Emma Bates is a blogger and a copywriting conversion specialist. She has gone through a ton of ups and downs over the years as she and her business have grown. Emma found ways to increase her sales and scale offers more easily.
Keep reading to find out how Emma uses social selling and her content marketing service to help others increase their sales!
1. Tell us a little about yourself.
I’m Emma Bates. I have had a multitude of different businesses! To list a couple: I had a blog that was later renamed to Emily Bates, and I also started an agency with my husband, which I later transitioned into an agency with my friend called Amplified Now.
I live in New Hampshire; we have 3 kids and I work from home! We are homeschooling this year, which has been crazy! And we have 2 dogs named Peanut Butter and Jelly.
2. What made you transition from your Emily Bates blog to your first service based company?
Blogging is usually more of a long-term plan to see an ROI. I needed to make money so I slowly started with some virtual assistant services.
As I grew, I learned how to write good copy and began getting countless questions from people on how I’ve gotten so good and where I was learning it from. That’s when I started to outsource copywriting for people who needed the assistance with sales pages, emails and Facebook Ads.
Last December, my husband was laid off. This was life changing. I have always been a work-at-home mom. We had some decisions to make. There was no sense in trying to find a job then with Christmas just around the corner. My husband was working as a researcher previously, so his writing skills are amazing. So, we then decided to work together in our agency Slow Rise Marketing. Our focus was copywriting and general marketing.
3. How did you get better with copywriting?
I had hired a one-on-one copywriting coach.
We had weekly calls where he would coach me through the next steps, what to look at and assigned homework. A lot of credit goes to practice – I would make up things and just write about it.
All in all, it was a guided practice and that’s how I got better.
4. How was adjusting your mindset when it came to becoming the sole breadwinner, while your husband had to take on the role of the home-parent?
I think we are still adjusting, but it has gotten much more smooth.
My husband has always been supportive of my business so it wasn’t difficult to become the breadwinner, but it was definitely an identity shift. I think we both take turns feeling guilty about not doing what we used to do. We had to look inwards and think about what it meant for our family to basically switch places.
Even for the kids, they had to learn to ask their dad for things they used to ask me for because I’m not always available. It was a shift for everybody.
5. How did you manage a growing income with growing expenses?
Not very well, haha.
We hired an online business manager really early on, a month into the business. I really needed that support. She was great, she helped me get SOPs up and running and get ClickUP going for us which is a project management tool.
Also, I was not charging enough! I would subcontract people and get paid exactly what I was paying the contractor. I should have definitely taken the time to look at the numbers before jumping into the agency.
6. Why is your content marketing service important for people? How did you develop it?
Back when I was a virtual assistant, I worked for Kathleen, who is now my partner for Amplified Now. I was her marketing assistant.
Kathleen wanted to start going on video for her business, so we began brainstorming what else we could do with the video. We could download the lives for Youtube, change it into a blog post and create captions for social media.
Over 3 months, we worked out this content repurposing system. All Kathleen had to do was record a video for 10 minutes a week and then she was able to get an entire marketing content strategy. People are busy and content is vital.
In this way, we put together a package we could sell so clients could be everywhere without spending hours of their own time.
7. What are your packages like? How many posts are offered for all platforms?
We’ve determined that an hour of our client’s time will give us about 4 videos to work with. From this they can receive a ton of content:
- 4 full-length videos on Facebook and Youtube
- 4 blog posts
- 12 social media posts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram.
8. What advice do you have for other new businesses?
It’s ok to pivot.
People get stuck. They think they have to stay with what they’ve originally tried out. Being online, you can reinvent yourself everyday. If you’ve started something and it doesn’t feel right, give it a twist or try building up something different on the side!
I changed my blog name 3 times and then switched over to the agency thing.
Don’t be afraid of the change. If you don’t take the jump, you won’t know what is possible. Do it scared!
9. What do you wish you knew before getting started?
So much, haha.
But two things, how much work a blog really is, and don’t buy all the courses!
There is so much to writing a blog and you can really get caught up in all the advertised courses. I wish someone would’ve told me about that.
If you are interested in Emma’s content marketing service or any other services mentioned, click here: AmplifiedNow.com
