Why Being Visible Isn’t Enough

Andréa Jones [00:00:03]:
Oh, I've got a hot take today. You don't actually want to be visible, you want to be discoverable, and there's a difference. And we're going to talk about that in today's episode of the Mindful Marketing Podcast because it really changes how you market and what you focus on in your marketing. But before we get into that, a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all-in-one podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the audio and the video. It is like chef's kiss magical, making the entire process so, so easy. Plus, I love their Magic AI clips.

Andréa Jones [00:00:41]:
Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it myself, resizes them for social media. So those vertical videos you see on TikTok and Reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click, it spits out 10 clips. I pick the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today. The link's in the show notes. And make sure to use my code DREA— D-R-E-A— at checkout to get 15% off your membership.

Andréa Jones [00:01:15]:
All right, y'all, I'm in my new podcasting space. I'm still figuring this shit out. Can I say that on the podcast, Jimmy? Are we bleeping curse words now? I don't know, y'all. I'm moving. You can clearly see the boxes that I tried to hide behind me, but we're gonna keep it rolling because you know what? Marketing waits for no Buddy, um, I'm in a mood, y'all. Can you tell? That's okay. I am excited about this episode because this episode actually came from a summit I was in last week. So I was doing AI sessions by the amazing Marisa Corcoran.

Andréa Jones [00:01:47]:
Um, we were talking about AI and how I use it in my emails, and I was talking about how I come up with ideas, which honestly all come from real life. Okay, they come from real life. And this podcast episode is because of that conversation. And so I wanted to show you how what I talk about in my marketing is echoed in my podcast and what's in my podcast is echoed in my business and it kind of all flows together. So bear with me for this story. So 2 years ago, Marisa Corcoran came on the podcast to talk about her story shutdown. Actually, Marisa, you're gonna kill me for this. I don't remember what it's called.

Andréa Jones [00:02:21]:
Story strip down. That's what it is. The story strip down framework that she uses in her Copy Confident Society, which is fantastic by the way. So she came on the podcast, totally changed how I write my emails because of that conversation. So because of that conversation, I changed how I write my emails. And at the time I was actually using a copywriter to write for me. And then since then I've used AI. I've replaced the copywriter with AI and myself.

Andréa Jones [00:02:45]:
Now I will say I teach this entire framework inside the Mindful Marketing Lab. If you're in the lab, you have access to Big Inbox Energy. Even if you purchase it separately, you get this framework. Okay. That point aside, I got part of that framework, like the inspiration from it, from that conversation with Marisa. So fast forward to now, 2 years later, not only have— do I have a product around it and how I like customized it for myself based on that framework. I created an entire process that helps me sell with my emails. Okay, so now I'm on Marisa's summit talking about how I do this in my marketing and someone raises their hand and they go, Andrea, okay, this is great, but where do you come up with your marketing ideas? Like how do you come up with the stories? And so on the spot I was like, I put this in my Google Keep every time I have a little story, something my kids— have done, something I see out in the wild, I put it in the Google Keep or I take a picture or something to remind me of that.

Andréa Jones [00:03:38]:
And then that gets turned into content. And so on the call, this is like a live Q&A, I pull up my Google Keep and I type in the word email because I usually put like a little keyword like email or podcast or social media or something so that I can find it. And the thing that came up is you don't want to be visible, you want to be discoverable. And I said, oh, This is something I wrote back in December 2024, because in Google Keep you can see when you wrote it, and I still haven't done anything with it. So that's where this podcast episode came from. So meta, right? Anyways, so let's talk about the difference between visibility and discoverability, because being visible usually means like you're being perceived consistently. People see you consistently, right? They see you everywhere. You— they see you everywhere, and it's great.

Andréa Jones [00:04:27]:
But what I want you to be is be discoverable, which means when someone goes to look for a solution to the problem, you pop up as a solution to that problem. Okay, so there's a little bit of a difference, and it's something that I've tweaked in the way that I approach my marketing. And you'll notice this in the podcast, in how I— where I spend my time even in my marketing, because I want to be discoverable. I don't necessarily need to be visible. Okay, so visibility requires a constant output. This is kind of what people think about when they think about visibility, and this is how I used to teach social media. We want to be constantly out there, we want to be, um, consistently creating content. And while that's still key, I want to talk about the difference between discoverability, which is your ideas live longer than a 24-hour post, okay? So being visible is like putting things out consistently so people see you consistently.

Andréa Jones [00:05:19]:
Discoverability is you put something out and then people can find it farther in the future than 24 hours. Okay. Visibility requires volume and attention. It requires being loud. It requires look at me energy. And I wanna be there when people need me. That's discoverability. When people search for me, they go, oh man, I really wanna figure out how to make my marketing work when I have two small kids.

