I feel your pain. You feel like, as a business owner, you need to be doing everything you can to market your business. And while that’s absolutely true, you can’t take on every single marketing tactic out there. Nor should you. You’ll drive yourself crazy, and you won’t even get better results for your efforts. Here are some ways you should let go and give yourself a break.
#1. Stop Trying to Be on Every Social Site
First of all, trying to maintain profiles on as many social media sites as are out there is sheer lunacy. There’s no way you can do it well. Plus, your audience likely isn’t spending equal time on all sites. If you’re trying to reach a business audience, you won’t find them on Pinterest. If you market to teens, they won’t be on LinkedIn.
A Better Solution: Rather than trying to spread yourself too thin and getting nothing out of it, spend some time assessing which social channels are the best use of your time and energy. Put all your focus on two to three, and you’ll do a better job of connecting with potential customers.
#2. Forget About Marketing to Everyone
Just like you shouldn’t try to be on every social channel, you shouldn’t try to make the entire world your audience. Yes, everyone loves cookies (except gluten-free folks), but not everyone will pay $5 for an artisanal, locally-sourced, ethically raised, dairy-free cookie. That’s a very specific product with a very limited audience. But don’t fear the niche: the narrower you go in who you try to reach, the more successful you can be at being known for your product and your solution.
A Better Solution: Limit your scope and focus on exactly the kinds of people you want to buy your product. You’ll find that you start to attract even more of those kinds of people!
#3. Give Up Your Rigorous Blogging Schedule
Look, you’re not Neil Patel. There’s no reason why you need to be committed to an over-rigorous blogging schedule if it’s killing you. Sure, if you have the time and inclination, knock yourself out and publish a post a day. But if you struggle to come up with content and are having to put off other things in your business so you have time to write, it’s not benefitting anyone.
A Better Solution: Find a cadence that works for you. And do get into a rhythm with your content because then people know when they can expect fresh articles on your blog. Whether that’s twice a week or once a month, set people’s expectations.
#4. Stop Struggling to Do It All Yourself
Look, I get that you’re Type A and think no one can do anything as well as you. I can relate, believe me. But unless you’re a marketer by trade (and trust me: that doesn’t make you necessarily good at your own marketing), you may be doing more harm than good to your little business by taking it on yourself. Besides, you’ve got enough to do in running your business, like fulfilling orders, ordering office supplies, getting sucked into a vortex of cute cat videos on Facebook, and strategizing about your growth.
A Better Solution: You might not believe me, but outsourcing some (or all) of your marketing could be the best gift you could give yourself. When you put your marketing into the capable hands of someone who does it for a living, you get faster and better results than you could get on your own. And quit bellyaching about how much it would cost. Isn’t it worth a little investment to see your sales skyrocket?
#5. Let Go of That Which Does Not Serve You
Yes, this is excellent advice for life in general, but it also applies to marketing. Consider all the different strategies you’re currently doing to attract new business. Now, be honest: which of those aren’t really getting you results? You might find that publishing monthly press releases isn’t sending traffic or sales to your site. Or that those pay-per-click ads aren’t creating a strong enough ROI. There’s absolutely no reason to continue wasting money and energy on marketing channels that aren’t helping you reach your goals.
A Better Solution: Take a hard look at the channels that aren’t meeting your expectations. Nix them and then re-allot the money you were spending on them to the areas of marketing that are netting great results.
#6. Relax About the Rules
Yes, it’s frustrating how Google keeps changing the rules about what it wants out of a website (press releases bad. keywords good. but not too many.). And maybe you’re bending over backwards trying to appease the Google gods. That’s a pretty stressful place to be, and it really doesn’t help your ranking.
A Better Solution: Just use common sense. You know that awkwardly stuffing in 18 keywords on a single web page is idiotic, and will not only turn off Google but also your visitors. Ask yourself what a given page is about, and then just find a way to naturally use one or two keywords that are appropriate in the copy. If you’re writing useful and relevant content, Google will find no fault.
#7. Get Your Nose Out of Your Analytics
Website analytics are wonderful tools, but if you spend all of your time studying them, you’ll miss other markers on the success of your marketing. For example, analytics can’t tell you that people are engaging in great dialogue around your latest blog post, or that one of your tweets really turned your audience off. Branding is larger than what the data tells you, so you need to look at the bigger picture and use some common sense about what’s working and what isn’t.
A Better Solution: Checking your analytics should be like weighing yourself. Don’t do it too much, or you’ll obsess over tiny fluctuations. Set a day each month to check in so you can compare one month of web traffic to another.
I know you feel like if you let go, your marketing (and your business) will crumble. But trust me: following these seven tips will ease your stress, give you your time back, and make your marketing more effective.
Images: ”Marketing word built with letter cubes /Shutterstock.com“
____________________________________________________________________________
Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month. Would you like to write for us?
An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.
