And I did.

I wrote an article about how I learned content marketing from my mother on my old website, but technology dies on you when you most need it and the article got lost in God knows where.

The article I wrote was inspiring (to me, at least)— it showed how we can learn even from the most unexpected source. I never in my wildest dreams thought I could learn ANYTHING about marketing (except maybe the fish market kind) from my mother.

But I did.

It’s sad that the article I wrote almost a decade ago is lost. 

But it’s alright.

I’m a writer. I can write this again.

Here goes.

A little background about mother dearest

My mother is in her early 70s.

She isn’t the most social (although she has the ability to be the life of a party) and she’s quite the homebody. My sister and I — guilty probably for living so many miles away from her at that time — decided to get her an iPad about a decade ago.

At that time, I didn’t live with my mother. I lived in Singapore for work but would often travel back home to Brunei.

During those trips, my mother would always ask me a question or two about apps on her iPad. It started with Facebook, and then she wanted to create photo collages for relatives’ birthdays (yep, she’s that kind), and she wanted games. Games, games, games — to keep her away from boredom.

One day, I was fidgeting with her iPad more than usual. I was actually making sure none of the apps she tried downloading herself were scammy so I was doing a mass clean up for her — also to ensure she wouldn’t have storage issues after I leave. 

Lo and behold, that little moment where I just wanted to clean up her iPad became a lesson I remember to date. 

Keep reading to find out what content marketing tricks I learned from my senior citizen mother.

Hack 1: Follow the best

When I opened up my mother’s Facebook, I noticed that she had already found some of her old friends. I was proud of her for this but I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t be caught in anything scammy. You never know with these old folks and their excitement sometimes.

I did a random scroll up and down her feed only to realise my mother was actually following some very insightful pages. Aside from recipes, she also followed a lot of motivational speakers, devotional groups and local communities where she would keep herself abreast of the latest deals and event happenings (not that she would actually go anywhere!).

I asked her where she got these sources from and she shrugged.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I see it on the homepage (feed) and I follow them.”

I realised she was seeing ads. Fortunately, the ads she was getting were relevant to her. She did ask me about some dodgy ones but I explained how scams worked to her and she agreed that while some of the information was good to follow and good to know, she wouldn’t take action on any of it until she cleared it with another person she trusted like me, my sister or my dad.

To date, my mother seems to know where the best supermarket deals are. She is also the first to try a new recipe she finds on Facebook or YouTube — and then shares it with her friends if she thinks it’s good enough. Talk about thought leadership. 

How is this content marketing, you ask?

How is it NOT?

She’s doing what any good marketer would do. Follow the knowledgeable people who trickle down information that is useful for your scope of work — for you to stay ahead of trends, tips and news to learn from and share with your audience (or with your clients, if you work for others).

Hack 2: Compile what’s good

My mother’s knowledge bank didn’t stop there.

After I close her Facebook, I went to check if she has enough storage for photos in her gallery. I found out two things:

1. She had enough storage
2. My mother is a photo hoarder

There were TONS of photos in her gallery. No, not of selfies. No photos of friends or family.

But a lot of photos with birthday messages, devotional quotes, inspirational words and what have you.

I asked her why she kept saving these photos. Her reply? Just in case it’s someone’s birthday or someone is feeling down, she sends them the relevant quote/image to make them feel better. For instance, she had birthday messages for daughters, sisters, brothers, and even a few to pick for her husband. 

Talk about having a bank of information at your fingertips that you can use!

Isn’t this the same with content marketing folks? If you run a blog, for instance, you can use the same tip to have an archive of stock photos that you can use. The same goes for social media — have a bank of captions that you have ready to use, with a bit of editing, whenever you need to. 

I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t actually use this tip my mother indirectly shared with me until much later when I was listening to a podcast by Noah Kagan where his guest shared how we should compile all the kind words we receive for (1) motivational purposes, and (2) social proof!

Mums do know best.

Hack 3: Show up

My mother clearly doesn’t hoard all this information for no good reason. Like I said earlier, she shares all the good stuff with her friends.

