You tried churning out blog posts or newsletters with ChatGPT.
You all-caps replied to LinkedIn posts offering free and easy resources.
Or you waited until you had the perfect edits before updating your homepage or services page on your website.
These feel like marketing, but they’re actually something else entirely. They’re procrastination dressed up as optimization.
And the way I know is because they didn’t work.
The blog posts didn’t perform, so they stopped. The free LinkedIn resources didn’t even get opened, so they couldn’t help. And the “perfect” edits never manifested, so the website didn’t get updated.
The reason you and most other consultants and advisors reached for these tactics, though, was because you assumed you would hate any marketing you did.
So you tried to do as little of it as possible.
I mean, the very idea of convincing, of persuading, of... *shudder*... selling is just upsetting. Who wants to convince? Who wants to persuade? Who wants to sell?
You don’t want to become the type of person you imagine bad marketers to be, so you avoid anything that might give that appearance.
That’s why optimization, skipping to the end where it’s all humming along and you don’t have to think about it, became the default option.
“I hate this stuff anyway, so let’s automate it,” you might even think.
Problem is, you can’t optimize what isn’t working. You can’t scale what isn’t there at all.
Because for marketing to work you’ve got to keep at it. Long enough to learn from it, to adjust and, yes, even optimize.
Which means, deep down at its core, there is a secret to marketing.
And it’s to find part of it you find fun.
I know. And I’m serious. Marketing must be a habit, not a one-off. Which means we need to find something about it we like enough to keep doing.
The answer isn’t a better tactic, a newer tool. Or some free downloadable resource that you never open.
It’s finding something you already like, and doing it long enough to get used to doing it all the time.
Me, I like writing, so I do it a lot. Is there some ideal, unexplored tactic out there that might perform better for me? Yes. Definitely. Probably short-form video, if I’m really honest with myself.
But I like writing, so I do writing. Which means I’ve given it long enough for it to actually work. And when I do make short-form videos, I can base them off of what I’ve already written.
For you, it might be something else. Could be video, could be process deconstruction diagrams. Could be visualizations or technical webinars.
Honestly, it barely matters where you start. The point is that you do start.
Because marketing is a performance, which means we need practice.
Which means the part you were trying to skip was the only part that actually mattered.
Which is why all those optimizations failed.
Because you can’t speed up what isn’t actually going anywhere.
Kelford Inc. is the marketing team that’s never at a loss for words. If you’re struggling with what to say and where to say it to attract ideal clients, we’ll show you the way.