Stop Wasting Time On Marketing Channels That Don't Work

Do you feel like you’re posting everywhere and struggling to gain traction? Are you on all of the social channels – Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, plus blogging, podcasting, and YouTubing, and wondering how you haven’t burnt out completely yet? Are you afraid to let go of even one of the channels because you’re afraid that might be the one that’s driving revenue for your business? You desperately want to stop marketing everywhere, but you have no idea what to change. More than anything, you’d like to stop wasting time on marketing channels that don’t work, but unfortunately, you don’t know which ones those are or how to figure it out. 

My friend, take a deep breath. I’m going to walk you through how you figure all of this out, even if it feels like a complete mess right now. 

You don't have to be everywhere; you only need to be on the channels that are working to grow your business. But how do you figure out which ones you can drop and which you should keep?

Why are you wasting time on marketing channels that don’t work?

You don’t have to be everywhere; you only need to be on the channels that are working to grow your business. But how do you figure out which ones you can drop and which you should keep?

The reason you’re wasting time on marketing that’s not working is because no one taught you how to figure out what’s working and what you can let go of, so now, if you’re like a lot of my students and clients when I first meet them, you’re afraid to drop anything because you might risk your business.

I’d like to walk you through how you can figure out what’s working and what’s not working in your marketing so you can stop wasting time and start making more money.

Are you using the right marketing channels to find your ideal customer?

The first thing you want to do is identify where your ideal customer actually spends their time. Where do they go for answers? Are they listening to podcasts, watching videos, reading blogs or all of the above? Are they only on social media? Which social platforms do they like?

If your audience likes podcasts and you don’t have one, then it might be a good idea to free up time from other channels that aren’t working so you can add that podcast you’ve been thinking about. The focus of this exercise isn’t to add more to your schedule, it’s to remove what’s wasting time and replace it with things that will work better or just allow you to have a bit more free time in your day.

If your audience reads a lot of blogs or gets information from Google or AI search engines, then SEO will be important to you.

Where can you find out what’s working and what’s not working? That’s our next step, we’re going to start to look at analytics.

How do you figure out what’s working and what’s not working?

You’re going to want to look at the numbers (metrics) to start to understand what works and what doesn’t work for your audience. If you have analytics set up on your website, take a look at the last 12 months and see how many visitors each channel has sent to your site. If you track your leads each month, see how many came from each marketing channel. Which ones are driving the most traffic? Which channels are driving leads?

Sometimes we get a lot of traffic from a channel, but it doesn’t convert into leads or sales, and because of that, we’re actually wasting our time, even if it looks like it’s working well because we’re getting traffic.

For me, that was my experience with Pinterest. I got a lot of traffic but very few sign-ups for my opt-ins, so my business wasn’t growing. I was able to look at the data and know that Pinterest wasn’t working for me, and because it takes a lot of time to create and optimize the pins each month, I was able to free up time to do something else that worked better for me. I ended up launching a podcast in the time that was previously being taken up by Pinterest, and it’s worked much better. I know my podcast converts because I get new students and clients regularly who tell me they originally found me via the podcast. It was the right decision for my business when I stopped using Pinterest. Don’t be afraid to stop using a marketing channel, even if others try to convince you that it should be amazing for you, because each business is different, and not all channels will work for everyone.

Audit your marketing channels – look at the traffic, check to see how many leads are being generated, and add up the amount of time you’re spending on that channel in a month. Now, take the number of leads you’ve generated and look at that compared to the number of hours you spent to get those leads. Are you generating enough leads for the hours you spend each month? If you have three marketing channels and you’re getting 10 leads a month from one and spending 50 hours on it, that might not be enough return on your time investment. This decision will be up to you. But if you’re spending 20 hours a month and getting no leads from the channel (and it’s been that way for a few months), that’s probably one that’s a waste of time for you to continue with.

Remember, we’re looking for conversion and sales data here, not follower count or website traffic. You might be seeing growth in vanity metrics, but if they’re not generating leads and sales, it’s not growing your business, and you might want to stop spending so much time on that channel.

What do you do to improve your marketing performance?

Now that you know which channels are generating leads and sales and which ones aren’t, it’s time to make a decision. Which channels will you continue to focus on, and which ones will you stop using? Now you can spend more time working on the channels that are helping your business grow because you’ve freed yourself up from those that aren’t working.

How to stay focused on what’s working and not waste time with marketing in the future

Review your marketing performance each year and see what’s working. If you start a new marketing channel, treat it like a test and see how it works in the first month, quarter, and year. If it’s working, great; keep it. However, if it’s not working, don’t be afraid to stop it after a few months. You will want to understand how long it takes to see results for the new channel that you’re testing out, so you can be sure you don’t stop before you should normally expect results. Some channels take longer to work than others. Be sure to research that when you start any new marketing channel.

What if  you find that you’ve been wasting time on the wrong marketing channels

Don’t feel bad if you’ve been spending time on marketing channels that aren’t working for you. It happens to most everyone. The most important part is that you understand how to assess the situation in the future so it doesn’t happen again. You’ve been doing a lot to learn how to market your business, not everything you try will work – that’s why we do so much testing in the professional marketing industry. We know that not everything will work, so rather than get upset, we test out new strategies for a set period of time, see what works and what doesn’t work, and adjust as needed.

By only focusing on the channels that produce results, your business will grow bigger, and you’ll waste less time. If you want to learn how to do the audit and start figuring out what’s working and what’s a waste of time, I’ve created a marketing checkup that you can request right here and go through today. Once you’ve gone through the document, if you’d like my help with your business, I’d love to help you. I work with entrepreneurs one-on-one in my Elite Marketing Coaching and in a small group in The Confident Marketers Club (coming January 2206). I can help you with this.