A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home-Mom

Unlocking the Secrets to Marketing Efficiency

• Charmaine • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Are there any secrets to actually promoting a small business as a solopreneur without burning out? Tune in as Charmaine wraps up the Marketing for Small Business mini-series with a cache of strategies to help you identify when your marketing is functioning like a well-oiled machine. 

In this 10th episode, we dive into recognizing the signs that you’ve hit the maturity stage in your marketing efforts, allowing you to focus on high-level strategy rather than daily grind. From starting with one platform and setting up effective feedback systems to knowing when it’s time to bring in some help, this episode is packed with actionable insights.

Speaker 1:

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'm so happy you're here. Today's episode is actually the third installment of a mini-series I've been doing called the Marketing for Small Business mini-series, and it is the last episode I'm doing In this series. I have hoped to bring you through the life cycle of marketing your small business from start to finish, and so today's episode will highlight the characteristics of being in that mature stage. Not that you are ever truly done with marketing, but here are the signs that you can tell that you're in that maturity phase and your marketing is working for you, not the other way around. You're not constantly having to think about it. That's how you know you've made it. And the first episode of the series actually two episodes ago, I talked about how to start from ground zero, like which platform to pick online, where to start with that to start a website, not to start a website and I encouraged listeners to just start with one thing one platform, to get used to the platform, get good at it and then, after some time, see if they need to branch out into other channels. Give a listen to that episode if you missed it. The second episode I talk about how do you continue this without burning out, and I pointed out that at first you will need to be sort of intense with your marketing, throwing a lot of time or money or effort at it. But eventually, once certain things are set up like you have your website set up, your maybe social media pages set up really you can dial it back down as far as the workload goes by setting up systems or even hiring these tasks out or some of them. So give the second episode of the mini series a chance if you want to listen to that, and then today's episode will kind of wrap things up as far as the final stages of marketing your small business. So I'm excited to share more about that.

Speaker 1:

Before we dive into the episode, I wanted to let you know that this show is sponsored by my business, effective Media, by Charmaine. Are you a business owner who is totally overwhelmed with marketing? You don't know where to start, or you simply want to hand some tasks off? Let me help you with that. I can help by giving your website a copywriting makeover so that each page is actually attracting and converting visitors. I can help optimize your social profiles to drive sales. Or we can work together to come up with an overall strategy bringing together all of your platforms and channels and content into one seamless and tactical plan. Or I can tell your story through ghostwriting. If you want to work together, head to my website, bycharmainecom that's B-Y-C-H-A-R-M-A-I-N-Ecom, and fill out the contact form. I can't wait to hear from you. All right, so let's get started.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the final episode of the Marketing for Small Business mini series that I did. The series is a total of three episodes now, but overall for this podcast this will be the 10th episode. It will not be the last episode, but I'm thinking of wrapping up the season in a few episodes. So stick with me, make sure you get the updates about when new show episodes release and, yeah, we'll be wrapping up the season soon here. I can't believe it.

Speaker 1:

But basically, to review, in the first episode of the mini series I covered how to choose a platform, which ones might work best for your business. I do believe at this time certain platforms work better for certain businesses. You'll want to check that out. In the first episode of the mini-series it's called how to Market your Small Business and then last week's episode called Avoiding Burnout. I described what you should expect once you get the ball rolling. You've set up maybe one platform or channel, you've set up maybe a website, and then what comes after that? You're going to need to set up feedback systems to learn what's working and what's not. Maybe that's checking the engagement that you get on a social media platform, the analytics, or checking website analytics to find out which posts and pages are performing the best, and then that shows you which losses to cut and which things to double down on. It's really, really important to have feedback and to react to that feedback. Otherwise you're spreading your resources out to things that might not even move the needle for you. Then you need to get comfortable being intense at first while you're setting things up and then, as you start to implement systems, then you can slowly start to relax a little more.

Speaker 1:

I likened it in the last episode to when I always started teaching. Every August, at the beginning of the school year, was super intense because I had to set up a classroom and new procedures. Even if I was teaching for my fifth year, I still had to come up with new systems because it was a group of new kids. So in the same way, when you start anything like another business, you need to start systems that will help you and work for you. So, whether that's coming up with media templates, maybe a plan, just try to make it easy for yourself. Like every Monday you do this type of post, every Tuesday you do this type of post and really kind of start to fill in. Every Tuesday you do this type of post and really kind of start to fill in the blanks, see what's working and then use that as a template for the future. There's no need to recreate the wheel every single day or week and you're just going to burn yourself out if you try that.

