Where To Focus And Prioritise Your Attention In Your Business

Whenever I open up a call for questions, I get lots which are along a similar theme: what do I first, what’s the most important thing, where should I be focusing? We all want a specific place to start in order to know that we’re doing all the right things in all the right places. This can be particularly difficult if you’re deciding to invest in some education and personal development, and you just want to do them all and can't possibly choose. Sound familiar?In this post I’m going to offer a few key pointers to take the pressure off that feeling of wanting to be doing things ‘right’, as well as help you to make decisions about what’s right for you right now.A bit of a spoiler though – “what’s the most important thing for me to be doing?” is very much a “how long is a piece of string?” question. There is no right, wrong or definitive answer as it is totally dependent on your own piece of string, your business and you. So this post isn’t going to tell you the number one definitive thing to do (surprise surprise), but it will help you to find the right thing for you.

It doesn’t matter where you start

It doesn’t matter where you start, it only matters that you do. I know clients who get tied up in knots wondering whether to focus on Instagram or the blog first, on whether pictures should be more important than the words, and which blog post to publish first?!The truth is, in the grand scheme of the history of your business, it doesn’t matter. I can’t remember what my first blog post was (and please don't go back and check!), but I know for a fact the most significant thing about it is that it was the first of many more. It started the routine and habit of posting which happens to this day.

As Westernised humans we have a linear view of time, but that’s not true of the life of your content. A blog post will be showing up on searches years after you post it - I have posts that are months old that still get more traffic than more recent ones. It didn't matter what order they were posted in, just that they were posted. So the most important thing is that you just start somewhere, and then continue.

Everything should be working together

This is the answer I always give when people ask what the highest priority should be in their marketing. For ease marketing is often divied up into social, and content, and ads, and email and everything else, but that fragmentation means we forget that all those elements work best together, not on their own.

To give you an example, almost all new clients who sign up to work with me find me via Instagram. However they don’t decide to work with me based on my feed, that comes from exploring my blog content and receiving a couple of emails from me. There is never one single thing that makes up somebody’s mind, which means I can never prioritise one element of my marketing mix over another.

Instead, think about the jobs each element does for you and your business, and think which function is the priority right now. Taking my example again, Instagram and outreach are my acquisition channels, while the blog, podcast and email are my conversion and retention channels. So if I have a lull in enquiries and want to boost my acquisition, then I’ll temporarily prioritise Instagram and outreach. If I’m launching new products and want to get my existing audience involved, I’ll focus more on email and content.So it’s less a case of what should always be a priority, but what are you lacking in your business right now and what element of the holistic whole is stronger at fixing that for you.

What do you want to achieve right now?

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had emails and messages from people asking which of my three current programmes (Make It Real, Campfire and Smoke Signals) is right for them. And my answer is always another question: what are your goals?There are so many options and opportunities out there for online education which promise the world and sound so enticing, and I totally get that it’s a slippery slope trying to work which to take. Do I need to learn to write, take photos, or uplevel my marketing? Is an ecourse enough or do I need more of a coaching approach?Stop reading the sales pages, drown out the noise and actually listen to yourself. Where are you trying to get to? What are your short term and long term goals? What would you like to achieve in the next three months? Now - what’s going to make that process difficult? And there’s your decision made. Take the course that will help you with that stumbling block to your goal. Once you reach that goal, set another one and join the programme that will help you get there too. And repeat 😉.