Girl Gang Craft Podcast Episode #93 “The Social Bungalow with Shannon Matson”

Phoebe Sherman interview with Shannon Matson

INTRO
Phoebe Sherman

Welcome to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast where we dive in deep to all things business, wellness, creativity, and activism for artists and entrepreneurs. We talk with impactful female driven companies and founders for an inside look at the entrepreneurial experience where you'll come away with tangible steps to elevate your business. Are you ready? I'm your host, Phoebe Sherman, founder of Girl Gang Craft artist and designer, and marketing obsessed. We're here to learn together how to expand our revenue, implement new organizational techniques, and cultivate best business practices as we work towards creating a life doing what we love. Let's get started.

Hello. Hello. Hey, creatives. Phoebe here. Welcome back to the Girl Gang Craft podcast. We just had a Salem this weekend, GDC Salem, and it was so fun. Like maybe even more packed than pride. Just like good vibes, great weather. I love meeting all of you vendors there. I met a couple girlies from Santa Cruz, which is wild and old coworkers from Santa Cruz to even all these California Massachusetts connections. Just like, really give me life. It's so fun and I got to meet a lot of customers. How are you all shopping? Our abortion is health care tank and our feminine urge tank, and it was just a really lovely, beautiful, amazing day that reminds me why I do what I do. So thank you for coming. Thank you for being there if you were there. And next up we have our Sacramento show. And this is really exciting because it's our first event in Sacramento. And we've been trying to do an event in Sacramento for a long time, like since 2020. And of course it didn't happen. But here we are having our first Sacramento event at the Crocker Art Museum, so you can go ahead and get tickets for that and is a ticketed event at the museum. If you're a museum member, you get to come for free, but you can get tickets at Crocker art.org/events. Or we also have the link on our website Grog and Capcom slash event. It is 18 up and it is an evening event from 6 to 9 p.m.. And it is a pajama party. Yeah. So come in. I'm thinking like nine years slumber party bow was feathers colors like cozy but with a little opulence. And so I hope to see you there. I will be there myself. I will physically be there. So yeah. So if you've are wanting to meet me, I will be there. I'm so excited to come to California and come to that event. I can't wait. So that's like August 8th. That's not this week, but that's next week. It's so soon. I personally take a little break for the summer season, get my ducks in a row, go on my honeymoon. So I'm really excited about that. And yeah, also relook at our funnels, do some design works and stuff. But if you are a vendor looking to do more events with us, we still have our applications open for our November Sacramento show, our Providence Show, and our Malden show. So apps are open for that. Apps are closed for Oakland and Salem winter just because those are our really popular shows. But you can apply for the waitlist so you can apply for all of that at Go game craft.com/apply and what else do we have for you? I think that's it for now. This is a really good episode with Shannon, who's the founder of Social Bungalow with comprehensive experience in marketing and advertising. Shannon prides herself on helping others structure and market their businesses for exceptional growth. Her journey began in the corporate world, where she held titles such as VP of marketing for a global Publishing company and National Director of Sales and marketing for a fitness franchise. Now she's the CEO and founder of the Social Bungalow, high net education and media company that helps entrepreneurs structure ingenious online businesses. So you can find out more about her at the Social bungalow.com or hit up her Instagram instagram.com. I don't know where I'm giving you the link to Instagram instagram.com/the social bungalow or, the social bungalow. This is a really good episode. Shannon is the finals queen all about having courses that are evergreen so it was really exciting to chat with her one on one and to open up this conversation for you. So let's get listening.

Hello creatives. Welcome back to Girl Gang Craft the Podcast. Today we have Shannon on the podcast from the Social Bungalow. Hey Shannon, how's it going?

Shannon
Good. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Phoebe
Thank you so much for being here. I've been following you for a bit, and I think what got me and we can dive into this a little bit is your carousels. Your carousel content is, like, so good and full of depth and also really easy to consume. which is a challenge and I'm sure that you think it's a challenge also, but you really have perfected it from my perspective. Yeah. Why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Shannon
Okay. Well, first, thank you for that. So my name is Shannon. Hi, everybody. If you're listening, I am from the social bungalow on Instagram. But I started from corporate doing marketing for different businesses and that scaled to the point of helping some celebrities in marketing as well. And that while so fabulous, was of course very draining and you're kind of jerked all over the place. So that was the beginning of the end for me and saying, okay, I've got transferable skills, I can take this online. What could this look like? So I started side hustling and I did outsource. Director of marketing is what I called myself for some local Las Vegas businesses, and then from there just ended up getting one client in this more online space who was an entrepreneur, expertise based, selling what it is she knows to help other people. And that was so impact driven. It was so clean. It was using digital marketing, which was everything I knew, and I was just lit up by it. So I fully pivoted or niched into that and then stopped doing so much of the done for you and started doing more education. So now it's been five years of strategic insights for online entrepreneurs who are looking to market their expertise and make it really structurally sound. So it's highly profitable and not so time consuming.

