Marketing Strategy Framework: How to Get More Leads & Sales in 2025
46:00 Share

Thinking of attending social media marketing world, but you need to persuade your boss. I have really good news for you. We've crafted the ultimate resource to get a yes from your boss. It includes talking points and a scripted email that really works. Imagine yourself in sunny San Diego this spring as you join thousands of marketers at our upcoming social media marketing world. So if you're a social media marketing person,

Simply visit socialmediaexaminer.com slash boss to get all the amazing resources so you can get a yes from your boss.

Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast, brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want to know how to navigate the ever-changing marketing jungle.

Today, we've got a great episode for you. I'm going to be joined by Emily Hirsch, and we're going to explore how to create a custom marketing strategy, one that will allow you to grow more leads and sales. And I got to tell you, there's solid gold in this episode. You're going to absolutely love this. You may even want to listen to it twice. If you're new to this podcast, be sure to follow us on whatever app you're listening to so you don't miss any of our future content. We've got some great

people coming your way. Let's transition over to this week's interview with Emily Hirsch. Helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide.

Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Emily Hirsch. If you don't know who Emily is, she's a digital marketing strategist. She's the founder of Embodied Marketing, an agency that helps entrepreneurs design custom strategies to generate more leads and sales. She's also the host of the Embodied Marketing Podcast.

And her course is called Expand and it helps marketers create successful marketing strategies. Emily, welcome to the show today. How are you doing? Yay. Thank you for having me. Super exciting to have you back.

Today, Emily and I are going to explore marketing strategy that will grow your leads and sales. Now, before we get into that, I want to talk about the why side of this, right? So many people listening to this podcast are about tactics and doing things, and maybe not everybody thinks strategically the way you think. So why is having a really clear strategy important?

so important as we go into 2025 and beyond? Yeah, I think having a strategy is one of the most important things for a business. And I think a lot of times entrepreneurs think they have a strategy. And I want you to keep in the back of your mind as we're talking in this episode, because you may realize like, oh, I thought I had a strategy, but I really was barely tapping the surface with that strategy. And on that note as well, I

I think we overcomplicate what a strategy is. And so also as we go through this today, think about it from the perspective of an experience. That's very much how I look at marketing is you are just creating an experience for somebody who finds your brand for the first time for a lead, right?

And that ultimately is your strategy. It's not this like overcomplicated, I'm going to trick people, I'm going to hack this and I'm going to send them there. But it's an intentional way that you are going to take someone from not knowing who you are to becoming a lead and then becoming a sale put in simple terms. And every single business needs that. And the more clear you can get on what your strategy is, the more clear you're going to be on what you should be doing. And I think

90% of entrepreneurs I talk to and business owners or people in marketing are saying, I feel like I'm throwing spaghetti at the wall. I feel like I'm trying all these things and it's scattered, it's non-existent. And so we're going to solve that today. But the most important thing is to have a strategy because you need leads and sales. And also, if you have a clear strategy, you're not going to be overwhelmed and wondering what you should be doing. Without getting into the details of what we're going to talk about today, I'm going to talk

If people were to follow the process and the strategy that we're going to outline today, what is the outcome that they could achieve? You'll have a marketing strategy, a clear marketing strategy that's not a templated, like everybody do a webinar, everybody do this. And that's super important to me because every one of your businesses is

is unique. You sell a unique offer, you have a unique experience, unique wisdom and a background and unique ideal customers, unique industries. And so by the end of this, you'll have the clarity on how to create a custom marketing strategy for your business that's going to generate leads and sales. And when this is done right, the real thing everybody wants is more qualified leads and more sales. And I also am a strategist.

Although I don't exercise that gene, if you will, as much as I would like. But the good news about a strategy is it can be timeless. Would you agree with this? If things change...

The strategy, you just change some of the parts of the strategy, right? You don't freak out when one algorithm does this or one platform does this. The reality is that your strategy should be able to stand the test of time. And that is something that you can bank on. Absolutely. I think as long as you build a solid strategy that's based off of principles, right?

and foundational facts of marketing and experiential marketing, it is timeless. Like this that I talk about today, I've been using this for 10 years. Like it's changed with every and all the changes that have come with marketing. I think the things that become expired are the hacks and the things that aren't actual marketing strategies. They're just little pieces that people like to use in the marketing strategy. But yeah, a good marketing strategy is,

can evolve with the time, with your industry, with your niche, with your offer, all of that. Okay. I'm really excited. So where do we start? What's the very first thing we need to be thinking about when it comes to this process we're unwinding here? Yeah. So the very first thing that goes into your marketing strategy is what I call your foundation. And there's a lot that goes into your foundation, but ultimately one question I like to ask everybody is,

What is the core outcome that your business solves for somebody? If I was to be sitting across from you in a casual conversation and I ask you, what do you do? Could you tell me that in a very clear one sentence? And this is very important. Using the language that your ideal customer would actually say.

