I’m not one to brag (just kidding; it’s one of my favourite things to do), but I have an excellent track record for hiring. For a boutique agency, I have a low turnover and a solid team that is invested in our clients, our business, and their work.

I often get asked how to find and bring on great marketers, which can be overwhelming. So here’s the step-by-step process I go through to find fantastic talent. (Although my team is so strong, they’ve been able to hire people with me being minimally involved)

💖 We have done postings online and have found some great people, but I prefer industry groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google Groups. Girl Gang is very active in Vancouver, and you’ll get immediate referrals from people within your community. For me, it tends to reduce the wave of resumes and produce highly qualified candidates.

💖 I look at their social media and marketing. I’m not looking for something perfectly branded, but I am looking for someone active who genuinely loves marketing, creating, and is curious. I’ve interviewed people who will say they don’t spend their spare time on social media, which for me is a red flag; for them, work will always be work instead of fun. You don’t have to live online, but you do need to love trends, exploring, and testing genuinely.

💖 I’ll ask questions to see how willing they are to put themselves out there. Shy marketers can be great, too, but you need someone who isn’t afraid to direct people, pump up a new idea, or get your audience excited about what they’re selling. You can’t hire a marketer who is too timid to get on TikTok.

💖 Do they have their own community? I don’t care if their community is rock climbing or Dungeons and Dragons. Do they have some point of reference for community and a group of people that come together over something they’re passionate about? There are a few reasons for this. One is that I want to know they have passions but also that they can draw on something outside of work to inspire them.

Here’s something else to remember. No matter the experience level, they need to make your job EASIER. That means pitching ideas, making processes more straightforward, and making your marketing fun. There is no point in hiring someone whose hand you have to hold or if you feel like it will be a case of the blind leading the blind.

So many entrepreneurs hire because they don’t have the bandwidth to create their marketing or research how to make trending content. It’s okay if they don’t know what will work, but they have to be willing to throw spaghetti at the wall and have a process for determining what works and what doesn’t.

For those of you following me on LinkedIn, you know that I’m letting AI run my life.

I’m currently letting ChatGPT guide my daily meals, my love life, my therapy, my career….and even having them help me write difficult emails.

And honestly, it’s going amazing. Here are some new ways I’m using AI:

🤖 I was feeling a bit stuck in my career so I typed in everything I wanted to do, vague or specific and asked ChatGPT to define it and outline the steps for me.

🤖 I had to write an email where I needed to set boundaries but didn’t want to sound like a total jerk, so ChatGPT wrote it for me.

🤖 I’m on a new fitness plan and needed some daily seasonal meals that hit all my nutrients while helped me feel full.

🤖 I used the astrology plugin to figure out when I should be doing some witchy spells and bringing in abundance.

🤖 I had it plan a trip I want to take with my daughter next year.

Everything has been wildly helpful. But one thing it still can’t totally do is marketing.

Why?

Because I haven’t seen ChatGPT be clever in a unique way that I want it to, or funny. I know you can train ChatGPT to get closer and closer but in my world you still need a marketer to vet everything and ensure it fits together.

So tell me friends, how are you using AI?

As a marketing coach, I often see how business owners are f*cking up their marketing. It’s easier said than done. I know.

Here are 6 of the most common ways that, as a business owner, you could be messing up your marketing:

🌟 They don’t see results immediately with things like social media, so they go back to what they were doing before.

🌟 There is a fear of alienating potential customers so their marketing is bland and ends up appealing to no one.

🌟 Their ‘why’ has become diluted or confused with their sales goals. No one gets passionate about a brand whose soul is making money.

🌟 They have a set idea in their mind as to how social media or certain marketing channels should work so they don’t play.

🌟 Trying to get successful somewhere that drains their soul. If you hate Instagram, focus on something else.

🌟 Getting overwhelmed with change and going back to what they were doing. It’s a constant process but you got this. Keep levelling up!

If something isn’t working then what do you have to lose right? Great marketing takes trusting the process, it takes risk, it takes FUN, and getting uncomfortable.

😳 “Hiring a coach was a huge waste of money!”

Unfortunately, I’ve heard that a lot, and I get it. Many coaches sell their time and expect entrepreneurs to come prepared for these meetings with questions and plans. It’s how my own coach uses much of time and it’s been extremely valuable and informative.

But so many clients that I work with don’t even know what questions to ask. They know they aren’t in love with their digital marketing, they know they don’t have the bandwidth to take it to the next level, and they know they need some specialized help.

So if you feel like you’re in need of SOMETHING when it comes to your business, brand, or career and you’re considering bringing on a coach, go through this checklist:

😁 Do you VIBE with this person? It’s important you don’t feel intimated, pressured, or even nervous. It’s best when you can be vulnerable with your coach and in my experience the BEST coaches are a mixture of a hype person and a coach. You should get the sense that they really believe in you and you’re not just another meeting in their calendar.

😁 You need to know not only what you will be getting out of the coaching but how it’s going to go. Are you ready to come to the meetings ready with a dozen questions or do you need a little more guidance?

😁 How available is your coach going to be? You might need someone to call during negotiations, a big sale, or just a low moment. Does your coach have office hours or is it going to be more personal?

😁 Look at testimonials critically. Raving reviews could be coming from people who had different needs than you.

😁 Really, REALLY think about what you need. You might need connections more than guidance, you might need moral support rather than templates and tools.

Interested in learning more about my own coaching packages and processes? Send us an email or visit our website.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but selling on social media doesn’t work.

🤔 The brands you see on social media announcing big sales, pushing promotions, or selling hard have built up that equity to do so. As a content consumer…it’s annoying, exhausting, and frustrating to be asked to listen and buy when nothing has been done to merit my attention.