Phoebe
Yes, yes, I love it. Well, your stuff is really relevant to me personally because we do courses and classes and podcast stuff. So I found some of your stuff really helpful. I guess I want to start with, why don't you tell us a little bit about your own offerings and what sorts of people in the online space that you help?
Shannon Yeah, so I've got courses that are one part academia of like, oh, that's how that works. And then another part playbooks. So they are pre done for you launch plan sales funnels content plans. Because I want to teach you to fish. But then I want you to be able to get out there and do it quickly. So it is to help you with your content, your launches, your sales funnels and just your offer structure on my courses.
And then we have community and little, you know, fun offers that pop up all the time, as well as then just working with me more intimately.
Phoebe And can I ask how big your team is?
Shannon Yeah, I have a marketing manager full time, a project manager full time, who's also kind of like an obvious sort of role. a client success manager full time. And she supports in our group programs whenever we do a pop up cohort. And then we have, my husband, who is our CEO and like, company protector of all, followed by then a part time, operations customer service type person.
Phoebe Awesome. Okay, so people in our community are sort of in a couple different camps. Those who listening are often product based businesses, but we also have some service based businesses. And as I personally, started as a product based business and then moved into the service based business, I think there's a lot of people who are thinking about what sort of services they could offer, or sort of thinking about diversifying their revenue, as that's something I talk about all the time.
So maybe a little bit of, conversation around like what sort of services folks can offer and sort of like maybe how they could start to expand their offerings and then we can sort of dive into some of the deeper stuff. Evergreen and live launches.
Shannon Yeah. I mean, the first and easiest way for a product creator to do so is to teach someone what you've done yourself thus far. If you have a passion for that, how to set up the Etsy shop, how to even skill based things for a niche of your audience. So if you've got people who are artists and they buy your products and they resell, or they get inspiration or whatever that looks like you to say, here's how you set up your Etsy, or here's how you make this sort of a product, or here's how you market this product.
So you'll always have your expertise right now. And even if you didn't go to school for it, or you don't feel like you are the most go to person for it at the moment, you are so close to the day to day right now that your nuanced understanding of their problems, what they actually want. They don't want to perfect AWS fluff because you're so far ahead of it and you think this is what they want.
You know, right now you are the best person to speak to it. And right now is such the time because it's fresh for you. Anything that you know, oh my gosh, where was this when I started? I wish somebody had taught me this or I could so help people with this. I get asked about this a lot, maybe even just test the waters and do a pop up, paid for masterclass a little bit lower ticket and see how that goes.
And you can even package up that recording and resell it for low cost as well.
Phoebe Yeah. So water maybe some of those hurdles for starting to offer a class online. Like what do you see in your niche or. Yeah.
Shannon I would say the first thing that sometimes we kind of hide in is the tech. We're like, oh, I don't know exactly how to do that. And it's like everything you've done in your business so far, you somehow figured it out. So you will figure that out too. But logistically speaking, your zoom account is enough. All you need to do is set yourself up a meeting, grab that zoom URL, and then promote it.
And when somebody opt in to get access, you email them the zoom. So that requires a zoom account and an email marketing software. And if you already have a website or you have like a lead pages or landing pages, some sort of online portal where you can make a web page, that's it's a web page with an opt in form, and then you're going to email them the zoom from there.
You of course, if you've never done anything like this, maybe be a little intimidated by going live, but you just speak and say what they want to know. Doesn't matter if you stumble. It doesn't matter if you get long winded. At one point they are going to eat it up because everybody is so hungry for value and tell me what to do.
Like I need some step by step. I need some support. When you do that, you'll see the chat lighting up. You'll see them super excited and all that fun stuff. Now you might be listening to that and saying the chat lighting up. I mean, where am I even going to get these people? But whoever you currently have in your audience, there are so many ways for us to use great carousels to talk about the event, to talk about our expertise, and to invite them promote that.
It's in the link in your bio on social media. Send it out to the people you currently have, or even partnering with people who have your ideal client in their audience so that you can get in front of more people and give them the URL and get them excited to come in.
Phoebe Yeah, I'm thinking about how that probably all sounds really scary to folks and thinking about my own sort of beginnings and the pandemic times, like figuring out how to do the tech and like emailing people and emailing reminders and like getting people to sign up. How am I going to take payments? And yeah, I mean, I think it can be really simple, like, you can have it be your zoom, you could even just DM people the euro.
Like, I mean, we would like it to be email, but you could just DM people and you could even collect Venmo like it could be very simple. And then maybe after that first time you sort of level up a little bit and maybe you create an automated reminder and maybe you uplevel to the webinar software on zoom. But I think each time you can get a little bit more comfy and you can upgrade the tech.
I mean, I personally am upgrading my talk like every single launch, every single Sasha. And like we are finding different ways to do things better. But that first time it doesn't have to be perfect. And just getting people on the zoom or getting people in person at like a local retailer or a local restaurant or whatever to get people in the door.
I think that's really great practice. It will be a big deal and it will be scary, but all of that tech and all of those intricacies can be figured out later.
Shannon Yeah, well, that I totally agree.
Phoebe Yeah, but it is scary. I totally hear it. Also a secret I just feels aligned right now. Like in the past I've had really low attendance to classes, and I did purchase the webinar on zoom so no one else knows how. And then the class was. Yeah.
Shannon Because they if you're on a meeting, they can see and if you're on a webinar they can and you can be like, hey everyone. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. You're all here. And there could be one person or nobody in the room. And if nobody's in the room, you're just looking forward to sending out the replay. And when they're watching the replay, they see it seems that people were there and it feels really energizing for them as they consume it to keep watching and not skip around too much.
Phoebe Yep. And that doesn't have to be the right choice. Always like a small group is also great, and I've had small groups, but like there was a point where I was like, you know, I'm just going to like, hide behind this. I'm not allowed. Also, I don't think it's dishonest. So you can do the things to make you feel comfortable in the space as much as possible.
Shannon Absolutely. And to your point about dishonesty is so true. We want to stay in integrity. But if you think about I'm building this for not just this one moment, I'm building this for the people who are going to watch the replay and how I'm going to be able to package up and repurpose it and sell it again.
And there will when I say, hey everyone, there will be and everyone at some point. And I want this grading to be appropriate for that. So just stand in your power and make a plan, because when you have something, you will feel so much more in control of. This is how I'm grading them. This is what I'm saying.
