You need to diversify and elevate your marketing for your business to grow. But do you REALLY understand what marketing is?
Don’t worry if you aren’t sure what the definition is. In my chat with Mónica Malave of Elevate It Now, we define marketing and how you can use it to elevate the growth of your business. One of the key pieces you need to make this happen is a marketing plan. So read our chat or tune in to find out what you need to include in your plan and how it saves you time.
Shannon Baker
So I want to thank everyone for joining me for this week’s episode. And I’m excited because this is the first live chat that I have actually had with my online local buddy, Mónica Malavé of Elevate It Now! We’ve been connected for years on social. We love coffee! Have talked about coffee.
Mónica Malavé
We’ve tried to have coffee three times.
Shannon Baker
And we still haven’t. But we’re not here to talk about coffee today. We are going to be talking about marketing. Mónica is my top number one go to person in my community, when I want to talk about marketing. But before we jump in, you got to get to know a little bit about my friend other than the fact that we are teal sisters. We both love this color! But tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Mónica Malavé
Hi, Shannon, thank you so much for having me here today! I’m so glad that even though we haven’t had our coffee, we are here to chat now. Um, so I’m super excited to be here with you. And thanks for inviting me. My name is Monika Malavé, and I am the marketing strategist, CEO and jack of all trades of Elevate It Now. We are a marketing agency, we launched approximate, actually, eight years ago. This is our eighth year in business this month.
Mónica Malavé
We are a full service marketing agency with which now we’re kind of focusing more, as you probably know, because you follow me, we’ve turned more into focusing on branding, marketing, strategy, and social. And not that we’re not doing all those other things, but definitely honing in on the important things of what makes marketing successful for any business or business owner.
So I come from corporate marketing, credit union, specifically in DC. I worked at the FDIC. I worked at the VA federal credit unions. And I made those two because they are two of the biggest ones in terms of names, right. Everybody knows who FDIC is. Everybody knows who the the Veteran Affairs are, which was one of my most rewarding experiences in marketing. And then I went into mortgage lending for a couple years, which actually just brought me back the wonderful agents brought me back to marketing. And that’s how I started my business in March of 2015.
Shannon Baker
Awesome! So as you can see, Mónica knows all things marketing without a doubt. And that’s when I decided I wanted to write an episode or work a podcast episode in about marketing because we really need to have a marketing strategy, Mónica was the first name that popped into my head. Because she is like a wealth of knowledge and always shares tips online. But of course, I want some tips specifically for my community. So we’re going to talk about how you can elevate your marketing, no pun intended, so that you can grow your business.
Mónica Malavé
The name works, doesn’t it?
Shannon Baker
So let’s start by defining what marketing is because I don’t think everyone’s clear on what that term is because it can be very broad. So how do you define marketing?
Mónica Malavé
Marketing is basically the means mediums and communicating to your large audience about what it is that your business does. Whether it’s you getting on a podium and talking about what you do, whether it’s social media marketing, email marketing, network marketing, Community Marketing, telemarketing, traditional marketing, which includes your billboards, and includes your posters, your print marketing, and all those things to advertising and public relations, which we do not. We do believe that social media has become part of public relations and public relations. A good social media strategy does have public relations involved, which is we try to focus on with our clients. This that’s the great thing about working with some of the local clients. But with technology, you can do the same thing with a client that’s far away, otherwise, we wouldn’t be a digital marketing agency. Um, so when we think about strategy, we take all those mediums into consideration for our clients. It’s not just saying, Hey, guys, I think the best way for you to do is to stick to social and forget it. You know me I always talk about diversifying your marketing. So it is getting the messaging across about what your business does and how they help others in terms of products and services and, you know, company offerings.
Shannon Baker
Great because I think I’m finding as I talk with myself People that because of the age of technology that we live in, that they just think, Oh, well, social media is my marketing, but I appreciate your breakdown in that. Social media is a type of marketing. It is a medium. Exactly. It is just one of the zillion
Mónica Malavé
mediums whether traditional, or or, or digital. There’s, it’s just a medium. That’s one of many marketing mediums. And if you’re just focusing on social, actually doing yourself a disservice, because there’s other things you should be doing. I don’t know if most of you know but you don’t own your content when you put it on these social networks. You don’t. So if, in case anyone noticed Tik Tok videos, where did Tik Tok get all the content for their commercials? The people, their users
Shannon Baker
is user generated content. UGC? If you ever see that, that’s what that Yeah.
