Want to be a successful businesswoman while raising your kids? This post will give you some ideas on how to give it a kickstart and elevate your game. With these skills, you will be able to effectively build your creation into a flourishing endevour.
Understanding Your Brand
Identify your unique selling points
What makes what you do so special, that nobody else is doing? This is what will set you apart from the competition. Do you bake a certain kind of cake that nobody else is doing? In a special time frame? And do you deliver? The more value that fills people’s needs, the better.
Knowing your target audience
You also need to know your customer really well and what their pain points are, and how your product is solving those issues. Maybe their party is in a week and they need someone who can act fast. Maybe they have a few ideas of the cake, but they need some input and expert advice.
Crafting a compelling brand story
Lastly, you need a compelling brand story that will draw people in. It can be a personal story that relates to your product and how that product has solved your needs. For instance, blogging has been a creative outlet for me as a mom that lifts me from the day to day grind. It’s also been a social support for me through different times in my life, like infertility and those early mom days.
Online Presence
Creating a professional website
A website is like your business card. It’s essential in this day and age for people to find you on the internet, especially when they have a problem which they are searching for, and your product can help solve it.
Essential elements of a business website
In my blogging course I’ll show you how to set up your site, and I remember I had a section where I had the four most important pages: 1) Home 2) About 3) Contact 4) Privacy Policy. If you are selling things online you are also going to need a 5) Shop. (Learn how to set up WooCommerce in WordPress and link it to payment gateways here)
User-friendly design tips
WordPress has many themes these days. SA Mom blogs still runs on Genesis but I want to eventually change it over to Kadence which is one of the latest themes on which you can build. For more info you can check out Ryan’s post here on some themes he recommends. The most important thing is to keep things clear and relevant. Focus on a few main categories and make them visible. Make your social media icons prominent.
Utilising social media
Choosing the right platforms
Where does your target audience hang out? That will determine where you need to be present. Then you need to post regularly on that platform about how your product helps people, as well as giving education, inspiration and encouragement to build your relationship with them. If you make cakes you need to be answering all the questions in the mom groups that people may have about wanting help with cakes.
Engaging with your audience
You can’t just post and ghost. You have to spend time commenting on other people’s posts and also comment on the replies to your post. Social media algorithms will favour your material if you do this as well. Continuing the analogy of the cake maker, you could comment on people’s birthday parties and follow and support other cake makers too.
Blogging for business
Benefits of blogging
Content marketing is something that sets you up as an expert in your field. This content will help draw an audience to you. For instance, our cake maker could do instructions on how to make a specific cake, but at the end have the call to action: let me make it for you.
Content ideas for moms
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about their problems and interests. I also think that doing a survey is a great starting point and has certainly helped me get ideas. You can also put your url into Ryan’s content idea generator and it will spit out some blog post topic ideas.
Networking
Networking is super important because it opens doors for you.
I’ll give you some personal examples of how it has helped me.
I decided to put together a blogging summit and interviewed various experts in their field. Ryan gave me access to all his blogging AI tools and I use them a lot. Not for the full article but for outlines and ideas. There are also people on that summit that really inspired me with their encouraging words e.g. Pearl and Aisha. I also learn loads of fashion tips from Helene. I’ve started going back through all my images putting on Alt tags because of what Ruth said. Purely because I created an event to learn from others.
The in-person events I did in Joburg were great for creating connections, both with brands and bloggers too.
Currently I’ve joined a local PE networking group and not only am I learning a lot, I’m making friends too.
If you bake cakes you might want to join up with other cake makers and improve your craft. Join competitions and events.
Networking might look different for each person, depending on the nature of your product, but essentially you need to do two things:
Join local business groups
In person social interaction will always be a memorable thing in that you are building relationships in a more physical way. Go onto social media and look for local groups. I found the PE ladies on Facebook.
Networking online
Comment and participate on people’s posts: both in your target audience and even with your competitors. Find groups and establish yourself as an expert by your comments that actually help people.
Email Marketing
Creating an email list is super important as there is power in having access to their inbox versus whether they will see you on social media. You’ll also have more control over this as opposed to Instagram and Facebook which can just kick you off when they want.
Building an email list
You can use social media to grow your list. But one of the effective ways as a blogger to do it is to give them something for free, in line with what they are already looking for. For instance I put forms in the post about how to start a blog and then give them some basics in exchange for a subscription. Use pop ups on your site as well.
Importance of consent
Within the email list set up you can have a double opt in – that means someone must confirm from their email that they want to hear from you. That also weeds out the people that aren’t keen. If you ever want to use their emails to give to a brand for any reason (e.g. a competition) you need to make sure that’s part of your terms and conditions.
Subject lines that work
Keep your subject lines simple, in line with the content of your email. Use emojis if appropriate for your audience. Avoid spam traps – don’t make unrealistic money promises, use all capitals and lots of currency symbols. Don’t use spammy “act now” pressure emails either.
Content ideas to keep subscribers engaged
I once listened to a video about takeaways from an event organized by Danny Iny. Danny is from Mirasee, a company that teaches you how to make courses, and I once bought a course from him. Anyway, I’ve always noticed how excellent his newsletters are, and I always open them. He says that we have to 1) Inspire 2) Empower and 3) Delight our audience. I’m going to leave it up to you to think about how to do that, but it’s always a good idea to motivate people and give them ideas on how to reach their goals.
Collaborations and Partnerships
Partnering with other businesses
Perhaps if you make cakes you could hook up with a party planner and join forces.
Influencers and bloggers can always support each other by commenting on each other’s posts. This is a powerful way of supporting your fellow content creator as this will help their content do well.
