Imperfect Marketing

Send us Fan Mail I am super excited about this episode with Lauren Kelley! Not only is Lauren a podcasting expert, but she has a ton of experience in community management and engagement. I genuinely believe that building community is the way we will move forward together. I began this podcast to help small business owners and solopreneurs learn from others. For me, community is about giving back a...

Send us Fan Mail One of the reasons people tell me that they don't have an email newsletter or don't use email marketing is that they don't want to send spam. A spam email is any unsolicited email usually sent out in bulk and is irrelevant, annoying, and sometimes malicious. However, those of us who send out email marketing know that we aren't spammers! Instead, we send emails...

Send us Fan Mail In this week's interview, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jessica Tutton, a Facebook Ads expert. Jessica Tutton shares her story with me and provides helpful insight into working with Facebook Ads. My favorite part about the entire interview? She was in her van for a nice quiet space, traveling Australia with her husband and children. Jessica was so open and shared a ton...

Send us Fan Mail In this week's episode, I speak with Charlotte Balluff, founder of A Place for You. She is a senior care consultant who helps people during tough times. This is the second successful business she has built and follows the sale of the first one. She is an impressive woman with an amazing network in the senior living space. It was fantastic to talk to her and learn about how sh...

Send us Fan Mail Information is very valuable. Google and Facebook have built huge empires just based on information. You can get information about your email subscribers in many different ways. Surveys- ask questions that you want to know the answers to. Use it as market research. Ask your email subscribers to update their profiles. Buttons in the email asking them about their interest in differe...

Send us Fan Mail Throughout my career, the main focus has always been on reaching our audience where they are and creating content that would entice them to buy, make them feel good about their purchase, or even just so they saw our name. It's about staying top of mind. Most people start out in marketing with tactics, and it should be driven by your goals and strategy. Your goals define your...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to Imperfect Marketing. This week I speak with Andrea Walker-Leidy of Walker Publicity Consulting. Andrea and I spoke about a ton of marketing and PR topics for your business, including defining your target audience, going viral, and how being different is better than being better. In this episode: 00:01:32 How Andrea tells stories 00:04:46 Where are your referrals re...

Send us Fan Mail Okay, okay, I really don't mean to beware of templates. I LOVE templates and swipe files and like to take inspiration from other sources regularly! BUT... if you don't proof your content or have fallback information in your automation system, you shouldn't bother to send the email. Think about an email you have received that clearly had templated information that wa...

Send us Fan Mail This week's episode features Liz Wiggins, a clinical psychologist who grew up in a public accounting firm. Liz joins me to talk about her lessons learned while growing her business and provides tips to help you grow yours. If you want a spoiler, this episode is about listening —or you can jump forward to around the 8-minute mark and hear for yourself! In this episode: 00:01:1...

Send us Fan Mail Yes, an A-frame is a tool used by a lot of retail stores to drive foot traffic.  What can we learn from an A-frame for digital marketing? There are many things we can learn from retail brick-and-mortar store marketing to use in the online world. Look at your home page. Does it invite people in? Is it outdated? How can you create a social connection around your online business? A l...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Imperfect Marketing I speak with Carol Ward, of FranNet of Michigan. Carol is a 5th generation entrepreneur and started in PR and Communications. She, like me, believes in integrated marketing and trying new things. Carol is also a fan of email marketing and works hard to grow her list. She is also dedicated to helping people. Be sure to listen in for more. In this ep...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to Imperfect Marketing! Today I answered a question that I was asked on social media: “How do I send an opt-in email to people I want to add to my list?” The answer is that you don’t—at least not through your email marketing provider. I recommend handling these as one-offs rather than one large email. Keep your emails personal and relevant, and do your best to offer v...

Send us Fan Mail Thank you for tuning into another episode of Imperfect Marketing. In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Brandan Fisher, the founder of Live Pigeon. Live Pigeon allows you to go live without actually being live. So, if you are on vacation, at a wedding, or even someplace without any internet, Live Pigeon can help you stay consistent and upload your pre-recorded conte...