And could you describe that to me in a simple sentence where I'm like, okay, I got it. I know the problem that you solve. So tell me some more about this because obviously it sounds good, but most people are like, oh, I have that. And then you ask them, do you unravel that a little bit? Well, let me tell you what I heard you say. First of all, what's the outcome that you deliver to your customer, that ideal customer? And can you describe it in their language and,

in a simple sentence. So first of all, let's break it down into its pieces, right? What if we're not even sure what the outcome is? What do we do? Yeah. So, I mean, this is based off of the offer you sell or you're going to sell. Maybe you don't have your offer completely done or you're making a new one. You can use this process. And so what is that problem you're going to solve, that outcome, that promise? If I say, if I buy this from you, I'll be able to know, be, or do this.

by the end of using it, whether it's a service, whether it's a physical product, whether it's a digital product, this applies to all of those types of businesses. Okay. So you have an example, like what do you do? Yeah. I actually have four examples that I pulled from. This is mine plus clients active examples. So here's an example. I help entrepreneurs create a marketing strategy that generates leads and sales. Okay.

Simple. I help repair people's blood sugar and A1C without needing medication. Okay. Simple. I help photographers add sports photography to their offerings. I sell a skincare product that heals your skin with natural ingredients. Okay. So these are extremely simple. Yeah. So if I had to guess, like if I take social media marketing world, I'm just going to on the fly do this. We help marketers become better. Yeah.

for lack of better words, we help marketers improve their craft so that they can become the champion of their business. I don't know, something as simple as that. Yeah. But in their language, right? So we help marketers learn the latest techniques and strategies so that they can

can improve the outcome for their business or clients. Something along those lines, right? Yep, exactly. And if we were to look at that of the attendees that are thinking about coming, you would hear them say things like, I want to improve my marketing skills. I want to learn new strategies so that I can do this. And so that's the clear sentence. And this becomes the driving force of everything in your marketing. All of your copy, your entire strategy comes back to this.

And I'll take it just a little bit further. I do this for not only the business as a whole, but any new funnel that I'm planning. So if I'm doing, which I know we're going to get into it, but I'm just dropping this seed.

If I'm planning a new webinar, the first thing I define is the outcome of that webinar because that drives everything. That's why this is step one, because this is the foundation. Well, you did this during the interview. I mean, you did this at the front of the interview. You said by the time you're done with this interview. Exactly. You will have a custom webinar.

template, for lack of better words, so you can create a strategy for your business. So what I'm hearing you say is you can do this for anything you create. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Yeah. And it should be step one of any new offer funnel strategy. And you should have this for your business as a whole. Okay. So you also said, but it's got to be in their language, in the language of your ideal customer.

Talk to me a little bit about this, because for some of us like who have backgrounds as writers, which I do, and it sounds like you do as well, this is not complicated. But for other people, it might be very complicated. So any tips on how to make sure it's in the right language? The easiest and most simple one is to talk to your ideal customer because they have the answers. And I think that's a skill that the more you do that and you will never stop doing that. Like, I think you're somebody who's excellent at that, paying attention to what people are saying, working with them.

whether that's on Facebook, whether that is in conversations, whether that's at your actual event. Or through surveys. Yeah, surveys. So one thing I tell people, because people are like, well, I don't have anybody to ask. I don't have a full audience yet. Who's going to reply to me? You can literally go into a Facebook group or I don't care, a Reddit thread.

And you can post a question. What are you most struggling with when it comes to fill in your niche, fill in the problem you want to solve? Or if I could wave a magic wand and...

fix your problems with your business. Tell me what that would look like. And then just let them talk. People actually love to talk about their problems, about what they want and share and give insight. It gives them value. And so the easiest thing, if you don't have an audience is do that. If you do have an audience, pull your audience. I like to ask more open-ended questions like that versus a survey with actual already responding, because I want to hear what they say in their language.

And I will take that exact language and use it for things like the marketing copy. And I think we are so close to what we do that we very oftentimes overcomplicate the way that we talk about it and the way that we write about it and try to market it. And for those that are brand new and don't have an audience, one other tip is going to be going to chat GPT.

