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Announcer: Live from the studios of KVTA Ventura County’s inspiration station, this is the Kim Pagano show. Join Kim and her friends every Saturday as they interview interesting and inspirational guests, everyone from authors and entertainers to doctors and experts from A to Z Kim’s got you covered. And now here’s Ventura County’s mom, and so much more. It’s Kim Pagano. 

Kim: Good morning and welcome to the Kim Pagano Show, the brighter side of life. And of course, I’m so glad that you are waking up with us starting your day in a positive way. I want to remind you that you can stream us here on KVTA.com. Or you can download our podcast which we hope that you do and take us with you every day. And again, we’re here every Saturday from seven to eight, starting your day in a positive way. And of course, we’re talking about the brighter side of life and as all the graduations are going on and everyone’s starting to get out of school, I know that we have a hot weekend. I want to just make sure that you are taking good care of yourself. And again, I’m so grateful for you to be here. And for us to be here as long as we have. We’ve been here for years. And we love what we’re doing. So again, I’d love for you to follow us all the way through our social. And I do want to say if you have something that you want to share here on my show, please reach out to us. Our phone number is 805-419-0008. And you can email me at Kim@kpshow.org. With that, I definitely want to say, if you miss any part of our show, you can hear us on our podcast and that is the Kim Pagano Show. 

I always like to start our show with something uplifting. And the most important miracles are always about what happened, more about what didn’t happen. So think on that for a moment. We have a great show for you today. And we’ve also got tickets that we’re giving away for the Conejo Food and Wine. And we are so excited to be a part of that. It’s a great event here in Thousand Oaks. And Kurt Souter is going to be talking with us and sharing a little bit more about that event. So again, definitely stay with us all the way through our show. 

I am excited to introduce my first guest Lori Berson. Lori has been a creative marketing strategist for over 25 years. And she has developed breakthrough revenue-generating strategies for integrating branding, advertising, interactive media, email, social media, print, outdoor and more; and she has put together this amazing book that we’re going to be talking about. 

Also joining me is Evon Rosen. She is a marketing strategist, content ideation, and developer for over 25 years. And Evon has been producing strategic, creative, and successful marketing initiatives to develop and enhance brands and grow market share. And so we’re going to talk a little bit about them with their new book “Ready-Made Marketing” for business owners, business professionals, and independent contractors. And this book is for your personal marketing department with marketing tactics with instructions, 70 customizable templates, and 400 technology resources. Let’s welcome Lori and Evon. Welcome, ladies. And thank you so much for being here. 

Lori: Thank you, Kim. It’s so great to be here. We’re excited to share some of the things from our book. And again, it’s great to be with you this morning. 

Kim: So let’s just start off with Lori, talk to us a little bit about yourself. I know I mentioned a few things. But how did you come about putting this book together? Is this what your clients are looking for, asking for, or what was your thought on that?

Lori: Well, actually, I’m going to have Evon take the first part of that question, and then I’ll come back to that.

Evon: The original idea for “Ready-Made Marketing” came out of COVID because, during the worst of the pandemic, firms were forced into new ways of doing business. Everybody started working remotely and in-person meetings were no longer an option. And it was really unfamiliar territory for most people. And a primary concern everybody had was financial. Cost-cutting lead to layoffs and people quitting. And that left many professionals and their firms with no internal marketing support and no budget to hire anybody outside. And Lori and I just wanted to make sure that more marketing wasn’t out of the reach for the many businesses and professionals who needed it. We’d seen so many people struggling with how to re-energize their businesses and jumpstart sales that we wanted to make marketing accessible. 

Kim: I love that. Evon thank you so much. I have your book in front of me. I’m gonna dig in a little bit deeper. But Lori, what are your thoughts? 

Lori: I just wanted to say we’ve also seen many business owners who are great at what they do but they really don’t know how to market their products or services. And marketing isn’t something they’re familiar with doing themselves, they typically don’t have the time to learn it as well. So the thing is, they know they need it but that’s as far as it goes. And Evon and I wanted to develop this resource for them, too. So the people that maybe weren’t affected by COVID but know they need marketing and, you know, don’t have the time or budget. 

Kim: Right, exactly. And who is this targeted for? And who would be your audience for this book?

