Module twelve
strategy
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One of my favorite aspects of running a business is the opportunity to be creative in my entrepreneurial choices. I get to decide what my business and schedule look like, and I get a lot of flexibility. It’s also a lot of trial and error. But I’m totally happy with that trade-off because this is exactly the type of life I want to lead.
In all the time I’ve spent as an entrepreneur, collaborating with other women in similar situations as me, I’ve gained a lot of insight into all the creative ways it’s possible to find success and opportunity during a season when it might not seem possible.
I’m telling you, the payoff from all this work building your business is so, so worth it. I can’t wait for you to see it!
In crafting strategies and procedures for my businesses that serve my bottom line, I’ve found plenty of ways to get crafty and “hack the system." This module will break down my top three favorite strategies for creative mamas that appeal to your desire to be authentically yourself, both in your business and with your family.
STRATEGY ONE: LEARNING HOW TO SELL WITH CONFIDENCE
When I first started my business, I really struggled with selling myself and my services. I still sometimes have a hard time talking about myself and spelling out my own value. It’s taken me years to get to where I am, offering services at a price I know is worth it, because I just didn’t know my audience, couldn’t predict how my offerings would be received, and didn’t know where to promote myself.
Once I finally started, I was able to get a handle on what my clients valued and where I could tweak my offerings to better serve them. The only way I was able to learn what my services were worth was to just start advertising them to my audience. If I hadn’t simply started somewhere, it may have taken even longer to figure it out.
You’re never going to be able to predict the future. There are countless variables and factors that may influence a customer’s action, and you can’t hold yourself responsible for their behavior. On the other hand, you can set yourself up for success by learning how to sell yourself with confidence.
Selling comes naturally to some people, but it’s more uncomfortable for others. Here are a few ways you can make sure you’re communicating value without getting sales-y or putting yourself (or your clients) in an uncomfortable situation:
Make sure your marketing content is selling for you — whether you’re writing content for your social media channels, website, or a workshop you’re hosting, work hard to make sure your content communicates value so that people who come to you inquiring about what you offer are already primed and ready to buy. It’s sometimes easier to brag about your accomplishments when you’re not face-to-face with people, so use digital marketing content as a way to boost someone’s first impression of you before you even hop on a call with them.
Offer a referral program for past clients — using a referral program is a great way to sell yourself as valuable without doing any actual selling. When someone is referred to you by another person they trust, you’re already positioned higher on their list of options than someone they have no exposure to. Word-of-mouth marketing is such a great tool because it allows others to market your services for you and brag about you.
Separate the emotions of your interactions — it’s easy for things to feel “personal” when you get negative feedback on your products or services because you’re their creator. They’re like your baby, and it’s hard to hear anything negative. But if you can learn to separate yourself and your own worth from the content you’re creating or the products you’re selling, you’ll be much better off as a business owner when you get in front of an audience and are ready to share about your offerings.
Customers are ready to be sold to, whether you feel comfortable doing the selling or not. What may seem too “sales-y” to you might actually speak directly to them. Remember when we talked about the problems you can solve for your target audience at the beginning of this course? Consider addressing these pain points in your marketing materials so your message really gets through.
Sometimes we go through phases where it feels like no one wants to buy. If that phase feels like it’s lasting a little longer than feels comfortable, you might need to consider a change.
Maybe you’re selling in the wrong place. Consider where your traffic is coming from and double down on those areas. Are most of your customers from in-person trade shows, or Etsy?
Maybe you’re selling with an emphasis on the wrong offerings. What are your best sellers, and do you promote them as heavily as you promote your favorite offerings?
Maybe you’re just not confident in who you’re selling to. Consider revisiting the Target Audience Workbook in Module Three. If you’re still struggling, think back on some of your favorite customers or projects, or ask others if they know of anyone who might appreciate what you offer, and use that information to piece together an idea of who your ideal client might be.
The first thing to remember is that it’s not the customer’s job to purchase or tell you why they’re not buying. It’s your job to convince them you offer what they’re looking for or to figure out why it doesn’t appeal to them.
Instead of focusing on your journey when you’re selling, focus on theirs.