You could go to ChatGPT and you could say, you are a fill in the blank, let's say fitness expert, right? Who works with people that are 50 and over, okay? And a world-class expert at this. What are some of the typical challenges faced by this client? And what are some of the phrases that they typically say?

And the reason this works is because ChatGPT has been trained on practically all the content in the world. So it's read every blog, it's watched every YouTube video, and at least you can get some starting points there in which to experiment. And sometimes talking to AI...

is your only option. So I'm just throwing that out there. Have you ever tried that before, Emily? I haven't done specifically that, but I think that's a great idea. And I mean, I definitely use AI for other things. And I think also if you say in their language or conversational tone, exactly. And the core things that you're trying to get out of, however you do it is frustrations, problems, and desires. I say those three words, um,

so many times in marketing because that's the root of everything. It's why people take action. It's why they pay attention. It's why they give you their time and their money. What are their problems? What are their frustrations? What are their desires in their specific words? Love it. Okay.

So step one to the Emily Hirsch methodology, whatever we're going to call this thing, is to set the foundation. And the foundation needs to be a very simple sentence that says, this is the problem that we solve for a very specific audience, right? And we're saying it in a way that is either going to strongly resonate with them because that's their language or

but it's pretty straightforward and simple. So let's say we've got this foundation step. What's the next part of the process? Yeah, so the next part, let's pretend we're having a conversation. I'd ask you, okay, now how?

Are you going to get that outcome? Tell me your process. Tell me your method. And everybody has this. I think most people are like, well, I don't have one. I don't have a method. I don't know what I do. And I had a mentor eight years ago tell me, Emily, you're not as special as you think you are. And somebody else can do what you're doing. You just have to pull out what your method is, what your process is and define it.

And I actually did this for the first time to train a team. But since then, it's become the front end of my marketing. Like it's what we're talking about today. It's the entire foundation of my business.

because every single one of you has unique experience, unique wisdom, unique beliefs and opinions because you've seen things that don't work and do work and you think we should be doing it this way and not this way in your industry. That's how you stand out.

And I can't emphasize that enough. I think what is missing from most people who teach marketing today is they water down your authenticity and try to put you in a box and say, this is how you should do it. But the magic that nobody talks about is actually you and your authenticity and what makes you unique.

And there are things that make me unique, that make you unique, that the more we can amplify that in our marketing, the better it's going to do. The more successful it's going to be, the more it's going to stand out. And if I guarantee, if you look at anybody successful today that you look up to, they're doing that either with or without realizing. So for those of you that are working in a business where you are not the thought leader, right? Yeah.

Or where there is maybe a product, a physical product and not like a information expert or something like this. I would imagine this could apply to that as well, right? Because maybe there's a process about how you make your widget, right? Or maybe there's some ethos that you have around your brand. Like your brand is maybe giving to certain kinds of causes, these kinds of things.

this is all the kind of stuff that could play into that for someone who's not trying to position themselves as a thought leader. True? Absolutely, yeah. So if you're working for a company or supporting somebody, it would be like the values of that company or their unique process, which is probably dictated by the founder, whether they've defined it or not, it is there. And if you're in physical product,

I guarantee there's a reason why you made your physical product. Like it wasn't out there before or that wasn't made well or with clean ingredients or whatever that story is.

that's your unique process. It probably is how you made it or why you made it and why it's different. And it's kind of like your reason why. Why did you decide I'm going to take this on and I'm going to build this business and have this impact? Because you saw the need that for whatever reason, it didn't exist out there in that way. So help us understand, because I don't think a lot of marketers understand

have embraced this concept that there's something unique about the process of serving our clients or the process of making our product or the process of putting on our event or whatever it is, help people understand like how in the world they can, for lack of better words, get the process going.

Because maybe they're blind to it. You understand what I'm asking? Like, how do we even reverse engineer what the process is? Yeah. And I think most people, it is very challenging at first to get it out. So it's really normal if you're like, I have no idea what the process is or what this should be. I think the best way to do it is try to explain it to someone. Like actually, like,

explain to someone, this is how I get the result or this is why my physical product is better than the other offers out there on the market and riff on that a little bit, maybe record it and put it in chat GPT and tell it to make you a process. You absolutely can do that because what will come out of that is actual like

core values and core components of what you do and how that's the foundation of what you do. I'm sure if we even go to your example of your event, if we look at, okay, how do you get those results for entrepreneurs? There's unique things that you do in putting on the event and putting on the experience that is your process. Yeah. And if I was to ideate, I would say, look, we curate 100% of our speakers.

