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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast! New episodes coming in July!
On today's episode, you'll hear from a self described chief boxologist who built a bold, purpose driven business by rejecting bad marketing and advocating what actually works. This is the Be A Marketer podcast.
Dave Charest:My name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact. And I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business, even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer.
Dave Charest:And at Constant Contact, we're here to help. Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be podcast. Hey, as you may or may not know, every good host needs a great podcast. Guest host, cohost. What the hell did I just say?
Kelsi Carter:Well, quick way is I'm Kelsi. Hi.
Dave Charest:Yeah. See see what I mean? If she wasn't here to save me there. Yes. Every good cohost needs a great no.
Dave Charest:I see. I did it again.
Kelsi Carter:Every great cohost needs a great No. See? Every no. It's every
Dave Charest:great host needs a great cohost. And mine is Kelsi Carter.
Kelsi Carter:That is right. Wow. It's me.
Dave Charest:Hello. Hi, Kelsi.
Kelsi Carter:Hi, Dave. How are you? We got there.
Dave Charest:I we got here. Thanks for going on that little journey with us.
Kelsi Carter:I do. I love the detour.
Dave Charest:I'm glad I'm hopeful hopefully you're still here, and we can tell you about what's going on today. Kelsi,
Dave Charest:now I can't say that I've ever had one. It took me a little while to actually get into creating these little spaces online at the time. But did you ever have a Myspace profile?
Kelsi Carter:I absolutely did. There was a period in the like around February, I think was like my prime of using it. And yeah, that was very important. Especially choosing your song, like in the background when someone clicks your profile, that was like the biggest thing. Everybody, what's your song? What's your song?
Kelsi Carter:Uh-huh. I would always have like a Paramore song when I first started. That was like always my guess too.
Dave Charest:Seems to make sense.
Kelsi Carter:Yeah. I was just I want people to get me when they first click my profile.
Dave Charest:Mhmm. Yeah. Well, you know, so I like I said, I never had one, but my wife did. And I can definitely I remember her spending hours on, you know, looking at things and doing all that stuff with like, don't know, what you didn't have like top friends and things like that too that you Yeah.
Kelsi Carter:Yeah. Like a top the top list, the top eight. And if your top eight wasn't wasn't good, then no one wanted to look at your profile.
Dave Charest:Oh, boy. The Internets are fun. But, you know, I guess, you know, in many ways, that's like just even an early example of kind of, you know, ways that you can kind of personally like brand yourself online in many ways. Right? And you have the tool that gave you the ability to choose your song, choose your backgrounds, do all of those types of things.
Dave Charest:And really before anybody was even talking about what personal branding was. And and I guess, you know, if you think about it the way you that you show up, for example, even in those little ways, right, your personal song or whatever the case may be, it really does shape how people start to think of you and even remember you. And I would say our guest today, is someone who who gets that pretty well. Kelsi, who's joining us today?
Kelsi Carter:Today's guest is Emma Easton. She's the founder and chief bolloxologist of Business Bollox, a marketing strategy company based in The United Kingdom. Yes. The name does turn heads, Dave, and it's very hard to say.
Dave Charest:Amongst other things. Right? Yeah. It it totally is.
Kelsi Carter:That's the point. Emma helps small business owners cut through the noise, ditch the one size fits all advice, and focus on those things that actually move the needle.
Dave Charest:Yeah. What I love about Emma is that her entire approach is about really stripping away the complexity and the noise to just really reveal what really matters. Right? Understanding your market, listening to your audience, and then really just aligning everything with that insight. And so whether she's mentoring founders or calling out lazy subject lines, Emma really drives home the value of clarity in both thought and the actions that you take.
Dave Charest:And, you know, in 2024, she was named entrepreneur of the year at the Lincolnshire Marketing Awards. Her approach, I would say, is bold, honest, and rooted in one clear idea. Right? As we mentioned, you need that clarity. If your audience doesn't understand you, they won't connect with you.
Dave Charest:And so I'm excited about our conversation today because you're gonna hear why clarity beats cleverness in your messaging, how Emma uses her voice to attract the right clients, and the simple structure that helps her stay consistent with content. So let's go to Emma as she shares how her business has evolved from a pandemic mental exercise to something she cherishes and frankly would never change.
Emma Easton:When I set this up, it was really I thought it was just a mental exercise right at the beginning of COVID, and I'd go back to having, as my mom calls it, a proper job, you know, when the world got back on its axis after the pandemic. And I just thought it'd be an exercise for me to keep my brain going and maybe help some people along the way. But it's really evolved into something I absolutely love and cherish and would never change. And I've since worked with my old employers and said, thank you very much actually for my redundancy because it's been the best thing ever. I don't know if I would've had the courage to go out on my own, particularly at that time.
Emma Easton:I know plenty of my contacts who did just before the pandemic and then found themselves in a pretty tricky situation. But I think there's something about being how we're influenced by what we have around us. So I do quite a lot of work in schools, particularly in secondary schools, helping young adults with their kind of career choices. And I think it's really important to be mindful about how we're influenced. So my parents have done like whatever jobs they needed to.
Emma Easton:My dad's very entrepreneurial. My mom brought us up on her own. So she had like all the bazillion jobs that she needed to kinda keep food on the table. So I think that's been around me and probably influenced me. So it meant that it wasn't off the table.
Emma Easton:Whereas an ex partner of mine, you know, his parents have been in the same jobs for a very long time. I fully expect that he's gonna be in the same job for a very long time. But then also very mindful when I'm talking to young adults that there are people who are people in their sphere that never had jobs. So, you know, that's not necessarily in my echo chamber, but it was highlighted to me by a career advisor. So I think it's really interesting to think about all this stuff influences us, whether consciously or subconsciously.
Emma Easton:So I think I was always open to entrepreneurship.
Dave Charest:So, I mean, as you're this started, I mean, obviously you have this inciting moment that kinda gives you that push forward. But I mean, do you have any doubts getting into this?
Emma Easton:I don't think so. Well, I kind of had to do something.
Dave Charest:You didn't really have a choice. Right? So No.
