5 reasons my content was failing and how I fixed the strategy (391)

Welcome back to the podcast where we reverse engineer your business goals and get honest about what that really looks and feels like behind the scenes. I'm your host Alice Benham, I'm a business strategist, speaker and the founder of Onnet, and I'm quite excited today to sit down and talk all about marketing strategy. If you're not familiar this is actually where my business first began. I quit school when I was 16 and I fell into the world of entrepreneurship when I was 17. For the first kind of five or six years of my business I was working as a marketing strategist. I loved the idea that if we understood the theory of like why people buy, how people feel connected to community, what moves people through the buyer's journey, that we could really create incredible growth. And for so many years I found that so so fascinating I still do. I ended up publishing a book all about marketing strategy and whilst my work now has evolved ever so slightly to be more around wider business strategy marketing is still such a core part of that so I'm excited to sit down and kind of deep dive some of my thoughts around this topic today not only because this is a really current thing that's going on in my business right now as you'll understand as I get into this episode but also because the more that I've been talking online but also with my clients with my business friends about how I'm feeling right now about my marketing I have been overwhelmed by how many people have kind of just said oh my gosh me too so if you in any way are feeling perhaps a bit frustrated by your marketing maybe you're not showing up how you want to maybe you're not being as consistent as you want maybe you're not seeing the results that you want if in any way your marketing is just feeling a bit ugh then this is the episode for you because I am going to deep dive why my content strategy was failing what made me realise that why I think it was failing very specifically and the exact things that I have done over the last three weeks to create change this is going to be such a practical episode so you might want to make sure that you've got a way of taking notes near you or just get ready to tune in so let's set the scene what made me realise that my marketing strategy was failing well you might have seen me making an announcement right at the start of September which I think basically said I need to sort my shit out and that was something that had really been brewing for me for quite a while when I have over the last probably you or too if I'm being honest with you thought about my business about the things that I want to achieve about my vision about what I'm excited to move towards I have continued to come to the conclusion that the biggest thing that is going to drive all of those results the kind of common denominator that is going to help me achieve that vision and get where I want to go is going to be my marketing I cannot tell you how many times I've written notes at lists in my phone or in my notebook or spoken to my team or my friends and I'm basically just said different versions of like I'm really going to sort my marketing out I'm going to take it seriously I'm going to really kind of get proactive I'm going to like make this work for me and I had said that and written that down and thought that thought and kind of made that decision so many times but here's the thing there's a very big difference between making a decision and following through on it you can feel like you are making progress when you just decide oh yeah I'm going to do that of course we have to decide as the first step but decisions don't create growth implementation and execution does and I landed in my business in September I just taken August off as I always do I had this kind of fresh perspective and I just realized like I need to sort this out I have been lying to myself for pretty much years at this point that I'm taking my marketing seriously when if I look at where my time is going the lack of consistency in my output the lack of strategic thinking in everything that I'm doing like I am just not doing the thing that I want to do and I either need to decide that this doesn't matter to me and stop pretending that I'm going to figure it out or actually figure it out when I had this realization I had this phrase in my head of like I need to take this thing off my plate or move everything else off of my plate so I can actually just like eat it and make it happen I need to decide like if this really matters to me I can't stop saying it matters and doing nothing about that and I know that I am not the only one that feels that way because when I announced on social media hey I'm actually going to take a complete break from my marketing I'm going to do something quite extreme delete all my channels stop showing up at all in order to sort everything out and kind of stop lying to myself and actually do what I'm saying I'm wanting to do there were so many comments I got so many emails DMs off of people basically just saying like I feel so seen and I know that as well because over the years that's one of the biggest things I hear in the work that I do with my clients and the people that are in on it is that usually the thing that's at the bottom of our list but most important to our goals is our marketing and I think that's such an interesting kind of tension that this topic this area of