42: How to grow a profitable business with lazy, low-key launch strategies you actually enjoy
In this episode of ill communication, you're going to find out how I built a multi-six-figure business without any complicated funnels, huge ad spend, massive teams, or major stress. You’ll learn my favorite tools to keep things simple and easy as I’ve grown my business.
Plus, I share a way to get your hands on some of my favorite zero-cost, minimal-effort, low-key launch strategies so you can grow your business without spending thousands of dollars on ads or complicated funnels.
In this super hyped-up, hustle culture we find online, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the next big thing. The big business gurus will tell you you need complicated funnels, flashy sales pages, millions in ad spend, and multiple social media posts per day. But I’m here to tell you that you don’t!
You can build a highly profitable, service-based business by using basic tried and true marketing principles and sales strategies, and it can be easy, simple, and even lazy.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
Why you don’t need anything flashy to find success
The only free tool you need when launching a new offer or service
The power of a simple monthly marketing moment
Simple strategies to promote monthly marketing moments
Other free ways to promote yourself that don’t take much time
The next time you're promoting yourself, whether it's a free event or a paid offer, don't overcomplicate it! Remember, some of the simplest strategies can be even more effective than complicated and pricey ones, and you'll probably enjoy these simple strategies more too.
Get more low-key launch strategies at the Low Key Launch Formula workshop on May 25. Save your seat now! If you want to meet the coaches behind the Monthly Marketing Moment, you can check them out at https://www.laurawrightofficial.com/ & https://amberannette.com/.
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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. Hello sweet friend, and welcome to episode 42 of the Ill Communication Podcast. Today you're going to find out how I built a multi six figure business without any complicated funnels, huge ad spend, massive team or major stress. I'm going to share a few of the tools I use to keep things simple and easy as I've grown my business and at the end of today's episode, I'm going to share a way you can get your hands on some of my favorite zero cost, minimal effort, low key launch strategies to help you grow your business without spending thousands of dollars in ads and complicated funnels. Now as I'm recording this episode, it's a Tuesday, and if you're a mom like me, you probably know Tuesday is Taco Tuesday. I often cook some variation of tacos on Tuesdays. It could be fajitas, soft tacos, hard tacos, Taco Bell enchiladas, or my go to burritos.
[00:01:54] A couple of years ago, I discovered the simplest and cheapest burrito recipe. It has just three ingredients flour, tortillas, a can of refried beans and shredded cheese. And it is so simple to make. You spread about a third of a cup of refried beans onto a flour tortilla top with a little shredded cheese. Roll it up and then pan fry it until golden brown and melty. When I'm in a rush to finish my workday and put some food on the table for my teenage boys to gobble up before we rush out to ball practice, this simple recipe is always a winner. My kids love it. They eat it up without complaint, which is like the equivalent of winning the mom marathon. Anyway, my point is this It's such a stupidly simple recipe three ingredients and a simple technique. And it doesn't just put food on the table. It's actually a meal. My kids enjoy eating without complaining. Now, when my husband makes these burritos, he tries to get a little fancy and put in extra vegetables and spices. But to be honest, the kids don't enjoy them as much. And in fact, neither do I. Sorry, Chad. I actually prefer the simple, basic flavors. And sure, I topped the burrito with hot sauce and enjoy my veggies on the side. But sometimes overcomplicating a recipe doesn't create a better result. And the same is true in business.
[00:03:26] In this super hyped up hustle culture we find online, it is so easy to get wrapped up in the next big thing. The marketing and business gurus tell you like you need complicated quiz funnels or flashy sales pages. You need to post six times a day on social media. You need Alex Hormozi style videos or you need to spend eleventy million dollars on ads, team and tech. And I'm here to say, No, you frickin don't. You can build a highly profitable, service based business by using basic tried and true marketing principles and sales strategies. And it can be easy, simple, low cost and yes, even lazy. So in today's episode, I'm sharing a few of these low key, lazy launch and sales strategies with you. These are the things that have worked very well for me and very well for many other clients and colleagues. And the first tool I'm recommending is good old Google Docs. When you're first starting out in business, launching your offers and growing your audience, you might think you need to have a super sexy website and sales pages. I've known far too many entrepreneurs who waste thousands of dollars on designers and copywriters to create a sexy sales page for a brand new offer. But here's the thing. When you're selling a new offer or service, you actually don't need a fancy sales page. All you need is a cheap and cheerful Google doc. When I first launched the Joy of Copy Club and back then it was called the Soulful Sales Copy and Coaching Club.
