Positioning to Reach a New Audience

Cindy
Hello and welcome to everyone who’s watching, whether live or on the replay. This is the Business Book Bistro where you’ll learn from fellow authors, what’s working for them to leverage their book for sales and profit. You’re bound to discover new ways you might make more money from your book too. I’m your host Cindy Carothers, also known as the Beyond Book Sales Coach, and today I am really pleased to welcome Noel Stary.

I’m going to look at my screen here because there’s a really interesting bio and I don’t want to stumble over it. She is the Chief Resilience Officer at 20 Lemons, a marketing agency where they create and execute smart marketing campaigns to increase sales for their clients. They also offer co working space for remote workers who need to get out of the house, for quiet or collaboration, or whatever.

She is a thought leader, opening the first co working space in New Jersey over 10 years ago and is currently bringing the licensing model to small downtown locations throughout the state.

She’s also a marketing leader with full service marketing company, 20 lemons which I’m sure is a story in itself but maybe we’ll hear about that later. It’s focused on making businesses become market leaders.

During the 2020 covid-19 pandemic, she authored her first book, “Main Street Moxie”, which guides the way for businesses to navigate the new business environment.

So welcome Nicole, we’re glad to have you here.

Noelle
Thanks

Cindy
Good. And you wrote your book during the quarantine and planned for it to support your business from the beginning basically. Can you tell us a little bit about your thought process and what you wanted to do for you?

Noelle

Yeah, absolutely. So 20 Lemons, as I mentioned is a marketing company in New Jersey and I do a lot of my work in New Jersey and when the pandemic hit I was in the process of working with restaurant groups in New Jersey, having office space in New Jersey and all of a sudden the mayor turns around and said, “We’re shutting restaurants, get out of your office”, and I had this like panic moment of “I’m going to lose my business overnight.” And one of the things I’ve always prided myself on was having a Jersey based business with a lot of Jersey based customers. And in that moment, I decided I needed a way to pivot and think bigger and get in front of a bigger audience. And while my heart has always been in helping Main Street businesses – all my businesses have always resided on Main Street in the different towns of New Jersey – I wanted to give insight to them as to how they can grow, but I also thought to myself “I could be doing the same stuff and giving this information to other main streets, nationally”. And so my immediate audience shifted for who I wanted to write this book for.

Cindy

From actually truly local to all the local businesses nationwide.

Noelle
Yep.

Cindy

Wonderful. Wonderful.

And you wrote it, and it’s been published now for a little while.

Noelle
Yeah, so the book came out in January.

Cindy

Tell us about how you are marketing your book – what are you doing with it right now?

Noelle

Yeah, yeah. So it was kind of interesting.

So when I went to launch the book and I’ve worked with authors for years on how to market their books – for my particular launch, we actually did it very different.

You know I didn’t have an opportunity to have a big in person event. We are planning one for this summer. But I said I need to get this in front of a bigger national audience that doesn’t know me, not just stay in my local audience. So I actually worked. I outsourced and worked with a national PR person to help bring it out to the west coast, Chicago area; just to kind of start testing the waters and getting some introductions and doing some new things.

And so part of what PR looks like in 2021 – you know, post covid world or during the midst of covid – was our book launch included doing a lot of podcasts, a lot of online conversations.

And I think some of the biggest benefits that we got out of it were – we got an hour video.

And so we can take that video and cut it up and use it on social or use in email blasts. And so we got the first thing out of it. And now we’re going to kind of use a multiplier effect by saying “how can we repurpose the video and the content that we’ve talked about before

Cindy

So you are using your book in a number of ways to position yourself as the thought leader, as the person who is thinking about what these main street businesses can do to come out of this quarantine, and thrive, not just merely survive, which is what they’ve been doing.

Tell us a little bit about the thinking that went into the positioning and how that’s working for you.

Noelle

Of the content. Correct? So the content was really focused around this idea of, you know…I remember the days that I was in college and I would be studying for exams and I would tell my mom I haven’t eaten in 10 hours and I’m not sleeping and etc etc and my mom always used to say to me “go back to the basics”. Like before you figure out what you’re doing today, mark off “This is what I’m going to bed and this is when I’m eating”.

And I think that when we, we the people are in stress or, you know, a fight or flight mode, sometimes you need to actually just take a step back and say, “hold on a minute. Before I start running around like a chicken without a head what’s the most basic thing that I should be doing?”

