Episode 45: Transforming Lives Through Digital Marketing With Vivian So

TMS 45 | Digital Marketing

 

By now, you must realize that digital media is not going anywhere. It’s everywhere, and it’s actually getting bigger and more innovative in the ways it’s connecting people. Joining Michael Silvers on today’s show is Vivian So, a digital marketer and empowerment coach whose unique approach to marketing converts her client’s personal stories to effective branding strategies and marketing tools. Vivian shares how she transformed her life by just taking one single action and how she’s doing the same for other people seeking to find a better way to market their product and service. Vivian and Michael also touch on building a tribe, the difference between marketing and sales, and the three simple things you can do to get started on bringing your story on virtual stages that will bring in revenue for your business and services.

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Transforming Lives Through Digital Marketing With Vivian So

It’s about mentoring. We know that. A lot of you have been reading for years. It’s great. We took a little bit of a hiatus. Everybody knows that. It was ending with some powerful shows. We’re going to start loading up the new shows. You’re going to be hearing from Joseph McClendon and Steve Leon, a Hollywood producer. I have an amazing guest because she is a champion. She gets out there and gets it done. I also want to let you know that if you want more information about The Mentor Studio, you can do a couple of things. If you’re in the United States, you can text TMS to 26786. If you’re outside of the US, you can go to TheMentorStudio.com. That will give you information about our mission and where we’re going.

TMS 45 | Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing: Marketing is all about the presale; sales is about closing the sale.

 

We also have an open Facebook group, which you can search up on Facebook. If you do the text opt-in, you will get that plus my Instagram and my LinkedIn. Vivian So launched her first website in 1997. We remember what those were like back then. A woman of courage coming from a negative upbringing family who decided to transform her life by taking one single action. She is the owner of Thrive To Shift Marketing, where she decided to use digital marketing to transform the lives of many others.

Welcome, Vivian. How are you?

I’m doing great.

Part of what happens and we talk about this a lot is people love to know a little bit about you. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, how you got to where you got to, some of the decisions along the way, and then we’ll go a little more in-depth.

I came from my negative upbringing. Although I got that college diploma, I was stuck in a cashier job for several years. I was like, “Why would you do that? You have a college diploma.” I was in that negative space that I couldn’t get out of. One day, I can no longer take a job because I was sick. I was like, “In this split second, I can change my mindset. It doesn’t need rah-rah. It doesn’t need anything.” I’m going to take action. I sent to my LinkedIn connection an invite to surf them and I got a job offer. It had a niche that I never heard of. Honestly, if I told you, you may not even know what it is. It is a window treatment niche and it was selling curtains. I didn’t know their niche but I did not reject the offer. I took up the offer, I over-delivered, and I got other clients because of it. That’s how I got started.

A good community helps the person grow. Click To Tweet

Because of that, during COVID, when I put up my business, I was saying, “I can use my story to inspire more people to buy my digital marketing service.” I was like, “If I can do that for myself, I can help other business owners such as coaches, consultants, and public speakers to connect their why in the story of the product and service so they can better position themselves.” We all know that before we feel we’re being understood, we don’t care about anything you say. A story is a great way to build bonds and trust if you do it the right way.

It is true. We used to always talk about the great book. In the business world, everybody talks about Think and Grow Rich, which I read a lot of times. In your upbringing, your background, in your earlier career, and nowadays, if you ask that question for young entrepreneurs, they’ll talk about the podcast, the YouTube channels, the things that they watch every day or keep them moving. What got you going and what keeps you going daily?

I do scripture meditation every morning. I use it as a way to comfort myself and other people. I read scripture meditation every week about top house. I use scripture to comfort people. When you have strong faith in God or your spirituality, you’ll have more power because you know that you’re being taken care of. You have the strength that everything is going to be alright.

In the last episode that I did that will be broadcast before yours, it was Ada who was on. She was talking about scripture. Readers, remember, in all religions, we don’t talk about any specific but it has come up in two episodes, which is interesting. I was letting you know the story so that everybody gets to learn about the story. When I first started to do stage work, I would sometimes get on the stage. In the personal development world, we had to be careful on stage about what we say. You don’t want to take one group out because it’s not the same religion or background or whatever that is.

TMS 45 | Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing: As long as you’re sharing a journey authentically and provide value, people will feel the togetherness.

 

I would go up and say, “I was almost late now. I must run a little late but I got here.” For me, what it is, is it’s a grounding. It grounds and it puts me in that right frame. I go almost every day with my wife. It’s good to be able to talk about that again. It’s like, “That’s okay to talk about whatever religious background you come from.” That’s important for grounding us and keeping us going. Thank you for bringing that up. The world is different right now. People have jumped into the digital the way they never could. Some of them got thrown into it. They still don’t quite understand it. You’ve been in digital for a long time. From your sense, can you tell us a little bit where digital is going? From a business perspective, what should I know?

