#367 Creina Lister – Transcript

Jess Brady
This week I speak to Creina Lister. She is a marketing expert at Hewison Private Wealth. So I wanted to know, how do we build robust marketing plans moving forward? And I wanted to understand the practical, tangible questions. I wanted to know what tech do they use? What are they tried? That’s work. What does digital activation even mean? We get quite in the weeds in this conversation. But I think you’ll agree that it helps leave us with practical tips about how we can build successful marketing campaigns. Welcome, Creina.

Creina Lister
Thanks for having me, Jess.

Jess Brady
Very excited to have you onboard. I’ve got so many questions, I guess I’ve been doing a few interviews recently to help us use what is normally the festive season. I’m using it as like the business planning season to try to learn how we can take the time because we’re always so busy take the time to focus on areas of the business where perhaps it’s not our strongest suit, or perhaps it’s something that we promise that we’re going to give thought and attention to and then the races ahead of us. But I think the insights that you’re gonna give us today will help us really understand from a marketing perspective, especially piggybacking off some of the other experts that we’ve had on recently, from marketing perspective, how can we build a strategy that’s really fantastic and robust into the new year. So no pressure? Before we get into all of the things that are swirling around in my brain, I think it would be lovely for you to help us learn a little bit more about you and your story.

Creina Lister
Sure. I’m happy to share I’ve I guess my story is not actually linear. I think that’s probably the most unique thing about my story is that I’ve actually been in and out of a few different areas of marketing I started many years ago, would you believe it in the advent of actually pre social media. So before there was actually any digital disruption to marketing, I was there at that part in agency land. So I started my career in agency land as an account manager. So I very much had a deep understanding of what clients needed, and how to make campaigns successful. I then actually was a little bit entrepreneurial, and did start a co founded a franchise business with my husband and went off and did some franchising, Master franchising, quite an interesting time. But I found I wasn’t sort of overly intellectually stimulated in some ways. So I jumped back into marketing. And I went to client side. So I actually ended up in the marketing department of Michelin, so I was working with tires, globally, and then I ended up working with a private hospital as marketing manager. So I’ve been in a number of different industries. And I think when I was at the hospital, working in service marketing, that’s when I really knew that’s where I wanted to be was, was actually marketing services that really enhance people’s lives rather than products. So that’s that just sort of my journey. And I was also reinspired with marketing when the digital disrupt Should all occurred within the industry as well. It just made it so much more exciting. So much more measurable. Marketers were able to report on their results and actually be a lot more targeted and tactical in what they were doing. And actually prove to boards and CEOs. This is the value of marketing. And so

Jess Brady
given that you found that you like marketing for service based businesses, you’ve obviously now moved into a business that is a financial advice business. And we’re going to talk a little bit more as we go through that today. How important do you think it is, like elephant in the room? Do financial planning businesses, including the very small practices that get lots of referrals from happy existing clients? Do they need marketing strategies?

Creina Lister
Well, I’m a marketing managers that obviously I’m going to say 100% Yes. But as a consumer, I’m saying 100%? Yes. Because essentially, like it is, you’ve heard it all before, it’s the window, like what your activity is, what your marketing activity is, is the window front of your business. So you might say, I’m getting lots of client referrals. But I would challenge you, are you? Have you looked at the data? Do like, Have you got business objectives? You’ve got to start with your business objectives. So what what are your business objectives? What are your strategic objectives for growth? How many new clients do you want to get? Where are they coming from? Like, do actually people sit down and look at that? So you’d have to look at that first. And then you may actually discover that you’re not actually delivering on those objectives from those lots of client referrals? So I think that’s where you flip it on its head, and you say, Okay, well, how can I actually get in front of more people? How can I reach more people. And that obviously comes back to marketing, how you do it is a whole other story. But I think identifying what your growth objectives are, and what your revenue objectives are, as a business will then determine how many clients you need, where they’re coming from, how do you reach more people. So really, you need to, and today, consumers, they might hear about you from one of your existing clients, the first thing they’re going to do is Google you, they’re going to look at your LinkedIn profile, they’re going to look at your, if you have any social media presence, and they’re going to use that as social proofing. That is how they’re going to research you before they pick up the phone or email you. So that’s a representation of you and your business.