And so, the book is really meant to be a book about hope, and I think the book is supposed to kind of bring you back to basics. Like before we start looking at all brand new ideas – and it doesn’t mean that new ideas or innovative ideas are bad – but it also doesn’t mean that we need to hop on every next bandwagon that’s happening. Sometimes we have tools in our tool kit that we haven’t even utilized or we forgot about because we started seeing a lot of new shiny objects.

And so it kind of goes back to the idea of “Look at your basic, look at your foundations. What else can you capitalize on here and then how do you move forward?

Cindy

And you’ve been doing things a little bit differently, but I think one of the things that you mentioned that you are doing is speaking and podcasts. How do you use your book there to help you get some more speaking engagements?

Noelle

Yeah, so it’s kind of interesting. I think that when I started a marketing company, I started a marketing company and then I started a co working space and some stuff shifted in my life and at some point someone said to me, “why would you keep a co working space?” And I said well there’s a million marketers, but if I’m a marketer with a co working space I get access to things that I didn’t have before. And then, as we started, as I started growing and I started saying I need to get in front of another audience, it’s like, hey, it’s great to be a marketer, it’s great to have a co working space, but I need a way to leverage my messaging and so the usage of the book I think was helpful to do that.

I think that when we were looking at how to market it or one of the areas that like we’re still working on is it’s called “Main Street Moxie” and I think that really knowing who your audience is or being able to deliver something to them, like, physically, deliver something to them is important. I know a lot of other speakers that say hey I’m running a conference, I’m a speaker at x event, and when I come in I speak to 500 people, all 500 people are going to get a copy of my book.

That’s not happening in covid today. So you need to get a little creative about who can you get your book in front of.

And so for us, because we do work with downtown businesses, there’s an opportunity to say, “these are local downtown’s that I want to be doing work’ with and sending them a copy of the book and saying, ‘here’s a book that can be utilized for your downtown businesses and business owners. I’d love to have a conversation with you or talk about how we can bring this to your town’ has been a marketing approach that we’re starting to work on.

Cindy

So you’re looking with local development authorities I guess or business associations, to speak to them and sell them copies your book.

Noelle

Yep, yep,

Cindy

And the book is the entrée in. It’s the introduction. It says “Noelle’s here. She knows what she’s talking about.”

Noelle

Correct.

Cindy

And you found that to be a very effective way of connecting with them for your particular niche.

Noelle

Absolutely.

Cindy

And that’s something hopefully that you expected to do.

Is there something that’s unexpected that’s happened while you were or monetizing or whatever your book?

Noelle

Yeah, I think, you know, we forget that we influence people all the time. And so while I was very intentionally looking to distribute the book on a national level, as we were putting content out, a lot of my local audience had come back or my local contacts had come back and said, ‘Hey, I saw you’re doing this. I’d really love to talk to you about it.’

And so in a traditional world, I would have gone after that audience out the gate, right, but the people out in Chicago, or the Midwest, we’re never going to reach out to me. And instead I said you know what I’m going to go after a totally new audience that I want to get introduced to, and my local colleagues had seen what I was doing and they were like “hey that’s really fantastic. Can you talk about it here?” And so I felt like I got double exposure.

And I didn’t even pitch my local teams, you know. And it’s not to say that I wouldn’t have thought about them in like a phase 2 process, but it wasn’t my goal out the gate. And so I thought that that was a really big benefit that I wasn’t expecting.

Cindy

And you publicized that pretty much on social media – what you were doing – and they looked at it and they said, ‘Oh, Noelle that sounds really cool. Thanks for keeping us aware of what you’re doing.’ So it’s that little visibility piece that, like you said ‘you influence people all the time’ – you don’t know who you’re getting in front of, and sometimes that comes back and surprises you.

Noelle

It’s so funny there’ a girl I work with in marketing, she always refers to the ‘halo effect’. You know like, we don’t always even remember where we were, what we were doing and how it influenced somebody. But if they saw it in 2-3-4 places, maybe they’re taking action. It’s not because of one direct message, it’s because they’ve seen it now several times or in different spots. And so I was very impressed with that. I thought that was a great thing that came out of this. \

Cindy

Yeah, that’s, that’s a very, I think significant thing. We spent a lot of time on social media we spend a lot of time doing all kinds of actions.

And you just don’t know where it’s showing up. You just don’t know where it’s going to land with somebody at the right time. We try really hard to always get in front of the right people at the right time when they’re ready to buy, but sometimes it’s those little guys that just come in, totally unexpected that the surprise you. And to some extent, make your day.

Now I know we also talked about breaking up your content on social media. You talked about it early on. Is there anything else you want to add around that topic?

