There are five costly marketing mistakes that you could be making, that could be costing you in your business right now.
These are all mistakes that I’ve guilty of making so I know them intimately, and I’ve learned how to overcome them, so now I want to help you avoid them.
Many business owners are making at least one of these mistakes at the moment.
1 – Being Too Timid
The first mistake that I see people making is being timid about what they offer. A lot of people say to me they don’t want to be pushy and they don’t want to come across as always talking business on Facebook.
What people fail to realise is there’s a clear difference between being pushy, and being bold as you share what you offer.
It’s so important that we are courageous and show up offering value, so that people will like you, trust you, build a connection with you, and want to take that next step towards you.
A number of people that I’ve spoken to this week have shared that they are afraid to step up and position themselves as an expert.
They’ve said things like:
“There’s so much info on Google, why would people listen to me?”
“I don’t feel I know enough”
“I’m worried I won’t come across as professional enough”
This is totally normal. Fear of criticism and judgment is a very real fear. I struggled with it for many years and succumbed to the imposter syndrome.
To be honest, fear very rarely goes away completely if you’re continually pushing outside your comfort zone.
We just need to act despite the fear.
When you push outside your comfort zone you can feel vulnerable and exposed. When you go on Facebook Live for the first time or hold a Zoom event, you are putting yourself out there for people to see.
Any creator, when they’re showing their work for the first time before it’s fully finished, can feel they’re putting their soul and heart on the line.
Your business is a form of your expression to the world and a form of creativity. When I started out in business, my brain was always sending me thoughts like “I’m not good enough”, or “no one will listen to me” or “someone might criticise me”.
But these are just stories we make up in our head. We’re not here on this planet to play small and have no voice.
We’re here to make a difference.
I heard a great quote the other day:
You don’t get criticised by people doing more than you, you only get criticised by people doing less than you.
I’ve found this to be so true in my journey. The millionaire mentors that I have, never criticise someone that’s further back on the journey from them.
If you want to have more influence and inspire people to take action, you need to be bold and brave with your offer and not hide away from sharing with people.
Share with boldness and don’t assume that people know what you do. When you start sharing with boldness and passion, it’s contagious.
2 – Being Too Inconsistent
Inconsistency in marketing is a big mistake. A lot of people are very ad-hoc with their marketing and wonder why they’re not getting clients. They only really properly market when they’ve got an offer or event coming up, or when they are inspired, but then they won’t post any content for weeks at a time.
Remember, marketing is not about you. It’s about showing up to your tribe and your community. It’s about being there for people and showing value, even if that person never buys from you.
When you’re consistent, people can rely on you. They learn to trust you, and they get to know you more.
The people who come into my free discovery sessions are usually people are ready to take action, because they’ve consumed my content and because I’m consistent with it.
They’ve either gotten an email, read my blog, or seen a video in my Facebook group. They may have done one of my workshops or webinars.
When people connect with me in strategy sessions, it’s usually because they’ve had some prior interaction with me through my content.
You’ll really fast track your sales process when you show up consistently.
3 – Being Too Passive
The third mistake I see people make is being too passive, rather than proactive.
A lot of people wait for people to come to them. They think that if they put up a website or a few social posts, that clients will come to them.
Business doesn’t work like that. It takes hard work to build something of value. It takes time to craft webinars and events and videos and blogs that are helpful.
They don’t need to be perfect, they just need to be valuable.
You need to share value – share with people about your business and put your name out there as someone to speak at events, on a podcast or on someone else’s social media platform.
How much time do you spend creating great marketing content, landing pages or crafting emails and videos every week?
What is the amount of time in comparison with how much time you spend consuming Facebook, Netflix or YouTube?
The goal is to create more than you consume.
Get your name out there by contributing and sharing your gifts with the world in a bigger way.
Marketing not working? Try a different approach.
Everything is figure-out-able. Be teachable and willing to keep going UNTIL it works.
Make a choice today to start being more proactive with your business and seeking out more opportunities.
