Do you want to stand out in your oversaturated niche? In today’s episode of She’s Busy AF, I’m sharing my top tips on how you can stand out and get more clients. These strategies helped me both in my marketing agency and mentorship business hitting 6 figures and repeat clients.

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All right y’all, let’s dive on in today. This is a really important topic as we close out the year. But even if you were listening to this at any other time of the year, these are really important stand-out marketing strategies for small businesses & things I really don’t see going away for a while. So I have seven amazing tips for you, really excited to dive into all of those. This might be a little bit of a longer episode today because I really want to spend some time on that.

 

Storytelling

 

The first standout profit-boosting marketing strategy I want to talk about today is storytelling. Human connection is so powerful in marketing. It’s literally why advertising agencies exist. Think about the Superbowl ads that we all look forward to every year. They tell a very intricate, intriguing story that connects you the consumer with them, the brand.

 

Now you’re probably like, “Okay Lauren, why are you talking about these big brands? I’m a small business. I’m a growing business.” They all relate, hear me out. The cool thing about storytelling is that every single brand can take advantage of it. So I have a couple of examples for you.

 

One would be a big brand, such as Google, and then one would be a smaller scale. So Google is one of my favorites when I talk about storytelling because they do such a good job at this. You might have to go to Google and Google for these ads, but they are tear-jerkers. So one of my favorite ones is a story of an older man saying to Google, “Hey, Google, show me that time,” & I think his wife’s name was Lorelei or something. Show me Lorelei, this and that show me Lorelei, this and that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

 

Then at the end of the timeline, I’m just going to give it away for you (so pause and go watch it if you’re really interested) it was a montage of his wife who’d passed away and all the photos over the year, and it was promoting Google photos. It was a tear-jerker. I was crying. Google does such a good job with their ads because of this.

 

At the end of the day, it told a story. It told a story over a timeline, it’s whole story, without them explicitly saying “this is about an old man and his wife who passed away” – you are just sort of led to that conclusion, but visually. 

 

And it is just, it’s so incredible. It really just goes to show that storytelling can leave a lasting impact. Now I know I can use Google photos to document timelines, locations, all of these things that I maybe didn’t know before.

 

On a smaller scale, the use of storytelling in smaller businesses can be with the owner’s story. So if you are a personal brand, what is your story? How is the story that your product-based business came to be? What made that matter? It’s important to have a story. Even if you think you don’t have a story to tell, trust me, you do. 

 

Dig deep. What is that story? What makes you different from every other brand out there? What led you to the moment where you are today, where you have a business because of your story?

 

Referral & Affiliate Programs

 

Number two is going to be referral and affiliate programs. It’s pretty nice when referral business falls into your lap. I think we can all agree on that early on. This is probably a lot of family and friends who start to look to you as the go-to person for your trade. As you grow, it’s important to do the work, to expand on this. In other words, expanding your network.

 

One thing I really like to use for this is my Lucrative Lead Tracker. I know I’ve talked about this in previous episodes, about a way to put all your leads in one place, which is really good for service-based businesses when you are seeking clients. This is also great in product-based businesses and when it comes to referrals. 

 

So let me pause for a second and talk about the Lucrative Lead Tracker, and make sure you understand. I want you to utilize this tool because it’s absolutely amazing.

 

When I first started my business, I was fortunate enough to lean into a ton of client referrals for business, which was amazing. However, I wanted to start going after certain clients, I wanted to reach a broader audience, which is what I’m talking about. Early on in business, leads just fall into your lap, business falls into your lap when you have people talking about it.

 

But after a while, you should start seeking these things out on your own. So whether you are a product-based business or a service-based business, you can start seeking out your own referral sources based on how those other companies complement your own.

 

I had no idea where to start. I was just getting started with my marketing business and having a hard time keeping track of people to win as new clients, as new referral business.

 

The issue is I was doing a terrible job of tracking, and it was something I had to change – I did that with a simple spreadsheet. When I started tracking those leads, whether it was people I wanted to win business, I noticed that I was closing significantly more business, and it was business I actually wanted. Not to mention because I was tracking so diligently, I was able to keep clients on for longer.

 

I was able to nurture those referral relationships for longer, getting into affiliate programs because of this and making residual income off of it. All things that can happen if you just track and you just stay diligent. So I’ve given my lead tracker a total facelift and I’m offering it to you for free. It’s changed the way I’ve done business forever, and it’s allowed me to hit my income goals with ease repeatedly. 

