I Don't Care Which Marketing Strategy You Use. Just Pick One and Stick With It.

Last week I started writing every day over on The Real Jamie Clarke, and getting it all out of my head and onto the page has shown me something I didn’t really want to see.

I’d been doing the one thing I tell every client not to do.

I kept changing my strategy.

Four versions of my own framework

I’ve been building The Perfect Customer Journey for years. It’s my framework, it’s how I work, and it’s what I believe in.

And at one point this year I had four different versions of it.

Four.

Every time I sat down to work on the business I’d “improve” it, rename a stage, shuffle something round and start again (and I’m the bloke who’s meant to know what he’s doing 🤦).

None of the versions were wrong, but because I never stuck with one long enough, none of them got the chance to work.

As I wrote on there last week, the key for me is picking a focus and sticking with it for long enough to see if it works.

The problem was never the strategy. It was me never giving anything enough time.

I don’t care which one you pick

People ask me which marketing strategy is best, and I think they’re expecting some big clever answer.

To be honest, I don’t care which one you use.

Yes, I believe the PCJ is the only one you’ll need and that it can help any business grow, but in all honesty, it doesn’t matter which…

…it just matters that you use one.

A strategy is just something that tells you what to do next and, more importantly, what to ignore.

Pick one from a book, a course, a mate who’s done well, or me, and then stick with it long enough to find out if it actually works.

A simple strategy you stick with for a year will beat a clever one you swap every three months, nearly every time.

Say you run a cleaning company.

In January you read a book that says pick one type of customer, so you concentrate on holiday lets.

By April a course tells you everything should be a funnel, so you build one of them too, and then in the summer an agency sells you a whole new plan and the holiday lets and the funnel get quietly dropped.

Every one of those might have worked, but none of them were given the time to.

Why we keep switching

I’ve done this enough times to know the reasons, and none of them are good ones.

It’s not working yet. Marketing is slow at the start, you do the work in March and the phone rings in June, so it’s easy to give up in April and blame the strategy.

We get bored of it. You see your own marketing every single day and your customers don’t, so you’re sick of it long before most of them have even noticed it.

Something shinier comes along. There’s always a new strategy, a new guru or a new AI tool everyone on LinkedIn swears by, and you never feel more productive than on the first day of a new plan.

That last one was me.

I felt amazing every time I started a new version. Then I felt like crap, because I had nothing to show for it.

What sticking with it looks like

So last week I did something I should have done years ago.

I wrote down who I help, how I help and what I don’t do, and I’ve fixed it for at least the next 6 to 12 months - no new services, no new niches, and no new versions of anything.

The words can get better (that’s allowed), but the strategy stays put.

Will I get itchy feet? Probably.

Will I want to change it the first quiet week? Almost definitely.

But, I’ve written it down, and now I’ve told you as well.

Tell someone

That’s the bit that actually makes it stick.

I’ve tried running before, loads of times, and I’d do it for a few weeks and then just stop, because the only person I’d told was me.

This time, on day one I put a video out saying I’d run at least a mile every day until my 40th birthday, and now I’m over 90 days in.

I’m crap at holding myself to things. I’m good at doing what I’ve told other people I’ll do.

So tell someone what your strategy is, whether that’s your partner, your team, a mate or me.

It’s a lot harder to quietly swap it for a new one when someone’s going to ask you how it’s going.

The one I use

If you want mine, it’s The Perfect Customer Journey, six stages that turn strangers into raving fans:

• Stage 1: Get Noticed. People can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist.
• Stage 2: Connect. Do you have a way you can reach them directly?
• Stage 3: Engage. This is where you build trust before people buy.
• Stage 4: Convert. Make the sale the next obvious step.
• Stage 5: Deliver & Wow. You need to impress and make yourself stand out.
• Stage 6: Create Fans. Do you make it easy for customers to tell others about you?

It’s what I use with every client and in my own business, and it’s the one I’m sticking with (all four versions are now one again 😂).

The strategy stays the same, and what you do inside it can change, like trying a new way to get noticed or a better way to follow up, but the six stages stay exactly where they are.

Use mine, use someone else’s, just pick one.

Your job this week

Write down the strategy you’re using.

It might be the PCJ, something from a book you’ve read, or your own way of doing things that you’ve built up over the years - it just needs to be written down somewhere you’ll see it.

If you can’t write it down, you don’t have one yet, so pick one this week.

Then get your diary out, put a date in it six months from today and call it “review the strategy”.

Until that date, you’re allowed to change what you do, but not the strategy itself.

And tell one person what it is.

Want one of these every week?

I write a short email every Sunday at 4pm called The Marketing Memo.

One idea, plain English, and something you can actually do that week, written for solopreneurs, coaches and service businesses who want marketing to be easier.

It’s free, and you can get The Marketing Memo here.

Want a second pair of eyes?

If you’re not sure whether your strategy is the problem or you just haven’t given it long enough, that’s what Your Web Review is for.

I record a video going through your website, Google profile, reviews and socials, and tell you the three things I’d fix first.

No big sales pitch.

Get your free Web Review