Why your pipeline is drying up - and the marketing levers you need to pull right now

Recorded from a hotel room in Sydney at 9pm ... because sometimes building your empire looks like getting cozy in a robe and showing up anyway.

This episode is a candid, unfiltered conversation about one of the most important marketing questions every business owner needs to be asking: are you focused on finding new audiences, or are you sitting on a goldmine you haven't tapped yet?

In this episode:

• The difference between awareness marketing and conversion marketing - and why most businesses only focus on one
• Why your email list is your most under-utilised business asset and how to actually use it
• The social media to email pipeline - how TSC builds it for clients and why it matters more than follower count
• Lead magnets, pop-ups and quizzes - how to pull people from your socials into a database you actually own
• Why most ideal clients sit in your pipeline for 6-12 months before they're ready ... and how to stay front of mind until they are
• The free TSC marketing audit tool that tells you exactly which levers to pull right now

Links:

• Free marketing audit: www.thesocialcollective.co.nz/marketing-audit

Links:

• Join the IHEE WhatsApp community
• Follow on Instagram: @inhererampireerapod
• Find Loren on LinkedIn: Loren Tomlinson
• Visit us at: inherempireera.com

Loved this episode? Leave a review - it would mean the world!!

If this episode gave you a breakthrough moment, share your key takeaway on Instagram and tag @inhererampireerapod. Your insights might just shape a future episode.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hi friends, welcome to this special episode of In Her Empire Era Hotel Edition. If you are listening to this right now, you are one of the special people that is listening because not everyone is going to find this episode, and not everyone is going to get an inside scoop and an inside look into my brain today and what has been going on within my agency at the social collective. But the thing that I think that makes this episode really special is I'm doing this hotel style. If you're wondering what a hotel style episode looks like, let me paint a picture for you. I am currently in my hotel room. I have just got back from a very, very busy day of meetings in Sydney. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to do all of this, of course. I came back to my room. I thought to myself, I have an episode that I want to do in the morning, but in the morning, I also, in true building and empire fashion, I want to go for my morning walk. I want to enjoy my last beautiful morning here in Sydney. I want to smell the beautiful air. I want to get some steps in before I have a busy day of traveling all the way back home to Al Cero, New Zealand. I also somehow want to smash out a podcast episode, head upstairs to the lounge and have a delicious, healthy, protein, heavy breakfast. I want to check in with my team and do some emails. I need to send out some invoices for new client work and a few other things on my list. And I thought to myself when I got back into my room this evening, how do I do it all tomorrow? Do it in true empire building fashion and really commit to every single thing that I'm doing. Do it in a way that feels fun and also get it all done without losing my marbles because I also have planned catch. I'm on a midday flight and I have to get back home. So it does mean that everything in my morning has to be crammed in between about 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. And cramming my entire routine and somehow managing to smash out a podcast episode is not really how I feel like ending my last day here in Sydney. So I thought to myself, what else does one do when they have been running around Sydney CBD for five days straight, doing work meetings, having an amazing opportunity to sit down with Michelle Obama, thanks to the growth faculty putting on an incredible evening with Michelle Obama, listening to her speak, getting to take in so many amazing insights from so many business owners that I have connected with and getting so excited for something very, very exciting that we are doing here in September, which I will talk about more in a later episode. So you have to stay tuned, my friends. And then what else does one do when one comes back to the hotel at the end of the night? And I thought tonight I want to change it up a little bit. And I'm feeling inspired and I'm feeling excited based off of some conversations that I've literally just finished having with an incredible human being. And I wanted to really end the night on a high for myself. I wanted to smash out an episode in the way that currently for me feels most authentic to me. And I know I touched on this in previous podcast episodes around how not every episode of In Her Empire Era is going to have video. Not every episode of In Her Empire Era is going to have reels attached and all of the full theatrics when it comes to podcast episodes. But that for me is what it looks like to show up and grow and build an empire. I've been heading my inbox and talking to clients all day long today. And my version of building and growing this empire also consists of showing up in podcast format and showing up for you, my amazing listeners, and being able to share such incredible valuable insights that have come out of so many things that we have been doing recently at the Social Collective and so many amazing conversations that I have been part of lately. And I really felt like tonight that looked like getting in my cozy robe, putting on my incredibly fluffy, comfy slippers, sitting on the bed in the hotel, plugging in all of my podcast equipment and just chatting, having a chat with you, because that is what it looks like in my world and in my version of growing and building my incredible empire that my team and I are building and that I am growing and scaling. And I hope that this kind of gives you a little bit of an invitation as well to really look at what it looks like for you to build your empire. And I think when I, I guess, kind of come to the core of it all and I really think about what that looks like for me, it is being