J3 Marketing?!
MY INTERNSHIP STARTED TODAY gasppp it was on Zoom with Gary and his assistant, Meagan, who are the masterminds behind J2 Marketing. I’m not sure why it’s called that, but now I’ve officially renamed the company to J3 Marketing (don’t tell anyone). For our first lesson, Gary taught me writing strategy, which is extremely important for his clients to know since they’re all attorneys who hate writing. Attorneys don’t like planning, but they have to do it.
This is how Gary teaches his attorney client friends to get creative and target their market:
Planning :D
1. Decide on the subject - What am I passionate about? What interests do I have in my personal life? What’s my expertise? What’s the target audience interested in?
Target market: attorneys
Focus on what is important to your target market
2. Choose an ideal topic
Attorneys want to know how to use LinkedIn
That's too broad, make it more specific
How to add connections on LinkedIn and why’s it important ← 2 min video
3. Clarify objective
What do you want attorneys to teach?
Educate, don’t self promote
You want engagement
Promote yourself indirectly
4. Personal experience
Vulnerable, people connect with it and relate to it
Attorneys do not like to be vulnerable
5. How do I want to be known?
An advocate?
Identify a problem in your target market and try to address it
One of Gary’s biggest no-no’s is being too braggy. He never uses his LinkedIn platform to tell people why J2 is the best. He uses it to educate/help others about marketing strategy, but also common topics we can all relate to: How to start a conversation, how to deal with rejection, what’s the best way to get business, etc. This approach indirectly promotes himself anyway - the guy is full of wise things! He dumped his wiseness on me so I could create the following infographic about writing strategy. Gary and Meagan liked it, so it will be posted by J2 soon!
The third activity I’m doing this summer is continuing my Toastmaster’s Gavel Club for kids in my neighborhood to improve their public speaking and leadership skills. We meet bi-weekly in the conference room of the hotel near our houses. We had our last one a couple days ago, and it was a small turnout. One of the biggest problems of starting the Gavel Club was gaining interest and following. Now that it was summer, participation was at its lowest.
Marketing a service is a lot different than marketing a product because it’s dependent on people in another way. It can be more unpredictable based on who you’re targeting. In this case, it was kids 11-18 years old, but most are around middle school-beginning of high school age. To get more members, I’ve been asking everyone to bring 1 extra person if they can (it doesn’t happen often). I also manage club communications, but it’s mostly been with their parents since they confirm scheduling more accurately than the kids.
In simple terms, finding new members is hard and getting current members to RSVP is even harder. But every meeting is productive for the speakers and evaluators. We rotate roles each time: 2 prepared speakers with speeches 4-6 minutes long, 2 evaluators for the speakers who give feedback for 2-4 minutes, 1 Table Topics master who runs table topics questions and picks on everyone to respond for 1-2 minutes, a timer who manages staying within time limit, an AH counter who counts how many times people use filler words, a Word Master who brings a word to the meeting that speakers have to try to incorporate into their answers, and of course, the Toastmaster, who runs the meeting. It’s been truly fun to hear what kids have to say and a lot of them (and I mean A LOT) are so funny when I don’t think they mean to be.
Apologies for the mouth-full, but that’s the gist of Gavel Club! I will keep you posted on the runnings of the club throughout the rest of the summer. Here are some pictures from our meeting this week:
