Marketing Made Simple: How to Simplify Your Business Marketing

Marketing made simple. Everything from social media, to advertising, networking, email lists, lead magnets, funnels, and more.

With so many options out there, it’s no wonder our businesses get bogged down with all the marketing techniques we’ve tried and tested over the years.

With each adding up to a jumbled mess of a marketing strategy. One which, for the life of you, can’t work out if it’s working or not.

If any of this is stressing you out, leading to burnout, or even costing you time and money, then let’s cut the crap and get to simplifying your business. 

Visual learner? Watch the video:

Marketing made simple

If you’d like a little help with all this, I’ve created a PDF which you can download for free:

How I simplified my business marketing

When I first started Limit Breaker, I went in all guns blazing:

• I was on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Quora.
• And trying Facebook ads and Pinterest ads.
• I was writing 2 blog posts a week and 1 guest post per week.
• I had 5 email opt-in freebies, ranging from checklist PDFs to webinars and quizzes.
• 10 printable worksheets in my website shop.
• An Etsy store with even more printables.
• And an email list with multiple funnels for these freebies and products.

I was constantly go, go, go and what’s worse, it literally got me nowhere. 

Not only was I burnt out, but nothing was working. Nobody was buying my products and hardly anyone was following me on social media.

The thing is, because I had completely over-complicated and stuffed my marketing strategy to the brim, I’d missed something really important. 

Because my time and energy were so engulfed in my huge marketing list, I couldn’t see that I was doing a really bad job.

My products sucked and my freebies sucked even more. 

I was stretched so thin across so many social media platforms that I wasn’t doing a good job of any of them. 

Even my blog posts, which is the thing I enjoyed doing the most at the time, weren’t great because I didn’t have the time to do them justice.

I literally couldn’t see any of this. 

Until one day, I had a case of burnout and took a step back.

This step back allowed me to really see what I was doing and as a result, I started to reduce. 

If any of this sounds familiar to you, let me tell you now, it’s okay to have a simple marketing strategy. In fact, it’s better than okay, it’s great.

• Currently, for my client work, I’m not on any social media platforms except LinkedIn and I hardly post. The only marketing I do is cold emailing.
• For Limit Breaker, I’m on YouTube and Pinterest. I have a Facebook page but I don’t use it. I have a few email freebies but that’s it. 

It’s freeing.

How to simplify YOUR business marketing

Okay, so let’s get to it. 

This can be a pretty complicated topic, so I’m going to talk through how I simplified each aspect of my marketing and then relate it back to you.

Starting with the thing I disliked the most – social media.

Simplifying social media marketing

Social media has never been something I’ve loved. As an introvert, I dislike having to be constantly connected and promoting myself. 

As a reminder, at the time I was on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Quora.

Simplifying this was easy for me. Anything I didn’t enjoy or didn’t get me results, had to go.

• Twitter was stressful, toxic, and needed me to be posting too often, so that went.
• Instagram was also stressful, felt intrusive, and got me absolutely nothing in terms of my time and attention, that went too. 

Interested in a more in-depth reason for me leaving Instagram? Read my I quit Instagram post.

Pinterest was probably the best out of the bunch, so I made the decision to cut the rest and focus all my social media attention on Pinterest. 

It didn’t require personal updates, it didn’t require me to be constantly logging in and it got me a decent amount of website visitors.

How you can simplify social media

The key is to look at each platform critically. 

1. What’s your goal for being on the platform? Is it website visitors, sponsorship opportunities, clients, sales etc? 
   • Is this platform working you towards that goal?
2. How much time do you spend on the platform?
   • Does that time make sense? If you’re spending 10 hours a week on Instagram but only making 1 sale – is it worth it?
3. Do you enjoy it?

This is the most important question you can ask yourself. Don’t kid yourself. If you hate it, you’re going to suck at it. Plus, if you hate it, when you’re just torturing yourself. Get off it.

