How to stand out in the messy middle

Thank you very much. Fresh off the plane. Nearly said fresh off the boat then, but that would have been controversial. So today we’re going to be talking about

how we can stand out, Paul you’re not meant to laugh that hard. So we’re going to talk about how marketing has gone from what we used to talk about as this, like, nice linear funnel, and it has over the last sort of, I would say probably like 5 to 10 years, really, if we look right back, it is just got messier and messier and messier.

So, most of us in the room, I think are freelancers from the conversation this morning. So you guys will be multitasking, running your businesses, trying to put yourselves out there and market yourselves. So hopefully today will give you a bit of a sort of modern-day picture of what I believe we need to be doing to stand out in the mess of it all, and the noise as a lot of people refer to it as.

So quick bit of background on myself. Like I said this morning, I run a marketing agency called The Brady Creative, founded it in 2020. March 2020 of all times with my mum. Won’t talk about that period because that was quite stressful. But we’re here five and a half years later. We’ve got a small team, and we deliver marketing strategy, brand strategy, social media marketing, video content marketing, not quite full service, but we do a blend of the strategic stuff and the creative stuff.

So jumping straight in, as I said, like the marketing funnel has typically been spoken about, there’s lots of different iterations of it. You’ll have seen different wording, different styles, but generally speaking, it’s been broken down into the awareness section. You then push people into considering your services, considering what you do, and then hopefully if you’re doing things right and you’ve connected with them, they’ll convert.

And then you tend to have people sitting in this sort of cycle of loyalty advocacy, and you want to keep people there as long as you can. Most people in the room will know that your clients do have a life cycle. For us, it’s sort of two and a half, three years. You will learn that as you businesses go, but you really want to keep people here as long as you possibly can, forever ideally.

Now, and I’ve got a few different iterations of this. We’re starting to see more of like a figure of eight. And in some models we’re seeing just like a mass in the middle, that’s a lot messier. So we’ve got the triggers that point people towards us, so it might be that they’ve seen a LinkedIn post of yours, they’ve received an email, you’ve watched them speak at an event.

There’s lots of different things that expose your business to potential customers. Once they then move through what people are deeming as like the new messy funnel for marketing, people sit a lot longer in this middle phase here where they’re exploring, they’re evaluating. They’re really trying to think like, is this the right business for us to work with?

Is this the right designer for us to work with? Is this the right copywriter for us? So people are spammed with content nowadays. It takes a lot longer to make decisions. And we’ll talk about that a little bit more. And then once they have made their decision, obviously they move through into purchase or conversion, as the previous model said.

“And this is where the experience you give them now is more important than ever, because there are so many more options now. People can move between the people they use, a lot more freely. So it’s a lot

messier than it has ever been. And, you know, things like post three times a week and be consistent and the work will just come like, unfortunately, that doesn’t cut it anymore.”

Like, I’m sure lots of you have heard a few conversations going on about LinkedIn already this morning, but if you go on a platform like LinkedIn, there are people that are posting three times a week or more, but it’s not like quality content. So we’re going to talk about some of the things you need to be doing outside of this.

Because yes, this is part of the puzzle, but this alone will not generate you a pipeline of beautiful leads. We don’t live in that world anymore, unfortunately, because there’s a lot of noise and people are getting lost in it. This is something that I think clients must say this to me, particularly people who are inquiring. This is one of the main things that people will say is like, I just feel like I’m getting lost in all the noise, whether it’s emails, whether it’s social media, whether it’s, trying to speak at events.

I just feel like there’s a lot happening and I don’t know how to stand out. So we need a solution to sort of what we’re going to do about that. Gifs for me are something I stole from The Marketing Meetup. I admit that every time, like the first time I went to a Marketing Meetup and there were gifs in the slides, I was like, what, you can put gifs in your slides.

So definitely stole that from Joe. So I’m going to talk you through five really of the fundamentals that I think we need to be doing to stay consistent, be seen by the right people and ultimately, like it says here, not go mental in the process because there’s so much pressure, you know, you might be looking at people like, say, Ryan posting on LinkedIn as an example, and thinking oh

Ryan’s flying like he’s doing really really well, but we’re just absorbing the vanity metrics of a post. We don’t know what Ryan’s got going on behind the scenes. He might be, you know, swanning on the surface and paddling like mad, trying to like, deal with all the clients. So it’s really easy to compare what other people are doing to what you might be struggling with.

