Podcast 1: 5 Disadvantages of Working Alone on Your Marketing

When it comes to being a complementary practitioner, therapist or coach, it can be lonely working on your own. You get to work with clients, but much of building your business means working on your marketing, which you probably do mainly alone.

Marketing is absolutely necessary to grow a sustainable business.  It is what will attract clients to your practice, so you need to find a way of marketing yourself effectively.

Whilst working on your own is great when you need to get your head down and know exactly what you’re doing.  Constantly working on your own can be a slog, and there are big disadvantages to trying to go it alone with your marketing.  Here are my top 5 disadvantages to working alone on your marketing:

1. Feeling overwhelmed

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, especially if you feel stressed about marketing yourself.  You’ll lose clarity and struggle to get an objective view of what’s what, and importantly, what you need to do next. This can lead to a spiral of questioning yourself and comparing yourself to others which feedback into feeling overwhelmed.

2. No one to bounce ideas off

Marketing is a creative process and having no one to test your ideas on will slow the process down.  Working alone, you’re too close to the tasks and can easily end up working on something that isn’t right.  Being able to share your thoughts and get an external opinion will help you to make good decisions.  Just speaking challenges out loud to someone can be an easy way to come up with viable solutions.

3. Lack of motivation

Let’s face it, marketing for most practitioners isn’t top of the list of favourite things to do.  When you’re relying on yourself to keep motivated, it can be very easy to get side-tracked.  Even worse, if you’re a social animal, it can be boring working alone, and your motivation can fade.

4. Lack of direction

If you’re not sure what you should be working on next, or where to start, it’s very easy to feel stuck.  We’ve all been there, starting the day with good intentions but ending up going round in circles and feeling like you’ve achieved absolutely nothing.  Having a vision, goals and a plan will set your direction, but not having any accountability or focus will stop you from moving towards it.

5. Lack of skills

You may be the best practitioner, but marketing requires a whole different skill set.  Whilst dabbling with different marketing activities may bring some results, there will be many where you just don’t have the required skills.  These are the times when you need help, but you feel alone and like everything is down to you.

Build your marketing support team

Having a team of people to support and help you with your marketing will help you build a thriving practice, faster.  There are many different options available to find help depending on you, your network and your budget.  Here are some of my favourites:

Business buddy

Find a friend who is in a similar business to you and buddy up to support each other.  You can decide how to make it work between you but it’s a great way to keep yourself accountable. You want someone who’s invested in your business as well as their own so you can both thrive.

This is one of the best things I did for my business.  A friend (a chartered marketer and practitioner too) and I have weekly calls where we spend an hour together.  We spend half the call working on each other’s businesses and set ourselves goals for the next week.  It’s a great way to test our ideas, get feedback on our projects and get support with our plans.

Masterminds

Masterminding is really powerful for your business and can happen in a number of formats.  You can have informal ones between peers or attend paid ones that are facilitated by a professional marketer. They can be online or offline and again; it’s about having a collaborative approach to help you thrive.

I’ve attended a few masterminds around conferences where I’ve worked with strangers. It’s been interesting to get completely different opinions on my business and there have been some amazing sessions where the ideas generated were worth every penny spent on attending the conference.

In-person workshops

This can be a fast way to get a grip on your marketing quickly in a supportive environment.  They can be on a specific topic you want to learn or tailored for a peer group.

I’ve run workshops both ways and as the facilitator, it’s a great way for the participants to learn and support each other.  I’ve also booked onto a few for myself where I want a focussed couple of days to really get to grips with a topic.

Marketing programmes

Joining online programmes are a great way of getting professional support but at a fraction of the cost of attending in-person events.  I personally find the ones that are based around a community work best as you can get feedback from the leader and the participants.  These can be run across a few weeks and you implement as you go with the goal of achieving something specific in your marketing by the end.

Coach mentor

Having a coach or mentor will help you make the right moves in your business.  This is one of the best ways to ensure you are supported and have someone keeping you accountable as you grow.  They will be there to feedback on your progress, support you when you’re having a wobble and celebrate your successes.

Marketing can be fun and easy but you need to make sure you have the support network in place to help you when the going gets tough as well as celebrate your wins with you.

If you’re struggling with your marketing, book a discovery call today and find out how I can help you.

Podcast 1 show notes:

• Introducing this episode (0:27)
• 1^st disadvantage is feeling overwhelmed (1:10)
• 2^nd disadvantage where you have no-one to bounce ideas off (1:48)
• 3^rd disadvantage is the lack of motivation (2:35)
• 4^th disadvantage is the lack of direction (3:02)
• 5^th disadvantage is the lack of skills (3:28)
• Build your support network (4:16)
• Get a business buddy (4.28)
• Mastermind groups (5:43)
• In-person workshops (6:53)
• Online marketing programmes (7:58)
• Get a coach or mentor (8:34)

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