Self-Employed and Stuck? 4 Parts of Marketing You Actually Need to Know

The biggest question my clients ask is, “How do I get clients?” There’s not a singular answer because there are so many different ways to market. Different marketing is appropriate based on differences between business owners, industries, and customers. But every business will find their answer in the realm of marketing! This article is part 4 of my series that kicked off with Do You Really Need a Business Plan? Collective Liberation and the Confidence You Crave. This article covers the section of a business plan all about Marketing. It’s a big section of a business plan. And it is no less important for self-employed businesses than it is for any other business!

The Marketing Section of a Business Plan

How you spin and frame your work matters, and this is distinct from what your business does. Other parts of a business plan ask you to speak plainly about how the business functions. In this section we want dive into your positioning and spin. This is the difference between a company that sells t-shirts and a lifestyle brand. Both sell t-shirts, but the latter is putting the shirts into a context that is appealing to a specific group of consumers. If you have a social good or community you’re serving, this is the time to appeal to those factors. And if you don’t have those, don’t fret. You can also tell it like it is!

This part of a business plan is huge, so it has four key subdivisions. It starts by rooting into the context, or market, your business exists within. This is called (1) Market Research. Then it describes the customer for this product or service, e.g., who you’re trying to sell to. In a traditional business plan, this section is often labeled “Customers” or “Niche.” For self-employed businesses, we're even more focused and it's your (2) Ideal Client. Given the groundwork of the first two sections, you propose a strategy for reaching these customers that’s within a defined budget. In short, a (3) Marketing Strategy. And finally, you estimate the projected results of this marketing and present those to the reader. This is the (4) Sales Forecast.

This marketing section is A LOT. Thankfully, I’ve already written so much about marketing! During this explanation I’m going to link to all the stuff I’ve already written about. This way you can find your answer, no matter what part of marketing you’re stuck on!

1. Know Your Market (Market Research)

Last month’s article (Beat Your Weaknesses: How to Win as a Unique Self-Employed Business Owner) made a case for why competition is a red herring. If you follow my advice to boldly celebrate your weaknesses, do you really need to know what other folks are offering? Everything in that article is true, and also, knowledge is power. It is a worthwhile endeavor to understand if you’re pricing yourself as a luxury good or a discount item. Market research how you identify how consumers will view you in comparison to others. This doesn’t mean you have to change anything about what you’re doing. And it is helpful to understand how you compare as we’re crafting a marketing strategy.

I cover how to do market research in the Launch Pad: Market Price Research section of the Is My Business Financially Feasible? Page. For those concerned about changing market trends, also check out: From Big Picture to Small Scale: How to Be Self-Employed And Master Market Trends.

2. Your Ideal Client (Customers or Niche)

In a traditional business plan, you’d reframe things discussed in other sections in light of your customer. So you’d go over your price, offering, and business identity, and how they appeal to your customer. You’d also describe what you know about your potential customers, which is called your target market.

I like to trim out the double work involved in all that reframing, and just get straight to it. Also, target markets are woefully insufficient for self-employed businesses. I get into why you don't want a target market in: Casting a Wide Net Could Tank Your Business: Don't Appeal to Everyone! For self-employed folks, we need to know a singular ideal client, rather than a market segment. Your ideal client is not a broad sweep of people. It’s a singular person. If you find yourself selling leggings to “anyone who has legs” (or the parallel for your industry), then you need to understand your customer better. It’s not true, it’s not realistic, and it’s going to waste your time and money.

You need to know who you’re selling to and why they want to buy from you. You need to get in their head and understand them. But if you’re just getting started, you might not have had any clients yet. So what is there to do? Most self-employed businesses base it on an amalgam of at least a few different people, if not an entirely fictitious person. If you have experience with crafting fictional characters, then fully lean on those skills! And, this is a key part of the work I do with my clients. We get to the bottom of who you’re trying to sell to and what makes them tick. For support around understanding your ideal client, please feel free to reach out and book a free initial session.

Once you know your ideal client, you’ll refer back to them when constructing a marketing message and for all your future marketing decisions.

3. Marketing Strategy

Now we get to the part where we make a plan to connect with that Ideal Client. This would need to be a fully written-out plan for a lender or investor. But for us, it can be more informal and rightsized for self-employed businesses.

Your website encapsulates the foundation of your marketing. For self-employed businesses, this is where clients get exposed to your “brand”. I put that in quotes because a brand is a concept that was invented to make a business feel more like a person. We’re self-employed, so we could think of it as we’re a person who’s a business who’s trying to feel like a person. Or we can cut out that middle step and just be a person. So, pick a business name you like (How Do I Pick the Best Name for My Business?) and get a logo solution that works for now (How to Get an Excellent Logo). I give you instructions on how to write some solid marketing copy in the Launch Pad: Clarifying Your Message and Writing Website Content. Make sure your offering is really clear (Do People Really Know How to Understand Your Offering?) and that you’re leveraging some basic SEO on your website (SEO for the Self-Employed Non-techie).

