Creative Business Markers Owners Marketing Strategies

There’s a lot of noise today out in the internet and social media about everything we feel we have to be doing as entrepreneurs. There’s email newsletters and Instagram and Pinterest and SEO and #allthethings. It can be so confusing and overwhelming and, worst of all, distracting!

If you’re running a side hustle or only have a limited number of hours to work on your business (hello, mamas!) you’re probably wondering which marketing tactics are THE MOST important to implement… so I grabbed five of my business besties and asked them about the top marketing strategies for their products and services. (Would it surprise you that only one of them even mentioned something from that list up there?)

What is the most important marketing strategy or tactic you use today and why? How has it been beneficial to your creative business?

My most important marketing strategy is to run everything through the filter of the Lily & Val brand. Branding is so much more than a logo or colors — it’s the heart & soul of a creative business and it dictates customer perception. A solid brand will stand out from the competition and provide consistency in your marketing efforts. Having a well-defined brand has benefitted my creative business because it provides a roadmap for my decisions and makes sure I’m crafting a specific experience for my customers.

Valerie McKeehan, Lily & Val

Investing in real connections with others… It could be through good-old fashioned face-to-face chats at conferences and events, being fully present and invested in my clients’ missions, helping out my colleagues in a bind, or even sharing my difficult life/biz lessons with complete strangers. I seek to help and inspire through the lens of friendship and service to others. It has always served me well as my #1 marketing and biz strategy and has always been the catalyst in making the amazing things happen. It’s incredible to see what happens when the marketing turns from you selling, into them receiving help, love and caring through your brand.

Cathy Olson, Love Inspired

I try not to put all my eggs in one basket, but Pinterest is a huge focus for me. It’s my number 2 source of traffic, just under Google searches. I love creating awesome graphics for specific pages and posts on my site to drive users to my best content. It’s helped me increase not only my traffic but also my affiliate earnings!

Jessica Lehry Bishop

The most important marketing strategy I use is to be myself, tell my story, and truly connect with my audience. The more I put myself, my life, and my experiences out there, the stronger the connection becomes with my followers. Women like to buy from other women they can identify with. My goal is to inspire other women and moms to easily create beautiful parties and homes that they take pride in. If I can continue to show them how to accomplish this, I hope they’ll keep coming back for more!

Kim Stoegbauer, TomKat Studio

My best marketing strategy tip is to actually have a plan: a marketing plan! Determine what months will be active or inactive launching months and then define what each month’s focus will be. The plan acts as a checkpoint whenever you get a case of “shiny object syndrome.” If the idea isn’t inline with your plan, it’s a NO!

Heather Crabtree

For me, my best marketing strategy is to always take the time to look at the hard data to analyze and to predict the outcome of my marketing campaigns and tactics.

I’m a natural marketing and data nerd, so I enjoy looking at numbers and analyze how a campaign worked in the past. Now that isn’t to say that I don’t try new things (because I do love testing!) but understanding these past figures helps me predict the outcome of a similar marketing campaign in the future.

For example, if you know that a previous email campaign generated a certain number of click-throughs, which then led to a certain amount of people on your site, and then a percentage of them bought your product, producing X dollars of sales — you could then deduce that if your email list was twice as large as last time, you could potentially double the results next time! Now, that’s a really generic example, but it’s an approach that has always been ingrained in me. Numbers and data are your friend and unlock so much amazing information. All of my marketing plans are based on that strategy, and it’s one that works!

You can plan for success, too!

Today I’m sharing a FREE workbook and video training to help kickstart your marketing plan in under an hour! With the video, I’ll walk you through 8 exercises that are going to lay the foundation for you marketing. It will be as if I came straight to your home office (or dining room table if your office is on the move) to chat with you!

When you download this tool, you’ll also be signed up to receive more FREE resources and updates of my upcoming Blooming Business Kits course launching soon that was created to help you cut through the clutter and utilize smart marketing tactics to grow your creative business!