How to Know What to Refine and Optimize in Your Marketing for Growth

INTRO: After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host, Kathryn Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you're ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a sought after entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you're in the right place.

Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter, one size fits all approach to marketing and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life.

Welcome to Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast. And here's your host, Kathryn Thompson.

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey, Super Stroked to be here in this week's episode. I cannot wait to dive into today's topic because [00:01:00] I'm going to give you sort of a behind the scenes look at some of the questions that I've been getting asked from some of my clients inside of Spellbound.

And if you don't know what Spellbound is, it is a six month experience where I support soulful mentors, healers, practitioners, coaches, Really turn their invisible wisdom into a sellable offer and a message that totally resonates who they are, integrity of who they are, so that they can really showcase the value of what they do.

And you've probably heard me say this a hundred times that if you don't know how to articulate the value of what you do, you're going to have a hard time selling anything. But more importantly, one of the big things that we work on inside of Spellbound is creating a marketing and sales System that creates consistent client attraction and sales, right?

So how to put that offer in front of the right people at the right time. And we're doing that in a bespoke way. So everybody's strategies look different, uh, which is how it should be because. [00:02:00] We are all different beings. We've got different business models and niches and all those sorts of things. And so this experience is really about creating an aligned strategy for them.

And I want to give you a little behind the scenes peek at some of the questions that are coming through, because I know that I had similar questions as well, but also these are questions that keep popping up and the more they pop up, I'm always like, I need to answer these for people. And I think this will be really beneficial for you.

So one of the big questions that I was getting asked recently was, there's so many different data points, Kathryn, to look at. How do we know what is working and what isn't working? And this is a big one, because if you feel like you're throwing spaghetti against the wall right now, and you're posting on social media, let's just say.

And you have no idea where your clients are coming from. You have no idea, um, if your content's resonating with them, like you're getting some likes and comments and things like that, but it's not really translating to sales, then you don't actually [00:03:00] really know what's working and what isn't working.

Therefore. It's impossible to create consistency and predictability in your business. The only way to create consistency and predictability in your business is if you actually know what is working and it wasn't working so that you can dial down what isn't working and turn up what isn't. And most people.

don't know this in their business. When I ask these questions of like, well, where are your clients coming from? Or, you know, how many clients are coming in every month? They don't actually really know where they're coming from. They don't know what enticed these clients to even reach out. They have no idea.

And that puts you in a very uncomfortable situation in your business. And so one of the questions I was asked by one of my members in Spellbound was, okay, now that I've got these data points, now that I've got the data, I can see What is kind of working, what isn't working, but how do I actually pinpoint what I want to change and what I want to tweak?

And this is really, really important [00:04:00] because there are a lot of data points. For example, let's just say you're running Facebook ads, right? There's a bunch of different ways that we can assess that. We can assess, for example, the conversion rate on the opt in page that you're running the ad to, right? We can measure the cost that it.

to get a sales call booked. We can look at the reach that's going out. We can look at the hold rate on a video. Now I'm not saying this to overwhelm you because again, the data is really empowering and it literally is the only way that you'll create consistency and predictability. So getting really comfortable and okay with the data is the pathway to doing that.

And most of my clients, everybody that comes into Spellbound, that's exactly what they're looking for because they don't want to rely on posting 24 7 on social media. And social media doesn't actually really give them all that much data, right? If you're posting organically, you're subjective to the [00:05:00] algorithm, you're subjective to the changes that they're making.

And in reality, you don't actually know. You might post a post with a keyword and get, you know, a hundred comments, but then what? And that's a question I often ask, like, okay, so you got a hundred comments with somebody saying they wanted your freebie. Well, how many of those that commented actually opted in?

I don't know. So we actually don't know how well it's converting. You could get a hundred comments and zero people actually opt in, right? So we want to look at the whole ecosystem of the data points, and I'm not going to go through all of the data points here or all of the things that I look at, but the question that was asked was, how do I know what to change?

And my response is always this. What is your goal? Right. What is the goal that you want? And for example, if you're running, let's just say ads to something and you're paying a crazy high fee to have somebody actually opt [00:06:00] in, the first place that I would probably look at, look at is why this is happening.

Because I always wanna sort of optimize the investment, right? I always wanna look at like, how can I. Lower my investment on paid ads while still getting the same results or, or better. And so that's the first place I'd probably look right. I'd look at how's the opt-in page converting, what, what is the, um, consumption of the freebie?

Let's just say for videos, we can measure that. For an ebook, we have no idea whether they're reading it or not, right? So that's why I love doing anything with video or a playback or anything like that, like a webinar or a masterclass. I know lots of people say, well, masterclasses don't work anymore or nobody's watching them.

