How I’d Market My Brand From Scratch If I Had To Start All Over

Welcome and welcome back to the Point of the Story podcast. I'm your host Sara Noel and you're welcome for giving you the only podcast you won't have to listen to on two-time speed. In Point of the Story, we're talking marketing, business, confidence, motherhood, and everything in between. Point of the story? I can't wait to get with you. What's up, squirrels? Welcome back to the Point of the Story podcast. I have a request for you today. Would you please time travel with me for a sec? Do you have a minute to do that? Yes. Okay, great. Let's rewind half a decade, a little more than half a decade, actually. And pretend like we are sitting down in a beautiful summer evening. Let's call it five o'clock. Okay, prime beach time, low tide, it's glorious. We're on cold storage beach specifically. Okay, East Dennis Cape Cod. Unfortunately, you can't actually go there because that is a resident only beach, but I highly recommend you making really good friends with me and then I will take you there. Okay. Okay. If you're a Cape Cod girl, or you are visiting, I recommend starting to become my friend right now. Okay? February. Then by the time summer comes, we'll probably be best friends and then we can go together. Okay, so we're together on cold storage beach. We're setting up our chairs in the sand. We are sitting down. We're about to start chatting. Okay, few hours. We're gonna sit there while the waves roll out. Okay, like I said, low tide. We're gonna sit here till sunset. We got a couple hours in us. And of course, you're my best friend in the scenario. Okay, just assume that for the rest of the central, we're talking now that we have sat down in our glorious Cape Cod beach chairs. If you don't know what a Cape Cod beach chair is, by the way, look it up. Okay, Kim Kardashian has one. It's world's best beach chair. Anyway, we are talking about my decision to become a freelance copywriter, even though I have degrees in three and a half other subjects that have absolutely nothing to do with marketing. And we start talking about how college degrees are sort of irrelevant anyway. Like who actually uses that? Okay, if you use your college degree, let me know. And I'm gonna be, you know, go out on the limb here and guess that you do something in the medical field or something super like analytical. But if you were just a girl, okay, chances are you don't use your college degree. And of course, you and I start laughing about this because like I said, who uses their college degree? Then I start laughing to myself thinking about how I literally have a formal education and philosophy. Okay, if you've ever heard my origin story, a.k. if you listened to last week's podcast episode, you would know, I think I talked about this. Actually, now am I telling the truth? Did I even say this in my origin story? Whatever. I wrote a newsletter about it and now I'm getting confused. But either way, if you know anything about me, you probably know I have three and a half bachelor's degrees. Okay, I have degrees in political science, sociology, criminal justice, and minors in philosophy and paralegal studies. But I originally started as a political science major. Then I was asked to do a double major in philosophy and political science because I had this weird random class where it was both politics and philosophy. And then I got a 100 and both of those classes and the philosophy teacher was like girl, you should really do a double major in philosophy. Then I added on a bunch of other shit, whatever. Point of my story. I often talk about how I'm one semester French away from a fourth degree and philosophy would have been that degree. So I have everything to have a philosophy degree except for the foreign language requirement. So when I say I have a formal education in philosophy, I am not kidding. So I was laughing about this, you and me. Okay, we're on the beach. We're laughing about this because I have a formal education in philosophy for no reason at all. Other than I thought it would make me a good foundation, you know, for my non-existent law career. Okay, at this time of life back in the day, when Professor Moan asked me if I wanted to be a philosophy double major, I said sure that's going to look great in my law school applications. Okay, and then obviously we know how that story ended clearly with me not having a law school degree. And thank God no $300,000 in debt. Okay, cool. But I did spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn how to read between the lines. Okay, that's what I just said to you sitting in this beach chair. And then in that exact moment, it hit me between the lines. Shit, that's good. And so between the lens copywriting was born when you and I were sitting together on the beach. Like I said, you are my best friends in this scenario, Hannah and Jamie. But anyway, now I have to figure out how the fuck to market myself on the internet now that we've decided what my business name is. Okay, and how to actually get clients. So that is a true story and a true, you know, me for my obviously told it like a cycle path with, you know, some serious manic energy. But that's what happened. Okay, I was sitting on