Emma Easton:I mean, the the universe said you're doing something right now.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Emma Easton:I'm the main earner in my family. I have two kids. My husband runs a charity that, you know, doesn't give him a salary yet. So, yeah, I just kinda had to crack on and and do something. I was, you know, that's yeah.
Emma Easton:Just like the universe aligned and I'm doing this now.
Dave Charest:So you received the entrepreneur of the year award from the twenty twenty four Lincolnshire Marketing Awards. Correct?
Emma Easton:I did. Yeah.
Dave Charest:Congratulations on that.
Emma Easton:Thank you.
Dave Charest:What was that experience like for you?
Emma Easton:Well, I'd be speaking at the event, and it was great to find out that I was a finalist. I was so nervous because, you know, you wanna play it down and you're thinking like the Oscars.
Dave Charest:Just play it cool, Emma. Play it cool. Yeah.
Emma Easton:Play it cool. Like, the competition was was really high. I know that the two other finalists, Toby and Rebecca, well done, guys. You know, they're stiff competition and they've done great things with their business. So I was just kinda like, just have my poker face if I don't win.
Emma Easton:Keep calm. But how lovely, one, to be a finalist amongst all the other businesses in the county and then to win. It was just fabulous. My husband was with me at the awards and he when they announced it, he went, whoop. And then everyone giggled.
Emma Easton:So that was kind of funny.
Dave Charest:So what are you finding that you love most about running your own business?
Emma Easton:I really love that I can choose who I work with. I think that's one of the great challenges when you are employed. Certainly, I've had the experience that there are people I frankly rather spoon out my eyeballs than work with. But we don't get a choice because someone has said that, you know, that's the client you're working with or that's the account you're working with or that's the industry you're working with, and I get to choose.
Dave Charest:That's interesting. Right? Because I think sometimes, particularly when you're just getting started, you have this tendency to wanna just take whatever work is gonna come to you. And so you you actually don't choose. Was there a moment where you did you start that from the beginning, or was there a moment you're like, wait a minute.
Dave Charest:I do get to choose here?
Emma Easton:I think that wait a minute happens quite a lot. Like, with when when someone starts speaking to you about a project and I think you just have to reroute yourself in why am I doing this? What floats my boat? What fires me up? What do I feel like is a really, you know, a good day in the office?
Emma Easton:Where do I feel I'm really gonna add value? I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna be taking people's money if I don't know that I'm gonna add value. And whilst I could do what I do with lots of different businesses and lots of different sectors, I've tended to find myself navigating to where it's work for good. And that really resonates with me. And I think actually the factors, you know, I do this volunteering in schools and I'm a school governor, just been in conversation about potentially joining a charity in some capacity that it feels like, yeah, all that's congruent.
Emma Easton:Maybe I didn't realize it, but all that stuff has come together. So that's helped me. I think also perhaps being a little bit longer in the tooth that being able to recognize that actually saying yes all the time can be counterproductive. And we probably all had those clients that, like I say, that, you know, they're a massive time drain Yeah. On our resources.
Emma Easton:And so we we might take them on thinking, well, gotta get the pounds in the bank, gotta get the money in, gotta get the money in. But actually, it's an absolute red herring. You know, you've just lost money. It's taken all your efforts to focus on that client, and you probably knew it. You probably had some kind of red flag going off, some inner alarm going off going, don't take it.
Dave Charest:Don't do it. You you mentioned, you know, like, the charity work and and those types of things and the other things you're volunteering for. Where does that come from?
Emma Easton:I think probably having a fairly frugal background. So my mom brought us up on her own and I'm glad, you know, I got to see my dad, perhaps not as regularly as if my parents had been to or definitely not as regular as if my parents had stayed together. And we still have a great relationship. But there were times like we would thought we were gonna lose the house. Yeah.
Emma Easton:I think I was going into some exams, a GCSE exam, and we thought we were gonna lose the house. And it is only now since becoming a parent that I realize all the sacrifices that my mum made. You know, there were times she didn't eat and I didn't necessarily know that. But I think that's kind of instilled this in me and maybe going to voluntary groups and seeing people helping out, just, you know, maybe going through guiding, I don't know, but all these little things come along that influence you. I think it's the right thing to do.
Emma Easton:I think what goes around comes around invariably. You know, I feel that. So, you know, I've had some great work come to me because of my position and the things that I've done. And they said, well, we've seen the work that you're doing. Real social media lurkers, which always sounds like my dog ate my homework.
Emma Easton:Well, there's all the people that don't interact.
Dave Charest:Well, it's true though, right?
Emma Easton:That even is true. But when you're a marketer and you're trying to say to a client, well, of course, they will have been people that have
Dave Charest:People who are
Emma Easton:watching I've seen this and not interacted. But some great work has come out of that and I put stories out on social, I talk about the stuff that I'm doing and maybe that will inspire others to do the same. I mean, one of my great things was I was talking at a school and I'd had permission to say the business name to the young adults there because you have to get permission. Can you imagine the complaint by the way? But the head team had said, that's fine.
Emma Easton:Anyway, then these young lads, we're all around a table and they're like, so what, you know, what what do you actually do then, miss? Which always makes me feel a 150 years old. Miss, what? And and I said, this is what I do. It's marketing strategy.
Emma Easton:This is what it means. And what's your company called, miss? I said, it's miss bollocks. And they're all going, that's sick, miss. Now what I love, you know, just going back to that point about we're influenced by what's around us, it's not everyone on that table is gonna be a budding entrepreneur, but what it's done is for those that haven't necessarily thought about it or thought it was stuffy or not for them, it's kind of opened their eyes to it or at least opened their mind to it so that they might consider it in the future.
Emma Easton:And I think that's really exciting, particularly for our young adults and maybe it's a mindset thing. But what they're gonna be doing when they've reached my ripe old age, you know, probably hasn't been invented yet. How exciting is that? If you've got this open mindset, then that's gonna stand you in great stead, whatever comes along. So I think that's kind of where that comes from.
Dave Charest:Okay. So I love that where that comes from. Again, the love of it is being able to choose what you do. What are you finding most challenging about it?
