Your website is the hub of your marketing
Lori Lyon is CEO and Creative Director of Ignite Marketing.
Lori knows that the business of Business is serious, but she also believes that it should be fun to do! With Lori's “secret sauce,” she teaches her clients about the importance of a great website design and marketing plan.
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0:00
Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, Founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, where I'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go.
All right with us right now. We've got Lori Lyons. Lori, you are the CEO and Creative Director at Ignite Marketing, and that's on the web at ignitingyourbusiness.com, and you're also the Founder of makeyourmarketingsimple.com. Thank you so much for joining us.
0:50
Oh, it's great to be here. Josh. Thank you for having me.
0:53
So what Tell me about your work with ignitingyourbusiness.com, with Ignite Marketing. You are you founded this company? And this was back in 2014? Is that right? Correct? Correct.
1:05
And, and it kind of started accidentally, I worked for a company and then got laid off. And because I wasn't technical enough, so I thought I'll show him. And a friend asked me if I wanted to, you know, I was talking about it. And they said, Well, we needed a new website, and I'm like, well, I've never built one. And he said, so if you patient you know, I would be happy to and of course, my mantra is, if it's on YouTube, you can become an expert in it. So, so between that and WordPress for dummies, I built in my website and the amazing thing was he paid me for it. And so then another friend asked me and and another friend and that's how it goes, and all of a sudden, a business coach said what are you doing? Why aren't you doing this for for a living and and it just exploded from there. So it's been I've been very fortunate.
1:54
Yeah. So this, you know, I think in this is something we're going to talk about in You have a term for it was it know what was the term when when folks that maybe have had a career already, and they're making a transition into something new? Or maybe they're even retired?
2:13
encore entrepreneurs?
2:14
encore entrepreneur? Yes. Tell me a little bit about that. And what you see generally about people that are starting businesses and listen, they they're there. They're not in their young 20s.
2:28
No, they are not. Yes, I've as I've been going to events, and I've been looking around and talking to people and even what I see on LinkedIn and you know, in the different social medias, people aren't in their 20s and 30s. They've maybe had a career and they've retired and either and I said this earlier, either they're, they don't like knitting or they don't like golf. So or they want to get away from their spouse, whatever the case may be. But maybe they've had a dream and said, when I have time, I'd like to do this, or I've always been good This, I want to explore this, or in a lot of cases with people that are around my age, they hit the recession in the late 80s. So their retirement got a hit, then they hit the housing bubble. And then you know, so different things have happened over the years that maybe their retirement isn't where they want it to be. So they want to start another business based on their experience. And there's a huge market out there of Earth, you know, these later baby boomers, early Gen X's that are in that market, and they've never had to market so they don't understand other than, you know, looking at grandkids pictures on Facebook, they've never used social media for marketing, and they don't get it. So that's kind of where this came in is like there's a huge opportunity and huge market out there for somebody who can explain to them how to get their business online.
3:47
So I'm going to ask a silly question. And, and that is, is that you know, in terms of part time businesses, is it just like Well, I guess I can go in the shop and do some woodworking and sell my woodworking and just put it out in the front lawn. And that's how I'll make my money or is there today? Are there more effective ways to get your product in in front of your ideal clients, your ideal customers,
4:12
there's a lot of more effective ways. And in fact, when you Google when I first started researching this, and I googled business opportunities for baby boomers, they talked about dog sitting, and they talked about, you know, doing that wood carving and putting them on the front porch or, you know, selling some of the products that are available. But unlike, you know, if I were retired, and I'm 60 something, yeah, there's better out there. I want to use my experience. And I want to use what I've learned over the years, and I want to make this a business, whether I'm a consultant, there's a lot of coaches. So they're in that service type of industry, not necessarily the product industry. And it's, you know, it's a great, it's a great place to be because you've got a retirement. In a lot of cases you've got a pension or retirement fund to help support you while you're while you're growing. This, but you want to do more, or you want to see that retirement sign get bigger.
5:05
So Lori, talk about what you do specifically with Ignite Marketing. And so obviously talked about, so you learned how to build your own website. And let's stop. Let's stop right there. Yeah. All right. How hard is it today? Now? I'm asking this question to someone who's actually been a web developer since the 90s. Mid 90s. In fact, so this is the early early days of HTML and web design. But how difficult is it today to get a website up for yourself?
5:40
There's two schools of thought on that if you go to the what i what i effects return as the rental sites. If you go to the Wix as or the Squarespace is you can be online in a matter of a couple of hours because they've made it so easy for someone to go on and put their put their presence up. The challenging part is making sure that their messaging correct Because a couple of years ago, even the purpose of a website was to talk about you and talk about your business and you know, and it tell how many years you've been in business and how many locations you have and blah, blah, blah, today, the messages about how are you serving your customer? And what can you do for your client? And what are the problems and the solutions that you provide for them. So it's no longer about you and your business. There's a certain extent to that, but for the most part is we talk solely about how we can help you as a as a client.
