Your Top 5 Health & Fitness Marketing Questions Answered

Marketing Strategy, personalized brand experience

Q. I’m launching my business in two months, when should I start marketing my business. A. Now.
Q. How should I begin marketing my business on line? A. With a marketing plan and a clear strategy.
Q. Should I start with Facebook and Instagram Ads? A. No. Start with organic posts first.
Q. How can I increase sales on my website? A. Brand awareness through links to your site.
Q. Where do I find influencers to review my products. A. Instagram

Do you have a question about how to grow your new idea? I have helped hundreds of brands start their businesses online. If you need guidance, you can email me at hello@mj.works or reach out on Upwork. You can find my profile here.

Helping Health, Beauty, Fashion & Fitness Brands Grow Their Businesses

Beauty pr, Brand Awareness, business, Clients, digital content strategy, Fashion Marketing, fashion PR, Fitness, Fitness Marketing, instagram, instagram insight, media relations, Public Relations, social networking

As a business marketing coach, I specialize in helping people who are creating and building anything that makes you look and feel great. This includes designers, doctors, trainers, and formulators in health, fashion, fitness and beauty.

Today I will be interviewed by Tyler Wagner on The Business Blast podcast. He’s received over 130 five star reviews and after listening to his profiles, I highly recommend adding him to your list of business growth gurus.

Working with Wellness Professionals

Health & Wellness Clients

Most recently, I have been working with Duke University’s Dr. Adam Perlman. He is a doctor of functional medicine based out of Charleston, SC and now moving over to Mayo Clinic. I built his website (WordPress) and a series of 28 videos to kick off his blog on alternative therapies in health and wellness and a new type of health & fitness concept that he helped build called Synchronicity. This project had me reaching out to influencers in nutrition, fitness, meditation, yoga, cryotherapy and flotation tanks for collaborations with Dr. Perlman. I did all of the leg work and production and collaborated with Travis and Aja on video and graphics.

Starting Up with Skincare

I just finished a project helping launch @soonkskincare a new Korean skincare brand with a smaller marketing budget. I helped the team by reaching out to vanity media (Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, etc) and at the same time micro bloggers in the beauty space on Instagram. I wrote the pitches, DM’d the bloggers and connected them with skincare enthusiasts around the world. This led to Soon Skincare getting noticed by Nordstroms for a holiday pop up.

New Fashion Frontiers

Day-to-day I help run the business side of things with the designer of Orseund Iris, an emerging fashion brand. We just launched on Net A Porter this past November and I am happy to say we are into our second buy from them and Bella, Beyonce and Kim are still asking for styles, so we remain humble and continue to create beautiful apparel and accessories for women around the world.

Fitness on Instagram

I am in the midst of creating a guide to getting started on Instagram as a fitness brand guide. This will be a lead generation tool for Fitness Mentors, a study guide site for personal trainers trying to pass the very difficult NASM tests. The guide will include how to develop fitness tutorials that are helpful, useful and valuable to followers, unique hashtag strategies to broaden audience and target new followers along with collaborating with others trainers to build a community of loyalists.

Emotional Intelligence

I have a passion project that I am working on and it is

called www.undisputedorigin.com.

It is a website devoted to self-awareness and emotional intelligence. I write each morning about something I am learning about myself and others. I pair each essay with beautiful artwork and credit the artist and post to Instagram. I am devoted to learning each day and read a wide variety of books which I also recommend on the site. I spend equal amount of time writing as I do reading and following other sites on the topic of mindfulness and self-improvement. I believe this practice is important for any business to build brand awareness. Your work can be great but it must be discovered by others.

Here’s What Happens When You Fiercely Follow Your Dreams

Brand Awareness, business, entepreneur, Fashion Marketing, fashion PR, Marketing Strategy, press coverage, Public Relations Plan

It takes boatloads of courage to act on your gut and it takes an even bigger heroic dose of bravery to say f-ck no to everything else. The path is dark and full of the dreaded unknown, yet you proceed any way. Sure, from time-to-time you’re tempted by a false sense of security, of a “job” and an actual paycheck and all the glittery shiny things it can buy.

But this is not the way of the creative warrior, the emerging designer.

No. You hold out.

You just keep building. You just keep creating. You just keep going. You do anything to make it happen.

You hold the standard. Your standard.

This is what bootstrapping a business feels like and what it means to only say hell yes to what you really want.

I’ve been closely involved in the behind the scenes development of fashion brand Orseund Iris for the past two and half years and I am so immensely proud of Alana Johnson, one of my four remarkable bad ass daughters.

I’ve worked with many big brands but nothing compares to the rapid growth I’ve witnessed with the power of social media.

