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Running a small business is no easy feat, especially if you’re a solopreneur handling everything on your own.
With a never-ending to-do list, marketing might feel like an unnecessary burden. However, hard work, great products and services, and an exceptional customer experience can only take your business so far. In fact, most small businesses plateau or fail to get to the next level simply because their marketing isn’t equipped to take them any further—or even to keep their doors open.
With this in mind, if you want to reach your goals and ensure sustainability, you need to effectively and consistently market your business.
At Treefrog Marketing, there’s nothing we want more than for your small business to succeed. So, whether you’re planning on being a solopreneur for the long haul or you just don’t currently have the budget to hire marketing help, in this episode, Victoria shares how to market your small business on your own.
How to Market Your Small Business on Your Own
1. Establish a marketing strategy.
Solopreneurs and small teams often let marketing fall to the bottom of their to-do lists simply because they don’t know what to focus on.
This is why you—especially as a solopreneur—need a strategy.
A marketing strategy is a long-term plan that defines your business goals and details the steps you need to take to achieve them. And, unless you have a long-term plan with clear, actionable steps, you won’t know what to work on or what to prioritize.
Instead, you’ll likely find yourself failing to prioritize your marketing—which prevents business growth and/or stability—and trying one marketing tactic after another without seeing results—which wastes time and money.
Basically, failing to operate from a marketing strategy is only going to lead to frustration, burnout, and chaos.
However, when you let an effective marketing strategy serve as your compass, you can free yourself of uncertainty and confidently market and steer your business toward the growth and/or stability you want to see.
Want a marketing strategy that’s PROVEN to work for small businesses? Learn how to implement the flywheel marketing strategy!
2. Build a strong marketing foundation.
If you’re going to market your business on your own, you need to build a strong marketing foundation.
Perhaps it’s been a while since you’ve thought about the big, bad wolf and the three little pigs. But, in this story, three pigs build houses. The first builds his out of straw; the second builds his out of sticks; and the last builds his out of bricks. Then, when the big, bad wolf comes to huff and puff their houses down, only the brick house remains.
Having a firm marketing foundation before trying various marketing tactics—like so many small businesses do—is like building a house out of straw or sticks in that it won’t set you up for long-term success.
To build a firm marketing foundation, you need to:
- Understand your ideal client and create clear messaging specifically for them.
- Build a strong foundation with a strategically-built, SEO-optimized website.
Victoria explains how to create a firm marketing foundation in more detail in the audio for this episode (which is available at the top of this page or wherever you listen to podcasts). However, if you’d like more guidance on setting your marketing up for success, check out our free resources:
- “The First Step to Effective Marketing for Small Businesses: Writing Your Marketing Guiding Statements”: This mini course breaks down how to identify and understand your ideal customer so that you can write clear messaging for them.
- “8 Things Every Small Business’s Website MUST Include to Convert Visitors into Paying Customers”: This guide walks you through eight elements that need to be on your website if you want your site to be effective.
3. Create systems that allow you to implement your marketing strategy.
Once you have a marketing strategy in place and you’ve built your marketing foundation, you need to create systems that allow you to implement the rest of your strategy.
This is going to look different for everyone simply because we all work differently, have different goals for our businesses, and have different ideal clients.
But, to give you an example, let’s say your marketing strategy calls for 12 educational blog posts per year—one per month—that lead to your opt-in. To write this content, you have a few options. You can batch your blogs and release one post per month. Or, you could dedicate the first Tuesday of each month to writing and publishing a blog post.
For social media, you could batch a month’s worth of content at a time, or you can set aside a specific amount of time every week to create social media content.
Do what works best for you. However, remember that in order to market your business consistently and to fully implement your marketing strategy, you have to develop and use repeatable, scheduled systems and processes.
Want help developing systems? Tune in to “Episode 118: Four Systems Every Small Business Must Have to Increase Efficiency & Growth.”
Can or should you market your business on your own?
If you have time, you can market your business on your own. When you have a clear marketing strategy and with the help of drag-and-drop web builders, YouTube how-to videos, automation options, and other tools and resources, you can implement your own marketing strategy.
However, as a small business owner, handling every aspect of your marketing likely isn’t the best use of your time—at least not long term.
After all, several skill sets and knowledge you may not currently have will be required. And, chances are, learning these new skills and information will take a lot of time—which will inhibit business growth and prevent you from focusing on other aspects of your business and your life outside the office.
Because of this, Victoria wraps up this episode by encouraging you to do a few things:
- Commit to implementing the flywheel marketing method step by step. At Treefrog, we are passionate about this strategy because we’ve seen it work for small businesses of all sizes and across countless industries. If you’re going to handle your own marketing, you can feel confident that you’re using your time wisely, because this strategy actually works.
- Outsource aspects of the flywheel method. You can implement every step of this strategy on your own. However, it’s likely going to be a much better use of your time to work with contractors to take some of this workload off your plate. For example, when Victoria was a solopreneur, she wrote her own messaging and web copy but worked with a designer to build her website.
- Seek accountability for marketing your business. This might be as simple as asking a fellow entrepreneur to hold you accountable, or it could also mean investing in marketing coaching—which we offer by the way.
At Treefrog, there’s nothing we want more than for your small business to succeed. And, considering how hard you work, we have no doubt that you have the determination and work ethic required to implement your own marketing strategy.
That said, please don’t leave your marketing at the bottom of your to-do list. The longer you ignore your marketing, the longer it will take to reach your business goals.
Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- ”The Most Effective Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses: The Flywheel Marketing Method”
- “Episode 103: The Best Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses: The Flywheel Marketing Method”
- “Episode 131: Time-Saving Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses”
- “The First Step to Effective Marketing for Small Businesses: Writing Your Marketing Guiding Statements”
- “8 Things Every Small Business’s Website MUST Include to Convert Visitors into Paying Customers”
- Strategic Marketing Coaching
- Receive 50% Off Your First Year of HoneyBook
- Learn More About Treefrog’s Small Business Marketing Resources & Services
- Join the Priority Pursuit Facebook Community
- Follow or DM Treefrog Marketing on Instagram
- Follow or DM Kelly Rice on Instagram
- Follow or DM Victoria Rayburn on Instagram
The Priority Pursuit Podcast is a podcast dedicated to helping small business owners define, maintain, and pursue both their personal and business priorities so they can build lives and businesses they love.
You can find The Priority Pursuit Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Stitcher, and wherever you listen to podcasts.
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