Andréa Jones [00:05:45]:
Oh, hello, my name is Andrea Jones and I help you with simpler, smarter marketing for busy people. Right? So for me, I want people to find me when they're ready, when they need me, versus just being loud and hoping someone hears me. Okay, visibility to me has this always-on pressure where you feel like you're performing, right? You feel like— you feel like you have to be this persona and you have to be perfect and you have to be polished and you have to be like aspirational, whereas discoverability works for me when I'm tired. Discoverability worked when I was moving this past week. Discoverability worked when my life is lifing the most, right? Discoverability works when I'm— can't get my kids to go to sleep. Discoverability works when I forgot to take the meat out of the freezer, so now I gotta scramble and make something for dinner tonight. Okay, discoverability works through all of that, and it feels less pressure-y. And I also find that this need to be visible makes you constantly feel like you're behind.

Andréa Jones [00:06:45]:
Like you're constantly comparing yourself to other people's visibility, right? You're constantly comparing yourself to what you see other people doing, and so you constantly feel behind. Whereas discoverability makes me feel calm. I'm just— I know what the plan is and I'm working the plan. And even if I don't work the plan, I know I have my backup plan for when I can't work the plan. And I feel like I can actually do it. I can click my little Asana check mark, have that beautiful rainbow unicorn go, woohoo, you did it! Right? That's what visibility is to me. Visibility is an action. Discoverability is an asset.

Andréa Jones [00:07:20]:
Action versus asset. And so how I teach marketing now and why this matters now is that I'm helping you build assets that help you be more discoverable. Yes, this still includes social media. Okay? I mean, for 9 outta 10 businesses I consult with, yes, it includes social media. Yes, it includes a short-form content strategy that helps people get to know you, right? Right now I'm talking about your signature content versus your supporting content. Yes, that includes creating an asset like a podcast, a YouTube video, a live series that is discoverable, a Substack, a blog, something where people can find you. But then we also want to attract the right people to be able to find us. This doesn't mean you have to be visible, it just means you have to be where they're looking.

Andréa Jones [00:08:06]:
Okay? And this is where AI is a huge asset with this. So one of the things that I'm doing in Uncommon Marketing Agency, which is so fun, is that we're helping our clients be discoverable through AI, through AI search. So it's not just go to Google, type in, you know, what's the best pizza place near me? It's okay if someone is like, I want deep dish Chicago style pizza, but I live in— Canada, in Toronto, Canada, how do I get that same experience? And they're asking chatty— ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, right? They're asking AI for this, Gemini. And how do you show up in those places? How are you seen in those places? It's not about being louder, and in fact, a lot of times is being way more specific in your content and in the words that you use and being repeatable in that process. Okay, I think we get into this mindset as business owners that we have to always have a fresh new idea. It has to be funky, it has to be fresh. I'm gonna tell you right now, boring is what's discoverable. One of the best things that can happen to you as a business owner, as a founder, as a creator, as a personality-driven business, is when someone finds you because of h— how highly specific you are in repeating what you do, your frameworks, your ideologies, the way that you speak.

Andréa Jones [00:09:26]:
And the only way to do that is to be so boring about it that you're bored with your own message. Okay? This isn't about being noisier. It's about being consistent. And when I say consistent, this is what I mean. I don't mean creating large volumes of content. I just mean creating content that people can actually find you for. And being found is being clear. Okay? We're not being fancy with it.

Andréa Jones [00:09:49]:
And the internet's already loud. We don't need more content. We need more specific content. So for example, I for a long time call myself a mindful marketing strategist, and I still consider that my title. However, y'all are not searching for mindful marketing. No ma'am, you don't know that term. Okay, I know that term. That's what I define myself as, what I define my business as.

Andréa Jones [00:10:10]:
But in order for people to find me, they're searching for things like simple content plan. They're searching for things like email marketing without burnout. They're searching for things like I'm switching away from Meta to LinkedIn for 2026. What do I need to know? Okay, that's being specific and discoverable. I don't have to be loud. I just need to create my do less market better kit and suddenly you're finding me because I'm teaching you how to do less and market better. I rebranded my tagline to simpler, smarter marketing for busy people because that resonates more than mindful marketing strategist. If I keep saying mindful marketing strategist, y'all go, what the heck is she talking about? Like, oh, I'm intrigued.

Andréa Jones [00:10:52]:
People kept saying that, oh, I'm intrigued, tell me more. But I don't want to tell them more. I want to go simpler, smarter marketing for busy people. They go, yes, that's what I want. Okay, that's discoverability. It's a phrase or a group of phrases that isn't clever but is clear and helps people find you. And then you use your content to deliver those. So this podcast episode is a great example of that.