So I’m going to try and bring it back to five things that I think we all need to concentrate on that have kept me steady, over the last sort of 6, 7 years, building, creating, building my profile. So things that we used to see typically, I’ve been in marketing now for 15, 16 years. So the cycles that we see would be like someone would see an ad or see a piece of your content, they’d visit your site, and then they’d inquire relatively quickly.

It might not be on that day, but it wouldn’t take that long for them to inquire or they’d see a piece of content, they’d visit your profile and then they’d inquire, they’d see a piece of content. Maybe come to an event like today and then business would be done. It’s not as quick as that anymore. It takes a lot longer.

There’s people out there that say like oh, seven touch points until people inquire, which God knows who’s out there actually counting that. I don’t know how accurate that is, but it does take a lot longer than it used to. And things like, this is an experience I had for years, actually, myself and Paul working in a previous business, you know, we used to have a bit of a formula really, you’d have like a monthly blog, you’d have a monthly email that went out, you’d have your weekly socials, you’d run a quarterly event, and every month we would have 30, 40 really highly qualified leads that would come into that business.

And that was a service-based business that wasn’t like product. It was it was service based. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world anymore. So anyone who has lived in that world, like it’s not as easy. You have to work a lot harder for those 30 leads now than you used to, sad times. So this is more of a picture of what I feel is happening out there at the moment.

So very messy, big cycle of people sort of coming through. And if we start at the top here, someone might say a piece of your content and they might think, oh yeah, that was like, I resonate with that, or I like what they said, or that was really helpful, I’m going to follow them, so they might follow me and then they will go on with their day, go on with their week, go on with their month, and they will forget about me.

They’ll forget about what they saw. It might have like, you know, they might have been able to tap into it in the moment, but then they carry on with their day and then maybe like a week or two later, they might see something else from me. They might inquire, but the chances are they’re actually going to forget about it again and just go back to their days.

So they’ve seen a couple of pieces of content from me, and then very quickly forgotten about who I am and what I do. If they do inquire, they might continue with their research after they inquire with you, they might be inquiring but, you know, when people like, dip their toe in and then disappear and then dip their toe in again and you think, oh, here comes another tyre kicker.

Like they’re just trying to feel out whether you are right for them and it takes a lot longer than it used to. Then they might see you again and you might have posted something that actually makes them go, do you know what, I’ve inquired, I’ve been doing my research like, I need to take this a bit more seriously.

I’m going to actually have a proper conversation, and hopefully at some point they’re going to bite the bullet and choose to go with your service, choose to buy a product from you, whatever it is that you do. But this, people bounce around these things now. They don’t just sort of go from here all the way around to here.

It sort of moves, around. So a lot more frantic than we used to see in marketing. Make sense? Not lost anyone have I? so as I’m sure, like most of you know, you subconsciously we are exposed to like thousands of marketing messages a day, like multiple thousands of marketing messages and most of them are shit. So we become like desensitised to content that we see.

And as people, like we’ll all be guilty of it. You go on your LinkedIn or you go on your Facebook or even in your email, like how many people actually, even from brands I love, I don’t read their emails very frequently because we’re too busy doing what we’re doing. So we find that we like, skim through things and you, you’ll be on your LinkedIn and you think, oh, skim, skim.

Yep. Lovely. Oh there’s Ryan, oh, there’s Penni. And you’ll choose to interact with the people that you connect with. But we do do it quite mindlessly. Like even to the people that we, we value and we appreciate. So I’m going to move into like how we stand out from that. It’s messy out there. There’s lots of noise. There’s lots of people posting things, sharing emails, trying to get their brands out there.

And the first thing for me is not to behave like Ace Ventura, but like, find a lane and own it. There’s a lot of, when we first started the business, people said to me, like, what’s your niche? Like, what are you going to niche into? And I was like, nothing. Nothing. Like we’re we’re a marketing strategy agency.

That is our niche. We do the strategy side and the creative side, and people tried to sort of push us into an industry. And were like you need to specialise in recruitment, no thank you. need to specialise in pharmaceutical, absolutely not, like and we very quickly decided we wanted to service multiple businesses in multiple industries. But our niche is that we do the strategic side and the creative side, which isn’t all that common.