able to do all of the amazing things that I get to do, having the meetings and the coffees and doing the work and sending the emails and doing it all in full glam. And as you heard, in my high heels that I just took off because my feet have been aching for hours. And then it also looks like the polar opposite, where I am sitting in a hotel room, here whipped up in a bun, getting comfy, getting cozy, and getting ready to smash out an incredible episode with you listening. Because while I may be ending my day, chances are you're probably starting. You have a coffee in hand, as we do around here, you're getting ready to start your day. And I have some amazing insights that have come out of some conversations today that I just simply could not wait until tomorrow to share with you. So I thought rather than waiting till tomorrow, doing my morning walk, and then smashing out a quick episode before I dash off to the airport, why not sit while I have a little bit of time at the end of my day, record this episode thoughtfully and carefully because the thoughts in today's episode have been so carefully curated and really have a good chat with you. And I think that brings me to today's podcast episode, which I think is an incredibly fitting conversation. And it comes from some conversations I've been having with my team this morning around what we really want to be sharing around marketing and how we want to be showing up. And that all comes down to the concept of why every part of your marketing plays such an important role in the longevity of your sales pipeline. So before I dive into the episode, do what I'm doing if you are listening to this in the evening and put your comfy slippers on, get cozy, and if you are just starting your day, grab that morning cup of caffeine, make sure that it's a double shot, get ready, pop those headphones in, get zoned in, and let's get into today's episode of In Her Empire Era. So, as I mentioned, this episode is really focused on honing in on why every single part of your marketing ecosystem, everything that you do when it comes to marketing, plays such an important role when it comes to building your sales pipeline. Now, this has been a conversation that I have discussed with many a business owner in the last couple of weeks, especially because at the Social Collective, which, for those of you who don't know, this podcast is presented by my agency, The Social Collective. And there's been a lot of conversations I've had recently while we've been onboarding some new clients. And a lot of that conversation comes down to the concept of how everything that you do in marketing stacks up. It's, I explained it to someone the other day, like it's Lego pieces. Your marketing is meant to be like building blocks. We're not throwing Lego pieces around and standing on them and going, ouch, they hurt because they're all scattered all over the show. And we're just actually creating crazy chaos. No, what we're doing is we are building a Lego tower. We are stacking things. We're building on what we started with. We are making it something that starts off really small and really curated, and then we get bigger and better and stronger. And next thing you know, you've got a whole damn Lego tower that you have built with your marketing. And all of it compounds over time. And I think that's one of the things that as marketers, I think in particular, and especially because TikTok has ruined people's attention spans, we are so used to this instant gratification. And I'm really on a mission here to change those conversations. Because I think if you are putting marketing content out there and expecting likes, comments, shares, saves, all super really quick, making sure that it comes so fast that you are going to be really disappointed, time and time again. But I look at something like the social collective that I have been, I've talked about this before. I've been out on my own for over six years now. I've been consciously building the social collective for the last four. And I really feel like now I am coming into my own. I am really reaping the benefits of all of the hard work that I put in, all of the seeds that I sowed, or whatever that phrase is, all of the hard work that I've put into the social collective is now starting to come to fruition. And the reason for that is because every part of our marketing ecosystem was really consciously taken into consideration along the journey. And I it's taken me until the last year to really recognize the importance of that and just how much it can really amplify your messaging. And I thought, why not bring this to a podcast episode and share with you all of the things that I have learned combined into one little bite-sized episode for you. But why not share all of that so you don't have to slowly grow and scale things like I did? And instead, you can zoom ahead a little bit more. You can take the lessons and the understandings that you have of your own business. You can apply this concept and this theory and this mindset, if you will. And hopefully this will help you start to scale your business in a much more meaningful and stronger way. So the reason that I am such an advocate for talking about every part of your marketing playing such an important role in building a really long-lasting sales pipeline is because if we're being realistic, we can't show up on all of the platforms all of the time in all of the ways that we want to. And what I mean is things like I would love to be filming more reels. I would love to be posting more video content on my socials, but realistically, for the phase that I am in in business with growing and scaling my team, onboarding new clients, changing a bazillion things. And I'm not even kidding when I say it. So many things in the back end of my business. I'll talk more about this in a future episode. But I went to Brisbane a few weeks back for an amazing agency accelerator program. If you haven't seen my Instagram post or my LinkedIn post, I did it with uh one of Australia's top marketing agencies called Chain Social. Shout out to Shelby and the Chain team. You are amazing. And I spent two full intensive days with them. And I have come back and completely overhauled