On today’s Engaging Marketeer, Darren is speaking with Ariel Hubbard, who is over in Washington state, in the U.S. They talk about how she took her massage training business, during covid, from face to face onto online, how she pioneered in her industry by being one of the very first people to use social media as a marketing tool, way back before Twitter was even born never mind ruined by Elon Musk, how she uses her podcast to attract new business and much more.
Using common sense to target your product or service
Darren: You talk about marketing through common sense and intuition. What is that because I have no common sense?
Ariel: Wow, you actually admit it, most people don’t. So marketing 101 is who’s your target market, finding out who your target market is and how are you going to reach them.
So the thing is, because of the advent of technology, there are a lot of ways to reach people where we couldn’t reach people before and in the olden days we used to send out little flyers or little cards or we make phone calls or we put ads on TV or radio. But these days, because there’s so many different outlets, with social media and now with the advent of AI in the mix, how are we reaching people? So the thing is you want to think about who you’re going to connect with and how you’re going to connect with them in a way that makes sense to that person. What I mean by that is, people have their preferred styles of communicating and they want to communicate in a certain platform.
Young people, they communicate via gaming platforms, so you want to talk to a young person, you have to get on a game and talk to them through the chat. If you’re older, it might be through texting or it might be through email but email is tough because a lot of people don’t read the email. So the common sense thing is “Okay, how do I reach people where they’re going to be? Not where I like to communicate from.”
How do you reach uh those people where they’re at? I had a woman reach out to me, through networking, so the word of mouth is huge, that’s a big one depending on what kind of business you have. If you have a service based business, word of mouth is the best way to get new clients but if you’re trying to reach people or you’re new or you have a different type of business, you have to reach them a different way.
So where are those people? That’s where the common sense comes in, so in the B2B world it is probably going to be on LinkedIn or it’s going to be in a business conference or at a lunch with business colleagues, or something like that.
But if you’re in a service space where there’s some intimacy involved, let’s say a hair stylist, where there needs to be a feeling of safety or connection, that’s going to be a lot of that’s going to be like uh people talking about you buzz about you saying you’re great you know that you know what you’re doing
So I did this thing, I call it gorilla social media. When I do post, I look at who looks at my posts that means they’re thinking about me because they’ll either like it or they’ll look at it or they’ll comment on it. Then, after a certain number of posts, I’ll reach out to them personally because I’m at the top of their mind, they’re looking at my stuff. And when I do that, I can usually close them on something. So if I’ve seen that they’ve looked at my things two, three, four, five times, I’ll reach out and say “Hey, did you know that I have this option?” or “I have this long distance class.”
Darren: So you’re actively using social media, because a lot of people just post stuff out there and forget about it. You’re laying bait, seeing who takes that bait and then you’re diving in there and grabbing them by the throat.
Ariel: Well I would use gentler terms but yes it’s true.
Going out of your way to meet your target market
Darren: I love what you say as well that you need to know where your target audience is. As you say, younger audiences, gaming platforms because I’ve had so many conversations with my kids over Minecraft, otherwise, I would never have used Minecraft. But now there are loads of business owners that say things like “Oh I don’t like Facebook so I’m not going to use it” but that’s where your customers are.
Ariel: You know what I say to this people? Get over yourself. You’re self-sabotaging.
Sometimes I say that directly and sometimes a little more gentle, depending on what someone can tolerate.
So I have been training people to do what I do for decades but for a lot of those people, they have a huge gap when it comes to marketing. People tend to resist using technology but the thing is, you can do so well with it if you just get over yourself a little bit. And I say address your resistance, look at why you have that resistance, deal with your resistance and use these wonderful channels to reach people.
I mean, half of my business or more comes from Facebook, from people referring people to me on a local site. It’s like a site for my town and these people refer me and actually more than half my business comes from that and that’s free, I don’t do anything, I just get people messaging me. Over the weekend, I had two people message me while I’m on vacation, it’s amazing. So social media can be incredible. If people get intimidated and uncomfortable, go take some classes. That’s how I learned, I started taking classes.
Way back in 2007, when I started social media, I started taking classes. I’m saying “Well this seems intimidating but I’m not going to let it get in my way!” So I just said “Okay, I’m going to make this happen.” So I at that time, I had a very small school and was competing with much larger schools in my area, that had way bigger budgets. The thing is, I was enrolling as many students as they were because the students were on social media and I was the only school in my area on social media.