My mum is on Facebook every day. She’s on YouTube every day.

Her Facebook mission is simple. She logs in every morning to wish anyone celebrating a happy birthday, checks her devotional group page, and then logs off to do what she needs to in the real world. 

She logs in later in the afternoon again to see if there are any interesting recipes or quotes to share.

When she’s run out of dramatic soap operas and Bollywood serials to watch on YouTube, she doesn’t just switch it off. She continues finding news stories, again with the recipes, and she’s even learned how to share YouTube videos on Facebook now. All by herself.

I’ve caught my mother saying “yeah, you can find it on Facebook” or “I got the recipe from YouTube, I’ll share it with you!” so many times now that I live with my parents again.

The consistency that my mother has with her iPad routine amazes me. While I find myself on my phone a lot too, I don’t think I’m as disciplined with the things I need to do on social media as she is. I end up scrolling aimlessly when I should be engaging or thinking of content ideas. If not for my mother’s example, I would never come out of the endless scrolling mode and get work done, I swear.

So thank you, mum. You’ve taught me well.

www.manishadhalani.com 

A while ago, a friend approached me to help her market her new product. At that point, she hadn’t even ordered stocks of her product yet. She wanted to start marketing it and collecting orders first. It was her way of validating the idea and getting in some cash before accelerating the business.

When we first spoke about this, she had only designed her packaging and started an Instagram account. She also did a photoshoot and wanted to hire me to write captions for all the photos. Sure thing, I said.

A few days after the above conversation, I spoke to someone else who was also launching a new business. In this case, they had not created their brand assets, not ordered any stock, but they insisted that they wanted to fix up all their website glitches and operational flow before they started getting in their product and marketing in full force. Without even knowing if anybody wanted their product.

While I was (and still am!) more agreeable with the former scenario, I started to #overthink. Which way is better when it comes to launching a product?

Launching a product: putting it to test

Staying true to my marketing mind, I decided to test this.

Since the pandemic started, I’ve been actively promoting marketing tips and hacks, plus my services through my Instagram account @minimarketinghacks. 

When I first started, I tried out a lot of things. Instagram, at that time, was still pretty basic. No excessive stories, no guides, no Reels. It was probably the heyday for IG Live at that time, if I recall correctly.

So I went all out with posting little marketing hacks. I did basic engagement like following other accounts, and I made some great friends in those first few months. I showed up.

I also tested a lot of “beyond” Instagram stuff. I wondered if I should have a website. Or was a SaaS platform to showcase my digital products enough? Did I need a newsletter? LinkedIn? TikTok? I tested it all.

As I did that, people started approaching me for work. They started enquiring about my writing services. I wanted to just do it all. Take all those clients.

But then I realised. I am one person. I can’t service all these clients. 

I need a passive product.

Creating a product first, then launching

Fortunately, at the same time this idea struck me, I had become close friends with a few ladies who also created content — video, audio, stories, design. We decided to join forces and come up with an Instagram starter pack to teach our followers how to create the different types of content we are proficient in, in an easy, digestible manner.

Yay, passive income!

Lucky for me, I had already started drafting my first product — an ebook called Writing Hacks for Instagram. And this product was a great fit for the bundle! Perfect timing.

We talked about how we wanted to market this. We decided to complete our individual “items” first, and then get together and launch it in phases. The first, a pre-order to test the waters and also encourage others to get it with some extra bonuses, and then to launch it properly a few days after that.

The bundle was a pretty big hit. For people who were all in our early days of Instagram, we got a healthy number of buyers. We even relaunched the product a few months later (I believe it was on Black Friday/Cyber Monday) and got a few more buyers.

In this case, we worked on our product first and then launched it. We’re all good at what we do and because we wanted to stick to a timeline and be on the same page, we all worked on our individual deliverables first and then focused on marketing our item later. This really helped because we were left to our own comfort when we were creating our products, and then used our combined expertise to market the product, interact with potential buyers and get them to buy. We didn’t stretch our energy by doing two things at the same time. Imagine working on the product WHILE getting orders. We would’ve been tired of doing it all!

