Don’t Waste Time On These 10 Marketing Strategies

If you’re trying to attract clients with any of the marketing strategies below, you’re wasting your time.

I know that sounds harsh, but I want you to avoid the same mistake that I’ve made, which is working really hard… but in the wrong direction.

So, without further ado, here are the top 10 marketing strategies to avoid.

1. Free Social Media Posts

We’re talking about free posts that you put on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin or any other social media platform. The problem with that is you’ll reach very few people.

As an example, even if you have a Facebook page that has a thousand likes and you post something out, only a hundred people or less will see it. So, you can’t really grow a predictable business like that.

You might be saying, “Hey Cham, I get clients from doing that!”

You might get one or two but it’s such a manual process, and you can’t scale it. You can’t decide to do triple the amount of results the next day and then triple it again the next week just because you want to.

You’re going to hit a ceiling on how many people you reach with a free post.

Now as I go through this list of marketing strategies to avoid, the question you shouldn’t ask yourself is, “Will it work?”

Well, does cold calling work? Does that mean I should do a whole bunch of cold calling? Of course not.

The question you should ask yourself is, “Is this the best use of your time?”

2. Boosting Posts On Facebook

You may have noticed a little blue button on your post that says, ‘Boost Post’, which is something that you should avoid.

It’s for people who really don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to online marketing. That’s because Facebook doesn’t have a human being looking at your posts. It’s just a computer.

So if you throw $50 at that and now that goes to an extra thousand people, and it happened to be a quote from Richard Branson or something, what’s that doing? How is that going to lead to clients for you?

Is that building your brand? Or is that going to build Richard Branson’s brand? It doesn’t let you optimise for YOUR marketing goals.

3. Clubhouse, Snapchat… Or Any Other Bright, Shiny Object

You shouldn’t be trying them out until you’ve maximised the core things in marketing like Facebook ads, Google ads, SEO and email marketing.

These new apps are what I would call BSOs (Bright, Shiny Objects)… there’s a lot of activity happening there but not much progress. And you’re really going to be wasting your time if you go down this path.

If you resonate with anything that I’m talking about here, it’s because I like to do things one time and then get paid for it or get the results from it forever, or for many, many years at least.

And I know I’m being brutally honest, but just know that these recommendations aren’t based on some blog post that I read.

I started my own business and co-founded Authentic Education back in 2009, and I’ve done all the marketing ever since.

We’ve invested millions of dollars in ads, and as of this writing, our Facebook ads budget right now is more than $300,000 every year. We also have 15 employees around the world and have been featured in the media.

4. Podcasts

Build it and they will come… that’s kind of like the mantra for podcasts.

But podcasts are like websites. Just because you build a website in this day and age, doesn’t mean that a whole bunch of people will start to check it out. Well, podcasts are the same.

“But Cham, some people do really well off podcasts!” That’s because they dedicate themselves to just doing podcasts.

So yes, podcasts will work, but is it the best use of your time? Probably not.

5. Facebook Groups

The biggest issue that I have with Facebook groups is it’s not scalable. You can’t just decide to triple the number of people in that Facebook group… not without a lot of manual work.

You’ll always have to be manually posting and direct messaging people, which again is not really the best use of your time.

6. Lead Magnets

They’re not good because people don’t really spend time with them. Honestly, how much time have you spent reading that eBook that you downloaded last year? Not much I bet.

And even if you have spent some time, there’s not as much trust built. That’s because they don’t see your face. They don’t see your facial expressions.

That’s why I don’t really think that eBooks are the best use of your time.

7. Stories Or Going LIVE 

Facebook Lives are too manual and they have no longevity. They only last for a maximum of 48 hours on people’s newsfeeds.

So if you do a Facebook Live today, Facebook is going to expect something brand new from you tomorrow. You also can’t reuse them which is the biggest issue for me.

8. Networking

When it comes to networking, the time cost is so high. Physically going out to network with people or through virtual networking, it’s not a way that you would want to reliably grow your business.

That’s because you trade your time for money too much with networking.

So if you want to have double the business, what are you supposed to do? Spend eight hours networking next week instead of four? It’s just too much.

9. Old Business Cards Or Contacts

Fifteen years ago, my business partner handed me a box of old business cards that he had collected. We thought it would be a marketing goldmine, but it wasn’t.

Instead, I spent days of my life entering their details into a spreadsheet and then emailing them. This was followed by even more days of answering complaints and questions that flooded in. Eventually, I had to remove these contacts from our database altogether.

Let’s face it, if you don’t remember who that person is, it’s highly unlikely that they remember you either. There’s simply no relationship to build upon.

The effort required to maintain these outdated contacts is simply not worth the trouble.

It’s also worth mentioning that doing so can even get you blacklisted by email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and others.

10. Direct Messaging

This is when you send direct messages to people like Linkedin or Facebook groups. You may have seen in your Linkedin message box now, there’s a whole bunch of people that say, ‘Hey, I see we have similar connections. What is it that you do?’

There’s just no trust there. Direct messaging is a poor way of forming a relationship with your prospects that’s built on trust, it’s also not the best use of your time, and I find it’s a really great way to get your account blocked.

The Marketing MAP

When you condense all of these 10 marketing strategies down, it’s what we would call Hope Marketing. Hope marketing is just putting a piece of marketing out there and then hoping it succeeds.

It’s not a predictable way to build your business.

So you might be thinking, ‘Okay Mr Smarty Pants Asian guy on this video… What should I be doing then?’

What I would recommend is something I call the Marketing MAP. It’s an acronym:

• M – Meet your ideal client

There are only seven methods that I recommend are the best way to meet your ideal client.

• A – Ask for their time

We need time because time also builds trust. Time and trust are the essential building blocks for a relationship. And there are three ways that you can ask for people’s time.

• P – Present your offer

There are two really great ways that you should be presenting your offer.

This whole Marketing MAP works for products, services, low-ticket and high-ticket items… It obviously takes a lot of time for me to explain in detail how to utilise these three steps to a point where you really get it. To a point where that lightbulb moment goes off and you think, ‘What have I been doing all this time?!’

From one business owner to another, I would love to map out the best way for you to attract clients to create a successful business.

That’s why I created a very special FREE 1-day online event called, “How To Attract Coaching Clients Consistently”. It’s where you’ll discover the one best way for your business to meet your ideal clients.

I say ‘one best way’ because I could probably make a prediction that right now, you’re doing too much. You’re working too hard for your money. You shouldn’t be chasing all these bright shiny objects.

My promise to you is you will get results three times faster than what most people do AT THE VERY LEAST because what most people do are a whole bunch of activity and not much progress.

A whole bunch of spinning their wheels and not much traction.

If you want to learn more about How To Attract Coaching Clients Consistently, click here. I’m going to show you how to successfully market your business in this day and age even if you’re a beginner, on a budget or bad with computers.

And I just want to talk about the elephant in the room which is why is it free? This is something that other people and a lot of other companies don’t address.

It’s free because we use a marketing method called Freemium like Google and Spotify. Why are they free? It’s because they deliver great value for free and a small percentage of people decide to take them up on the premium version, which makes it a win-win for everyone.

And we do exactly the same thing. So if you want to just stop chasing all these 10 bright shiny objects and you would rather just learn ONE system to start attracting clients consistently, click here to register your free ticket and I’ll see you online soon!

Do you want to learn more? Download our digital marketing free course guide.