4 Ways You're Making Marketing Too Complicated
/These days it seems like there are infinite ways to market your business.
Webinars, workshops, summits, collaborations, funnels, pixels, ads, message bots, podcasts, to name a few!
We get it.
As digital marketers, Kleneice and I are constantly learning new tips, tricks, and strategies to optimize results for Humble & Whole and our clients.
Can I share a secret with you? We haven’t done anything complicated to get results for our clients or to grow Humble & Whole.
We have yet to even experiment with paid advertising.
The truth is that marketing is simple.
In theory, to succeed, all you need to do is share information about your product or service with the right people.
But we’ve noticed that within the online business space, it’s easy for newer entrepreneurs to overcomplicate marketing. It’s almost inevitable because there’s so much content out there describing different strategies, methods, and tips.
Let's dive into four ways you could be overcomplicating marketing your business!
Trying to scale before growing organically
It’s not uncommon for us to have clients or consultations with entrepreneurs who invested in FB or Instagram ads only to have witnessed no ROI.
When you’re just starting out and you have no idea what has worked organically then you’re at risk of losing money on ads.
We’re strong believers in testing out what works organically before throwing money behind it.
Ads aren’t the easiest way to grow your business either.
There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes of running a successful ad campaign.
Wait until you know what content, themes, offers, etc. resonate most with your audience and then optimize your marketing efforts with advertising.
Trying to learn everything on your own
Marketing gets complicated really fast if you try to learn and implement multiple strategies on your own.
Learning to host a high-quality webinar takes time.
Creating sales funnels that convert requires a lot of testing and tweaking.
There are courses about practically every marketing technique, and they take time to absorb, implement and adjust.
When you’re doing everything on your own, there are blind spots in your business that you don’t see because you’re too involved.
It can be hard to figure out how to apply what you’ve learned in a course to where you are right now in business.
A marketing professional knows how to assess where you are right now, identify the strategies that will help you reach those goals, and implement them on your behalf.
Implementing too many strategies or techniques at a time
If you’re trying to act on multiple marketing strategies and techniques at a time when you haven’t mastered the basics, then you’re going to be overwhelmed.
Not only that, but trying to implement too much at once also prohibits you from getting laser-focused on what is yielding the best results.
Less is more in marketing.
While the temptation is to fight the increasingly restrictive algorithms with multiple strategies, you can actually move the needle forward in your business if you hone in on what has already worked for you in the past.
Think about where your last 5 clients came from. Is there a pattern?
What if you’re just getting started and you don’t have data to guide you?
Select no more than 2-3 strategies and keep them going for at least 90 days so that you have enough data to evaluate. By that point, you should be able to eliminate 1 or 2 strategies that didn’t work out so well and amplify what did.
Relying on high leverage events
Webinars, workshops, pitching to podcasts, participating in summits, hosting giveaways, etc are high leverage events that take considerable time and effort to yield an ROI.
I like to think of these as the icing on the cake of an effective marketing strategy instead of the foundation.
When these high leverage events become the foundation of your digital marketing, you enter a cycle of pressure to host or participate in the next best event in order to keep your business afloat.
This is not only stressful but so incredibly time consuming that you’re likely to have minimum time available to devote to client work.
Chances are, you’ll be tempted to make marketing your business a lot more complicated than it needs to be if you’re:
- Focused on the progress or success of other entrepreneurs
- Not paying attention to your own progress and success
- Convinced that overnight success is a reality for you
Sure, there are stories that exist of entrepreneurs doubling their income in just a few short months or crossing the 6 figure mark in under a year. That’s wonderful, but you don’t have to hold yourself to that exact same standard.
Understand that your entrepreneurial journey is uniquely yours.
You will be successful, and you don’t have to run yourself into the ground trying to reach your goals.
It may be hard to believe, but simple methods actually work really well in marketing because at the end of the day, you’re selling to a human, not a machine.
The truth is that if you are consistent with the small things, you will see results. Put power behind things that are already working for you.
Of course, if you would rather not even worry about marketing your business and you’re ready to see some serious results, we would be happy to help!
