CHAPTER 11

Marketing and Branding Your Side Hustle

Your brand is a gateway to your true work.

—Dave Buck

As a side hustler, learning how to effectively market your business is crucial, as you don’t exist without sales and revenue. Your business name, logo, packaging, slogan or tagline, hashtag on social media, and mission statement on your website are tools. Keep in mind, for most side hustlers the primary purpose of these marketing tools is to create revenue. In today’s times you also have access to additional marketing strategies such as paid advertisements, sales funnels, pay per click, podcasting, SEO (search engine optimization), content marketing, and campaigns. These tools and strategies are amplified by your brand. Your business brand is at the heart of your marketing, and as a solopreneur, you also have a personal brand, which is comprised of, well, you. As an individual who is also a business owner there is a strong intersection of your personal brand and your business brand. We explore this relationship and help you strategize how to grow as you market both yourself and your business.

As a side hustler, you are the face of your business and brand; you are the ambassador. What you personally value gets translated into your business, and vice versa. The personal and business brands for some of the most effective business owners are interchangeable and almost indistinguishable from one another. They are one.

When we examine the large-scale enterprises of Ray Dalio, Beyonce, and Seth Godin, it is clear their businesses are anchored in the personal brand of each individual. When you think of their companies, you see their face and you remember their story. They have mastered the art of weaving themselves throughout their business brand—and it is immensely powerful.

On the flip side, if there is incongruence between someone’s personal brand and their company’s brand, you are likely not drawn to that business or compelled to support it. Again, since the personal brand can amplify your business brand, it can also damage it.

This demonstrates the importance of brand consistency. Consistency in a world of disruption is difficult but ever-more important. A solid brand takes on an identity of its own and makes a product or service identifiable and distinguishable. And when you are consistent, people tend to trust and rely on you more.

But I’m not Gary V. or Oprah, do I really need to brand myself to have a successful side hustle? Heck yes! Here is why—people’s purchase decisions are made as much based on branding as they are on the product and service itself.

When you see a modern apple silhouette, we globally think of one of the world’s most valuable brands, Apple Inc. It could be a sticker on a dumpster, but you still associate the symbol with the tech empire. For many though, the Apple brand represents more than just a technology device; it stands for cutting edge, creative, and forward thinking. And by buying an Apple product you are saying to the world, I am these things! People often don’t want to admit it, but they spend money and buy things that are consistent with how they want to be perceived by the world around them. Apple spends millions of dollars on marketing to make you feel a certain way when you see and use their products. This is the essence of branding and Apple has mastered it.

Now as a side hustler, you don’t have to spend millions on commercial spots, but you can take a cue from what major companies do and make it a priority that your branding have a similar effect. Ultimately, this branding example embodies the art of differentiation, as branding guru David Brier describes in his book Brand Intervention, which should be the goal of any company large or small. If people know who you are and how you make them feel, you can differentiate yourself and your business.

The reality is if you exist in the twenty-first century as an individual or a business, you have a brand, it just might not be intentional—yet. As discussed in Chapter 6, we all have a brand. Even your mom has a brand. How she dresses, communicates, what she stands for, where she invests her time, and so on. This brand impacts how you and others respond to her. As Jeff Bezos famously said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room,” and an effective brand can be described with just a few primary adjectives. Identifying what those qualities, strengths, and characteristics are for your brand helps you define distinctly how you want to resonate with others and how they think of you.

When we think about the small business owners and side hustlers whom we love doing business with and refer others to, there are common reasons. These owners are often known for being honest, genuine, humble; they overdeliver and are focused on the long game and do the right thing long-term for their clients. They are effective at sales, without being salesy. Branding is about creating a reputation that precedes you and communicating it so clearly it sticks.

If your audience doesn’t trust you, and your strategies are ineffective, then it will be very difficult for your business to take flight. Many people ask, “If a brand is so important, where do I start?” This chapter provides you with a high-level crash course to instill helpful thought processes when it comes to building your brand. We discuss a number of different avenues for effective business and personal branding as you scale your side business, but the major takeaways are understanding your audience, building your story, creating content, and developing a plan to have that content reach your target audience. Further, we discuss the fundamentals of building a following on social media, effective networking, and creating revenue through marketing strategies. Some of these steps may feel beyond where you are currently, but they are all good to keep top of mind for your future success.

