Ten Ways to Avoid Marketing Overwhelm

This time of year, as we make plans and surge forward with fresh new goals and projects, it’s easy to slip into marketing overwhelm. But instead, you can set up your marketing year to build momentum and mojo instead.

Here are some tips I cooked up that will help you fire up 2006 to be the Year You Seriously Built Platform.

1. Realize that you don't have to do it all. To get known in the world, you don't have to pursue every marketing vehicle, just the right ones. So target like mad. And don’t be afraid to choose new markets to target in the coming year, based on what you REALLY want to accomplish. Ask yourself if the market you’re working with gave you what you wanted last year. And if they didn’t, let them go.

2. Learn what impresses your market and deliver it. Some niches can rely purely on on-line promo, because that's where their people live and breathe. But others need the 'seal of approval' of major media. Figure out precisely what will make you THE source for them to turn to. What will win them over?

3. Determine what you need to do … precisely. Break your marketing
plan or to-do list down into all the areas you need to work on.
(There's an overall list in the back of my Get Known Now Home Study Course.) And choose only those marketing venues that really apply to your surgically chosen market… and no more! For instance, if they don’t hang out on line, don’t promote to them there. Get a magazine column or be a radio guest.

4. Make a comprehensive, dated task list. Setting dates works.
Once you know what you have to do, use a Task management system
like the one in MS Outlook. It forces you to give each task a
date... then it reminds you when the task is due. Repeatedly!

5. Pick a focus of the week. If you can't keep momentum going on
your promo efforts, pick a weak area and focus on it for a week
or even a month. Break down your entire marketing plan over the next twelve months, and dig into a small chunk each month.
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6. Do five promo tasks per day. Promotion Expert John Kremer
says do five small promo tasks every day like clockwork. Track your
progress in the appropriate section of your promo binder or on Excel
sheets. That kind of continuity really builds up over time, so tasks you’d forgotten about in the beginning of the year, start paying off later in the year. That gives you real marketing momentum.

7. Have a promo-support buddy. Email a supportive friend
every day with your list of marketing tasks. Just writing it down
will help you stay focused. Then follow up at day’s end (and return the favor, of course.)

8. Give each tasks a certain amount of time and no more. Our brain is conditioned to perform at a pre-determined speed which we set .. so simply decide you will spend one hour on a certain promotion task, and no more. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how doable large tasks become in this framework.

9. Keep a wall of fame. Whenever you get an interview, article published, or some other platform goodie, post it on a wall of your office, preferably in a frame. It builds mojo, and convinces your subconscious to keep the momentum going.

10. Have a monthly or weekly Platform Challenge day. Use Instant Messenger
(free at msn.com) and spend a day getting promo tasks done with a fellow
marketer. Check on by IM every hour or so, or get on the phone and share the momentum. Pick a shared focus, like blogs or booking speaking gigs, and make goals for the day. In fact … I'll have some of our coming up in the next month you can join me for!

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