Jess Brady
Can I add a little story in there? I can’t remember if I told it before. So sorry, listeners if I already have, but I have a girlfriend who has five father had a financial advisor, her father sadly passed away, and she inherited some money. And she started working with their firm, she came up to me at a party quite panicked, that she’d used a financial advisor. And she said, You know, I know he was dad’s advisor. I know he did a good job. And I said, Well, why are you worried because she’s like, I don’t know if I can trust him. And I said, Well, that’s a big reaction, what’s going on? She said, He’s really nice. We were really good meetings. But their website is terrible. And I can’t find out anything about him on LinkedIn. He doesn’t post on LinkedIn. And I was like, feces, fascinating that your father used him for several years was very happy that you have now started using him. You like him as a human, but your entire basis of trust has been on what you can socially prove via the online world, and then have her panicked, and I think a lot of advisors probably be in the same boat where they’ve like, just not quite gotten around to getting all of that stuff up to scratch, not realizing it’s actually panicking, new clients,

Creina Lister
some absolutely, and particularly, as the generations move over anyone, I don’t want to make any assumptions, but anyone sort of 60 and under, they’re doing that. So we have you have to, you have to make sure that your website is up to scratch, it’s actually represents who you are, and what you do. And also, Google reviews, I mean, they’ve been huge with building that trust, and then credentials and the validation, which which are seriously genuine. So you have to be able to ask clients for that for that endorsement for those recommendations for those reviews. You have to have the courage to start doing these things. Okay,

Jess Brady
so we agree, let’s just say everyone here everyone listening, we believe Okay, cool marketing. It’s a real thing. It’s not something that is like a nice to have, it’s a must have. And obviously, as we’re saying, like it’s a nice time of year to carve out and really sit down and think about well, what are my objectives? What are the what are the revenue targets for the business next year? How are we going to implement a marketing strategy that helps support and deliver that? Let’s get stuck into that bit. Because sometimes I feel like we can, we can talk all day long about why we need them. But let’s talk about actually what we need to do to help people particularly because I’m conscious that you’re an expert, and you sit in a financial planning business, and not everyone has the capacity to have someone as capable as you as a dedicated resource. And so often, we’re just like, We are the marketing, HR, and every other division, so I’m keen to lean on your your thoughts and inspo here. What are the top things people don’t do? Well, when they’re building marketing plans?

Creina Lister
First of all, I think what people don’t do well is, and probably relevant to a lot of listeners today would be that they think about if they sit down to begin a marketing strategy, it’s like, this is how I want people to look at my business and look at me. So they’ll design something about how they want their business to be perceived, or, or seen. And they tell people, This is what we are, this is what we do, rather than coming from it from understanding what the client is, what the ideal client is, and what their needs are. So you really have to look at what the client needs are, who that client is, and there can’t be any misalignment between what you want your business to be. And what it actually is, I think that’s hmm,

Jess Brady
we shout information about who we are at people via our social channels, instead of actually using those social channels to ask questions, or to prove that you understand the need that someone’s trying to have solved by coming to see someone

Creina Lister
correct. So really, you have to be relevant to who you’re talking to. At the end of the day, you have to identify where are you relevant? Who were irrelevant to? How are you going to enhance? What value is your brand or your business going to add to that person that you’re communicating to? And how are you going to show it? So it can’t just be through a website and what you said what you say on social media, it has to be through the whole organization. So that’s like the tone of voice and the messaging, like how do you speak? What’s the language that you use? Even if you write it, you have to have your people in your business, also delivering that verbally? So it’s, it’s that whole brand experience, no matter how big or small you are, that has to be consistent, and it has to be authentic? I

Jess Brady
agree. This is interesting. Do you advocate for businesses on top of their marketing plan? To have things like a tone of voice guide? Like how do you practically get people to, in a business, make sure that they’re sort of singing from the same hymn sheet? Well, yes,

Creina Lister
I have actually undertaken that process, myself internally, with the help of an external agency as well that specializes in brand and tone of voice as well. So sometimes it’s about working with the people in the business that may have been there for a very long time. And it’s about getting the information out of them put onto paper, and then translating that into how we speak. And what we say, so that it can actually connect and resonate with those clients that we want to attract.

