copy, whether it's SEO or not, I would have said that beautiful copy. But I can see where they kind of clunk these words in there to create an SEO presence. But when you read it, it might draw people there, but it's not going to then convert, right? It might bring you into my pond, my ocean, my store, whatever it is I'm trying to bring you into, but I'm going to read it and feel clunky, and I'm not going to move forward. So can you talk about that? How we mix those together to make it still sound fluid and get the messaging across but to do the job of SEO that it's meant to do? Yeah, absolutely.
Erin Ollila 24:44
That's kind of why I mentioned that I would call myself both a conversion copywriter and an SEO copywriter. And I point that out though, because there are many copywriters that I work with and I'm friends with that have different types of jobs. Some might be strictly SEO, some might be strictly conversion. But here's the way I embrace it, especially when it comes to websites, right? There is one thing we haven't discussed, which is the answer to the to the question do you just ask, but the SEO gets to the people to your digital storefront. And the conversion like efforts, takes those people and then turns them from lead to customers. But the only way that it's successfully done is when we focus on the what I mean, technically, it's the customer journey. But in this case, it would be like the lead journey, or the lead experience that we set up on our websites. And this is where I think tons of copywriters are not focusing their efforts, or business owners, if they're writing for themselves, is we write in a way that we that either sounds nice, which again, if you're not using SEO and sounding nice, nobody's going to find it, and then nobody's going to care because they're not finding it right? Or we write for SEO, and then it seems so unnatural, and it turns people off, right? So there's one factor. The other same thing for conversions. We either like a lot of people will tell me, Oh, I don't want to be a salesy, like sleazy salesperson on my website, I just am a nice person, I don't want to like drive home pain points. And that's because you know, so much in the marketing world is teaching people to have a countdown timer on their websites, and like, tell people that like, you know, if you don't join, now, you won't get XYZ. So we're learning marketing efforts that are not necessarily aligned with our beliefs. And we're not learning then how to use other marketing efforts as the like calls to action on our websites, like the way to invite people in and allow them to purchase, or at least allow them to book a discovery call with us. Because, you know, the general online business population is teaching a one size fits all approach to marketing, that really doesn't work for people. So I promised to solve those two dilemmas for you right now, when we sit down and we look at copy specifically. So many of my clients will say like, why did you say that here, when we're reviewing their copy together? Well, they'll say, Oh, I thought that was helpful. But maybe we should move this to a different page. And I think the number one way to make sure you have successful copy on your website or other places, is to review it from a client's perspective or a leads perspective. So you know, on our homepage, as an example, many people will have, you know, a hero statement in that big opening section of their homepage, when you scroll down, you may have a copy section that really explains either describes you your business who serve pain points, let's say, if you scroll down a little bit further, you'll see like a tiny about section, especially if it's more of like a personal brand type of a business, and then scroll down a little bit more. And it will show things like merit badges or potential ways to work with that business. That's there for a reason. Because the end user needs to learn those things in that succession. In order to make, you know, a, like a decision on if they want to work with you. If for example, instead of that hero image, like hero image, and the header that goes on that, it was just by now buttons, you would lose people immediately. Maybe not everyone, but you would lose people, or and vice versa. Like we could, you know, we could talk about homepages all day. But the point is, when we look at whether our copy is successful, we really need to look at is this information like that we're giving to the end user coming at the right time. And when we move people throughout our website, are we moving them to the right place in our website at the right time, because that really does affect conversions. If you only have let's say a lead magnet on your homepage, and no other way for them to go on to any other pages of your site, they're not going to take more time to learn about your services, right. So marketers and copywriters, they really do spend a lot of their research and their time planning out that user experience. And then that does affect copy. So very quick TLDR. If you just zoned out of my long rant right there, you take the SEO to attract people, you then look at the people you've attracted and make sure that they have a very clear journey and path throughout your site. And then the words that you're using, converts them into paying customers or at least into warmer leads, who potentially join your email list or at least get on a discovery call. So that would be the best approach to any type of copywriting
Michele 29:41
okay. You know, what's interesting about that is again, I think sometimes we tend to think in silos, let's do our copywriting. Now, let's do our messaging or do our messaging and then do our copywriting. Now let's do our marketing, as opposed to really thinking about holistically and strategically how all of these places intersect in especially I would say the higher price ticket, the more we have to really make sure somebody understands what's happening. Yeah, you know, if I'm if I'm selling something for 99 cents a month, I want him to understand it. But I don't have to pour that much into it because they're willing to lose that if it's not a big deal. But the more you get into 99,000, people are going to stop and make sure they really understand everything. So the more clear, the more concise, the more educational, the more trustworthy. You're messaging and the journey that you're taking them on has to be right.