😳 It’s like asking a stranger on the street to buy you dinner as opposed to your boyfriend asking to go somewhere nice to celebrate 6 months of dating.

This is often where sales and CEO’s clash with marketing. Marketing wants to put up fun and engaging content while leaders want you to sell…which makes sense but you have to lay the groundwork!

Look at the biggest brands in the world. They invest in experiences, inspiration, and value before they push for a sale and the % of sales content is low.

😉 Of course there are exceptions but not generally.

People want to know you and ESPECIALLY on social media. They want to connect so if they find you on the explore page, make it interesting enough that they want to get to know you further.

Someone was showing me a marketing plan that they paid a good chunk of money for that was MISSING these three things!

I was sort of baffled because EVERYTHING should be guided by these three things otherwise you’re just recommending trending tactics that you are working for other people and not strategies that align with the core of your brand.

Let me explain:

🤩 POSITIONING MATRIX

This tells you how you are the best at SOMETHING compared to your competitors. You need to lean the f*ck into that and say it through EVERYTHING you do.

🤩 BRAND VOICE

This makes everything YOU. If you’re funny and sarcastic that tells you the personalities you partner with and the content you create.

🤩 YOUR WHY

This dictates everything. EVERYTHING…from the products you create to the software you buy. If you’re about value and low price then that guides your marketing just as if your why was about being vegan.

If you don’t have these things you’re getting a generic plan based on tactics that are generally working for some brands and not what will work in alignment for you.

“IT WAS A DISASTER.”

I’ve heard this about so many marketing efforts but MOST of the time brands are throwing the baby out with the bath water. People still say that right? Gen Z back me up here.

Anyways, let me explain. Marketing is about momentum. Sure there are rare times where one thing on its own drives sales but almost never.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s say you worked with some influencers but didn’t see any sales.

But with that campaign did you also:

😎 Run an ad-campaign to re-target the audience that engaged with the influencer content?

😎 Offer a special discount with a trackable code and send traffic to a landing page that aligned with the campaign?

😎 Have your social page optimized to welcome the new traffic and have an email sequence ready to welcome new customers?

My point isn’t that everything needs to be complicated, but that we usually execute these things on their own expecting results. We need to think about if they are simply generating or enhancing momentum and then how you will best monetize that momentum.

And it’s never to late to go back to old campaigns and see if there’s anything you can still do to make the most of it. See who engaged with old campaigns, who opened emails, and who requested a sample.

You probably didn’t fail, you likely were just missing a couple of other pieces.

But if you did all that and still had a campaign tank, I feel you. Feel free to join me in a meltdown.

These rules have never let me down and even if you decide you’re a rule-breaker, you need to know the rules before you decide how to break them!

⚡️ RULE OF 7 ⚡️

The idea is here is that your audiences needs 7 or so interactions with you before being moved to purchase and I really like this rule because it takes the pressure off your efforts. Yes some people go viral with one post but most likely it should support your newsletter, your ads, your influencer partnerships, and everything else you’re doing.

⚡️ FEATURES<BENEFITS ⚡️

Stop talking about the features of your product. Nobody cares that it’s high in protein, they care about having more energy and less empty calories so they can hit their fitness goals or whatever.

A lot of business owners are (rightfully) in love with their products and get this one messed up so ask someone totally outside of your audience to review your marketing and see if they’re interested. They should at least be interested in these amazing benefits you offer.

⚡️ BE DIFFERENT BUT NOT TOO DIFFERENT ⚡️

If you’re creating a new category or a new niche it’s helpful to reference a known category, person, or brand. ‘We’re the LULULEMON OF ICE CREAM!’…I mean that’s an example, it doesn’t have to make sense but the gist is that different is good but too different and people tune out because they can’t be bothered to take an entire class to learn about your brand.

⚡️ 80/20 ⚡️

You should be entertaining and education 80% of the time and doing a hard sell 20% of the time. Again there are exceptions, I’m pretty sure people are following Costco on Instagram just for the deals but highlighting your retailers, your suppliers, and talking about your product should be interesting otherwise it’s just a sales pitch and if you’re going to sell then SELL.

What rule am I missing?

I spent the morning trying to log in to Instagram, unable to airdrop anything on my computer, cleaning hot sauce off my phone, and changing my shirt after getting chocolate chia seed pudding all over it. I’m not just venting; I am going somewhere with this.

When faced with something not working, I’ve heard this voice in the back of my mind ask, ‘What if it’s not me? What if I’m not the problem?’

It’s like how any conversation about budgeting and the economy derails into me ranting about how the real problem is that billionaires need to pay taxes. I’m bringing this up because I’ve been doing a deep dive into the food industry, and I’m hearing some really wild things repeatedly about where the industry is going and its challenges.

If you’re feeling like things just aren’t getting the results you want, and you have this feeling it’s not you…you’re probably right. But before examining all your efforts, here’s how you can figure out if you’re the problem:

🍋 Talk to your peers and brands that seem to be killing it. You don’t need to request their industry secrets, but if you’re seeing the same challenges, like lack of sales or reduced social reach, then it’s not you.

🍋 Look at the last time your brand was killing it. What was the economy like? What were the trends? What was the landscape like? Your brand or marketing slowing down could be a natural evolution.

🍋 Are you doing the same things you were 2 years ago? If so, that’s likely a problem. You need to be constantly refining, changing, and testing. Your efforts are probably just stale.

🍋 Are you listening to your audience and experts? I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had brands come to us with a problem and when we point it out, they argue why it has to be done a certain way. Ok, no problem, but you’ll get the same results. You can’t expect a big change if you’re not willing to take the risk of changing.

And if after all this you decide it really isn’t you (and billionaires DO NEED TO PAY TAX) then it’s time to choose how you want to pivot, address, or re-align.