Marketing Advice For People Who Are Tired Of Marketing Advice

Can I let you into a little secret?  I’m a marketer, and sometimes I’m tired of marketing advice.

There, I’ve said it.

Everywhere you look, someone is telling you what you should be doing with your marketing, whether that’s posting on LinkedIn every day, creating videos, starting a newsletter, writing a blog, building your personal brand, doing SEO, running ads or getting yourself onto whatever social media platform is currently being described as the next big thing.

And somewhere in amongst all of that, you’re also supposed to run your actual business.

If you’re a small business owner, you’re probably already responsible for sales, accounts, customers, suppliers, operations and all the other jobs that seem to appear from nowhere when you decide to work for yourself.

So when somebody tells you that you also need to become a full-time content creator, it’s hardly surprising that marketing starts to feel overwhelming.

I don’t think it has to be that way.

Marketing doesn’t have to be a daunting, all-or-nothing task where you’re constantly chasing the latest trend or feeling guilty about everything you’re not doing.

You don’t have to do everything, and actually, trying to do everything is one of the quickest ways to end up doing very little consistently.

Instead, work out what matters to your business, who you’re trying to reach, what you want your marketing to achieve and what you can realistically fit into your week.

That’s really the philosophy behind The Honest Marketer.

I’m not interested in telling you that you absolutely MUST be doing X, Y and Z, or selling you a complicated strategy full of jargon and things you don’t actually need.

I’d much rather look at what you’re already doing, work out what’s helping, what isn’t and what could be made easier, then help you take things forward one manageable step at a time.

Start with what you’re trying to achieve

It’s surprisingly easy to get caught up in the activity of marketing without stopping to ask what you’re actually trying to achieve.

• Why are you posting on LinkedIn?

• Why are you sending that email?

• Why are you attending that networking event?

• Why are you writing that article?

If the answer is simply, “Because I know I should,” then I think it’s worth taking a step back.

Your marketing might be designed to generate enquiries, build awareness, stay connected with existing customers or establish you as an expert, and there isn’t one right answer because every business is different.

The important thing is knowing your answer, because otherwise it’s very easy to spend a lot of time doing things without knowing whether they’re actually helping.

Stop trying to talk to everyone

Another common problem is businesses trying to appeal to absolutely everyone because nobody wants to turn potential customers away.

The trouble is that when you try to talk to everyone, you often end up saying nothing particularly meaningful to anyone.

• Who do you actually want to work with?

• What do they care about?

• What problems are they trying to solve?

• What questions do they keep asking you?

Those answers are much more useful than trying to create generic content for an imaginary audience called Everyone.

The more clearly you understand who you’re talking to, the easier it becomes to decide what you should say.

Tell your story

I talk about storytelling a lot because I think marketing is much more interesting when it actually tells us something about the person or business behind it.

That doesn’t mean you need to share your entire life story on LinkedIn; it simply means giving people something they can connect with.

Tell them why you started, what you’ve learned, what you believe, what problem you solve or something that didn’t quite go according to plan.

And, importantly, say it in your own voice.

If you wouldn’t say something over a cup of coffee, ask yourself why you’re writing it that way online.

You don’t need to fill your content with corporate buzzwords to sound professional, and sometimes the most professional thing you can do is simply explain something clearly and like a human being.

Find a marketing cadence you can actually maintain

Marketing is often treated as a series of urgent tasks, which means you suddenly realise you haven’t posted for three weeks, panic, write four posts, send an email and promise yourself you’ll be more organised next time.

Then life gets busy and you’re back where you started.

I think it’s much more useful to think about marketing as a rhythm.

Your cadence might be one LinkedIn post a week, a monthly email, an article every few weeks or attending one relevant networking event a month and actually following up with the people you meet.

There isn’t a magic number.

The right cadence is the one you can realistically maintain.

Consistency doesn’t mean doing everything; it means doing the right things often enough that they have a chance to work.

Give yourself the Fresh Eyes Test

When you’ve been looking at the same website, LinkedIn profile or brochure for months or years, it becomes incredibly difficult to see what a new customer sees.

So pretend you know absolutely nothing about your business and look at your website as though you’ve never seen it before.

• Would you understand what the business does?

• Would you know who it’s for?

• Would you understand why you should care?

• Would you know what to do next?

Sometimes you don’t need a completely new marketing strategy; you just need someone else to look at what you already have and ask a few questions that you’ve stopped being able to see.

Talk to people

This might be my favourite piece of marketing advice of all.

Go and have a conversation.

Talk to your customers and ask them why they chose you, what problem they were trying to solve, what nearly stopped them buying and what would make their lives easier.

Then listen to what they tell you.

Those conversations can give you your next LinkedIn post, website update, email, article or even a new service idea.

This is also why I’m such a fan of networking.

My advice has always been “Don’t just turn up – show up”, because networking doesn’t finish when the event finishes.

Have conversations, find out what people do, ask questions, be interested in what they’re saying and follow up afterwards when there’s a genuine reason to do so.

It’s much more useful than collecting a pile of business cards and putting them in a drawer.

So, what should you actually do?

If your marketing currently feels like a giant, slightly terrifying to-do list, my advice would be not to add another 20 things to it.

Start by making it smaller.

Pick one or two things that genuinely matter to your business, decide what you want them to achieve, work out who you’re talking to, tell your story in your own voice and find a rhythm that you can actually maintain.

Then see what happens.

If something works, do more of it.

If something doesn’t work, stop.

You are allowed to stop doing marketing activities that aren’t helping your business, even if someone on the internet has told you they’re essential.

You don’t get a prize for having the longest marketing to-do list, and marketing should support your business rather than becoming another business you have to run.

That’s really the reason I became The Honest Marketer.

I love helping people and I don’t think small business owners need more things to worry about.

They need practical support that makes marketing feel manageable, whether that’s helping with a website, working out what to say on LinkedIn, planning some content, getting more from networking or simply sitting down with someone and working out what on earth they should be doing next.

Sometimes the most useful marketing advice you can get is simply:

“You don’t need to do all of that. Let’s start here.”

And, for me, that’s what honest marketing is all about.

If any of this makes you feel like you need a hand - get in touch!