Here is an exercise

I’m not kidding – you need to do this. Stick with me here.

Step 1: Please take a minute and say (out loud) the sentences below in the whiniest 4-year-old tantrum voice that you can muster up.

  • Marketing is haaaarrrddd.
  • It’s hard to know what works.
  • Facebook ads keep getting more expensive.
  • Technology changes so fast.

Step 2: Now, say these phrases in the voice you think a navy seal would use while being pinned down by the enemy.

  • Marketing is hard for everyone.
  • The thing that has to work is me. I have to work harder and smarter than the competition.
  • Digital marketing is the most cost-effective way we can talk to customers.
  • I don’t have to know everything about technology, but I have to be in the game.

 

Great job. I hope you did that out loud. Even if you didn’t, I hope that you really used those voices in your head.

Marketing IS hard. Why do you think it should be easy? You literally have to test and try things to figure out what works; testing THIS audience and THAT message. There is no easy or simple. Even when you find a path that works, you will be met with obstacles. Expect them.

I guarantee that digital marketing works. The way that I can guarantee that it works is by working with people who refuse to quit figuring it out. If you never quit, you never fail. If you run a digital ad or reach out to one social media influencer and it doesn’t bring you viral success and you quit, that’s tragic.

Even I am guilty of this. I’m not getting on to you. I’m getting on to us. Shame on us. How fortunate are we that we’ve been met with so much success that when more success doesn’t happen immediately, we just quit?

You quit. You die.

Let’s stay the course. Marketing is hard. Questions about how to get people to engage, and how to create customers… those are GAH-BILLION dollar questions. If we think we can answer a gah-billion dollar question with a $100 answer, we are disillusioned.

Don’t get mad, get fueled up. Make a change. Make a plan.

Now, I’m going to stop typing – and you are going to stop reading, and we are going to get to work!