47: 3 critical tips to help you get ready for fall and year-end sales campaigns
Running a business is kind of like running a long, slow, ultramarathon.
It has ups and downs, highs and lows, laughter and tears, and often feeling like you can’t or don’t want to carry on. It’s all about how we prep and set ourselves up for success so we can continue running our businesses and reaching our goals, even when we feel pukey.
We are now officially into the last half of the year. Many of us have plans for fall campaigns, Black Friday, Cyber Monday sales, or year-end promotions. It's going to feel like a marathon as we move through the next six months to the end of 2023.
In this episode of ill communication, I’m sharing 3 critical tips to help you get to run that marathon and reach your goals.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
The first step to preparing for quarters 3 and 4
How to start “training” for your promotions now
The best way to keep the inspiration and momentum going this summer
How I support the members of the Joy of Copy Club
I hope you found these tips helpful! I am so happy to share that you will get support with all three of these things inside the Joy of Copy Club! The doors are officially open now until June 26th.
There are only 20 seats remaining, so if you want one of these exclusive seats, reach out to me ASAP to let me know if you want to join or to schedule a call to see if it's a fit. Once the doors close, they won't open again until the fall. Secure your seat now!
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[00:00:03] Welcome to Ill Communication, Copywriting, Tips and sales strategies for small Business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and change makers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soulmate clients. Let's get started. I can't do it, Kim. I just can't do it. That's what my husband said to me, slumped into a lawn chair [00:01:00] with exhaustion. His face was pale and stained with tears and sweat. He'd been running for ten straight hours, traveling up and down a hilly, single track forest trail for 75km. That's 46 miles. He still had 25 more kilometers to go to complete his 100 kilometer ultramarathon. But I've watched him train for this race for months. Every weekend and many weekdays, he laced up his runners and headed out for two, three, four, even five hour runs. He had his running nutrition and drinks planned out. He was ready. And I was ready, too. As his running support crew, I often show up at different aid stations along the routes of the races he runs.
[00:01:52] I have different drinks, sometimes chicken broth or even pizza to give him fuel when his energy stores are low. He's [00:02:00] run several ultra marathons, which is any distance longer than a marathon, so I know what he's capable of and how I can best support him. And usually it's through the foods and drinks I bring at this particular race. A few weeks back. I had some new snacks and drinks I thought he'd really enjoy. But when I saw him at the aid station just before his last lap, I couldn't help him with food. He wasn't able to drink or eat anything other than ginger ale, water and a little bit of electrolytes. He was having a tough time. His body wasn't into the race and he was thinking of giving up. And when he said, I can't do it, my body hurts. The wife and the mom in me wanted to say, Oh, okay, honey, you should quit and look after yourself. It's okay to stop and rest and drop out of the race. I totally wanted to say that. They didn't. [00:03:00] Instead, I said what I knew he needed me to say, which was, Dude, you've got this. He just have another loop. You can rest here for a minute. Let's cool you off. But then you can get back out there and just finish. I know you can do it. And when I said that, I saw calm come over his dusty and dirty face.
[00:03:20] He changed his socks and shoes and went out to finish the last 25 kilometer lap. And he did it. He finished his ultramarathon with ten minutes to spare before the cut off time. And it's because he had trained his body to do the run. He was prepped. He had done all the work ahead of time so he could show up to the race and be ready. And he recovered real quickly, too. He's kind of a freak that way. If it was me, I would be whining and limping for weeks. But then again, you couldn't pay me enough money to even think of signing up to run 100km. And even though he struggled during the race, he could complete it because he was prepared [00:04:00] and because he had a coach on hand to remind him what he was capable of. He has said multiple times since then that my few words of encouragement were what helped him get back into the right mindset and get back onto the course when he wanted to quit. Never since that race. I can't help but see the parallels for us business owners as we run our businesses because running a business is pretty much a long, slow ultramarathon with ups and downs, highs and lows, laughter and tears, and often feeling like you can't or don't want to carry on.
