Creating a Streamlined Client Journey with Kristin Lawton
“You need your marketing to be streamlined and only once it feels really effortless and it's working do you add on to it.”
Do you feel like your marketing strategy is a waste of time or you just feel completely disconnected from it? This episode of Strategy Snacks featuring Kristin Lawton is for you. Kristin is a marketing mixologist with over two decades of experience in brand and marketing strategy. Her approach is designed to save you time, eliminate choice overwhelm, and set you on a path to effortless growth. Throughout this episode we’re debunking passive income, sharing what it means to have a streamlined client journey, and hitting on the importance of a brand that feels fully aligned with you and what you love.
Topics:
The success that can be felt from attaining brand recognition and creating a full fledged audience to customer lifecycle
The myth of passive income and how so many entrepreneurs completely buy into it
The importance of building up your marketing and brand foundation instead of copying what someone else is doing
Creating a streamlined client journey by focusing on increasing your know, like, trust score through 1-2 channels
Why you shouldn’t aim to have a presence everywhere
For more from Kristin, be sure to:
- Visit her website
- Follow her on Instagram: @districtbrandbar
- QUIZ: WHAT’S YOUR SIGNATURE BRAND MARKETING STYLE?
For more, make sure to:
- Follow me on Instagram @frenchie.ferenczi
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[00:00:00] Frenchie: Hello, hello, and welcome back to Strategy Snacks. I am so excited because today we are joined by Kristen Lawton, who is an expert in all things brand and marketing, and who is actually a marketing mixologist, which is my favorite title and term, maybe ever. So I'm going to hand it over to Kristen to do a quick intro and to tell us a little bit more about who she is, what she does, and how she helps business owners.
[00:00:32] Kristin: Yes. Uh, hi Frenchy. Thank you so much. I love the strategy snacks. Um, so I am Kristen. I am the owner of District Brand Bar. Uh, yeah, I call myself a marketing mixologist because I just really love mixing up the best strategy for business owners. Uh, and I always think every brand should have like, It's own cocktail.
[00:00:53] Kristin: Uh, but I really helped build the brand and marketing foundations, uh, for business owners and [00:01:00] solopreneurs, uh, and set up those systems and routines so that marketing their brand is like very effortless and when they take it on and they have everything set up and streamlined that they need.
[00:01:10] Frenchie: I love it. I absolutely love it.
[00:01:11] Frenchie: I took your quiz, um, which I guess we might link to anyways, now that I mentioned it, we will. And I, when I took
[00:01:19] Kristin: your quiz, I think I was shaken. Yes. I'm a shaken too. Uh, so yeah, that means we really lean into, um, relationships and love are much more like outgoing and engaging and. Uh, we create marketing strategies that are based on that, but yeah, I will share all about that in a bit.
[00:01:38] Frenchie: I love it. I love it. Cool. Well, let's just roll into it. So the first thing I really want to hear about is what was kind of one of the most important or I want to say iconic or milestone moments in your business journey to date. Yeah.
[00:01:52] Kristin: Yeah, you know, I think it may be a little simple, but also just like really important [00:02:00] for business owners.
[00:02:00] Kristin: But I think it was really when I got that first client that like came to me, not from like a referral or someone that I knew, but that had like gone through my client journey, like found me on Instagram, grabbed my lead magnet, like, and then, you know, became did my like. one on one service and like the feedback was I love your brand, I love your framework, and like you basically like I have called in that right ideal audience.
[00:02:28] Kristin: Uh, I think anytime that happens it just feels like so good that like everything is working in the way it should. Um, so yeah, I mean, you know, there's obviously like lots of little wins, but to me that's like when I feel most proud.
[00:02:43] Frenchie: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's funny people come on here a lot and they talk about how something is like simple, but I actually think those do feel like those big moments and Thank God, because, like, you know, we don't get to have that many, like, weddings and, you know, graduations and, like, moments in our lives.[00:03:00]
[00:03:00] Frenchie: So it's, like, actually really beautiful, I think, that the moments that stand out are actually, like, kind of more nuanced.
[00:03:05] Kristin: Yeah, I do love that, you know, like, and while it's, like, important to, like, I guess, you know, for some people to, like, speak on a big stage, or I'm not really a vision board person that's, like, I want to speak here, I want to write a book.
[00:03:17] Kristin: Um, But I want my brand to speak to others and to like, you know, they feel like it's fine and, and what I do can be easy for them, you know? Yeah.
[00:03:26] Frenchie: Yeah,
[00:03:27] Kristin: absolutely. I love that. Okay. So on the flip side of that,
[00:03:30] Frenchie: what has been kind of one of the harder business lessons for you to learn as you've grown and evolved?
[00:03:35] Kristin: Yeah. And I think the flip side is like the opposite of like, where. You know, when I started out, I was like, okay, well, I'm going to do what other people have done. And so the thing that I like bought into is like passive income. And it's so easy to just sell a low cost product and you just run ads and then you become a millionaire and you don't actually have to bring on clients.
[00:03:55] Kristin: I mean, it was the whole, the whole, you know, Thing that I bought into, [00:04:00] um, and I did, I focused like the first part of like the first six months of my business of like creating, you know, products. And like, I, one of them I am like very proud of, like, I, I use it all over the time. Um, I have so many people that use it, but I didn't have a, I didn't have anything next for people to, to do, you know, I wasn't actually making money off of it.
[00:04:22] Kristin: Like. There's just, there were so many things and it was just a, I'm copying what other people are doing and I didn't actually think through and build out those brand and marketing foundations for myself, even though I'm the expert at it and I have 20 years coming into this and I feel like I wasted time and money.
