#188 - Which of these marketing mistakes did you make this year?

Hello. Hello, guys, it is Kate here from hellofunnels and welcome back to the Doing It Online podcast. Today we're getting a little reflective. It's the end of the year or almost, and it's time to have a little bit of a sit down and a reality check. And let's have a look to see if you made some of the bigger mistakes, especially marketing mistakes I saw people making this year. And the reason I want to go through these big mistakes I saw people making is so that you can be aware of them, you can notice them, and you can make sure you don't make them again next year. So next year can be better than ever. Are you ready? Awesome. Let's dive right on it.

So, as I mentioned, guys, end of the year. And yeah, there's definitely been a few marketing mistakes that have bubbled up that I'm seeing people make again and again. Both clients, friends, you know, hell, even sometimes myself. The very first one of those, and this is one I think is very easy for people to do and to fall into, is when it comes to your marketing, when it comes to your messaging, when it comes to how you're creating content, how you're showing up online, is that you are getting a little too inspired by someone else out there doing what you want to do. And you end up kind of pretending to be them, or not pretending to be them, but just trying to adopt. Maybe it's certain personality traits or certain phrases or certain styles of content that just aren't you. And usually this happens because, you know, you're scrolling through your feed and you're like, oh, that looks cool, like, I'd love to do something like that. And there's nothing wrong, absolutely, with experimenting and, you know, trying out new ideas. But you've got to take that moment to make sure it fits and to make it your own. So you can't just go and say, hey, this person's really successful. And they're successful because they're totally bright and bubbly and they're always doing this. If that's not actually how you come across, if that's not just authentically you, and I hate that word authentic because it gets thrown away around way too much, but it's true. You can't go out there and try and pretend like you are someone else and hope that because that works for them, it's going to work for you. Because it's not, because it works for them, because that is them. And, and people resonate with that. And you don't want to try and just be a 2.0 version of someone else. You need to come out and figure out how to be engaging and to connect in your own way with the people who will connect with you. And so you've got to do that by being yourself. So, yes, it's great to get fresh ideas and to get inspiration, but just make sure that you're not starting to try and sound like or look like, or act like, or even market like someone else just because you think that is what you should do. Because you know you have to be like that person to be successful. That's 100% not true. Onto number two. And this one I think as well, again was super common this year, and I think more so than usual because this year was the year of things that used to work not really working so well. So what happens was in previous years, a lot of us and myself as well, I found this one actually quite tricky this year, where usually you would sit down and you would make a plan and you would be able to predict things with a lot more accuracy than what's happening a lot this year. However, I think because some people found that one or two things on their plan didn't go to plan, so they're like, well, there's no point planning. I'm just going to go straight into reactive mode. And rather than marketing intentionally setting up promotion plans or setting up funnels or creating content, that's all leading towards an end goal. Because a couple of those end goals didn't pay off, you're like, well, I'm just going to go back to throwing spaghetti on the wall mode. And again, while it is important and we do have to be testing new things, particularly if a key strategy that you might have used before is now underperforming, you don't want to go so far in the other direction that there is no plan, that it is all just reactiveness. Because with that, that's exhausting. That's really hard for you to plan, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, which makes it really, really hard to run a business. So even when you are in those instances where you're like, well, we normally used to do this kind of launch, we do it a couple of times a year and this would be the results I would expect. But this year it's been nothing like that. Rather than throwing the baby out the bathwater and go, okay, we'll just wing it from now. You still want to have some plans in place, you still need to have some structure, but you just need to be less attached to the outcome and to go in with that real. Okay, so, yes, we're going to be doing a promotion. We're going to still do our best and do everything we need to do in the lead up to that, but we're going to be treating this as a test. And for those of you who had things like funnels and stuff set up as well, this definitely was a lot easier because you already had a bit of a baseline covered. It definitely is more difficult if you are 100% relying on launches and promotions, and those promotions are not working as well. But you can't just go all in on your plan. Plan doesn't work. Bugger it. Throw it out. Go just to throwing the spaghetti mode. You can't do that. Instead, somewhere in the middle tends to be where I've seen people, particularly those who've been able to really rally and go, okay, we did a few things, they didn't work so well and now they're getting the momentum back and they're picking things up. And it's not because they just went to panic crisis mode. It's because they went, okay, well, I still know the essentials. I still know the fundamentals of what I need to do to connect to my audience, to get the right message across. I know I need to be doing these three things. Sure, the thing that was converting to sale, that needs some experimenting, that needs some playing with, but I don't need