the beach with my two best friends. We were talking about college degrees and how they're relevant. I had just decided that I was going to be a freelance copywriter. I had taught myself every possible thing about copywriting and marketing that I could find on the internet. I had secured my first two free projects under my belt and exchange for a testimonial. And now I officially needed a business name. And it came to me that way. Okay, that is how between the lines came to be. But of course, once that came to be, once I knew what the business name was, I couldn't really turn back. And then I needed to figure out how the fuck to market myself. So for today, that's what I figured we would talk about. I would love to tell you how I would market my business from scratch if I had to do so, you know, right now. Thank God I don't actually have to have been quite successful in the regard of, you know, finding clients over the last very many years. Praise the Lord. But for the sake of this episode, let's pretend like I don't have consistent increase coming my way. Thanks to my lovely SEO optimized website and organic digital marketing efforts. Okay, let's pretend I'm about to market my business from scratch completely. Okay, are you with me? I'm feeling like a rapid fire energy today. I know I already talk on two-time speed, but today I'm feeling like three-time speed. So feel free to slow me down if you want. I do have a blog post about this. It's slightly different because since I wrote the blog post about this, I've actually changed my mind on the order of things. But anyway, lovely Adrian will link it for you. She'll also link very many things for you in this podcast. Like every single episode she does. So clap for Adrian right now. If even if you're by yourself driving in your car, I want you to just give Adrian a round of applause. I do believe by the time you're listening to this, her new website will be live. And I'm personally on a mission to get her more clients so that she can be exactly who she wants to be. Podcast manager, launcher, editor, extraordinary. So here's where we are beginning in this scenario. Okay, I know what my business name is. Between the line's copywriting. I know what I want to offer website copywriting services. Side note, in the beginning, when I thought of my business name, I didn't even know what website copywriting was. So clearly, this is not actually a like reiteration of how I marketed my business from scratch. This is how I would do it now. Okay, so between the lines copywriting is who I am, website copywriting is what I do. Let's also assume that I have a general idea of who I want to serve in the problem, solving or need I'm meeting for them. So again, for the sake of this example, let's say I'm a website copywriter for service-based business owners. Okay, and let's also assume I'm on a budget. So I don't want to spend too much money on marketing efforts. Preferably zero, unless I find a resource that'll teach me about marketing or expedite the process for me. Okay, that's what I've got so far. Name, what I want to offer, general idea of who I want to serve in whatever, and let's assume that I'm on a budget. Now, to clarify, I'm not going to only share budget-friendly things in this, you know, how I'd market my business from scratch, because when I started for real, okay, my real-life story, I genuinely did spend zero dollars. The only, only, only thing I spent my money on was a website domain. I didn't spend my money on anything else for the first year of me being in business, and I don't necessarily think that was like world's best strategy. I do think there are things that would have expedited the process for me, especially if I had invested a little bit more, like if I had invested in specific things, maybe I would be further down the line now. I don't have any regrets though, but I just, the reason why I wanted to share these specific tips being on a budget is because this is most people's reality. Most people don't have thousands of dollars to spend on a website copy or any designer and branding and social and blah, blah, blah, all the things that you could possibly outsource. Most people don't have that. So I'm going to assume that we are all here with nothing in our wallet. Okay, the first step we are going to take, or I'm going to take in this fake scenario, marketing my business from scratch. Number one is I'm going to gain an in-depth understanding of my target audience. This is the best thing that I can do for myself first. It's also something that will evolve. So you have to be okay with knowing if you're going to start your business from scratch. Gain an in-depth understanding of your target audience, but know that you can also change it, because like I said, in the beginning of my business, I don't even know what website copywriting was. Okay, if you had told me what it was, maybe I could have been like, oh yeah, sure, it sounds good, but I didn't know that in the beginning. I was out here writing blog posts for people for free. Like you don't know where you will end up, you know, five, six, seven, ten years later and who you'll end up serving, but you got to start somewhere. So the first thing I'm going to do is develop