Showing up online day in and day out seeking attention feels unnatural. That’s because it is unnatural.
We aren’t suited to show up and seek attention over and over. But that’s what we are told to do with online marketing.
The two most common marketing strategies for solo entrepreneurs are social media marketing and prospecting. Both these approaches will drain you if you try to do them year-round.
Very few people can remain consistent with either (especially if they don’t have a team). Yeah, sure there are a few outliers who can do it. They may even try to convince you to do it because they can. But most of us feel drained and burned out.
Here’s the issue
They sold us the idea that we need to show up on social media (and maybe in people’s inboxes) day in and day out, rinse and repeat. Fun! 🤮
But this doesn’t work because we’re not machines!
We cannot program ourselves to do something without ceasing and just ‘go go go’. Especially something that feels as unnatural as organic social media and traditional prospecting. Even the people that do this, if you watch them closely, you’ll see this go-go-go draining approach damages other areas of their lives. No, thank you. So, what’s the alternative (without losing income and/ or getting a 9-5 job again)?
Is there another system that allows you to be, well, human? Yes, and nature has shown us all along.
Nature gives us clues
From the climate to our hormonal cycles to moon cycles, as a species, we’ve largely lived by cycles. Why? because cycles allow for renewal.
Think for a moment about the Earth’s Carbon and Water Cycles. These are just two of the many essential cycles that renew the Earth and its ecosystems. But we’ve lost touch with cyclical living and are currently out of whack!
Nature shows us we must create and maintain systems of renewal. But you may be thinking, ‘This is nice, but what does this have to do with marketing‘? I hear you.
What if we structured our marketing cyclically, not linearly? What if we had periods where we refocused so we weren’t expending the same levels of energy all year like machines?
What if we structured our marketing so that we could (gasp!) take breaks?
We.
Need.
Rest!
Right now, with your current system, there’s no room for rest. That’s the issue with organic social media marketing and it’s the same with prospecting. You’re running on a treadmill with no off switch.
→ If social media is your thing, when you stop posting, your income either drops or stops increasing.
→ If prospecting is how you get clients, then when you stop prospecting, your income drops or stops increasing.
Behold! The recipe for burnout Bundt cake. Would you like a slice? Um…no, thank you!
Mainstream marketing strategy advice doesn’t allow for rest
(and it’s missing a few key pieces)
Most gurus aren’t showing you a holistic marketing approach. They’re teaching you specific tools and tactics, not a holistic system. They aren’t necessarily doing anything wrong. You do need to know how to use the tools and tactics. But, it’s up to you to take what you learn and plug it into your system.
I’m not knocking the guru’s success, but if you try to follow their tactics, you’ll notice you aren’t getting results anywhere near theirs even though you’re following all the steps.
Which of the following scenarios has left you scratching your head or wondering if something is wrong with you?
Scenario #1: Someone teaches you a short-term strategy such as IG marketing. Their strategy may work for a time, but what happens when you become fed up with showing up on social media ‘consistently’? By that time, you’re panicking because you know if you quit your income will plummet.
Scenario #2: Someone teaches you YouTube tactics (including SEO). Their content may be solid but what they never explained is how to incorporate YouTube into a holistic marketing system. YouTube is a long game. What do you do in the short-term, while your YouTube is gaining traction and the algorithm isn’t quite algorithim-ing the way you were told it would?
This is where most people quit because the guru didn’t teach that part. You need to understand the guru was true to their word, though. They taught you a tactic and they can turn around and say ‘It didn’t work for you because you weren’t consistent‘. They’re right. But why weren’t you consistent?
You weren’t consistent because:
a. You were drowning trying to implement tactics that worked for them but aren’t working for you.
b. You don’t have a system that allows you to be human and rest.
Consistent marketing efforts do lead to consistent income. But, they also lead to burnout and exhaustion. We have to redefine the concept of marketing consistency.
Rethinking the concept of marketing strategy consistency
(for solo entrepreneurs)
What does it mean to be consistent?
Most people tell you consistency = showing up on social media or in people’s inboxes day after day like a robot.
This is a limited view that doesn’t tell the whole story.
Being consistent also means:
→ Consistent focus on your vision (doing things in alignment with that vision).
→ Consistent voice and tone of your messages and your overall message.
→ A system that brings consistent attention to your offers (this includes active and passive marketing efforts).
Notice I didn’t mention anything about daily—or even weekly—posting on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or wherever.
You need a marketing system that doesn’t require consistent energy and effort all year.
Create a marketing strategy that’s cyclical, instead of solely linear
This isn’t a magic trick. Simply use the technology that’s already available.
Step 1: Stop creating never-ending content plans and start planning a time when you’ll rest. I call these marketing rest periods.
Step 2 Plant long-term marketing seeds that bear fruit during your marketing rest periods (and beyond)!
You may be thinking ‘I take breaks when I need to. I already rest sometimes.’ Great! But here’s the problem with that:
- We tend to push ourselves far too long before we feel drained and then decide to take a break. So by the time we take the break, we’re near exhaustion. We needed the rest some time ago.
- When we do take a rest, because we hadn’t planned for it, we either don’t take long enough or take too long and our finances and momentum suffer.
Instead, we need to intentionally build rest periods into our marketing system.
Here’s how to do it
Focus on balancing your short-term with long-term marketing seeds so that by the time the long-term fruits come to bear, you can feast on them during your marketing rest period.
