The Key to Marketing Momentum
A resounding frustration that I hear from my clients and other small business owners, is that when it comes to their marketing, they struggle to put the time aside to do it, and they struggle to stick to it when they do. I hear ya. When the client work is flowing, deadlines are approaching and your to-do list is a mile long, it’s pretty easy to set aside the marketing portion of it.
But - we all know that marketing is key to success in business. Because once those current projects are done and those deadlines have been met, what next? Where does the next lot of leads come from? Your marketing of course. It’s essential, so why is it always the first thing to fall by the wayside when business ramps up?
I’m not going to tell you that there is some secret sauce to getting your marketing done, or holding yourself accountable. It doesn’t exist - and anyone that tells you that they can help you achieve this for $57 (for xyz course that’s actually valued at $5899) is just telling you porky pies. The only way to make sure your marketing gets done, to ensure you have a steady stream of leads or sales coming in (and not the stop-start viscous cycle we get stuck in) is by ruthlessly prioritising it.
Accept Your Limitations
Capacity is arguably the biggest challenge small business owners are facing - there are SO many things we need to be across, to do, to oversee etc. And even within the marketing world itself, there are SO many channels, platforms, trends and updates to stay across that it feels hopeless most of the time. But, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the persistent barrange of updates and algorithms - even for someone like me, who lives and breathes marketing all day, every day.
To be even slightly successful in achieving our marketing goals, we need to first accept our limitations. There are only so many hours in the day, and only so many dollars in the budget. But who wants to be only slightly successful? You want to be exceptional right? There is a difference between getting things done, and getting things done well - and it lies within how thin we spread ourselves. To be exceptional, and for your marketing efforts to be as impactful as they possibly can be, you have to stop spreading yourself, your budget and your time too thinly.
So what this means in real life is focusing on what will get your the biggest bang for your buck. Not just budget-wise, but where you invest your time too. Don’t have three hours to make a reel? Then don’t. Is your email list the channel that’s bringing in the most new leads or sales? Then decrease your time on socials and focus on that. Are Google Ads performing better than Facebook & Instagram ads? The shift your budget and your time to focusing on Google rather than spreading it across both.
Rutless Prioritisation
Great marketing doesn’t need to be complicated or complex - often if feels that way, but it really doesn’t have to be. There isn’t enough time, or budget, to waste on marketing that doesn’t work. So, it’s time to be discerning - look at your data: what’s working for you and what’s not; remove anything that’s not working from your to-do list; re-focus on the things that are working so that you have the time, money and energy to making those things work exceptionally. Rutlessly prioritise what will move your business forward the most. And it isn’t enough to do that once and then move on - you need to revisit and review your priorities often (as it’s all too easy for them to shift in progress).
How to Prioritise Ruthlessly
List out all of the potential activities, efforts or decisions
Go through all of your current marketing activities and corresponding data to go with them. How many social followers do you have? How much time do you spend each week creating posts and engaging on socials? How many leads or sales are you getting from it? Then do the same for your email list, your website visitors and every other marketing channel you currently use. Don’t make decisions based on gut feel - use your Insights and Analytics and figure out where you currently are. You might be surprised as to what the numbers actually tell you!
Make a priority map
Once you’ve listed out all of your current and potential activities, and how they are performing for you, it’s time prioritise. You may have your own method of doing this, but this is what I recommend.
Use a priority matrix like this one ➡️
Map out your items that require low resources but get high results; tasks that need high resources but get high results; ones that are low in resource but also low in results; and finally those that are require high resources but don’t get many results
The items that fall into the low-resource-high-results quadrant are your first priority tasks, followed by those that are high-resource-high-results.
Refine your list
In this example, there are only 2 items in the top left quadrant and 1 in the top right (your top 2 priority quadrants). But, what if you had 10 in the top left and 3 in the top right? You’d still need to whittle this down even further. You can repeat the above process, but just using the items you have identified in quadrants one and two.
This will help you to get really granular - maybe some of the low resource items require more time than others; maybe one of the high resource items generates a lot more leads and sales than the others. Go through this process as many times as you need to in order to get a priority list that feels achievable for the time and resources you do have available to you. You might have it in the budget to get help creating your emails, which will free up time for you to create that webinar. Or you might only have time to do the email and Google posts, but you decide to increase it to a fornightly email rather than monthly. Only you know what you have time and money to achieve - the above process just shows you which tasks are worth the investment of that time and money.
Be ruthless with your schedule
Now after doing all of this prep work, the key to gaining momentum with your marketing is to then actually DO it. You’ve taken the time to truly look at what works for your business, as well as your available resources. You’ve whittled down your priority list, so you know what to really focus on so you won’t be wasting your time on tasks that don’t drive your business forward. And now you need to act on it.
Get out your calendar and book time in each week to get those tasks done - whether you have just 1 item left on your list, or 5. I like to set Monday’s aside to focus on my own business work, and this includes my marketing. Or you could set aside an hour a week, or a half-day on a Friday to plan for the upcoming week. Or maybe you just do one day a month and batch all of your marketing for the entire month. For this to work, it needs to work for YOU! So figure out a marketing schedule that works for you.
If accountability is an issue, get a marketing buddy - a fellow business friend who also need accountability: you can help each other out and hold each other accountable. Or, if the budget allows, I can be your accountability buddy through my 1:1 consultation offer. Whether you need a call a month, once a fortnight, or once a week, we can come up with a plan that works for you, and together we can work out your priorties, come up with a plan of action, and I can keep you accountable to that plan.
It’s time to be ruthless - you’ve got this!