my target audience and the offers that I'm crafting for them so that I can make sure that my marketing efforts are actually going to attract them. So the best way to ensure that you'll get results from your marketing, of course, is to be super specific. Speak directly to those people and communicate exactly which solution you're providing. And then demonstrate why they'd want it, what the transformation can look like for them and then how their life will be once they have the solution. Okay, but you can't do any of that if you don't know what your target audience wants or who they are or why they need you or what their current situation is like or why they're frustrated with that current situation. So you're going to need to put some work into developing that target audience and figuring out the specifics. So important things you want to make sure you are clear on about your target audience, who they are, what they do, what they want, what they really want. Okay, I call this a true one. So the difference between what they want, let's say, website coffee writing services and what they really want, what their true one is is probably more money so they can take better vacations with their family. Okay, you're going to want to know both what they want, the physical thing they want from you are maybe not physical, but the literal thing they want from you and then why they want that thing, what they can do once they have that thing. Okay, why they need you specifically or why they need me specifically, how I can serve them. This is where it becomes very important to develop what your offers are. We're going to come back to that in a sec. How you can relate to them and then how we can differentiate ourselves from the competition to appeal to the people that we want to work with and then help them understand why we're the right choice. Okay, I recognize that this sounds It's kind of hard, but it actually is quite simple. all it takes is some strategic brainstorming, okay? And enough effort to think a bit deeper. A Google Doc will do. Side note, this is one of the bonuses that you get when you purchase either my Wicked Easy website copy guide or my website copy rating course. I have a very in-depth target audience development workbook. Target audience, yeah, what's that called? Yeah, target audience development workbook. Oh my god, I was confusing myself. That name sucks, honestly. Let's rebrand that bonus because it's literal, like it's describing to you what it does, but like, why does that name suck? I actually just wrote an entire newsletter about the target audience development workbook. So anyway, it sounds harder than it is. You just need to set aside time to do it. But like I said, we were gonna come back to offers. This is me doing that. So of course you want to recognize who our target audience is, what they need, why they want it, blah, blah, blah, blah. But something that we also tend to do in the beginning of our business is beat everything to everyone and I'm telling you not to do that, okay? Let's say you were starting out as a website copywriter and you decided that you were also gonna offer blogging and email marketing and SEO and website design and you're also gonna like, I don't know, get them pitched on more podcasts on the side. That's a chaotic ass services page, okay? Suddenly you are trying to beat everything so that when you're marketing yourself, what are you gonna talk about? Everything, all the time that's confusing. Maybe let's pick one to two things to start with and then if we have success with that or if we don't have success with that, we either wanna move on or then we can add more whatever, but I want you to be dialed in, okay? When we're talking about how we're going to market our business and how we're gonna start our business and all of that, please don't try to be everything to everyone. They mean that in two senses, number one, no deal. If you have too many offers, no thank you. That's too many, I'm already confused, okay? And then also, I mean, in the sense of, you don't have to be marketing to everyone, you know this, right? Come on, I feel like you know that's already, if you market to everyone, you're marketing to no one. Some of y'all know that but need the reminder deeply, okay? This is your reminder, be more specific in your marketing in every sense of the word, okay? And I do believe that is possible without niching down, I'll just say that, this episode is not about that, but I could pop off about that for an entire other episode, but I just wanna say, if you've ever heard me say, my ideal client is anyone who's nice to me and can't afford it, that is still true, okay? I'm not telling you that you have to be a show at website designer for wedding photographers, like it does not have to be that specific, but you have to be specific in some way. So the way that I'm being specific is I'm a website copywriter, okay? I'll work with anyone who's nice to me and can afford it, but all I'm giving them is a website or a sales page, okay? That's what I'm doing for you. You could be specific in terms of the service that you offer, in terms of the type of person that you offer, in terms of the location that you're in, like pick one thing to