Breaking Old Habits: How to Change Your Mindset About Marketing

By Guest Author, Molly Winters

Introduction to the author by Deborah Moyer – The Downsizing Institute

One of the things I love about the work I do is meeting extraordinary people who truly love helping others while offering real solutions to everyday challenges. So, it’s with sincere pleasure that I introduce Molly Winters as my guest blogger for today’s post. Owner of The Connection Copywriter, Molly is a former home organizer turned professional copywriter whose mission is to help business owners find and share their distinct voices.

She offers done-for-you copywriting services for your website, sales pages, email sequences, DIY budget-friendly writing support, email marketing, blogs, and more.  When she’s not writing, Molly’s often curled up reading with a cup of coffee or spending time with her husband and two kiddos in Bend, Oregon.

No matter what kind of small business you own, most business owners say that creating relevant and effective copy for their marketing is one of their biggest challenges. Do you feel like social media is too daunting? Are you running out of ideas to create excitement in your messaging? Or maybe you just have no clue where to get started. I get it. It’s been a challenge for me for a lot of years too.

That’s why I asked Molly to share some of her expert advice with us today. There’s lots to learn, so let’s dive in!

Deborah

How to Change Your Mindset About Marketing

Marketing is about visibility and repetition. Being seen — over and over and over again. 

If you’re groaning internally, you are NOT alone! After working with many introverts and extroverts who all find social media and online marketing exhausting, I’d love to show you another way.

Deborah recently shared 5 Proven Marketing Tips with you on The Downsizing Institute blog that are spot on. Still, what if you know you should be doing more with your marketing but you struggle to do it?

If you dread marketing your business, it may be time for a mindset shift. With so much of our business requiring an online presence, it’s easy to overlook human interaction in our marketing.

We tend to put on an entirely different voice in our materials — a voice that sounds official, factual, and sterile because we’re so worried about getting it wrong.

The “Personal” in Connection

Instead, imagine if the warm, kind-hearted, and helpful tone you use in person with clients could show up in your marketing. Readers would get to know, like, and trust you so much faster, and you’d feel better about the content you’re putting out in the world, too.

Seniors and their families feel so much stress and anxiety when facing a downsizing move or major organizing project. Your ability to show compassion and understanding for their pain points helps them see you as the solution to their problems.

But how do you do that? With a foundation in human connection, your consistent monthly marketing and direct outreach become much easier.

Let’s dive in.

Creating Human Connection in Marketing

Forget about marketing for a moment, and instead, reflect on your interaction with clients. Close your eyes and picture what it’s like to meet them for the first time. 

What do you do, say, or convey with body language? What helps them feel at ease and think, “Yes! This is who (and what) I need!”

Now, picture what it’s like when you work side-by-side with them when they feel overwhelmed in their home.

Remind yourself about . . .

• The relief they feel when you help them clear more space in their home.
  
• The teary eyes they might experience when you help them discover lost treasures and memorabilia they haven’t seen in years.
  
• The gratitude they express as you help them sift through a life’s worth of belongings.
  
• How often you’ve been told, “I couldn’t have done this without you.”

THOSE are the feelings and moments we want to capture when marketing our business. When we do, it doesn’t feel like marketing — it feels like helping. And if I know anything about organizers and downsizing experts, I know you LOVE helping people.

Write the Way You Talk

The next thing I want you to do when reflecting on those moments is to think about what you say when you’re connecting with them. And what do they say to you?

If you use humor to lighten the mood, use humor in your marketing.

If you share personal stories about health struggles that your clients can relate to, share the same stories in your marketing.

That’s how we build connection in our marketing — and connection increases authenticity, trust, and revenue. 

You’ve seen time and time again when working in homes that it’s not really about the stuff but rather the feelings that come with it. That’s why we need to use human connection and feeling in our marketing.

Changing Your Mindset on Consistency

This sounds great, but how do you begin putting it into action? Unfortunately, there’s no cookie-cutter plan I can give you to guarantee an influx of steady clients. You have to find what works for you. 

Here are a few common monthly marketing strategies and how they may help.

Why Email Marketing Matters

Email is an untapped resource for many professional organizers or downsizing experts because they’re concerned about adding clutter to their readers’ lives. Rather than thinking of email marketing as junk, think of it as a chance to send a helpful note rather than an overwhelming newsletter chock full of information. 

Social media, websites, and blogs are all materials that go out to the masses — but email can still offer that one-on-one feel your clients crave, even if you’re sending it out to 500 people. Write your emails as though you’re writing them to one person, and try to keep a REAL person in mind while you write. 

Why Blogs Are Helpful for Your Marketing

Blogs are useful for two main reasons. First, they establish you as the expert and showcase your knowledge while helping your readers with valuable information. Second, they give your website a boost in SEO (search engine optimization) rankings, which means people can find you faster when searching.

To Use or Not to Use Social Media?

These days, most people say you HAVE to use social media for business, but I’ve known several successful business owners who won’t touch it with a ten foot pole.

Personally, I despised social media in the past. Professionally, I began enjoying it (and seeing it pay off) when I used it to connect and relate to others rather than to post facts and tips. 

Direct Outreach 

Often, we get so caught up with our website, blogs, and social media that we forget about direct outreach, or what I like to call — talkin’ to people!

Setting up a gorgeous website, blogging each month, and sending out email newsletters are great ways to consistently market your business. But each of those items requires people finding and contacting YOU.

Direct outreach allows you to flip the perspective, take back some control and contact THEM. I suggest choosing a specific number of people you could reliably contact each day or week, and then setting that as a marketing requirement.

There are a ton of different ways to do this, but here are a few ideas:

• Sending a direct note via email or text to a past client to check-in.
  
• Dropping a handwritten note in the mail.
  
• Stopping by and introducing yourself in person to real estate offices, estate attorneys, and other potential referral professionals. Bring chocolate!
  
• Sending emails to introduce yourself to real estate offices, estate attorneys, and other potential referral professionals.
  
• Sending a “thought of you email” to a past client, colleague, or referral partner with a link to an article, a photo they’d appreciate, or something relevant.

Putting it All Together For a New Mindset

If you’ve ever experienced feast-or-famine in your business, you know how scary it can feel when things get quiet. One moment, you’re swamped with jobs and working all day, and the next, you’re watching tumbleweeds roll past your window.

This happens because when we get busy, we tend to drop off in our marketing habits.

A combination of your consistent monthly marketing and direct outreach is what keeps your pipeline steady and reliable. But reframing your approach and attitude toward marketing is what helps you feel more connected with your readers, thereby allowing you to help more people, change more lives, and increase your bottom line.

Ready to give it a try?

Molly

PS — If you like the sound of this but you’re still not sure how to begin, my Pro Organizer Content Community might be a good fit for you. Each month, I deliver a blog post, email newsletter, social media captions, and Canva templates to help you build consistent marketing habits.