the back end of our business to make it better and stronger, more amazing for my team, and so much more amazing for our clients. And because of that, I haven't had the time to sit and record oodles of podcast episodes and sit and talk to a camera for hours on end because I've had my head in the books. I have had my head in the systems and in the processes. And that's where I think really having this full marketing ecosystem like we have with our socials running, our ads running, our email marketing nurturing our audience, having that all work together means that if one of those areas slips up, or one of those areas can't have as much attention as you would like it to have, or as maybe it used to have, the others are there to pick up the slack. The others are there to continue to support your audience. Because what we don't want to do is drop the ball entirely. And I look at the brands, in particular, those brands that just solely focus on organic socials or just focus on ads or don't market at all. And you're really putting your eggs all in one, maybe one and a half, possibly two baskets, and you're really slimming your chances because what happens is when life gets busy, things get busy, whether you've got work commitments, family commitments, personal commitments, when things get busy, if you drop the ball, first and foremost, if you're anything like me as a founder, you feel an enormous amount of guilt because you have led up on some things that you used to do really well and really strongly. But also, you start to feel like, oh, I've dropped the ball. And it actually becomes a lot harder to pick it back up. But if you have other marketing platforms that are continuing to nurture your audience, for example, our socials have gone through a bit of a refresh process. And so most of our focus has been on our email marketing database, on building and scaling our in-person events, especially for in her empire era. And of course, we have had advertisements running across Meta and LinkedIn and Google consistently. Does not mean you have to start with all three of those. Bear in mind, I started with one and we grew and scaled. At the moment, currently, we're actually only running ads on Google and LinkedIn, but Meta has been a big part of our ecosystem recently. But the reason that I do that is because that helps me counterbalance when there are weeks where we don't have as much content to post because we've been more focused on client work or more focused on agency deliverables internally. Because what happens, especially for service-based brands, is you have future, as do we, we have future clients that are considering working with us for likely months before they actually make that decision. And what happens is that if there's a platform or a channel that we're no longer communicating with them on, if that is the only tool that you are using to communicate, there is a significant period of time there where when you're not showing up, they're not hearing from you. And therefore, we're not getting them any closer to making a decision to come and work with us and say yes. Whereas if you think about it, with what we've done, yes, our socials might have been a little bit lighter. However, we've still been retargeting those people with advertisements. We've still been nurturing our email database. So having conversations with them, talking to them about this is who we are, these are the results we bring in, this is the kind of clients we work with. And so what we're continuing to do is really build on the amount of digital real estate that we occupy. Because what happens is that if we're not communicating, that doesn't mean that no one's communicating. It just actually means that there's more space for your competitors to occupy that space. And when we talk about that, the terminology used is either market share or often we first refer, often we refer to it as digital real estate. So if you're not putting your brand out there and you're not sharing, or really think about this for if you're ever having those moments of doubt. If you're not showing up and speaking to your ideal clients, there is somebody else that also has those same ideal clients and they will be. They will be occupying the digital real estate. They will be advocating for their brands to your competitors, they will be advocating to your potential clients. They will be showing up as one of your competitors claiming that space. And so I think it's really, really important to remember that just because you're not showing up doesn't mean nobody is. And if you want to keep that competitive advantage, you want to continue to own a significant portion of that market share in your industry, you've got to show up. And one of the easiest ways to continue to do that so that you have a really strong sales pipeline that does not dry up when times get tough is through diversifying the channels that you use. It is through having multiple forms of marketing. Because realistically, if we're being honest here, our ideal clients are already out there looking for a solution. Our ideal clients are already out there and they're usually one of two people. They're either problem aware or they're solution aware. Problem aware consumers are people who are aware that they have a problem. They just don't know what the solution is. They're not actively looking for a solution, they just know that they have a problem. The others, on the other hand, are solution aware. They are aware that they have a problem and they've taken it one step further by going, I now need to find a solution. Those are the proactive people, and ideally, those are the ones we want to get in front of with our marketing. They're the ones that are going to make quicker, more aligned decisions. They usually have a set of criteria that they're looking for. And if you align and they align, that's where a match is made in marketing heaven. However, there's a few things that we can do here. The first is we can market to bring awareness to those people who are problem aware but not yet solution focused. So we can start to bring their attention to this is your problem. This is where you might be struggling, if this is you, if you identify in