I’ve always run my business from my diary. If a meeting or call with a prospect goes into my diary, it happens. Simple.
It’s the same with my important ‘get done’ tasks. If they go into the diary, I treat them as I would a meeting or call with a prospect. I show up and they get done.
And it’s why whenever I plan out a marketing campaign, either for myself or one of my clients, I look for the opportunity of where the live events are. Not stuff like ‘launch date’ or ‘decide on the price’. I mean a live event where you have to show up in person.
For many marketing campaigns, there’s often an event; a workshop, masterclass, webinar or Facebook Live. You can discuss the pros and cons of running these events at different times and days of the week. But until the date is fixed, it difficult to get any real implementation energy behind the campaign.
The real traction starts from the moment when you get a date in your diary … and then start telling people.
Even if your next new product is an online one and you are not intending to be there ‘in person’ with your customers, always create the opportunity to run one, either in the building awareness stage of your marketing or in the selling and conversion part.
Yes, there are plenty of good marketing reasons to do this, including creating higher levels of engagements, but the truth is until a date for a live event where you have to show up is put in your diary, it’s really easy for a project like this to stay in the ‘I’d love to do’ stage.
Let me give you an example.
Yesterday I ran the first round of Pod calls for our new 90 Day Planning Cycle in Momentum. Two of the members were both in the same situation of discussing a new product they are launching in the next 90 Days.
One was a 12 week mastermind programme. The other was opening up a new membership community. There were a lot of details still to be worked out; the product names, onboarding logistics, price, payment plans, etc, etc. Both of them could spend the next 4 weeks working through all this … but we all knew that stuff was going to get in the way if there wasn’t a real ‘I’m showing up’ date in the diary to work towards.
Both of them had young children at home. Yup, not only are they both running a busy business but also home schooling two children each. The reality was that there was always going to be more pressing things that could potentially distract them, making it easy for them both to push milestones back.
Start from where you are and don’t try to work out all the details BEFORE you begin taking real action.
And, in both of these cases, the ignition needed to kick start both these projects was getting dates in the diary of when to run the live support sessions. Not think about doing a survey and asking their list when would be a good time to. But making a decision for what’s right for them, based on their current commitments.
If you are short on time, there are always things to distract you that feel far more urgent and important at the time than your new marketing campaign for your new programme, membership community or product.
If there’s no commitment from anyone else to show up on that day, then there’s a very good chance you’ll let yourself off the hook. And this is one of the BIG reasons why so many new product projects just don’t happen in so many businesses.
They stay in the ‘I’d love to do’ stage.
Once the dates are in the diary, making decisions about product names, pricing, processes … well, they are going to happen. The energy will HAVE to flow towards this project of yours. You’ll have to no choice but to be committed to the dates you’ve put in your diary to show at an event.
So I’d love to know what date you are going to put in your diary.
If you’ve got a marketing campaign or new product idea that’s been stalling over the past weeks, what event can you decide to run to ignite you into action?
Until next time, do less, be more and play bigger.
