While students fear the words “summer school,” a local marketing expert is hoping business owners are ready to learn how to show their businesses in the best light.
The Marketing Summer School is the brainchild of Moniek James, a marketing strategist and consultant, and founder of Renegade Creative Media.
“I definitely was trying to be a little cheeky with putting in summer school, because, yes, that does bring up memories like the worst thing ever,” she told ABD with a chuckle. “But as a business owner myself, I think about usually what happens in the summer is things slow down. You know, you hear people travel and take vacations and things like that. So, for a lot of small business owners and entrepreneurs, that means their business slows down.”
She said that a slowdown can present a prime opportunity for business owners to improve their marketing skills. She said they can design campaigns for the fall and winter to put their business ahead of the pack.
James said the workshop, a collaboration with theClubhou.se at the Georgia Cyber Innovation Training Center, is tailor-made for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and nonprofit leaders. This is a two-session workshop covering everything from branding to AI marketing plans.
The first session is Friday, July 19, from 10:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. It will focus on brand identity and their customers’ personas.
“The brand identity piece is where the creative piece really shines,” she explained. “It’s helping the business owners get to what I call their brand fingerprint. It’s the marathon, things like the core values, the resonating method, the brand belief. We will talk about the ideal, the things that really matter to the brand. It’s the lofty statements, the grand vision that these business owners have for their brands. We start with that because that’s the foundation.”
Looking at customer personas will also help the business to clearly define their customers, including demographics, age range, and income level. It will also demonstrate where to go and look for that information to ultimately create a detailed, ideal customer profile.
The second session will be the following Friday, July 26, also from 10:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. The topics will be developing customer journey maps and learning AI-enhanced strategic marketing.
“The customer journey mapping is like the second series of the customer personas. Once we’ve identified the lifestyle of that person, we’ll think about the stages that they go through, from becoming aware of a business or of a product to actually buy, recognizing that most customers don’t buy automatically,” James said. “You’re able to start to build the marketing campaigns or create the content that grabs them by the hand and escorts them through the journey, answering the questions, providing the solution that they’re looking for along the way, so that when they’re ready to buy, they think of you, and they buy.”
Attendees will also learn about AI marketing tools currently available, like ChatGPT, and how to use them to design a business-specific marketing campaign.
“I’ll be talking about how to design prompts, the approach to build prompts, and then giving them some other ways to use ChatGPT outside of just giving me some content ideas. I really want to challenge them to think about how to turn their AI tools into strategic thought partners to support them in all phases of their business, and not just in the marketing,” she said.
The sessions can be attended virtually, or in person at theClubhou.se at 100 Grace Hopper Lane. The cost is $97. James recommends attending both sessions, but anyone who enrolls can attend one session, depending on their immediate needs, and watch a recording of the other online at their leisure.
“This marketing thing is constant. It’s always evolving. Businesses are evolving because our customers are evolving, and then the marketing industry is evolving,” James said. “So, figuring out how to put yourself in the space, to be able to be learning, so that everything that we’re doing as business owners is relevant to what’s happening in the world and what our customers are looking for.”
For more information and to register, go to: https://www.subscribepage.com/mss
