Earlier this year I reached a huge milestone: five years in business. This is the longest job I’ve ever had and two of my clients have been with me for longer than my previous employed jobs. After 12 years of employment where I would quickly get itchy feet, this feels like a huge achievement. If you’re trapped in a cycle of itchy feet but you’re spread very thin at work, maybe a business is the answer?!

I’ve timed five years of Into The Woods Marketing with the last year of my 30s and a big life change: I’m having a baby.

Hustle, Interrupted

I’ve been documenting my journey into self-employed motherhood and I am keen to keep this separate. So, if you’re interested in following along about running a business and growing a baby then here’s the link:

Hustle, Interrupted

For many years I was very not interested in anyone’s parenting journey, so feel free to skip down below to what else is new and my lessons from five years in business.

What else is new?

I went limited. Every year I have this conversation with my accountant and this was the year I took the big plunge. I’ve had to set up a whole new spreadsheet to figure out what to save/what I owe for corporation tax and how to take dividends. But otherwise, so far, so good! It feels very grown up to be a director of my own limited company.

My long-term co-working space is closing. As much as I need variety in my client work, I need stability in my environment. I have been at the same co-working space for five years and made a lot of friends there. Earlier this year, they closed and the landlord took over the building, they have gone back and forth over offering co-working and ultimately have decided not to go ahead. It’s very unsettling not knowing where I am working when I go back to work post-baby next year. I’m going to try and put this out of mind for the time being.

Work is good and busy! I am having a great year in business, mostly because I am doing interesting work with lovely clients. It makes it harder to step away, temporarily, but it’s also a solid foundation to come back to next year.

Lessons from five years in business

1. I am rubbish at marketing myself

I don’t want to be famous. I spent a lot of time marketing other people and their businesses and I don’t often have much left in the tank for myself. I have a lot of thoughts on marketing and creative careers and building a brand which just live in my head.

I am totally at peace with this. I met my most recent client having a random conversation at a gig, so I’ll continue to use my marketing channels in a way that suits me.

2. Who you work with has a big impact

I’ve said yes to clients and work that I shouldn’t have, because I needed the money or I felt awkward saying no.

I’ve also changed my offering several times only to come back to what I know and love, which is being an outsourced marketing manager.

I thought I didn’t like doing certain types of work, when actually I just need to work with great clients and stick to what I am good at. Clear communication on both sides, clear briefs, values aligned and payment on time.

3. Keep learning

I’ve been to some great conferences this year, FWD: London from Mailchimp and Nottingham Digital Summit. It can be a fairly hefty investment going to a conference, taking a day out of client work, travel and the ticket price. I’m quite selective about what I go to but I make the effort to keep learning.

Yes, every talk seems to be about AI nowadays but there’s always more to learn about brand, creativity, email marketing, LinkedIn, etc etc. I like talking to clients about what I am learning and how we can bring that into their business.

I’m a B2B marketer, I work with corporate businesses in regulated industries and professional services, which, I know, is not the most thrilling dinner party conversation. However, in my non-work worlds, friends and acquaintances know that I have worked in marketing for quite some time, and occasionally ask for advice.

In the right circumstances I am very happy to look under the hood of a different industry. Why? I’m incredibly curious nosy, and if it’s a business I care about, then I have a vested interest.

Recently, a friend and business owner asked for some advice to get more customers. I am their customer, so I jumped at the chance for a deep dive. We did a condensed version of the marketing strategy workshop I usually do for clients, which looks like this:

Where you are now?

I start by asking what is and isn't working. Asking this as an open question means that I can tell as much from what comes up (i.e. what’s important to you), than whether it’s working or not.

We’ll then explore some classic marketing audit questions about customers, competitors, the industry and marketing data.

Where do you want to be?

This can be tricky to pin down. I’ll ask: What does your business look like in 1, 3, 5 years time? What do you want to be known for? What do you not want to be known for?

These questions can throw up a lot of ideas and big aspirations. The key is to whittle them down to focused, measurable goals (more on this below!).

How are you going to get there?

The link between where you are now and where you want to be. My tool of choice here is a marketing funnel, which means we’ll look at how to generate interest, turn interest into customers and then keep the customers coming back for more.

So, back to the conversation I had with my friend. I realised that the conversations I have with one-person local businesses are not that different to those I have with bigger corporations. Here are some common themes:

1. Spend your time, money and effort where your customers are.

Aka, no you probably don’t need to be on TikTok just yet 😬

Most businesses have a pretty good idea of who their customers are. This is the starting point for everything else:

• Your customer needs → your messaging

• Where they hang out → your marketing channels

• How they consume media → your content and campaigns

If you sell clothes and your customers discover you on Instagram, but you’re struggling to find the time to post, you need to figure this out through outsourcing or reprioritising other tasks. If you’re in a niche industry with an expensive annual trade show and absolutely all your customers are there, you need to work your budget around this.

Be ruthless with your time, money and effort. If your marketing isn’t bringing in new customers or helping you keep the ones you have, it needs to change.

2. Your product might be letting you down.

We all know of brands with great marketing but terrible products.

A fitness class with a cult following but a terrible booking system. Sending out orders with no delivery updates. An online course delivered through a ropey learning platform. These are all aspects of your product which are going to put off new customers, annoy your current customers, and can’t be fixed with a marketing campaign.

No one likes asking for feedback when things aren't working, but it really helps in situations like this. So, do it often, because the clues will be there, in your reviews, in lapsed customers and even in complaints.

3. Collaborate with the competition.

Just because you have similar customers and products doesn’t mean you have to be rivals. This can be a provocative suggestion but it’s always worth bringing up in conversation. Here are some examples:

• Fitness classes at different providers in a city offering discounts for member referrals

• Businesses in the same industry creating annual awards or a podcast

• Working together to improve the supply chain, or even campaign for better regulations

Parting thoughts

In sharing this, you might wonder if I’m giving away all my tips and tricks to having marketing strategy conversations. The fact is, if I used this advice 15 years ago, I would have asked textbook questions and duly noted down all the answers. 10 years ago, I would have rushed to answer all the questions myself.

Today, experience helps, I’ve been on both sides of the marketing strategy conversation dozens of times. Knowledge helps too - particularly training as a coach and mentor and learning about structured conversations, questioning techniques and how to actually listen. Like many professions, the value lies in experience and knowledge, not the time spent together.