Leveraging influencer marketing
People are more likely to buy from other moms using your products. Choose influencers that are suitable for your product and will actually use it. Check out their pages and blogs and see what kind of content they are creating. You could create a combination of blog advertising, for people searching online, and social media influencers for those spending time on these platforms.
Promotions and Discounts
Creating irresistible offers
I’m going to borrow three points from Danny again: 1) Relevancy, 2) Credibility, and 3) Urgency. This means you need to present something that people actually need, and that you have the authority to sell, coupled with a deadline. You need to meet their pain point with proof of your expertise. And then you make the offer time limited. I’ve found the deadline counter in Systeme.io to be particularly useful for this, and it’s part of their system, you don’t have to pay the $49 dollars per month that Deadline Funnel costs.
Using discount codes and vouchers
You can have a flash sale and use coupons to draw attention to your products. It’s great to couple this with an event e.g. summit, bundle, holiday, Black Friday, or an occasion relevant to your product. For instance, in our cake scenario, you could give a discount if they refer a friend.
Utilising SEO
Basics of search engine optimisation (SEO)
If you are blogging for your business, then you’ll want to use this resource. Hone in on a few categories and then niche down further, using keyword research. Ruth Adeyemi, from Sarmlife, who I recently interviewed for the Summit, breaks down her process into four steps:
- Answer the Public – she clicks there on a high traffic item to
- Google (gets ideas of phrases, and the competition)
- Ubersuggest
- Share Through Headline Analyser
I’ll be honest, I don’t follow this whole process, but I will say that Answer the Public is a great place to start to know what people are asking, and I have used that for posts before e.g. my pregnancy massage post. I literally answered all the questions that people had in that post, and that post is doing very well.
The Share Through Headline Analyser is quite interesting. They say longer headlines (21-28 words) do better. They also look at things like context words (insight, time, space, motion), active sentences and using a brand or a celebrity. They also suggest using negative words (e.g. afraid, scared, risk, alarm) but sparingly, or else you’ll also create too much of a negative association with your brand, although they are good for engagement. After putting the headline of this post through it, I made it longer and added the context word “considering”.
On-page vs. off-page SEO
There’s a great article here that explains the difference, but essentially on page is what you can control e.g. internal links, headings, concise urls, page speed and meta descriptions. Off page are things like backlinks, public relations and guest posting.
Local SEO strategies
Claiming your Google My Business listing
An article explaining how to do this is here, but as you can imagine, this is super important for you for people to be able to find your services, especially if you have a physical store.
Gathering and responding to reviews
Ask your happy customers to leave you a Google Review and this will help your business. It’s important to respond to reviews as well.
Customer Engagement
Building a loyal community
You can create a Facebook group and auto set up questions every day. Share your success stories and allow people to ask questions.
Importance of customer feedback
Feedback is always an essential process to improve ourselves. I had a feedback form after my summit and it works well with the survey as well.
Managing customer service
Try and have systems in place so that you can respond quickly. An auto responder on your WhatsApp or email can help. These days you can get chat bots for your website too. You can also have a phone help line.
Handling negative feedback
It’s important to remain calm and help solve the customer’s problem. Replace the product or fix it to their satisfaction. Offer them some extras. It’s always important to over deliver so that they are satisfied.
Analysing Your Efforts
Tracking key metrics
Obviously, your key metrics would be your sales over your costs, and you can track these every month in a spreadsheet.
For bloggers this would also involve looking at which posts are doing well using Google Analytics and looking at how to monetise them. Influencers must also look at their Insights to see what is successful and follow those kinds of content.
Adjusting your strategy
You’ve got to flexible in life. If something isn’t working, you have to try something else. Hayley Malan at the summit talked about how the content creation landscape has evolved from blog domination to social media domination, and it’s important for us to be able to adapt and use those platforms along with our blogging skills.
Go back to the data. See what people are interested in and what they want. Sometimes it can be so discouraging to launch a product to crickets, but don’t feel bad, you’re not the only one. See it as a starting point for something new.
TWO EXTRA IMPORTANT POINTS FOR MOMS:
Creating boundaries with your kids
There was something very significant that Charlotte Haggie, the woman behind the podcast The Managing Mom, said at the summit. She said “I don’t feel guilty about working because for me, one of my values is contribution, and I think it’s important for my children to see that work is part of contributing, is part of what I need to do in order to make an income or do things that I love to do.”
Isn’t that refreshing? When your cup is full, and when you are doing what you love, you will be able to be a better mom to them.
This does mean, however, that you are doing to have to figure out childcare, depending on their age. For me, my mom helps me a lot, and I know in those early days I also used my maid a lot. But you need time to do the things that give you meaning and bring in money to your family too. If you’re working from home you have to have acknowledgement of how they can interact with you while you are busy. Nicky knows he can’t disturb me when I’m busy teaching. But he can say hello. 🙂
Self care
If you’re trying to balance at all and falling apart at the seams, it means you aren’t creating time for things that are going to build you up again. It can be as simple as watching your fave TV program or reading a book or getting your nails done. A special spoil for me is getting a pedicure. Maybe it’s as simple as taking time off to rest. Whatever it is, make sure to prioritise your own well being, or else your body will get sick and create a break for you.
Conclusion
Being a businesswoman along with raising children isn’t easy. You’ve got to balance the attention of your kids along with branding, being online, networking, crafting that perfect email, collaborating, promoting, engaging, SEO’ing, and being prepared to go back to the drawing board if it doesn’t work. It might seem overwhelming. But it’s definitely exciting to build your own legacy for them.
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