Erin Ollila 30:31
Yeah, can we stop there for one second, though, they think that's very important. I was so happy to hear you say concise, because what happens, what's really hard for the consumer, I think, like the marketing consumer to understand, though, is there's so much pressure into educating people at a higher price point. So most of the people that I work with, especially for the done for you copywriting, it's a mindset shift to get them to understand that better education and clearer and more concise copy is actually shorter copy, it is not over explained copy, right. And I think that when people think that they have higher prices, they think that they have to have like, full long sales page types of pages as their website page. But really, that's complete opposite what you have to do. That isn't to say you don't have to educate. So I don't want anyone to get confused on the point that I'm trying to make. But what I'm trying to say is for web pages, specifically, the absolute key for success is shorter copy. In the most clear and concise way possible. Like don't use the like fun phrasing, like I'm a word unicorn, if you want to just say you're a copywriter, like, that's what I mean by being like clear and concise, like speak in the language, they will understand, show them options. And here is where design and copy really true truly work together, show them options in a way that they can, their brain can digest it. So instead of paragraph after paragraph after paragraph, you know, good copywriters, and good web designers will take longer form copy, and they'll break that down into bullet points, or they'll move like even if there are paragraph sections, maybe we'll shorten them and move them into like boxes on the website, like as call out boxes, or put an icon near them. So that we can give our brain a chance to digest the information. So if there are people with, you know, high ticket prices, which you know, many of your clients are in the interior design world, we need to remember that our consumers need our help, because we know things that they don't. But that does not mean that they do not understand the world that were processing for them. So if we need to educate them in a high ticket, like you know, experience, the ways to share longer form content, our blog posts, especially SEO, blog, posts, services guides, so you know, say very quickly what you need to say about your interior design, like services, maybe it's like, you know, a small one time offer or, you know, a complete, you know, build of a house that you would do the whole thing, say it very quickly on the site, and then give them a longer Services Guide that they get after the discovery call that goes through every single phase of the process, because they're willing at that point, if we force them to do all of this work on our website, they're going to get overwhelmed. So the people that will then come to you for a discovery call or to work with you are going to be fewer, because you're overwhelming them. And they're thinking, oh my gosh, if she's overwhelming me at this point, what would it be like to work with her? Is she going to throw every single fabric option at me or every type of tile like, I need her help to make these decisions? Or his excuse me, but the point of the matter is, keep it clear for the higher priced items and then find other ways to share that education with them.
Michele 33:53
That's right. You know, it makes me think when I've worked through a couple of different things, I did a I was reading a sales page of somebody's one time they sent me something that wanted me to purchase. And what was interesting was I knew the person who sent it to me, I already did that home know, like trust. I'd already worked with them on something else before. And this was a new offering they had. And Erin I'm not even kidding you. The sales page was 14 pages. Yeah, it took me I scrolled. And I scrolled. I'm trying to understand. There's pictures, there's champagne, there's a yacht, I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling. And all I want to know is what is it do I get? And how much is it going to cost like that? In my brain, I'm looking for the messaging. Here's what you're going to get. And here's going to be the cost and I'm scrolling and I'm scrolling and scrolling. And by the time I got to the end, I was exhausted. And that was like You gave me so much information, but probably 85% of it I didn't need at that point to make the decision. And so I remember as an educator being told multiple times, quite often less is more we tend to think that more is more and less can very much be more, we usually can only take in about three points at a time to your point that we can digest. And so when we start giving way too much information, and here's the beauty of all of this, it's not a one. Well, it's the beauty. And it's also kind of the bane of our existence. It's not a once and done, it's a once and then monitor, because I know that my copy has shifted and changed over the years, with the times with what I offer with what I do with what my client needs. But also realizing how they take information, you know that the work that I do, I try not to hit huge pain points and leave people stirring in that pain point. Because there's already so much shame around not understanding money, not being able to run a business, struggling with how to scale and what to do, you know, not that everybody comes to me that's in a struggling in a mess. That's not the case. But there's always something that they don't know. I mean, that's the whole reason we reach out for any service is because we either can't do it, we can't see it ourselves, we need somebody else to look into it. So there's already enough questioning going on around that. The last thing I need to do is make them feel worse about it, because now I've just shut that down. But it took a while to figure out some of those nuances of how to hit the pain point, but to give confidence to address the pain point. And that's why I think it's not, I would love for everything to be done when it's moving on. You know, I think we all would, it's just not the way it works. But to have somebody who understands the pieces and parts for the first stab at it. We're going to be closer and then it's just going to be small tweaking as we go.
