How To Make Your Marketing Manageable

If you want to attract clients, you have to do some kind of marketing. If people don't know you exist, they can't buy from you.

Fortunately, there are absolutely loads of different ways to promote your products and services, both online and off. Unfortunately, that can feel overwhelming.

Everywhere you look, there's some marketing "expert" telling you you need to do this, do that, and be here, there and everywhere.

And that would be all well and good if you had an abundance of time on your hands. But when you're going through a busy period, it can be very easy for marketing to slip to the bottom of the list.

This is why so many freelancers experience the feast and famine cycle. They do loads of marketing when they are quiet, the marketing pays off and they get busy, so they don't have time for marketing. Once the busy period passes, there's nothing lined up because they haven't been doing anything to attract new business.

So how can you break the cycle and market yourself consistently without overloading yourself?

Choose the right platforms and activities

A huge part of marketing is making sure you're getting in front of the right people - your ideal clients. And that means using the platforms they use and using marketing methods they will engage with.

But as well as choosing platforms and activities to suit your ideal audience, you also need to choose platforms and activities that suit you.

I have lost count of the number of people who tell me they hate social media. And yet, they slog away at it day after day because someone told them they need to be on there.

Or the number of people who feel tied to networking groups because they rely on it for referrals and don't have time to do any other marketing.

Or the number of people forcing themselves to make videos even though they hate making them.

It doesn't have to be like this. If you don't enjoy the marketing you're doing, you're going to find it harder to stick with it. And it will impact your results if your heart isn't in it.

That's not to say there won't be days where you're struggling to motivate yourself, but those days should be every now and then, not every day.

So find a platform or activity you like (or at the very least feel comfortable with).

If you like doing video, make videos. If you like writing, start a blog and email list. If you love public speaking search out events you can speak at or apply to be a guest on relevant podcasts.

The more you enjoy marketing, the more likely you are to do it.

Don't try and do everything at once

Everyone will have an opinion on what marketing activities you "should" be doing and it's very easy to get distracted by the latest new platform. But don't try and do everything at once.

You don't need to be on every platform all the time. And you shouldn't be.

If you're spreading yourself across twenty different platforms, it's unlikely you'll be doing any of them well. It's far better to focus on doing two or three activities really well.

If one of them isn't working, you can swap it for something else. And if you feel like you've got a good routine, you can add another platform into the mix.

Start with small goals and build them up

I often hear freelancers setting themselves overly ambitious goals, such as vowing to post on social media every day or committing to a weekly blog post, video or email. And they stick at it for a month or so before it becomes too much.

The ideas run dry, or they get too busy with client work, or they just burn themselves out because they didn't realise how much work was involved.

If you're doing something new, find out how long it takes to do before committing to doing it daily or weekly.

You might think you can bang out a blog post in an hour or so, only to find it takes you four or five. You might think a video will take you ten minutes to film, only to find you have to do multiple takes before getting something you're happy with.

And if you've set yourself an unrealistic goal, you'll give up pretty quickly.

But if you start small, you can build up. You'll get faster at writing posts or editing videos. You'll develop more efficient processes and get into a routine.

So rather than "post every day," start with "post at least once a week", and rather than committing to a weekly blog post, why not start with monthly?

Set your bare minimums

While it's important not to overstretch yourself, you do need to get some kind of consistency. If you're only doing the odd bit of marketing here and there, you'll struggle to get consistent enquiries, which means you'll struggle to get consistent sales.

So set yourself some "bare minimums" - tasks you will do as a minimum every week or month. For example, post at least twice per week on Instagram, or write one blog post per month, or send at least ten outreach messages per month, or connect with five new prospects on LinkedIn each week.

Your bare minimums should be realistic and sustainable. There might be the odd week where you don't stick to them - it happens. But if you can achieve your bare minimum tasks 90% of the time, that's better than doing nothing.

Make time for marketing

Make marketing a priority. I know it can be tough, but it's important. If you're inconsistent with your marketing, your sales will be inconsistent and you can quickly slip into that feast and famine cycle.

Find a routine that works for you, whether it's blocking out half a day a week to focus on your marketing, using the first 30 minutes of each day to work on it, signing up for co-working sessions, or doing it late at night when there are fewer distractions.

Make use of scheduling tools - prewrite and schedule content during quiet times so you have stuff ready to go when you're a little busier.

It doesn't matter when you do your marketing, as long as you're doing something.

Measure your results

There's no point continuing to slog away at something if it isn't getting you the results you want. And with marketing, the results you want usually include sales.

Too many people get distracted by vanity metrics, but likes and views don't pay the bills.

Which is better? 1000 people see a social media post, and not a single one of them buys from you, or 10 people read your blog post, and one of them becomes your next client.

Track where your enquiries come from. Ask people how they found you if it isn't obvious. If you know which of your marketing activities generate the best results, you can invest more effort into doing them. And if something isn't working, you might need to change your approach.

Reuse, repurpose and recycle

I still find it baffling how many people think they have to constantly come up with new content ideas. You don't.

It is perfectly fine to reshare the same social media posts and reuse the same content on different platforms.

We see the same TV ads over and over and we don't mind, so why wouldn't we share our own promotional content more than once?

It's not like you share a post and everyone in the world sees it. In fact, chances are, half your connections or followers won't even see it. And of those who do see it, how many will actually give it more than a passing glance?

Think about how much content is put in front of you every day. How many posts you see on your social media feeds, how many emails you get sent, how many ads you see in various places. And how many of them do you really pay attention to?

Why would your ideal clients be any different?

So don't be afraid to build up a library of content that you can share and reshare and schedule in advance if you know you're going to be busy.

Get support and accountability

Staying on top of your marketing when you're relying on self-motivation alone can be tough, so get support if you need it.

It might be that you have the budget to pay someone to do it for you (or at least do some parts of it). Or it may be that you just need someone to guide you and give you a kick up the arse every now and then.

But if you do need help, get it.

Check out my group events and one-to-one services to find out more about how I can support you, and sign up to my weekly email for tips, insights and ten-minute tasks.

Sitting and waiting for clients to find you is not an effective strategy.