Hello gorgeous! Always good to see you again.
So last week we talked about marketing being gross, which definitely struck a chord with a lot of you. I don’t think I’ve ever had that many email replies to an article before. 🙂
This week we’re going to get into another big block — marketing just feels totally overwhelming.
Coping with the firehose of information
- There’s too much to learn.
- There are too many techniques.
- It’s too expensive.
- It takes too much time.
And now we have to figure out all this technology stuff on top of the rest of it.
This famous copywriter says I’ll starve if I don’t do some complicated technique he recommends, but that rich marketing guru says I’ll starve if I do.
Then there are all of these acronyms. And jargony things. I don’t even really understand what a brand is, and somebody’s telling me I have to make a brand promise.
It’s enough to make a person want to hide in dark room for about a week.
Or . . . not
The only reason marketing is complex is that communication is complex, because people are complex.
It’s actually possible to make this whole marketing thing a lot easier on yourself.
There’s a very old-fashioned saying that in order to sell anyone anything, you have to get them to know, trust and like you.
And that’s all marketing has to be. You don’t have to turn it into a climb to the summit of Everest.
Put some communication together that persuades a few nice folks to know, trust, and like you. Then make them an offer, on terms that you both find attractive.
The rest is just bells and whistles.
Add a few bells and whistles if they appeal to you. Or just leave it simple, clean and vanilla. Plenty of successful people do.
Why I think people get totally bananas
If you have the kind of personality I do, it always feels like we’re behind. Like our competitor is 100 times more successful than we are, because he’s some kind of marketing genius.
Like the people we meet at those weird business mixers are all mocking us for being small and clueless and out of the loop.
Even though we say we don’t believe the creepy guru guys who promise us a Lamborghini and a mansion in Malibu and a yacht, we kind of do believe it. And so we try too hard, and we don’t give any credit to small steps.
We try to create some gigantic complicated marketing empire from scratch. All at once.
This is a little like trying to give birth to an 11-year-old. Even if you could do it, a) it wouldn’t be any fun at all, and b) that would be one messed-up 11-year-old.
My 5 favorite ways to make marketing feel less overwhelming
- Imagine your business is a baseball game. If you swing wildly at every pitch trying for a home run, you’re going to wear out your arms and generally look like an idiot. Instead, you want to play “small ball.” Keep moving the game forward, hit by hit, base by base. Small victories build into big ones.
- Decide on a focus. You might have one person’s advice you really like. Or you might decide that there’s a style or flavor that feels good to you. But chasing after the latest and greatest shiny object every few weeks will just exhaust you. There are a million ways to do this — settle on the one you like and try not to get too distracted by the rest.
- Don’t try to look so big. No one wants you to be Microsoft. No one likes Microsoft. It’s ok to be small, imperfect, and funky.
- Keep all the pieces easy to change around. This is the biggest reason I don’t recommend that small businesses print a bunch of brochures. Or, actually, any brochures. You can read about an alternative here.
- Don’t think of it as marketing. Just think about it as communication that helps people know, like and trust you. That’s usually a lot less intimidating.
If you missed the first post in the series
This is the second lesson in a five-part series. You can read the first post here:
Next up: a close cousin to “It’s overwhelming” is “I don’t have time.” When we’re trying to make a business work, we spend so time time doing the thing that it can be terribly hard to find time to “market the thing.”
As always, great talking with you!
2020 P.S.
I wrote this in 2009, and I still find it’s weirdly relevant in 2020. Probably more than ever, given pandemics and the struggle to end white supremacy and all the complexity and intensity of this time.
I’ve been thinking about some tools to help, so stay tuned, and I’ll be updating old posts like this one plus getting some new content out!
Take care and stay safe.
Dave Doolin | Website In A Weekend says
Grand Slams require at least one single.
I like to remind myself that home runs will not take any team to the World Series. You get to the World Series by consistently hitting singles and doubles, over and over and over again… and again… and again… The SF Giants are practically proof-positive of this principle.
Stephanie Schuesler says
Sonia –
Great topic! (I need to read the first in the series too; I’ll do that next!) I really appreciate your honest, common-sense approach to this. In fact, your 5 Ways to make marketing feel less overwhelming also tend to apply to life in general! Funny how that is… don’t you think?! You ROCK!
Thanks!
Traci Walters says
Hi Sonia,
Great post, as usual.
#5 Is especially excellent advise in my humble opinion.
As always, thank you for the awesome read!
Traci
Julie, the Digital Marketing Diva says
Sonia;
I love the picture. I feel like that a lot of the time – getting blown in the face with everything.
I obviously have the kind of personality you do because, as you said, ” it always feels like we’re behind. Like our competitor is 100 times more successful than we are, because he’s some kind of marketing genius.” So true.
Thanks for the reminder that marketing is just connecting with people. That’s something I enjoy and needed to be reminded of this week.
Nichole says
I find it odd that you characterize yourself as “small,” when, in fact, you have this blog with a ga-zillion followers. Marketing is very overwhelming. I have yet to start my blog and have opted to begin instead with a massive email campaign and face-to-face networking. The really scary thing about marketing is that you never realize just how many copywriters are out there until you start your own copywriting business…
Sonia Simone says
Nichole, you might be surprised, I definitely do get lots of readers at Copyblogger, but Remarkable Communication is a much smaller crowd. Partly because I post so rarely, so folks don’t think to swing by.
