When you’re starting to learn marketing, it can get super overwhelming – there are so many tricks and tips on what to do on Instagram, Facebook, Email, your blog to get more people to pay attention to you.
But as a business owner, you really shouldn’t be spending all your time learning how to use those platforms. You should be spending most of your time doing the marketing work that’s going to continue making your marketing effective further into the future.
You need to think about strategy, not just tactics.
Doing something that’s changing the world and would you like to have a chat with me about it? Click here and fill out the form!
Don’t like videos? Here’s the text version:
Think strategy, not tactics. In this video, we’re going to be talking about the mindset that you need to have as a business owner when you’re thinking about marketing because it can get really, really overwhelming.
If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel already please do it will help me loads and if you click the bell you’ll get notified when I release new videos.
Learning Marketing is Overwhelming
So, today want to be talking about a mindset that you need to have and it’s really important in marketing because there are so many things in marketing. Have you ever sat down at your desk and thought, “Okay, I’m gonna do marketing for my business today!” and then you just look at all of it and it’s just– there’s so many things to do! So many things to learn. There are so many courses on marketing. There are so many tricks and tips to learn on how to make Instagram work for you, how to make Facebook work for you, how to make email work for you… it can get really, really overwhelming.
Learn the ‘Why’ Not the ‘How To’
The point is – and this is the key thing you need to have in your head – is that you need to think strategy, not tactics. And what I mean by this is that you need to be thinking about how these things work and why these things work rather than how to make them work.
In the end you should be leaving the tactics to the people who know how to use them, the people who use them all the time. Hire a person who knows how to use social media, if social media is the channel for you.
Marketing Strategy Questions to Ask Yourself
But as the business owner, as the architect of your marketing strategy, you need to be thinking,
“Is this the right channel for my marketing?”
“Is this where my target person is?”
“Can I convey my unique selling point really clearly on this medium?”
“Is this platform a place where people are going to take the action that I want them to take?”
These are the kind of questions that you need to be asking and have the answers to not,
“How do I post on Instagram?”
“How do I get more followers on Instagram?”
Getting more followers on Instagram is the result that you want to get because you know that Instagram is the place where your customer is.
Example of Strategic Questions for SEO
And the same thing goes for something like SEO or email, right. What is the kind of person that is going to be using that? If it’s SEO you’re thinking,
“Is this something that people actively search for on Google?”
“Is this the kind of thing that Google is going to promote?”
“Is it saturated on Google?”
These are the questions you need to be asking yourself.
This is Step 1 and 2 of the Content-Led Marketing Strategy
So, as a business owner, you need to start taking a little step back from all of the shiny things in marketing and think strategy. And that is why my whole thing, when I’m teaching marketing, is all about strategy.
It’s all about thinking, “Who is my target person? Do I understand them really well? Do I understand where they come from, why they care about my product, what drives them, what makes them want to buy the thing that I’m selling? And how am I unique? Why do they want to buy from me in particular?”
These are the first two steps of the content-led marketing strategy, and they are the most important, I cannot overemphasize this. This is what it’s all about. It is about strategising, and as a business owner – as a smart business owner, as an ethical business owner – you really want to be building your marketing strategy around that foundation.
Because then it doesn’t matter what channel you choose. It doesn’t matter what tactics you take, the strategy is the bit that’s going to form a solid foundation that will keep your business running no matter how the market changes.
And believe me marketing changes so much. It changes so often, you’re never going to be able to keep up unless you are actually actively doing marketing all the time.
So, focus on strategy, not on tactics and believe me you’ll have a better business.