And no matter if this happens or that happens, I'm proceeding.
Phoebe Yes, absolutely. Now let's talk about the repurposing thing too, because that also maybe at some point requires a lot of tech. But even right now, for instance, sharing things, we're just sharing things over here. I at one point was on teachable and was paying a coupon, raising the price. So was like 60, $70 a month or whatever. And right now we're on a private YouTube.
So I'm just saying that that tech doesn't have to be that high scale as well. And like, maybe you flush it out a little bit more and you get back on teachable or get back on Kajabi or something like that. If you are doing modules, it's totally okay to have your hour, hour and a half to class that you've recorded on zoom and just put it up on a private YouTube and then have some sort of paywall for that.
Shannon Yeah, absolutely.
Phoebe Okay. But now let's talk a little bit more about advanced tech. And I think one of the things that I'm thinking about, and I'm sure everyone here is thinking about is the marketing aspect, like, how do I get people to show up at my class and what does that look like integrated into your year? Like, what could a launch cycle look like?
How can you make that? These are a million questions and one. So maybe let's start with what are some ways to get people in the door.
Shannon In the door for like a free event or what are we thinking.
Phoebe We could do free or paid? I don't know, we could start with free.
Shannon Let's define the word launch. So launch. Even though initially it sounds like an initial launch, like you're launching something for the first time, we in the online space, when it comes to your own expertise based offers like courses, services, etc. we use the term launch as just another word for a type of promotion. And so a launch is to define any time that you're doing like a little bit of a ramp up to where you're teasing and seeding that something's coming, and then you've got a specific open to closed cart window, just like a Black Friday or holiday sale card to open on this day.
It closes a week from now. This is your urgency and your reason or your container to make a decision. Whereas when you've got pieces on your website for sale all the time, that's your all the time sales. And if you were to have somebody opt in for a free resource, and then on the back end of that free resource, you're sending them some added value emails, and then you present one of your offers that would be a sales funnel.
So fun terms to define all these different ways. But it really comes down to with launching and getting people into a paid experience. It comes down to that urgency factor, and a lot of times people feel like a level of ick around urgency because it excuse masculine brow marketing things of that sort. But your phrasing will be in your brand voice, so it's not going to have any of that weirdness attached to it.
It's kind of an active service because you're creating a container for decision to be made, and that decision could be, no, it's not that you're forcing somebody to buy or being persuasive or convincing, it's that you are creating some quality content that gets them really educated on what it is you're about to sell them, so they feel equipped and capable, and then you create a container for a decision to be made.
And if it's not right now, it's not right now. So with that, when we are looking to get people to purchase our offer within our launch, what we do in that ramp up side is we give them some free stuff. And it's not just your free content on social or free emails out to your list, that's part of it.
I also have most of my clients host to events of some sort. The first one is just an easy free resource like I'm sure many of you have downloaded a million times. A freebie, PDF you see on Pinterest, or an on demand 15 minute value training. Some sort of something. Something that gets them to raise their hand and say, I am interested in this topic.
This topic is related to the offer you're about to sell them. So now you've got some people that are showing you their leads for the offer that you can keep nurturing. And then the second event, I like to do something live and even like we've been saying, if it's very few people in the room doing it live is going to have energy and it's going to speak to the card is now open and you have an urgency factor associated because there is a time window which you need to purchase.
So with that whole little scope, let's call that six weeks, eight weeks time, you're looking to really get a spike of cash of clients, of confidence within this timeline. You want to produce these events that are going to be really aligned with the offer and have a beautiful post about it and opt in page about it. So now to the original question.
Okay, we're driving somebody to a free event and we want them to opt in. I would want you to post about it on all your platforms and then pin that piece so that anything you're doing for the next six weeks, they're seeing that and they're acting on it. I would want you to lean out the link in your bio.
I'm social, so it's not your full Linktree style situation. It's just that one specific thing, because we want to funnel all of our leads focus to that. Even though it's great for them to go click around, we don't want to dilute the interest. We want it to be aligned with the offer. Like we were saying earlier, the opportunity for you to guest speak.
And this doesn't have to be big. It can be somebody you know in the online space that has a Facebook community. It could be somebody podcast that's going to launch within the window that you need it to even a biz bestie where you two want to do like a swap of your free resources, where for your newsletter or whatever it is that you have regularly in your content, you promote theirs and they promote yours, shared posts, things of that sort.
So you're getting in front of other audiences, but across the board for that first freebie and then transitioning into that second event, you want your main call to action in that era to be just those pieces so that everybody gets in, and then all of those people are your leads for your open card. And that's not to say we are only going to tell those people about the opportunity to purchase this.
We are going to tell the rest of your platform to. But those are the people that we've now had actively raise their hand. So if we want to do any direct outreach, if we want to support them and hop on a quick call or voice memo in the DMs to help them make a decision or answer their questions, we can proactively reach out to them.
We're more in control of who our leads for the offer are.
Phoebe Yes, okay. And I'm looking at that. I'm thinking about this eight week window thing. How do you feel about shorter lunch cycles, and do you think that water is down the pool a little bit?
Shannon I think that promotions, flash sales, all of that, you can whip it around and do it over a weekend and only ramp up that week. That's all good. My one thing I'm explaining here is like a larger scale launch where if we and I don't know how much everybody consumes more of the digital experts content versus product based business content.
But if anybody knows, like an Amy Porterfield, for example, she does her once per year live launch of Digital Course Academy, her signature offer. It's not available throughout the rest of the year, which is a marker of her success and how large she is. I wouldn't say don't have your signature offer available all year at this point, but she spends an entire nine months essentially building her email list and curating people who are raising their hands and interested in creating a digital course.
She opens up the doors for like one week once a year to buy this program, and she makes ten plus million dollars in that week. So it's that same sort of energy, but on a lower scale. So when we're live launching, I don't need you to not sell anything or kind of completely turn off your opportunity to sell during that window for two months time.
I need you to view this two months as I'm creating. I'm distributing, and that I'm selling within this bracket. And that's what I'm focusing on for the 6 to 8 weeks.