We don't have an application process. Every single speaker who speaks at our conference, I know because I've had them on one of my shows. And there's that curator thing, you know, that I think is valuable, a trusted curator, just like museums have trusted curators. And there's a reason why people go to like New York or LA museums because they trust the curator to bring together the best. And I feel like that is

part of the process that I could share. And I think that's a story that people could wrap their head around because they've been to events where there is no trusted curator and it's like ridiculous and they end up walking out of rooms, that kind of thing. Is that the kind of stuff you're talking about? I don't know. Yeah, I think like that would be one of your...

steps or one of your core components of the event. And another would probably be all of the options that you have. You can kind of build your own experience within based on what you're interested in. That's very unique, you know, compared to other events, everybody sits in the same room and you watch every speaker. So those type of things is like, okay, I want to go to that

event because of those things. What about you? Yeah, well, we're talking about my process right now. But what I would say, so I have a service, right? And so when someone asks me, okay, how do you get that result? I talk about the process when we work with clients. So I say, okay, the first thing we do is we develop your marketing strategy. We build the foundation. We map out the funnel. We map out the emails. Then we build it. And I talk about the core components of the copy and the messaging within building it.

And then we execute it. And when we're executing it, we're tracking all the way through the funnel and every single step. So for me, because I'm a service, I talk about the process that we use when we deliver for clients. But that translates over. And as we get into this, you'll see it translates over into my marketing because that's how I sell coming into my service. So, OK, there are some people listening that.

are saying, well, isn't marketing about talking about the client and not talking about the customer, not talking about us? I hear a lot of we in there. Do you want to address some mindset challenges there that people have about talking about themselves and maybe, you know, talk to me a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. So I believe that my process is what somebody needs to be successful. And it's not actually about me. It's just what I have spent years doing.

developing and refining and improving and implementing to get results. So it actually has nothing to do with you. It is your proven however many years or hours that have gone into creating this way to get the result. So it is all about them. And it's saying, I'm going to shortcut this

You having to go weed through a bunch of content and books and courses and all these things. And I'm just going to give you the exact method to get to your result in the fastest way possible. I love that, especially, and I think it'll become clear as we begin going through the rest of this.

So, first of all, we need this foundation and the foundation is really, you know, what is this outcome that you're solving for a particular audience in their language? And then we also need to identify this unique process. Now, just before we move on, how complicated does this process need to be before we move on? Is it meant to be simple or is it meant to be complicated? Our unique process.

Simple, because you need to be able to explain it to somebody. So you need to be able to explain it to somebody in a conversation where they could literally go, okay, I understand the problem you solve, and I understand how you solve that problem. Got it. If you're feeling lost in a changing world, come to a place where everyone knows your pain. Navigating disruption is easier when you're surrounded by peers facing similar challenges.

That's why we designed Social Media Marketing World to help you make meaningful connections with themed networking spaces, interactive workshops, and tons of attendee-led meetups. Maddie Young says, this was my very first time at Social Media Marketing World. It exceeded every expectation I had. The value of the sessions and networking experiences cannot be overstated.

Don't go it alone. Join marketers just like you navigating a rapidly changing world. Grab your tickets today at socialmediamarketingworld.info.

All this stuff sounds like it's foundational for what we're about to talk about next, right? Yeah. So let's talk about actually building the strategy. Where do we go with this information that we've accumulated here? Every single marketing strategy, no matter what type of business you have, has three components to it. And I always say I boil marketing down in the most simplest form, which is build an audience, generate leads, convert the leads in the audience.

Everything you do from organic social media to paid ads to building funnels to email marketing fits in one of those categories. And so whenever I create a marketing strategy, it needs all three of those components working together to achieve sales.

And usually sales is actually very easy when you have the audience and the leads happening before the sale. So let's start with audience building and let's spend some time on that. What do we do on the audience building side with this foundational stuff that we've already crafted? First, audience building the way that I define that, because I know people may use different terms.

That is anything that is content. That's anything that is being used to attract brand awareness. Visibility are all words that would be kind of fit in that category. And you're not asking for name and email. You're not asking for the sale. This is where you are just saying,

Building that value and that could look like social media posts, that could look like you have a podcast. A strategy that I teach, I call visibility ads. And basically it's taking a small percentage of your monthly budget, let's say 5%, and actually putting a little bit of ad spend behind content.

