A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home-Mom

Avoiding Burnout in Small Business: Marketing for Small Business #2

• Charmaine • Season 1 • Episode 9

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In the second episode of the Marketing for Small Business series, Charmaine explores the next phase of marketing a solopreneur endeavor. It can be tough, but not impossible! 

Learn the critical importance of starting with just one marketing platform to promote your business without creating burnout, and discover the significance of setting up feedback systems to gauge your marketing success. Understand the vital distinction between online engagement and actual sales, ensuring your efforts translate into real business growth.

In this episode, Charmaine dives into the concept of an initial sprint in your entrepreneurial journey, much like the intense periods of a first-year teacher, and the eventual necessity to delegate tasks to avoid burnout. You won't want to miss this episode!

Speaker 1:

Hey there and welcome to another episode of the Mostly Stay-at-Home Mom podcast, where we chat about entrepreneurship, mom life and earning side income as a busy mom. I'm your host, charmaine, and I am happy you are here listening today. So this podcast focuses on income opportunities for moms or side hustlers, people who want a career change Basically that hustle where you want to get somewhere and you're currently somewhere else. Right, when it comes to income, I think a lot of us are in sort of the same boat, even if we're in vastly different situations. I am currently recording a three-episode mini-series on marketing your small business, because I believe business is a fantastic income opportunity if you're looking for something different, career-wise, or to fit into your family life. So the goal of this mini-series is to bring clarity and encouragement to beginning business owners by walking them through the beginning, middle and end phases of marketing your business.

Speaker 1:

In last week's episode, I started from the very beginning. I talked you through how to choose marketing platforms for your business, because the reality is we can't do them all, even though the gurus might tell us to do them all, just to start with one. So if you missed that episode, I would go back and listen to it. Today's episode, the second of the mini series, covers that period right after launching a business, where you start to get traction, but I try to walk you through what actions to take to avoid burning out completely. Sometimes the marketing factor can be what burns out a business person entirely, so I don't want that to happen with your business. I will say, even if you don't have a business, a lot of these concepts I hit on today can be broadly applied to areas of life outside of business. So, whether you're an entrepreneur or not, I welcome this day and see if it resonates Before we get into it.

Speaker 1:

This episode is sponsored by my business, effective Media, by Charmaine. If you're a business owner without a marketing team and just feeling overwhelmed or a bit lost when it comes to marketing, I want to help you out. From creating a tailored media strategy to regular content creation. I can take this off your hands to get your media working for you. If you're interested in working together, head over to my website, bycharmainecom B-Y-C-H-A-R-M-A-I-N-Ecom for more information and fill out a contact form. I'm excited to see how we can work together and to help your business thrive.

Speaker 1:

All right, and let's get started with the second episode of this small business marketing mini series and last week's episode I covered just how to get started, what is step one from ground zero, and that is simply choosing the platforms that you are going to advertise on. I mostly talk digital, but of course you could also do traditional advertising as well. But when it comes to digital advertising online, I point out that we have this tendency to view all the social media platforms and websites and email lists, as you know, not a big deal, when they actually take a lot of time to do well and to build up. So I encourage you in that episode to choose just one platform to start with, to get good at, and then maybe add another platform. We also go into website creation. Is that necessary for your business? How do you go about doing that? And so if you missed that episode, I would highly suggest going back to it.

Speaker 1:

For today I'd like to talk about what to do once you've started those platforms. Maybe you've made pages on various social media platforms, but actually, if you take my advice, you hopefully have just started one and maybe you've gotten that going and maybe started another one. But in any case, now we're sort of in the middle stage of advertising or marketing your business, and so I want to talk about how to avoid burnout, because we don't want that. We don't want your business to totally flop because you just find yourself spinning way too many plates and then dropping them. Okay, so let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

I have three major tips for avoiding burnout at this phase of the game. Number one and this is super important is to set up and learn at least one feedback system. What do I mean by this? At least marketing feedback. You might be marketing on a website and a Facebook page, for instance, because you have finite resources I mean, we all do whether that's time or money. You are putting a certain amount of money or time or both towards marketing on those various platforms and at first you can throw a lot of your resources out towards marketing, but then allow that feedback to teach you what is working and what's not, because you don't want to stay in this weird no man's land of not knowing if a marketing channel is working for you. You definitely need that feedback.

Speaker 1:

The teacher in me is reminded of like it was drilled into us right. Reminded of like it was drilled into us right To collect data, data, data and then analyze and sort of reevaluate how you were going to teach based on how the students responded to the lesson. If students weren't understanding what we were teaching, then we had to go back and reteach, maybe in a different way, maybe at a slower pace, break into chunks that were more manageable, etc. Right, you don't want to just plow ahead and teach an entire course of X, y or Z and leave your students in the dust. So, to bring that teaching analogy to marketing your small business, it would be a painful mistake and a costly mistake to throw all of your resources into I mean, let's just say, facebook ad campaigns, or all of your time into making reels and posts on Facebook if it's not actually bringing you business.

