Welcome to the new School of Marketing podcast. I'm Bianca McKenzie, and this is the place where we break down marketing strategies that actually work without the overwhelm.
Before we dive in, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land I live and work on, the Palawa people of Luturita. I pay my respects to elders past and present and acknowledge the deep connection they have to this land, culture and community.
Now let's dive in and make marketing work for you.
So I want to start today with a question,
and I want you to answer it honestly, like, just to yourself before we really dive into this episode.
When you think about doing your marketing, you know, like, sitting down to write a post,
sending an email to your list, showing up on social media,
promoting your office, like, all the marketing things,
how does it feel for a lot of people?
What I hear is that their honest answer is, like, it feels hard. Like,
harder than it should be,
harder than running, like, other parts of their business.
There's,
there's like, a resistance to doing marketing that doesn't quite make sense because it's not like marketing is, like, physically demanding or it's not like, technically you can't do it because, like, it's like, yes, some parts are technical, but, like, it's not beyond your skill set.
Right?
You know how to write,
you know how to use Instagram,
like, you know what you're supposed to do.
And yet it still feels hard.
So today I want to dig into why, like, not just, like, surface reasons, not like, you know, I don't have time or I don't know what to say, like, those kind of things.
But I want to go deeper. I want to look at, like, real reasons underneath those kind of things that you often tell yourself.
Because in my experience,
when we talk about the real reasons,
marketing stops feeling like something we're constantly fighting against,
and it starts feeling like something we can actually sustain. And that's, you know,
what I want you to do.
So here's the thing about marketing. Feeling hard.
I feel like most people diagnose it wrong.
They assume it feels hard because they don't know enough,
so, you know, they buy another course.
They assume it feels hard because they're not doing enough, so they try to post more.
They assume that it feels hard because they're on the wrong platform,
so they start, you know, all over somewhere else.
And none of this helps because the knowledge wasn't a problem.
The volume wasn't a problem. The platform wasn't a problem either.
The problem is almost always something quieter and something more personal than any of those things.
And until you name it,
you'll keep treating the wrong symptoms.
So let me walk through what I actually think is making marketing feel hard for most business owners.
Because after years of working with business owners,
mentoring small businesses, running my own business,
I've started to see some very consistent patterns,
and I think at least one of them is going to feel very familiar.
The first and most common reason marketing feels hard is that you're doing it from a place of need rather than a place of generosity.
And let me explain what I mean when you sit down to create marketing content from a place of need, you know, I need more clients. I need this launch to work.
I need people to buy.
Everything you create is going to carry that energy.
It feels forced because it is forced.
You're not thinking about your audience and what they need. You're thinking about what you need from them.
And that reversal, like however subtle that is,
makes everything harder.
The caption is harder to write because you're not sure if it's compelling enough to get the result you need.
The email is harder to send because you're worried it won't convert.
The post feels uncomfortable because it feels like asking, and asking feels vulnerable when you're already anxious about the outcome.
Compare that to sitting down to create marketing from a place of genuine generosity.
You know, when you have that, you know, I know something that would genuinely help people that I serve, and I want to share it.
If you flip that switch,
suddenly the creative process is different.
You're not asking for anything.
You are giving something.
And giving is almost always easier than asking.
The shift that I'm describing isn't about pretending you don't have business goals. Of course you do.
But the moment of creating content works better when you lead with what you're offering rather than what you're hoping to receive.
And this sounds simple and it's actually a practice.
And it's one of the most impactful shifts that you can make.
The second reason is a little more confronting marketing feels hard for a lot of people because of the story they're telling themselves about what it means.
Let me go a little bit deeper on this.
If you post and Nobody engages.
It means your content isn't good enough.
If your launch doesn't convert,
it means your offer isn't valuable.
If your email open rates drop, it means people are losing interest in you.
If you put yourself out there and get ignored,
it means you're not good.
Not as good as you thought.
Do you see what's happening?
Every marketing outcome, like every, like every sale, every open rate, every follow account is being run through a filter that turns it into a verdict on your worth.
And when the stakes are that high, of course it feels hard. Of course there is resistance.
You're not just writing a caption,
you are putting your self worth on the line every single time you hit publish.
This is exhausting and it's completely understandable,
but it's also not true.
A post that doesn't perform,
that is data.
A launch that under delivers, that is information.
An email list that's growing slowly,
that's a marketing problem to solve. It's not a verdict on your value as a human being or a business owner.
I really need you to understand this.
The moment you can genuinely separate the outcomes of your marketing from your sense of worth.
You know when a flopped post is just a flopped post and, and it's not evidence that you should give up.
As soon as you can separate them,
marketing is going to get so much easier.
And it's not because the results are automatically going to improve,
but it's because you're no longer white knuckling your way through it.
