Solopreneurship is the new cool.
And rightly so! After all, it lets you decide your working hours, clients, partnerships, workflow processes, and the niche you’re most passionate about. And who doesn’t love complete control over their work set-up and goals?
But the snag is that even the most brilliant solopreneurs are not marketing their business well enough to get the ROI and traction they could benefit from.
Is that your case, too? Then, this article is all you need to nail marketing for solopreneurs as we’ll uncover the surefire strategies and recommended tools successful solopreneurs have been using lately.
With the tips and tools listed below, you can increase the likelihood of getting financial independence, personal recognition, and growth from your business, no matter your niche.
So, without further ado, let’s discuss the sure-fire strategies to help any solopreneur make their business a huge success.
8 Potent Marketing Strategies For Solopreneurs
Did you recently start your journey as a solopreneur, or are you struggling to become the next Justin Welsh?
In either case, you need a solid strategy to boost your marketing efforts.
Becoming a solopreneur whom businesses want to invest in and people want to network with is not that easy; but if you market yourself right, you can easily be one.
So here’s a list of marketing strategies to help you and your business catch more eyeballs, connect with your target audience, and generate more leads:
1. Set achievable goals
The more specific your goal is, the more chances you have to achieve it.
Once you create a mental map of your goals, jot them down on a document. Define the route you’d like to take in order to achieve these goals. As we said earlier, be as specific as possible in defining goals.
Anthony Carlton, Founder and Brand Consultant of FinGhosts.io, says, “One of the lessons I’ve learned from growing a 6-figure business from solopreneurship is to get clear on what you want from the start. For instance, my goal was not to grow a $1B business but to design a better lifestyle.”
Once you decide what your long-term goal is, break it down into a number of achievable, short-term ones that contribute to that vision of life set by the long-term goal.
The best advice here would be to choose goals that align with your interests. For example, if you’re an introvert and have difficulty networking with people, aiming to become a famous podcast host is a little unrealistic. However, choosing a business that revolves around blogging or something might be more suitable.
2. Study your audience
Gone are the days when people's marketing efforts were directed at anyone and everyone.
If you really want to grow and connect with an audience your business can benefit from, then know and understand your target customer profile well.
Seth Godin, the founder of Carbon Almanac, too, emphasizes a lot on focusing on a target audience and their behavior by saying, “In a world of noise, understanding your audience is the key to being heard.”
Study and observe their needs, demands, and what they best respond to. Platforms like Reddit, G2, and Google Trends can be quite resourceful in helping you understand your target audience.
You’ll be amazed at how helpful and fruitful studying your audience can turn out to be.
3. Create your personal brand
A solopreneur without a personal brand is like Taylor Swift without her marketing team - great but less impactful.
You need to have a personal brand that tells people exactly who you are, what you offer, and how you and your business can add value to their lives.
Pick a platform you’re most comfortable with, be it LinkedIn or Twitter, have a unique tone of voice, and speak to your target audience.
Share your vision, wins, and losses with your followers. The more they engage with your personal brand, the more likely they will invest in your business.
4. Highlight your unique value
As a solopreneur, having a unique value proposition is crucial for several reasons:
Differentiation
Attracting Clients
Building Trust
Sustainability
For example, let’s consider the example of Justin Welsh. He generated over 162 million impressions on LinkedIn, leading to revenue streams from products, sponsorships, consulting, and subscriptions. His unique value lies in creating high-quality content that resonates with his audience.
Take a step back and look at your posts and business from your target audience’s POV. Ask yourself why I should invest my time and money in this business. Does it solve any problem for me?
When you have the answer to these questions, you can better understand what value you can offer to your people. For example, if you’re becoming a MUA (makeup artist), you’re one of the peas in the pod. But if you’re an MUA who offers bridal makeup with a twist or makeup for cultural celebrations, people will be more enticed to invest in you because that service is unique.
5. Distribute your content
Like we said earlier, pick your favorite platform, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. And start promoting your business through different content pieces such as animated videos, promotional GIFs, etc.
This is where affiliate marketing comes in handy. Contact an influencer who is the best in your niche or domain and ask them to promote your business. As the social proof phenomenon states, people are more likely to buy your product or service if they listen to or watch positive reviews about it.
Once you’ve created the content, use marketing automation tools to schedule and post this content.
(Note: The most suitable tools for content creation and distribution are listed below.)
6. Grow a valuable email list
“Email can be the most direct and personal channel to engage with your audience,” said Ann Handley.