[00:05:06] I just created a Google doc. I formatted it a little bit with headlines, body copy and of course some gifts. But it was very basic and very simple. It had just enough information and persuasion. Prospective members could read and then decide to book a call to see if it's a good fit. And in the Google doc, there was a hyperlink to email me or my team to book that call. It didn't even launch a booking calendar. I used that cheap and cheerful Google doc for many months and only after I made several sales and knew I had a proven offer did I then turn it into a sales page on my website. But to be honest, the copy and layout are very much the same and the call to action is still to email my team to schedule a call to see if it's a good fit or to join. There's no complicated shopping cart or click to buy. I don't have my stripe account connected to my sales page because this copy coaching offer doesn't need it. People who want to buy my copywriting services, whether it's the joy of copy club or a 1 to 1 service, aren't going to book that service without meeting me first. So there's no need to build a complicated process and I don't need a super flashy sales page with a built in payment taker to accomplish this.
[00:06:30] Many of my favorite marketers and some of the best coaches I follow also use. Simple Google Docs or PDFs to test and sell new offers. So if you're just starting out in business or if you've been in business a couple of years and are launching a new offer, don't over complicate things, especially if you don't feel very techie or you don't want to pay someone to build a sales page for you. Just create a simple Google doc or a word doc and share that with your prospective clients. I promise it doesn't have to be more complicated. The next strategy I've used to grow my list and enroll people into my group program or to work with me privately is something I learned from my past coaches Laura Wright and Amber Arnett. It's the simple monthly marketing moment. It's where you have one date per month where you host some kind of a marketing moment, like an event, a workshop, a masterclass or a webinar. Now it's easy to overthink and overcomplicate this. It's because a lot of the gurus will tell you you have to have a specific webinar with specific sales slides and then a pitch at the end, followed by a sophisticated and sexy sales page, and that you need to run ads to sell your webinar and stacks of emails to support it all. And yes, those strategies can work, but so does the simpler approach.
[00:07:53] Every month or every two months, I host a marketing moment. Sometimes it's a workshop on a specific topic, like writing a welcome sequence or writing your about page. Other times I've hosted a simple open office hours to provide free copy coaching. These monthly marketing moments are a chance for people to experience what it's like to work with me. It builds, know, like and trust and authority, and it attracts new subscribers to my list. Also, having a monthly marketing moment on my calendar gives me a reason to create and share content to talk about myself and my offers and to show up more for my audience. It helps light a fire under my ass to market myself and it gets me into motion. It doesn't just motivate my audience to get to know me, but it motivates me to show up for my audience. And just like that good old refried bean burrito. I keep it super simple. I typically just use the zoom registration form instead of a landing page. My team and I manually upload registrations into my email service provider and then I send a few follow up emails. I'll reach out to a few different coaches or past clients and invite them to share the free event with their communities. And now that I have a podcast, I can use the dynamic ad feature which is free to me to promote my monthly marketing moments. Could I have a sophisticated landing page funnel software and auto registration process? Yes.
[00:09:27] Could I run ads to grow my list and audience a little faster? Yep. But then it wouldn't feel so easy for me. It would feel more complicated. And I like that things feel simple and a little more analog. It appeals to the Gen Xer in me. I may be growing my audience and my business at a slower rate than some of my competitors, but I'm also growing it at a pace that suits me and my busy Gen X lifestyle. And hey, I'm not perfect. Sometimes it's not a monthly marketing moment, but it's an every other monthly marketing moment. And what I have noticed is that when I don't host an event for several months, my revenue declines and my audience growth plateaus. So it's just a nice, easy way to have something on my calendar that commits me to show up and promote myself. It allows me to experiment with different kinds of marketing moments, test new offers, test new audience and marketing without spending so much time and money on complicated, sophisticated funnels. The monthly marketing moment is a lazy, low key way to create a networking opportunity to get in front of some new faces and invite your existing audience to experience working with you. And speaking of lazy and low key, there are several things I do to promote my monthly marketing moments that don't cost any money, but they do cost just a little time and a teensy amount of creativity.