Because in my opinion, I like my time. And so I use ads to buy that back. And if I spend a little bit of money and I promote a podcast episode, I'm going to get thousands more people to see that than if I just posted it on social media. But your audience is...

attracting new people to your brand, to the business who are going to consume the content. It's not necessarily followers, but it can translate into followers. It's people who are willing to give you their attention and are bought in on that. I say today, attention is currency. And so it starts with someone saying, this is worth my time to consume this content. Okay, we're going to get back to this visibility ad thing. But first, I want to ask,

What kinds of content are we talking about here? Because we've kind of built this foundation stuff and I think this plays into it. I just want to connect the dots here. And when I say what kinds of content, I don't mean like social posts versus podcasts. I mean the substance of the content. Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. That's definitely where we need to go next. So you've done the foundation work.

on your core promise, on how you get there, on the problems, the frustrations, the desire, that should drive your content creation. So an easy way could be, let's say you make a list in this foundation work of all the problems that your ideal customer talks about in their language. Well, every one of those is multiple video ideas or podcast topics or things that you can talk about. And so all of the content that you create needs to be directly connected to

to those things we defined from your ideal customer. The outcome that they want, it can talk about your process in different ways. You could do it high level, the whole thing. You could do a piece of it. You could do why one part is super important and nobody else has it or nobody else is talking about this. So you said this earlier of like marketing is about the person that you're marketing to and not you.

That's definitely true. And that is true in content as well. You are using your expertise and your unique process and what you solve as a business and your values and all of those things to actually impact your content. And then one other thing I want to say is I always tell people,

Align your content with what you are excited to talk about or you are excited to create or you're naturally good at. And that kind of brings back to like your unique, authentic edge. I think that we should do that in content creation too, because if it's easy and natural, that's how you create magnetic content that people want to consume. Right.

Okay. So a couple of questions here. I love this. Can you give us an example of how you do this with one of your posts or a video just so people can wrap their head around this? Yeah. So I have a podcast. That's my main form of content. And I like to recommend for every business, you have one main form that could be podcast. It could be a blog. It could be YouTube, something that you consistently create. So I will take podcasts.

top episodes from the previous few months. And I also run it through the filter of, okay, cold traffic, somebody who has no idea who I am, because sometimes I'll have a top episode that my audience loved because they want to listen to what I had to say. So top episodes that are great for cold traffic. So they're talking to those core problem frustration desires. I'll pick two to three of those podcast episodes and

I'll record a quick face-to-camera video saying, I recorded this podcast episode. Here's the result. Here's the outcome of the episode if you listen to it. And then I'll turn that into an ad. And I'll spend probably $10 a day, not very much on these visibility ads, per

promoting that and getting every single day. I run these 365 days a year traffic to my podcast. And what I can do with that traffic is one, it turns into downloads, but two, I actually run it to my website page because I don't want to run it to Apple or Spotify and

They're pixeled. And now I have an audience of all the people who went to that page that I can use for retargeting. I can use for lookalike audiences. So all of my clients, this is a strategy. E-commerce too. We might put the product in the visibility ad, but it's focused on that content, that attraction. Okay.

First of all, love this. So a couple of quick technical questions on the podcast side of things. Are you doing audio and video? I do audio right now, but I'm going to do both. I'm just lazy. Okay. So right now your podcast is on Spotify and Apple podcast dot, dot, dot. So you have a landing page that you've created, which is just for the podcast, right? And it probably has a player embedded with the latest episodes on or something like that. Right.

Or do you have a page for each episode? We have a page for each episode on our website. And so I will run it to that because my call to action is the specific episode. Okay. And so we'll run it to that page with that episode. And is that page an article version of the episode or does it have the player at the top? It has the

player. It has the links to Spotify, Apple, the different players, and then it has the transcript. Okay. So you're creating a video ad and where are you publishing these video ads typically? So we run them as ads. So I put them in the ads. They're not social media posts. I also do post for my podcast, but this is- Yeah, but which platforms is what I'm asking? Right now, Facebook and Instagram. Yeah. Or meta. Okay. How successful are ads that are promoting podcasts? I'm just curious. Does that really work? Yeah, it absolutely works. You can't track all

perfectly the downloads because that just like they don't have the ability, the software to go from Facebook to the page to download on, you know, Libsyn, wherever you run your podcast. But I see an increase in downloads if we're running or not running visibility ads. But also some of my top converting audiences when we get to, okay, we're running a webinar or lead generation are those podcast audiences, people who have gone to that web page and

to view the podcast. I also use that for the lookalike audiences. So saying, okay, all these people in the last month who went to this page, I want a million more just like that. Have you figured out what the cost per whatever is? Is it pretty costly to do something like this?

