Hiding behind marketing

Transcript

Hi, George Swift here from Bigger Brighter Bolder.  

In my previous video, I talked about the importance of bringing sales to the forefront of your business. I talked about the importance of bringing sales to the forefront of your mind. And in that video, I talked about how many small business owners hide from sales. And sometimes they hide behind things like being busy with clients or being busy on delivery, or being busy with product development, or being busy playing with their website or being busy, busy, busy doing other things...  

In this video, I'll talk about one specific thing that I often find small business owners hiding behind in order to protect them from having to go out there and actually do sales activity, which maybe they feel a little bit uncomfortable with.  

Marketing.  

Of course, marketing has its place in business. We all need to be doing marketing of some sort. However, way too many small business owners consume themselves with marketing at the expense of doing sales. Often, because they're trying to avoid sales and they think, “If I could just get marketing right, if I can just do enough marketing, I won't have to do maybe the uncomfortable or what seems to be unpleasurable side of sales.”  

The truth of the matter is, however, that unless you fully embrace sales in your business, you're always going to struggle to achieve what you otherwise could achieve. I talked about that in that previous video.  

Today I’m looking at marketing specifically. There are a million things you can do in marketing. There are a million things you've probably been told that you need to do in marketing.  

The truth of the matter is, only one, two, maybe three of those are actually doing anything at all. And it's possible even out of the three that are working for you, one of them is outperforming the others by a country mile. However, we kind of feel like we must be on all social media platforms.  

I must be doing video. I must be doing blogging. I must be updating my website. I must be maybe doing a podcast. I must be going and doing this, and doing that, and running live events...  

And you start thinking in terms of having to do all this activity in marketing, and you kind of lose sight of why you're marketing in the first place, which is to generate leads in order for you to have sales opportunities.  

So for me, again, it's about bringing sales to the forefront and realizing that marketing supports your sales activity. It's not in place of your sales activity, it's not to hide behind. You want to bring sales to the forefront of your business. You do as much marketing as you need to in order to keep the sales pipeline full, in order to get the results you want in your business, whatever that is, right? Success, as it looks to you.  

So stop hiding behind marketing, stop hiding behind maybe the things that feel safe and maybe even feel fun - like for example, blogging if you enjoy writing, video, if you like doing video, maybe you like podcasting, you've got something to say and you spend a lot of time doing that.  

Maybe you're all over social media, spending hours and hours a day on social media because you know you should be on social media and you're trying to do Twitter and you’re trying to do Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook and everything else. TikTok.  

The truth of the matter is, whilst you're consuming yourself in bringing marketing to the forefront of your focus, sales takes a side line and we lose sight of why we're doing the marketing in the first place.  

When we take marketing, move it to one side, bring sales to the forefront, we stop hiding behind marketing activity. We step up to our sales activity, then we do as much marketing as is needed to support sales rather than consuming ourselves with marketing, hoping that somehow we're going to get sales in the back end of that. We transform the progress that we can make in our business.  

Yes, you need to do marketing. Yes you need to do lead gen. What does that look like for you? For most small businesses, it's only one or two things that really deliver the results for your business. For some people it could be Twitter, for other people it's LinkedIn. For many people, let's be honest, it’s LinkedIn. For some people, it could be Facebook. For some people it could be networking - face-to-face networking, or online networking - for other people it can be referrals.  

What you want to do, is you want to double down on the one or the two that are working, if you want to have a little bit of coverage in other aspects of marketing, by all means have a little bit of coverage. But fundamentally, you want to work hard and graft on the one or two things that are working for you because when we do that activity here and it brings sales opportunities to the forefront of what we're working on today, which is sales, then what happens is we start to bring momentum into our business. Sales momentum which brings in more clients, brings in more money, and of course that is ultimately how businesses grow.  

So stop hiding behind other aspects of your business. Maybe you just got consumed with marketing because we're constantly bombarded with marketing messages about how we should be marketing as small businesses and there are many marketers out there, selling their services to us - not wrong by the way, we just need to be really selective about which ones we do, and which ones are going to work for us. And we must always, always, always remember that marketing serves sales and sales is fundamentally what we're focused on.  

If you make that little transition, that little shift, you'll end up getting more time to spend on sales rather than spending it on marketing that isn't working - maybe more money as well.  

Also, what you'll do, is you'll end up not having to do as much of the marketing as you maybe are doing. Maybe you’ll not be as overwhelmed with the marketing because instead of doing 10, 20, 30 things, you're only doing one or two things consistently, maybe daily, certainly weekly, that give you enough leads to fill your sales pipeline so you can continue to grow the business on the trajectory that you want to take it.  

Stop hiding behind marketing - for that matter, stop hiding behind everything and anything.  

Bring sales to the forefront of your mindset, bring it to the forefront of your business, and your business and your future will thank you for it. 

Are you hiding behind marketing? 

We all need to do some, but are you consumed with it at the expense of doing sales.  

Sales can be difficult. 

But unless you fully embrace sales in your business, you're always going to struggle to achieve what you otherwise could.  

The truth is, only one or two of your marketing activities are actually doing anything at all.  

And it's possible that one of them is outperforming the others by a country mile.  

But we end up thinking, 

• I must be doing video.  
• I must be blogging.  
• I must be updating my website.  
• I must be doing a podcast.  

I must be doing this, and that, and running live events...  

And you lose sight of why you're marketing in the first place, which is to generate leads in order for you to have sales opportunities.  

So bring sales to the forefront and realize that marketing supports your sales activity.  

Stop hiding behind marketing! 

Bring sales to the forefront of your mindset - bring it to the forefront of your business - and your business and your future will thank you for it.