Last week I shared on LinkedIn that I had overhauled my website in a day. If you want to work with me, I have focused on offering two specific services to new clients: strategy and mentoring. Take a look!

Last week, one of my favourite and most essential business tools wasn’t working. Trello, which is my day-to-day planning and task list, was down. Well, it was frozen, then it was glitching, and then not working at all. I did a quick search to make sure it wasn’t just me - it wasn’t. So what next?

I shared my frustrations on LinkedIn.

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I’ve written about moving away from Big Tech previously, but I still have a fairly chunky tech stack for my one-woman business. I don’t use any paper in my business at all, and all my notes are scribbled onto a tablet and filed accordingly. (Most of the time.)

I’d like to say this is part of my eco-credentials, but in reality, it’s because on paper, I would have different notes for each client and each project, never mind the random notes, ideas and reminders for my own business. I work between home and a co-working space and I can guarantee I would never have the right notes in the right place and it would be too much to remember and carry around.

Most of the time, this set up works well. I have my digital notes, plus various other marketing, planning and organisational platforms (I’ve listed my favourites below). It gets unwieldy when clients’ preferred tools are added into the mix, or if I get distracted by something new and shiny.

I am sure we can all relate to:

• Feeling like you’re using a computer for the first time when having to switch from Zoom to Teams (and vice versa)

• Sounding like you’re speaking in code when trying to locate a file. Is that on Airtable, Notion, Sharepoint or Google Drive? 🤷🏽‍♀️

• Heated debates about where to record actions and accountability. I stopped doing white-labelled work (ie working for agencies under their brand) because having multiple inboxes, planning tools and file locations nearly broke me 🫠

It’s a lot. A lot of tech and tools that (for me at least) have really crept up on me over the past decade. And the numbers back this up: in 2011 we had 150 online tools available to us, and now it’s over 11,000. (Big thank you to Monét McGee who brought this stat to my attention at the last Nottingham Marketing Meet Up).

Since I started my business and I have more control over which tools I’ve used, I have learned that less is more and a good test of their usefulness is how much I miss them when they aren’t working. So, not including email/calendar/file storage (which would pretty much bring my client work to a halt if they were down), here are my most essential tech and tools:

Trello as my day-to-day task planning tool. I have a list for each day, which runs to a week in advance, plus a task queue. My board for the day will include my meetings, my tasks, plus any personal commitments. At the end of each day I plan the days ahead.

Airtable and Trello for project management, depending on the complexity. Airtable is fiddly, but I worked off some templates and now I have my own template for chunky client projects.

Samsung notes (sorry, I do not own a single Apple product!) and I have heard good things about reMarkable too.

WhatsApp/Messages for quick and group-based client comms. Perhaps controversially. But I like having everything in one place and it’s usually the quickest way to get hold of each other. And also the reason why my phone storage is 90% screenshots of work for approval.

WorkingHours for tracking client work. I have honestly tried so many of these apps - there are LOADS available - and I ended up liking this random one I found on the Microsoft App store (again, sorry to Mac users). It’s really simple, plus it includes a pomodoro timer and an Excel export for invoicing.

Trello’s downtime ended up being just a few hours, so in the big scheme of things, it was fine. In the context of some of the tech my clients work with and provide (this includes medical software and property tech), it’s definitely fine. Lives and homes are not at risk if I can’t access my to-do list.

In my last newsletter, I wrote about navigating self-employment through big personal changes. It felt like quite a lot of myself to put out in the world, but I had lovely responses on Substack, LinkedIn and directly. Since then, as well as regaining focus, I’ve had several new business and new project conversations which have felt really good. So I’d just like to say that things do get better. And it’s all extra resilience and context for those pesky tech meltdowns!

I remember a time when we were not encouraged to bring our personal lives to work. Only our closest colleagues might know about the break-up, house move or tricky family situation going on at home. The expectation was that you carried on as normal. There certainly wasn’t any mention of mental health and wellbeing.

Thankfully the world of work has evolved and I can guarantee that every time I look at my LinkedIn feed, I will see personal posts from people in my network, and wellbeing-themed posts from companies I follow. Employers have changed. But what happens if you’re self-employed, like me?

Right now I’m coming out of a significant period of change in my personal life and it’s the first time that it has affected my work. When I realised how much this change was going to affect my focus, motivation and productivity, I had a decision to make: what do I tell my clients?

One of the reasons that I chose to have my own business was to take away the overwhelm of office politics and gossip and management. “I just want to focus on doing the work”, is what I told myself and my clients. This was fine, until I found myself spending a lot of time staring into a screen and basic tasks happening painfully slowly. Not to mention that many of my clients have known me for years, are former colleagues, have had cups of tea in each others’ living rooms and know the names and ages of our pets and children.

So, I decided on:

1. Full disclosure with my clients that I was going through some big personal changes (and as it happens, with my accountant and graphic designer and web developer).

2. Not taking on any new work for a few months. I didn’t market my business at all, I just focused on my existing client work.

This is what happened, and what I learned:

My clients were really understanding. Of course they were; my clients are all lovely people. It was 100% the right decision to be open and honest. Going forward, I will consciously choose to work with people and businesses where we can have these conversations.

Whether it’s divorce, bereavement, moving house or starting a family, the disruption and emotional impact of personal changes is huge. And everyone goes through this at some point in their lives. Most of the time, the upheaval is temporary. You just need to go into survival mode while you figure out your way through to the other side.

Where previously I’ve been able to throw myself into work during a personal crisis, or compartmentalise work and home, that just didn’t happen this time. And I felt pretty bad about that. Which I know I shouldn’t, but I did. That’s something to process and reflect on.

And finally, the fact is that if I don’t work, I don’t earn, so the financial implications of this period of my life were honestly not great. That’s the downside of self-employment. It was another reminder of the importance of having a f-off fund and business buffer in place.

To go back to the title of this post: how much of ourselves should we bring to work? The events of this year have changed me and my perspective on this.

There’s a balance between over-sharing every single detail of our personal lives and learning not to hide when something significant is going on behind the scenes. And the balance is not a fixed point.

So, yes I’ve been quiet and now you know why. I’d love to know how you’re doing - reply to this email or leave a comment below to say hello.

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Last week, a client thanked me for getting a project up and running without delays and unnecessary meetings. This meant the world to me as it brought me back to my purpose: I want to make marketing flexible and affordable for growing businesses. I want to do stuff that gets results.