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Phoebe
I'm thinking about my own offers here, and let's see, we were doing some bigger launches maybe twice a year, and that felt really draining for me. There was a lot of like emotional hype around these launches, and when they didn't do that, well, it's all relative. But I would get really depressed and that would really affect me. And so something that I've personally been doing, I guess only the past few months. And maybe you think this is totally wild, but it's kind of been working for us. We've been basically doing a mini launch every week, and that has actually helped my energy because I'm not like, so consumed with this one launch. And I think it's actually been working for us. I mean, obviously we're that sort of builds long term as well, because those freebies funnel into things and then those people come back whenever the launches, I don't know. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Shannon
A couple questions.

Phoebe
Yes

Shannon
Once per week. How long have you been doing that? Is it for a theme of offers? What do you mean exactly?

Phoebe
Yeah, we've been doing it since, I guess the summer ish. Yeah, we've been going through our suite of classes and just focusing on, like, one class a week and launching it.

Shannon
How many do you have?

Phoebe
I have two, like mini classes and two maybe bigger, like mid ticket.

Shannon
Okay. And so would each of them be on a week. So you've got basically like one month's worth of each one of them having their own focus per week in the month.

Phoebe
Yes.

Shannon
Okay. And how long is your window for them to purchase during that one week?

Phoebe
5 to 6 days.

Shannon
Okay. And does it go away? Is there a bonus or is there a discount.
Phoebe
there’s a bonus

Shannon
Okay, so will this same bonus on like class number one week number one of June. And then class number one week number one of July. Will that same offer and bonus be available then that next month when you're doing it again?

Phoebe
No, I guess it is kind of each thing is quarterly because we won't even launch those because our holiday season is different and there's like other stuff going on. And then I think we'll like relaunch for quarter one and go through them.