be specific about, stick with that, and then you can fuck around and do whatever you want in all the other areas, okay? Okay, again, this is how I'd market my business from scratch, so all of my thoughts about niching are not gonna be happening in this episode. If you want a different episode about that, you let a girl know, okay? Let's move on to step number two before I get too carried away 'cause I can feel myself getting carried away and we're just gonna need to rain it in. Step two, I'm gonna buy my website domain and I'm gonna choose my website builder. So once I've got my target audience development nailed down or at least the brain storm about what my target audience might be, I will need to buy the domain for my website and select my website builder, okay? This is very important for me to do this ASAP Rocky. As a service based business owner, I know that most people would recommend either a square space or show it. Now, because I have the luxury of my current knowledge and forming this whole, what I do to market my business from scratch experiment, I know that square space is best for a first website and show it is best for a second website and every iteration of it thereafter if I'm choosing between show and square space. Side note, I have a massive deep dive about the show and versus square space debate. If you're curious, Adrian will happily link that blog post for you in the show notes. Another side note, I'm in the process of drafting why show it is best for a quote unquote second website, aka an established website from my blog and another guest post about it for show it's blog. So make sure that you're subscribed to my newsletter and also linked by Miss Adrian. Thank you, hello, to read that when that comes out because I will share it. Obviously, you have your choice of other website builders. There's more website builders out there than just show it in square space. A lot of my girlies like web flow lately, but I'm trying to make this easy for you, okay? Step one was to find your target audience. Step two is buy your website domain and choose your website builder. I recommend choosing between show and square space because I think those are the two easiest to get started with. I definitely don't recommend Wix go daddy or WordPress. Two of them suck, one of them is hard, buy. We'll talk about that a different day. So since this is a redo moment for me technically and this, you know, what I do to start over marketing my business from scratch, I know that I like show it better. I'd like to say that I'd show it from the beginning if I were doing it all again, but if I were genuinely a beginner and I knew nothing about website design, I would recommend choosing square space because it's a lot easier to customize without any prior knowledge of website design. That's what I actually did in my real business. For step number two, I'd buy between the lens copy.com from Google Domains and then I would set it up for show it. Also side note, I know there's so many side notes in here, but if you sign up for show it, you can use my link. I think it gets you a free first month, but no matter how you sign up for show it, if you sign up as a first time user, I wrote that welcome sequence that you get. So slay, think of me when you read it. Okay, step number three, start with a website instead of social media. Okay, don't forget about this one. I'm not talking shit about social, some of my girlies are getting mad at me about that. I did this the first time around and I would definitely do it again because get ready for my important quote here. When you first start your business, I strongly advise beginning with a website instead of beginning with social media and the reason is simple. You wanna focus on growing your foundation, not your following. That's my important quote I want you to take away from this episode. You wanna focus on growing your foundation, not growing your following. Sure, social media offers awesome growth opportunities and it really helps you attract some ideal clients. I'm not saying, you know, fuck Instagram, I'm not saying I'm gonna delete all of my social media. Obviously social media had a big part in growing my brand as well. But in the beginning, fostering those relationships, staying consistent, creating content, that takes a lot of time, too much time for somebody who is a brand new beginner also starting a business. And it's very easy to get discouraged when all of those efforts don't immediately pay off. That's why I recommend beginning with a website because unlike social media, your website doesn't show how new you are to every single person who looks at it. Your website is a beautiful entity that if some, if done right, and it looks great, if somebody came across that on day two of you being in business, they'd be like, oh my God, Slay, love this person, let me inquire. If they went to your social media and you had two followers, they'd be like, oh, they just started yesterday, okay? Unlike social media, your website is owned by you and it isn't subject to change or diminished reach based on arbitrary algorithmic changes. Okay, I know we're all sick of the conversation of like, you own your website, you own your blog, you own your email