Erin Ollila 36:40
Yes. Oh, absolutely. And there's really so much to what you just said right there. One, when it comes to your business, like I hate to tell people this because I think they just get so excited at a website launch. And they're like, it's done. It's beautiful. It has my message, everything's great. And then as the like ethical marketer, I want to be like, cool. So let's start paying attention to the traffic that comes in, let's start paying attention to the things that you people say on Discovery calls. Another thing that like people don't always negate, to copy, excuse me equate to copy, but it's very important is what types of clients come in, you know, I just got off the call with someone a call with someone yesterday for who did copy coaching. And she said, My messages there, I really love my sight. Like it's not the copy, I want to change. But I am on so many discovery calls that I people are having trouble booking into my calendar. So I had to remind her, that is the copy that needs to be changed to me, because what that means to many of the wrong people, right? So either we need to adjust the copy on your site. So it is clear, you're more specific, you know, it gives them better instructions, which is that customer journey, right? Because the copy was great. It wasn't the copy it was that it wasn't clear for the buyer, right? Or we need to change how we direct people to work with you. You know, in some instances that maybe you have to change it to make a smaller offer or people do like a strategy session or a pick your brain session. Or maybe you limit the amount of discovery calls. And then really if you're getting that many people in the people who get in on Mondays on Discovery call days are the people who get in. But there's so many all of these things that we learn once copy is out there, whether it be websites, or sales pages, or whatever it is, we have to take that lesson and then use it to determine how we adjust our marketing over time. And I think a lot of people are hesitant to think that like, their copy will change and they don't want it to change. But you know, I would question that. But just think about your own personal life. Look at how much you have changed over the years, like, sure there might be times in our life we'd like to go back to because those experiences are wonderful. But for the most part, would you rather be like would you rather stay stagnant in your life and have never changed? Like I think most people can agree that growth is a great thing. And they understand that like when you look at it that way, when you when we're considering our businesses are growing or even just evolving, then we have to put in the effort to grow and evolve with it. And that's an okay thing. Like you said, we don't need to start from scratch, some business owners might find that their message has completely changed. And some might just need some tweaking to make things a little more clear for people or give them different options to come work with us. But what this comes down to a lot is knowing our audience, you know, in hearing what you said before, you know, we all talk about our ideal client avatars and our ideal client audience. And again, I think this big this big bad online marketing world has kind of made like a mockery of why we do that. But it's so important because if we have a general idea of who the people are that are buying from us, especially if those people are the ones we want to buy from us and that's a really important thing to point out. We can then know what their like level of awareness is. And when you know the level of awareness you can then put your marketing message to Learn path, so that the person who shared the sales page with you that was 14 pages long, they wrote a sales page for the person that had the lowest level of awareness and lowest ability to buy. And you would do that if you're marketing to a cold audience. But because you had a relationship, you are an absolutely not cold audience to them, it would have been easier for them if they just took bullet points and a price and stuck it on a Google Doc and shared that with you because they didn't have
Michele 40:28
like, I was so irritated by the end of the 14. I'm like, Yes, this is
Erin Ollila 40:33
Yes, for sure. And you know, that's, I have an episode on my own podcast coming out in two weeks from the time of this recording. It is short, short, long pages compared to Long, short sales pages compared to long sales pages, and the benefits and the you know, the pros and cons of both pretty much, and how we can adjust our marketing to match how we as consumers like to do like consume things. So again, low price product, let's say someone's selling like a guide, that's $90 or something to that effect, you do not have to have a 14 page sales page for that, you just need to quickly explain what's happening in that under $100 product. Even if you put that to a cold audience because your cold audience understands, okay, I see the value and what this is overall. And if I happen to lose $100 on this, you know, that's the worst case scenario, he they also have the opportunity to research you before they make that decision, like no one is forcing anyone to, to press buy. And I would keep that in mind as a business owner, and a consumer, there is no nobody forcing you to do it. It's marketing is driven from like a post industrial revolution capitalism, right, like that's, I mean, I am a marketer. I love marketing, and I love how psychology plays into marketing. But we do have to remember, so much of what this world that we're living in is built on is capitalistic. And it is from a error of people who are marketed to take advantage of people. So I always tell my clients like one, determine how you like to buy and purchase things, to determine what feels good for you when you do that. And then three, look at that information about yourself and determine if that's the experience you'd also like to give to your customers. But more importantly, would they be receptive to that, because you know, there are all different types of buyers, I have friends that will like they know what they want, they