What Lentil Soup Taught Me About Marketing
Most people don’t start their own businesses because they’re pumped about learning marketing, but it’s completely necessary to find success. Luckily, there are marketing lessons hiding around just about every corner, even in the kitchen.
My mom hates to cook. She’ll happily be the first to admit this you. When I was growing up, if anything was cooked beyond boiled water or a spin in the microwave, it was done by my dad.
And while I never considered myself a “rebel” in the traditional sense, I have always liked to buck traditions and put in the work to show that I can be different if I put my mind to it. (That’s the secret about a lot of entrepreneurs/business owners/freelancers I think).
So I cook.
In fact, now that I work for myself, I cook all three meals at home most days. (Except when a poke bowl is calling my name...or a donut).
I’m by no means a master chef (I couldn’t even cut it on Masterchef Junior -- those kids are intense) but I like it and it brings me a specific type of joy to be able to create nutritious meals for me and my husband.
So naturally, as I was whirring up some tomato soup the other day I started to think about how I could leverage this for content share my experiences to help my audience.
And it occurred to me that learning to cook isn’t all that different from learning marketing.
Allow me to present: lessons I’ve learned in the kitchen that have made me a better marketer.
Bon Appetit!
Start With Simple Stuff
I don’t remember the first thing I ever cooked but I remember the first ‘complicated’ thing I ever cooked and it was this lentil soup. It was delicious, but I spent what was probably half of my checking account on saffron threads which was...dumb.
When it comes to marketing your business, you don’t have to start with a recipe that has you frantically googling what Swiss chard looks like. For instance, you don’t have to build a complex marketing funnel before you’ve sold your first product and you don’t have to buy the most sophisticated automation software.
You can start with a grilled cheese or a simple pesto, which in this case might be writing a blog post, using the free version of MailChimp, or just setting up social accounts for your business.
To mix metaphors, you don’t have to dive into the deep end to learn to swim and if you do, you’re a lot more likely to drown AKA get super overwhelmed.
It’s OK to Use Recipes
There’s some common wisdom that if you use recipes, you don’t really know how to cook or you’re not a good cook.
I use recipes all the damn time and nobody is complaining about my pizza dough or vegetarian chili.
Business owners are creative risk-takers, and we tend to build a lot of our identity around those descriptors. Sometimes that translates to “I have to come up with a fresh new idea every time I do something, otherwise I’m a fraud!”
For your marketing to be effective, you don’t have to create your strategies from scratch. You can start from successful recipes, whether you find them on a blog, in a course, or just kinda crib them (the strategy, NOT the content) from other successful people.
Once you get more experience (and data) under your belt, you’ll be a lot better equipped to make tweaks, changes, and even create your own brand new, fresh-to-death strategies that work for your business.
Memorize Your Favorites
I think it was Ina Garten (or maybe Martha?) who said you should have a handful of really good recipes memorized to be a good cook.
I don’t know how to make coq a vin or beef bourguignon and I would be completely lost if you tried to get me make a souffle.
But I can throw together a pizza dough, tomato soup, some homemade naan, and a juicy roast chicken from memory. If I want the other stuff, I can go to a restaurant.
Maybe you’re really amazing at writing blog posts but you suck at in-person events (what, no, this isn’t based on me, of course not). Maybe you’re superb on camera but sitting down to write marketing emails makes you want to scream.
Play to your strengths. Get good at what you want to be good at. Of course you want to take on new challenges and learn new things, but you can do that once you get really good at your favorites. And you can always go a restaurant AKA a professional service provider for the stuff you don’t get yet or don’t care to learn .
Learn Your Tools
When I first learned about oven thermometers I was absolutely floored. You mean to tell me that there’s a chance my oven temperature doesn’t match up exactly to the number on the knob on the front?
You don’t have to hang a thermometer in your oven every time you bake, but whenever you start cooking with a new one, it can make a huge difference to know what temperature your oven actually is.
Whether you know it or not, you already have a kitchen full of marketing tools at your disposal. It might be your personal narrative, an extremely unique product, or a deep and unrelenting knowledge of your target market.
How do you know how effective your tools are? You start using them.
Share your story on social or write blog posts about the topics your target market really cares about. Track your results, try again. Repeat.
There’s no oven thermometer for marketing, but there are plenty of analytics that can help you. But you gotta start trying things.
You Can Leave Some Things Out
When I made that lentil soup so many years ago and spent like $40 on saffron I hadn’t learned one of the most important cooking lessons out there: you can leave stuff out.
I wouldn’t try to make a lentil soup without, you know, lentils, but leaving out a garnish, a topping, a drizzle, a spice won’t turn something delicious into something gross.
Want to launch a promotional campaign but you haven’t had a professional photo session yet? Eh, skip it.
Have a blog post itching to get our but you haven’t finished your lead generating content upgrade yet? Just publish.
Your business and your marketing will never move forward if you’re waiting to get every single piece perfect. You’ve got to put yourself out there and start trying things to figure out what works for you. Even if you don’t have and za’atar or arugula isn’t in season.
Results May Vary
You only have to take a short scroll down to any online recipe comment section to learn that a recipe that yields incredible results for one cook is a total disaster for another.
It could be the aforementioned oven temperature thing, but it could also be humidity, altitude, utensils, or the phase of the moon. Who really knows.
The point is that this can also happen with your marketing strategy.
You can copy a successful launch exactly or follow all the steps your favorite marketing expert has laid out for you and you might not see the same results. By the same token, you can try something completely different and new -- or something that goes against conventional wisdom -- and you’ll see great results.