Andréa Jones [00:11:13]:
People are searching how to be more visible. Okay, so I'm gonna put in this podcast episode. I'm going to say how to be visible. I'm going to talk about visibility because that's what y'all are searching for. But what I'm going to tell you you need is not visibility but discoverability. Okay, so I'm going to talk about visibility. That's what you're searching for. Then you find me.

Andréa Jones [00:11:30]:
I'm going to say this is how we're going to be discoverable. Okay, this is how we're going to be discoverable. Now, if you want an AI prompt for this, if you're in ChatGPT, if you're in Claude or something, I want you to just go in there and always start with your business. And I teach this in the Mindful Marketing Lab We have a full AI prompt that we build that goes through how to train AI to know you and your business. We're not just typing in something generic here, okay? I want you to talk about what do you sell, who is it for, why does it matter? We're talking about the transformational phrases that you help people achieve. We're talking about your values, your company's values, what you stand for, what you stand against, your own personal story. We're giving all that to ChatGPT or whatever your favorite AI tool is. Then the AI prompt you wanna ask is, what are the 20 phrases that my ideal client would type into search Google, AI, YouTube, or whatever app they're in when they want to get a specific result that I help them achieve? Okay, this is where you can start expanding your brain.

Andréa Jones [00:12:32]:
You're not gonna take the first 20 that it gives you, but it's gonna give you a jumping off point. And then this is where you can layer in your story, your unique perspective, your repeatable framework. So when I'm talking on a podcast episode like this, I'm gonna have my little tagline that's like, okay, you don't need visibility, you need discoverability. And then in this podcast episode, I'm actually talking a lot about what I always talk about. Y'all, this is not new information. And people come to me all the time, they're like, I've been listening to podcasts for years and I love it. And I'm like, really? Because I say the same things over and over again. But the reason that it works is because you're at different stages of your business every time you listen to a podcast episode.

Andréa Jones [00:13:13]:
I had a client who came to me, she's been listening to podcasts for 3 years. She just started working with me. She's fantastic. Amazing. Something I said in a podcast last week on the one where I talk about taking breaks, she was like, that really resonated with me. And in my mind I'm going, I've been talking about this. You've said you listen to podcasts for 3 years. I've been talking about this for way longer than that.

Andréa Jones [00:13:31]:
Y'all, I'm coming up on my 400th episode. But the reason that this works, the reason that she listened for 3 years, then became a client. Is because I repeat myself so much that now my philosophies, my frameworks, my repeatable structure— she trusts that so much that now she's willing to work with me and then take her business to the next level. And even if she listens to that exact same podcast a year from now, she's gonna get something different from it. So the lesson here is repeat yourself and repeat yourself often, but embed it with the things that your ideal client is searching for. So if you want to then take what ChatGPT gave you, let's say it gave you 20 ideal phrases that your client searches for, then I want you to use your framework. Okay? So I've created a custom GPT and a custom folder inside my ChatGPT with my framework that I taught it how to use. And I could go to that and say, okay, what's an analogy that I can use for this? What's a repeatable structure? Or here's what happened in the Olympics.

Andréa Jones [00:14:29]:
How can I relate that to something that my ideal client is going through? ‘Or, um, what are some of the, the keywords that people are searching for in October 2026 that I can then apply to this?' Okay, um, ‘Turn this into a podcast outline,' or ‘Give me an idea for a LinkedIn video that I can create for this.' Okay, you can see how now you're taking the same thing that you always talk about and you're approaching it in different ways. You're almost like being your own thesaurus, right? We're, we're taking one word and adding concepts, adding layers, adding context that people can to listen or watch my podcast. I want them to be like, oh, that's Andrea energy, you know what I mean? Like, even when I meet people in real life, the best, the best compliment for me personally is you're exactly like you are on your podcast. Yes, thank you. Although I will say my nail lady recently said I am way more energetic on my podcast than I am when I'm there. And I, I didn't— I couldn't figure out how to tell her that, like, um, I'm at the nail salon, I am quiet, this is my meditative time, I don't talk, I'm not a— I'm not a talker like that. In those settings. Like, especially if I'm at the spa getting massage, don't talk to me.

Andréa Jones [00:15:40]:
We're not talking. This is quiet time. Same thing when I'm getting my nails done. Quiet time. Sorry, Tina. I, I am this bubbly, generally speaking, or like this energy. I don't know if I call it bubbly, but this energy, generally speaking, is what it is. But there are some moments where, you know, I tone it down a little bit.