can make very quick and easy decisions, they buy it and they move on with their life, I am the exact opposite of that. I need to think and ruminate and research. So it seems like I'd be one of those people that want to like over explain things on our website. But this is where I mean, we can educate people in different ways. Because let's say I wanted to purchase something from you, I land on the sales page, I read the sales page, am I going to be frustrated that I don't have like your entire life story on the sales page. And I don't have like every single facet of what will happen moment to moment of whatever it is that I purchased from you know, but if you make it clear for me, you will immediately move up to that like, maybe I'll work with them bucket. And then whoever ends up in that bucket, especially if I'm comparing service providers as an example, I can then look at their websites, look at their social media, ask them to have a discovery call, read their testimonials, all those things help me make a decision as that longer term decision maker. And then when I make that decision, I am gung ho excited about working with that person, because I have made the decision in the way that works best for me and my brain. So we do have to remember, there's no perfect way to make decisions. There's no perfect buyers, we just have to determine how we want to market and understand that people receive things differently. And we have to make decisions on how we share our marketing in a way that feels good for us and good for them as well.
Michele 44:06
You know, it's interesting. So after somebody signs up or applies for a discovery call, and they go through the process, we send them two or three emails to give them information to get them ready for the sales call. And at one point, I sent all of that in one big email. Here's all the information to get you ready for the sales call. And another one I sent it as three emails over a few days because they're usually at least a week or two out by the time we talk. When I started trying to investigate, you know which one works better, it was about half and half. So then what we did was we switched we kept them as individual three individual information. But I put in the very first one, we're going to be sending you information over the next three days. If you're someone who consumes things a little bit at a time, take time when each of these comes in, if you are the type of person who prepared who would rather wait and see everything yet wants, you're going to get three of these. And when all three come in, give yourself an hour and sit down and look at it. So I just said upfront, like, I can't win the battle. Half of you want it this way, and half of you want it that way. So I'm going to give it to you. And you can either squeeze it all together and look at it at once, or you can look at it a little at a time, based on how you process, I've found that I mean, again, some things don't matter. And some things do, but I just framed it at the beginning thinking, I'm just going to let you know what's coming. And then you can decide what you want to do and how you want hand.
Erin Ollila 45:31
And that's the perfect example of considering the customer experience when we when we do marketing is specifically copywriting to write because you are not saying I'm only going to talk to this one type of person who processes this in a specific way. But you are considering how they make decisions throughout the process. Right? That's right. So I think I mean, I'm thank you for sharing that. Because I really do think it's a great example. And I hear a lot of the times the clients that I work with, again, from either copy coaching or the done for you services. It's the clients who it's so hard for them to let go of that over explaining, those are the clients that when they make decisions, I think they end up being a lot like me, right? Because they want so much information themselves. So they feel like they have to give so much. But there are so many like I'm going to throw some big air quotes on this sheets in order to speak to all different people, right? So let's pretend there's an about page because people love to write that like mini memoirs on their about page. And I'm always telling people like one your about page isn't technically about you. But two, we really don't need an a mini autobiography here. Like no one cares what happened to you in third grade unless it is so related. Like maybe you were one an interior design award and third grade cool, share that but if not, let's leave the elementary school in the past. But what I'll tell people if they are desperate to keep sharing things, is there are so many like design options that allow you to have more information on a page without cluttering other like your consumers decision making. Some of them might be dropped down boxes, frequently asked questions are the coolest and smartest thing for almost any web page, because it gives you the option to share extra stuff, where the people who make immediate decisions don't even need to click into them. And the people who like really need to do their research can read every last word. The other beauty about things like frequently asked questions is Google does scan nested design things right? There's my you know, autograph of not being able to pull my word but like the dropdowns? Right? Correct. For a long time, it was unsure whether or not like you could use them for SEO purposes. That's why I say it's like a quote unquote, cheat because you're not cheating. Like, I am the absolute last person who will ever tell you to do any like black link SEO junk, like, if you're going to do it, do it very ethically and do it in a way that aligns with your business. Let's not like cheat it up. But if you can use a frequently asked question to answer something while also using an SEO keyword phrase, or give more information for those buyers who really want to sit there and like soak it all in, do it because it can be recognized by Google, it's helping those people who want extra info. And it's not like cluttering the minds of the people who don't need to like read it or review it at all.
