Marketing Strategies For Your Side Hustle
Alright, so you’ve got your brand figured out, your social media pages up, and your website is ready for people to go down the funnel and buy your products. The only thing missing is all the people, and this is where a lot of side hustle owners start to really hit the middle of the mountain. Where you aren’t making much progress and you feel like turning back and giving up.
It can be hard, especially if you are working so hard and have invested your time and money into all of this and then your marketing doesn’t produce the customers you want. But do you even know what customers you want to attract into your business? Well, most side hustles and even the majority of businesses don’t! They are confident and comfortable accepting anyone with a pulse and an open wallet, but this is often a bad business practice, because if you are trying to market your product to everyone you will likely get nowhere and sell to no one. So it is much better to reach out and focus on finding some of the ideal customers you can bring to your website.
Identifying and Targeting Your Ideal Customers
Think about your side hustle and the products or services you want to sell. Who do you want to target in your marketing campaign? Do you want to target people with pets? People who love to cook? People over 30 years of age? Is your product suited for teenagers? Young adults? The elderly?
Write down who your ideal customer would be. Give them a name, talk about their family, and flesh out their life a bit. Make them be the perfect customer that you would give your arm to have walk in the door. Once you have your perfect customer in front of you, try to find them. Where would they hang out? What would they be doing? How would you get their attention?
Finally, and this is the most important question that you need to ask yourself whenever you focus on your ideal customer, how will they be helped by my product or service? What problem do they have that I am in a position to solve? How will my product or service make their life easier or better?
Crafting Effective Marketing Messages
This will help you start to focus on your marketing campaign. If your ideal customer is 25 years old and spends a lot of time on social media, then you can market to that on social media. The questions above: how will they be helped by my product or service? What problem do they have that I am in a position to solve? How will my product or service make their life easier or better? These are the questions that your marketing needs to answer.
Because no matter where, when, or how you market your products or services to someone, you need to ensure that you are letting them know the answer to the questions above. Your customer wants to look at your marketing advertisement, post, or campaign and get that question answered. Because they want to be helped and they want to know why and how you can help them before they spend their money on you.
So if your side hustle is baking cookies, talk about how your ideal candidate doesn’t have time to bake their own homemade cookies, but also doesn’t have the money to risk a gamble on storebought stuff. Instead, they need a baked good that is going to hit the spot every time and is made with some of the best ingredients ever… and wouldn’t they know it, that is what your product is!
No matter what your side business is, you are trying to solve a problem or provide a benefit in another person’s life, and your customers need to connect to that if you want them to give you their business. So make sure that all of your marketing messages bring everyone back to the fact that a problem needs to be solved and you are the only one capable of solving that problem.
Finally, while your entire business might be online and you might be putting a lot of work into your social media posts, websites, and email list emails, don’t forget about the world of offline marketing too. Sure it might not be as glamorous or as impactful as it once was, but it still holds a lot of power and weight that you can take advantage of.
Utilizing Online and Offline Marketing Channels
Don’t be afraid to host local gatherings or events at your storefront to drum up business and make some physical connections. For example, if your side hustle is all about art, you might want to host an art gallery or some type of gathering where you can share your pieces and show your work off, while also getting to know some of the other artists in the area.
Also, don’t underestimate going door to door and trying to drum up customers the old fashioned way, or hang up some flyers around town to try and get people’s attention. Again, the offline ways of doing things might not be as beneficial as the online ways of doing things for attracting your perfect client or drumming up some amazing business, but they can be helpful and you might as well give them a try.
Marketing can be a very hard and discouraging part of any side hustle, even if you are a naturally good marketer and you enjoy talking to people and telling them all about what you do and why you do it. However, don’t be afraid to keep on marketing and putting yourself out there, even if it seems like no one cares or no one is paying attention.
If you have been marketing for a while and haven’t seen any real success, you should try to look at the data behind your business. How many people are looking at your website every single day? What pages are they spending the most time on? How many people did your social media posts bring to your website? While this might not get you any sales, understanding what your business marketing efforts look like on the data end can be very important for your overall marketing plan.
You can even hire or work with an expert in order to interpret the data and come up with a serious plan of action!