Lori: The target market is business professionals and their firms. For example, attorneys, CPAs, real estate professionals, and other small businesses like manufacturers, printers, and distributors, in addition to independent contractors, like hairdressers, fitness trainers, maybe some music or art teachers, and people with limited or no marketing expertise. And those with no marketing staff, or as Evon mentioned earlier, those with limited or no marketing budget, which we found to be a majority of the small businesses out there. Also, we found that people who have some marketing experience have been drawn to the book because of the distillation of the 400 technology resources that you mentioned. Working with other marketing professionals, I found that they may know a couple of the really well-known tech resources. But many times those can be super expensive and out of reach. One of our primary focuses was to make people aware of all the free and very low-cost tech resources available, many of them being like $5 a month and at most $15 a month. And this gives them some of the automation capabilities to help them save time and scale their business. Basically, Ready-Made Marketing is perfect for anyone looking to start or enhance their marketing, whether they have no experience or they do have some but need these additional resources. 

Kim: So I want to just open up your book again. And, again, for anybody that’s just waking up with starting your day in a positive way here on the Kim Pagano show, we’re talking with Lori Berson and Evon Rosen and of course their book “Ready-Made Marketing.” So you actually have emails that people can kind of copy and do cold calls? And cold emails, I guess you would call them that the correct? 

Lori: Yes.

Kim: We have some samples in here of exactly what to write and then you even go into warm emails, and then follow-up emails. So what a perfect thing to just start off right there or re-engagement emails? Are these all things that you both use every day for your business?

Lori: Absolutely, as well as these are the types of programs we provide to clients. So yes. Basically, any business or independent contractor can take these custom templates and customize them to what they need. But it’s got everything there for them as well as instructions and how-tos.

Kim: So are these funnels popular right now? And so you know, you have a goodbye for now. So are you even getting my emails, right? I haven’t heard back from you. Because we don’t want to sound like we’re stalking people, right. So this is a nice way to say goodbye for right now. Correct?

Lori: Right. There are a bunch of different use cases. And they can be set up with an automatic cadence. And that’s where some of the tech resources come in as well. So you can actually plug and play these templates into an automation program. You know the non-stalker-ish sort of stuff that you mentioned

Kim: Do you mention here what programs people should use? Is that where you’re coming in with like, don’t waste a lot of money on this if you don’t need to? 

Lori: Yes, the beginning of the book has all of the templates and the how-to’s as well as tips on how to get the most out of LinkedIn and how to do podcasts and webinars. The back of the book has all the technology resources, and they’re categorized. So you’ll see a category for marketing automation platforms, which I just referred to, you’ll also see a category for customer relationship management. And then we’ve highlighted the recommended platforms, and we give you the pricing as well. So that’s all in the technology section. 

Kim: Wow, that’s really incredible. So even landing pages, where to build them and what to use, correct? 

Lori: Correct. Yes, everything you could possibly want is there.

Kim: You even have meal delivery here. We have to eat while we’re working right?

Lori: Definitely meals are super important. But we also use meal delivery as a promotional tool in marketing campaigns. 

Kim: So you would send somebody a meal kind of thing?

Lori: Exactly. If a company wants to do a Lunch and Learn program, you could set that up through GrubHub and some of the other meal delivery programs to facilitate that, especially these days with virtual stuff. So it’s perfect for that. 

Kim: Right. You also have in here a text messaging. And so is that something that people like? Or do they get annoyed when they get so many texts?

Lori: The texting could be part of a program. Then you have to get opt-ins from your audience or contacts. So within the proper realm, it’s one of the most highly effective messaging things these days. It gets a higher response rate than email. But again, it depends, you’ve got to get your people to opt-in. 

Kim: Right, exactly. And what about video messaging? This is kind of intriguing to me. Something that I just started kind of doing. And I think it’s kind of cool.

Lori: Oh, it’s not only super cool, as you say, but it’s super effective. Because there are people using it more and more these days, but not a lot of people. So you really stand out from your competitors. And the best part is we’ve got in the resource sections, free software available for video messaging, as well as you can do it through LinkedIn when you have a LinkedIn account, but it’s just amazing. And we’ve got tips and tricks and how-to’s in the first section of the book on the best way to do this and what to say with templates and things, and I’ll let Evon speak to some of the templates and stuff as well. 

