As a small business owner, you’ve likely experienced the challenging juggle of various roles and responsibilities. One of the most important tasks, yet often neglected due to time or financial constraints, is the marketing and sales of your business. For the longevity of your business and your long-term happiness, it’s important to take a break from the busy daily routine and evaluate essential marketing tactics.
Why is marketing and sales one of the most important tasks in your business? Because, when done right, you attract the right clients at the rate you need to fuel your business for growth.
Many business owners have expressed feeling trapped in a constant cycle of lacking time or resources to hire a professional, and not managing to set up their marketing and sales systems themselves. When they do allocate some time for marketing, they often feel overwhelmed and unsure about where to start.
However, what if your business didn’t feel like a never-ending grind? What if you could regain the freedom and joy that motivated you to start your business in the first place?
The answer lies in streamlining your marketing and sales processes. This not only attracts the right clients, but it also stabilizes your cash flow, ultimately giving you the freedom you initially sought.
While the path to establishing efficient marketing and sales systems may seem daunting and won’t happen overnight, here is some good news. You can start lifting the burden off your shoulders today by taking three key steps towards systemizing your marketing and sales.
1. Clarify Your Marketing Message
The first step is to refine your marketing message. Regardless of whether your business is one day old, one year old, or a hundred years old, it’s beneficial to reevaluate what’s working and what isn’t. Often, when business growth stagnates, it’s due to a communication issue.
As business owners, we may not be communicating effectively, in a way that enables potential clients to envision the transformation they’ll undergo by working with us. They should be able to visualize their “hero” story.
It’s important to clearly express what you do and who you serve to attract your ideal clients. Working with the right clients makes business much more enjoyable. We suggest reading “Building a StoryBrand” by Donald Miller and attending events to refine your marketing message and gain diverse perspectives.
You can rewrite your brand narrative independently using low-cost or free resources. However, if feasible, it’s a worthwhile investment to seek an external perspective to help shape your marketing message.
2. Consistently Publish Your Authority Piece
No matter the medium you choose, be it publishing a detailed blog post, hosting an informative podcast, or creating an engaging video, the key to establishing yourself as a trustworthy figure in your specific niche lies in consistently helping people overcome their challenges.
By continuously providing solutions, you demonstrate your expertise and commitment. Your content should align with your business’s overall mission and directly serve the needs of your ideal client. This might mean tailoring your content to address specific questions, issues, or needs that your target demographic faces.
Consistency, both in terms of the quality of your content and the regularity with which you post, helps establish your authority and competency in what you do. A steady stream of useful, high-quality content is one of the most effective ways to build a loyal audience and position yourself as a leader in your field.
This is a long-term commitment, and the idea of creating an authoritative piece can overwhelm many small business owners. The time and effort required often seem to outweigh the short-term benefits. However, the good news is that you can develop a content plan that aligns with your current business status.
You have the option to undertake this task yourself, learning valuable skills along the way, or you can choose to seek assistance. This assistance can be in the form of a small business marketing cohort, coaching, or consulting from professionals who specialize in content creation and strategy, thus ensuring that your content is of high quality and effectively meets your business goals.
3. Use Time-Saving Tools
Since being a small business owner means that you’re wearing so many hats and filling so many roles, it’s more important than ever to leverage time-saving tools.
Time-saving tools and practices lifts the weight of overwhelm.
Evaluate your workflows and ask yourself if there’s a simpler way to do things. Could you create templates or develop systems for repetitive tasks? Could some tasks be delegated or even automated?
For instance, if your sales process includes sending a thank you email after each meeting, you might create an email template for repeated use. This way, you wouldn’t have to compose a new message each time. Incorporating this prewritten template into your email system could further streamline your process.
Another area where time-saving tools are beneficial is in social media management. Social media is a powerful marketing channel that strengthens your authority in your niche. Consider using a time-saving tool such as Scrivener Social, which features Canva integration and AI writing prompts, to communicate efficiently and effectively.
Final Note
Remember, your business should provide you with freedom, not confine you. Over time, implementing best practices in messaging and systems will alleviate the uncertainty associated with attracting and retaining your best clients.
Whether you choose to do it yourself, receive coaching, hire a fractional marketing team, or use a combination of these methods, implementing these steps can help you realize the freedom you initially envisioned at the start of your entrepreneurial journey.