When you think of “branding”, what comes to mind first? We’d venture to guess a popular logo popped up in your head, or a specific color palette. In all actuality, branding is much more than just the visuals that represent a company. It’s also the voice, personality, mission, and tone that make up a brand.

Even if the brand is run by multiple individuals, the brand as a whole should have its own personality that, well, personifies it! It should coax certain feelings from an audience and specifically target a certain group of people.

It all seems very confusing, but by following just a few steps, you’ll be able to intertwine your personality into elements of your branding and successfully convey that to your audience, whether you’re just starting out or in the midst of a rebrand!

As small businesses competing against larger or more well-known businesses, it isn’t as effective to just talk about what you do as a business. The key to standing out is the brand that you build. A recognizable and loved brand is one of the most valuable assets a business owns.

However, a brand is much more than just a name, tagline, logo, and other visuals. Even though these pieces do play a role in the bigger picture, there are other elements that bring it all together.

it’s super easy to fall down the rabbit hole of Googling which tools are best for which purpose, signing up for free trial after free trial, and getting lost in a sea of overwhelm when you notice that you’re 50 applications deep yet you only use about 2 or 3 semi-consistently.

So, to prevent you from going anywhere near that rabbit hole and save the time that you would otherwise be spending on trial and error, we’re going to break down our ultimate list of tools for new service-based businesses! We’ll be listing a few options for different categories so as to not overwhelm you. Some of these we currently use and some we’ve used in the past before our business grew and evolved.

Email can be such a game-changer for businesses that want to connect with their audience in a more personal way. When you compare your people scrolling upon a social media post versus getting valuable content delivered directly to their inbox, email is the way to go if you want to build authentic relationships.

Plus, email gives you an opportunity to share exclusive content with your list, making it even more valuable to your audience. Anyone can see your social media accounts and not follow you, but your subscribers have already signed up for the long haul and are ready to devour new content as it comes.

But email marketing is more than just creating a list and hoping people subscribe to it. It takes work to make sure people know about it, and even more work to make sure that they actually want to subscribe, which is where your opt-in comes in.

Since you’re reading this post, we’ll assume you already have an opt-in created (but if not, this is the post for you) and are looking for ways to market it. If so, you’ve come to the right place! Today, we’re going to share 5 successful strategies to market your opt-in, your freebie, your lead magnet - whatever you want to call it!

One of our favorite features of Dubsado are the forms. They’re easy to design and even easier to send off to clients or embed on your website. In fact, the design possibilities are endless, and with Dubsado’s drag-and-drop builder, you’ll have them created in no time!

You’re able to add text boxes, images, questions, drop-down menus, columns, and more to your forms, but one of the most versatile blocks in the code block. With it, you’re able to integrate third party applications directly into your proposals, questionnaires, and lead capture forms!

This means that you can completely take your forms to the next level and amp up your client experience. The possibilities for what you can embed are endless, but we’re here to give you 5 ideas for how to take your Dubsado forms to the next level using code blocks!

So you have a freebie created, your opt-in form set up, and your freebie delivery email ready to go so that you can deliver the goods when someone joins your list. But before you start telling people about it… Do you have a welcome sequence?

When someone joins your list, they’re the warmest within the first few days. That’s your window to let them get to know you more and show them what you can offer before they forget who you are or why they even subscribed in the first place. After all, first impressions matter, and this is your way to make a great virtual first impression on your audience!

We’re huge fans of welcome sequences because it means that when the time comes to sell to someone, they won’t be in the dark about who you are– they’ll already know, like, and trust you (or at least that’s the goal). So, what actually goes into a welcome sequence? Read along as we walk you through how to write a welcome sequence that converts subscribers to buyers!

Listen, we’ve been around the block a few times when it comes to email marketing platforms. Over the years, we’ve migrated and re-migrated to a handful of different ones to find the best fit, yet we always ended up leaving. After our recent switch last year to Flodesk, we definitely aren’t planning to leave any time soon.

While we’re aware that moving over such a large email list with over 100k subscribers to a beta platform seems completely absurd and irrational, but honestly? It was absolutely the most no-brainer migration we’ve ever done, and here’s why.

Email is one of our most favorite things to talk about! In the 5 years we’ve been in business, we’ve seen 100k+ new subscribers come through our doors. It’s been an amazing outlet for us to provide exclusive value to our audience outside of your everyday Instagram post. With email, there’s a more personal connection you gain by being allowed space in someone’s inbox.

Since we’ve had our fair share of methods that worked (and didn’t) to grow our email list, we wanted to share with you our top 5 favorite ways to get people to sign up for your email list and increase conversions!

If there’s a way to save time and be more productive in our businesses, we’re all over it. One of our favorite ways to do this is to plan all of our social content. Otherwise, it can be way too overwhelming!

Before we started batching our content, we quickly realized that posting a day at a time was not the way to go. Our thoughts would become scattered from all of the ideas we had, yet no actual system of turning those ideas into content. One we did create a system for batching though, it saved our time, sanity, engagement (no more gaps in posting!).

So, today, we’re going to walk you through our step-by-step system for planning a month’s worth of social content at once, so you can get back to being the productive queen (or king) you are.