4 – Selling on Social Media
The next mistake I see is people trying to use social media to sell. Social media is not about selling, it’s about relationship building.
A lot of people use social media to jump into someone else’s Facebook group and promote themselves or an event or put up an offer.
Remember that people that are following you are not just a number or someone to give you likes.
You want to give value on social media. Lead with generosity. Leading with generosity means being genuinely curious and helpful for those who comment and engage with you.
Be generous with your engagement with your followers. You always want to give free and helpful advice before making an offer.
People need to understand what you offer and the benefits and reasons why they should buy your offer. You need to be clear on the pain points of those you are talking to. You can use social media to help people understand your expertise.
To grow your business, you need to take people from social media to your landing page – such as offering them a valuable freebie, which then captures their email address.
From there you can continue to give value through your ongoing emails and build trust and connection.
5 – Thinking Social Media Will Get You Clients
Social media very rarely gives you enough clients to build a profitable, sustainable business.
Social media is best when it’s combined as a strategy with landing pages and some type of offer – like a lead magnet/freebie or presentation, such as a zoom event.
Getting people onto your email list and capturing people’s details is crucial for growing your business. When people are on your email list, they are on your real estate.
Social media is not your real estate. Our real estate is our landing pages, emails and websites.
Landing pages convert 4 to 10 times higher than websites. So my website is full of links to landing pages because landing pages, which are stand-alone web pages.
On a landing page, people take one action. There are no distractions.
Landing pages have an opt-in action where they enter their name and email, and they go on to your email list.
Your email list is one of the biggest assets that you have as a business owner. You own it.
All of my clients that are doing well are doing so because they’ve got marketing funnels in place with landing pages. They are not doing well from social media alone.
I use Click Funnels and have a lot of different landing pages within it.
The reason I love Click Funnels is that it looks super professional. You can use it for up to 20 different funnels. You can use it for webinars and use it to host online courses. I host my webinar replays in there, you can do up-sells, cross-sells, down-sells – the works.
You can take payments easily through Click Funnels by integrating it with your merchant account like Stripe, so it’s beautiful and seamless. It has completely changed my business. I use templates so I don’t have to start from scratch.
Want to try it out?
You can access a free 14-day trial of Clickfunnels and access all my funnel templates, to save you starting from scratch.
For the template links, drop me an email and I’ll hook you up.
So to recap the 5 marketing mistakes, they are:
1 – Being Too Timid
2 – Being Too Inconsistent
3 – Being Too Passive
4 – Selling on Social Media
5 – Thinking Social Media Will Get You Clients
Need some help?
For a limited time, you can apply for a FREE 45 minute 1:1 client attraction strategy session.
Here’s what you’ll get out of our time together:
- A clear understanding of the challenges preventing you from signing up clients and how to solve them.
- A personalised roadmap customised to your business to apply straight away
- An easy-to-implement strategy to find your ideal clients & turn them into paying clients.
All the best!
Kat
Here they are:
The first captivation weapon is compelling content.
To grow your business, you need to create consistent content that’s valuable and relevant to your ideal client.
It’s the type of content that your ideal client really wants.
Being consistent and constantly showing up and giving compelling content builds trust. People get to know you, like you and trust you.
We do business with people who we like, who we can trust, and who we feel gets us.
There are many people that have signed up with me as a client and said they just feel like I get them and speak their language.
There are a lot of people who watched my business over time before they decided to work with me and this built trust due to the consistency.
I never used to enjoy doing Facebook Lives. But I decided that I was going to do them consistently. There has to be a time where you get serious about your business and say, ‘I’m doing this and there is no ‘out.’ You have to decide to burn your bridges and go all-out in your business.
When I first committed to consistency, I assumed that consistency was going to pay off, but I had no proof. Now, I do!
The benefit of consistency is that you build trust with people who don’t know you. You’re not here today and gone tomorrow, you consistently show up because you want to help people.
When you’re consistently showing up with compelling content, you get to teach people what you do and you get to teach people new things. Through that, they will realise if they’re a match for you.