Now, why did we not include email marketing in the previous pointer? That’s because communication through email is more personal than social media and deserves special attention and effort. Moreover, comparing email marketing vs social media for their influence on businesses, email will always be the winner! 👑 (Read the linked article to know how!)
While collecting email IDs, your goal should not be to grow a massive email list but a valuable contact list that interacts, engages, and invests in you.
7. Become podcast guest
It’s 2024, and everyone has at least one favorite podcast host or channel.
(We got you thinking about your favorite one now, right? 🤣)
People from different industries host podcasts and invite guests. Pick the most streamed podcast channel from your niche, reach out to the respective team, and shoot your chance of becoming their guest.
Results? You’ll be heard and acknowledged by that channel’s massive viewership and also be known as an SME. A lot of solopreneurs were successful in growing their network after becoming a guest on a podcast.
The outcome is definitely worth your time and energy.
8. Keep testing and trying
We can’t emphasize enough the importance of this one.
Once you’ve embarked on this journey, be open to try and test new things. And what is even more important is to be patient and persistent.
For example, if you try creating a personal brand on Linkedin and don’t see sufficient engagement in 4-6 months, don’t be disappointed; be patient and keep going. However, try tweaking your strategy a bit if you don’t see positive results even after a sufficient period of time.
So, these are the winning strategies used by top solopreneurs these days.
Now that we’ve covered the planning stage, it’s time for implementation. After a good deal of research (and testing, too, actually), we’ve short-listed the top 7 tools to help you solopreneurs grow their businesses efficiently.
9 Tools to Help Solopreneurs Market Their Business Effectively
As a solopreneur, you’re handling marketing, accounts, strategy, and compliance single-handedly. This means you have too many tasks on your hands to juggle and quite limited time to invest in each task.
Thankfully, we have tools that can do all these tasks for you in a matter of minutes, all while producing high-quality results.
For your ease, we listed down the top nine tools that can help you produce and distribute top-quality content quickly and effortlessly.
Unlayer to Design Emails, Landing Pages and Pop-ups
Unlayer is a content creation platform that enables users to design emails, landing pages, pop-ups, and documents efficiently and easily.
Whether you are building an engaging newsletter for a growing audience, or creating a landing page for capturing leads, or designing pop-ups for blog subscription, a tool like Unlayer takes care of all your content creation needs.
Unlayer’s drag-and-drop editor allows users to create customizable and mobile-friendly designs in a matter of minutes. What makes Unlayer the best content creation platform in the market are its unique and advantageous features:
A user-friendly drag-and-drop editor
Comprehensive documentation
Custom tools
Custom blocks as reusable elements
Mobile responsive content
Code samples and demos
Merge tags for email personalization
AI features
The choice to hide or display items on the mobile version
No limit on the usability of tools
Team collaboration to streamline the workflow process
Custom cloud storage or self-hosted storage
Language support
Playground to see how the product works
Roles and access management
All these features come to you at a very reasonable price, too. Unlayer offers a 14-day free trial, and the pricing for Unlayer’s designer plan is $15/month, while for the Team plan is $30/month.
ConvertKit for Email Marketing
ConvertKit is an all-in-one email marketing solution that is designed especially for content creators, bloggers, and solopreneurs.
It helps creators in a range of ways, for example:
Grows their audience,
Runs campaigns,
Automates mundane tasks like scheduling or posting, and
Sends newsletters to keep readers engaged and hooked.
In a world where people purchase audiences and likes, ConvertKit is a bliss for creators who want to grow an audience organically. ConvertKit has bagged a lot of praise from its users because of its intuitive and user-friendly interface, hassle-free list management, and powerful automation features, all offered at reasonable prices. For those interested in exploring their options, we have also done an elaborate study on ConvertKit vs Mailchimp.
ConvertKit offers free plan is for up to 1000 subscribers with limited features. And you’d have to opt for their paid plans to avail yourself of advanced features such as customized recommendations, third-party integrations, 24/7 reporting, and more.
GetResponse for Creating Email List
Your email marketing efforts need special attention and focus.
A tool that can enable you to curate a quality email list and send the emails you designed using Unlayer, effectively is GetResponse. It enables you to create an email list that your business can benefit from, nurture those leads, and maximize your revenue.
In case you’re wondering if you need a tool solely for this purpose, you must know that a quality email list can take your business to the next level.
You can choose a pricing plan that suits your budget and needs the best.
Grammarly for Error-free Writing
As a solopreneur, you must be sending out tons of emails, networking with people on social media, and writing content for your marketing campaigns, too. With so much to do, checking your text repeatedly for typos and correct grammar is quite difficult and time-consuming.
