Start with What You Have - Powerhouse Marketing for Solopreneurs
I had a client consultation recently with a second-time Founder who was struggling to know where to start with expanding their existing brand. They talked me through their founding journey, what brought them to create the organisation, how they saw the future of the company, & the values that they built the parent brand on.
As they pitched the brand to me, it was incredibly clear to me what the USP of the business is, who the key audience is, why the offering is valuable to that audience, & what this person personally brings to the table as a Founder. This is something that, in my experience, only a Founder can provide. That unique vision that drove you to start a company, regardless of the size, should form the foundation of your brand positioning & story.
Brand Storytelling
I know, it sounds pretentious, & many Founders feel like their org doesn’t have the ‘perfect’ story. The reality is that the growth of a company is rarely straightforward; in fact, these challenges & obstacles that you’ve had to overcome as a business are what makes both the journey & your approach to problem-solving unique, & ultimately worth sharing.
So what can I do today?
Start with What You Have
I always tell my clients to start by committing to a realistic marketing schedule. For some, that might be everyday, & that’s great if you have the resources (& time!) to accommodate it, but if you can only commit to one original post per month, I recommend doing that.
Start Today
Yes, today. If you’re planning video content, start by writing a script or drafting a format. I’d really recommend not leveraging AI for this - to begin with, the audience wants to hear your voice, not OpenAI’s. Even if you just get 5 minutes of content planning today, you have to get into the habit of carving out time for it.
Consistency is Not One-Size Fits All
For some, staying consistent on socials is a 3 x a day posting schedule across all platforms, maybe even more. If you read that and cringed, thinking “but I don’t even have time for one post a week!” - of course you don’t, you’re a Founder; your time will rarely be best spent churning out content to stay present online.
Start by assessing how much time you can currently dedicate to your marketing, & which channel you want to start with - I’d recommend starting with your most engaged existing channel, or the format you’re most comfortable working with solo. It’s ok if that’s only once a month.
If you have a team who have the skills to repurpose content, ask them to help you out or add your content to the existing schedule.
If you don’t have a team, but have a small budget to allocate to marketing, consider using a marketing contractor to outsource to. Bear in mind that if you want multiple skill sets, i.e. graphic design, video editing, copywriting, strategy, & scheduling, you may have to engage multiple contractors. I offer clients services across these functions, but this is often not the case.
If you have neither the capacity to bring it in house or budget to allocate to outsourcing - you have no choice but to DIY it, so consider where you could expand your schedule to accommodate the time required.
Leveraging AI
This is a controversial, but increasingly common solution being explored by small businesses, as it appears to offer the best of both worlds - minimal cost & time investment, with seemingly the same result. The reason I don’t recommend that my clients rely on AI is because it has become so popular. Which brings me to one of my golden rules in content creation:
If everyone else is doing it; don’t
The Homogenisation of Social Content
Social media is a busy place, and over recent years users have reported an eerie phenomenon - a large portion of the content currently being created looks and sounds exactly the same. This sameness can’t be solely blamed on AI, but it is undeniably caused by how we as users habitually leverage tools like AI. Where necessity used to breed innovation, we now have shortcuts. Don’t have product photos? AI can do that. Can’t think of a caption? AI can do that. Not sure when to schedule content? AI can do that.
However, AI can’t analyse your audience engagement in real time. AI can’t produce an eye catching image without a technician to provide a precise prompt. AI can’t predict what trend will go viral tomorrow. AI cannot innovate (yet).
If you want your brand to stand out from the crowd, why would you try to achieve that with the same methods everyone else is using?