What Should You Do About Your Marketing?

You’ve hit that moment. You know it’s time to do something about your marketing.

This moment can come in many forms. You’re launching a new service, or a whole new business. A new competitor's gathering up a lot of attention. A sudden drop in dollars {or people} has you worried. Or...you just know in your bones...it’s time to get this marketing going for real.

And you look for answers.

You ask your friends who seem pretty smart in most things, you ask an agency you talked to once and thought you couldn't afford, you ask a business coach who seems to have her marketing game going strong….

"Hey. What should I do about my marketing?"

{Actual footage of some good old marketing girltalk.}

Here’s the thing.

All those people most likely either don't know what you should do or will be way too certain about exactly what you should do.

Because there is no should.

In marketing, There is no right answer. there is no should.

The problem with should is that it implies a right answer. And there is no right answer in marketing.

@@In marketing, as in life, there is no one right way to do anything.@@ There simply is no single, simple, magic, perfectly right answer. There is only testing and learning and getting results {or not} and getting better results {or not}.

Even still, we’re conditioned to want to find that perfectly right answer {who doesn't want to get an A?}. And there are a lot of very loud voices out there pushing their super simple secrets to success...the single, simple, magic, perfectly right answer that only they have. And with our penchant for getting the right answers, we’re vulnerable to the big promises from those loud voices.

That's the other problem with should ... it implies judgment. It implies that there’s someone out there who knows the right answer and is just waiting to say….here’s what you should do. Or, the classic, here’s what you should’ve done.

Maybe it’s your inner critic shoulding you. But, more likely, it’s people around you, people building their online following out of people like you, or people pitching you their services.

Free yourself from the shoulds. Right now.

Ask yourself why you're marketing. What do you want?

The real question is not what should you do. It’s why you're doing marketing -- what you want to get out of it.

When I help people clear the clutter and find a path forward in their marketing, it’s not about what they should do. It starts with...what do you want? What does success look like to you? How will you know you got there?

Deciding what you want is so much more complex than it seems. It's about being honest about what’s important to you; what you don’t want and what doesn’t matter to you. 

And, in marketing as in life, being confident about what we want insulates us from other people's shoulds.

Are you all about the people? Maybe what’s most important to you is ensuring that your business grows to help as many people as possible. So keeping your services accessible, connecting with a growing audience through social media, and building a huge email list, are all really important to you.

Are you aiming for the dollars? Maybe you want to earn as much money as possible by working with as few people as possible. So building a big email list or a huge social media community isn’t important to you, but telling your story the right way to just the right people is.

Find the marketing that'll get you what you want.

Once you know what you want, you can decide how you'll get it. You can evaluate the shoulds and decide how one path fits you better than another. Not because it's what you should do, but because it's what you must do.

If you're all about the people, and want your business to help as many people as possible, you need to reach as many people as possible. You need to be really active on the social media channels where your dream clients hang out. You need to put out a lot of content and have really enticing offers to get people to opt in to your email list.

But. If you want to earn as much money as possible by working with as few people as possible, you don't necessarily need any of that. You don't need to reach a lot of people. You need to reach the right people. While there's no shortage of people saying that if you want to start {or grow} a business, you should be on Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter/etc., and you should blog regularly, and you should build your list, and you should launch a course...you might not need any of that. You might just need to get out there and tell people about what you're doing. Tell your friends, tell your colleagues, tell your family...maybe even tell people via carefully planned and not-at-all-salesy cold emails.

Marketing isn't about what you should  do. It's about what you need  to do.

I hope you’re seeing that, in deciding your marketing path forward, there’s no should about it. It’s what you want and the most effective ways to get that.

If you find someone shouting that you should be on Pinterest or you should make a new website right now or you should build your email list to mega proportions, take a breath. Remind yourself of what you want, and that you've decided what you will do and what you won't do based on what fits you.

Because there is no should. There is only why.