Women Founders: Are You Marketing in the Right Places?
Are you marketing your business in the right places – or are you trying to be everywhere?
That was the big question we explored at our September COCO Women Founders Amersham Networking & Business Mastermind.
Like-minded women in business came together in Amersham for a morning of networking, sharing ideas, learning and taking some much-needed time away from the day-to-day running of their businesses.
And this month, we got very practical about marketing.
With Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, email, networking, PR and an ever-growing list of other options, it can feel as though we should be doing everything.
But trying to be everywhere can quickly become exhausting – and it doesn’t necessarily result in more customers.
Our message for the morning was simple:
You don’t need to be everywhere. You need to be where your customers are.
Practical Learning. Meaningful Relationships. Real Action
COCO’s Amersham business mastermind and networking events aren’t about walking into a room, handing out as many business cards as possible and delivering a sales pitch.
We want women to make meaningful business relationships, but we also want them to leave our events with something they can actually use.
That’s why our monthly Business Networking & Mastermind events combine conversations and relationship-building with practical learning and the opportunity to work on your business, rather than always being in it.
At September’s Amersham meet-up, Vicky White, owner of COCO Women Founders and digital marketing company White Communications, delivered an interactive 60-minute workshop, Are You Marketing in the Right Places?
Rather than sitting back and listening to another marketing presentation, everyone was encouraged to use their own business throughout the exercises – auditing what they were currently doing and making decisions about where to focus next.
The goal was for everyone to leave with three priority marketing channels, one meaningful result to measure and a first action to take.
Start with Your Customer – Not Your Marketing Channel
One of the biggest mistakes businesses can make is starting with the channel.
“Should I be on Instagram?”
“Do I need to post more on LinkedIn?”
“Should I be doing email marketing?”
Those aren’t necessarily the first questions we should be asking.
Instead, start with:
Who am I trying to reach and what do they do when they need what I sell?
During the workshop, everyone spent time thinking about their ideal customer, what that customer needs or wants and, importantly, the trigger that causes them to start looking for a solution.
Do they Google it? Ask someone they trust? Look on LinkedIn? Search Instagram? Read reviews? Attend a networking event? Ask an AI tool?
Understanding that behaviour can help you make much better marketing decisions.
How Do Your Customers Actually Find You?
We then looked at four broad ways customers might encounter a business:
SEARCH – Google, Maps, SEO, directories and AI search.
DISCOVER – Instagram, Facebook, PR, video and podcasts.
RELATIONSHIPS – networking, referrals, LinkedIn and partnerships.
NURTURE – email, social media, content and retargeting.
Not every business needs to give equal attention to all four.
A local service business might find Google and referrals are incredibly important. A visually-led consumer brand may find discovery through social media plays a much bigger role. A B2B consultancy could rely heavily on relationships, networking and LinkedIn.
The important part is understanding your customer’s behaviour rather than copying somebody else’s marketing strategy.
Where Did Your Last Five Customers Come From?
This was one of the most useful exercises from our Amersham mastermind event because it replaced assumptions with evidence.
We asked everyone to think about their last five customers or genuine enquiries and answer two questions:
How did they first find me?
What made them enquire or buy?
It’s such a simple exercise, but it can be revealing.
You might discover you’re spending hours creating content for a particular platform when most of your customers actually arrive through Google.
Or perhaps customers initially hear about you through networking and referrals, but then check your website and social media before deciding to contact you.
Which leads to another important point…
Marketing Channels Should Work Together
Marketing isn’t always as simple as:
Instagram post → customer.
A potential customer might meet you at a business networking event in Amersham, look you up on Google afterwards, visit your website, read a couple of reviews, follow you on LinkedIn and then receive an email before finally deciding to enquire.
That’s a customer journey.
In our workshop, we mapped that journey across five stages:
DISCOVER → RESEARCH → TRUST → BUY → RETURN
Everyone identified a marketing channel or touchpoint that could support their customer at each stage.
The lesson?
Your marketing channels shouldn’t compete for your time. They should work together.
Give Every Marketing Channel a Job
This was another simple exercise that can completely change how you think about marketing.