Speaker 1:

My last suggestion in the last episode was actually hiring something out as soon as possible. Now I know when you start your business you're usually bootstrapped. You usually have not that much funds. As soon as you see money to start come trickling in, or even before that, if you want, I would highly suggest handing off some tasks so that you are not in the thick of marketing when you need to be focusing on other overall aspects of the business. It is good and it will actually help you, your business survive to hand off tasks by hiring them out.

Speaker 1:

So let's get into the third and final installment of this mini-series. So maybe you have gotten into a rhythm as far as marketing your small business goes. Maybe you're finally past that intense initial stage. You're past setting up your systems. You kind of know what works and what doesn't. You've even maybe passed on some other tasks to someone else. You've hired someone else to do some other task. Maybe you hired a web developer, web designer, a copywriter for your website, and that's all taken care of. Maybe you've hired a social media manager for your Facebook page. Those are just examples of things you could hire out.

Speaker 1:

Now you've reached sort of this maturity stage, or at least teenage stage, of marketing your small business. This is a good place to be and most people don't even get there because they get too overwhelmed in the initial stages and it becomes too much for them. But if you've reached it this far, congratulations. You've made it to this maturity stage. And if you're not there yet, that's okay too. You can take this information, remember it and sort of look ahead to the goals you want to achieve. I think it's helpful when starting anything, but especially a business, to kind of have like this roadmap in my mind and A to Z, you know what does the finish line kind of look like and that really helps me take the next step and achieve the next goal I need to achieve. So hopefully this is helpful for you if you're in that place too. So you know you've reached a mature stage of marketing your small business.

Speaker 1:

If your marketing starts to work for you I'm not saying that you'll never pick up your phone and add a post or a reel or a story, but it won't be consuming to you anymore. It shouldn't be at this point Again. You're past. You should be past the initial intense phase where you've poured a lot of time, energy and possibly money into setting things up and getting traction. That's all fine and I encourage intensity in the beginning, but I realize that's not a way, a place that you want to stay in. It's not a way to thrive in your business and keep going.

Speaker 1:

How does your marketing work for you? Either you have hired someone else who has the skills to be able to do this for you, or again you can set up systems. Let's say, batching content is a common system that creators use if you are the only one manning this operation for now. So that means take one day and batch similar tasks together. Let's say you market primarily through a website. You could make sure that you get all of your images ready to go on the same day. Either you take product photos, you edit them, you create captions and alt descriptions for your website and you upload them to the website. There are so many tasks that have to do with images, but if you did them all at the same time, this actually is more effective.

Speaker 1:

Or let's say you rely on a lot of text-based marketing, such as blog posts or even mini essays Some people call them atomic essays, like on LinkedIn. If you have a very words-based or text-based approach to marketing, you could try to write all of your posts and essays on the same day and batch it. Yes, it would really exercise your writing brain. So you know there are eventual limits you would reach with this, but you get what I'm saying. Feel free to use. I would use all the tools available ChatGPT to kind of help you brainstorm. You can type in certain prompts to have that AI help you brainstorm. Maybe AI can help you come up with an outline. I wouldn't suggest having AI write everything, because I think people can see through that, but it's great for bouncing ideas off of and helping you really clarify what you're going for.

Speaker 1:

If your marketing content is more video-based let's say you're a YouTuber or you heavily rely on Instagram Reels you could film all of your content in one day. I've seen YouTubers talk about this and they talk about, you know, having different outfits, ready even to switch outfits. I mean, it's not necessarily deceptive, but you have to do what you have to do right, and so it is truly more efficient to do all of that type of task, like filming, in one day, and maybe editing can be a different day. So batching tasks is one of the easiest systems you can implement if it's just you starting out. Another system is I've talked about it before but like templates for your media.

Speaker 1:

When I helped my church with their social media, we decided that we would do like a verse post at the beginning of the week, like every week, and then we would do two reels per week and then we would do you know, etc. Etc. So we had actually kind of filled in these blanks. It's almost like if you imagine squares and you're filling them in and, yes, the specific verse or the specific video that we're putting in the reel would change with each post, but we use the same type of content each day of that week. So it really, when it came to content planning, it made things go really fast and simplified Some things. Once you set them up, they're almost self-running. So, again, if you're in this mature phase, you can now relax a bit.

Speaker 1:

The main thing I'm talking about here is like a website. If you either hired someone to create a website or you took the time to create your own website through WordPress, congratulations. By the way, it's not an easy task, but once you get that up and running you can kind of breathe a little bit. And once you have all of your main pages the main pages for a website, for a business that I'd recommend is like your home page where do people end up going first? What do they see first? And then you would need a services page or a product page, depending on what you have to offer, an about page and then maybe contact, a way for people to reach you. You can include your contact information. If you're a local business, sometimes people include like those maps that show where their storefront is.