10 Celebrity-Approved Contemporary Labels That Made It Big in 2017

Alana Johnson’s New York–based label, Orseund Iris, was launched several seasons ago, but 2017 was the year it really took off, making the rounds on social media and the street style circuit alike. What began as a collection-based brand that soon developed into a non-seasonal model, it has become a celebrity-approved go-to for reworked classics. Its claim to fame is the corset, which gave way to the three-dimensional bra tops that are every bit as much a hit; whatever the case, both have molded the famous curves of models such as Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski.

Here are three super important tips for new fashion designers to follow –

1. Build your social media following every single damn day. Your business will only be as big and beautiful as the number of people who find you.

2. Press won’t come until you build your own gorgeous content and start confidently shining your own light. So take those snaps, share those stories and connect with your favorites on Instagram and Facebook first.

3. Wear your own designs before you finalize the details., before you cut that first pattern and before you grade. We know you’re inspired by what’s out there, but what make’s it an original – your design – is the very touches you add that no one else can.

Forge on brave one and hold the standard.

xo Madeline Johnson

Marketing Health, Fitness, Food & Fashion + 3 Smart Ways To Build Your Online Business

digital content strategy, digital marketing, Email Marketing, Influencer marketing, instagram insight, Instagram marketing, madeline johnson, Marketing Mavens, marketing muscle, marketing plans, social media marketing

What to Do When You Hate to Sell

So many business owners tell me how they hate to “sell”. They don’t like to push their products or services on people because they can’t stand it when they are sold to by other companies. They delete email campaigns, block brands on their social media accounts and get really weirded out about retargeted ads appearing out of nowhere while they are surfing online. I know, it’s spooky. I get it, I don’t like pushy sales campaigns either, but I also think many business owners need a shift in their perspective. If you have a great product, you shouldn’t be selling at all. You should be building a community with your website, blog, video and social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. You should be creating valuable videos, posts and downloadable tools that help future customers. Create and share like a thought leader about the problem your product solves and always give them a call-to-action.

Social Media Marketing Isn’t Difficult, But It Is Time-Consuming

So many brands want to create social media posts on the fly or worse yet, farm out the work to a freelancer who doesn’t understand their market. The truth is, without proper planning, research or quality visuals, you aren’t going to attract any attention at all. Posting thoughtless or copy cat content can also lead to breaking trust with potential customers and clients. If clients only spent more time being thoughtful about what they want to post and really answered their audience and their community’s burning questions. If they only put themselves in their customer’s shoes. Think like your customers and clients and then give them solutions and broadcast it out to your social media content.

Even The Best Content Won’t Be Seen Without a Sizable Community

On the other hand, many clients have fantastic content, but they haven’t bothered to build a following on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat or Pinterest. They are wasting all that work on a community of zero. The way to get followers is to follow, to comment, to like and engage with the audience you want to attract.

I often get asked by associates, friends and new clients about what I am currently working on these days. Lately, I am in the midst of helping a number of businesses navigate their way through digital marketing & web-based sales.

I have a digital marketing consulting gig, which includes web and email campaigns for Glaxo Smith Kline. I am working with Roy Heitzer, Head of Multichannel Marketing in the Nordics: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and Norway and his team.

I am also creating a full marketing plan (including editorial content for articles, video and blog posts as well as strategy for social media and special events) for Nuvo Suites.

On the side, I am writing articles about healthy and natural living for Green Scene Gal, a new blog dedicated to helping women who long for a more natural way of life that is free of synthetic chemicals, GMOs, pesticides and artificial hormones.

I just published this article to help warn new moms and dads about arsenic levels found in baby food.

In the meantime, I am also developing a B2B Drip campaign for the fitness franchise Get in Shape for Women. See attached for email one of the five email campaign.

On a day-to-day, I strategize and assist Alana Johnson, designer and founder of Orseund Iris with her made in NY fashion label. This includes strategizing and optimizing the business for growth which continues to build a following with 98% of online sales coming from Instagram and fashion influencers

For those startups looking to build their vanity metrics with media interviews, I also have an online course www.ThePRPlaybook.com for entrepreneurs in health, fitness and wellness. This is targeted to brands like PEbyDesign.com who I have helped from the ground up.

HOW TO SUSTAIN YOUR STARTUP SUCCESS

business, creative collaboration, digital content strategy, Email Marketing, Influencer marketing, instagram, instagram insight, Instagram marketing, Marketing in the Moment, marketing muscle, marketing plans, social media, social media marketing, Technology, the future of branding

This list of market building business tips about how to stay on course while you design epic products and services for the world was originally created for my daughter who is a hard-working, bad-ass fashion designer. Like every child ever born, she asks for advice daily and then ignores a lot of it. SO THAT IS WHY THERE IS SO MUCH EMOTION BEHIND THIS POST. All of these tips apply to anyone making anything. They work and they are important and today is a SPECIAL DAY because she is FINALLY heeding more of this advice. Amen.