This feedback reminded me of how many times marketing is unnecessarily complicated, usually coupled with being slow, expensive and ineffective. I find it so disheartening when I work with a business that went down the route of big agencies, costly consultants or layers of approval, and it didn’t work out.

But I’m not perfect. And this feedback reminds me of all the times I’ve been involved in expensive, lengthy and over-complicated marketing projects. I didn’t brief the agency properly or I had way too much on the go and didn’t prioritise or even worse - I didn’t challenge or question the process.

So, with my purpose in mind, my learnings from past experiences and feedback from when I get things right, this is what’s on my mind about uncomplicating marketing.

Focus and priorities

Whether it’s age, experience or the power* of being a business owner, I aim to have one big goal with clients and prioritise the one thing I can do to make an impact. I have five clients at the moment, and when I worked in-house I usually had 3-5 business units/departments/products at any time. For me, that’s a good balance of focus and variety.

Things become complicated when a business has multiple goals and I find myself spending a week incrementally moving 10 things forward and feeling as though I’ve achieved very little. I get more done (and feel more fulfilled) by prioritising one thing and spending a decent chunk of time finishing this and then moving on.

*There’s power in being a business owner because when I worked in-house, I had very little control over my diary or my workload. Sometimes it felt like the only way to get through everything was to work extra hours which inevitably resulted in lower-quality work for my employer and burnout for me.

A great, simple product

Marketing a great product with dated branding from an established business which customers love? I love this type of client. Marketing a flashy product which doesn’t work and customers hate? Avoid.

I’ve worked in businesses where no one can simply summarise what the business does or sells. This creates a lot of work. Some years ago, I became fed up with this and started introducing key messaging documents at work. We all agreed what the product was called, what it did and how we described it to customers. This cut out lengthy approvals and stopped the spread of 15 different but varying descriptions of the same thing.

A great product and a simple message will save you so much time.

Sidenote: I’ve also been in a position where I’ve had to market a product which customers hated. In this case, marketing resource is better spent on improving the product rather than promoting it. In this case, through customer research, feedback and restructuring customer comms.

Sharing progress

When I have a mentee who feels as though they aren’t appreciated, or things are moving slowly, I always ask: are you sharing your work internally?

Communication is part of why marketing is sometimes so complicated. When you haven’t done what you said you would, or things aren’t going to plan, the easy option is to hold out and share once you’re ready.

I’ve stopped doing this. I love the accountability of sharing progress and I share as I go along.

This doesn’t mean meeting every day or constantly asking for or sharing updates. There’s a balance between focus and sharing which gets work over the line.

On a related note

This year marks 15 years in B2B marketing for me and a lot has changed since 2008. I wrote about what I’ve learned and Better Marketing published the article:

📖 Check out the article

Here’s to the next 15 years!

Three of my clients have website-related projects on the go at the moment. We’re either developing a new one, or optimising new-ish ones. The work has led me to discover some interesting tools which I’ve been playing with on my own website. In the process, I’m learning a lot about making my website work harder for me.

Website and SEO (search engine optimisation) best practice evolves constantly. I don’t have SEO agency level of knowledge, but what I’ve learned over the years has had great results for me and my clients. I’m keen to keep learning.

I’ll be honest - some of the results on my own site happened completely by accident. This blog ranks at no.6 for “in-house, agency or freelance marketing” and it’s not even my most popular blog article. In 2021, I thought - this would be useful for potential clients to know more about - and two years later, it’s out there bringing traffic to my website.

As people (and potential customers) have started to find me via search and my website, I wondered, what would happen if I focused on making my website work harder for me?

So, I’ve been auditing all aspects of my website (which I’ll explain below). It got me really excited about making the most of what I have and it's spurred me on to get some draft blogs over the finishing line.

I’m sharing this with the intention that you can learn from my process.

Website traffic

An easy one to start us off. I use Fathom Analytics to tell me:

• How many people are visiting my website

• Where they came from

• Which pages they visited

• How long they spent there

It’s particularly useful when I’ve written a new blog post, or I’ve been featured on a podcast. I can see if I’ve had an increase in visitors, and which pages they visited.

Of course, there’s Google Analytics, but I always found it confusing and invasive. If you use Wordpress.com, this has some good native analytics.

I like Fathom as it’s privacy-focused and it’s incredibly easy to use. (I’ve written more about privacy-focused marketing on Medium)

Domain Authority

A few years ago at the first-ever Search Leeds event, I learned about Domain Authority. It was developed by a company called Moz, who describe it as:

“A search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages (SERPs).

Domain Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to greater likelihood of ranking.”

Moz has a free Domain Authority Checker tool, where I check my own and clients’ websites to review and track the DA score. You can check any website, so it’s also a great tool for competitor and industry research.

Ideally, as I add useful content and optimise a website, the score goes up. It can be a slow process, but it’s a metric I like to track. (Full disclosure - my website currently scores 8/100 so I have a way to go!)

Keyword research

If “keyword research” is a mystery to you, let me quickly explain before we jump in.

Here’s an example:

I want my potential customers to type “B2B marketing consultant” into their search engine, and for my website to pop up in the results.

This means it’s more likely that they will click on my website and choose me as their B2B marketing consultant.

I can help this process along by signposting potential customers in my direction.

I need to make sure “B2B marketing consultant”is included in my website content.

So keyword research is a blend of investigating:

• What keywords do you want to be known for?

• What keywords might your audience search for?

A keyword research tool does a lot of the heavy lifting for you:

• You can enter certain terms and see whether your site ranks for that term, and how high

• It will suggest related keywords and how popular they are

• You can see where competitors rank against you

• You can track all of this over time, so you can see what is and isn’t working

I’ve wondered if I should invest in a keyword research tool for a while. ThIf te best known ones are quite expensive, and I don’t want to use the Google Search Console.

I discovered a keyword tool called Wincher in the Yoast SEO section of my pages and posts on Wordpress:

(Yoast is a Wordpress plugin which helps you to set up your content for search page results. It also gives a useful readability score. I am told there are better alternatices but I haven’t got around to looking into them. Yoast works for me right now.)

Wincher is €39 a month and does exactly what I need for my website and my clients’ websites. It’s based on Google results, so ethically, I am not sure how this sits with privacy issues - this is something I need to look into.

So, I’ve started tracking some keywords and the gamification of it all has got me really excited about optimising my website, which leads me onto…

On-page SEO

This one is new to me, and it started with this On-Page SEO Checker tool.

