Prepare to Scale Your Business: Leverage the Power of Marketing Consistency
In today’s competitive marketplace, if you want to have a successful business, you have to get your voice out there, be heard, and become recognizable. That means you must be consistent with your marketing.
Think of it this way…
Have you ever heard the saying, “It’s not what you know it’s who you know”? That’s typically used in the context of getting a job or getting a promotion. But, what it really speaks to is the power of relationships.
Think about your various relationships for a moment. You have people in your life that you are in constant contact with, and you have people in your life who you rarely have contact with. The people you feel closer to are probably those you encounter more. They are the people that you know best, like best, and trust the most. More than likely you’re willing to do more for them than you would for those on the periphery of your relationships.
Consistency matters in all relationships.
Years ago, I had some close friends in college. We did everything together. After college, we went our separate ways. A while back, I reconnected with one of them. But, rather than feeling like re-engaging a close relationship, it felt more like a simple reunion. That sense of deep connection had fallen away through time.
Why am I talking about this?
Because I want you to feel something. I don’t want you to think about something. I specifically want you to feel something.
I want you to feel that sense of connection with those you’re close to in life, and I want you to feel that lack of connection with those who are not a regular part of your life.
That feeling of closeness and connection is the purpose of your marketing.
And that feeling of disconnect is what happens when you are inconsistent in your marketing.
Why marketing consistency collapses
Despite how important consistency is in marketing is, I still see entrepreneurs and coaches put marketing endeavors on the back burner.
From what I can tell, it keeps coming down to one key issue:
Time.
I get it, though. I’m an entrepreneur myself, and I know how busy you are. You have a ton of responsibilities and spin all the plates. When the rubber hits the road, everything relies on you in some form or fashion.
Even if you have hired staff, there are still certain things you need to do. You have to make sure communication is happening so that everybody’s on the same page and all of the work is getting done.
At the end of the day, it means you have to prioritize.
And, somehow, marketing just doesn’t seem like it’s as big of a priority as the other things.
That’s how marketing gets put on the back burner.
But that may be the biggest business mistake ever…
The indispensability of marketing consistency
When you’re building a brand, you’re building an identity. And that identity is really all about a quality of relationship that flows from what and how you communicate.
Ideally, when people see your logo or hear your message, they are filled with good feelings that lead them to anticipate having even more good feelings in the next encounter with you.
Notice the word “anticipate”. That’s what it’s all about.
The brain is a prediction machine. When it enters a situation, it looks at what’s going on around it, and then it looks at its related history for similar situations. After comparing the situation and history, it makes a prediction about the most likely outcome. That prediction generates emotions and behavior.
Every time your ideal client experiences your marketing in a positive way, that positive experience goes into their brain’s history, which leads them to anticipate further positive experiences.
In Neuroscience there is a saying, “Neurons that fire together wire together”.
You want your marketing to fire and wire, fire and wire, fire and wire those neural pathways in their brain.
It is continual positive exposure to your brand that conditions your ideal clients over time to anticipate wonderful things happening whenever they encounter you, which encourages them to want to work with you.
Notice the words “over time”.
Repetition is vital.
A lack of consistency in your marketing will create a glass ceiling when it comes to your revenue.
Being consistent in your marketing, however, can open up whole new horizons for you and your business.
The kind of effective marketing that builds a business into six figures (and then into seven figures), doesn’t just rely on just positive experience. Rather, it creates a virtuous cycle of repeat positive experiences that build on each other over time.
Adjustments that can make consistency easier
I realize that time is the number one barrier to consistently marketing your business.
Sorry, but I cannot add more time to your day. What I can do, however, is give you ways to maximize your productivity in order to free up more time you can spend it on consistent marketing.
Let’s go…
Eliminate distractions and get focused
Let’s begin with this: If time is the issue, stop wasting it.
It’s extremely easy to get distracted and chase rabbits down holes. One hole after another after another. You could spend an entire day doing this.
Let’s start by identifying those rabbits. Do you tend to get lost on social media? Do you start looking for answers to problems on YouTube, and the next thing you know you’ve watched five different videos about something interesting but unrelated? Do you suddenly have grand ideas for the future and start mapping them out when you’re supposed to be working on something else?
Be careful. Those rabbits will chew through your business if you let them.
And, here’s the trick to dealing with them: Don’t stop chasing them.