Shannon
Okay. Then. Yeah, that's great. The reason why I'm asking those questions is one that sounds like a really fun campaign for you to do in a month's time. So one focus per week. It's basically a bunch of mini launches put together on the front end of that. You've done a ramp up, not maybe intentionally for this week by week sales situation, but you've done your content and your freebies and all these things that have then built an audience and made them ready for you to tell them what to buy. So I would still count that as kind of a standard launch, just done with a different lock up the week by week thing. Super fun. I would imagine they're a little lower ticket. Yeah, so lower ticket is going to be good for those sort of activations, gamification, anything like that. And then the only thing I would have been concerned about is if you were doing the same thing the following month, in the following month, because then you would be like the boy who cried wolf with the same thing.
And I would definitely recommend mixing up the bonus for those who purchased before and were like, oh, I didn't really have the money or the time to purchase, but I purchase because you told me this bonus was going away and I could have just waited a month and gotten the same thing next month. That's always how we want to make sure we're balancing our messaging and considering the future effect of what we say now.
Like limited time, it'll never be back. And then something comes back or something gets discounted. But yeah, I mean, it sounds like you have loved on your audience, grown a pool of people who have a need. Then you've done low ticket week by week, fun style theming launch, and it sounds like it's going really well. And now you're prepping for the holiday.
So yeah, I love that.
Phoebe Okay, cool. Great, I love it. Okay, so let's talk about bonuses. What makes a good bonus and what is a bonus. Yeah.
Shannon First what is a bonus. There's two types of bonuses that you'll typically see. And let's talk about courses. So in courses you'll have your core curriculum. And then sometimes you've got this like additional masterclass or template pack or things like that that are a part of the curriculum already included in the offer, but treated as if they're bonuses within the curriculum.
So they'll be in their own little bonus module and you'll find your bonus goodies in there. Those are part of the curriculum bonuses that can exist all the time and be used in your marketing at any point. But fast action bonuses are those that are going to have an expiry, and they're typically associated with that sale. And so this can be a bonus mini course template pack call with you.
Group call, whatever it is, it's going to move your people. But the number one thing I want it to typically be rooted in for fast action is that it's an objection handler. So if your people are going to come into this launch and be like, oh man, I don't have time, how am I going to get this done?
Your bonus is like a pre done project plan to make your way through the program and achieve your goals and X date and they're like, oh, sold. Like that's worth the cost of it alone and bonuses. Then from there they can be two types support or supplies. Support is any access to you, even if it's in a group container, to be able to, with ease, make their way through the program warm and then supplies is anything like templates, any past curriculum videos, etc. that you want to give out that doesn't take your time.
That's going to help them get through with more speed. So speed and support and supplies. But either which way? Handle some objections and give it an expiration so that it creates that container for decision to be made.
Phoebe I love it okay. We've talked about live launching a little bit and bonuses. Now let's talk about evergreen. How do you know when you should start having your courses available?
Shannon Evergreen. Yeah. If I can kind of dismantle everything we talked about and say, I would prefer you start evergreen. And I know that that's.
Phoebe Really.
Shannon Backwards for most people. And like that's something you achieve or it's more advanced. But if you think back to the beginning of most of our businesses, we started with some sort of one on one course that we knew people were going to want. We had one digital offer and then we sold it. We got that market buy in, we got some money from it, we got some students.
And then at that point, what happened to it? It was just on the website, and then we needed to launch it again or weave it into something else. If at that point you instead created a small sales funnel for it, you would then have this freebie that makes this funnel, which I'll explain in a second. And you would routinely on your website, in your link, in bio and in your content, have purposeful content to point towards that freebie and know that this little sales foot soldier has your back, because that thing that you created has the means by which to be sold routinely and in any other business, they have sales funnels and they have
sales funnels immediately to get on a call, to book a consultation, whatever that looks like. For some reason in our online space, we regale ourselves that we have to do everything with effort and marketing and promotion and all of this real time, when really the thing that's going to best support us in the beginning of our business, when we don't have a team, is building a little team member being your sales funnel, I prefer to do a quick little small launch, like a pilot launch to just test things out, even to monetize before you make it like get industry or get audience buy in by selling something before you build all the courses or all
the videos for your course. So then people buy it and then you build the product for those people. You massage it through the process of having real humans in there and knowing all the nuance of what they need it, or their questions or things that they wanted access to. You can refine the product, and then you can build a funnel for it, because you've got all that fodder for your emails.
So with a sales funnel, it is a freebie. And I know most of you know that you need a freebie or currently have one, so it's nothing different than what's already on your to do list. We're going to have some sort of free resource that people give their name and email for in exchange to receive that resource. And then from there, we'll email them a little bit of value on that topic, and then we'll transition into, hey, this has been really valuable.
If you want to take this to the next step, I have a course. This is what it consists of and it's on sale for you right now. And the reason why somebody would buy through your funnel versus it also being on your website, is because there is that fast action bonus associated. If you buy through the funnel, through the funnel is your best opportunity.
You can get access. You can also discount in your funnel if you wanted to. Dealer's choice on that. And it gives some sort of reason for them to buy right now while they're in the funnel. And the great thing also is that they've gotten the freebie, i.e. they raise their hand on the topic, they got their value emails.
