Marketing for creatives in 2024 (Part 1 of 2)

Mark Tioxon: Existing long enough for people to find you. That's actually a big part of it, so a lot of people quit. So if you can exist long enough for people to find you, you're probably going to get work. 

Lex Roman: Today's show is all about 2024 predictions for marketing your creative business.

We're talking channels, revenue streams, and messaging to help you find more buyers and make more money this year. Joining me is Mark Tioxon.

Mark runs both a service business and a product company, and he tends to be more social media driven in his marketing, while I tend to be more relational. So you'll get a mix of both approaches in this series. This is part one of two, so come back next week to see the rest. I'm Lex Roman. I help creatives make smarter marketing bets, and you're tuned in to the Low Energy Leads Show.

Lex: I invited you on this show because you and I have such different perspectives about digital marketing. 

Mark: Hi, I'm Mark. I am the founder and one of the co-owners of Witchy Kombuchy. It's Atlanta's most magical kombucha. In 2018, I nearly died from autoimmune disease and on that healing journey, I say that the meds saved my life, but a change in diet is what enabled my body to heal. I decided to make a batch of kombucha and I told myself, if this batch doesn't work out, I'm not doing it because it is weird. It did work out and it was delicious.

And sometimes your hobbies can't stay hobbies. So now we have the most magical kombucha company in all of Atlanta, and that's actually one of my main businesses. So that's like 40 plus hours a week, but it's a growing company, so all of that money goes back into it. So I don't live off of that or anything like that. So the other living expenses and everything else is my photography company, and I've been a wedding photographer, brand portrait photographer, all the things photographer for over a decade here in Atlanta. 

Lex: Welcome to the show, Mark. 

Mark: Thank you for having me. 

Lex: 2023 was a challenging year for a lot of creatives. Work was really up and down, and so going into 2024, I want people to think about trends that are changing where they should focus their energy. So we're going to break that down today and I want to start by talking about winning visibility channels going into 2024. Are there channels that jump out to you as like this is a place people should consider showing up? 

Mark: Still Instagram, absolutely. TikTok and then any of the in-person group gatherings that you can find? 

Lex: Yes, so I think that that's becoming even bigger. I think to me, winning visibility channels in 2024 is more small arenas in your community or in online spaces that are more curated. 

Mark: One of the things that needs to change is people's mindsets when they go into those groups. Everybody thinks maybe they're end customers, but you really need to go into it more of a business to business mindset, even though you might have retail customers of some sort, the people that you're networking with is a business to business connection and you need to approach it that way. A more efficient method is to connect with connectors and on some level on really the level that is business to business instead of trying to look for clients. 

Lex: Yes, connect with connectors is a phrase to etch on to a piece of paper and pin up on your vision board, connect with connectors. Can you say more about what that means? 

Mark: If you know any extroverts or you identify any extroverts, go meet them. You don't have to be an extrovert, you're just talking to them. One-on-one, right? So you don't have to be the extrovert to meet their extrovertness, you just have to go ahead and talk to them. So you just have to make that one-on-one connection and they will do their thing automatically, but if you can make that one-on-one connection with them, it amplifies your energy. 

Lex: I think that's an important point because sometimes folks think that they can just network and network and that will pay off, but it really is who you're talking to, right?

Mark: Everybody's tired of, we've always been tired of the idea of networking. So it's really figuring out how you can be as weird as possible when you meet people and find those other people be 

Lex: As weird as possible. Okay. What about content place? So in terms of visibility channels, we've got things like SEO to a blog. We've got things like newsletter swaps, we've got things like podcasting. Are any of those things becoming bigger in 2024 

Mark: Live streaming. So different platforms have different things. So I think on Instagram, if you have any sort of following, if you can cultivate a friends list, do more friends list posts, so hopefully they see it and you can actually have a more specific message and again, kind of get weirder, and since you feel comfortable with those people that are on your friends list, you can get weirder and just be more individual there.

