Podcast : It’s Not Rocket Science! Five Questions Over Coffee with Colette Bratton (ep.15)

Who is Colette?

Colette Bratton is a marketing mentor, on a mission to help solo entrepreneurs use marketing effectively to help them grow the businesses of their dreams!

Marketing can be a huge frustration for small business owners, as it’s another skill to learn and another hat to wear. Using her 30 years’ marketing experience, Colette has created a system that helps entrepreneurs acquire the necessary skills and prioritise their time and energy to successfully promote their businesses.

Key Takeaways

1. Too many people get stuck knowing where to start their marketing – mulling it over but not starting
2. Small business owners need to work smarter not harder so they have time for a business and a life
3. Make your own marketing for your business shout as loud as your client business so that you do some regularly

Valuable Free Resource or Action

Collette has Facebook groups for Virtual Assistants and one for other businesses where she posts everyday

Transcript

Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Stuart Webb 0:28

Well, the technology wasn’t very nice to me then the web with the video wouldn’t play with it. Hi everyone. Stuart Webb again here with it’s not rocket science. five questions over coffee. I’m here today with Colette Bratton. Colette is a marketing mentor on a mission to help solo entrepreneurs to use marketing effectively. So we’re gonna have a really interesting conversation. Good morning, Collette. I’m really glad you’ve been able to join me thank you so much for making the time.

Colette Bratton 0:53

Oh, no problem at all. Let’s hope the tech Gremlins don’t get us any more.

Stuart Webb 0:58

Technology has not been kind to us so far this morning has it? But you know, let’s move on past that. So could I just just sort of start off with sort of what is it that your, your most your most of your customers, etc, really find so confusing and, and problems with that you’re trying to help them sort of overcome?

Colette Bratton 1:17

Sure. Well, my, my ideal clients are virtual assistants and another solopreneurs. So it’s just them in the business. And, you know, as a result of that, their main issue is, is time me and you both know this to a totally, because there’s, there’s only one of us. And there’s you know, it’s so tricky. And so they really want to grow their business. But they’re already juggling so many balls and wearing so many hats, that it makes it really difficult. So but they have to concentrate on the client work, because that’s what pays the bills. But they’re also aware that they need to do some marketing, to keep that steady stream of clients coming in, in order to help the business grow.

Stuart Webb 2:01

And so what are the common mistakes they’re making, trying to sort of keep that marketing going, whilst also trying, as you said, to run a business and as well as that, we’d all like to have a bit of time for ourselves and for our family as well.

Colette Bratton 2:13

Well, well, definitely. And I think that the main problem is that they, they try to fit marketing in, in when they can, which means they don’t always take a proper route, if you know, I mean, they there are so many free marketing articles there are there are interviews like this, that, you know, it’s easy for people because they’re they’re interested to, to want to go and listen to or to want to go and read. But in some ways the amount of information available just it makes it more confusing. Yeah, it gives them an even bigger headache, because they’ll read one thing from one person and, and one thing from another person. And sometimes those agree, which is great. And then they feel like they’ve got a route forward. And sometimes they disagree. You know, I mean, with most of the social media platforms that I can think of that I could give you one example where one guru said do it this way. And another example where another group guru was said, definitely don’t do that. So, you know, I’ve got enough marketing knowledge to be able to make the decision as to which way I think it’s right. But if I had not got the experience that I’ve got, I wouldn’t have a clue. You know, if you if you gave me that dilemma with anything else, that wasn’t marketing related anything in life, generally, I wouldn’t know you’re looking to the experts to guide you. But if experts disagree, it’s like when your Sat Nav tells you to go right and then you find one tells you to go left and technically they’re both right. But you just don’t know which one to believe.