Emma Easton:Cash flow is always the biggest thing when you got a small business. I don't think that will be news to anyone that runs a small business. In fact, this morning at a breakfast networking, in fact, two people said that, you know, I was like, how are things going? You know, the balance of money in and out, clients taking too long to pay invoices, those kinds of things. Some of my clients, I do some work with universities and at the moment universities have been really struggling.
Emma Easton:We've seen redundancies, you know, the model is changing and so on. And so finding someone who can, like, who's got a payment card, if they wanna set up LinkedIn ads, no one knows who's got a payment card. So then for example, we will take that on, but I will need a PO so I know I can get that covered. But there can be a delay. And so I'm effectively covering the cash flow for some clients and that ends up with me.
Emma Easton:So I think that's the biggest headache, you know, getting the invoices paid and balancing out and doing the forecasting. That's not my go to love. Yeah. But but just so you don't wake up in the middle of the night panicking, you have to do that stuff. Yeah.
Emma Easton:So you don't panic because then you know, look, now I've got a six month, nine month, twelve month runway. So don't panic. Have a good night's sleep.
Dave Charest:Is it just you in the business? Do you have anybody else working with you at all? Or
Emma Easton:It's me. I have a I have a fellow director who does some niche consultancy, and then I bring in specialists to do work.
Dave Charest:Got it. Got it. No one on the back end side, though?
Emma Easton:Not permanently employed. No. So it's working with VAs and so on. And again, it's bringing using the specialist skills when we need it.
Dave Charest:Got it. Well, let's talk about marketing here. Right? So obviously, you come to the business with marketing experience.
Emma Easton:Mhmm.
Dave Charest:What do you love most about marketing?
Emma Easton:I love that it's the way that it connects business to customer. And I think too often it's seen as a one way, so company to customer. But actually, there's so much richness in listening to customers. If you if you spoke to anyone that I've lectured or spoken at an event, I'm always talking like this. Listen to your customer.
Emma Easton:All the answers to your questions are probably with your customer. And this is like this two way street. So think about it more like a dual carriageway. So, you know, you can share stuff with them. You can test out, you can validate offers, you can all that stuff.
Emma Easton:You know, you can go back and forth with customers. And I like to think it's more like a partnership because you're building a relationship, you're building that element of know, like, and trust, is actually a phrase I find a bit hackneyed, but I think we all kind of know what it means. Yeah. But we're building that relationship with our customers such that they do trust us with their hard earned cash or whether it's a product or a service. And so I think that having marketing as a conduit to that, it's like really what underpins it and what's what moves your business from being maybe a hobby to being a business because we've actually got people wanting, like coming to us.
Emma Easton:We're building that funnel. We actually, you know, might be even we're creating a wait list or, you know, a brand new offering. There's quite often I'll speak to startups and they're like, well, I've got to like fully create the thing and then take it to market. No, let's go validate it first. So actually that can be a massive reassure that you're on the right lines because so this fully kind of being able to validate and support entrepreneurship, that's great as well.
Emma Easton:And I think there was a meme that went round and it was a take on the Lion King where Mufasa was standing on Pride Rock with Simba. And it was, you know, like everything that you can see, everything the sun touches is yours. It was like marketing. Marketing. Yeah.
Emma Easton:Yeah. Everything Everything the the sun sun touches touches is is your your domain. And I kind of get that feeling. I think that's a bit like how it is with marketing. It, you know, it can have a really positive impact on the business.
Emma Easton:And conversely, rubbish marketing can have a massively negative impact on the business. And that's the stuff that boils my blood. I want it all to be good.
Dave Charest:Well, what would be an example of rubbish marketing?
Emma Easton:When it doesn't work, when it's not had the proper foundation. So there was a really interesting stat that I read, which was from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, that 75% of marketers are not trained. I was like, okay, that's interesting. Why is that? How's that?
Emma Easton:So then when you take a step back and so if you look at all, let's say I go to a networking meeting with a 100 people in the room and there's however many people in there that might classify themselves as marketers, whether they're SEO, digital, you know, email marketing, they might be a copywriter and consider themselves to be a marketer. They might be creative, etcetera, but they're all kind of in that marketing space. Very often they've come to it because they are experts in that thing. So somehow they've fallen into a role that has got them to, you know, either they've come in as a junior or whatever and they've become a real expert in let's use SEO as an example. They are less likely to have done some formal training.
Emma Easton:Now, whether that's through university or through other channels, they're less likely to have done formal training other than perhaps a digital platform they're using. And for me, what that suggests, and this is only based on my experience, but it is supported by lots of people I've spoken to. Maybe I'm speaking to the wrong people. But lots of people have said either their lack of training meant that they didn't understand marketing strategy. They didn't understand the foundational work that they needed to do.
Emma Easton:Didn't even know that was a thing that they needed to do. Or I've even given talks where people have said, oh, yes, I understand this thing about market segmentation and understanding all that stuff. You know, we did that when I did my degree. And then I ask, and have you used it since? No.
Emma Easton:Why not? Well, clients never give the time or the budget to do it. So then I'm like, why? Hello, marketers. We need to be one educating our clients that they need to do this because this helps us understand their business.
Emma Easton:Or maybe it's a bit like when you sell your house, you get a house survey done that then becomes like the buyer's pack for anyone buying a house that says this is the state of the windows, floor, roof, etcetera. If you have that foundational work done on your business, then whether you're giving that pack out to a copywriter or a creative or an SEO expert or a digital marketer doing email, they understand your audience. You now understand your audience. So that if you're a leader in a business and you're going off to a networking meeting, you now know who you're targeting. You now know what you need to say.
Emma Easton:You now know the messages that you need to convey, the way in which you need to say it, the language that you're going to use. And because this stuff isn't done invariably, and that, you know, when clients come to me, they're like, oh, marketing isn't working, or they'll say, oh, marketing's all bollocks. And then we'll dive into it and they'll have been doing the tactics. You know, they'll have either had a campaign or putting stuff out. We're doing this organically.