Your role in this is to just offer a solution that exactly fits their current need, whether they recognize that need or not. Your focus in selling should be on promoting the value of your offerings as what they most desperately need, not necessarily just selling the product they want.
STRATEGY TWO: DIVERSIFY YOUR INCOME STREAMS
When you feel maxed out with the time you can spend in your business but you’re wanting to make more money, you might consider adding additional revenue streams within your business. Now that you’ve created a great product or service, how can you expand the reach of your business?
Basically, income diversification is a business strategy where you have multiple types of income streams all within one business. As an example, I work with people one-on-one (service), but I also sell digital education (products).
Having multiple sources of income is a really good way to decrease risk within your business. Think about restaurants during COVID — if they didn’t already have a way to do contact-less orders, they probably suffered, at least at first. Some things we saw were businesses offering free delivery, or selling gift certificates for people to dine later, and other ways to implement new income streams just to stay afloat.
Even if we don’t have another COVID, there are still plenty of reasons to develop multiple income streams. Maybe you want to go on an extended vacation but need someone to show up for you while you’re gone.
Or maybe you want to have a legit maternity leave and still make money while you’re enjoying the newest member of your family.
You need a way to make money that doesn’t require much of your time.
You can decrease the chances of your business failing by building up additional income streams. It’s a smart way to make sure the efforts you’re spending on your business aren’t wasted. It’s also the only next step if you’re already starting to feel like you’re maxed out with the time you have, but want to grow.
While this isn’t a comprehensive list, let’s break down some of the most popular types of income streams available to creative entrepreneurs:
Services — Working with a client directly in a way that you can’t duplicate to get more value out of it. You might still have all the steps laid out and a really clear process, but there is always the potential for something to change or for you to end up spending more time than you anticipated. In order for the service to be completed, you likely need to be present and fully focused, so the demand for your time is high with this type of income, which is fine if you can find ways to increase the rate.
Products — With products, you spend all your time on the creation of the goods and then hardly any time interacting with the client for delivery. For some products, like digital downloads or courses, you might be exclusively spending your time upfront with the creation of the product and then letting it sell and deliver on auto-pilot. Your time investment is minimal with products, and you can batch your work to cut down on your overall time spent and be more efficient.
Productized Services — Essentially, by turning a service into a sort of product-service hybrid, you can make your services more cookie-cutter by starting from a template or something so you can still work directly with your clients, but it’s a faster process and streamlined internally, so you can take on more projects without spending much more time. Basically, it’s a way for clients to still feel like they get your high touchpoint experience but without requiring as much from you.
Sponsorships — I categorize “sponsorships” as things like speaking engagements, mentoring, and any paid marketing on behalf of another business — basically, any time you’re paid to work in your business, doing something that you’d likely already do or that you do so often it’s second nature, and while you have to spend time on this type of income stream, you probably don’t have to step outside your normal mode of operation that much. It’s very peripheral or parallel to what you’re already doing.
Affiliate Marketing — Getting paid a commission by another business for sharing about their products or services. We’ve all seen this in action. You can share a link or code that’s connected to you so that when someone makes a purchase off of your referral, you get a kickback from the company as a thank-you for spreading the word about their business. The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to be involved in the sale at all, and it’s separate from your own business and work. It can be very passive and minimally invasive to your standard operations.
Passive Income — My favorite income stream for creatives, passive income is a way to make money repeatedly off of one product after you take the time to create it. An example of this are the products in our online shop or even this course. We spent all the time and effort required to create a quality product, and now we sell it to the masses with minimal maintenance.
Lots of creative business owners consider Etsy to be the ultimate passive income tool. You can sell digital download products, which means you don’t have to follow up or complete an order — your digital print, template, or e-book sells without you attending to the sale at all.
And you don’t have to use Etsy — you could set up a digital download shop on your website, too! The value of Etsy is that it’s an already-established, highly-trafficked site where your offerings might get more eyes on them than if you were to simply house these digital offerings on your website.
Diversifying your income streams allows for a stronger business because if one income stream suffers, there are others to pick up the slack.
Spending the time to set up a solid foundation for your business, including taking some time to brainstorm and maybe follow through with additional income sources, will help you in the long run by giving you extra pillars to support your creative business, no matter how busy this season of life becomes.
