Are Your Marketing Efforts Falling Flat?
A sneaky reason WHY and what you can do to fix it.
If you’re spending a ton of time and energy on promoting your business and have a solid marketing strategy in place, but you’re still not getting the results you want, it might be time to look at what else might be going on.
I say this with a ton of empathy for what you’re going through because what I’m about to tell you isn’t talked about enough and happens to pretty much every new business owner. I know, because I’ve worked with many of you, and I’m a business owner, too.
Your mindset may need some work.
If the energy you’re putting into your marketing isn’t right, it won’t help you attract clients. At best, you may get lucky to attract a few people who want to work with you. Most likely, you won’t get any engagement, and you’ll spin your wheels trying to “fix your marketing.”
Say, for example, that you’ve started your business, but you’re not 100% sold on the idea of working with clients and growing your business because that would mean more responsibility and demands on your time. Well, that will affect what you do in your marketing and how you show up on sales calls. You’re probably going to self-sabotage without even realizing it.
Or maybe you’ve recently launched your business but are not yet confident in your ability to help clients. That will definitely impact how you market yourself and how comfortable you are showing up online. Which makes it even harder to sell and inspire trust from others.
This is what I helped my last client through, and by the end of our time together, she was feeling a lot more confident, signed her first client, and was excited to start working with her.
The work doesn’t end when you launch.
My last example is a story from my own business. I share this because I want you to realize that even if you’re past the initial stages of launching a business, you will still have to periodically work on your mindset.
Because we’re all human, and things affect us. I’m going to be a bit vulnerable here so you can see that you’re not alone.
Two months ago, I was getting coached by one of my peer coaches, and I told her that I wasn’t sure if I was doing enough in my marketing to attract clients. I had recently changed my marketing strategy and downgraded social media as one of my primary channels because I didn’t think it was producing the results I wanted.
But that made me worry that making this change would affect how many people I could attract because I had pivoted to longer-term strategies.
She listened to me for a few minutes and then pointed out something I didn’t really want to hear but needed to hear. She said it wasn’t my marketing strategy that needed work but my mindset and energy. She could tell I was putting too much pressure on myself to “find clients” instead of just sharing from a place of service and letting go of the outcome.
As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I knew she was right.
What she was saying was that if I just focused on trying to get clients, I wasn’t going to be in the right energy or the right frame of mind to share authentically. And working on my marketing with the sole focus of just signing new clients wasn’t going to attract people to me; it was actually going to do the opposite.
I walked away from that coaching session feeling a bit defeated and unsure of what to do to raise my energy. I had some ideas we discussed, but they didn’t feel very solid yet.
One was around gratitude, and one was around creating from a place of service and being more spontaneous around the content I was creating to make it more authentic and enjoyable.
For the next few days, I worked on being more grateful for what I have already achieved in my business and the results I’ve gotten for my clients. I made a list of my wins to remind myself of them every time I felt low.
Things like: being able to coach over twenty women so far, helping them launch their businesses and simplifying marketing for them; creating my signature program; launching my own podcast, etc.
And I tried to tune into the fact that whenever I coach someone, I am helping them transform something in their life, which is an honor and a privilege.
Here are a few other things I did to raise my energy:
- I took a couple days off from working on my business. This gave me the mental space to work through what was happening in my head and a much-needed break.
- I re-watched a great TED talk from Brene Brown on the power of vulnerability, which is one of the things we covered during the coaching call and something I want to incorporate more into my marketing.
- I re-watched some training from business coaches I’ve worked with, envisioned my next client, and tuned into their energy.
- I went through my program again — I was looking to see if there was any reason I shouldn’t be happy about it — and I couldn’t find anything. So I decided it was top-notch and didn’t need to question this again.
- I asked myself the questions I’m about to go over and started creating content from that place.
- I reminded myself that whatever people do or don’t do (in terms of working with me) isn’t a reflection of me — it’s a reflection of what is going on for them at that moment. Someone had recently ghosted me after filling out an application to work with me — this helped me let it go.
Those were a few things that helped me, but now I want to share a couple things I’ve helped my clients work through…
Feeling like you’re not good enough in marketing.
A lot of the women I work with are very new to marketing. This makes it hard for them to trust themselves and show up because they come to it with a beginner’s mindset and not necessarily a growth mindset.
If, like them, you find yourself thinking:
“I suck at marketing; I don’t know what to do to find clients.”
A good reframe would be:
“I can learn how to market myself effectively. I already intuitively know which strategies I want to try and will take the time to choose strategies aligned with me so I can really focus on those. Over time, I will get better at it, and if I stay consistent, I’ll get even better results.”
We all fail sometimes, even those of us with a ton of marketing expertise. But it’s about learning what works best for you and doing more of that.
Assigning too much meaning to recent events.
If your marketing hasn’t produced the results you want yet, ask yourself:
“What am I making this mean?”
If you haven’t yet signed any clients, are you making it mean that you’re not good enough? That you’re not capable and worthy of working with someone?
Or if someone didn’t become your client after they talked to you… are you making it mean something about you? Or was it just not the right time for them? Or perhaps it wasn’t the right fit? (You can’t be perfect for everyone. And not everyone is the right fit for you, either.)
Having the wrong expectations to begin with.
I’m going to state the obvious here, but many new business owners have the wrong expectations of what’s possible in marketing.
Because we live in an instant gratification culture (and unfortunately, the way many business coaches sell their programs plays into this), many new entrepreneurs think that they only have to do a little bit of marketing to get instant, crazy results. Sadly, it’s not true.
Marketing takes time, effort, and energy, especially if you want to grow organically. Most businesses take years to be successful, not weeks or months.
Understanding this fact helps people stop buying into the false belief that marketing should be easy and clients should fall from the sky.
Sharing from a place of value.
And finally, I mentioned sharing from a place of value. Here are some prompts that can help you the next time you want to create content:
1) What does my audience need to hear today?
2) What does my ideal client need to understand to get them one step closer to solving their problem?
3) What would I like to talk about today? (vs. what “should” I talk about today?)
4) What do I wish I had known when I was starting my journey?
(I would like to credit Anna Thellmann for helping me come up with these prompts. If you need an awesome relationship coach, go check her out!)
I hope you’ll consider some of these suggestions the next time you’re being hard on yourself. And I hope this helps you realize that you are not alone. We all have to work on our mindset, even if we help our clients with the same thing!
Want my help breaking free of these mindset blocks so you can confidently launch your business?
Check out my 4-month 1:1 coaching program, LAUNCH WITH EASE, built specifically for new entrepreneurs. We work on your marketing strategy and your mindset so you can confidently launch your business and start attracting clients.