Emma Easton:We're doing that. We did these flyers, blah, blah, blah. And we get into it and they're not targeting the most profitable segments. They're not targeting even the ones that have the pain that they think they need. And it's kind of like they've I was talking about this I wrote this to someone the other day.
Emma Easton:Back in the day, I'm older enough that when if you wanted to set up a business, like side hustles weren't really a thing. If you wanted to set up a business, you had to go to an actual bank manager. I'm not saying this is how it should be. I'm just saying this is how it used to be and this is why it used to be done. The old way of doing it was you'd go to a bank manager with a formal business plan.
Emma Easton:They would validate it and, you know, they would check it over and check that you haven't missed out on the fundamentals like, is there a market? Right? Now we have these lovely ideas and then we try and post justify and post find a market for our massive problem solver. But we have to make sure there is a market. So how many times have we come across people who are brilliant, like idealists that have come up with these things, coming up with new products and services, but there simply isn't a market for it.
Emma Easton:So they are trying their best to market the hell out of it, but there simply isn't a market for it. And that's what, that's what, you know, marketers shouldn't be taking money to market that. They should be saying, well, I'm not sure there's a market here. Maybe there's a way to validate if there is or isn't. That would be good marketing.
Emma Easton:Just taking their money because you can provide a service, that's bad marketing. So for me, marketing should be doing the things that business owners want. Sometimes I think it's about the tough love. They you know, this sounds great. However, I'm not sure that this is gonna fly.
Emma Easton:Here's why. Here's the research. Yeah. This is the stuff that you need to be aware of. And if we're not doing that, then I think that's falling into bad marketing.
Dave Charest:So when you think about your business and the things that you do to market yourself, what do you find most challenging about marketing?
Emma Easton:I think being consistent. Not in terms of my message, that is very consistent, but having the time to do it consistently. And there's, as you grow your business, there is, and this is why I think I'm able to talk about it and be really relatable typically to the multihatted founders. So whilst I have other people that step in, I've still gotta give them a brief. I've still gotta I've gotta take myself out of doing, out of speaking to clients, out of going to networking to give them the brief.
Emma Easton:And, you know, I know I've gotta do it. And so when am I gonna do it? So that they can get on with doing what they need to. I think my biggest challenge other than that is delegation. And they kinda go a bit hand in hand.
Emma Easton:And that's been the same throughout my career. If you spoke to someone probably from my first job, they would probably say that too. And again, I think this is very relatable for people who are growing businesses or who've grown businesses. You know, when you know you can do something really well. Yeah.
Emma Easton:Like, just give it here, I'll do it. But that doesn't help the other person. And one of the great interests for me has been working with more mentees. So helping them. And actually, I've got so much from that relationship as well from being a mentor because it's taught me things as well as then.
Emma Easton:And I think that, you know, again, you know, giving, I've got I've I've had value from that as well. So that's helping me to work on whether I will really like, will I ever master that? Am I aware of it? Yes.
Dave Charest:So you mentioned businesses, like, you know, do good type of clients that you like to work with. But is there a specific audience that you're trying to reach with your business?
Emma Easton:The specific audiences are really more it's more about the situation that they find themselves in. There are some loose segments that I work with, and that's to do with headcount slash turnover. But it's more about, say, the situation they find themselves in. So I'm really driven by the good marketing. So there will be times when I will meet, let's say a company with 20 people, perhaps a couple of million pounds turnover, something like that, upwards.
Emma Easton:And they're like, you know, either we've got a new product or service or a new wanna go to market strategy or, you know, our landscape's changed a hell of a lot and we've not really taken a step back. We've just been in grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And now we're like, actually, what are we gonna be doing over the next three to five years? And then they'll get me in. And we'll literally do that back to basics, looking at stuff like that.
Emma Easton:But there's also clients at the other end that are, you know, how do we get to that point? Like I say this, I call it the multihatted founder, where you might have a couple of people in the business, but everyone's kind of doing everything or doing at least three jobs. And how do you know what to do? How do you know what's gonna be most impactful for your business right now? And there's so much information out there about what you should or shouldn't be doing.
Emma Easton:But it can feel like it's a little bit biased. So if I'm having a mentoring relationship with that client, I'm not taking any money whether they are doing this thing or that thing. I am purely giving them an unbiased experience view on given their goals and the outcomes they're looking to achieve, what they should be doing right now and then holding them accountable to make sure they get the thing done. And that's super, super valuable. So we're kind of anywhere between that and that.
Emma Easton:There seems to be a bit of a collection of companies in healthcare and in education. And again, that goes back, I think, to my values. I've had quite a few clients come through who get the access to work payment. So perhaps where they have some additional needs and they are wanting to grow their business and they've been able to access that funding. But that's probably about as tight as it goes.
Emma Easton:I think it's driven by helping others and what that help is will depend on where they are on their journey. Does that answer that, Dave?
Dave Charest:Yeah. No. It it totally does. Yeah. Definitely.
Dave Charest:Okay. So can you walk me through some of the things that you do to market your business to these audiences that you're trying to reach?
Emma Easton:So a lot of it is word-of-mouth. So for example, a recent piece of mentoring work came through a web agency that I used to well, I know from before I relocated. And they were talking to someone about a web project and they were saying, well, we've got a we want to take on an apprentice, but actually we don't have any in house marketing skills. And they said, I think you wanna speak to Emma. And then that's kind of how that lovely relationship came about.
Emma Easton:I do quite a lot of public speaking. So people hear me talking and then go, well, hopefully they go, that lady is speaking scents. And then some and then work invariably comes out of that. A lot of people actually will come up to me and go, do you know what? I've never heard anyone talk about this stuff before.
Emma Easton:You go to a marketing conference, what's pretty much everyone talking about? Tactics. They're talking about the tools like you guys, you know, you should be talking about the tools. Here are tools that you can make your life more efficient, yada yada yada. And some of the specifics around the tactics that unless I mean, I'm not trying to like big myself up and my head get bigger than my home office.
Emma Easton:But unless there's unless I'm talking at the event, maybe it's an echo chamber of the events I'm going to, but I invariably don't hear people talking about this stuff. Now there's probably something around because people just want to know the tactics. Like, what's the latest thing I need to know about? What's going on with this algorithm? What's going on here?