So then they've continued to consume from you. And they're really in your universe right now. And mostly what that's doing is putting them into a hot state to where when you present the offer, they feel really called to do it. And then you add on the bonus or the discount. So there's urgency and you create just consistent sales for yourself and you turn yourself into an old Navy.
They need to sell so much merch every single day to stay in business. However, we are running our businesses like we're Old Navy semiannual sale, and then that's the only time that we're really doing anything. We want to create the dynamic for somebody to come in and buy our offers all of the time, every day, every week. So I would say create, do a small launch, get it tested, get your humans, get your social proof, create a funnel, drive traffic towards the funnel.
Let that do some cash for you. While you may be building your next offer, or you work a little more one on one, or those students that graduated from the pilot, now they have a new need and so you sell them on something else to continue working together. And then from there you could do another promotion, but you set yourself up with a strong foundation.
So you are not hand to mouth running your business, that if you don't work your business doesn't work without anything funnel wise.
Phoebe Yes, yes. Here's a question do you think the freebie needs to be directly tied to the topic of the course?
Shannon Usually I tie the freebie, so let's take my live launch course. Since we were on that topic, I wouldn't necessarily have a free resource that's like how to do a live launch, and then it'd be a micro version of the program. I would do something that meets them with where they're currently at, as per them being qualified for launching.
So if you should do a 6 to 8 week launch, you typically have an audience. So what do you need at this point is maybe your audience has gone a little cold and we need to warm them up. So my freebie might be like content formulas that are going to warm your audience up this week and get them responding and telling you exactly what it is that they want when their audience is responding and telling them what they want, it's going to tell them which of their offers they should do a launch for.
So as I follow up with more emails, it's then going to be like, hey, now that you know what your audience wants, let's go ahead and launch it to them. Here's a formula to launch. So it's more rooted in what do they need right now with where their problems are. Their awareness is that is so front of brain for them.
It's such an open loop that they can't see the solution yet because they're still so rooted in their current problem.
Phoebe Yes, yes, I love that. And that's so hard to think about too. I mean, you really have to know your audience. Obviously, and it's kind of hard for us to get out of that space. That's so, I mean, product driven. Here's the course for the thing. And it's really hard to be like, okay, well, what else do you need to, like be able to say yes to the course?
Shannon The number one thing I would say in my programs, or in my approach with marketing, is we always start from a storyboard, and that's really like mapping out the journey for the person. And I typically in working with a client, I don't let them pass go or collect 200 until we've sat down and really diagnosed the problem for our people.
What mistakes have they made to solve the problem? What symptom has this created in their lives? How are they feeling about it? What are they embarrassed about? And we start with this dossier of messaging and information. And through this process, it ends up kind of glowing off the page with what they're kind of obsessed with right now. And we're like, that's what we have to make the freebie about because we cannot sell them anything until they get this solved or this understood.
And then once I clear that out of the way, they will be ready for so much more.
Phoebe I love that. Then if you're offering your freebie, are you posting about that on social media or running ads or both?
Shannon Yeah, if you're not doing any ads like organic is good enough as well. If you have a small audience started that you what I was saying earlier about it creating more purpose in your content. If you're routinely, you know, one offer or one post is about your offer, one post is about your freebie, and then one post is just value.
So you're not giving them any real call to action. Besides like follow, save, share. That's a really nice way to just think about your content going forward. I'm a business. I always want you to know what I sell, but I have a free resource of value that's also going to sell for me. And then here's just value in and of itself.
So you don't get kind of sick of my content knowing there's always a pitch on the back end.
Phoebe Okay, so let's switch gears to social media actually quickly. So do you have both live launches now and evergreen then. Yeah, yeah. And what is like the split on that.
Shannon Well, it's 100% evergreen because it runs all year and then 2 or 3 spikes of launching. But that would be what we were talking about earlier, where it's that bigger launch where you're really doing our themed ramp up and all that fun stuff. I do also then little small pop up things throughout the year, like a fun fresh Black Friday or a pop up group program because I can tell my audience this summer, for example, it seemed like there was a industrywide slowdown in sales because all of their clients were traveling and just whatever the fallout of Covid.
So many little things and everybody together. Battlecry I need more money and clients. So okay, let's do a pop up group program. So it is not fair to say that I never will create and sell something new, but I have this back stock of courses and then of sales mediums like my funnel and like my launches that are going to continually bring that in.
Phoebe Okay, cool. So content, tell us a little bit about your content strategy. I mean you just mentioned the sort of the sell, the freebie the value. Is that something that you're just friends and repeating throughout the year?
Shannon Yeah. If I'm not doing a launch where like I was saying, I really want to trim down what it is, that's the link in bio what the call to actions are, because I want no question about you getting into the funnels or the launch ramp up so that that is exactly what you're focused on. When I'm not launching, I am routinely driving people towards the funnel or just giving them value so that when I do have something to provide them launch wise or new pop up offer wise, they're toasted up and really enjoy being in my ecosystem and are paying more attention when I do go to pitch.
Phoebe Are you more of a carousel girl or a real person?
Shannon I'm definitely carousel. I'll put on makeup like one day a week, and on that one day I end up with too many things that I'm tackling, and then all of sudden I'm like, oh, I didn't film any reels.
Phoebe Are you making content yourself then, or is your team? Oh yeah.
