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Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are having such a great first week of the year. I think everybody’s kind of, I don’t know, a lot of people in my world are focusing on routine and optimizing their life, of course, the first week of the year, myself included. But it has been a little weird because I have COVID and I still have COVID. Today’s the first day that I would say I actually feel better. I’m like, okay. I’m getting back to myself, but I’m not a hundred percent. I’d say I’m 80%. This is at least a week in, but probably longer because I don’t know exactly when I got it because I thought I had a cold and I still don’t know if it was a cold, or if it was COVID the whole time, but it’s made it a little bit weird because normally I would be dialing in my morning routine and just have a lot of discipline, but I’m exhausted.

So I’m sleeping in later than I normally would. It’s been weird, but maybe it’s a lesson there for me, but I am feeling so excited for this new year. I just feel like 2022 is gonna be so big. 2021 was extremely difficult and I’m just glad that I made it through. Actually, I have a really fun series coming to this podcast next week. I will be announcing it in a little bit more official detail in the next episode but I have a series that’s gonna talk about everything we went through last year, like super transparent. Talk about what we went through, talk about how I made the plans to change it, what I did when I wanted to quit, what I did, and just really give you guys like a super inside transparent view. That’s coming next week. Look out for that. It’ll be on this podcast. We’re just gonna do some bonus episodes. So if you subscribe, you’re good and you can get excited for that content. 

So today I am talking about how to make creating new creative and content manageable. Every month in our program, I do a pick my brain session where students can come and ask me any questions, like anything that they have about their business, about marketing, about their offers. It doesn’t matter. They love those calls, and I love those calls and it gives me content ideas. So one of the questions that somebody asked was, “you know, I’m pretty much a one-man show and I only have so much time, but I’m constantly overwhelmed with needing to create content or needing to refresh my ad creative. So how do I manage that being a one-person company and not really having a team?” I think even if you have a small team, a lot of people are in this situation where they feel overwhelmed by the amount of content and the amount of creative. If you’re running ads and you listen to me, you know that I’m constantly saying, “refresh your creative, when in doubt refresh your creative.” And you guys are like, “I don’t have time to do that. When do I write the copy? How do I know what to do? How do I streamline this?” 

So I answered off the cuff with kind of what we do or what I would do, and people loved it. It was their favorite part of the training. So I wanted to bring that here because I think sometimes when you’re a content creator, there’s things that you’re like, “ah, people wouldn’t even care about that. That’s too simple,” And then it’s like your guys’s favorite things. This might be one of them because I think most people, I mean myself included, sometimes are struggling with the overwhelm and constantly needing to create content, to create new creative, and how do you create process for that? So I have some thoughts on it that I wanted to bring here and share with you guys, and I think this might also help you going into the new year planning, staying organized, just in a proactive versus reactive place with your content. 

So number one, I recommend spending some time, an hour, really you don’t need longer than that an hour to 90 minutes at the most, planning out your next month the last week of the month. I would think about are you going to do a promotion next month? Are you going to do some sort of launch? Are you going to update something in your marketing? Are you going to, you create some sort of content theme? Or what is that content that you’re creating? Just spend time thinking about that. Now here’s the key with this is your planning has to be tied to your goal goals. 

So the first thing you have to do, and I talked about this in the last episode, is having a goal. That’s like, it’s great, it’s a revenue goal, but then the actions on how you’re gonna get there and your whole year goal that you’ve recently hopefully set, let’s say it’s a revenue goal. You should have a revenue goal. What does that mean every month? How many leads do you need to be getting? How many applications, how many calls, how many sales, how much revenue in order to stay on track for that goal? What are those numbers? Now if you have that for the next month, you can now start thinking about what are the actions I need to take next month.

I say this and it’s like, so obvious to me, like of course you need to do this, but I stopped doing this to an extent. I feel like last year for a few months, we got into this place where we were just doing a bunch of things, a bunch of to-dos, but they weren’t necessarily tied to goals, and no they weren’t a waste of time, but going into the month of December, I set a revenue goal and an application goal and a sales goal. I was like, it’s, non-negotiable, we’re hitting these goals, so everything we do needs to contribute to this in our marketing. And it worked. We had our best month, and I think that is a big reason why is because I aligned all of our actions with those goals. 

So have your goals and then make sure your actions are aligned with those goals and your content is going to directly impact that. So for example, if you’re like, “I need to get an increase in sales next month. I want to get five more sales than I did the previous month.” Well, how are you going do that? Are you gonna increase your ad spend? If you increase your ad spend, you probably need more creative. Do you need to do some sort of promotion where you spend a week where you’re doing an extra push to your product, or to your application, or to whatever you’re call to action is? How are you going to actually increase your sales? It’s not enough to just say, “well, I wanna increase my sales next month. This is my goal.” How? Because if you do the same thing as last month, you’re probably not going to increase your sales, right? That directly impacts your content. 