Understand Your Audience

There is a saying in marketing, “If you try to talk to everyone, you wind up reaching no one.” Knowing your target audience is critical to your success. If you don’t identify who you are trying to reach, it’s going to be hard to, well, reach them. Everyone is not your audience. In fact, when you are vague on who your audience is, there is a lot of lost opportunity as you won’t be able to effectively zoom in and connect with the individuals or groups that actually are. By getting specific you can invest the majority of your resources and efforts into resonating with the right people.

Questions to Ask to Target Your Market

What are their needs and pain points?

What problems are you able to help them solve?

What demographic are they a part of?

What types of aesthetics are they drawn to? For example, style, colors, imagery, etc.

What are their habits?

How do they spend their time? What does a day in the life look like?

What are their psychographics, meaning what are their motivations, behaviors, and attitudes? What are their rational and irrational motivations, behaviors, and attitudes? For example, do they want a powerful car, or do they want to appear powerful to their friends?

What inspires them?

What type of content do they consume?

What genre of podcasts do they listen to?

Where do they show up? Are they on social media? If so, TikTok or Instagram? LinkedIn or Facebook? All of the above?

Your answers to these questions inform the kind of content you generate along with a solid basis for reverse engineering a plan for effective branding. If you already have revenue flowing, take a look at your current clients; they can give you very helpful insight into the previous questions. Don’t discount the clients who decided not to buy your product. Find out why.

Study other successful brands—ones that are well beyond where your business is and ones that are a half-step ahead. When you analyze prominent brands, you can recognize how you respond to them from the consumer side, which is helpful intel to leverage. Observe how international brands like Amazon, Disney, The Home Depot, and Netflix are showing up and effectively reaching their target market. What are your favorite brands and why? How does their marketing reach you as the consumer? You will notice strong patterns and can start to apply a similar mindset to your messaging. On the other hand, it’s valuable to take a closer look at successful side hustlers who have 12 to 24 months more experience than your side hustle and gauge their results. Here is an exercise that helps you conceptualize how leading business brands develop their niche and effectively reach their target audience.

Ask those same questions about:

Your in-law’s woodworking business that has evolved from a side hustle to a front hustle over the last few years

Your buddy who is an electrician in the evenings and weekends and has significantly scaled her revenue over the last 12 months

Your high school friends who have created a strong presence on social media and have grown their part-time home-based businesses

Your neighbor who has been able to go from full time to part time in corporate as they have added more clients to their consulting business

What sticks out to you as general themes in what makes each of these companies (and small business owners) so successful in their reach? Are the differences between each company distinct? Do you have any confusion on what each brand stands for and whether you personally connect or not? Where do you notice more emphasis on personal branding and how effective is it? With these examples in mind, review the responses about your own brand now with more specificity and boldness.

Let’s go deeper and do a side-by-side comparison on business branding between Target and Kmart retailers and their growth and relevancy in the twenty-first century. Per Wikipedia they sell parallel product lines in terms of product category.

Target: Beauty and health products, bedding, clothing and accessories, electronics, food, furniture, jewelry, lawn and garden, pet supplies, shoes, small appliances, toys and games

Kmart: Clothing, shoes, linen and bedding, jewelry, accessories, health and beauty products, electronics, toys, food, sporting goods, automotive, hardware, appliances, and pet products

So why is Target booming as the eighth largest retailer in the United States, while Kmart is making a slow, painful descent? At the top of the list, we would put branding. Target is really effective at leveraging the aesthetic intelligence that Pauline Brown speaks to in her book Aesthetic Intelligence. They create an experience. In other words, Target creates delight while you are in their store. When you think of Target, you likely think of a modern, clean, energizing experience. It’s a place you want to go. Even the typography on their website (heavy use of the classic sans serif font Helvetica, for those who care) delivers a simple, clear element. Target knows its audience and caters to it. When you think of Kmart, you likely think of a place your grandma hangs out to buy dated, cheap, bargain merchandise months in advance for the family Christmas exchange. As helpful as it is to study success stories, it can be as helpful to look at the dinosaurs of an industry to decipher what went wrong.

