Make Marketing Suck Less

Laura Litwiller [00:00:00]: If I decide to use social media, then maybe I'm posting all the time and checking for likes and comments and, you know, in my off hours and I don't know. I just think marketing can even just affect

What you choose from marketing can affect your life. And for me, it has been really important to figure out a way to do it that works for me and lets me keep on living the life I wanna be living and not feeling too stressed out by my work or feeling the need to get in there and do things at all hours of the day.

Michelle Mazur [00:00:40]: Welcome to Make Marketing Suck Less. The podcast that knows marketing is freaking hard, especially when you're a solo business owner trying to juggle it all. I'm your host, Dr. Michelle Mazur, author of the 3 Word Rebellion and founder of the Expert Up Club. Forget the latest marketing fads and tactics promising social media stardom. I'm here with research-backed strategies to help you clarify your message and get twice as effective with your marketing. And while I can't promise you'll ever love marketing, I'm here to make you hate it a tiny bit less.

Michelle Mazur [00:01:21]: Everyone who markets marketing programs is always so damn certain that their approach works for everyone, everywhere, no matter the business. They've got the one right way to do it. And that certainty makes you doubt yourself and your decisions. And it also always has you on the lookout to find that silver bullet that's going to work flawlessly. But what if there's no one right way to market? How do you navigate the uncertainty and build your own confidence around marketing?

This is what Expert Up Club member and career coach for teachers, Laura Litwiller, and I talk about on today's podcast. We dive into her own journey to trusting her decisions, tuning out those noisy voices of marketers, and how she is making her own marketing suck less. But before we dive in, a little bit about Laura, she is a career transformation coach for teachers feeling stuck. For over 10 years, she's helped her 1 on 1 clients and students in her teachers at a crossroad course discover and create work that aligns with their strengths, personality, value, and what they want most for their life. Enjoy this interview with Laura as I know it will help you begin to navigate your own self-doubt and uncertainty when it comes to marketing. And I'll see you at the end for my big three takeaways. Laura, welcome to make marketing suck less.

Laura Litwiller [00:03:10]: Thank you so much, Michelle. I'm excited to chat with you. Great to be here.

Michelle Mazur [00:03:14]: Me too. Me too. So I like to start all of these interviews off the same. So tell me, what makes marketing suck for you?

Laura Litwiller [00:03:26]: Oh, it's such a good question. The main reason that marketing sucks for me is that I always have this nagging suspicion that I am not doing it right, that I don't know the right way to market my business, and that there's some golden wisdom out there or something that would change it all for me or make it better. So I guess I'm always just feeling like, oh, I'm probably not doing this right. And so I have this relationship with it that's that's just a little bit uncomfortable.

Michelle Mazur [00:03:58]: Yeah. So What in particular do you feel like you're not doing right?

Laura Litwiller [00:04:03]: I I feel like I am not choosing the right marketing strategy, or I'm not reaching my potential clients in the right way.

Michelle Mazur [00:04:14]: Mhmm.

Laura Litwiller [00:04:15]: You know, I work with teachers. And Yeah. Whenever I tell people that I'm a career coach for teachers, they're like, oh, wow. You must just have teachers knocking down your door. And so I feel a little insecure, because I'm like, well, actually, I don't. Why not? Why don't I have teachers knocking down my door? Education is rough right now. Teachers a lot of teachers are comfortable. It seems like they would be knocking down my door.

Laura Litwiller [00:04:45]: But so I guess I'm always wondering, well, why are they not discovering me? Right? And what am I doing wrong that, you know, makes it so there that it's I'm hard to find or I'm not visible to them.

Michelle Mazur [00:04:55]: Yeah. I feel like I have that same reaction too of, oh, teaching is so hard, especially in certain states where they have all of these requirements. I remember being on vacation with a friend last year, and she's like, oh, crap. I almost forgot to upload my syllabus to the state. And I'm like, what?

Laura Litwiller [00:05:17]: oh, my. Yeah. The expectations are so high for teachers, and they just keep getting piled on top of the expectations that were already there. And there's so much for teachers to do just to sort of maintain a classroom, but then there's all these other things on top of that that are expected of them.

Michelle Mazur [00:05:40]: So what have you been doing to try to reach teachers?