Well it wasn’t when we started the business. So one thing I would get you guys to think about, if you haven’t already, and you’re trying to improve on your marketing, is what’s the lane that you want to own. Be really specific with it and then really go in on it. So for me, my personal profile is all around sharing lots of free marketing advice.

It spans across copy, across content, across ideation, like. But it’s all about giving lots of free advice away so that when people are ready, they’ll think of me first. So something to sort of jot down in your pads or take a photo of something to think about, sort of either throughout today or after today is, what’s one thing that you want people to think when they hear of either your name, if you’re building your personal brand or your business?

So when people hear The Brady Creative, I want them to think vibrant, young, agency, strategic and creative. They share loads of like free advice. Like those are the things that I want people to be thinking about when they hear my name. I want them to think like, no, no real filter. Like I am who I am like you meet me in person is what you’ll see on my LinkedIn.

I don’t take things too seriously. And again, I’m always available to help. Like lots of free advice. So very giving, very friendly, very approachable are the vibes that we’re going for. So think about that and it needs to span across all of your marketing.

Then the second thing I would say is, you need to be willing to go where other people are not willing to go. So I wouldn’t walk into this house. Personally, I don’t know anybody else, but you need to be willing to, to do things differently. And again, when you look at the emails you receive, the events you go to, the social media that you see, like, what can you do that your competition are not doing?

What are you willing to do that others aren’t? Because that’s how you’ll stand out. It’s really easy. I’m going through a process with my LinkedIn content at the moment, and I’m using LinkedIn as an example, because that’s my primary platform individually is, my content for years has been just talking heads stuff, it’s just me, the camera, me speaking.

And I’ve got a little bit bored of creating that. I don’t think people have necessarily got bored of watching it, but I feel it needs to evolve. So I’m trying to like move around a bit more like script my videos a bit more, which is hell on earth. But we’re getting there. We’re moving through it. So I’m trying to think about how can I differentiate versus the people I’m seeing competing with me.

So things that you can be thinking about just across the board for this, like with your marketing and it sounds really simple, but lots of people shy away from these things because they’re scared. So what mistakes have you made that you can show? How honest are you being? How unfiltered are you being? I’m a bit too unfiltered at times,

I won’t lie, but it’s so far it’s not got me in too much trouble. Bold opinions that you’ve got about your industry. Like I’ve got a piece, well, a couple of pieces that I’m working on at the moment around, like, being deemed expensive. And it’s something that we all will have experienced in the room, but people don’t really talk about it.

So I’m going to sort of do a few pieces on educating people on why do we use that word, like, let’s think of other ways to think about it. But it might not go down very well, but I’m going to try it anyway. This is a big one in the bottom here. Like, how uncomfortable are you with what you’re producing?

So if and like Ryan, my experience this a lot with clients but, when you’re trying to get people to show up differently, particularly with things like video as a prime example, people are scared of it. But if it scares you and makes you uncomfortable, it’s most of the time it’s what you should be doing. Because being comfortable isn’t really going to stretch you as far as you need to

grow an audience, to grow a following, to grow customers. Like if we just play it safe all the time, you know, we’re not going to be rewarded for playing it safe, unfortunately. So have a think about, are you doing this in your marketing? Are you being bold? Are you being opinionated? Are you being real with what you’re sharing?

Because lots of people answer, these are quick wins. If you can start building these kind of things into your marketing, you’ll be way ahead of lots of other people. These guys will be familiar, to some of you in the room. So James and Joe, who co-founded The Marketing Meetup? Yeah. So this was a post that I think James posted, it would’ve have been a few months ago now.

And they’ve got a partner, I believe, called tracksuit, and they don’t produce tracksuits. They’re like a tech startup that does like, I don’t know, something techie. And James was basically saying in his post that they, they were going to this meeting with these guys and the meeting was about like, what can they be doing next? How can they expand the partnership?

How can they do more together? And they had the idea of turning up in these like lairy tracksuits because it’s different. Like it shows how passionate they are about what they’re doing. It’s very memorable. It’s like a bit of a joke about the name of the brand that they’re meeting with. And James was basically saying, like, what can you do that your competition wouldn’t do?

He was like, I can guarantee none of our competition will have turned up to a meeting wearing tracksuits like this with the energy that we turned up with. So like, this is a prime example. And I loved like I loved it when I saw it, I was like, yes, I’ve never been able to word it that way, but this is a prime example of doing what their competition wouldn’t do, like being different, standing out.

