A Simple Shift In Marketing That Will Save You Time and Energy

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If you run an online business you’re probably always open to finding simple marketing strategies and tools that actually work. The problem is, what starts as a simple strategy suddenly grows into too many gears spinning, feeling like you have to be “all the places” (all the time!), and a lot of overwhelm.

Instead of stacking strategy on strategy on strategy, I want to introduce you to three marketing shifts in how you approach marketing overall that will create more ease, more impact, and definitely more money coming into your business.

First, develop a core message

This is something that I stumbled across accidentally in my first business, as a designer. I had started off in the branding world and within a year narrowed in on doing the less glamorous, but very important ongoing design work (think PDFs for your courses, blog graphics, etc.)

The message was simple: You’re not a designer. You’ve got great branding, but now what? Stop wasting your time fumbling around in Canva or Photoshop. That’s what I’m here for.

And it landed. Now I wrote tons of blog posts, created lots of content, but it always came back to this core idea. My ideal clients were absolute rockstars at what they did. But they were not a designer and it was a waste of their time and energy trying to figure out how to make a PDF fillable or whatever.

A lot of people will hear the phrase ‘core message’ and automatically assume I mean your business ‘value proposition’. While that’s a useful thing to have as well, what I am talking about is something a little different.

I want you to have an idea, a concept, a message that you come back to over and over again—that people begin to associate with you. Yes, build your value proposition and your elevator pitches and your “I help…” statements too, if that feels good. But what I am talking about here is your *thing*.

The thing that people go, “oh her? Yeah she’s the one who…”

The thing that causes your ideal client to go, “oooh… woah. She’s right.”

The thing that shifts a belief, introduces a new idea, or challenges your client to see something different.

So how do you create this? Start by digging into the question, “why you?”

This is one of the MOST POWERFUL questions you could learn to answer in your business (and one that my clients and I spend a lot of time exploring). As you dig into that question (it probably won’t be easy…) you’ll begin to uncover the reasons your clients or customers really would benefit from having you in their corner.

Those answers can become your core message.

Next, Think Deeper Versus Wider

If you’re someone who enjoys life outside of work (uh, hi!) this is an important one. Instead of continually stretching yourself, your time, and your energy wider… let’s instead move deeper on what’s already working.

A simple example:

If you’ve got a podcast that people seem to enjoy and be nurtured by, how can you promote that podcast more? How can you get it in front of more people? How can you share and reshare past episodes more often to drive traffic? Those are examples of going DEEPER on the podcast—

Instead of going wider. What I see a lot of people do is say, “well the podcast is great. But I also need to be on LinkedIn. And TikTok. And I should get that blog going again. Also we need to be on YouTube, right?” and they stretch and stretch and stretch wider but gain little traction.

Instead of spending all that time, in all those places, doing all those things… What if you instead dedicated a portion of that energy to getting the podcast more listeners? If you know it’s already working well, can we add fuel to the fire? Can we go deeper on what’s working and let it work even better?

I had a client recently who used this idea to take her newsletter that was very popular and turn it into a sales machine. When we started working together she already had a great newsletter operation going, with one small problem → her click through rate left a little to be desired. 

But instead of working on that and putting energy into shifting that click through rate and continuing to grow her newsletter (something she enjoyed doing!) she figured she needed to start dancing on Reels and TikToks and doing more on social media, period. (Even though she didn’t want to do those things.)

We focused in and went DEEPER on what was working and within a few shifts and tweaks she had her clickthrough rate improve and started generating more income through her newsletter. It was SO MUCH EASIER to do that than to learn a new platform, learn silly choreography, or force herself to show up on platforms that she didn’t even enjoy.

So the question for you is:

Where are you stretched wide right now? Where can you, instead, go deeper on something that is already working or nearly working for you?

Finally, Think Persistency over Consistency

Consistency gets a lot of clout in our online space—and yet, I hear a lot of people struggle with it. I want to introduce you to the idea of persistency instead and see if that works better for you.

Where consistency can imply ‘post every day, twice a day’, persistency can say, ‘say it again’. And there’s a lot—a LOT—of power in saying it again.

This is something I talk about with my clients consistently in their desire for more ease—you don’t have to recreate the wheel. If you have a core message, if you have a big idea that your people need to hear… well, say it. A lot.

Instead of coming up with new-new-new all the time, can we choose to be persistent in our ideas, our message, our beliefs, our perspectives, and our point? This is actually how you build trust over time and trust is essential to your business. We see this in big brands all the time. Apple has had different ways of sharing this persistent idea of ‘for creative geniuses’ for decades. It used to be about using their big desktop computers to create videos and then it became about expressing yourself with your iPod and then it became about shooting the cover of Vogue with an iPhone—but with persistence they’ve owned this niche of we’re for creatives. 

When I talk about this, there’s usually a sigh of relief that you don’t need to have a million ideas to be successful. You don’t have to churn out incredibly new insights daily on all the platforms to make more money. Instead, you get to be persistent with the message you’re here to share—so much simpler.

There’s still room for creativity and using new metaphors or stories or examples, of course. It doesn’t have to be verbatim, the same content over and over again. But if you’re clear on WHAT you’re actually trying to say, then it becomes a fun game of ‘how do I want to say it, today?’

Final Notes

I invite you to overlay these three concepts onto your marketing and watch how much simpler and ease-filled it can be. I’m a big proponent of less, but better and with these three simple shifts you’ll be on your way to more effective marketing with more ease.

Dive Deeper:

• How to pivot your business to support the life you really want
• Is your marketing working? How to know if you’re wasting your time
• How to manage your energy for more productivity

Kaitlyn Kessler is a business coach and mentor dedicated to helping her clients create more ease in their businesses and lives.

Her support blends strategic thinking with the inner work and a whole lot of self-love. This supports her clients to step into more alignment with their offers, their business models, their values, how they want to lead, and more so they can continue to grow their impact and income in a way that actually feels good.