Laura Litwiller [00:05:46]: Well, one thing that has been helpful is to I made a quiz. I made a quiz online that's called, should I quit teaching? And I've been having people trickle into my email, newsletter, through that quiz very consistently, not huge numbers, but consistently, I get maybe 5 to 10 a week which for me is pretty great.

Michelle Mazur [00:06:13]: Yeah. That's great.

Laura Litwiller [00:06:14]: The quiz has been really helpful because I think when people are googling, should I quit teaching, they're finding it. I also wrote a blog post on a colleague's website on her blog. Called Career Alternatives for Teachers. And she primarily works with introverts. That's sort of her careers and introverts. That's her her group. But she has a large following, and she has good SEO juju or whatever it is.

Laura Litwiller [00:06:46]: And so people end up on her website, and then they click over to mine from there because, so that's been an interesting way to get traffic, like, being on someone else's blog that already has a good audience. How else have I been attracting teachers? I have been working on my SEO in particular Through SEO content on my website and in some of my blog posts, really trying to optimize them. And that remains to be seen because I just kind of wrapped it up Doing the work, but I'm really hopeful that that will bring more people my way. But, honestly, the primary way that I get my 1 on 1 clients is through word-of-mouth and referrals.

Michelle Mazur [00:07:30]: Yeah. Okay. I mean and I will say, like, I was I was just gonna suggest. I was like, oh, are you trying SEO? Because I feel like that could be a great way for you.

Laura Litwiller [00:07:39]: Yes.

Michelle Mazur [00:07:39]: But SEO is also this longer-term strategy. Like, what you do today will pay off in 3 to 6 months from now.

Laura Litwiller [00:07:48]: Right.

Michelle Mazur [00:07:49]: But it's great that you're getting some traffic in. Is there anything else you've tried and then was just like, no. I don't think this is gonna be working for me.

Laura Litwiller [00:08:00]: Social media, period. When I first started out, I was trying to post regularly on Facebook and LinkedIn, and I didn't like it. I don't like being on social media personally, and so trying to force myself to get on there professionally didn't feel good. And it's not that I have any qualms about putting myself out there. It's more that I just I don't enjoy being in the platforms and trying to shape my message in a way that really works for those platforms. And so I struggled for a while, and I might have talked to you about this in our work together, but to decide whether to just close the door on social media or to invest more in it. And I decided ultimately that if I'm not enjoying it, I'm not ever gonna really be good at it or invest enough energy into it to really make it worthwhile. And I also feel like, you know, I'm I know teachers are on social media, but I don't necessarily want that to be the space they hear from me because it's just a bombardment of everything.

Laura Litwiller [00:09:19]: All that is to say, I have completely well, I won't say completely. I have stopped using social media except for when I am posting I've posted a blog and I wanna put it out there or I have a course coming up or a new offer, then I will use it, but I don't use it aside from that. And I'm only, right now, using LinkedIn and not Facebook.

Michelle Mazur [00:09:46]: Yeah. I think you're making a couple of interesting points. It's like, number 1, don't do marketing that you hate. Yeah.

Laura Litwiller [00:09:59]: That's what makes it suck.

Michelle Mazur [00:10:02]: Yes. And I've had this conversation, I think it was, with Jessica Lackey, about how the ways you have to post on LinkedIn are just constricting. It's this, like, there's, like, these formulas that you need to follow in order to go viral, and who knows if those formulas actually work or if just one person got lucky and then everybody started doing it.

Laura Litwiller [00:10:29]: Right.

Michelle Mazur [00:10:30]: And I feel like there's just that, like, constriction of having to put yourself in a box. But, yeah, I never understand, like, why people feel like they have to post on social media, even if they hate it.

Laura Litwiller [00:10:47]: Yeah. Well, that's what everyone says. And everyone, I'm, like, holding up quotes, you know, like, whoever that everyone is. But there's the sense that that's what you do if you wanna have a successful business. And I definitely fell into that earlier on. But now I know other people who have successful businesses that don't use social media that much, if at all. And just the the mental space and actual time that it frees up for me not doing it is worth its weight in gold, really.

Michelle Mazur [00:11:27]: I agree. And I think the other thing that you said that was really important is that you're still using social media. It's just not a core part of your messaging strategy Or your marketing strategy. Right? It's this, like, when you have you wanna get your blog post out there. And I like, I'm very much the same way, like, just coming off the promotion for the Make Marketing Suck Less Summit.

