Over the past several weeks, I have written about what it takes to successfully market your off-line business online.
This article gives you an overview of what you need to do.
If you’ve read my previous articles you have what you need to get started.
So—back to my first question—what’s stopping you from marketing your off-line business online?
Most of the time, it’s something inside of us.
- We want it to be perfect.
- We aren’t sure where to start.
- We try one thing and it doesn’t work as we had expected.
- It’s taking longer than expected.
Yes, all of these may be true, but they are just excuses.
Are you looking for reasons to do something or reasons to not do something?
You can’t make anything better until you first attempt it.
Moreover, your first try won’t be your best. You will improve with practice.
Look at the iPhone. The first phone released, while an amazing device at the time, is nothing like the iPhone 6 Plus.
Most things are improved upon as they are used.
The search for perfection often comes down to fear—fear of marketing differently, fear of being different.
If it comes down to not being sure where to start, let me make a suggestion.
Sit down at your computer and just do it.
If you want a weekly e-mail, sit at the keyboard and type.
If you want to create a community on Facebook, start posting.
Don’t worry about the strategy or what you’re trying to make happen. What you’re looking for is the accomplishment of actually doing it.
As you do your activity of choice, you will get better at it. You will change and grow, even though you may not notice it yourself.
The other evening as we were getting ready for bed, my wife mentioned that my writing has improved. She had been reading some of my newer posts, looked back at some of my first ones, and saw that I had improved. I didn’t realize it, but she saw it.
The next challenge is when it’s not working as we expected.
I started a weekly e-mail newsletter, and I’ve sent out ten. I have one hundred people on the list, and I can’t get them to buy anything.
You’re just getting started. Everyone who is successful at any kind of marketing effort learns by trial and error until they get it right.
Congratulation for getting started and keeping at it. Now you need to decide what results you want and then look at what you’ve been doing to get them.
How can you change your approach so it moves people closer to the action you want them to take?
Keep writing and sending out your message and then tweaking it until you get it to work. It takes time.
The last issue that comes up for all of us as we’re getting started with any kind of new project is that it takes longer then we estimated.
Many years ago, I read a quote that new projects always take twice as long as expected to complete and cost twice as much. I think this is one of Murphy’s laws.
At the time I laughed, thinking nothing could be that far from reality.
Now that I’m older, I wonder if that quote could be stated even more strongly. Many times businesses and projects I have started and worked on seem to take longer and cost more than twice what I expected.
When I’m finished they work out okay, but the journey is always longer and harder than I anticipated.
So now that I’ve written this much about getting started, I will tell you what you really need to do.
Sit down at the keyboard and type. When you’re done, distribute your work.
You can do this via e-mail or using one of many different social media platforms.
One of the tactics that helped me put information out when I was getting started was the ability to schedule my e-mail and posts to be distributed.
I could get them done, and instead of sending them live while I was at the keyboard, I would schedule them to go live at a different time. This didn’t feel as intimidating to me.
Get started!!
Have a great week.