When I start working with clients, I like to take a look at their online marketing.
Do they have a blog? Do they have social media accounts? Do they offer free content in exchange for joining their email list?
Usually, the answer to these questions is yes. Business owners read about online marketing tools and immediately set them up for their own company.
But that’s where it stops: the blog is mostly blank; the social media accounts are inactive; potential customers enter their email address but don’t see an email for weeks.
If you set up marketing tools, but don’t have a system for how to use them, you’ll never see any benefit.
When you’re your own boss, how you use your marketing becomes even more critical. You don’t have a specific marketing team on your staff. Unless you hire a assistant, it’s just you. And marketing can eat up all your time, leaving none left for actually making money.
If you’re going to market your business online, you need a strategy in place.
1. Decide what forms of marketing you’re going to use.
Do you want to blog? Get on Twitter and Facebook? Make YouTube videos? Will you gather emails and send out a newsletter? Will you offer free information, then promote your products to subscribers?
Remember, if you’re just starting out, you don’t have to do everything – especially if you’re doing it all yourself. Pick two or three things and really concentrate on making them work.
Pick one or two social media accounts to begin — or you risk getting overwhelmed and doing nothing with any of them.
2. Learn about your chosen tools.
Twitter can be a great way to connect with customers or with other professionals in your industry. But a lot of users fall into the black pit of only promoting themselves and never interacting with anyone else.
An email list can help you connect with customers, but only if you use if the right way. If your subject lines always say “My New E-Book Now 40% off!” you’ll never get anyone to open them. “10 Ways to Sleep Better Tonight,” by contrast, is much more likely to be read.
For every marketing tool, there is a right way and a wrong way to use it. Take the time to educate yourself so you don’t accidentally set your business back.
3. Be consistent.
If you tell your email list that you’re going to send out a weekly newsletter, you need to send one every week.
If you are going to maintain a blog, update it on a consistent schedule, not whenever it occurs to you to post something.
If you have social media accounts, don’t forget to look at them for days.
Clients and other members of your industry can tell when your heart isn’t in your marketing, and that comes across as a lack of interest in your own business. And if you don’t find it interesting, why should they?
Of course, everyone has days where things just don’t get done. Your computer crashes, you posts don’t auto-update, you’re too sick to even think about getting out of bed. Your readers and clients won’t hold that against you – if you’re consistent the rest of the time.
4. Set it and let it go.
That being said, consistency does not mean you should be spending all your time on marketing. That’s the beauty of a system.
Maybe you want to spend an hour every morning on Twitter. Or write all your blog posts for the week on Sunday and schedule them to autopost. Or have a series of pre-written autoresponder emails that send when someone signs up for your email list.
Marketing (especially social media!) can easily become a way to waste time: you avoid work but still feel productive. Don’t get sucked into this trap.
Put a system in place, then get on with the other parts of running your business.
5. Review
No system is perfect, and nothing will work 100% of the time.
Every few months, take a look at your marketing system. Evaluate what is working and what isn’t. Come up with a new schedule, or split test a few different emails. Open a new social media account.
Your business should never be stagnant, and neither should the way you market it.
Everyone needs a system for marketing – what’s yours?
Several people have been asking about social media coaching and training courses. We run customised programmes inside agencies and brand marketing teams, but they’re individually designed around the strategies the firm has and the specific needs of their departments.
We don’t want you to be alone in sharing your campaigns, which is why MailChimp makes it easy for your readers to share your work too. If someone reads your newsletter and likes what you have to say, all they have to do is click a button to show it to all their friends and followers across the social networks they use.