Michelle Mazur [00:11:55]: I was using LinkedIn a whole lot more. And I might go back to using it just like once a week just to put something out there. Yeah. But it's never going to be a core part of my strategy.

Laura Litwiller [00:12:09]: Yeah. If it feels good, do it. Right? And if it doesn't, then doesn't have to doesn't have to happen.

Michelle Mazur [00:12:19]: And then I think my other question for you is, do you think teachers would be looking for someone like you on social media?

Laura Litwiller [00:12:29]: I think that on LinkedIn, teachers are that are on there are in the job search, typically. They have decided they want to leave the classroom, and they are using LinkedIn as a tool to find jobs, to, connect with people and resources that could be helpful. So I do think that people I do think teachers are on there on LinkedIn. But since my focus is more on helping teachers explore their possibilities and discover a path that feels right for them, and much more about clarity and figuring out what's next and not so much job search-oriented. I don't know that those people are really on LinkedIn. The ones that are just kind of exploring a change and not really sure Yeah. Or don't know what else they would do.

Laura Litwiller [00:13:24]: I'm not sure they're on LinkedIn.

Michelle Mazur [00:13:27]: Yeah. That's a good point because, like, thinking about since, like, you and I did work together, like, I know your audience And your people well enough where it's like, it might not be the right point at the customer journey. Right? Like, you wanna get to them before they've made the decision. So, like, when they're kind of in that contemplation space of, like, should I stay? Should I go? If I leave, what would I do? Versus, like, I'm now looking for a job and I need someone to write me a resume.

Laura Litwiller [00:13:57]: Yeah. Exactly. And so Facebook might actually be the better platform for me because there are lots of teacher groups on there that teachers will frequent. But I think more than posting on there, from my own page, it's probably if I wanted to invest in it, it would be more going into these groups and posting more because that's where all the teachers are hanging out.

Michelle Mazur [00:14:25]: Yeah. That definitely makes more sense. Gotta go where they are hanging out, but it sounds like that is also not the best use of your time.

Laura Litwiller [00:14:34]: Yeah. For now, anyway. I don't know what will if things will change or if I'll feel more motivated to use social media in the future or maybe at some point, my business will hit a point where I can hire someone to do some of that. But for now, when I'm considering my time and how I wanna use my time, I've decided not to use it in that way.

Michelle Mazur [00:14:56]: Yeah. So would you say you're using your time instead to focus on, like, the SEO and the collaboration piece, borrowing other people's audiences?

Laura Litwiller [00:15:06]: Yes. I definitely think SEO and the collaborative piece sort of trying to find more strategic partnerships, but also just the 1 on 1 conversations with other people that are connected to my audience of teachers or somehow adjacent to it. And so one person I was talking to about marketing for my business was like, you need to catch them earlier, like, before they're even, you know, ready to work with someone who would help them figure out what's next. But when they're feeling burnt out and and are trying to just, like, figure out how to stay and or tapping into sort of the self-care wellness resources. Oh, so I thought that was an interesting idea. I don't know if I'll follow on it, but just kind of thinking more creatively about who I could connect with that, yeah, might have their own audience of teachers even if they're not right at the point where I would best serve them.

Michelle Mazur: Okay. Excellent. So at the beginning, you were mentioning that you're not feeling too confident with how to market or if your market strategy is right. What is helping you to kind of bolster that confidence?

Michelle Mazur [00:16:32]: Before Laura answers the question about what makes her feel more confident with her marketing, we're gonna take a quick break. You know what helps to navigate your self-doubt and uncertainty around marketing? Understanding what options you have to market your business and making sure that the marketing you are doing is actually designed to help you grow your audience, engage and nurture those folks, and when the time is right, invite them into your offers. This is one of the reasons I created the Market Like An Expert 7-day Crash Course. So you know what your options are and can confidently decide how to market your business. In this free course, you'll create a do-less but better marketing strategy that creates demand for your offers and expertise.

It's time to find out what options are available to you and create a marketing plan that doesn't suck the life out of you. So sign up at doctormichellemazer.com/mle. That's the letters M L E, or open your podcast app and click on the Market Like an Expert link. Now back to our interview.

