With client work naturally eating up majority of your working day, it makes it difficult to find time to think about marketing. As any small business owner knows, it can be tough to find a spare second to promote oneself and ensure you keep the website content and social media channels constantly up-to-date.
You’ll find the following tactics help you to become more streamlined and efficient in your marketing efforts, and hopefully more successful too – saving you time and money along the way. What’s the secret? It’s all about focus. Read on to find out more.
Table of Contents
- Know your audience and pick your niche
- Follow your audience and get heavily involved in their sector
- “You want to stay relevant, active and interesting as well as consistent in your communications.”
- Blog content that adds value and gives away information
- Try to implement at-least one of these tips into your marketing strategy. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see high engagement in the first couple of months. It’s all about consistency and ensuring new clients or users see the history of consistent posting and engaging with existing users which may turn them into a new customer/client!
Know your audience and pick your niche
You could say you do absolutely everything for everyone if that suits, but you might be spreading yourself a little too thinly and opening yourself up to wider competition. You need to focus. Hone in on exactly what makes you special and figure out who will really appreciate your input.
In which case, pick a specialism and choose a target audience. You might, for instance, sell handmade floral arrangements for car showrooms. Or perhaps you focus on shooting food photography for trends cafes. Whatever you choose, write down who you are and what you do and who you do it for. Pin it to your wall. From this point forth, you will live and breathe it.
In fact, what you choose to do and who for will inform your entire marketing strategy. You’ll be amazed how easy everything else falls into place from this point on. When you’ve got a spare minute, your first tasks are as follows:
- Update the copy on your website:Write with your audience in mind: what will they like to see and read? What are their interests? What are their problems? How can you solve them? How can you add value?
- Define who you are, how you help and why you’re better: Once you’ve nailed your web copy, come up with a clear and compelling value proposition, i.e. the main reason why someone should hire you. This will be the first thing people read when they land on your website, so take some time to write it and don’t be afraid to tweak if it isn’t working. It should explain how you solve clients’ problems, deliver specific benefits and tell the ideal customer why they should hire you and not from anyone else.
- Freshen up your social media: Make it flow with what you’ve updated on your revised website. Add your value proposition to your bio’s, for instance, and ensure your profiles match what you’re saying elsewhere. Use the same logo or profile pic for your display picture, so people can easily recognise you across different platforms.
Follow your audience and get heavily involved in their sector
Specialise in architecture and design? It’s time to sink your teeth into loads of relevant Twitter and Instagram accounts, blogs and magazines, events and exhibitions. You’re going to spend a little time each week doing one or more of the following:
- Read up on the latest industry news: With your morning cup of coffee, grab a copy of the latest trade magazine, or read your favourite blog, and enjoy finding out more about the movers and shakers – the very people you’d love to rub shoulders with. Which brands are making waves? Who’s doing what? Soak up the news to boost your industry knowledge.
- Get involved in the conversation: Follow relevant people on social media and engage with your followers. Like their pictures, leave comments, respond to direct messages. Don’t have time to share content? Use Bufferto schedule social media posts, so you remain active even when you’re busy.
- Comment on other blogs and magazines: Sign up for profiles on relevant online publications and magazines to raise your profile by leaving comments on articles. You’d be surprised how many people will click on your website link to find out more about what you do.
“You want to stay relevant, active and interesting as well as consistent in your communications.”
Blog content that adds value and gives away information
With all the insights you’re gaining from a daily ritual of tweeting, reading and commenting, you’ll certainly have plenty to blog about. There should be no excuse – every day you should be populating your website with fresh content. But not just any content; words and images that are relevant to your target audience. Because you’re hitting home your specialism as well as tackling your SEO.
- Share tips that your audience would love: Tutorials, how-tos – they continue to be popular and can attract a wealth of visitors to your website. With your audience in mind, write your own tips and tricks. Don’t worry about giving away any business secrets – people won’t want to do things themselves; they’ll want you to handle the work.
One final tip – whatever you add to your blog, don’t forget to share it on all your social media channels. You want to stay relevant, active and interesting as well as consistent in your communications.
Try to implement at-least one of these tips into your marketing strategy. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see high engagement in the first couple of months. It’s all about consistency and ensuring new clients or users see the history of consistent posting and engaging with existing users which may turn them into a new customer/client!
To see how Waterside can help with your marketing strategy, email info@watersidecreative.com to get more information. Sign up to our monthly newsletter with helpful tips, updates and more content like this blog. Visit the Project Planner to start working together.
