Debuting My Small Business on the Internet: What I Accomplished in a Month
Hello! I’m Noah Warwick of the Super Mini K-pop Shop, South Carolina’s only music store that caters specifically to K-pop fans. This is my landing page for a month-long series on how I practiced content marketing for the first time and used it to create an online presence for my shop, from scratch.
The Goal
I wasn’t sure what all I was in for at the start of the month. However, I had a strong desire to expand my knowledge of marketing. I also wanted more clarity as to what getting my shop “out there” on the internet would look like.
I had a vision for myself that involved getting into the habit of creating content and publishing under my shop’s name to get the attention of my target audience. You see, my overarching goal is to launch my shop and keep my audience engaged so that every time I put on an event people are showing up.
Besides my shop, I wanted this project to help me practice more writing, designing, and operating technology, which will serve me greatly in my future career.
The Main Things I Set Out to Achieve
Learn new marketing concepts
Create a landing page with a call to action
Create social media posts
Start a company newsletter
A Synopsis of Each Week
Week 1 was all about familiarizing myself with content marketing. I learned which skills it involves, its basic processes, and why careers in this field are useful. I read introductory articles, such as Hubspot’s Content Marketing Guide, which taught me about sales funnels and inbound vs. outbound marketing. I also picked out a series of questions that I felt were most important to address about my business for the general public to understand how it’s going to work. The questions came from a long list that I went down when I conducted market research on my shop. I elaborate on the new terms I learned and I address important questions about the Super Mini K-pop Shop in my personal newsletter article “A New Season and Fresh Experiences.”
Week 2 still involved a lot of learning, but also more doing. I set out to create a landing page for my business with a singular call to action. First, the article, “SEM Rush: What Is a Landing Page?” taught me the real definition of a landing page, which is different from a website homepage. I learned about the features that these pages include, such as hero images and headings with precise language. Then, I attempted creating a custom hero image to fit my brand and adding it to my shop’s page promoting its newsletter. I define landing page lingo and I explain my creative process in my article “Concerts and Content Marketing Week 2.”
Week 3 challenged me to think more strategically about social media. This was the week that I read Buffer’s “Beginner’s Guide to Creating a Social Media Marketing Plan” and Hootsuite’s “How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy.” They taught me how to set measurable goals and provided me with questions to help craft my brand’s persona on social media. Then, I created a campaign with the objective to spread awareness via 15 Instagram posts with a timeline for posting for them. I talk about the initial struggle of designing these posts in my “Conquering My Fears…” article.
Week 4 is the week that I made this landing page you’re reading now. It’s a testimony to the beginning of my journey in content marketing, and hopefully an encouragement to anyone wanting to learn new skills. You can start out knowing very little about a topic, just like I did. You don’t even have to be an expert to apply your knowledge right away. Take the work I’m about to show you as an example; it’s amateur stuff, but it’s possible for me to build on it and refine it, and one day it might become something special.
Achieving the Things I Set Out For
Learn new marketing concepts: Check! ✅
There were a couple concepts that stood out to me. The first one is that the marketing process acts like a funnel. At the top of the funnel, potential customers are made aware of a problem and a business’s corresponding solution. In the middle, they are engaged with content demonstrating how that business meets their specific needs. Finally, at the bottom, potential customers are converted into actual customers when they decide to do business with that company.
The second concept, which is completely new to me, is that marketing splits into two directions: inwards and outwards. The latter is known as outbound marketing, and it pushes a business’s message out far and wide in an attempt to resonate with someone who wants its product or service. It’s costly and usually not as effective as inbound marketing, which spreads brand awareness through content or social media so that people become interested in a product enough to find out more about the business.
When it comes to marketing on social media, I also learned that you should set goals that are SMART : specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. Without these types of goals, it’s harder to measure success because vanity metrics like number of followers and likes have debatable values.
Create a landing page with a call to action: Check! ✅
I made it with the intention to get K-pop fans to sign up for my music debriefing newsletter. The aesthetics of this landing page were made to reflect the bright, fun, and sparkly vibe of K-pop. Pictures of actual K-pop groups are included in the hero image as well, to boost my credibility as both a fan and a writer who will highlight niche and specialized K-pop groups.
Create social media posts: Check! ✅
In an effort to increase brand awareness and build an engaged community of K-pop fans, I designed 15 Instagram posts to be uploaded to the @superminikpopshop account within the span of a week. While the main purpose of my account will eventually be to advertise the products my shop is selling (i.e. albums, posters, and stickers), my first 15 posts feature song recommendations and reminders that shopping events are coming soon. Some of them are even Halloween themed, to add extra relevance since right now is that time of year.