The CPA? I don't have the cost per debt loan. Or cost per click, maybe? Yeah. So I run it. Cost per click is like 30 cents to get someone to the page. That's like a good, I mean, I have clients who get lower, but in the B2B space where I am, that's about what we pay. Sweet. Okay. Let's talk about the organic stuff. Do you also create similar posts organically or what do you do if you don't have the budget, you know what I mean, to advertise? Yeah. So I also post about my podcast and have regular social media posts. I

I choose to primarily go on Instagram and Facebook. I think what social media platform you choose should be based on your business and where your audience is and what type of content that you want to create. Is it video or text or images or all of the above? Both. Yeah, I think so. If we're talking about organic social media, I think Instagram is very geared towards reels,

carousel posts. I also see like graphics without any text, just organic photos do really well. So we mix in all of those and they're not all about the podcast. Like they're the podcast organic stuff. I probably post like four to five times a week. I'm more of like a paid ads girl because organic takes so much time. So I do less organic and I personally think organic can be a huge time suck without a lot of payoff.

So I see organic as like a nurture, consistent strategy, and then ads is like a growth strategy. Well, and some people that are listening, this is their job to work organic. So it's not going to be a big problem for them, but you're a CEO and you've got a bunch of jobs that you have to do, right? Okay, cool. So-

So basically what I'm hearing you say is you should identify, come up with a list, for lack of better words, of all the common problems or challenges that your core audience is dealing with that you solve for. Right. And then figure out maybe a Venn diagram with what you're excited to talk about. Like right now, one of the things I'm really excited to talk about is artificial intelligence because I have an AI podcast. We have an AI track at Social Media Marketing World.

We're about to announce an AI ticket to social media marketing world. So there's a lot of cool stuff that we're working on on that frontier. So I'm very excited about it. I'm dabbling with it. And for me, you know, obviously my gift is the written word and also the spoken word. So, you know, I'm not a video guy. I'm more of a audio and a written word guy. So what you're saying is like, look at what you're good at and just lean into that. So for me, it's going to be the written word.

And for me, it's going to be maybe more audio focused things for someone else. It might be video and then just kind of really make sure that this content is strategically dialed in and you don't need to have a podcast. You could be publishing this stuff organically directly on the social platforms or it could be YouTube.

Right? Yeah, exactly. Just having consistency, I think, is the most important thing. And with the audience piece of your strategy, like what is your strategy to grow your audience and just having that defined strategy.

is, you know, what type of platform is it? Where are you posting? How often are you posting? What are the core pillars maybe of that content? And that's kind of step one is like, what is that strategy? I think most people don't even have that defined. And so they start spinning their wheels and like posting everywhere and on all the platforms and thinking like they're so behind and I should have a podcast on YouTube. And that's where the overwhelm comes from. Yeah. And if people stop listening right now, right.

and walk away from the podcast, they will have gotten quote unquote their money's worth, even though this is free, because most people don't have a posting strategy at all. They're just all over the place. They post about all sorts of random things and it's not tied directly to the kinds of things that we're talking about, which is that core audience that you're trying to attract, which I think is brilliant. This is step one of your strategy. What comes next? Yeah. So the next piece is your lead generation. And again,

This is where we get to go back to the foundation and kind of bring that in full circle. I think a lot of people are really random with their lead generation. They know, okay, I need it. And they see people teaching webinars or challenges or slow funnels or whatever it is. But the way that I look at lead generation is as an experience. And how can I create the best experience for a lead to

to have full clarity and full confidence in my offer, in what I sell. So the way that I love to do that is say, first of all, if we look at lead generation and we say, okay, I'm going to solve a problem for somebody with my lead generation. It's probably the same problem that your business solves and your offer solves just on a different scale, a different format.

And then we solve that problem by showcasing our process or our values or whatever you identified in that second step that we talked about, about how you get the results. So let me actually share an example of a client because I think this will help. So one of my clients who helps people repair their blood sugar and A1C with type 2 diabetes without needing medication, right?

She has a core process for how she does that. She believes in fasting and certain types of foods that they should eat. She's got her core method.

Her strategy is a webinar. And guess what she teaches on that webinar? At a high level, she shares her strategy, her process. Because what you're doing is you're getting somebody bought in and going, I need that method. I need that process. And I believe that that process is now going to get me my result.