our business that is so key is also something that we somehow find it really easy to kind of deprioritize and ignore I think for me I almost had to wait to get to breaking point where I wasn't just aware that I was you know failing at my marketing strategy but I was like so so annoyed by that that I was actually going to make the changes needed to create improvement I think for me the time of year is really what triggered this if you're not familiar I have a core program called on it it is proudest thing I've ever built in my business this year there's over 200 business owners in there and the program is really designed to help people not just work out what their vision is but every single month take steps towards that it's about keeping you accountable to your business goals and very ironically avoid exactly what I'm talking about happening to me with my marketing where you say you're going to do something and then you never follow through the launch for on it 2027 is coming up which is both equally exciting and terrifying and that is like my biggest marketing activity of the year that is like the most important thing in my year is the launch of on it and so for me in September when I landed back in my business when I saw that this launch was ahead I was like Alice you need to sort this out like now like it was kind of maybe fine that you kept just ignoring this or not following through on it early on in the year but like this is crunch time and so for me I think it really needed to be this like big moment of reality because I also think let's be honest in business like there's always different things that are screaming for our attention and energy and something has to really matter to us in order for us to prioritize it so I'd kind of say that it's like a first thought to anyone that feels like they're not showing up in their marketing how that they want to like you probably need to begin by thinking about like why are you actually wanting to do it because if quite frankly it doesn't feel important enough to you the urgent stuff in business is always going to come above that with that being said though I want to dive into like what I've actually done because I'm now as you can probably tell back on the internet back in my marketing strategy and I'm going to be honest with you feeling really good like showing up how I want starting to see the results that I want I genuinely feel proud of my output from a marketing perspective and I cannot tell you the last time that I felt that it's been years honestly so I am doing the thing now I'm showing up how I want I don't think I'm gonna be perfect at it by any means I'm sure I'll drop off and have to bounce back but I'm doing what I want to be doing and I want to start to unpack with you like what I've done to get to this point because I know for a long time I just kind of said to myself like I just need to like get on with it I just need to give myself a talking to you I just need to like slap myself on the wrist and I think we all know in business like that's not it we're not that dumb that we just need to be kind of told off and then we'll do it like there's always reasons why we're not showing up how that we want or seeing the results that we want and so let's get into what I realized and have taken action on were the five main reasons that my marketing strategy was failing and if you resonate with any of these and I'm gonna bet you resonate with at least a few of them exactly what I've done in order to either solve the problem or stop that problem from getting in the way of my action so without further ado the first reason my marketing strategy was failing and I'm gonna bet everyone's gonna be able to resonate with this one is that I didn't give it time time is always the first answer I hear from people when I work with them on their business growth and I ask them you know what's gonna get in the way what's the enemy of this strategy it's always lack of time and I always invite people to reframe it that we never say I don't have time and instead we say I'm not giving it time the reality is time is a finite thing and if we see it that we just don't have it we're never going to have it so let's be honest it's not a lack of time it's a lack of prioritization of time it's a lack of giving it I realized and this was really key for me so if you resonate with this idea of just not being able to give your marketing time then you might not lean into this point that for me I had always been in a state of being reactive and very short term with my marketing I have an idea for a piece of content I'll get it out today I need to put an email out I'll write it this morning I told myself genuinely for years that's how I've been for the last 11 years I've never been ahead I've never really planned an advance I told myself that worked well for me in many ways it did because I think to an extent probably allows the content itself to feel quite fresh often the content is inspired by something that's happening in kind of real time so I think then it can connect more with people what I will say is that by telling myself that that was how I had to do it what I was expecting was that I would have time every single day dedicated to marketing truly if you want to be creating your content as you go you can but you then need time every single day to make your content and for me for my business for my schedule like that is just not reality so I was expecting myself to