list, but it's true in this instance, okay? You own your website, done, you own your domain, full stop. Unlike social media, your website gives you the space to explain who you are, what you do, who you do it for, and an engaging in depth away. Obviously there is an argument to be made that you can do that on social, too, but your website is just bigger, okay? Long form, more possibility. Website first, social second, okay? If you focus on growing, you're following only, and I'm talking to people who are starting their business and they're debating what they should focus their energy on right away. If you're thinking about, okay, should I do website or should I do blogger, should I do email, or should I do Pinterest, or should I do Instagram, should I do Thread, should I do LinkedIn, should I do TikTok, should I do YouTube? Pick your website, okay? Start there and then you can build your platform from there. If you start in a platform, you know, a follower based platform and you don't grow your followers right away, you're gonna think to yourself, oh my God, I suck. I'm not even good at this. I'm getting no clients, like everyone says, this is how to grow on Instagram, right? This is how to grow on TikTok, right? This is how to grow on YouTube, blah, blah, blah. You're gonna get discouraged. You're not gonna get discouraged from building your business if you build your website because there's no, it's just up. Like there's no follower account. There's no vanity metric to get fixated on, okay? Website first, social second, the end. Step number four, do keyword research and write my website copy. This is what I would do next, okay? At this point, I know who my target audience is. I have my domain, I have my site up, obviously, or I'm focusing on getting my site up. And then step four, we're gonna get that shit up, okay? Because I understand the impact that SEO has on visibility, I for sure would wanna do some keyword research prior to writing my website copy, to see which keywords I would have a good chance of ranking for. For the budget-friendly moment, I would use a combination of Uber Suggest, Google, Pinterest, and then the free trial of Sam Rush to do this, but me being me, like knowing what I know, I'd just use paid Sam Rush, Google, and Pinterest. Once I chose my keywords, I'd then get started writing my website copy, okay? The pages that I would need to launch my website with are home about services, blog, and contact. You may argue that blog is not necessary. I would win that argument, okay? Yes, it is. I would also launch my site with seven to 10 blog posts live, so my website doesn't look brand new, because a sad, lonely, empty blog page is the easiest way to tell if somebody has just launched their site. And even if this is my tip for you, whether it's day one in business or day 100,000 in business, if you are launching a blog for the first time, I recommend launching with whatever makes your blog look full. I tell this to my students and clients all the time, so if you were to go to betweenlinescopy.com/blog right now, today, February, whatever the fuck day, this episode comes out. You would see that there's a spot for 13 blogs on my site. I have a featured blog at the top, I have three little blog posts under that, then I have three lines of three after that, so I think that adds up to 13. Don't quote me on the math, but something like that. That is a full one page of blogs for me. If I was launching my site, let's pretend my website was a template, not a beautiful custom designed by the lovely Sarah Clist, okay. Let's say it was a template and I was launching with that, I would want to launch with 13 blogs to make it look full, okay, then that way I would look, you know, nice and experienced and cool and awesome, and not like I started my business or my website or my blog yesterday. And obviously, we want to focus on blogging because blog posts are among the best ways to attract an aligned audience because you're literally calling them in on purpose by strategically answering the questions they are asking and talking about things you know that they're interested in. and searching for. Okay, we'll come back to the blogging bit in a sec. Step number five, choose my website design option. After finalizing my website copy and my keyword research and I get all that stuff done, I'm gonna choose my web design option of which there are four. I'm gonna tell you them from least expensive to most expensive. So option one, DIY my website myself. Option two, DIY my website with a template. Option three, buy a template and have a designer customize it for me. Option four, hire a designer for custom design. I would choose whichever one of my budgets supported in real life, this is what I did. So I DIY my Squarespace website by myself. Actually, let's rewind. I first impulsively bought my website on GoDaddy and made a GoDaddy website. Very quickly realized that was fucking stupid. Switch to Squarespace like literally 24 hours later 'cause I was like, ew, what is this GoDaddy bullshit? Absolutely not. So I just switched to Squarespace right away. DIY my Squarespace website. Then I hired a very affordable designer for maybe a couple months later. And then a couple years later, I