Think of side hustlers who have done a stellar job of knowing their audience, staying up to date and relevant. Perhaps a real estate agent selling houses that feels current, bringing fresh new perspectives to the social media space versus someone who is struggling to do so with templated direct messages and a formal suit and tie headshot on their business cards and Linkedin bio. If it were a physical picture it would be dusty.

Do research in the market. Put time and effort into studying market trends. You can conduct your own surveys, poll your social media audience, ask your current clientele for their feedback, and leverage existing data and studies that have already been done. However, try not to allow yourself to be bound to those trends. What could you do differently or even better than successful brands in your industry? Airbnb, Facebook, and Uber exist because they asked this question. We discuss differentiation and branding a little later in this chapter.

A practical example for doing detective work if you are getting into the short-term rental game would be to take a close look at why some properties are always booked on VRBO or Airbnb and why some clearly need help. What are the differences in the descriptions, features, photos, reviews? This gives you valuable data versus just your feeling on what works.

Assess if your product or service will legitimately reach the accurate target market.

Do your potential clients have the resources to buy your product?

Is your product easily accessible to them? Perceived accessibility is hugely important.

Will they view your product as a means to help fulfill a need or connect the dots on how your product will benefit them?

You may also build a customer profile and create a brand avatar that is your brand personified. Your avatar represents your target audience and is your ideal end user in character form. This exercise works for any type of business and ensures your ideal audience is tangible and streamlined for yourself, your employees (or future employees), or anyone else you work with behind the scenes. For example, when we had a professional build our website, we had them look at our customer profile and branding guide so there was continuity with the final product. We also had our videographer for content creation, photographer for brand images, and designer for our office space do the same. Give your avatar names—make them come to life so when you think about your business and your brand you are speaking directly to your target market. Our brand avatars are Will and Mallory. They are cool, obviously.

Build Your Story

Brands don’t come alive with bullet point lists of adjectives like you see on a poorly written résumé . . . some of the best brands are communicated through stories. Studies have shown that we are motivated toward action through story. Stories let us apply an idea to our own lives. When we can see ourselves in a great story, we are more likely to take some sort of action moving forward, even if it’s just choosing between spaghetti sauces at the grocery store. Speaking of spaghetti sauce, Carrie is a huge sucker for Newman’s Own. Paul Newman’s face on every jar of pasta sauce, the story behind his mission, and knowing that 100 percent of his profits (after tax) go toward his foundation keep her buying. Newman is a great example of making his brand personal. In a different way, take Nike. There isn’t one exclusive face that represents the brand, but their marketing team habitually uses success stories as their narrative to inspire athletes and active people in an unparalleled way. One can effectively see themselves in their moving story campaigns. As a result, they focus very little on features or attributes at all because their storytelling sells their products for them. You want their story to be your story, therefore you buy their shoes.

So What Makes an Effective Story?

Tell an actual story. An effective story demonstrates an evolution and pulls your audience in, bringing them with you on your journey. Your audience can see themselves in your story, relate to it even in some small way. As a literal example, Airbnb uses the stories, testimonials, and experiences of their customers to become relatable to future customers. Their users, hosts, and guests are the brand, thereby amplifying the overall user experience through the voices of real-life storytellers.

Incorporate your brand personality with your own personality. Tell your audience the essence of your brand through how you share the story. Use your voice. As an example, our brand would be described as empowering, challenging, confident, and adventurous. We have woven those themes through how we conduct business and our marketing strategy through the content we create on social media, our website, our logo, and our business values. We hope those we have done business with would affirm these brand attributes, as they reflect who we are as individuals, as well as our business brand.

Once you have pinpointed your brand personality, weave it into your story, imagery, packaging, website, content creation, and overall vibe. Each individual experiences your brand differently, but the way you convey it should be congruent.

Be honest. Your story should be accurate and representative. It shouldn’t be inflated or mirror another brand, as this breaks trust. The Honest Company, which sells nontoxic, eco-friendly baby products, ran into trouble in 2017 with allegations of misleading ingredients in some of their products. The bad publicity definitely took a toll, especially for a company whose name and mission center around honesty and transparency.