There’s a piece of research that was done recently where someone did a study that showed it takes seven hours of consuming content for people to make a significant buying decision.
So if you’re reposting other people’s quotes, you’re not really building that trust through your own consistent content.
You need to start increasing the time you are providing content. If you’re doing Facebook Lives, I encourage you to consider running a 60-minute Zoom event.
If you’re already doing 60 minute events, up it to 90-minutes then 2 hours, then commit to running a half-day then a full-day workshop.
Running online events and webinars with Zoom is one of the fastest ways to build up connections with people because when people book into an event, they’re more invested.
I recommend that you do both written and video content. If you’re better at one than the other, then just start with the type of content you are good at, and you will grow as a content creator the more you do it.
The more you put yourself out there doing videos, the less you will need notes, and the less nervous you will be.
Video is the way of the future. It’s also the way of NOW.
Putting out valuable video content builds your personal brand. You’ll get more people referring you as a go-to expert and you’ll be known as a reliable business owner.
One of my clients wanted to build her business, so we worked together. She was so committed to putting out regular content. She kept showing up and she now has over 40,000 followers on Facebook and she got them really quickly!
She was genuinely showing up and building her tribe and creating valuable, consistent content.
This is the first powerful captivation method
The second method is creating crafted online events.
Events are about organising your knowledge and having actionable steps for people to follow. It’s structured and organised.
You don’t have to be a great speaker. You don’t have to be an extrovert (I’m an introvert). You just have to have knowledge that can help people.
Repetition is the mother of increasing your skills and it’s the same with running online events. They are so powerful as you can reach more people at one time.
You can build rapport and connection with more people at one time by doing online events. It maximises and leverages your time.
Every hour that you spend with someone, you could spend that same hour helping 50, 100, or 500+ people via an event.
Doing online events allows you to educate people and inspire them. It can open so many new exciting doors of opportunity for you.
If you’re willing to run an event, people often start inviting you to speak in their groups and you become known as the go-to expert.
I suggested doing online events to one of my clients, Gaynor. She literally laughed, as she didn’t know how she could find the time, as she had her business and was also a busy mum.
I encouraged her to step out and when she did, her results were brilliant. Her first online event brought in $2,368. It was by no means perfect, but she still had people show up and get helped by it.
Since using that online strategy she’s gone on to make over $25,000 and now she has an online course. She used to run retreats in the UK and now she’s taken everything online. She never thought she could do it, but she did!
It takes work when you first start doing them and organising your knowledge, but the hard road gets easier and the easy road gets harder. Events are SO worth it!
The third marketing method to build more followers, engagement and trust is to have a client attraction funnel.
The thought of a client attraction funnel may freak you out, but they are actually simple once you know how to do it.
A funnel is basically an automated way to turn strangers into clients. They are where people can sign up to your services 24/7.
They may come across your post on a downloadable freebie that you created. They click to download the freebie and it takes them to a funnel landing page.
A landing page is a simple one-page website. The people opt-in, they put their name and email in your funnel and they get your freebie to download. In return, you get their details.
You capture people, get their information, and then you can continue to build a relationship with them. A lot of people get my emails and they don’t sign up straight away. But after nurturing them, they come to a point where they are ready to buy.
A funnel could also be a landing page that leads people to your event. A funnel could also be a landing page that’s a freebie that people download and they go into your email list and nurture sequence.
A nurture sequence is a series of emails that give more help and free gifts. Your ideal client will eventually work out if you are the right match to work with them.
Only 3% of people are ready to buy immediately when they come across you. Others need more time to build that rapport with you. A funnel is a way for you to consistently build relationship. You share and give value through your funnel system.
The right people will want to keep working with you. These are the people who see that you’ve sufficiently educated them and inspired them to actually take action.
These skills are all learnable and at some point, if you want to be a successful business owner, you do need to learn these skills.
Remember it’s all about just taking action, and it can be imperfect action.
It’s about making a decision and going for it.