Lots of people think that their marketing is creating a landing page, email marketing, and all those individual tasks. Ultimately, true marketing is supposed to be their visibility and their burning perspective for a company so that they can bring in more sales and income through building a stronger bond with the audience. Marketing is all about the pre-sale. Sells are closing the sales. A lot of people think marketing and sales are the same but they’re different.

To pre-sell them, you do need visibility and the branding that you need for doing it whether you’re doing social media or paid ads. The whole thing is about to pre-sell the surface so that when you go to the shopping cart, you’re ready to buy. When I first talked about how the story is related to digital marketing, some of them didn’t get it. It was like, “I thought you are the storytelling person? How is that your marketing?” I was, “Which brand does not have a story? Which marketing goal is not about bringing it to more eyeballs, bringing it in front of the ideal customer to get visibility?” We forgot about that.

A lot of people would say, “It’s hard to lean at your marketing without ROI.” The best ROI is how many eyeballs you get when you do your digital marketing because it’s their show that brings you in front of enough people. If your strategy is correct and you hit the customer and resonate with them, they will hear your pitch. Once they feel they understood, they are more willing to open up their pocket and open up their mind for you.

Never stop pitching your vision because by doing it, you grow more confident. Click To Tweet

Is there a fine balance between information and too much information? That is critical. How much do I give the audience where I’ve slain them and they don’t want to buy anything from me or even move forward? How important is it also with customers that you see about also creating a community?

When I buy a program, the community is the one that I’m looking at. Even though you have a regular thing that I can look up online, the community and support from the mentor are what I’m looking for when I join a program. That is not replaceable because a good community that is safeguarded, does accept everybody, and can never have any bully and other stuff, it helps the person grow. Starting and keeping a business up and running can be stressful. At those times, we want to have a buddy to fall back on and can be a partner. Someone that you can share your ideas with, discuss with you, and warn you something rather than someone at our home that may not necessarily understand a word. They may not even understand what digital marketing is. It’s making it hard if you don’t have that companionship going on within the community.

It almost sounds like a plug for The Mentors Studio. Thank you so much. When Mary Glorfield and I became business partners, she was with Tony for eighteen years as his VP. I needed that like-minded individual but also, at the same time, the days that I could go and go, “This day is a tough day.” Somebody is rolling out and how are we going to move forward. That somebody who’s going to listen to any drama or whining or anything like that, but it’s a community. I always like to pick individuals that are ahead of me or have done more than me and help the ones that are before that.

Even if you have a regular brick-and-mortar store and you’re doing digital media, people love communities, and Millennials love communities. There are no ifs, and, or buts. That’s why you got Facebook. Sometimes, there will be a store owner. Even we used to do this for dentists. Dentists create communities online because people will come to that. Have you ever had in any of the businesses you worked with a very traditional storefront that you built a community for? Are you able to get them to see the importance of it? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Usually, business is different. I don’t have an actual example that I remember but, in a study, I probably say you want to build a tribe. You want to encourage people, like in Facebook content as a group, to answer the objection beforehand. In your customer’s mind, when they are going on a journey, they want you to look for a solution, and they need a group that gives them the information. If I have two company, one company do not think about the objection that I will be anticipating or do nothing about explaining the process that I’m going through during my search for the solution. The other one, when I go to their website, they talk about the potential objection that I will run into and the things that I need to consider when I’m making the decision. I will go for the second one because it saves me time and money.

I don’t want to go and find a different website and reconsider evaluating your product. I want to go to a stop where you’re so transparent and authentic like, “This is what you’re going to need to consider. These are the pros and cons and this is what you need. If you’re expanding, this is the preconscious you need and answer the objection beforehand.” I was like, “I don’t have to find leaders when you know how to do this.” Consumers spend so much time doing research when you have one stop for all the answers, you think that person is a pro? You say, “Thank goodness, I don’t have to spend another five hours on researching.”

I agree because also what’s happening is people are used to one-click or three-clicks and they’re off your website. If they don’t find something in one click, they’re gone. If you start to how great we are, how not interested? What you just said is phenomenal about the tribe, about the, “Be realistic. This is who we are, this is the pros and cons. If we’re a fit for you, great, if not, fine.”

TMS 45 | Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing: By sharing your day, you can potentially help somebody. There are so many people wanting to hear from you and how you survive your day.