So lead generation and the actual content of your lead generation is very intentional. It's an experience. It's taking somebody actually on an emotional experience of,

I now have clarity on the path that I need to take to get the result that I want. I also have confidence that this method or this process or these steps or these phases, however you want to lay it out, is going to get me there. And what that does is land somebody right when you go to share your offer, fully bought in and like, I need this right now.

Okay, so what I've heard said before, and I think, I don't know if you told this or somebody else told me this, but useful but incomplete, right? So talk to me a little bit. And maybe we were talking about that when we were prepping. Because some people are like, well, wait a minute. You're telling me that I should give away my process and my process is my process and I charge for that. So how do we do that? So you're giving it to someone, obviously, in an appropriate format that is appropriate.

On a webinar or a challenge or a lead generation. And so, or ebook, yeah, ebook, PDF download. So you're not giving them the ability to, maybe they could go do it themselves, but the reality is they're, they're not like, I always tell people, you could go listen to 600 episodes of my podcast and probably do everything that I do without ever hiring me. But do you have time to do that? No.

So I'm more of the method and belief that you want to over deliver on the free and people will buy for the saved time and speed of the results. So you may be showcasing your process, but you're getting buy in on your process. And then your program or even your product, your service is now, OK, this is the fast track to getting that result. So you look at it as you

The lead generation is the what. It's the high level explanation and also valuable. I think people confuse that because they're like, well, if I'm just showcasing my process and my offer, then how is that valuable? Listen to this podcast. I am showcasing my process and it's super valuable for you to have clarity on what you're missing or what you could be doing differently or what you need to do. You still need my help. You still are like, great. I don't want to do this. I'm going to be bought in.

Let me sign up. Same with your event. When you explain the process and you explain what you talk about, like you're not giving them everything. Obviously an event like they have to come to the event to get the outcome, but you're showcasing the what and your offer is the how.

And you can't solve someone's problem in a 45 minute webinar completely and fully. Your job is give them clarity. Clarity is very valuable for people. Most people are not clear. Otherwise they would be getting results. Well, and if we're crystal clear about what I do on all my podcasts is I give people a taste of what's possible and many people go out and do it, but there's so much more that they could experience if they had a chance to come and experience Emily live.

at Social Media Marketing World 2025. And she's going to be teaching on something else while she's there, right? So the idea here is, yes, I am extracting insights from amazing people and only the best of the best I choose to come invite to Social Media Marketing World. But you get a chance to not just hear Emily, but you get a chance to talk to Emily.

You get a chance to sit around a table and interact with Emily as she's there for the entire experience, right? And that is really valuable for some people. And there's so much more where that came from, right? And this is the side of it, flipping it back, anybody who thinks they're giving away too much information, right?

I've said this so many times, I wrote a book called Writing White Papers. And then by the day the book came out, I had so much more information. I could have written a second book on writing white papers. And then once I started getting questions from everybody, I realized I could have written a third book. There's just so much more. And what ends up happening is people ended up lining up to want to hire me because yes, they could go ahead and read the book and do it, or they could actually hire me. And then eventually I became the world's leading expert on this thing because that was the perception of the world. So,

So I'm a big believer that give as much away for free as possible. And like you said, it's about creating clarity and confidence. You want people to feel very confident that you are the one. And it's not everyone who's going to get that lead that's going to want to do business with you. It's just the few, but you don't need a lot to be successful.

Yeah, it's all about building that trust and creating that through an experience. And I think also realizing whatever you choose, like maybe I'll give a few examples of the lead generation. So, for example, if you have your process, you could take that and that could be the outline of your webinar. Right.

I've also done it where I do a free challenge and I actually teach someone how to do step one. So for example, I have a free challenge where I teach someone how to launch a visibility ad and they're like so excited. They launched an ad, they got it live, they see the process. Then on the final day, I teach them what the next steps are that they need to be successful. Now they're fully bought in. They're super excited. They launched their visibility ad. They know they need all these other pieces and they're exactly where I want them to be when it comes time for my offer.

So whatever you choose,

There's actually a lot of intention that goes into that experience because in order to make it an experience that isn't overwhelming, that isn't confusing, that isn't like a fire hose of information, you have to teach it in steps. You have to actually boil it down to how do I get this clearly communicated, which is super valuable for someone. If I was to be like, let me teach you everything that we do for clients, you'd be so overwhelmed. That's actually not valuable.

