What’s Different About Marketing in 2021

Salsey scarcity-based marketing won’t work in 2021. 2020 showed us what scarcity and fear actually look like, and missing out on a deal or a program is not it. In 2021, authentic, vulnerable, content with a heart-centered message is what your audience will resonate with.

What are Authenticity and Vulnerability?

Understanding how to incorporate authenticity and vulnerability into your business is more critical today than it has ever been before. These buzzwords are talked about a LOT. They are often overused and under-explained, so we are diving in to cover them in detail.

Back at the beginning of online marketing, you could make a LOT of money with awful content. Sleazy sales content was king, and people ate up the scarcity-fueled intimidation tactics that ruled the screen.

Today, people run from this energy. They want something real, and the most successful online business owners are the ones who deliver straight from their hearts.

Be Vulnerable When Marketing Your Horse Business

Vulnerability – feeling uncertain, uneasy, and not wanting to stick your neck out for fear of getting hurt.

Vulnerability doesn’t make you less of a business owner or less of a leader. But, if you’re not in the practice of being vulnerable, it can be terrifying to put into practice.

Being vulnerable in your business looks like:

• • Changing your niche (Laura just niched down to horse business owners who have a soul connection with their horses)
  • Sharing the transformational story of why you started your business
  • Changing your program to be something you truly love instead of something you think will make money (April did this last year and met ALL her income goals)
  • Making changes in your business to create a life you want
  • Sharing stories from your personal life, your unedited human side
  • Sharing about your heart horse or something you love that complements your business
  • Sharing about a past bad experience with a horse or a horse trainer or horse professional that taught you a lesson
    Launching a new program

These transformational moments in your business and your life are the content that will resonate with your ideal client. They can be scary to share because publicly sharing your heart and soul leaves you extremely vulnerable. Still, it’s so magical when doing so positively impacts your audience.

Be Authentic When Marketing Your Equine Business

Authenticity – letting go of outside expectations that you or others have about what businesses should or shouldn’t do and embracing what you truly want your business to be.

You may feel like you have to offer a particular service or serve a specific client, but deep in your gut, doing so doesn’t feel right. Or perhaps you want to offer something unusual, like yoga with horses or an experience of a spiritual connection with horses, but you are scared about what people might say.

Doing the thing that’s on your heart is being authentic. A year ago, Laura was holding herself back from offering horse guided meditations in her programs. She started offering it, and it has made her programs so much more impactful.

2021 is the time to figure out who you are, what you want your business to be, and go for it. Today, you have to make real connections and build real relationships in your marketing content more than ever. Cold and distant marketing will not work in 2021.

Look at the programs that you’re attracted to. Why is that? Probably because the person promoting them is authentic and vulnerable. How can you implement similar strategies into your marketing?

If you hold your audience at arm’s length, they will hold you at arm’s length. If you don’t let people into your heart, they won’t feel safe working with you, and they won’t take that leap. If something is on your heart, share it. What’s the worst that can happen? If somebody says something negative, delete their comment and unfollow them or block them and move forward.

Don’t Use False Scarcity In Your Marketing

If you only have two spots left in a twelve spot program, that’s fine to say because it’s actual scarcity. BUT a lot of people create false scarcity in their marketing, and that scares people away.
Don’t ever

• Offer a huge discount with a bunch of scarcity about how the price is going up soon
• Pretending a program is filling up when it’s not
• Create a strong sense of urgency with strong calls to action like:
  • Buy now
  • Don’t miss out
  • Doors closing
  • DM me prices going up soon
  • Limited spots available

This type of marketing leaves people with a feeling of scarcity. It drives the people who are centered and ready to do the work and centered away and attracts people who are desperate and operating from a place of scarcity.

These clients will be mad if you take too long to respond to an email or blow your phone up at 10 pm. They are so desperate to make the business work that they destroy their lives, and everyone else’s around them. Like attracts like. Scarcity energy attracts scarcity energy.

Get Honest With Yourself About What is Working

Now, at the start of the year, it’s the perfect time to look at your analytics. Look at the insights on each platform you used in 2020.

• YouTube
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• A Blog
• Email Marketing
• A Podcast
• Pinterest

Are they converting? Are you getting clients from these platforms?
If you aren’t, is it because you aren’t putting in the effort or because the platform isn’t right for you?

If you are spending time making connections in messenger, are these connections converting to clients? Are they signing up for your email list? Are they reading your blog or joining your Facebook Group?
You need to have a goal for each platform you are on, and you need to be keeping track of whether or not you are meeting that goal. As you look through your insights, try to figure out how your time is best spent.

Look at:

• Which form of copy (video, story, post, meme, etc.) gets the best engagement
• What topics resonate with your audience the best?
• What images get the most attention
• What time of day is best to post
• How long can you capture your audience’s attention with video?
• Can you create posts off the comments you received to get more engagement?

Spending an hour looking at your 2020 data will help you create marketing content with intention in the new year.