[00:10:59] I share these strategies with my launch copy clients and the members of the Joy of Copy Club and keep listening because I'm going to share how you can get access to them too. These strategies are actually so simple that a lot of business owners actually forget to do them because we kind of get wrapped up in all the complicated, costly ways of promoting our services or offers. Business owners get so focused on creating stories and reels and lives and pins that they actually forget some very basic and very important free things to help you sell your services. So here are some of the low key launch strategies you can use to promote your services or monthly marketing moments. The first one is something I see so many people forget and it drives me crazy. It's simply sharing a square static post on your IG grid or your Facebook page announcing your offer. Simple. Creative with the name of your offer and now open or now enrolling or sign up today helps me quickly and easily see your launching or creating something new. With a simple static announcement post on Instagram or Facebook. I don't have to watch a long reel or swipe through several stories to get the gist of your offer. Plus, there have been so many times I've wanted to share and cross-promote events or offers other coaches and course creators are promoting. I go to their Instagram profile to share it with my audience, but I can't find the offer anywhere on their grid.
[00:12:37] There's actually no announcement post. Sure, they've been creating stories and lives in reels, but there isn't a simple announcement post I can easily share with my audience. When you don't have that simple announcement post and pin it to the top of your feed, you're making it difficult for your audience to quickly see what's going on with you, and you're making it difficult for other people to share the offer with their audience. So this low key launch strategy, number one, is to include a simple announcement post, not a real not a video on your social media pages. Low key launch strategy number two is to use the events feature in LinkedIn and Facebook. These are free ways to promote your monthly marketing moments or events. This isn't going to create a flood of signups, but it's just another free way to promote yourself That doesn't take up much time. And here's why this is important. People need to see a message at least seven times and sometimes as many as 20 times before they take action. So leveraging some of the free tools like Facebook or LinkedIn events to cross promote means your message is being viewed another time in another format by your audience. The more times your audience sees and hears your message, the more likely they will act upon it. And trust me, you'll get more sick about talking about your events and services than your audience will get of hearing about it.
[00:14:08] Low key launch strategy number three is to update your link in bio to just the one link you want people to click or buy. It's super simple and easy with Biocyte or Linktree or other services to promote several items in the link that's provided within your profile on Instagram or LinkedIn. And in fact, at the time of recording this, Instagram now offers two links in your bio to help people take the next step with you. But when you're promoting a free or a paid offer, you should ditch the multiple links and just go with one call to action. Here's why. When you're actively promoting something, you want people to buy or join that one thing. But if you have multiple links in your bio to your podcast blog, Amazon store, your speaker page and your monthly marketing moment, your audience will get distracted and confused when you're in a sales or launch mode. Remember the rule of one. Give your audience and followers just one call to action to the thing you want to sell. You'll reduce confusion and distraction and you'll increase clicks and conversions. And there are even more free, simple ways to promote your business or your events. The joy of Copy club members in my private clients receive a checklist of dozens of free and easy ways to promote these services and events, and there's a special way you can get your hands on this hot little number, too.
[00:15:39] On Wednesday, May 25th, I'm hosting my next monthly marketing moment. It's going to be a workshop all about the low key launch formula. I'll walk you through the elements you need to have in place to have a successful low key launch. Plus, you'll get access to a few of my templates to help you write killer copy for your next low key launch, including the low key Launch Strategies checklist. So the next time you promote an offer or event, you won't forget some of these simple business marketing basics. And remember, these are the exact strategies and tools I've used to grow a multi six figure service based business in a very lazy, low key way. So visit Khimki NHL.com slash low key launch formula to save your seat. I'll drop a link in the show notes as well. Well, that's a wrap on this episode of Ill Communication. I shared a few of my favorite simple and often overlooked tools and strategies to grow your audience and your business. We talked about why a simple, cheap and cheerful Google doc can be the best way to sell a new offer. We talked about why monthly marketing moments are an uncomplicated way for you to create a mini launch event without all the complex tech and pricey advertising. And I shared three low key launch strategies many businesses and brands forget to use that could be costing you more sales and signups so the next time you're.
[00:17:10] Promoting yourself, whether it's a free event or a paid offer. Don't overcomplicate it for yourself. Remember, some of the simplest strategies can be even more effective than complicated pricey ones, and you'll probably enjoy these simple strategies a little more. Kind of like those cheap and easy refried bean burritos my kids and I love so much. Thank you so much for joining today. I hope to see you at my next monthly marketing moment or right back here for the next episode. Hey, 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 Kilcommon Copy Club. I'll see you next week.
Resources Mentioned
Join the Low Key Launch Formula Workshop
Learn more about Amber Annette
Additional Resources
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