You enter your URL and a keyword, and in return you get a score and recommendations for what you can fix (each suggestion below is clickable):

I’ve been running all my website pages through this tool to make sure they’re optimised for search. In many cases, I’ve made just a few small tweaks, such as:

• Making sure each page has over 500 words

• The keyword is in the headings (without overkill)

• My images are labelled and tagged correctly

You don’t need to take on all the suggestions if they don’t feel natural - so don’t go shoe-horning your keyword into every aspect of your website. As I mentioned in the beginning, I’ve had some accidental SEO wins purely through thinking about what would be most useful to my audience. And this should always come first.

There are still some areas I need to figure out

A few years ago, I did some learning around links. In particular, getting websites with a high domain authority to link to you - a major part of digital PR. But, there’s a technical side to backlinks that I haven’t explored, so that’s on my list.

There are also a whole host of free and accessible tools such as Surfer SEO to explore - that’s another one to add to my list.

What were the results?

It’s working. I’m seeing my selected keywords go up and up in search results 🥳

Most importantly, it’s given me a much-needed kickstart to go over old content, get it updated and move some blog drafts over the line. Now that I can see concrete evidence that content will bring traffic years down the line, I feel genuinely excited to create content.

I’m going to stop my terrible habit of writing 90% of a blog post in an afternoon, and then taking months to complete it.

And here’s my latest post

I have written a series of posts about mentoring, based on my coursework from the ILM qualification I completed in 2021. Here’s the first one to make it out of my drafts:

Does this get you thinking about your own website? This is a top-level overview of an in-depth subject which I am very much learning in the open. If you have thoughts, questions, tips or ideas, I’d love to know.

I started this piece by wanting to share where I am hanging out online, and the subsequent thought turned it into a deeper dive into the future of social media. Which is a conversation worth having…enjoy!

LinkedIn has evolved massively over the past few years, going from an online CV and broadcast tool to a full-on professional community. I used to only “connect” with people I knew, now I follow (and am followed by) people I have never met. Users who were driven away from the ethics of Meta and Twitter are popping up on LinkedIn now. People have cottoned on to what an amazing tool it can be once you stop lurking and put yourself out there.

And yet, I have LinkedIn fatigue. In recent weeks I find myself pulling away from it. I am due a big edit on my following to curate my feed, but over the past few months, there’s been a distinct shift in what I’m seeing over there.

I am trying to put my finger on exactly what feels different, and I think it comes down to seeing a lot of the same content rinsed and repeated and a lot of instructional content. Too many listicles, clickbait intros and hot takes.

(And I fully accept my role in this - I shared my hot take on AI just a week ago).

So, I’m exploring different paths, communities and information sources. I’m sharing them here, as there’s a whole world of social networks beyond Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and TikTok. And maybe you’d like to explore them too - and just maybe, you might find they are places where your customers hang out.

Reddit. It’s not just for nerds.

I love Reddit to the extent that I often have to delete the app to stop myself from spending too much time on there. It describes itself as a network of communities where people can dive into their interests, hobbies and passions. I’d describe it as a less-toxic Twitter where I follow interests rather than people*

I first got into Reddit through my hair and my hobbies. I have wavy hair and follow a version of the Curly Girl method. Someone told me there’s a Reddit community (called a subreddit) for each hair type, and another person told me there’s a booming aerial circus community there too.

I’ve since joined communities for cats, historical houses, women’s health, my favourite films and TV shows, collecting vinyl and reducing waste. The communities around freelancing, writing and marketing aren’t as active, but they are there and worth following.

For the most part, the communities I’ve picked are happy places. So when I want to see funny cat photos, find out what everyone thinks of The White Lotus and get an insight into human behaviour, Reddit is my go-to.

*There’s definitely a dark side to Reddit, just as there is with all social platforms. However, I find it very easy to opt out of the bad stuff by sticking with the communities I have chosen.

Slack and Discord. For closed communities.

I’ve used Slack at work for years for messaging and sending files. I love it as a tool to replace unnecessary email.

Over the past three years, I’ve been a member of various freelance and business communities that use Slack as a comms tool. What I love about these closed communities is that they are a safe space. I am unlikely to share my absolute worst business fears and moments on LinkedIn, but I would on REALWORK.

In theory, you can search for Slack “workspaces”, but all the ones I know of are invite-only and part of a wider subscription. So that’s the downside.

Discord is similar to Slack, it’s invite-only and a chat-based community. I originally heard about it as a voice-based platform but that’s not the case now.

I’m in a couple of writing communities that use Discord as a hangout and info space, and I’m a big fan of the Below Radar community on there.

Substack. (Obviously).

I’m seeing more and more of my business community starting a Substack, and I love it. I like the blend of blog and newsletter and I like having my subscriptions in one place, which isn’t my inbox.

I really wanted Medium to be like this, except no one I knew was using it. So, I still read and write on there, but Substack is where I come to get long-form content from people I know.

What does it all mean?

These platforms have choice, privacy and community in common, which is definitely the way things are going in marketing. It’s certainly at odds with buying giant lists of email addresses or targeting aggressive online ads to absolutely everyone and hoping that something sticks.

However, if you’re reading this and thinking you need to go off and start a subreddit or Slack group of people to sell to - please don’t. Commercialising spaces where people congregate around a specific subject needs to be handled with absolute care, or they will eventually leave.

Have a look at the Huel subreddit as a good example of letting customers create a community around your product. The brand’s involvement is limited to responding to customer support issues and new product launches (I’m sure this community is a huge source of intel for the Huel team too). It’s worth considering - what would your customers say about your brand in a closed community?

Yesterday I took part in a panel about impact and purpose for the Alt Marketing School open day, and AI was a hot topic. I've seen *so much* on this subject on LinkedIn, so here’s my take and how I make it work for me.

If you’re curious about AI but haven’t tried it yet, it can be used for creating copy, generating content ideas and even telling you what your marketing plan should include. Pretty cool, right? I think it's a great tool, but like all tools, it’s all about how you use it.

I’ve been using copy.ai for about a year. This is a writing tool which creates email, social and web copy. You just input your brief, but like all briefs, if you skimp on the detail, you won’t get the right output.

I’ve just started using ChatGPT, which is much broader, and it’s more conversational. So, you can ask for five social media captions about launching your new brand of cheese, and then ask it to rewrite them with a gardening analogy.

When I think about to how basic marketing tools were 15 or even 10 years ago, this is a huge step forward. You may think, robots are taking over marketing and creativity is dead, but at the same time, this is a huge saver on time and effort; you’ll never have to write product descriptions again.

