The perils of simplifying your marketing
Can your online presence be as simple as this single coffee cup?
A familiar story…
A little over a year ago, I bought a Plus-level plan to ActiveCampaign (AC). AC is a powerful email automation tool that a client was using and I wanted to familiarize myself with what it did and step up my email game. Realizing the extent of what it could do, I immersed myself in training and eventually started using it for my own business. In January 2021 I launched Monday Motivators to a very small list. I loved creating that newsletter and the content that went into it every week. What I learned from subscribers doing that newsletter is what birthed the PappyClub Journal.
Well, that and the fact that I realized how complex my business marketing and communications had become.
I was inspired by my friend and colleague Kerstin Martin (a fabulous Squarespace educator and designer) who had migrated her entire business to Squarespace’s latest version 7.1. No simple undertaking, mind you, given that Kerstin had an abundance of content plus many Squarespace how-to courses she was hosting from her SS site. It took her several months to do the migration, refine her branding and get it all set up as an all-in-one marketing tool for her business. The result was beautiful.
What attracted me most to what she was doing was her straightforward message about reducing the complexity of how she was running her business, which is right up my alley. She incorporates her email newsletter, courses, memberships (which is how she delivers her courses), and here’s something that blew my mind: she no longer gates her lead magnets (“gates” meaning no email opt-in form to get the lead magnet).
Whoah. Online marketers shiver. HubSpot utters a shriek.
That last part is what blew me away. But let’s stop for a second. If your goal is to be of service and help others, why are you trading your value for someone’s permission to market to them? Why not just give them value and build a trusted relationship? This is why I’m no longer doing a traditional paid membership club, gating my lead magnets or having to manage multiple lists of segmented people who came in through a variety of gates.
Did you hear that audible sigh of relief? I did. Thank you, Kerstin, for being the inspiration for a better way to approach an online business.
Here’s where the “perils” come in when downsizing and consolidating your marketing and online footprint. You have to:
Think through the decision to simplify thoroughly so you don’t cause breakdowns in the current systems you are delivering and using to grow your business and service existing clients
Be careful of the traps when oversimplifying where you could possibly lose functionality or data that you need to grow your business or service your clients
Be mindful of your resistance to give up a more powerful tool for a simpler one that still gets the job done
Look at your entire business operation so one consolidation doesn’t impact another area in a detrimental way
The final peril is that you’ll no longer have the excuse of, “I’m too busy doing xyz to market my business or make sales calls.”
My new simplified strategy includes:
Declare a simplified strategy. LOL
Ask the question, “Do I really need [this] in my business right now?” when assessing a new marketing tool, subscription plug-in or whatever extra bells and whistles someone else may be using that they think is the BOMB and distracts you from your own simplified strategy.
Stick with what works.
Do what I do best.
Be 1000% me.
Stop using “busy-ness” to keep me from building relationships and delivering value.
Ask myself, “How simple can I make this?”
Be in action reducing the complexity in everything I do on a daily basis from checking off tasks to walking the dog.
Spread the word about how awesome it is to have a simpler way to operate a business to my audience and clients.
Build simpler products and show my clients that it can be easier (and a lot cheaper) than they’re making it out to be.
🎙️Check out my conversation with Kerstin Martin in episode #907 of the Simplify & Multiply show, which airs June 7th, 2021.
For you:
You don’t need to go to extremes when it comes to simplifying and consolidating your solopreneur business. Take one aspect that you may not be getting the best return or results from and assess how you can improve it. Can you consolidate it? Can you reduce the complexity of it? Can you reduce the cost of it? Can there be an easier solution?
Take my example of using Google contacts, calendar and email as my CRM replacement. I’ll save hundreds of dollars a year, have less tabs to open in my browser and less annoying reminders and functionality that I don’t use to fuss with. I bet you’ll be able to find areas of your business where you can do something similar. If you’re too close to it, let’s talk about it and I can give you some ideas.