Shannon Despite having a marketing manager who is so supportive in kind of getting my copy into our landing pages or sales pages and things like that, like a really fabulous doer and co thinker. I still keep my finger on writing most of the copy for the business at large, but then content and emails because I am the one with the client.
I'm the one hearing their needs and demands, and I'm also the one creating all the curriculum. So to tie a through line between me being the person who's with the client and who's the curriculum creator, but then I'll give it to somebody else to promote it. It works, but it doesn't pack the same punch. And I see that in the data.
That's not to say if you're listening to this and you want to get out of all of the content and marketing that you're doing that you can't because you absolutely can. And the majority of people do as they scale their business, they get support in that. I just have that skill set in coming from marketing. So I prefer to maintain and also a marker of our brand is we produce a lot of content, we produce a lot of deep.
And as you can tell, I'm not short winded. I'm long winded for anybody to speak on my behalf, and it really feel like it came from me is kind of hard to do if it doesn't just come from me.
Phoebe That makes sense. Okay, so what do you think makes a good carousel post?
Shannon I would say it has a clear calling out to their subconscious on the front page. To that what happens is there is so much content constantly. We are just continually scrolling. And if you've ever like, interrogate your own scrolling process, think about it. Next time you're on social, you're scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. And then there's that one thing that you stop and you look at.
Now, it might be, of course, your friend or somebody who has a striking look about them. But when it's going to be something of value that's got copy, it's because the words said, hey, wait, stop. Pay attention. This is something that we've been seeking, we've been wanting. And until you phrase it in a way that is, oh my gosh, yes.
How do I do that? What is that? Do I have that problem? How do I solve that specifically to your people? They might just scroll past it and also they might pause and thumb through it. Me like that was cool. And then they'll keep going if we want to inspire them. Consuming every word, commenting, clicking to the profile, following DMing, taking action, consuming more.
We want to make sure that what that cover image says is rooted in. Are you making this mistake? Are you struggling with this and it be specific to them? And then from there, not too many.
Phoebe Words.
Shannon Per slide if you can avoid it. And also any visual designer people, which I'm sure many of you are very creative, will hate me for this, but I additionally deviate from my brand font body copy wise because it's serif and I do a sans serif, just neutral font for the body of my carousels. Because mass market wise especially to get on the explore page and have it be really easy to consume.
I want the font to be no brainer readable. So I do a super neutral like open sans style font so that people can actually read all the words when I'm personally looking at a piece of copy, and it's really pretty font, but it's very like Bookman Old style looking, lots of serifs and like, it's very fancy. I'm like, I can't read anything in this and I just want to scroll through or jump off of it.
So readability, spacing, not too many words per page, but ultimately the message is you don't need to give away the farm in this carousel. You ultimately want to help reframe their perspective. Because when we help people change the way they look at things, the things that they're looking at are going to change, which is a quote of some degree by Wayne Dyer that ultimately is saying, when we help somebody like we can't change their circumstances in a post and we can't change their circumstances overnight, especially if they're not within our offers.
So if their circumstance is I want to launch, but I don't have a super warm audience, so therefore I don't feel capable. And then I want to sell you my launch offer. I can't suddenly say, well, I'm going to snap my fingers and you're going to have a big, thriving audience tomorrow. It is going to take some work.
However, if I can change the way you look at your small, quiet audience and say, hey, we're going to do X, Y, and Z within the program to solve the quiet part. But small. That's actually a luxury because you're going to know these people. You're going to have so much more rapid fire opportunity in selling, etc.. So perspective changing thought reframes inside of a carousel are going to make people feel capable, and capability is the bedrock of any sale of them being like, yes, I can do this.
Yes, I'm ready to take this on.
Phoebe I love it. I love how all of this is so like embedded in psychology. And I mean, that's what marketing is, isn't it? Really? Yeah. So are you not on TikTok then?
Shannon No, I don't know. Maybe two years ago I had another gal who was supporting us in marketing and she's like, let's get into it. And I'm like, for sure, let's try it out. So she was just repurposing our reels onto TikTok, and that just didn't go very well because TikTok and or Instagram both love native content to the platform.
Number one. And then number two, just from a time perspective, I do pour a lot of blood, sweat and tears into my writing and my carousels. And I'm more of a like podcasting verbal and a written emails and carousel brand and just person. So then to take the time to produce all of this video content consistently and that has its own culture and energy and it's so worth it if you take it seriously.
I was just like, I don't have a need for it at the moment, and it is so much more to take on, and so I'm not going to diversify and dilute my energy and my time to places that aren't currently performing, as well as the other places I'm just going to pour into those.
Phoebe Yeah. So what are maybe some of those other things that you've decided aren't worth your time in your business?
Shannon Well, I'm not on TikTok, YouTube, anything video platform wise, even though video is so powerful and like we were saying earlier, reels, they're awesome. I just don't find a ton of time for them. So I have a lot of them. I just don't produce a ton of them consistently. Something that works really well that I've been doing lately is I've always had a newsletter.
I send it out every Tuesday since 2020. It's called The Goods and it is longer, and some people don't make it through the whole issue or they save it and they're like, I want to get back to this later. This was juicy. But then all of a sudden the next issue comes and the next issue comes every week and they never catch up.
So in the summer, I started doing a private podcast where it's kind of an audiobook of me reading the newsletter to them, and that way they can listen on the go instead of needing to sit and get the entire thing. And that has been phenomenal for consumption of them actually getting the knowledge and retention, because so many of us just learn better to hear it.