Laura Litwiller [00:18:03]: Well, definitely having my message a little more dialed in after working with you on my 3 Word Rebellion, That has really been helpful because I feel more confident that what I'm putting out there is gonna resonate with teachers. And being a part of the Expert Up Club because I can take my questions there, and there's so much collective wisdom in there that I can say, like, hey, should I even think about this? I remember one time I was like, should I do a Facebook group? And there was a lot of different perspectives and feedback on it, and it was so helpful just to help me work through it and save me from doing it myself even though I know experimenting is most of the time the way I figure out what actually works. But that's really helpfulto have that resource that I can tap into and gives me more confidence about a decision that I'm making. I also think that, just doing more of what I enjoy is making me feel more confident because typically what I enjoy, I'm also good at. And then it builds my confidence, so that I, you know, feels like, okay. I'm doing something that's good for my business. I'm doing the thing that works for me.

Laura Litwiller [00:19:29]: So just trying to follow the flow a little bit more. And then along with that, I guess, just listening to my intuition and trusting that. Because often when I sit with a marketing possibility, I will come up when I sit with it and reflect on it enough and gather enough information, I feel confident that I'm making decisions that are good for me and my business. But if I get wrapped up in the swirl of shoulds and all of that, of what I should be doing

Laura Litwiller [00:20:05]: for my business and this voice over here says this and this one says that, then I don't I just sort of throw myself into it rather than stepping in intentionally. I mean, I remember when I decided to work with you, at the same time, I was considering hiring someone to do some marketing and ads for me around my course. And so I was kind of weighing those two options, very different, you know, like, working on my long-term message versus a sort of a, like, marketing ads and strategy, different approaches. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized that what I really wanted was the confidence that my message was resonating. And so that's why I chose one of the reasons I chose to work with you.

Laura Litwiller [00:20:58]: But I think if I had just, you know, I don't know. Hadn't sat with it or hadn't run it by other people, then I would have just probably jumped into the thing that seemed like the quicker fix. Like the, hey, if I throw money in it into ads and I do this, then I'll be successful versus a longer-term strategy of, well, I wanna feel confident that teachers know what I do and know you know, I want them to feel drawn to working with me. So that's kinda yeah. I think that those are some ways that I feel more confident, and I have what I've done to make myself feel more grounded around marketing.

Michelle Mazur [00:21:44]: Yeah. And I have so much to say.

Laura Litwiller [00:21:47]: Go for it.

Michelle Mazur [00:21:49]: Yeah. Well, I was just thinking about, like, yeah, the hiring the agency to do the ads. Rachel Alexandria talked about that because she went down that path. And it does seem like, oh, it's going to solve problem. And at the same time, like, if you don't have your messaging dialed in, then the ads aren't going to work No matter what the marketing agency tells you because they'll say, like, oh, we'll be fine. You'll figure it out. Nah.

Michelle Mazur [00:22:17]: And really, it's that, you know, you can sink a lot of money into that without a lot of ROI, which is terrifying to think about. And it also sounds to me it's that process of, really tuning into what is it how do you wanna market? What does your business need? How do you wanna be showing up versus listening to, like, the all the noise out there About how we should be doing things?

Laura Litwiller [00:22:52]: And it's so easy to listen to that because I never had an ounce of marketing experience before I started my business. I mean, I was a coach, a teacher, an educator, and I didn't know what I was doing. So it's natural to look elsewhere for input and answers, and sometimes that leads you astray.

Michelle Mazur [00:23:17]: I think one of the things that always has bugged me about the online space is how certain people are that things work. Like, this is the thing that's gonna work for your business. It worked for my business. It worked for this business, so it works for all businesses. And it's like, yeah. No. That's really not how marketing works at all.

Laura Litwiller [00:23:36]: It's so unique to who you're attracting and yeah. Like you said, how you wanna show up, all of that. Even the lifestyle that you wanna have, I think, is affected by that choice. Because if I want if I decide to use social media, then maybe I'm posting all the time and checking for likes and comments and, you know, in my off hours and I don't know. I just think that even marketing can even just affect what you choose for marketing can affect your life. And, so for me, it has been really important to figure out a way to do it that works for me and lets me keep on living the life I wanna be living and not feeling too stressed out by my work or feeling the need to get in there and do things at all hours of the day.

Michelle Mazur [00:24:34]: So as you're starting to focus on more of the things that you want to be doing, whether it's SEO or finding strategic partnerships. How are you feeling about marketing now?