(Didn’t expect that did you?)
I’m serious. You really don’t want to stop chasing a lot of those rabbits. Think about it…
Building relationships on social media, pursuing interesting information around other interests, and generating new ideas for your business are actually all things that can help you in the long run.
So, you want to keep those rabbits around. But, instead of letting them run free and cause destruction, let’s put them in their own little playpens where they can really have some fun.
Rather than trying to eliminate those kinds of distractions from your schedule, set aside time specifically for them.
Then, when you’re trying to work on things and you’re tempted by social media, you can just let the distraction go. After all, you will get to focus on social media when it’s scheduled next.
Did you suddenly have a wonderful idea while working on something for a client? Excellent! Make a note of the idea and commit to exploring it the next time you have a block of time scheduled for creativity and innovation.
Streamlining your day will help you remain focused and more productive.
The effect will be amazing.
Be crystal clear about your ideal client
How often have you sat in front of a blank computer screen and asked yourself, “What do I want to say to promote my new offer?”
The fuzzier you are about your ideal client, the harder it is to figure out what to say in order to connect with them.
Think of it this way. It’s a lot like buying someone a gift. If you really know what they like and what they want, you may know right off of the top of your head exactly what the perfect gift for them would be. But, if you don’t know them very well, you can walk around the store, scan the shelves for hours, and still never find something that works.
The clearer you are about your ideal client, the easier it is to create your marketing messages, which means they take less time and are more effective.
Use branded templates
If you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, don’t do it. Using branded templates helps maintain a consistent look and feel, while potentially saving you a ton of time.
Let’s think about blog images for a moment. Imagine what it’s like to show up on someone else’s blog that just seems to have random images for articles on the blog homepage. Now consider what it looks like when you have consistency with the images. From the reader’s perspective, it’s much more inviting.
For example, if you go to the Wise Owl blog, you can see that each listing is designed to be consistent with all of the surrounding listings.
Social media is another place you can tap into this. If you use Canva, you can create a custom image for whatever social media platform you use. You can pre-set your design elements. When you need a new post image, just duplicate the template, add a new image, new text, and you’re done.
You don’t have to create completely new graphics from scratch every single time. You don’t have to make sure you have the right font or the right brand colors, because they’re baked right into the template.
Ebooks and PDFs, same thing. Whatever program you’re using to generate them, I’m sure you can set up a template. This will establish your fonts, line spacing, margins, and overall standard format. When you’re done, your ebook or PDF will have the same look and feel as all your other ebooks and PDFs.
Look and feel is about brand recognition. After people have seen your stuff enough times, they should be able to recognize it at a glance. Using branded templates make your branding more effective while making your workflow more efficient.
Use AI to help write your marketing content
I just talked about how to make the presentation of your content more efficient and effective with your blogs and social media. Now let’s talk about how to make their creation more efficient, and possibly more effective.
You can use AI to help you write your marketing content. It’s absolutely amazing what AI is capable of in this day and age. We all know about ChatGPT. Have you heard about Writesonic? Did you know that Grammarly has a plagiarism checker to make sure your AI generated article isn’t displaying duplicate content? (Remember, duplicate content is a big “no-no” that can land you in hot water with Google and damage your ranking.)
Of course, AI is not perfect. You will still need to take some time going over AI-generated articles and clean them up to make sure they have unique content and match your brand voice.
But imagine how much more consistent you could be with your marketing if you spant half as much time writing your weekly blog articles.
Repurpose your content
Now that you’ve saved a ton of time using AI to create your blog articles, let’s use that one piece of long-form content to generate other content.
Do you have a YouTube channel? If so, you can use that long-form blog article as a script. Turn your camera on, hit record, and start reading. Touch up your production and, voila! You have a YouTube video.
Take the audio off of the YouTube video and, voila again! You have audio for a podcast.
What if you were to pull out some juicy sound bites from that article? There you have your social media posts. (Bonus: if you want to turn them into memes, go back to using your Canva social media template to create them quickly.)
Even though you used AI to reduce your time significantly, you still had to touch up that article. You might as well maximize the time investment by repurposing the article, and you will save yourself a ton of time that you would normally have spent on creating other unique content.
When you repurpose content, a major bonus is that everything created is focused in one direction. This harmonizes your voice in the marketplace and strengthens your brand.