don't actually know the timeline. At least a year, two later. I hired Sarah Cleist to do my site when I switched to show it from Squarespace. And she is currently on her third iteration of my show at site now, but only because I'm dramatic. I want a new one every two seconds and like make her rip her hair out. But my current site would absolutely work for the next like three years at least. Like the current version of my website on the day that I'm recording this is still sexy and I still get compliments on it at least once a week. So yeah, I just have more pages that I need her to add. But that's my design journey if you're curious. So I would choose in this scenario, whichever one my budget supported, I do think it's very affordable and easy to DIY your website yourself with just one of the free templates that comes with either Squarespace or show it. I think Squarespace is easier to DIY than show it, but only because show it lets you customize your mobile. And that that's a lot of work. If you don't know how a show it works, you don't know how a design works. Then once my design was all set, I would do a final proofread. I would check all the links. I would add my SEO metadata to each page, making sure that my title tags and my meta descriptions are different and unique for every single page. And then I would get ready to show off my sexy new site to the world, okay? That brings us to step number six, which is blog up a storm, okay? I know I already launched with some blog posts, but because I'm brand new and I have no clients in this example, I have a lot of time to build up my blog archive. Whenever anyone asks me what they can do in the beginning to grow their business aside from the obvious, I always tell them to blog, okay? That is the best thing you can possibly be doing with your time. If you have a bunch of time on your hands, like sitting here, crossing your legs, tapping your fingers, waiting for a client to walk in the door, blog, okay? I still get inquiries in traffic from blog posts I wrote for ever ago. Like there is a post I have from literally 2020 that still brings people to my site all the time. Same deal with posts from 2021, 2022, 2020, 2024. Obviously posts from this year. The blog is where I thought, okay? Okay, because soon, in this example, hopefully, I will be inundated with increase for dream projects and I won't have as much time to work on my content marketing. So I would be smart to do as much of it as I can right now, okay, while I'm starting from scratch. So I would first start googling topics relevant to my services and offerings, then scrolling through the people also asked section of those inquiries or those queries, I mean, to see what people want to know, okay? Fun fact for you, that is how I rank number one for my show at Versus Squarespace blog. A few Google Squarespace Versus Show at Versus Squarespace. As of the last time I searched it, I was number one, and I've been chilling at number one spot for that for a long time. It's because I looked at the people also ask section and I included all of the questions that are in there in the post, okay? That is my hack for ranking number one on Google. I've done it a lot and it pretty much works every single time. So feel free to steal my hack, you're welcome. Okay, so like I said, I would Google topics, see what people also ask section has to offer me, maybe some content ideas. Then I would think about what my future clients need to know or have or do or be before working with me. Then I would think of all of the industry adjacent topics to me and my services and what I offer. So for example, I'm a website copywriter. So when people are interested in website copy, what else are they thinking about? Probably website design or website builders or SEO or blogging and content marketing. Maybe they're thinking about how to get found online. Maybe they're thinking about how to grow a business. Maybe they're thinking about business investments, whatever. Anything industry adjacent is a great idea to blog about, especially in the beginning, if you don't feel qualified or like you know enough to be posting educational content. Like let's say you decide, okay, I'm gonna be a copywriter. Monday, February 10th is day one, okay. And you hear me on this podcast talking, you know, on Thursday about how you definitely need to be blogging, but you're like Sarah, I just decided I wanted to be a copywriter yesterday. I can't be out here writing a blog post like how do I website copy? I don't even know that. Write about things that are industry adjacent and that will help you in the beginning until you have enough knowledge to share and write educational blog posts. Then once I know all that stuff, I would make a big list of all the potential blog posts, ideas that I could write about. Then I do some keyword research whether I'm using Uber Suggest or Semrush or I'm using ChatchubyT to help me or I'm googling or whatever to see if there's anything that I have a chance of ranking for by looking at if I'm using one of the platforms like Uber Suggest or Semrush. I'm looking at search volume and keyword difficulty metrics. And then I'd block up a freaking storm, okay. I'd be blogging up the ass at the