Written by: Kate Greunke, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
I used to hate marketing, mainly because I didn’t understand it. The first two years of running my freelance copywriting business found me cursing social media, my website, and my dire need of clients.
It’s funny to realize that the very thing I didn’t want to do (marketing) was the exact thing I’d end up doing successfully for both myself and hundreds of other businesses around the world. As my agency approaches serving our 1,000th client, I’ve realized the basics of good, effective marketing are even simpler than I first thought.
If you are trying to grow a service-based business, here are the five marketing questions you should be able to answer.
1. “What is the best way to market a new, service-based business?”
At the Socialite Agency, a good portion of our clients are new business owners in the home industry. The ones who create the most success for themselves are those who focus on professional branding, a good website, and internal workflows first. Next, they focus on understanding their money and knowing how each dollar is being spent. After that, they are able to confidently invest in marketing their business long-term, which allows them to build up momentum and actually start getting new clients.
Notice that marketing is last on the list. If you don’t first have good branding, solid processes, and smart money management, all the marketing in the world won’t be able to grow your business. Do the foundational work first, even if it feels boring. Once you’ve laid a solid foundation, you can approach marketing. The marketing tactics that require momentum and long-term efforts include blogging and email marketing, which is why you need to be mentally prepared for the marathon versus the short sprint.
2. “How much time should I be spending on my marketing every month?
In the nearly ten years that I’ve been running my agency, I have found that allotting up to 3 hours per month for our clients to collaborate with us on their marketing is realistic, but if you are doing all your marketing yourself, that number might need to double.
Marketing tasks that directly correlate to reaching actual business goals, and will include hours of your time, include the following:
Monthly email newsletter - helps people remember who you are and what you do, makes it easy for people to forward your email and refer you to others, and it also helps people get to know you in a more intimate space- their own inbox. The goal of email marketing is increased referrals.
Monthly or biweekly blog posts - helps Google and other search engines understand the who, what, and where of your business. The more blog posts you have, assuming they are relevant to your ideal client and of high quality, the more reasons Google has to rank you higher in search results. The goal of blogging is increased website traffic.
Collaborations - Partnering with local professionals, clubs, or businesses to offer an event or a service helps your ideal clients trust you faster. The goal of collaboration is to cross-promote.
Press features - Interviews in your local print or screen media help establish your brand and industry authority. The goal of getting in the press is to increase brand recognition. People should know who you are and what you do. It doesn’t mean they’ll hire you at that moment, but the press has a way of self-multiplying. One interview or feature can lead to another, and all of this free advertising will only bolster your marketing efforts.
3. “How can I most effectively grow my mailing list?”
Let me tell you a little secret: The size of your mailing list doesn’t matter. Often, I have people asking how to get more contacts when they are actually ignoring the contacts they already have. If you’ve already added friends, family, past leads, and clients to your list, and if you’re already emailing your list once a month, you are ready to start adding more contacts to that list. But if you aren’t even emailing the contacts you already have, focus on doing that first.
To get more contacts on your mailing list, make the idea of being on your list attractive. What would attract your ideal client? For many of my agency’s clients, offering a pricing guide or cost calculator has worked well. This attracts people who are already crunching the numbers for their project rather than just curious, casual onlookers. If a pricing guide doesn’t make sense for your business, you can instead offer a guide to your services, which explains your client experience and tells them what to expect if they work with you. Again, this attracts the serious lead rather than the one who just wants free advice.
If you want to be even more engaging, you could make your lead magnet a video and pair it with one of the guides above. The video would include you going over the details of the guide, perhaps while physically touring through a recent / in-progress project. All of these lead magnets will deter the DIYer, which helps keep your mailing list clean and free of people who would never hire you for your services, anyway. Again, the size of your list doesn’t matter. The quality of your contacts is the only thing that does.
4. “How can I be certain that my website is optimized for search engines?”
If your website is on a content management system (CMS) such as Squarespace, Wix, or Weebly, don’t even bother using an online tool to measure your website’s SEO. It will dock your site for loading speed or “unnecessary” javascript every time.
