32 Rich and Real Branding with Gelaine Santiago

Scale With Heart

I used to have such a difficult time weaving in the selling portion into my social media content. Even though I felt authentic in my voice when I posted normally, any time I would try to sell my coaching services, I would feel so sleazy. I imagine you’ve also felt the same way before! Today I talk with Gelaine Santiago about overcoming that discomfort and narrowing down our audience when pitching our services. Gelaine shares her own entrepreneurship journey and how she transitioned from a broad, global fashion brand into a much more focused, and ultimately more successful, business uplifting Filipino artisans. Together, we talk about how to balance storytelling and selling in our bigger content strategies, and how to leverage our “why” by becoming crystal-clear on who we’re speaking to in our marketing.

Gelaine Santiago is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, writer, and content marketing coach for BIPOC founders. As a marketing coach, Gelaine helps BIPOC founders show up unapologetically and sell authentically through content. She is also the co-founder and CEO of Cambio & Co. and Sinta & Co., two Filipino fashion brands that create sustainable livelihood for artisans in the Philippines and empower the diaspora to celebrate their heritage. Her work has been featured in major publications like Forbes, Cosmopolitan Magazine, and Huffington Post.

Here are some things I’ve learned:

• How to leverage your story as a means to connect to your community while selling at the same time (“story-selling”)
• How to get detailed about who you’re serving – what is their problem in one sentence?
• The more we understand ourselves, the more we can understand our ideal customers and feel aligned in that relationship.
• How we can empower ourselves and other minorities so they don’t feel pressured to whitewash their message in order to be more “mainstream”
• If you’re trying to speak to everybody, you’re really speaking to nobody.

Resources from this episode:

Follow Gelaine on Instagram: @gelainesantiago, https://www.instagram.com/gelainesantiago/

Get The Template: Find Your Fierce Customer Persona This isn't another generic customer avatar exercise. This is the same customer persona template Gelaine has used to grow dozens of purpose-driven brands, including her own 6-figure businesses: https://fiercefans.gelainesantiago.com/customer-persona-template

Visit Gelaine’s website: https://www.gelainesantiago.com/

Additional resources:

Are you interested in crafting a fulfilling, growth-oriented experience for your clients that scales? Take my free mini-course Build Your Foundational Framework

Interested in working with me? Check out my Service Page

Follow me on Instagram

Meet my podcast editor Angelina at The Intentional Edit :)

My intro music was produced by Moshun