One thing I found really helpful was I went into the month and I did this again for January where I planned out my entire month’s podcast. I planned out our entire calendar for emails to our list, because if I don’t, we just don’t send any extra, we just stay in the same place of just doing podcast emails. I planned out what specific event we’re gonna do this month. We actually have a pretty big launch this month, because we are launching our new program. I planned that out. I planned out the before and after of that and, and I created a theme. So this is what I told our members inside of Ignite is if you can look at your next month and create some sort of theme, and that doesn’t mean like the theme of your content all has to be about ads or health, right? It more means how are you going to build content around an event or around something you’re teaching, even if that is in your actual podcast, right? But then the podcast can drive your social and then it can drive your ads and your emails and it can drive all of those things. 

What is a theme that you can create? It doesn’t mean you’re limited to just that theme, but what is something that you can do that brings freshness and newness to your content, but in a streamlined way, because you’re able to align your podcast, your emails, your ads, and your social, all with this theme that aligns with each other and makes it easier for you to go put out this really valuable content? That’s how I started looking at my months. So in December, our theme was the Marketing 2022 Playbook. That was our big thing, and see I’m using the word theme, but I don’t really know if that is the right word because it’s not necessarily a new launch, but it’s like, what do you want your content to center around that month? so last month it was our Marketing 2022 Playbook and we still have those ads running. We’re still promoting the playbook, our bonus attached to the application ended. 

But this month, my theme is going to be this podcast series that I talked about. I’m gonna share with you guys kind of, I’m calling it like The Great Reset in what we went through last year and that’s gonna lead into our launch. I almost just gave away the name of our program, our launch of our new program. So that’s my theme for the month. Now that I have this big theme, and it doesn’t necessarily mean more work. Yes, it’s more work, it doesn’t have to, but now that I have that, that allows me to have a foundation to now plan my podcast, our emails, our text messages, our social media around this and it makes it so much easier for planning. So try to create some theme or event or something that you can do because this also brings newness to your brand, which is really important. That’s really important with content. That is the reality of where we’re at is your audience gets really board if they even sense for a second that you’re doing the same thing over and over again, okay. 

So plan it out the last week of the month for going into the next month. What’s your theme gonna be? What’s your focus gonna be? Is that in alignment with your goals? If you go do these things if you focus on these things, is that enough to get you to your goals? And if not, what else do you need to do? Create that theme and then allow that to help you plan promotions and emails and text messages, content, social media around that. Then also plan out all the videos that you’re gonna need, all the Reels and the content you’re gonna create. So if you have a podcast, what are those podcasts? If you create weekly videos, what are those video titles? You’ll see how, if you have a theme it’s so much easier because it’s either you’re leading up to the thing, or it’s after the thing, or it’s doing the thing, and you’re able to align everything with it, right? Then you can plan out Reels. 

So I’ve taught this in the past, but if you want to create Reels, it’s not effective. You’d be like, I want to create a Reel and then just go on Instagram and start looking for one and then choose one and create it. You need to plan. You need to get 10 ideas, 15 ideas, go on Instagram, just scroll through, and you’ll see the trending ones, and pull out ideas for ones that you feel like “I could do those. I could record that.” Now you have a list of them so that when you go to record, you’re just recording. You’re not spending time researching or finding ideas or scrolling Instagram at all. So for the whole month, if you say, “I wanna create 10 reels,” you better have all those planned out for what exactly you’re gonna record for those reels.

If you have a promotion coming up, you probably need to create some videos around that promotion. Do you need an ad video? Is it for registration? Is it for your offer? What videos of you do you need to list those out? And then is there any other content that you have to create? Okay, then you need to create. Then you need to plan out how much creative you would need if you’re running ads. So a general rule of thumb that I have is at least once a month, you need to refresh your ad creative, two versions of copy, two to three versions of actual of images or video. But if you’re spending more, if you’re spending, that’s for if you’re spending I’d say $3,000 and below a month in ad spend, but if you’re spending above that, you might need to refresh it two times, maybe three times. If you’re spending $20,000-$25,000 a month, how much are you going to need to refresh your creative? 

So our team does this for our clients, depending on their ad spend. We know already ahead of time in a proactive way, how many new versions of ad creative, how many new versions of ad copy that client is gonna need for the month. In the last week of the month, we follow the same process on my team. The creative team meets with the ads team, talks about the client account, reflects on what worked last year, I mean last year, what worked well I guess it will be for this month. What worked last month? What didn’t work? What do we need to do this month? Is the budget increasing? Is there a launch? What’s coming up? Then the creative team takes that and we bring it to our clients and we say, “hey, we need these two Reels. This is a good idea for you. We need to record these, or we need this video, or we need these two videos.” We have it all planned out. 

That keeps you in a proactive place because here is what happens to so many people running ads. They’re running ads, they’re working, and then the cost starts to go up and they’re like, “oh shoot. My cost is going up. Let me try to optimize the audiences and see if I can bring it back down.” A couple more days goes by that doesn’t happen. What they need to do is refresh the creative, but now it’s already been two days, two to three days, the cost is going up, they don’t have new creative to refresh it with, they don’t time to create the new creative. The ads sit for another 3, 4, 5 days with the cost rising, rising, rising, and then they finally get time to create the creative. Then they relaunch it. It has to reoptimize, and now they’ve lost traction with their ads. That is such a common pattern that people run into.

