Brandmerry Blog Archives
3 Ways to Become a Better Marketer for Your Small Business
Social media just isn't sustainable and so many entrepreneurs find themselves burnt out and no further along trying to keep up with the hustle of social media. That's why today's episode is so important and if you're an entrepreneur, which I guess you are, you are going to want to tune in.
BY MICHELLE KNIGHT
Marketing is a non-negotiable for business owners. That is if you plan to make money!
In all seriousness we've got two big players: Branding and Marketing. While Branding, is typically done at the beginning of your business set up and revisited from time to time, the work behind the scenes is not ongoing.
Marketing is very different. Marketing requires consistency (whatever that looks like for you), creating valuable content and reaching your ideal customer to ultimately attract them to your paid offers and services.
It's like freaking magic.
And since, it's one of the most important parts of running your online business, I thought I'd share three of my must-have tips so you can become a better marketer!
In today's episode, of The Brandmerry Podcast, you'll learn:
Why consistency is so dang important and not just a buzz word!
How and why you should incorporate the power of storytelling into your marketing strategy to improve client attraction and connection.
Why after your customer buys is a continuation of your marketing work and how to take better care of your clients.
Tune in now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to hear the full episode and all the tips.
P.S. A great way to master your marketing and take the pressure off of social media is to join Brandmerry Academy. Inside, we're teaching a holistic and sustainable approach to marketing your business! Learn more at brandmerry.com/academy and get an entire year of marketing courses and support!
- FREE GIFTS YOU'LL LOVE -
DISCOVER YOUR BRAND STORY IN UNDER 5 MINUTES
LEARN HOW TO WRITE AN ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE THAT CONVERTS
MAP OUT 30 DAYS OF CONTENT IN UNDER AN HOUR
- READ THE LATEST POSTS -
MEET MICHELLE
Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.
I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.
I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.
This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.
Why Marketers Should Stop Relying on Social Media
Social media just isn't sustainable and so many entrepreneurs find themselves burnt out and no further along trying to keep up with the hustle of social media. That's why today's episode is so important and if you're an entrepreneur, which I guess you are, you are going to want to tune in.
BY MICHELLE KNIGHT
Time and time again I see entrepreneurs believe that in order to market their business they MUST use social media.
Now don't get me wrong, I love spending my time on Instagram and with the addition of Instagram Reels I'm loving it.
But, the reality is most entrepreneurs don't have countless hours to spend on social media, not to mention enough brain power to create new content every single day.
Social media just isn't sustainable and so many entrepreneurs find themselves burnt out and no further along trying to keep up with the hustle of social media.
That's why today's episode is so important and if you're an entrepreneur, which I guess you are, you are going to want to tune in.
In today's episode you'll learn:
Why relying on social media at the top of your funnel, and ultimately how you create brand awareness, is not the best strategy.
The other platforms I recommend to not only evergreen your content (more in the episode) but to also bring in consistent leads to your business.
How to streamline your content, using other platforms, and still show up on social media for FUN! Yep, Instagram can be fun, I promise.
Tune in now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to hear the full episode and all the tips.
P.S. A great way to learn all these amazing marketing platforms and take the pressure off of social media is to join Brandmerry Academy. Inside, we're teaching a holistic and sustainable approach to marketing your business! Learn more at brandmerry.com/academy and get an entire year of marketing courses and support!
- FREE GIFTS YOU'LL LOVE -
DISCOVER YOUR BRAND STORY IN UNDER 5 MINUTES
LEARN HOW TO WRITE AN ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE THAT CONVERTS
MAP OUT 30 DAYS OF CONTENT IN UNDER AN HOUR
- READ THE LATEST POSTS -
MEET MICHELLE
Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.
I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.
I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.
This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.
How to Boost Your Confidence and Increase Brand Awareness
Visibility (aka showing up) is a non-negotiable as a business owner, but it's not always easy. Learn my top tips for improving your confidence so you can show up online.
How to Boost Your Confidence and Increase Brand Awareness
BY MICHELLE KNIGHT
As I wrap up creating 90 days of content both for Youtube and the Brandmerry Podcast, I started to think more about visibility and showing up online.
You can watch an entire vlog I created about the process here.
The thing with visibility and creating content is it’s not easy, and it took me months to build up the confidence to even show up online to promote my business.
But, this confidence is absolutely essential if you want to not only build an online community of warm leads, but also lead your audience through the buying process so they become a paying customer.
Today, I want to talk about getting visible, and how you build up the confidence to show up.
I've been doing this long enough and I work with a lot of new entrepreneurs, people who aren't super familiar with social media or don't feel comfortable with social media or afraid to use video or don't want to look stupid in a reel or don't want to send an email because it's not perfect.
There are so many things that are keeping us from showing up and growing our audience, but more importantly, nurturing our audience and making the sale, that we can move through.
However, I know you can move through those beliefs and I’m sharing five ways to do that with you today.
