The current market is shifting. There’s no doubt about it. What do you think the future of marketing looks like online? Maybe we’re at the next stage of marketing, and the next iteration hasn’t revealed itself yet. A lot of the things that people consider ‘marketing’ may not even be helpful for the majority of service-based business owners. For the majority of you, marketing is a huge distraction! It’s also an ego-killer.

If you’ve been dipping your toe into the ad space lately, you would have been hearing that a lot has changed. Although people say that every year and the changes are usually not so significant, this year is different; because of some really big Apple changes, the game kind of did change, and we now have to think about a whole lot of new things when it comes to paid advertising. In this episode, we are joined by Tony Rulli, co-founder of the digital marketing agency, Intentional Spark.

Today, Tony is going to be going over what those changes actually mean for marketers and advertisers, and he’s going to share his best recommendations for how to not necessarily combat those changes (because you can’t really) but how to still get the information that you need to sell your product or service.

We have the best thing since sliced bread to share with you. Big, big, big news. We are beyond excited. For the first time ever (note the sarcasm), we are giving more value to our members and our students because we love you and are obsessed with your success. It should come as no surprise to anyone that we just want to continue to see you improve your results. We are constantly looking at our programs and our offers to identify how we can help you be more successful, how we can arm you with the tools, strategies, and systems to be the most effective you can be. And we have been taking a good, long, hard look at everything we have done inside The Creative Template Shop, and we love it. It's not changing. All of that is staying AND it's growing and becoming even better!

We run ads for everything under the sun, and we have for a long time. Something we did very early on was make a conscious decision to not look at the comments on ads because sometimes there are just troll-type comments, and we don’t need to leave our headspace there. Funnily enough, Abagail’s husband is our ad comment moderator, so it is very rare for us to see a negative comment. But, for some reason, the other day, Emylee was scrolling one of our new Creative Template Shop ads, which is so beautiful and cute. The ad contains our slogan which we have been using for over a year. Emylee was compelled to look at the comment, which was along the lines of, “Oh, so that’s all that marketing is, is beautiful graphics? That's not all that marketing is, so it’s weird that you say that.” The specifics of the comment aren’t that important, but we do want to have a conversation not only about what marketing is, but what marketing means to two visual artists, and why we have our Creative Template Shop slogan, which was very intentional. We believe that it’s something that really makes our business stand out from anything else that we see out there.

Today on the show, we have Monica Schrock, who is cautiously optimistic and is an introverted copywriter who works as a marketing consultant. She has a mean coffee habit and a serious nerd streak. She revels at the intersection between intention and strategy, hoping to make the world a better place one word at a time. Monica has spent the last 14 years navigating the extroverted field of marketing, helping 200 clients craft their brand message and increase their sales from double to over ten times. We are talking about all the tips and tricks she has learned on that journey on the show today.

So, if you resonate as a fellow introverted entrepreneur, who started their business to maybe escape ever having to talk to anyone again, and then realizing that you have to do that in order to make sales, put your offer out there, and grow your business, this episode is for you. We are talking about how to set boundaries, how to schedule (or not schedule) your week in a way that fits your personality so that you can actually get stuff done without feeling guilty and feel like you’re putting marketing and sales messaging out there that doesn’t make you feel icky.

Today our guest is Jennifer Turner, the founder of Gemini where she helps online business owners improve their copywriting and design to create higher conversion rates. Gemini is an online branding and education platform and Jennifer is the rare combination of a trained copywriter and designer! Their MO is unifying a business' voice in the copy and design to tell a stronger story. We love it! Today we will be focussing solely on the copy side of things and how to get your up to scratch!

We are super excited for Jennifer to dive into her four-step formula for high converting copy and it is honestly one of the best formulas we have found in a long time! These kinds of frameworks can sometimes put you in a box or make you sound a bit robotic and this one is a really cool way to insert your story and your audience's story while coming up with something that gets your conversion rate all the way up! This can be used for freebies, opt-ins or paid services and programs, it can be applied in those areas just as effectively, that's how versatile it is, so get your notes ready and let's get into some strategy!

Today on the podcast we have Melissa Harstine. She helps creatives, coaches, and consultants land next-level clients with customer-centric copy and gripping case studies. As a trained journalist, she leverages her research and interview superpowers to write killer copy that makes readers think, “holy guacamole, did they read my journal?!”

We’re breaking down everything about case studies today; what they are, how you can use them to land more clients, how you can use them to vet your clients, and to work with your dream clients. We also dive into how you should set up the interview, how to transcribe it, and how to repurpose your content. Everything about this process makes it seem so tangible and 100% worth it!

Any business that is selling through a one-to-many system is going to, at some point, debate whether or not their strategy is worth their time and energy. That’s why today, we are going to talk a little bit about why we decided to roll out our affiliate program, as well as some of the logistics behind setting it up. When it comes to affiliate programs, there are a few mysteries that need solving, like what kind of software is out there and how to make it work in your business. We are also going to focus on some of the aspects that didn’t make sense for us in the past, because like we said: affiliate programs aren’t always the best idea. So join us and get the lowdown on the dos and definitely don’ts of setting up an affiliate program.

Do you want to increase your sales? Of course, you do, we all do! There are so many strategies out there on how to do this and today we are picking out four that have been highly effective for us! We hope that sharing this with you will help you to decide which strategies are best for you and your hustle. When we speak about our work we are referring to Boss Project, our main thing and then each of our own side gigs. Some of the strategies have worked better in different places but we will be unpacking all of that, do not worry!

The cool thing is that you get to try these out for yourself and see which suits you. We want you to think about which fits with your goals and lifestyle, as well as its conversion efficacy. These are the most important metrics for you to keep an eye on while testing things out. Don't forget to keep the conversation going over on Instagram, you know we love to hear from you, so hit us up with any thoughts or questions!