Speaker 1:

And let's delineate between what's actually bringing you sales and business and giving you an audience online, right, because the two are not necessarily the same. They often go hand in hand. But it's crucial to realize that they are different, because likes and comments and shares on Facebook don't necessarily equate to sales. Engagement on these platforms is always good and something to strive for, and building an audience means you're building brand awareness, of course, but I would just caution you that chasing the likes is not the full picture if you want to stay in business. If you are simply trying to build an audience to build an audience, then hey, go for it. But I suggest that you really dig deep and see what's affecting your sales. Some examples of feedback systems that I'm talking about.

Speaker 1:

I encourage you to look into the analytics on whatever platforms you're using. So this means if you are on social media and you have a social media page for your business, usually if you create a business or creator account, the platform will provide you with analytics to show you, basically, your engagement, and you can play around with the different graphs and see how the engagement changed over time, see which posts got the most traction and most clicks. You can see all of that. So I would encourage you to look at the platform analytics. Another way to tell is through your website. If you made a website for your business, for example, you'll want to look at the website analytics. If you made a website through WordPress, like a blog, then you can hook that up, like connect it to Google Analytics, which is my suggestion. There are other plugins or platforms, I guess, for checking your website analytics, but Google Analytics will do the job and just look at that too and you can see how many clicks, you've gotten where people are coming from, which is important, and where you're gaining the most traction. So if you really have a social media page but your goal of that page is to drive people to the website, then look at your website analytics to see are they even coming from that social media platform? And then, once you look into these feedback systems, your analytic, that should tell you where to go from there. That should help you create a media plan, because at first, when you're trying new things, it's kind of like throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.

Speaker 1:

But I would not say, stay in that stage forever or for a long time. Even. You need to quickly gain feedback and then make a quick decision from that data. Whatever is working, double down on and whatever is not working, cut those losses right Because, again, resources are limited.

Speaker 1:

I think we have sort of this optimism when we start a business. We're kind of on top of the world and we feel good about ourselves and our business and we're willing to put in hours and hours and hours. And before we know it, we're kind of on top of the world and we feel good about ourselves and our business and we're willing to put in hours and hours and hours and before we know it, we're spending hours on something like editing little nuances of a TikTok video when it is not really going to give us a high return on investment. As they say, it's not a high ROI activity usually. Now, if editing really matters to your audience, maybe, but I would say usually that's not like a high ROI activity, if that makes sense. So this period of looking at your data and determining what to double down on and what to just forgo is super important.

Speaker 1:

Don't forget to do this. Even set up systems to check your systems. Okay, whether that's like, every Friday is going to be data Friday. Like you might be the type of person who hates digging through the data, or you might be the person who loves it. Either way, make it a habit that you enjoy checking. If you have to take yourself to your favorite coffee shop and just pump yourself up for this data day, go ahead and do so. But I would say, make it a routine or a habit to regularly check whatever data is coming in from your analytic and see what's working, see what's not working and make your decisions from there.

Speaker 1:

Apart from analytics, there's also feedback systems, like you could ask your customers, of course, like where did they find you? How did they find out about you? That's the old-fashioned way to do it. You could conduct surveys. If you are out with people a lot and you're interacting with your customers, you could make it a habit of including that in your conversation with them. Or, if you have an email list, you could include the survey in your emails. I would say, maybe include some sort of incentive or discount for people who fill out the survey, because that's always nice, and you could ask people directly, like how did they find out about you? Draw up a graph or chart and as you see and collect more and more responses, things will begin to reveal themselves. Did the people find you on instagram? Did they find you through google search? Did they just hear about you through word of mouth? These are important things to learn and I feel like a lot of business owners wait way too long to assess their data on this. So super important.

Speaker 1:

Number two in avoiding burnout once you get started with your business is sort of to get comfortable with the different energy levels of marketing a business. I mentioned first that in the very, very beginning it's sort of a sprint. We do have to throw a good amount of intensity at something at first, I think, to make any progress. That balance that we all seek, I really think it's not something we should actually strive for, because I mean, yes, we all want to be happy, well-balanced people, but when you're starting something like a business, that's a very intensive project. It really is. There's so many different things and factors that go into it, things that you need to do. So I would say, get used to the rhythms of an intense period in the beginning and then it tapering down, and you should be as you get more used to the job and the different functions of your business. You should be, as you get more used to the job and the different functions of your business. You should be seeking to create systems, create habits. You know, every Monday you do this, every Tuesday you do this things that make it easier for you to complete certain tasks. If you're interested in systems building and habits building, I am also interested in that and I've studied that type of thing a lot, like James Clear's Atomic Habits and BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits, for one. Also, there's a podcaster and YouTuber named Ali Abdaal who talks about different productivity methods, and all of these people are good. You know, maybe if you have spare time to consider listening to because there are ways to manage your time and systematize it that you can cram more in without dropping too many of those spinning plates.

