Did you know that I can give you all the marketing advice in the world, but if you choose not to take action, then the advice becomes useless. The best marketing tactics in the world will never work if you don’t actually implement them.
These are the biggest mistakes that business owners make when it comes to taking action.
Don’t Wait For It To Be Perfect
Waiting for something to be completely perfect is one of the biggest mistakes business owners make. One of two things will happen if you take this strategy:
- You will spend so long perfecting, revising, tweaking and editing that you will never actually release anything. In your eyes, it will never be good enough.
- You take time that you don’t have to perfect a resource, piece of content or marketing campaign. By dedicating so much time to that one thing, everything else falls by the wayside. You could have achieved 10 times as many things if you weren’t so adamant on perfection.
There is no reason that everything has to be 100% perfect when you release it. You will always have the opportunity to tweak and re-release your campaigns once you have gained feedback. If you never release them, you will never get that feedback!
Keep Focused On Your Marketing Tactics
It is so easy to get distracted from your marketing by other things. An inbox full of emails, client work, ordering stock, filling orders, ‘researching’, wasting time on social media, hanging out the washing during work time, and unnecessary coffee dates with anyone and everyone. You might even feel like it’s either feast or famine with your workload.
The question you should ask yourself is, what if my clients contracts all ended tomorrow? Would you have anything to fall back on? Without a marketing strategy, you run the risk of leaving yourself without any clients.
Prioritise time for your marketing. A little forward planning now will see you have a steady stream of clients in the future.
Stop Procrastinating
Does it seem like there is always something more important to do? Marketing is one of those things that you keep meaning to action, but just don’t get around to it.
Allocate time to arrange your content delivery, social media management and advertising. If you are really pushed for time, or the whole process baffles you, then you should definitely consider outsourcing. Marketing is business critical and should be scheduled in, and budgeted for (in time and money).
Don’t Be Trapped By Shiny Magpie Syndrome
Have you heard of Shiny Magpie Syndrome? No, it is not a weird medical condition, but it is a very serious thing that plagues small business owners. It is driven by the constant quest for knowledge. You buy online course after online course, you attend conference after conference, seminar after seminar, workshop after workshop… but do you ever do anything with your learnings? I am a big advocate for ongoing learning and personal development, however there is a tipping point where it becomes too much learning and not enough doing and your business either stands still or starts to slide backwards.
It is time to action the valuable tips you have gained. Hit the pause button on learning until you have taken action on the things you have learnt.
Stop Using Money As An Excuse
Money is a fantastic excuse for almost anything and taking action is no exception. Stop telling yourself that you don’t have the money for a marketing campaign.
You need to start working within your budget, even if it seems non-existent. There are plenty of low cost marketing options that you can consider and take action on. Some will only cost your time. If you need some low-cost marketing inspiration tips then you should check out our blog on Piggy Bank Marketing.
Lose The Fear
It can be terrifying to put yourself out there when marketing your business. Fear can be a major contributing factor to losing focus, procrastination and excuse making. It is important to push past the fear and use your marketing tactics to take action.
I think Erin Hanson said it best with her well known quote ‘What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?’