Sometimes when you look at your business it can seem like everything needs attention at once.

Maybe you don’t have a social media plan or even a marketing strategy. Perhaps you aren’t creating content, or content that’s connecting with your ideal clients. Maybe your website is old, outdated, or doesn’t actually say much of anything at all. Or maybe you don’t even have a website yet. Maybe you have systems issues (or the issue is you don’t have any systems.)

Any or all these things, or more, might be true for you and your business and where it's at right now.

First, phew, let me say, it IS a lot. No matter where you are in developing your business, creating a solid foundation for it takes a lot – a lot of commitment, clarity and work. Business building is also a deep, soulful journey. Please offer yourself a lot of compassion, especially if you find your business is not where you’d necessarily like it to be right now.

Also, recognize it can be easy to get overwhelmed by the number of things you have to do to help your business develop. The dominant cultural message (and one that’s particularly loud in what’s being marketed to coaches, healers and other creative entrepreneurs) is that you have to do it all and do it NOW. You have to build your dream business, and if you’re not doing all the things to market it…well, that’s a problem!

Everything at Once

The truth is when you try to do it all at once, not only can you not give the care and quality needed, but you also end up running in all directions at once. That’s a hard place to build momentum from.

If you ever look at elite runners in the minutes up to the starting gun, they aren’t running around grabbing their Gatorade, talking to fans, tying their shoes, warming up, looking at race films, and such. By that point, they’ve taken very deliberate, focused steps to bring them to that point. And all their attention is on what’s in front of them next – the race.

I have some good news though. Buried under all that might need attention in your business right now there is an order to doing things - one that can offer you a pathway forward. This week, I’m going to share with you five major steps to your marketing and business building roadmap.

Of course, there are many other aspects to building your business – systems, networking, referrals, legal structures, and so on. But those can, in many ways, be developed along the way, and often as needed, as you work your way through these five major steps.

Start at the Beginning

First and foremost, you need to start with your marketing’s foundation. You need to establish your who and what, or what I call your Authentic Core Statement. This is a statement that says in simple, relatable terms who you help and what you help them with. This is so critical to get down first because all your business’ marketing gets built on top of this.

Next Create an Offer

Once you can articulate who you help and what you help them with, you need to create a way people can work with you. In other words, you need something to sell an offer that is directed to your “who,” your ideal client, to help them with their “what,” that thing their struggling with. This could be a one-one coaching program, a group, a class, a workshop. It could be anything.

You focus on creating this next because as you work on your business and start building natural connections, it’s very likely people may approach you to help them. Plus doing the work to articulate this offer helps you lay the groundwork for your website copy.

A Web Presence

Next, you can work on your web presence. In today’s world, you need a web presence. Notice I didn’t say website. I said web presence. It’s the modern-day equivalent of the yellow pages. if someone hears about you and your work, the first thing they’re likely to do is to look you up online, and if they can’t find you, they might have difficulty growing trust in you and your business.

A web presence, especially a fully developed website, offers visitors a chance to get to know you, your work, who you help, your approach, how you work, and more. In short, it’s a beautiful way for people to engage in conversation with you before they reach out to you directly.

Compelling Content

Once you have a web presence established, you can turn your focus to creating content that is resonant and useful for your ideal clients. Leaning into who you help and thinking about what they’re struggling with allows you to develop content that is meaningful.

As your potential clients hear from you on a regular basis, understand your point of view, and receive help from your content, they’re more likely to begin to see you and trust that you’re someone who can really help them with the problem their struggling with.

Effective Campaigns

Once you’ve started building your audience through your content, you can start to add in promotional offers, in other words, marketing campaigns designed to sell or promote a particular thing. That thing could be a program or product you’re selling. But it could also be a free offer. Or a webinar or some other value add item.

What’s important here is understanding both that it takes much more time and effort than you think to plan and execute a successful promotional campaign. And that people need much more time than you realize to decide whether to say yes or not to what you’re offering.

Moving forward requires you to take a step, and the direction of that next step matters.

Each of these stages is fundamental to the ones following. You can’t create a good offer, website, content or promotional campaign if you’re not clear who it’s for or what the issue is. You can create good content without a web presence but when people engage with that content and want to find out more about you, they won’t be able to. And if people haven’t had a way to engage with you before (such as through your content,) it’s unlikely they’ll pull out their credit card the first time they see an offer from you.

If you find yourself not knowing where to start or feeling like you have to do everything at once, you can pause, and take a step back. Pull out this list and start at the beginning, making sure you have your Authentic Core Statement in place. Then you can turn to your offer(s), web presence, content and creating effective campaigns.

One step at a time is all that’s ever needed.

If you’re struggling knowing where to focus your efforts, I'd love to offer you a free marketing assessment and intuitive business energy reading.

In our call, I'll ask you questions about where you're at with your business' development journey, then I'll do a short energy reading on the essence of your business. I'll let you know what's working well and what wants attention. Then, I'll offer practical guidance on a next step that can help you move ahead.

Getting clarity on where to focus is the first step to stop struggling with your marketing and to getting more clients.

For more information and to sign up, click here

Photo by nine koepfer on Unsplash