And that's okay to have that perspective if you've got the data that's backing it. But I use a masterclass and webinar and it [00:07:00] performs amazingly. Now, you know, In saying that, does that mean it's gonna perform like that all the time? No. Which is why I often say you're messaging your offer, you're marketing, all of that isn't a one and done, but you will not know what to change if you're not actually measuring and tracking your data.

If you have no idea what is working and what isn't working, you would never know. You might start to see, see Sales dip, and then you'll be like. at the mercy of like, well, what's going on, right? And then it's just a guessing game. And that creates a lot of efforting in your business that isn't necessary.

So my response to my client was at this point in the journey, like in terms of what we had been running, how long we had been running the ads and whatnot, it was time to look at how do we increase conversions? Meaning, how do we get more people on sales calls? That's how she's selling and that's how she chooses to sell.

You don't have to sell with sales calls. You can sell with a sales page [00:08:00] and whatnot. But again, lots of times people will say, well, this is what I want. And yet still don't have the data or understanding of what's working, what isn't working. So you still have to understand whether or not your sales page is converting, right?

You have to know what percentage you're even after. because the data that we look at will be dependent on what is the goal that you're trying to achieve right now. And I don't go in and change a bunch of data otherwise, or a bunch of points, right? Because for example, I wouldn't go in and update an opt in page plus update a A masterclass plus update a sales page, because then I would not know what was actually the contributing factor to the change or the shift.

So I will change one thing. So for this particular client, we had been running ads for at least 30 days, which is a really good baseline of data, right? We had over a hundred people move through the [00:09:00] funnel. We had tons of views on different videos and whatnot. We had a ton of data. Her conversion on her opt-in page.

Absolutely could be improved, but it wasn't horrible. Right? So the baseline that I'm looking at on a conversion page is a minimum of 30%. My opt-in pages are converting anywhere between 70, 60 to 70%. Right? That's a really good conversion rate. That's what we're working towards. But that page, if that page, for example, was converting less than 30%, that might be the first place that I would tweak some things to test.

And we had already done that, by the way. So we had already optimized that in order to get the percentage higher. And we'll be working on getting that percentage higher and higher and higher. Absolutely. But we'd been running it for 30 days, there had been an investment of dollars that had gone out, and therefore at this point now we're looking for conversion, right?

We're looking for call booking. We changed one [00:10:00] thing, one minor thing, on her instant access or replay page where her master class is living, and somebody booked a call and invested. Now, this is the reality, again, of knowing what to tweak, what to change, how to change it. in order to see really big wins, right?

And is now seeing a return on her investment from the ad spend, right? So that was 30 days, 30 days of holding her nerve, 30 days of not doing knee jerk reaction and changing things and all of that, and being patient for the sale to come in, which it has now. Now, the beauty of this is, once we start to see these types of results rolling in, We can start to optimize, like I said, the different data points.

And what we choose to optimize will depend on the goal of that particular client. I want more sales. I want [00:11:00] more phone conversations. What, what is it that she's particular after for the next 30 days? And that's what we'll work towards. And sometimes it's 60, sometimes it's 90. It just depends again on the goal and the length of time.

For me after 30 days and over 100 people through a funnel, I'm wanting to see some conversion. And that might not necessarily be translated into a sale, but it might be translated what I want to see is an interest in the sales conversation, right? Because again, all of this takes a level of mastery. And a level of, um, experience and I think the problem that I see in the industry and across the board is most people are playing what I call a short game.

They want quick wins, quick results in the shortest amount of time and the problem with that mindset or mentality is, is that you're only looking at the micro in that moment. and therefore that's the thing [00:12:00] that's going to dictate the decisions that you're making. So if you don't see the sales results that you want, let's just say in two days or three days, I put my offer out there on StoriesKathryn and I never got a sale.

Okay, but what did you receive? There's data. Right? You got some sort of data there and there's something that we can learn from. And to me, the short game ends up having a lot of people spinning, right? Hopping from strategy to strategy, trying something different, changing their offer, changing the name of their offer, changing the length of their offer.

And I will tell you what will create sales for you in your business, your messaging and your offer. Absolutely. The strategies, they all work. They're a dime a dozen, right? They all work as long as your messaging and your offers on point. Now, that doesn't mean we want to hop from strategy to strategy. We want to play the long game, right?

When we can play the [00:13:00] long game, one, we're going to outlast most people out there because most people are only playing the short game. They want results in like two weeks. Most people that I see will not hold their nerve for 30 days or longer. Most people at two weeks or three weeks will say, it's not working.