6:31
So in terms of your own program, and so you've got a program it's called make your marketing simple. com. here's here's my experience. Lori and i'd love your experience on this and I love that you're doing this work. And we already kind of talked about this a little bit. I my perception is that the number one reason that businesses don't really become profitable is because This is kind of Michael Gerber old school email and forgive me to my regular listeners are like it goes again. But I said enough, people have a passion. And so they start doing what they do. And then it's like, well, wait a minute, Where is everybody? How come nobody's buying? Oh my goodness, and they do they just stay kind of stuck and frustrated that their schedules not filled up, they're not able to sell the products that they were hoping to do. How much time do you think someone should take a in terms of and I know this can vary. But But I want someone to be who's going into this to be very thoughtful and realistic about what it takes to start a nice little lifestyle business for yourself. How much time or what percentage of your time do you think on average someone should be spending letting people know about their products and services and how they can help versus actually doing the product or the service, right.
8:11
And I'm going to go, I'm going to speak mainly to services, because products can vary so much depending on what the product is. And I'm going to go back for just a second to do something that you said, when you talk about passion making a business, you could be passionate about what you do, but if you don't have sound business principles and marketing behind it, passion isn't going to last very long. Yeah. So to that end, to start, I think at the very beginning, when you're first starting out, I would say conservatively, 60 to 70% of your time should be marketing your business, because marketing is letting people know you exist. And it's not selling it's not advertising. It's specifically letting people know you exist. So if you spend a lot of time on your social media, or your you know, networking and for beginning business owners, I said eyeball to eyeball is the best way way to do it and the quickest way to do it, go find networking places where your client is. And first, for backing up even further identify exactly who your target market is exactly who your idea who your target client is. Identify the solutions and the problems that you solve for them, then go find those people and say hang out at you know, Rotary Club, go to rotary, because that's where a lot of your people are going to be if you're at that age. Then you start with the social media, because what's what's hard about social media is social media is free, but it's not free. Because it's, it takes an investment of time. And if you're going to do advertising, it takes an investment of money. So going eyeball to eyeball is the quickest and easiest way to do it. And then you start developing your marketing strategy behind that. And you know what, it doesn't take any technology know how to talk to somebody.
9:54
If someone is just getting started, should they spend their social media time setting All these profiles and trying to maintain a LinkedIn and a Pinterest and Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook you can tell by the way I'm asking this question
10:14
it's your first it all goes back to where your target market is if your target market is if you're a woman selling makeup, go to YouTube because 80 something percent of women Google YouTube, Google makeup tips on YouTube. If you're you know if your target market is you're going to you know, sell on your Gidget or gadget to the teenage boy that plays is a gamer go to YouTube because that's where they are. But if you're if you have a product to sell and you know it sits in the Pinterest profile, that's where you go. Facebook isn't necessarily for everybody if your business to business LinkedIn every day, because that's where they are.
10:51
No kidding.
10:52
Yeah, where your market is.
10:54
So when you say go there, like what are you doing on social media, so You know, I have a lot of ideas on this. So I'd love your perspective on what is good activity on your social media platform of choice.
11:08
And well, let's go to LinkedIn. Because that's that seems to be making a comeback. It's been around forever. And it kind of I think LinkedIn kind of ebbs and flows depending. But LinkedIn has been, you know, as always, to me been the premier for business to business. So if I'm going to go to LinkedIn, I'm going to number one, make sure my profile is set up to attract people, make sure that I have a good consistent message on my my headers across all my social media platforms, wherever I may be. But I want to make sure that I have keywords that are targeted people that the clients that I'm looking for. So first of all, I want to optimize my profile before I do anything else. Secondly, I'm going to take advantage of all of those pictures of people you should know and make connections because you forget that the connections are the important part of it. And so I first want thing I do on LinkedIn is I go search and see who's on, you know who I haven't connected with that I should, then now you can start reaching out to them through the messenger and you know, start reaching out organically to the people that you want to connect with that you have a common interest. Then I would go to the businesses and finally I would start writing and posting my, you know, comment and engaging just like any other social media on the poster there and posting my own things on there.
12:27
Am I going to be reaching out and selling or would you recommend maybe a different tack with people?
12:33
I would, I would establish the relationship first. I hate nothing more than to be sold. In the second sentence. Hi, I think we should connect. Let me tell you what I do.
12:44
I'm the unconnect.
12:48
So no, I firmly believe believe that's all built on relationships. It's the next best thing to eyeball to eyeball.