The key is balance. If you ignore AI, you’re missing a trick, but if you rely on it completely, your marketing will lose its soul.

AI is great for:

1. Repetitive copy

Have you ever had to promote an event and write a series of social media captions essentially saying the same thing? Or how about writing lines of product descriptions for dozens of the same product with tiny variations?

This is where AI is your friend. Functional but necessary words that probably aren’t the best use of your creative brainpower.

2. Kickstarting the writing process

Do you need to write 500 words on an “innovative” new software launch, but you have no idea where to start? Gather your ideas and info and see what AI comes up with; it’s often easier to edit something terrible, than try to create perfection from scratch.

AI is not so great for:

1. When you need to be creative and original

Let’s say you need to develop customer personas and messaging. You set about interviewing customers and workshopping keywords with your team. This is the time to draw on your experience, instincts and your most original ideas (as well as data). This creativity is very difficult to replicate with AI.

2. Authentic storytelling

AI tools are based on what’s already out there, so if everyone relied on it all the time, all copy would end up looking the same. Knowing a good story isn’t always about data, it can be a gut feel or a crazy idea, so let’s not ruin this with over-reliance on AI.

Practical tips

My first tip is: Put cr&p in, get cr&p out. Much like any creative brief or even a CRM system. You might have a messy list of bullet points and words, but the more you have, you more you’ll get out of your new tool.

My golden rule is to edit, edit and edit again. Maybe it’s my personality, but I use the AI outputs as a starting point. I re-word, adapt the tone of voice and play around with ideas.

And finally, don’t over-rely on it. For practical reasons: I couldn’t get onto ChatGPT for a while as it was over-subscribed and the free version of Copy.ai has limited words. But also for your own skill: It’s taken me a lifetime to become a good writer and to recognise good writing, and this is a skill I constantly develop through reading and writing.

Think of marketing and AI as nature. Left alone, things can get a little wild, but interfere too much and you’ll destroy it. It’s all about balance.

I’m genuinely curious to see how all this pans out in the future and how others are using AI in their work… let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Earlier this month I had a couple of client meetings in London and unknowingly made myself quite ill on my trip. I spent the whole of last week off work with an epic cold, and it’s still lingering this week. At this time of year, I would usually be slowing down, leading up to a pause on client work between Christmas and New Year. But instead, I’ll be catching up and wrapping up client work a week later than planned.

This situation represents the worst and the best of working for yourself. If I don’t work, I don’t earn. But I’m also in control of my time. There are times when “powering through” will only prolong illness. Most of the time, I can catch up afterwards and everything works itself out.

I had some time to reflect, which is something that I love to do at this time of year. Not only because of the new year, but because I have a January birthday and it’s the anniversary of my first plans to start Into The Woods Marketing. Three years on, my spark of an idea is a fully-fledged business 🥳

So, here are three of my wins from 2022 and how I’m building on them in 2023.

I gained more time for myself but I need to spend more time nurturing my business

At the end of 2021, I felt burned out. I was battling a kidney infection and I had taken on too much work. My aim for 2022 was to stop this from happening again. In March, I had my first holiday and completely switched off. I went away again in September. I made time for the gym (I often go during the day). I enjoyed spontaneous time off in the summer when the weather was good. I’ve kept the size of my client-base in check, which meant that last week, I could pause without feeling overwhelmed.

However. The stability I’ve built into my business has made me complacent about promoting it. The time and effort I’ve spent marketing and developing it has been pretty sporadic. I’ve always got something on the go, and certainly things never stand still, but I am not consistent. So my goal for 2023 is to spend more time and effort on my business. I’m good at keeping on top of finances and admin, but I need to also prioritise working on this newsletter, writing blogs, being on LinkedIn and pitching myself for speaking and writing opportunities.

I removed big tech from my business but my screen time could be more focused

This time last year, I felt uncomfortable with the ethics of Google, Meta & co. I had read Digital Minimalism, discovered Below Radar and decided that I wanted to remove big tech from my business. This was a tricky one as I was using Google Workspace, which was the home for my email, file storage and calendar. The full story of how I untangled myself from big tech is a newsletter in itself, but I’ll just say that I’m happy with where I am on this - my email, calendar, file storage, website analytics and project management tools are now with privacy-focused providers.

Next year, I want to look at how I use my screen time at work. In a previous newsletter, I talked about creating focus time, which I am great at doing, but I find myself switching from task to task, or going to check something on LinkedIn or my email, only to get distracted. The Freedom app is a big help with this.

My earnings are consistent but I need to get better at saving

Typing this out makes me cringe inside, but I can’t be the only business owner in this position. And that is: I need a bigger buffer and business savings. Self-employed taxes in the UK mean that you pay “on account”, which is 1.5 years’ worth of taxes for the first instalment, and then you have payments every six months. When I first started my business, I didn’t have any savings, and I had a choice of either paying my mortgage or saving for taxes. The initial outlay has put me on constant catch-up ever since.

I hate being in this position, and now that I have consistent and reliable earnings, I am determined to get ahead of the cycle.

What I’m watching

Last week I watched 1899, and it’s the best thing I’ve seen for ages. It’s historical, mysterious and very addictive. I also loved Wednesday, which is perfect for formerly-spooky children (me). What have you watched and loved recently? Let me know and I can add it to my Christmas watch-list.

I had some interesting conversations following my last newsletter about focus. The general consensus is: we are all really different and we have varying amounts of influence over getting the most from our focus time.

So how have things gone since then? Better and worse. I carved out focus time but got sidetracked with some annoying news. Which led me onto another topic: recommendations and thanks.

My business thrives on recommendations, and I make a point of recommending people where I can. In the past few weeks, one of my lovely clients recommended me for work, I made some new recommendations to others and was generously thanked for recommending someone.

I also found out that a recommendation I made didn’t work out and resulted in a very poor experience. In my world this is A Very Bad Thing. For the first time, I reflected on how I will manage recommendations in the future and I learnt a bit about myself in the process.

People don’t always do what you expect them to do

Even if it means dealing with consistently terrible behaviour, I prefer it when I know what to expect from someone. I like to think I’m good at working people out, so when I am proved wrong, this is frustrating and probably says more about me than them.

But people can be inconsistent for all sorts of reasons. Things in their personal life can cause changes in behaviour and sometimes we don’t know people as well as we think we do. And I acknowledge that I am inconsistent too - life throws all sorts of curveballs which can affect our work.