Sure she’s nervous, as any startup who has achieved a bit of success would be. You might be nervous too – the big question – how do I sustain the success? Especially in the finicky world of Insta-fashion. Here, I humbly give you YOUR GUIDING STRATEGY FOR STAYING & GROWING SUCCESSFULLY.

WAKE UP, DESIGN, REPEAT

Design EVERY SINGLE DAMN DAY. Do not let a morning go by without designing. That means you don’t answer emails or texts or schedule meetings unto 1 pm every day. Why? Because the life of your authentic brand depends on you DESIGNING. Designing can mean sketching, shopping vintage, eating something delicious, going to an inspiring store, museum, listening to music – WHATEVER MAKES YOUR CREATIVE MINDFLOW BABY. The only reason you are in business is that you designed epicness in the first place. There is a lot of stuff people can buy out there, they are choosing to drop their bank on yours. KEEP THOSE CUSTOMERS HAPPY.

DEVELOP SYSTEMS FOR REPETITIVE STUFF.

What is a system? A set of rules that a baby monkey can do. They just learn the system (written or video instructions) and they do it.

Develop a system for responding to customers emails including templates for their frequently asked questions.

Develop a system for making sizing 1,000% CLEAR for all customers. Put it on the website.

Develop a system for ordering office stuff – like your favorite drinks, food, printer ink. Yes. make a list for the intern or assistand – where to go, when to reorder, how to pay for it. Make it so YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TO TELL HIM OR HER WHAT TO DO.

Develop a system for packing items for shipment – include the surprise and delight gift – write it down or video it for the new interns. Then make them watch it. Show them PRECISELY HOW YOU LIKE IT DONE.

If you are complaining that an intern or assistant isn’t doing something the way you like it, it is YOUR FAULT. You didn’t set up the easy-to-learn systems.

TAKE PRE-ORDERS ON ALL NEW DESIGNS

The best rule of business is to MARKET BEFORE YOU MANUFACTURER. This is done by the best, most SUCCESSFUL companies. Create the demand BEFORE YOU ACTUALLY MAKE THE style. How?? Start sharing the backstory of design on your Instagram and Pinterest (YES PINTEREST) accounts. Show your customers the inside scoop. Tease them and then create a link to a page where they can GIVE YOU THEIR MONEY. Let them know they are going to be the FIRST TO HAVE IT. How exciting is that?? And give them a little something special for supporting you in the meantime. Make the “landing page” really JAZZY, sexy & FUN. Show the super special parts of designing, what inspired you. What is a LANDING PAGE? It is a special page on your website that you LINK TO THE BIO in your Instagram account every time you POST about that one design to INSTAGRAM. Don’t wait for the customer to SAVE your post. Make it EASY FOR THEM TO SHOP THE LINE. Stop with this I DON’T WANT TO BE TOO “PUSHY” CRAP. THERE IS PUSHY AND THEN There IS MAKING IT SIMPLE & EASY. DO THE LATTER.

SAVE SOME MONEY FOR GOD’S SAKE

Stop f-ing WASTING YOUR MONEY on stupidly expensive food. That $6.00 matcha drink isn’t good for you. Don’t buy into it. What is good for you is PEACE OF MIND THAT YOUR BANK ACCOUNT ISN’T NEGATIVE. Lack of money is the most stressful thing that can happen to you. You can lose your lover, break a leg, create something stupid that people will laugh at, but if you don’t have dough in the oven, life will SUCK. Make it a habit. Open up a BUSINESS SAVINGS ACCOUNT TOMORROW. Do it after you finish designing. Move $500 over IMMEDIATELY and then add reminders to your calendar to drop $500 in every month. DO THIS NOW. More if you can. Save, save, save. We are going to INVEST that money too, so your money can make baby money. GROW THAT ACCOUNT BABY.

LET THOSE DAMN HATERS HATE

It’s their job. That is what they do. Haters are going to HATE. It’s GREAT to have haters. Why? Because you are actually doing something that get’s noticed. Hater’s don’t hate on something that isn’t getting any attention. Why? BECAUSE HATERS DON’T DO ANYTHING BUT HATE. That is how they get their ATTENTION. MORE MONEY, MORE HATERS. That’s okay. Hell, some brands actually pay to have more HATERS. It’s called Facebook and Instagram ADVERTISING.

CHILL YOUR ROLL. TAKE A BREAK.

Every day make sure you do something ridiculously extravagant and/or luxurious. GO AHEAD WASTE SOME TIME. Whatever that means to you. A pedicure, a bike ride, a hello fresh meal with your partner. This business building thing is NOT A RACE. It is YOUR LIFE and you need to enjoy YOUR LIFE. So make some time every day to do something fun that you enjoy. DON’T FEEL GUILTY ABOUT IT. Just do it. Just like you design, you also take time to RELAX every day.