12:55
Okay, so, so again, I guess you've got your social media. So I'm a big fan of that as well pick one, maybe to read probably one social media platform and just live there. I mean, that's, that's where you do your thing. You know, another thing and I think that you can even do say, for example, so my wife is a family therapist, I said, Listen, you know, if you're just a small, independent family therapist, one of the best things you could do is just join a bunch of Facebook groups, and just help people and provide free advice, you know, and just the way you answer questions are similar to, you know, hey, Family Therapist checking in here, let me tell you what I normally tell my clients, and then go into and just give them lots of help. And then no call to action. Do not sell do not like just so here's what's going to happen. If you were to answer five to 10 questions a day on all the various groups and by the way, I'm not talking about the family therapy Facebook groups, right, right talking about, you know, a neighborhood, you know, Facebook group or something like that. And you want to just keep your eyes open for subjects that you can provide some expertise on. And what will happen is people say, Well, that was an insightful answer. They'll be thinking to themselves, and then they hover over your name. And then if your personal profile, yes, even your personal Facebook profile, just explains a little bit about what you do. It's optimized so that people can kind of follow the rabbit trail, as it were. And they can say, Oh, my gosh, this person does know a lot about dog walking, or this person does know a lot about, you know, house cleaning, or whatever it is, you know, just don't be afraid to you know, most people Facebook is a very personal, a social media platform. But if you want to me if your audience is there, it's a kind of a consumer audience, or even b2b audience and you you want it you You're welcome. You know you, you're open to doing this method of kind of like, and again, this is really, really early stage free pro bono market. I think anyone could do this will work. This will get you, your first group of customers very, very easily and again, answer five or more questions every single day, don't sell, make sure your personal profile is optimized. And you're going to start getting leads, guaranteed.
15:25
Yes, the default for everything that you should you do, whether it be email funnels, social media, whatever you do on your website should always be to add value, give value to your audience, and then they will find what they need on with you. And the other thing that I would do to his podcast, you know, this is podcasts are my new jam. I love podcasts, being a guest on a podcast. Yeah, and find where your audience is, and especially some of the smaller podcast. They always are looking for guests and it's a good way it's takes a little longer, but when you speak on a podcast, Cast. Those are that's your audience that that is listening to that. So it is a great place to do if you're comfortable with that, you know,
16:08
any, I guess, to someone who is in a job, and they're unhappy right now and they know it's like, Listen, I've always wanted to do X, yes, what is a great way that they can that they, you know, obviously they're not going to quit their job tomorrow. But talk about starting a business in your very part time while you're already working a full time job. Sure.
16:37
And that's a good place to be because you're planning ahead and i would i would add that the grass is greener on the side. Having been in corporate A long time ago, but I would I would start first of all risk taking your idea and just doing the market research on what is out there for that idea. When I started talking to and gearing my marketing toward encore entrepreneurs, I started doing a lot of research on where where they are, which I kind of knew because that's me. But also, I looked to see what else who else was talking to them? What were my, quote unquote competitors, which I don't believe in competitors.
17:14
I agree.
17:15
It's Yeah, if you're giving value people are gonna flock to you. But look and see what that says out there. Look at the language that other people are using and look at where you can fit your niche and how you can bring your unique brand of expertise to the topic that you're talking about. And, you know, start spreading the word. It's never I don't think unless there's, you know, there's a corporate reason for you not to that it's never too early, even if you spend 30 minutes a week, an hour a week, you're going to be that much farther ahead when you're ready to get started. Start building your social network, you know, start putting the laying the groundwork for it the foundation. Yeah, I love it.
17:53
Well, Lori Lyons, you're the Founder of and CEO of Igniting Your Business, Ignite Marketing which is on the web at ignitingyourbusiness.com and then makeyourmarketingsimple.com. Can you just real quick in like 30 seconds explain what makeyourmarketingsimple.com is?
18:11
Sure I'd love to. I found a need for businesses that you know, they'll say I hate technology but it's not the technology behave is the strategy they don't understand. So this starts small business owners. Through the very beginning we we go back to the basics, we identify the target market. So we help you find identify your clients, find your clients, nurture your clients, and keep your clients for the long run all through through marketing and through the different various mediums that you market your business today. Yeah, and we do it in a simple way that makes sense. So we're not overwhelming you and confusing you.
18:46
Well, Lori, thank you so much for joining us again. Great place to start is makeyourmarketingsimple.com. You have a simple program that people and it's so it's you said it was 90 days right
19:00
Right. It's a three month program. Yes,
19:02
that's wonderful. And you could learn all the basics. And I suppose that is someone is afraid of technology, you're going to hold their hand and say, You know what? I know how you feel. I felt the same way. Here's what I learned. And guess what? It is absolutely possible for you to learn the basics. And as you can, you can absolutely. You know, again, more than just hoping to catch people driving by the house. There's a lot of other really, really great platforms where you can get way more eyeballs, people that are looking specifically for the products and services that you offer. Right?
19:41
Yes,
19:42
absolutely. And Lori Lyons, thank you so much for joining us. Josh has been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
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