And I had these guys from Google call me up and they’re trying to pitch me to buy their service. And I said “Do me a favour, go ahead and do a search for schools in this town.” And they’re like “Oh, your name is at the top” I said “That’s right, I don’t need you” and when they asked how I did it, I said through social media.
So, I don’t know if people are aware of this but when you post frequently, you interact online and you have meta tags on your website, your SEO scores go up and the search engines can find you more easily and then your information pops up. The most important thing is we have to be seen in order to be seen, so if people are not visible, no one’s going to want to work with you or buy your service/product.
But I would say, with your target market, what’s the age group of your target market? So anybody over 40 is going to be on Facebook or Pinterest, women especially, even though that’s been around for years, Pinterest is still huge. If they’re in the corporate world, it’s going to be LinkedIn. If they’re 30 and under it’s going to be Snapchat. You have things that are trendy, like Vine which is gone now, they’re always new things. So as the new things come up, we think about who the age group is and again, those young people, those gen Z people, they’re going to be on gaming platforms.
So who’s your target market? What’s their age? What are their interests? Where are you going to find those people? And then go to where they are and communicate the way they do.
Marketing on social media before it was a thing
Darren: So when you started using social media, in 2007, it wasn’t a big thing then. Myspace had been around for some time and was on its way out, Facebook had just sort of come in, Twitter hadn’t started then, LinkedIn had been around for a while but it was pretty clunky. So you must have been a bit of a pioneer to be using social media at that stage, when everybody else was using Google ads, SEO directories, Yahoo that that kind of thing.
Ariel: I was. So what I started doing, and my students used to make fun of me, I would take pictures of my students in my classes, I would show what we were doing, I would talk about what we were doing in our classes. They used to make fun of me but then I had ten thousand pictures in my library of contents, so laugh all you want but I was the one laughing as I went to the bank.
I love what I do and I’m passionate about it. So I would take pictures, and originally the goal was to share it with the students, to show them the techniques or help them remember what they learned in my class. And then, what I realised, I can share this on social media and show the outside world what this is all about, so I started doing that.
Also, I would have people check in at my school. They would check in and when they checked in, that would generate more interest and focus on the school. People would look at that and see that generate more interest over the years.
I used a lot of Facebook and I had multiple outlets on Facebook and I would do multiple postings on there. Then I with HootSuite and then that went away eventually and then I started using Instagram. Instagram was a gem because when you see who likes you and you see them liking over and over again, that’s a lead.
And then I’d start reaching out to these people, then I start closing business and I was closing business from 2000 miles away.
Using the podcast to gain more business
Darren: So how are you finding the podcast for bringing potential clients into the business?
Ariel: That has not been as much of a focus, it’s more like an adjunct, for me right now. So I’m at episode 88 on my Woman Power Zone show and it’s a podcast, designed to empower women to know things that they don’t know, to help them have a better life. Now, of course, men can listen to it too, it’s really for people but because there aren’t as many things for women, I wanted something for women.
So that has been more like an adjunct, reinforcing my credibility. So what happens is, I have clients or students, a lot of times, during a session, I’ll talk with them about an issue and then I’ll have them listen to this show. They’ll listen to the show and it reinforces either what I was saying to them during the treatment or my expertise and then it reinforces the information I’m saying. I originally did the podcast because I got a grant, during covid, and then I decided to use that funding to empower women. Help women, give them a bright light and something positive to listen to. The goal from that wasn’t necessarily to be income generating, I think the benefits from that are going to come.
Darren: But the great thing about the podcast is it’s there forever. It goes all the way back, it can go back a couple of years and people can, at any point, consume that and it adds that credibility that you really do know what you’re talking about.
Ariel: Right and, in my in my view, it has replaced books for that because people used to write books to become experts, or perceived as an expert, in their field, now podcasting is the thing. You could write a book, and I have, but the thing is you’re going to get much more immediate consumption if someone just listens to you while they’re walking their dog, versus having to order a book off Amazon and reading it, if they even get time to read it. So it’s much more consumable.
About Ariel:
Ariel has over 30 years of experience in holistic health. She works with Therapeutic Massage, Energywork, and a variety of other modalities in her healing practice. As well as this, she works with Nature Intelligences and beings in the Spirit World in her healing practice. She hosts a podcast called Woman Power Zone and has written two books, Come From the Heart: A Guidebook to Healing with Divine Energy: Part One and Part Two.
Website: https://arielhubbard.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HubbardHealthSolutions/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arielhubbard/?hl=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arielhubbard/
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