Andréa Jones [00:15:56]:
Anyways, that's this whole sidebar. Take those discoverable terms and turn them into content. And what I want you to do from here is active listening. This is the piece where people miss with AI when they go, man, ChatGPT gave me a podcast script, okay? And then they turn it to a podcast saying, man, it didn't work and it turned into any clients. Hello, we're not taking exactly what AI says and just doing that, okay? We're using AI as a thought partner. We're using ChatGPT or Claude as a thought partner. So when I take this podcast episode, for instance, I did use ChatGPT to help me outline it, but I gave it context. I gave it clarity.

Andréa Jones [00:16:30]:
I told ChatGPT what I wanted to say in this podcast episode, and what it helped me do was organize it into a flow that made a little bit more sense than my stream of consciousness rambling. Okay, that's how we use it as a thought partner. I didn't tell ChatGPT, uh, randomly give me a podcast episode that's visibility versus discoverability. Hello, that would be so generic. Okay, it wouldn't even have any of my frameworks in it, and it would just be like whatever is on the first page of Google, right? I don't want that. Um, and then the last piece of this that really ties everything together into your marketing framework is asking yourself What's next? What's next? When you're creating this piece of content, when you're creating a discoverable asset, what is next for that person consuming that content piece? And in the Mindful Marketing Lab, we call this your next step. So we have our last step, which is easy. That's someone giving you money for something, right? Join the Mindful Marketing Lab.

Andréa Jones [00:17:22]:
You join, you become member, you get unlimited strategy support. That's my last step. Okay. But when I'm recording podcast episodes like this, or when I'm talking on social media, I'm not often talking about the last step. I'm talking about the next step. Okay? I'm leading them to water. This is the evergreen trail that leads back to what you do, and this is what makes this discoverability key. So for me, for instance, I have my Do Less Market Better kit.

Andréa Jones [00:17:48]:
If you're listening to this podcast episode and you wanna learn more about creating marketing strategies that work for you in your life, you probably want the Do Less Market Better kit. You can find it at onlinedre.com/kits. So that's something that I created once. And then all of my content leads back to that. Okay? This podcast episode leads back to that. Some of my social media posts lead back to that. I have it linked in all my profiles, uh, all of those things. It leads back to that.

Andréa Jones [00:18:12]:
And I have a couple of places that people can kind of enter into my ecosystem that way. But this way it feels like a relief. I don't feel like I'm guessing if content that people have discovered from me actually leads somewhere. I know it does. Okay, I know it leads into my— once they sign up for their kit, they're in my world, they're on my email list, they get all the updates about everything happening on my end, and away we go. Okay, this to me feels like a relief when I think about content being discoverable versus being visible all the time. I feel a relief from it, honestly. And this is why I love figuring out the content placements that get the most bang for your buck.

Andréa Jones [00:18:49]:
So this is why I just completed the LinkedIn Jumpstart Challenge. This is my 8th year doing it because LinkedIn is one of the few platforms that has the algorithm working for you in a way that's just so beautiful. You don't have to post every day. You can post once a week, you can post even twice a month and still get amazing results on LinkedIn because it's not about visibility and posting content every day. It's about discoverability and helping people actually find your LinkedIn profile, which means we work hard once we edit our— and optimize our LinkedIn profile, and then we kind of feed the algorithmic beast a little bit with some content and some context. Repeating ourselves with our frameworks and still using those, those discoverable keywords in our content pieces so that people find us. Okay, then we don't have to be these massive media machines that marketers are telling us we have to be right now. Not yet.

Andréa Jones [00:19:40]:
Okay, when you get there, then you can hire, um, agency to help you get there, right? Then we don't have to do it all ourselves. So I want you to stop treating your visibility like some sort of action or activity that you have to do, and I want you to start thinking about discover credibility as an asset. You're building a pathway for people to find you, get to know you, and trust you so that they can buy from you. Okay, this isn't something that you need to do every single week or every single day, but the more you do it, the faster you could build those pathways to people finding and discovering you. Okay, all right, with that being said, I had so much fun with this episode. If you want more like this is I want you to go to download— guess what? The Do Less Market Better kit. Because in that kit, I teach you the framework as like a sneak peek into my marketing framework, um, how to build a marketing system that works for you, for your life, your real life, okay? Whether you have kids like me, or you have aging parents, or you have a full-time job, or you're going back to school, or you have chronic illness, like whatever is happening in your life where you're like, life is lifing, and traditional marketing advice doesn't work for me, this kit is for you. Okay? Go get it.

Andréa Jones [00:20:58]:
It'll help you simplify your marketing and create a content strategy that fits with your life. And I'll see you in the next episode. Also, I'm gonna tease out right now, keep an eye out in my inbox and my socials for episode 400. I'm doing an ask me anything episode and you will have the opportunity to submit your questions for that episode. It's gonna be so fun. I can't believe I've done 400 of these things. Anyways, life is wild. I'll see you soon with another episode.

Andréa Jones [00:21:23]:
That's all for today. Bye for now.