In this episode I’m going to teach you how to market yourself – but before we dive in, if you’re listening to this the day it was released, tomorrow is Thanksgiving AND my 39th birthday – and I just wanted to take a moment to say how grateful I am for YOU for listening to this podcast, for being part of my journey, for telling your friends about it and sharing it with other people that you know would get value from it, and for subscribing and leaving me a review.
And if you haven’t subscribed and left a review yet, I’m grateful to you in advance for when you DO – and if you’re in the US and you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope it’s an awesome one for you.
Okay, so let’s dive in to this week’s episode.
You may not know this about me, but I majored in marketing and communications in college. And then, I went on to work in marketing departments throughout my career. My background is in marketing, but my passion is technology.
There’s a word for that now – MarTech – but I don’t think it existed back in the day when I was in college. Like I said, I’m turning 39 tomorrow. I didn’t have internet until I was 17 years old… Can you imagine a kid these days not having internet? Anyway…
So I teach people how to build a website in my Free 5 Day Website Challenge – which I’ll link up in the show notes, but I teach it from the perspective of creating the KIND of website that’s going to help you market yourself.
I’ve taught over 7000 people to build their own website, and then the question that always follows is –
Okay, I have a website, but…
How do I market myself?
Like, how do I get found, how do I sell my products and services, all that kind of stuff.
And then people who are introverted or have a little bit of imposter syndrome going on avoid marketing, because it feels like you gotta constantly be promoting yourself and putting yourself out there and doing all these really uncomfortable things.
So to answer the question of how to market yourself, we need to talk about what marketing IS, and what marketing ISN’T.
Because it can mean a lot of different things.
Marketing is NOT promoting yourself and selling things.
It's:
- Letting your ideal customer know that you exist.
- Helping them understand how you can help them solve their problem or enhance their life.
- And giving them all the info they need to make the best decision for themselves about whether or not to buy from you.
So the good news…
(especially if you’re introverted or afraid to put yourself out there)
….is that marketing really has nothing to do with YOU.
Which probably sounds odd coming from the girl who tells you to put your FACE on your homepage and share your story on your About page, right?
But that’s not about you either.
It’s about helping your ideal customer build trust and get to know you as they make the best decision for THEM.
So if marketing has nothing to do with you, it’s a relief, right?
Your job is not to sell yourself or be found or prove your worth or put yourself out there.
Your job is to know your ideal client/customer/reader better than they know themselves.
Understanding your ideal customer is not just a FOUNDATIONAL step to marketing your website…
It’s everything.
So there’s another mindset shift I want you to consider:
Marketing is not about getting people to find YOU. It's about you finding THEM.
It’s about going out and finding your ideal customer…
Getting their attention…
And inviting them to visit your website.
There are essentially 5 ways to find your ideal client online and invite them to your website:
- Search results
- Social media
- Relationships
- Guest Posting
- Paid Advertising
Which I talk about in Episode 190.
And some ways will work better for you than others.
It simply depends on how your ideal client researches the problem you solve and how they generally spend their time online.
So if they’re researching:
Do they go to straight to Google?
YouTube?
Pinterest?
Do they post on Facebook to ask their friends, or maybe to a group?
Do they reach out to their network on LinkedIn?
Do they go straight to a favorite blog or website?
Something totally different?
What about how they spend their time online when they are NOT researching their problem?
Take me, for example:
While I’m having my morning coffee, I open up Facebook on my iPhone, respond to messages and then scroll my feed. I belong to tons of entrepreneur FB groups so I see a lot of that in my feed.
Sometimes I’ll open up Instagram and follow back my new followers and check my DMs and scroll my feed, maybe watch a few Stories. Sometimes I won’t. I’m just not on Instagram that much…
Then I’ll open up the Flipboard app on my iPhone and read articles and blog posts curated by the app for me that match my interests – lots of entrepreneurship and personal development articles.
When it’s time to walk Scarlett, I’ll listen to podcasts about business and marketing and personal development.
Many times, in the evenings my husband and I will watch YouTube on our smart TV. We’re planning to build a house in 2020, so we watch all kinds of videos related to home construction (I feel like an expert on septic systems… ew.)
