One of the most common pitfalls that stops businesses from reaching new levels of growth is that their marketing is time-consuming with results not matching the time invested. 

What I’ve learned in my 10+ years of marketing? A lack of results isn’t always an effort problem, it’s usually more of strategy and systems problem.

It often comes down to these 5 habits that are keeping you stuck.

You’re Constantly Starting From Scratch

Waiting until you need content to film content, not taking the time to build templates, having no system…all of these things make marketing time consuming and feel more painful than it should. 

You spend so much time repeating the same actions (ones that you could easily template or automate), and that all leads to an output that doesn’t match the results. You know the saying “slow down to speed up,” it was made for marketing. When you take the time to build strong foundations and marketing systems, you can speed up exponentially in the future. Both in results and time invested.

Working On The Fly With No Strategy

Marketing takes foresight and advance planning. When you’re just winging it, everything feels disjointed and actions can work against each other.

This is why you try to have the “best Q4 yet” and are left with lacklustre results. Momentum takes time to build. If you’re waiting until you need new clients to start marketing your business, you’re too late and will feel the discomfort of that. For best results, you need to be working 30-60+ days out.

I know that you’ve got a lot going on, but you need to shift your mindset so marketing is something you approach proactively instead of reactionary.

Only Thinking About Short-Term Results

So many business owners are hesitant to invest in marketing when it’s not guaranteed to get short-term results, but that is exactly why you’re stuck constantly chasing your marketing. A website, blogging, SEO, AEO, building a high-value email list, PR…none of them sound sexy and take commitment without clear return, but they have strong compounding results to build your authority and sales funnel reliability over time.

You need both short-term and long-term strategies in your marketing to drive scalable, consistent results that don’t rely on you being on social media 24/7.

Thinking That One Social Media Channel Is The Best Place To Grow Your Business

When you go all in on one channel, you leave so much opportunity on the table. A well-rounded marketing strategy never puts all your eggs in one basket. Instead, it creates an ecosystem where all pieces play a key role in the end result.

I’ve seen this play out in real time, even with other marketers. Last year, two notable YouTube strategists shouted from the roof tops that they were quitting Instagram. The lion’s share of their sales came from YouTube, so why would they waste their time on a channel that wasn’t generating revenue? 

What they failed to see is that Instagram channel functioned as discovery channel. It help them be found and warmed up a cold audience so that by the time they hit their video funnels on YouTube, they were leads that were ready to buy. Unfortunately, it took them months to see the full scale of that decision, and will take almost as long to fully revive their strategy. 

Confusing Vanity Metrics With Real Marketing Data

If the only thing you can tell me is how many views your last post got, you’re focusing on the wrong data.

Reach. Views. Impressions…they are all important but are only a small part of the data you should be looking at. 

What’s your conversion rate? How much does it cost you to gain a new client vs. their life time value (LTV)? Your churn rate? These will tell you how many impressions you need to theoretically hit your sales goals. It also tells you what that client makes your business vs what it cost to attain them, and how long they stick with you before you need to replace them with a new client.

Which platforms or traffic sources lead to the most sales? How are you defining your attribution to determine why that channel deserves that sale? Buyer journeys are not as linear as they once were. 

Let’s tie in the YouTube example from above: A client might visit find you on Instagram, join your email list and visit your website but end up converting on YouTube. That doesn’t mean that YouTube deserves all the credit. The sale might have happened here but the other pieces of your strategy are the supporting cast that made that happen. 

In Summary

There is a huge difference between doing marketing to do it and doing marketing strategically. The first is time consuming and usually has minimal ROI for the amount of effort invested. The latter takes a bit more time to get moving, but yields more reliable results long-term. Which are you choosing?