Ep 116: Marketing That Worked This Year and What Will I Bring into 2025

This episode highlights the marketing strategies that Sarah Noel Block successfully implemented in 2024 and plans to carry into 2025. She shares insights on virtual events, a targeted business development blitz, and innovative approaches to client engagement.

- Discusses effective virtual event strategies 
- Explains the success of the end-of-year business development blitz 
- Introduces the 'anti-social strategy' for niche community engagement 
- Highlights the LinkedIn 'magic DM' approach 
- Shares results and insights from each strategy 
- Encourages listeners to consider these strategies for their own marketing 

If you're intrigued by any of these, there are full-blown programs and courses to teach you all of these strategies inside the Tiny Marketing Club. Go to sarahnoelblock.com/club to learn more about that and get started.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Marketing Strategies for 2025 Success
• 14:00 Join the Tiny Marketing Club

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:47

Welcome to Tiny Marketing. This is Sarah Noir-Block and the podcast that helps B2B service businesses do more with less. Learn mean actionable, organic marketing strategies you can implement today. No fluff, just powerful growth tactics that work. Ready to scale smarter? Hit that subscribe button and start growing your business with Tiny Marketing. Hello, welcome to episode 116 of the tiny marketing show.

Speaker 1: 1:16

I'm Sarah Noelle Block and I believe this is the last episode of the year, so I actually recorded an entirely different episode for today and then I said, no, I'm going to go in another direction. So here we are. I want to talk about the marketing that worked this year and what I'll bring back into 2025. So there are a couple strategies that I began implementing in 2023. And I kind of perfected in 2024. I want to dive into those and what's making me money on the daily, let's dive into it. Some of these I'm going to take I'm going to take with me into 2025.

Speaker 1: 2:08

So strategy one that worked really well was virtual events, and it killed. So I did one about every six weeks and I started to evolve my virtual events towards, like mid-year, where once a quarter I would do a paid workshop, where once a quarter I would do a paid workshop and then I would fill them in about every six weeks with mini masterclasses. So this worked really really well because, a there were free options available to fill my funnel, so it brought new people into my world who might not be warm enough to want to go to a paid workshop. And, two, adding that paid workshop element allowed me to give people a taste of what it's like inside of Tiny Marketing Club. So they got a little mini experience of what it's like, and that helped convert a lot of people to the full experience because they're like, wow, if this $97 workshop is this valuable, I got to see what's inside Tiny Marketing Club. Another thing on that is anytime you're doing lead generation I'm going to run through this really really quickly, just high level.

Speaker 1: 3:39

So passive lead magnets like downloadable PDFs they bring in cold leads who need a long time to nurture. And then active lead generators, like these virtual events that I'm talking about, the free mini masterminds. Those bring in warm leads because they're more likely to attend. It's a time-sensitive event. You either show up live or you don't. And then we have hot leads and those come in from micro offers. So something that is paid. They're far more likely to consume that content because they traded money in order to gain access to it, so they're more likely to actually consume it. So that's why paid workshops did so well for me. I had a 100% show up rate for my paid workshops, which is unheard of. So I'm bringing virtual events back into 2025. And if you aren't in my community, so you can join my free events, go to eventssarahnoelblockcom and you can see all of the events that I host there.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Okay, so what may evolve in 2025 with my virtual events? I like to include tools and bonuses for live attendees. I think I'll probably create. I tested this out with the 2025 growth playbook and I created some AI driven coded calculators that my clients could use that attended that workshop. So I think I'm going to do more of that in 2025, create more AI tools that will allow my clients to do things quicker, because you're all solo consultants, solo fractionals at least the people who are in tiny marketing club and AI will help you streamline your processes so much faster.

Speaker 1: 5:37

Okay, so let's now talk about part two, the second thing that I did in 2024 that absolutely killed it that I'll bring into 2025. And that is my end of year biz dev blitz. So I talked about this last episode. I give you a little bit more of a deep dive on it, but it helps you end the year strong, because people are focused on planning for the next year. They're doing their budgeting now and and if you sell to corporate a lot of my clients are B2B then you also have the added benefit of use it or lose it budgeting. So if they have budget that's left over from 2024, then that means that they're not going to get it back in 2025. You can run this department on X amount, so you don't need Y amount, which you were originally budgeted. So they use it no matter what. Another element is tax savings. So when you sell this time of year, people can pay in full in December and they can write it off immediately on their taxes in January. Big benefit there.