Short-term marketing seeds
These are the common digital marketing efforts. They have a short lifespan. A few days after you post or send them, they’re dead. finished. gone. Very few people will ever see them again. For example:
- IG posts
- FB posts
- LI posts
- Salesy prospecting
Long-term marketing seeds
These take longer to bear fruit, but when they do, they’re more passive. You create them today and bear the fruit months down the line (while you’re in your marketing rest period, for example).
For this to work, your long-term marketing seeds must be high-value (searchable or suggested/recommended) content.
Examples of high-value long-term seeds:
→ Creating a bank of scheduled interrelated social media posts (one post leads to the next, and so on, with a structured purpose behind each of them).
→ Well-thought-out and keyworded SEO (Search Engine Optimized) evergreen blog posts—not just throwing a few keywords in and calling that an SEO post. For this to work, you have to take the time to do the required research that gives your posts a high chance of ranking when people search for the topic.
Also, your main talking points cannot be the same generic stuff everyone in your niche/bubble is talking about. You need to add something to the conversation. Something that keeps people reading (and coming back for more). If your content can be duplicated on ChatGPT, it will not work for this system.
→ SEO Medium articles (same as above in terms of well-thought-out content).
→ SEO YouTube videos (you get the gist).
→ Strategic collaborations with other creators (for example SEO guest posts and podcast interviews on YouTube).
→ People-centered prospecting conversations.
These seeds can bring long-term attention to your offers (even when you’re not active on social media or in DMs). They take time to grow but when implemented strategically, can let you take your marketing rest.
Prospecting can be both short-term and long-term. If your approach is people-centered as opposed to pushy prospecting, you can often reap rewards in the long term. For example, sometimes prospects you’re conversing with just aren’t ready, and then bam! 6 months later they jump in their inbox and reply to one of your 6-month-old messages saying they want to hire you/buy.
Notice that many of these are SEO-related. You may have heard about SEO, but unless it’s a part of your marketing system, you’ve grossly underestimated the power of it. SEO articles/videos mean you publish it today and people can come across this piece of content months and years into the future. It’s like passive marketing.
A cyclical marketing strategy that allows for rest helps you gain an unfair advantage
When you sprinkle the internet soil with short-term and long-term seeds, you allow for personal renewal. You also gain an unfair advantage because most other entrepreneurs struggle with this consistency issue. You don’t want to be ‘most’ entrepreneurs. You have to find your edge.
Well, you have to find several several edges. Working in cycles can be one of them because most others aren’t doing it and instead, they end up burning out and in marketing slumps which hurt their bottom line because they have little to no well-strategized long-term seeds planted.
Using marketing cycles as motivation
Imagine saying the following to yourself. How does it sound (and feel)?
‘I have to post four days a week on social media indefinitely with no end in sight.’
VS
‘I’m posting four days a week on social media now, but I have a long marketing break planned later in the year’.
You can feel the difference in your body.
Humans work well when we have something to look forward to. It gives us hope. Somehow we muster the energy when we know a break is coming.
How do we know this will work?
Don’t take my word for it. Does SEO work? Of course, it does. It’s the main marketing strategy for hundreds of thousands of businesses and for some, it’s their ONLY strategy because it’s a proven, long-term approach.
Does people-centered prospecting work? The answer to this one is obvious, too. We’re humans. Connections, conversations, word of mouth, and referrals have been central to business since the beginning of time.
But…
All marketing is an experiment. If you come across someone who tells you that XYZ works 100% of the time, run! Nothing works the same for everyone all the time. Nothing!
So, test this for yourself and your audience. The beauty of cyclical working is you have breathing room to test and assess (without losing income).
Do this as an experiment. You can start planting your long-term seeds now. Let them grow for at least three months, then start watching and measuring to see the results. In the meantime, you’re still doing your short-term seed planting, so you’re not losing anything at that time. Don’t overload yourself. Chip away at this if you’re feeling overbooked. Create your long-term seeds slowly (or quickly if you can carve out the time). Remember, you want them to be meatier than the usual content you come across. They have to rise above the noise so they will take longer to create. It’s time well spent, and you’ll thank yourself later.
If you give yourself enough of a runway, by the time your scheduled marketing rest period comes along, you’ll be enjoying the fruit of your long-term seeds (or at the very least, you’ll know what isn’t working and what to tweak).
Bonus: You won’t just be adding to the internet noise because in the process,
you’ll be contributing to your body of work
For years, I’ve been advocating for creating a body of work. When you plant long-term seeds, you’re putting substantive work out there on the internet that contributes to your body of work (for example, high-value articles, blog posts, long-form YouTube videos, etc.).
Is this for everyone? No!
Maybe you want to reap the financial rewards of both long-term seeds and short-term seeds without taking a marketing rest.
Or maybe you just love the marketing grind. Kudos!
Please go do your thing and leave the rest of us who want marketing rest periods to do our thing.
Some of us don’t want to only settle for short vacations (where we’re still logging on and checking social media) or sabbaticals every 5 years.
We want scheduled, chunky periods of rest from the marketing grind.
(If it’s for you, by now, you’ll know. You’ll feel it. Go deeper with it in my free training.)
For now, start thinking about how you can plan your marketing rest. I don’t know you personally, but I know you need it.
P.S. Ready to create your Marketing Rest System so you can take breaks from the marketing merry-go-round without losing income? Get the free Marketing Rest Training.