Marketing Strategy Example for Solopreneurs

Jun 3

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

Mapping out your marketing strategy can feel like a lot when you’re a one-person show, but I’ve learned over the years that a weekly workflow, mixed with the power of repurposing can transform the way you show up, build your leads and make sales. Re…

When I first started my business I felt overwhelmed with the idea of constantly creating content, notice I didn’t say consistent here because for a long time I thought consistent meant constant.

This is actually not true, consistency is what works best for YOU!

Once, I realized I could map out how I wanted to show up, where and how often I began to bulk my content creation days. Every Monday, I would have a few hours, kid-free, to write my blogs, social media posts and emails for the week.

This was crucial in making sure I could get my content out into the world, increase brand awareness and attract quality leads.

But, as any business grows so do the creative juices and I began to think of new ways to reach my audience. Many of these included live videos, pre-recorded videos, podcasts, Pinterest strategies and more. That’s when I became mildly obsessed with streamlining my marketing.

Over the past five years, I’ve become a master at not only my own marketing strategies but also supporting entrepreneurs in doing the same for their business. It’s the core principle inside of signature membership Brandmerry Academy!

Today, I’m giving you a look inside of my marketing strategy so you can steal it for yourself.

Let’s get started!

MARKETING STRATEGY TEMPLATE: 4 KEY PIECES

Before we get into the exact strategy you can steal from me, it’s important to take a birds-eye view of marketing as a whole.

There are four very important key pieces to a strong marketing strategy.

MARKETING PIECE #1: STRATEGY

The first piece in a strong marketing strategy is the strategy and systems.

This is getting a strong foundation in place so that you can show up and market your business consistently.

And having the pieces in place that are going to not only bring in new leads but also convert those leads into email subscribers and paying clients.

This stage includes a strong website, core messaging, email marketing platform and onboarding, plus a weekly workflow which we’ll talk about in a bit.

MARKETING PIECE #2: AWARENESS

In the Awareness phase, you're making sure that you're touching on all of those stages of the buying process, and that people are constantly learning about you and your brand.

This is typically where all those cold subscribers are coming in, people who find your blog on Google, see a pin that you created on Pinterest, or a video on YouTube.

They're coming in not knowing you previously, and becoming aware of your brand and how you ultimately support your clients.

MARKETING PIECE #3: ATTRACTION

Attraction is where someone who is now aware of you moves into being attracted to your brand, your mission and your work. This is where the magnetic energy starts to build.

They're ultimately at that phase where they want to learn more.

This is where having a lead generation piece in place is so important because the people who are ready for more can buy or join your email list where they move a little bit further through the customer-buying process.

MARKETING PIECE #4: CONNECTION

And then the final phase is what I like to call Connection.

This is where you are ultimately connecting and building trust through your marketing efforts and leading people to the sale.

Think about it as an upside-down triangle, where you've got cold leads coming in the top through awareness, moving into the second phase, warming up a little bit, into the bottom phase where they feel that connection and they are ready to purchase.

All of that is part of your marketing strategy. Making sure that you have the systems and the solid strategy in place so that all of those pieces work very effortlessly together.

Now, it's time to steal my strategy.

Just like I promised you, I'm going to share with you the seven-piece marketing strategy that I use in my business.

MY 7-STEP MARKETING STRATEGY

MARKETING STEP #1: CREATE YOUR WORKFLOW

One of the core parts of the Systems Phase is creating your workflow. One of the things that get entrepreneurs so freaking hung up is the idea of consistently showing up, but there is a way to fix this, and that is making sure that your system and your workflow are established.

Now, I teach this workflow inside of Brandmerry Academy in great detail, but for a limited time, I also have a freebie for you if you want to just dip your toes in the water a little bit.

You can go to brandmerry.com/repurpose, where I teach you how to master the art of repurposing and create a workflow for your content that you can repeat week after week after week. You’ll get your hands on my Content Creation Repurposing Guide!

This is the same workflow that you have heard me talk about numerous times in my videos and blogs, where I take a video and post it on multiple platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

I transcribe that and turn it into a blog.
I share that blog on Pinterest.
I share that blog in my email.
I share that blog on social media.

My goal is to make sure that I am extending the life of my content.

You want to create this workflow very early on so you understand where and how often you are going to be showing up with your marketing efforts. That is going to allow you to create a workflow that you can just plug the various content topics into and repeat week after week.

So, number one, create your workflow.

Again, something we talk about and cover in great detail inside of the Academy, but you can also get your hands on a small portion of that at brandmerry.com/repurpose if you just want to dip your toe in the water.

MARKETING STEP #2: LEAD MAGNET

Number two is making sure that you have your lead magnet set up.

This is part of that Systems Phase again because as you start to build that brand awareness and attract more people to your brand and your business, you want a way for them to stay in contact with you.

It is not enough to say, "Hey, just follow me here. I hope you actually see my stuff." We want to make sure that we have a way to email our community members. This is where you're able to talk about your products and your offers more effortlessly because these people want to hear from you.

