The Remote CEO Life Podcast

The Best Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses with Nicole Bernard

• Sophie Biggerstaff • Season 3 • Episode 21

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What are the best marketing strategies for small businesses that actually work?

In this episode of The Remote CEO Life, I sit down with marketing expert Nicole Bernard, whose journey from running an organic farm and microbrewery to becoming a top-rated contributor for Entrepreneur Magazine has given her rare insight into what it really takes to build a marketing strategy that works - without the overwhelm.

We explore simple, freedom-driven approaches to marketing, why PR and SEO still matter, and how to maintain visibility even when you hate social media.

Here’s what marketing strategies for small businesses we discuss in this episode:

  • How to decide what channels work best for your business
  • SEO, PR, email, and long-form content explained
  • Why your content pillars and buyer persona are key
  • Alternatives to social media for lead generation
  • Creating an effective weekly marketing rhythm
  • How to grow your email list without social media
  • How to beat content fatigue

If you want a marketing strategy that actually works for your small business without burning you out, this episode is a must-listen.

Connect with Nicole Bernard:

🌐 Website: https://nb.marketing

📥 Download her free marketing & PR workbooks: https://nb.marketing/hello

🎧 Listen to her podcast: https://nb.marketing/podcast

#marketingstrategies #smallbusinessmarketing #digitalmarketingtips #contentcreationstrategy #entrepreneurshipjourney #freedomlifestyle #onlinebusinessgrowth #marketingwithoutoverwhelm

About The Remote CEO Podcast:

This podcast is for freedom-seeking online entrepreneurs, offering practical, actionable advice to help you step up into your new role as CEO by building an online business that works for you - not one you work for.

Hosted by Sophie Biggerstaff, an online business mentor, e-commerce founder, mental health advocate, and full-time digital nomad. 🙋‍♀️

👆Want to start an online business? Take my quiz to help you get started

👆 Want to achieve more freedom in your life? Find out how you can make it happen in my free masterclass.

👆Need online business advice? Get my best business tips directly in your inbox by signing up to my newsletter

👍 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share to hear more conversations about starting and growing an online business.

🔗 Stay Connected:

📸 Follow me on Instagram

🎥 Follow me on TikTok

🗣️ Connect on LinkedIn

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Sophie (00:00)
Hello and welcome back to the Remote CEO Life podcast. Today I am joined by Nicole Bernard, an entrepreneur marketing expert whose journey started back in 2007 when she and her husband launched an organic farm and microbrewery in the beautiful Cascade Mountains. Through building on everything from the ground up, including marketing, SEO, social media and PR, Nicole discovered her passion and talent for helping businesses grow without the overwhelm. Since then, she's helped countless entrepreneurs simplify their marketing strategies

has been featured as the number one read contributor on entrepreneur magazine twice, and has been the sole provider for her family of four since 2016. So today we are diving into how to make marketing simple and the mindset shifts that fuel success and how building a business around freedom changes everything. So welcome Nicole to the podcast.

Nicole Bernard (00:46)
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat.

Sophie (00:48)
Yeah, me too. I'm super excited. Do you want to go into a little bit more detail around all of the things that you're doing, which all sounds super cool? I'd love to hear more about it.

Nicole Bernard (00:55)
Yeah, definitely. So yeah, like my intro said, I'm actually from Louisiana, so outside of New Orleans, but we moved up to the mountains and bought a farm and we were young and no kids. So we thought it'd be fun to like, you know, revive it. So we did all that successfully for about seven years to the point where our neighbors weren't as excited. And so we ended up having to go through a big legal battle due to all the traffic we were creating. So we ended up closing our doors, which, you know, ⁓

kind of felt like the rug was ripped out from underneath us, but everything happens for a reason. Worked at a marketing agency and then branch out on my own again in 2016. And ever since then, I've been working with businesses, big brands, mom and pops to help them with their marketing. And I also kind of coach them as well. Some people don't quite have the budget to hire someone and I get it. And so it's really fun to teach them how to do it because then when they understand what they're doing, it makes it lot more effective and they get to grow.

Sophie (01:50)
Yeah, amazing. And you obviously work across so many different areas of marketing. Is there one specific area that you specialise in?