Did they look a bit silly? Yeah, but they actually look like great. It’s brilliant. So it took a lot of inspiration, from James and Joe with this. I just thought it was amazing.

So ponder it today. Or like after the talk today, like, what can you be doing that your competition are not doing? Like, what are you seeing a lot of out there from people that you’re competing with that you think I can do better than that? Or if I’m willing to push the boundaries a little bit, I can be reaching more people than they are.

Like, really? Give that some thought today.

Where can you take your content that you haven’t taken it before? Like we all know deep down, if we’re playing it safe, like if we’re sitting in the safe lane, so it might be time to think about how can you step it up?

And then the third thing for me is it’s a really obvious, really, really obvious one. But people struggle with this because they don’t feel confident enough or know how to do it. But it is just ask your audience, like if you’ve got an audience like on LinkedIn, I haven’t got a particularly big following, but it’s very engaged. And if I’m thinking of changing things in my content, I reach out to people that follow me and engage a lot, I reach out to them privately, I’ll do polls on my profile like I want to know what they think because they’ll tell you like, they’ll tell you what they want from you.

So a few things you can do in terms of like how to do that. So one thing that you can do really easily, the first one is touchpoint testing. So when I say touchpoint, I mean like anything that has your branding on that is going out into the world to market your business is a touchpoint. So it might be the hoodies or the t shirts that you wear like, Paul’s got one of our t shirts on.

It might be the stickers for the event all the way through to your, the branding on your emails, how your invoices look, how your email footer looks to your content like everything that has your branding on or that you’re using to push your business out is a touch point. So as an example, we’ve just, well, for about six months we’ve been working on funnels for each of our services.

So we’ve created like documents to download. People will get moved into a funnel. The rest is history, hopefully. But it’s really good exercise to share those assets with your existing customers and say, right, we’ve just created this. What do you think? Is there anything missing? Is there anything else you would want to know when you were first inquiring?

Like, share what you’re developing with your customers and they will give you feedback? I think people are just very often a bit too scared to do that, because they think, oh, everyone’s busy, they won’t do it, but your most loyal customers will help you if you ask. And you can always incentivise them to do it as well.

We don’t. But you can. So think about certain touch points you’ve got in your business that you’re maybe thinking of changing. Before you do, ask your audience or ask your peers at somewhere like this Cowork Crew is a really great place to do that. So actually ask them, as I’ve just said, and then I’ll show you a little thing on,

this was something I saw a few months ago. So it’s not mine, it’s not my hack. I can’t remember who shared it, but I thought I’d share it today, it’s a little hack you can do on Google to help you find questions that people are asking about your subject. It’s really simple. It’s not like AI wizardry or anything like that.

So I’m probably really old to the party here. But I just thought it was a really good little hack. So as an example, if I type into Google tips for standing out in the messy middle of marketing, if you scroll about halfway down the page on Google, once you get past all the ads and everything, you’ll reach a section that has like a section here that says people also ask, so if you’re struggling for like ideas or you’re struggling on like what people are asking in your world, this is a really quick way of finding out what people are asking.

So it might be if you then typed in, what are the seven A’s of marketing? You scroll back down, halfway down the page and there’ll be other questions relating to that. Or like Dave, you said earlier, like what is a digital product designer? There’ll be other questions that people have asked that you can then build into your SEO, into your email copy, into various things that you’re producing.

So this is another really good way of sort of finding out what are people talking about in your area of expertise, really simple. But I saw it a few weeks ago on LinkedIn and I was like, that’s genius.

And then another slightly like loaded word is like consistency, and Penni’s like wincing at the back. Because when people hear my experiences, that when people hear, oh, you need to be consistent, people seem to think that means like, right, I’ve got a post every day and I’ve got to send an email like twice a week.

And I’ve got like, people hear consistency and they think volume when actually like if you can sustain posting on your LinkedIn once or twice a week and it’s really high-quality stuff. Fantastic. Like if it’s only once a week, but you can be consistent with it. That’s better than posting three times a week and then dropping off after two and coming back ten months later, and no one’s going to have remembered you.

