Are You Sleepwalking Through Your Marketing Plan?
You’ve likely heard the saying “runs like a well-oiled machine.” This sounds like brilliant music to a business owner’s ears because that means that things are running smoothly and you are in a groove. However, sometimes that can easily lull you to sleep, causing you to run on auto-pilot rather than continuing to push yourself and your business.
Where marketing is concerned, it’s easier to sleepwalk through your strategy once you have gotten past the initial start-up phase. If you take a second to think about it, you might feel bored with aspects of your outreach, or perhaps there are certain materials that haven’t been changed in a couple of years.
Sleepwalking through your strategy is a dangerous way to market your brand. It could mean that you miss an opportunity to make it better. It can also mean that you lose audience interest, because if you don’t care enough to engage them in new and interesting ways, then why should they come to you?
Here are a few things to keep in mind when you are implementing your marketing strategy to make sure you don’t lull yourself to sleep:
Edit yourself: Stop trying to include every little detail in your content. Get to know what your audience likes and tailor your content to them. They will dictate the type of content they like, and they will show it by engaging with it in some way. You have to learn how to pick out the most interesting or most important details and share that content.
Avoid buzzwords:We’ve talked about buzzwords before. The thing about buzzwords is that nobody really knows the meaning of them and they just come out because it’s industry jargon that we think sounds good. Find different ways to talk about what it is that you offer. Stand out in your industry because you refuse to settle into the buzzword rut.
Go beyond content: You can create great content, but if you do nothing to share it and engage with your audience, then what is the point? Use your content as a jumping off point to start a great dialogue with influencers or potential clients.
Listen: Listening is just as important as doing when it comes to marketing. It should be all about your audience, which means you need to know what they are talking about and how they feel about your brand.
Diversify: Your marketing strategy should be exciting to look at. It should give you different options and tactics to implement if not daily, then weekly or monthly. Think of ways you can integrate different channels into your overall strategy. Use social media, experiential marketing, and a mail out as part of one campaign. The more you change it up, the more it forces you to both think ahead and look back at what works best.
Don’t abuse automation: Automation has its place in marketing, especially if you are a small business or solopreneur that just can’t be in all places at once. However, you have to use automation wisely or it comes across as insincere and robotic. For example, sending an automated direct message a second after someone follows you on Twitter shows that you really don’t care about that person following you. Either put a person touch to it, or don’t send it at all. Don’t forget that you are a human interacting with other humans.
The bottom line is, if you are bored, then your audience will be bored. If you think you are stuck in a rut with your marketing and have fallen asleep, then pinch yourself so you can wake up and start building an exciting brand.