Marketing Your Small Business: A Total Beginner’s Guide

This guide kicks off my Marketing for Small Business miniseries, in which I hope to walk you through the life cycle of marketing for small businesses.

This information can be found on my podcast, A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home-Mom. Click the player below to listen to this episode:

The Marketing Your Small Business Miniseries

In my last episode, I promised a series coming up, so I will introduce this mini-series as Marketing for Small Business. Now, if you don’t have a business, don’t peace out just yet. I might inspire you to start one–you never know!

This mini-series will contain three episodes. I hope to take you through the life cycle, so to speak, of marketing for your small business without burning out.

When we start businesses, it’s just us, right? It’s usually just one person starting everything, and they have all of the duties, from producing the product or service to advertising it to handling the finances, and the taxes. Everything becomes just super involved, and sometimes it’s hard to balance it all. I want to show you some tips and tricks for getting your footing when you’re in that situation because I’ve seen this marketing aspect of small businesses that I thought were wonderful be the cause of them eventually fizzling out.

It just becomes too much for one person to handle.

But I’m hoping to give you some concrete, actionable tips that will help you not drop the ball on marketing your business. So be sure to stick around for this series.

Why Start a Small Business as a Busy Mom?

And one major reason I’m writing and recording this series is especially for moms who are dipping their toes in the water of business. But they need maybe clarity, direction, or maybe just encouragement. It is such a mental game.

In previous episodes I’ve done, I’ve highlighted small business as a great way to supplement your income. I’ve also talked about taking up side jobs as well. I’m not against being employed by any means and I do this. I am a substitute teacher and I’ve tried so many gigs!

Chances are, if you’re here, you also think a small business or starting a business is a great vehicle for adding extra income to your family. If you find that either you’re a seasoned business owner or you’ve just taken those first few shaky, wobbly steps towards your own business, or maybe you’re just merely interested in learning more on the topic, welcome. I imagined you when I wrote this mini-series.

Starting Marketing Your Small Business from Zero

Let’s say you’re starting from ground zero, or nearly ground zero.

I would suggest– and this is the most important thing I would say you have to get a handle on– start with just one thing, one outlet to advertise.

In the world of digital marketing, it seems like there are endless opportunities. There are even new platforms popping up. So just start with one. And yes, that includes email newsletters, websites, social media platforms, and just one of each social and just one of each social.

For example, if you wanted to start with just an email newsletter, go ahead and do that until you can gain footing, get better at it, and work on systems to make it manageable with all of the other tasks in your business. Because, remember, you’re running a business. You will need to produce a product or a service and then handle your customers, your customer service, make sure they’re satisfied, handle payments, taxes, etc.

The marketing aspect of your business shouldn’t take over the entire operation. I mean, at first, when you’re just starting out, you will have to put a lot more heft into marketing just to get your name out there. But if you’re just purely spending all of your time on marketing, you’ll find you won’t have time for the actual business.

You could also try setting up a website. I am an advocate of creating your own websites, but it is sort of a rabbit hole to go down to. If you start a WordPress, for example, website, it is pretty involved. I will say, when I created my blog almost two years ago now my blog almost two years ago now there was a lot to learn and it took me months to get a passable handle on having my own website.

I mean, we’re talking buying a domain name and creating a website, using a theme or page builder on WordPress. It’s a lot, but there are easier methods to get a website. There are common website builders like Squarespace and Wix.

It boils down to: Are you willing to put time or money forth to create your website?

Then there’s social media. Maybe you could purely just start on one single platform.

You could start writing Twitter threads if you really want to. There are certain niches that this works for and others that it wouldn’t really work for, I don’t think. Or you could become one of those LinkedIn posters and post every day on LinkedIn and interact and just get really good at one social media platform.

But I think and this is why I say this with so much warning: There’s a temptation to start all of these things at once. We think, Okay, I can start my email list, I can have a website and I can have two or three social media platforms, but that’s five marketing outlets on top of running your business.

You’ll find yourself just frustratingly spinning your wheels before you know it and dropping balls left and right because no one can sustainably keep up with that unless you maybe have a total 100% time to devote to this. But I have a feeling you’re either busy with another job, like your day job, trying to get out of your day job with this side hustle that you’re trying to start, or you’re a parent.

The Myth of the Do-It-All Digital Marketer

I really, really want to caution you. Even if you hear it everywhere– from content creators– who encourage you to do all of this at once. I would say it’s just simply not true and not sustainable.

You have to think of where content creators are coming from. They have different incentives. I’m not dissing the model, because I am a content creator as well, but to make that content profitable or worth their time to produce, they need views to pair usually with ads. A high number of views will get them to get money from ads, generally speaking.

You’ve seen the YouTube thumbnails demonstrating this. They show this girl with a shocked face and she’s like “I earned millions on my Etsy shop” or “I did this on Twitter” or, you know, “blew up my Instagram.” I’m not saying it’s sinister or falsified information, but it’s just different, coming from a different place, than someone like your best friend, who’s going to give you different advice than a lot of content creators.

You’ll find all kinds of videos shouting the merits of starting a YouTube channel. They say you have to start creating videos so that people know who you are and you start building an audience. Then some other video rolls around, and it says no, the most important thing is building your email list and you need to have this amazing newsletter and capture leads in that way. Or before you know it, you’re watching reels on Instagram about making your own blog.