So, the second thing that you want to do when setting up your marketing strategy is to make sure that you have a lead magnet established.

This includes making sure that you have that free gift whether that's a PDF, a video, audio, quiz, or something similar. You’ll want to create your landing page or opt-in page as a way to capture their information.

My favorite platforms for this are Leadpages for opt-in pages and Convertkit as my email platform. I like this combination, but many of my clients will just simply use Convertkit, as they do have the ability for both opt-in pages and general email marketing.

After they’ve opted into your free gift, you’ll need a way to send them the gift via email, and put them into a nurture sequence, where they get to learn more about you, your mission, your brand, and how you are going to support them. You can also offer up your product or your service in that email sequence if you have something readily available.

You don't have to wait for the perfect offer, you can always focus on nurturing them and building deeper trust and go back to add your offer later.

Having your lead magnet established early on is so important because as your marketing picks up, and it can take off very quickly, you want a way to capture those quality leads.

MARKETING STEP #3: WEBSITE

Now, one of the things that I teach over here at Brandmerry, specifically inside of Brandmerry Academy, is the power of a website. I know a lot of people will sit there and tell you that your website isn't important, but here's the thing: your website is a home base for your expertise.

When you use the strategies that we teach at Brandmerry like SEO, where you don't have to show up and post every single day on Instagram, or utilizing search engines like Pinterest, where you can extend the life of your blog post and make sure that you're driving traffic to your blog for two, three, four, five, six years down the line, then your website is important.

Now, if you want to show up every single day on Instagram and post all the time and just try to convert those people into sales, and that feels like a good strategy for you, go for it.

But, I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs who follow that strategy and struggle a bunch, where they're like, "Well, I have all these subscribers but nobody's buying from me." That is why we teach the strategies that we teach for evergreen content over here at Brandmerry because in our minds it’s much more effective.

So, with these evergreen strategies, it's important to have your website established.

I’m not asking you to hire a designer or spend months building the “perfect” website, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. It can be very simple to start, and you can continue to add on to it as you go.

What I recommend to start is a very simple homepage, where you have your lead magnet, where you tell people a little bit about who you are and who you serve, and you can link to your product.

Having an additional page that shares your product or your service with a link to purchase, book a call or submit an application.

Followed by additional pages for your ‘About Me’ and your blog.

You can have your website set up in no time, because as we know, it's not about perfection, it's about putting it out there. And you can continue to add to it and build.

This is one of the things that we teach inside of the Academy. There’s an entire brand new course all about creating your website, where I walk you through step by step by step what pages to have and what to include on them.

Remember, think of your website as a home base where you're going to be setting your evergreen traffic so that you don't have to show up on social media every single day, multiple times a day.

MARKETING STEP #4: BLOGGING

Please, start your blog from the get-go. This is going to be powerful for you because it's allowing you to create strong content on your website so people can learn a little bit more about you, a way for you to showcase your expertise and authority and create content that lives on.

You can then utilize SEO so you can show up in Google and other SEO platforms.

And, a little hint, if you have your workflow set up, you're creating long-form blog content, which you can then cherry-pick pieces out of and put on social media, or email your list, or create a small reel about.

So, because you're creating a piece of long-form content right out of the gate, you're actually giving yourself smaller chunks of content that then you can put out on various platforms. Having a blog, in the beginning, is powerful.

Now, if you're not someone who likes to write, don't think of blogging as just writing an entire post every single week. There are a lot of different ways that you can create blog content. One of them is writing the blog, but the second one is how I create my blog posts - starting with a video.

I create a video because I happen to enjoy video content more, transcribe that and turn it into a blog.

Another option is starting with a podcast or audio recording. You can transcribe that and put it onto the blog.

I'm not saying that you can't also start with video or start with podcasting, but because we're going for a simple strategy, bare-bones, you need a blog, and you want to start it right away.

If you're like, "I can do video and blog," then let's do it. That's why the workflow that we designed in the first part is important. You can get yourself into a system and you can use awesome marketing tools to streamline your energy.

One more thing about the blog is that it's important to have that text for repurposing.

Remember, you can use that long-form content to create multiple pieces of content to show up on social media. You could take an entire blog post, pull out individual sentences, and have an entire month's worth of content for Twitter.

There's a lot of really strategic ways to extend the life of your content, so start with the long-form and then can thank me later.

MARKETING STEP #5: PINTEREST

Pinterest is a search engine optimized platform, meaning that people come to the platform to find very specific pieces of information and the platform uses the keywords from your content to categorize the content. This means if someone is looking for travel tips and you have a post on travel tips, you’ll show up as a resource for them.

I talk a lot about SEO because I love it so much. Feel free to dive into last week’s post if you need a deeper dive.

This SEO strategy is why Pinterest is a more powerful platform than some of the social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook because people aren't specifically going there to solve their problem and seek out solutions.