Now I have to start over or change or whatever. And I'm not saying this to shame anybody. I'm just saying this from my own experience of what I see over and over and over again. And what I'm inviting you to sort of consider as you listen to this is, am I playing the long game? Or am I playing the short game?

What decisions am I making in my business right now in this moment that are short game decisions, right? And short game decisions to me are, for example, posting something on social media, not getting the result we want and changing everything that we're doing or going back to [00:14:00] the drawing board and saying, well, it must be the offer.

So I have to change everything about the offer. And I got to tweak everything when in reality, Maybe we just need to talk about it five more times to start to really see whether or not this is landing or getting traction with people. And that to me is short game thinking. Long game thinking is being able to hold our nerve for 30 days while we're investing in ads, knowing that the ads and the money that we're putting there is an investment, not an expense.

It's an investment for future growth. It's not a loss of money, right? The loss of money is that scarcity mindset. It's, I'm losing this money. I'm not seeing the return on investment yet. And I get it, right? When we're putting money out, it can be hard to sit and hold our nerve. But the thing about Facebook ads is, or Instagram ads, or any paid ads really, really, yeah.

is we get so much data from it. [00:15:00] So for example, I shared how I turned off my one funnel because I didn't have the capacity that I needed in that moment to really make that funnel work. That doesn't mean that I've lost all my data and the money I spent. I got a lot of information from that. Right? So again, another perspective shift that I'm inviting you to sort of consider that investing in yourself, in your business, in Facebook ads, is not money lost and is not an expense.

That if you're playing the long game, all of these investments will start to create momentum and traction in your business for the long game. If you're here to create a long term impact, then that's the game you need to play. If you're here for sustainable growth in whatever you're supporting people with, then you've got to embody that sustainable growth within yourself.

And I know I've probably said this before is that [00:16:00] we don't get what we want. We get who we are. And so that means that if we're approaching our business with the same level of thinking and doing that is, let's just say the short game or the lack mentality or the scarcity mentality, that we're then we're going to get the same results, right?

It's that full reflection. And so I really wanted to one, showcase some behind the scenes questions that I get, which are very valid questions. There's a lot of data here, Kathryn. How do I know what to change? Well, it's whatever that goal is in that moment, in that 30 day, 60 day, 90 day cycle, right? And so that's the key.

So you don't have to get overwhelmed by the data. Like I don't go look at my Facebook data on a day to day or week to week basis. That's another big one, right? Is that I'm looking at trends and trends being 30, 60, 90 day [00:17:00] trends. So for example, if I went into Facebook ads today, let's just say. One of my ads might be costing me, you know, 15 a lead, let's just say, and that actually isn't the average.

My average is like, let's just say four to five dollars, but today there is a spike in the data. It's kind of like the stock exchange, right? When we're investing, we're taking a risk to invest, but But what do they always say? Play the long game when you're investing, unless you're in like high risk and doing that sort of thing.

But I'm talking about like for retirement, right? If you're investing, you're in the long game. You're not going in there and pulling out all your money because you saw a, a fluctuation in it today or last week, right? No. You're riding the waves. The same is for your business. You've got to be able to ride the ebbs and flows of your business and actually look at trends, look at trends of what's going on to make those decisions, not to make them on a knee jerk reaction in the moment based on one singular conversation or [00:18:00] One reference point, right, is like, okay, so my ad cost obviously spiked, let's just say, to 15 a lead.

Let's just see over the next 30 days what that actually looks like and is there something here I need to change? That's how I want to invite you to go into the decision making. That's what I call long term game playing decision making, right? It's not making reactive rash decisions in the moment based off of one thing.

Right? And oftentimes something that we're just guessing about or a story that we're making up in our mind about the scenario, which we all do. I do it, but I make a daily practice of really paying attention to the thoughts and ideas and whatnot that's coming through. And I know when I first started running ads, it was scary as hell.

And I also know I was that reactive business owner turning them on and off and on and off and on and off. Absolutely. But [00:19:00] I'm sharing this perspective with you and my decision making and how I approach it from that long term game perspective, right? So my investments that I make in my retirement and whatnot, I don't even look at.

I literally don't go in and look every day. I know there are some people that do that, but I just don't because to me, I'm not taking the money out today. And I'm not taking it out tomorrow or next week, right? And it is an investment in my future. I look at my business the exact same way from a long term perspective.