Like probably most of you listening to this podcast, obviously. So the ability to have it be more conversational and to listen when they're driving and when they're doing the dishes has made it to where so much more than before. People are DMing and being like, hey, in the goods. A couple weeks ago you said this and it really stuck out to me.
And then I say, oh, I'll ask them a question. They're like, oh no, no. I listened to the podcast. So that has been really a nice, helpful piece as well. But the thing I love about that versus it being a public podcast, is that it requires you to opt in. So I'm not just giving up a podcast. A podcast is great, but it's a different strategy.
I'm giving of a bonus asset that's bettering my current platform, but I'm still getting the opt into my email list.
Phoebe I love it. How do you organize your day to day?
Shannon Well, I have a coffee shop slash restaurant I'm currently. If anybody sees this on video, I am in my office, which is on the third floor, and then the coffee shop is on the first floor, but I live about 30 to 40 minutes away from it, so I split up my week with some days I'm home and then some days I'm here.
Monday to Friday, so it's different every day, dependent. And then some days I try to batch as much as I can. Like client calls are a day and interviews are a day versus writing and what have you as a day. Because I personally will give myself anxiety looking at the clock. If I know it could be 9:00 am and I have a call at 1 p.m. and I will fixate on the clock and not get into a flow state because I know something's coming up that I need to be on and ready for.
So really try. When it's creation and writing days to just have nothing, I need creative nothingness, nothing on the calendar from there. So really and truly very different every day. But those are kind of my main goals or themes.
Phoebe Okay, so you run a coffee shop restaurant. That's cool. How does that integrate into your other work.
Shannon That social bungalow started in 2017, 2018 somewhere in there and then Bungalow Coffee, which is kind of our physical expansion of the digital brand as a like collective and community space rooted in coffee and great food in Vegas is started in 2020. At the end of 2020, we open in 2021, in March, they don't necessarily cross-pollinate in a way to where they're like cross promoting each other, but it is this just physical embodiment of what we believe in, in the digital brand come to life for the Vegas community.
Phoebe That's so cool. That's awesome, I love it. Okay, cool. What's your favorite way to not work right now?
Shannon Favorite thing to do when I'm not working or way to stop myself from working?
Phoebe Both either.
Shannon My favorite thing that stops me and properly gets me out of my head because so that I'm not still thinking about it, is to spend time with my niece who is three and a half. And so obviously she's going to take a lot of time and attention right there in the moment when I'm not working, I don't really have any, like massive hobbies.
I feel like I need to romanticize that and get it, find some new hobby to get into. But I'm spending time with my husband. I love to read. I love to go on long walks. I'm spending time with friends. We're going to a concert. We're pretty foodie. We love coffee. So just your normal stuff. Just live and let live.
I just try to keep it balanced. As far as my team, actually, most of them are on the East coast. I'm on the west coast of America and one gal is in Italy. They all work an east coast schedule, so they work from my 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. so I do a heavier morning early afternoon day to cross over with them, and then I have a more open afternoon and evening.
And every day there I'm on a long walk. I'm with the dogs. I make like a pretty robust dinner. I love to cook, just relax, watch a good show, read a good book, call it a good day.
Phoebe Love it. What have you been reading lately that you like?
Shannon So any of mine like personal development and business stuff I listen to? I don't know why. Reading a business book. Maybe because it takes too long or I can't listen and do something. So when I'm read reading a book for pleasure, it's all thriller mystery album.
Phoebe Okay. What is something that you wear? She knew when you were starting out your work.
Shannon I think, I wish I knew I didn't actually start doing any paid ads for a year or two years, year and a half, and maybe. And I wish that I had gotten into that sooner, because it really is just like you're Fastpass at Disneyland to grow an audience, to get in front of aligned people and to be able to point them towards even if you don't have the freebie.
We talked about the email list. We talked about all these fun additional things you can do just to get them to come and connect with you on your main social media platform and see the quality content that you're putting this effort into. And you're talking about your offers and they're going to see your website or whatever it is you have.
Your path to attracting people is so much faster. If you set aside $500 to put into it. And also just the natural authority marker that is having some people following an account causes other people who see the account to follow, to follow, to follow. That doesn't mean you need more than 500 people. It just means if you have 30 people, somebody might say, oh, what is this account?
And then they hit the platform and they don't follow them. They'll come back to it another time. If they find you. Whereas if you have more people, when people find you, they think, oh, okay, this has some third party verification, some buy in there trustable. They're real. I can give them. I follow and give them my attention as well.
And getting there faster so you don't lose anybody along the way by just spending a few hundred bucks. I would have done that sooner if I started over my bit.
Phoebe Okay, how can people work with you?
Shannon I would say, just come see me on Instagram. That's where I hang out all the time. And it's subjective to what you've got going on. And many of you who are in an earlier stage like we talked about today, I would point towards one of the courses, but I would love to help kind of diagnose or consult which of those courses is right for you so you don't get into a situation that's not the best path for you right now, because I want everything to be really aligned and profitable for you in the right order for you.
So just M&M and I can point you there. If you're somebody who's been in business for a while and you want to take it to the next level, then we can talk about working together in a more intimate capacity. Be that in a VIP week or in a long form, one on one.
Phoebe Okay. Well, thank you so much, Shannon. Really appreciate it. I learned so much. I like personally I took so many notes.
Shannon Oh good. Well, thank you for having me. Thanks everybody for listening. This was super.


OUTRO

Phoebe
Thank you so much for listening to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast. Head to Girlgangcraft.com/podcast for shownotes and more. See you next time.