Nicole Bernard (01:57)
Not really. I would say organic and inbound. We don't do paper click or ads or anything like that. So we do a lot of strategy, lot of search engine optimization, social media management. So that holistic organic approach is what we specialize in.

Sophie (02:12)
Amazing. And obviously before you bought your business online, you were running an organic farm, a microbrewery, and now you're helping other businesses with marketing. What were the biggest lessons that you learned from running those businesses that you were then able to transfer to your clients that you're now dealing with online?

Nicole Bernard (02:29)
Yeah,

yeah, it's been interesting because I you know a lot of marketing agencies don't actually have the experience of being a small business owner as well. So I lived that as well. You know, I understand how you know little time we have to execute the marketing tasks and you know the time to actually figure out how to do the marketing tasks. So that's what my degree was in marketing. But yeah, having the hands-on experience with the farm, you know, we did a lot of search engine optimization like

and influencer outreach, even before that was even a term, because this is like 2010. So you know, reached around to like a lot of beer bloggers and just really understanding that marketing really starts with relationships, you know, and so building those relationships. And then they were able to, you know, either they would feature us, they would post on social media, you know, we'd have events and invite them in. really translating that to my clients and how they can do that in their businesses has that's what's really been.

really effective for them.

Sophie (03:25)
Yeah, that makes sense. I think marketing can actually be so overwhelming, can't it? But like such as for small business owners, because there is so many avenues you can go down. So many platforms, strategies, like it is literally endless. And it's personally something that I really struggle with. Like I'm not a natural marketer. I'm a salesperson. But so I really had to learn, particularly through social media, like how to utilise that properly for my business. And I still don't wouldn't say after five years,

Nicole Bernard (03:30)
Yeah. ⁓

Yes, they're endless.

Sophie (03:53)
of doing it that I am anywhere near an expert in it. feel like because it's constantly changing and I personally don't really like social media, like it's not really something that I enjoy spending a lot of time on, I find it very hard to figure out like what the best strategy is for me. actually that's led me to go down the route of trying other marketing routes and techniques. So I now I'm actually trying to work with more SEO driven strategies, more long form content rather than short

Nicole Bernard (04:15)
Mm-hmm.

Sophie (04:22)
form content. So I'd be really interested to hear your take on what are your recommendations of platform usage for small businesses and which channels should we be utilising that are the most effective.

Nicole Bernard (04:31)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I get that question a lot and it's really it's hard to answer. So like for instance, I can just think offhand the different clients that I have. So one is like an AI startup and we rely heavily on podcast sponsorships and influencers. I have a few lawyers and we really focus on the SEO long content for people searching for the different services and particular problems that they solve. And then I work with some breweries and we're all in on social media.

So it really depends on your business and I really hate, I wish I had like a black and white answer to give people but that is something that I work with them a lot too. I have like a whole workbook that anybody can even grab on our website but it helps you figure out your goals of what you're trying to accomplish, you your buyer persona, your ideal people are and then that really helps you figure out where you want to spend your marketing time. Like for instance, if you're like an RV seller, you know, like your ideal client is,

most likely like retired, older, that's gonna help you figure out which platforms that they're on. know, like they're probably not on TikTok, they're probably still on Facebook because, you know, that's where they can see pictures of their grandkids. And you know, and it also helps you figure out what kind of content they like to consume. You know, some people might not like video, even though obviously we know that it's the overall trending way to consume, but I actually don't, like I love to download things and read through them. So it helps you to figure out, or like a podcast, you know.

And then also to your messaging. like, what are they Googling? Kind of like, what are they putting in there? What are they struggling with? What keeps them up at night? And then that really helps you figure out that strategy of, you know, what kind of content you can create. And then, and then you also know where you're putting it. So.

Sophie (06:09)
Yeah, that makes a good point. Do you kind of start with the problem? So the thing that somebody is actually Googling, ultimately if they're Googling it, that's the thing that they're most wanting to, the problem they're most wanting to solve. Do you start there and then work with that problem for all of the different marketing channels?