It seems like a discordant cacophony of voices telling you to do everything all at once, and it’s just simply not possible. The people who are having success with this started with one thing. They got good at it and then they added in more. Or they hired out tasks. No one successful is doing it all themselves.

How to Start With One Marketing Channel

Let’s say you want to start by building a dedicated website for your business. (I think this is the way to go, by the way!)

You could hire someone to make a website for you to your exact specifications, hiring a web developer and then maybe a designer to design the website, and then you hire a blogger to put on content for you for the website– it’s like a million jobs in one to have a website, but you know what I mean.

Again, either you take the time or you spend the money. There’s no way to instantly have all of these channels up and running well–it’s just a fantasy.

And believe me– I’m preaching to myself here. I try to avoid shiny object syndrome. I know it’s frustrating to not feel like you’re getting traction on one platform and want to jump to another and start another or another or another.

Unless you’re already a celebrity, any online marketing channel will take time.

Choosing a Marketing Platform to Start

As far as platforms go, do I have opinions about which ones to start on?

I mean, the easy answer is going to be no– find what works for you.

But here are some tips as of now and the rules are always changing. (Not that I’m an expert on each of these platforms!) I just get senses for these things after I’ve been on several of these platforms and I have just gotten used to them. Things, algorithms, users– all of these factors are always in flux, so there’s my big disclaimer– what I’m saying works now might now necessarily work in the future.

Pinterest

Let’s start, for example, with Pinterest. Pinterest is, they say, a search engine. It is visually based. Is your business or niche visual? For example, I find that craft products do well on Pinterest.

Let’s say you knit cute, personalized sweaters. You add flowers, embroidered initials, whatever it may be. You could take pictures and make them either into a blog post or have it directly linked to your Etsy shop– wherever you sell online.

Put those images up on Pinterest, and I think that would do well. Add in some tutorials on how to knit this, and how to knit that as blog posts to get people clicking to your site. Even better, right? But again, Pinterest is the best for niches where you would have visuals, especially crafty situations.

I’ll give you an example of a niche that doesn’t procure as many visuals. Let’s say you are in a content-only business, for example.

I have a blog that’s almost a year and a half old– www.chocolatefortheteach.com. You can go visit it. It’s all about substitute teaching as a former full-time teacher. Then, when I had my daughter, I scaled down to substitute teaching. I wrote about over a hundred articles, just giving advice and tips to other substitute teachers.

Now think of like the visuals I could include. I’m obviously not going to take pictures of the students, right? So I usually would end up taking a picture of myself in an empty classroom during my break time and that would be my usual picture. I have tried designing pins for my advice posts and putting these things on Pinterest, but they’re not as successful as crafts, recipes, etc.

Maybe if I had a website that had all sorts of learning activities and I took photos of the learning activities and posted them on Pinterest, that would probably do better.

Because of this, while I still utilize the channel, Pinterest is not my biggest platform.

Instagram and Facebook

Let’s talk about Instagram and Facebook. I’ll put these together, because through Meta you can join them, and it’s nice because you can post on one and it’ll automatically post on the other.

I’ve seen like food businesses and restaurants do well on these platforms. (People love looking at pictures of good food!) I think most businesses could do well on Facebook and Instagram.

You just have to ask yourself who your audience is, and if they hang out on these sites. These platforms have changed between favoring video (reels) and photo (carousels), but starting with both these media forms and seeing which works is my main suggestion for Facebook and Instagram.

Twitter and LinkedIn

Twitter and LinkedIn might be good for a service-based business. A lot of business people follow each other on those platforms, and if you interact with other people on there, commenting on their content, I can see you building that pretty successfully over time. But the key here is spending time on the platform.

If you run a service-based business, you could talk about things in your niche, why you do what you do, what methods you’ve chosen, and the reason behind your methodology. I think Twitter and LinkedIn are fantastic avenues for that. They’re very text-based.

YouTube

And then there’s YouTube, which is long-form video, although they do feature short-form (shorts) as well.

YouTube is probably good for just your bread-and-butter content creator, but there might be other business models that could work well here, too. Don’t forget the power of this platform– as of now, YouTube videos can come up in Google search results. That gives multiple ways for people to find you!

Taking the First Step

I hope I’ve given you plenty of options to consider. But as far as just taking that first step of marketing your business, I would highly encourage you to think about where your customers would hang out, which one of these platforms would best serve them, and then start hammering away on that one platform before moving on.

And this is just digital marketing– I’m not even going into detail on the other forms. You can still print out business cards and do word of mouth, of course, and network, you know, in person (!).

I think that’s important. Do what you can in person, in your own community, to spread the word about what you have to offer.

But there’s also value in carving out a little digital space for your business, even if it’s a lot of work. Then people who aren’t necessarily interacting with you in person all the time but follow you on one of your social media profiles can get a glimpse at what you are doing. You keep posting and doing your thing, and they’ll come to recognize you for that specialty when a need arises. Maybe these contacts will send opportunities your way. The longer you do this, the more your inbox will fill with questions on the topics you share.

It’s good to advertise in the digital space and show people what you’re up to. Just start simple, and work your way up from there.

Thanks for joining in on the (Mostly) Stay-at-Home Mom podcast– there are two more parts to the series, if you’re interested in listening either on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Or if it’s easier, with one click back to the homepage of this site, you’ll see a player including all of my podcast episodes as well as a feed of my other recent blog posts.

Let me know in the comments: What kind of business are you thinking of starting? Which digital media platform do you think you’ll use first to promote it?