And then same thing over on TikTok or even on any of the platforms that do the live streaming. A lot of the things that people are saying now is that we want a friend or video on in the background, which is what sort of live streaming does, even though you have to kind watch it, but there's always this loneliness factor in our society. So good or bad, there's this level of I feel really comfortable with this person that's getting ready or doing a task and talking and asking and I can see them. They say it's like FaceTiming a friend, but it's not. But it's essentially that feeling 

Lex: Parasocial relationships for the win. Interesting. Okay, so creating a close friends list and live streaming even to a smaller crowd. 

Mark: Well, you think about service providers, how big of an audience do they really need for the number of clients that they're going for? 

Lex: Okay. I want to talk about getting weird later when we talk about messages. I think that's an interesting point. What do you think about paid ads or paid ads going bigger or smaller in 2024? 

Mark: They're bigger if you have the money. 

Lex: If you have the money, yeah. You think for creatives they're big? 

Mark: Actually, no. Yeah, no, because you're still not making the same connection. So as far as creatives or even a lot of service providers, no. 

Lex: Yeah, I think Facebook paid ads are going away. 

Mark: Even the complexity of having to run a campaign.

Lex: I think people are tired of fussing with all the settings you have to do there and it's like, yeah, this money isn't well spent. What about blogging? Do you think blogging is coming with us into 2024? 

Mark: Blogging is not.

Lex: I feel like it's not either, but I do know people that are really amped on blogging still. 

Mark: Well, that's because their form of blogging is their form of email list, so they've already built it. But if you were to build a blog from scratch and just volume wise of what's out there, I think it was something like there are 8 billion people in the world, but there's only 4 million podcasts and lots of 'em are never get past episode four. So you have a much greater chance of building a small powerful audience with your podcast than you ever do with your blog. 

Lex: Yeah, small powerful audiences are winning strategy. I think, and I agree with blogging, the main goal there was SEO was getting found on Google, and I think that's kind of a hard game for a lot of creatives to play because as you found out being an Atlanta based photographer, it was easier 10 years ago to get seen on Google. It's become even more and more competitive, which means that now you have to do so much more blogging or so much more content creation than you would maybe want to do. 

Mark: Even just the going back to the amount of connection you can do through a blog versus video or even voice is so much stronger in the other platforms than it is just in the written word on a blog right now. 

Lex: And I think for service providers that are working with their audience directly, that hearing you and seeing you in action makes such a huge impact. 

Mark: Well, even if you consider your competition not getting too competitive about things, but if there is somebody that is out there, I can just put a video and I hear them, I feel more connected to them than me having to go to the effort of reading another person's words and not hearing their voice, not having them talk to me directly. 

Lex: I have found with this podcast that people move faster through my growth engine because they listen to me on this show 

Mark: Even just visually, and it's a trick that I carry over from when I dated people online. So just to speed up things. So say you match with somebody online and then maybe I have a date with them a week later, I would send them a photo of me every day. So they would get used to seeing a picture of me every day.

And by the time that we went on our first date, they really felt like they knew. They knew me because they'd seen my picture every day, maybe a video or whatever, even though I just said hi in the video or I text. But just that everyday communication cut out a lot of the getting to know people. 

Lex: I feel like this is a mark specific strategy, but 

Mark: It isn't because the more times it's even touch points, the more times someone sees you automatically, they're going to be more comfortable with you. 

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Lex: Let's move on. This is a fun one. Revenue streams, predictions about winning revenue streams. So when I say revenue streams, I mean things like the difference between digital products and physical products. I mean one-on-one done for you stuff versus things like memberships courses. I also mean things like the difference between maybe the agency model and a creator model. What do you think are the winning revenue streams? 

Mark: As many as you can do 

Lex: Do 'em all? 

Mark: Well, not all, but the ones that fit you. So you're going to have a core product, and then what are the easiest ways to extend from there that are still as connected to that product as possible? Not start selling shoes if you're a kombucha company, but other things that are connected to that or things around your brand. 

Lex: I want to remind you that you're on the low energy leads show. So let's say you don't want to do all the revenues, dreams. What do you think are the ones that folks should gravitate to, especially people that are creative services?

Okay, one of the things that I think is really interesting that I would say is a winning revenue stream that you have is that you're bundling your photo services and you shoot a bunch of families on the same day or you shoot a bunch of portraits on the same day. What's interesting about that is that it's very efficient for you as a service provider. It's also really cost effective for them. I think that's a really interesting revenue stream. It's like the group offer that's still very personal. I don't know what you would say about that.

