“Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own”.

During a coaching session last week, a member kindly shared this awesome quote by Bruce Lee with me (thanks Kirsten!).

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been really focusing on helping members get unstuck and decide which single thing is going to make the most difference to their business and that’s why this quote really resonated with me. 

I used to be a serial course junkie. I would sign up for everything. My inbox overflowed with webinar reminders and ebooks that I didn’t read. Because I appeared to be taking action, social media algorithms kept serving me up more ads for more marketing hacks that allegedly would make all the difference.

I hit a wall. And then one day, I decided to delete every last unwatched training or unwatched resource from my inbox and reset. (Alright, I didn’t actually delete them, but I did file them away so those emails weren’t sitting there making me feel guilty.)

Essentially, I gave myself permission to stop worrying about what the latest hack was and what everyone else was doing, and take a long hard look at my bigger picture. 

It didn’t take long to work out where the gaps were.

I needed to get help with some of the more technical parts of my business.
I needed to outsource more.

In some cases, I just needed to complete the final 10% of a project to make it really fly.

What I didn’t need to do was try to do it all at once. I had to accept that I couldn’t learn everything at the same time and that maybe there were some things I should never learn, but instead outsource that learning and implementation to someone better qualified to do it than me. 

If you’re feeling stuck at the moment, let’s explore the different stages of business growth you’re likely to go through, and what you should be doing during each stage.

The Planning Phase

You’re in the early stages of your marketing journey.

When you decide to tackle your marketing plan strategically, it’s tempting to try to do and learn ALL the things at once. But this will lead to frustration, overwhelm and procrastination. Take it from a master procrastinator!

At this stage of your business, you need to lay solid foundations and develop a mindset and habits that are going to keep you on track.

It’s also the time to build a crystal clear picture of your ideal client and conduct research to discover the most pressing challenges they are facing.

This will give you all of the answers you need to create a laser-focused content plan and a bank of language to use in all of your marketing materials, that will strongly resonate with your ideal client.

During this phase of your business, you should be doing these things:

• Learn how to schedule your time properly using a planning tool and an online diary. Time to say goodbye to endless paper to-do lists that never get any shorter.
• Really get to know your ideal client by building up a crystal clear picture of how them behave, what they need and what they are struggling with.
• Carry out some deep research with past clients to help you understand the kind of content you are going to need to create to really resonate with your ideal client.

The Building Phase

You’re ready to start creating the tools you need to build a marketing machine that will work on autopilot yet still connect with your ideal clients.

Here you’ll be creating the key pieces of content you’ll need in order to set up a VIP experience for any enquiries and a basic email funnel to nurture new leads.

This phase of building your system is hard work and it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

However, learning these skills and understanding these tools will help you make significant progress and you’ll use them again and again as your business grows.

During this phase of your business, you should be doing these things:

• Add the Facebook pixel / API to your website to start gathering data over time. You might not be ready to use it yet, but the more data you have, the better
• Choose an email marketing platform (like ActiveCampaign or MailerLite)
• Start to automate parts of your marketing where there is an easy win to be had. Eg. When someone makes an enquiry via your contact form
• Plan and create a freebie / lead magnet and start building your email list

The Scaling Phase

You’ve laid solid foundations, mastered key skills and now you’re ready to start attracting a steady stream of leads on autopilot.

This phase of your business is exciting, because you should be seeing more consistent organic leads coming into your business as well as seeing a significant improvement in conversions, whilst saving time through automation.

Now it’s time to add the strategic pieces of the puzzle that can significantly increase traffic to your website and add well-qualified warm leads to the top of your funnel.

It’s also the time to start thinking about outsourcing certain projects to make sure you are using your time productively.

During this phase of your business, you should be doing these things:

• Time to think about outsourcing. Work out what you should do yourself and what you should outsource.
• Create SEO-focused content to start driving more traffic to your website.
• Create ‘expert’ content to help your audience get to know, like and trust you.
• Gather testimonials, social proof and case studies to help convert more of your leads.
• Set up Facebook retargeting ads to build your relationship with leads who are already in your audience.

The Innovation Phase

High five! Your marketing machine is up and running and you’re seeing a steady stream of well-qualified, enthusiastic leads coming into your business.

With your system in place, now it’s time to turn up the heat and start to really scale your business. This phase is all about diving into the metrics of your marketing funnel, looking for areas where you can make improvements in order to get the best possible return on your ad spend.

You’ll also want to start reaching out to other businesses to create partnerships in order to access audiences you can’t reach on your own. You might even be considering scaling through creating passive income or digital products.

During this phase of your business, you should be doing these things:

• Build your team to ensure you are able to spend at least 30% of your time on deep, strategic work.
• Outsource anything complicated that is subject to rapid change and requires an expert. eg. Facebook ads.
• Review the tools you are using and invest in systems to make sure that your business workflow is as automated as possible.
• Start focusing on potential partnerships, in order to gain access to a much wider audience than you can reach on your own.
• Seek out opportunities to significantly raise your profile – guest appearances on podcasts, presenting online and at events.
• Consider adding additional streams of income to your business. This might be coaching, courses, memberships or digital downloads.

A final tip from me? More than any other thing, putting yourself in the right environment, alongside others on the same journey as you, will help you succeed.

Learning from coaches and experts, who can help you take shortcuts, will help you escape the dreaded ‘procrastination zone’, make decisions quickly and take action consistently.

If you’re interested in building your own Marketing Masterplan and being part of a community where you’ll get help and support every step of the way, check out www.themarketingfix.co.