We know a “successful” man who runs a high-ticket coaching business. Many consider him an influencer based on his social media presence, and he touts himself as an authority in the small business coaching realm. He brings a lot of flash on the surface, selling his services at a premium. But based on a wide range of client testimonials shared with us in confidence, very few results are driven by the quality of his work. When it comes to how you position yourself in the marketplace, be candid about the tangible results you are genuinely able to provide.

Use personal anecdotes. The more your customer can see themselves in your story, the better. The most compelling stories are both personal and visual. Let’s say you run a personal injury law firm. When telling your story, you might go into detail about how a former client had to decide between feeding their kids or paying their medical bills. Describe them, name them, and paint a picture of how you helped them through a tragic situation. Your potential clients can identify with that story.

Burt’s Bees is a great example of effective storytelling. From their origin story of two hitchhikers hitting it off and making candles together, to a focus on the bees behind their products, Burt’s Bees uses compelling visuals and personal details to draw customers into their story. When you hear their story, you involuntarily visualize what it might have looked like for two hitchhikers to make candles together. You can hear the buzz of the bees. Now that you have a visual attached to Burt’s Bees (especially if no one else in the skin care category has that visual) that sticks in your mind and can’t easily be removed (consciously or unconsciously).

Share your WHY. Pulling people in with what made you start your side hustle in the first place is a big part of storytelling. As an example, “I was allergic to all the makeup from the big department stores, so I made my own with essential oils. . . .” Bringing people into your process creates a bridge and serious relatability when you’re sharing with the right target audience.

Be compelling. Use words that work. Ever noticed how certain words resonate momentarily while others linger and sit with you? The same goes with your brand story. It can either be a quick pass through in someone’s brain or stick like duct tape and actually impact. Identify words that evoke feelings while highlighting your brand’s idiosyncrasies throughout your story. Make it pop. Think of the approach of Dollar Shave Club and why it resonates so much. Its lead commercial asks, “Are our blades any good?” to which the answer goes, “No, our blades are f**king great.” This brand has created messaging that its audience relates to: men’s frustration and fatigue buying overpriced razors, not just a product.

As Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick share in their book The Art of Social Media, “Success favors the bold as well as interesting on social media, so don’t hesitate to express your feelings and agenda. People voluntarily followed you; they can voluntarily unfollow you if they don’t like what you share.” Put in another way, give the right people, your intended audience, a chance at finding you by speaking your truth!

Be easily understandable. In Donald Miller’s book Building a Story Brand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen, he speaks to our human nature of taking the path of least resistance as consumers. If your audience has to decode your brand and story, know that they probably won’t. They will move on without understanding what your company is about and how it could help them. Make your messaging simple and straightforward—don’t make your potential customers do extra work. For instance, we know a lot of intelligent, technical entrepreneurs who have great products and services, but the way they convey their brand and message is way over the heads of the average human being. Confusing narratives create a disconnect and equate to missed opportunities for business.

As an example, we know someone who started a pet daycare side business. He has a degree in veterinary science and even does behavioral training with his client’s pets when he takes them out for a walk. However, his story and branding would lead you to believe the only thing he does is let your dog outside to water the fire hydrant. There’s a real gap and missed opportunity when people don’t totally understand what you do, the extent of your expertise, or how your business can benefit them.

If your audience has to decode your brand and story, know that they probably won’t.

Once you have developed the story that easily communicates how you and your brand are unique (as long as you actually are), no one can take that away from you! Your story is not static; it can change over time. It’s an evolution and you are heavily involved in the process as it’s you; it’s yours! As you craft your story it is important to know where to share it.

Create a Plan to Reach Your Audience

Now that you have identified where your target market hangs out, and you’ve got a compelling story to tell, it is imperative that you show up to said space with a strong plan based on your business goals. For many it may be online, for others in person, but for most it will be both. Whether it’s your local area, the Northeast region, Instagram, or Facebook, figure out WHERE you want to anchor yourself as you identify HOW to engage, add value, and to represent you and your business.

Develop Your Road Map

Take time to think about the following questions to develop your road map.

Which environments will you leverage?

What is your purpose in each environment or platform?

What is your content strategy, and how does it reflect your expertise and the problems that you solve better than others?

If online, how often and when will you be posting content?

