Keep it Simple! (And Get Ahead in the Process)

You are probably making marketing a lot more difficult than you should be.

When it comes to getting the message of your business out there, there are lots of guru’s, there are lots of folks giving advice. Many of those people have earned the right to share that advice. Many of those people have not earned the right to share that advice, and yet, they are sharing that advice anyway.

You know you have problems when you start to follow advice from mixed crowds and especially when you start to compare the effectiveness of your business with others.

And I think a lot of people make it so complicated that they never even get started!

Here’s the solution: Keep it simple and get ahead in the process.

If you will take this advice to heart and really think about it, I think that you will see that it makes sense.

Here’s the deal.

Ultimately, this is your life. This is your business. You get to design it. You don’t have to do it one way. You get to do it the way you want to!

Sure, there are best practices. There are things that I’m going to recommend that maybe you don’t want to do. Okay, well guess what?

Just do something!

Dive in there and find something that you’re going to do.

So how do we keep it simple and get ahead in the process? I think we can do this pretty simply.

Do What You Want to Do

It’s that simple. Do what you want to do.

If you don’t want to post to social media six times per day, then don’t.

Because even if that grows your business at what expense has it done so? The expense of your time, your integrity, your values, the expense of not having the life that you really want?

Your life should never be about your business.

It should be the other way around. And that’s a lesson that I’m learning every single day.

But I work towards the day when my business activities simply support the life that I want to live because I have built them around my life and not the other way around. So don’t do anything in your business that you don’t want to do.

You have a ton of other stuff in your life that you already don’t want to do.

Don’t make your business activities one of them, because you won’t do them! 

And that leads me into the second thought, which is this:

Do What You Will Do

Maybe you will post to social media one time per day with no problem. Okay, fine. Do that. Make it valuable, make it count.

Find a way to engage with people. Maybe it’s a question that incites and promotes engagement. Just do what you will do. because then you can start moving the needle.

If you just commit to doing the things you will actually sit down and do and you do them consistently, then you can start to gain traction over time.

Will it take time? Yes, it will take time.

That’s what marketing, at least organic marketing, which is mainly what we discuss here, is. It is a process that works over time to gain you a string of potential clients that will eventually make it to where you are not making the phone calls on a daily basis to try to gain the next client. They come to you. That’s the ultimate goal.

Do what you will do consistently so that you can produce the results that you want in a way that is consistent with the life that you want.

Do What Your Competitors Won’t Do

Now, this is huge.

Most of your competitors are losing out of business that you could easily gain because there are things that they will not do.

Now, I would give one caveat here. Make sure that the things that you’re doing that your competitors won’t still fall in line with one and two. Make sure that you do want to do them and that you will do them.

I’m not downing your competitors because they won’t do these things. Your competitors might win clients that you won’t because they’re doing things that you won’t do! That’s not the point. The point is not about whether you will or won’t do it.

The point is that when you actually live into what you will do and you do it consistently, you can see results.

So just by the very fact of the matter, doing the things that your competitors won’t do, you will gain customers that they will not gain.

And this is the ultimate kind of “zig instead of zag” thinking. When everybody else is doing one thing, oftentimes the best thing to do is do something else.

Here’s the bottom line: You just do what you want to do, do what you will do, and do what your competitors won’t do. Keep it simple and get ahead in the process.

To your success!

— Steve