3 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid as an Online Entrepreneur

Business Tips and ToolsVisibilityBranding

Feb 13

Written By brandmerry

3 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid as an Online Entrepreneur

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

You’re probably making these 3 marketing mistakes and there keeping you from growing your community and profits. Find out what they are here brandmerry.com/blog-1/3-Marketing-Mistakes-to-Avoid-as-an-Online-Entrepreneur#femaleentrepreneur #businessow…

In the past four years of running my online business, I’ve worked with thousands of entrepreneurs in marketing their brand and business.

I’ve noticed three core mistakes that online entrepreneurs are making when it comes to marketing their business.

And, full disclosure, I’ve ALSO made these mistakes - you live and you learn right?

Along with everything I create at Brandmerry.com, I want to give you the insights and tools to brand and marketing yourself online. So, let’s start with the top three mistakes.

For additional tips on what I call SMART Marketing and what I believe the 3 pillars of a solid marketing strategy are, be sure to watch the full video below. These tips start at the 19:32 minute mark.

Marketing Mistake #1: Relying on Social Media

The very first marketing mistake is that you are most likely relying only on social media to grow and market your business. As the online mentoring and course industry expands more and more coaches are utilizing social media platforms and unfortunately the message is getting out there that all we need to do is show up on social media to grow a profitable business.

I don’t know about you, but I quickly noticed it’s not quite that easy, right?

While, this strategy might have worked wonders for them and it probably still does cause they have like 100,000 followers or 25,000 followers, for those of you that are just starting out and in the trenches of that first and second year maybe you've realized that you've hit a ceiling and that you can't create more content.

Showing up on social media daily to engage and create content takes a lot of time. When you go about using this strategy only, you’ll start to create less and less content because it starts to get harder to keep it consistent. Then over time you notice you’re going weeks without anything.

I got to a point in my business where I had reached six figures, and although I felt accomplished I also didn’t know how I was going to keep growing. I realized I couldn’t make more than this a year, if I was going to keep getting clients and then still show up on social media every single day.

The reality is by relying on this strategy I was limiting myself and you’re most likely doing the same. It’s not scalable to rely on social media to grow your community and profits.

The other piece is that you don’t own social media. If you're relying on Instagram to promote your business and Instagram doesn't work, how do you promote your business?

If you're relying on Facebook or even your Facebook group to show up and promote your business and for some reason that's not working in the middle of a launch or a sale, what happens?

That’s why it’s so important to have these other avenues in place to consistently build your audience.

**If you’re curious about my favorite strategy which is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) be sure to check out this post here.

You should not be relying on social media to constantly attract new leads and grow your business. Social media is where we go to be social, to build relationships, to nurture the community that's already there.

Marketing Mistake #2: Not Generating Leads

This mistake makes me hurt a little inside, when I see an entrepreneur who has no efficient way to collect leads from prospects on their website, watching a live video or following them on social media.

This is all about list building. The idea is that if someone is taking the time to consume your content, you want to give them a way to join your “inner circle” i.e. your email list.

To kick it off, I highly recommend Convertkit to grow your email list because it has all the tools you need including landing pages, segmenting, forms for your website, tags, funnels and more. You can try it for free with my link here.

The beautiful thing about capturing your ideal customers information is that they are committing to your business. It’s essentially their first investment in you and your brand. Even though you're not getting an exchange of money, somebody is saying, “Okay, I trust you. I like what you're about and want to hear more from you. I want to welcome you into my inbox!”

I don't know about you, but my inbox is a sacred space. This is a big deal!

So to generate consistent leads to your business you want to have advanced marketing strategies in place like, SEO, podcasting, YouTube, blogging and Pinterest where you’re putting out a piece of content and every single day people are finding it and saying yes to joining your list.

Now, here is the kicker!

There needs to be an exchange that happens where you give them a free gift in exchange for their email address. This is the very beginning of the lead generation process.

If you’re new to list building, here is the overview below. If you want to learn more about list building, check out this blog here.

So you start with a free gift. If you’re a service-based business this can be a PDF, video training, audio training, a quiz...there are a ton of different options here.

If you sell a product, this might be a coupon code or a discount on their first item, but it could also be something really cool like a quiz. If I were selling a skincare product, I might create a free quiz that tells people their skin type and recommends the best products. In order to get the results and tips, they would have to give their email address.

That’s the free gift, something of value in exchange for their email address. Then you show up for them regularly in their inbox, providing value and time to time asking for the sale.

3 TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR FREEBIE (FREE OFFER)

Your freebie needs to be something your audience knows they need. If they are not aware of it, then it’s going to be really hard to market.
It needs to provide value to your audience. If after they consume the content, they walk away with something to implement, having learned something new or being inspired it’s valuable.
Your free gift needs to be a clear pillar of your brand. For instance, a skincare quiz sounds super cool, but I wouldn’t do that as a free gift because it doesn’t directly connect to my brand message or paid services.

Marketing Mistake #3: You’re Blaming the Algorithm

I call this the blame game.

My marketing isn't working because of the algorithm…
My marketing isn’t working because my industry is saturated…
My marketing isn’t working because my ideal client isn’t on [insert platform]...

That is not why your marketing isn’t working, but it's really easy to fall into this rut. It's really easy to fall into this thinking and then stay there.

I can teach you all the strategies in the world, but if you're stuck in a mindset that no one cares or no one sees it or it doesn't matter, then you won't get results.

And that's the truth.

I’ve had those moments in my own business, especially in the beginning. If I was promoting a challenge and there were 5 people who signed up, and in my mind it was nobody cared.

EXCEPT 5 people!
5 people who signed up, who had never heard of me before, who had never bought from me before, who were giving me an opportunity to show up for them.
That’s 5 potential clients.
It’s all in your mindset.

Such a big part of showing up is creating content! If you don't think people will find it, if you don't think people will find value in it, then what are the odds that you’re going to consistently show up?

Your mindset will take over and you’ll feel there is no point...no one sees it
...the algorithm is out to get me.

The algorithm isn't out to get you_brandmerry.png

No, the algorithm is out to challenge you...accept that challenge and become better.

If your marketing isn’t working change your mindset, accept responsibility and find solutions.

We cannot play small games when it comes to building our online brand and our business and this belief will keep you playing small. In order to be successful, we need to think big picture and big picture responsibility, taking responsibility for things, not working and finding solutions.

CONCLUSION

The first part to improving your marketing is understanding the mistakes you’re making and my guess is you’re now super aware of three.

From here, you can create a course of action to fix them so you can continue to grow your online business. If you want to learn more about SMART Marketing and the three pillars of a successful marketing strategy watch the video people (these tips start at the 19:32 mark).

If you’re ready to take action to improve your marketing, grow your audience and grow your profits, then I encourage you to check out Brandmerry Academy and join the waitlist for when the doors open again.

Learn more at brandmerryacademy.com

Branding and Business Coach | Michelle Knight of Brandmerry

P.S. If you want to learn more about my repurposing strategy, check out my 3 tips here.

P.P.S. Are we connected on Instagram? No? Well lady what’s happening here we’ve got to fix that. Come hang out with me on my favorite social media platform. Follow for inspiration and send me a DM to know we’re connected.