The thing about being a small business owner is that you HAVE TO become a Jack/Jill-of-all-trades. You don’t have the option. You have to become an expert in sales strategies, master of marketing and still manage to run the actual day to day of your business. It’s a lot to tackle and inevitably something will fall through the cracks.
Often, if you are a service-based business, you are so busy working for your clients that you forget to market your own business. And then as your projects complete and finish, you find yourself without the next ones coming in as quickly as you want them.
For product-based businesses or store-fronts, it’s a similar issue. They are dealing with ordering, manufacturing and staffing issues and then they look around and no one is buying or ordering the very products they have just spent so much time perfecting.
What a bummer.
We are so busy working IN our business that we forget to make time to work ON our business.
This is the catch-22 of small business ownership. It seems like an impossible loop to get out of but here are a few suggestions to help you keep those customers rolling in:
1. USE YOUR FREE RESOURCES
One setback many business owners encounter is that they think they can’t afford marketing. While some services are expensive, there are many that aren’t as pricey as they assume. And there are a TON of free resources they can use to market their business. Obviously, social media is a huge one.
For product based businesses, Instagram is ideal. You can showcase your beautiful product, or even film a short video on how to use it.
For service-based businesses, Facebook has easy linking abilities (although it’s becoming harder and harder for businesses to be seen organically) to click through to your website and e-commerce. A huge trend on Instagram is micro-blogging, which is small, value-packed captions on your posts. This allows your readers to get major value off of your account without having to click through to your website (let’s face it, the more steps you create to make them access the free value, the more the users drop off).
And let’s not forget email. You can create an email list for free or very cheap on MailChimp and it’s absolutely one of the highest converting (if not THE HIGHEST converting) mediums of talking to your audience base. They have all OPTED-IN to receiving your newsletter so they are already more loyal.
2. CREATE A SCHEDULE
This is something that SO MANY small-business owners DON’T DO and it might be the most useful! Create a calendar in your phone, iCal, Excel or Google Calendar so you know EXACTLY what you are posting every day. You can pre-arrange the topics so that you don’t have to decide what to talk about in the moment (let’s face it, this is often one of the hardest parts), or even write the posts ahead of time so all you have to do is copy and paste!
3. BATCH YOUR CONTENT
All of our content for the entire month is created in less than one day. LESS THAN ONE DAY! For the. entire. month. This includes photography, post descriptions, blogs, and email newsletters.
If you can focus on your content all at the same time, it not only crosses a major to do item off your list, but it also becomes more branded, uses a more consistent style and tone of voice, and showcases stability to your audience base.
It may seem like a lot to take a whole day to plan your content but even if you can split it up into a couple of days, or few 2 hour work periods, it will make the biggest difference when it comes time to posting. Trust us on this one. You will thank yourself everyday you don’t have to think about what to post.
4. LINK YOUR CONTENT
The EASIEST hack for your business. If someone is clicking on something you are posting (blog, email, website) make it easy for them to find your other content. Link blogs, products, affiliate links, specific social media posts, Pinterest links etc. as much as possible.
How many times have you clicked on a website or blog and got caught into a wormhole of clicking? This is a daily occurrence for us. Usually while watching TV. Don’t you want to be the website they click on? Make it easy for them to get lost in a wormhole of your content.
5. ASK FOR HELP
Balancing family, work, social lives, obligations, business, and just LIFE is a constant juggling game. There are so many balls in the air. If you feel totally overwhelmed by it all, don’t know where to start and need a little direction, contact us. We can help you prioritize your marketing to do list or give you a custom quote on doing it for you.
We know how hard it is to be an entrepreneur. But don’t shortchange yourself by not giving your business the attention it deserves. People NEED and WANT your products and services. Help them find it by putting yourself out there.
What is your biggest roadblock to marketing your business?
