Marketing for creatives in 2024 (Part 2 of 2)

Mark: Because people like to correct. And then if they're correcting you, they're engaging with your content on some level mark's, 

Lex: Instagram brain is really coming out. 

Mark: So there's all of that, but at the same time, you're really just trying to communicate and talk and say something that you want to say to other people to total one person that's right across from you. 

Lex: Today's show is all about 20, 24 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 two of two, so if you miss the first one, you can find that wherever you're listening to this one. I'm Lex Roman. I help creatives make smarter marketing bets, and you're tuned in. So the low energy leads show. Okay, let's talk about losing revenue streams. Can we talk about courses?

Mark:  Courses? 

Lex: My prediction is that courses are going to go, there's going to be less courses in 2024. I should caveat that there's going to be courses, but there's going to be less courses making money in 2024.  

Mark: Are these courses that just end or are they courses that are entryways into the community?

Lex: Selling a course? On Teachable, right? I made a course about a thing and you can take it or don't take it, and I don't care. 

Mark: I think that what courses will exist and are successful will change or shrink because there will always be some easy entry level. So I need to learn how to do some basic sewing. I either find it on YouTube or maybe just teachable, 

Lex: But you know that you won't do the Teachable. Mark, we already talked about this. You're like, I'm not going to do it. So this is the thing. Here's why I think courses are going away, because unless you're in college 2020, 2021, people were taking a lot of courses.

They were learning to make sourdough bread, learning watercolor, whatever. They were like, I'm going to do this course. And maybe they did the course, they had nothing else to do. That's not the world we're in anymore. And I think many of us, especially in the B2B space, but even parents, people are busy. No one's like I have a lot of time to sit here and watch videos about how to do this thing that I don't really want to do, but I don't have enough money to hire someone else to do for me. So I think that people are aware, they're self-aware enough to be like, I'm not going to buy a course. I need help on some level. I need at least a done with you. So I feel like courses are going sideways and that memberships communities are amping up instead. 

Mark: Do you think that because of the cost, of course, creation is cheaper and cheaper and cheaper that that'll make up for that loss and people will still make courses? 

Lex: People will still make courses, but I don't think anyone's going to buy them. I personally, my recommendation would be to not create a course unless you have a really sizable audience of DIYers. 

Mark: What if the course is again, that digital product? 

Lex: Yeah, I guess. I think that there's so much easier digital products that you could make for almost anything that are much more off the shelf. Think about all the things you could make a guide to how to use your brand, five different ways to use your brand photos. It doesn't need to be a course. It's more valuable if it's actually just a list with instructions. I don't need five videos on that, right? Save me time is the TLDR, right? 

Mark: So I will not be making a course on how to make kombucha. 

Lex: I mean, there's a world in which some things could still work as courses, but I think the idea that your clients who are coming to you to do stuff for them are going to instead take a course on it. I feel like it's a fallacy. 

Mark: Okay. 

Lex: If I'm like, Mark, I want you to do my branding photos, and you're like, actually, I did a course about how you can take your own photos, I'm going to be like, no, I want a photographer to do this. I don't want to learn photography.

Let's talk about predictions for messaging, winning messages and losing messages. So this goes back to the thing you were talking about earlier, about getting weird, being weird. Yes. I want to qualify that a bit because I think really what you're saying there is that you need to have a perspective and a voice that people want to listen to. 

Mark: Yes, absolutely. And be casual. So much of what we see or have seen online is scripted or just perfect. We're still coming out of the curated Instagram and TikTok ruined all video quality as far as what we're willing to accept and what we like and what we entertained and everything else. 

Lex: People are in their bed...

Mark: In their bed, in their car, the worst lighting, whatever, and just saying whatever they're thinking. So we're all so used to that and we accept that and we kind of crave that, especially when we've been bamboozled by nice expensive PR campaigns, advertising and everything else. So we appreciate someone, just a regular person telling me that they like this thing.

And there's always blurred lines of that because they're trying to sell something, but the best ones don't sell you. They're just even now as far as influencers, it's less of the influence. It's going to be less of the influencer telling you this is a great thing and more of them telling you some other story and they're holding this kombucha, right? And then it's that whole like, well, tell me about the kombucha because holding it this whole time and you didn't even say anything about it. So it's going to be more of that product placement than it is anything else. So along with that, you have to learn how to talk casually. Casual is a big thing that people have to learn how to be in front of a camera 

Lex: And not just in front of a camera. If you're listening and you're not a video person, we're not going to shame you into doing video. I think any medium, right? Writing and graphics, anything that you're doing in your business, you're communicating all the time. So I think that message, that's true. Even if you're one-on-one emailing people, you get cold messages, maybe you get cold outreach from people and it's very formal and very formulaic.

