How to Never Have to Think About Your Marketing Again (+ We Need Your Feedback!)
Episode 437: Show Notes
As of this week, we are officially five months into the launching of the Creative Template Shop and it’s so exciting, still! There are so many different moving parts and really cool aspects behind the scenes that are going on with this product of ours, and what’s more, they have never been a part of the process for other products we have developed! So, we wanted to share an update with all of our people!
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We want to share some things we are thinking about developing – new features – and we want to hear from you too! So, we are officially opening our project to the public airwaves for your guys’ feedback and we are talking shop about the really cool things we think are so special about our baby. After today’s show, maybe our shop can become a nice little home for you on the internet as well!
What is the Creative Template Shop?
The Creative Template Shop was born out of our clients’ and our need to produce professional and branded looking marketing on the fly. We want it to allow you to focus on what you do and how you serve, while not having to worry about the other majorly important piece which is how you look. We give you templates and tools to go from, “Meh,” to, “Oh my gosh!” in minutes!
Our shop makes it so easy to add templates and customization to your business’s identity and we have also integrated it with many popular software platforms such as Canva, Dubsado, Leadpages, and Squarespace! There are two ways you can join in, by either becoming a member or buying a template one-off, and on there you’ll find templates for social media, pricing guides, opt-ins, workbooks, client proposals, and so much more! The best bang for your buck is by getting a membership for $47 per month, which will give you access to everything on there, and we release four new templates every month in three different color stories (bright, neutral, and soft). We want to become your marketing department, so what are you waiting for?
Our Reasons for Starting the Creative Template Shop
As creatives, it is easy to feel we are supposed to be good at all of the things required to keep our businesses running. Emylee started out as a photographer, so she was amazing at everything associated with using a camera, but when it came to doing things like making a website, a business card, or order form, things got a little complicated. The point is not to feel bad about this or beat ourselves up though. You don’t have to be good at all of it. This is what we are here for! Abagail also came from a specific background, more on the marketing side, where it was her passion to serve her clients. This also had its limitations though, because while she wanted to serve so many people, her capacity would only allow a few per month. So it becomes clear how something like the Creative Template shop could become a solution to both of these scenarios and more! We will always love strategy but now we are exploring how to infuse it with design, and the exciting part is that we are testing things all the time!
A Behind the Scenes Look at What Goes Into Our Monthly Releases
Next up, we spend some time sharing what it takes for us to come out with these amazing templates each month and how it all starts with you, our client. We want to produce things you guys need, so member requests are taken into huge consideration when we make new templates. We have a process where we brainstorm many ideas weekly and then narrow them down to what we call our ‘core six’ using a voting process. We have team members coming from many different backgrounds so the perspectives they bring in this process is a lifesaver, and we also get so many ideas from our wider community. One of our unique skills has definitely always been identifying the pulse of what is needed from the murmurs we hear across our channels. Often users don’t see the nuances involved in something they ask for, or they ask for something that seems like a good idea but turns out not to be, so having a skill for producing workable products out of these urges becomes super valuable.
Once voting has taken place and we have narrowed the templates down to four, our amazing designer makes mockups, and then Emylee sprinkles her special copy fairy dust on them. This involves inserting prompts into the templates for what type of copy could be put where. So, the templates are not just pretty marketing objects but also guides about how to be best utilized. Once we have made our tweaks and built out various color stories, we go one step further and show you how to tweak the content even further yourself in our how-to blog posts. After that, we go through a whole release cycle involving product descriptions, launch graphics, announcements, emails, and more. Because we are so extreme, we release our how-to blogs every Thursday, and we are also doing live demos inside our Facebook community where we talk about how to use and implement the templates from the most basic steps to complex and bigger projects too! So head over there if you have any questions, or even shoot us an email!
Hearing Audience Feedback in Our New Member Discussion Sessions
One thing we did recently that was new was a private member call to gather feedback, and we want to do more of that in the future. It was a round table discussion where we got to hear your ideas on what the future of this idea could look like. It’s a way for us to beta test things and hearing feedback on certain ideas allows us to weed the less effective ones out so much faster. For example, it got suggested that members would like to see more community involvement within the project. It’s not like we don’t have a community though (our Facebook group has over 30,000 members), but what people were talking about was more specific to the business of using templates. So, people were asking about things like pop up groups, ways to connect to other industries, ways to like and share each other’s templates, and so on. We don’t know what implementing this will look like, and we are notoriously extra, so we need to be decisive about what ideas we take action on, but at the same time this could be really exciting! The last time we saw this much traction on an idea was from our Trello for Business course, and that still receives a huge amount of monthly attendees so we really believe this could be the next shining star of our business!
Using Templates for Speed, Brand Consistency, and High Post Engagement
One of the cool features of the shop as we mentioned before, is the templates come in three different color palettes. This is one of the ways you should use this product, because if your brand identifies with a certain palette, then you’ll get more brand new possibilities in it every month. So, you’ll have a whole new arsenal of designs to use every single month! When you’re running your own design show, things can get fuzzy very quickly, because it’s so easy to choose a new font or color when you find something that catches your eye, and this can become quite off-brand, so you’ll find the templates so helpful in this regard. While Abagail is not a designer per se anymore, she still designs every day and comments about how much more quickly an idea can come to life with the help of templates. Recently, we released what we deem highly sharable and on-trend social media graphics. We tested them, and the post had 210 saves as well as 59 shares! We don’t usually get that many likes, and while likes aren’t an indication of how much money you make, your growth has a lot to do with engagement, so the attention these new templates got for us bode so well for your future if you use them too. To cut a long story short, we are so excited about this. It feels so light and fun for us and the fact that y’all love it too just makes the whole project feel amazing. Your feedback counts so much too, so remember to give us a shout if you want to chat and we can schedule a Zoom call, and if you have a template you customized that works, share it! Until next time, happy templating!
Highlights
What is the Creative Template Shop? [0:03:37.1]
Our Reasons for Starting the Creative Template Shop. [0:06:21.5]
A Behind the Scenes Look at What Goes Into Our Monthly Releases. [0:10:06.3]
Hearing Audience Feedback in Our New Member Discussion Sessions. [0:30:18.1]
Using Templates for Speed, Brand Consistency, and High Post Engagement. [0:36:38.7]
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
We help overwhelmed and creative entrepreneurs break down their Oprah-sized dreams to create a functioning command center to tame the chaos of their business. Basically, we think you’re totally bomb diggity, we’re about to uplevel the shiz out of your business.
KEY TOPICS
The Creative Template Shop, Marketing using templates, Brand identity, Outsourcing, Feedback strategy sessions, The Boss Project community