Same with your emails. Like if you like splurge a load of emails to people and disappear. People need to see you regularly, even if they’re not reading every word, watching every second of the video. So this really matters for standing out because people will come and go in your market, competitors will come and go and you’ll see people come and

you’ll think I’ve had a few people come along in the last five years and I’ve thought shit, like, they’re really good. I really need to up my game, but they’ve not been able to sustain what they were doing, whereas I have. So, you know, if you can keep banging the drum, keep going at your own rhythm, it will pay you back.

And another part of this consistency piece for me anyway, is my opinion is your brand should be the same everywhere, so there will be little iterations. So say if you’ve got some part of your market is you’re dealing with lawyers and other part of your market is you’re dealing with startups. There may be iterations in the tone that you use with those people, but how your brand shows up needs to be the same.

Whether it’s on your LinkedIn again in your emails, in how you answer the phone, like I’ll always say to the team like we had a lady who used to work for us and she was very formal when she answered the phone and I was like, dude, like chill, like chill. Just breathe. Just be like, Hi Hannah speaking. Can I help?

Like, it doesn’t need to be super formal because that’s not who we are. Likewise in the way I would write my emails like I use gifs in my emails. I’m not overly formal because that’s not what I’m like. So really think about like, how consistent is your content across the board. Because it doesn’t just mean consistency in terms of how often we’re showing up.

It’s about how consistent we look and sound as well. Because again, you’ll have people come and go and people will sound like one way one week, and then they’ll have switched it up another week. Like you’ve got to give things time to build the momentum. And, this is not everyone’s favorite, I can’t lie, but it’s a long game in marketing now, there are things that we can do to like advance lead generation.

Like you can be using social ads and things like that, but even that, you need like a good 6, 12 months to really build an effective ad strategy. You’re not going to have like two weeks of posting ads and then all of a sudden you’ve got this, you might have a flurry of business, but there will be peaks and troughs.

So if you really are taking your marketing seriously, like word of caution, you’ve got to like buckle in for the long haul. I’ve been posting for six years, as you’ll see in a minute. I’m going to show you the first ever video I posted on LinkedIn. It’s absolutely terri. But six years later, my LinkedIn profile.

Now, it’s probably dropped off a bit. But a couple of years ago, my profile was producing probably 60-65% of the business that came in. It’s probably dropped off more now to like 30-40% because we’re getting a lot more referrals and the team are now sharing, so we get more from the teams profiles as well.

But that didn’t just happen overnight. That took like years of posting. I’ll give you an example. I had a guy, would have been about 18 months ago. I got a message in my DMs on LinkedIn and it just said, hi, Hannah. Rob here. You probably don’t remember me, but we actually went on a copywriting course together ten years ago.

And I’ve been following you ever since. Like, I’ve been following everything you’ve been doing. Like, it’s a bit weird, but he didn’t mean it that way. And he was like, you know, I’ve been keeping up with what you’re doing, and I love what you do. I’m actually on the board of an up and coming agency in India, in New Delhi, and they’re looking for a UK marketing strategy partner.

Would you be interested? And I was like, well, yeah, obviously. Hello. Yes, of course I remember you. We’re now 18 months into working with that agency. She flies over every 3, 4 months to do content with us, we’ve got some amazing brand projects, like for their clients like, on going. So ten years, I went on a course with him ten years ago.

He never liked anything. We’ve had this chat, I was like, you’ve never liked anything. You never commented on anything. You’ve just been lurking in the background. And he had, he’d just been watching, keeping up with what I was doing. Ten years later, he’s brought a huge amount of business my way, so you never know who’s watching. So it can feel frustrating at times when you don’t feel like people are reading your emails or looking at your socials.

But trust me, there’s more people watching than you think, even if they’re not interacting. So the long game can be hard, but I don’t think they’ll be sound on this. You don’t need it because it’s crap. It’s just me going, oh hi yeah can’t wait to see everyone later at this event. Yeah. Okay. Bye. It’s absolutely terrible. I’m just rambling on about nothing, as you can see.

Like it’s not great quality. I didn’t have a mic on so the sound is like awful because it was really windy. So it’s like hi, it’s like awful. I’m not looking at the camera. I’m literally just like, just record a video it’ll be fine, just put it on LinkedIn. It’ll be fine. And it’s not remotely entertaining or educational

at all it’s just me saying, can’t wait to see you all tomorrow at this event. Woo! Off I go. So that was video number one on LinkedIn six years ago. And I’m also wearing heels in this video, which is hilarious. Can’t remember the last time I wore a pair of heels. And then this is a video I posted not too long ago.