Speaker 1:

To bring in another example from my previous career teaching, I remember the whole first. My whole first year of teaching was just such a constant survival mode and maybe most first year teachers experienced that too. I was literally hired days before school started and I didn't have a room set up or anything. So it was survival from August to May when we got out. But the years after that so I taught for five years I would say year two through five fell into a similar pattern where I could expect I mean I would work on stuff over the summer just to get kind of a head start, but I would definitely always expect to have like a really intense August and then maybe taper that down in September where you're just like I, was constantly setting stuff up in the room or creating lesson plans or creating a game plan for how to how to teach like this certain group of kids. You get a new group of kids each year, right, and you really have to consider what works with these kids.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, I would go in on the weekends, saturdays, sundays, stay late every day, go in early in the mornings. It was literally insane and you feel like you're not gonna survive. But somehow those intense Augusts I would always, always prioritize like setting up systems. I know it sounds weird to say to myself, like how do I make this easier on myself? Like that sounds selfish, but it really is. Like when you're running a classroom you're like the mayor of this little town and you have to set up systems and things in place that you know make the whole school day run smoothly to even survive. So, yeah, I would expect that intense sprint of an early fall and then I would finally catch a break and like have more and more regular, like normal person hours by. Like October, november, November and December were always fun because we got our holiday break and then, you know, by springtime we got in a really, really good groove and that would usually go by faster. Of course, testing in the mix makes it more complicated, but you know what I mean. And by year five I got so good at this that I didn't have as intense Augusts as usual, like I wasn't literally spending the night at the school anymore.

Speaker 1:

But anyways, just to give another example of this and I actually heard it in a recent Ali Abdaal podcast that he talks about it too like this ill thought out concept of balance. I mean, I guess it's okay to want to hit all the important things of life, but if you're trying to be excellent and succeed in something that's, I guess, out of the ordinary and starting a successful business is out of the ordinary, most businesses fail right Then you need to let go of this kind of like balance idol for a little bit. Right, you can always come back to it once you are successful. But if you're trying to succeed at something like this, you really have to to sprint for a bit, to throw intensity, volume, speed, all of those things at it and then afterwards, once you establish yourself more, then you can slow down or even hand off jobs. And that brings me to my third point.

Speaker 1:

By this time I challenge you. You're sort of out of that initial period, right, and you're getting towards the middle stage. You've set up systems, you've gotten your feet wet and you're at least a little bit used to it by now. I want to encourage you to hand off at least one task, maybe several if you can. That involves, I mean, you of course need to be bringing in money to then probably hire someone to do whatever task. But I mean, that's really how you make a business work. You cannot sustain a business by continuing to do everything yourself. That just is a recipe. I'm sorry for failure and I'm preaching to the choir. I'm the person who tries to do everything herself.

Speaker 1:

But it was in this book that I read E-Myth, revisited by Michael E Gerber, and he talks about most people who start a business from their passion. They want to continue. He calls it in the technician role like the person who produces the thing because you're passionate about it. So you want to produce the product. But what you need to do to have a successful business is you need to not only produce it but have a managerial perspective to like managing your whole business, like think of zooming out and getting this bird's eye view, and that manager takes care of all the aspects of the business finance, marketing, etc. Not just producing the one product.

Speaker 1:

And he tells the story of a lady with a pie shop and she's passionate about baking pies and she has wonderful, warm memories of baking pies with her aunt and she's just really stuck and stressed out and her dreams of having this happy pie shop are dashed because she's just working constantly, all the time and she feels like for nothing Because she's solely focused on making the pies. She's the only one making them and once she follows, begins to follow his advice of like hiring another person to make pies eventually, like setting up systems to where she's not actually making the pies anymore, you know, except unless she really wants to for enjoyment. But she's now managing the entire business and she's more zoomed out from it than like this technician point of view. So I thought that was an interesting example. It's a good book, e-myth Revisited.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, I would challenge you in this third point of surviving in your business, thriving, not burning out to hand off duties. Okay, if you want that's what I do for marketing purposes Hand them off to me. I love it. I specialize in digital marketing or you know, it could be anything. It could be the finance aspect. A lot of people, including me and my husband, have handed that off to other experts, like people who actually know how to do it much better doing it than us, like trying to learn it. So I would say that's.

Speaker 1:

The next key part to this is hiring something out, handing something off, so that you are not stuck and overwhelmed being the do-it-all person, if that makes sense. I hope this was helpful to you. If it was, let me know. I have an email for the podcast. It's called mostlyhomemom at gmailcom. I'd love to know what kinds of businesses you're thinking of starting or maybe you've started, and, of course, I always appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Stay tuned for next week I hope to have the third installment of the mini-series ready to go for you on small business marketing. So check that out and thank you for listening.