create day-to-day but not giving myself the time to create day-to-day and the realization for me was that I think I can't expect that to work for me. The way that my schedule works, the way that I like to spend my time, like it's just not a case of having an hour every single day for this. What I probably need to do is to get ahead, which in 11 years I have never ever done. The only thing that's ever been ahead in my business is this podcast, and that's because usually, you know, especially when we had guest episodes, you're kind of recording in advance, there's an editing process that needs to happen. But genuinely, none of my other marketing has ever been done ahead, and I'm ready to change that. I'm not saying I'm going to be scheduled and prepped weeks and weeks and weeks in advance, but I realized if I'm never ahead, I'm constantly not going to be giving the content as much strategic thought and planning as I want to. This realization is the biggest reason that I decided to just take a big old break before posting again was because I was like, I need to stop so I can get ahead and then I can stay ahead. So for me, what this looks like in practice, the practical steps I've taken here is to aim to always be at least one week ahead with finished content. So what that means is the content is like ready to go. If it's a video, it's edited. There's a caption written. If it's an email, it's fully written and set as a draft. If it's a podcast episode, it's been with my editor already for a few days. I'm not saying it's all perfectly scheduled, I'm often still posting it when I kind of feel is the right time or I may be tweaking tiny, tiny things as I go, but the core of the content is ready at least a week in advance. And further than that, I am trying to have my plan and my ideas about three to four weeks out. That is because in order to get that content prepped a week in advance, I've got to get it filmed sent to an editor or be sat thinking about it for quite a period of time. When I was expecting myself to create content on the fly, sometimes the content would be really high quality because it just kind of landed well. But honestly, most of the time the content was not that good because I couldn't give it headspace. I was rushing to get something out and then either getting something out that I didn't really feel I'd given enough thought or not getting anything out at all because I didn't feel like I could give it enough thought. First reason my marketing was failing is I didn't give it the time. And my solution for that was to decide to work ahead of time, pause my marketing so that I could build the capacity and then I have looked at in my day-to-day where there's pockets of time and making sure that on my to-do list, I am honouring the fact that marketing needs to be a priority. Moving on to the second reason my marketing strategy was failing is that I was overly documenting in my content and not creating with strategic intention. Here is what I mean by that. In my experience, if you are creating on the fly as I've just talked about, what you will most likely end up doing is creating content which is documenting your business, what you're up to, the behind the scenes, what you're thinking and feeling. That content is great, it's needed. But if that is the only thing that you are posting and sharing, what you will likely end up doing and this is what I did is create content and create this kind of world in what you're putting out there which is good, it's nice, it connects with people it has some value but it's likely not proactively creating growth. To give you an example here, part of my vision as I move forward in the business is to be booked a lot more for speaking gigs. I absolutely love speaking at something I feel so passionate about, I love doing it, I feel really confident at it and I love to do more of it. If all I'm putting out is documentation of the behind the scenes of my business, what I'm thinking and feeling, my wins, my challenges, then someone's probably not going to look at my channels or come across me and think oh I'd love to book you to do a keynote. If someone's going to book me for a keynote, they need to see me talking about the topics that they would likely book me for. They need to see my expertise, they need to see my methods, my frameworks, how I think, how I speak. If I am not creating the content that's going to get me what I want, then what am I doing? And that's what I realized when I looked at my past content from this year, I was like yeah like there's good content in there but I am like 90% just documenting rather than strategically creating. The question I asked myself here is the same question I asked for a lot of my clients is what is the reputation that you need to get the opportunities that you want? How do people need to see you? What do they need to see from you? What do you therefore need to create in order for that to be built? If you're only ever documenting, you'll build yourself a personal brand of course but you probably won't position yourself as a thought leader with the expertise that you really want to be known for. So the way that I really applied this and made changes here is that when I was then working on my strategies, the first thing I did once I'd kind of deleted all my marketing channels, I was like right I'm a strategist, I know where we need to begin here, is I really intentionally thought about that question of what