Kim: Perfect. Okay. 

Evon: You mentioned Kim that there were templates for all kinds of situations, cold emails, warm emails, we did that because we wanted to make sure in every part of somebody’s sales process, they had the words to use to be able to interact with their clients or their prospects. 

Kim: I think that’s so important. And thank you for that, because that really helps out a lot. You know some people tell you, but they don’t give you the words. So are these the words and you just kind of change them to whatever your business is? 

Evon: Exactly, the template is there and we have different choices of words that you can use, but you just customize it to be your own.

Lori: I always say one of the most daunting things is to open up a blank page and craft your own message. This definitely takes that hesitancy and fear away, it makes it super easy. 

Kim: Yeah, you even talk about e-signatures. How important are those?

Evon: E-signatures are used in a lot of situations, mostly they’re used to sign forms or sign contracts. They’re becoming more and more usable in marketing as well when you want. Now that everybody’s working remotely, when you want to send over something that a client needs to sign or a prospect needs to sign an E signature takes care of that really easily. And this book gives you the software. It tells you about the software that you can use to get those signatures done.

Kim: Right, do you have to pay for e-signatures? I’ve never really thought about that. Is that something that you have to pay for? I guess DocuSign would be one of them that I would be familiar with. But I guess it’s basically if you’re sending over contracts, correct, right?

Evon: Anything you need somebody to sign a proposal or a contract. And no, there shouldn’t be a charge for that signature. 

Kim: And now let’s talk about social media for a second here. Talk to us a little bit about social media marketing.

Evon: This book talks about social media in the realm of LinkedIn, and many of the more usable, user-friendly LinkedIn tactics that are used in marketing that you can start seeing results right away. We didn’t want this book to be a social media marketing book. So we just use the book to talk about LinkedIn and some specific tactics. Five of them actually. We talk about articles, we talk about doing posts. We help people with video messaging through LinkedIn. So it’s taking some tactics that people can do through the LinkedIn platform. But that’s the only social media platform we deal with. 

Kim: Okay, so you don’t do Facebook or any of that stuff? 

Evon: No, basically, because this book wasn’t intended to be a social media book. And LinkedIn is really the platform for business right now. Facebook is more for personal use. LinkedIn is more for business use. 

Kim: Okay, good to know. And so if you are both into marketing and really helping businesses get out there, where is the best place? I guess you kind of just answered it, LinkedIn is the best place for people to be seen, and to get their message out there correct?

Evon: For business. That’s not to say that’s the only platform to use you. Certainly, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, all of them have a place. And they all should be used. But the primary one for business is LinkedIn. 

Kim: Okay. So let me ask you, this is what you both do. And why are you giving away all this wonderful marketing expertise? Talk to us ladies? Well, I know you asked yourself this right after we did.

Evon: Well, the last few years have been really hard on many businesses and professionals, and Lori and I just wanted to give back to the business community that’s basically created our livelihood over the years. And we wanted to provide a resource like no other. Other marketing books are mostly planning oriented, strategy-oriented. They talk specifically to social media, or branding or sales funnels, we wanted a DIY book, something that could be handy, easy to use, with everything laid out there for the taking. So people could start or refresh their marketing and quickly see results, we just wanted to give back. 

Kim: Beautiful. In fact, you guys are so kind, we have a few to give away. And so I’d love to open up our lines to this at 805-419-0008. All you have to do is leave us your name, your number, and your email, and one of our team members will get back to you. And Lori and Evon thank you so much for joining us. I have to have you back because I know we didn’t dive into everything. And I know there are so many things that we can talk about. How do they find you? And how do they find your book?

Lori: They can find the book on Amazon. And gosh, it’s kind of a long link but basically, just go to Amazon and in the search box type in “Ready-Made Marketing” and it’ll come right up and there’s a little preview in there as well. And they can find us on BersonDeanStevens.com. 

Kim: So great. Thank you, ladies. Please download our podcast and share that with everyone. And I look forward to having you back again. Thank you again. 

Lori and Evon: Thank you, Kim. It was great.

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