Stuart Webb 3:45

It’s such a it’s such an interesting way to put it is Nicolette and I do see this I do speak to potential clients about this as well. You know, what advantage do you have? And I go well, I’ve already made the mistake. You don’t I you don’t want to make the mistake I made what I can do is I could take away that third degree burn and turn it into a slight scold. Wouldn’t you prefer to have a skull? Well, yeah, I would. But you know, I do What do I do or not? Do I deserve to have that pain myself? Really? No, you don’t, you can actually get away with it. You’re absolutely right. A lot of the the internet nowadays, there’s so much information out there. You just I look at myself and sometimes I think you know, a really I’m nothing more than a curator of information. I take away I take away stuff and present it back in a way that sort of somebody go Oh, right. Okay. It’s as easy as that is it? Yeah, it is. And it’s back to those wonderful stories of sort of you know that the architect that drew somebody a quick plan on a napkin and then as a 30,000 pounds, they try to go I’m paying you 30,000 pounds, it took you 30 seconds. And you know, it took me 30 years to know how to do it in 30 seconds. Exactly.

Colette Bratton 4:50

That that’s the thing, isn’t it? So people just end up stuck where to start, you know that, that they’ll watch something on LinkedIn or watch something on Facebook and they just don’t know. So we before they get into the nitty gritty of what to do down that particular option, that there’s a million different options to market their business that they they don’t know which to go for. And there’s a result that the limited time and energy they’ve got and the limited budget they’ve got, then they just don’t know where to start to get the best results. And we all know what we do get we if we if we stuck on something, we mull it over, and mulling it over is great. But quite often we never make a decision. So nothing ever. We never take any action. I know I’m guilty of that.

Stuart Webb 5:34

Yes, yeah, that’s a difficult one. I’ll leave that for next year. This year, there’s too much else going on. You’re absolutely right. And that’s a lovely way of putting it sort of, you know, what, I suppose the job we’ve got now is helping people to procrastinate and, and I love the fact that you’re the small geezers equaliser you, you take away all that pain and help the Small Business be is as effective as efficient and as noticeable as the big business with the lots of time and lots of budget.

Colette Bratton 6:04

That’s the bait, it’s just about working smarter, it’s about doing all the things you need to do, but but finding time to do them and then trying to work smarter to get them done.

Stuart Webb 6:14

Brilliant. I love it. I love it. So So what’s the variable free action that you point customers to or valuable free resource that you want to give to the audience today, in order for them to sort of take advantage of some of that knowledge and skill that you’ve got?

Colette Bratton 6:28

Sure, well, well, I find that with, with marketing, it’s one of those things that when people meet me and they start chatting, to me, it reminds them that they’ve not done anything on their marketing for a while. So as a result of that, they then start to think about is, you know, it rejects their priorities, it reduces our to do list a little bit. And it’s the same with with marketing, unfortunately, your client work will always shout loudest, because at the end of the day, your client work, you get to put an invoice in and it pays your bills. So it’s about making marketing for your own business shout louder. Now we all know that there’s a benefit to it, we all know, if we promote our business, we get more inquiries, we can turn more of those into sales and our our business grows, but it’s a bit of a journey. Whereas you know, if you do that client work and invoice it, it’s almost kind of paid in the next few weeks. So it’s a more immediate and more immediate gain. So what I try to do when I’ve got a free Facebook group, and you can access that from the website, that’s that scrolling down Down the bottom, I’ve got a Facebook group for vas, specifically for virtual assistants. And I’ve got a free face group Book Group for other entrepreneurs. And sometimes they have the same issues. But but sometimes they are two totally different markets. So I like to have the two separate groups. But in that Facebook group every day, I will post something that will just bring marketing to the to the top of that person’s agenda again. So it just reminds them about marketing their business. So on the Tuesday, there’s a Tuesday task. And that may be I mean, today’s is about you know, have you considered being a podcast guest. So I’ll tie it back a little bit to to what I’m doing in my business, but it may be Have you checked your LinkedIn profile? Have you ever thought about doing Facebook ads? Do you have a lead magnet, you know, so it will be a small task that they can do with a 1015 minute task that just takes them back to that marketing thing and gets them thinking again, on Wednesdays, at the moment, I’m doing some Wednesday wisdom sessions. So I’ll do a live training, which just really, again, covers covers lots of different subjects that that small business owners need to know about on a Thursday, I Chuck in a Thursday thought and that will be something that I’ve noticed either that somebody has done or, and just makes you think a little bit again. So I’m putting these in this, there’s something in there every day, just really to motivate them as a guest to to think about marketing their business. And then when they’re ready to do more, that you know that they can move on to the next stage and do more if they’re ready to.