this way, not using those words, but that's the kind of feelings we want to drum out. You know, when you look at some marketing content and you all of a sudden think, oh my gosh, that's me. Oh my gosh, I fit into that category. My gosh, it's like weight loss. Like when people are marketing, there's awful weight loss drugs to you. You may not necessarily be actively looking for a weight loss solution, but they prey on the people that are feeling crappy about their weight. Those are problem-aware people, but they are not necessarily solution focused. Solution-focused people, on the other hand, are actively seeking out their solutions. They are the ones Googling for Ozempik, Minjaro, all of the other names, but they are already actively searching it out. So we want our marketing at that stage to speak to those who are considering. Those are the kind of people you want to put testimonials in front of, results. You want to be sharing a little bit more about the process. And where marketing, and I'll go into this in future episodes, but where marketing falls so nicely is your social media can be an amazing storefront. Your social media can be the place that not only speaks to the people that are problem aware by sharing a bit about your brand and talking about it from a positive standpoint on how you can help people, but you can, of course, also provide that additional portion of education for those who are solution focused and are already looking for the ways to fix the problem that they do find themselves with having. So social media is really a great place to be your storefront for your marketing. It's just like a website, but I kind of think about it like if somebody never made it to my website, would they have enough information about me and about my brand to actually then be able to make an informed decision to come and work with us? So your social media should be doing things like sharing your portfolio, sharing your customer experience, sharing visual proof or things like people behind the brand. So it's really just putting yourself out there and getting yourself in front of these people because I can guarantee you, if you're not, your competitors are. And ultimately, what we want to be doing is we want to show up and help them see that we are the ones that can provide the solution. The next thing that we can do going into a bit more of that consideration phase is our advertising. And that's where, first and foremost, advertising is amazing for the perspective that we can bring in eyeballs that otherwise may not necessarily have found us. These problem-aware people are ideal to be seeing those initial advertising campaigns. Why? Because they're aware they have a problem, but they don't know how to solve it. And so if we can start marketing to their problems through sharing the solutions that we can provide, we can pull those people into our sphere. We can pull those people into our marketing ecosystem. And then what we get to do is we can retarget them. We can retarget those people who are then no longer just problem aware. They are solution focused. And we can speak to them and be like, I know that you're looking for the thing that we offer. So why don't we have a chat? Why don't you come in for a consultation? Why don't you just book an appointment and let's actually do this thing? So advertising is great for those two things. It not only means that you get to talk to a brand new audience, but it also means that you get to continue having conversations with people who, even if they haven't done something like sign up or put their email address in your pop-up form or they haven't booked an appointment yet, that doesn't mean that you can't re-market your advertising to them and you can't retarget them with what you need to be sharing. Because the last thing that we want to do, and this is my absolute favorite piece, is through your email marketing. And the reason that I will never not discuss it when it comes to looking at your marketing ecosystem is because what it does is pulls together all of the hard work that you have done when it comes to your organic socials and your advertising. Plus, of course, any events, PR, etc. that you've done. The reason it's so great is because you've already got that database of people you can speak to. You've already got people in your marketing ecosystem that you can have a conversation with. You've already got names and email addresses and probably business names and phone numbers of people that have already either worked with you before or they've put their hand up and they've said, hey, I'm not really right now, but I am definitely interested in working with you. So here are my details and I'd like you to reach back out. And I think email marketing is such an untapped opportunity for businesses looking to grow and scale their pipeline. We have just recently onboarded a client who we had this exact same conversation with where they were looking at okay, well, our pipeline in a few months is starting to dry up. And what can we do to make sure that we're securing some more work? And one of the things that we're going to be doing for them is switching on some advertising so that they can bring awareness to. Like I just said before, a brand new audience that have never met them, plus remarket anybody that has visited their socials or visited their website. But the other conversation that we had when that business owner came to me saying, Hey, I'm looking for some advertising, is I said, okay, well, once the advertising is done and once the people have seen you on their socials, what is then the next conversation that happens? What then happens after that? Where do they go? And we got talking about the concept of having a lead magnet or having a pop-up on their website. We got talking about the marketing audit that we have on the social collectives website, which if you're curious to check it out, it's www.the social collective.go.nz backslash marketing hyphen audit. It's a really quick three-minute marketing audit quiz. It's 10 questions and it basically helps you diagnose which of your marketing levers to pull. And the reason we've done that is because by the time that our clients get to our ideal future