So, how can you put income diversification into play for yourself?
I’ve created an exercise called the Income Diversification Workbook to help you brainstorm various ways you can easily include additional income streams without taking on much more work.
STRATEGY THREE: DISCOVER THE POWER OF FUNNELS
I’ve hinted at funnels in previous modules of this course, and now I’m excited to dive in!
Admittedly, I’m actually still exploring this strategy for myself within my own business, but I really wanted to touch on it within this course because I can already see immense value in implementing funnels, and I see this as the creative mama’s “lazy way” to get more eyes on your content. It’s sort of its own type of business hack, and I can’t wait for you to try it!
A funnel is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a way to get more people to a specific action or destination by “funneling” them in.
Here are a few benefits to using funnels in your business:
It’s a “set it and forget it” type of marketing strategy — once it’s in place, it keeps working for you forever
It allows you to do a lot of intentional copywriting and content creation behind the scenes and put together a perfect, highly-curated experience for your audience as they go through it
If you’ve done it right, your funnels can be completely automated and do all the heavy lifting for you, bringing in new eyes without involving you at all.
Funnels also help you by weeding out the people who don’t really dig what you’re offering. If someone has stuck around for the entire length of a funnel and made it to the end, they’re likely an ideal client or candidate for your business. This means you don’t have to spend as much time answering questions or responding to inquiries from people who aren’t as passionate about what you offer. You can work more often with people who rave about you!
Alright, let’s take a closer look at what a funnel might look like:
The first step is to capture attention, like with a “shiny object." You might do this by posting Reels on social media in the hopes they go viral or by including a freebie as an opt-in for people to join your email list.
Once you have your audience in your sphere of influence, you can begin to advertise to them. You might send them an automated follow-up email to ask how they enjoyed the freebie or to thank them for their purchase and invite them to explore your latest arrivals.
The goal with this follow-up touchpoint, and all subsequent touchpoints, is to incrementally increase their involvement with your business until they finally end up where you want them to (as a client, as a customer, as a student, etc.).
As an example, if you’re a food blogger, your ultimate goal might be to have visitors attend one of your in-person recipe retreats. Not everyone off the street will be interested in such a high-ticket investment, so you’ve got to prime your audience and funnel in the most interested participants.
Here’s how your funnel sequence might look:
A potential customer sees your recipe pins on Pinterest.
They click over to your site to read the full blog post.
While on your blog, they see a pop-up inviting them to download your free weekly meal planner, in exchange for opting into your email list.
They get added to a specific email list that sends them a follow-up, asking how they like the meal planner. This follow-up email also recommends your Healthy Snacks for Picky Eaters e-book for under $10. Such a low-ticket offer for something that valuable is an easy investment.
After purchasing the low-ticket e-book, you might suggest one of your more expensive offerings, like a full recipe book for $20 or a ticket to your masterclass on sourdough that you hosted last year. They can watch the replay for just $37!
After they buy into one of those options, you can start to share more expensive, exclusive offers like a menu consultation, or maybe done-for-you meal plans on a subscription basis, etc.
Ultimately, after they’re at a point where they’ve already invested good money in your brand, you can approach them about your in-person workshops, but the investment doesn’t feel as difficult to make because they’re so familiar with your brand and know your value.
A funnel like this takes your audience from knowing you to liking you and then trusting you. The Know Like Trust funnel is a very common one, and you can see exactly how it might play out in this example.
Now it’s your turn! Develop a funnel for your own business using my Funnel Worksheet to guide you through the steps your audience might take as you warm them up to the idea of a larger investment with you.
Running a business is a lot of work, but as long as you’re strategic with where you prioritize your efforts, you can see a large impact in no time. Talking business strategy is one of my favorite activities, and I’d love to help you if you’re feeling lost on where to go next.
I offer one-time Business Audit + Strategy services as well as recurring coaching to creative mamas like you! Learn more about The Unburden Studio services on our website, or get in touch to ask specific questions.
We’re almost through! The last module will shift your mindset from a current perspective to a future one, and I can’t wait to see how you grow.