Jess Brady
I love this so much. Because in my small brain, I’m like marketing is this. And you’re like, actually, marketing is also how everyone speaks. In every channel that we have when we talk to someone. And I guess remembering that it sort of bleeds out into other things. It’s quite fascinating. And a little bit of against what I had actually assumed marketing is. So that’s an interesting one. What other mistakes do people make,

Creina Lister
probably not investing enough time and money. So it’s marketing is not an expense. So I very much don’t believe marketing is an expense, it’s an investment. And the one thing that’s been my lightbulb moment working in financial services business is that it’s no different than speaking to a client about their investment strategy, and invest for the long term and you will see the results. You cannot jump in and be reactionary. And try something for two or three months and go up didn’t work. You have to invest, be consistent. Don’t chop and change too much. Just be consistent, be active. And in the long run. You’ll see the rewards. So you have to invest in the long term with marketing. I like the financial and tralgy measure. Totally, totally. That’s, I’ve, I’ve learnt. I’ve liked that. And it’s the same. It’s actually completely the same.

Jess Brady
Yeah, sorry, I interrupted you. So tracking and measuring so would you encourage that you know, those businesses particularly smaller ones, too Have a reoccurring meeting where they’re sitting down with themselves or with someone else in the business and actually reviewing the analytics, and the success markers, whatever they are based off the marketing campaigns or marketing projects that have been done over a certain period.

Creina Lister
100% Yes. So how often?

Jess Brady
What’s an ideal? Do you think?

Creina Lister
I would say fortnightly? Oh, that’s

Jess Brady
a lot. Okay. Yeah,

Creina Lister
fortnightly, but it depends on the individual business. And it goes back to those strategic business objectives. So maybe it doesn’t need to be fortnightly, perhaps it’s monthly, but I would not say less frequently than a month.

Jess Brady
Okay. So every month, at a minimum, we should be carving out an hour to look at all of the analytics and make tactical decisions based off what we’re learning or just observing, as you say, because if it doesn’t work for a few months, you can’t just cut and run.

Creina Lister
Yeah. So I mean, I look at things almost daily. But that’s because that’s my job. So for somebody that is, say, a principal of a firm or something, working with their advice, advisors, if they have multiple advisors, they are a sales team, in a sense. So you do need to be connecting with them frequently, about things like personal branding, what are they doing, to increase their presence, grow their networks, and then the company or the business need to support those efforts through delivering all of the consistent branding and messaging. And then there can be tactical campaigns that you might want to focus on. Growing certain service areas, it might be SMSFs, or it may be insurance, or whatever it may be, just focus on four pillars, perhaps a year, not to overcomplicate things, and then just check in monthly on the activity and what’s been done. What’s in market, what’s working, what’s not research, there’s so much information available. Again, it comes down to time, and I know not everybody has that. But Google Analytics is fabulous as well. So just making sure that the technology that is available, is used. So Google Analytics can provide a lot of information about how many people are coming to your website, what’s working, you can set up conversions, conversion goals on Google Analytics, there’s a lot you can do with Google Analytics, that will give you insights into, I guess, what people are doing and how they’re interacting with you digitally.

Jess Brady
I like that, because it’s simple and easy. And basically, none of us can say that we don’t have time to do that, because Google does all of the work for us. But I’d love to know, as someone who is a dedicated resource in this space, how do you approach it? And what have you tried that you’ve found really works? And what have you tried that you found? didn’t quite work? Like? You’d thought it would? I’ve probably got

Creina Lister
a recent example. So what I found has worked really well with within this industry. And what I do in my role is SEO and content content marketing has been the most successful shift, I guess.

Jess Brady
So that’s pause, what is content marketing?

Creina Lister
Okay, so content marketing is actually writing information and publishing it. So that people, that is how people will discover you, if they’re searching for a certain type of information, or they’ve got a problem, and they’ve got a need. Most people will go to Google and look for it. If you have published content, an article, logs, guides, ebooks, any kind of intellectual property that you’ve created, is considered content. And if you can produce content that’s actually really good and useful. That is super beneficial to not only the people that are reading it, but also search engines will index that well, and you’ll start to appear higher on Google searches and top of page. So content marketing for for us has worked very well. So we can see that a lot of our online inquiries, for instance, come from online search, specifically from certain articles or content contents, even the words that you use on your website. So the words the language, the information needs to match with the needs of who that that consumer is. So contents really, really important.