I make it a habit to check before I recommend someone - can I recommend you for this? But in future, I am going to check more thoroughly. Not only, does this person have capacity to help, but do they feel able to do a good job right now?

But at the same time, I can’t be responsible for other people’s actions

There’s another area of my life where I constantly make and receive recommendations, and that’s tradespeople (I live in an old house which constantly needs work, as do my neighbours).

My neighbour recommended a plumber to me who did a great job at installing my boiler but flooded a ceiling which then collapsed. Countless neighbours have recommended tradespeople that have ghosted me. I found (another) plumber who installed beautiful new radiators for me but got my neighbour’s pipes completely wrong.

We all feed back to each other and joke about how difficult it is to find a good tradesperson. And the good ones are always so busy.

I reflected on why I feel differently about these recommendations, which didn’t all work out. My professional reputation wasn’t on the line, but I value my relationships with my neighbours. I believe it comes down to me not feeling responsible for others’ actions in this case. And perhaps that’s because we always feed back to each other which gives closure to the situation.

So in this situation, I need to give feedback to get closure

And I’ll report back on that, as it’s an awkward conversation that I know I have to do, but don’t really want to do.

I learned that I really value loyalty, and anything which breaches that feels like a betrayal. But, I’m still going to keep my cycle of recommendations. I’ve had one bad experience. I wouldn’t have a business if it wasn’t for recommendations and I love knowing that I have been able to create work for others.

Life lessons from aerial circus

Ahead of performing in a circus show at the weekend, I wrote about why I do aerial circus and what it means to me. I don’t usually write about topics outside of marketing and business and it felt good to write about something personal.

The biggest perk of working for myself is that I am in control of my schedule and my working environment. When I was employed - which was pre-Covid - I found it difficult to focus in an office environment with meetings scattered throughout the day and colleagues always stopping by my desk. I’m easily distracted and love to talk, so this was a disastrous combination.

Conversation, discussion and ideas come easily to me, but I have to make a conscious effort to follow through on my actions. So, when I started my business, I knew that I wanted to structure my week around creating chunks of time to be productive, carving out focus time and (trying) not to get burnt out.

After two and a half years of experimenting, this is what that looks like right now.

Client catch-ups happen on one day

It’s important to me to catch up with my clients every week. It gives me accountability, we can agree priorities for the week ahead and it reduces the amount of email and phone calls in the week. On a Monday I often do up to ten Zooms, and that’s my focus for that day.

The rest of the week is all about focus

There are some tasks that I can do on the go or in between meetings - catching up on email, updating my Trello tasks, even drafting simple social posts. But for writing content, creating strategies or doing research, I need to focus without distractions or an impending meeting.

So for most of the week, meetings are limited. Meetings require prep beforehand and time afterwards to decompress and plan my actions. So if I have meetings scattered throughout the day, it’s difficult to get anything else done.

If I need to have a meeting during the week, I prefer to do it before lunch to leave my afternoons free to focus.

I’m not an early morning person

I’m sorry, I can’t, don’t hate me. I need an hour or two to wake up, have coffee, feed the cats and do Wordle.

I split my week between home and co-working

I rent a desk at a co-working space, because working from home usually looks like this:

I often work from home for a couple of hours in the morning, but sometimes I escape to my office for the whole day if I need to get stuff done. I like the change of scenery and then I can come home and give the cats my full attention.

My work-day includes exercise

Of the various activities I do outside of work, a few run in the daytime and this is an excellent way to take a break from my screen. I do my best thinking during lunchtime gym sessions.

Periodically I need to re-set

I’m not perfect and things slip. This week I have had meetings every day. I talked through a lot of stuff with clients, but I didn’t leave much time to actually do the work. So next week, I need to re-set and say no to any additional meetings.

(And hopefully, no more political turmoil to factor into content schedules!)

My top three focus tools

A meeting scheduling tool - Being able to say “Here’s a link to my diary to book some time to talk about X” has saved me so much time.

I use simplymeet.me so that people can book time with me. I have pre-set meeting times and this integrates with my calendar to avoid clashes. (This particular one integrates with the privacy-focused email provider that I use for work, but loads are available)

Automated task planning - I use Trello to plan my week, with a list of tasks for each day that I can move around. As some of my work is repetitive (eg meetings and social posts every week, newsletters once a month) I’ve set up automated tasks that drop in to the relevant day. This saves time and helps stop things from being missed.

Focus playlists - I need absolute silence or music without lyrics to be able to concentrate. This is my playlist of choice, and I’ll be listening to it this afternoon.

I was interviewed for a podcast earlier this year. It was released while I was on holiday and today I listened back to it. I have been putting this task off as (like everyone) I find it very weird listening to my own voice (I am not as northern as I think I am) and I live in fear of saying the wrong thing.

As it happens, I spoke about a subject I am very comfortable with; my education and career in marketing. I left university and started my career just as the credit crunch hit, and even though a decade and a half have since passed, I see a lot of parallels between that time and now.

I’m not an economist but I think recessions are inevitable and we will all have to work through several in our lifetimes. The timing is never great but it’s especially tough when you’re starting something new or going through changes at home or work.

So building on from the podcast, here are some thoughts on working through a recession/a crisis/tough times:

Keep working on the next step

I remember how hard it was to get a job in a relevant field during the credit crunch, and then the fear of moving on from something secure. However, you don’t want to get stuck.

Regularly update your CV, portfolio, interview/pitch technique and Linkedin profile. Connect with potential employers and clients on LinkedIn, and keep an eye on potential jobs or client work. You never know what might come up.

Prioritise you

You’ll never look back and wish you worked more.

Take your holiday time, take your compassionate leave if you need to and don’t feel pressured into working lots of extra hours. If your employer or client is in trouble, it’s tempting to do everything you can to help. If you are in this position, take a step back to evaluate the impact of this extra work. Are they compensating you fairly? In the words of the great Lizzo: is the juice worth the squeeze?

Remember the big picture

A crisis will force you to review your life choices, so, lean into this. Have you worked yourself into the ground for an awful boss who made you redundant? Did your employer go out of business leaving you with no salary and no commission? Did a PR crisis spiral wildly out of your control and now you hate marketing?

What have you learnt from this? And what will you do differently in future?

Girls in Marketing

I was interviewed by Girls in Marketing for their podcast and my episode was about consulting and mentoring in marketing. They have lots of episodes about getting into marketing and marketing tips, so definitely check them out.

