Have you ever done this?
You get excited about blogging. So you create a blog and start writing content for your posts. You write the first month because you are excited. By the second month it’s getting a bit tedious, but you do it anyway. By the third month you are really questioning why you’re writing and you begin limiting your posts. You slip from every day to three times per week. No results. Month four is cancelled.
Or maybe you’ve decided to send postcards to certain zip codes to try and drum up business. You spend time creating a postcard and figuring out how to make it a powerful campaign. You’re excited about its potential and you ship the first month issue out enthusiastically. With no bites on the first go around, you’re a little more hesitant about month two, but you’re still dedicated to the concept. Month two’s postcards head out your door and into the mail. By month three, you’re very unsure about the whole thing. You may have had a call or two, but really no clients yet. Do you really want to do this and incur this expense? Maybe one more month; postcard three heads out the door. Month four – no sales, no great leads – it’s over.
This is what I call the 1-2-3 Marketing Mistake.
No matter what marketing tool you try, online or off, nothing will work spectacularly on its first go. (Okay, I’m sure you can find some case studies that show instant phenomenal results, but they are the case studies, not reality.)
People today want instant results. We can solve cases in one hour, thanks to television. We can see an entire generation move from birth to death, thanks to Hollywood movies. We know everyone can get rich overnight thanks to many of today’s marketing tools – just look through your email or watch an infomercial.
So why shouldn’t our marketing methods work just as quick?
We are exposed to so much content, so many ideas, so many messages, its almost impossible for the average person to understand your offer with one contact, especially if they don’t know they have a need yet.
Lets go back to our two examples.
If you’ve decided to set up a blog, there is only one thing you should be doing on a regular basis. Blog.
Content is crucial, the more you add the more successful you’ll be. Which means you should blog throughout week one, week two, week 10, week 52, and week 152. If you’ve chosen blogging as one of your marketing tools, you should be using it every week throughout your business life.
Why? Let’s look at what happens.
Your first week, your domain name and blog are new. Nobody knows they exist. They won’t type in your URL and they won’t find you in Google.
By week eight, you are starting to gain ground. Google may now recognize you. Your content may be good enough a few people are sharing it with their own friends on sites like Facebook or Pinterest.
By week twelve, a few of your posts are ranked high in Google under some of your keywords and people are starting to come into your site to find out more about you. Your Facebook and Pinterest traction also continue to rise.
Yet week twelve is the three month point. You have seen little results and so you’ve moved to “I quit” mode.
No more content, no more leverage.
By week twenty, all of your rankings in Google and traction in sites like Facebook and Pinterest is gone because there simply was no follow through. Recognition is gone. Business is gone.
The same thing applies to any type of marketing you do – postcards, networking events, fliers – anything.
When you give up too soon, you’ve lost all the traction you’ve built up until that point.
The only way to make it work – make it succeed – is to put a marketing tool in place, keep it in place, and evaluate it along the way to tweak it and make it more successful for you. Don’t delete it – keep doing it.
That’s what separates the successful from the “out of business”.
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