I will caveat I didn’t film this a videographer did, I also didn’t

colour grade it or edit it, a videographer did, but you know, better camera, much better mic. It’s a more dynamic video. Like there’s this, like I was saying earlier, I’m trying to add a bit more movement, a little bit more comedy, even a bit more of my personality, into the content. So apologies for what is to come.

And it’s far more entertaining and educational. I’m actually sharing something of value in this. I was basically talking about, how going viral isn’t a healthy goal to have. Like, you’re better off focusing on being consistent, showing up regularly than trying to get that video that catches, you know, thousands, thousands and thousands of people. But yeah, much, much bigger difference in the videos there.

But that’s taken me six years. So it is, the long game is worth it, I promise you.

And so I thought I’d also share, some of my, because people have asked me quite a lot. And again, my following isn’t big, but it is highly engaged. And people have said to me like, how have you kept the consistency? Like how have you kept showing up and stood out? I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily say I stand out, but people have fed that back to me that I do.

So I’m just taking what people say here. I’m not like, backing myself that much, and I tend to use, I shared a video about this, a few weeks back, but these are my foundations. And these aren’t just my foundations for LinkedIn. These are my foundations for how I would market my business, how I would market myself across all marketing channels.

So for me, if I feel it, I post it. If we were to share an email with our audience and I read it the day it was to go out and I wasn’t feeling it or didn’t think it sat right with us anymore, I wouldn’t post, I wouldn’t send it. So this is a really big one for me.

And I know, Ryan, you don’t schedule your content, do you? You do it all manually? I stopped scheduling my personal content about a year ago because I was finding that, like, I was scheduling things that in the moment when I created them, I felt them. I was happy with them. I believed what I was saying, but things moved so quickly.

A post would go out that I scheduled maybe a week ago and I’d be like, oh no, I don’t like it today or I don’t. It doesn’t sit with me as it did last week. So now what I tend to do is I’ll prep my content, but I will post on the day. I do it manually so that if that post doesn’t resonate with me on the day, I’ll pick up another one that does, or I’ll write something off the cuff, or I’ll produce something off the cuff.

So that’s a really important one for me, is if I feel it I share it. If I don’t, I don’t. The second one, conversing rather than broadcasting. So I with all of my content and again this goes across marketing channels is I want to spark a conversation, I want to create thought, I want to get people thinking about, oh, how could I implement that?

Or they don’t necessarily have to talk to me, if it starts a conversation with themself, fantastic. If it starts a conversation with me, even better. But it’s really for me about getting people thinking, getting people talking and not just being like, hi, here I am, and this is what I do, and this is what we’re all about.

So it’s very rare that you will see on my LinkedIn me just like outright promoting The Brady Creative. I don’t think I’ve ever done that. Feel free to go and stalk and call me out if I have, but I don’t think I ever have. It’s more about, this is something we’ve tried. Have a go, or if you’re struggling with this,

have a go at this. It’s never ever, here we are, look at how great we are. It is actually something I am going to start integrating a bit more of, but in a different way, which I’ll talk about in a second. And then the third one for me is, which I’ve talked about a few times already today, is sharing my knowledge with no obligation.

And that goes for the rest of the team as well, is, you know, you’ll have heard people say, and if you’re in marketing, you’d have had clients that might have said to you at times, but I don’t want to give, like, too many of my secrets away. And I don’t want people to know how I do things and like bollocks to it like people,

they’re not you. If they try and do something that you’ve implemented, the chances are they’re not going to do it as well, and then they’re going to come back to you anyway. That happens time and time again. So my attitude is, I’m going to share my knowledge with people so that when they have x problem, I’m the one they think of.

I don’t want to be the person that they think of in terms of, oh yeah, I know she does strategy because she sells it all the time. I want to be the person that they think of as she really knows her stuff, I’m going to ask her what she thinks because she’s knowledgeable and she knows what she’s doing and she’s happy to share.

I want people to feel safe to approach me and not feel like they’re just going to get sold to because that won’t sell anything. So sharing with no obligation is a big one for me. And the underpinning for me and The Brady Creative side of things is real talk, real advice and a big part of what we do is about sharing with personality.