Mark: I think that one of the most powerful things is to collaborate every opportunity you can. So say you have an offering as many times or as many different collaborations you can with other persons, it's almost a different offering.

So I'm a photographer. I do a portrait session day with a ballet school, so I can go to a different school and it's a different audience and they don't have to be connected at all, but it's completely different audience. I'm only doing half of the heavy lifting as far as the marketing goes and they're doing the rest. That is a thing that I can replicate at different schools where I'm not working so hard on the marketing end. Anytime you can collaborate in that way with your core product with different audiences, it's a much easier lift. 

Lex: Yes, it is. But what I also think is cool about it is that it sort of combines the group, the scalable offer and the one-on-one because it's more cost effective for them. It's not like they're hiring you for shoots. I think that's really an interesting way to think about your services. It's like how do, to the extent that I want to serve an audience that doesn't have five or six figures of cash to give me, how can I accommodate them in a way that this is going to make sense for me?

So as a similar example of that, Eleanor Mayrhofer, who's also been on this show, she's doing a group build our website together cohort where she's advising about how to build the website and I think she might be giving them some tools and things to sort of get their faster, but it's more cost effective than hiring a web designer. But it is not a course, and I think that's really important. You're still doing a done for you service, but in a cost effective way. And I feel like that's a missing revenue stream that needs to be bigger in 2024. 

Mark: If you can find the different audiences, then it can be more lucrative 

Lex: Finding that group that's waiting for that offer 

Mark: And different groups and keep 'em 

Lex: keep 'em?

Mark: What I was going to say separate, but 

Lex: Send them a text message every day with a photo of you.

Okay. What do you think about creator monetization models? Is that becoming more interesting or less because we've seen a lot of service providers, a lot of web designers, copywriters, coaches move into podcasting, YouTubing, live streaming newsletter writing, ostensibly they're thinking about digital products, they're thinking about sponsorships, things like that. How much is creator monetization growing in 2024? 

Mark: It's unlimited. It really is. The amount of people that try to create a podcast or some other show and quit after 1, 2, 3, 4 episodes is endless. So if you can outlast them, part of it really is just existing long enough for people to find you. That's actually a big part of it. So a lot of people quit. So if you can exist long enough for people to find you, you're probably going to get work. 

Lex: Yeah, I think that's true. And a lot of people give up in their first year of business for that reason. It's like a very small percentage that make it to year five

Mark: So get that other job so you can make it to year five. 

Lex: Get that outside funding.

Mark: Get that outside funding. 

Lex: So creator monetization is expanding, which I think is an interesting one. So for those of us that do sort of knowledge work or creating content, as you and I both do, there is monetization to be had in that space. So if you're like, I do want to serve musicians or I do want to serve artists and they're poor, you can monetize the audience growth in a different way by engaging with brands or having a third party that's helping

Mark: Any project that you do podcast especially should serve or accomplish several goals. You're not just trying to create an entertaining episode. You're trying to create an episode where either it's a vehicle for you to connect with people and then connect with other people or build an audience, get them on your list. So any sort of thing you're creating is going to accomplish a number of goals on top of being the of thing that you like to make.

So don't be making a podcast if you don't like to make podcast or make podcasts long enough until you figure out how you like to make them. So while it also serves all these other purposes without you thinking too hard.

Lex: What do you think about memberships in group programs? You've done a lot of these in your time. Do you think that's getting bigger in 2024 or smaller? Oh, 

Mark: It's getting bigger.

Lex: You think so?

Mark: Yeah, absolutely. MLMs keep getting bigger. So there's always another MLM. So on a lower scale, along with the whole loneliness trend of everything online and people, we want to be part of group, we go into these things with the best intentions and the best hopes.

And if you can deliver on that on some level, on any level, you're going to have a core people that are your super fans and it doesn't take too much. You just have to be involved, which at some point is a lot. But if you're building a community, you're building a community, so you have to be there. 

Lex: What about digital products? So digital downloads, templates, swipe files, things like that. Getting bigger or smaller in 2024?