What type of engagement are you working to create? What does a win look like?

What is your overall theme and vibe (see previous section)?

What is your brand’s personality? Are you effectively conveying your story? If your brand was a person, would you like them or want to be friends?

What is your end goal?

Once you have identified the answers to these questions, you want to dig into setting up your profiles, assuming you are tapping into social media. To get started you primarily need an account with a solid bio that represents you well.

The Power of Content Creation

As mentioned, social media can be a huge asset for your personal branding and business. But you don’t just make an account and instantly attract the masses. Effective social media strategies take work—smart work. We highly recommend leveraging content creation paired with strong branding, which can entail a wide range of video content, storytelling, text posts, photographic imagery, blogging, articles, and live broadcasts. These are all forms of content marketing that push out value through content distribution in an effort to generate attention, leads, and revenue over time.

But why content, specifically? Content creation is a fantastic way to expose yourself in the best way possible, as well as your brand, to a virtual audience (for low cost). Effective content creation makes people feel like they’ve gotten something for free . . . something that adds value to them. You are giving your audience a sneak peek or trailer of what working with you would look like and the benefits they can gain from your expertise! And we are in an age where people want to know the face behind the brand. Your content itself is a powerful branding mechanism and can also build you a following because your audience comes back for more value, more free advice, and more ideas. And if they don’t need your paid services or product now, they know to come to you when they do!

Content creation is also an opportunity to engage your growing community in a meaningful way. Messaging for the sake of messaging can do more damage than good. As you engage on social media, it is essential to have anchoring principles for why you are there, what your goals are, how much time you want to spend there, and exactly what you want to be spending your time doing, as this can be very helpful in giving you both limits and a roadmap. Here are some ideas to help you understand the role content plays in your branding and how to develop it for your target market.

Amplify Your Differentiator

Dig deep to better convey your unique slight edge by writing down and answering these questions:

What does your brand do best?

Why do you do what you do best?

How are you different from the rest of humanity?

What is your unique angle?

What are your leading principles and values?

What brand strengths of yours are extraordinary?

What is your brand’s deeper vision? How can others rally behind this vision and be part of your mission?

For example, TOMS Shoes does a standout job of answering these questions loud and clear through their branding and clarity of vision. Carrie here. I know that every time I buy their shoes, which is often, that one-third of their annual net profit goes toward designated causes. I also know they value sustainability and equality of opportunity. They tie their products to causes and make their consumers feel part of something bigger than footwear. And this keeps me coming back!

If you’re struggling to decipher how you are different, then that should be a red flag to you to take a hot minute and a step back. It might be time to pull in a branding professional to help you decode why a consumer should take action and join your movement. If you are unsure, then why would anyone else be sure? Confidence and clarity are key.

Organize Your Ideas Through Ideation

What is the objective? What topics do you have expert authority around? What are your values? What are the specs on your audience and target market? Come up with a brainstorming list of core topics and subtopics you can speak to. Be sure that 100 percent of your content isn’t specific to your industry. Add human elements and humor to the mix and shake things up! For the love, share a random, funny story sometime and see what happens.

Generate Content through Bulk Creation

When you are in your creative flow, don’t slow down. For maximum efficiency, create multiple pieces of content at a time. Feel free to change outfits or backdrops for variation. This helps put you in a position of strength, as you’ll have a lot of content to pull from as you post.

Outsource

As discussed in earlier chapters, figure out what makes sense to have someone else handle. For example, you probably can’t outsource speaking on a podcast; however, there are areas such as adding subtitles to your content or pushing it out on different platforms that could easily be done by someone else. Referrals go a long way, so poll your community and find effective people within your price point. Don’t forget there is often room for negotiation or swapping services.

Value

Add a ton of it. Think abundance and give away loads of free content. This might feel counterintuitive, but the more people benefit from your content and know your mad skills, the more likely they will seek you out for more as well as promote the heck out of you! Don’t get in your own way of creating viral traffic by holding your cards too close to your chest.

Have a Call to Action

Be sure your content is actionable, meaning someone has something they can do with the information you shared with them. Ask yourself, How can my audience implement this idea, strategy or thought? If you’re not sure, you want to go back to the drawing board.