 

Super easy to update, it will help you close more sales, keep track of more prospects at referral business, and see your capacity and help you plan better for sales and marketing strategies. I think that’s a win-win. So you can grab your copy by heading to this link right here!

 

Experiences

 

The next thing I want to talk about here, the next big tip I have for you for profit-boosting and standout marketing strategies. Number three: experiences. People love a reason to dress up and go somewhere that has something new, exclusive – exclusive being the really big keyword here – exciting and fun. Experiences are an incredible way to go about this.

 

So some examples of how you can create experiences within your business, from big and small. A podcast is kind of a small way to create an experience, right? You are creating a show for people. You could do a YouTube channel on the small end. People don’t have to dress up to go to those things, right? 

 

But on a bigger scale, think about events. I helped a client create an experience at their hair salon a couple of years ago, where they brought in influencers, they had a caterer and pretty much everything was sponsored and free. I don’t think we even paid for the photographer.

 

We brought all these businesses together along with influencers, but it was a day to create exposure for the brand. These influencers came in, and they got their hair done for free, they got photo shoots, they were styled and wardrobed. It was a way for, again, these businesses and these influencers to have an experience, to get to know a brand more. That is something that sticks with them, and they refer business.

 

The goal of this hair salon was to shift their audience on social media from an older demographic to a younger demographic – and we successfully did that with this event alone. The exposure we got, the new followers we got and then the residual for years to come, they have a much younger audience coming into there. 

 

That was something that they had said previously – they were like, we want the children of the moms that we do hair for. So that was quite a successful venture. 

 

Another thing you can do is “pop-ups”, and this can be done again with other brands. This is really good for the event industry. If you want to do a curated day where you come together and you do a photoshoot for, let’s say a mock event.

 

The idea is you have (I’ve seen people do this locally here, which is where I kind of got the idea) your picnic company, you have your food company, you have your balloon company, you have your photographer, you have a boutique – and all these people come together and style. It’s a styled shoot.

 

That’s another way to have an experience where other people can participate in, and while at the end of the day, you’re getting photos out of it, you’re getting things from marketing. You are also involving people and you’re also increasing the exposure of your brand that way and think about all those channels that your brand is going to be featured on. Absolutely incredible.

 

Another experience you could do is just a pop-up in general. I like to kind of compare it to a lemonade stand. You pop up a lemonade stand in your front yard, you’re selling lemonade, you’re increasing the exposure by people walking by on the street. Think of something you can do similar to that. That could be at a market, it could be at a storefront mall – get creative with that one.

 

Polarizing Opinions

 

Number four is going to be polarizing opinions. Nothing gets people talking like an opinion that totally shatters the norm. My tips for this? Think about what in your industry you don’t believe in, and don’t be afraid to take a stand. I remember when I was really new to business and just corporate America in general, I had a hard time questioning things. 

 

I was kind of naive. I thought everything that everyone said was right, and it was that way or the highway, and they’re like, why would I question that? It’s the right decision. As I grew into my own, I realized that’s not the case. 

 

When there’s that friction, that tension, that sort of “I don’t believe in that, I don’t think that’s true.” That’s when it’s time to voice your opinion in a lot of ways, but we’re going to talk about marketing in your own business right now. Lean into those moments where you question the effectiveness of an idea or a thought and form an opinion around it, and then share that opinion. 

 

You will be really surprised what is possible. I’ve seen posts go viral on LinkedIn because of this. I’ve seen reels go viral, TikToks go viral. People have a lot of chatter and conversation around something, and it creates this residual 24-hour effect of, “wow, I agree with that,” or “I don’t agree with that.”

 

I don’t want you to worry that sharing a polarizing opinion is going to cause bad friction either because this is just where conversations can open up and people can have dialogue and people can have bigger ideas about things and it creates exposure around your brand at the end of the day, which is what we want. That’s what we’re here talking about.

 

Networking + getting out of HQ

 

The next thing is going to be to get out of your house or headquarters – if you have an office, if you’re working from home, this is so important for creating exposure for your business. The first thing would be networking. 

 

So one of those things you can do for getting out of your house is going and networking. Going back to human connection, it’s really important that you are having conversations with other people, other business owners, other consumers, getting the name of your brand out there.