Mónica Malavé
Good point. Yes. And so how do we combat are keeping our own content and owning it? Well, that’s your email marketing, you own that. You own your website, you own your content, you own your blogs. Now, another warning companies like Wix and Squarespace and all of those easy builders, they have a very small print saying once your content goes on here, we are free to do with it what we want, which is why a lot of businesses not only it’s not just about the functionality of a website, it is what ownership do you have on that content. And Wix tells you up straight front, it’s ours, we can use it however we want. So if you guys are ever contemplating things, remember the things that you do have ownership of in the digital space, because once they go somewhere else they can and cannot be yours, WordPress blogs, all that stuff is yours. So which is why I still blog? Yes, I don’t blog as regularly as I want to. But those are things that are mine, my email marketing list is ours, it’s elevated now, because people have subscribed to it has email marketing has jumped up from 20% to 62% since the pandemic started,
Shannon Baker
but they still have to be meaningful, which means you have to have a strategy. So when you’re talking marketing strategy with someone, especially if it’s like a new client, like, what things do people need to keep in mind, so they can have more effective marketing?
Mónica Malavé
Guys, I talked about this a lot, you know, just it’s so much easier to just jump and jump into what we need to do and do it. But we should always start with a marketing plan. It doesn’t have to be 50 pages long. It could be an outline that evolves just like your website, just like your content, just like we do as individuals, the marketing strategy, what it does is it allows you to write everything down, right? What is it? What is it that I believe? What are my values? What are my business values? And what is my business going to be based on? And those are your mission and vision statements? Why am I here? Why do I exist? Because when you answer that question, guess what, you can create better content around it. When you just jump in, you’re jumping in what, hey, I started my business This isn’t this great? And then what?
But if you’ve got those mission, vision statements, value propositions, everybody has different names for them, then everything that comes in to your business, whether it’s partnering with someone, whether it’s your content, whether it’s what channels am I going to use to market my business? You’ve got them all laid out. So why the why is first, and then the how we’re going to do it. So you’ve elected so with me with my clients, we go through a lot of in depth stuff. Because I want to know, what are your goals? What were your past goals? What’s working? So far? What hasn’t been working? Where are you getting the most exposure? And what can we do about that?
Do we need to have a couple of digital pieces in there in with some traditional marketing stuff, maybe, particularly with my real estate agents, when the pandemic hit, they’ll have to go digital, but now that the world’s opening back up again, and they’re back out to doing their outside activities, and knocking on doors and delivering gifts and things like that, which is the fact that, you know, it keeps it keeps on top of mind in their areas. So when you have a marketing strategy, you have a list, you basically have a to do list. That’s your plan of how you’re going to do it and it keeps you focused on what you’re doing the content you’re building so that you don’t sit there and wake up today and say, oh, man, I started this business. What should I talk about today? Mm hmm. You know, because you You didn’t have any you didn’t create some backbone and you didn’t create the foundation for this business.
Shannon Baker
Yes. I love that word foundation cuz you know me, I’m all about building a house without a foundation, right? You can’t build anything without a foundation. Or it’s gonna what? crumble? Exactly? Big time. One thing I appreciate about what you said too, is that the marketing depends on what? what industry you’re in. So for everyone who’s listening, that means it’s part of your marketing strategy, you have to know who you’re talking to.
Mónica Malavé
Yes. target audience demographics.
Shannon Baker
Yes, it matters. Because that also determines when it comes to social media, where you’re going to show up, if my audience, it’s busy women, we hop on Instagram, we connect with a couple of people, we watch a few stories, we’re off we go on Facebook, another time of the day, we’re on there for a little while. We’re off. We’re not on Twitter. Might be on LinkedIn, maybe once a week, but not much. Definitely not really on tick tock. So it’s like, why would you invest your time and resources in a platform to market your business if your people are not there? But if you know, know who your people are? Yeah, you don’t know where
Mónica Malavé
you can even create content around it. If you don’t know who that audience is, then you’re just really spinning your wheels?