These tools, such as PageSpeed Insights, are meant to measure the performance of websites that have been custom coded from scratch. If your site is on a CMS, the tool won’t know how to read it and will give you a low score as a result. This doesn’t mean using a CMS like Squarespace, Wix, or Weebly is a poor choice. In fact, these website platforms are fabulous. Squarespace is my personal favorite and the only website platform that my agency uses.
To Know Whether Your Site Has Good SEO, Answer The Following:
Did you compress your images? You can use TinyPNG or a Wordpress plugin to do that for free. Compression is especially important if your photos were professionally taken, since those file sizes are often huge. Your photos should be no more than 2,000 pixels in either direction.
Did you change your image file names to reflect the location you serve and the services you offer? If you are a home stager in Phoenix, your image file names should say, “modern living room home staging phoenix arizona” or something similar.
Does your website have headings that directly describe your ideal client, including and most importantly, the very first headline on your home page?
Does the first paragraph of your home page speak directly to your ideal client and expound on their pain points? This will ensure you’re using the right keywords.
Does the second paragraph of your home page explain how your services solve their problems? This will ensure you’re using the right keywords.
Did you remove any automatic slideshows from your website, especially and including on the home page?
Does your home page have more than just a few images and sentences? Your home page is the most important part of your website and should follow a sales page layout.
Does every page of your website end with a call-to-action?
Are you blogging at least once per month?
All of these factors contribute to your onsite SEO and should be prioritized.
5. “How can I quickly get another client? I’m starting to panic!”
Take a deep breath. No good decisions are made from a place of panic. In fact, it’s that state of panic that often leads business owners to do things they regret, such as signing year-long advertising contracts or saying yes to absolutely horrible, nightmare clients.
Take These Specific Actions To Reach Your Next Client:
Action 1: Send a newsletter to your contacts that specifically asks them to refer you. State exactly what type of project you are looking for or exact service that you’re offering and who it is meant to help.
Yes, you can literally just ask for what you want.
If you have a really small mailing list, that’s okay. Make sure you’ve added family, friends, leads, and past clients to your list before sending your referral request email. Also, ensure that you have a way for people to directly book a call with you from within that email. Link your Calendly or Acuity Discovery Call. Both Calendly and Acuity have free plans. Use them!
Action 2: Attend any networking or public events in your area that your ideal client would also attend. Don’t worry about having a perfect elevator pitch or a stack of business cards. Just be yourself.
Approach people or ask for introductions to them. Ask them what they do for work. They’ll ask you the same question, to which you can simply reply, “I’m an interior designer who specializes in helping families revamp their vacation homes.”
Yes, be that specific. If you label yourself as a generic, all-around business owner, you will be forgettable. Instead, make yourself memorable by being hyper-specific. It won’t alienate those who fall outside your specifications. Instead, it will prompt them to ask more questions, which will lead to a full conversation between you and them. And conversations are far more impactful than an elevator pitch.
The conversation might end with tentative plans for a coffee date. You might be able to hand them your business card, but don’t do that unless they ask for it. Being a genuine, authentic human being will sell more than being a perfectly polished professional.
Your Next Steps
If you can remember these marketing basics and implement them in your business – or delegate them to your appropriate team members – you’re likely going to dislike marketing a whole lot less because you’ll have a much higher likelihood of seeing results and watching your business grow. Great marketing doesn’t have to be difficult, expensive, or complicated. You can do this.
For more simplified marketing advice, stream The Kate Show Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Kate Greunke, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Kate Greunke founded Socialite in 2014 as a virtual agency of professional marketing specialists exclusively for the home industry. Kate hosts a marketing podcast, The Kate Show, which is ranked in the top 1.5% of all podcasts globally and available on all podcasting apps. In 2021, Kate was named 20 Under 40 by Window Fashion Vision Magazine. She currently resides in Wisconsin with her husband and two children while managing an international team and extensive client roster.