 

The next thing would be event attendance, which kind of goes hand in hand with networking, but maybe the intention isn’t to go and collect business cards or hand out business cards or network per se – but the intention is to go and learn. An example of this would be local conferences. I loved going to Inbound when it was in-person. I cannot wait until they’re in person again, and they can do the same.

 

It is a marketing conference in Boston, hosted by HubSpot. My entire business model as an agency back when I had my agency shifted after this event for the better. It’s where I really grew to love content marketing and inbound marketing, as well as outbound marketing. 

 

Even though that’s not what we talked about there, it was all about inbound marketing, but it really shifted my perception of content marketing. It definitely changed how we did business, meaning how we operated our marketing.

 

It also changed how we did strategy for clients. We also saw a pivot in how our client’s success looked too. It’s really crazy what can happen there, not only the growth and development of your business but then also who you can meet.

 

I still keep in touch with people from those events. If you can weasel your way into speaking at one of these events that have incredible exposure for your business. Sometimes they do these paid, most of the time they are unpaid. But again, if you were someone who spoke at Inbound once with 20,000 people, that’s pretty crazy.

 

Involvement

 

The last tip I have under getting out of your house, getting out of HQ, would be your involvement. So we talked about networking. We talked about attending events. What about your involvement? Do you have the capacity to sit on a nonprofit board and lend your “expertise” for free? I use air quotes with that because you are giving your time, but you are giving it in exchange for, again, more exposure.

 

The more involved you are, the more exposure you get, it doesn’t go unnoticed. I have definitely gotten business from, and been made connections to, from my affiliations with nonprofits. So where can you get involved? All right, we’re almost done. We got two more left.

 

PR

 

The next one’s going to be PR – public relations. There are so many affordable and easy ways to tap into PR. You can do podcast guest features. You can show up on other websites by contributing guest articles. These are things that are very important. 

 

What I love about PR is that it can create some long-term exposure to your business. So if something were showing up on a website, that’s SEO, it could be immediate traffic if it’s a big publication. It can also be something where you’re showing up eight months, six months, a year, two years down the line for something you spoke about that’s SEO relatable.

 

So I absolutely love those, and podcast features totally, totally add to your credibility. It gives somebody the chance to listen to you before they work with you or listen to you before they buy from you & decide “okay, is this a decision I want to make?” It can only enhance their purchasing decision. I just think PR is absolutely an incredible avenue to tap into.

 

I definitely have some tips around that. There’s a podcast episode I did on PR – actually there are two. I will go ahead and link them right here, so that you can go visit those because they are good ones.

 

Organizational Partnerships & Join Ventureships

 

 The last one we’re gonna talk about here is organizational partnerships or joint ventures partnering with other brands. Like we talked about a little bit earlier, these can seriously increase the exposure of your business. For example, I have a membership called the Smooth Scaling Club with two of my best besties.

 

One of them is a copywriter and the other one is a graphic designer, and then I am a marketing consultant and brand mentor. Doing this together we’re able to pull in our audiences to join this membership, but also promote our businesses outside of it. It’s a great way for us to grow our audiences and we’re leaning into each other and using each other to do so. I think it’s okay to do this in this way, right?

 

Copywriting and desiging, while those are not services I offer, what if I did, down the line one day? I think it’s okay to partner with like people in your industry because everyone’s different. Everyone has different personalities. Everyone wants to work with different people. 

 

So just going back to organizational partnerships and joint ventures, don’t be afraid to do that. Don’t be afraid to partner with like industries or similar professional service providers and see what comes with that.

 

With that being said, I’m wrapping up today’s topic. I really hope you found this helpful. If you did, please make sure you like and subscribe, leave a review comment. Tell me all the things. You can also message me on Instagram if you want to talk with me any further about any of these topics. I love, love, love, helping people figure out what are some standout marketing strategies. How can you grow your business? Expand your business?

 

Brand awareness is everything to me. I feel so strongly about brand awareness for growing your business and focusing on that as opposed to immediate ROI, because you can really build a brand strongly that way you and you can really grow an audience strongly that way – create loyalty, loyal customers. 

 

Obviously, if they’re loyal, they’re returning to buy from you. So if you tap into any of these marketing strategies soon, have any sort of success definitely hit me up and I will see you on the next episode of She’s Busy AF.