end. Okay, step number seven. I would then take advantage of Pinterest marketing. So now that I have my target audience developed, I have my website domain purchased. I did my keyword research. I wrote my website copy, I chose the design, I launched with some blogs, I'm still writing blogs. I want to maximize and amplify the reach of my blog post. So I'm going to be marketing them on Pinterest, okay. But because I'm a beginner and I don't have enough money to justify hiring a Pinterest manager yet, I'm going to go to my friend Sarah Burke's website and I'm going to consume all of her free content. I'm going to download all her freebies, I'm going to read all her newsletters, and then I would try to DIY it as best I could. Okay, I'd probably post maybe like five to seven pins per blog and I would be out here, okay. I'd then teach myself how to use tailwind too and I start using that to schedule pins or maybe I would just fuck around and use cam but to schedule my pins because last I checked you could still do that, okay. I'd become Pinterest marketing queen and then I would get on a schedule where I probably batched my Pinterest stuff like one day every month so it wouldn't take up all of my time. Okay, okay. And then eventually I would hire a Pinterest manager. Fun fact, a VA and a Pinterest manager were the two things that I hired ever out for first in my business like the first money I ever spent my business besides random like books about fucking copywriting and then my domain where Pinterest management and virtual assistants. And then I had a virtual assistant for a couple months and I've had the same Pinterest manager ever since. So slay. Okay, now we have officially reached the final step of how I would market my business from scratch. We are on step eight which is set up my email marketing efforts because now that I have a beautiful website up I wanna make sure that I have a way for my readers to continue their relationship with me even after they read my website especially if they're not quite ready to take action yet by working with me, okay. So if I were smart I would launch my website with a freebie and a newsletter plan in place because that will be just the thing, okay. That'll help them continue their relationship with me. So I want to on my website have blogs obviously and then I wanna have either a freebie option or a newsletter opt in ideally both, okay. So first thing I would do is consider which questions my target audience has, what they're dealing with, what they're searching for help with and then I would create a freebie about that and showing it's relevant to my offerings, okay. I wanna make sure that my freebie definitely is relative to website copywriting, okay. We're not gonna create Pinterest ABCs if we're a website copywriter. This is me telling my past self. Anyone who's taken my email course knows the tea about that, okay. Then I would create an opt in form for it inside float ask. I have a discount code for float ask. That will be linked in the show notes. Thank you, lovely Adrian. Then I would put a pop up of that form onto my website. If I were smart and tech savvy, I would also make a landing page for the freebie on my website as well. So example between linescopy.com/homepageout too. Then I would market that on Pinterest, okay. And it'd be very easy for me to send that link directly to people so I would have a pop up form and inline form as well if I were really tech savvy and then a landing page on my site. So three forms for people to download that freebie. Then I would create a simple welcome sequence to ensure my reader A gets the freebie, B gets to know me and C is interested enough in me and what I offer and what I'm gonna email my list about regularly so they will stay on it, okay. Then I will brainstorm topics for weekly newsletter and get to work on creating that, okay. That is definitely a whole ask other podcast episode. At the time of recording, I just hosted a live email marketing workshop that was so fun. The last thing that I did for the workshop was six lessons, five lessons, whatever, the last lesson of the workshop was creating an entire year's worth of content and that part was so fun. I'm definitely gonna host it more often. So I'll link the wait list for that workshop if you're curious. If you're wondering how I would brainstorm topics for a weekly newsletter and like I said, how I would help you plan an entire year's worth of that, I have a massive hack and it's sick. So join the wait list for that if you're curious. But yeah, that is what I would do. And then from there, I would focus on blog and email for a while until I felt confident enough to grow on social and all the while, I would also likely be cold pitching to get my first few projects under my belt and working for free on small projects to get good testimonials to add to my site. But again, that is a whole other podcast episode. Okay, so quick recap of the steps they are. Number one, develop your target audience. Number two, buy your website domain and choose your website builder. Number three, start with the website instead of social media. Number four, do keyword research and write your website copy. Step number five, choose your website design option