Bear in mind that these social media platforms don’t have to be working amazingly well right now.

If you can see that with time, your growth will increase with the benefits, then your time now may be worth it. Even if the return is small.

But you have to be able to see a possible future with a return, because growing on social media takes time. 

Okay next, let’s talk blogging.

Simplifying blogging

I feel quite strongly about this topic because through my client work, 90% of my job is writing articles.

If you’re writing blog posts as part of your marketing strategy, here’s some harsh but necessary advice: you need to do a better job.

Sadly gone are the days when you could write a blog post about your experiences and opinions and have it rank in Google or have hundreds of people comment.

Google is far more sophisticated now and there’s way more competition.

Blogging is an excellent strategy to get people to your website, onto your email list, and subsequently buying your products, but you have to take it seriously. 

This is why simplifying your marketing strategy is so important. If you reduce the number of things you do, then you can do a better job at those reduced things.

If blogging is your strategy of choice, then with more time you can become fully invested and knowledgeable in search engine optimisation, writing better titles, structuring your content well, and more.

Blogging was a key focus for me, but as I said earlier, I didn’t have the time to make it a priority. 

So once I reduced, I made sure to improve my skills to make my blogging much more effective.

Next, let’s look at freebies or lead magnets.

Simplifying freebies/lead magnets

It’s exceedingly common for online business owners to offer some kind of freebie in exchange for an email address. 

This includes anything from ebooks, pdfs, videos, webinars, quizzes and more.

You could say they’re a staple of online business marketing.

When I started Limit Breaker, I really went for it. 

I’d read how easy it apparently was to get people to join your list and if I didn’t do it, I was missing out. 

So, I paid to create an online quiz, I paid for email marketing software and I created endless freebies and funnels. All with the aim of growing my list.

My list grew incredibly slowly. Not exactly the massive growth I was promised by online gurus.

It took me a while to realise, but because I’d created so many freebies, I was struggling to keep on top of them. 

And because I’d stretched myself so thin, I wasn’t even analysing to see if they were working or not. 

I became a creation machine. Constantly making more and more freebies, products and funnels in the hopes that one would stick. 

I wasn’t really thinking, I was just creating.

It was dangerous behaviour. Not only was I not thinking of my own sanity, but I wasn’t thinking about the people I was trying to help either.

I ended up removing them all and spent about a week really thinking about what the people I was trying to help, actually wanted or needed.

How you can simplify your freebies/lead magnets

If you’ve found yourself in a similar position, it’s worth taking a hard look at your opt-ins, funnels and even products.

1. Do you struggle to keep up with promoting them all?
2. Are they actually working to get people subscribed to your list? 
   • Figure this out by seeing how many website visitors you get each month and if they’re converting to email subscribers or not.
3. Do they actually help people?
4. Are your email funnels, welcome emails, or email series as effective as they could be? 
   • Just like blogging, it takes practice, technique, and trial and error to create really effective email marketing.

Also, let’s not forget, you don’t need any freebies, opt ins or funnels to have a successful business. You can run a business without them. 

So I’ll leave that one up to you!

Marketing made simple doesn’t stop here

These are just 3 areas of marketing that I personally simplified for my business. You might have many others.

You might run adverts (which I also stopped doing), you might do outreach, you might create videos, you might even run a podcast. 

Either way, cast a critical eye over every aspect of your marketing and get ruthless.

If it doesn’t help you reach your goals, isn’t enjoyable, overworks you or costs you too much time and or money, you have permission to stop.

You don’t have to be everywhere at once. You don’t have to pander to a social media platform’s algorithm if you don’t want to. 

Simplify and pare back, then focus on the marketing methods that are working for you. You’ll be surprised at how much more progress you’ll make just by doing that.

And don’t forget to download the free simple business PDF to help you along.

So, I want to hear from you. Have you simplified your business marketing? Thinking of simplifying now?

Leave me a comment because I’d love to know.