Be more confident about your marketing choices. Really.

Apr 5

Written By

The hardest part about marketing isn’t the doing. It’s the deciding. Being confident about what you’ve decided to do. Not being weighed down by this nagging worry that you’re not doing it right.

You can sit up in bed at night, fretting to yourself, “Oh no, oh no, oh no, I hope I‘m doing it right.’”

Or. You can get to the bottom of these worries. And you can be more confident about your marketing choices. Really.

You are not the only one who doesn’t know how to do your marketing.

It’s not just you. Everyone I talk to feels this way.

You don’t know whether you’re doing the right thing right now.

You don’t know if you should be doing different stuff. Or more stuff. Or less stuff.

You don’t know how to know if what you’re doing is working. Or if there are things you should be doing to make sure you can get the information you’d need to know if it’s working.

Everything is always changing. You can’t possibly keep up with Facebook algorithms and also do what you do.

You’re intensely aware that you don’t know what you don’t know.

Like I said. You’re not alone. Everyone who does their own marketing feels this way. And, here’s a secret. A lot of marketing experts feel this way, too. Especially about their own marketing.

But when you convince yourself that you’re the only one who’s struggling with something, you make it ten times harder.

You’re less likely to look for help because you’ve convinced yourself that you shouldn’t need help. You should be able to do this. You should get this.

If you want to be more confident about your marketing decisions, allow yourself to not have all the answers.

You’re not going to get it right every time. And that’s ok.

Accept that this might not work. Whatever you’re doing right now, it might not work.

The first time out at doing something usually is awful. Did you win the Tour de France the first time you rode a two-wheeler? OK. So it’s ok if your first Facebook ads get you nowhere. Or your first website isn’t perfect.

What’s not ok is not doing anything. And if you’re frozen by perfection, you will do nothing. If you accept that this might not work, that you might not get this thing right this time, you free yourself up to play, to experiment.

Everything in marketing is an experiment. Even when the experts are running the show.

Get ready to respond to everything that happens in your marketing with this mantra: “Isn’t that interesting.” And suddenly, it’s not so scary is it. {This practice + more stuff that will change your life here.}

You are a responsible, smart person, who’s not going to let it all explode.

You might be saying, yes, it’s all well and good to give myself the room to experiment. But I have a limited amount of room for playing, for experimenting.

This is true. If you’re finding yourself saying, “Isn’t that interesting,” every day because you’re hearing crickets with everything you try...then, things need to change.

But are you really going to let things keep going in a downward spiral until there’s nothing left? Of course not. Because you are a smart, dedicated, responsible person. If you find that the decisions you’re making about your marketing aren’t working, you’re going to change your decisions or get help to do it differently.

Trust yourself that even if things aren’t working as you’d like, you’re not going to let things go so far that they all fall apart.

You can be honest about why you’re doing this marketing stuff.

When you know what you want to get out of your marketing, you can know if it’s working.

If you get clear about where you’re headed, you’ll know if what you’re doing is helping you get there. “I want to grow” is not a reason. Neither is “I want to earn more money.” Or “I want to do as well as I possibly can.” Even “I’m tired of feast or famine” is just not enough.

@@What does success look like to you in one year? Five years? That’s why you’re doing marketing. To get you where you want to be.@@

You’re not doing marketing to get all the Likes or all the Follows or a bazillion website visits or 100k people on your email list. Free yourself from those demands. They’re not real. And that brings us to the next thing.

You don’t have to do all the things. You might not have to do any of the things.

Marketing means different things for different people. Everyone needs a stellar website. Everyone. Beyond that, what you need to do will be unique to you. What you need to do and what you want to do or think you have to do are probably not the same. And no one needs to do all the things.

@@Your marketing needs to fit you. You need to do what works for you and the people you’re talking to.@@

That means that you most likely don’t need to have the best SEO in the world, get 10k visitors a month to your website, or be the #1 search result on Google. You most likely don't need to have a bazillion Followers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or anywhere else. You might need an email program. You might not.

It's ok to quit something. no matter what your mom says.

Most of us have been told most of our lives that we can't quit. Anything. Ever. Quitters never win and winners never quit and whatever.

That is not true. You have to quit some things sometimes.

Just because you've been on Facebook doesn't mean you always have to be on Facebook. Just because you have a blog doesn't mean you always have to have a blog.

If the things you're doing aren't working, quit doing them. The fact that they aren't working for you is not a reflection on you or your worth in this world.

It goes like this: You try something, you see the results, you say, "Isn't that interesting," and you make a decision: change it, quit it, or keep it.

Now, bear in mind that the decision to quit is simple to describe and often very hard to do. We all make irrational, nonsensical decisions based on sunk costs. Just...don't. Don't keep going with the blog because you've put so much time into it. Don't keep going with the email list because you've attracted so many people to it. Do things because they're working for you the way you need them to, not because you've worked so hard on them. {Really. This is hard for everyone. There's a reason Seth Godin has written so much about it -- how to ignore sunk costs, the truth about sunk costs, and more.}

You are not a marketing expert. And that’s ok.

Building on that part about not having all the answers...You are smart. If you’re leading your own thing, whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or the person in charge, you know what you’re doing. You’re great at what you do. But what you do is not marketing.

You’ve probably been doing whatever marketing you’ve got going on all by yourself for a while now. And you know you’re not a marketer. And you know that to get to the next level, you need marketing. You have dreams for yourself.

You want to feel like you’re on stable ground. Like you’re building something.

You’ve gotten yourself to where you are on grit or instinct or maybe a lot of reading or e-courses that promised you a lot. You’ve made the best decisions you could with the knowledge, time, and resources you’ve had available to you.

You can keep going it alone. Accept that your marketing is the best that you can make it. If it works for you, that’s great. Don’t let it keep you up at night. If you want expert marketing, though, you’re going to need to ask a marketing expert.