I'm in it for the long haul. Therefore, the decisions that I make are going to be based off of the trends that are happening over a 30, 60, 90 day cycle. And taking that data, but not from a perspective of, Oh my God, it's not working, I'm shutting it off. I'm, I got to change what I'm doing. I got to do something different.

It's from the mindset and perspective of, okay, this data is informing something, and there's so much possibility here to refine and to [00:20:00] optimize. And by optimize, I mean, improve, but refining as well, right? Even though I'm years into this. into entrepreneurship. We're talking almost a decade now, which seems crazy, eight years maybe.

Um, but I'm over well over five years in the entrepreneurship game and I can tell you right now that it's this sort of resiliency in being able to make decisions from this perspective, from this grounded, sort of calm, non reactive perspective where we're seeing possibility to change and refine all the time.

And again, I've been in almost a decade now in full time entrepreneurship. I've been doing marketing and sales for over 20 years. And I can tell you right now that there's always refinement and optimization. There's always refinement. What once worked likely maybe won't work again. Right? Or it'll run its course, you know?

So if you're [00:21:00] thinking, okay, webinars or masterclasses don't work anymore, you could be right. You absolutely could be right. Maybe your audience is desensitized to them. Absolutely. But I never take that at face value unless you've got the data that's backing in. Right? Because just because your belief and the belief that you have about a certain thing doesn't make it true for everybody else.

And that we all look through the world from our own perspective. Right? So the lens we're looking through is the reality we absolutely see. And so if you say that nobody's listening to masterclasses anymore, I know that's your belief. But if you don't have data to back that for me, Then I'm looking at that and looking at it just as a belief and potentially a limiting belief because I see a lot of people thrive with masterclasses.

I see a lot of people create really beautiful customer journeys using video and [00:22:00] something of the sort, right? And so I'm saying that just because you have that perspective, I don't do this. I don't watch this anymore. That is your own belief system coming through, being projected out and likely limiting what you're going to be able to create, right?

And likely limiting the possibilities available to you in this very moment because You're looking through that narrow perspective and we all do it, right? We all do it. I have some pretty solid belief system stuff, right? In terms of, it takes a lot of effort to grow and scale a business, right? That is what I'm working through at the moment, right?

That it takes a lot of my effort to do that. And so, That is true for me because that's been my reality, right? But I see a lot of entrepreneurs out there that, I'm not saying that it doesn't take effort, but I see a lot of entrepreneurs moving more effortlessly in flow. [00:23:00] And so I know it's possible. And that is my evolution right now.

It's like, okay, Can I redefine what effort looks like? Can I redefine what it actually takes for me to run the business? And there's a lot of things unfolding and unpacking there, but that's what I would love to invite you to do is to start to really observe your thoughts and the things that come forth and to really start to question them.

This is a practice, right? Because most of us. Are operating on autopilot and I do this too, right? I've got my ingrained patterns, but one of the things that I'm doing right now is to really start to observe how I'm wired, how I behave, what my thoughts are right now in my reality, and then really starting to question them.

So that I can uncover where am I limiting beliefs? Where am I capping my potential? Um, and this is the beauty of, of growth. But I [00:24:00] started this podcast episode today because I wanted to share with you. Again, that sort of big question that I get, like, how do I look at this data and make sense of it? And I think the biggest thing to say is, where are you wanting to go and what is that goal over the 30, 60, 90 days?

And if you don't have the data that you're looking at, you're making decisions in your business based off of hunches or guesses, and I'm not saying our intuition isn't the guiding light here because it absolutely is, but I am so well tuned into my intuition and I even get this wrong. So I'm not saying that just because you had a hunch or a nudge, your ego is really, really seductive and can be really, really creative in terms of what's coming through, right?

And so I'm saying that even my own thinking and my, my own practice of being really, really, really good at trusting my intuition and knowing what that is versus what my ego is can sometimes get lost [00:25:00] in sort of translation. And so I always back up the decisions based off of my data. Right? And there's nothing wrong with that.

And I'm not saying that we want to that to be the thing that drives every decision we make in business. And we're so rigid with the data. It's to me that what the data has allowed me to do from a very intuitive perspective is I get to lead with my intuition. And then I get to use my data as support.

It's like a, it's like another beautiful team member in my business, right? It's kind of how I look at it. It's like, it's just support there for me to support me in looking at what is possible. Because again, everything I do in my business and everything I encourage my clients to do in their business is to really experiment and play and to really open themselves up.

to what's possible beyond what they're sort of seeing right now in their current reality, right? And what they're [00:26:00] going, this is how it has to be. And this is how I'm building it is like, okay, we're looking at the data now going, okay, well, how, how do we increase sales conversations? If conversions right now, sales conversions is the thing that we want to increase.