Jess Brady
And from a tracking of that, do you then have like a call to action at the bottom of that, which clicks into the website? And that’s how you can all like click here to speak to someone more about it, like, how do you then know that they’ve read that content?

Creina Lister
I’m also really fortunate where I am, that we actually Have a marketing automation platform, which all of our website is connected with. So at the bottom of most of our content pieces, we make the website quite easy for people to subscribe to continue to receive updates. But if you’re going to be collecting subscribers, it’s really important that you actually have a consistent content plan in place that you can’t just do it one month, and then not do it for three months, you have to be consistent with delivering content to your subscribers. And then also, yeah, booking a meeting or contacting us has to be nice and easy and simple for the user as well. But also, once somebody has submitted any information, our marketing automation platform will actually be able to track where that first first touch point was with that particular consumer. So even if we’re having events, or if we have a guide, sometimes we’ll publish a guide. But to download it, you have to actually fill in your details. So then we actually know that the first time that person interacted with us was when they downloaded that particular guide. So not every business is going to be able to invest in that. But we have that ability and that visibility of when that person first connected with us, and then that will put them on different lists, and they’ll receive our content on an ongoing basis. And then we do find that after six months or 12 months, they’ll actually do a book or meeting form. So it doesn’t happen instantaneously I’m finding in this industry, it takes a lot longer that decision making process to engage is a lot longer than a parachute use, for instance.

Jess Brady
Sure. And that gives you the time to be able to consistently build trust and credibility and showcase knowledge because you’re constantly providing content that they want to read or are reading that helps as a proof point of why you are the advisor or firm that you should they should be chatting to. So just sort of breaking that down, like do you do sequenced nurture campaigns that already exist that someone will go on when they subscribe to a newsletter? Or is it something where it’s just gets everyone say gets a monthly newsletter or something similar?

Creina Lister
At the moment, everyone gets a similar weekly update. So we do weekly, and we have done nurture, we have done some customer journeys, and some nurture. A lot of people that are listening might not know what that is that yeah, let’s just play some people. So as Jess was just saying, someone might download a particular guide, and it might be on, you know, what’s the difference between income protection insurance and TPD. Let’s use that as an example. So they would click on that download that and we would put them on a particular list that relates to insurance, this person’s interested in insurance, then we could send them a nurture journey would be we would have set up in the back end of the marketing automation platform, a sequence of events, that might be one week or two weeks, there’ll be sent another piece of content. So we would pick and map out four or five pieces of content that’s going to deliver on what their interest is. So we might deliver a little bit more about a case study of a client that went through a claim, or some Google reviews that we’ve received for our insurance advisors care. So it’s just providing those extra touch points that are actually relevant. It’s about that relevancy. So there’s no point sending a 25 year old, a whole bunch of information about establishing an SMSF. So it’s about really knowing who your audience is what they’re looking at. And then we’ve got a long way to go still, like it’s a constant work in progress. And we haven’t fully deployed everything I’d like to. But it’s all time and resources, isn’t it?

Jess Brady
It is what I like about the idea, can I also just giant disclaimer, I’ve never done nurture campaigns. So let me just speak from no experience. But we are I am currently setting up nurture campaigns for the new year. Exactly that so sort of identifying either a type of person or a type of issue that someone might have, and trying to figure out what relevant articles or topics might be best for them to get, or based on the time of year, what people probably want to kick them into action. But what I like about it, for my brain is that you can, I don’t want to say build it once because obviously it needs to evolve, but you can build it, you can set it in the background, and then it’s self executing. And all the while you’re looking so clever because you’re continuing to provide value to people that they believe is very, you know, in touch with what they’re looking for. And it’s efficient, which in our world, there isn’t often an enormous amount of efficiency. So I’m interested in next added that you’ve done it and it has been successful.

Creina Lister
Yes, it has. We’ve mostly done it for events. Okay. Yeah. So we’ve done it for events, which has been great. And then we’ve actually put so whatever that I guess audience was at the event, then we’ve put them on certain lists this by industry, and then we’ve served them industry content that’s relevant to them. So they

Jess Brady
come to an event, there’s some sort of industry conception or concept, overarching it, they leave, because they’ve come to the event, they’ve got your details from there on for a little bit that they’re getting dripped information that’s relevant to whatever industry they’re in. And have you found that that has a higher conversion rate compared to other? Yeah, okay. Yeah, absolutely.