Nicole Bernard (06:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, so we kind of start with like, are the most common questions you get, know, like you as a business owner. I feel like two business owners, kind of forget like that we made our products and services to serve people. Like we really know a lot more than I think we give ourselves credit for what they're struggling with. So yeah, so we do that. So, and then we will kind of do some keyword research around that and see what opportunities we have. And then we'll build out some content pillars as well. So the different few things that they're asked about, we will start to build out.

you know, these different topics and pillars that we can continue to post about, whether that's their blogging, their podcast, podcast guesting that they could go and talk on, social media. And so just in those different forms of content, we can reiterate, you know, how we solve those problems, but in different ways. Cause I think the average used to be like someone had to see your content seven times for it to even click. And now it's like 25 or something insane. So.

Like there's so much content being put out there. So it's really hard to make sure that you're standing out and so when you have all of that this strategy and the things that they're struggling with and you consistently show up then they're gonna start to find you

Sophie (07:37)
Yeah, I really do believe that you need to... the market is so crowded and particularly on social media it gets very noisy and there's a lot of people doing very similar things so you really do have to stand out. Like what would you suggest is the best way to articulate your unique selling point?

Nicole Bernard (07:42)
and it's.

Yeah, that's a great question. The best way is to really know what you're solving and what kind of verbiage and things that they are using. And then, again, if we're going to talk social media, there's some best practices you can follow depending on whatever platform it is. There are certain ways that they want people to post and engage on their platforms and the tools that they use. And so it is a little time consuming, especially in the beginning. But if you keep up with it, and that's

Also, and I get it, seems to be the biggest problem with small business owners is the consistency of doing it because it is something that has to be done and it takes a little while in the beginning. And if you don't see a lot of results right off the bat, a lot of people start to fall off thinking it won't work, but it really will. And if that might be having to do some video batching and some carousel posts, if we're talking Instagram, certain little best practices will really help. And as you're...

getting started, but then also really knowing your messaging and your buyer persona.

Sophie (08:53)
Yeah, I think that is a really good point that you just made. Like the fatigue around creating content is so real. And it's like, okay, I'm actually at that stage of the month where I'm like, Oh no, I've got to do it again. I just, and what I, what I really, yeah, exactly. Like what I really feel is that if I'm not in the right energy to create content and the content won't land. And I'm really interested to ask you like what

Nicole Bernard (09:06)
I'm so tired.

Yes.

Sophie (09:21)
How would you simplify an approach to creating content creation? Let's take social media, let's take Instagram, just because I know that so many people do utilize Instagram and want to be showing up on Instagram. For somebody that has...

no real desire to create content, doesn't really enjoy the platform, wants to spend as little time doing it as possible and doesn't necessarily have the budget to outsource. What do you recommend to that person in terms of a strategy? So make sure that they maintain their presence, they get the key messages across and they remain consistent. Because obviously that's a really big part of it is that you have to show up consistently to see those results. At some point, if you come in at one point and then drop off and come in and they will drop off, it's going to be very hard for somebody to get to know, like and trust you.

Nicole Bernard (09:35)
Right.

Sophie (10:02)
order to buy from you. So what would your best advice be for somebody that is feeling that way around it?

Nicole Bernard (10:07)
Yeah, yeah, so I would say like, you know, I tell a lot of my clients like once a week, even if it's like Sunday, you know, having a glass of wine or, you in the morning, like before everybody gets up and you're having some coffee, kind of do it one week at a time. I mean, if you can do it further out, like if you have, if you want to brainstorm, you know, a little bit further out, but just take a little bit, like what's coming up in your business? What are you, you know, what is, you know, the biggest problem that you solve for them? You know, do a little research too. You can also like there's, answer the public.

And so like you can see what people are searching and so not just Google. So you do have to put a little bit of work into trying to figure out like how you can have that content land with them. But again, as you kind of do that, it gets a little faster and then just kind of like brainstorm, you know, what your posts are gonna be. And I would also do, I would go a step further and see like, I would Google, you know, what are Instagram's latest trends or whatever this week and updates because they do release like they're just doing those lockable reels, you know, like they're rolling those out, which are brand new.