does my reputation need to be to get the opportunities that I want and how do I reverse engineer that? How do I make my content and what I'm putting out strategically aligned with what my goals are? Not so that I'm just documenting and sharing which is great but also proactively building that reputation and if I am documenting and sharing how can I be even more intentional in the way that I do that and maybe not just tell a story but use the story to say something deeper. If this resonates with you, I've actually got just realises I'm saying this, a free masterclass, it's a ten minute video, super short, super actionable that has in it the questions that I like to ask myself and my clients to define a memorable reputation. So if you feel like you're in this same boat of not quite knowing like what does it even look like to build that reputation? What do I want to be known for? Head to the show notes, I'll link it there, super quick and simple but those are the prompts that I was literally working through a few weeks ago to think about this idea of how do I not just document but strategically create? The third thing that was creating failure in my marketing strategy, one that I've shown many people resonate with which is that I pretended that I could and would keep up multiple channels at the same time with high quality. I knew I was making this mistake for a good few months but I feel like I just kept pretending that I was this robot that could do everything all the time. Truthfully when it comes to marketing a lot of the time less is more, in fact I think that's true in most of business. A couple years ago one of my clients said to me the phrase 'simplify to amplify' and it's something that I think about a lot because most of my work is helping people actually grow their businesses through simplification, a lot of the time we get more by doing less and what I was doing for a long time in my marketing was pretending that I could keep up loads of channels like TikTok Instagram and LinkedIn and I'm going to have YouTube and I'm going to have the podcast audio as well on Spotify and iTunes and I'm going to put them on the blog on the website and I'm going to have all these free downloads and I'm going to do this press pitching blah blah blah blah blah. Now of course if all of those things were kept up consistently and intentionally amazing, great I would be seeing huge results but coming back to what I said in point one about time it just wasn't doable. I didn't have an endless capacity and in pretending that I could do all of these things at once what I was ending up then doing was either just doing all of them quite crap or and I think this is more often what happens realizing oh I can't really give any of them my all so I'll just give none of them anything because let's be honest that's a horrible feeling isn't it that you're kind of not giving you all to something you're not bringing your best and often that can lead us to just stopping the action in marketing what you really need to think about is your buyer's journey how people move through your business from first finding you to stay and connected and then to getting that step deeper so what I did to kind of solve this problem to move forwards in a simplified way was I brought it back to basics and asked myself if I only had three things going on what would they be and I identified for me that it was Instagram this podcast and my emails at the core of my marketing strategy over the last 11 years that is the three step process that is the three platform strategy that is worked best for me other platforms have absolutely played a role but if I could only do three things those would be the three and so I said to myself okay Alice start with the three nail them as soon as you feel like you're bringing your best to those three we can add more in but why do we try and start with seven when in reality we've not even nailed the core so that for me was the solution to this was really asking myself the question what is the simplest buyer's journey I could create here okay people are mostly finding me via Instagram so let's really make that the place where I'm driving visibility and also where I'm nurturing community what do I then want as a place for people to go deeper so they're really connecting more with me but also starting to maybe move towards the services that I offer well that's the combination of this podcast and then also my emails where you can also get you know various resources and free workshops that kind of help you to connect with me more as well I imagine that I will add more platforms into the mix down the line and I'll be honest even today as I'm recording this episode I put a post out on LinkedIn because I felt inspired to and I had the time it's not about saying I'm not going to do anything else but instead it's going what am I really able to commit to let's actually make the plans so doable that I'm really accountable to it and then once I'm nailing it great we can add more to the list if that resonates with you let me tell you now I'm on the other side of that simplification it feels good it feels good to be asking of myself what I actually have capacity for and from a strategy perspective you always want to work with the minimum viable kind of outline make that work and then great if you add stuff to it it's only going to make improvements so that's a third mistake I was making pretending I could do multiple channels