IE 405: Effective Bootstrap Marketing Techniques with Melissa Smith

Melissa Smith, known as The PVA or Personal Virtual Assistant, has a virtual assistant matchmaking business to match businesses with virtual assistants based on communication strategy and ideal client fit. She also coaches people who want to run successful virtual assistant businesses.

She has been in business for nine years, working remotely, and traveling the world. When people saw she worked successfully remotely, she began helping others with remote work consulting and the virtual hiring process.

She matches clients to employees and remote assistants. Melissa believes that having a very specialized business is possible, but you can go “deep to go wide.” She did this in her business with bootstrap marketing because it is so cost-effective.

What is bootstrap marketing?

Marketing is not sales. They are completely separate. Marketing is another arm of your business. Marketing is how you get to sales conversations or discovery calls, etc. It creates awareness about your business so that people know who to call and know that you exist.

Bootstrap marketing recognizes that you may not have a lot of money. You may not even know who you are marketing to or who your audience is. You don’t want to spend a lot of money, throwing it against the wall and hoping to find the right person in the group.

Bootstrap marketing is very specific because we want to find the people who will not only give us money but also throw money at us.

Customers recognize you are solving a problem and want to give you their money to solve the problem for them. Bootstrap marketing allows you to do that without spending a lot of money.

Jenny believes that this is one of the smartest ways to start. If you start throwing money at ads on Facebook, Instagram, etc. and you don’t know who you are trying to target, it is going to be very difficult to see results.

Melissa tells people to follow the money trail. How do people with more disposable income and larger budgets think and spend? That is something we have to learn.

When we first start, our natural desire is to want to help people who are like us. We think they are like us and need our help. The problem is that if they are like you, they don’t have a big budget or extra money either.

When Melissa started in business, she thought she would be helping people who had a business similar to her husband’s business but she needed to level up. She needed to follow the money trail. In the beginning, she didn’t know where that money trail was, where it led, or how it got people to want to give or throw money at her.

Bootstrap marketing says you will learn as you go and will never be wasting money. Once you have done all the hard work that a marketing person might tell you.

Perhaps you need 3-6 months of budget just to figure out who your audience is. This could be for an online business or a brick-and-mortar business. You may have to do this several times throughout the life of your business.

It is the most cost-effective and also one of the most rewarding ways. Once you scale your business and have multiple things going on you won’t ever get to be this close with your clients on their journey. This is market research.

Many people think you can just skip this step and jump right in to being able to make money and find the right clients. But doing the market research and understanding the problems and solutions they need is key.

How do you identify and leverage low-cost or no-cost marketing channels to maximize reach and impact?

Anytime we talk about maximizing, one of the words that will pop up is productive. How do we stay productive? How do we maintain productivity? How do we keep it going for the long haul even when we don’t feel like it or other things get in the way?

We have to manage our energy levels. If it takes everything you have just to go to an in-person meeting, share with someone, and barely speak your name because you are so far out of your element, is it realistic to think you can keep that up?

While Melissa is extremely introverted and typically a wallflower, she is willing to talk to anyone about her business. She is fueled by adrenaline when it comes to business.

You need to think about what gives you energy and what doesn’t take your energy. You have limited time and resources.

Networking must be part of your bootstrapping. Let’s say you want to join a networking group. How you define networking, what groups you participate in, etc. is all up to you.

There are a thousand ways to do it so don’t lock yourself into one way. You want to find someplace that you find valuable because your people are there but the key is that they find you valuable as well.

You get energy because people are glad you are there and are willing to make introductions for you. You can layer your activities to keep your energy up or don’t have to force yourself to do things.

When you have tons of clients, when you are hiring people, when the money is coming in, during the busy season, this still needs to be a priority for you. There will never be a time in your business when you will have to stop marketing.

We all know and use Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, Harris Teeter, and gas stations. Yet, they never stop marketing to keep the awareness.

If you can go to someplace that you find valuable to attend, and people find it valuable that you attend, it makes you feel good because it is a community involvement or something that you are passionate about, it is important to go.

Maybe they have good lunch and learns, or you feel comfortable asking questions about your business. Keep it manageable and make sure you have energy both going in and energy coming out. That will sustain you and make it more productive.

Attendance alone will not be the only thing you need. Value will keep you productive in that cycle. You have to be consistent.

With your marketing effort, whether you are blogging, creating video content, or doing a podcast, you have to get energy from it and feel fueled so that you can consistently continue to show up.

Your audience can rely on you, engage with you, and continue to know what to expect from you. They see you as the resource, can trust you, and want to work with you. Consistency creates the best karma.

Can you discuss the importance of establishing a strong brand identity and voice in bootstrap marketing efforts?

