Starting and consistently growing a business can feel like an uphill battle a lot of the time. We have to wear all the damn hats with many of the hats pushing us so far out of our comfort zone. One area that many of my small business owner clients like to avoid is marketing. They understand how important it is to bring in new customers and clients, but they often don’t know where to start or they feel uncomfortable with putting themselves out there. Today, we are going to dive into some of the ah-ha moments that really helped me to learn to love marketing my business, and myself. As a business that requires clients to put a great deal of trust in me, marketing myself is very necessary!

Let’s dive in!

Breakthrough #1

I know you may not want to hear this, but no matter what your business is, showing your face is important. Think about it, when you go to someone's business social media page, and don’t see the face(s) behind the business, are you more or less likely to buy from them? For service based businesses, it is even more important that your potential clients and customers can see who you are.

How can you push past your fears or hesitations?

I wish I could snap my fingers and help you get to the place where you love showing your face, but the truth is, to get more comfortable showing your face, you have to show your face. It gets a little easier every time until you hit the point where you don’t even hesitate hopping on a live video. Consider investing in some professional pictures if you aren’t ready to start with phone selfies. Working with a photographer and having professional edited images can be a confidence boost to start showing us who you are!

Random fact: when I am checking out someones IG profile I hit up their stories and reels first because I feel like that is a very quick way for me to get a feel for their personality!

Breakthrough #2

Being on more platforms is not better when you are starting out. It can feel overwhelming, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Clubhouse, website, blogging…..personal page, business page, when to post...ugh!!! I can feel my shoulders creeping up as I type this. I remember when I first launched, I felt so much pressure to be everywhere, all the time. There are so many platforms that you could spend all day posting content, but you don’t have time for that.

What to do instead!

Pick one platform to focus on initially. When deciding where to start, knowing some details about your ideal clients is helpful. Different demographics of people spend time on different platforms. If you google ‘best social media platform for (insert demographic details)’ you’ll get some guidance on where your potential clients are hanging out. When you feel ready to add an additional platform, don’t be afraid to repurpose some of your content. Remember that while there will be people that follow you on multiple platforms, it is more likely the case that the bulk of your followers are only following you on their preferred platform. Even if someone follows you everywhere, they aren’t seeing everything you post. To share content across multiple platforms, I use a scheduler to send the same content out to different platforms on different days. So you might see something on my IG today that you see on my FB or LinkedIn later this week or next week. I still mainly focus on one platform, which is Instagram for a few reasons. 1 - I love it! Between reels and the ability to connect with people through hashtags, I have a lot of fun doing all the things. 2 - It’s working. When a new potential client books their free Discovery Call, I ask how they found me and about 75% of people through Instagram.

Another piece of advice is to not wait too long before you start working to convert your followers to email list subscribers. You aren’t the boss of your social media account, you can get locked out, or your account can get shut down. If it is the main path for new clients to find you, you could be in big trouble. A great way to encourage people to come join your list is to give them something that can help encourage them to sign up. As a financial coach focused on helping my clients transition from jobs that are sucking the life out of them, to building a business they are passionate about, my current website pop up helps walk them through steps to Design a Plan to Resign! So when you get to the email list step, think about how you can help your potential clients with a freebie!

Breakthrough #3

I saved the best for last! Be yourself. Don’t hold parts of you back because you are worried about what others will think. I didn’t get there until I’d had my business for over two years! When I stopped being the person I thought people wanted me to be, it was like opening the floodgates on my business.

Let me help to put it into perspective for you. Owning your own business has so many advantages and one of them is that you don’t have a boss to tell you what to do and who to be, so take advantage of it! You will get haters no matter what you do, so you may as well have haters for swearing or wearing yoga pants every day or whatever things are most you! You are you, you are here on this earth to be yourself. By being yourself you will attract the clients and customers that you click with. So go be you and enjoy every minute of it!

xoxo

-Sherry