Stuart Webb 9:04

You know, that’s one of the key things to making your business a success, isn’t it correct is do a bit of marketing every single day. Because otherwise you hit the feast and famine thing so, so easily, which is you know, I’ve run up applied work now I do some marketing, and hopefully it brings something in tomorrow. And the answer is it never does bring something in tomorrow, it’s gonna take a while it’s always a slow burn. So you have to do something every day. And I think that’s a great way of reminding somebody to do something every day is to just poke them once a day with a thought of a task, you know, a certain thing that you need to sort of, you know, think about, give them something every day in order to be able to sort of just focus back on that. That’s brilliant. I love it

Colette Bratton 9:47

goes down really well. They really has it’s just that, that resource that’s kind of there to remind them but you know, it isn’t in their face so much that they get fed up to be reminded.

Stuart Webb 9:57

I love that. So What’s the concept or, or, or programme that’s really sort of been most impactful in your experience.

Colette Bratton 10:07

I have a favourite book and that favourite book. And then if you’re ready, Stewart his questions are the answers by Marcus Sheridan,

Stuart Webb 10:15

I haven’t been I should be putting on my list of rules.

Colette Bratton 10:20

Now, I’ve always been a firm believer that content is king. And this book really, it kind of takes that analogy and explains how it worked for Marcus. Now, I won’t spoil the story for anybody reading it, but he was a cool guy in America. And when the recession hit, obviously, nobody had money to buy swimming pools anymore. So he needed to do something to try to keep his business afloat. And what he did was think about all the things his customers asked him all the questions that they may have asked, because there were obvious questions that you’d always ask somebody if you sat down to buy a swimming pool. But all the questions that they may have thought about, but not got around to asking, or even the questions that they thought about, but didn’t want to ask, you know, like, we’re all a bit nervous about asking some things in case we look a bit silly. Or we should know where if we ask the price, does that mean we can’t afford it? You know, so. So what he did very cleverly, was just put all that information on to his website. And it worked, it started to get in traffic. And it is really all about content about thinking what your customers want to know. And then answering those questions. So it may be that there’s this big debate in business, isn’t this? Should you put your prices on your website? And some people say yes, and some people say no, we’re back to that satnav thing again, aren’t we that there’s no right or wrong answer. But what he did very cleverly was talk about the prices. So you know, he didn’t necessarily say it’s this much money, he went around what was involved in a price. So you know, the answer is how long is a piece of string, but he was able to answer the question. So if somebody put into Google, how much is a swimming pool, he had information that came up, so of course, then you’ve got his business name in front of you. So it’s definitely worth a read to do it, definitely stick it on your on your summer reading list. It’s I think everybody you know, that’s got a website, or that’s putting out any kind of content can find something in there. If nothing else, it inspires you to write more blogs and add more pages to your website.

Stuart Webb 12:27

That’s really valuable advice. I tell you. The other thing that I think that really illustrates is the great value that sometimes your customers bring you in terms of new services and new thoughts that you can capitalise upon, I’m a great fan of using customer comments, customer information in order to generate new services, because I think our customers know best what they want. And all we have to do is listen to them, and then understand them well enough to deliver what they’ve been asking for, but not the nesc asking for in a way we’ve been listening for.

Colette Bratton 12:59

Definitely. And I think one of the issues that we have as small business owners, because we don’t have, you know, I always compare it, I was a corporate marketing manager for many years, as a corporate marketing manager, all I had to do was marketing. So my whole job every day, was to sit and think about the target audience and what we should do, you know, imagine all that thinking time, think about how great it could be if you’re a small business owner with this, as much thinking time as a corporate marketing manager, you know, you’d really be able to certainly stall out and get clear on on where you wanted to be. And a lot of the problems I see with small business owners and entrepreneurs is that they never quite get that time to really understand their target audience. And if you don’t really understand your target audience, no matter what you do, it’s never going to be quite as effective as if you could really get in the mind of them. Because you really need to understand what is it they they want to know, what is it that? I mean, every product or service offers a solution, doesn’t it to something out there, whether it’s to help people lose weight, or to help people grow their business? And that there’s the questions that we know people will will ask, and then there’s the questions that will keep them awake at night. And if you really understand you’re talking, you know, both because you kind of subliminally answering the questions that keep them awake at night, because that’s, that’s the bit that’s gonna make them take action.