Creina Lister
Yes.

Jess Brady
Let’s go back to overarching marketing plan, we’re getting very detailed, but I feel like we got a

Creina Lister
good, no, I wasn’t tuned out.

Jess Brady
Well, if they have, then they’re missing opportunities to improve their business and marketing plans. So that’s

Creina Lister
a little bit too complex. But it also just putting the time at the very beginning. And then it’s actually quite a lot of work at the beginning to set up customer journeys and nurture campaigns. So it is a lot of work content wise as well. So I think setting aside the time to do that, will create the efficiencies in the long run, who writes the code does take time, I do write a lot of the content, and sort of our advisors. So our advisors are great at putting pen to paper, and then I’ll do a bit of editing or flush it out, make it longer. So yeah, a lot of our it’s all internal.

Jess Brady
Okay? And do you find that long form pieces of content are better,

Creina Lister
you need to have a mix of both. So long form is better from an SEO perspective. But sometimes, from a social perspective, you want something shorter and snappy, that you can just read on the go, I’d say I’m seeing more of a trend to long form at the moment as well. So

Jess Brady
interesting, I feel like yeah, you get your head around one thing, and then it changes,

Creina Lister
it changes all the time, and you have to be agile, and you have to be changing, or be okay to fail as well and try different things. You have to just keep trying different things. And if it’s not working, just pivot.

Jess Brady
So in terms of your like Master marketing plan, so content pillars are clearly really important. Once you’ve established your content pillars, what do you then do like, How do you tackle planning for marketing in your business?

Creina Lister
Well, content, yes, is one thing. Social media is also another pillar. So social media management, that is also very important to the business events, digital activation across everything is very important as well. So you can have all these pillars. Yeah. But then how are you going to activate it and take it to market? So that does

Jess Brady
that mean? It sounds very cool. But what does digital activation mean?

Creina Lister
It means okay, I’ve got these really great content pieces. I’ve written all of this amazing content. We’ve got a great website, we’ve got some good events coming up. We’ve just produced a guide, how am I can activate it and launch it like how do I reach the people? So digital activation is just the term that’s used, I guess. And that means, okay, let’s reach the people. It’s just reaching the people and digital is the way to reach the people. So we activated across social media will activate it across SEO. So we’ll write things so that it contains keywords. So we’ll research what’s, what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. We also activated through copy Google Ads through search engine marketing. We’ve also been harvesting a retargeting list as well through LinkedIn, there’s lots of digital work that I’m undertaking at the moment. It’s a little little things, it’s all it’s the sum of all. Really, it’s not you can’t just do one thing, and think that one thing’s gonna deliver results. You have to, it has to be sort of, they call it omni channel, like it has to be across a lot of different areas. It’s a proliferation of, I mean, you know what, everyone, everyone knows what it’s like, Wherever you look, you’re bombarded with information. So you have to be part of it, or you’ll get lost. So you’ve got to be part of it. You’ve got to be discoverable. If you’ve there’s no point producing all this great content if you’re not going to make it discoverable.

Jess Brady
And for the people who haven’t dabbled into paying for things like Google ads, or can you tell them part of the scamp Having your articles come up higher. I don’t know what that’s called. Have you and is it successful does it work?

Creina Lister
So we did do some, it’s called native advertising where we have sort of three articles that we’ve written, and we actually will pay for them to appear on different news sites. And that is how you can harvest the retargeting lists. So people that are interested in an article on SMSFs click on that article reader, they go on a retargeting list. And then we can at the moment, we’re developing retargeting assets that are just brand who we are, what we do, and there will be served those ads when they’re on the fin review, or they’re in other spaces as well. So we’re going that’s all part of that digital activation. So we’re doing social. We’re doing native advertising. We’re doing LinkedIn, we’ve done Google ads. That is something I’ve wound back. So we discovered after a couple of months, the investment was too high for the return. So that is something that we have sort of wound back a little bit and just reassessing why it’s becoming more and more expensive, actually, particularly in this industry, a lot of people are bidding on words at the moment. So I think that’s really interesting. So that that just wasn’t getting the return on investment.