Shannon Baker
Exactly. So if you take nothing away from this conversation, take away this one thing. Create a marketing strategy.
Mónica Malavé
Guys, yes, even Okay, so even if you don’t want to pay an expert to do it, go to HubSpot. They got templates, they’re not templates for anything content. And if you do anything, go down five, download their template, yeah, they’ll probably call you email you but somewhere you’re getting their tool for free, and start working on them, do some of that, do some of that legwork. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time and a lot of things. I think a lot of something that we waste a lot of time thinking that social is free. It’s not it take time is money, and time that you use to create and engage and do all those things cost money. So your time is something that should be calculated into that too. And if you’re not clear on that you’re wasting hours that you could be spending doing something else with your business.
Shannon Baker
That’s it. You know, my key is to help my audience leverage time. That means you have to have a strategy in place for anything that you’re doing it as your mission time is a resource. And once it’s gone, yes, it’s gone. It’s gone. We can’t get it. You cannot recoup it.
Mónica Malavé
We cannot recover that document.
Shannon Baker
No, not at all. So definitely the key to elevating your marketing is to have a plan. One of the key ways you can do that is to make sure you follow Mónica on Instagram, because let me tell you, she shares some awesome tips and strategies, funny videos to think, a little humor with the expertise.
Mónica Malavé
But posts the other deck I wanted to shoot myself. I was and I had to share I had to laugh at myself because I was like, Hey guys, I have this great post to post. But guess what I already had actually, I use the same images, but the content was different. And I was like, and now it’s too late. So we’ll just have to hang on till tomorrow.
Shannon Baker
Distractions. It happens. But the thing is, you just kind of roll with it. That’s the whole thing. social medias. It can be fun. You know, like you say it does take time, but you can be effective and have some fun with it. That’s all in part of your personality and your part. Your profile on Instagram. Totally matches your personality. 100% Ah, thank you. So anyone who doesn’t know what Mónica looks like, she has to hair a beautiful smile. Oh, and a wonderful sign in her office that says creativity. Always positive vibes only behind her with these vintage cars. So I absolutely if you can’t tell we have like this, this classic vibe between the two of us because we have multiple things in common, including our love of flowers.
Mónica Malavé
Oh, flowers, coffee color, teal. I mean, seriously, Shannon, what isn’t there? And we’re both from this hashtag DMV? No, guys. It’s not the Department of Motor Vehicles here. DMV, the hashtag DMV stands for DC, Maryland and Virginia. And it is our hashtag. Yes. Which I don’t recommend using on social by the way, especially Instagram. Have you ever looked at the DMV hashtag?
Shannon Baker
Most of the local hashtags are like terrible the picture trifling? Yes.
Mónica Malavé
Is this our representing on social? Oh my god, what are people gonna think of us? And we’re so polished up here, right?
Shannon Baker
Not according to those hashtags, which also emphasizes the need to make sure you research your hashtags before. Yes. extra tip. Part of your marketing strategy is Well,
Mónica Malavé
part of your marketing strategy and your ongoing social media marketing strategy that’s in your marketing plan. Yes.
Shannon Baker
So this has been a great short conversation, and hopefully it has motivated you all to get it together. It’s early enough to make some changes, like some fix, and actually you have to tweak your plan anyway for marketing to be effective. So definitely make sure you follow Mónica online for additional tips and connect with her she will engage you back. Take it from me, and if you love coffee, let her know. Many like Thank you. Thank you again for joining us.
Mónica Malavé
Thank you for having me, Shannon, and we’ll see each other on Instagram.
Shannon Baker
Of course we’re probably talking later today about either wine or coffee or something.
Mónica Malavé
Something it’ll be one time sometime. Yes,
Mónica Malavé
It is.
Be sure to connect with Mónica on Instagram for more tips and go to her website for more information on her services. If you would like to know how to leverage social media as part of your marketing strategy, check out this blog post.
