Does even the thought of marketing your service business leave you feeling exhausted?

Or are you tired of investing time, energy, and effort in your marketing activities only to feel disappointed by the results?

If so, you’re not alone.

Many service-based business owners struggle to market their businesses efficiently and get a return on their marketing investment when they’re first starting a business.

And trust me, I’ve been there too!

I know how overwhelming it can feel to have a marketing to-do list so long that you don’t know where to start.

I know how weary you can feel while trying to set up and learn how to use yet another online marketing system.

And I know how disappointing results can make you feel like giving up and stopping your marketing altogether.

However, here’s the thing…

If you don’t invest the time, effort, and energy in setting up your marketing foundations, you’ll never reach the next level where you can focus on growing your service business.

You’ll stay stuck in the early start-up phase, where you don’t know what’s working and what’s not.

You’ll struggle to grow your audience to the size where you can build a sustainable business.

And you’ll end up burning out trying to market your business in a time-consuming and inefficient way because you don’t have the strategy, systems, and structure you need to free up time and grow.

Now, you may be wondering what marketing activities are worth investing the time and effort in to grow.

So, in the following blog post, I’ve outlined five marketing activities that I believe are essential for any new service business owner who wants to stop feeling stuck and start gaining massive momentum in their business.

Ready to find out what they are? Brilliant, let’s go!

1. Optimising your website

I’ve worked with many small business owners who have invested in a website but haven’t worked out how to drive traffic.

And I get it. Building a website can be exhausting, and the last thing you feel like doing once it’s launched is to spend more time and money driving traffic to it.

However, you can do some simple things to ensure that your website gets visitors.

The first of those marketing activities is search engine optimisation (SEO), where you add targeted keywords and phrases to your website so you can get found online.

It may sound complicated, but many easy-to-use online tools are available to help you find the right keywords.

The second is to write and publish SEO-friendly blog posts specifically with your ideal clients in mind.

It will take some time – the things that work well often do!

But it’s worth the effort because SEO continues to work for you long after you’ve set it up.

RELATED: How to choose the right keywords for your target market

Not sure where to start when it comes to marketing your service-based small business? That’s where I can help. Get started by downloading my free Ultimate Marketing Checklist by clicking the button below: 

2. Creating strategic content

Many new business owners fall into the trap of posting a lot of short-form content on social media and hoping that someone might see it.

However, those content creators with the most success invest in creating long-form content such as blogs, podcasts, or video series.

The reason that these business owners are so successful is because this longer content enables them to:

• Position themselves as an expert by demonstrating their knowledge and expertise
• Reach more people using SEO tactics so it keeps getting found long after it’s published
• Save time on content creation as you can repurpose longer-form content into shorter social media posts and emails
• Nurture and warm up their audience in between promotions and launches, leading to higher sales conversions

With AI tools like Chat GPT now available, creating long-form content has never been easier.

And once you’ve found your rhythm and process for creating content, you’ll find that it becomes faster and faster for you to get the work done.

RELATED: How to start a blog for a service-based small business

3. Email list building

An email list can be a service-based business’s most valuable, tangible asset.

It will hold value if you ever choose to sell your business in the future.

And most importantly, it gives you a ready-made list of prospects to which you can cost-effectively promote your business.

I know many people get put off by the need to use technology and the time it takes to build an email list.

However, with the email automation tools available now, setting up is quite simple and affordable.

I use Convertkit for my email marketing and recommend it to a lot of my clients because it’s simple to use, ensures I’m complying with privacy laws with its inbuilt unsubscribe functionality, and enables me to segment my subscribers into groups so that I can filter the communications I send.

If you’d like to try using Convertkit, click my affiliate link here for a free 14-day trial.

The other systems I also regularly recommend to clients are MailerLite and ActiveCampaign.

RELATED: How to create an email list building strategy that works

4. Participating in collaborations and partnerships

Getting visibility and growing your audience can be one of the hardest marketing activities when you’re starting a business.

However, there is a simple way you can fast-track your audience growth by leveraging the audiences that other business owners have built.

There are several ways to do this, including:

• Giving something away for free in a bundle or competition
• Being guest interviewed on a podcast or at an event
• Speaking to someone’s membership or presenting in a course/program

If you don’t know of other business owners you could collaborate with, I recommend joining a paid business community or network.

These communities will open up opportunities you would otherwise never have been able to access.

My other recommendation is to join Facebook Groups that have been expressly set up to find collaboration opportunities.

If you haven’t encountered these yet, trust me, they exist!

Go into Facebook and use the search function to find groups with words like collaboration, guest, or partnership, plus your industry name.

Be sure to read the group rules inside and then start networking to find beneficial collaborations.

RELATED: 5 Essential steps for creating an effective marketing collaboration

Not sure where to start when it comes to marketing your service-based small business? That’s where I can help. Get started by downloading my free Ultimate Marketing Checklist by clicking the button below: 

5. Writing a marketing plan

I hear a lot of people in my community tell me they are disappointed with their marketing activities and results.

They’ve usually spent considerable time creating graphics on Canva, writing social media captions, and showing up online.

Yet, they don’t have any sales to show for all that time and effort.

When we start reviewing and analysing what they’ve been doing, it becomes clear that they didn’t really have a strategy and plan behind their marketing activities.

They simply had an idea, began working on it, and posted it on social media within a few hours or days.

Now, there is nothing wrong with taking imperfect action and putting yourself out there – and sometimes, it even works.

However, the most successful small business owners are the ones who spend time planning their marketing approach.

Their campaigns, promotions, and offers are created weeks and months in advance.

And they give themselves enough time to ensure everything is strategically aligned and published to optimise their results.

As the saying goes… proper planning prevents poor performance.

So, if you want to improve your marketing performance and set your business up for success, invest the time, energy, and effort required to write a marketing plan.

RELATED: How to write a marketing plan for a service-based small business

There, you have five simple marketing activities worth investing the time, energy, and effort into.

Once these marketing foundations are in place, you’ll free up time, enhance your results, and see a better return on your marketing investment.

Are you tired of trying to figure out what you’re missing when it comes to finding clients and making sales in your service business?

Break through the barriers holding you back with the support of an MBA-qualified Marketing Coach and Business Mentor who will tailor a 1:1 program specifically for you.

BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH is a 3 or 6-month 1:1 Coaching Program for service-based business owners who want to develop the strategy, systems, and structure they need to find clients and make sales so they can stop feeling stuck and start gaining massive momentum in their business.

Did you find this blog post helpful? Don’t forget to PIN it on Pinterest and share on Facebook.