5 WAYS TO BOOST YOUR CONFIDENCE AND GET VISIBLE
I made a list of five things to share with you on how to boost your confidence and start getting visible online so you can make that money.
Make the money, make the impact, go out and get it, because visibility is a non-negotiable.
You’ve got to show up.
Number One: It's Bigger Than You
When it comes to visibility and showing up in marketing in general, you have to understand that it's bigger than you.
When I was first starting, I kept asking myself, "But why do people care? What if I sound like an idiot? What if this is not correct? What if nobody shows up?"
I kept saying all these different things like, "What if, what if, what if, what if?"
Then one time, when creating content, I sat down and thought to myself, What if this is not actually about me?
It was at this moment that my branding shifted, because for a long time I thought branding was 100% about me and what I did, and we know now that it's not. It is about your audience. It has to be about your audience.
You are in this to make money. You are in this to make an impact. If you're just talking about yourself all damn day, your audience isn't going to be able to resonate with you. There's going to be no connection.
Everything you share, even when you're sharing stories about yourself, you must ask yourself the following questions:
Who is this for?
What will my ideal customer get from this?
How is this going to support them?
Otherwise, you're just showing up to show up and talk about yourself and that won’t move your business forward.
So one of the first things that I started to ask myself was, "What is the bigger picture?" and that, I think really ties into your mission. In the first episode of the Brandmerry Podcast, I shared with you a mission-driven business.
You can go back and listen to that episode and get really clear on what the mission is behind your business. It's always bigger than you. It's the impact that you are ultimately going to make. So the first step is identifying the mission.
The second step is really switching your focus, switching your thinking when it comes to visibility. Remove you from the equation.
You are the vessel, right?
You are the one that is delivering the information, carrying out the mission.
That's it.
When we start to recognize that it's so much bigger than just us showing up, and it's about the message and the mission and the impact that we are going to make, that will give you the motivation to show up and increase your visibility.
That's number one, big picture.
Number Two: Have a Plan
Now, notice I didn't say be prepared because I think this whole idea of being prepared fluctuates and can be different for every single person.
For those of us, who are recovering perfectionists, working on it every damn day, you're never prepared. You're never prepared because of perfection. It's a vicious cycle, so it's not about being prepared and having all your ducks in a row.
You can never have everything perfectly lined up and perfectly ready to go. You need to record videos, and you're like, "Ooh, I need this perfect background, and I gotta paint my wall, and I gotta have wallpaper, and I’ve got to get the perfect outfit, and I have to have this perfect boom mic and this perfect ring."
No, you don't need to have any of those things, so it's not about being prepared because your ratio of what is prepared could be crazy compared to what is actually required.
But it is about having a plan. You’ve got to know how you're going to show up and when you're going to show up.
This is going to allow you to actually do the damn thing because you will keep postponing it over and over and over and over again if you don't plan for it. Something will always come up. It always does. There will always be an obstacle or an objection or something that you're like, "Oh, can't do it today. No, today's not the day. No, I'm not ready."
Create a plan.
When are you going to post your first blog post?
When are you going to create your first video?
Have you been thinking about reels?
Have you been saving reels to your phone and you just keep waiting and you're like, "Oh, I don't know"?
Put it on the damn calendar.
Create a plan of action. If you’re in your first year of business it feels like you’re throwing spaghetti at a wall. Shit, I'd argue your first, second, and third year, too! It kind of feels like that.
It's like we're just throwing stuff and seeing if it sticks, but even though that's like a really good analogy, there still has to be a plan in place.
What the hell are you throwing on the wall?
What are you wanting to stick?
You've got to know these things. Otherwise, you really are just mindlessly floating around the internet. So having a plan will actually support you in getting visible and being confident in showing up.
Knowing what you're going to talk about on a video before you hit live or record, will take the pressure off. It doesn't mean you have to have the perfect script, it doesn't mean you have to have the perfect microphone, but have a game plan and get it scheduled.
If you’re looking for my tips to create a plan for your content calendar, watch this video here.
Number Three: Choose Your Platformu
When it comes to visibility, showing up, and nurturing your audience, you want to choose one platform and one medium to start.
We know with niching down, especially the more specific you are, the more streamlined you are, same with your offers, the more specific you are, the less you have when you're starting out, the faster you will grow. Because your attention is not pulled in a million different directions.
When you're just starting out and you're really struggling to just get started and just get the confidence to go do something, don't stretch yourself so thin. Start with one area.
When I was first starting, Facebook was super comfortable for me because I spent all my time on Facebook back in the day. I'd never run a business there, I never had a business page, but I was comfortable with the platform. That's why I decided to start there.
I also love video so I decided to just create a lot of live videos as this was something new Facebook was offering at the time.
I did frequent challenges. I would do multiple videos a week sometimes, and that is what I focused on, and that is how I signed most of my clients.