Michele 48:26
So with all of that in mind, which page do we need to pay the most attention to for SEO? Is there a page? Or is there a space on our website that we really need to? If we were to just have choose one? What would that be?
Erin Ollila 48:40
You're killing me here because I'm like, actually, every page is valuable.
Michele 48:44
Um, well, let's stop there for just a second. Every page really is valuable. We have very valuable real estate on all of these pages. And so not diminishing any of those to your point it that is very, very true and even the FAQs we have opportunity to maximize the use of everything and if we're not maximizing the use of everything we need to ask why not right because with that, that's loving for things that we've been we've been missing I guess let me narrow down and ask this way do you think which of these do you think if we had to focus on this I first because they're all important we're going to do them all but if we had to focus on one would it be the main page? Or would it be some type of a work with me our services sign up for discovery sales page? Would it be the here's everything about me page or you know, welcome to my website, front page of the newspaper top half of the fold, or is it the sales page?
Erin Ollila 49:41
And we're talking about SEO here right SEO Okay, so I can answer this a lot easier. If we had to choose between the two for a starting point I would make you look at your work with me or services page first, for the sole reason is that you have more opportunity use more words on those pages. You know your homepage again using in that structure I mentioned before, you might have your boat section to have like a tiny paragraph, maybe a pain point section for tiny paragraph, but you don't you have so much less than words there. As well as with your services page, not only do you have the opportunity to have more words, but you also have your using words that you're going to want to rank for. Right? So my I mean, I have I have multiple services pages on my website, but let's pretend they were all one. I could use copy coaching on that page, because I'm talking about how to hire me for copy coaching. I could use copywriting coach, which is similar like I call them keyword synonyms, right? I could use done for you copy, I could use website copywriter because they naturally fit in to what I am offering on my services. So if you are starting SEO from scratch, take a take a peek at your services page. You know your about page might be a close runner up for that because again, you can use SEO keywords and SEO keyword phrases to describe your job title or industry or major offering on a on an about page. But I think the best starting point would probably be your services page. But like a really quick follow up to that to my like every page is important. I do want people to understand for the longest time I didn't really do SEO research on pages, because there are less words on the pages. And the keywords we want to rank for on those pages are a lot more competitive. You know, there is an episode that I did with Meg case full of love at first search on my podcast, where we talked about the fact that on my own website, I would never want to try to rank for the word copywriter for the reason of search intent. If you search that right now, besides the fact that there would be millions of pages that I'd be competing against, I would also be competing against the people who want to learn how to be a copywriter. The businesses who want to hire a full time copywriter, I would be competing against people searching for price ranges for copywriters, the website copywriters, email copywriters write because it's too broad, that it would not be worth my time to try to do that. So that's why it's a little harder to determine your SEO keyword phrases for your website pages. Not that you shouldn't do it, though, like I've completely come around when I've seen people really start ranking very high for the efforts we put in. But if SEO is important to you, I really encourage people to put content on their website, the example that I use all the time, and it just sounds so silly, but it works so well is if your keyword phrase in a blog post that you write about is how to peel a potato. That is evergreen content, I am assuming I mean, I think I'd bet my life on it that while we might have different potato peeling methods, the general idea of taking skin off of a potato is never going to change, right? Like that's just potato peeling and its essence. So if you write a wrote a blog post on how to peel a potato, you can take that in many different ways you could say like the different types of tools like all of these things are going to attract people who actually care about peeling a potato. And because you're using a longer keyword phrase, the type you're likely not definitely but likely having less competition, you're getting absolute ideal people, because again, you're not going to have someone who cares about how to cut their grass, learning for how to peel potatoes, they're able, they're going to be able to self identify immediately that they don't want to go to that link, if you are doing a good job of not of like making your titles clear and making those meta descriptions clear. So while SEO is extremely valuable for your website pages, if lead attraction in a way that is more hands off, is important to your business. Having content on your site is a very valuable financial investment, or time investment if you do it yourself. Because you're like I said, it's hands off, you put the good content out there. If it is evergreen, and it's always going to help people, then they will find their way to you. And you don't have to rely on things like you know, paid ads, referral networking and all those types of things.