[00:04:39] It's really in how we prep and set ourselves up for success that we can continue running our businesses, reaching our goals, even when things feel a little pukey. Now, the day this episode is being released, it's June 21st, the summer solstice here in North America, which means we are now officially into the last half [00:05:00] of the year. Many of us have plans for fall campaigns, Black Friday, Cyber Monday sales or year end promotions. It's going to feel like a marathon as we move through the next six months to the end of 2023. So today I want to share three essential tips to help you run that marathon to the end of the year. The tip. Number one, decide what promotions, campaigns or goals you have in quarter three and quarter four To continue the race analogy. My husband, Chad's already registered for another ultramarathon in September, so he will begin his training and planning during July and August when we go on summer holidays with the kids. He's going to have to plan his training around that and we have to do the same in our businesses. What promotions or sales or campaigns will you run between now and the end of the year? What are your goals? Do you want to launch a podcast? Do you want to launch a new refreshed website? Get it on [00:06:00] your calendar and then you can make your marketing plans and tech to do lists in advance and get started on that work now and work through it during the summer.
[00:06:11] If you're looking for a handy planning tool, check out episode 41, the £0.05 flash sale formula because it has a brilliant and super simple breakdown of how to plan a sale or promotion and reverse engineer the due dates for all the assets you need to have in place. Tip number two to get ready for your year end and fall race season is to start training for your promotions now. And when I say training, I mean start doing the research, writing the sales page and writing the emails. Start warming up your audience with your pre-launch content. It will be a lot easier for you to write all of the copy assets you need for your fall or year end promotions. If you can pick away at it slowly and steadily over the next few weeks. [00:07:00] And I get it with summer holidays in full swing. And then after that, it's the back to school rush. It can be tough to carve out time to get your writing done, but all the more reason to set up your copywriting schedule and create a little momentum over the summer because the last thing you want is to hit September or October and feel super stressed because you haven't done anything to prepare. You can't market or promote an offer to an audience you've ghosted throughout the summer months, just like you can't show up and expect to complete a 100 K ultramarathon without doing some training and prepping in advance.
[00:07:38] So you want to carve out some time to consistently show up for your audience and to get a head start writing all of the promotional assets you need for your fall or year end campaigns. And the third tip to get ready for the year end race is to find a coach and a community. When my husband trains for his ultras, he sometimes [00:08:00] runs with his friends. And in the past, he's joined trail running communities or running clinics to help him get practice and improve his running. And it's the same in business. When you surround yourself with a community of people who are running toward their own goals, you'll feel inspired and you'll have momentum to show up and keep going, especially when you feel tired. When you work with a coach, they can help you fine tune your techniques. They can give you different strategies or templates to try. They can review your work and help you tweak and refine your copy, your offers or your messaging. And sometimes a coach is there to just simply say, Girl, you're on the right track. You're doing so good. You've got this. Keep going. The more I support Chad on his races and the more I work with my own business coaches and the more I coach my own community inside the Joy of Copy Club, the more I realize how invaluable and important [00:09:00] this third tip is.
[00:09:02] It is so helpful to have someone in your corner, someone to bounce ideas off of, someone to cheer you on and keep you going. And so, my friend, I want to tell you, you will get support with all three of these elements inside the Joy of Copy Club and the Doors to join are officially open and they'll be open until June 26th. The Joy of Copy Club is a copy coaching community where you access proven copywriting formulas, frameworks and sales strategies to help you write all the copy you need in your business. If you want to rewrite your website before the end of the year, or if you want to have a campaign or promotion, you can access any of the templates you need. So you'll write faster and more effectively and make better use of your training time. Members can drop into any of the four copy coaching calls per month. You can attend these, use them when you need [00:10:00] them. Calls to bounce ideas about content, strategy, events or promotions. You can bring copy you've written to the calls and we can work on it together to simplify it, to strengthen it, and to optimize it for sales. The calls are hosted live on Zoom on Tuesday mornings from 9 to 11 a.m.