to go, oh, bugger, I need to quickly do an email launch for this and quickly do a thing for that, and quickly do a thing for that and have everything be rushed, nothing to your normal sort of level, and it just be like panic, panic, reaction, reaction. And you kind of end up digging yourself into a hole where you're doing a whole lot of little things not very well. None of them are working because you haven't been able to put the proper care or attention. And because you're moving so quickly, you're also not able to notice. Well, actually, that thing was kind of okay. And maybe if I'd spend a bit of time on it, or if we do it again and tweak some things, improve some things, that could be the new way that I do it and the new way I move forward. When you're in reaction mode all the time, you're not going to be able to see those little breadcrumbs of where you now need to start taking things. So that's number two. And that's probably, to be honest, it's probably the biggest thing that I've Seen this year is like people getting rid of the plan, throwing away the fundamentals, even though the fundamentals are still relevant and still important, and just going panic this, panic that. And yeah, it can be really, really scary and frustrating. So I get that, guys. But if that was kind of how you felt this year was, let's make a plan, let's get back to being planned for next year. Okay, all right. Mistake number three, and these kind of are related, but that is that you spent most of your year, most of your energy and resources in the market you did on what I call single use marketing. So you spent a lot of time on creating reels or creating content that goes into Instagram or TikTok or one of these really short form platforms where they only last a couple of days and then it's gone, rather than spending your energy and your time on creating at both evergreen content and also more evergreen or systemized ways of marketing. So the same with launches and promotions and things are for people who were doing that kind of scattergun panic approach. That means it's an awful lot of your time has been spent creating things from scratch. New things. Okay, well, that didn't work so well. Throw it out. Let's try this completely new thing, which means when you. New landing pages, new sales pages, new this, new emails, new everything and. All right, that didn't work. So get rid of that, start again. Like, that's so much effort, guys. So much time spent and care and resources and energy spent on things that you don't get to use again. You need to flick the switch. Particularly now, I think now more than ever to be going, okay, well, how can we even in this testing mode, making sure we're focusing on, you know, that old cliche of working smarter, not just working harder. Like, what can we be repurposing? What can we notice? Okay, that worked. Let's keep it. Can we be more intentional with the things that we're creating and going, or can we create something that you know, if it does work how we want it to, that we can go and use it again and again, or that if it works okay, rather than again scrapping it all, we figure out a way to run it again to make some adjustments to see if we can improve it rather than going back and starting from scratch. Like, this is where people get stuck. I know I harp on this quite a bit, but yes, there's a place, there's always a place for testing, but that testing needs to be testing. How can we improve and make these incremental Improvements, not how can we test a whole new thing if it doesn't completely change our business, throw it out, start again. Because that's where you get stuck in beginner mode and you never get to move on to mastery and layering on these things that have mastered. And that's the whole year why I have my business because all about helping people to create these systems in their business that you know, you create them once you spend some time refining them and then they are always there working for you and supporting you and being a real foundation and platform for even when there are ups and downs that you can still go, okay, well I know I still have this base, maybe it's dropped by 10%, but it's still giving me that foundation, that level of safety that I can feel free to now go, okay, well what do I need to experiment? What's my current thing I'm testing? You know, it is again something that I think more and more when things are uncertain and people really do spend that time, their focus moves away from creating sustainable systems that can be used over and over to just quick fix single use marketing. And if you're spending most of your time on stuff that you never get to use again, it's such a waste. It really is. Okay, number four and I probably is probably a little bit of a double up, this is the last one. But I really think that it's a conversation that we need to have is that we can't be out there marketing like it's 2020 anymore. 2020, 2021. You know, the pandemic plague years, whatever you want to affectionately call them when we're all stuck at home. Like the environment, the world, it was different, it was weird. It was not business as usual. And now we've kind of gone back to business as usual, but it's still not. And maybe we will never have a normal business as usual time again. But things have changed drastically in the economies, in politics and that stuff all has a trickle down effect. And also with how people are consuming content, how people are wanting to spend their time. You know, there's a lot of burnout of people having spent so much time at home watching videos on their laptop. But a lot of people like, I don't want to do that anymore. The need for community is different. The need for in person connection is different. The way people want to consume content. A lot of people want just audio now. They don't actually want to sit and watch a video because they want to be able to listen on the go. Things have changed and we can't just sit back and go, well, but this thing worked two years ago, it worked really well. It should just work now. What I'm not talking about here is that the foundational stuff, the fundamental stuff, like