[00:00:00] Mia Fileman
Are you tired of empty promises and stolen ideas? Me too! Got Marketing is a podcast for marketers and small brands who want real talk and clever strategies without the BS. Running an online business is hard, but everything gets easier when your marketing starts performing. I'm Mia Feilman, your straight shooting, campaign loving friend here to talk marketing, running a business, pop culture, and everything in between.
Let's dive in.
[00:00:39]
Hello, friend. Welcome to our first. Ask Me Anything episode, where I answer questions that you have submitted through the form on the website. If you would like to get your question answered, head to campaigndelmar. com forward slash got dash marketing. Of course, I'll put it in the show notes. All right, let's do this.
[00:01:00]
First question. What have we got? With the introduction of AI models, is traditional SEO dead? Oh, that's such a good question. The answer is no. But SEO has changed with the introduction of ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. So what's really interesting now is that people are using AI models like they were using search engines.
And these AI models are producing results. But where are they pulling the results from? From your website, from your blogs, from your And so a better way to think of it is that generative engine optimization, GEO and SEO are now working hand in hand. I hope that answers your question.
[00:01:51]
Number two, I have a lead magnet, but no one downloads it. This is such a common. Question that I receive, I bet you that if I asked you how often you have shared this lead magnet in the last seven days, you will tell me once maximum twice. As you know, I love campaigns, so I take a campaign approach to lead magnets. I want you to carve out two weeks and I want you to talk about your lead magnet every day for two weeks. The more you talk about your lead magnet, the more people will download it. A really annoying thing happens. So, we create a lead magnet, we put it out there, we don't get a big response, so then we convince ourselves it's shit, and then we stop talking about it, and then of course people aren't going to download it because you're not sharing it anymore, and so then we go and invest another five hours building a new lead magnet thinking the problem is with the lead magnet. It requires at least 30 touch points with someone before they take action. So I don't care that you are sick of talking about your lead magnet. Talk about it more. Talk about it in all the places.
[00:03:16]
Number three. Can I market my brand without social media? Short answer is no. Long answer is this. Social media is an essential component of marketing in 2025.But, you don't just have to market on social media. You can incorporate social media as part of your marketing mix. and use your social media strategically to get people onto an owned channel like your email list. Often when people say they don't want to use social media, what they're really saying is that they don't want to spend all their time on social media. And you don't have to do that. So you can spend a small percentage of time on one social media channel, but then make sure that you are creating Marketing that cuts across paid, earned, owned, and borrowed channels. So there is a way to market that feels more aligned with your values and how much you want to be on social media, but brands who avoid social media altogether are usually very well funded. And the great example is Lush Cosmetics. They have purposefully made the decision that they will no longer use social media for their brand. However, they have physical stores where you get foot traffic, and then they have big advertising budgets where they can pay for eyeballs.
That us as small businesses, we just don't have those budgets. So we need to use social media platforms. Here is something that might be helpful to you. Often the problem with social media is meta, right? Let's be honest. So boycott meta. Don't be on Facebook and Instagram. Double down on LinkedIn, go to Pinterest.
It is the kindest place on the internet. Do you know that gambling, political ads, pro bulimia kind of content, all of it is banned on Pinterest. So it is a great place to market your business if your audience is on Pinterest and you don't have. The comments and the DMs like you do on Instagram. All right.
[00:05:09]
What's next? Do free challenges and webinars still work or is everyone over them? Oh my God. Look, I'll be honest. People are a little bit over them. This has been something that online business owners have flogged really hard and people are very conditioned. People understand that if they attend a free webinar, they're going to be sold to.
Having said that they can still be successful. If you have an existing audience. So if I look at an example from my community, Megan Winter, who runs Loom Marketing, she's a member of Marketing Circle. She has spent years building her audience on Instagram and her email list. And she offered a free ads masterclass in January.