Pinterest users tend to be further along in the buying process, as opposed to Instagram or Facebook. They're ready, they know their problem, they're seeking out solutions and they're ready to purchase. Where on the other platforms, you're just throwing content out there and hoping that it hits the right person.

So, integrating Pinterest is powerful.

Now, I'm not going to do an entire video on Pinterest. It is a whole strategy in and of itself. But if you're serious about marketing and you're ready to use this platform, which I highly recommend, we teach it inside of Brandmerry Academy.

It is an entire monthly marketing mini-course, learning how to use Pinterest effectively in your business. We're talking thousands and thousands of monthly traffic, anywhere from a thousand to what we see over here at Brandmerry upwards of 25,000 website viewers a month. Pinterest is a powerful tool to support you in doing just that.

You've got the blog because you followed Step 4, now, integrate Pinterest so you can create that consistent traffic to your blog.

While I’m not sharing the entire strategy here, there is one little piece of information that I will give you. When you create your blog content, create anywhere between five and six Pinterest pin-sized variations of your title.

Let's say, you tilted your blog “Three Ways to Improve your Content Creation”.

Go to Canva, choose the Pinterest template, make five individual pages, design them all just a little bit different. Change out your brand colors. Put a photo back there. Maybe change the text a little bit. And then, put different variations of your title on those images.

One could be “Three Tips to Improve your Content Creation.”
One could be “Want to Improve your Content Creation? Read my Three Tips here.”
Another one could be “The Number One Tip You Need to Know About Utilizing Tools to Improve your Content Creation.”

You can change them up.
You can change colors, font, photos, etc, but have at least five different variations.

Then schedule those to release over the first week or two when your blog gets out into the public. You can continue to share them on different boards, etc. This is going to allow you to create fresh content on Pinterest, which is important when it comes to utilizing Pinterest.

Again, check out Brandmerry Academy for the complete training.

MARKETING STEP #6: VIDEO

Now, number six is where you get to incorporate video. This is where social media does come into play just a little bit, but we're focused on using video rather than just static content, which will allow you to reach more people because these platforms love video.

Now, you don't necessarily have to do videos on Instagram or Facebook.
You could use YouTube as well, but hey, if you're creating the video, why not put it out there on a bunch of different platforms so you make sure that you get in front of your ideal customer?

Video could look like Mondays with Michelle, which is an entire video that I record that I put on Facebook and Instagram every single week. Video could look like using Instagram stories, because those work incredibly well for moving people through the buying process, building trust, and leading them to the sale. It could also be live videos on a platform of your choosing.

Let's not forget our friends' Instagram Reels or TikTok, these short-form videos that are highly educating and highly entertaining do well, and these platforms love to push these types of videos out.

So, no matter what you're doing in your business, no matter what feels good for you, figure out a way to incorporate video at this stage so that you can start to build that know, like, and trust factor with your audience.

MARKETING STEP #7: KEEP IN TOUCH WITH YOUR AUDIENCE

And then finally, number seven is to figure out and design your weekly touch base with your growing audience.

Now, if you remember back to number two where we talked about your lead magnet, it's important that if you're growing this email list that you are emailing them, and not just when you want to sell something.

Email them and let them know what's happening regularly.

We tend to, as marketers think that everyone sees our content the first time that we put it out there, but that's just not true. You want to make sure that you're getting in front of your audience and that we're hitting them wherever they are.

Our audience is busy, they’ve got a lot going on and they've got a lot of information coming their way. So if someone has said, "Yes, I want to hear from you," on your email list, do yourself a solid and email them.

This could be focusing on emailing your list every single week when you release your new blog.

It could be making sure that you share your new video every single week via email.

If you've got a podcast episode, sharing that every week.

Remember, you're creating new content every week so you can just email your audience about that. And then, if it feels good to, you can always take it a step further and include additional story or additional resources to email and stay in contact with your audience multiple times a week.

But, the bare minimum is once a week. That's what we believe over here. Highly, highly recommended to keep a strong and healthy email list.

CONCLUSION

Those are the seven pieces of a solid marketing strategy. You want to have these core pieces in place and then every day focus on taking three important actions: Growing your email list, nurturing your existing email list, and working on making a sale.

Watch this video on Youtube where I dive into a deeper strategy about these 3 daily marketing moves.

That is the seven-part marketing strategy that I want you to steal which will allow you to show up daily to attract new customers with ease.

Roll these out phase by phase. You want to have one, two, and three, ready to go for your systems.

Then your blog and start to integrate Pinterest.

Remember, you don't have to do it all at once. Think about it in phases as it will make it much more manageable.

And, again, if you want support with every single part of this process plus more, because there's a lot when it comes to marketing your business, we believe in simplifying it inside of the Academy.

Head to brandmerry.com/academy to get signed up before doors close.

P.S. Have you tuned in to The Beautiful Climb podcast? I release new episodes every other Friday on topics around productivity, motherhood, habits, goals and going after the life of your dreams! Check out past episodes and be sure to subscribe at thebeautifulclimb.com