Today I have a story about fences, blackberries and prep work. I had the idea for this story at the end of the August bank holiday, but as this is my first proper working Monday for quite a while, it’s a few weeks late.

The three-day weekend in August was earmarked to put up a new fence in the garden. The old fence had been taken down, neighbours consulted and the new fence pieces ordered, delivered and painted. A special machine for digging fence post holes was hired for the weekend. All prepared, or so I thought.

Things didn’t go to plan. The first day was spent fixing a part of the existing fence so that it could accommodate the new fence. On the next day, when trying to dig holes for the fence posts, we discovered that the boundary of the garden was lined with roots from long-gone trees and a surprising amount of concrete.

I was tasked with clearing the plants down the side of the garden to create space for the fence. I was reluctant to do this as the area is overgrown with blackberry brambles and I didn’t want them to go to waste. So I rescued as many blackberries as possible, getting covered in scratches in the process.

In the meantime, my boyfriend was exhausted trying to dig through concrete and tree roots with no joy (and lost several drill bits in the process). He used the special fence post digging machine on just one fence post.

Amongst all the fence-building frustration, I harvested dozens of blackberries. I shared them with our neighbours and made a cake with my share. And while I was looking at the half-built fence and eating my cake, I thought - this whole situation reminds me of work.

This is what we should have done with the fence:

1. Repaired the part of the fence that we were keeping.

2. Investigated the land around the fence and dug a few holes.

3. And then bought all the necessary equipment for the job.

Basically - better prep work. And this happens all the time in business.

You think you have done the prep work, but it’s just surface-level investigation.

How many times have you started work on a new project or client, and it turned out that you needed a different strategy, or different tools and or even to start again altogether?

It’s not necessarily malicious or intentional, it’s just how things go sometimes. A client can tell me they have all their email marketing up to date, compliant and running correctly, but until I start work and do some investigation, I probably won’t know for sure. I’ve worked for big companies that have spent ££££ on due diligence for an acquisition and still found skeletons in the closet.

And just like the fence-drama led to the blackberry harvest, digging deeper in work is often fruitful too. You get a better understanding of customer needs and what the business is trying to achieve.

My lesson to myself is not to get too frustrated when it turns out I need to do extra prep work.

A month on, the fence is still not finished but what’s been done looks great. And there have been many blackberry harvests since, resulting in one more blackberry cake and an apple and blackberry crumble.

This weekend I went to a BBQ and got talking to a business owner who found themselves in a tricky situation with their marketing. They had paid someone to set up their website and they noticed that their emails weren’t being delivered. They had no login to their website, their own business name didn’t show up in search engines and the email issue seemed to be linked to a blacklisted domain.

It pains me to see people in this position. I work with larger businesses, but I am always happy to chat to micro businesses owners about marketing over a quick coffee or Zoom. It’s never been easier to set up your business online, but it’s not always clear what’s legit, what’s BS and what’s a scam.

Here’s what my micro-business coffee chat usually covers:

Brand

I’ve worked with very successful businesses that had no visual branding at all or a very outdated logo. In all cases they had an amazing product, great service and loyal customers who recommended them. When it came to developing their visual brand and messaging, they already had a strong sense of who they were. I’ve also worked with some visually stunning brands with absolutely no substance.

With this in mind, start small and basic with your brand:

• A business name that explains what you do and is easy to mention in conversation or type into a search engine

• The business name should be available as a web domain, plus you need to secure the social handles and do a quick Google search to check for trademarks, duplicates and scandals

• Think about where your customers will see your brand - Does it need to work in a large format on your van or signage? Does it need to be easily photocopied on paperwork?

• If you pay someone to create your logo, this is your intellectual property so make sure you get the original design files

• You can even play around with Canva to create a logo, just don’t infringe on anyone else’s copyright and keep it very simple

When it comes to brands, simple and to the point is better than fussy and complex. Please do not spend £1000s at this stage, your brand can evolve over time.

Website

Before you even think about getting a website, make sure you own your domain (in my case this is intothewoodsmarketing.com). I use GoDaddy and I have this on auto-renew so there is no risk of losing it. If someone else manages your domain, make sure you have access to the login. Like your logo, this is your intellectual property.

Once you own your domain, you can set up your emails. I avoid Google but this is an easy option, as is Microsoft Office. It can be fiddly setting it up but there are plenty of tutorials online.

If you need a simple website which says this is who I am and what I do, then a basic Wordpress.com template is £36 per year. This is what I started out with, and I’ve upgraded over time.

And if you’re selling online, then Shopify is a very easy and affordable option used by loads of online retailers.

If someone is building a website for you, you’re trusting them with a HUGE business asset, so do your due diligence. You’ll need access to the CMS (content management system - so that you can edit the text). Your web developer should be open about their credentials, how your website will be hosted and what happens if something goes wrong.

A few years ago, I did some coding classes on Treehouse which I recommend for learning the basics of how websites work. This is handy if you’re working with a developer and you feel as though they speak a different language.

SEO (search engine optimisation)

I avoid Google but I would still advise you to set up Google My Business which will help people to know that you exist and are legit when they search for you online.

It’s worth doing a web search of your business name from time to time to see what comes up. If your website and social handles show up in the results - great! If you’re getting bad reviews, then you need to take ownership, investigate and respond. If nothing is showing up, then you have a problem and you need to talk to your web developer or website builder/host (eg Wordpress) to find out what’s going on. You may need to call in an expert if this happens.

There’s a whole marketing industry designed around optimising your business to appear in online searches for your industry or product, eg marketing agency in Nottingham. This is a huge subject. I would recommend getting your website up and running first before jumping into SEO.

Social media

You need to be on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, right? No.

If you’re going to be on social media, you need to be where your customers are and be honest with yourself about how much time you can commit to it.

My plumber is active on the Next Door app as his customers recommend him through there and that works for him. My hairdresser shares photos of her work through Instagram and that works for her. My window cleaner isn’t on social media at all because his business is all through word of mouth.

This is all very brief, like I said, a quick coffee’s worth of advice, but hopefully just enough to steer someone in the right direction.

As for my friend from the BBQ, it looks as though I’ll be helping them to move over to Wordpress and we’re looking at a new domain name. Ouch.

My ability to get the job done comes down to two things: Feeling creative and being productive.

