Reboot Your Marketing Game For The New Financial Year

We're halfway through the year - time flies! The end of a financial year is a time where business owners will review their finances and goals. But it's also an ideal time of year to review and reboot your marketing game.

If you fell off the marketing wagon, it's time to hit reset.

How To Reboot Your Marketing Game For The New Financial Year

Give yourself a marketing review

You can't reboot your marketing if you don't know where it's at right now. So let's have a look at what happened over the first half of the year. Whether you're a new practitioner who is a marketing newbie, or you've been around for a few years, ask yourself these questions to get you thinking.

What worked?

It's always nicer to start off looking at what did go ok before you get down on yourself. Have a look at what you did to market yourself, and which methods led to paying clients, network connections and other business benefits.

Feel like everything has been a massive failure? There are always wins if you look closely.

Did you:

• Show up consistently on any form of social media?

• Discover what your preferred social media platform is?

• Figure out what style of marketing suits your strengths?

• Run a workshop or talk that brought in new clients?

• Have someone ask for your business card when you mentioned your business?

• Cut out a form of marketing that wasn't working for you?

• Write your first Facebook post, blog or newsletter?

• Have clients referred to you via word of mouth?

• See a higher conversion rate into paying clients?

As an example, I fell off the regular blog and newsletter bandwagon at the start of April.

But I did continue to show up in Facebook groups most days of the week, have people contact me for my fee guide, and maintain my ~75% conversion rate for people who book in a free chat to discuss my services. I also had more clients book in for my 1:1 marketing support service than ever!

So now I know some of the ways that my marketing was on point for the last 6 months.

What failed miserably?

Now it's time to look at what didn't work. Maybe you gave Instagram a go, and got crickets in response. Or maybe you planned on writing weekly blog posts, but you ended up too stressed and booked up to achieve that.

When you note down what didn't work, have a think about WHY it didn't work. You might not know for sure, but you can have a good guess.

Did your marketing efforts fail to reach your ideal clients?

Was your messaging unclear, so potential clients didn't realise why you are the person to help?

Were you just not consistently showing up?

Now before you get down on yourself for everything you didn't do, realise that this is priceless information. It tells you what has not worked, so you can take action to rectify that.

One of my favourite sayings is "there is no such thing as failure - only feedback."

What do you want to start doing differently?

Now that you know what worked and what didn't, you can decide what you want to do differently.

Generally, you'll want to change what didn't work, and keep doing what did work. But this might also be about trialling a new method or platform for your marketing if you've got one nailed.

Time to get strategic

Now that you know where you're at, it's time to take action!

Look for ways that make your marketing easier and/or lazier.

Can you batch your videos or blogs?

Can you pre-schedule social media content so it ticks on even when you don't have time to show up every day?

Is there something small that you can outsource and free up more of your time to be with your clients?

A good way to figure this out is to think about what you want your business to look like when you're fully booked out. If you were a successful practitioner, what would that look like?

Which tasks would you get someone else to do? Which tasks would you keep doing because you love doing them? Write all of it down on a list, and pick one or two changes to get started on before 2020 arrives.

This might also be a time to implement systems that keep you on track. Maybe it's time for you to set up a booking system or a full customer relationship management (CRM) system.

If you're looking to make it easier to keep up with your management to-dos, you might start using a task management program. For example, all of my Q3 goals and content plans already are set up as projects on Asana. That way, I can track what gets done and what doesn't.

Are you in the right marketing mindset?

Being strategic is all well and good. But if you're not in the right marketing mindset, you'll get nowhere.

If you hate marketing because you think it's sleazy, change your language about marketing. Instead of selling your services, you're offering them.

I like to think of my offers like brownies at a party - you offer them around, but you don't shove them down people's throats, and you don't apologise for offering them.

It's also not ideal to create your marketing and content when you're in a down mood. Find a way to lift yourself up, then write your blogs, film your videos or put together your offers.

I know that my services are more likely to sell out if I'm super excited and sharing them out of that excitement. But if I put out a service because I have to pay a big bill that week, it's more likely to flop.

Want some help to reboot your marketing over the next 6 months?

I'm here to help. In my 1:1 marketing support session, we spend 60 minutes workshopping your marketing woes and get you clear on your next steps. To book your session, click here.