4 micro-business marketing “rules”: DEBUNKED
As sole traders or solopreneurs, when we’re marketing our own businesses, we all try our best to follow the “rules”.
Annoyingly, these rules aren’t written down anywhere. It’s not something you could download or read.
It’s just a collection of unwritten rules we all hold above all else when it comes to our marketing. But still, even though this book doesn’t actually exist, small businesses still follow these rules, even if it means having less fun with their own marketing.
And when someone is having less fun than they could be, I MUST step in.
So I’d love to discuss some of these rules, and debunk them, if I may.
(Even if you said no, I can’t hear you.)
RULE 1: YOU’VE GOT TO BE PROFESSIONAL, ABOVE ALL ELSE.
Okay, this is something I hear all the time.
“We want to be fun, but we also want to be professional”
And that’s absolutely fine. But I would just love it if, for once, someone could give me an actual definition of what “professional” even means?
Because I’ve thought about it, and the best I can come up with is:
Seeming capable and competent, and like you’re good at your job.
So with that said, why do you feel like having fun, and showing that you like to have fun, negates your ability to do your job well?
Why are having fun and adding value seen as mutually exclusive???
Proposed replacement rule:
Assume that it’s a given that you can do your job well. Instead, focus on making sure that your marketing communicates the value of the one thing your clients can’t access anywhere else: YOU.
Your personality.
Your opinion.
Your approach.
Your experience of the world.
Your definition of fun.
Your sense of humour.
All the things that make working with you unique and transformative and wonderful.
RULE 2: “SELLING” MEANS TALKING ABOUT SERVICE FEATURES AND BENEFITS
We can’t talk about marketing without talking about sales. So let’s talk about sales and selling, and how they aren’t separate things at all.
One of the things I hear from people a lot is that they don’t know what their “sales messaging” is, or they don’t know how to write “salesy” posts without feeling icky.
And I think this is because we’ve all learnt that “selling” means talking about specific features, or outcomes of your services. And sure, those are things we can talk about in our marketing. But when we look at selling through such a narrow lens, it takes all the fun out of it.
It feels like we’re broadcasting, rather than communicating with a human being, and telling them the story behind our businesses. Which is really what selling is all about.
Proposed replacement rule:
Selling is just talking about why you’re the best person to do what you do, for the people you do it for.
When you use that lens, suddenly selling isn’t this icky “mode” you have to go into in order to get clients.
Selling can be as simple as:
Talking about your clients, and how you’ve changed their lives and businesses
Talking about your work, and how cool it is
Talking about the things you do every day
Talking about the beliefs/opinions/experiences that made you decide to run your business in a completely unique way to anyone else
TALKING ABOUT YOURSELF!
RULE 3: IF MY MARKETING PUTS PEOPLE OFF, I’M DOING IT WRONG
We’ve all heard the saying:
Market to everyone, and you market to no one.
And there’s a reason why we’ve all heard it: because it’s TRUE.
We are so obsessed with the idea of being liked by everyone, and so scared of putting off any potential client who could pay us some lovely money.
And we never stop to think if that potential client is someone we even care about, or someone we’d actually enjoy working with.
We’d rather be vaguely approved of by everyone than adored by a specific group of people.
And we never question if making a vague connection with everyone actually comes at the cost of creating really strong, long-lasting relationships with the very people our businesses were designed to help.
Proposed replacement rule:
If your marketing is putting (the wrong) people off, then you’re doing it perfectly.
Even if they’re people you thought were the right people. If they’re put off by your marketing, then they were the wrong people. And your marketing has done it’s job beautifully.
And if someone is put off by your marketing, then chances are they weren’t your target customer anyway. And it is not your job to adapt your entire business just to cater to the tastes of one person you can’t add the value they need to.
RULE 4: IF MY CONTENT DOESN’T GET LOADS OF LIKES/VIEWS/COMMENTS, I MUST BE DOING IT WRONG
A lot of the marketing rules we follow are actually borrowed from big businesses. Because for some reason, we believe that big businesses are the only type of business who understand marketing.
Big brands have the budget to pay for the kind of software that tells them:
Who has clicked on their social content
If that same person has also checked out their web pages
How close that person is to converting
But as solopreneurs/micro businesses, we don’t have the resources to access that level of data. So instead, I think there’s a tendency to overfocus on the data we do have access to. Things like:
Likes
Comments
Shares
Saves
But the majority of the time, I think these data points have very little to do with how close people are to deciding to work with us.
How do I know?
Because I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve shared a post that “flopped”, only for someone to enquire about my services citing that specific post as the reason the reached out.
Or how many times someone has started a disco call with me saying “I’ve been watching your stuff for months” and I know I’ve never seen their name in my notifications tab.
And because when we’re thinking about working with someone, we’re way more likely to go lurk mode on their content. We watch everything they share, but we might not always “like” it, and we’d certainly never comment something like “I’m really interested in this, please tell me more”.
Great marketing (the kind that magnetises dream clients to your world, and gets you on their business wishlist) needs two things:
Consistency
The reason they’d pick you over someone else
And what’s the best way to achieve both of these things?
HAVE FUN AS MUCH FUN AS POSSIBLE WITH IT.
So, proposed new rule:
The only metric you need to worry about (as a solopreneur) is how much fun you’re having doing your own content…
(and also sales, but that doesn’t make as nice of a quote).
So, what are the rules of marketing and building a brand as a micro business, a sole trader, or a solopreneur?
There aren’t any.
You get to talk about your business, and build connections with your audience in whatever way you think is best.
After all, no one knows your specific customer better than you. And no one understands your business better than you.
So stop trying to filter both of those beautifully unique ideas through a rulebook that you didn’t write.