And she had hundreds of registrations. And then I think something like 50 or 70 people came live. And so that was really successful for her. And then she got a really good conversion rate off that. But why did this work for Megan? She had an existing audience. She could tap. They already trusted her and knew that she was going to deliver the goods in a free masterclass. And also the topic was fire. Of course, we want to know what's working and what's not working in paid ads in 2025. So make your masterclass and workshop really compelling and focus on brand building first before you jump straight to lead generation, which is what a masterclass or a workshop is. For me, four years into business, I am now pretty much ready to hang up my boots when it comes to free workshops and masterclasses. What I've been finding is working really well for me is to put a price on it, charge 95 or 200 so that people have some skin in the game. And then if they go on to sign up for marketing circle, then I'll give them back that money. I'm kind of done with the free masterclass thing.
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[00:07:51]
Okay, I think we've got time for one more question. Do I really need to niche down or is that outdated advice? Okay, this requires some explanation. There's a lot to this. Okay, niching does work when done strategically. The benefits of niching are that you become the go to expert in that field. Like I am with campaigns, people know me as the campaign lady. Marketing then becomes easier because you are known for that thing. So like Mia is known for marketing campaigns. So and so is known for marketing analytics. Like that is what your reputation is built on. Something really specific as opposed to all marketing or all social media or copywriting for everyone. And then you can attract better clients and it's actually really efficient for you to support those clients because you are working with those clients in the same way. You are not doing all things for all people. Requiring all these different systems and templates because you serve a really wide market. So say, for example, you are a marketing analytics specialist, you can just really focus on delivering the best service to people just on marketing analytics, not on SEO and blogging and performance marketing and all the things.
So niching makes sense when you are in a highly competitive market like marketing. Being a generalist marketer is hard, and what's interesting is that I'm actually a generalist marketer, but I've chosen to sort of in inverted comm niche on campaigns because I wanted to be known for something and not just drown out in the sea of all the other marketers. Nishing also makes sense if you want to be considered an expert as opposed to a generalist. And I do want to be considered as an expert because experts get paid speaking gigs, they get podcast invitations, they get thought leadership PR articles in business publications. But here's where niching can hurt you.
If you niche down too much, you might find that there is insufficient demand for what you are offering. You also box yourself in and potentially too early. Your business is going to iterate after you start it and it will change completely over the course of one or two years. So you don't want to niche down too much too quickly.
You want to leave it a little bit open. You might get just really freaking bored of doing the same thing with the same people all the time and just outgrow that niche. And then you could also become really dependent on one customer type and you've cut yourself off to other customers. So what is the answer to this?
To niche or not to niche? My perspective is that you should focus on positioning versus niching. Instead of obsessing over the niche, think about your positioning in the market instead. Here's an example. I help female founders with marketing, which is so broad, so generic. You could say, I help female founders market strategically so they can stop relying on social media. This is not a niche, it's your positioning. And honestly, that is my positioning that I am a marketer who doesn't love social media. That's my positioning. It's still specific, but I haven't boxed myself into a niche. I'm not just an email marketer. I'm not just a campaign marketer. I'm a marketer who doesn't believe that you should spend all your time on social media.
[00:11:25]
Okay. We'll do one more question. One more question. What has changed for you since going booze free? Okay. What has changed for me? The quitting alcohol. is that I yell at my kids less. And honestly, this is a huge thing. And probably the reason why I will not go back to drinking alcohol. I have young kids, they have pains in the butt.
And I was yelled at as a child. And so I got into this really bad habit of constantly yelling at my kids. And then what happened? They yelled at each other. They yell at me. And I found it I want to say impossible, but it wasn't impossible to not yell at them while I was drinking. But for whatever reason, since giving up alcohol, I don't yell at my kids anymore. And I'm really, really, really happy about it. And now we have a calmer, calmer house. So that's probably the main thing since giving up booze. Yeah, I do occasionally miss a drink, but it has honestly gotten so much easier since November. Like now I practically don't even think about it, even in social situations.
All right, friends, that's a wrap on our first Ask Me Anything episode. Please continue to send in your questions. I would love to answer them. I will put the details in the show notes. I'll see you next week.
[00:12:54]
Subscribe button and keep the good marketing rolling. Podcast reviews are like warm hugs and they're also the best way to support a small business. You can connect with me, Mia Feilman on Instagram or LinkedIn, and feel free to send me a message. I'm super friendly.
