Beat Marketing Overwhelm With these 7 Steps

Real estate agents know they must do a lot of marketing and prospecting in order to get new business flowing in the door. However, with all the marketing tactics out there - advertising, mailings, newsletters, websites, blogs, email newsletters, speaking, networking, referral marketing, etc - it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the initial amount of work it takes to get just one of these things, let alone all of them, off the ground.

Overwhelm is common in small business owners. Often, they are responsible for every element of their business from making sure the bills get paid, to attracting client, to doing the day-to-day tasks of helping buyers find a home or sellers sell their home. In other words, it’s easy to get so caught up in many different things that you feel like you’ll never be able to get everything done no matter how hard you work.

In business, focus is key and finishing projects is crucial. If you decide to take on any marketing project, it’s important to focus on doing it right the first time. Get the system up and running. And only when it’s working, add on other marketing initiatives.

For instance, in yesterday’s article, I talked about the steps necessary to create a newsletter in my hypothetical examples of goals, objectives, and to-do items. Creating a newsletter takes some work to put it all together. It’s easy to push some activities off to another day because life or business gets in the way.

The problem with that approach is that when you put marketing on the backburner, it rarely gets done - or gets done well. It gets rushed. Quality is sacrificed. Or worse, it never gets finished.

Since marketing your services is your lifeblood - it’s what brings customers in the door and puts cash into your pocket - it is absolutely critical that you stay on top of things. Marketing isn’t a one time event. It’s something that you must do repeatedly - and well - if you hope to stay in business for the long term.

Here are some tips to overcoming marketing overwhelm so that you’ll stick with the activities you choose over the long term.

1. Start with one thing. Everywhere you look, you’ll find new ideas to market your business. But the first step is choosing one idea and implementing it. Once that’s working, choose another and implement it.
2. Start an idea journal. As you come up with ideas for your business, write them down in a daily journal so you don’t forget about them. The act of getting them out of your head and onto paper will help you evaluate which are good ideas and which need more clarity before you take action.
3. Strive for balance. Accept that you won’t be able to do everything all at once and that’s ok. Find a happy medium between what you can do and what is too much. Don’t worry about what you “should” do. Focus on what you “can” do.
4. Don’t shoot for perfection. With marketing, many things are a matter of testing, collecting feedback, and revising the contents, so it’s ok if you don’t have your goals hammered out or your marketing message nailed down. It’s better to be doing something than thinking about doing something. Get out there, try it, and see what happens.
5. Outsource if you need to. Entrepreneurs like to do everything themselves, but it’s ok to ask for help if you don’t know how to do something or know others could do it better than you.
6. Do what you love. It’s far easier to stay motivated when you do the marketing activities that you actually enjoy. If you fear public speaking, maybe that’s not for you just yet. That doesn’t mean you can’t take a class to learn how to speak better at some point, but don’t focus on it now. Instead, work on the things you enjoy. If you like talking to people, start going to networking events to meet people. If you like writing, start a blog.
7. Push yourself. As an entrepreneur, you’ll constantly brush up against your own limitations, uncertainties and fears. That’s natural and it happens to everyone. If something feels a bit uncomfortable to you initially, don’t immediately write it off. Give it a try for 30 days, look at the results you’re getting, and evaluation whether you want to continue it.

If there are a number of projects on your plate that are currently stressing you out, take a few moments to write them down. Now ask yourself, “What is the next step I must take to complete each project?” Often, that next step is pretty simple - like a phone call, email, or simple communication - and can be taken care of in just a few minutes.

For those that will take longer, write everything down and detail out exactly what needs to be done to accomplish the project and how long you estimate it to take. Just the exercise of becoming organized and knowing exactly what you must do to finish the project will give you some piece of mind.