April is the beginning of the second quarter of 2013. If you haven’t done so already, now is a good time to check in with yourself and see how you’re doing with your goals for this year.
Did you achieve your first quarter goals – financial, list building and others? Yes? Yea! Take time to celebrate.
No? Take a moment to notice what worked and what didn’t. Where there things you said you were going to do but didn’t? Read More→
I’d never heard of this term until yesterday but I intuitively understand its meaning. According to Wikipedia “decision fatigue refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual, after a long session of decision making.”
In plain language, the more decisions you have to make, the less able you are to make good ones.
In business, we are constantly making decisions; from what marketing strategy to employ to which phone call to return first. Some decisions will have a major impact on your business, some won’t. That’s why planning and prioritizing is so important.
I heard a journalist on the radio talking about how President Obama has cut out trivial decisions so he has more mental muscle to tackle the big problems. Eating the same breakfast every day and only wearing grey or blue suits are two ways he has reduced the number of decisions he needs to make in a day.
Decision fatigue is why a marketing plan is so essential. Spend one day making a bunch of decisions about the type of marketing you’ll do and put them on your calendar. That way, each day you don’t have to decide a) to engage in marketing and b) which marketing activity you will do. It’s already laid out for you.
Something simple like creating a posting schedule for your Facebook page can reduce decision fatigue. Knowing you’ll post at 9 and 2 on Monday; 11 and 7 on Tuesday etc will make you more likely to get it done.
How do you reduce decision fatigue in your life? Leave a comment and share your tips.
Andrea Stenberg
To create a 12 month plan, first look at your year by month. Take a piece of paper and divide it into 12 blocks – one for each month.
Block out specific programs, services or sales you will be offering and need to promote. For example a coach may be launching a new coaching program in February. A fitness coach may offer a “Get ready for golf” training program in March or April.
Next look at your year and notice the gaps. Are there months with nothing going on? Will you be too busy serving the people who purchased last month or do you need to add some new promotions? Block them into your calendar.
Now look at each promotion, sale or new program. On a separate piece of paper write down each of the marketing activities you will need to do and break each activity into steps. Pick a date for each step and mark it into your calendar.
Now look at marketing activities you will do regularly; your email newsletter and social media posting come to mind. Decide how frequently these will happen and add these to your plan. For example, if you plan to send a newsletter once a month, pick a date for each month and add that to your calendar.
Look at your product offerings to decide what topics relate to your offers that month. This will help you write the content. For social media you may want to have some themes you cover each month, allowing for some freedom to add personal comments or timely material that comes up later.
Adding your marketing activities to your calendar and relating them all to specific offerings does two things. First it prevents the activities from being forgotten or squeezed out because you’re too busy. They’re already in your calendar.
Second, because you know what products or services you will be promoting each month and what marketing activities you need to promote them, you don’t have to make marketing decisions each month. You’ve made the decision today. Now you just need to implement it.
So, go out and create your plan, then have the best 2013 ever.
At this time of year, many of my customers are too busy just trying to survive until New Year’s to worry about marketing their business. I suspect this is true for many professionals who provide a service to other businesses.
If you find your business is slowing down or even drying up for the next two weeks, this is an excellent time to finish your 2013 marketing plan.
First, review how 2012 went. Did you meet your financial goals? If not, why not?
In many cases failure to meet financial goals comes down to marketing. Here’s a list of questions to ask about your marketing in 2012:
I have a confession. While I can be kind and supportive to others, when it comes to myself, I’m a bitch. I expect too much and when I don’t meet my outlandish expectations I beat myself up. If you had a boss treat you the way I treat myself, you’d quit.
I’ve had a bad few months. Several family members have had serious, life-threatening health issues that have been on my mind. I really haven’t been fully in the game.
In addition, recently I hosted a webinar that was a total disaster. Although it was on a service I’d used before I had tons of technical problems. The screen sharing didn’t work, people couldn’t hear, others couldn’t get on the line. It was a flop! Seriously! I wanted to crawl under the covers and forget it had ever happened.
However, it was after the failed webinar that I made my big mistake. Instead of figuring out what went wrong, finding a solution and booking a date for a replay, I allowed this “failure” to bring me to a complete halt.
I began doubting myself, replaying the problems over and over in my mind. I became paralysed, finding it impossible to make a decision about what to do next.
Not only was I second (and third and fourth) guessing myself, I stopped moving forward at all. I wasn’t doing anything to build my business. Lack of forward progress made me beat myself up even more. And … well, you get the picture.
So how did I get off this self-destructive pity track? I finally recognized that I needed help and reached out for support.
It’s not that the support I received was earth shattering or even something I didn’t already know. It’s just that sometimes you need someone else to point out the obvious. It’s like that saying, “it takes a village to raise a child.” If you’re in business, you need your own village too. You can’t do it alone.
Just taking the action to reach out for support helped me get off the pity track and start being more positive. After getting the support, I was able to feel more confident and to create an action plan for myself.
Feel free to use it yourself when you get off track:
Have you ever had a really crappy, horrible thing throw you off course? Please let me know I’m not alone. Leave a comment and share your tips for getting out of a funk.
Andrea J. Stenberg
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