New Entrepreneurs – Use These Simple Marketing Tips

Wondering what is the best way to get your business off the ground?

Today we are going to share the top five marketing strategies for new entrepreneurs!

Marketing Strategy #1: Cold Email

What is Cold Email?

Cold email is the practice of manually reaching out to potential customers via email to let them know about your product or service.

How to Use Cold Email to Grow Your Business

When it comes to cold email, one of the best resources out there is “The Cold Email Manifesto” by Alex Berman and Robert Indries.

We highly recommend reading the entire book but here’s a quick overview of the approach that the authors recommend:

1. Register a new domain name that is similar to your main domain name and create a new email account associated with it.
2. Use an email warm-up tool like Lemwarm to “warm up” your new email account by simulating back-and-forth messaging.
3. Create a lead spreadsheet. You can compile it yourself but it probably makes more sense to pay someone on Fiverr to do it for you.
4. Use proven cold email templates. The authors share their own templates in the book but we also recommend checking out Justin McGill’s templates that he used to grow his company from zero to $30k in recurring monthly revenue in just one year.
5. Start with just 10 cold emails per day and then gradually increase that number until you are sending 100 cold emails per day. You can track it all in your lead spreadsheet but it probably makes more sense to invest in software that was designed for that such as Lemlist.

Once you get good at cold outreach, you should be able to schedule 10 discovery calls and close 1 sale for every 100 cold emails that you send.

What are the Advantages of Using Cold Email?

Cold email is super affordable.

It’s also relatively easy to master because you already know how to send emails, all you need to do is figure out how to get the attention of potential customers. 

Finally, it’s the fastest way to get paying customers if you can’t afford to spend money on marketing.

What are the Disadvantages of Using Cold Email?

Cold email is extremely time-consuming: sending 100 personalized emails will probably take you at least four hours. Assuming a 5-day workweek, that’s 20 hours spent on cold outreach alone.

Moreover, cold email is hard to scale. 100 cold emails per day is probably the upper limit of how many messages you can send per day without crossing into the spam territory. Some email service providers might start flagging your emails as spam way before that.

Keep in mind that while cold email is legal in most jurisdictions, spam is illegal in a lot of them, including the United States where each separate email is in violation of the CAN-SPAM and can result in penalties of up to $51,744.

Summary

Cold email is super affordable and relatively easy to master but it requires a ton of time and is hard to scale.

Consequently, this marketing strategy makes the most sense for new entrepreneurs who don’t have much money but do have a lot of free time, especially if they need to start generating revenue ASAP to pay the bills.

Marketing Strategy #2: Social Media Marketing

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is the practice of building a social media following and then leveraging it to sell your products and services.

How to Use Social Media Marketing to Grow Your Business

Here’s the approach that we recommend:

1. Choose a social media platform that makes the most sense for your business.
2. Create a content calendar that you can keep up with indefinitely. When it comes to content creation, quality is more important than quantity. The ideal publishing frequency varies from platform to platform but you should probably post at least one new piece of content every day.
3. Set aside time every month for batch-creating social media content for the next month. You can use AI tools like Jasper and Firefly to speed up the process.
4. Once you have the social media content for the next month, schedule it using tools like Buffer, MeetEdgar, or Flick.
5. Set aside time every day for replying to comments. If you reply to each comment that you get, that will not only increase the engagement for that particular piece of content but also incentivize your followers to comment on your posts in the future.
6. Set aside time every day for networking with other people in your niche. Share their content if you believe that it can benefit your followers, leave thoughtful comments under their posts, and eventually reach out to them via DMs to establish a more personal connection.
7. Put a link to your lead magnet landing page in your bio with a one-sentence call to action. You don’t need to promote your free offer directly. Instead, simply focus on consistently publishing high-quality content. People who find your content valuable will probably decide to check out your lead magnet eventually.

Consider watching this video if you want to learn more about building an audience on social media:

What are the Advantages of Using Social Media Marketing to Grow Your Business?

Social media marketing is free: no matter how broke you are, you can create a social media profile and start posting.

Also, if you focus on consistently publishing high-quality content and interacting with your followers, the algorithm will give you more and more exposure as time goes on because social media algorithms are designed to maximize engagement.