Michele 54:14
I've worked with Meg before she's absolutely done a podcast with me.
Erin Ollila 54:18
She's lovely.
Michele 54:19
Yeah, she really is. And it's so very true. You know, but I think too, it's like you said you're not cheating the system. You're creating content and writing about something that you really know. Absolutely. And people are coming to you because you're ranking for they want to know what you know, right? And so it pulls them in. So if an interior designer, drapery workroom whoever is listening today is thinking, Okay, I already have a website, not looking to do a rebuilt, let's say redesign of the whole website. But I do need to let's stay either fresh in my message or freshen up my copy, get some new SEO, how do they start or how do they tackle that because now in some cases It's harder to go back and to think and reimagine what we've already written and put out there. Yeah, than it is to start from scratch. And you know, I guess could be, conversely, it could be just as hard the other direction, but at least they've got something out there. How did they then go back and start tweaking and managing it and thinking about it?
Erin Ollila 55:18
Yeah. So there's a DIY approach and a hiring approach. We'll start with a DIY approach, though, right? One is really paying attention to what your customers are saying. And that is not just at the end of a project Testimonial Request, that is throughout the process. So are they asking the same questions like different types of customers asking the same questions of you? Depending on that answer would depend on like, so basically, one, collect those answers and questions, right. So let's just say, you know, all of your clients are really kind of getting hung up on the process, they're excited to work with you, they, you know, do all the onboarding, everything is going well, but you have to continuously remind them like, Oh, we're not at that phase yet. Or that will happen after this, I'll contact you in this many weeks. So identify that identify the customer experience issue or a project management issue. And it doesn't have to be just issues, it could be things that are going really well, as well. So identify it, and then use the information that you gather, to make marketing decisions. So pretending that that the process example is what we're talking about right here. What we could do then is to one, keep your website as is but make an actual process page, especially if the like type of like, let's just take interior designers, if they work through the same things over and over again, obviously, like a new build might be different from like an entire house like, you know, refinishing, like if you've got a house or whatever, because the you know, as the interior designer, the different things happen. But in general, the process of working with your clients is the same. Maybe you make a process page, and on that page you describe this is what's going to happen in the beginning, here are different touch points, here's when like decisions should be made, and you share that on your site, maybe you make a Services Guide, maybe you do a series of like emails that are like you treat them like a nurture sequence with a client nurture sequence. So in those emails are weekly check ins, and they can be pre written and automated. So let's just remind ourselves, we do not have to manually do these things. Maybe it's the if process is an issue, maybe it means writing like four or five blog posts that take a different part of the process and explain how they work together. And then you turn those four or five blog posts into a cornerstone piece of longer content, all of which could be SEO code, and all of which could attract potential new people to you. So again, identify what the problem is, or identify what's going really well use that information to be able to look at what you have now and make decisions on how to adjust. And I know that sounds too simple, because I think making the decisions are really hard. But I do think once you're really clear on what it what the small changes are, you know, you don't look at your website and be like, Oh, what do I do now? Right? You just say to yourself, Okay, process seems to be a thing, let's figure out how to address that, then you can make those changes in different places in small ways that make everything work better. The easier approach is hiring someone to do it for you. I know we don't all have the same, you know, time availability, financial investments, but if you have a marketer who is able to look at your site from a way that isn't you know, isn't influenced by knowing you or knowing your business, then they can give you an audit of what they see as an end user. Many copywriters or marketers also hire user testers. So like, there are companies that we can take websites to, to see like how real true people process the information. So you know, whether that is that you're hiring someone for an audit that they're doing, whether it is that you're hiring someone to adjust certain things. So if it's that, you know, you need a process page, and then you have them come in and you do that, maybe you have them you say like I've never done anything with SEO? I do you have content? Can you come in and start to do like the tweaks that you need to do to make these actually rank on Google? So I would say, no matter whether you DIY or you hire someone, it's even if it's a long list of things you'd like to adjust, right? If you're hiring, we can help you look at that long list and prioritize it for you. And if you're not, do not let you know like fear or procrastination keep you back from the list. literally pick one thing, it might be the like, the snowball method, right where you do a tiny thing and it grows and it grows. Or you might take the biggest hardest thing and knock it off first just to give you some momentum. But whatever it is that you've touched, like tiny efforts are absolutely going to build into bigger marketing momentum.