Automate at deeper levels
Not everything in your business can be automated. But you might be surprised at how much can be.
You’ve probably heard me talk a lot about how important it is to automate your emails. A welcome sequence, for example, is invaluable when it comes to building your appointment funnel.
When your business is ready, however, you need to go beyond basic automation.
If you have multiple ways for people to get on your email list, you will want to start using tags and lists (or whatever your email service provider uses).
By segmenting your email automation, you are much better able to target your email audience with the right message. Those who are most likely to respond will receive the content, and those who are probably not interested in that message won’t. This maintains a positive experience between you and your audience. (Remember what I said about the virtuous cycle of positive experience earlier?)
Batch your time
Have you ever gone into a restaurant and seen they have a breakfast menu, lunch menu, and dinner menu? Even if they offer all three of those at any time during the day, categorizing their menu that way is beneficial. You can determine what kind of meal you’re looking for and ignore everything else on the menu. This makes life so much easier on your brain, which makes it a lot easier to make a decision.
Making life easier on your brain is ultimately what you’re doing when you batch your time. You are actually giving it a gift. You signal to your brain that it only has to focus on what’s on the plate in front of you right now (yes, pun intended), and it can let go of everything else. It gets to relax enough to focus its attention and energy in a singular, productive direction.
Then, when it’s time, it can let go of everything you just did, not worry about it, and refocus on the topic of your next time block.
This is huge when it comes to productivity. However, transitioning from bouncing all over the place to sitting down and focusing on one single thing may require an uncomfortable transition. After all, you are changing your life habits. But, once you start to reap the rewards, I doubt you will ever want to go back.
Hire assistants
The constant experience of overwhelm can become devastating to a business. I know you have things in your business that you enjoy doing and thrive at. But I also know there are things in your business that drain you personally.
What are they? Name them.
Then, ask yourself, “Is this something that I can give to someone else so I can focus my time on things that are more important to me?”
Here’s another question to ask yourself: “What are the things that I am great at, and what are the things that I’m iffy at?”
If it’s possible to put those things you're iffy at onto someone else’s plate who is better at it than you, it might have the added benefit of strengthening your brand while freeing up your time.
Use a marketing planner
A great marketing planner will have everything you need to keep you strategically aligned, focus on the right tasks so you can meet your business goals, and help you to identify where you need to adjust your marketing in order to grow and scale.
In my opinion, this leads us to one word…
Indispensable.
Find a really good one, and use it.
Monthly planning sessions
If you want your marketing strategy to have any real focus at all, you have to do this. You have to clear off time on your calendar so you can sit down and focus on next month’s plan.
Marketing isn’t just about getting your message out there and making sales. It’s also about evaluating what works and what doesn’t. You want to focus your energies on whatever gives you the best return on your investment.
Each month you need to evaluate progress. Looking at your metrics, how well did you meet your goals? If you didn’t meet them, why not? Do you want to have the same goals for next month? Is there something better you could be doing next month?
Once you know what it is that you’re trying to do, the next step is to align all your energies and tasks.
Planning your next month’s strategy is not something that you scratch out in 15 minutes on a napkin. Set aside a couple of hours a month so you can really dig deep, get a strong sense of direction, and launch forward when the first of the month rolls around.
Want Help With Your Content Marketing Consistency?
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Planner Genius puts an end to marketing confusion, procrastination, and overwhelm by giving you the structure, support, and tools to market easily and consistently!
Do you want to grow? Do you want to scale?
Do you want to break into six figures annually? Do you want to break out of six figures and into seven figures?
If so, you must be consistent in your marketing.
For many people, it’s hard because they are not used to prioritizing for productivity. And, entrepreneurs tend to be the creative types, and creative types struggle with structure.
This is where getting professional help comes in.
Why not sign up for a free clarity call? Let us help you find the direction you need to move forward. You are under no obligation to work with us as a result of the call, so it’s at no risk to you.
Why not at least find out how we can help you make your business dreams come true? Spending a little free time with us can only be to your benefit.
Bo is the community manager for Wise Owl Marketing. He also helps with email marketing and content creation. Outside of Wise Owl, Bo owns his own dog-training business. When it’s time to relax, he prefers to simply spend time with his two dogs, Loki and Lugh, aka the “#McBuppies.”
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