[00:10:18] Mountain Time. And we have members from seven different time zones joining us from Pacific Time to Greenwich Mean Time and every time zone in between. And if you can't join live because you live in a very different time zone or because, heck, life or business is getting in the way, you can pre-submit your copy and I'll still review it and you can watch the replay whenever it's convenient for you. These copy coaching calls are a real game changer, not only two members love the opportunity to get custom copywriting help for their own copy, but there is tremendous value in watching others share their work too. And what's funny is I have a couple of members who [00:11:00] don't even show up to the calls, but because the time is blocked into their calendar, they're naturally creating more content, showing up for their audiences and putting more offers out there. And they can access the copy vault of templates and trainings any time they need. And the members of the copy club are so supportive of each other. This intimate little community is among the best I have ever been in. It's so lovely to be part of a community of other business owners who are running vastly different businesses because in the copy club we've attracted psychotherapists, fitness coaches, virtual assistants, copywriters, graphic designers, business and marketing coaches, photographers, lingerie designers and nonprofit consultants.
[00:11:47] The common thread is that all these women have busy lives, often with kids or aging parents to look after, and their mission is to make life or business better for their communities to [00:12:00] have an impact and create change and to build a profitable business that supports the lifestyle they want and deserve and to create the kind of world we want to live in. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while and you've heard me talk about the Joy of Copy Club and you're thinking of joining, please pay attention. Enrollment in the copy club is limited. I keep the numbers low to make sure I can serve every single member, and so we can create this beautiful little community that is missing from so much of this online work we do. At the time of recording, there are only 20 seats remaining inside the Joy of Copy Club. So if you want one of these exclusive seats, reach out to me ASAP to let me know you want to join or to schedule a call to see if it's a fit. And my friend, the Doors will be closing on June 26th and they won't open again until the fall. Copy club kicks off in the first week of July so you can begin setting your priorities and goals, [00:13:00] aka signing up for your fall or year end races so you can begin your training program and not lose momentum over the summer break or back to school crazies.
[00:13:11] And so you'll be able to get into your year end promotions feeling ready? And you'll have a coach and a community by your side cheering you on each step of the way. The Joy of Copy Club runs for six months to allow you the time and space to work on multiple goals in your business. You can write a website and nurture your audience with weekly newsletter emails. You can write blog or podcast content and get all the copy written for your year end promotion. I've created it to be flexible to meet your needs depending on what your goals and priorities are. Visit Khimki NHL.com slash Copy Club to see everything included and who it's for and who it's not for. But my friend, now is the time to join, so reach [00:14:00] out to me to schedule a no pressure call and see if it's a fit for you. And if it's not a fit, I will absolutely tell you. If you're listening to this episode at some point in the future, please reach out to me to get your name added to our interest list and to find out when the doors will open again. Many of the copy clubbers tell me this is the best investment they make in their businesses. It's the best investment of money, time and energy.
[00:14:26] So I'd love to welcome you as our newest member into the Joy of Copy Club and help you complete the business marathons. We're running together with more ease, more joy and more sales. Email me at Hello at NHL.com to secure your seat in the Joy of Copy Club. And if the copy club isn't a fit for you right now, that is totally cool. I'm so glad we get to connect here every Wednesday on the Ill Communication podcast. I'll see you next week. Hey, [00:15:00] would you like to hang out with me and other women business owners doing rad things in the world just like you? Then you should join the Joy of Copy Club. It's a group copy coaching experience where you receive access to all my sales templates, writing prompts and copy recipes. So you're never wondering what or how to write once a week. You can pop into my open office hours where we'll live, review and edit any kind of copy you've written. Seriously, you can bring a social post, an email or even some edits to your home page and I'll help you optimize it before you send it out into the world. The Joy of Copy Club gives you the tools and the confidence to get your message out there so you can grow your impact and your revenue. Find out more at Kim keel.com/copy club. I'll see you next week.
Resources Mentioned
Learn about the 5P flash sale formula
Secure your seat inside the Joy of Copy Club
Additional Resources
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