Effective & Sustained Marketing Moves A Business Forward

What if you followed through on all the marketing initiatives you started instead of getting distracted by the many new things? Where could you and your business be today?

Trendy & sensational marketers chase the newest shiny object (social channel, marketing technique, etc..). And while there sometimes is merit in this chase, most that follow the masses usually miss what makes it worthwhile, to begin with. 

What's tried and true doesn't fade away, so there's a lot for us marketers to work with. 

When Blogging Was New

Born in the late 1990's blogging began its rise to mainstream prominence in the mid-2000's. In 2006, when I launched my first blog, political in nature, I was at the forefront of this trend. While this led to a rapid rise in traffic, I didn’t know how to monetize or channel that energy in a fruitful way. I rode the wave but bailed before it led to anything good. 

Fast forward almost a decade later to 2014 when I began consistently blogging personally as part of shutting down my company and launching into the next chapter of freelancing. I now regret not sustaining a personal blog back in 2006 to date, even if it was only updated a handful of times per year. But I’m glad to be over four years into the journey and now seriously making a go of it.

With so many great blogs and content produced daily across the web, my efforts are now a part of a renaissance of blogging worldwide. Getting traction is harder, but the principles a decade ago and today are the same. 

Getting Distracted & Not Following Through 

Undisciplined marketers (including me at times) get easily bored and bounce around from one marketing channel to another, losing the momentum they've built each time

I’ve had a few clients launch substantial YouTube channels regularly creating videos. One that was hugely successful abandoned the initiative in pursuit of different and new priorities. Others have started and stopped blogs and email initiatives. By breaking the chain, they lose the momentum started and when they do come back around, the energy to reboot is not as easy as they suspect.

Steadily Doing What Works, Even When It's Not Perfect

On the flip side, I’ve got a client who cultivated almost 800 blog posts by the time we started working together. Over the past few years, we've been consolidated this library into a focused and quality resource center for the company's customers. We'll end up around 200 when done.

As this enormous content audit project has progressed and rolled out, it's generated a gigantic increase in search traffic year after year. It's been monumental in the growth of his business and its profitability. The very nature of us doing a content audit means it wasn't perfect, but it was good enough to make the difference, get him the traction, and eventually hire me to help him take it to the highest level. Consistency over time matters more than perfection.

Two Principles For Moving The Needle The Right Way

While the best marketers are not always former business owners, many of them are. The marriage between reality and making sure they create a sustainable system, and one that builds a profitable result, is vital.

Many creative marketers have tons of ideas, but they've lost sight as to how it will actually help the business move forward and make a profit. 

As marketers, it’s best to figure this out before starting so you can embrace the campaign for the long run. And remember, no one method is a silver bullet to solve all your growth challenges. 

Two of Jim Collins principles for success are powerful filters for our plan forward.

1. Fanatical Discipline - For us to succeed in a business growth campaign (marketing), we must know our twenty-mile march and ruthlessly execute it every day like clockwork. For this blog, it's three new articles per week that will get me to over 400 (my goal) by year's end.

2. Empirical Creativity - While creativity in marketing is useful, it must also be backed by the utility of it. Does our company projects actually generate a fruitful result or are they simply creative with no practical benefit?

The second principle ensures we don’t launch bad creative ideas. The first ensures we actually follow through on the good ones. 

Successful marketing is grounded and sustained. Anything else is simply a series of unfortunate events. 

Hero Photo by Rui Silvestre on Unsplash