So just kind of being, not, you to don't put a ton of time, but like if you can do a little research, because if you're gonna be putting effort in there, you may as well make it worth your while, you know, and kind of follow the best practices that they want. And then you can kind of also to, you know, start to gather like whatever content you'll need, whether that's even like a stock video, you know, you can still do like a voice overlay pretty quickly and easily. You can do the carousels, which are really trending right now.

Sophie (11:13)
Yeah.

Nicole Bernard (11:29)
and then stories as well. You can kind of just plan it out, like even if it's on a piece of paper, it doesn't have to be like word for word what you're gonna do, but I feel like when they can kind of just get in that mindset and get some of those content ideas and they see kind of where it's gonna go that week, it's less overwhelming instead of just trying to like post something on the fly or being like, I'll come back and do that later, because we always know that that doesn't really happen. So just kind of trying to get ahead of it a little bit and then having a plan and then.

I would say engage as well. That's a big factor that people kind of like, well, a of people will just schedule their posts out and that's kind of it, but they want you to be on there. They want you to be engaging. They want you to be using the different tools within Instagram to like the stories and you know, things like that. So yeah, I would just say that kind of start to get a little organized and put a little bit of effort, but I understand that you don't really want to be on that platform or social media in general, but if you're gonna do it and that's where your people are, you're gonna have to.

put a little bit of effort into it.

Sophie (12:26)
Yeah, no, I agree with you. I just think it's such a game.

And this, I hate playing games. Like that is against everything that I stand for. And like just even what you just said, like around like, you know, you have to go in and look at the trends and see what updates they've made and go in and follow all of the rules that they've put into place. That is just everything against what I believe in. So for me, it's such a struggle ⁓ to take that and be like, yeah, let's go and do that. I...

Nicole Bernard (12:32)
Yeah.

you

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Sophie (12:57)
rebel against rules personally and I'm like, right, I want to do everything that isn't trending and everything that isn't what they're telling me to do, but then obviously don't get the results and then that's really disheartening and frustrating. So I think it's a bit of a catch 22, honestly, sometimes with particularly social media. And I personally, like I said at the beginning, I feel like for me, I have had this ongoing battle for five years with social media.

Nicole Bernard (12:59)
you

I'm afraid.

it is.

Sophie (13:22)
trying to figure out the way to do it. And there's been points, don't get me wrong, there has been points where my social media has been booming and it's been really working and driving me leads and clients and I've got people from there to buy from me for sure. But the energy that has sucked out of me in that process hasn't almost been worth it. So I am definitely trying to find different strategies, different channels and take away the pressure.

Nicole Bernard (13:33)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Sophie (13:46)
from social as particularly short form content. And like I said, I'm now focusing more on long form content. So what would your suggestion be for someone that feels the same way as me around social media? What are the other options for them?

Nicole Bernard (13:59)
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot. And so like I mentioned to one of my, few of my clients, they're all lawyers, like we really do focus on that long form content. And then as like for social media wise, we are just kind of putting, you know, different captions from the, long form content. And it, it's there almost like for brand awareness for them. So people don't go to their page and be like, are they still in business? Like, you know, there's still fresh content going up. but it, it's driving them back.

to that content and then we also, she does a good bit of public relations so that might be something too. We're getting featured in different articles that are also helping her SEO because she's getting brand authority and click backs, backlinks. And that has been really neat too. There's a lot of opportunity in PR. that would be, we also rely heavily, she does two newsletters a month which we have a template that's usually pretty good to go. Her open rate and she's got

think like five or six thousand people on her email list, you know, it's always about 48%, like 46 to 48 % so highly engaged. So when you're creating that kind of content and you want to put your energy that way, then that way, like social media is just kind of like a little bit of it for awareness and again, if they happen to head to her social media. But that's a great strategy too. And if you have, you know, if you're really passionate about the content that you're creating, you know, I think that.

in itself that energy attracts as well. It doesn't have to go through social media, you know, to be almost attracted. And then you're also doing the backend SEO work. That would be a great strategy.

Sophie (15:27)
Yeah, I guess do you work with funnels because I think like with that email bit like that's all well and good but we've got to get someone on the email list right so like what's your best suggestion for getting that person on the email list if they're not using social media?