Develop a Cadence with Your Posts

The more you keep showing up, the more others will too. If you plan and execute on throwing the party, the guest list might be light initially, but it will continue to build (assuming you plug away with our other suggestions). Frequency matters!

Execute

Once you post, be sure to invest time into the backend work of fanning the flame on your traction through responding to comments.

In addition to creating and posting your original content, we recommend four things you can do to maximize your impact and create content that connects your brand to your intended audience.

1.   Add connection requests. You need an audience. Continue building it. Personalized invitations can go a long way for getting your requests accepted.

2.   Direct message your new and old connections. A large piece of building a community is extending a hand or dialogue to those within your network. A friendly hello or candid introduction can go a long way for learning more about your audience as well as getting people excited about learning more about you (keep in mind this is not an opportunity to mass pitch your network).

3.   Create a prioritized to-do list and use a timer to stay on task if necessary. The struggle is real. Social media is one of the most distracting places in the world that we go to and attempt to be productive. Your cell phone can be a liability or an asset depending on how you’re using it. There is so much opportunity cost in anything you do, so be deliberate, efficient, and efficacious.

When on social media, deploy the concept of surgical strikes, meaning get in and get out. Do what you need to do, and don’t get tripped up with all the other inputs and distractions that can become a time suck.

4.   Comment on others’ content. One of the best ways to create visibility and traffic to your own profile is to create impactful noise on other profiles, especially when it’s a creator you respect and align with. Be generous and sincere, and add value, and it will draw a ton of positive visibility your way over time. Reposting or sharing other people’s content is a great way to show solidarity and build community, assuming you give them credit. There is so much power in reciprocity!

You can have meaningful and different content, but if it isn’t positioned the right way, nobody will read it, or worse, the message will be lost in translation. So from a technical standpoint, here are some small but critical things to consider when polishing your content for cyber launch.

Hook: Lead with a strong opening line that draws people in! Don’t be boring. Your goal is to get people to slow their scroll with your originality and creativity. Observe content that pulls you in and gains your attention and duplicate what fits your style and personality.

Hashtags: They help people find you and can become a sticky element of your brand. Include a personal hashtag in your posts so people can start to follow that hashtag specifically. It ultimately creates a library of your content. Also include three to four additional hashtags that are relevant to the topic you are speaking to. Learn how to use them effectively, and they will be a lever for your visibility and reach.

Tag: Tag people in your posts, not as a technique but assuming there is relevancy to that person and what you are posting about. Don’t be that person who goes ballistic with the tagging strategy. It’s not a good look, and isn’t typically well received by the people getting overtapped.

Timing: Put thought into when people tend to check their feeds. Commute times and lunch times are examples of when people frequently check social. When you factor in different time zones, there are always people on social, so don’t overthink it but consider it!

Variation of posts: Whether it’s video, long form content, articles, images, text post only, listicles, polls, and so on, switch it up and have some variation in your content. It shows range and engages different people differently.

Include subtitles with video content: Subtitles create better accessibility, and generally people are way more likely to go through your content if you include them in your video posts. Yes, it takes extra time but it’s worth it.

Create more engagement on your own content: Get deep in the comments section with your community. When people engage and are ready to talk to you, praise you, or question you—show up! Do your best to be in the thick of the dialogue with prompt turnaround time. Likes and commenting perpetuate the visibility of what you put out.

Ultimately, the goal is to be productive and happy, so learn how to leverage your time on social media and simultaneously protect your time—it is a skill and boundaries go a long way. As mentioned, the more you grow and the more visibility your brand creates, you will have an influx of people commenting and direct-messaging you (oftentimes on topics unrelated to your business)! This type of traction is a great sign of growth online; however, you can easily get swept away in the noise. Avoid being at the whim of all the notifications and inbound messages.

Message people who engage on your posts. Build bridges with people who are engaging with you. Get to know them better. Keep leaning into relationships.

Apply analytics—always. For example, if you currently have two followers on Instagram, you may want to go heavier on adding connections initially before diving headfirst into posting content. Follow guidelines and approaches that make practical sense for where you are at on your journey. While online platforms can be really incredible in helping you grow your brand, it’s important to also keep in mind it’s not one size fits all on social media.