What could you do to do that? And then it's this beautiful experiment with intuition. So it's not like the data is. Governing our every decision and being really rigid with that, which is why I shared the ebb and flow, right? Like, I'm not in my data every day going, Ooh, what's happening? What's happening?

What's happening? That to me, again, is not leading with the intuition perspective, right? Is that it's just there to support me in the decisions that I make. And I'm always trusting that intuition as guidance in a lot of ways. Sometimes it's not, we can't explain it, but again, it's from that place of play and experimentation.

Okay. You want to increase conversion on your opt in page. Let's just [00:27:00] say, well, what can we do to do that? Could we add a video? Could we switch up the pictures? Could we change some of the language to make it that much more juicy? Like, or pull out more of your personality. Like this is where we get to be creative and play, but this is where I invite my clients to go, you know, you can, what, what is your intuition guiding you to do when it comes to that can that opt in page?

Or what is your intuition guiding you to do when it comes to maybe the masterclass that you're running? Or what could you do to form connection with people? Because to me, connection is the bridge to conversation. And if we can connect. bridge that connection point, we're likely going to get more conversations and more conversations, in my opinion, result in people buying more, right?

Because when they can connect with you and then have a conversation with you, and I'm not saying it always has to be a sales call, can be in the DMs, you could have a beautiful conversation with somebody on your sales page, where you have a video there [00:28:00] telling a bit of your story. And so, I'm sharing all this with you because I think sometimes the whole data thing gets there's this battle between should I be tracking data and our whole life is based on metrics and analytics and all the things and I would love again if that's kind of where you're feeling as that soulful mentor intuitive I get it because I'm that as well and there's that tension right for sure but I would love for you to consider your data as a team member that's just here to provide you insight for And you at the end of the day are the leader, um, guiding your, your business forward, but you're, you've got support and the support is what allows us to receive, right?

And so the more support we have around us, The more we get, we will receive and that's being in sort of your feminine, the analytics and the data and stuff is the masculine and we need structure, but we also need fluidity and creativity and intuition, right? There's a balance. [00:29:00] There's a yin and a yang here.

And so it's not about, it's all analytics and this is how we run our business. But like I said, if You don't have that informing you in any way, shape, or form. It's going to be really hard to create that predictability and that consistency that you desire. And so I really hope that this episode has provided some insight.

with a behind the scenes look at really what we do in Spellbound in a lot of ways, and that it's again, this really beautiful experience to create that predictability and consistency so that you can be in delivery and doing the work that you're meant to do without having to think about every day, what do I post on social media?

What should I say? And how do I say it? It's that you get to build this beautiful machine, as I call it, this system that then allows you to be in your creativity. Allows you to be in that flow because you've got the consistency kind of working for you. And then over time you're optimizing and [00:30:00] refining it.

But like I said, I'm not doing that on a daily basis. It's not something I'm like locked into all the time. I'm doing it over 30, 60, 90 day cycles. Right. And oftentimes over 90 days, you know, I don't remember. I ran the exact same ads for a year and a half without touching them. . Right. So it's like, it's not like it's.

You're, you're in there doing work all the time. And then now I'm in a place of like, okay, I'm evolving a bit, right? My message is evolving. Who I'm serving is evolving in a lot of different ways. And so it's like, what does that look like? And that's what I mean by the long game, right? Because at this point I could say, okay, I'm evolving.

Now I have to burn everything to the ground. And I used to do that, right? I'd be like, okay, I've changed and evolved. Now burn it to the ground. And sometimes that's what you need to do. But in a lot of cases, it's not. We can, we get to just evolve and sort of grow. And that's the long game sort of approach and mentality that I'm talking about.

Right. And to me, if you're doing this work and it's your life's [00:31:00] work, that's what you're here to do. It is a long game. It's not based on. One particular season, AKA, you know, today or tomorrow, whatever, it's based on the process, the long term, the long term game. And that's the game that we're playing. And that to me is how I make decisions in my business.

That's Navigate Everything In My Business. I'm riding the ebbs and flows of it, but also being really well supported and informed in how I make decisions. Therefore I can make quick decisions because I understand what's happening in my business and when it's happening and how to sort of navigate that.

So I really hope this episode has been informative for you. And of course, if you have any questions, please Please pop over on Insta at Creatively Owned. I would love to hear from you. Uh, you can DM me. I'm over there and I'm wishing you a fab day. Cheers. Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time.

You can also find us on social media at Creatively Owned and online at [00:32:00] creativelyowned. com. Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic self.