Why Is Focus Important When Marketing?

Focus is a key tenant of any marketing plan. It's been said that "focus is the answer to every question in life." But what does this have to do with your business? The answer is everything! When you make decisions about how to market your company, it can be easy to get caught up in all of the different ideas and options available.

With so many choices out there, it can feel like you're spinning your wheels and not making any progress at all. Rather than trying a little bit of everything, focus on one thing at a time.

Choose one specific marketing channel or tactic and implement it before moving on to another option. This will allow you for greater success as well as more ROI from your efforts!

Also, it is easy to think that the most important thing to focus on when marketing is the product you are selling. In reality, this is only half of what matters. It's just as important to focus on your target audience and how they will react to your marketing message.

The more focused your message, the better chance it has of resonating with them and working for you in return.

For this reason, I recommend that you place your focus on one or two channels, such as social media advertising, email marketing and online content creation, as these are the ones that will drive results for your business.

Over the years, I’ve observed that the clients who ignored this advice, ending up wasting time, money, energy and resources. Meaning, they attempted to do it all (or tried too many things at once) and then wanted to spend valuable coaching hours discussing what's not working. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of  selecting  one or two channels and begin with those until you have results to show for your efforts.

The key is to find out what's working for other businesses in the same niche as yours before committing too much time and money into a channel that yields little result. If I had done more research on this topic when I began, I would have saved a lot of time, money, and energy.

This is where the marketing funnel comes in handy.  It is not wise to invest in every channel  so you can test which one provides the best return on investment for your goals.  Keep it simple.  Focus on where your clients hang out online and offline, and make a doable action plan. When you keep your actions simple, you have a better chance of success that you would have if you tried to do everything at once.  

Focus your marketing efforts by going through this five step process:

Step One: Define your goals and objectives.  Writing down your intentions and desired outcomes helps to focus your attention and efforts. 

Step Two: Complete a business model canvas to ensure that your value proposition, customer segment and revenue streams are aligned. 

Step Three: Draw out your desired marketing sequence. For example, if you point someone to your website, what happens next? Do you want them to sign up for your opt-in (free gift), invest in a tripwire, then go into your email sequence that slowly leads them into your course, mastermind, membership program, coaching program or product sale? OR Do you want them to go directly to your About Page and then to your Services page? OR do you want them to complete a quiz and then sign up for an entry level product? There are so many options, so take a moment to clarify your customer touchpoints during the buyer journey.

Step Three: Check alignment between your content strategy, marketing strategy and sales strategy. Please keep in mind that confused minds do not buy, nor do those who can’t easily see the relevance of your solution.

Step Four: Schedule time for direct contact and followup, networking and referral building, writing, publicity, sales calls, online/offline promotional events, live/virtual events, and so on.  List your channels, goals, objectives and timeline. Commit to taking daily action and review this plan weekly to track your progress and make adjustments as needed.

Step Five: Reflect On What You've Learned After Doing The Process Above And Apply This Knowledge To Future Marketing Decisions & Plans.

The aforementioned five step plan is ultimately about freedom.  There is no worse feeling than “overgiving, overdoing and unearning”.  Clarify how much time, money, energy, and resources are required.  Setting measurable, achievable results allows you to track everything in real time so that you  know whether or not your campaign is working as planned. 

What’s been your major learning, insight, or discovery so far?