Send us Fan Mail What are you willing to do for your brand? Welcome back, and thank you for tuning into another Imperfect Marketing Brief! These shorter episodes focus on helping you learn from other's mistakes and do better marketing. A friend of mine recently shared that she lip-synced in reels on her Instagram account. They got great engagement BUT offended some of her regular followers. W...

Send us Fan Mail  In this episode, I answer your questions and those I receive regularly. Listen in to find the answers to these questions: How do you build your email list from scratch? What do you build for a freebie/downloadable? What content do you use for your freebie/downloadable? "I don't know what to post on social media" "I don't have time...." Do I have to b...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back, and thank you so much for listening to another marketing brief. Today's focus is on authentic marketing. It's June, so I felt I needed to address and mention something I thought we learned by now, but that you must be authentic in your support of months and holidays. Think of Pride Month and Juneteenth. Walmart did it wrong, and so did Burger King, but Kate...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to another Imperfect Marketing episode. My guest this week is guest Nancy Maurer. She is a coach and has grown her business throughout the pandemic—which, as you can imagine, was not the most ideal time to launch a business! However, she has learned some lessons about staying focused, avoiding procrastination, and getting started as soon as possible. She shares these...

Send us Fan Mail Did you see in 2021, on International Women's Day, that Burger King tweeted that "Women Belong in the Kitchen?" They were trying to communicate that they were launching their scholarship program and wanted to encourage their female employees to follow their culinary dreams. Great program, but...a bit too creative in its execution. While most people didn't get t...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. This episode features Brenda Cadman, a Canva expert, and trainer. Brenda has been an entrepreneur for more than 22 years! After running several successful web agencies, she decided to teach people about Canva and how to use it after realizing what a need there was in the marketplace. She also shares with us how she has dealt with...

Send us Fan Mail In my Imperfect Marketing Briefs, we learn about companies that either got marketing really right or really wrong. In this episode, I discuss the debacle that Marketo ran into when they didn't renew their domain.  It wasn't pretty. A good samaritan went out and helped them by protecting their domain, but things could have gone a lot worse. Now, most small businesses have...

Send us Fan Mail Marci Taran is the owner and CEO of Bradley + Company, more than just a promotional products company. There are a lot of things we can learn from Marci and her experience of looking at promotional products as a tool in your marketing, not just a pen or a bag. Topics in this episode:  00:00:49 Meet Marci 00:04:15 It's about connection, not a pen 00:05:23 How Marci created an e...

Send us Fan Mail It has been said that Colgate branched out and made frozen dinners several decades ago. Now, no one seems to have proof either way, but Colgate Lasagna provides an interesting discussion on branding. When you have a brand as strong as Colgate, expanding may not be a good idea—unless it makes sense to people. We all put advertising and communications through a bologna filter in our...

Send us Fan Mail In my Imperfect Marketing Briefs, we learn about companies that either got marketing really right or really wrong! In this episode, I discuss the KFC UK campaign launched in February 2020. They highlighted their Finger Licking Good slogan worldwide as COVID-19 became a pandemic. KFC acted swiftly and pulled the campaign. Their advertising agency and PR agency worked together to re...

Send us Fan Mail Thanks for coming back for another episode of Imperfect Marketing! This episode features Scott Lawrence of Headshots by Scott Lawrence. Scott is a fantastic headshot photographer who started his career in Insurance and, after launching a successful business, had to start from scratch when his family moved to Michigan. He also shares the mistakes people make when getting headshots....

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the first episode of Imperfect Marketing! I am joined by Brenda Meller of Meller Marketing in today's episode. Brenda is one of my favorite people and one of the best LinkedIn marketers. She niched down her business and focused exclusively on LinkedIn; as a result, her business has grown! We can learn many things from Brenda, including how she handles her goals, st...