Nicole Bernard (15:35)
Yeah.

Yeah, well she gets a lot of her signups through her website because we are doing so much content. We do four blogs a month, so she's got one a week going out. And again, all best practices were focused on keywords that she was getting ranked for. And so that becomes through her website.

Sophie (15:42)
Okay.

Amazing. So SEO driven strategies, blogs and content on the website, basically.

Nicole Bernard (15:58)
Yes, and then if

we want to go into SEO, SEO is kind of like, it's a beast and it's got an umbrella. you want to make sure your technical is up too. So like your website, your core updates that they really, they focused on last year. like broken links, speed, security, all that, make sure that's good to go. And then you move on to like on page. So that's like these new blogs going up, those are optimized with a checklist on the backend that meets all of Google's requirements.

And then I said to off page SEO, so we're doing the PR, so she's getting links back to her website, which shows that she's credible. And then local SEO. one of the, she has two firms. One is international, so we don't focus on Google, my business or anything like that, but her other one is estate planning, and that is very regional, local. So we optimize her profiles, like Apple being, and her,

Google business profile. And so we, that's his like her for like her local SEO. So you want all four of those pillars, like really worked out if you're going to focus on like the SEO process of it.

Sophie (17:01)
Yeah, that makes sense. guess it's very different for a local business versus like an online business, right? But either way, there we are SEO strategies. And from the point of like implementing these SEO strategies to the point of actually seeing the results, I know that is a bit of a longer term game than it is with social media short form content. So talk us through the timeline difference between the two.

Nicole Bernard (17:06)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it usually it takes a few months. So like I actually just did to like a ton of SEO work for a different Lawyer or anything just totally different and it there's a lag time for sure. So there's like a few different places you can audit your website One is like Neil Patel is uber suggests and they could also go to like JT metrics and they'll give you overall like scores of your website and what they'll actually tell you exactly what needs to be done

So you can kind of work through that. And once you do all those things and kind of get it up to where, you know, you're fast, like you're technical, and then like all of your pages are optimized as well. It usually takes like a few months. Whereas, you know, social media, if you're getting good engagement and you're being consistent can be very quickly. So yeah, it is definitely more of a long-term game for SEO. But then once the ball starts rolling eventually, then that's you start to really see people in traffic.

Pick up.

Sophie (18:14)
Yeah, that makes sense. And do you feel like, I personally believe that if you play a long game, you get long lasting results. Whereas if you play the short quick win game, you're only going to get immediate overnight success results, which doesn't tend to last very long. Would you agree with that strategy? Like is SEO something that can bring you returns ongoing rather than just like a quick win?

Nicole Bernard (18:22)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, definitely it can and I will say there is two it is Slightly changing a little bit right now in the seo world whereas like seo is now becoming termed search everywhere optimization because we have such erratic find journeys now And so even though we don't love being in social media and might not want to focus it again That's kind of why we do like put up the different content because those will come up in search results, you know, and so and then there's also like some zero click going on so we see like

Google put the AI answers and so a lot of people aren't even clicking right now. So I mean, not that they're not clicking, but traffic is taking a dip right now, but they do think it'll come back up after we kind of get through this new era of what this is. But so yes, I agree. Like the long term one is definitely more sustainable, but there are just a few different kind of things to keep in mind to where you would want to be on multiple kind of platforms. But if.

your main focus is SEO, then I would go with that, but just kind of have other little points along the way that they can find you because, like I said, people are searching a lot different than they have before.

Sophie (19:41)
Yeah. Do you, how many, how many platforms would you recommend someone to be on or how many channels, sorry, that's probably a bad word. Would you recommend someone utilizes for their marketing strategy?

Nicole Bernard (19:48)
Yeah.

Yeah, there was a study that just came out and it zero like I mean one platform I can't remember what the return is but there was like a whole chart the optimal is five and that is the highest ROI you'll get if you are on five different channels and then if you hit to six or seven it's kind of like diminishing returns it goes back down. So I would say based on that data that I saw like anywhere from three to five.

Five being the optimal, that's the highest, yeah.

Sophie (20:16)
Interesting.