But I give you the high level, the what, so that you're bought in enough. Okay, so step one of the strategy is to build this audience in some way, shape or form. Step two is to generate a lead.

What's the next part? Yeah. So the final step is your conversion is converting the leads, converting your audience to sales. And this really is easy when you have the other two steps in place. I think that building a warm audience and building a list is the biggest asset every single business could ever have. You will always be OK as long as you continue to serve them.

So when I look at the conversion, that is taking those leads to a point of now I share my offer. That could be a pitch on the webinar. That could be an email sequence followed up to an e-book download. Or if you're a product business, it's probably pretty fast that you bring them to your product or you go directly to your product and you have lead gen available.

accompanying it. And I was sharing in this pre-conversation that there was a study done by this e-commerce company. They spent like a million dollars on this study and I've always found it so fascinating. They found out that for every person who bought, it took 30 micro touch points with their brand.

And a micro touch point could be you see my email in your inbox and you don't open it, but you just saw my name for a microsecond. You're scrolling Instagram and you see my ad. You don't even click on it. You don't even stop to read it, but you see it. And if you think about it, the brands that you buy from, you probably did have 30 plus micro touch points. And so that comes from consistency. It comes from having that well-rounded strategy of,

So if we look at this in the format of, okay, I bring leads in and I convert them, you're going to have that initial time that you pitch your offer, you share your offer for the first time. I like to have some sort of urgency paired with that. And then it's, okay, how do I continually nurture? How do I continually re-engage? How do I continually talk about my offer in a strategic way? Because

I see it all the time. People sit on my list for six, 12 months. I just had someone sign up for our program who's followed me for nine years.

And just decided. And I'm sure you've seen that. Like the longer you're in business, the more the snowball effect starts to happen and people buy. But that only comes from consistency and consistently nurturing and consistently talking about your offer. You don't want to have a funnel where someone comes in, you share about it one time in an email sequence, and then that's it. They never hear about it again. And I see entrepreneurs so focused on new leads.

which new leads are very important, but actually your biggest opportunity is your existing leads. Do you have any quick tips on how to actually offer the offer? So this is huge. I think most of the time when I see people getting leads and they're not selling, it's either the offer itself or more likely it's the way the offer is being talked about. And

And if you do the foundational work that we talked about in the beginning, this is automatically going to be way easier because now you have this core outcome. So if you've got this outcome of the promise that your business has, and then you go to your offer and you're like, am I communicating this very well and how I get this result? You could probably improve it right there. But one exercise I'll share that people love doing is and go do it right now.

pull up your sales page or wherever you talk about your offer, or if you write a future sales page and take that headline and read it back in the format of I want, as if you were your ideal customer saying, I want. And is it something that they would say in their words exactly what they want? And most of the time what I find is people have overcomplicated headlines, not in language that their ideal customer wants.

anytime you talk about your offer, it should be focused on the outcome, the benefits, not the features. So people will say, if you were to say, Michael, come to my event, there's this many sessions a day and it's this many days long and it's this many hours and it's in San Diego. Like nobody cares about that. What they care about is the outcome that they're going to get by coming to the event, attending the sessions and actually showing up live in San Diego. And so

All the marketing focuses on that. What's in it for them? Why is it important? Keep asking that question. I run it through anything sales. I run through that filter of what is in it for that person. Have I made it about them and the outcome that they want, the benefits that they want if they were to buy this offer?

So just so I understand, we're reading the headline and maybe the opening sentences and we're putting the word I want in front of it. Yeah. And we're making sure it logically makes sense. Is that right? Yeah. And it's something someone would say that they want or your ideal customer. Well, Emily, I want to...

to say to you that this was amazing. And I know I speak for all my listeners and saying, holy cow, you got to listen to it again. There was so much gold here. People want to connect with you. What's your preferred social? And then if they want to do business with you, where do you want to send them? Yeah. So my social media is Emily Hirsch on Instagram and

And then we've got a special link for you guys at embodiedmarketing.com slash SME. I'm going to put a free gift link to my podcast there. And if you want to explore our program, it will all be on one easy page for you. Embodiedmarketing.com slash SME. Yep. Correct. Emily, thank you again so much for sharing your insights with us today. Thank you so much for having me.

And

And do check out our other shows, the AI Explored podcast and the Social Media Marketing Talk Show. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. The Social Media Marketing podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner.

Make 2025 your best year ever. Grab your discount tickets to Social Media Marketing World right now by visiting socialmediamarketingworld.info.