Staying Consistent
Let's talk about consistency!
Welcome to the Make It Happen podcast, brought to you by Strategies For Small Businesses, #SFSB, and Christina Littrell-Williams, lead master tactician. My team and I have been working as online marketers for over a decade supporting entrepreneurs as they grow, achieve goals, and even surpass them. We love what we do. It is our intention to give you something you can take away from every episode; an idea, a sense of encouragement, a new tool, and/or answers to any questions you might have submitted to the team.
Consistency seems to be one of the consistent problems across the board with my clients and most business owners in general.
They want to market their services or products and they see all these different ideas, opportunities and tools to use to make it happen. They have big ideas … I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do that then the next “marketing bright shiny object/idea” comes in and they are I'm going to do this; I'm going to do that and nothing gets done to create any foothold on their audience. Sure, they start something, but it seems to be short lived. They lose interest quickly OR they get “too busy” to continue it. They become inconsistent with their efforts and then they lose a lot of potential revenue, a lot of followers, and a lot of people in their tribe/community who have been distracted by a competitor.
Consistency across the board is huge in your business success!
Let’s focus on marketing here.
What is consistency when it comes to marketing?
When you’re planning to market your services/programs/products, you want to do it on an expected path and outcome for your followers, your tribe, your community.
You want to do something that they can expect and that they can count on. Especially if you are providing content that is helping others in a guiding or training manner. You want them to be wanting more from you. You want them to be looking for you because of the value you provide. (Side note, we will be discussing content and what is TOO MUCH vs JUST ENOUGH in a later episode). Consistency is how you infiltrate their busy lives by making it convenient, because they know when to expect things and where to best get it from you just by you being consistent.
Let’s focus on marketing here.
What is consistency when it comes to marketing?
When you’re planning to market your services/programs/products, you want to do it on an expected path and outcome for your followers, your tribe, your community.
You want to do something that they can expect and that they can count on. Especially if you are providing content that is helping others in a guiding or training manner. You want them to be wanting more from you. You want them to be looking for you because of the value you provide. (Side note, we will be discussing content and what is TOO MUCH vs JUST ENOUGH in a later episode) Consistency is how you infiltrate their busy lives by making it convenient, because they know when to expect things and where to best get it from you just by you being consistent.
A lot of times, we'll have clients go, I'm going to do a podcast, I'm going to do a blog, I'm going to do it every day. We will sit with them and lay out just what those plans look like, and we tell them, you know, that's great, that's going to be amazing! Then we ask them, but can you keep it up? And show them their projected Marketing Calendar based on their idea.
When you're planning your marketing, always keep in the back of your head and tell yourself, I need to be consistent with this. I can grow but I never want to decrease what I'm doing in my efforts (unless it is not working, and we will discuss evaluating what is working and what is not in a later episode).
You want to create a marketing plan calendar and plug in what you’re looking to do and overlay that on your daily business calendar. Look at it honestly, is your newest plan something that fits into your schedule and do you have the available time to get it done?
Then put it through the test of asking yourself, is that something that I can follow through on?
Like a blog post, if you are looking to supply rich content to your followers, your community and to attract other people to you, then you're going to want to be consistent.
You're going to want to do a blog every day when you start out but is that realistic for where you are right now?
Doing a blog/article submission is a great idea, and you might want to say let me start out with a blog maybe one every other week. Once I have the flow going, I can add to that delivery plan and give more.
Podcasts are amazing, they're fun, your listener gets to hear your personality, and they get to learn the tone of your voice. They get to connect with you on a completely different level. You have the ability to deliver a podcast in video format as well as audio, as well as a written post like we do, and your audience gets to consume the content on the platform they enjoy. You also end up with three different platform submissions with one piece of content.
When you're planning also plan be consistent!
When we have clients that want to do something short termed and not be locked into a rigorous schedule but want to make sales, we will work with them to produce/services flash sales. Those are short term, you're looking at a week to two weeks tops, on putting out something for a quick marketing venture. These will have an educational set of emails/posts/blogs on a specific topic guiding to purchase the program/service/product that will solve the problem the audience has, and the marketer has the solution for. When that flash sale is done then content creation for the most part can slow back down to a daily routine of just being “seen” in the virtual world.
Flash sales are easier but then you want to set up your consistency in these too. Once a quarter, maybe twice a year. Maybe it's just New Year's, what is that for you and then you stay consistent.
The more you build that foundation of what your followers, your community, can expect from you, the stronger they're tied to you.
When planning any marketing ventures make sure you’re also planning to be consistent. Be sure your daily calendar is updated with blocks of time on it for ALL parts of your life - personal and professional then create a marketing calendar that will not only list your expected “release” dates but also the production days needed to complete that task and overlay them. Give it the test by asking yourself, Can I Do This and Stay Consistent? Or ask yourself, is there someone that can help me get this done and stay consistent?
Sending you much success!
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Thank you
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