What do you do when marketing your business sucks?

I’m not talking about sucky collateral or a poorly executed website (though many people who claim to wish to market themselves and their businesses more effectively are guilty of just that).  I’m talking about when you feel blah, bored, and unmotivated.  I’m talking about when the act of marketing sucks.

Novelists talk about the mid-book slump, that point during writing when you want to throw the computer at the wall, drive away in your car and will yourself away from the dullness and drivel of a task you know all too well, but can’t possibly muster up the stamina to complete.

So…what do you do when you feel that way about your marketing?

The easy answer is do it anyway.  Yes, this is the boring answer.  But it’s the one that will get your marketing done and yield results. Here are some strategies I’ve learned from working with people who hit the marketing wall.

Unsuckifying Your Marketing

Ask questions. Why are you feeling this way?  Has it been a bad week?  Is marketing taking up too much time and energy?  Is it just boring?  Do you need more return on investment information in order to feel like your work is paying off?  Are you having a hard time sticking to a to-do list?  Don’t judge, just ask.  Then use the information you gain to create marketing that doesn’t suck.

Pare down. It’s easy to vow to blog every day, make 100,000 tweets per hour, attend 3131535352 networking meetings, cold call for eight hours a week and speak during every lunch hour.  Guess what?  If you’re overwhelmed, it won’t happen.  Try paring down to the essentials.  Once you can do these well, you can branch back out to other, bigger, more exciting things.

Add on. If you’re not excited about performing basic marketing tasks, it may be time to add a new initiative…a carrot on a stick, if you will.  What about trying a new social media tool, dabbling in SEO or trying to add 10 reciprocal blog links?

Track it. Are you tracking the results of your marketing efforts?  If not, how can you have any idea where you are, where you’re going, or what return to expect?  Time to build in some tracking systems and a system for routinely checking in on your progress.  Marketing seems a lot less sucky when you know where you’re headed and why you’re doing it.

Get help. No man is an island…and most business owners have so many pressing tasks they can’t guarantee to be wearing two similar socks at a time, much less masterfully executing a marketing plan.  Whether it’s hiring an assistant for a few hours a week to take care of mailers or consulting with an expert who can take some marketing work off of your plate, there is no shame whatsoever in getting help.

Related articles and resources:

Chill out — Financial Anxiety and Marketing

Google Analytics — the grandaddy of low-cost tracking tools

Developing Good Marketing Habits

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