Fed up of marketing strategies and advice that don’t make any sense for your own business?
This week’s episode comes with a free mantra: YOU DO YOU! Katie talks us through filtering out the expert marketing advice that makes your life – and business goals – more complicated. This week’s theme is insightful and empowering and looks at the three times in your life you absolutely should ignore the experts and go your own way instead.
Today's episode is sponsored by the Instagram MOT. This 20-point checklist and free training are freshly updated, so get stuck in to find out if your profile is fit for purpose or needs some attention! Click on the big yellow button below to get started right away.
There’s no shortage of marketing advice.
As a small business owner, one thing you can’t fail to notice is how packed the ‘marketing expert’ space is. Sometimes it’s beneficial, other times? Not so much. Katie wishes she had £1 for every time she stumbled on two pieces of marketing advice that completely contradict each other; she’d have enough for a pretty fantastic holiday saved up by now!
“Everyone needs different advice because everybody needs different advice, but the problems start when business owners are made to feel wrong, bad or stupid for opting out of a specific approach.”
This kind of pressure only leads to more confusion – so this week, Katie decided to untangle some of this for us. As always, she’s made it easy to follow by cutting it all down to three different scenarios where ignoring the expert advice is the smartest thing you can do.
Are you already meeting your business goals?
Everybody’s measure of success is different. One business owner will aspire to hire a team of people. Others set targets to reach a 6 or 7 figure annual income. Others want to streamline their week and only work three days.
If your ambitions are not so lofty, don’t feel like you have to take advice from those who DO seek out that kind of success.
Sometimes you end up in a position where that money-driven advice comes to you without you wanting (or needing) it. For example – when you sign up for free training on a topic you are interested in, the trainer suggests a strategy or approach that doesn’t suit your goals, personality or energy.
Katie’s always fair and includes her advice in ‘advice you can ignore if you don’t chime with the advice she shares on this podcast.
You do you – that is the overriding message of this episode!
“You don’t have to take every word from a training session as gospel, just because there were one or two useful nuggets of information.”
Does the marketing advice align with your own values?
There are so many grey areas when it comes to marketing your business. One man’s expert advice is another man’s sketchy nightmare, so it’s essential to work out what sits well with you and your values and what doesn’t.
For example, just think how divided people’s opinions are on using click-bait headlines for emails and blog posts. Or how different people feel about pop-up boxes on websites. Do you know the pop-ups that encourage you to sign up to a mailing list or access a discount code? Some people hate them and find them intrusive and annoying. Other people swear by them and wouldn’t dream of being without them.
If your gut feeling tells you that this advice doesn’t feel right with you – ignore it! Or maybe you’d find it valuable to have a conversation with the person who’s recommending this approach.
YOU DO YOU!
“So if a recommended strategy or approach is different from your usual style – sit with it and think about it. How does it make you feel? And how will it make your audience feel to be on the other side of it?”
Some marketing advice causes more problems than it solves
Sometimes it’s easy to recognise this before you even get round to trying it out. Often we hear advice that sounds brilliant at first but goes downhill when you give it a show.
This can be apparent with productivity or streamlining advice – it’s intended to make your life as a business owner easier (such as batch creating content and scheduling it throughout the month, or setting up Facebook ads) but in reality makes the process more of a headache and stress.
Of course, there are always lots of new tools and techniques to help you with these activities. Things like new scheduling tools, productivity calendars, automation etc. But this usually means having to learn new technology and strategies. Not to mention building And building extra time and energy (that you don’t have) to experiment and practice.
“It’s normal to find that some strategies don’t work for your business. Lots of business owners in my network don’t use scheduling tools, don’t run Facebook ads, and they get on just fine.”
The pitfalls of quick-wins and fast results
When you’re researching for ways to help you market your business, it’s easy to click on pages that offer real, actionable advice because it feels like it’s going to be the easy solution you’ve been looking for.
This kind of advice promises you measurable outcomes – 1000 new sign-ups to your mailing list or an easy to follow content calendar to grow your Instagram follower rates.
But the reality is that a blog post with the title:
‘This is hard and takes time, but here are a few ideas to help you.’
Would be much more helpful to you as you work out – through trial and error – the strategies and tools you need for your business. The title isn’t as snappy, but the results are probably more helpful.
When good-intentioned advice goes wrong
Often the action, ‘quick win’ advice we seek out ends up making us feel more stressed-out than ever. It lures us in with promises that are rarely delivered and convinces us that we don’t know what we’re doing or are crap at marketing.
You would not believe the number of people who come on this podcast as guests, who are convinced they’re doing marketing wrong – but they’re running successful businesses. How can they possibly be doing marketing wrong?!
It’s not you that’s the problem…it’s the advice.
Whenever you hear that little voice in your head saying, ‘I’m so bad at this, take a deep breath and reframe it. If you follow marketing advice that’s making you feel anxious or frustrated, then the reality is there’s something about the advice that isn’t right for you and your business.
Remember the mantra from this week’s episode:
YOU DO YOU!