Announcing first, then working on the product

As I got a better understanding of how to collect passive income sales, I then decided to switch gears.

From time to time, I started working on smaller passive projects of my own. From my Udemy courses to my Kindle ebooks, I kept churning out small items that didn’t take me too long to work on. I would work on the project first and then talk about it when the time was right. Sort of “leave it on the interwebs and see who comes” sort of situation.

But I got tired of waiting around after a while.

I wanted to test the waters. See what people wanted from me.

So I sat down and went through all the conversations I had with potential clients that I never closed. What were their issues? What did they want? 

I realised that a popular service people were hiring me (on Instagram) was to write captions. A lot of people enquired about this, but budget issues (most of them are new business owners/solopreneurs) hampered their ability to sign up.

So I decided to work on a fill-in-the-blank caption template bank. Easy cut and paste solution for busy solopreneurs who want to create more posts on Instagram but are strapped for cash, time and energy.

Great, I thought. This would work.

Then I remembered. After creating so many courses and ebooks, not many people were buying from me. How would I know this idea would work? What if this was one of those things that I worked hard on but didn’t bear fruit?

So I decided to announce the product first.

I even went the extra mile to set up a product page and “launch” it at a pre-order price (massive discount). I shared what the product was about. I told myself I’d only work on it if I had 5 buyers. Lo and behold, after a few days, 10 orders and more started rolling in…

So I got to work. It took me about 18 hours to work on it and by the time I launched it, I had about 23 people who bought it at the pre-order price. A few more trickled in when I launched it at the full price, too!

The verdict? 

So here’s what I learned after testing both options.

Work on the product first? Announce first, launch later? Or launch first, announce later? Which one works best?

In all honestly, like I said above, the announce/market first option gave me more bang for my buck. It helped me validate the idea, build momentum and curiosity and rake in more sales. This is why I was definitely on board with my client who wanted me to write captions so she can start posting about her upcoming product on social media before her shipment even came in.

However, I highly encourage you to work on the launch first, announce later method if you’re working in a group. Look at the strength of your team. Are they capable of working on a product in crunch mode (after receiving orders?) or do you want them to complete the product/project first before you are ready to announce it to the world? This method worked best for me when I had product bundles with my business buddies, but not so much when I was a lone ranger working and marketing my own products, possibly due to my limited resources.

Sounds like I’m ending this off with the cliche “it depends” answer? Yes, because, it does, really.

View all my digital products on my website @ www.manishadhalani.com.

1. Wrong target audience — which was highly unlikely because I was only speaking with people from their very specific industry, or
   
2. The website itself wasn’t doing a great job.

I repeatedly made suggestions to improve the website.

Most of them were implemented, although it took too long sometimes. All the while, they kept asking me to prove the marketing best practices that I was using — and I couldn’t because once again, I had no analytics to show that my strategies were or weren’t working.

So I did what I could. I asked for a budget to bring in a marketing agency. Two, in fact. One that would help us with auditing the website and SEO efforts, and one who would help with lead generation.

The results? Pretty decent. To me, at least.

The people in charge weren’t happy again. I was the only one who understood the results were decent for the budget and effort we had put in and seeing that the platform itself wasn’t converting.

Sign number four.

I started feeling dejected, questioning my every move.

I often wondered if I was a good marketer. While I was getting flak in the office for not delivering numbers, outside my freelance clients were begging me to take on more work so I could help them. I was clearly conflicted.

So I waved the white flag and resigned.

The project is still live but is no longer taken care of.

After I left, they decided not to do any marketing, focusing on onsite SEO only. About a year later, the tech team left and nobody works on the platform anymore.

Lessons learned

Set expectations

One of the most important things that wasn’t communicated was expectations. The directors didn’t say what they wanted out of the project — no subscriber goals, no KPIs, no monetary goals. They just wanted proof of concept, which they did get once subscribers started rolling in, but nobody took that and ran with it.