Interesting. Okay. And I know that you're all about simplifying marketing strategies and making it as easy as possible and creating an effective marketing system. If you were to create a highly effective marketing strategy for us using four or five channels, what would you suggest to use?

Nicole Bernard (20:33)
Yeah, so again, it would depend on which platforms and where your people are searching, but generally, I would have some long form content, so a few blogs going up every month, and again, doing some research on the focused keywords that we want to rank for. So a lot of tools that are used throughout different businesses are the same, but the nuances are the details and your messaging and the keywords and things like that. So yeah.

blogs because again that's new content going up every month. Google loves to see that and it's optimized as well. and then I would also have email. So depending on what type of know content your people want or how often they would like it some go four times a month some do one a month and again it's just knowing who your people are. So I have email as well and I would work on building that list.

whether you're focused on social media or long form content or guesting on podcasts and getting people to come back and join your email list, growing that because we've all seen that social can be pretty finicky. ⁓ So email and then yes, I would do social media depending on which platforms that they would want and according to those best practices. And if that only meant one social media platform, then that would be fine too because you've got these other channels going around.

Sophie (21:34)
Mm.

Nicole Bernard (21:47)
And then I would also do PR. Like I said, it's great for brand awareness. It's great for SEO. A lot of times they share it on their social media. So then you've got some social media content there as well. And there's a variety of ways to do that. You can pitch yourself. You can join things like Haro or Quoted. So different things like that. But yeah, so I would use all of those and kind of, again, stick to those brand pillars of what those problems people are talking about and that they're suffering from.

and then creating the type of content that they would like to consume.

Sophie (22:16)
Yeah, definitely. And you've obviously been doing some PR, right? Because you featured in Entrepreneur Magazine a couple of times. So talk to me a little bit about that process of securing that PR.

Nicole Bernard (22:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, well, I'm actually a contributing writer to entrepreneurs, so I get to write for them pretty regularly, but I've gotten ⁓ clients in Forbes. I've gotten clients in Bustle, USA Today, and in different ways. I've gotten a few through Haro, and then I've gotten a few through working with clients. create a spreadsheet. What topics, what hooks would be good to catch up reporters? And the journalists, they want content. It makes their life a lot easier.

So coming up with some good hooks like that's how are you gonna get them to open that email? That's got to be pretty compelling and then the inside, you know message about whatever it is that they're really wanting to be, you know featured for and it pretty concise way and that has worked really well too if that takes a little bit more time because you are trying to find their email address, know, you're creating these specific outreach letters, but we want it lands like it did in in Forbes like that you can

So many beneficial things for that.

Sophie (23:24)
Yeah, I completely agree because I used to do a lot of PR actually when I first started my business in the first couple of years, I was doing a lot of PR and I've had a lot of features in magazines. I've been in Forbes, I've been in Vogue, I've been in the Times, like quite a lot of big publications, but I just didn't, I couldn't actually maintain it. I've kind of been a little bit slack with it over the past couple of years, to be honest, but it's on my radar to pick it back up this year. And I think, I think PR is one of the most underutilized tools for an online business.

Nicole Bernard (23:35)
Yeah, so cool.

Mm-hmm.

Sophie (23:54)
business

owner, particularly a new business owner, because we're kind of sucked into this narrative that we have to just show up on social media and we're going to make sales and all of this stuff. like, that's not necessarily the reality exactly what you said, you do need multiple platforms, you need to be creating different types of content to take your customer through a whole journey to actually buy from you. doesn't just always happen. Don't get me wrong, some people can just do it through social media because they're really good storytellers, for example. But like in most cases, I would say like people need other

Nicole Bernard (24:03)
Mm-hmm.

Bye.

Sophie (24:23)
platforms in order to actually get people to be buying from them. And I think PR is a great way to build the credibility piece. that whole, which looking at customer journey credit, having someone trust you is like a really big part of that. And I think if you're, if you, we're saying that Forbes trusts what you have to say, naturally that should just be a factor in building that credibility with your audience, right?

Nicole Bernard (24:28)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Totally. Yeah, totally.