Michele 59:56
One of the I did a couple of podcast episodes where we talked about taxes. And one of the big things that we all talk about is save your receipts. Okay? Well, now we've been using this term receipts in a much more broad way in the world today, when somebody says so and so said this and did this, and I've got the receipt, right. And I say that because I think there are some receipts that we get within our marketing that we need to hold Oh, sure. Work. For example, even if you don't know where to start, I would say even just give yourself a month. And look at every single person that calls you reaches out every discovery call every console call, and listen to what they're saying. Because I went through that, and have I continued to go through that when people either give me feedback, positive or negative, or we're in a discovery con, they fill out that form, I listen to what they tell me their pain points are what they tell me. They're trying to accomplish what they do. And they're using. Interestingly enough, they use the same words and the same phrases over and over and over and over. And so when it came time to write certain copy, I didn't have to stop and think what would they say, I knew what they said. And so, you know, I could strip every name out of everything, every email, every phone number, and I could look at the challenge that they wrote, I could look at the key words that they put in it. And it was the same for every single one on most, they would fall in the category of this is what I want. And this is the emotional outcome that I want. It was like a bam, bam, bam, I mean, they just lined up, it was almost overwhelming, because it was so clear. And that actually helped me shift what I wrote, shift how I wrote it. But it also helped me in the sales process to go, Oh, sure. You know what this is what your peers are saying, This is what your peers want. This is what your peers are looking for. So then even when we wrote case studies, we highlighted those things, because we knew that's what everybody was asking and saying that they wanted, and they need it. So it just it tied some bows around things with a few phrases and a few words over and over and over. But if I had not seen it, you know, kind of all jammed up together, I could have missed it and said, Well, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what I hear or I'm, but it was written. So there was no way that I could ignore these words. And these phrases were a big deal to my community.
Erin Ollila 1:02:29
Yeah, that's kind of like the whole earlier talk about like qualitative and quantitative information, right. So what you're talking about specifically actually has a name, it's called voice of customer research. And it is something you can both DIY and hire out for. Now, when I say it's both qualitative and quantitative, it's because if you look at what you're talking about, you're talking about emails, you're talking about, like conversation pieces, you're talking about maybe like forms they filled out. So that would be qualitative, yet, if they're filling out a form, and it's potentially being on a spreadsheet, that it's quantitative, because it's data. So I know that's, I don't want to confuse anyone. But when we do research, as we should do research on everything in our business, I will not write a word from my done for you clients, until I have fully researched all of their competitors, the ones that they tell me and the ones I find on my own, until I researched their clients, either from interviewing them directly or doing like an audit, like a, you know, maybe a form that they like they can send out on their own emails. So competitors, clients and SEO, I will not touch, like a document, because you're just guessing at that point, right? Yet, it's really I just want you to see the overlap. Like when I researched someone's competitors, I'm looking at their website and seeing how they say things, what are the pain points they talk about? You know, is it does it seem effective? So that's words, right? That's qualitative. Yet, if I keep noticing the same things coming up, over and over and over, then that's quantitative data, we can take those words and phrases and understand that we can input them in certain ways that the whole right brain left brain thing again, right? Like, we might read something, and it's the story. So we get that story, but then we might see those same few keywords over and over and over and over again. And those are the data pieces,
Michele 1:04:25
because the emotion and logic overlap.