simultaneously and really well at the same time and the solution there was to simplify keeping this moving then the penultimate mistake that I made. is that I didn't admit that I really needed help in order to make this happen. You can hear a theme in a lot of these answers, right? It's about capacity, it's about resource. And whilst absolutely, you can find ways to make more time and prioritize it. Because whilst absolutely, you can find ways to release your time from other areas or work more in your business so that you've got more time in your marketing. One of the best ways to increase your output if time is the problem is to buy other people's time. And I realize as I say that out loud, that sounds awful saying that I'm like buying other people's time, but you know what I mean? Like if something needs to get done and I don't have the time for it, maybe the solution is that I need to find someone else who does have the time. And let's be honest as well, someone else who can probably do it way better than me. The biggest thing for me here was looking at my social media. I have had an editor on this podcast since 2019. And I can tell you that is exactly why this podcast is the only thing that I have been perfectly consistent at. Pretty much perfectly, I will say. Not fully perfectly, but I'm pretty confident, say. I mean, almost 400 episodes. This podcast has been happening. This podcast has been strategic and the biggest reason for that is the team. I have an amazing editor called Em. She comes to my garden office. We record the episodes together. She goes and edits them. There is so much support there for me that makes sure that they actually happen. I then looked at my social media and went, well, where's the support there? I'm not getting any help yet. I'm expecting myself to put out not just one thing a week like this podcast has, but like one thing a day. I don't know why I'd thought for so long that I was this fantastic video editor or that I had capacity for it or that I even enjoyed it. Can I be honest? I hate video editing. One of my least favorite things. And so I've hired a couple of people to help me with that. Incredible people who can turn around edits that look a lot better than anything I could make in a timeframe that I could never do either. It sounds so simple, but I think that's 'cause it is. If you have the financial capacity to get some help and let me tell you, I think a lot of the time we are overegging how much help we need and therefore how much the investment is gonna be. It can be a hundred pounds a month and you find someone that can even just give you a couple of hours for that. It doesn't need to be full-time team members big, big investments. I've actually been really surprised by how kind of affordable the total cost for me is of getting this increased help with my marketing compared to how much time and headspace it's freeing up for me and also how much it's then helping me to create. Maybe for you, it's not a video editor. Maybe it's someone to help with copyrighting or making something work from one channel where you've built it to work for another one. The question to ask yourself is where am I most getting stuck and how can I bring someone in here to help the process. I've learned for me that when there's people involved there's accountability involved. If I know that someone needs this video from me 'cause they need to edit it, I'm probably gonna make it. If I know that someone needs my feedback so that I can then post it, I'm probably gonna give my feedback. When there's someone else in the process, you naturally will be more accountable to the plan. So that is the fourth mistake I made and how I solved it. And then moving on to the final one, I feel like I've left the juiciest one to last or at least the one that is still feeling most like something I'm struggling with now, which is that my marketing was failing because I was letting my ego matter more than my vision. Now I say this is something that I'm still struggling with now because everything that I've shared so far is what I've done in the last few weeks, right? The steps that I took in order to get more strategic, get out of my own way, make sure that when I came back online I was doing so consistently and strategically. The hard work starts now. Like what I've done over the last few weeks has kind of been this like fun little game. You know, treating myself like a client, making notes, thinking of ideas, getting team in place, like the internal action of building a strategy is a lot of fun. And let's be honest, very comfortable. The external execution of that is where things get hard and the last week and a bit of actually showing back up with more intention has been difficult. And I'll tell you quite honestly, the reason it's been difficult is because I think being seen to be trying and taking messy action in your marketing is hard. I am the advocate for messy action, right? It's something I talk about so much. I talk so much about these phrases of, you know, don't be afraid to be seen trying. Take messy action because those things are so hard to do. But we have to embrace them if we want to see growth. I'll give you examples of what I mean by this. In the last week and a bit, I've been shown back up online coming out, right? With this content that I've been thinking about preparing, working on, et cetera. My ego has had a tough time. I have been annoyed that things haven't landed in the