Are you doing the right things to market your brand?

The online space can be overwhelming… There are lots of things to think about when it comes to marketing your business and connecting with your ideal clients so where do you start?

More often than not, the overwhelm that we experience stops us from moving forward and taking action which of course will not result in a flourishing online brand.

Instead of feeling like you need to be doing ALL.THE.THINGS, I recommend doing a couple of things and doing them well. Once you’ve mastered these, you can move onto the next. And remember, these things take time. You are not going to see overnight success so celebrate your achievements. Every small step leads to greater things.

To help you think about what marketing activities you should be doing to market your brand, I’ve put together my recommended marketing strategies to grow your audience online along with two handy graphics depending on which stage of business you are at!

1. Create and connect with your community

First and foremost you need to be connecting with your ideal clients on a daily basis. There’s absolutely no point in creating content and giving value and then just sitting back and waiting for them to come to you. 

Reach out to your ideal clients and get to know them. Be friendly. Show interest in what they are doing and show that you care. Whatever you do, don’t come at it from the mindset of making a sale. It’s about making connections and engaging with your community. Take the time to get to know them.

Instagram is great for this! Use social media for what it’s meant for – being social. 

2. Showcase your expertise with content marketing

Content marketing is a great way to show your audience that you know what you are talking about. There is a content marketing medium for everyone – blogging, podcast, video. 

When you are first starting out, I recommend choosing one platform and do it well. The first platform that I recommend is always a blog. This is because having a blog on your website is great for SEO. 

If you’d prefer to go down the podcasting or video route, then transcribe your content into written form and repurpose it on your blog. 

You then want to take that content and repurpose it across your platforms. For example, write a blog post and then use elements of the blog post to create a couple of captions for Instagram. Do an Instagram story and/or an IGTV sharing the tips from the post. 

There’s absolutely no need to think of new content for each and every platform that you’re on. Repurposing is key here!

3. Drive traffic to your content using Pinterest and SEO

You need to be driving traffic to your website each and every day. Two great ways to do this are via Pinterest and SEO. 

I’m a big lover of Pinterest. It’s not a social media platform, it’s a visual search engine.

At the time of writing this blog post, Pinterest sends on average around 6000 visitors to my site each and every month and it grows my email list organically by over 15 people a day. More importantly, it’s brought me, 1:1 clients and customers, to my shop. In fact, you’ve probably found this blog post via Pinterest.

Another great traffic driver is Google. Ensuring your content is optimised for search engines is really important. 

4. Create an email list

If you don’t have an email list, start one… NOW! 

Email marketing is a great way of connecting with your ideal clients. After all, they’ve likely given you their email address in exchange for one of your freebies which means they are interested in what you have to offer. 

Email your list on a regular basis to keep you at the forefront of their mind. Give your email subscribers your best stuff! It will be worth it!

The other bonus of an email list is that you’re not relying on a third-party platform. If something happens to Instagram OR Facebook tomorrow, you still have a list of potential leads that you can market to.

AND THEN… ONCE YOU HAVE BEEN IN BUSINESS FOR A WHILE

When you’ve been in business for a while and are successfully doing all of the above consistently, then you can think about adding additional marketing channels to your strategy such as:

5. Getting in front of other people’s audiences

You’ve shown that you know your stuff. You’ve got a bunch of content available so now it’s time to get visible! Reach out to others who have a similar audience to you and talk about guest appearances and collaboration opportunities.

Utilising other peoples audiences is a great way to quickly expand your audience and get in front of people that you may not have done or at least not as quick.

6. Using paid advertising to grow your audience

Now I am in no way a paid advertising expert, organic marketing is more my thing but I do know that paid advertising is powerful. It’s a great way to quickly get in front of people that don’t know about you yet. 

Paid advertising comes in the forms of Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Google Ads.  In fact, it’s something that I am going to add to my business this year too!

I hope this blog post was useful in understanding the different marketing channels that you should be using to market your business. 

It’s really important, especially when you are just starting out or you haven’t been marketing yourself consistently, to choose one of each of these channels.

For example, don’t choose a Facebook group and Instagram… choose one! 

Don’t decide to do blogging, podcasting AND video… choose one!