858: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at My Marketing Hours (And the Strategies That Deliver)

0:01This episode is supported by What Should I Do With My Money? From Morgan Stanley. Okay, can we just talk about how money is legitimately one of the hardest topics of money. up. Like even when you think you have your stuff together, there's always this really weird awkwardness around it. That's why I am obsessed with this podcast. It actually makes money conversations feel approachable. I recently listened to an episode about affording multiple big life things at once, like a wedding, a house, an IVF, if they were all happening at the same time. And honestly, it hit home. So many people are wondering, can we actually have it all without sacrificing our sanity or our savings.

0:42What I love is that they bring in real experts who help break down these massive costs into actual doable steps. It's like having a money mentor in your ear who gets it. Search for What Should I Do With My Money in your podcast player. We'll also include a link in the show notes. Many thanks to What Should I Do With My Money and Morgan Stanley for their support. Email is 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter or X combined in terms of acquiring customers. And when I think about effectiveness and I think about limited time that we have to spend on it, I want to be focused on the areas that actually move the needle.

1:22I'm Jenna Kutcher, your host of the Gold Digger podcast. I escaped the corporate world at the age of 23 with nothing more than a$300 camera from Craigslist and a dream. Now I'm running a seven figure online business that feels even better than it looks all from my house in small town, Minnesota with my family. Here we value time as our currency. We mix the woo and the work, and we are in the pursuit of building businesses that give us the freedom to live lives that we love. I've always loved turning big goals into reality, and I'm here to help you do the same. This isn't just a peek behind the curtain.

1:59Come along with me and my guests as we tear the whole curtain down. Every week we tackle practical, no-fluff marketing strategies and host honest discussions on what works and what doesn't. Join me and my expert guests for actionable insights to help you grow your dream business with confidence. Pull up a seat and get ready to be challenged, inspired, and empowered. This is the Gold Digger Podcast.

2:26feels like a never-ending, constantly shifting to-do list. Like you're trying to keep up your posting and emailing and creating content, but with everything else on your plate, it feels impossible to know what's actually moving the needle and what's worth it. Here's the thing. On average, entrepreneurs spend 20 hours a week on marketing, but let's be real. Not everyone has that kind of time. Maybe you're growing your business on the side, juggling a full-time job, parenting or just trying to squeeze in a little breathing room. Or maybe you do have the time, but you want to make sure you're spending it in the ways that actually work.

2:59That is exactly what I'm breaking down in today's episode. I'm pulling back the curtain on where I spend my marketing time, what's truly worth the effort to me, and how I structure my strategy so that it works for me, whether I have two hours a week or 20. If you want smarter results-driven marketing without feeling like you're stuck on a content hamster wheel, this one's for you. Let's dive on in. Before I dive into the content today, I want to touch on something that I think might honestly surprise you. So as we're going through this episode today, I want you to realize as you look through this lens of where I'm spending my time on my marketing, that on my team, I don't have anyone dedicated to marketing.

3:42So I don't have a marketing team. I don't have a CMO. I I don't honestly have any team member whose position on my team is dedicated to managing the marketing strategy. That is the place in my business where I serve the most. That is my main job within our company. I love marketing. That is why I love this podcast. And so when I am sharing these things, I don't want for you to go into this episode thinking that I have this massive marketing team that we have a bunch of people dedicated to making this possible. I have a very small team for the size of business that we run. Most of my team members have been with me for years and we all help out in marketing in different ways, but the strategy is coming from me.

4:31And over the years, what's been interesting when it comes to our marketing is that our strategies are fairly rinse and repeat. They're also really predictable and organized, which as somebody with ADHD used to sound boring, but as somebody who now craves more structure in my business so I can have more freedom in my life, I recognize that these systems and this organization has really enabled me to live a beautiful and big life while getting all the efforts done. And it's so interesting to me because in researching just where we as entrepreneurs are spending our time in marketing, the fact that most entrepreneurs are spending 20 hours a week on marketing, it is shocking to me.

5:17There has to be a better way, in my opinion, because if we're dedicating that much time just in getting ourselves and our offers out there, we're missing out on a lot of opportunities to not only do more meaningful work in the area that we serve in, but also to just live a better life. So I'm going to break down each category. I basically have broken out where I spend my marketing time into about nine buckets, which sounds like a lot. But as we go through it, I bet you're going to recognize that you are doing most, if not all of these things in your own business. So I just wanted to paint the picture so that you're not listening to this episode through a lens that isn't correct.