Stuart Webb 14:23

Yeah. And you know, you sparked a thought there. And I don’t want to drag this out and spend the rest of the day talking about that I probably could be, you know, I keep saying to people, if you’re trying to sell your business or sell your product, your service, you’re doing it wrong, what you need to do is put yourself in the mind of your customer, work out what they’re looking for, and then you just present them with the answer, and they’ll naturally buy it. And you know, too often we think that selling is about sort of, you know, pushing and, and convincing somebody, but actually if you’ve got the right product and you’ve understood your customer and you just basically say here’s the answer to you Solution point, wouldn’t they buy it? Why? If they’ve already worked out that they’ve got a problem, and they know that their problem is going to be solved by this and you’ve got the solution, then it’s not a sell anymore is it? You’re just helping somebody to make the right decision for themselves. It’s just simple as that.

Colette Bratton 15:19

And that helps on to from it helps the the the entrepreneurs who don’t like selling, you know, I’ve got a business that I don’t like selling. So if you’re helping people that helps with that mindset, but like you say, it just makes it so easy to buy, because you have a solution to my problem.

Stuart Webb 15:38

Why wouldn’t you want to? So we could talk for hours. But you know, let me let me let you get back on with doing the valuable solution, and servicing those people that got this problem. So what’s the customer? Was the question, the one question that I should have asked you, I always think this is my get out of jail free, correct question. Because, frankly, I I’m too lazy to think of the fifth question. But what’s the person like me to ask you?

Colette Bratton 16:03

Well, I guess a question that normally, you get asked when you meet somebody is, you know, how, how do you actually help people? And so I figured that was a good one for to answer. So. So I help business owners who are desperate to grow their businesses, and but they just don’t know where to go. And it’s important to meet them at whatever level they need. So some people are ready for proper help, some people just need to get to know you a little bit. So I’ve got a range of free and paid resources on my website, that that can help. So there’s the free group that I mentioned, which has got some really super valuable content in. And I’ve also got a paid membership group that helps guide entrepreneurs in the right direction, it’s at the end of the day, it’s all about getting marketing done in the most stress free way possible, and the most effective way possible. Small business owners don’t have a huge amount of budget, they don’t have a huge amount of time. And what they do tend to do or tend to worry about is wasting money and effort on activities that give poor results. But often they don’t know they’re going to give poor results until they’ve tried them. And then they say marketing doesn’t work for me, I think it does. But you know that they might generate content that gets no engagement, that they could commit hours to social media for no obvious gain. So it’s really about pointing them in the right direction. And I’ve got a roadmap that I use in my membership that takes them from, you know, kind of starting point, right through to where they want to be and ask them all the right questions, in terms of who is your target audience? And where will you find them? And what do we need to say to engage them. And it’s about taking that path, that the it’s not an obvious route, but it’s a logical route. Because what we tend to get carried away with is the shiny stuff, don’t we get a new leaflet, and we get a new website and we we spend ages on social media. And it comes back to that if we don’t understand that tell the audience if we don’t really know how to present that solution, it can be an awful lot of wasted effort. So yes, that would be the question that I’d ask. And I’ve answered.

Stuart Webb 18:12

Thank you so much for your time. I know, there’s a lot of free stuff that I’m looking forward to diving into myself and having a lot of gravity what you’re up to there. I encourage anybody else to do that. guy would just like to sort of point out if, if you’d like to hear more of this sort of thing going on. If you want to keep up with what’s going on here. If you go on to this link, which is going to remember how to say this https colon forward slash forward slash TTA dot FYI, forward slash subscribe. So that’s TTA dot FYI, forward slash subscribe, you can get notifications of when we do this. And you can come in here other really interesting people like to let talk about the things that are going on, and helpfully get you doing a bit of marketing each day so that you too can see your business growing, collect. Thanks so much for spending the time today. I really appreciate it. I hope you get lots of people coming and asking you those really interesting and difficult questions that you can answer for them, and we’ll speak against him.

Colette Bratton 19:14

Thank you. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thanks to it. Bye