Emma Easton:What's the best tool for this? You know, what should I be doing with AI obviously comes up a lot. But regardless of all that, we need to do the foundational work. Yeah. I call it step one.
Emma Easton:Yeah. Because it's like most of the marketing, we dive in about step three or four. But what about step one when we don't do it? Yeah. And I liken it to, so I've gotta have some foot surgery.
Emma Easton:So I was having this thought about, well, what do I do? Like, I'm a bit worried about it. I don't think anyone particularly wants to have surgery. So how do we make how do we know that people are gonna be looked after in surgery? And I kind of now ask this of an audience.
Emma Easton:So anyone's coming to my talks, don't say what I'm about to say that I want you to say because I want yeah. But, you know, anyway, but they will invariably say, oh, okay. Well, we want surgeons and we want good equipment. We want lighting because I got this, like, the picture on a slide. No one ever says clean hands because it's so obvious.
Emma Easton:But it was only like, think how long medicine has been going on and bodies are being being cut up and women delivering babies and like medicine has been going on for a very, very, very long time. But it was only in the mid eighteen hundreds that someone said about how about we wash our hands in between patients? And here's the even more interesting thing based on my research. It only made it into the American medical guidelines in the nineteen eighties. Why?
Emma Easton:Probably because it's so obvious. But we don't look at our market because it's so obvious. Yeah. We think we know it, but actually, have we properly investigated it? This gut feel.
Emma Easton:Gut feel gets us a pretty, pretty long way. And I'm not saying let's spend the bazillion pounds on research. You know, part of this stuff is good. And the tools, you know, we can use AI, we can use a whole load of tools to give us market size information. Then if we know lifetime value, then we can put some values against a particular segment or I try and debolloxize it for non marketers, and I call it groups.
Emma Easton:But then we're able to say, well, this group's got this value. This group's got this value. And then when we look at those two groups, let's say they've got the same value, but for one, they've gotta go to 10 people and then other, we gotta go to a 100. Well, let's go to the 10 people because that's fewer conversations and therefore more profitable. And depending on the model of the business, it might be actually that we wanna go with a 100 people because we you know, there's something about risk.
Emma Easton:But when we've got that data in front of us, then we know. Ta da.
Dave Charest:Yeah. It's really I find a lot of the same things. Right? Like, I focus a lot on the foundational stuff too when I'm speaking to, and and I think oftentimes we get into here's what you do without asking the, I think important questions are, well, what are you trying to do and who are trying to do that for? Because that's gonna determine how you then use the tools.
Dave Charest:Right? Because we all have access to the same tools, but how we use them is gonna be different. Right, based on what it is that we need to do and accomplish and for whom. Right? So, yeah, I love that.
Dave Charest:I think maybe part of, like, social media is a problem here too because, like, I think that makes it feel easy because it's so accessible.
Emma Easton:Yep.
Dave Charest:And it's very good. I keep saying this. It's very good at making you feel like you're doing something. Right?
Emma Easton:Right.
Dave Charest:When you actually probably aren't doing anything meaningful where you could be spending that energy someplace else and actually moving
Emma Easton:Yeah.
Dave Charest:Further, right, with your business. It's a very interesting thing.
Emma Easton:I heard someone the other day saying, just because it's more efficient Yeah. Doesn't make it more effective. Yeah. And there's there's people I talk to, and it's all about it's all about social. It's all about digital.
Emma Easton:And then we take a step back and say, well, who do want to get getting hold of? And it might, you know, senior decision makers in yada yada yada sectors. Well, bizarrely, when you take a step back and look at what's going on, like everyone's inboxes are full. There's tactics. There's tool.
Emma Easton:There's subject lines and, you know, make sure your content's right. But sometimes it can be old school ways. Yeah. I had a client that wanted to get in front of UK supermarket. Hard, hard, hard, hard.
Emma Easton:But knowing that market, knowing the people in those roles, we went and did a whole load of research on them. What did we do? We sent out 10 letters. Just 10. We had three replies and one got to contract.
Emma Easton:10 letters. Yeah. So, you know, we've got all these amazing tools, but sometimes we just need to take a step back and go, and is that tool the right tool for who we're gonna connect with?
Dave Charest:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, similar story. I mean, somewhat similar story, but I I think, yeah, sometimes we get so blinded by almost the digital landscape in many ways, right, where it feels like it's easy to do things, but you forget that there's people on the other end of that. Like, I can remember a time where I had someone was working for me and we were trying to connect with somebody in the company to get something done, and I was, like, following up on that.
Dave Charest:They were like, oh, yeah. Well, I I sent that email. I'm like, well, they sit right over there. Did you walk over there and and and have a conversation? That might be easier.
Dave Charest:Right? Like, it's we get blinded by that sometimes. Right? So it's yeah. Point well taken.
Dave Charest:So, you know, you mentioned consistency and that being a challenge, right, for your own stuff.
Emma Easton:Mhmm.
Dave Charest:What do you do to actually or or how do you approach actually getting things done when it comes to the marketing pieces that you need to do?
Emma Easton:Yeah. I call that getting shit done.
Dave Charest:That's a good name. So
Emma Easton:one, I block out time in the calendar because otherwise, it'll fill up with meetings and and so on. So I have regular blocks of GSDs in my calendar, and I've had done that for a long time. And particularly, like, this quarter is being really busy for me. So I've got you know, I have to protect that time to do stuff. I also, when I'm working on my business, not just in my business, so the GSDs tend to be working in the business stuff.
Emma Easton:On my business, I also have slots of time. So I have slots of time making sure I'm doing new business e staff, prospecting e staff, following up with proposals, those kinds of things. I have slots of time for that as well. Again, gotta protect it. If it's not in my calendar, it ain't happening.
Emma Easton:But also I work with a accountability coach to make sure that I'm prioritizing the right things to do for what I'm looking to achieve. And we have goals like for the quarter and the year, but sometimes it's just like, look at my workload. What am I doing this week? What is going to tangibly move me forward? And I think there's something about the overwhelm of in fact, someone else spoke to the other day.
