EP116: Marketing for practitioners that hate marketing

Perfect Practice

Sachin Patel interviews Estie Starr about organic marketing. If you hate marketing, the things you hate about it are the things Estie Starr hates about it, manipulation, being salesy, and inauthenticity. Estie explains in great detail how an organic marketing framework allows you to reach your target client by being excited by what you do, the value it offers people, and how it can help them. Her “crazy dream” is building a consulting firm for small business owners, and she tells how she has succeeded in it since 2011. Her dream is to help everyone with their dream. Estie says you’re trying so hard not to sell because you don’t want to manipulate anybody, you don’t want to be salesy, that you are withholding your gift from people who need you! Listen in for a remarkable conversation about the marketing strengths you already have, and how you can reach more people in your target audience with more impact than an ad buy would do. Estie offers you a gift in the links below.

Key Takeaways:

[1:03] Sachin welcomes listeners to Perfect Practice. Sachin welcomes and introduces his friend, Estie Starr.

[1:15] Estie is a marketer extraordinaire. She helps people with marketing who hate marketing. Sachin welcomes Estie and reads her bio.

[3:23] Estie was born and raised in New York. She started marketing at age 7 and started her first profitable business at age 10. She went to a business school in New York where she got a degree in marketing. Estie left a CIO job she loved in 2011 when a new executive took over her team and demoted her to his secretary.

[5:08] Estie had “this crazy dream” to build a consulting firm for small business owners. She built a company to six figures of profit in two years with no ad spending. Her specialty is an organic marketing strategy where you don’t spend money on ads. By 2019 they were staffed in seven time zones with clients on six continents. Her dream was to help everyone with their dream.

[6:34] Estie wanted to teach marketing at a college level but she dropped out of a master’s program because it would have decreased her income. Colleges don’t let you teach without a master’s degree. So she taught entrepreneurship in high schools and opened a business school online in 2019. Estie has faced discrimination for not having the “look” of a businessperson.

[9:37] The most common marketing mistake is trying to be everywhere and do everything. Don’t try to do all the things major companies do with their huge marketing budgets. They’re already successful You are just starting. Choose the path that works with your assets.

[13:35] You should be going after a clear path to conversions. The goal of marketing is the creation and communication of the value of your product or service to your target customer or client to convince them to buy. Your marketing creates value. Your messaging communicates value. You want to be talking to the right people and convince them to buy.

[16:09] Estie shows the difference between manipulating people to buy something against their will and explaining to them why they might want to get something and how it could help them. Estie shares a case study from a student. Selling is being enthusiastic about your offer of value to someone who sees the value leading to an exchange of value in return.

[19:09] “Bro marketing” may be authentic to the person doing it, but if you try to buy their formula and it’s not authentic to you, it falls flat. Estie has a snow cone stand analogy. Marketing that works has at least 10 moving parts. You might have only one. Estie lists some of the conditions that are necessary for your marketing to get conversions. Be authentic to yourself.

[23:00] Estie was asked to critique a website recently, but the person wanting the critique had no idea if a website would work for his service. Estie talked him into calling the first 20 people in his target group. If you can’t sell something on the phone, you can’t sell it online.

[24:35] Start by making sure you’re clear on your value proposition and your ideal target. You can’t market before you know them. Find your SWON strength: Speaking, Writing, One-on-one, and Networking. As a business owner, you have one or more of these skills strongly. If your skill is speaking, look for where you can speak. If you’re a writer, write. Leverage existing audiences.

[28:23] One-on-ones have the hardest challenge in getting a mass audience. First, sit down with your immediate network, especially any who have access to your audience. Tell them specifically whom you want to get in front of. If they know them, they will connect you to them. Estie shares a couple of examples of how this works.

[31:55] You are trying to reach your BEEs: the Body, Eyes, and Ears of your Audience. Where are they physically? What are they looking at? Ears are referrals. Your best referrals are the people in your world. Who are they dealing with? Your Queen BEEs are the organizations, institutions, and individuals that your BEEs flock to.

[36:19] Estie says if you are unwilling to share what you do because you don’t want to manipulate anybody or be salesy, you are withholding your gift from people who need it. You’ve got to know how to present your value offer. You need to be paid for your time or you can’t dedicate your life to your practice. Consider talking with people as a first date. Look your best.

[39:15] Estie offers a free three-day marketing success challenge on her website EstieStarr.com/FreeGift. That’s a great next step. If you get on a call with Estie, she will explore an offer with you, according to your budget and your ability. She has offers from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the scale and scope of what the company needs.

[40:06] Estie tells about a testimonial she received the day of this podcast.

[42:36] Estie cites the law of attraction and says if you’re out of alignment, you’re going to attract people who are out of alignment as well, and then you’re going to wonder why.

[43:18] Estie’s program has 12 steps she explains in terms of a flower. These include core branding concept, vision/mission, pitch, unique selling proposition, target audience, the problem you solve, positioning, product, price, promotion, graphical branding, and sales process.

[48:36] Estie explains how you establish a sales process that builds a self-sustaining sales cycle, which is the essence of an organic marketing strategy.

[49:13] Sachin invites everyone to get the gift from Estie’s website to reach more people in an impactful way so the world gets healthier and happier. Marketing doesn’t have to be difficult. Estie talks about the wrong sales process. People are interested, they come in, and then you run a sales prevention strategy! Make sure your tech works if you use tech.

[51:30] Sachin shares a case study of his events. An event that had a 10K register didn’t have as good an ROI as an event that had a 3K register because the event with 3K had an offer that was articulated and presented much more clearly and built up a rapport.

[52:28] Sachin encourages you to go back and listen again to the frameworks presented in this episode, take notes, and check your marketing strategy against it. Let these frameworks support you on your journey ahead.

[53:54] Estie shares her contact information. She notes that she has been absent from social media for a while, but the content is timeless, and she is coming back to post more.

Mentioned in this episode

Perfect Practice Live

NASDAQ

Tribe For Leaders Mastermind

Kevin Thompson

Entrepreneur

LinkedIn Influencers

Fiverr

Upwork

More about today’s guest Estie Starr

Estie Starr is an award-winning business consultant, exceptional marketing strategist, avid speaker, and the founder of Strand Consulting, a multinational business consultancy that’s focused on helping small business owners scale their businesses to make big profits. She believes very strongly that people can build professional and profitable businesses doing what they love, and she’s here to guide you so that you can bring your vision to life with a lot more ease.

Estie has been a certified professional coach for over 12 years and she pours all her experience into her work, making her services highly valuable and effective to anyone who seeks them. Through Strand Consulting, Estie can help small business owners around the world by providing business and marketing strategies that will allow them to launch and scale their businesses.

Links:

Estiestarr.com/freegift

On Instagram: @estiestarr

On Linkedin: EstieStarr

Podcast: Business Breakthrough Podcast with Estie Starr

More about your host Sachin Patel

How to speak with Sachin

Go one step further and Become The Living Proof

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Books by Sachin Patel:

Perfect Practice: How to Build a Successful Functional Medical Business, Attract Your Ideal Patients, Serve Your Community, and Get Paid What You’re Worth

The Motivation Molecule: The Biological Secrets To Eliminate Procrastination, Skyrocket Productivity, and Get Sh!t Done