5 simple shifts small businesses can make to sell more in 2025
How to stand out?
Where and how you tell your story can make all the difference.
There is no magic pill to creating sales and getting noticed.
Nope, you can’t lean back and hope the algorithm is going to show your content to your ideal audience either.
Finding and growing a community of loyal and raving fans can sometimes feel like an uphill battle.
You are so busy running your business there’s little time left to focus on marketing and create stand-out content.
But there are small things you can do
I am going to share these to make your marketing a whole lot easier.
Take five, this is a goodie!
Shift 1
Create remarkable content. In other words, become unmissable.
Now before you take off, or think that means creating highly polished high-effort videos, it’s not that!
The way you stand out, either online or offline is to share what makes you truly different or unique.
That means being clear on your proposition and why you exist vs your competitors.
This could also be your ‘hot take’ on something - but make sure it’s got longevity.
I tell every business owner that a strategy is so important because it ensures you go through a process of figuring out what sets you apart. What makes your brand and offering unique.
If you are saying the same thing as your competitors you are going to sound the same.
And disappear into the background and never be heard, or even noticed.
Recognising your brand's unique perspective and then sharing this alongside stories, experiences and insights that no one else has or can offer will catch the right people’s attention a whole lot more than anything else you share.
Anyone can share images of product, a list of services and benefits..
By sharing your unique way of seeing the world you are showing up differently to every other brand.
You can also level this up a notch and position your brand's unique perspective on the world into one of three categories :
1. Controversial
2. Relatable
3. Aspirational
Just imagine…
You are a clothing brand and you primarily sell to women over 40.
You focus on making women feel good with clothes that are high quality.
You could share tips and styling ideas, showing your product and details around fit and fabric.
The kind of content can easily be replicated which means it is harder to stand out.
What if you were to share details and a viewpoint that others don’t have?
For instance, pointing out that women over 40 can feel as sexy and attractive as they did in their 20s in your clothing (and sharing images, videos and stories as such).
Including customer preferences around styling your clothes rather than your brand making recommendations i.e. the brand in the wild
This is the kind of content that gets people to stop and look, where they think mmm, that looks good or interesting.
You get the idea.
If you’re providing a service, remember that Chat GPT and any AI tool can provide all the basic answers, tips and ideas that a customer needs.
What they can’t do is share your unique viewpoint.
So there’s no point in sharing top tips, unless of course, Chat GPT hasn’t heard of them yet!
Shift 2
The algorithm is in charge when it comes to organic growth
Social media platforms make money out of advertising, so unless your organic content is going viral all the time it’s not possible to ensure your ideal audience sees all of your content, all of the time.
If it’s good enough plenty of people will see your content, but you can’t rely on social media as your only channel.
Consider where else you can get in front of your ideal target audience.
Go back to your audience research and what you learned about where they hang out, and where they spend their time.
If you haven’t researched exactly who your audience is, now is the ideal time to do some 1-2-1 interviews.
Reach out to your current customers and ask them for 30 minutes of their time to walk you through why they buy and what led them to purchase your product (or an alternative if they have purchased one)
You can then also ask them about where they spend their time and how they interact with brands, what’s important to them etc.
Then figure out any other channels to be in, not just online and how you should show up.
Look at things holistically by creating an activations plan that shows where you might show up as the *brand-in-person*, sponsor an event, speak on a podcast or sell at an event.
The benefit of *brand-in-person* events or activations is that you will have more content to share online showing your brand in action and real life.
Shift 3
Be consistent. Obvious I know, but easier said than done, right?
Greatness and sales take time.
This one is more of a mindset shift.
Once you realise that consistently putting in the effort will deliver, you will find it easier to show up and create content.
People don’t buy from your business the first time they see you. They will be using other products and alternative solutions.
They need time to trust you and figure out that they can’t live without the solution you are offering them.
Once your people start to notice you, they will also notice when you show up and will miss you when you don’t!
If you post on regular days the people who look forward to your content will notice when you don’t post!
The customer journey is not linear, it is usually a series of messy stops along the way.
So to stand out, and help people get to know and like you, I recommend looking at what kind of journey your customer takes.
This is also known as your customer journey funnel.
It’s a way to map out what messaging and content to share for each stage of the journey.
You get more strategic about what you are creating and clear on the objective.
Ideally, you create messaging and content that sits into three buckets :
Attract - stand out and get people to notice you
Build Trust – get people to like you and trust you
Make the Sale - share specifics to make the purchase decision easy
What to consider?
Make a minimum of 50% of your content /videos Attract content: that means NOT selling your product or service in 50% of your content.
Share as much as you can about your industry, your journey, the behind-the-scenes, your process, and anything but an actual ‘sell’ of your product or service.
Why? Because people don’t like to be sold to.
Instead, you share the human and more interesting side of your business and brand that builds interest and connection.
If you consider your favourite brands and why you follow them, they are most likely not talking about the product or service but their unique position in the world.
Think Nike or Dove – they focus on the stories and benefits of their brands to the world rather than selling you their products.
Their products are a *by-product* of their brand.
When you are building trust, allocate 30% of your content to sharing testimonials, reviews and feedback.
Guide people to signing up to your email list if you have one, and begin to nurture the relationship this way too.
