It’s time for part three of How We Unclucked Our Messaging!

What’s been sent out so far:

1. ​We have a marketing problem
   1. How did we know? Our lead-to-client pipeline slowed dramatically; we weren’t getting enough leads in, and growth wasn’t happening how we wanted it to happen.
2. ​Determine outreach and brand awareness activities ​
   1. What did we determine? Go hog-wild on LinkedIn, create a lead magnet, write case studies, and rewrite our website.
3. (this week) Do the outreach… and fall flat on your face

Part three:

Do the outreach… and fall flat on your face

Right.

So.

Outreach time.

I’m going to walk through all of the decisions and actions we took, fully aware that it will read as TOTAL CHAOS.

I should be embarrassed about this, but the fact is that every single client we have ever worked with comes at us with an equally chaotic marketing potpourri.

Bag of tricks?

Confetti work-getti?

Whatever you want to call it, practically every company, at multiple points in their timeline of existence, will try everything everywhere all at once when it comes to marketing.

And think it’s a good idea.

It’s not a good idea.

It comes from lack of clarity, even though you THINK you’re clear on your goals.

Are you ready to be shown how this ‘MARKET EVERYWHERE’ actually works?

A bird’s eye view?

Let’s go.

(1) Brand awareness: LinkedIn

Janel signed us up for a 4-week LinkedIn bootcamp to force us to focus on this.

It worked!

We went from a very complicated content plan to a fairly simple one.

We started publishing more and were, in general, more intentional about showing up.

The problem?

We both spiraled into puddles of angst when it was SO HARD to update our profile cover image.

What did we call ourselves?

• Were we an agency?
• A cooperative?
• Strategists?
• Consultants?
• Fractional CMOs?

WHAT ARE WE.

Also, yes, we were posting more on LinkedIn.

But it still felt like throwing spaghetti at a wall.

And damn, posts were so hard to write.

Like.

So hard.

It should not be this hard!!!!

Existential crisis number one: complete.

(2) Audience building: Lead magnet + upsell idea

We immediately shelved this idea because we realized we should focus on our podcast instead, but the ‘ticket’ was still open, and it stayed on our to-do lists.

With the ticket open, it added to a growing pile of ‘open projects’ that started stacking in my brain like a bad Jenga set, threatening to collapse.

Reader: I collapsed.

I could not function with so many ideas floating around.

Where would I focus?

Where SHOULD I focus?

So, Janel (who is a superhuman) made me a list of “all the biz dev stuff up in the air” in priority order.

It… helped?

But the list was still too long for me.

Janel thrives in this form of chaos.

I definitely do not.

It starts catching fire and leads me straight toward burnout.

But we still had the pesky problem of audience building.

Without this lead magnet and without our podcast live yet… how would we expand our reach?

I did what I always do when I come up against a “we need to be talking to more humans” problem.

I reached out to past clients.

(ahem which we should be doing at all times anyway but let’s ignore that fact for now)

My brilliant solution (which, in fact, was brilliant and we’re keeping this idea) was to bring back Wingspan Wednesdays, an exclusive service just for past clients.

They get a deal on our services and can book and pay without having to ask us if we’re free.

They just find a time on the calendar and we’re off.

We immediately booked a few projects and reconnected with some beloved clients.

However.

This didn’t solve our problem of audience building.

It boosted our audience retention.

So.

We put more effort into the podcast.

We scheduled and recorded 3 interviews.

Janel started editing them.

But.

We weren’t really doing much public work toward audience building. It was all behind the scenes.

Which was certainly not the goal.

In other words, we were doing what so many companies do: spend too much time coming up with cool ideas, working on them, and not doing audience building in tandem with offer creation.

Existential crisis number two: complete.

(3) Authority building: Case studies + website

Welcome to another example of not actually putting our name out there more, but staying in a safe space of ‘development.’

We started rewriting our website!

We had had a sales call where we talked about our super cool subscription model, and the lead was like, “ummmmm but you don’t talk about this anywhere on your site and I’ve never heard of this model before.”

Oops.

We should fix it!

People need to know how we work!

It’s so cool!

It’s so flexible!

It’s soooooo client-focused!

We have gotten so many results for so many clients with our subscription model!

I cracked my fingers and sat down to write a draft of our new website.

Janel edited it.

I edited it.

Annnnd we got stuck on at least every other phrase.

We tweaked, polished, moved things around, hemmed and hawed about what needed to be on it and what needed to be shared after first contact.

Finally, we came to a good-enough draft that sent me off to build it in WordPress.

And yet.

And yet!

1. We were still struggling with basic things like “are we an agency yes/no”
   ​
2. How do we talk about what we do? Are we ‘marketing + retention + positioning’ or are we ‘content wizards’ or are we ‘strategists?’ Are we over-promising our skills if we say “marketing agency” when we don’t do things like paid social campaigns?
   ​UGH EXISTENTIAL CRISIS NUMBER 3: COMPLETE
   ​
3. Nothing we were writing was really… working. It all felt disjointed. Cobbled together. Clunky. But we couldn’t figure out how to fix it….

…. oh.

Y’all.

It took us THREE MONTHS of DOING EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE to come to this simple conclusion:

Our marketing wasn’t the problem.

Our problem was positioning.

We were focusing so much on the what and how of our work that we had completely lost sight of the why.

We couldn’t

• write good LinkedIn posts
• update our profiles
• come up with good audience-building ideas
• rewrite our website

if we didn’t know why we existed.

Our messaging was completely off because our positioning was neither here nor there.

Our positioning was all over the place.

We needed to nail down how we fit into the marketplace before we could nail down our messaging.

Duh.

Literally.

Duh.

This is what we tell our clients ALL THE FRICKING TIME.

It’s why they hire us!

They are too close to the chaos to see the forest through the trees.

We had fallen prey to the same chaos.

Talk about developing empathy for what your clients are going through.

Hot damn.

The good news?

We finally diagnosed the problem correctly.

The even better news?

We finally knew exactly what we needed to do next.

No “maybe we should try this… ????”

Nope.

We had a clear game plan.

Next week, we’ll lay that game plan out for you.

Cheers,

Anna (they/them)

🏳️‍⚧️✊🏳️‍🌈✊🇵🇸

How We Unclucked Our Messaging series

1. ​We have a marketing problem​
2. ​Determine outreach and brand awareness activities​
3. (this week) Do the outreach
4. (next week) Positioning vs Messaging

What I'm reading

​We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by adrienne marie brown​

I need this so badly. How do we maintain a coalition on the left in an age of black and white? Of zero compromise or conversation? Of cancel culture?