Then, I started to get a little bit more confident and decided to venture to Instagram. I hated it at first, it felt like a lot of pressure, but I was also excited about it and knew I had the capacity to take it on. So, I practiced, I refined, and I figured out what worked for me. I got good at writing captions and so on and so forth.
You don't have to do it all at once. A visibility plan doesn't mean that you're showing up everywhere under the damn sun.
If you're really struggling to gain confidence, then pick a platform where you know your ideal customer is, pick a medium, and really focus on that. Now, as you start to expand, of course, there are ways that you can repurpose your content, which is still something that I do today. It's a huge staple inside of Brandmerry Academy.
With a repurposing plan, you can start to find your main core medium, and then kind of push your content out from there.
For me, it's still video, all these years later, so I really encourage you to simplify, strip it down, think about the main platform and the main medium that your audience is on. Practice. Get yourself out there. Do the work.
Find what works. Find what doesn't work. Really dedicate your time and energy to it, because you're going to get confident as you do it. That's the secret. You get confident the more you do it, so why not laser in and focus on one thing, get really confident on that, and then watch that snowball?
I used to tell my clients that it is literally like a snowball rolling down a hill, right? It starts really, really small, and then it starts to get bigger, and the momentum picks up, and that's essentially what visibility is.
You're going to start small, it's going to feel really, really slow, it's going to feel insignificant, and you're going to start to pick up momentum the more that you do it and the more that you focus on where your reach is going to expand.
Number Four: Identify the Value
This kind of circles back to number one, where we discussed the point of showing up. Why are you doing this in the first place?
This particular point is about each individual piece of content. So before I record a live video, I always sit down and identify what I want my audience to walk away with.
Before I record a podcast, I sit down and identify what I want my audience to walk away with.
Before I create a social media post, I'm like, "What the hell is in it for my audience?"
If you can identify the value before delivering the content, it's going to take the pressure off of you.
Your mindset starts to shift and you start to realize…
...This isn't 100% about me. It doesn't matter how I look. It doesn't matter exactly what I say. As long as I deliver the value piece, we’re golden.
So make sure that you're taking the time to identify that.
Now, I recommend that a lot of my clients do that in the content planning process, but you can absolutely just sit down right before you hit record or right before you write the post and connect back to the value and what you want to provide with that piece of content.
I'm telling you, it seems incredibly simple, but it's a game-changer.
Number Five: Practice
That leads us to number five, which I already kind of told you, but we can still hang out here and talk about it a little bit more...practice.
If you listen to any entrepreneur, public figure, athlete, they will tell you that they boost their confidence and skill set by continuing to do it over and over and over again.
I had an amazing client inside of Brandmerry Academy the other day and she asked, "How did you get so confident on camera? How are you able to just speak really fluidly?"
My response was that I’ve done so many videos. That was the medium I chose in the beginning and I wanted to do it as much as possible to become incredibly confident at it.
I remember when I recorded my first podcast episode, and my husband can probably attest to this, I re-recorded it over and over and over again because it just didn’t feel like enough.
Now, I've recorded a lot of episodes and I just sit down and record it. Mistakes and all, I'm here for it.
The confidence comes by doing, and I think that's the irony of the entire thing. People wait, and maybe you're waiting, to be confident to get started, but you're only going to get confident by getting started.
Think about it.
Your confidence will grow the more you do it, and that's why all these things build on each other.
CONCLUSION
I know there is something you’ve been waiting to do, or holding off on until you’re ready. YOU ARE READY NOW.
Go through this process and tips I’ve just outlined, because visibility is non-negotiable as a business owner, and it's so fun to connect with people as you grow your business.
Show up, share your value, and connect with your audience. That's the fun part for me about content creation.
Yes, I love new leads. I love when people discover me and my brand, and that's part of the equation, but more than anything I love when people are like, "Watched last week's video and loved it."
"Watched this week's video and it was amazing. Love listening to your podcasts."
That's why I'm doing it, and because we're business owners, you're also going to make more money. Let's not sugar-coat it.
We want to see you.
We want to hear your message.
One of the things that I said really early on, on a podcast just by accident, and it has stuck with me ever since, is “Someone, somewhere needs to hear your message!”
So just remember that. You're just speaking to someone, just one person, that's it. If one person gets your story, gets in touch with you, you did your job.
If you’re looking for more support with your marketing, I suggest you check out my free training. I’m teaching you how to master your marketing without social media and you can sign up here to access it.
- FREE GIFTS YOU'LL LOVE -
DISCOVER YOUR BRAND STORY IN UNDER 5 MINUTES
LEARN HOW TO WRITE AN ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE THAT CONVERTS
MAP OUT 30 DAYS OF CONTENT IN UNDER AN HOUR
- READ THE LATEST POSTS -
MEET MICHELLE
Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.
I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.
I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.
This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.
6 Tips For Finding New Clients Online
Creating a service-based business and looking for clients? Understandably so, since it's how you generate revenue for your business. On the Brandmerry Blog I'm sharing 6 tips for finding your next clients.
