How To Market Smart, Not Hard
Do you feel like you're slaving away for hours on your marketing and see little in return?
Marketing can feel like hard work sometimes. But there are ways that you can tweak your approach to market smart instead of hard.
10 Simple Steps To Market Smart, Not Hard
As with anything simple, there is a lot of aspects involved with marketing smart instead of hard! So I thought I would pick out my top 10 steps to marketing yourself smart and not hard.
Plan in advance
The smartest thing you can do is to stop half-heartedly creating content and marketing when you have to. Instead, let’s get you planning in advance.
You can plan out:
Promotion periods of specific services or packages
Content topics
What to post on social media and when
This doesn’t have to be a rigid plan – especially if you tend to rebel against strict deadlines. Instead, it gives you a guide of what you’re going to do and when.
That way, you never get stuck staring at a blinking cursor on a Monday morning when it’s time to put your social media or blog up for the week.
Create your content around your marketing, not vice versa
It’s common for health practitioners to create content, and then get stuck on how to market their services. Instead, I prefer flipping that around and creating content to support your marketing.
How do you do that?
Firstly, you plan in advance, so you know what you’re marketing and when. For example, if you’re marketing a 4-week stress relief package, you can create blogs, videos and social media posts about stress.
If you know that package will incorporate one week about diet, one about exercise, one about stress management techniques and one about sleep, then you have 4 introductory topics to promote.
Pick 1-2 core strategies and nail them
One of the biggest reasons practitioners struggle with marketing?
They think they have to do ALL of the things and create ALL of the services under the sun!
Just like we tell our clients - when things are overwhelming, take it back to the essentials. Focus on one form of social media and one form of content e.g. blogging.
Stick to that until it becomes effortless. THEN you can think about adding in other options!
Batch your efforts
There are days that marketing just sucks. There are days that you couldn’t come up with inspiring content if your life depended on it. These are the days that it is hard to market smart!
Unless you get ahead of the game, that is.
Make the most of your good days by batching your content and marketing in advance. This could be based on your plan for the month or quarter. Or it could be as simple as writing up a chunk of promo copy and scheduling it in for a launch. You might jump onto Canva and create a bunch of social media images to go along with it.
It’s like meal prep – marketing is easier to do when it’s served up from a big batch-cook!
Use templates to speed up the process
One of the best investments I ever made was getting branded Canva templates made for my business. I just have to add an image and a title or fact, then hit download and post it on social media. Simple!
If you don’t have branded templates yet, my girl Shonelle at Tech For Pracs has you covered. You can get 20 Canva templates for an absolute steal of a price right here.
In fact, you can save an extra $30 if you enter the discount code SGMC111 at checkout.
Spread your branding and message everywhere you go
A big piece of your marketing is your branding and message. That is the goodness you want to smear all over the world (in a good way – like chia jam!)
Keep using each aspect of your branding and message across:
Social media
Your website
Any media contributions you give
Cross-collabs with others
Content such as blogs, videos and podcasts
Your clinic space
Your images
Hell, you can go as far as I have and make your colours your staple across your wardrobe and homewares! That way, you’re always on brand (and your clothes always match, winning!)
That’s why you’ll see my colours, my face and my message of lazy, simple and niche-focused marketing no matter where you see me.
The best part about this? You can reuse similar words, images and concepts no matter where you go.
Reuse what you have when you need (or can)
There is no shame in reusing your marketing and content. In fact, it’s one of the smartest things you can do!
For example, you could:
Use your Facebook posts for Instagram or vice versa
Take tips from your blogs and use them on social media
Transform your notes from a video into a free PDF opt-in for your mailing list
This is also handy when times get busy or tough. If you really can’t face writing a blog or go blank when it’s time to schedule a batch of Facebook content, pull some content that you’ve done previously and reshare it.
Wanna know a secret?
This image is not new (mate, I wish I was still on the GC, but alas, Melbourne lockdown is my reality!)
This is not the only platform you'll see the post.
Plenty of my followers see my content more than once - and they don't give a shiz!
Schedule your response times
One of the biggest black holes when it comes to your time is responding to contact from people.
DMs on Instagram.
Comments on Facebook.
Messages via Messenger.
Emails.
Enquiry forms on your website.
If you’re anything like me, you could spend your entire day just responding to others and refreshing your inboxes.
But that doesn’t earn us the moolah. It often distracts from income-generating activities.
Set yourself some response times each day or each week. Stick to checking your various inboxes during this chunk of time, then close the tab.
Ditch whatever doesn’t serve
Hate Instagram with a passion?
Ditch it.
Feel overwhelmed at the mere thought of Facebook lives?
Ditch it.
Procrastinate for a solid week whenever you need to record a podcast?
Ditch it.
Marketing is not supposed to be like nails on a chalkboard.
It’s your business, and your marketing strategy. You get to choose what’s on the table, and what to toss aside.
Stop forcing yourself to use marketing techniques that you absolutely hate.
As long as you’re consistently marketing yourself and reaching your ideal clients, the method doesn’t matter.
Consider if outsourcing is for you
There are going to be aspects of your business that you really don’t dig.
If marketing is one of those, outsourcing it might be worth considering. That way, you can spend your energy on your zone of genius and working with dream clients instead!
Do you find yourself marketing hard instead of smart? Need some guidance to put together a plan that works for your business?
I’m here to help. Click here to book a 1:1 appointment.