And I know it's easier said than done,
but it's so worth naming because a lot of the resistance people feel around marketing is this and they don't realize it.
Marketing is not tied to your value as a human being.
The third reason is when I see constantly, especially with business owners who've been consuming a lot of marketing content.
So you've been studying what other people do.
You've absorbed their style,
their approach,
their voice.
And somewhere along the way you've started trying to market like them instead of like you.
You know, like maybe you're writing captions in a voice that isn't quite yours.
Maybe you're making content in formats that suit you.
Like, you know, you might be trying to wrestle your way creating videos. If you're a writer,
maybe you're trying to do long form, but you're really like more of a punchy kind of thinker,
maybe polished and professional,
but that's not your natural style.
Maybe you're positioning yourself in a way that feels technically accurate, but it doesn't Feel true.
And when you're trying to market as someone you're not,
there's this constant like low level friction.
Like it's kind of like wearing shoes that are almost the right size, like you can walk in them, but it's never quite comfortable and over time it's going to wear you out.
The solution sounds simple, you know, just be yourself.
But I know that be yourself is.
It's kind of like one of those pieces of advice that sounds obvious and it's not always easy to implement.
So let's look at it.
I want to be a bit more specific about this.
Think about how you talk when you are explaining your work to someone that you respect and that you feel comfortable with. Like, not like when you're pitching or something like that.
You're just explaining it.
Think about the words you use,
the examples you're looking for and giving the energy that you bring.
That's your voice.
That's the voice that your marketing should be in.
I know that sometimes really goes against some of the stuff that we've learned, especially in education,
like, you know,
writing essays and like that kind of stuff. And if you've worked in corporate, like I know it kind of goes against your natural voice.
Also think about the content formats that feel natural to how your mind works. So if you think in stories,
write stories.
If you think in frameworks, share frameworks. If you're funny,
be funny. Obviously you need to kind of think about this because spoken funny versus written funny,
like there's, there's a nuance to it.
If you're direct, be direct.
Don't you know, sand off your natural way of communicating because someone told you that a different format performs better if you're a writer, right? Don't worry. Wrestle yourself through videos if that's uncomfortable.
When your marketing sounds and feels like you,
like genuine, like specifically like really like you,
it stops feeling like a performance and it starts feeling like a conversation. It should feel natural.
And conversation is sustainable in a way that performance never is.
I know there's so many people who say, you know, like,
you gotta fake it till you make it, blah, blah, blah. You just, you can't,
not if you want it to be sustainable. You need to be yourself. It needs to feel natural.
The fourth reason is more practical. But it's just as real marketing feels hard when every single piece of content is a decision made from scratch.
You know, what should I post today?
What should I email about today?
What do I say? How do I say it? Is this the right time to promote my Offer like all the questions,
so many decisions to make.
When every piece of marketing requires this many decisions,
the cognitive load,
it's just, it's so big and cognitive load is exhausting. It's why so many people feel like marketing takes so much out of them when the actual output isn't that big.
And the antidote to this is structure. I know, like it sounds really simple, but.
And I'm not talking about, you know, a rigid, like, you know, joyless editorial calendar that kind of turns content creation into form filling. I'm talking about a simple framework that removes the daily decisions.
You know what you talk about,
you know, have your content buckets,
you know, roughly when you're going to create it,
create a bit of a, like a batching kind of rhythm.
You know what your content needs to do.
Like each, each piece needs to have a purpose and you know what you want people to do next, which is your call to action.
And when those decisions are made, once you know, at a system level,
you don't have to remake them every time you sit down to create,
then you just create.
And creating from within a structure is so much less tiring than creating from a completely blank page.
If marketing is exhausting,
you need to look at how many decisions you're making in the process,
then look at how many of those decisions could be made once and applied consistently.
And that's where your energy is going. That's where a simple system gives it back.
The fifth reason is one that doesn't get talked about enough,
and that is that marketing feels harder in isolation than it does with support.
And most business owners are doing their marketing completely alone.
Like, no one to bounce ideas off,
no one to tell them, you know, that their instincts are right.
No one to notice when they've been quiet for three weeks and you know, gently ask when no one to celebrate with when some something actually works.
And isolation amplifies all the other things I've talked about today. You know, the self doubt gets louder when there's no one to offer a different perspective.
The resistance gets easier to give into when there's no accountability.
The meaning making gets a lot darker when you have nobody to give your reality check.
And this doesn't mean that you need a business partner or a marketing team.
It might mean that you just need to find a community of other business owners who get it. You know, an accountability partner who you check in weekly. You do the same thing for each other.
Maybe a mentor or a coach who can see your blind spots.
Even just one person who understands what you're trying to do and can ask you about this regularly.
Like the work itself doesn't change,
but how it feels is going to change a lot when you're not carrying it entirely alone.