Complete this sentence:
I use __________ to __________.
For example:
Google → capture active demand
Networking → build trusted relationships
LinkedIn → reach decision-makers
You might use Instagram to demonstrate your expertise and personality. Email could help you stay visible to existing contacts. Networking might create trusted relationships and referral opportunities.
But if you can’t explain why you’re using a particular channel, it’s worth asking:
Why am I spending time on it?
Be Evidence-Led, Not Guilt-Led
This was probably one of my favourite messages from the morning!
There is so much pressure in marketing.
You should post more.
You should be on TikTok.
You should send more emails.
You should create video.
Instead, we asked everyone to score their current marketing channels against three things:
Is my audience there?
Does it produce results?
Can I sustain it?
A marketing channel that scores highly across all three probably deserves your attention.
One that takes hours every week, doesn’t reach the right people and isn’t producing meaningful results?
Perhaps it’s time to give yourself permission to do less of it.
Stop Measuring Marketing Success by Likes
Data doesn’t have to mean complicated dashboards and spreadsheets.
But you do need some evidence of what’s working.
We discussed looking at Google Analytics for traffic sources, Google Search Console for searches, social media insights for clicks and enquiries, email marketing for actions – and your actual enquiries.
One of the simplest questions you can start asking today is:
“How did you hear about us?”
Rather than chasing likes, follower numbers and reach for the sake of it, choose a result that matters to your business.
That might be enquiries, bookings, calls, website leads, email sign-ups or event visitors.
Stop. Start. Continue.
By the end of our Amersham workshop, it was time to turn all that thinking into decisions.
Everyone considered three questions:
STOP: What am I doing because I think I should?
START: What genuine opportunity have I identified?
CONTINUE: What’s already working and deserves more attention?
This is something any small business owner can do.
You don’t necessarily need a bigger marketing plan.
Sometimes you need a more focused one.
Create Your Own 90-Day Marketing Focus
The final challenge was to turn everything from the session into a practical 90-day marketing focus.
Rather than leaving with pages of notes that might never be looked at again, everyone identified their priority customer, three priority marketing channels, the job of each channel, what they were going to reduce or stop, one result to measure and their first action for the next seven days.
Our final message summed it up perfectly:
RIGHT AUDIENCE. RIGHT PLACE. RIGHT MESSAGE.
And that’s a pretty good place to start with any marketing strategy.
Why Women in Business in Amersham Need More Than Networking
Of course, the marketing workshop was only part of the morning.
What makes our COCO Amersham networking events valuable is the combination of learning and community.
It’s having a conversation with another woman who understands the realities of running a business.
It’s being able to ask a question without worrying that you should already know the answer.
It’s sharing what’s working, talking through what’s not, finding new opportunities and having other women hold you accountable for the action you said you were going to take.
Because running a business can be isolating – but you don’t have to build yours alone.
Here’s what one of our Amersham members had to say…
“The goal setting sessions have been so helpful, They really do help me to focus.” Carly O’Keefe
Looking to join a local women’s business group?
If you’re searching for a local women’s mastermind group in Amersham, we’d love you to come and experience COCO Women Founders.
Our Amersham community brings together founders, entrepreneurs and women in business who want more than a room full of sales pitches.
COCO is about building genuine relationships while also giving yourself dedicated time to work on yourself AND your business.
Whether you’re already running an established company or you’re at an earlier stage of your business journey, you’ll find a supportive community where you can share ideas, learn, collaborate and take practical action.
Come along to an upcoming COCO Amersham meet-up and discover what can happen when you put yourself in a room with like-minded women in business.
The Speaker & Author: Vicky White
Digital Marketing Expert
Vicky is a marketing specialist, results-driven strategist, Google Ads expert & SEO whizz. She is best known for her ability to develop and implement results-driven strategies and marketing campaigns that increase brand visibility and generate leads. With over 14 years’ experience running her marketing Agency White Communications, she works with rapidly growing businesses looking to outsource their marketing.
Vicky is also the owner of COCO Women Founders – a community of women who want business and personal growth in a safe space, masterminding with other like-minded women as feeling alone while running your business, just isn’t the vibe anymore!
