A Playful Angle on Self-Promotion Strategies
What if you played smart to find an edge?
Defining the Problem
This workshop is designed to help you overcome problems to elevate your marketing game. First, while you may know the benefits of marketing you may be unclear about how to develop a strategy and apply it to yourself. Second, you may feel uncomfortable, anxious, and uncertain about self-promotion and it’s limiting your business potential. These problems can be solved.
Applying a Solution
Marketing is about investing in your future. In the Marketing Edge Workshop, you can learn by doing how to better promote yourself as an independent creative, freelancer, or solopreneur.
Like so many things in life, marketing gets better results when you practice it. But what type of practice? The answer may surprise and delight you: the 5th principle in a marketing practice for creatives is to play.
When you strategically involve playing in your marketing practice, you can get serious about experimenting and finding out what works. You can intentionally build a body of promotional work that is out of the ordinary. That counts because it can help you gain an edge and get noticed.
In time the investment can pay off when your brand reputation rises and attracts opportunities. Additionally, the more you play with your marketing practice and learn from it, the more confidence you gain in your moves.
Playing is a creative act and you already possess an unfair advantage: the ability to express and show off your creativity. So why not design the goals and rules for your own marketing game? Why not start a practice and process to play more and set yourself up for more wins?
I created this workshop to change the way you think about practicing marketing and promoting yourself.
What it’s about:
This is a hands-on workshop. It’s a better way to learn the strategies and lessons in marketing by making and launching a self-promotion project. Here’s what’s involved:
- Learning lessons for solopreneur self-promotion strategies
- Creating a game plan to build and launch a self-promotion project in 10 weeks
- Setting up a play-driven, marketing practice
- Developing a POV and strengthening your creative voice
- Overcoming fears and gaining confidence for promoting yourself
Lesson List
- The advantages of discovering a marketing edge
- Playing to strengths and creating value
- Reframing attitudes towards marketing
- Strategies and opportunities for self-promotion
- Playing with a strategic purpose: skills, passions, causes, and connections
- Gamify a self-promotion project: goals, strategies, rules, and process
- Persisting at playing the long game
Join me to find your marketing edge and play smart.
Workshop Dates:
Meets online weekly on Tuesdays at 11 AM Central beginning April 27, 2021 – June 29, 2021.
Each live session is recorded for playback.
This Workshop Includes:
Online Workshop Sessions
Weekly lessons and playwork assignments to build your creative marketing practice.
Learning Strategic Frameworks
Explore strategic frameworks for self-promotion and practice applying mental models to play and overcome anxiety.
Supportive Learning Cohort
Learning in a group provides a richer array of perspectives and insights. Participants can connect in a Slack channel, too.
Workshop Instructor & Facilitator
Melissa Kalinowski is the founder of Think Upswing, a brand and marketing consultancy. She helps solopreneurs find a marketing edge. She delivers strategic guidance and insightful questions to help owners grow their creative businesses. Melissa is fascinated with exploring ideas and interpreting phenomena related to insights, innovation, and creative expression. She enjoys asking the “what if” questions that spark imaginative thinking, finding concepts and connections to solve problems, and helping clients consider new ways to realize their potential. She has over 20 years of experience successfully launching brands, products, and services in B2B and B2C markets including education, technology, and publishing.
What does it cost?
The Marketing Edge Workshop (Early Bird Offer)- Save $349 when you register before 4/15/2021. Pay for this workshop in two easy payments of $825 each. The first payment is due at the time of registration and the second is automatically billed via PayPay. That’s it!
- Once this early bird offer expires, the Marketing Edge Workshop program fee increases to $1,999. Reserve your seat today!
The Spring Workshop Has Closed
Develop a Marketing Edge
Commit to a fun, marketing practice to draw out and play up your creative voice. It won’t feel false, creepy, or wrong to engage in self-promotion. This workshop will help you step up to genuinely market yourself with confidence. So don’t sit back and wait to be discovered. Join up to start or restart your marketing. It’s the right time to share your creativity and demonstrate your expertise.
Benefits
Clarity
Create a self-promotional strategy that is purposeful and focused.
Skills
Learning the art of self-promotion is priceless. Once you know it, you can apply it again and again.
Affordable
If you’ve looked into 1:1 coaching programs (typically three times as expensive), but they fall outside your budget — then you’re in luck. This workshop offers an affordable option to invest in your personal growth via a group learning experience. You’ll make significant headway learning among solopreneurs who share similar aims.
Accountability
Use the structure and tools in this workshop to reduce the noise from your inner critic. Challenge yourself to play hard to build a new body of self-promotional work.
Courage
When you play, you dare to fail in order to learn and win an advantage for the next turn. Gain courage to test out and improve a winning self-promotion strategy. Learn how to trade indecision for courage instead.
Guidance
I’ll be checking on your progress in the workshop and provide feedback and tips on the Slack channel.
FAQ
Who's it for?
It’s for creative solopreneurs, freelance creatives, artists, and creative business owners, including designers, illustrators, animators, motion designers, authors, writers, copywriters, content writers, photographers, artists, marketers, web designers, etc.
Why 10 weeks?
By design this workshop has stakes. The stakes are the workshop duration, the deadlines, and the accountability to yourself and your peers. Stakes like this challenge you to bring your best self to play, create, strategize and grow.
Will I be judged?
The Marketing Edge Workshop is a safe, creative space to show up as yourself. The workshop culture is about helping people rise up instead of tearing work down. Our focus is not to criticize or critique. It’s about learning and growing together.
What happens after I enroll?
I will send you a welcome e-mail about the workshop. It will contain tips on how to make the most of your workshop experience. Relax! You don’t have to prepare anything before the first online session. You need only show up with enthusiasm and a hungry mind.
Gain Courage to Fly Your Flag
Send a bold signal about your expertise
When you challenge yourself to grow by inventing exceptional projects, you gain a greater chance of standing out and being discovered. You may be perceived as a higher-flying professional with a vision and a point of view. Businesses need solopreneurs who are extraordinarily talented and have the know-how to communicate, connect and create value.
Are you ready to play, create and raise your voice?
Connecting Play, Passion, and Self-Promotion
The benefits of playing and pursuing a passion project are two-fold: you can gain an outlet for creative expression and enhance your personal brand, too. Read up on helpful guidelines and learn about creative practitioners and their projects.