Are You All or Nothing With Your Marketing?

In marketing (as in life) many of us tend to have an all-or-nothing approach.

We go ALL IN on something — the new podcast, daily live videos, posting to IG stories, starting up the blog again, getting consistent about sending out email newsletters, driving traffic with ads, and definitely absolutely planning out our next launch more proactively…

(In fact, I see people all the time who get a serious case of FOMO {fear of missing out} if they aren’t doing all the things when it comes to marketing. As soon as they see someone else having success with a new marketing tactic, they jump on the bandwagon, afraid they will lose out if they don’t jump on it too.)

But then, as soon as something gets tricky, or difficult, or a more urgent task comes up, all those good intentions go by the wayside. 

We miss going live one day, or forget to post to stories, or get stuck on what to write about for the blog, or miss a few weeks of email newsletters again, or the podcast starts getting expensive without any real results…

And suddenly it’s like… Why even bother? We broke the streak, so now there’s really no point in continuing at all.

It’s easy to fall back on that place of all or nothing. If I can’t give it my all, why even try?

Which might show up for you as:

• I’m not getting any leads from my podcast, so I don’t even know if it’s worth doing…
• Only one or two people show up to my live videos, so no one will even notice if I stop…
• IG stories don’t convert to sales, and I keep forgetting to post them anyway…
• Blogging is dead, isn’t it? Why take all that time to write something no one will read…
• I haven’t emailed my list in so long, I’m embarrassed to start up again — and what would I even say…?
• My last launch went OK, even though I didn’t do much planning, so it’s probably fine to just do everything at the last minute again…

But when you say these things, how do they feel? Do you actually like being the person who is inconsistent, embarrassed, confused, and unfocused when it comes to marketing your business?

Or are you tired of feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, and anxious about your marketing — and tired of throwing good money after bad because you don’t know where to invest your time, money, and energy to make the marketing work?

The solution isn’t to add more to your marketing plate; it’s to become more discerning.

Less but better.

Less noise, more connection.
Less how to and more why to.
Fewer tactics, more strategy.

Because here’s the truth: less but better doesn’t happen on its own. It requires forethought, consideration, and planning.

A recent client, we’ll call her DW, came to me because she felt like she was doing all the things when it came to her marketing, but she wasn’t sure what — if any of it — was converting. She was spending tons of time each week creating content including going live in her groups, making videos for her audience, writing how-to articles, and sending out an email newsletter every week.

But her topics were scattered — no two pieces of content in any given week talked about the same topic. Her calls to action were all over the place, and they were only consistent when she was promoting a particular course or event. She had dozens of email funnels all leading to different places.

And she wasn’t clear on how any of it was working.

When we sat down together, the first thing I asked her was this: What do you most want to sell more of. She had a clear answer: if she could sell more of her premium offer, that would make her whole business run more smoothly.

Knowing that, we could chart out a clear plan for her marketing efforts. All roads lead to Rome — or in this case, all marketing channels lead to a CTA to fill out an application for her premium offer. Once we determined that’s what we most wanted to promote, we could align the topics for all her various marketing channels with the offer, asking ourselves, how can we use this content to move the audience closer to a sale?

We could also streamline her processes. She chose to make her weekly videos the central point in her content marketing plan. Once she made the video, someone else could write a blog post on the same topic, compose an email inviting her audience to consume the video or the article, and she could still go live in her group to riff on the topic and answer questions.

Suddenly, what had been a big tangled mess seemed a lot simpler — and a lot more effective.

What’s tricky about all or nothing thinking is that it’s a false binary; the answer isn’t all or nothing. It’s something in between.

It’s looking at the data to determine which marketing channels will be most effective for reaching your ideal audience.
It’s playing with the medium and the message until you find the marketing and communication style that best fits your brand voice.
It’s figuring out exactly what your people need to hear, know, see, or do in order to transform from being part of your ideal audience to becoming an ideal customer.

And all of that can all be accomplished with some smart planning.