About this time of year, people tend to suddenly realize that the year is going to end one day.
Perhaps even soon.
That’s probably why this season has typically been our busiest for starting new client projects.
We’ve earned a bit of a reputation for getting things moving when they’d previously been stuck, and for getting early traction when there’s lots of urgency.
Projects need to get finished, KPIs need to get achieved, and all the ambitious plans for January need to get off the ground before it’s been another year without progress.
This year there’s even more on everyone’s minds, though. The tariffs, the supply chain disruptions, the push for AI and the backlash to it. It’s all adding up to a lot of urgency, isn’t it?
As that urgency picks up, it might also be met with some anxiety about your marketing. What you feel you should be doing versus what you’re getting done. What you like doing versus what you have to do. And what isn’t working versus what really needs to work.
That’s why today is just a quick check-in on how you’re doing, along with a few tips to slow the stress while speeding up the work, using our DEW system:
Doing: Are you getting your marketing done every single day?
Enjoy: Do you like the marketing you’re doing enough to have fresh ideas and motivation?
Working: Is what you’re putting out there paying off in ways you can prove?
So, let’s take the first one: Are you Doing your marketing?
What I mean by that is not, are you doing a bunch, all at once, and then forgetting about it for a week? I mean, are you making marketing progress every single day?
The key is to make marketing a habit, not a chore. Something you do because it feels uncomfortable not to do it. Which has to start small, manageable, easy. And then you build up from there.
As Leah says, “If you can’t see the goal, set a pace.”
Because trying to start with One Big Day energy will just leave you exhausted and resentful about having to do marketing you don’t like and which doesn’t seem to be working.
Which gets us to: Are you Enjoying your marketing?
It’s not trivial, it’s not a nice-to-have. If you hate your marketing you’re not going to do your best, it’s as simple as that.
So when you’re building the habit, start with the things you like doing, even if they’re not completely optimal. Optimization is usually just procrastination, anyway. You can optimize once you’re in motion, you can add direction once you’re moving anywhere at all.
Once you like your marketing, you’ll start spending more time thinking about it. You’ll have more and better ideas, and more energy to implement them.
You’ll find yourself able to find the time to get it done, because now you want to.
So find a tactic you like and do it every day until you couldn’t imagine stopping.
Then, you get to decide: Is it Working?
That’s the last thing to check because it can’t work if you’re not doing it and it won’t work if you hate it.
Once you’re doing your marketing and having a good time while you’re at it, you get to measure, adjust, iterate, and optimize.
You get to look at what’s worked best, what hasn’t worked at all, and derive lessons that inform your next attempt.
You don’t change everything at once, and you don’t try a little bit of everything.
You slowly and intentionally adjust one variable at a time until you strike upon consistent results. You feel your way toward success. Marketing performance is a function of practice, after all. Not one big idea or one big day of effort.
But continual, steady, and sustainable practice.
Yes, the year will end one day.
But no, that doesn’t mean you have to panic about your marketing. Anxious activity without focus won’t help.
What can help is starting small, finding the fun in it, and sticking with it long enough to know how to improve it.
There’s plenty of time left in the year for that, if you start today.
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