Speaker 1: 7:03

So end of year, biz dev blitz, I am definitely bringing that into 2025. It ended up resulting in I just told my coach this it was $50,000 one week and then another $96,000 another week that were confirmed sold. So it works really really well and I use it to book out as far in advance as I can for 2025. So we can plan projects usually through the summer during this end of year BizDev Blitz. So how I would refine this a bit is it always occurs to me spontaneously, like in November I'm like, oh yeah, this worked really well last year, I should do this again. So I think next year I will do a little bit more early preparation. I also did a Black Friday deal at that time. So I think, like the combined power is what made it so powerful this year. So I'm going to plan my Black Friday deals and my end of year biz dev blitz a little bit earlier this year and think about it before mid gangbusters in 2024 is my anti-social strategy.

Speaker 1: 8:21

So I love LinkedIn, so don't get me wrong, it's just a name that I have for it. But my anti-social strategy is leveraging niche communities to be a big fish in a tiny pond. I always ask what communities my clients are in because I want to know what niche communities I should be spending time in. These are the types of communities that live on Slack or Circle or Heartbeat or Disco platforms like that, disco platforms like that but they all, like everybody that's in them, usually falls within a certain niche. So it makes it really easy to add value to exclusively the people that you want to work with and I tend to connect with them over there be value-driven, answer the questions. First, I set up alerts with keywords so I'm alerted immediately when someone asks a question that I could answer. Well, so I do that. And then I usually connect with them over on LinkedIn to deepen that relationship. So my antisocial strategy will continue in 2025.

Speaker 1: 9:31

It converted. About 60% of my clients came from that strategy alone. Why it worked? It reduced overwhelm and it increased my engagement because you know, with Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or whatever, that's a huge pool of people. These niche communities are less than 10,000 people and they're all within the same niche, so it's really easy to find the right people to connect with and then I can create a higher impact because I am an expert that can support their questions, answer them. So it made it really easy for me to show my value because I was in communities that needed my value. So next year I'm going to double down on this and so my antisocial strategy. It is part of my everyday profit habits and I usually turn those on, maybe half the time, like probably like two weeks out of every month. I'll do my everyday profit habits to drive all of it. I'll probably do it every week next year because it did so well, and I think I'm going to aim to connect more with the community leaders because the speaking engagements I did within those niche communities drove a lot of leads at one time, so I'm going to double down on that too.

Speaker 1: 11:09

Okay, thing four that worked really well in 2024 is LinkedIn's magic DM. So I talked about this. I just like nodded to it last week in my episode on the end of your biz dev blitz, but Molly Godfrey in episode 100 taught her magic DM strategy where you're basically connecting with someone and you use your like one liner in the connection request, in the message that you send, and you get far fewer people who are going to accept that request, but the people that do are interested in you. It's like a tiny little hand raise saying, okay, I'm intrigued by what you do, so I'm going to keep doing that, because about 40% of my clients converted from that strategy alone.

Speaker 1: 12:07

I may add a few things for 2025. We have voice notes now in LinkedIn DMs, so I know that does really well because someone is hearing your voice. It's a little more intimate, so I might add that in as a piece of it and also using more of my LinkedIn analytics and making sure that my content is hitting the right people. So, if you have a premium account in LinkedIn, you can click on view next to your impressions on your posts and it'll show you what people viewed your profile after viewing your post. It'll also show you what industries are looking at it, what roles are looking at it, what locations. So it will give you a lot of insights into who is lurking and reading your posts without interacting with them and, as I've said many times before, the money is in the lurkers. Many times before the money is in the lurkers.

Speaker 1: 13:15

Okay, so those are the four strategies that worked especially well for me in 2024 that I'm bringing into 2025. That is virtual events, the end of year, biz dev blitz, my anti-social strategy, which is part of my everyday profit habits, and the magic DM in LinkedIn. All of those are. I'm putting in a suitcase right now I'm picturing like a rucksack, the stick with the handkerchief. I'm putting all those strategies in there with the handkerchief. I'm putting all those strategies in there, putting it over my shoulder and taking it into 2025. So feel free to copy them and if you are intrigued by any of these.

Speaker 1: 14:00

There are full-blown programs and courses to teach you all of these strategies inside the tiny marketing club. Go to sarahnoelblockcom slash club to learn more about that and get started. If you liked this episode, make sure to like, subscribe, comment so we get into the feeds of everyone else, just like you. I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you. I love you or no. I'm going to do it like Buddy the Elf I love you, I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you or no. I'm going to do it like Buddy the Elf I love you, I love you, I love you. Have a great holiday and I will see you next year. You love all things tiny marketing. Head down to the show notes page and sign up for the wait list to join the tiny marketing club, where you get to work one-on-one with me with trainings, feedback and pop-up coaching that will help you scale your marketing as a B2B service business. So I'll see you over in the club.