6:00It is really coming from me. And this is the area that I love. Now my team 1000 % helps me execute on the strategies, but the strategy itself is coming from me. And that is what I love about business. That feels like a challenge that I want to take on. So the majority of my week is spent in this bucket, which is content creation and strategy. And I kind of already touched on it, but I love the creative process and I love generating strategies and ideas. I am a visionary. That is just like the role that I play in the business. I love to think outside of the box. I love to think of new ideas. I love to present them to my team and get my team to buy in on them.

6:43I love to outline them. I love to create the first draft. And then oftentimes after the idea is fully formed and outlined, that is then when I pass it off to a team member for execution. So I have kind of adopted this belief of thinking about my work in this way where I do the first 20 % of the ideation and the creation. Then my team does the next 60 % of creating it. And then I do the final 20 % or in the past I've said 10, 80, 10. So 10 % ideation outlined, 80 % handed off to a team member to execute. And then I have the final pass on everything. And so that is like the dream. Now I will say that like, I still get really excited about the creative process and creating things.

7:31And so oftentimes I will take on the majority of that work and then pass it off to a team member to review my work. So based on timing and bandwidth, content creation and strategy is the majority of my time. And this is what I honestly love. I look at my journey as an entrepreneur and I started as a blogger. I blogged, so many people don't realize this, but over 13 years ago, almost 14 years ago, I started blogging and I blogged five days a week for years and years and years without ever missing a single day. And so I have always loved being a creator and the medium in which I create has transitioned over the years.

8:12I still blog, still love the blog. I podcast, I show up on Instagram. And so the medium has kind transformed, which has been the challenge that I desire when it comes to ideation and creation and strategy. But what's amazing about it is that I still really enjoy this part of the process. This part of the process feels like a baby to me. It's something that if I tried to outsource this piece, I would feel very personally detached from my business because this is what I love and this is what I do. So the main meat of where I'm spending my time is content creation and strategy. For example, this podcast episode, we came up with the idea, just me and one other team member.

8:55Then I did the entire outline. I'm doing the entire recording. And then after I'm done recording, that's when I hand it off to be finished up, cleaned up and ready to be published. And so you can kind of see that like the majority of that effort lies on me, but that is mostly by choice because that is mostly where my joy is. So the second main bucket, if I'm looking at a breakdown of where my time is being spent is social media. Now this is a linchpin in my life for sure. I have a very love hate relationship when it comes to social media. And over the years, I will say that my relationship to social media, I feel like has gotten entirely healthy, But it's still one of those pieces of my business where I question, do I have to show up on these platforms?

9:45And what could it look like if I shifted away from them? And that's really interesting to me. But that is probably because I look at my marketing in a slightly different way. So one of the reasons why I have a love-hate relationship with social is that I create all my own content. So anything that is being published on my feed is created by me. I am the person editing the reels and putting the captions on and writing everything. That is coming from me. And I love it, but it takes a lot of time, right? And over the years, I feel like social media has gotten even more unpredictable. The algorithm changes have gotten even more frustrating, where it used to be pretty easy to pick up on like, okay, this is a strategy.

10:33Let's go with this. This makes sense. It works. And now it's like, okay, is this going to work? Is this worth my time? And so my struggle when it comes to social media is the only reason why I am on it is because it's not the end game. And I want to meet you where you're at. That is why I'm there. It's like showing up to a party you don't really want to go to, but you know that people you love will be there and that makes it worth it. That's kind of how I feel about social. To me, like social media is a handshake. It's not the conversation. It's like the greeting, the hi, hello. But I want to go deeper with you.

11:11If you've read my book, How Are You Really? I start off the whole first part of the book saying I hate small talk. Like don't talk to me about the weather. Don't talk to me about sports. it's like, I want to know how your life is. I want to know what is challenging you in your marriage. I want to know how therapy is going. And so for me, social media feels so surface level and I just have a deep desire to dive deep. And so I use social to meet my audience where they are, where you are. But my focus is getting you into a place where we can go deeper like email or like this podcast here. And so to me, it's almost like I saw the other night.

11:52It was funny. Drew and I were watching a show and then the Matrix intro came on as that show ended and he called it out right away. And it was like when all those codes were like going across the screen. And I was like, that's like what social media feels like. It feels like this constantly changing code. And I feel like the older I get, the more frustrated I get by it. And the more that I question like, what is this even doing? And is this even worth it? Okay, it is officially that time of year. And if you run a business, you know, the holiday rush is no joke. I've done more Black Fridays than I can count at this point.

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14:35It's interesting to me because I feel like people are so focused on going viral on social, but one, if you've ever gone viral, you know that it's a double-edged sword, that it is a really cool experience, but it can also bring in a lot of hatred and nastiness and confusion into your business and your life. And with people being so focused on going viral, they're missing being focused on getting results. And so for me, when I'm using social, I have a few main goals. One of them is to connect with you, like just to literally connect with you across the screen. The other goal is to convert you, to literally get you into a place where I can do what I truly want to do, which is go deeper with you and get to know you and figure out what you're struggling with and how I can help you.