I mean, what do you think the first person who tried to make milk out of oats was going on? At just look how that turned out.
What you Take the Time to Learn Today Will Feed You Forever
This is a little hokey, but the truth is that if you dive into marketing your business and get good at it, it will feed you for the rest of your life. Even if you shutter your business, move on to other opportunities, start a non-profit -- knowing how to promote, sell, persuade, and add value for customers will never go out of style. The skills you’re learning and practicing will stay with you in any kitchen and you’ll only get batter. I mean, better.
Trash-Proof Your Wellness Business Emails
A few tips to make your emails better, watch your open rates climb, and rise from the trash folder like the beautiful marketing phoenix you are.
“I don’t see email as a problem in my life. I actually very much enjoy email. I look at it as a form of entertainment… maybe I’m sick and I need some sort of therapy around that.”
Anecdotally, most people don't feel like Mitch.
I have a friend who has literally over 10,000 unread, unarchived emails in his inbox.
I have another who I have to text every time an email needs her attention because she just stopped checking it one day.
That many unread emails makes the Virgo in me want to scream into a bottomless pit and the marketer in me want to cry and hop the first plane to an ashram with no wifi.
And as a businessowner, I'm sure you have your fair share of email stories that make you feel a little bit crazy, too.
According to MailChimp, for the health and wellness industry, an open rate around 20% is about average for emails. While that might look pretty good all things considered, it still means that 40% of people that get your emails don't even bother to open them.
You pour your blood, sweat, and precious time into every email you write just for them be thrown in the trash like yesterday's kombucha.
Ouch.
But with more than 4 billion email users expected by 2021 and email marketing still being shown as the most effective digital marketing channel, you can't exactly just ignore email marketing altogether and hope for the best.
Instead, you can make your emails better, watch your open rates climb, and rise from the trash folder like the beautiful marketing phoenix you are.
Heya -- don't have time to do the whole reading thing right now? No prob.
Download my Really Basic and Not at All Patronizing Guide to Email Marketing for Wellness Brands.
Read at your leisure.
Whaddya Got?
"I'll do more with email marketing when I have a bigger list."
"I don't have time for email right now. It's my busy season."
"I've got plenty of clients, I don't need to doing email marketing right now."
It's just you and me here. Tell me...have you ever said any of these?
Or thought them to yourself as you filled another hour with social media? (It's got it's place but we both know that social media marketing time can quickly and seamlessly morph into puppy and cake frosting video time.)
The fact is you should always have email campaigns running. Whether it's a follow-up sequence to an opt-in you haven't promoted in a while or a re-engagement campaign for customers you haven't heard from in a while, the right time to be working on your email strategy is approximately *looks at invisible watch* now.
With email marketing as with so many other aspect of our businesses, it's way too easy to wait for the perfect time when everything is in place and you're absolutely sure it's going to go perfectly aaaaand oh would you look at that you're dead from waiting.
The perfect time is now.
Don't have a huge list? Start with the one you've got and strategize to grow it even bigger.
Have a list that hasn't heard from you in a while? It's not too late to get them re-engaged, to reintroduce yourself to them and add value to their lives.
If want to trash-proof your emails, you have to actually send 'em out.
Who Are You Even Talking To?
The key to making sure that your emails get opened is RELEVANCE.
*one more time for the people in the back*
How you make sure that your emails are relevant takes a little bit of practice and a lot of listening.
Chances are that you have more than one type of ideal customer and those customers have differing (although perhaps overlapping) interests and needs. As soon as someone gets on your email list, they should be categorized and tagged based on what you know about them.
Then, rather than send one email out to your entire list, you can send emails that are specific to different segments.
The best way to learn what kind of content your customers actually want from you is to ask them. You can send out a post on social channels, ask them in an email, or reach out to your best customers individually and find out how you can help.
The more value you can provide that is relevant and helpful to your customers, the less likely they are put your emails in the trash.
Always Be Connecting
Successful email marketing is about making personal connections. It might not feel that way when you're loading your email copy into MailChimp but in fact every email you send out is a piece of you. And the more you share of yourself, the more effective your email marketing is going to be.
The list that you spent all that time building (or that you're still working on) isn't a way for you to make constant sales pitches, it's a way for people to get to know you, what you offer, and how you can help them.
Switch it Up
No matter how long you've been at this, you have more to learn. You, your business, and your customers are going to change and grow over time.
Example -- I signed up for an email list a few months back. It was a message I was interested in at the time but I didn't hear from them for weeks and weeks. When I finally did, the subject line was READ NOW. A dutiful email reader, I did!
It was a newsletter. No particular value, just notifying me about a new blog post.
Hm.
Then I got another email the next week with the same subject line. "Really?" I thought and opened it again. Same low-value content.
Eventually, even though the subject lines changed, I was so annoyed by the lazy tactics of the first handful I got that I stopped opening anything from the sender.
But I would bet a lot that that first email had phenomenal open rates! And the third or fourth one had rates that may as well have been negative.
Your list can quickly get used to tricks and tactics. Strive to stand out and don't fall into patterns. What works for your first month, quarter, year, won't work forever.
Luckily, the data that you can collect on your emails -- open rates, click throughs, unsubscribes -- can all help you to be better day after day and send after send.
I get it, email marketing can feel more than a little overwhelming. If you still have questions, I've got a few options for you:
(1) Download my Really Basic and Not at All Patronizing Guide to Email Marketing for Wellness Brands
(2) Schedule 15 minutes with me to go over your current email strategy
(3) Take a nap (seriously, this always helps me). When you wake up, shoot me an email with any questions you have.
Photo by Adam Solomon on Unsplash