Sophie (24:49)
Amazing. So everyone goes and get yourself doing a bit more PR. It's super important. And I know in your own personal values, that freedom is a really big value for you. It's definitely one of my biggest values. So you're able to kind of spend a bit more time with your kids and things like that. So how have you been able to set up your business and specifically your marketing strategy to allow for more of that freedom in your life?

Nicole Bernard (24:53)
Yes.

Yeah, so for me, I also, in the beginning, it took me a little while to kind of get into a rhythm because I was kind of used to just having a routine set by somebody else and I worked at a marketing agency for two and a half years before I opened mine. But for me, like when I get up early and like all these things I'm talking about, because I do it for my strategy as well and for theirs, it's been like, like I said, kind of getting ahead of things and

instead of waiting till things kind of like hit the fan, which I did a lot in the beginning and I really didn't have any boundaries with clients either. having those two, like just getting up a little bit earlier to kind of like make sure everything is, you know, ready to go. And then also that. And then the other thing too is, you know, I started out as a solopreneur and I get it too. It was really scary hiring like my first person, but being able to delegate ⁓ has really been a

Life saver too because I don't have to do all of these things anymore and I get that that's you know Not an option for everybody too But as soon as it could be like I would definitely even if it's like part-time or if you wanted to hire like an intern to Kind of start taking some of those things off your plate That's really wouldn't like the freedom aspects kind of opened up But that's you know, and that was just part of my journey like entrepreneurship, you know, it's not for the faint of heart and so, you know, like the first few years are

a lot of doing everything on my own. But then yeah, that delegation piece has really changed everything.

Sophie (26:38)
I agree. It's definitely not for the faint of heart, it? It definitely takes time for all of these things to set and to implement. like you say, you've got short-term wins, maybe just short-term, sorry, you've got short-term actions, which maybe give you short-term wins and long-term actions, which give you longer-term wins. So it really is about balancing between the two. And then eventually you start to see what works and you can rinse, repeat those strategies. But naturally then some kind of algorithm changes or the market changes and then you're

Nicole Bernard (26:40)
No.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm

Sophie (27:07)
to re rejig your whole strategy over and over again.

But right now, let's say we are in like Q2 going into Q3 of 2020. And then sorry, we're in Q2. What are we in? We're in Q2. Yeah.

Nicole Bernard (27:20)
I

we're still in two, yeah.

Sophie (27:23)
We're in Q2,

I can't do maths today. We're in Q2 2025. What would you say today to someone listening, if they could only focus on three marketing actions over the next 90 days to know that in the next 90 days, maybe they start to see the traction and the results from the actions that they're taking, what would you recommend they prioritize?

Nicole Bernard (27:38)
Mm-hmm

Yeah, so I would write I would prioritize, you know getting your foundation in check, you know, again those goals like what do you what are you really hoping to do, you know, ⁓ and just really Understanding that foundational work of like okay, and this is where they are. is what I'm do and then from there I would pick those like even if I you know, if I didn't necessarily want to do five channels off the bat like one or two and just go all in and honestly like the biggest return I if

I wanted that quickly. It would probably be PR would be one of them. And then I would also probably do a combination of social media and email and just to start growing that list. Like I would probably concentrate on PR and growing my email list on those two. And that could also be like, you know, again, guessing on other podcasts, you know, like that's a great way to get in front of a lot of other people and gain that trust quickly. So I would focus more on that than trying to like crack the Instagram.

algorithm in 90 days. So yeah.

Sophie (28:35)
Amazing, great advice. I'll definitely be having a look at those because that is a plan for mine for the next 30 days is to really ramp up my marketing strategy. Amazing. So if anyone wants to get in touch with you and see how they can work with you, how can they find you?

Nicole Bernard (28:38)
You

Yeah, my website is nb.marketing. There's no dot com or anything. There's like I said, there's that free workbook on there. There's actually a workbook to about PR and different steps that you can do it with the template of the spreadsheet that I talked about. I've got my entrepreneur articles on there and then my podcast is on there too. So.

Sophie (29:02)
Well, thank you so much, Jane, for your insights into all things marketing. I really appreciate your time and for coming on and chatting with me.

Nicole Bernard (29:09)
Yeah, thanks for having me. It was a blast.

Sophie (29:11)
You're welcome. Thank you.