[00:04:39] Kristin: Um, which, you know, it's just part of the game, but it is something that when I hear people like lean into the passive income, I'm like, nothing is passive in this business world.
[00:04:51] Frenchie: Totally. I, oh my gosh, I just like, I feel that so hard that. Also, like your exact experience is actually one of the [00:05:00] reasons that I started doing what I do because I was in some programs in my early days of this.
[00:05:07] Frenchie: And I noticed like all these people whose business was like not in the place to actually be. Right now selling 200 courses because you need a really big audience or what have you. We're trying to play that game. And then we're so much time and energy and like the funnel and this and that. And I've actually like over time realized, and this is counterintuitive to a lot of people.
[00:05:28] Frenchie: I'm like, you actually kind of have to start higher ticket. And then as your audience grows, you can potentially explore the like passive income route, which like, you know, passive caveat. Yeah, not passive caveat. No,
[00:05:42] Kristin: totally. I had, I had a zero on my email list. I had friends and family on my email list. And I'm like, Oh, I can sell to people that don't know me.
[00:05:51] Kristin: I haven't like actually nurtured anyone.
[00:05:54] Frenchie: Yeah. My sister bought something that I made. I, two people bought it, my sister and someone else and like, [00:06:00] bless her. But I actually think I just started crying when she bought it. Cause I felt like so pathetic, you know, nobody's buying my thing. And my sister's like throwing 40 bucks at me just to be nice.
[00:06:10] Frenchie: I know.
[00:06:11] Kristin: And I like, I guide my husband all up on, you know, in on this and just that, like, this is going to work, babe. Like, just, you know, let me focus on this.
[00:06:20] Frenchie: Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm glad that you, you know, were in the lesson and that now you are thriving. And, um, my last question for you is like, when we think about, you know, our own business strategies, what is one kind of strategy snack that you want to share with our listeners?
[00:06:36] Frenchie: Yeah,
[00:06:37] Kristin: so it really is about having a streamlined client journey And I focus in on no like trust It feels like this like gimmicky word, but if you take it as a path where you're like, okay How are people getting to know me and then how are you engaging and getting that like building that relationships?
[00:06:56] Kristin: They like you and then where are you selling and you streamline it? [00:07:00] To just like two or three channels, you know, traffic sources that people are getting to know you and, and one or two that you're engaging with them and just one that you're selling, like you can make such a difference. And I, you know, I like to throw everything back to cocktails or mocktails or whatever.
[00:07:17] Kristin: But it is like, if you take, you know, it's, it's the difference between like a Negroni, which I think is like the perfect cocktail, but you know, three ingredients, very simple, like you can put your own twist on it, but like, it's straightforward, easy to make delicious, not time consuming versus like some, I don't know, like on one scale, like a long high, it just has like so many flavors thrown in, or you're like adding so many, like, Garnishes and embellishments to a cocktail that it takes you so long to do and you're not really getting anything out of it.
[00:07:48] Kristin: Like it just the same with marketing like you need it to be Streamlined and only once like it feels really effortless and it's working. Do you like add on to it? Yeah.
[00:07:59] Frenchie: Yes. A [00:08:00] thousand, a thousand percent. I love that. Um, one of the things, okay. So I, for a period was doing this, like kind of faux freebie on, um, with like many chat on Instagram and okay.
[00:08:11] Frenchie: When in like the therapy world, I don't even know which kind of therapy, but when you're anxious, they tell you to do like five, four, three, two, one. And so it's kind of like, Look at five things. You can see four things you can hear. And like, you know, you go through the census that way and it's supposed to be very grounding.
[00:08:26] Frenchie: And I was like, I want to copy that, except for like business. So when you're feeling like totally overwhelmed by your business, um, 5, anyways, as you were talking, I was like, I feel like you could do a 5, 4, for like, I love it. Yes. So. That's a great idea.
[00:08:41] Kristin: But I do think, you know, it's like, you know, the funnel, I kind of think of it more as a journey because it's not really like super linear or whatever, but, um, you do, you just want everything to be simplified.
[00:08:53] Kristin: What you're working on is simplified so that the marketing activities and how you're spending your time is like easy and not overwhelming. And [00:09:00] that it's so easy for the person and your customer to know, like, okay, what's the next step where I'm hearing from you. And if you're everywhere, it's not going to.
[00:09:07] Kristin: You're not really going to call them in the way you want.
[00:09:10] Frenchie: Totally, totally amazing. Well, Kristen, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom today. Where can our listeners find you, follow you and connect with you?
[00:09:18] Kristin: Yeah, well, we talked about the quiz, but, uh, it's called what's your signature brand marketing style.
[00:09:24] Kristin: You end up with a cocktail style. So you're either on the rock shaken, stirred or neat. Um, and it's really about leaning into your personality and what makes. Marketing your brands feel really organic and natural and authentic. Um, so that you're not wasting your time on something that is just never going to work because you're not feeling it.
[00:09:45] Kristin: Uh, so go take that, um, so districtbrandbar. com slash quiz. Uh, Once you do it, take the quiz, um, come over to Instagram at district brand bar and tell me your [00:10:00] results. Um, and I can share more tips and, um, yeah, it's, it's really fun. I have a really fun quiz also.
[00:10:07] Frenchie: It is a really fun quiz. I love it. I love it.
[00:10:10] Frenchie: Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having us. Make sure you go take the quiz, connect with Kristen, and we'll be back with more soon. Bye everyone.