Thanks to Grammarly, this can be easily taken care of.
All you need to do is install Grammarly on your devices, and it’ll automatically send you suggestions to correct your text for punctuation errors, tenses, or typos.
If your budget allows you to opt for Grammarly premium, even better. Grammarly Premium offers additional features such as suggestions for writing inclusive English, adjusting your writing tone, keeping citations consistent, avoiding plagiarism, and AI assistance.
Grammarly is an absolute must-have if you want to improve your communication through text. It offers a free version with limited capabilities, whereas their premium version is for $12/month, which is still a good price for these amazing features.
Slack for Communication
Even as a solopreneur, you will need to collaborate and communicate with freelancers or agency members. Communicating on WhatsApp makes it difficult to balance between personal and professional life.
To keep things professional and less mentally draining, get yourself Slack. It improves communication and coordination with your business partners or colleagues.
It also works wonders in helping organize your workflow processes. Plus, Slack is free to use for a lifetime. You can view their additional pricing plans here, but for solopreneurs, their free version seems perfect.
Zapier for Task Automation
Time is crucial when you’ve got so much to do. So, how about automating all your repetitive tasks?
With Zapier, you can automate many tedious tasks and focus more on strategy and planning. What’s great about Zapier is that it has 6,000+ integrations and service offerings.
All you need to do is set up the tool once and assign the task, and that’s it. Zapier will take care of everything else.
Again, we understand that as a solopreneur, you wouldn't want to invest big money into these tools. The good news is that Zapier offers a free version you can use forever. But if you want to enjoy more benefits, you can opt for their Starter plan, which is for $19.99/month, or their Professional plan, which is for $49/month.
Hootsuite for Social Media Management
Another tool that can drastically save you time is Hootsuite. It’s a social media management platform that enables you to schedule your social posts, freeing up your mind and creating space for you to focus on other, more important tasks.
If you’re one of those people who curate and create social media posts for the whole month or week at once, then Hootsuite is perfect for you.
Hootsuite’s Professional plan is perfect for solopreneurs, which is for $99/month.
Quickbooks for Managing Finances
Who will handle the finances when you’re investing a lot of brain power into strategies?
Enter Quickbooks.
Quickbooks is an accounting software that enables users to track their expenses and customize invoices according to their choice. With their real-time tracking capabilities, you can manage your finances much more efficiently.
As a solopreneur, you can choose their Simple Start plan which is for US$1/month.
Patreon for Creators To Build Online Community
Patreon is a platform where creators such as musicians, podcasters, game developers, animators, etc share their work and connect with their fans or followers directly. The followers or fans can access their favorite creators' work by paying for it, making the work more exclusive and premium. The coolest thing about Patreon is how followers can reach out and track their favorite creators and their work without the influence of algorithms or the fear of privacy breaches. So, if you’re a creator who loves sharing unfiltered BTS of your work along with the final product, Patreon can be your jam. You can also customize the benefits or features of your service for your users. Their Pro plan is the most popular among creators and takes 8% of the income earned through Patreon. Their Premium plan takes 12% of the income made through Patreon but offers additional features such as a dedicated manager, team accounts, and merge for membership.
And this is it. These are the resourceful and helpful tools available to save much of your time and energy needed to complete mundane tasks.
Final Thoughts!
Now, you’re all set to take your marketing to the next level. Just make sure you don’t overwhelm yourself in the process.
Make the best out of these budget-friendly tools.
Also, these tips can help you nail marketing for solopreneurs effortlessly. But before you go,
we’d like you to have a peek at some of the frequently asked questions about marketing for solopreneurs.
FAQs About Marketing for Solopreneurs
We noticed some budding solopreneurs frequently ask the following questions. So we decided to answer them for anyone looking for the answer.
Q. What tool can be used to create budget-friendly videos?
A. The handiest and most economical option to create videos would be your smartphone’s camera. If your smartphone does not offer a high-resolution camera, you can opt for any other entry-level affordable camera.
To edit your videos, you can opt for softwares like Canva, DaVinci Resolve, or Shotcut.
Q. How to use or allocate a budget for a small business?
There’s no specific number or percentage that should be dedicated to marketing alone.
But when it comes to deciding on a marketing budget, you must consider factors like what tools you want to use, which type of platforms or influencers you want to invest in, and how many of the tasks you can do by yourself without outsourcing any freelancer or agency.
Q. What are the best marketing tools for small businesses?
The above-mentioned tools can be used for your small business, too. However, the pricing plan varies according to the size of your team and requirements.
