Don't Overcomplicate Things
Simple guide to avoid marketing overwhelm: focus on profit-driving activities first, phase your growth, and don't get stuck perfecting logos while missing real opportunities.
Hey marketer! 🙋♂️
There's so much you could be doing within marketing, sales, and advertising. There are tons of communication channels, approaches, platforms, and smart apps out there. Just think about how many social media platforms you could be active on. And you could spend loads of time on each one - building an audience, creating content, working with ads. But all of this costs at least time. Or money, if you don't have time and want someone else to do it for you. 🤷🏻♂
I recommend being very strict and self-critical when choosing communication and marketing channels, as well as other marketing activities. 🥊 Map them out in a mind map and then subject them to your own intense criticism:
Will this make me money?
Will this bring me real value?
Isn't this just something I'd like to do, but it doesn't have much benefit?
Especially in the early days of business, when you need to turn over every penny before investing it somewhere, this perspective is crucial. After all, it's your money, right? It disappears incredibly fast, so prioritize by importance and don't let yourself get distracted. Does a beginning handyman really need a professional logo? Will your hardware store actually benefit from Facebook and is it worth creating content for it? 💸
Focus on What Matters Most
I'm not saying you should reject everything and only do activities that directly lead to profit. Keep the others noted down too. But focus primarily on the more important ones. 👉🏻 You can return to the less critical ones later, once your business is running smoothly.
Unfortunately, I often see entrepreneurs who get stuck for ages on their logo design instead of launching at least some kind of website as quickly as possible, running ads, and actively seeking work. Then weeks go by while they're deciding on color shades or fonts, meanwhile they have nothing to fall back on and money is running out. In such situations, you can create a quick basic version of a website, simply write your name/company name/service name instead of a logo, and the website can work while you perfect your logo in peace. 🙈
Avoid the Graphics Trap
Especially with graphics, it's easy to slide into creating unnecessary things. You work on an endless brand manual containing designs for all kinds of printed materials, email signatures, car wraps, advertising flags, and who knows, maybe even airplane decals - while you don't even have a simple sign with your name above your storefront and people don't know about you. 🫥
Everything can be phased and processed gradually. 📝 Plus, if you're just starting out, your original plan might change a bit because the market and customers behaved differently than you expected. Maybe instead of installer services, you suddenly find yourself doing more handyman work - which doesn't bother you, so you start expanding your service offerings.
Think About Growth from the Start
Generally, people sometimes forget about potential growth and expansion. I've met several entrepreneurs who chose their business name in the early days in a way that later became very limiting. Either they planned to operate solo, built everything around their personal name and soon grew into a team, or they started with one service that they incorporated into their business name and then added others, making the original name misleading. Or they changed their field of activity entirely. It's good to admit this possibility and try to think a bit into the future.
Keep It Simple
The solution is to proceed super simply and choose activities based on their immediate impact on earnings. And gradually add more. This will save you a lot of worries and stress from managing many communication channels and marketing activities.
"It's better to do less but with quality, than do a lot simultaneously but poorly."
💡 Food for Thought:
Successful entrepreneur and renowned speaker Gary Vaynerchuk said:
"I think people overthink decisions. There's no time machine, there's no traveling to the future – you'll never know what the alternative would have been. So just pick one option and do it!"
And that keeps running through my head. He's right. Don't be afraid of mistakes. Nobody has a crystal ball. 🔮 Do your maximum to gather as much information as possible for an informed decision, then just decide somehow and go for it.
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Looking forward to the next article!
Jan Barborik
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