Speaker 1:

You could think about doing that If you don't have or know the technology behind doing that. I wouldn't freak out. Just, you know it's fine to include your telephone number and business address and email address or whichever communication methods you prefer, and then, when you have time to learn how to include those more advanced features, you can do so. But as long as you have your main pages on your website, then all of that is set up for you and people can start to find you. Of course, you need to tell them about your website, promote the website, but it's already created in there and people can get to know you and your business by checking out your website, and then all you would need to do is you know regular maintenance, update information as it comes, you can add new information through blog posts. So it really is something worth setting up and then having, I'd say, minimal work to keep it going.

Speaker 1:

So you are in the mature stages of marketing your small business if your marketing is working for you and not the other way around. Again, this doesn't mean that you never put forth any effort into marketing, but it just means that you're not totally consumed and overwhelmed by it, that things are pretty well self-running. Let's say, for example, you might want to get involved in marketing from time to time. That's fine. Some business owners like picking up their phone at a spontaneous moment and recording a story to share with you. Know their customers, their followers, and share what's going on in the restaurant or you know the storefront, whatever business they run, and you know that's fine as an extra, just fun addition to your life. But the point I'm trying to make here is that it shouldn't at this point be overwhelming to you or just inundating. If it is. Go back to the last episode where I give some ideas and pointers on how to kind of make it out of the survival phase and to a more sustainable phase.

Speaker 1:

The second characteristic of being in this mature small business marketing phase is that, as you've been working to set up all of these marketing systems, you might have hired someone or even a team to help you take care of marketing. That's just one big piece, I will say, to the puzzle. The other piece is this invisible thing that keeps on building and that is your reputation. Your reputation, and just the word of mouth locally, will continue to build with time as you keep doing what you do, as you keep working in this business. So that is kind of the great thing. It's a good thing and a bad thing, because when you first get started, your reputation is zero right, and that's why there's so much intensity required.

Speaker 1:

When you start marketing, you have to really throw everything at it, because no one knows, maybe, that you do this specific thing or you sell that, so you really need to get that megaphone out and tell the world. But the cool thing is that through time, as you continue working in that area, selling that product, just more and more people without you necessarily knowing who is finding out or how they're finding out, more and more people will get to know you. Word of mouth can happen behind your back, not like in a bad way, but without you even knowing right. So there's it's like this invisible compounding effect that works in your favor. Hopefully, if you are doing good work and a good job, then you have, like all of this compounded. It's sort of like if you put your money in a really good stock, I guess, and it just grows and grows. That's what building a good reputation for your business is. And then you're really mature once you hit, when you've been in the same business for 20, 30, 40 years and that's basically all you need.

Speaker 1:

So, for instance, I have a family member who's like this. He's been in the same industry, same business that he's run for, I believe, about 40 years and he really does not rely on much marketing. I think he put out a print ad in a neighborhood magazine, but that's about it. He does have a website. I don't know, I really doubt he's active on it, but really most of his business I would guess like 99% of his business comes through happy customers who refer to him, new customers, word of mouth, just people in the area who have learned about him through his work over 40 years.

Speaker 1:

And I don't want to discourage you. Maybe you've only been in this for a few months or a few years. It does take time to build, but as you're doing the good work you want to do anyways, it's sort of this nice, effortless byproduct, right? So let that be an encouragement to you that it's almost this opposite graph, this inverse line. If you look at the marketing aspect, that line is going to start high because you need an intense level. So you're online, you're marketing, maybe you're even putting out print ads. You know, whatever marketing techniques you're using, that line starts high and then it slopes downward through the years because you won't need as much.

Speaker 1:

And then there's another line, which is your reputation line, and that starts at zero when you first start out. It's like you register your company with the state and the IRS knows who you are, but no one else does so. Like you're starting at zero, right. As the years go by and you continue selling that thing or doing that service, whatever work you do, that line is going from lower to higher and it's going all the way up. So they're like X's intersecting right, but I just find that's helpful to keep in mind. So I don't know if you agree with me on this, but those were the phases of marketing a small business in my mind. I hope that's been helpful to you.

Speaker 1:

Please reach out and let me know if you are starting out a new business. If you want to bounce ideas off of me, I'm curious what business you're starting, because I always like to suggest starting a business if you're a mom looking to add to your household income. I'm also an advocate of part-time work. I substitute teach, so there's options for you if you are looking for extra income, not just starting a business. But that was the focus of this mini series. So let me know. The email for this podcast is mostlyhomemom at gmailcom. If you want to reach out and if this has been a help to you or maybe entertaining to you at the very least I don't know but if you have appreciated this podcast, it would mean the world to me if you stopped by and left a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for joining and I hope to see you in the next one.