And instead maybe you get people that are trying to find something about you and trying to be more relatable, and it's like, which ones do you respond to? And you might be like, none. Well, me personally, I like to respond to the ones where they're clearly looked at my website or something like that. So that casual tone, the we're already on the same page. I understand you, I think is an interesting framing for your messaging no matter where you're showing up. And then in terms of winning messages, how would you say that thing about Instagram? It's like being more authentic, being more normal?

Mark: And more imperfect. And even if you want to take it to a nefarious level, having typos in there on some of your captions and everything else, or even just saying the wrong thing so that on some level people can correct you and stuff like that. So yeah, it's like a whole is 

Lex: Is that a thing? 

Mark: The whole complete strategy's being wrong on some things or saying something wrong or the wrong number just because at least on social media.

Lex: But not THAT wrong?

Mark: Not that wrong. It's more like just something that someone can easily correct you on and it's not a big deal because people like to correct. And then if they're correcting you, they're engaging with your content on some level 

Lex: Mark's, Instagram brain is really coming out. So 

Mark: There's all of that, but at the same time, you're really just trying to communicate and talk and say something that you want to say to other people, to the total one person that's right across from you.

Lex: Yeah, I think this idea of having a point of view on your work and your industry is becoming paramount to staying in the game because there's so many more options for services right now. There's so many web designers, there's so many SEO strategists, there's so many branding people, there's so many photographers. There's a million of you and me out there. What makes us interesting is our point of view on our work. That's really your defensible piece here. So to me, your messaging is becoming one of the most important things about your marketing. 

Mark: Well, that's always been the way to stand out and we forget that, right? And the idea, again, going back to how many clients do you ultimately need as a service provider to exist? You're not trying to get your video to a million people. You can't handle 5,000 clients. So you need whatever number that is. And so what is the minimum number of people that need to see your video, and what types of connections can that be made through Instagram or TikTok or however you're communicating with them, or even just your is in email, whether you're embedding a video or an audio or just you're texting email. 

Lex: How can you get that conversation farther along? How do you think about what those messages are that you should be communicating? 

Mark: One that you exist, that you're currently working, 

Lex: People like working with people who are working 

Mark: And not necessarily that everything's perfect all the time because obviously there's room there for asking for work, but they like to see that you have either that you're working on things or you're thinking about working on things or even talking about past work feels like you are working. So just reminding us that you exist and that you exist doing this thing that we might want to think about you for. 

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Lex: I think another winning messaging angle is success stories from that work. So not just I'm working, but here's exactly what we're doing today and here's the outcome. You do that with photography, so I'm helping today. Here's what this looked like. And I think more of us can be telling those success stories, especially those of us who do invisible work. 

Mark: There's not a lot of artifacts. One of the things that I need to get better at is actually talking about problems that have come across us and whether or not I solve them or even just something that I'm thinking about that I have right now. And that's one of the content ideas that I need to get better at doing is especially in the kombucha business, one of the things I say that keeps the kombucha interesting, I always tell people I never dreamed of having a beverage company as my work, but the container of a beverage company and having to do everything within that, there are a lot of problems that I have to solve that keep it very interesting. And that's really what keeps me going. As much as I enjoy kombucha and all the things and it saved my life and all that stuff, but solving the problems within this container of a beverage company is what really keeps it interesting, and I need to communicate that piece more. 

Lex: And that's pretty unique to you and Witchy like a unique thing that only you can provide us. It's not a regurgitation of someone else's thing, which I think is a losing message at this point. So predictions for losing messages is regurgitating stuff that everyone else is saying, which sounds like obviously, duh, why would you do that? But I see that stuff all the time on social media.

Mark: That's when you get into, let me talk about things in the industry, right? 

Lex: Well, I think it's different though. If you're going to talk about things in the industry, I think you can have a winning take on that, which is like, I have a perspective on this, or I have information you should hear about this. I think a losing message is like, let me just regurgitate the same words everyone else is using. But I see that stuff all the time. People are just parroting messages that they're so saturated on the internet right now. And I think my email coach said something to me a couple months ago where she was like, if you're using words that everyone's hearing everywhere, they're meaningless. Now. They're meaningless. 

Mark: Especially if I'm using them. I joke because I'm so out of many things that if it eventually got to me and I know of it, that means it's big or mainstream or we're way late on the thing. 

Lex: Yeah. I'll tell you a phrase. When I used to work in tech, the question that would always come up in meetings was, well, what problem are you trying to solve? And I was like, I'm so sick of hearing this question. It is like ask me something new. So I think the same thing is true of messaging. It's like if you're not hitting anybody with these generic messages, maybe it's time to have a point of view at perspective on it. And I think actually industry predictions and trends can be really interesting depending on your space, but you have to have a take on that. It can't just be a generic regurgitation of what someone else is doing. 