which everyone fits your budget. Step number six, block up a storm. Step number seven, take advantage of Pinterest marketing. Step number eight, set up your email marketing efforts. Okay, and that is how I personally would start my business from scratch. Market my business from scratch, get the word out there and hopefully be really fucking successful and get a million clients and make a million dollars. All right, point of the story. These are the eight steps that I recommend taking for new business owners just starting to get their business out there or old business owners need it really. fresh marketing. But the one thing that I want you to take away from this is to grow your foundation before you're following. That is not me talking shit about social, so don't get it twisted. I'm about to hit 10k on Instagram and I am late over that. I'm simply saying don't let something like follower count get in the way of your bigger goal of growing your business. Focus on the foundation and then that way you won't get discouraged. I love you. You got this. Let's do it. Two reminders before I officially kiss you goodbye. Number one, this week's fuck count contest is winning my February sales challenge. I'm currently hosting a sales challenge for the month of February where I am sharing one task for you to get the word out there about your offer every single day. I also think I'll continue the challenge. You can still buy the challenge after February. You don't have to do it starting February first. Obviously, we're past that. You don't have to do it in order. You can take what you want and not do the other things if they're not applicable to you. But I think it's an awesome way to give yourself an excuse to talk about your offer all the time because Lord knows we are not talking about it enough. If you're curious my thoughts about that, I have an entire 30 minute private podcast episode on my sub stack millionaire moment. I'll have Adrian link that as well. If you want to learn more about how to start talking about your offer without feeling awkward or annoying. So that's that on that. My second reminder is do not forget to share this on your story so I can buy one lucky listener's coffee. You know I hate the nasty bean monitor, but I would love to buy it for you if you share about listening to my podcast on your story. Also, I didn't realize clearly I have two Instagrams, right? We have App Detail Copy and then we have App Point of the Story Pod. I forgot about that one for a minute there. Okay, I have to go fix my fucking pictures since Instagram fucked up my little cute grid. Okay, now I have to go back and fix that and I went on to go check and see if it was messed up and I had so many messages of all of you guys tagging me on your story, but you were tagging the podcast, which I probably told you to do, but I'm a dumbass and forgot to check that account. So maybe tag BTL Copy for this week because Lord knows I will not be checking Point of the Story Pod, even though I'm reminding myself right now, I know I will forget. Okay, Squirrel. That's all I have to offer you today. So if you have any questions about today's episode, feel free to comment them on the Point of the Story substack and if you have any suggestions, any specific ideas, specific topics, specific things you want me to talk about, make sure you leave that in the suggestion box on my substack as well or you can just DM them to me at BTL Copy and maybe at Point of the Story Pod and I'll see that in six months when I check it. But yeah, if you have anything that you want me to talk about, I would love your ideas. I've been so excited seeing your reviews come in too. Oh my God. I sent them all to my mom this week and I have my phone on dark mode and she goes, I just risked blindness to read this because apparently she doesn't like reading the white on black text. I don't know. She goes, I just risked blindness to read all of these because they were that good. And she was right. Thank you, Gail. They weren't great. If you have it in your heart, if you have it in the kindness of your heart, I would absolutely love for you to leave me a review on Apple. Spotify's a bitch and only lets you rate. But that's fine. You can still give me five stars on Spotify and I will literally kiss you on the mouth if you do that for me. So the end. Love you, bye. I hope there's no bloopers on this one, but if there are bloopers, feel free. Adrian, SOS. Oh my God, shit. I'm feeling like my throat hurts. Well, it was like I was high. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Now I'm really going to be a one-take wonder. I had just test out my intro. Okay. I had learned learned myself by I swear I speak English. I had taught myself if you Adrian would love to link my newsletter guide, my newsletter. No, what's that called? I swear I know how to record a podcast. Sorry, I was burping Adrian. I'm not a burpee person, SOS. Okay. I don't know what I was fucking talking about Adrian. SOS. There's no way this is going to be 45 minutes long. Oh my God, I'm going to be late for my wax appointment. Okay. Free frail. Free frail. Bye. So I would choose which web. Hello, English. Smart to do it as much of my English. Smart. Okay, Adrian help.