The Mindful Marketing Podcast (Formerly Known As The Savvy Social Podcast)

Why Relationship-Based Marketing Works with Jessica Abel

·49 min·4 clips

Andréa Jones reveals her favorite way to get clients isn't from social media or email—it's from friends.

The episode begins with host Andréa Jones introducing the topic of relationship-based marketing and guest Jessica Abel. Abel details her background as a cartoonist and author, describing the burnout she experienced trying to make a living from book advances and royalties. She explains how she transitioned into business coaching for creatives after learning about business models from Tara McMullen. Abel breaks down the economic challenges for authors, noting that most books never earn out their advances and require massive audiences to be profitable. She argues that creatives often need to separate their passion projects from their income-generating work. The discussion turns to offer creation, with Abel emphasizing the importance of premium pricing and service-based models over low-margin products. Jones and Abel explore the concept of relationship marketing, which Abel credits to Michelle Warner, defining it as a spectrum from transactional traffic to deep referrals. Abel provides examples of how different clients, like a poetry coach or web designer, find collaboration partners in non-competitive spaces. She advises introverts to build relationships asynchronously through thoughtful engagement rather than constant content creation. The episode concludes with Abel sharing details about her free monthly coaching call and a planned training on capacity-based pricing.

As heard by us

A grounded look at how relationships, pricing, and business design shape the same marketing decision.

Relationship-based marketing gets a clear, practical airing as the host explains why friends have become her strongest source of clients. With Jessica Abel, the conversation treats relationship-building as part of business design, then pushes into the less comfortable math of…

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Why you'd press play

You want clients who come through real relationships, and you are ready to rebuild the business underneath your marketing so it can actually support the revenue and time you need.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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