The thing about having a “creative” job is that no one feels creative 100% of the time. When I was working as an office temp in the 00s and daydreaming about a creative career, I imagined a constant flow of ideas and words. And now I am in this (very privileged) position, I have learned that creativity is fragile and unpredictable. In my case, it’s not linked to stress; I have had some of my best ideas when I am very busy and under pressure. And it can’t be forced; if I make time to be creative, I can guarantee it will elude me.

Like many people, I also don’t feel productive 100% of the time. This is something I have more control over, as productivity tends to come and go with my energy levels. But still, it goes up and down and I have to adapt to how I feel.

This is how I work around the ebbs and flows of what’s on my mind and the urge to do something about it:

1. I feel creative and I’m being productive

When I feel creative, ideas rush around my mind with little effort. I’ll have 100 campaign ideas for each client, a visualisation of how it’s going to work and a random desire to re-decorate a room in my house. When this feeling aligns with a productive mood, this is the very best version of me. It often coincides with taking on a new project or when I have learned something new that I want to try out.

I reserve this time for campaign planning as this needs creative input for messaging and structure, and the productivity spurs me on to set up the rollout, scheduling and metrics.

2. I feel creative but I’m not being productive

Having ideas without feeling compelled to do anything with them usually happens when I am travelling home after a thought-provoking meeting, or when I am tired. I’ll make a note of all the ideas that come to mind so that I can action them when I feel more productive.

However, there is one task that I love to do when all I want to do is write, and that’s brand messaging. I let the ideas flow onto a page without thinking of how it’s going to be presented (which inevitably will distract me from the words).

3. I don’t feel creative but I’m being productive

When I am being productive I want to tie up loose ends and put things in order. Previously, I have found myself re-organising files and clearing out my inbox in this mood, but I have learned that what I should really focus on is formulaic marketing tasks. The ones where good is better than perfect, I’ve got a template, and I’ve done it 1000s of times before.

For me, this is writing social media and blogs. 90% of the time, this just needs to follow the research and the content plan, and I’ll be thinking about how I can repurpose and reuse the content again and again.

4. I don’t feel creative and I’m not being productive

Ah, the danger zone. When I can’t think and I don’t feel like doing anything, I do my admin. Accounting, filing, responding to overdue emails and setting up meetings all happen when I’ve got downtime between meetings or I can’t focus on anything more complex than a simple task.

I can guarantee that in any given week, I will experience every combination of feeling creative and being productive and as much as possible, I plan my schedule around this.

Atomic Habits

The link between creativity and productivity has been on my mind as I spent the majority of last week feeling distinctly un-productive and un-creative. This led me to download the audiobook of Atomic Habits by James Clear which has reignited my need to address my worst habits for productivity - my phone, social media and too many meetings. I’ve also realised that last week’s slump was likely caused by the UK heatwave. I’ll report back on habits next week.

Each year that I’ve been in business has a theme.

Year one was survival and year two was experimenting.

Survival and experimenting involved saying “yes” all the time. When I launched Into The Woods Marketing in the summer of 2020, having quit my full-time job just before the pandemic, I just wanted to get started. My pricing wasn’t right, and the clients were not always my ideal clients, but I had to work to do and I made sure my bills were paid. A year later, I had plenty of work on my plate, and I knew the business was going to work and I wanted to try everything. I took on branding projects, did work for an agency, got a coaching and mentoring qualification, started a Medium publication and hired a VA. I tried different pricing structures and made enough money to finally go on holiday after two years.

After two years of saying yes, I had built a business, generated income for myself and my contractors, and did work that I loved and work that I hated.

And I’d recommend this journey to anyone else starting out. Just start and experiment along the way.

This year, I’ve been feeling as though things are still not quite right. I’d found myself without any project work, just retainers. And without a mentoring client, just doing tactical marketing. Some clients who were meant to be short-term had drifted into being long-term.

I need to start saying “no” more often, and this year is shaping up to be about evolving and refining.

How I’m evolving and refining

Fab Giovanetti’s first Substack post landed in my inbox and it was all about how to get unstuck. This prompted me to take my niggles and write down what I loved doing and what I want to move away from. This led to two outcomes:

1. I want to separate “me” as a brand from my business

This is for a number of reasons. The main reason is audience; my Medium blog, my teaching and some of my mentoring work are aimed at other marketers. My client work has a completely different audience.

I wish I didn’t need external validation to develop a personal brand, but that’s where it has come from. Feedback from my LinkedIn content, teaching and conversations has inspired me to do this.

2. I want to help brands build a marketing function

Defined projects, developing a brand and mentoring are my favourite types of client work, and they make the best of my skillset. I want to help businesses to create brands, develop marketing programmes and then recruit and mentor a person or a team to run the programme. And this is the thing that I want to offer going forwards.

What’s next? Well, after years of growing audiences and writing newsletters for others, I’ve set up this Substack as a marketing channel for my personal brand and I’ll be sharing what I’m up to and what I learn along the way.

This process of survive, experiment, evolve and refine reminds me of so many other parts of my life; the house renovation, the garden, the circus. Next time I am doing something new and feel out of my depth, I will remember that it’s all part of the journey.

Credits

Fab Giovanetti for helping me get unstuck and prompting me to start posting on Substack. She just started posting on a Substack too - give her a follow :-)

Sue Moore for giving me the name of this newsletter. Sue provides psychology-led marketing for marketers and writers at Virtual Golddust.

Alanna Oakes who also helped me with names and setting this up. If you need a virtual assistant, check out Ask Alanna.

And Farrah Storr for running an intro to Substack workshop - thank Farrah!

Here’s what’s going on right now:

Money is on my mind: I’ve just paid my second tax bill as a business owner and as I go into my third year of business I want to get better at putting money aside regularly and building a buffer. My five-year-old laptop is on the way out, which is prompting me to think about this upcoming big purchase and how I fund this in the future.

I’m planning a holiday: I didn’t go on holiday or take a significant break for my first two years in business. I took a few weeks off in March and I am planning another few weeks off in September. My brain feels sluggish and I can’t wait.

Zero-click content: This is a concept I recently came across via the wonderful Amanda Natividad. This is about putting the good stuff upfront and easy to find, with no clicking to get more information. Clunky customer journeys and gated content never sat well with me, so I love the idea of this approach and I’ve been playing around with it on LinkedIn.

I’m thinking about what format this newsletter should take. The marketer in me wants a name, a structure and a schedule but the creative side is winning over by just seeing how it goes and how people respond. If there’s anything in particular you want to know about, let me know.

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