Noelle

Yeah, I think the tools that are out there today… you know I think if anything very positive came out of covid, I think it’s just accelerated the rate and how we can utilize technology.

So you know it’s like we’ve got podcasts, and then we’re taking the podcast, we’re cutting them into snippets, we’re taking those snippets and adding them to social media.

We’re using them as lead gen or even as you mentioned at the very beginning of this conversation. “Hey after we get this video we’re going to transcribe it and add it to a blog.”

So we are adding content all over the place. And I think that the tools that are out there today are just easy to use. I think they’re cost efficient. And I think that they’re really helpful in getting in front of people that you want to.

Cindy

I usually ask our guests to give us one actionable item from what they’ve talked about and just following up on what you just said I might ask – Do you have a favorite tool? If social media and breaking up content would be where you would suggest people can start to take action, do you have a favorite tool? Or do you have another tip that you would like to give us as an actionable item? So you got a choice there.

Noelle

Favorite tool? The tool is the one that’s that I think it’s like the hard one.

I would really encourage people continue doing video. Do video.

And I don’t have a recommendation for a tool but I really want to encourage video. I think people get nervous about getting in front of a camera. I think that you shouldn’t be. I think we live in a pretty casual world right now and what people are really looking for is authenticity. And so it’s more about your message than “Hey, do I have all the right lighting and the right equipment?”

And so I think that is really the biggest message that I can give. Whenever we look at statistics, video is like tenfold for the amount of visibility that it gets (compared) to images.

So, you know, keep doing video. Don’t be scared of it, and just put it out there.

Cindy

Now, I know you have a free offer for everyone, and I’m going to go back to my notes and drop the link into the chat here, but you wanted to offer some listeners a copy of your book. Why don’t you talk about a little bit about that while I put your email address on there as soon as I can find it?

Noelle

Fantastic. I know that everyone likes to kind of get their information in different ways so I’d love to give you a free copy of a digital book or a print book. I’m happy to ship it to you. And I’d also like to offer 30 minutes marketing consult.

So, any different type of business that you have, I’d love to do as a short audit with you, and all you need to do is send one story or example of what you have done with your business to help survive Corona. And Cindy I think it’s going to add that link as to where to send that to.

Cindy

I just put it down there it is. I’m going to spell it out. It’s info, INFO at 20 the number two zero lemons, with an s.com and that’s below the video on the Facebook page, and I can put that in this comments too.

So okay, sometimes technology is my friend and sometimes it’s a little bit more complicated. I have a love hate relationship with technology so there we go. Okay. Well, it should be there info@20lemons.com. What you did to make your business survive the pandemic.

She’s offering a free consult and a copy of her book to the first five, so hopefully they will be taking you up on that.

I think it’s a fabulous opportunity, especially for anyone who either has a bricks and mortar store, is related to somebody who has a bricks and mortar store, has a favorite bricks and mortar store that they want to survive. You can get it and give it to them.

That would be a great thing because our downtowns, our small little communities are what gives life some of its character, some of its meaning.

So, is there anything else as a final piece of advice, Noelle that you would like to give to our listeners right now?

Noelle

I really think you know the number one thing that I talked to everyone about in marketing is you’ve got to pick marketing that’s authentic to you. I know that we are talking about all this great technology that’s coming out. We know that people are getting back out into the world, but you’ve got to choose things that work for you because if you don’t, you’re always going to kick the can as to why you don’t want to get started. And so the things that feel more comfortable to you’ll probably embrace, and that’s what’s going to radiate and come out, so try to think about that as you’re making some decisions.

Cindy

And hopefully video will be something that you’re comfortable doing.

I will like to echo, or endorse that particular comment. Something that you like, something that you will do, something that you will do consistently, because otherwise –what’s the point? (of marketing.)

Alright, well, I want to thank everyone who’s watching either now live or on the replay. I’m sure that you have gotten some good ideas here today from Noelle.

And I want to thank you very much for sharing Noelle with everyone today.

Let me remind everyone that we are here every week, every Friday at noon. So next week, it will be May 21^st, we will be back.

If you’re interested in being a guest, please send me a direct message – an author, with a business book, a book that you’re using for your business.

And also let other author friends know about us. We are the Business Book Bistro, where you can learn from other authors what’s working now to market and sell more books and discover opportunities that you too can use to make more money with your book.

I’m your host Cindy Carothers signing off now and wishing you ever increasing success in all you do. Thank you Noelle. Thank you listeners.

Have a good day everyone.

Bye. Bye.