Melissa finds that brand identity comes later. People will tell you what they want. You cannot tell them. They give us money and we have to listen to them.

We see big companies like Johnson and Johnson or Eddie Baur, who changed their logos recently to be more readable to Gen Z. Those are extremely recognizable brands who changed their brand identity because of the consumer.

When Melissa first started, she had a bunch of different titles. It was her clients who recognized she was like a matchmaker. Because everyone kept telling her that, she changed her identity to be a matchmaker.

When we are marketing, our voice is secondary. We should be listening to everything everyone tells us and filtering it out. We listen and we receive from people who part ways with their money.

Everyone has an opinion. Unless people are spending money with you and on your services, they don’t have the same weighted opinion.

Your customers have already shown trust in you, said they like what you are doing, and are willing to give you money. Their opinion matters more than others who don’t purchase your services.

Spending money on brand identity is the fun part of business, creating your logo and selecting colors, etc. If Melissa had done that at the beginning of her business, she would have lost so much money because her clients are very specific. She would have created something very specific to her but not to the clients.

Have something and be polished but do your research.

• How does it look in print? How does it come up on a poster?
• How does it look on a website?
• What colors can you combine it with?

When large companies change things, they have done tons of market research. Years ago, Weight Watchers did their redesign and it tanked. Hundreds of millions of dollars were lost.

Everything has to have real meaning to the customer and not just to us. If you are a marketing business, build websites, or design logos, then you need to start with great marketing.

If you are creating a service-based business while trying to figure out who your clients are and looking for the money trail, come up with something that is basic, professional, and meets your clientele.

You don’t have to be fearful of competing with bigger names and products because you are your brand. Everything you do is your brand.

Your identity, every time you post /tweet, when you are on podcasts, when you write an article, is your brand identity. If you want to make sure people know who you are and what they are getting when they work with you or buy your product, it will be you who creates the brand identity.

Know what you are putting out into the world because a Google search will pull up a lot of things.

Jenny walks her clients through their positioning; understanding what makes them unique in the marketplace and then combining it with core values.

When you know what your core values are, it is much easier to attract clients who will value those and know what direction you are trying to take them in. This is true for both service and product-based businesses.

It is understanding and having the confidence to step into your positioning and what you are going to serve people with for the ultimate outcome of the business.

You need to be able to nail down your core values and your deal breakers.

We are not always confident in this because we wonder if it will eliminate someone. What are you not willing to do?  What audience are you not serving?

Setting boundaries will help you get to your core values and help you understand them better. Confidence will come.

Don’t cross the deal breakers, even just once. You will never make a worse decision. It is better to fire the wrong clients before even working with them.

How do you measure the success of bootstrap marketing initiatives, and what key metrics should entrepreneurs track?

It is the same metrics as paid advertising.

• How many people did you reach?
• How many people reached out to you?
• How many calls or conversations did you have?
• How many people took you up on your free offer?

Melissa had a poster board in her office and showed 60 days to track her metrics of how often she was doing things and what the results were.

You need to track the number of people you talk to, how many people you reached out to, and how many networking events you attended to see how that correlates to the results of the sales you made that day.

If you are not doing the marketing and nothing is happening in your business, you will see it. You can look at your board and take the feelings out of it.

If you didn’t reach out to anyone or follow up on emails, and nothing happened in your business, you can see that you didn’t do the actions.

You can think about this similar to your health journey. If you only exercised once instead of three times you had extra food taking you over your calorie count for three days, and you drank all weekend long, you can clearly see why you didn’t lose any weight. You know exactly why.

If you do all the things and nothing is happening, then you need to reassess to figure out what is happening. What was your message? Were you consistent?

Eventually, you will build compound interest in your business, even if you are creating the wrong content. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

You can’t put that much out and get nothing in return. Every action has a reaction. No action means no reaction.

The success of your business is from three months prior. You have to know what works well. Is it a podcast? Is it a networking event? Is one networking event better than another?

You don’t want to waste your time on things that aren’t yielding results.

Successful VA Workbook

The Successful VA Workbook is geared for VA’s but it will work for any business. It has you target your ideal clients, see them, and know them. It helps you answer questions about who your ideal clients are and where they hang out, where they spend money, what they are reading, what language they are using, etc. It helps you clearly define your target audience and answer questions for them before they ask.

It also walks you through creating mile markers, objectives, KPIs, and metrics in your business so you can track them to see how far you get.

 

Action Steps:

• If you liked this episode of Influencer Entrepreneurs,  please subscribe and leave a fabulous review!
• Join the conversation on Instagram by tagging Jenny when you’re listening to the podcast.  She’ll send you a personal message whenever you tag her.