Emma Easton:Oh, I've got to do my website. And that feels like a big thing because it's like a whole other pages and I've gotta do content and blah, blah, blah. And they they, you know, they've got a content management system, whatever else. They're like, ugh, ugh. What if you just did one page this week?
Emma Easton:Would that you know, how would you feel at the end of the week if you managed to get that one page done? Brilliant. Okay. Go do one page. So if it's only thing that you can actually feasibly get done because you're, you know, doing the work or you're away or your kid's sick or when you have school holidays, you know, that has an impact and so on.
Emma Easton:And do the page because over the weeks, let's say you've got 20 pages on your website, in twenty weeks you have done it. But you'll probably have procrastinated twenty weeks and still not done it if you see it as a whole. Yeah. Or is it I mean, there's a book called Eat the Frog. Yeah.
Emma Easton:I love that. But that potentially would be, do the whole website. I'm just like, let's take take take some little nibble and breaking it down into manageable chunks that feel less scary. And then it feels like a thing that you can actually just get done. You know, you gotta half hour, go get it done.
Emma Easton:I love the Pomodoro technique. I use that all the time.
Dave Charest:What's that one?
Emma Easton:So that's where you have twenty five minutes focus time.
Dave Charest:Okay.
Emma Easton:And then you have five minutes off. Yep. So if I've got stuff that I really know I need to do, I'm gonna have twenty five minutes real hard focus and then I'm gonna go off and look at social, make a cup of tea or, you know, catch up with my family. And that's really useful because I'll block out some of those slots to get, you know, to, again, get stuff done.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Well, I'm curious when you start thinking about so let's get into some of, the tactical things a bit here, but so, like, let's on social, do you have like a a primary social channel? Are you in multiple places? Like, do you kind of work that?
Emma Easton:I'm mainly on LinkedIn.
Dave Charest:Okay.
Emma Easton:And I'd say I'm I'm active on LinkedIn. I have channels on other platforms, but really, I'm I'm not active on them. You know, if it's not a personal introduction, my work comes from LinkedIn just because it's where the B2Bs are. And I love the platform. I love I love interacting with people.
Emma Easton:I love seeing what people are up to. I love how more personal it's become since lockdown. It feels like it really took a step forward from, you know you still get the people going, this is a business platform. Okay. Yes.
Emma Easton:We're in we're in business and we're still human beings.
Dave Charest:And we're people. Right. Yes. Yeah.
Emma Easton:So and particularly for early career marketers and they're like, but that post about someone's birthday just got the most engagement. It's like, well, because people can relate to that. Everyone has a birthday. And, you know, and that's a nice thing to see. And you're like, oh, congratulations.
Emma Easton:So that can be a great way to one, have to break the grind of content and all that kind of stuff because, you know, people buy from people and we're real actual human beings. And you know, why did that dog post do so well? Because it's about a dog. So, you know, so now you start to see companies that have, you know, they'll bring their dogs into work and then they'll say, oh, and this is chief morale officer. You know, and those posts do brilliantly.
Emma Easton:In fact, my cat needs to get in a few more of my posts with a whole cat dog war going on. Yeah. So LinkedIn for me is the best one. Find because my clients are in B2B, we'll invariably be getting them to embrace LinkedIn. Yeah.
Emma Easton:I'm always surprised by people who aren't active on LinkedIn when their work is B2B. Like it's kind of, you know, even if you, you know, use a free account, you can still do a lot of understanding your market. And I know that's kind of my call. But you could still do a lot of understanding your market just with the free version.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Well, I'm curious, you know, for you, do you feel a need to and I feel like this might be different. Right? But do you feel a need to be on every channel?
Emma Easton:I think I used to. Maybe early days. And now I'm comfortable not being on every channel. And you'll probably find that every small alright, influencer is gonna say something different. But I just think be where your audience is and go be there and go be consistent.
Emma Easton:And unless, you know, if you have a social media manager, that is, you know, that's their job to be your business or your personal, depending. But you out on socials, that's their job. Let them go do that. But if you are juggling a bucket load, focus on what, again, what's gonna be most impactful for your audience. That's why you need to understand your audience inside and out.
Emma Easton:You know? And when you've done that foundational work on understanding your market, you then know, actually, my audience loves video or they love stats or they love this, you know, and they like this style of language. You know, I need to be tagging this on my post or I need to be using this hashtag or I need to be in these groups. Again, all that all the answers. In fact, you know what?
Emma Easton:I do have a crystal ball in my office because I I talk about it kind of like, it's like the crystal ball of marketing. When you do this stuff I should have a like, I put my scarf in my head instead of like, how do I do marketing, Emma? Well, that's how you do it. You've gotta know the stuff. You gotta know your audience, and then the answers come.
Emma Easton:And if you don't have the answers, at least now you need you know what you need to go and find out. So, you know, if they're on LinkedIn, be on LinkedIn. You know, if they're on Facebook, so have in my network, people who have more b to c companies, That's, you know, that's more Facebook. Very visual businesses might be more on the visual platforms like Instagram and TikTok. I heard a lovely story the other day about a financial advisor who's absolutely going great guns on TikTok.
Emma Easton:And he just he's there with a flip chart and he's explaining stuff to his audience. But who would have thought that TikTok would be the place for a financial adviser? Yeah. Now that could be the place to go. Maybe that's the place to go if you're like particularly if you're doing educational content.
Emma Easton:So I've got a couple of clients who I'm saying, I think you guys need to get on TikTok because of the the stuff that you're putting out. Great on LinkedIn, but also you could get a really interesting following on TikTok. And we've done that based on research. So, you know, those right at the very beginning of our conversation, we're talking about customer. Then we heard it back from customer.
Emma Easton:You know, where do you guys hang out? What content, you know, what platforms do you, you know, do you use? Where do you spend your time? Oh, this and that. Okay, makes note.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Emma Easton:Okay. And then and like, so this stuff comes from your customers. Oh, you know? Doesn't feel like rocket science. Although I did meet a rocket science scientist the other day, and that was quite exciting.
Dave Charest:Where does he market?
