I’m barefoot.
Sitting in a lounge chair,
soaking up some sun (and silence… with the exception of the calming water sounds and chirping birds)
and taking a break from the “ruckus” of the Traffic & Conversion Summit in San Diego.
I’ve heard a lot,
taken a ton of notes,
learned a TON,
and AM —definitely — inspired.
But when I sat down to share the BIGGEST take aways (at least from day one) of the summit SO FAR, I started drawing a blank.
Where would I start?
What’s MOST important, no matter what business a woman has, no matter where she lives, what she sells, how successful she is already, and / or what industry she’s in?
A lot of this event has been spent encouraging “digital folks” to incorporate some (gasp!) human interaction into their marketing. You know, a “free the bots” sort of march. =)
But really, it’s about freeing US from the bots…
encouraging business owners and marketers to — YES — use “bots” and various other means of automation, of course, but to do OTHER things like, and I’m quoting from my notes here:
— Focus on QUANTITY over QUALITY of prospect. I sat there SO proud of the decision we made to grow Women Who WOW exclusively through print invite only for its first 18 months in existence. This focus on QUANTITY was critical to our eventual and continued success…. and allowed us to create an organization that was markedly different than anything else out there serving the “same demographic.” Because let’s face facts: There are “women entrepreneurs” and then there is US… the women who WOW. There IS a difference. There are a ton of women entrepreneurs… a precious few invited to join us.
Take Away # 1: The QUALITY of who you INVITE into business with you matters. It affects your BRAND, your bottom line, and — if you’re like me — how much you LOVE (or don’t love) your business. As #bosslady, you DO get to choose, so choose wisely.
— Try taking your logo / headers off of your emails to your list. You don’t say???? =) HOW LONG have I been singing THIS song? My open rate stays high because I write to EVERYONE the way I write to ANY ONE… as if they are a friend. Friends don’t send friends emails with headers on them.
Take Away #2: If there’s ANY HINT of you trying to be “professional,” using tactics that deliberately say, “I’m so important and fancy it’s tough for me to respond personally to my market,” STOP.
Be you, instead.
Un-filtered, Un-edited, you.
Show up, seriously.. YOU show up, and engage with your market.
I hear SO MANY entrepreneurs complain about low engagement FROM THEIR MEMBERS or MARKET. I don’t suffer from low engagement issues, because I engage FIRST.
My Momma taught me that to make a friend, I need to prove myself friendly. In business, and especially on-line, if you want engagement, you’d better engage… YOU start the engagement… by speaking to people the way you’d speak to a friend.
— Conversations matter, and if you sell something, you need to use all of your bots to drive prospects into REAL conversations.
“Nothing sells without conversation.” — ME. =) circa 2012… repeated ad nauseum ever since.
Take Away #3: Those conversations you’re avoiding… become a lot easier (and dare I say even ENJOYABLE ) when you embrace the whole idea of showing up as who YOU are, instead of following some script.
I’ll keep posting from the event… with daily updates. Wish you all were here with me. Certainly PM me here: m.me/womenwhowow if you have any specific questions.
