top of page

The Digital Marketing Productivity Hack for "Solo" Founders


Productivity: Noun-

Definition: The rate at which goods are produced or work is completed

Entrepreneurs want to get things done, sometimes, more than they can handle at once, within a specific time frame. Most business owners are juggling marketing, public relations, accounting, human resource, inventory management, including administrative tasks. As you can imagine, things can get overwhelming pretty quickly. Especially with Digital Marketing.

Digital marketing plays an integral role in growing your business in the early stages. Having a digital marketing strategy enables companies to generate leads, and increase sales. How is this done? Through communication channels such as social media, email, videos, newsletters, podcasts, etc.

Here’s how it works:

Digital marketing assists companies with building brand awareness, while providing brands the opportunity to engage with consumers. Customers are expecting to find you online, outside of your website. It would be great if customers only needed to search for your website online for your products and services. The truth is, some of your customers have yet to learn about your company to even know that your brand exists, let alone your products and services. With digital marketing, you’re directing customers to your online store, or selling platform of choice.

Okay so, I know I need a digital marketing strategy, however where do I begin?

I’ll share with you what I learned as a solo Founder creating a digital marketing strategy that worked best for my business. Earlier in my entrepreneur journey, I did everything. I wasn’t fortunate enough to have a Co-Founder, or a team, so much of the work fell onto my shoulders. This included, Digital Marketing. I’m no marketing expert, however I understood the importance of having an online presence and was determined to get it right. I pretty much researched everything related to digital marketing and applied tactics and best strategies I learned along the way.

My Offering

At the time I was selling business related e-books and offering consulting services. I used social media, blogging and my newsletters to build my credibility as an expert by sharing information, resources, and offering free webinars. My website housed all of my e-books which is the reason why it was important for me to direct traffic from the social platforms to my website.

How I got started

I started out creating content literally every single day. My form of communicating to clients was through blogging. I used Instagram and Twitter as a tool, to drive traffic from the platforms, to my website.

The problem?

I was “hustling backwards”. I would literally write 2 to 3 blogs a day. The problem? I was balancing working a 9-5, while growing The Corporate Concierge Group. I couldn’t afford to hire an agency or consultant. My resources were very limited! I had to be resourceful. That meant researching and learning about the subject of marketing, social media, calendaring, posting, email marketing, and hash tags. It was what I needed to do until I was in the financial position to outsource and or hire a digital marketing agency.

My Strategy

One of my strategies for driving traffic to my website included list building. The idea is to attract leads by capturing customer information to build an email list to market to customers. I set up a subscriber form on my site for customers to sign up for my mailing list on website and blog.

Sounds straight forward right?

Here’s how I did it

At the end of the day, we learn to be resourceful while building within our means. You don’t necessarily need a “robust” marketing campaign just a strategic plan for attracting and retaining prospects and customers.

In the beginning, I started out creating content every day. That lasted very briefly. I needed to better maximize my time to work more efficiently. I started creating content every month, for the entire month. What I should’ve done in the beginning was plan my content out for the entire year (we’ll get into that later).

Here are a few tips that may help solo Founders to best maximize both your time and resources. Especially those individuals who don’t have the ability to hire a social media or branding agency to handle digital marketing.

First, marketing itself is extremely time consuming! There is no “quick fix”, nor are there any tactics that will produce immediate results. This is a numbers game that takes time to master. You will definitely learn trial by error. Just patient with the process.

Set realistic goals

The best way to approach your digital marketing strategy is to set goals. Determine what the goal is. Assess what do you have to work with and how can you get it done efficiently to help you reach your goals? A few examples:

“We want to grow our online community to build a social media presence”

“We want to introduce our brand to potential users of our products”

“We have an upcoming event and would like to have at least 200 people attend”.

Whether you want to raise brand awareness, generate new leads, or nurture leads, it’s important that you clearly define your goals and desired results:

  • Generate new leads

  • Nurture leads

  • Establish authority and industry expertise

Think about how you want to communicate to your audience:

  • Email

  • Podcast

  • Newsletter

Each of the listed above items requires a different approach. An example, creating a podcast may entail video content or simply voice. With email marketing, subscribers are able to read your content, however, you would need to incorporate a way to engage with readers once they’ve read your content. This is where your strategy comes into play.

Example:

You decide to launch a newsletter as the preferred communication to your audience. Once the reader views the content, then what? How do you do gain feedback from readers? How do you know if the content was interesting?

Social media

Here is where you would add an engagement strategy for connecting with readers. Use Twitter or Instagram to pose questions regarding the newsletter content. Open ended questions, helps brands engage with audiences to learn more about their customers. You can tailor content based on the reader’s feedback.

Here’s a tip to help you get started with creating content that speaks to your audience:

Research Content

Research industry trends and topics. Industry related news and content can help you understand what’s happening in your market, and provide you with content to share with followers. Industry related Trends and topics can also help you craft relevant content for your audience.

Define Your Success Metrics
Defining your success metrics really boils down to what is your bottom line? Growing the number of subscribers for your YouTube channel? 500 retweets on Twitter regarding an important issue you’re raising awareness about? Once you decide what your goal is, you can then craft a strategy that enables you to execute your goals. Measure your results by tracking your data on campaign performance, including audience demographics. This method helps you to understand what content your audience is responding to which can assist with creating tailored messaging, marketing campaigns, products and services.

Plan your content

As I mentioned previously, in the early stages of my business, I was trying to figure out how to manage my time wisely. What helped me greatly was prioritizing my tasks for the week through scheduling. I would set a day and time to create content. Typically, I set aside a day (usually on the weekends) to outline what I’m going to blog about. I started out by writing a list of topics to blog, and a few articles to share.

I used a calendar to write out all of my topics which helped me plan my content a month in advance. In using this method, I’ve been able to go from planning my content up to 90 days in advance, to 12 months. Meaning, I have 12 months of content already typed, ready to publish, and share.

I used a social media management tool. Buffer to publish my content on my platform of choice. My website provider Wix, has a built-in feature that enables push post capabilities as well. Planning out my content in advance, allows me to focus on other areas of my business for the rest of the year. The only thing I have to do once the content is published is tracking and monitoring the results daily, weekly and monthly.

Here’s an example of my calendar

Here’s a “business case” example to help