Share the reasons why people should trust you and like you. Share success stories.
Finally, only allocate 20% of your content to Make the Sale/conversion type messaging.
Ironically this is the kind of content that most brands make and put out. A picture of products, an offer for a service.
This kind of content is boring, don’t you agree?
We’ve all seen it – and it doesn’t make us buy from a new brand or business.
So don’t fall into the trap of just showing your wares, and hoping for the best!
Once you get into the habit of showing up, and know which kind of content you will share across which platform or channel it becomes much easier.
If you truly struggle to find ways to get content out, pick one platform that you feel comfortable on, and show up consistently there.
Shift 4
You’ve been creating all this content, putting in the effort, how do you know what or if any of it is paying off?
Measure what you make!
The easiest way to generate more sales is to look at your analytics
If you put out 10 posts, and you see from your analytics that 2 of them performed well ( and maybe even drove sales or sign-ups etc) you stick to the format or approach of those and make 10 more similar to that.
The analytics is telling you that your audience likes this type of content so listen to them and make more of the same!
This reduces your mental load and workload because you have ready-made format and content ideas that you can start to play around with and make more of.
Secondly, once you dig into the content that is working and getting most engagement you may get more insight into what your audience is interested in.
Often what our audience wants to hear and see is different to what we think they want to hear and see.
Here are some things to consider as you go through your analytics:
1. Pull off your analytics with each of the three phases of the customer journey in mind: Attract, Build trust, and Make the Sale.
2. Track for different levels of engagement and reaction
3. Note the platform performance. Each is built for one part of the customer journey funnel. For example, TikTok is an Attract platform, while Instagram is more for nurturing and driving sales.
4. If you send emails, dive into your provider analytics to see if emails are driving sales and nurturing relationships
5. Attraction content – measure visibility, shares, likes, engagement
6. Build Trust content – measure comments, likes, shares, engagement, profile views
7. Make the Sale content - click-throughs, sign-ups, sales, website traffic, abandoned cart
Your audience will give you clues and tell you what they like to hear.
Try out and test different formats and ideas.
Use your analytics to make decisions monthly, patterns won’t appear weekly.
You need to give it between 1-3 months to see big meaty patterns.
For the things that work really well, you will see results quickly and can make tweaks based on these.
Side note: please don’t take the performance of your content personally.
It’s easy to get emotionally connected to what we make.
Try to see it as data that helps you understand what went right and what went wrong
Shift 5
The purpose of social media is to get in front of as many people as possible, as many of the right eyes as possible.
You get their attention, have them notice you and turn them into raving fans of your brand or business.
When they turn into raving fans their obsession with you turns into an actual purchase or investment.
When you get their attention, one of the best tools to build trust alongside your content is email.
It is possible to create up to 40% of your revenue through email
Crazy, hey? But seriously true.
If you are not using email to nurture your audience and share stories, news, reasons to believe in you, and then ask them for the sale you are missing out.
Email is a direct communication with each person.
They have shared their email address with you, and no matter what happens on any social platform you can speak directly to them.
Known as zero-party data, this is hugely valuable to your business.
Creating an email strategy sounds more daunting than it is.
When you take email seriously and see it as a tool to grow revenue it just means you are allocating time and effort to it, just as you would for any other platform.
The good news is that it will take less time in the long term as you can easily set up automated flows, templates and messages that go out to your audience while you do other things.
Using a service provider such as Klaviyo or Mailchimp makes life easy.
They offer free and low-cost packages and are easy to navigate, even for those of us without tech or design skills.
Ideally, you would create a welcome flow series of emails and then send regular emails to your audience either weekly or bi-weekly.
If you are offering a service, you could do a monthly email.
The most important thing to remember about emails is that you are asking for your audience’s attention.
They will be getting hundreds of emails and you want them to open yours because it will bring them value.
Make sure to consider the following:
1. Emails are a way to continue sharing your story, background, unique perspective, and why.
Use them to open up, bring them into your world
2. Once someone signs up to your email, they have given you permission to speak to them directly, personally.
Write your emails as if you know them
3. This zero-party data is hugely valuable.
If for any reason you could not access your social platform accounts or something got shut down, you still have a way to communicate with your people.
4. Hooks are important i.e. the email subject line, but what your email contains is really important.
Only send the email if it’s going to add value. Otherwise, you risk being unsubscribed.
I hope you found this helpful.
None of these will create overnight success in isolation if you don’t have a strategy.
Or if you don’t know how to present your product or service as the solution to your audience’s problem.
If you don’t quite know how to do that, get in touch because I want to help.
There are so many small changes and shifts you could be making.
I want to make sure that your marketing feels much easier than it does now.
Thanks for reading!
Claire.
Hi! I’m Claire,
If you're a founder or business owner with big dreams of success and growth—and a big, scary to-do list standing in your way every time you sit down to *do* your marketing—nice to meet you, I'm your new solution.
I'll help you find your target audience, and your brand's voice, perfectly position you, and craft messaging for your content strategy that will resonate with your ideal audience.
And I'll do it all while keeping your goals to ensure that your brand aligns with what you want to achieve.
I’ve been in marketing for over 20 years and I’m busting through the bull**** and industry nonsense to give you you straight-talking and proven strategic marketing that will grow your business.