With that foundation in place, you’re ready to look at your active marketing strategy. As self-employed businesses, this cannot be too laborious because we need to spend most of our time on client-facing work! For this reason, I advise using my “team of horses” approach. You can learn about it in my article: Don't Worry About Marketing Because You've Got a Team of Horses. For more in-depth support of possible “horses” see the Marketing Tactics heading below. I even lay out your first marketing project for you in How to Conquer Your First Foolproof Marketing Project. And if this doesn’t seem hard or complex enough, take a chill pill and read Want to Feel Calmer? Learn How to Trust Your Marketing Inertia!

Marketing Tactics

You cannot employ all these tactics. It is too many. You are one person. And there are a finite number of hours in the day! Once you have a specific marketing tactic in mind, it's a lot easier to dive into learning about that tactic. I’ve written articles on a lot of different marketing tactics over the years. Below, you’ll find links to past articles grouped by the type of marketing tactic being discussed. I’m also writing more about marketing all the time. For the most up-to-date list, here's a link straight to the Marketing category within my blog, and another to all articles tagged with marketing.

• Content Marketing

  • How to Get Strangers on the Internet to Hire You

  • The Unexpected Secret of Content Creation: Why You Should Give Everything Away Free

  • 5 Things that Help Others Promote Your Blog on Social Media

• Social Media Marketing

  • Social Media for Solo Entrepreneurs

• Networking / Network-based Marketing

  • The Basics of Successful Networking

  • Networking Events for Introverts

  • How to Get Quality When What You Have is Quantity: Networking for Extroverts

  • How to Master One-on-One Networking

  • The Most Frequently Missed Opportunities When Networking

  • Knock Networking Out of the Park

  • Stop Forcing That Sale! 5 Principles to Unleash Your Audience

  • How to Commit to a Networking Group: 3 Reliable Criteria

  • How to Craft an Effective Elevator Speech for Your Business

• Selling Technique & Skill Building

  • Salesmanship: the Good, the Bad, and the Absent

  • 4 Skills You Already Have That You Could be Using to Land Clients

  • Don't Be a Slimy Salesman: Utilize Modern Sales Tactics

  • The Story of the Good Used Car Salesman

  • Seize Your Process! 3 Steps to Improve Your Conversion Rate

  • How to Conquer Simple Strong Website Analytics

• What NOT To Do

  • Exploit Your Own Desire: the Insider's Reason to Ditch that MLM

  • The Competition Insider: How to Win Against the Siren Song of the Marketplace

  • Caution and Grit: How to persevere through the hard times of self-employment

  • Lessons from Poor TV Choices

4. Sales Forecast

This is where we talk about the expected results of all the marketing you’re planning on doing. If you’re trying to secure a loan or investment, then that third party wants to know how fast you’ll make their money back. For us self-employed folks, we’re smaller and able to be more agile. But there are two key limits on our success.

The first we'll get into in next month’s installment, the Financial Plan section of a Business Plan. The marketing part of this is finding a balance point between two things. First, the volume of clients we need to be successful. And, second, the number of clients we can bring into our business. Hold tight till next time when we'll get deep into it.

The other piece of this is the timeline. In a traditional business plan, this is a month-by-month projection of sales numbers based on assumptions. For self-employed businesses, the assumptions are doing a lot of heavy lifting. Plus, they always result in the same kind of graph. It's just like the one below:

For the sake of the above example, I used a coaching business like mine. I assumed I can land 3 new clients per month and that clients work with me for a minimum of 3 months, but an average of 6 months. You'll see that my client count climbs for the first few months, then slows since I lose some to attrition. The client count eventually levels off at 27 clients. If my practice is full at 20 clients, I hit that point around 8 months.

There are two major weak points of this projection. First is the accuracy of my assumptions, especially the number of clients I can land per month. Second is a question of whether the client count will level off before or after I'm "full."

The accuracy of your assumptions is fundamentally a guess. You've never operated a business before, so there's no data to pull from. If you have previous sales or marketing experience, then that provides you with some data points. Working with a business coach could also help you be more grounded in reality. But at the end of the day, what is reasonable can surprise us. Make your best guess, and then adjust with time.

The second weak point is whether the red line will level off without crossing the blue line. This is dependent on if you can get clients faster than you lose them, and at what rate. This question is frequently overlooked by self-employed business owners to some degree. Some folks never identify that blue line. They don't set a target volume of clients that feels comfortable and will result in success. Others have a sense for that, but don’t consider that clients will drop off at some rate. We’re going to get into defining the parameters for these next month, so put a pin in this thought process.

Keep in mind that as solo-entities, we can have a plan and then change plans mid-course if it seems not to be working! For some right-now insight on your business’s trajectory, check out my business runway calculator. You'll find it in the article How can I be Confident That my Business is Possible?

Your Business’ Marketing Plan

Your business’ marketing plan is going to be entirely unique to you and your business. Your plan can be written down, or just solidly thought out. It’s up to you. Hopefully the information contained here helps you to cover all your bases. If you have more questions or want individualized help, that’s what I’m all about! Feel free to reach out or book a free initial session.