Laura Litwiller [00:24:45]: I feel fine about marketing now. I think, I wouldn't say I'm, like, I feel so confident and I feel great because I think I will probably never totally feel that way. And that's probably a good thing because I wouldn't be learning if I was just feeling totally confident about it. But I feel much more grounded in my decisions when I make them, and that feels huge. But I still have so many questions and find myself experimenting a lot and reaching out to the Expert Up Club and other trusted colleagues and partners and things like that. So I would say that we're on good terms, me and marketing.

Laura Litwiller [00:25:39]: We're on good terms. Sometimes we have some bumps in the road, but we usually end up in a pretty good place.

Michelle Mazur [00:25:46]: Spoiler. Hate to tell you this, but you're always gonna be experimenting with marketing. Yeah.

Laura Litwiller [00:25:55]: That's kind of what I realized.

Michelle Mazur [00:25:59]: I know. There's never a there, like, where you're like, I have figured it all out. Because you will get to a point where you're like, I have this dialed in and it will work for a while and then it will stop. And then you're back to like, why isn't this working or what do I need to tweak and change? And, yeah, that's, the unglamorous truth about marketing.

Laura Litwiller [00:26:25]: Yes. Well, that makes a lot of sense. And I feel like from what I hear from even experienced business owners, you know, I'm 3 years in, but people who have many more years than me, it's the same thing. Right? In fact, I have a friend who has an amazing business, and it's been soaring for the last number of years. And there's just recently been a dip. And I've always looked to her as, like, wow. You made it.

Laura Litwiller [00:26:54]: You know? And then she had this dip, and she's like, what is going on? I don't know what to do. What do I need to tweak? Where should I take things? And so it's it's ongoing, figuring it all out.

Michelle Mazur [00:27:11]: Yes. Yes. I love that. Alright, Laura. Why don't you tell everyone where they can find you and how they can take your quiz if they're a teacher?

Laura Litwiller [00:27:20]: Yeah. So the best place to find me is on my website, which is just www.lauralitwiller.com. And the quiz, Should I Quit Teaching, is on the homepage of my website. So you can just click on it and take it there and get a little more clarity about a question that you've been asking probably for a really long time.

Michelle Mazur [00:27:47]: Awesome. And we will hook that up in the show notes. And, Laura, thank you for coming here and helping us all make marketing suck less.

Laura Litwiller [00:27:56]: Yay. That's a mission I believe in, so I'm glad to be here. Thanks, Michelle.

Michelle Mazur [00:28:05]: I so appreciated Laura's openness about how she doubts herself when it comes to marketing because that is a completely normal thing. We always think we need to be adding something or doing something wrong when, really, the truth is marketing is all one big experiment, and experts like Laura weren't trained to be a marketer. None of us subject matter experts were actually trained on how to market. Here are my other two takeaways from the interview today. What really struck me is that when Laura said one of the best ways for her to feel more confident was by dialing in her message, was that she needed to know that what she was saying would actually resonate. This is one of the biggest points of frustration because people are told how to do marketing tactics, but they're not told what to say in order to lead people to your offers. So messaging always comes before marketing, but we don't talk enough about how that messaging helps you feel more confident in putting your marketing out there. Because once you have the message, you have a guide, basically, that tells you what to talk about to market your business.

Michelle Mazur [00:29:35]: The final takeaway that really struck me from this interview is I loved the point Laura made about making your marketing work with your lifestyle. Especially with something like social media, it can be intrusive. It can be all encompassing. Like, you can be checking your likes instead of interacting with your partner or enjoying movies or going and working out. Right? Like, it's so oppressive on our lifestyle. And, really, marketing should be something that we're able to put away and say, like, okay. I'm done with that for today, and feel good about it. So remember, even the people who are selling you certainty, the one proven formula, they actually know that marketing doesn't work that way.

Doubt, uncertainty is natural, and you can embrace it to experiment and find out what works for you.

Michelle Mazur [00:30:41]: If the Make Marketing Suck Less pod is making your marketing more effective so that your clients can find and hire you, please share the show with a friend. The easiest way to do that is through pod link. You can find the show at pod.link/rebel, and that page will allow anyone you share the show with to subscribe and start listening in their favorite podcast player.

That's pod.link/rebel.

The Make Marketing Suck Less podcast is a production of Communication Rebel. Our production coordinator is Jessica Gulley-Ward. The podcast is edited by Steven Mills, our executive producer is me, Dr. Michelle Mazur.

The make marketing suck less podcast is recorded on the unseated traditional lands of the coast Salish peoples, specifically the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish people, original stewards of the land, past, and present.