If you’re in a proactive, if you’re already going into the month saying, “I need two versions of ad copy and two to three versions of images,” then you can create those in an organized and batched way that now once you need it, if it’s not now, but it’s next week, it’s ready. It’s ready to go and you can just load it, launch it in the ads, or your team can load it and in the ads. So that’s how we treat client accounts in that very proactive way, because we’re trying to avoid, “Hey, we need ad creative right now today.” Now I’m not saying that doesn’t ever happen. There are still times where you’ve got to prioritize, drop something, something comes up that you didn’t plan for, but it’s still a good idea to try to stay in a proactive place. So plan out in this planning how much new copy and creative you’re going to need for your ads. It should be at least one time, one refresh a month, but if you’re spending more, you might want to do more. 

Now that you have this all planned going into your month, you can now batch record and create this. So now you have a list of ad cop yyou need, podcast videos you’re gonna record, Reels you’re gonna create, videos you need to record for your promotions. Maybe even a theme or something you’re gonna focus on. That’s going to also plan emails that you need to write, text messages you need to write social media, and now you can batch it. There’s a few options here. You could batch it once a week. So you could create that week’s content all at one time or like Friday, create next week’s content. Or, and I recommend this for video recording and Reels, I don’t think you need to be doing that more than once a month. Once a month, I have the list of everything I need for that next month. Usually I do it at the end of the month or the beginning. It has to happen after this planning though, obviously. So now you can spend an hour, an hour and a half, two hours. You really don’t need a lot of time if you’re organized, record all your Reels, all your videos, everything you’re gonna need at once. 

Now, for me, that doesn’t include my podcast. I am not proud to admit that I’m not very ahead on my podcast recording. I need to get ahead, but I continually push it back because I’ve been creating so much content for our new program. But my goal is to be a month ahead on the podcast because it makes my team’s lives so much easier. If I was doing all of this, there’s no way I could turn this around as fast as we are right now. So I would also batch record that, and I do think there’s a balance between getting so far ahead versus a little bit ahead. I think like four to six weeks is a sweet spot. I personally would never want to be like six months ahead on my content because things change so much that if I did that, I’d be so afraid that I was creating something irrelevant. I don’t know. I just can’t plan six months in advance exactly what you guys are gonna want me to say on the podcast. So for me about a month is like really good, right?

I have friends who are like, “I’m done for the next six months with all my videos of my content.” And I just think it’s awesome. I’m like,” I’m jealous of you that you’re that far ahead.” But also, I would just worry, because I like to be so real time. It’s also the industry that I’m in, but I don’t even know what changes Facebook’s going to put out in the next three months. So I don’t think you have to be crazy far ahead, but I do think that a month is really good. So if you can, now that you have the plan and you’ve got the plan of everything, all the Reels, all the videos, all the content, all the emails, all the social media that you need to create, now you just work into your calendar time where you’re gonna actually create that.

The mistake people make is when they go to create, they’re planning, and then they’re finding inspiration and ideas, and they’re creating all at once and it feels super overwhelming. So you have to separate those and do them in order. First you have to plan, then you can go find inspiration and ideas and finish the planning, and then you create. When you’re creating, you should just be creating. I never sit down and say, “okay, I have to record a podcast.” I don’t wanna say never because sometimes that does happen, but normally I always have like my podcast, even if I haven’t recorded it, I have the topics planned because to me that’s just like a different use of my brain. When I actually sit down to create, I just want to create and I want to have it, I don’t want to have to be planning at the same time because it’s just not effective.

So that is how you guys can make creating new content, creating new creative, manageable. I think I want to repeat this because it’s so important. Make sure that everything you’re doing is in alignment and is an action that’s going to help you achieve your goal. Because also, so many people make this mistake where they just create to create. They create seven social media posts a week because they think they need to, or they record a daily podcast, or five podcasts a week because they just decided that they’re gonna do that and that’s that. Or they are just writing emails to be writing emails. Everything should be supporting a goal, and that’s where the planning comes in place because you can run it through that filter once you have your goal and really ask yourself like, is this all the most important things that we can do to achieve these goals? And if not, what needs to go, what needs to be added? And am I just doing things to do things or am I doing things with purpose? That is really important because with content, it is easy to get into a place where you’re just pumping out volume and you forget why you’re even doing it. It should also always be leading and supporting your goals. 

That’s how I recommend making your content and your new creative more manageable. It is important to be in a proactive place, especially with ads. You don’t want to get in that cycle that I described where you need new ad creative, but you have nothing and then you don’t have time to create it, and then three days goes by and you’re spending money on those days and that’s not a good place to be in. So it’s one of our company values to always stay in a very proactive place, and I think that is a goal that you should have in your own company. So hope this was helpful for you guys. Have a beautiful rest of your week and weekend, and I’ll talk to you guys next week.

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