If you want a new result from your marketing, building your own marketing rhythms will help get you there.
Many of you have read Atomic Habits. The big realisation for the author James Clear was that results aren’t driven only by the goals you set, they are connected to the systems you follow. Those habits, those processes you follow day after day until you got to the result you’re looking for.
“We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits
It’s possible you feel like you’re starting this too late. You know the impact of showing up – daily social posts, weekly blogging, monthly podcasting. You’ve been on the receiving end of it from others – like watching Jason Staats’ videos and thinking, “Wow, he’s everywhere: he’s so good”. It can feel a little demotivating – like you have so far to go to “catch up”…so you never start. But if the first best time to start was years ago, the second best time is now.
At a certain point in the past Jason simply showed up. I interviewed him along with other accountants at an event several months ago, and afterwards we talked for a while about creativity and marketing and the power of starting something, keeping going, and building a rhythm of it. Jason laughs about his original videos now, but he kept recording them and they kept helping people. I like James Ashford’s definition of a marketing plan: “Do shit, and if it works, do more of that shit and do it better. If it doesn’t work, stop that shit or change that shit.”
It’s the rhythm, the consistency which helps you do all this.
And I’d argue that building a rhythm of creativity – something which stirs up that creative mindset within you, even if it’s been dormant for a while – is a good place to start, because it releases the pressure of “do marketing” and “make sales” and “get results”…and yet at the same time it’s almost guaranteed to stir up something in your mind which will lead to those things.
Here are a few ways you might begin building a rhythm of creativity into your life:
- Set a very small goal every day. Like writing 200 words, or even 20 words of a social media post. The habit itself is small, and you might expect small results. But this stage isn’t about being obsessed with getting results: it’s about sticking with the pattern, the rhythm. You might not even know what your ultimate goal is yet, whether it’s writing a book or publishing consistent blog posts on your website. It’s okay to start a rhythm first and let the goal reveal itself.
- Connect your new habit to one you are already doing. Something you do without even thinking about it. Every day you make coffee, check your emails, or take your children to school. Connecting your new creative habit to an existing one gives it a greater likelihood of success, because you’re always going to do that thing you have to do. Right before you check your emails, open up the draft document of social media posts and write a few lines. After every client meeting, spend 5 minutes noting down the questions & comments they made which you’ve heard before from other clients, and can use for marketing content in the future.
- Create a habit for the whole team. Choose a book and read it together, with a defined deadline. Everyone can easily calculate how many pages or chapters they need to read per day, or week, or month. One person needs to read a page a day to finish on time. Someone else needs to read a chapter a day. You could follow a similar process with recording videos, or making lists of questions your clients ask, or sharing favourite quotes from books and podcasts. It can be the simplest habit of all, but when you’re all doing it together, someone is bound to remember on the day you forget, and vice versa.
- Make it a challenge. Doing a 100 day challenge is a great way to establish a new habit: do the thing, every day, for 100 days in a row. You could use this to write a certain number of words, record a video, or post on a social media platform. You could even connect a certain number of puzzle pieces in a puzzle you have sitting out on a table. If you find one hundred days is too much to start with, do a thirty day challenge or even an eight day challenge! The point is to set yourself a challenge which will push you a little and bring a sense of achievement. It’s challenging (hence the name!) but not impossible.
With any habit you set, follow the Four Laws of Behaviour Change shared by James Clear in Atomic Habits:
- Make it obvious
- Make it easy
- Make it attractive
- Make it satisfying
When you do this, there’s a higher chance your habit will last, which means your chances of reaching your goals will increase.
Not because you set a goal, but because you built a rhythm which contributes daily and consistently to that goal.
You might even find you enjoy the habit itself more than the resulting achievement. I am definitely one of those people who, when I start getting close to achieving one goal, my mind is already leaping ahead to the next goal. It’s a blessing and a curse, but it reinforces the value of rhythms. They protect me from “SQUIRREL!” marketing and I can definitely point to my rhythms – this newsletter, my weekly blog posts, regular social media posts, 100 day challenges – as the contributors to my achieving the bigger goals. Like publishing books and reaching revenue targets.