15:23And so social media marketing does take up a good chunk of my time each week. And that tends to ebb and flow based on one, the time that I have to give to it, but to what we have going on in our business. And so like, if we're in a launch, I am creating a ton of content, but when we are not in a launch, then I am more so showing up when I feel like it and when I like it. And that to me feels really good because it feels more derived from inspiration versus this mass need of content creation, which is kind of the beast that social media has become. So it's interesting because if you are somebody listening to this and you have been struggling with social media marketing or just feeling frustrated by it, I just want you to know in all of the conversations I have offline with my peers in the industry, some of the biggest names that you know, like everybody is frustrated with it.

16:20It's not just you. And I think that it comes down to when you really look at time as your currency, it's really easy to second guess, is social media the best place I should be spending my time? And for me, it's not, which is why I'm going to tell you about the next two buckets where I spend my time that one, take way less hours than social media, but two, give me longer lasting results. So the next bucket after social media that I'm spending my time in is email marketing. And here's the thing. I know that email marketing doesn't feel sexy to you. I get it. It's not shiny. There's not a big, bold number under your name.

17:03You're not getting all the dopamine hits of the likes and comments and the hearts. I get it. I get it. I get it. And yet when I look at my marketing breakdown, I am spending way less hours on this medium and it is the number one way I drive profits in my business. So guess what's worth it to me? Email marketing. Totally worth it. Email is 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter or X combined in terms of acquiring customers. and when I think about effectiveness and I think about limited time that we have to spend on it, I want to be focused on the areas that actually move the needle and email marketing to me is twofold.

17:45It is a place where I can go deep. I don't have to fit everything into a five-second looping reel or a short little caption. I can pour my heart out. I love writing emails to you. I love sharing the behind the scenes of my life or a funny story with my kids or the five products that I am obsessed with that I ordered this month. I love sharing that. It feels like home to me on the internet. As weird as that is, it feels like a direct line of communication to you, which feels so different than social, which to me feels like screaming to the masses and hoping somebody listens. And so email marketing is so fun.

18:23So here's where I mainly focus on when it comes to email marketing each week, brainstorming ideas. So one of the things that I love to do, and I highly recommend doing is getting on different creators' email lists just to watch what they're doing. So again, email is the number one way that I drive sales in my business. And I love being subscribed to different creators' email lists to get ideas and to see like, ooh, that subject line really got me excited. Or, ah, I love how they formatted this. Or, oh, I've never even thought to try this. Or this really short email was super effective. And so I spend time every week in my inbox just studying what email marketers are sending me.

19:04And I love that. So if you haven't done that yet, do that. And I have like a little folder where I will save good email copy. Like I'm like, this is good. This is really good. Another area that I spend time in each week is the actual writing. And one thing that we do on my team is that we batch work everything. And so while I'm giving you this weekly breakdown, each week kind of ebbs and flows in a different way. And that is because we are constantly working ahead. So at any given time, it's so funny. Sometimes people will be like, Hey, last minute, do you want to do this? Or could you do this?

19:36And I'm like, girl, we are like two months out. Like we're already living in the future. And that's just how we like it. We like to work from a place of rest, not stress. It's how I've always been wired. And so when we figure things out, like brainstorming ideas and writing the email campaigns, a lot of times that is batch works. Meaning I sit down and I'll hammer out three, four emails in one sitting where I'm outlining them or I'm writing them word for word. And so that part is so fun to me. And I prefer doing it this way because I love to see the sequence of how somebody will be receiving them.

20:12I love to make sure that context isn't lost. I love to make sure that every email stands on its own without assuming that somebody read the previous email or they're going to read the next one. And so from a strategy standpoint, I like batch working because I feel like I can be so much more strategic when it comes to it. And I can also kind of see the lay of the land. Like for me and what I teach, we focus so much on serving over selling. And so we're looking at the frequency of the emails that we're sending to our email list. And we're also trying to balance the scales of how much can we serve, whether it is sending out an email that is just straight up encouragement, sending out free resources, free information, ways for somebody to get free wins versus selling where we have an actual offer.

20:58And truth be told, we're really only selling a couple times a year. We usually do one launch per quarter. And so that frequency is actually pretty easy to balance for us. Then once the emails are written and signed off on, then I have a team member on my team, Shannon, who will take them and upload them into our email service provider, review them, and then test them. So if you've ever had an oopsie where you've like sent out an email and it says like, hello, name, and you forgot to like fill in that name field or whatever that is, we've all been there. And so I am a big lover of testing. And a lot of times when we test the emails, I'll notice like, oh, I don't really like the way I said this or like this formatting looks a little funky.