I started out exactly where you are about 2 years ago, I didn’t know anyone in the social media space, so have courage. It takes a bit of time, but it does come together.
(At the risk of sounding like a big pitch-fest, you might want to check out http://www.freelancexfactor.com, which is a program Brian Clark and I did about how to build a strong copywriting business.)
Robert says
Sonia, you’ve done it again… you keep writing directly to me! How do you do it? This is the exact thing I suffer from badly! I even mentioned it in last week’s comment.
It’s so true, I get overwhelmed with marketing big time… I fall into the ‘I’m not good enough’ to write good copy trap, that I don’t write anything, or research waaaaaay too much and talk myself out of writing something… well I decided to do something about it this time, and launched my new site redesign with the copy I have instead of holding out any longer… I can make changes to what’s not working as I go, but I needed to move forward.
Just wanted to say Thanks again for giving us the good stuff for free!
Sonia Simone says
Thanks Robert!
I mainly write to myself and other people seem to dig it. 🙂 (Or at least, all the people who don’t dig it go away.)
Chris says
You got me thinking. I’ve learned computer security by scanning the horizon, picking one thing that looked useful, implementing it, and then repeating the whole process. It’s taken a few years, but I’ve gotten good at it. I probably would have gotten better faster if I had spent less time scanning and more time doing.
I’ll bet the same thing applies to marketing. Pick a basic thing and do it until you’re reasonably good at it. Then pick another. Am I right?
Patsi Krakoff aka The Blog Squad says
I hate marketing. I love writing. Oh, I get it, I can do the marketing thing by writing, only I’ve got to learn to write smart, just like you do, Sonia! Another service ace in the back hand corner…(my business is like a tennis match.)
Evan says
I understand know, like and trust. My question is how to do this in big enough quantities. These things take time and individual attention and how do you do this with 1,000 or however many people?
bob purcell says
Let’s review where the term “marketing” came from. “Marketing” as a practical term was coined by The French during The Marshall Plan, it was meant to encompass everything that one or an organization had to do in order to “bring a product to market.”
Then flowed the famous 5 p’s…that’s why its hard.
Julie Wuthnow says
Sonia,
I actually love the fact that you don’t post too often – those that do are sometimes…. overwhelming 🙂 And really, your gems are worth waiting for – the care you put into them really shows.
This is so helpful – a few days ago I reached the point of realizing I had to pick and choose which marketing strategies to pursue (although I haven’t quite sorted out which ones yet). Usually I can tell I need to focus and back out of ‘overwhelmedness’ when I don’t find any time to produce anything myself, and my days start to feel like one big maze of scattered and stressed multi-tasking. I really like the business I’m creating – when I start to get this feeling I know I’m getting off track.
Stan Lenssen says
Sonia,
I also experience marketing as overwhelming. You always think you have to follow the big guys and act like they do. This is not only impossible for small companies, but – as your Mircosoft example explains very well – also not desirable. I like your philosophy that marketing is “communication that helps people know, like and trust you”. This puts it all in a perspective that can be handled by small companies.
Thank you for that insight 🙂
Darlene says
Hi, Sonia. Once again, you’ve rendered wonderfully relevant material. It is overwhelming but recently I took it down to what I know…and that’s working! On target for hitting $1000 in two weeks. Thanks and can’t wait for #3.
Mark Keating says
Sonia:
That’s odd – every time I surf over to Copyblogger, it’s always one of your posts…
Mark
Sonia Simone says
Little do you know, Mark. 🙂 I only write there once a week, but these days I edit all of them (except Brian’s) and choose the image. So there’s a bit of Sonia in nearly every CB post you read these days.
Sonia Simone says
(P.S. Doing a gigantic WOOOT for Darlene!) It’s funny, isn’t it? When we try to do everything, we fail. When we can execute even a small thing well, things start to move. It’s positively spooky. 😉
Jennifer Woodard says
Sonia,
I have read many marketing books myself and I have found them overwhelming and I have worked in marketing for over 10 years. The process that most books tell people to go through when trying to develop a marketing plan, SWOT analysis and such things can overwhelm someone who is not a marketing person.
I have found it easier to help my clients to focus on what they are trying to do. If they are trying to get the word out about their business, then focus on that one area. Yes you will have to deal with leads and close sales when the time comes, but focus you marketing on the one are that you have chosen. Once they have a chosen an area to focus on then we develop a plan to achieve their goals. I also find for people that are doing their own marketing it is easier for them to develop a long range plan then break it down into short range goals. This seems to work better for my clients. I also ways say, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I work to help them break marketing down into bite size morsels and then it seems less overswhelming.
Jenn
Evan says
Hi Jenn,
Well said. I’m not a marketer (lousy at it in fact, am here to learn) but I have always found SWOT analysis a waste of time. How do we learn what our strengths and weaknesses are? Opportunities? Only limited by our imagination. Threats? On line – anything may happen tomorrow. Every possible new entrant to your market?
I have read lots of marketing books too. I think the problem with most of them is that they are written by people who already know. This means that they are (unconsciously probably) written for people who already know. The ‘how’ is usually assumed. (This is a problem with ‘experts/gur’s’ etc writing the stuff). Thanks for your comment, it’s good to know there are some marketers out there who understand.