way that I thought they would. I have felt like some content hasn't performed well when I'd expected it to. I have felt a bit embarrassed to be seen to be showing up so visibly and loudly and intentionally. And I have had moments where I've thought, oh, it would feel way more comfortable just to not do this, to try less or to not try at all. When in reality, what that would be doing is allowing my ego, what I'm feeling, to matter more than the vision that I'm working towards. I keep reminding myself that the vision I'm working towards means far more to me than any comfort or ego stroke that I could feel right now. I know that, and I know that's true, but it's still difficult to live through that and to embrace that in the day-to-day action. If I'm being honest with you and with myself, I think for a long time, I wasn't showing up consistently, boldly, strategically because I was scared. I was scared to be seen to be trying. I was scared to be rejected. I was scared to look silly or to be embarrassed. And actually, I chose feeling safe and comfortable over moving towards my vision. In my world and my business, my vision is so much more meaningful to me than my short-term comfort. I've seen time and time again that when I prioritise my long-term growth over my short-term comfort, amazing things happen. And so I really had to realise that yes, there's all these practical things that I've done, right? Getting ahead on my strategy, thinking intentionally about my reputation, simplifying the platform plan, getting the right team and processes in place. But ultimately, the other thing that's gonna play a role in all of this is gonna be me, my brain, and my willingness to execute this, even if it feels uncomfortable. I don't necessarily have a solution to this point because I don't know that we can ever change this. The reason that I talk so much about taking messy action, not being afraid to be seen trying is because I've seen with my amazing clients, students in on it, everyone I get the privilege to work with, you can be incredibly established in business, doing amazing things, and still feel this challenge. I don't know that this ever goes away, but I do believe, and I know from other areas of my life and business where I've worked through this, the more you take the action, the more you realise that like a bit of a bruised ego, a bit of embarrassment, a bit of ugh, this just feels a bit cringe. The more you do it, the more you realise it just doesn't matter. It doesn't necessarily take the feeling away, but it takes away its relevance and importance. So this is very much still a work in progress for me, but something I'm just noticing is coming up as I get more strategic and intentional. So to recap, the five reasons that my marketing was failing is that I didn't give it time. I wasn't intentionally creating, I was overly documenting. I pretended I could do multiple channels simultaneously well. I didn't admit the help that I needed, and I let my ego matter more than my vision. I am so curious to hear which of these points you resonate with. When I shared at the start of September that I was taking a break for the reasons that I've explained in this episode, I was just so overwhelmed by how many people were saying I feel the exact same way. So I'm really hoping that this episode, maybe if you're in that similar boat, feels not only affirming, so you know not alone, and you don't kind of beat yourself up too much, but also perhaps a gentle kind of cool out to think about, well, what are you going to do about it? As I said, when I had this realization, it was this moment for me of going, you either need to take this off the plate or you need to eat it. You cannot keep telling yourself this thing matters yet not making anything change. And if you resonate with that and you feel a little bit cooled out by that, then I want you to know that such a positive realization to have because your life will get infinitely better if you either take the thing off the plate and stop asking something of yourself that's not actually going to happen, or you find a way using a lot of the things maybe that I've shared in this episode to make it happen. I am on the other side of making that change and it is going to be a forever working progress, I'm sure there'll be an episode like this in the future where I have to do the same kind of reset, but I really hope this has been a valuable listen for you. I'll link in the show notes that masterclass all about how to define a memorable reputation. It's 10 minutes long, so if you want to watch that video for the prompts and questions that I've been using to think about that, then go for it. And there's also a couple of fun other free bits I've got going on at the moment, actually something that I was working on in the break was building out some resources that feel really valuable and tangible. So I'll also link those in the show notes. There is a Q4 sales template, which over 250 of you have already downloaded and used, which is so exciting. And there's also an on-it taste obsession coming up in early November, which is always my biggest, biggest workshop of the year and full of so much value. So I'll link that there as well for you to register for free, but that is it for another episode. I'll be back in your ears next Tuesday. So until then, know that I am always cheering you on and I really hope this has been a helpful listen for you. See you later. (upbeat music)