On the weekends, I’ll open up Pinterest. I like reading articles about entrepreneurship, list building, and I also like to search for and pin recipes.
If I’m ever researching anything, I go straight to Google. It doesn’t occur to me to go to Pinterest or YouTube. But one of my blogger friends says Pinterest is always the first place she goes to do research, which I find fascinating!
The good news is…
There are TONS of ways you could catch my attention.
Here are just a few:
- Posting in a Facebook group that I’m in.
- Guest posting on one of the sites that I see in my Flipboard app all the time, like Forbes.
- Interviewing someone that I follow and admire on your blog so that I go check it out when I see them share it on social media.
- Writing an epic blog post that’s optimized to show up in search results.
- Paying for ads that target me on the social media platforms I’m on.
The bad news is…
There are tons of ways you could catch my attention.
And that’s why you feel overwhelmed…
…like you don’t have time to do marketing…
….and have no idea what to do or where to start.
But you gotta pick something and just do it. And it’s not about picking the right thing.
It’s about picking SOMETHING and taking action on it.
It’s about intentionally trying different things and figuring out what works best for you.
So if you’ve taken my Free 5 Day Website Challenge…
…you may recall that I have a pretty strong opinion on the point of building a website in the first place.
The point of a website is NOT to:
- brand yourself.
- establish yourself as an expert.
- market or sell your products and services.
(Even though a website helps with all of those).
The sole purpose of building a website is to build your email list.
All roads lead to your email list.
Why?
If you don’t get an email address from your website visitors, you have no way to…
- Invite them back to your site.
- Let them know about new content you’ve created to help them.
- Let them know how they can work with you on a deeper level.
You’re leaving it all up to chance.
And chances are, they’ve moved on to the next shiny object.
So if all roads lead to your email list…We gotta compel people to sign up!
And saying…
“Join my newsletter list”
or
“Subscribe for updates”
or
“Get my 10 best marketing tips”
is NOT compelling.
If you have any variation of those as your “call-to-action” to join your email list…
…that is a big reason why your email list is not growing (even if you are getting traffic).
In the Free 5 Day Website Challenge, I talk about the concept of a freebie, or giving away valuable information in exchange for an email address.
The freebie is an important piece of the puzzle…
…but how you describe the freebie on your website is even more important.
Your freebie must be results-oriented.
Let’s take my 5 Day Website Challenge, for example.
My ideal client wants to wave a magic wand and have all the steps laid out for them to DIY their website so that they save time and feel confident and capable.
If they didn’t have the problem of not having a website and feeling confused about what to do and overwhelmed with all the choices, they’d be able to get on with getting clients and making money.
So the RESULT I can deliver is to help my ideal client:
“Build a website in just 5 days even if you’re not techie so that you can stop feeling overwhelmed and start booking clients.”
So you know how I’m searching to solve my problem, you know where I hang out online, and you’re going to put the results I want right in front of my face and I click through to your website and opt in because you’ve piqued my interest.
That’s how you market yourself.
It starts with understand your ideal client’s problem and where & how they’re searching for a solution…
(and what they’re doing online when they’re not searching for a solution)
Then using that knowledge to:
Make a DECISION on the first marketing tactic to try…
Write an irresistible call to action for your freebie…
Get people on to your email list.
And then any time you create new content, no matter what platform, you are going to send it to your email subscribers.
So that you stay top of mind.
And from time to time you’ll let them know how they can work with you.
So that when that one ideal client who’s been on your list for years finally believes she has the time and money to solve her problem, you’re not just coming out of nowhere trying to sell her something.
So just to recap –
Marketing is NOT about selling yourself or getting found.
It’s about:
Letting your ideal customer know that you exist.
Helping them understand how you can help them solve their problem or enhance their life.
And giving them all the info they need to make the best decision for themselves about whether or not to buy from you.
So that’s it – that’s how to market yourself online – And you’re not going to want to miss episodes 198 and 199 with my guest Bernadette Doyle because she’s going to share with you how you can take action on marketing yourself before you feel ready and share the #1 key to success in any business – so go ahead and hit subscribe so you don’t miss that – and I’d love it if you could go to shannonmattern.com/review and leave me a rating and review – it helps me reach even more side hustlers!
See you next time!