21:42Could we change that up? And so our goal is always to have emails tested weeks before they go out so that we can truly set it and forget it in many different ways. And so email marketing is a place that feels like a very worthy place that I love to spend my time. And if you're still not sold on email, then listen to this. When I'm looking at my marketing hours and considering that most entrepreneurs are spending up to 20 hours a week on their marketing, I question, are we really looking at the ROI or the return on investment of our time? Now, when it comes to email, the return of your investment is$42 for every dollar spent.

22:24So essentially that's me saying, Hey, give me$1 today and I will give you$42 back tomorrow, which any person would probably do, right? That's a very, very good return. Now, social media is way less than that. It's like a couple dollars per dollar spent. So when we're looking at like, okay, where are we putting our time, our money and our energy? To me, email marketing is the worthiest places to spend our time. And so this is an area where like, I love spending my time for email marketing. And if you have no idea where to start when it comes to growing an email list or getting that started, or if you're listening to this and you're like, Ooh, I should be allocating one to two hours a week on an email list if this is where the true ROI is.

23:12If you head to growanemaillist.com, that's growanemaillist.com, then I have a one-hour masterclass that will teach you how to start and grow an email list of engaged buyers. And inside of that training, I walk you through the process. I show you how it can work based on your business type. And I give you a lot of reminders of like social media is rented space. An email list is an asset you own. And so this again is just to me, it's like if I only had a couple of hours to spend per week on my marketing, I would be spending my time on email marketing because of that return on investment and the fact that you get to directly connect in a much more intimate way.

23:56And also, if you think about it for me, like it can take me upwards of like one hour to create a carousel or a reel on social media. And half the time it does terrible, more than half the time, honestly, if we're looking at the odds. And so if I could spend one hour writing a heartfelt email to my email list and inviting them into some sort of offer, it would likely move the needle so much more than likes and comments. And that's just how I like to look at the hierarchy of where my time is going and where it is best spent. So after email marketing, I am doing one strategy that takes one hour a week and we outsource it, but I'm still kind of a part of it.

24:35But this is a place where so many entrepreneurs are missing the boat. And what am I about to talk about? It is Pinterest. So Pinterest is this like magical unicorn of a place when it comes to your marketing. And I can't believe how many people are not using it. Like you might not be using Pinterest as a strategic way to market your business. Now, there are a million reasons why this, I would argue, is one of the best hours you could spend per week on your marketing. And if I'm looking at this again through the lens of the average entrepreneur spending 20 hours a week and they're not devoting one hour to this, I'm like, what are you doing?

25:16So one, Pinterest content lives 120 times longer than your Instagram posts. So if you think about it, when you are creating content for Instagram, it lives and dies within a few hours, 24 to 48 hours max. Whereas the average lifespan of one pin on Pinterest lives on for four months. So you can create one item on Pinterest that takes way less time than creating an item on Instagram, and it can live for months versus hours. And so when I'm thinking about my marketing, I feel like I am coming at it from a place of like, I want my efforts to give the longest results. I don't want like quick flash in the pan marketing strategies that work for a hot minute, but that require me to constantly show up.

26:07So Pinterest is one of the biggest drivers of website traffic for us. And so if you have built a website and you're like, okay, this is great, but like, I don't even know how to get people onto my website or people don't even know I have a website. This is where it's at. And what's amazing about this is if you think about it, if you have somebody on your team that can learn the strategy, you could outsource this. It could be like the best$20 you spend every single week. And so while I am still involved in our Pinterest marketing, I outsource the main meat of it because I created the strategy. And that doesn't mean I have to be the one doing it, but this is a high priority channel for me.

26:50Now, Pinterest often drives more traffic than Facebook and Instagram combined. And to me, that's so important because not only is traffic awesome, but capturing that traffic and converting that traffic is where you actually get more sales. And so I love Pinterest for a million reasons, but the biggest reason is, is that the strategy takes less than one hour a week and it can be outsourced. And I just feel like so many people are sleeping on this platform. And it's so crazy to me because it's like, if you want more long-term results, if you need more people landing on your website and understanding that you are actually selling something and you have something to offer, then this would be where I would start.

27:32This would be the one hour I would start with when it came to marketing. If you want to learn a strategy on this, you can go to teachmetopin.com. I have a free masterclass on Pinterest. I'm not trying to plug all these places, but I'm sure after listening to this, you're like, well, wait, well, how do you do that? So teachmetopin.com, free masterclass that teaches my strategy on Pinterest. But this is an area where I'm like, do not sleep on it. Like an hour a week can totally change the game for your business and actually drive way more results than the one reel that you spent an hour creating that totally flopped.