Mark: Completely wrong. Predictions for 2024 

Lex: Now, Mark, that would probably work if you did it. 

Mark: You really have to come up with new variety actually. 

Lex: Well, I think your point about the beverage company is an interesting vehicle, and this is interesting to me. Mark is important because I find folks are slogging through marketing that they think is going to work, but they hate doing, and that generally doesn't work if you hate your marketing. I don't think I've ever encountered someone who's like, I hate my marketing, I hate doing it, and it's weirdly working. I've never encountered that. If you hate it, it's probably not working as well. Well, it 

Mark: Goes back to finding why it's interesting for you and then being able to talk about that and hopefully you are doing something that is still interesting to you, at least one piece of it, and you can talk in that direction. 

Lex: You got to find the interesting angle, 

Mark: At least what gets you interested about it.

Lex: Okay. I want to close by talking about something you spoke about early in this interview, which is about the idea of collaborations. Because one of my big predictions for 2024 is more solopreneurs teaming up with other people. So smaller businesses combining forces. I think the forces from big conglomerations global corporate forces are becoming so heavy now. Businesses have to work together. How do you see that practically playing out in 2024? 

Mark: I think that if we can get more creative on how we can work together, that's part of one of the challenges. On top of just meeting people. We have our weekly group meetup and I'm like, I have no idea how I can work with these people really. So coming up with either a whole other project to work on something that we can work on together with the willingness of course, but coming up with some sort of creative vehicle that we can all of a sudden work on together, that effort into that area will make everything much easier because it's always like, okay, so you do this thing, does that automatically align with things that I've done in the past? Can I use, I use you? Can you use me? So what if we have to make something new so that we can work together? 

Lex: Yeah. A guest on this show, maybe a month ago, Artur Perez talked about the serendipity of meeting people and then trying to picture their relationship to your business and sort of paying attention to that over time. And I think one of the things that he did that's an interesting strategy for more of us to do is sort of bring people on as contractors who had skills he didn't have. So sort of envisioning your team as bigger than just an employment contract. And I think that same model can work in a collaboration. So it's like I don't have really a lot of paid ads expertise, for example. So if I was going to do something in that space, I would collaborate with someone and then I'm growing my team, but I don't even have to contract them. We can just do it as a collaboration. That idea of expanding your team idea too.

Mark: I wish that I had people that knew how to use me actually in the things that I do. I don't get that many collaborative offers from people. I consider my peers. So maybe a part of it is actually also putting that out there more. Yeah. 

Lex: Yes. I think that's a really interesting and heartening way to start the year is who could I be collaborating with? Could we team up and offer services together? Could we strengthen each other's message online? How could this work? How can we help each other? Because it's really challenging to do this work alone. 

Mark: One of the blocks is that we always feel, I've been in business photography and other things for over a decade, so I need to get over and realize and accept that I could provide that much value to somebody else. 

Lex: And I do think you have to let go. A little bit of the preciousness of this is how much dollar value my thing is worth, and how I think you have to get over that and sort of just be like, okay, how can we help each other? And this is going to be sufficient in what we agree on

Mark: Well, the idea is that the project, it goes into areas that you can't do by yourself. So whether it's, it's not numbers and numbers. The idea is that the collaboration reaches to audiences or areas that you can't do by yourself no matter what. So the value isn't necessarily like, I need you to be equal value on this thing. 

Lex: Right? It's like captain plan with our forces combined. Alright, last thoughts. Predictions for 2024. 

Mark: There's more connections, more people trying to figure out how they can connect to other people. And then as much as we fight video or social media or podcasts, spending the energy and time to figure out how we can comfortably be on there, because it is just like the telephone. It is a vehicle for us to connect to people and we have to remember that and just figure out how to do it in a way that we can feel comfortable. 

Lex: I'm going to take a different tack. I invited you on this show because you and I have such different perspectives about digital marketing. I appreciate and validate that perspective and agree with it. At the same time, I really want to encourage people to do less. I think that we've been really burning ourselves out on doing all of the different marketing things and operating.

We're a much bigger team than we are, and I think we really need to cut our losses and focus in on the two to three things that are really working, that are showing promise or that we're excited about and do less stuff that we don't want to do. So if you're jazzed about video, I definitely would take Mark's advice. I agree that it's really effective, but if the thought of that makes you want to hide under the covers, then I would remind you that there's always another path and that you should do the thing that's most effective for you and not bother with advice from other people who don't have evidence about your business. 

Mark: Absolutely. Figure out how you can do the things that you want to do.

Lex: 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, lowenergyleads.com.

If you want more of low energy leads, make sure you get on the newsletter at read.lowenergyleads.com and stay tuned for more episodes coming this month. 

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.

Until next time, keep your energy low until the value will be high.