the, you know, you have to know your audience, you have to know their pain points and their wants and their desires. You have to be able to communicate with them well, you have to be able to be showing up in the platforms that they want to be on. Like all this foundational stuff, this doesn't change, but how it is executed changes. So for a lot of my clients, you know, who've got their funnels, like the funnel itself still works great. It's not changing, it's been running for years. But how they get people into the funnel, that changes. Maybe how they communicate with people at certain points in their funnel, that changes. So it's not about completely going, oh, okay, no previous marketing strategy is going to work. The fundamentals and the foundational stuff does still work. Like the strategy still works, but it's the tactics that have to change. So you have to be able to make that differentiation. You have to be able to look at your business, business and go, okay, let's go back to super high level, top level. I know I need to be able to communicate with my audience. Okay. Previously, what's worked best was this. Now they're no longer on that platform, they're on this platform. Maybe I'm going to need to tweak it. It's not throwing everything out. It's okay. How can I take this fundamental principle of, you know, marketing and sales and communicating with my audience and how do I now tweak it to be 2023, 2024 and ongoing proof the same with how you sell. A lot of people found really big drop offs with live webinars and a lot of people really relied on live webinars. But guess what? Evergreen webinars, on demand webinars, they're still doing pretty well and people are now savvy enough and they spent all this time again in lockdown being very aware of, you know, how on demand works, how zoom works. Like the market is now completely changed. So within those evergreen webinars, like, yes, they're working, but you know what's working? The ones that are really honest and upfront and get to the point versus the old school way of doing webinars where even if it was evergreen, you pretended that it was live and you like had fake comments going down the side. People don't buy into that anymore. They're clever, they're educated, and they're time poor. So we're not going to throw out this foundational strategy that works really well. We're going to upgrade dated. So this is what I'm talking about, guys, with not marketing like it's 2020 anymore. It's, let's look at those key pieces. And the same with live launches. I know a lot of people are finding their live launches are just not converting like they used to. So what has to change? What has to be different? Like we still need to be showing up and connecting. We still need to be giving great value. We still need to be making offers. But does the offer need to be tweaked? Does the format of how we're doing this engagement piece need to be tweaked? Maybe people don't want to go into a Facebook group anymore. Maybe they just want a private podcast that they can listen to and, you know, respond in a Slack channel. Like it's the same, but it's different. We have to be okay with being curious about what that difference is and how we can make it work for us. I hope I haven't sent anyone to a tailspin here, guys, but I just wanted to really share what I was seeing and that a lot of frustrations, I know a lot of people are having a lot of people thinking, oh, nothing works. And it's not true because there are people out here this year, all this year being very, very successful and doing things that are not completely, you know, whole new strategy kind of things. They're the same old things that have always worked well, that they've spent a lot of time crafting and honing, but they're getting a little update. They're being brought into the 2023, 2024 world and that's what you need to do. So to reiterate, guys, to go back through it, number one mistake I see people making in their marketing this year was they'll just flat out trying to be someone else. Not gonna work. You know, it's okay, you is good. Just stick with you. Okay. Number two, they didn't have a plan. They maybe had a plan. At the start of the year, things started to go off plan. Rather than trying to correct their plan, they just through the plan out the window and went straight into spaghetti throwing mode. That's never the recipe for growth. Number three, they spent so much time on single use marketing when they really needed instead. Like if they'd spent even a quarter of that time on creating things that could be reused on Creating systems, creating funnels that things are going to work and create this engine in the background for them. They would be so much further ahead than getting all obsessed about what's the trending reel and all of that kind of rubbish. So. So number three, too much time on single use marketing. And number four is that they just kept trying to market like it was 2020 and then got mad when it didn't work, then started going back through all those things that I just mentioned. The New Year's upon us, guys. It's an amazing opportunity for us to keep testing, to keep showing up, to keep figuring out what works. And I really hope that this is, you know, drop just one or two AHAs or little diamonds into your mind that's gonna make, make it that much easier for you to go, oh, that's the thing. That's the thing I need to fix. Because even if you fix just one of these guys, or stop doing just one of these, it's going to have a huge impact, I promise. So any Aha's guys, or is there one or two, perhaps that you might have been guilty of this year? Share below 100%. No judgment from us. As I said, we've done some of these ourselves. We'd love to hear from you. Or you can tag us over at hellofunnels. And if you think you might have a friend who might be struggling with one or two of these too, shoot them a link, share it with them. You know, they will definitely thank you if you can help them to stop making these mistakes and to start moving forward. So that's it from me this week, guys. Have an amazing week. Until next time, we'll be back with another episode. Bye.