Emma Easton:Exactly. Well, it's Andromeda.
Dave Charest:What role does email marketing play in your business?
Emma Easton:It's really important because it's a list that I own. You know, I've heard lots of stories about people who are focused on, let's say, LinkedIn or Meta or whatever, and something's happened. Their account gets locked. That's it. You're out.
Emma Easton:You know, you're blown out the water. But if you have an email list, then that's yours. And there are tools like yours, then, you know, you can then use that and harness that and get the stats. You know, actually look at what you're doing. Well, I heard the other day someone, well, we're just sending them out of our Outlook.
Emma Easton:Oh my God. How do you know? Like who's interacting with what at what point? What's a wasted opportunity. Yeah.
Emma Easton:So email is super, super important. I can't necessarily see that changing in the short term. I think we always have to have a bit of a lens about what's going on, but what's happening with all the tools is there's all these innovations going on. And I think there's some pros and cons with things like AI. Like we don't want to have all our content all sounding the same.
Dave Charest:Right.
Emma Easton:But in terms of like getting you over that blank page it is, I think it can be really, really good. You know, there are people who, were writing is not their skill set. Again, that can get them past that. And then you go, heck, that's not how I write. And then you've got something to put more into your language.
Emma Easton:Very important to do that because we're all going, oh my God, there's like, well, one of there's hashtags and asterisks all over it and emoticons. And then, you know, it's been chat GPT, but you know, definitely you, I think email has to be part of your, of your strategy unless your audience doesn't have email. So my mother-in-law, for example, she lives with us. She has email. She's super digital.
Emma Easton:But the people that she speaks to in the village, not so much. But that is, I would say, a small and reducing market. Yeah. I think most people have access to email. We have it on our devices.
Emma Easton:I can get my emails on my Apple Watch. Heck, there's a whole another issue about how connected we are and can we turn off, but you can just take your gadgets off. Yeah. Turn them off. Yeah.
Emma Easton:Until we start getting implants in our retinas where, you know, we can probably still distance ourselves. But it is, you know, we think about where your audience is, use the tools that connect with them, find ways to make it easy for yourself and for them to interact with you and be in control of your data, definitely.
Dave Charest:What do you do to move people from social to those owned properties? What what ways do you kinda grow that list?
Emma Easton:It's in having the conversation. So I have, for example, I run some quizzes. That people can find. Let's say I've spoken at an event. I have a little QR code at the end.
Emma Easton:That's how people then come into my quiz. And I say, yes, that's gonna put you into my email ecosystem. You can always unsubscribe. But they get value from the quiz. So that then brings them into my ecosystem.
Emma Easton:They get a lovely hello, thank you. From doing the quiz, they get value from that and they can always unsubscribe straight away. But invariably people like that stuff. I think if they are liking me, there's a particular style of, you know, and the brand, the business name kind of says it all. So I think people are there for a particular style of content.
Emma Easton:All my content is written as if you were having a conversation with me. It's not written in boring boring business. Yeah. In fact, you know what? I have I don't know if you can see it.
Emma Easton:I have Lord Business from the Lego Movie on top of my monitor as a reminder. Don't be Lord Business.
Dave Charest:That's amazing.
Emma Easton:Like, because that's that's just not how people speak. But I do again. I have clients who write, like, seriously, like, did someone, like, from the eighteen hundreds write this copy? This is not how real life people talk.
Dave Charest:It's funny. Right? Because, like, I feel like there's, like, a there's a switch in people sometimes. Right? Particularly when you're just not comfortable with marketing.
Dave Charest:Right? Like, you don't really understand it. So you feel like you're putting a like, all the hats you gotta wear. Now I'm putting on the marketing hat, and now I need to talk like this because I'm marketing. Marketing.
Dave Charest:Right? And so you end up doing these things that you're like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Like, right? Like, just pretend you're in front of somebody and you're talking to them.
Dave Charest:Right? That's one of the complaints. To them, like, when you're like, you've we've got bigger problems. Right? Yeah.
Emma Easton:Yeah. You know, if you're talking like dickens in a conversation, big problem. I heard something the other day about, you know, what if you were having a conversation and what if you recorded that conversation and took the transcript and ran it through an AI Yeah. To pull out, you know, what was the situation, what was the problem? And then suddenly you've created some content there that could become a case study anonymized, of course, but it, you know, it starts feeding into it.
Emma Easton:So you can be present in the conversation, actually be having a proper, it could be a, you know, what you call it, like discovery call kind of conversation. Yeah. Someone's explaining their challenges and you're like, okay, and you're in it and you're and you're helping them. And obviously you've got their permission and explain why you're recording it. And I'm just gonna use this as anonymized content for case studies and so on.
Emma Easton:So use your real life language. And as you're using that transcript and seeing how people are actually talking, it's a reminder. Dickens doesn't live here anymore. Yeah. Maybe that should be a Post it note on people who who write Dickens need a little Post it on the corner of their screen going, nope.
Emma Easton:Nope.
Dave Charest:I wanna shift us a little bit to think about just when you're working with clients and and those types of things. And so I feel like we often try to jump ahead. You know, we talked earlier about just the the tactics and without actually focusing on the fundamental things. And I think also we, as humans, right, we tend to overcomplicate things too. Right?
Dave Charest:Are there any particular areas for you that you see business owners that's really just just really making things too complicated of themselves when it comes to marketing?
Emma Easton:All this time. Hang on. I'm kinda feeling like a rolls up sleeves moment.
Dave Charest:Uh-oh. Yeah. Uh-oh.
Emma Easton:All the time. I think we can get really pickled as business owners. Yeah. Get really pickled as business owners about what we think we should be doing is one thing. And that's kind of it feels like you got that devil and and angel on your shoulders telling you.
Emma Easton:And you probably got your Dickensian brain saying, speak like this. And then you've got someone else saying, just speak like a normal human being. But the I think the word just, and I think if you went through the transcript of this, I know I use the word just a lot. Just should be banned. So let's just get this out.
Emma Easton:You know, let's just send that email. Let's just, just, just, just, just. That just is the barrier to the thinking. So I call it think before things because that one is quite memorable because the words are similar. But think before you do the things.