What are the Disadvantages of Using Social Media Marketing to Grow Your Business?

Building a social media following takes time.

You can probably do it in 2-3 years if you remain consistent. 

However, that first year can be pretty brutal. It’s challenging to stay optimistic when you have been posting high-quality content every day for several months but only managed to gain 136 followers. That’s why most people give up!

Summary

Social media marketing is super affordable, relatively easy to master, and doesn’t require that much time but you will need to consistently post high-quality content for several years in order to build a following.

Consequently, this marketing strategy makes the most sense for new entrepreneurs who have a job that pays the bills and some spare time that they can dedicate to growing their social media presence.

Marketing Strategy #3: Email Marketing

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is the practice of building an email list and then leveraging it to sell your products and services. 

How to Use Email Marketing to Grow Your Business

Here’s the approach we recommend:

1. Come up with a concept for a weekly email newsletter. It should be something that your target audience would find interesting.
2. Choose email marketing software for your weekly email newsletter. ConvertKit, Ghost, and Substack are all great options.
3. Create a landing page for your weekly email newsletter. Carrd is a solid and affordable option.
4. Set up a confirmation and deliverability welcome email where you confirm the subscription and tell the new subscriber what they should expect next.
5. Set aside time every week to prepare the next newsletter issue. You don’t want to do this last minute so make sure that it’s ready to go at least one day in advance.
6. Leverage your social media following by promoting your newsletter in your bio and sharing a sneak peek of each issue one day before you send it out.
7. Focus on consistency. Your goal should be to never skip a single newsletter issue no matter what.
8. Promote your products and services in the “P.S.” section of your newsletter. If you have a special announcement, you can make it in the body copy but that should be a once-in-a-blue-moon type of thing, not a weekly occurrence.

Consider watching this video if you want to learn more about building an email newsletter:

What are the Advantages of Using Email Marketing to Grow Your Business?

We would argue that email marketing is the best way to decrease your customer acquisition cost (CAC), increase customer lifetime value (LTV), and improve your profit margins.

What are the Disadvantages of Using Email Marketing to Grow Your Business?

You will need a marketing strategy for the newsletter itself. How do you intend to promote it?

Also, remember how we said that the first year on social media can be brutal due to extremely slow growth?

Well, it’s much easier to grow a social media following than it is to grow an email list so that’s something to keep in mind!

Summary

Email marketing is affordable, doesn’t take that much time, and is relatively easy to master but in order to grow your email list you will need a way to promote your newsletter.

Also, it will probably take you a few years to get to the point where your email list is large enough to generate substantial revenue.

Consequently, this marketing strategy makes the most sense for new entrepreneurs who have a job that pays the bills, some spare time to dedicate to their newsletter, and a marketing channel that they can use to promote it.

Generally speaking, if you are starting completely from scratch, it’s probably best to build a social media following first and then leverage it to launch a weekly newsletter!

Marketing Strategy #4: Video Marketing

What is Video Marketing?

Video marketing is the practice of using video content to build a following on platforms like YouTube and TikTok and then leveraging it to sell your products and services. 

How to Use Video Marketing to Grow Your Business

Here’s the approach we recommend:

1. Take a look at the popular YouTube channels in your niche. What are their strengths and weaknesses? You want to find a way to bring something unique to the table.
2. Invest in filming equipment. You can get away with shooting videos with your smartphone but a high-quality microphone is an absolute must. Also, get some camera lights because proper lighting makes a huge difference when it comes to production quality.
3. Invest in video editing software. We recommend going with AI tools like Descript and Opus Clip if you don’t have any prior video editing experience.
4. Invest in an AI text-to-image generator. You are going to use it to create video thumbnails. We recommend Adobe Firefly
5. Create a content schedule that you can keep up with indefinitely. Ideally, you want to post one video per week, on the same day every week.
6. Set aside time for creating video content every week. Keep in mind that if you have never made videos before, you are probably severely underestimating how time-consuming it is.
7. Make sure to target a popular keyword with each video. You can find popular keywords by typing a generic keyword related to your niche into the YouTube search and looking at the search suggestions that come up.
8. Do competitive research for your target keyword. Watch the top 3-5 videos that are ranking for it and read the comments. You want to find a way to make your video better.
9. Shoot the video. Make sure to end each video with a call to action encouraging the viewer to check out your lead magnet or subscribe to your weekly email newsletter.
10. Edit the video with AI video editing software and create a thumbnail for it with an AI text-to-image generator. Ideally, your thumbnails should have a consistent aesthetic so that your subscribers would immediately recognize your videos in their subscription feeds.
11. Upload the video. Don’t forget to take care of the boring technical stuff like adding tags.
12. Publish the video. You want to reply to every comment that you get. This will help you create engagement.
13. Use Opus Clip to repurpose your video into short clips. Upload them to YouTube and TikTok.
14. Promote your new video on social media and in your weekly email newsletter!