BY MICHELLE KNIGHT
Here at Brandmerry, we focus on personal branding and marketing strategies to help you create more income and impact.
And one of the ways to create more income and impact is serving more clients.
So I thought what better way to support you in doing that than to share six of my favorite ways that you can start implementing to sign new consistent clients in your business.
Before I dive into the six tips, I have two little disclaimers that I need to share with you.
These tips are not going to work if you don't know who your ideal customer is. In fact, you're going to have a really hard time signing clients if you don't know who you really want to work with.
So it's incredibly important that you do the ideal customer work so that you know how you're showing up and what you're saying to those clients.
In addition to that, your messaging needs to be very clear.
Ideal customer and messaging are both core parts of the personal branding process. In fact, they are just two of the elements that I teach inside of my course You! Branded.
And if you want to get a sneak peek, you can watch the Build a Better Brand Method on-demand training all about personal branding. Sign up at betterbrandmethod.com to watch it on demand.
So make sure you take the time to learn more about your ideal customer and messaging.
6 WAYS TO SIGN NEW CLIENTS
METHOD #1 TO SIGN NEW CLIENTS:
Create High-Value Content
My number one way to attract new service-based clients is to create high-value educational content.
Now, educational content can be a slew of different things depending on what you sell in your business. But if you're a service-based business owner, chances are you’ve got a lot of cool information up your sleeve that you can teach your audience.
Now, why do I say high value?
Because if you can really position yourself as an expert from the start, from that initial piece of content that they consume from you, whether that is on a blog or a video on YouTube or a live stream or a freaking Instagram Reel, then you're going to build that trust right from the beginning, and that is really important.
Create high-value content, put it out there, show up, invite individuals to join your community, join your email list, sign up for your service, and watch as you build momentum and brand awareness and those clients keep coming in.
So again, I'm going to stress here, it's not just about consistent content, it's not just about posting to post on social media. It's high-value, quality content.
What is your audience searching for?
What questions are keeping them up at night?
Why are they coming to you to solve their problem?
Help them through that process and watch as your gap between the new ideal customer and signing that customer gets a lot shorter.
METHOD #2 TO SIGN NEW CLIENTS:
Host a Live Event
This is one of my favorite ways to sign new clients. With a product launch, a course, and a group program, but specifically for one-on-one service-based clients.
Sometimes we think, “All right, I've got this one-on-one service and it's always available, someone can sign up at any time.” Well, that might actually be hurting you.
And I'm not suggesting that you're constantly opening and closing and opening and closing the doors or changing things around, but adding in frequent live events, maybe quarterly, maybe monthly, where you get to share your expertise, give incredible value, and then ultimately pitch your service can be incredibly helpful.
So these live events could look like a video series on social media, you could host a challenge inside of a pop-up Facebook group, you could host a webinar or a workshop, some sort of training for your audience.
Essentially you have something that everyone signs up for about a topic that is super important to your audience and then you get to pitch your products and service as a solution to that problem.
If you have a service that's always open, you're always accepting new clients, it can sometimes cause your audience to say, “I'll sign up later, I'll do this later.”
Having these live events can be incredibly helpful and moving your ideal customer through the buying process, getting them really excited, helping them solve a problem, and then offering up your service as the solution.
METHOD #3 TO SIGN NEW CLIENTS:
Share Your Free Gift with your Community
Now, tip number three might not work for all of you, but I think it's important to know. Because I'm hoping that we'll also get the juices flowing in your brain around growing your community.
Tip number three is all about sharing your free gift with your network. In the beginning, you might not have a huge network to tap into. I didn't have anybody in my network that I could sell my services.
But I have a lot of clients who do. And by realizing that they have this network, we have to get really creative with how we tell them about our new venture.
How do we tell them about our services without feeling like we're bombarding them or overwhelming them?
One of the best ways to do that is to create some sort of freebie or lead magnet for your audience. You need this anyways, you need this regardless because it's a great way to build your email list, which is going to help you sign consistent clients.
When you create that, a great thing to do if you have the network available to you is to share it with them.
Reach out to them and say, "Hey, I have this new freebie. If you're interested, this is what it does." Or, "I know that you have a network of people who might be interested in this, would you mind sharing this?"
If you have a connection with other people in your industry that maybe have a similar audience or maybe they've changed gears and now they work with a different audience, reach out to them and say, "Hey, I know that you used to do this, I know you used to be in career coaching and you're not anymore. Would you mind sharing my new freebie that I have on resume building with your existing audience?"
Tying into those connections that you already have and those networks can be incredibly helpful. But this is my favorite way to do it from a really authentic place so it doesn't feel like you're like, "Oh, I got this new offer, here's where you click to buy."
It will get people on your email list where they will hear about your services.
METHOD #4 TO SIGN NEW CLIENTS:
Build Brand Authority
Tip number four, and one of my other favorite ways, is to build brand authority.