Okay, so we've named five reasons marketing feels hard.
Let me now talk about how to actually address them because I don't want this to just be, you know, a diagnosis without like giving you a path forward.
So. So for the doing it from need problem,
before you sit down to create marketing,
I want you to pause and I want you to ask yourself,
what do I genuinely want to give my audience right now? Not what do you need from them,
what do you want to offer them?
I want you to start there and let the content flow from generosity rather than anxiety for the making it mean too much problem.
And I know you're not the only one, trust me, we all do this.
So I want you to create some distance between your marketing outcomes and your self assessment when something doesn't perform.
I want you to practice saying that's interesting data before you say anything else,
literally out loud. If you need to just, you know, say, hmm, that's interesting data.
What is it telling me?
I want you to turn it into a puzzle rather than into a verdict because it has nothing to do with you. It is literally data and information.
I need you to go onto a fact finding mission because you'll, you'll just uncover so much for the trying to be someone else problem.
I want you to go back through your last 10 pieces of content and I want you to ask yourself, honestly, I want you to ask, does this sound like me?
Pull out the pieces that feel most like you and the least like a performance.
And I want you to look at what they have in common and then I want you to create more of that.
It is literally about having conversations, like about what you do without the pressure for the no system problem.
I want you to set aside two hours this week to make the decisions that you've been remaking every day. I want you to focus on creating content buckets.
You know, like, what three to five pieces of like type of content?
Can you create content in every single time? I don't want you to think about this every single time you post.
And then you need to decide on your posting frequency.
Like, are you going to post two times a week? Three times, five times. But like,
just know what you're doing if, if it all feels hard. Start with two times a week and then create two or three templates that you can use repeatedly.
You need to remove the daily decisions, and you need to replace them with just a simple structure. Just, you know,
these are my content buckets.
I'm going to do something educational.
Just, you know, look it up. Look to look up content buckets and write down some content buckets for you.
Decide on your posting frequency and then just create.
Just make it simple for yourself.
For the doing it alone problem.
Identify one person, just one,
who you could talk to about your marketing this month. It could be a peer, it could be a mentor. It could be someone in a community that you're part of.
Don't just go to your best friend or your hubby. They need to understand in a way, they need to understand where you're coming from.
Like,
because otherwise a lot of people try to put in their 50 cents and it's not really going to work. So find a peer or a mentor or someone you know in, like, a business community that you're part of.
Tell them what you're working on,
ask them for their perspective,
and notice how different it feels to have even one person in your corner. Like,
it makes such a big difference.
So none of these things are complicated. None of them are going to require a big investment,
either in time or in money.
They just require honesty about what's actually making this hard and then the willingness to address what is making it hard,
rather than just, you know,
trying harder and just doing more things. Because that's often what we do. We just, you know, try harder. Like, work harder, work more, post more.
No,
be honest.
What is making this hard?
And then address that and fix it.
I want to end with something that I think sits underneath all five of the reasons that I've talked about today,
and that is that marketing feels hard ultimately because it requires you to be seen.
Being seen is vulnerable.
It doesn't matter how experienced you are, how. How confident you are in your work.
Doesn't even matter how long you've been in business.
Putting yourself and your business out there for public consumption,
that involves a level of exposure that is. It's just.
It's uncomfortable for most of us,
and that's understandable.
That discomfort doesn't mean that if something is wrong with you,
it means that you're doing something that matters.
You care about your work, you care about your reputation,
you care about what people think. You know, not like in a shallow way, but in a.
This business represents something that I've poured myself into that kind of way.
And the answer to that discomfort is not to push through it harder or to find a way to market that doesn't require being seen.
The answer is to build a relationship with the discomfort,
to recognize it as a signal that you're doing something real and you're showing up anyway.
And you're not doing it because it always feels good, because it doesn't. It's uncomfortable.
But you're doing it because the alternative, you know, staying invisible, playing small,
waiting until it feels comfortable.
That costs more in the long run than the discomfort of being seen ever could.
Okay,
there you have it.
Why marketing still feels hard even when you know what you're doing.
And we also talked a little bit about what you can do about it.
So I want you to go back three to five reasons that I shared and identify which one resonates most with you right now. Just one.
And then take one small action this week to address that specific thing.
Not all five, just one.
Just the one that's costing you most right now.
And if you want support in making marketing feel less hard, with structure, with community,
with someone in your corner helping you see your marketing more clearly,
that is exactly what we do inside the Marketing Momentum membership.
I will leave the link in the show notes so you can have a look.
And I want to say thank you for tuning into the new School of Marketing podcast. I want you to remember that marketing,
it doesn't have to feel this hard.
So hopefully now you have some guidance on where to start fixing it.
I'm Bianca McKenzie and I'll catch you next week. Until then, keep making marketing work for you.
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