The entire team starting dragging their feet to work because it constantly felt like nothing they were doing would please the people sitting on top.

Value your resources

While we were hustling so hard to get proof of concept from the outside world, nobody pointed out that the internal team fit the user demographic of the platform. There was no communication about the website platform to them before I took over. Everyone was working in silos. When the entire company was involved, it was more for a generic update and if feedback was provided, it often fell on deaf ears. Those who were giving their opinions out of kindness soon stopped communicating their thoughts, too.

The problem to me was simple — the people on top never actually entrusted the project in the hands of the team. Marketing best practices were demeaned, technology was ridiculed — and everyone started feeling small after months of not being able to prove themselves because we were working in circles.

Micro-managing isn’t productive

Just typing this out is agitating me. After a few months of realising I had hit a dent with organic marketing, the managers and directors started asking me to send in weekly reports of the work I was doing. The list wasn’t that long, really. But what they failed to notice is that marketing isn’t just about uploading a social media post and then sitting and waiting for it to work. There’s more to do than that.

Instead, my time was spent in meetings to report progress, take down minutes, and then preparing weekly reports for someone to see (I’m still not sure who actually checked the reports). In the end, I felt increasingly gutted looking at the list of work every week and not being able to provide tangible results from it — it was driving me crazy.

Data is collected for a reason

Use it! I always request my freelance clients to provide me with some data to show that the writing or marketing I do for them is working. Even the slightest increase in traffic is a number we can work with.

But in this project, we weren’t communicating the numbers regularly. Plus, what mattered to me, didn’t matter to another person, and vice versa. Analytics was not given due importance — and this is coming from someone who dislikes numbers and wishes she could just write without worrying about data. The reality is, even basic data would’ve been helpful. Knowing when to follow up with subscribers, or what add-value they were looking for would’ve been helpful. But we didn’t know if any of these efforts were working because analytics was hardly a topic to be discussed in meetings.

Whatever I’ve written above can be easily read as a rant. I was not happy with the project, I felt small, I felt dejected, and I felt not good enough.

Keeping all my emotions about the project aside, could I have done better? Yes.

Could I have taken responsibility and say “look, guys, I know my stuff, I got this!”? Yep!

So why didn’t I do it?

Because nobody was listening. And because I wasn’t confident enough that my work was well, working, because I just didn’t know!

We didn’t communicate how we really felt, and what anyone really wanted out of the project. The team had only three people and we were all working in silos. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one frustrated. I was just the first to own up to that feeling and walk away.

Which is also another point to drive, isn’t it? When we don’t feel right about something, why don’t we say it?

Why are we afraid that our CEO, boss, chief, what-have-you, will fire us? I had come to the point that I let all my grievances out to my boss. He knew what was going on in my mind. And yet, I constantly felt like I was the only one taking the effort to make a change.

And I bet you, the other team members felt the same way individually.

Yet, again, nobody communicated this.

It’s not with just this project either. I’ve worked on many remote projects since I quit and started my business. The lack of communication doesn’t ascertain that the efforts I’m putting in are working for them.

I ask or request access to their analytics but I’m ghosted. So I just keep rehashing best practices and cross my fingers (and toes!) that it works for them.

In the end, I tire myself out with the guessing game and end up closing the project and moving on. It’s not a nice feeling, this, but it has to be done.

So before you want to embark on that next marketing project, sit your team down and establish your expectations. This is especially important if you work in a big team, but equally vital if you’re a solopreneur outsourcing marketing efforts to a virtual assistant.

Decide what’s the best way to communicate.

Don’t work in silos, but recognise that some of your partners or team members may be quieter or introverted — less vocal. Find ways to get them to express their opinions and ideas.

And most importantly, communicate what’s happening with analytics, results, and tweak your goals if you need to. With everyone aligned to the same goal, and with the will to learn, adapt and grow, plus a dash of patience and perseverance, your marketing effort will succeed.