IMITATION IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF FLATTERY – MY ASS

Anytime you can call out some creep ass KNOCK OFF cheater brand copying your original designs DO IT. Make them feel like what they are GREEDY, UNORIGINAL A-HOLES. That’s right. Call them out. Call them out in public in a CLEVER AND FUN WAY. Like you care but you don’t care. Unless they are HUGE creepy conglomerate – a dinosaur – looking to stay relevant. Then EMAIL CALL & SCREAM at the CEO & Founder and their BOARD OF DIRECTORS. Remember, however, when YOU are INSPIRED by something to REDESIGN IT and make it your VERY OWN. Best thing to do really is KNOCK OFF YOUR OWN DESIGNS and start a second business in the weird ass bowels of eBay. LOL. P.S. Don’t spend too much time on this and try to design something so ahead of the curve that the market has to catch up. One step ahead baby.

MOST PEOPLE ARE CLUELESS ABOUT HOW FAST THE WORLD IS CHANGING

So, don’t listen to MOST anyone, except maybe people like Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil and maybe me because I have made it my business to stay RELEVANT, ahead of the CURVE and on top of my game. I AM FASCINATED WITH CHANGE AND YOU SHOULD BE TOO. NO JOKE. Every business is being disrupted by technology. This includes INSTAGRAM. You have to start emailing & MEETING with your customers and clients. WHY? Because Instagram may become the old people’s party and then how you gonna find them customers? SnapChat?

But doesn’t everyone hate email? Hello, people DON’T CHANGE THEIR EMAILS. Some still hang on to their freaking yahoo and aol accounts. Emails are a tighter connection. Better YET get the cell phones of your VIP customers and take them to DINNER. Just, whatever you do, DON’T BE BORING. Create an email you WISH SOMEONE WOULD SEND YOU.

GROW UP WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS OR KEEP ATTRACTING THE YOUNG GUNS

Yeah, your 25-year-old Insta-hottie is going to have a baby and all of a sudden that cropped off the shoulder number isn’t going hide her love handles and/or mother belt. Oh, am I “body shaming”? Read the HATERS note above. This is reality. Have a plan as to how you will keep moving forward with your biggest fans now or the babies coming down the pike.

EVERYONE IS GOING TO WANT A BIG BITE OF YOU. CHOOSE YOUR PACK WISELY

Why? Cause your haute, hot, HOT right now. Yup. Especially the has-beens and the wannabes. Be DISCERNING. Be choosy. Be SUPER SELECTIVE about who you chill with. Why? Because if you hang with the reckless and wild, you will become reckless and wilder. If you chill with the sorry asses, you, in turn, will be a sadder one. EVERY dedicated entrepreneur experiences a bit of FOMO at times. There should be a LONELY HEARTS CLUB MEETUP for those building something big. Get out, dance, laugh and then get back to work. That BULL SHIT ABOUT WORKING HARD & PLAYING HARD is for drunks and trust fund IDIOTS without a purpose. Balance your work and play and stay away from the MDMA. Seriously, it’s not worth the emotional roller coaster ride. Get HIGH ON LIFE.

SELECT WHO YOU WANT TO DO BUSINESS & SCREW THE 15 MINS OF FAME

Stop getting so flattered every time someone wants to COLLAB or PARTNER WITH YOU. You are WORKING YOUR ASS OFF and deserve to be noticed. Say NO to anyone not willing to collaborate with respect or who brings their headaches to the table. You have enough of your own problems to solve. If it’s not a HELL YEAH immediately than it’s a F NO. If you have to THINK about whether you want to sleep with someone, then it’s A F NO and collaborating is a lot like sleeping with someone. Create a list TODAY of the discerning people or businesses you want to align yourself with. SAY NO to anyone else who reaches out. Say it nicely. Always be kind. Kind always works.

You WON’T MISS OUT. Andy Warhol was WRONG and RIDICULOUS about that 15 minutes of FAME. Not true. Most people remain anonymous their whole lives. You may never be famous. Who cares? It’s better to BE GREAT.

KNOW WHAT SUCCESS MEANS TO YOU

Stop measuring your success by other people’s stupid ideas of success. SUCCESS IS SIMPLY DOING WHAT YOU LOVE. Life is short. Everything else is BS.

IT ALWAYS TAKES LONGER THAN YOU THINK.

Whether it’s sex with an ex or a check-up at the dentist or building your first prototype or sample. So STOP with the anxiousness. IT WILL TAKE YEARS TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS. Even Google, the FASTEST growing business in the history of the world took 15 years to become a GIANT. SO SLOW THE HELL DOWN.