Now, we talked in tip number one about high-value content, about how it's important to build your expertise and showcase your expertise from the beginning.
Because, the reality is there are going to be people who are looking for your products and services online that may be further along in the buying process and they're looking for that moment of trust, of “this is my person.”
So having that high-value content is incredibly helpful.
But another thing that's going to help you sign consistent clients is going to be your brand authority. People want to know that you know what you're talking about.
A few great ways to do this, and two of my favorites, are through pitching your personal brand and through the power of search engine optimization.
When it comes to pitching your personal brand, this is a fantastic way to get in front of a new audience. I have my degree in public relations and it is one of the trainings that we teach inside of Brandmerry Academy, my marketing membership because we understand that it's a fantastic way to get all eyes on your brand.
When you do this, you're getting invited to come onto a platform with credibility. Now, maybe you're not going to get into Forbes the very first time you pitch but think about those smaller podcasts that your audience loves, that they listen to regularly, that they have a lot of trust and respect for the host.
That host is inviting you in to share your expertise. Your authority level is already elevated.
So rather than shooting a paper airplane in the dark of social media and hoping it lands on your ideal customer, you're getting in front of your ideal customer already elevating your brand authority through the power of pitching your expertise.
On the other side of that, we've got SEO. Now, this isn't an “or” situation, this is an “and” situation. Because pitching and getting featured in publications, on podcasts, on TV will also help you boost your SEO because it helps drive traffic to your website.
SEO is an incredible way to increase your brand authority because of your ranking on Google.
So I'll give you an example. If you go to Google and type in brand coach, I am going to show up at the very top, if not in the top three. If I'm a consumer and I'm looking for a brand coach and I go to Google and I see that the top person without paid ads is Brandmerry, immediately the authority is high.
So using the power of SEO, and site-wide SEO specifically to rank for your industry can also help increase your brand authority.
SEO, search engine optimization, is something that we teach again inside of Brandmerry Academy, which is my marketing membership. And you can learn more at brandmerryacademy.com.
METHOD #5 TO SIGN NEW CLIENTS:
Offer Assessments
Tip number five is all about offering assessments.
Now, I wanted to make sure that in covering these six ways, that you had something that would work for you no matter where you're at in your business. So the assessment works really well if you have a small audience or you're just getting started.
You could absolutely do it if you're further along in your business and you've got a huge email list, but just know that you're going to need a lot more time blocked off to handle all of these assessments.
Now, assessments do require your time and energy, but in the beginning, it's incredibly worth it if you are looking to create consistent income through your service-based business.
So what an assessment essentially is, is honing in on one area of your expertise, offering free assessments by application for someone to get your knowledge dumped into their lap. So I'll give you an example of what I did in the beginning of my business.
I offered brand messaging assessments.
I would promote them on social media, I would promote them in my email list, I would promote them on my website and my blog, and back in the day when I used Facebook groups, I would promote them there as well.
Essentially, in conjunction with awesome benefit-driven messaging, I would say…
I'm offering five of these this week, here's the link to sign up. When you sign up, you are going to fill out a short questionnaire, we're going to hop on the phone for 20 minutes, you're going to share a little bit about your business with me, and then I'm going to give you three ways to improve your brand messaging at the end of the 20 minutes.
So super actionable, they knew exactly what they were getting, it was focusing on one specific area.
I found that the assessments really served me better than offering a free call or a discovery call. Because those are incredibly vague and someone might not know exactly what they're going to get on that call so they might be hesitant to sign up for it.
Think about two to three things that you could really focus on that are key to your entire framework as a service-based entrepreneur, create really strong marketing materials to promote those assessments, and offer a limited-time opportunity to get in the door.
Don't always have these assessments open. Say you're offering two or three a week, maybe you do this every month, maybe you have it on the back end of your freebie or in your email funnel.
No matter how you want to work it in or promote it, these can be incredibly helpful with getting your customer on the phone with you showcasing your expertise, solving a problem, and then at the end of the assessment you can say something along the lines of, “If this was helpful for you, do you want to have a conversation on how we can continue to work together?”
Then you can move into the sales conversation - and just for the record I never had someone tell me no!
METHOD #6 TO SIGN NEW CLIENTS:
Storytelling
If you don't already know, my expertise over here at Brandmerry is serving my clients through personal branding and marketing strategies, but it's all based on the art of storytelling.
If you're not familiar with the art of storytelling, you can watch this video right here, where I share more about the importance of storytelling and some of my top tips. Ultimately, if you want to show up, you want to build connections, you want to build trust, get in the habit of sharing your story.
When I first started out and I wasn't signing any clients in my business, I was doing all the things. I was showing up, I was even at the beginning offering some assessments, but nothing was really registering with my audience.
I had a small list of about 10 people that grew from 20 to 30 to 40 or 50, and still, I wasn't signing consistent clients.
When I started to focus on emotional branding and the connection with my audience and showing up and sharing stories about why I do what I do, my values, my mission, those same people started buying from me.