Mark: They're bigger, but as a secondary offering, and they're only purchased on the authority of however much the person trusts you, not the strength of this thing is the greatest thing by itself. It's buying it because I trust you and you said that this thing is great. 

Lex: And I really think that digital products rely on having a substantial content engine. I don't know anybody that sells digital products substantially where it's a worthwhile revenue stream where they're not a content creator in some way. Social media, YouTube podcasts, 

Mark: Again, it's just a widget. Then I'm trying to sell this widget by itself. Lemme tell you about all the features of it.

Lex: But if you don't have a content engine, I see people launching digital products without an audience. If you have a very small audience, you can sell high ticket contracts, but it's very hard to sell that $15 PDF. Have you seen anybody who has a small audience that can sell digital products like that? 

Mark: No. And usually I try to find it for free download somewhere. 

Lex: What about one-on-one done for you offer? So in the past when I started in my agency days, was 2012 done for you was all that I saw? I don't remember anybody doing group programs or templates or things like that. We were sharing a lot of this stuff for free as ways to get leads, but it was like, come and we'll do it for you. So what about done for you? Do you think that's becoming bigger for people or smaller? 

Mark: I think it'll become a bigger option that still needs to be on the table, sort of just like the three-tiered pricing. You want people to buy the middle one, but then you have to have the higher pricing. So I think that should be an option, but you will direct or steer people towards your bread and butter. 

Lex: I think about a lot the agency model of selling services and how agency owners that I know that have been in the game for a long time, a lot of times they want to get out of that. They want to get out of the service delivery because it's like one for one. You come in, you pay me, I do the thing. There's never an ability to step off that treadmill. And so a lot of the agency owners that I know that have been in this for 10, 15 years, they're looking to other monetization models. So I think one-on-one is getting less. 

Mark: I think it'll always be there. 

Lex: I think people will always want it, but I think service providers want to offer it less. 

Mark: And so where is that?

Lex: In terms of prediction?

Mark: Well just people were always going to be wanting it. They will. And so maybe I will find the person to deliver what I want. 

Lex: It's interesting though. I think that more people are becoming open to group offers, templatized offers, productized offers, as we've talked about on the show, I think people are open to that more and more than they used to. It used to be like, no, I need someone to do this logo, and now it's like, maybe I could buy a logo kit. I feel like people are becoming more important as generations get older, more of us are tech savvy who are in the people that are buying these services. More of us are tech savvy. 

Mark: I think that might be part of where they are in the evolution of their business. After you've made a couple logos for your various small businesses, you have an idea of, you have an understanding that if you hired a designer, a proper designer to create a proper logo, that it really would be better than something that you have made, 

Lex: Right? I think this changes though if your client base likes to learn capabilities from you. So if your service is also about building capabilities on their team, I think that this can change. So for example, if you're a web designer, a developer, a copywriter, where the client team also has people that should know those things or know about those things, I think a done with you offer can make more sense. I find that this is true of growth trackers. There are people that join Growthtrackers, my membership program, because they don't just want to learn how to do lead generation. They want to empower their clients to also leverage these growth marketing techniques. 

Mark: Do you think that'll be one of the ways that it'll happen is simply that, not that they're tricked into it, but come in with this idea and actually in the process we will be doing it together? 

Lex: No, I think that it's savvier than that. I think that it's team leaders, it's executives who recognize that they need to skill up their team and they can lean on service providers, not just to do it for them, but to also train their team. And I think that's true of any service provider that's working with a business where there's related jobs on that team already, which I think is true for copywriting, branding strategists. There's related services on the team already, so you can be hired to also train up their team, which I think is an interesting model for folks that are getting tired of delivering project work.

Send in your predictions for 2024. You can comment on this video, whether you're watching on YouTube or Spotify. You can also send me a message on low Energy Leads website, low energy leads.com. If you want more of low energy leads, make sure you get on the newsletter at read dot low energy leads.com and stay tuned for more episodes coming this month. Until next time, keep your energy low until the value will be high.

You can find more episodes of the Low Energy Leads Show on my YouTube at Low Energy Leads. We break down specific marketing strategies and talk about how to do them. And I interview guests about how they get leads so you can improve week by week, month by month, your approach to finding your best clients. Come back every week for fresh episodes.