Jess Brady
Sure. So retargeting means someone’s already been on your website, then they’re off on their merry way, reading AFR or doing something else, and you’ve paid to make sure that you somewhere are coming up for them,

Creina Lister
correct? Yes.

Jess Brady
Interesting. All right. Let’s talk tech, how do you practically make this work? So let’s say that we do the content plan, the social media component, think about how we’re activating this into the market. Surely, there’s tech that supports this. You’ve talked a little bit about the automation marketing piece that you use. Can I ask is that knowing a little bit about your business is that Salesforce marketing cloud or

Creina Lister
Salesforce marketing cloud? We use Pardot, which is or some people call it Pardo Pardot. It’s, it is a Salesforce product. Previously, I have worked with, like hubs there’s HubSpot. Marketo. There’s other other ones as well. As HubSpot. Yeah. Yeah. Actually love HubSpot. I miss HubSpot.

Jess Brady
Shout out to HubSpot. You are not sponsored. But we’ll say it anyway. Yeah.

Creina Lister
So yes, we used that. But again, I’m the marketing manager, this gets difficult for me as well. I’m not a marketing automation specialist, or a marketing technologist, it’s almost like, we do have an external person that supports all of these things that I’m talking about. It’s not something that I physically do myself or the strategy, but the content and the brief and I get it put together. Okay. I mean, there are there are parts of it, I do manage and run myself. But for some of the more technical side of things I do Lean on somebody else to do that.

Jess Brady
And I think that’s a really good call out because advisors that are listening to this might sadly be feeling a little bit overwhelmed. Stick with us, we got you, there is no reason why you wouldn’t use an agency or an outsourced specialist that can help bring this to life. Like even for me, I get overwhelmed with all of this. And I’ve just engaged a marketing expert to really help me because I’m like, the time it will take for me to learn how to do all of this stuff. And to do it well. And to activate it into the world, the way that I want it done is not a good return on investment for my time with the other priorities. So obviously, finding an expert and knowing that they will bring considerable value over time. Like I think that if a small business, who doesn’t have a dedicated resource isn’t outsourcing to an expert. They’re either really stressed, or they’re probably not doing it well.

Creina Lister
100%. So I’m a dedicated resource in a business and I still use three external partners to deliver the strategy. All let’s pause

Jess Brady
there. Thank you for green.

Creina Lister
Why three? Do they do different things? They do different things. So we have one agency that specializes in brands, tone of voice, and socials. And then we have another agency that specializes in the nitty gritty of the digital. So all those things I spoke about before with native advertising, Google ads, making sure it’s all linked and tracked in our marketing automation platform. They hook up campaigns, they hook up landing pages. So we do so they do all of that. They also do all of our SEO so they provide SEO Your recommendations on, you know, what, what, what’s people’s search intent at the moment. So staying on top of what the actual consumer is searching for at the moment, and then delivering content, that that provides me with content insights about what we need to be writing about. Because at the moment, people are really searching for this information, but I’m not going to write it if it’s not going to be relevant to our ideal client.

Jess Brady
Mm hmm.

Creina Lister
So we have to keep that front and center at all times. So we use that and then I also work with someone who’s a bit more of a Pardot. Specialist as well.

Jess Brady
Yeah, right. Cool. And so the very natural next question is, you obviously are invested in this both from a resourcing and a tech and support stakeholder perspective. Can we talk the results? How is what does it mean for your business in terms of lead, Gen, etc.

Creina Lister
I’m actually a little bit of a data nerd. So I love tracking numbers and revenue and sources and where it’s come from, it’s had a massive result. So over three years, our revenue from online sources has grown almost 300% Oh, so I think the proof is in the pudding there. When I first joined the business, we were doing a lot of traditional PR. And we basically turned that on its head and went with a content and digital strategy. And since deploying that, and using the two, we started with just one external party, and it’s an I was able to prove the strategy. And then after two years, we’ve now added a third external resource as well. So got the proof in the pudding, content and digital niche shift needed to happen from a strategic perspective to deliver on those business objectives. And we’ve grown revenue from marketing generated leads, right, just under 300%, in three years.