And they weren't new to me, I'd been showing up, I had been delivering value, but suddenly there was that connection piece. So one of the best things that you can do for your business, especially as service-based entrepreneurs, especially as someone who's building a personal brand, is getting into the habit of sharing stories.
Now, I talk about the art of storytelling all the time on my podcast, The Brandmerry Podcast.
You can also check out the Brand Storytelling Guide on the Brandmerry Blog.
Storytelling truly is an art. And you want to make sure that when you're sharing these stories, that you're not just talking to a wall or talking to anyone, that you're speaking directly to your ideal customer, the same ideal customer that's going to buy your one-on-one package or the custom package that you are offering.
So get in the habit of incorporating a story into everything that you create, and that includes your emails and your social media posts and your blogs and on your website and in your videos because it's going to help you sign consistent clients in your business.
All right, there you have it, six ways to sign new clients as service-based entrepreneurs.
Don't forget to catch the free on-demand training, the Build a Better Brand Method.
You can go to betterbrandmethod.com to learn more about my signature six-part method.
You're going to learn more about elevating your messaging. I've got a trick in there on doing the ideal customer research that you're not going to want to miss where I’m talking about telling your brand story.
You can also check out youbrandedcourse.com to learn more about my paid branding course. This is truly where you get the step-by-step system for building a strong brand foundation rooted in story, understanding your ideal customer and mastering your messaging.
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MEET MICHELLE
Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.
I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.
I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.
This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.
What To Do When You Don't Hit Your Business Goals
It happens to all of us, probably more than anyone would like to admit. Yep, I'm talking about not hitting your business goals and projections. And rather than feeling defeated or as if something is wrong with you, I want to share my greatest lessons and discoveries when things don't go as planned.
BY MICHELLE KNIGHT
I hope that this title really caught your attention.
I know it did on Instagram when I shared that I didn't hit my goals in business. And I was really hesitant to share that for obvious reasons, but the response that I got really reminded me how important it is to share this side of being a business owner.
Because it can always feel like everyone around you is fucking nailing it and you're over here like, "What? What did I do wrong? Why am I different?"
But the reality is nobody's nailing it.
We all have these moments where we don't necessarily hit our goals. I'm five years into running this business, which is kind of nuts to think about. There have been numerous times that I haven't hit my goals, but I've always made progress and moved forward even when I didn't hit my goals.
So, when I posted that Instagram post, it made me kind of think, "What would I share with entrepreneurs specifically about NOT hitting your goals?"
And then as fate would play out, I had a client who hosted their very first challenge and it didn't go as they had planned. We had a whole conversation about, "What does that mean? What could we have done? What do we learn from this?" And I was like, "Oh my God, I just need to share this on the damn podcast."
So that's how we got here today.
BUSINESS EXPECTATIONS
I think that there is a very thin, beautiful, kind of wiggly line between goals and expectations. I think we get the two confused quite often.
I'm a big fan of setting goals, many of you know this. It is like in every program that I'm in if you work with me one-on-one, I'm always asking you, "What are your goals?" because it's really important to reverse engineer. I think one of the best strategies that we can learn as business owners is to reverse engineer.
Thinking about where we want to go and the steps we need to take to get from point A to point B.
It breaks down the whole planning process and it makes it actually quite simple and less overwhelming.
Goals are measurable. We know this. We've learned this in school. You can actually look at a goal and say, "Yes, I'm 20% there. I'm 50% there. I've already surpassed that."
Expectations are very different. And I've found that expectations tend to be very emotional, where goals are achievable and able to analyze when we remove the emotion.
There comes a point where you have to remove the emotion and say, "What is the data telling me?"
But that doesn't change the fact that we go into a launch or putting our business out there or whatever without expectations, without the emotion behind it and why it’s important that we are paying attention to why we're setting the goal.
WHY DO YOU HAVE THIS GOAL?
The first thing you want to identify is...What is the goal?
Make sure that it's measurable; typically some sort of a number.
Then, get clear on why you have that specific goal. Ask yourself, “Why is this goal important to me? Why am I going for this goal?"
And then, and this is the hard part, strip away all the BS around what you should be doing.
I'll give you the example that I posted on Instagram. I posted on Instagram at the beginning of June that I didn't hit my goal for my Academy launch.
Now, Brandmerry Academy is a marketing membership that I host along with the Brandmerry support team where we support entrepreneurs in marketing their business without relying on social media.
I have launched the Academy three times since the doors opened. I basically put the whole thing out into the world at the beginning of 2020. As I was gearing up for this launch, I was thinking about our launch in January 2021. It was epic. It was so good. There were a lot of different reasons for that.
One of which is that I had another program that was ending, the support was ending, so a lot of those members went into the Academy. And then we brought in a lot of new members. We did the same in terms of numbers this launch as well, bringing in the same percentage of new members, but I didn't have an existing program ending, so we didn't have that kind of rollover.