 

That is exactly what having your tribe is about. You educate them and grow with them. Some people are like, “I don’t have too much track record.” That’s great because you journal how you start your journey. Some people will grow with you. Some people will be there with you when you hit a certain milestone but your track record is always there. The person with a track is better than someone with a magic wand. It’s not believable and it sounds like a hoax. It can trackback like, “Yes, there’s a humble upon failure when you start.” It doesn’t matter as long as you’re sharing a journey authentically. Every time you’re providing value how to move a step forward along with them together, they feel the togetherness. They may just as well go with you because they can relate to you. They are having the same struggle with you and you take out everything together as a mastermind.

We’ve talked about brick-and-mortar stores used to when it came to the mastermind concept, a group of individuals working together, and they’re like, “What do we need that for?” Think of all your employees, understand what your vision and your mission are. You got together once a week and went through how to make everything better. They’re more enrolled and want to do so much more for you from the person who enters the door and even with a website. I’m walking in your door. I want complete honesty. I might not be the right fit. I want to know you’re also willing to recommend if we’re not the fit for you. Maybe they are.

It’s important to involve everyone in your organization on the same page on the vision of your corporate culture and your goal. The frontline worker is really important. They are the one who knows that nothing will work, what is the bottom line, what has screw up, what does the customer needs. To get all the input from everybody, especially the front-end person to involve in the decision-making and respect their opinion and you bring a good point.

By the way, where in the world do you come from?

I come from Ontario, Canada.

The great thing about this message is it is worldwide. Digital media is out there everywhere, as we know. If there are three things that I could do right now to at least get started, get going, let alone hire you, what are three simple things to start me down that path that I could do? Is there anything you could recommend?

The first thing is push content consistently. It can be once a month, once a week but it has to be consistent. It doesn’t have to be all over the places, just the platform where you feel most comfortable with and where your audience is. Secondly, never stop pitching your vision because by pitching your vision, you grow more confident. You also get a JV partner, collaboration, speaking of opportunity, business partner, and client. Sometimes, it’s not about your product but your vision. That’s where the story comes in. Without the story, nobody cares because they don’t resonate with who you are. That makes us special. The last thing is you should be able to describe your business in 2 to 3 sentences. If you cannot do that, in the event of networking, who is going to listen to you? You missed the boat kind of thing. You got 90 seconds.

If they want to reach out to you or connect with you, what’s the best way?

I can give you my Calendly link where they can book a free 30-minute session with me to talk about anything they want about digital marketing. I can be able to help them to assess where they are. I also have a website, VivianSo.com. When you go there, you will be able to download one of my books which talks about my life story. Hopefully, it will be an inspiration to you to start a digital marketing business.

Thank you so much for being on. If you’re a mentor in the Mentor Studio, you’re on the calls, you’re there to be of service, or you’re a newer member, it’s great to have mentors who are looking at that long-term mission which is to serve the underserved. To serve those who could not afford it. Sometimes it’s not always about the money, it’s they don’t have the mindset that I need this. We’re making a difference in the world that way, looking forward to our world tour, looking forward to everything we do. For those of you out there who want to connect with us, it’s very simple. In the US, text TMS to 26786. For the rest of the world, you could go to TheMentorStudio.com. Vivian, it’s been great to have you on and be part of this group. I look forward to the work we’ll be doing for years to come. Any last things you’d like to say to the group before we let them go?

The last thing I want to say is don’t belittle your own story. Your story matter. It doesn’t matter if you feel like you have a boring life. The little thing you share with somebody can potentially help somebody the entire day because of the struggle you go through, you are not alone. There are so many people wanting to hear from you on how you survived your day.

Thank you so much, Vivian. Thank you, Mentor Studio audience. This is Michael Silvers, and have another glorious day, whether it’s your morning, afternoon, or evening, take the information and use it. Don’t wait. Don’t think. I’ll do it in the next couple of weeks. Take that information and take the notes. They were amazing tidbits now and get going out there and be of service and help somebody else now that you normally wouldn’t have. Thank you for the mentor studio and Vivian, have an amazing day.

 

Important Links

 

About Vivian So

★ What Makes Me Different ★

I came from a negative upbringing which felt like I was living in Hamlet for 6 years…stuck in a cashier job with a college degree. After I changed my mindset to take action, instead of inaction. I realized that I could do the same for other people so they could make more money and feel better about themselves.

When a company connects products or services to a personal and business why, it will stand out from the crowd, creating a unique selling proposition and a strong branding strategy.

★ Specialties Include ★

How to Tell My Brand Story, How to Make My Business More Visible, How to Market My Coaching Services, How to Sell by Telling My Story, How to Sell Through Public Speaking, How to Create a Business Around My Story, How to Tell My Story and Make Money, How to Brand My Business With My Story, How to Discover My Why to Position My Business for Success, How to Use Virtual Stages to Make Money, LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation

 
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