Wonder why your marketing isn’t working? Does that sound mean? You know what’s really mean? Working your bum off trying to make a crust and having little to show for it.
Before I let you in on the number one reason why your marketing isn’t working, I want to debunk a few popular reasons most people believe.
Myth 1: You’re not getting enough traffic
Many business owners lust after traffic. In fact, they’re greedy for it. All they’re focused on is more, more, more. Whether they’re paying for traffic with online advertising such as Google Adwords or Facebook ads, or through search engine optimisation, they’re focused on feet through the door of their site (so to speak).
Myth 2: You’re not being frequent enough with marketing
With so much activity going on and so many marketing messages coming at us throughout our day, you could be forgiven for thinking you need to be out there, doing more, updating your social media channels more frequently, having a reason to mail your list more frequently, blogging, writing articles, making videos, producing a podcast. Nope. That’s not it, either.
Myth 3: You’re not optimising the time of post
Righto smartie. I know the answer (she says). It’s that I’m not being smart about when and where I’m posting. There’s an extra special formula of time of the day for each social media channel, as well as blog publishing and pressing ‘send’ on your emails, right? It’s just a matter of cracking that, and then we’re cooking with gas, yes?
The number one reason
Say, hypothetically, you’ve got significant website traffic, month to month. You’re in a good, regular groove with your marketing and you’ve figured out the best time of the day to send your email newsletters, to publish your blog posts and to update each of you social media channels. These are all good things.
But what’s the missing piece? Conversion.
Marketing activity and eyeballs seeing your stuff is one thing, but the other, equally important, essential piece of the puzzle is converting those eyeballs into inquiries and sales.
You must stand out, now more than ever
We have time, focus, and attention. We have more stress, responsibilities, and expectations. We learn how to filter stuff out. We do this walking down a busy street, we do this when scrolling through our Facebook feed, we do this when watching television and reading magazines. We do this to keep ourselves sane.
You have to make people care
Our marketing needs to make an emotional connection with people for it to be effective. We must talk to people about what the problems they’re grappling with, not what we’re selling.
We need to recognise the power of words, and know which words come with messy, potentially disastrous baggage, and which bring a hallowed glow of promise. We need to connect with what people actually care about, not what we guess they care about.
When we can write with emotion, we get over ourselves and start working without ego. Business becomes so much easier. We need to recognise our secret weapons – words, emotion, and creativity – towards seamless flow. We need to write in a way that disrupts, uproots, provokes and transforms. We need to write in a way that activates.
Because otherwise, your reader stays on their comfy couch and you stay invisible.
Ready to write compelling copy? Join me at my upcoming Blogging for Business courses.