And not, you know, every business that you go into has a personality. It’s full of, you know, potentially hundreds of personalities. And for me, it’s about helping people open that up and share it in a way that they’re not, like, petrified. So those are my foundations. Those are the things that I’ve stuck to over the last sort of five, six years that have helped me stay steady.

And I thought this might be of interest, might not be. But this is sort of how I, the sort of percentage split of what I tend to share across my platform. So, the vast majority of what I share is advice pieces. And then I’ve got a section in the middle where I do talk about personal things every now and then.

I think one of my better performing posts was when I put the wrong fuel in my car. Because. Relatable. Yeah. I was on my way to a christening that I didn’t want to go to, so it was all good. I got like, two hours on my own in the car. Real talk, which is something that I’ve probably only really introduced properly in the last 12 months, just being really honest about things.

So as an example, a piece I did, about six months ago was around, getting people to understand why marketing is expensive. And I sort of broke it down in terms of, you know, if you were only going to pay somebody x a month, that’s like less than the minimum wage. So trying to put a bit of perspective on actually marketing is a skill.

And that’s why it can feel expensive sometimes. And then behind the scenes of The Brady Creative, this, a lot more of this sort of stuff goes out on our business page. I tend to share a little bit on mine personally. And then this one on the end in red is something that I need to really work on.

I’m not very good at sharing our work, and I think that’s for two reasons. Number one, I find it a bit uncomfortable. Not because the work’s not good, it’s just a bit like, it just gives me the ick a little bit, I’m just a bit like, oh, yeah, we did that. There you go. Enjoy. And I’m really proud of the work that we do.

It’s just trying to find a way of showcasing it in a way that’s impactful. And one thing being totally honest that we sometimes struggle with, with clients. And you guys might feel this in the room is, you need data from the clients. And if the clients aren’t very good at capturing that data, sometimes it’s hard for you to extract it.

So this is something that I and we as a business are really working on at the moment, but that’s generally a split of what I tend to share. Again, whatever the platform is.

And a big thing to sort of remember, I think in marketing nowadays is people, it seems a bit deep and like, yeah, but it’s true is people need to feel seen in what you share. So like Penni, you’re really good at this. Like your content is very personal. It’s very open, it’s very vulnerable. It’s very like real life, like,

so there’ll be lots of people seeing what you share going, oh yeah, like I’ve just got a dog as well and it’s like manic, like so you’re really good at this. But I think something that people struggle with is really showing up just as the day is or as life is, and we’re seeing more of it after Covid, I think.

But people want to see, like, the mess behind businesses. People want to see honesty. They don’t want to see this, like polished marketer that’s like, oh, yeah, I can get you x number of leads every month because that’s a lie. So I think one of the big things is remember that people want to feel seen in what you’re sharing, again, no matter the platform, people want to feel related to.

And I’ll leave you with, these are two slides that I sort of end most of my talks on. These are three things that if you’re struggling, just remember, like, start where you are. It’s never too late to start being better with your marketing. It’s never too late to start thinking about what you do with your business next. So start where you are.

Use what you’ve got. I started with a phone, no microphone, and like we got there in the end, like it took me a while, but we got there. And just be real with what you’re saying. Like, don’t try and be anybody else. Don’t try and, sort of compete too heavily with the people around you. Just go back to what we said earlier, like find your lane, own it.

And be real with what you’re doing. Because the right people will find you.

And then this is my favorite quote of all time. Doctor Seuss today you are you. That is truer than true. There is no one alive who is you-er than you. And that goes for you as a person. It does also go for you as your business. Like, you know when you say to people like, oh, what’s different about your business?

And they go, oh, we’ve got great customer service. And you’re like oh shut up like, like anyone can say that. Like anyone can say that, but I know I can go home and no other business has me, Paul, Elouise, Lois, Sam, Helen, another Elouise. We did have a George, but that’s a sore spot. So like, no one else has

those people. The people in my business are what’s unique about it, the way we go about selling what we do is unique. There aren’t any other agencies that do it the way we do. I know that because I’ve used half of them. So just remember that, like, you are unique, you do have something valuable to say.

So does your business. And, there will be people out there that will buy into you, that will relate to you and that will want to work with you. You’ve just got to show up in a way that pulls them towards you, and that isn’t doing what everybody else does. Thank you very much. The end.