I wasn't planning on that though. I wasn't planning for that. But I was planning for a giant launch.
When I say giant, like big, scary to me, not necessarily to someone else. Maybe to you listening, it might be absolutely terrifying if you've never launched anything before. But, I was essentially going for a $50,000 launch, which is not something that I have done to date.
And I felt really good about it. I felt really confident in it. Obviously, there are some scary feelings, exciting feelings as well if you're jumping up that high, which we were, almost doubling what had been done previously without spending more on ads.
So, when I didn't hit my goal, there was something that I think we all go through. There was number one, "Okay, what happened? What did I do wrong?" I think that we can all be honest with ourselves here and say that that's kind of where our mind goes right in the beginning.
But I've done this enough to know that even if you don't hit the goal, it doesn't mean that it was a complete freaking flop or a failure. That’s why it’s so important to remove the emotion because it also doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you.
WHAT DOES A FLOP TELL US?
So what does it tell us and what do we do when we don't hit those goals?
In order for anything that I'm going to share with you to work, you have to have a measurable goal. I know I've said that 16 times already. You have to have a measurable goal, or none of this is going to work.
You'll find that you aren't hitting your goals, but you can't assess why that happened.
You've got to set the goal and stick to it and stay the course. You have to have a very, very clear, measurable, specific goal and make sure that goal feels good to you.
I believe in challenging ourselves. And I shared this in that Instagram post that I could've very easily just wanted to replicate what we had done in January. That would have been fine. And that's what ended up happening.
So when we set out and challenge ourselves and it doesn’t go as planned...
It does not mean that there's anything wrong with you.
It does not mean that you are a failure or that you failed in that situation.
It does not mean that you can't do it later.
It does not mean that you will not be successful.
When we don't hit our goals, we get so freaking down on ourselves and hard on ourselves that we slip into the mindset that we’re never going to be successful!
What a detrimental feeling as a CEO.
LOOKING AT THE DATA
When I finally started looking at the data and what the data was actually telling me, as I mentioned before, allowed me to remove the emotions.
Because no matter what happened, at the end of it all you grew from that experience. If you challenged yourself with a new scary number or you set a goal that you had never achieved before, you challenged yourself. You grew.
If you plan to launch something, let's say you wanted to host a webinar or something, you grew your community through your efforts.
Maybe you just got to practice talking about your offer over and over and over again so now you feel incredibly confident.
Maybe you wrote a bunch of emails and now you get to repurpose those emails later on for your next launch.
You can have a base, you can tweak it and you can move forward. That's what all this is about.
When we don't hit our goals, we move on to this mindset of defeat.
That's not serving us.
That's not serving our businesses.
That's not serving us as the CEO.
It's not serving us as people.
We have to get into the habit of removing our worthiness from the success of our business. Whether your business succeeds or doesn't succeed, doesn't change the fact that you are worthy.
That's why I'm in love with looking at the data when we don't hit our goals.
Because we need to be invested in what we're doing, but we cannot tie the success of what we're doing to our worthiness as human beings.
I see this happen a lot with business owners, especially newer business owners, in their first year or two years of running a business, where they're constantly going through this emotional roller coaster if they don't achieve exactly what they set out to do.
So, when I was talking to my client about the particular challenge that she hosted; the first one ever, very small email list, I started to say, "Okay, let's look at the data."
WHAT DATA TO LOOK AT
Let's say your goal is to get 100 people signed up for your webinar and you got 50 people on.
What you want to do is look at first is dedicated time.
How often were you promoting the signup?
If you didn't hit your sign-up goal, then it will come down to two things.
Thing number one, were you actively promoting?
Were you putting it out there enough for people to actually sign up?
We know we have to talk about things multiple times. And sometimes people have to hear things seven times in order to take action, even on something that is free.
With the data you can sit there and assess and say with clarity, "I probably could have posted this a little bit more. I really only did it twice a week," so on and so forth.
Number two area for analysis is your messaging.
If you feel like you promoted it consistently across all platforms; you were talking about it quite often, you were just doing the damn thing, but sign-ups were lacking, then you can start to look at your messaging.
Was my messaging clear?
Could I have created a better title for this?
Is it a timing thing?
If you have a landing page for people to sign up on, you can see how many people landed on the sign-up page (or landing page) and how many people signed up. Maybe your conversion rate was 20%, then we know that needs to be higher and we can adjust your messaging.
If you got great traffic but few sign-ups, we know it’s a messaging issue on the sign-up page.
Do you see how powerful this data is for moving forward?
Then the next thing we look at is engagement.
If you're hosting a webinar, it's important to know that in your mind you might have this expectation that 100% of the people who sign up are going to attend your webinar (there are those sneaky expectations again).
But data shows that that's not true. In fact, a solid goal is 50%. Of the people who sign up, we want a minimum of 50% of those people to attend the webinar.
That is a marker for us. So if you're going in with this crazy expectation that it's supposed to be 100%, you're already setting yourself up.
