“Should we all just quit Instagram and start a Substack?” suggested a vintage business owner to me last week as she was doing her post-purchase chat on how to find her next pop-up location. The unprompted question indicated she had been toiling over this move and was ready to start bouncing the idea off people.
I get it. Substack has been on my mind lately too. The publishing platform has a notable number of writers in the food and design industry. That’s attractive especially when you combine it with the referral program Substack created to help readers find and subscribe to newsletters on their platform.
I want to be where my peers and audience are so I’m creating Launch Table, this weekly Substack newsletter.
Who is Launch Table For?
This weekly newsletter’s goal is to help small businesses make more money through better marketing.
This is for you if you have a small marketing team. Maybe you do all marketing. You didn’t study marketing. You hate marketing mumbo jumbo talk. You know you need to be great at marketing so you can sell the thing you sell but don’t want to over-engineer it or pressure people to buy. Launch Table is for you.
Marketing, in Four Steps.
Great marketing boils down to these four steps:
Find your ideal customers.
Build relationships while showing how you can improve their lives.
Make it easy for them to buy from you.
Continue helping them after they bought from you so they want to buy again from you.
When you do that, suddenly it feels less like selling and more like helping, with financial rewards.
Your ideal audience will want to spend their money with you because they like you, trust you, and know what to expect from you and the thing you sell. The value your business provides will be clear to them.
What You’ll Learn by Reading Launch Table
In this newsletter, I’ll share ways to find your ideal customers, communicate with them effectively, and increase sales. Additionally, you can expect to learn:
Consumer psychology so you can understand buying behaviors
Great marketing being done by other businesses
Marketing ideas you can straight up steal from me, permission granted
Where to put your marketing time, money, and energy
Why me? Why you?
Small business marketing education is often ignored, perhaps because people want to go after the big companies with the big budgets.
You are often the biggest risk takers out there, doing the most interesting things. I want you to succeed, so I write for you.
I’ve been doing marketing, press, and advertising (but let’s just use the blanket term “marketing”) for culinary and home furnishing brands for 20+ years. I’ll share proven strategies and tactics so you can avoid mistakes and make more money.
What’s next for you.
I’ll send a weekly Launch Table newsletter. If you’re already on my email list, you’re getting it now. You don’t need to do anything.
If I’m a new face to you, I recommend subscribing. The best case scenario: you learn how to better promote your business and make more money. The worst case scenario: you don’t like how I write and unsubscribe.
Next week, I’ll share why my number one marketing advice for any business is to focus on your email list and why you may also benefit from joining Substack.
Until then.
Your marketing pal,
Melissa Lukach