By Kadejah Brathwaite, Intern
Have you ever searched for a product online and noticed later, when you were scrolling through social media, advertisements for that same product showing up? That is the power of marketing and its increasingly less subtle influence on us often goes unnoticed, but not for this Atlanta millennial marketing specialist. Britney Martinez, 23, works with brands that generate more than $1 million in revenue by growing their online presence and converting their followers into customers.
Martinez, who is also a Youtuber, uses her platform to share her life and to coach other entrepreneurs.
According to Fundera, 50% of small businesses fail after just five years in operation. Martinez says that the first step entrepreneurs should make when building a brand is to start exactly where they are. Rather than waiting for the perfect moment, she encourages people to simply set a schedule to launch their company and understand that with trial and error, everything will fall into place.
Next: Once you’ve launched your brand, you need to increase your online following. Instead allowing clients to get stuck in the knee-jerk monotony of predominately posting promotions, Martinez coaches small business owners to be real with their clients and to share their stories of the raw nitty-gritty work they are doing behind the scenes.
While finances can be one of the main barriers for startups, the entrepreneur coach believes there are more ways now than ever to find funding. For instance, drop shipping, which is a supply chain management method for when goods are shipped directly to the customer.
“Instead of doing it the traditional way by buying all of the products in bulk, you only buy the product if you make a sale, so you’re saving yourself a lot of money,” Martinez said in one of her YouTube videos.
Three tips from Martinez:
- Share your story, be yourself and don’t sugarcoat the journey.
- Stay consistent. Your online platforms are like a street while your actual page and its posts are like the store. In comparison to a physical location, the amount of traffic the street (your page) gets is according to how many times you post.
- Get your followers involved. Engage with them by asking questions, responding to their direct messages and using a call to action.
Balancing work, school and a business can be a challenge, but the key is having time management and creating systems that work, Martinez added.
“Life is literally a list of goals you check off daily,” she says. “Business is just a numbers game, but don’t let time or the numbers intimidate you.”