Erin Ollila 1:04:28
Absolutely. That's a great way to phrase it. But when it comes to voice of customer data, you know, you can do the research yourself by sending out you know, forms questionnaires, and you can hire someone to like, especially through like a VIP day to do interviews of your clients. But this is on my mind completely selfishly because I am working on a testimonial product. But what I keep trying to reinforce as part of the course is when we collect data, especially when we're looking for testimonials from our clients, we need to do it in a way that's not a selfish should ask for two reasons for the end result that we want, which is a testimonial, but to for client experience, the client you're asking, and all future clients, because instead of just saying like, you know what, what, how wonderful was it to work with Erin or you know, like, what was Michele best step when you work together which is going to give you a honestly generic responses right? If we ask something instead of like, you know, you had many different choices of website copywriters as an early question, I just want to preface that when you're onboarding someone, I could say, you know, you had a lot of different options for copywriters, I'm very well aware of that, would you be able to help me and inform what maybe some of those reasons were that you chose me over other people, I asked this of a client, I don't remember if it was 2000, or 2020, or 2021. And he gave me such great feedback that really helped my business. He is in real estate. So he's in sales. But he said to me, Erin, it was between you and another copywriter, that copywriter was incredible with sales, like they had me wanting to pay them triple, like on the spot, yet, when it came to working with you like your demeanor, your personality, you're not pushing this, you're encouraging, like all of those things just made me think like, I really feel supported by her. Like, I know, no matter what if we work together, and I know this is like, you know, I'm not trying to like gush about myself here. But I say it because in talking with him more and learning about my own business, I realized that connecting and communicating was how I felt comfortable selling, and was how all of the customers I liked working with felt comfortable. So that's why I started my podcast because I know that if people could hear me and you know, learn from me and learn how I communicate, it would be easier for those completely cold leads to feel more comfortable and trustworthy to want to like take the step to hire me for something else. So again, long example, but I do share that in in that we need to when I talk about testimonial collection, we need to ask our clients, our leads are onboarding process in the middle of the project. And at the end of the project, we need to ask them questions that are not completely selfish questions, so that we can better inform how we run our business. And get that end result, which is the testimonial we want that has juicy data and juicy info in it that like really sells us for our future clients.
Michele 1:07:30
Right. You know, it's been interesting how the podcast has done a lot of that for me as well. So I would say a majority of people that come to me might say, I heard from about you hear or somebody in a Facebook group mentioned you hear or whatever. And then I went listen to your podcast, and then I decided to reach out. And so that it's been a great tool. Erin, tell us what are your podcast? What is it?
Erin Ollila 1:07:54
Oh, thank you. It's called Talk Copy To me, it is a I like to call it marketing and the messaging podcast. And I do that because while we talk mostly copy and copywriting it is for business owners, right. So I'm sure copywriters themselves would get like, you know, tips for their own business. But I created it really just to inspire the people who wanted to learn about marketing, even if they want to, like you know, offload the work on an actual marketer, or the people who aren't ready to, you know, hire someone and want to DIY so they could learn about what it is that they want to work on, and then just feel a lot more confident in doing it regardless of the ways they chose to work on it.
Michele 1:08:33
I'd love it. Alright, we'll put that in the show notes. So is there anything else that you feel like you want to add to the conversation as we wrap up anything that you think we haven't touched on or talked about that could be helpful for our listeners today?
Erin Ollila 1:08:47
I mean, I think we could talk for like four more hours at this point. So don't give me the opportunity to do that. Because I obviously will really just that like, as corny as this may sound like just the motivation and inspiration to realize like you can really make a difference in your marketing with tiny efforts. And I know it sounds silly, but like even myself, I just started doing I'm trying to be more present on social platforms. Not necessarily to market myself, but more to like build up that consistency factor of showing up. So I just joined something called I think it's like tweet 100 where you share on Twitter for 100 days. So I share this because it's just one tweet every day, right? I can schedule it out. There's no rules, but it's building up that muscle of the follow through or for other clients. It could be creativity, maybe they want to be creative in their social. So tiny efforts really do build up when it comes to marketing and I just encourage you whether you know you know when you believe in marketing and you want to hire someone to do it for you, or if you are doing it yourself, just really know that those efforts will pay off in the longer run and in a way that feels good for you.
Michele 1:09:56
I love it. I love it. Love it. Love it. Thank you so much for joining today. Thank you for the time reception. I'm excited to head over and start listening to your podcast.
Erin Ollila 1:10:03
Thank you, Michele. It's so wonderful to talk to you.
Michele 1:10:05
You too. Have a good day. Erin, you're so right, we can absolutely talk for many more hours about the topic of messaging, word choice, and just being intentional about the journey and the process that we take our clients through. For those of you listening if you're looking to be intentional with the scaling of your business with hiring with financials, please apply for a discovery call on my website at scarletthreadconsulting.com And let's talk and tension can lead to profitability and that is not by accident. Profit is a Choice is proud to be part of the designnetwork.org where you can discover more design media reaching creative listeners. Thanks for listening, and stay creative and business minded.