Each year, marketers report data, emerging trends, new tactics and more — which are all necessary for building your marketing strategy. However, we think dialing it back a notch may be what is needed as we move into a new decade. Yes, you read that correctly — DECADE.

For any small or medium-sized business, it’s easy to get sidetracked by all the marketing possibilities out there, especially with social media creating ample FOMO (fear of missing out) daily.

We want to help you take a moment to zoom out and think about one concept to help you create a strategy that succeeds.

That one word is consistency.

Why Consistency?

There are many reasons a small or medium-sized business may need to adjust marketing tactics, but let’s be clear that pivoting and completely changing tactics are not the same thing.

Creating consistency is vital for your potential customers and is so important for their buying cycle.

Each time you swap up the marketing tactics because you’re bored or haven’t seen results in just a few months, think of it as having to retrain your audience to understand your message.

That’s like watching the movie 50 First Dates 50 different times. Not fun, and not a great spend on marketing dollars if you ask me.

How to Create Consistency

Creating consistency starts with building a plan.

You should look at your marketing budget and plan it by the year. Make sure you get some form of exposure year-round, followed by an increase in spending a few times per year for lead generation during your busiest seasons.

For more tips on marketing your business in the off-season, check out this blog!

If you go straight to dumping your dollars into lead generation, you’re leaving quite a bit of money on the table and not serving your potential clients as well as you could be.

What to Expect

With an approach based on consistency, you typically see “little by little, little becomes a lot,” but there is a time factor that requires patience.

There is also an awareness that needs to be established for what KPIs (key performance indicator) you are measuring that would not be direct leads in the beginning. The rhythm you should work toward is by measuring impressions, reach, engagement (in whatever capacity your chosen channels allow) and later followed by conversions – otherwise known as the marketing funnel.

No matter what tactics or channels you choose, I highly recommend aiming to create consistency in your exposure year-round. If you’re playing to win, the key is to keep playing.

At the end of the day, there are a lot of elements that create “good marketing.”

For a small or medium-sized business, creating consistency in your strategy is the first step. From there, you can update messaging, call-to-actions, imagery and all the other moving parts and pieces that advance your business through the marketing process.

The absolute worst thing you can do is jump from strategy to strategy, never giving anything enough time to pick up traction, gain momentum and move you forward.

This is also one of the most common mistakes our strategists see with the clients we work with because it’s easy to fall into the mindset of “this isn’t working, let’s shift the whole strategy.”

You will be on the brink of a breakthrough once you find perseverance and consistency with the marketing direction you’ve chosen and built out over time.

Final Thoughts

Although consistency doesn’t always yield immediate results, there is no doubt it sets your business up for a better long-term strategy as you grow. So, don't give up on the process.

The key to creating consistency is being intentional about choosing where to spend your dollars on reaching your audience, building your online infrastructure and collecting data to build on to the presence you’re creating.

All of those things become hard to accomplish if you lack consistency in your marketing.

My recommendation is to choose a dollar amount that fits your budget and find one or two places to start being extremely consistent. Once you begin building traction there, you’ll be able to allocate more budget to the next phase as you grow.

When you are intentional about how you are marketing your business year-round, your clients are more likely to notice, trust and work with you!

If you have comments or questions, feel free to start a conversation with us on our Facebook page. We are a team of people who are always looking to help business owners just like you!

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