Start a company newsletter: ⏸️
I can almost check this one off, meaning that I’m still in the process of achieving this goal. My newsletter uses email to share information about local K-pop events and music in K-pop that will be entertaining to potential customers. I wrote and sent out the first email in a welcome campaign for the Super Mini K-pop Shop. In this series, my welcome email includes my brand story. Then, my second email details the problem of having no K-pop store in South Carolina, and the solution that my mobile shop offers. In my third email I’ll share my personal story as a fan to demonstrate my credentials. Finally, my next two emails will set out the short term and long term benefits of my business.
Tools That I Used
PicsArt
PicsArt is great for creating square shaped visuals that fit into Instagram feeds very easily. You can create from scratch or use templates, and I did both. There are lots of fonts and stickers, especially cute and trendy ones that appeal to my audience’s sense of aesthetics.
Canva
Canva is another handy tool when it comes to creating visuals. I used its “y2k” and “k-pop” templates to make eye-catching Instagram posts. Canva helped me create a big enough image to be used as the background of my landing page. My favorite feature of this tool is the way you can crop pictures into fun shapes thanks to its wide range of photo frames.
Substack
Substack is what allows me to send out emails to people who sign up for my newsletter. Everything is simple and easy, from setting up a profile to drafting your letters and sending them out. Substack even gives you the ability to schedule your letters to be published at set times, so you don’t have to worry about sending them out at the same time every week.
Skills I Gained
There are several hard and soft skills that marketers need to have. Out of all the hard skills, I got to practice basic design and copywriting (different kinds: social media captions, blog post writing, and email writing) the most. I could still use some more practice in the basic video editing and marketing analytics realms, though.
As far as soft skills go, this month challenged me the most to get into a strategic thinking mindset. I had to practice intentionality with the distribution of my content and the time of day that I posted to Instagram, for instance. While my business is quite casual, I feel like I could use a lot of work in my personal organization and ability to stick to hard deadlines. It’s somewhat common in content marketing to have no structure, and you have to stick to a structure you make for yourself.
Things I Would Do Differently
Repurpose my Instagram content for Tiktok.
I initially had it in my plan to start campaigning on Tiktok at the same time that I began on Instagram. Instagram was my top priority because it’s an easy community builder and it’s where I’ve seen the most success from K-pop stores online. However, I could have really benefited from video content, since videos actually perform best on social media compared to images. It’s certainly not too late for me to post on Tiktok, but if I had carved out more time this month I would have been at least a couple weeks ahead of where I stand now.
Re-run my Instagram ads for a week.
Last month, I learned how to use Meta Ads Manager to create ads on Instagram. I gave my project a small budget and ran the ads for a week. But back then, I had no content sitting in my feed. I would have liked to run the ads again at the same time I was building out my feed on Instagram this month, to see if there’s a noticeable difference. Once again, I don’t feel like it’s too late to do this. No matter what, I’ll still need to keep building out my feed and running ads for the foreseeable future.
Manage my tasks by breaking them down further.
A lot of tasks go into a month-long project. I broke them down by weeks, but I think breaking them into days would have helped me use my time more efficiently. I could have made daily lists of tasks, which might help me reduce the occurrences where I draw out tasks over multiple days (wasting precious time).
For example, my tasks for Week 3 involved reading articles, posting 15 times, writing a 5 email welcome series, and writing my personal newsletter. Here’s how I could have divided them up into a few days:
Day 1:
-Read Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Marketing Plan and How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy
-Make timeline for posts
-Update Instagram profile
Day 2:
-Design 3 posts on Canva
-Write 3 captions
-Post 3 times on Instagram
-Write welcome email
Day 3:
-Design 3 more posts on Canva
-Write 3 more captions
-Post 3 more times on Instagram
-Write second email in the welcome series
And so on…
Final Thoughts
Despite my what-ifs, I’m satisfied with my results from this month. I was able to absorb a ton of information, which makes me feel like a more rounded out person. I also got a sense for my personal working style if I were a content marketer. I could spot my strengths and weaknesses alike.
I do think that I came out of these four weeks with a clearer idea as to what getting my shop “out there” looks like. I learned about several forms of inbound marketing, from email newsletters to landing pages, product demos, and blog pages. I even formed a brand voice— it’s friendly, happy, and excited, like one K-pop fangirl talking to another.
I hardly implemented any marketing tactics in the real world prior to this month. I’m so glad I took the plunge and did something about it. I am now able to say that I understand the basics of creating and marketing content. I have learned a lot and am excited to continue learning and growing my skills. If you want to follow my future adventures, you’re welcome to subscribe to the Super Mini K-pop Shop’s or my personal substack.