Marketing your business can get pretty overwhelming in the current climate. The always-on nature of an online business means even when you’re not working, your marketing should be working. To add to this, online marketing is forever evolving, so keeping up with the frenetic pace of change can get hard to handle at times.
As a marketer, you want to try every new trend and throw in a gimmick or two for good measure ... but what if I were to say SIMPLE is the new trend?
Why Simple?
Diversity is beautiful and the diverse opportunities of Internet marketing can be addictive. Yet there is so much complexity in diversity, and so much noise in the digital space right now.
We’re trying to get our audience’s attention in every way possible, but is it all just amounting to white noise? We need to take a step back and re-evaluate our goals and messages. By focusing our energies on simplifying the processes and the output, we can get the attention we’re craving without having to work 24/7 for it.
Simpler Marketing – Ditching the Noise
So yes, marketing is making your life complex. Simple sounds good, but what does it actually mean in practical terms?
Realign Your Focus
Every now and then it’s a good idea to readjust and take a good long, hard look at your marketing strategy and what you’re hoping to achieve with it.
To find your focus, ask yourself questions like:
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Who is my target market?
Don’t try to attract the largest audience possible. Instead, narrow it down to the people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service. If you try to market to a diverse group of people, you’re either going to need multiple strategies or not get the results you’re hoping for.
For example, if you were selling an eBook about dating sites, you would market it differently to men and women. An overarching marketing strategy for both males and females would likely be a flop, because men and women respond to dating differently. -
You would need to figure out who your eBook would appeal to and focus your marketing efforts on that gender. This would help you come up with more targeted messaging and creatives. This would then simplify the process for you and simplify the marketing message your audience would receive.
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What are my goals?
Sometimes it’s easy to lose focus on goals when you’re doing something day in and day out. Ask yourself what the goal of your marketing is. Whether it’s traffic, leads, conversions or anything else, try not to have multiple goals—zero in on one goal instead. One goal will help you focus better. -
What is working?
Are you regularly monitoring and measuring what is working? If certain strategies or tactics are not really delivering as expected, you need to remove them from your strategy and instead focus on what is working so you can keep growing.
For example, let's say you're advertising on Google, Facebook and even Bing, but your conversion rates from Facebook are much higher than the other two. In this situation, you should either switch off your advertising on the other platforms or at least transfer the majority of your budget to Facebook.
One Thing at a Time
If you have been trying multiple tactics/platforms/channels of marketing, this is a good time to thoroughly analyze what is working. You don’t have to do everything and be everywhere just because the Internet says so.
The best example of this is when I see businesses set themselves up on multiple social networks when their audience is only really available on one or two. Why try to juggle Pinterest and Twitter when it’s obvious that your audience is hanging out only on Facebook and LinkedIn?
Keen to try some new tactics you’ve picked up from your affiliate marketing lessons? Go for it! Just implement them one at a time instead of overwhelming yourself with too many changes all at once.
Clean Up Your Act
Has it been a while since you’ve looked over your marketing messaging? Review it to see if it’s clean and crisp and communicating exactly what you’re trying to say. Make a habit of constantly refining your communications so your audience knows exactly who you are and what you stand for. Stay focused on quality content rather than churning out large quantities of irrelevant, off-brand materials.
Most businesses have a vision for themselves. Your aim should always be to communicate this vision to your customers in the cleanest, simplest way possible.
Organize, Delegate & Automate
You don't have to stop living your life and focus all your energies on being hands-on in order to perform good marketing. Simplifying your marketing also means simplifying processes so you’re not tearing your hair out in frustration. Learn to set up processes and use tools that will help you delegate responsibilities and automate tasks where possible. Additionally, work on being organized so you don't end up overwhelmed with 100 to-dos on one day, then having nothing to do on another.
Quick Tips
- Use task management systems like Trello to stay organized.
- Schedule your social media posts with tools like HootSuite.
- Set up reports to run automatically and receive them via email weekly/monthly.
- Outsource content creation if it’s not your cup of tea.
Mobile-Ready Content
It’s a mobile world, so if your marketing is not mobile-ready, it should be. If you’re working on a new website, for example, you should be thinking about making it mobile-ready right from the beginning. Don’t add to your workload by creating desktop-friendly versions of your marketing first and worrying about mobile-readiness as stage two.
A large majority of your audience is coming to you via a handheld device. Even Google is encouraging businesses with their Go Mo site, which is aimed at spreading an understanding of why mobile is important.
Image source: Why Go Mo? – Go Mo
Simplify your life by making sure your content is mobile-responsive automatically.
Most importantly, remember that simplification is an iterative process. You should find yourself simplifying things over and over again to make sure you keep your audience listening even when things get noisy for them.
What about you? Do you find that marketing can get complicated sometimes? Any tips on simplification that you’d like to share with us?