Jess Brady
Amazing. I mean, that. That is why we must have these conversations. And we must learn from businesses who are doing it well, in our space, despite all of the complexities and all of the change that’s going on around us. It can work if you get it right, you, you’re a very good example, because your business is not small either. So I can imagine that you are already generating some form of leads through marketing. So to have a 300%, growth rate increases, exciting, very exciting, congratulations. Anything else that you’re doing from a marketing planning point of view that you would like to share with the XY community as they plan for 2023 and beyond,

Creina Lister
I really think it’s very simple. But I’ve always said, Just activity creates activity. So just doing something, and it sounds so simple. Sit down over the break, and work out what it is that you’re hoping to achieve, what support and what resources you need to achieve that, you’re not going to be the expert in writing the content or how to market it, how to put together the what it looks like from a designer perspective, all of those basic things need to be considered. Canva is a great tool that I use as well, I use that a lot in house myself, I use Canva all the time. So that’s a tool that you can use for free. And you could set up your brand assets or what what you want to look like, even with building your own website, now a lot of WordPress websites, you can actually use a lot of the Canva designs to actually build your website, it’s there’s a lot of free things out there that you can be doing. But seriously, look at how much you want to invest in marketing as well. That’s increased as well as a percentage of total turnover. So I think making sure you’ve got a good understanding of what’s realistic to actually achieve anything in terms

Jess Brady
of have a budget format, a budget.

Creina Lister
So have a budget, that’s very important. Don’t treat it as an expense, it’s actually an investment in your business. And definitely, there’s a lot of resources out there. I know a lot of people that use air Tasker and things like that to actually align themselves with a designer or to write content. There’s so many talented people out there that are freelancing. So you can also connect with them. And just have a plan, just an activity plan, and just really know who you are, like, how are you relevant to your clients now and communicate that to your future clients?

Jess Brady
Given our whole world is predicated off building plans for people? I think that is a very nice way to give a good summary of what we need to do have a plan. If people want to learn more about you and what you do, where should people find you?

Creina Lister
The best place to find me is probably on LinkedIn. Yeah, that’s probably the The best spot to connect with me professionally.

Jess Brady
Wonderful. Before we round out today’s conversation, can I ask you a couple of quick rapid fire questions? Sure. You sound panic and panic. Now, I’d love to know, what is one thing that you do to look after your mental health.

Creina Lister
I said, one of my quotes is a lot of people meditate. I bet it’s so I love to have baths. So I’ve actually given up Friday night drinks for heading home and hitting the bath.

Jess Brady
That is amazing.

Creina Lister
I’m with you. Do it. So good,

Jess Brady
awesome. A piece of advice that you would give to your younger self.

Creina Lister
Don’t take things too seriously.

Jess Brady
Few times.

Creina Lister
Yeah, I still do from time to time. So I have to remind myself not to be not to take myself too seriously.

Jess Brady
Love it. Do you have something that’s on your bucket list?

Creina Lister
Several? Doesn’t everyone

Jess Brady
No but probably you know, what’s yours? Oh, no, I have lots you go tell me yours.

Creina Lister
Mine. Probably one I was talking about recently would be I really love to go to all of the grand slams the Tennis Grand Slams all in one year.

Jess Brady
Okay, cool. Very cool. You’d be up to date with all of the information on tennis. Um, last question. Do you have a book recommendation for us as part of the expat community and my fake book club

Creina Lister
as in like a professional read? Or whatever you like or whatever you read me a lot. I don’t get a lot of time to to read, unfortunately, only when I go on holidays. So did I read when I was last on holidays was a light read. It was good, though. Was the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

Jess Brady
Okay. I haven’t had that on the list yet. Awesome. A nice light holiday read.

Creina Lister
Light holiday read nothing too deep.

Jess Brady
That is quite good timing, given the season.

Creina Lister
Oh, yeah. Everyone’s looking forward to the end of the year.

Jess Brady
Looking forward to the end of the year. Okay. I’ve got lots of ideas off the back of today’s conversation. And I know that the XY community will as well so a giant thank you for being part of today’s podcast. I really appreciate your insights and expertise on something that is sometimes overwhelming and thank you for breaking it down and making a very practical appreciate it

Creina Lister
No problem. You’re welcome.