Now that doesn't mean you can't have more than that, but that is what you want to shoot for, for your minimum.
So, you can assess the situation and say, "Oh, hey, 50% actually did show up. Maybe it wasn't necessarily the number of people that we imagined on a webinar or on a live video, but based on our sign-ups, we hit the 50% mark."
So if you hit the engagement rate, but 50% equaled a low number, then we know we need more people to sign up and can circle back to number one.
If you didn't hit the engagement marker, then you get to look at your numbers and say, "Well, were people opening the emails where I was reminding them about it, did people know where to go? Was I doing a good job with the CTA on the video? Was I doing a good job of keeping people engaged on the webinar?"
That's the thing that I love about marketing.
MY LAUNCH ANALYSIS: CASE STUDY
Your data is there, you just need to analyze it.
Look at your data through a lens of no emotion. It's a non-emotional lens if you will.
Just read the data and see what the numbers are telling you. It's going to improve your marketing.
For the launch that I had done for the Academy, I started to look at the information. Sometimes when I’m launching, I'll do a webinar, or sometimes I will do a challenge. With each of my programs, I've fluctuated between the two because I really want to find what works best.
So this most recent launch we did a four-day challenge. And when we were looking at the numbers and comparing to the previous one, we noticed that sign-ups and engagement were lower for the challenge.
What that tells me, by looking at the data, is that my audience is busy and they have a really hard time committing to showing up consistently over the course of four or five days. But by inviting them to a single workshop or session that they can just block off an hour and a half on their calendar, it's much easier.
We know this because when we host one-day workshops for The Academy launch, the sign-up and show-up rate is higher.
We also then started to dissect the emails. On the back end of this challenge, I opened the doors to The Academy Now, one of the things that we've been playing with from time to time has been creating shorter launches. When I first started my business, I would launch for two to three weeks.
The first time I launched Roadmap to Freedom I launched for an entire month. I was so tired. But I was just starting so I didn't have a huge community and I wanted to get on the phone with as many people as possible and I was testing everything.
As we've launched more and more, we've played with shortening that time span.
But this launch was still a little long. We realized when people were actually signing up. And most of the people sign up on the webinar or the challenge and then at the very end. So we can shorten that quite a bit and that's some data that we can take moving forward. We felt like this one was just a little bit long and drawn out.
One of the things that showed us this information, was looking at the open rates and looking at the click-through rates and how they steadily declined and then peaked.
That really kind of confirmed for us over here at Brandmerry that we wanted to shorten our launches. And that's a strategy that we're going to use moving forward. It also saves me time and energy as well.
The final thing that I always look at for a launch specifically if not hitting my goals is the messaging.
That's that last piece. "Were people opening my emails?"
We keep a spreadsheet where we input all that data from ConvertKit, which is the platform that we use for email marketing. And then we can say with clarity which emails had better open rates and click-through rates.
The open rate data telling us which subject lines worked and the click-through rate telling us more about the body of the email.
This is a normal conversation when we’re assessing the date, "Wow, this email had a huge open rate. Great. We'll probably keep that subject line when we launch again. This one did not have a great open rate. We need to change that subject line. This had a great click-through rate. Fantastic. The body of the email, the email itself is awesome. We don't need to mess with that."
And that allows us to look at the information and repurpose pieces that worked for the next launch - we don’t need to recreate the wheel.
Do you see how powerful it is when we take time to assess our goals?
CONCLUSION
The assessment stage is the most important stage for moving forward.
How do you know what to improve upon?
How do you know what to change?
How do you know what to keep constant?
...if you don't take the time to look at what actually happened?
Remove your worth and your emotion from the assessment stage while you look at the data.
After you’ve assessed the data you can then ask yourself, “How do I feel?”
What do these feelings tell me about the work?
Do I enjoy what I’m doing?
How do I feel about the process?
You will become a better business owner if you let your data drive your decisions, and then swoop in at the end and say, "How do I feel about this? How do I feel about the data? Do I want to give it another go and switch it up and see what happens? Do I just say, 'Nope, data shows that this isn't working? I fucking hate it. Let's just do something different?"
You get to make those decisions and I think it empowers us!
It gives us back the power as the CEO to make those decisions. And that's incredibly important.
Be grateful for what did happen.
Celebrate what did happen.
Don't get so obsessed with what didn't work out that you forget to celebrate what did.
That's how you are going to move your business forward.
That's what I did after this launch. I celebrated the amazing new members inside of The Academy. I also celebrated what I learned as a business owner.
Be open to adapting, and celebrate no matter what.
- FREE GIFTS YOU'LL LOVE -
DISCOVER YOUR BRAND STORY IN UNDER 5 MINUTES
LEARN HOW TO WRITE AN ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE THAT CONVERTS
MAP OUT 30 DAYS OF CONTENT IN UNDER AN HOUR
- READ THE LATEST POSTS -
MEET MICHELLE
Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.
I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.
I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.
This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.