EP 493 | Everything Works But Not Everything Fits
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Everything Works So What Should You Do?
Here’s the really freaking annoying thing about trying to figure out your marketing strategy:
Everything works.
You can find someone who has built a wildly successful business using pretty much any marketing strategy you can think of.
Which sounds like good news. Until you’re the one trying to figure out what the heck you should actually do.
Because if everything works, how do you choose? I think we’ve been asking the wrong question.
Stop Asking What Marketing Strategy Works
Most of the conversation around marketing is focused on this:
What’s working right now?
What kind of funnel is converting? Which platform is getting the most reach? Are webinars back? Should I be running ads? Should I launch a podcast? Should I start posting on YouTube?
And none of those are necessarily bad questions. But knowing that a strategy can work doesn’t tell you whether you should build your business around it.
A better question is:
Does this work for me?
Does it fit the type of business you want? Does it fit the life you actually have? Does it fit your strengths? Your capacity? The way you like to show up?
And maybe most importantly:
If this works really well, do you actually want to keep doing it?
Because success means you’re probably going to do more of it.
A Strategy Can Work and Still Be Wrong for Your Business
This was a lesson I learned with live launching.
Live launching worked for me.
People bought. Revenue came in.
The problem wasn’t whether I could make a live launch convert. The problem was that the entire sales mechanism depended heavily on my availability.
There were dates. Deadlines. Live events. Emails. Things that had to happen at very specific times.
And when my life changed dramatically during COVID, that became a problem.
If I stopped actively selling, sales stopped too. So I eventually built a different sales mechanism: automated email funnels. Because I wanted something different from my business.
Sometimes we keep trying to optimize a strategy when the real issue isn’t its performance. It’s the fit.
Your Business Really Only Needs to Do Two Things
Strip away all the tactics and platforms and funnels and trends, and your business has two pretty important jobs:
1. Get in front of new people.
2. Sell something to those people.
Generate leads, sell to those leads.
The complicated part is deciding how you want to accomplish those two things.
And you have a LOT of options. That’s why instead of trying to determine the universally “best” way to generate leads or sell, I think you need to decide which mechanisms you’re willing to build around.
For me, that has become hosting Bundles for lead generation and automated email funnels for selling. Your answer might be completely different, and that’s kind of the point.
Choose Something You’re Willing to Get Really Good At
There’s another downside to constantly asking what’s working right now:
You keep starting over.
You try one lead generation strategy. It doesn’t immediately produce the results you hoped for. Someone tells you something else is working better. So you jump. Then you jump again. And again.
Suddenly you’ve spent two years trying seven different marketing strategies without sticking with any of them long enough to get particularly good at one.
So instead of asking what you could do, ask:
What am I willing to get really freaking good at?
You probably don’t need 14 different ways to generate leads. And you don’t need 9 different ways to sell. You need reliable ways to do both.
And ideally, they’re strategies that fit you well enough that you can keep refining them instead of replacing them every six months.
What Should You Do?
Start with two questions:
1. How do I want to consistently get in front of new people?
2. How do I want to consistently sell to those people?
And before you answer with whatever strategy your favorite business person is currently talking about, run your answer through a few more questions:
Does this fit my actual life?
Does this fit the kind of business I want to run?
Does this fit my strengths and capacity?
Do I actually enjoy this enough to keep doing it?
If this becomes wildly successful, am I happy to have my business depend on it?
And am I willing to stick around long enough to get really freaking good at it?
Because the goal isn’t to discover the magical marketing strategy that works.
Because remember…everything works. The goal is to figure out what works for you — and then build from there.
the big takeaway
The best marketing strategy isn’t the one that works. It’s the one that works for you.
Almost every marketing strategy can generate results. The real question is whether it fits your life, your capacity, your strengths, and the kind of business you actually want to run.
Because if a strategy works really well, you’re going to have to keep doing it.
So choose a way to generate leads and a way to sell to those leads that you’re willing to get really freaking good at — instead of constantly abandoning what you’re doing for whatever the internet says is working right now.
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Frequently Asked Questions:
Q1: What is the best marketing strategy for an online business?
A1: There isn’t one marketing strategy that works best for every online business. The better choice depends on your audience, offer, capacity, strengths, budget, and the kind of business you want to build.
Q2: What are the two most important parts of a marketing strategy?
A2: At the simplest level, your business needs a reliable way to generate leads and a reliable way to sell to those leads. The specific strategies you use to accomplish those two jobs can vary.
Q3: How do I choose a marketing strategy?
A3: Look beyond whether the strategy can work. Consider what it requires from you, whether it fits your life and business model, and whether you’re willing to consistently use and improve it over time.
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