Emma Easton:So if we just took a pause and thought about something just for a little while longer, I'm not saying like procrastinate two weeks. If we just spend a little bit of time, then we do so much better. I mean, in emails, for example, the thing that really bakes my noodle is the amount of time that people will spend on the content of the email and then do kind of some throwaway subject line. Yeah. But what is the job to do of that subject line?
Emma Easton:That's to get someone to open the email. Now, if you don't spend the time on the subject line, no one is ever gonna see your carefully crafted content. So, you know, that's let's just get it out. And and this is I see this time, time again, concentrating on the copy and the email. I'm not saying don't, but also give the subject line the same attention because it has a job to do.
Emma Easton:Just like if you're sending something in the post, right? Then you would if you're putting it through a franking machine, you'd make sure there was something nice on the franking machine or you would choose a nice stamp or you'd have nice stationery because you want it to look like something that someone wants to engage with. Now, why do shops have amazing windows? Because the job to do is to entice you into the shop. So what I say to people is, you know, this is the stuff we're doing now.
Emma Easton:You know, people have heard of eightytwenty rule. Why are we just jumping in and doing the 20 without doing the 80? And maybe it doesn't need to be that ratio of percentage, but we certainly need to do some thinking. And what I'll do is I'll give a real life example. Like if we do this now, if we jump in with this right now, what's the outcome likely to be and how is it different from the outcome that we're after?
Emma Easton:So the outcome is we've possibly sent something out or created something that doesn't meet the goals that we have for it. It's probably spent, we've invested time and money. But if we just put another, I don't know, half day even, it doesn't have to be that much into properly thinking it through, then we haven't wasted. Let's say it was ten days, right? We haven't wasted that ten days for the one and a half day.
Emma Easton:It's like, would you go out and do a video shoot, for example, without planning what you were gonna do? Well, no, you wouldn't. You'd plan your shots. You'd work with your videographer. You would have booked the spaces.
Emma Easton:You'll have had the people that you're gonna interview. You'll have the kit and you'll have done the planning. If you don't do the planning, then you're gonna spend three times as much time because you haven't got it all planned out. You're gonna have to go there, go there, go there, go back there because you forgot to get that shot that you meant to get. You didn't do the B roll, etcetera, etcetera.
Emma Easton:And so by putting it in real life stories, you can say, well, I'm gonna just say we need to halt it here because we're gonna go down the wrong route. We're not gonna get what we want. And this is, you know, effectively, there's you know, this is why you've asked me to do this stuff. And what I want to do with those, excuse me, with those early career marketers is give them the confidence to press that pause button because they will have so much pressure from everyone around them that we just gotta get this done, you know? Yeah.
Emma Easton:It's Friday afternoon. We just gotta get this thing out. But there's no point sending it off Friday afternoon. You know, let's do it on Monday. Yeah.
Emma Easton:You know? Or actually there's, you know, the emails, actually there's a whole load of research around the weekend now being a really good time to get hold of particular segments, which never was the case before. And if you weren't aware of the research in your segment, then you wouldn't know that. And you'd be just going back to something that you heard five years ago that says, well, you only send out emails between ten and two on a Tuesday to Thursday. Yeah.
Emma Easton:Well, that was pre pandemic and the world's moved on and your audience has moved on and they're interacting with their emails in different ways as an example. But that's why we need to do that research. And then they're like, maybe I'll just battered them down the head with with reasons why. And they're but invariably, they'll go with it and and then we see the positives that come out of it.
Dave Charest:It's really a delicate balance between that, what you're saying, right, of getting the shit done, right, and doing it, but then also being thoughtful enough about it so it's meaningful. Right? And and not getting in that analysis paralysis area as well and overthinking. Right? Like, you've gotta really really find that sweet spot.
Dave Charest:We're getting closer to our time here, so I need to I need to ask you this. So this actually I saw come up on your your LinkedIn feed as we're connected there. And so what I wanna know from you is, what is the marketing superpower that most small businesses don't know about?
Emma Easton:It is understanding your market because they just think marketing is the tactics. So if you ask people in you got a room of people in small businesses, and, hey, small businesses are still quite big businesses. And you ask them what's marketing and they're just gonna reel off a whole load of tactics. And that's, yeah, that's the visible chunk of marketing. But they won't see the research.
Emma Easton:They won't see the pricing strategy. They won't see the budgeting. They won't see the prioritization. They won't see all that stuff. And that is equally as important.
Emma Easton:You know, there's no point in doing that stuff if you're not gonna do the tactics, but equally, you need to do that stuff before. And so that's the stuff I talk about is understanding that that is the thing that's gonna allow your marketing to sort of put its pants on the outside and get a cape and wear an eye mask because that's the kind of the power pose for your marketing is having done that research and understanding the market. There's a really simple way for people to remember this. And that's it's called marketing, not social media ing. It's called marketing because you have to understand your market first, and then the tactic will come out of it once you know your market.
Dave Charest:Well, friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number one, understand your market before anything else. Emma stresses that marketing without understanding your audience is like building on quicksand. Before you dive into tactics like social media or email, do the foundational work. Segment your audience, validate their needs, and define what success looks like.
Dave Charest:Number two, block time to get shit done. One of Emma's practical tips is scheduling GSD time on your calendar to focus on marketing execution. Whether it's batching content, writing emails, or briefing collaborators, setting aside focused time helps you avoid the overwhelm and build momentum. Number three, focus your energy where your audience actually is. You don't need to be on every channel.
Dave Charest:Emma primarily uses LinkedIn because that's where her b to b audience hangs out. So know where your people are and show up consistently there. It's better to go deep on one platform than spread yourself thin across five. Here's your action item for today. Take a moment to evaluate your next email before you send it.
Dave Charest:What's the subject line, and does it do the job of getting someone to open it? If you're using Constant Contact, try our AI powered subject line suggestions to test a few variations and see what resonates. It could be the difference between being opened or ignored. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review.
Dave Charest:Just go to ratethispodcast.com/bam. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. That's ratethispodcast.com/bam. Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.