Create Revenue

The goal of any business is to create revenue and ultimately, profit. Whether you are a side-hustling local gardener or a graphic designer by night, your objective is to generate sales (and net profit as talked about in Chapter 7). We have seen many businesses flounder in the process of creating sales, which puts them out of business quickly. For enhancing revenue, we recommend using the following approaches:

1.   Be extremely clear on your offering.

2.   Make it obvious where people can find you, and make it easy for people to purchase your product or service. This seems apparent, but a lot of new business owners overlook extra hoops they create for their potential customers. How easy is it to access and navigate your website? Add items to the cart? Check out? Remember, your consumer base does not want to do extra work to get your product especially when they are not loyal yet.

3.   Leverage the heck out of user-generated content. Let people talk. This is clutch! Share positive reviews on your website or on your social media stories. So many consumers are review driven. Give the people what they want! Repost your customers social media posts praising your company. This creates an entirely different dynamic when others are promoting you versus you promoting how awesome you are.

4.   Build email lists with monthly newsletters. As mentioned, this is a great way to stay on your customers’ radar. Make sure you are actually adding value to them versus creating spam, as you can simultaneously keep them up to date on new and fresh offerings.

5.   Develop a strong SEO. Work to grow your visibility and frequency so that you are higher up on search engine pages and so that keywords that are being searched are more frequently and effectively drawing consumers to your page.

6.   Use content marketing. Create content so you can answer people’s questions and problems for free. This builds confidence as it shows competency, which drives more users to your website and offerings.

7.   Leverage paid advertising. There are lots of opportunities for paid advertisements and each have pros and cons. Whether it’s paid advertisements on Facebook or Instagram, which can be fairly economical and measurable, or something larger scale, this method can help drive traffic to target individuals who your product or service can specifically help serve.

8.   Network like your business depends on it—because it probably does. We have all heard the adage “It’s not what you know but who you know.” So who do you know? And who knows you? How can you build on your social capital? Social media creates a massive opportunity. We know, “Friendships and partnerships on the internet?” We were skeptical too, but that is one of the best places to put your pole in the water and create relationships as well as revenue. But don’t exclusively hang out behind your computer, also network live and in the real and show up consistently. Even if someone doesn’t currently need your product or service, if you’ve built familiarity and trust, they will think of you first when they do need your help (or someone in their network does).

9.   Be a big advocate and referral source for other people’s businesses. The more you give, the more you gain, period. As Daymond John on Shark Tank shares, “We’re talking tapping into other people’s marketing, mind power, and momentum, even other people’s manpower. Cross-promote with others’ in the industry you operate in. It goes both ways. You promote them. They promote you. It’s mutually beneficial and it doesn’t cost a thing.”

10.   Create exceptional customer service and support. This is one of the best ways to separate yourself from the masses. As an example, Carrie here, I recently purchased some clothing online from my friend Tori’s boutique. I happened to be heading out of town the next day, and Tori, who is local to me, hand delivered my items to my door so I could be sure to have my new threads for my trip. This is an example of creating a slight edge with your customer base. Small, thoughtful steps create an immense amount of positive, public praise as well as repeat revenue, and is particularly powerful for a small business owner.

11.   Collaborate with those in and outside your industry. Podcasting is a great example of this. Both hosting and being a guest can magnify your voice and create a cascade of other opportunities and direct and indirect sales. You are boosting your volume exponentially by broadcasting your value on more microphones and channels. Have a clear call to action and an easy way people can reach out and connect with you and access your offering.

12.   Develop an affiliate program! You can incentivize existing customers to refer business your way for cash referrals or credit on their purchases with you. By minimizing their costs or kicking them a commission, they will be more likely to promote you on social media and do word of mouth marketing for you. We could write a book on this topic and seriously urge you to create an affiliate program. In doing so, others are more likely to add you to their affiliate programs, further diversifying your income options also!

No matter which environments you choose to leverage—in person, online, or both (recommended)—know that personal and business branding as well as marketing are areas for considerable thought and investment so you represent yourself and your business well, differentiate yourself from others, and broadcast yourself clearly enough so the right people can find you and actually purchase your product or services. Embrace the learning curve and be BOLD. Entrepreneurship does not reward the meek!