A Marketing Strategy For Newbies: How To Get Leads When You’re Just Starting Out

One thing that all successful online businesses seem to have in common is an excellent marketing strategy. Somehow they overcome our immediate inclination to be annoyed and not buy anything and replace that notion with, “You’re kind. You’re modern. You get me. So clearly I must have your X (online course, books, planner, etc.) to become successful like you.”

From my vantage point, it seems like these businesses create this audience sentiment using one of two marketing strategies:

1. Identity Origin Story. The identity origin story brand of marketing goes something like this:  I used to have this huge problem (unhealthy diet, no business, no skill, debt, etc.). Then I navigated the pitfalls of my problem and came up with a system that completely changed my life. Now I’m rich and happy and can put you on the road to success too.  All you have to do is buy my signature product (book, program, widget, etc.)
2. Money, Money, Money. With the Money, Money, Money marketing approach, the business owner explains to the audience that not only has she made a lot of money using her signature product, but her clients have too.  Then the business owner primes the audience with marketing language that can be summed up like this, “do you like money? Want to make more money? Then you need my product too.” Cue the plethora of client testimonials.

Of course, I’m simplifying and poking fun at these marketing messages a little bit, but you get my point. No matter how we may say we feel about these marketing strategies, they work, and they work well especially online.

Now here’s the rub. If you are a new business owner, you can’t use these market strategies in a way that feels honest and true. You certainly don’t have numerous clients to call on for testimonials. So the money, money, money approach does provide the social proof you need.  Moreover, you may only be at the beginning of your quest to overcome a struggle and are providing insights to customers from that perspective. So identity origin story doesn’t work as a marketing tactic either.

So how do you attract customers, when your origin story isn’t fully formed, and the only testimonial you have comes from your sister? The answer is positioning.  

Positioning As An Alternate Marketing Plan

Positioning is a great marketing strategy because you don’t need to relate to your audience as an expert to get customers. Instead, through position marketing, you find out what your target audience wants and give it to them.

You study them. You learn about your audience’s problems, frustrations, fears, and anxieties and craft business solutions to solve those problems.

For example, if you are on the road to wellness and find out that your audience wants healthy meal plans using 5 ingredients. You sell them healthy meal plans with 5 ingredients.  If they want a method to systemize and automate their freelance work, you create that system for them. Positioning is about giving your audience a quick win to an urgent need.

How To Do Positioning Research For Your Marketing Strategy

Now if you’ve been in business for a little while, you already know that, although positioning sounds simple, it is not easy. To do it well, you have to know your audience which requires lots and lots of research. Most marketing advice suggests that you start your research by creating a survey. The problem here is that only about 33% of people will actually complete your survey. Knowing this, here are some alternative sources of market research to help you with your positioning:

1. Facebook Groups – Facebook groups are collectives of people that organize around a topic or idea and discuss it in an open forum.  There are FB groups for just about everything, and you can get to know your customer just by paying attention to the feed in these groups.
2. Twitter Chats –  Twitter chats are similar to Facebook groups. People interested in a particular topic use the same hashtag to group all of the conversations about that topic in one location on Twitter.  You can then use those hashtag to research your audience and learn more about them.
3. Amazon – Because Amazon sells almost everything, it has one of the most robust search engines in the world. You can use that search engine for research. Type in your industry and search for books in your niche. Then read the comments.  You can learn a lot about your audience by exploring how they feel about books in your industry.
4. Pinterest – like Amazon, Pinterest is basically a big search engine.  Type in your topic and go down the Pinterest rabbit hole for a while. Not only will you see your audience’s concerns via the top-rated pins, but you will also see the subcategories of worries that they might have.
5. Phone Interviews – Finally, if you can get on the phone or do a video chat with your target customer, it’s worth the effort. Talking with them about your topic will help you to pick up on word choice, phrasing, and subtleties that you just can’t get from a survey.

Now that you know how to market as a newbie tell me, what can you do to turn these insights into action for your audience?  Leave a comment below and let’s start a conversation.