Consider watching this video if you want to learn more about starting a YouTube channel:

What are the Advantages of Using Video Marketing to Grow Your Business?

It’s becoming clear that video is the preferred medium for people all around the world so we can probably safely assume that its relevance is only going to increase in the foreseeable future.

What are the Disadvantages of Using Video Marketing to Grow Your Business?

It will likely take you at least 2-3 years to amass a substantial following on YouTube.

Moreover, you are probably severely underestimating the amount of time, energy, and money required to build a popular YouTube channel!

Summary

Video marketing can enable you to capitalize on the ever-increasing popularity of this medium.

However, building a YouTube channel is not just a long-term project but also a resource-intensive endeavor.

Consequently, this marketing strategy makes the most sense for new entrepreneurs who have a job that pays the bills and are willing to invest a ton of time, energy and money in their YouTube channel.

Marketing Strategy #5: Paid Advertising

What is Paid Advertising?

Paid advertising is the practice of promoting your offers with paid ads. In the online marketing context, that typically means running ads on Google Search and various social media platforms. 

How to Use Paid Advertising to Grow Your Business

Here’s what we recommend:

1. Build a sales funnel for your business.
2. Choose one social media platform to advertise on.
3. Create an ad campaign designed to promote your lead magnet.
4. Start running that ad campaign with a small daily budget.
5. Optimize the campaign with split testing (also known as A/B testing).
6. Once you figure out how to run that campaign profitably, begin gradually increasing your daily budget.
7. Continue gradually increasing your campaign’s daily budget until you reach the point where you cannot scale it anymore.
8. Once you have mastered paid advertising on one social media platform, you can start expanding to other platforms.

So to reiterate, you want to use paid advertising to drive traffic to your lead magnet landing page, not to the sales pages of your products and services. You can learn more about the reasoning behind this approach in our guide to customer acquisition. 

Also, if you want to learn how to run ads on your platform of choice, there are a lot of free videos on YouTube but we recommend waiting for the next Udemy’s sale and buying a course that has the best reviews. That should cost you around $10-$20.

What are the Advantages of Using Paid Advertising to Grow Your Business?

The main advantage of paid advertising is speed: it enables you to get traffic immediately, assuming that people click on your ads. 

Another advantage is targeting. Social media platforms have not just massive user bases but also incredible targeting functionalities. That enables you to reach potential customers regardless of who your target audience is.

Finally, there’s scalability. Ad campaigns are relatively easy to scale as long as you have the money for it. Want to double your sales? Simply double your ad spend!

Of course, at some point, this linear relationship is going to break down, but you can get pretty far by just throwing more money at a profitable ad campaign. 

What are the Disadvantages of Using Paid Advertising to Grow Your Business?

Paid advertising has a steep learning curve so you need to be okay with burning money until you get the hang of it. And that might take a while.

Also, if you want to use paid advertising to grow your business, you need to make sure that your math is on point. Otherwise, you might find yourself in the red really fast.

The most important number that you need to pay attention to is the customer acquisition cost (CAC) to customer lifetime value (LTV) ratio.

Consider watching this video if you want to learn more about the CAC: LTV metric:

Summary

Paid advertising can be a great way to get your business off the ground quickly but you need to know what you’re doing and have the budget for it.

Consequently, this marketing strategy makes the most sense for new entrepreneurs who have a lucrative job, want to invest some of that money into growing their side hustle, and don’t mind burning cash in order to learn how to run ads.

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