clients for our pipeline, get to our website, they are already solution focused. They're aware they have a problem, they're looking for a solution, but what they need to do about their marketing, they don't know. And that's why we've created this interactive quiz for them. And I've put it together with some very specifically curated questions. And at the end of it, you actually get a marketing health score. So you get a percentage score, which tells you if you're in the green, the orange, or the red, plus the percentage of where you sit on a scale of one or zero to a hundred percent. And it's there to tell you how many more opportunities you've got in marketing. And also what we do is we then manually follow up with an email. I follow up with an email to personally give them three top tips of exactly what levers we would recommend they pull in their marketing and what they can do versus when they might want to consider reaching out to someone like an agency. Because that is where email marketing is an amazing tool because we have used our socials to bring awareness to it. We have advertised and more than likely pulled this brand new person in through some advertising and they were sold by looking at our socials. And now we have them in our email database. And we've not only provided them with something of incredible value, because I've literally told you exactly where you can be focusing your efforts when it comes to your marketing to get some quick wins so, so quickly. But also what we've done is we've now got that person in our database. So while they are considering, and honestly, most of our clients sit on our database for about six to 12 months before they are ready. They look at this, they'd look at something like a quiz. They would then go, Great, I know that I've got these problems. I'm gonna go try to figure it out myself, or my team and I are gonna work on this. I'm gonna get the business in a slightly better position. And then I'm gonna come to the social collective and we're gonna outsource and we're really gonna elevate this thing. But before you do that, you realistically probably want to plug a few holes in your marketing ecosystem. And then while you're doing that, I'm not just sitting back and going, oh, well, hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll hear from them again. No, we're proactively emailing them. We're not bombarding their inbox, but what we are doing is sending regular email communication, providing value. We are sharing information, we are helping them along their way, we are supporting them with their journey. And then when they're ready, there's always calls to action that gets weaved in between, or there's a reach out that'll happen, or there's a phone call that could be made depending on where they sit in the pipeline. And that's how we then pull people in to actually working with the social collective. And the reason I share that is because your socials and your ads are amazing for bringing awareness. Same with PR, same with events, same with collaborations, same with working with content creators, you name it, all of that stuff is amazing. And then if you can pull people into your email database, when it comes to building longevity with having a really, really strong sales pipeline, you have such a great pool of people that you can tap straight into. So, my parting message that I would love to leave you with for this episode, to round it all out, if you are looking at your future pipeline going, it's looking a little thinner than I would like. I don't have as many inquiries going on. I want you to think about do I need to bring more awareness to people? Do I need new eyeballs? Or do I have a pre-existing group of people that I could instantly reach out to right here, right now, and that will help you figure out which lever to pull. If you're still wondering what lever to pull, like I said, head over to dub.the social collective.co.edz backslash marketing hyphen audit and check out our tool because I think it is really incredible. I created it myself. My team and I have been trialing it and testing it for a while, and I think it's really helpful to be able to help you figure out what levers to pull. But the reason I wanted to share this is because this is not something I'm going to be promoting on every episode. But in true fashion of having a very special spend the evening with me podcast episode, which I'm now wrapping up about half past nine in the evening. I really thought that it was important to share that tool with you because I think it can unlock so much for you and for your business. So go check it out. I'll leave it in the show notes below. But thank you so much for joining me. I hope you are having a wonderful start to your day. Or if you have been doing the exact same as me, I hope you were tucked up nice and cozy and you've been enjoying listening to this marketing episode. But I think that this is the first step in being able to really grow and scale your own empire is starting to get a grip on your own marketing. And I'm so excited to share so much more of these tips and tricks, conversations that are happening with inside the social collective and around our work that we're delivering for clients, being able to share a lot more about what things look like on the day-to-day with growing and scaling my own business. And I think that's why I'm so excited that this podcast has a new name, a new vibe, a new feeling. I feel so rigor, reinvigorated being able to put this all together. I cannot wait to share so much more with you. But for now, I'm off to make a cup of tea so I can get up bright and early, seize the day again tomorrow, and continue building my empire. But stay safe, look after yourselves, show up on socials, make sure that you're messaging me on LinkedIn, I'm Lauren Tomlinson, or heading us up at In Her Empire Era pod on Instagram if you've got specific requests for future episodes. But stay tuned, have an amazing rest of your day, and I will see you on Monday for our next coffees and content update episode. So I've got so many more things that have changed in the marketing space that I cannot wait to share with you. So stay tuned and I will see you then. Bye.